Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 589 | The Secret Reason DC Republicans Love Ketanji Brown Jackson | Guest: Jon Schweppe

Episode Date: March 28, 2022

Today we start by discussing the crazy moment from last night's Oscars when Will Smith smacked Chris Rock in the face for a joke he made about Smith's wife. Then, we talk about more of the red flags surrounding Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, this time the support she's getting from "libertarians" and "conservatives" in Washington, D.C. Joining us to explain things is Jon Schweppe, director of policy and government at the American Principles Project. Jon talks about how high-level Democrats and Republicans seems to be in sync when it comes to supporting Biden's far-left, soft-on-crime nominee for SCOTUS, and the reason for that seems to be a shared obsession in D.C. with "Criminal Justice Reform." We discuss what the D.C. elites want from those reforms, and almost none of it would actually benefit regular people. However, knowing that many allegedly right-wing organizations support criminal justice reform, even though it really has nothing to do with conservative values, explains why these groups are silent about KBJ or are outwardly supporting her. --- Timecodes: (0:00) Introduction (1:38) The slap heard around the world (10:30) Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's judicial sentencing record (19:37) Interview with Jon Schweppe --- Today's Sponsors: Z-Stack is formulated to help combat any & all variants as well as the common cold & flu. Go to ZStackLife.com/ALLIE & enter promo code 'ALLIE' to get a small discount! Birch Gold is the leader in converting IRAs & 401(k)s into a tax-sheltered IRA backed by gold & silver. Text 'ALLIE' to 98-98-98 to get a free info kit on gold - no obligation! DonorsTrust is the principled, tax-friendly way to simplify your charitable giving. Visit DonorsTrust.org/ALLIE to download their donor prospectus! --- Show Links: New York Post: "Ketanji Brown Jackson Would Be the Supreme Court's Biggest Radical" https://bit.ly/36B1VYe The Federalist: "Yes, the Senate Should Investigate Ketanji Brown Jackson's Leniency Towards Sex Predators" https://bit.ly/3tM0grG --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Hey, guys, happy Monday. Welcome to Relatable. This episode, as all episodes, is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Get American Meat delivered right to your front door.

Go to Good Ranchers.com slash alley. That's good ranchers.com slash alley. All right, guys, we've got a great episode for you. you today. We are talking to our new friend John Schweppey. He is the Director of Policy and Government Affairs at the American Principles Project. He is also a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute. And I am having him on because he had a really interesting and revealing thread about why there are some groups and individuals who call themselves conservatives. They are on the right who are supporting the nomination of Katanji Brown Jackson. And it has to do with something called

criminal justice reform, which, as we've talked about, is actually a very destructive set of policies that often leads to higher rates of crime and more victims. So why are there some foundations, organizations, politicians on the right, who are supporting so-called criminal justice reform and are supporting Katanji Brown Jackson, especially with her disturbing record and issuing such light sentences on child predators and child sex. And child sex. And, abuse consumers. And so I have a couple more things that I want to say before we actually get into that interview. But before we get into the serious stuff, I want to talk about the slap heard around the world. One of the most stunning moments in TV history, I think. And that is when Will Smith at the

Oscars last night just slapped the heck out of Chris Rock, who was hosting the Oscars. It was, if you haven't heard of this, heard about this yet. If you haven't watched this yet, you got to watch this. Watch this on YouTube. If you're listening, go back later, watch it on YouTube because you've got to see this. All right. Here it is. Jada. I love you. G.I. Jane 2. Can't wait to see it. All right? I'm out here. Uh-oh. Richard. Oh, wow. Will Smith just smack the shit out of me. Wow, dude. Yes.

It was a G.I. Jane jump. Keep my wife's name out your fucking. No. I'm going to. Okay? Okay, just to give some contacts in case you weren't on Twitter and you weren't seeing people talk about this, Jada Pinkett Smith, she has alopecia. And so she lost a lot of hair and she looks bald.

And so Chris Rock calling her, you know, in G.I. Jane, too. G.I. Jane was a movie. Demi. Moore shaved her head and that was like a big thing back then. And so he's just making a joke because now she has a shaved head, which by the way, like she looks really beautiful. She can totally rock that look. I don't even know if Chris Rock knew that it was because of alopecia. He might have thought that she just shaved her head. I had no idea that she had alopecia. That's not something that everyone knows. Now maybe he was and he was just making a joke at her expense, which by the way, is something. that comedians do? Comedians like Chris Rock, I mean, they test the limits of what someone can say. They say offensive stuff. So I have a few thoughts about this whole thing. On the one hand, I think it is completely justified for Will Smith to feel offended on behalf of his wife. Now, I will say when you see the footage, you will see that right after Chris Rock tells the joke, Will Smith was actually laughing. And then he gets up a few seconds later because I guess he saw Jada's face, Jada was not laughing at all. She looked very offended by it. And so I don't know if he looked at her and was like,

oh, shoot, my wife is not happy. Like I don't want to sleep on the couch night, whatever it was. And so he decided to get up and then slap Chris Rock to defend his woman. Or if he was doing like a fake laugh, like ha ha, ha, I'm about to kill you kind of laugh, which is a little bit troubling. Or he didn't really hear the joke. But it's a little strange. He looked sincerely jovial and like he thought that the joke was funny and then he literally goes out there and just slaps him. And obviously Chris Rock, you can tell as he is about to get slapped, he doesn't know what's coming. Like he thinks it's a joke. And there's uncomfortable laughter from the audience.

And then as Will Smith starts yelling from the audience, that's when you see everyone's face kind of goes serious. Like, oh, this is real. Like that wasn't just a bit. And there are these like, there are these like, montages of people's, of celebrities' reactions going around on Twitter, which were kind of funny. Like, I don't actually think that it, I think it was real. I think it's something that that really happened. So, so that's, that's, that's one thought that maybe, maybe he was justified in being offended. Will Smith was justified. And, you know, someone going out and fighting on behalf of your

woman or, like, punching a guy on behalf of your girl. Like, that's something, that's a tale is all is time. However, however, it is still a little psychotic, okay, for you to hear a comedian tell a joke, yes, an offensive joke, and then to get up on stage in front of millions of people or hundreds of thousands of people. I don't know how many people watch the Oscars these days. And to slap a comedian for telling an offensive joke. Like, that's a little crazy. That's. That's. I'm sorry. That's a little wild. I understand being offended. Being offended. Okay, fine. Be offended. Talk to him after. Maybe you even take it outside after the show. Or maybe you mention it in your speech because he did end up winning an Oscar. And it was weird. His speech was like, are you talking about the character that you played defending his family? Are you talking about the moment that you just had defending your family? It was very confusing. But there were so many different ways that Will Smith could have handled it. rather than doing what he did. I felt really bad for Chris Rock. I don't think that the joke was great. Like, I don't like making fun of people for things that they can't control. Maybe that's just because

I'm sensitive. I don't like those kinds of jokes either. And if someone did that to my family, like my child or something, maybe I would go up on stage and slap them too. Like, maybe, maybe so. There is that part of that that Will Smith has seen his wife struggle with this thing. And it really, you know, hit home and really he took it hard. Like if my spouse had some kind of special need and someone made fun of it on live TV, who knows? Maybe I would want to go out there and slap them too. However, I don't think that's a really great justification for what he did. And one thing I will say, no matter what your perspective is on it, is that Will Smith, even if you think he was justified in this, like even if you think he was justified in doing what he did, he's not a victim. Like he just assaulted

someone on live television for telling a joke. He's not a victim. And all of the people who were comforting him, like on the side of the stage and afterward, you saw of Denzel Washington, whom I love, by the way, and Bradley Cooper and all these people saying, like, it's okay, dude, it's okay. I mean, is this the conclusion of the culture that we've built that words are violence, but actual violence isn't violence? That's kind of what it seems like. I'm not trying to make it political because I'm not saying that this is necessarily a political thing. I'm not trying to make it a culture war issue. It's just a little, but I did see it fall along kind of predictable lines that most people

like on the right or center right were saying that was totally uncalled for. Chris Rock is a comedian. And then a lot of people on the left who seem to kind of applaud it and think that, oh yeah, he's just defending his family. And that's weird. Like what are the politics behind that? Why would the left react that way? Iona Presley, who is a far left congresswoman.

she actually tweeted she has alopecia as well and so she is bald and she tweeted alopecia nation stand up thank you will smith and then she posed a picture of herself and says some other things thank you will smith it's just it's honestly it's strange again i don't want to make it political but why are you defending violence because of someone's words is that a good justification for it does seem like the left is more and more comfortable with responding to offensive words with violence. I'm not saying that's Will Smith's political motivation, but the reactions to it, how it fell along partisan lines, very strange. I think lots of things are true simultaneously. And so maybe there are some nuance there. At the end of the day, though, Will Smith is not a victim.

I don't think that how he reacted to that was justified. And I think some people should have some sympathy for Chris Rock. Like, there seemed to be no sympathy in the crowd for Chris Rock. and there absolutely should be. He probably didn't even know the joke was going to be that offensive. And like he is a comedian. Crazy times, crazy times. We are going to remember that moment forever. That's going to like go down in the TV Hall of Fame.

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news. of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular.

This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. All right. Just want to set this up a little bit. before we get into our conversation.

So we have already talked about Katanji Brown Jackson and her record, particularly when it comes to the sentencing of child sex predators and consumers and distributors of child sex abuse material. And we're going to talk about just some of that heinous stuff today, some stuff that I read in the Washington Post that I talked about. It added to a highlight on Instagram over the weekend. That really is just stunning, especially in light of a lot of professing Christians, public support of Katanji Brown Jackson, she does objectively have a record of issuing light sentences

for all kinds of criminals. But I think it is particularly disturbing the light sentences that she has issued for child sex predators and the justifications that she has given for that. I know some people have sent me the article from National Review saying, oh, you know, well, it's really hard to sentence child sex predators and, you know, child pornographers and all of that. that. And so really, we should be looking at some other problems about Katanji Brown Jackson. I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure that I buy that argument. Yes, there could be other issues with her that she's light on crime in general. But that to me is particularly egregious. I think it's important to focus on that because it gets people's attention. That when you are

soft on crime, like these are the kinds of people that are being let loose back into the community and are most often reoffending and who are their victims, children. And so I actually think that it is very good for Josh Holly and Senator Cruz and for other politicians to highlight this. Now, is it true that these senators should also be trying to pass legislation that gives firmer guidelines on sentencing for these kinds of criminals? Yes, I do think that's true. So I think that's a fair argument. But that doesn't mean that we should turn away from this record when it comes to Katanji Brown Jackson. Someone that we've had on this podcast once or twice, I think just once is Rachel Beauvard. And she's awesome. She used to work in D.C. in the kind of

libertarian movement. And I don't know if she would identify herself as a conservative populist. And so I don't want to put that label on her. But she has been someone. One of the few, or she kind of bucks against a lot of libertarians today who are not willing to kind of break up big tech and talk about big tech censorship. And she also continually, I think, really effectively brings us back to what conservatism actually is, which is not just opposing big government, but opposing all kinds of dangerous and power-hungry bureaucracy, including corporate bureaucracy. And she wrote a good article in the Federalist about why we should care about Katanji Brown Jackson's leniency towards sex predators. And she argues that the Senate

should actually investigate this and that this is the conservative position. And so here, part of what she said. She says that Judge Jackson appears to have a track record of both advocacy and sentencing decisions demonstrating an extreme leniency towards child sex predators. Perhaps more concerningly, her record also demonstrates an attempt to normalize a radical sexual ideology of adults being attracted to minors, categorizing it as not as flatly criminal, but simply as misunderstood. While at the U.S. Sentencing Commission, Judge Jackson advocated for eliminating the existing mandatory minimum sentences for child porn suggesting that at least some people who possess child porn aren't sexually motivated, but simply in this for the community. That's something

that Katanji Brown Jackson said. And as I will mention in the interview with John that we are about to have, the Washington Post also noted that when she sentenced an 18 year old, the 19 year old to only three months in prison for possessing child sex abuse material of kids as young as eight getting raped, she said that he was just sexually curious. about his peers, his peers. And so she has really, really troubling rhetoric when it comes to this in a really troubling record. So Rachel Bivard goes on to saying, while on the federal bench, Judge Jackson demonstrated

a continuous string of departures from sentencing guidelines for sex predators. The Biden administration and its backers have offered no substantive defense of Judge Jackson's record. While the White House has dismissed Holly's critique as cherry picking that buckles under the lightest scrutiny, they just say that kind of stuff. they have failed to demonstrate how they've resorted instead to tossing complete non sequiters at holly calling him an insurrectionist and bizarrely trying to tie him to the candidacy of former alabama senate candidate roy more but the flags in judge jackson's record are not cherry picked nor are they taken out of context rather they are a pattern yes we have talked about this there were seven instances that josh holly brought up when she when he was talking to her about this and we talked about them last week i'll just go through a couple of them. Defendant distributed multiple images of child pornography. I say child sex abuse material. Possessed as dozens more, including videos. Federal sentencing guidelines said 97 to 121 months in prison.

Prosecutors recommended 24 months in prison. Judge Jackson gave the defendant three months in prison. The defendant distributed 33 graphic images and videos of child sexual assault on anonymous messaging app. Federal Guidelines said 70 to 87 months in prison. Prosecutor recommended 70 months in prison. Judge Jackson sentenced to the lowest sentence permitted by law, which is 60 months. Over and over again, we have seen this by Judge Jackson. This is a fact. This is her record. And the media is just trying to call it QAnon. If you look up, you know, Josh Holly, child predator hearing, whatever, you will see variety. You will see Vox. You will see all of these left wing and even libertarian outlets basically saying that he is just, perpetuating some kind of Q&on conspiracy theory, some kind of crazy conspiratorial nonsense to put it

in the words of Bray Brown. So, I mean, weigh these facts about her disturbing pattern that is recorded. It is a fact. There is no context that makes it better. There are no context that makes her words better, as we will talk about a little bit today. Way that against the people that you see defending her. The people who are saying, oh, we should still celebrate her in some way. Guys, she has a pattern of protecting child predators. The most egregious crime that we can think of people who either get paid for or are consuming the rape of children. And as Ted Cruz pointed out, some of these images and videos include sadomasochistic material

of infants. All right? We are talking about people who then very often go out to reoffend. These are not victimless crimes, by the way. You are causing a demand for this kind of material. every time someone like this consumes it, obviously it's an even bigger issue to distribute it. And she is putting them in for the lowest amount of time possible. She has, since her days in college in the early 90s, are you against having any kind of

child sex registry? Think about the professing Christians that you know who are advocating for her, who are just saying, oh, I'm just throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Consider that. Consider that. It probably is coming from a place of ignorance, I would say. But we're talking about real decisions that are affecting real people and real communities and real children.

We're not just talking about personality flaws here. Like we're talking about real stuff here. I mean, this matters. This matters. And so the question that we have, the question that we have that we are going to answer today, why in the world, are there some so-called conservative organizations and institutions that are saying, yes, Katanji Brown Jackson is so awesome and, you know, we should be behind her or who are saying, well, you know, we might disagree, but, you know, we're still going to

support her anyway. Why? Why is that? So John Schweppie is going to kind of pull back the curtain for us and he's going to tell us he's in D.C. He's going to tell us what goes on at these D.C. Cocktail parties that provides the motivation for supporting someone like this. Okay, John, thank you so much for joining us. Can you first tell us who you are and what you do? Well, my name's John Schweppie. I am the Director of Policy and Government Affairs at a conservative group based out of D.C. called American Principles Project. Got it. And I'm so appreciative that you are here to spill the tea as it were. There was a thread that got retweeted many times. I saw a lot of people talking about it. And when I saw it,

I immediately said, oh, I want to know more about this. This is a little bit more about this. This really interesting. The first tweet of the thread said, I'm tempted to share a dirty little secret about Washington, D.C. that would explain why many on the quote, unquote, right, are basically cheerleading Katanji Brown Jackson's nomination, but I really don't know if folks could handle it. So rather than reading the rest of your thread, can you just explain what you mean by that? Why are there some people on the right who were excited about this nomination? Sure. So about a year ago, I started researching funding and how it affects all these different organizations out here. And specifically, I was focused more on big tech companies. So Google,

Facebook, Amazon, Apple. And I was trying to figure out, you know, why are some of these conservative groups, for example, advocating for policies that favor the big tech companies when the companies are censoring conservatives. And when I did that recently, search, you know, I found a lot of, you know, Google and all these companies do publicly disclose that information. But I was hearing from people in the know that one wrinkle to it was the Coke Foundation, the Coke Brothers and that they were giving out a lot of tech money as well, but that wasn't publicly available. And so I started doing some- Who are the Coke Brothers? What is the Coke Foundation for those who don't know? And we're saying,

for people who aren't familiar, K-O-C-H, you may have heard about the Coke brothers or kind of just, there are these people that a lot of people can't really define or point to, at least people who aren't super familiar with them. So can you just quickly tell us who they are? Well, for the long time, they were a boogeyman for the left. But they are a kind of libertarian leaning. They're not socially conservative. They don't want to talk about the social issues like abortion or transgenderism. But they, you know, are wealthy benefactors who have funded a lot of politicians, a lot of, you know, groups out here. And what they try to do, a lot of the business interest stuff that you hear from the Chamber of Commerce, that's kind of

where the Koch Foundation has been historically. And so low taxes, low regulations, some things, which really aren't that bad, but certainly a de-emphasis on the social issues. Right. Okay. So continue, you kind of found in your research that they were behind some of these things that you were wondering, hey, why would conservatives be funding these organizations or be on the side of these tech companies? Right, right. So, it's difficult because unfortunately almost all of this money is as the Democrats like to say dark money. It's really hard to kind of find where it went or who actually received it unless the recipients say so themselves. So for example, on this thread, I had an interaction with Robbie Suave over at Reason Foundation.

I didn't know Reason got Coke money. I learned it from that interaction. But basically, you know, a lot of this is reliant on my conversations with people out here. talking to ex-Coke employees who worked at these foundations or these organizations. But one of their biggest, and this kind of circles back to what the thread is about, one of their biggest focuses, in fact, it's the main issue on their site, is criminal justice reform. And that's an issue that, you know, if you're a conservative out here in D.C., you hear people talking about all the time. You know, we need to make sure you always hear the story of, you know, we don't want someone who got caught with possession of marijuana to go to jail for 10 years. And of course, you know, when somebody says a story like that,

it's hard to disagree with it. Like, yeah, I don't want, you know, for someone to have an ounce of marijuana to have their life totally ruined. And usually just so people know that's not actually what is happening. People aren't typically going to jail for 10 years because of an ounce of marijuana. It's typically something else. And that just happens to be what they are able to charge them with or what the police are able to book them on. So that's a little bit of a of a myth. And that's a little bit of a that we hear from the criminal justice reform activists. Absolutely. And really, the effects of criminal justice reform go go much further beyond that.

So without going down too much of a rabbit hole, and I do apologize and please bring you back. No, you can take us down the rabbit hole. We love rabbit holes. So a couple of years ago, my organization authored a report about Black Lives Matter and the Breed Act. And this was like the ultimate goal of criminal justice reform from the West perspective. And it is, you know, basically making sure that if you're under the age of 24, you're never incarcerated, that if you're in jail currently for a drug charge, that you're released immediately, that there's no life sentences for any crime ever, all these different things. And there's this overlap between the right and the left on this issue. So when we, what brought this up this week was the confirmation hearing of Judge Katanji Brown Jackson and Senator Josh Hawley and Senator Ted Cruz's questioning of her. over some of her lighter sentencing in the past, some really light sentencing against sex offenders.

And a lot of people on the right, National Review, wrote a piece, plenty of people on Twitter, were defending this position. And so what I was trying to articulate is that this position is held by people on the left and the right. It's a very, you know, established. Defending Katanji Brown Jackson's position of issuing light sentences? Yes. Yes. Okay. Even so, so, you know, Josh Hawley brought up pedophiles, which obviously is probably the least defensible example. But when you're talking about criminal justice reform, it is a belief, and this is a debate that goes back decades, but it's a belief in rehabilitation over deterrence, over over a longer sentence. They call it restorative justice very often.

Yeah. But unfortunately, what happens and Holly pointed this out, I think Cruz did too, a lot of these offenders are recidivists. And they, you know, go to jail for three months, as one of them did that Holly quoted. And then they go back out and then they offend again. And so I think the real issue here is that D.C. is a blob. There's a lot of money that goes around to make people out here care about issues like this. But if you talk to anybody back home, criminal justice reform, if you really get into what it is, nobody supports that. And including, you know, people, minorities, all sorts of people.

It's not just Republican voters. Right. And the left is really good at this, but as you mentioned, it is some people on the right, but the left is really good at the language game. They're really good at slapping euphemisms on the policy positions that they want. So you don't actually have to get into the details of what they are actually supporting. So like reproductive justice. They put all these adjectives in front of justice. And because no one wants to be unjust, no one wants to be against justice. You say, yeah, I'm for reproductive justice. Sure, I'm for criminal justice reform. But they're then, as you said, once you get down into the nitty gritty, not just of what the policies are, which is basically letting people out of jail, them not getting prosecuted, all this. And then you look at the consequences of what those policies are and how they're not making people safe and they're not actually helping the criminals that are committing the crimes. Then you realize it's really just a bunch of hogwash. Like letting people out of jail or having fewer people in

jail is not in itself a just end unless we are preventing what people are actually going to jail for. But you mentioned Katanji Brown Jackson, one of the cases that Josh Hawley brought up, and I think was brought up a few times. The Washington Post wrote an article about it. And they really wrote, it was so disgusting, a puff piece about this child sex abuse consumer. Let's see, Wesley Hawkins, who Brown Jackson had sentenced to only three months in prison, even though prosecutors had recommended two years. I think federal guidelines were up to 10 years.

And really, it was amazing her reasoning behind this. First, the author in this Washington Post article tries to make us feel sympathetic towards Hawkins and towards the judge and make us feel very angry at the Republicans who are asking about this and also very angry about Hawkins's family because at the end they tell us that the reason that he looked at child sex abuse material was because his family was homophobic and he didn't know where else to turn. It's just really incredible the journalism these days. But what Katanji Brown Jackson said was that the reason that she only sentenced him, he was 18 years old, 19 when he was sentenced, the reason that she only sentenced him to three months in prison is because he was just looking at

images of, quote, his peers. And that because he was so young, it's not a big deal. Well, the records show that some of the children that he watched being raped were eight years old. And so, I mean, this is really nefarious stuff. This is not some conspiracy theory. A lot of articles are saying that it's conspiracy theory. You mentioned reason.com. Josh Hawley absurdly suggests that Katanji Brown Jackson has a soft spot for child predators, vanity fair, Vox. They're all calling this Q&ON and all this stuff. It's really, really bizarre to me. Even if you are on the side of criminal justice reform, why would they go out of their way to try to defend the light sentencing of child predators? Like, what really is behind that? That's totally shameless, in my opinion.

It is. You know, we talked previously about Trump derangement syndrome. And I think Holly kind of creates the same thing on the left. As soon as he brought this up, they felt like they had to oppose it. But look, I'll tell you, just so your viewers know, our organization has worked on protecting kids, working on some of this trafficking stuff. When someone searches for child pornography, it's not like something that accidentally happens, right? And I think that's something that a lot of these folks are trying to do to gin up sympathy. But on the top layer of the internet, the internet that we all use, you're not going to find child pornography. It is actually removed pretty effectively. To go find it, you have to dig and you have to use all of the,

you know, the dark web and all of these different things. And so for somebody like that, you know, and again, this is also just something that we've seen this. There's studies on it. When someone is looking for child pornography for personal use or whatever, that is an indication that they're going to hurt a child. It's not, it's not one of these things where you can separate the two things. And so I think it's despicable, but it does kind of show how, you know, I think morally repugnant our establishment is out here, that something like this, which should be easily a slam dunk issue, is up for debate. It's just, it's very troubling that they would try to say that any criticism of light sentencing

of child predators and viewers of child sex abuse material, that that's Q and on. I mean, that's really, really disturbing logic. Now, some logic that I saw in national review, you mentioned national review, I think. it was by Andrew McCarthy, said basically that Republicans shouldn't be focusing specifically on the child predator stuff, but should maybe highlight the fact that she regularly has bucked sentencing guidelines, that she really is soft on crime in general. And that is why, like, the Cato Institute, the Koch brothers would be behind her. Is that right? Yeah, yeah, I think that's accurate. You know, I think McCarthy, unfortunately, this is just a question of politics, but when you, you know,

use the inflammatory language he did in National Review to criticize Hawley, everyone's going to run with the top line headline and the top sentence and say National Review debunked Hawley. And I understand it, I understood its piece. And look, I think there's a lot of truth to maybe going with the broad scope of things. But, you know, I think most folks, your viewers probably among them, don't understand or haven't heard about this push for lesser sentences for sex offenders. It seems really bizarre. And so if we're not going to have this debate now during a high profile Supreme Court hearing, when are we supposed to have it? And so I think that's the frustration a lot of us have had with this line of argument

is this is an argument we should be having. It's not a, you know, it's not a slur or a smear against Katanji Brown Jackson. It's a record. And we should be discussing it. So you mentioned in your thread. You mentioned, you said this, the coax and the movement they cultivated through targeted grants were very successful. Trump was unable to get most of his priorities passed during his term, but the First Step Act became law fairly easily, few besides Tom Cotton, publicly opposed. Remind us what the First Step Act was and why Trump and so many Republicans said, yeah, let's definitely do this. Well, the First Step Act, is a criminal justice reform bill.

And, you know, it did seek, again, it's that, it's that example of drugs I gave you at the forefront. That's what everyone was told it was about. But we've seen and Cotton, I think, has documented this pretty well and some other sites as well, that there's been a lot of criminals with different types of offenses, gun offenses, all sorts of things, that have been released. And, and of course, they're recidivist. They do it again. So this crime wave, you know, a lot of people are trying to tie, and maybe it's fair.

I wouldn't know for sure, but it might be fair to tie this crime wave in part to the first step act. And so, you know, I think the president and his advisors, I think they were trying to do the right thing. I don't necessarily fault them for signing that bill when there was so little opposition to it. But when you look at the money and you look at, you know, what the Koch brothers, the Koch Foundation and all of them were trying to do as early as 2014, 2015 with this issue, it's pretty clear that they kind of bought conservative unanimous opinion on this out here. And that had a huge effect where if maybe those grants weren't out there, maybe if things were a little bit different and some groups were opposing it, maybe Trump wouldn't have signed the bill. Wow. And I know this is probably speculation, but why?

Like, is there some economic benefit? Like, what is the so-called conservative or maybe libertarian argument? for the kind of criminal justice reform that we're seeing that very obviously, especially if you look at these progressive cities where these policies are at the forefront and are most consistently applied, I mean, you see a rise in death and destruction almost every time we hear a story of being murdered. The person who murdered them or the person who assaulted them was out because of, you know, a low bail set by some kind of progressive judge or they were just able to. who, you know, fly through short sentences. They had previous, very serious, violent crime charges, and they were able to go out and reoffend. I think it's a crazy percentage, a crazy high percentage of people who are recidivists who go out and commit a similar or worse crime. Again, so, like, what is the motivation? The progressive motivation, I'm like, okay, I feel like they are just bent on destruction of the United States, whatever. I don't understand the libertarian.

reasoning behind this? Yeah, the progressive motivation is definitely the equity agenda, right? That, you know, if there's any, you know, if there's more blacks in prison than the general population, that's evidence of systemic racism. And so the only way to fix that is to release enough criminals onto the streets. Even if that means, which it does, even if that means that more innocent black Americans die because that's exactly what happens. I mean, it's typically intracial violent crime of any race.

but we know the homicide rate among black Americans, unfortunately, is really high. So you're just creating more black victims of murder when you decide to meet these equity quotas without actually addressing the root cause. But no one seems to care about the victims in criminal justice reform. No, that's right. And it's a tragedy of the policy out here. But I'll tell you, you know, so I think somewhat libertarians probably buy into the equity agenda. They might not say it explicitly.

But I also, I'm just going to say this, Allie. And I think this is just true. You know, I can't back it up. But the reality is that people out here really do want to be liked. They want to be seen, especially on the right, as not racist. And so embracing things like this are a way to, you know, not be attacked and to have that. And so I think the motivator for a lot of these folks, you know, some of them probably have some tragic stories where they know somebody who went to jail for drugs or something like that.

And look, I'm sympathetic to that. But I think for a lot of them, it is about, it's about cocktail parties. And I know, you know, people make fun of that. But it is just kind of how DC works and how this ecosystem is. But what about, I mean, what about the Koch brothers? Like, what do you think their motivation is? Surely they, maybe they don't. But surely they feel like they have some kind of pure motivation.

Like, do you think that the Cato Institute and the Coke brothers, like, does it really come down to cocktail parties for them? or do they have some kind of economic motivation or some kind of power motivation behind backing these kinds of destructive policies? It could be economic in a way that we haven't been able to discern yet. But I'll tell you, you know, the Cokes are very much have been concerned about how they're perceived. Remember, they were very involved in the Tea Party wave back in 2010 and then the left demonized them. And, you know, these are corporate tycoons.

They don't really like that. they were actually running at their, I remember this, there was an advertising campaign for their company talking about all the great human work they're doing across the country and they ran it for like a year. So I do think in part it is about perception and criminal justice reform is an issue if you poll it the way that they talk about it. It's probably an 80% issue. And so it's an issue where that they put that first and foremost in what they're doing. Maybe the left won't hate them as much. And I really do think that's a part of it. I know that seems cheap or political. But it's hard to discern what else it could possibly be. And what is Our Street? So Our Street is a group out here that used to be seen as on the right. But they take a lot of corporate money, a lot of corporate money. And they're involved in various kind of right libertarian issues, issues like defending big tech censorship and fighting against the antitrust bills. they often talk about occupational licensing reform.

Why, though? Why? Just because they're getting money from these major corporations, and so they're just going to be on the side of these major corporations, which is not, by the way, libertarianism does not equal defending big corporations that become almost as powerful and deleterious as big government. Well, that's, so in my thread, I was hinting at this with talking about how the Koch Foundation cultivates support with grants. And this is what corporations do out here. It's a dirty little secret everyone knows about. But all of these, not all, but a good portion of these think tanks are for sale. And if you go in there, if you're oil and gas, if you're, you know, big tech, whatever,

and you go in there with a, you know, six-figure grants and say this is what we'd like to see, they do it. And so this is something I think Congress needs to become more aware of. I just think maybe they turned a blind eye to it in the past, but a lot of advocacy out here is pay to play. And, you know, what we're trying to do is to some degree expose that. Okay, talking about exposing, this is a crazy connection. And maybe you mentioned this and I just didn't see it. So, so what is it? Paul Ryan, so Paul Ryan has a family connection to Katanji Brown Jackson.

It's like Katanji Brown Jackson's brother-in-law is married to Paul Ryan's sister-in-law. law. Okay, so there's a connection there. And then Paul Ryan tweeted, Janet and I are incredibly happy for Katanji and her entire family. Our politics may differ. But my praise for Katanji's intellect, for her character and for her integrity is on equivocal. Is there anything there? Is there? I mean, what's going on? Well, I will say if they're family friends, I'm not necessarily going to fault him for, you know, providing some support. But look, I think something that people need to understand is if you're not really worried about the social issues, is a liberal justice really that big of a deal, right? Like, it's not. And so if you're, if you're somebody's motivated by

pro-life, by, you know, fighting for women's sports and against the transgender agenda, fighting for guns, all these things, of course, the idea of having a far leftist on the Supreme Court is scary. But I just don't know if Paul Ryan's really motivated by that stuff. It seems like to me, he's always been motivated much more by the fiscal conservatism, which is fine in its own right, but without the social conservatism, it's bankrupt. Yeah. Wow. Wow.

This is really interesting. I mean, I think that we can say, okay, maybe there are some good things about this person. I remember liking her initial speech. Of course, we know that progressive nominees very often try to come across as more moderate and more conservative when they are going through these hearings and then they almost always rule to the left. So I don't think she's going to surprise us with any of her rulings. I think we know, as you've explained, why she is being supported by the entities that she's being supported. I am just a little surprised to see how much the media is trying to cover up the sex offender stuff.

That does surprise me. I would think, okay, you just ignore it. They're not ignoring it. But they're also not really debunking it. Like they'll have headlines saying, this is misleading. this is misinformation. We're going to debunk this. And then they go through it and they don't,

they're not actually able to debunk it because, I mean, it's all public record. It's all there. Everything that Josh Hawley said is exactly right. I mean, it's true. And I guess it's not specific to child predators, but we should be worried in general, someone who apparently doesn't care quite as much about the rights of the victims.

Well, as the left becomes more authoritarian, I think they're getting a little bit more lazy with their argumentation. And so with this, they'd rather just dismiss Josh Hawley as a Q&on sympathizer and, you know, have social media ban anything critical, right? So, you know, but I think the the big thing I've seen come across when people do engage in debate on this is why are you mad at Katanji Brown Jackson? This is basically what all of us believe. And I don't, think that's necessarily encouraging. And it's certainly something that I think is going to require us to keep an eye on and for us to continue to ask judicial nominees going forward. You wrote this in the New York Post. Given all the criticism of Jackson's Week Record on

Crime and Sentencing, not to mention the White House withholding 48,000 pages of documents related to her time on the Sentencing Commission. I didn't know that. Yeah. And, you know, the crazy thing is they were selectively leaking those documents to friendly media outlets. So as they were trying to rebut Josh Hawley's criticism and Ted Cruz's criticism, the media was fact-checking and they were having help from the White House. But yeah, 48,000 documents or pages of documents. And, you know, I think we would have really gotten to understand the judge's judicial philosophy. How is that possible? How is that, how is that allowed that the White House can just withhold that kind of information? In this world, I mean, with with a media that's totally on your team, this would

never have happened under a Republican. If Trump had tried to withhold documents about Kavanaugh, you would have seen an FBI investigation. You would have seen all sorts of things. But this is just kind of the game they play now. And, you know, we are, I mean, this is where we need Republicans elected because they're going to cheat and they're going to collude with their friends in the media and in the corporate world. Yeah. I just, I think that, easiest way to explain why the media is the way it is, why it doesn't speak truth to power, just pretends that it does, why it doesn't hold Democrats and the people on their side accountable is really simple. I mean, I think it's a principle that we can all understand as unfortunate as it

is, is that it's really hard to think objectively and to write objectively about your friends. It's really hard to criticize your friends, people that you're close to, people that maybe you even feel are giving you access or giving you power or insulating you from whatever it is, it's really hard to write objectively about those people, especially when you share the same ideology. So that is just one reason why the media is so corrupt in why they are able to get away with the things that they are. One thing I want to ask you, you also mentioned in this New York Post article, the Breathe Act. What is the Breathe Act? So the Breathe Act is the model legislation that all the, you know, all that Black Lives Matter funding had to go somewhere. And we know it went to

some of the founders' houses and all that. But part of it went to groups that focus on this. And it's basically a total revamp of our criminal justice system, gets rid of abolishes prisons, the entire, you know, defund the police agendas in there. And a lot of Democrats, you know, it came out and endorsed this early. Now they've kind of run away from it. Nancy Pelosi isn't talking about it. But this is, at least from our perspective, what we have to see is the end goal of the Black Lives Matter movement of some of these radical woke folks. And, you know, it's pretty crazy.

I mean, when you look at all the individual things it does, I mean, it basically gets rid of drug offenses. Again, like, no more life sentences. You know, people under the age of 24, I could go out there and do a bank robbery with a gun. And if I was under the age of 24, under the Breed Act, I wouldn't serve time. So it's a very radical thing.

We actually have a report out there. It's called Black Lives Matter and Debrieve Act and authored by myself and some other folks at American Principles Project. But it's pretty crazy. And I think the Democrats were smart to run away from this, at least publicly. But if they ever feel like they have the power to impose it, they will do it. Yeah, absolutely they will. Yeah, it seems like they have at least rhetorically kind of back down from the defund the police language. at least temporarily, but I have no doubt if there is another incident, like what happened with

George Floyd or anything. I mean, it's been kind of strangely quiet on that front talking about things like police brutality in general. I feel like we haven't heard a lot about that in the news recently, but I have no doubt if another crisis occurs that they will use that wave of crisis to push something as radical as that legislation. I mean, I say repeatedly on this show that social justice kills. Social justice is not just. Social justice says how can we try to make outcomes for all different groups equal without actually looking at what is causing the disparity in the first place? As Thomas Sol says, discrimination or disparities are not inherent proof of discrimination. If there is a disparity in outcome between two groups, whether it's graduation rates, whether

it's incarceration rates, that does not automatically mean that discrimination is, the cause of that. But the equity social justice agenda just assumes that discrimination is the reason why, for example, maybe there's a higher proportion of black Americans in jail. And so rather than looking at the root cause and solving the root cause, they just say, as you mentioned earlier, well, we just have to do whatever we can to make these numbers equal if that means releasing violent criminals from jail and creating more victims. Unfortunately, there are no equity quotas for victim numbers. Isn't that interesting? There are only equity quotas. for the people that are creating the victims.

It's almost like there's a nefarious, destructive motivation behind all of this. Well, I'm very thankful. I'm very thankful for your perspective and uncovering this. Last question I want to ask you, I notice that you call yourself a populist. And this is something that I've seen more and more from people on the right. I would say my husband and I talk a lot recently. I think it was Sager and Jetty that first,

kind of made us start thinking a little bit differently about our conservatism. And our perspectives have changed life. It's probably the help of Tucker Carlson, too. Can you tell us, though, like, what is populism essentially? Why do you call yourself a populist and not necessarily a conservative? So one of the political figures I really learned a lot from while he was alive was Jeff Bell. He worked at American Principles Project previously, but, you know, worked for Reagan, ran for Senate in New Jersey a couple times. And he's, he's a lot. And he's He had a book called Populism and Alitism. And he kind of said that this difference between populists and elitists was kind of the most

important political difference. And basically what it comes down to is elitism is a belief that the people are too stupid or can't govern themselves and we need an expert class to rule over them. And populists are people who have a general optimism about the American people and their ability not only to govern themselves but to make decisions. And so I think, especially with COVID, and this is when I started really using that identifier, I think we're on the side of populism here. And so while I'm still a conservative and I think that conservative populism is definitely

a thing. I have an optimism in the American people. And I think that generally when you talk about populism, Trumpism is definitely a form of populism. I think that's the unique thing that makes it great. I'm curious what you think about our 2024 prospects for President Trump. DeSantis. You don't have to say exactly like who you want to be a candidate. But where do you think the country is going? Who do you think most conservatives will get behind?

So the one thing I learned from Trump in 2016 is that we don't know anything. Yeah. Very true. So I think that there's a conventional wisdom that if Trump runs, he will absolutely win. And he may. I think he'll beat the Democrat, assuming it's Joe Biden, but even if it was somebody else. But I also just think it's too early to count anyone else out. So DeSantis has shown himself to be very impressive as governor of Florida. And, you know, if there is a primary between Trump and DeSantis, you know, we'll see what happens. I think it would be good for us anyway. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Do you think that this issue of crime, do you think it will be a key issue in 24? You linked an article in your thread. Safe Streets required the political will to punish crime.

American Greatness by Austin Stone. It was published earlier in March. And that's true. I mean, progressives certainly don't have the political will. But as we've already mentioned, there are plenty of Republicans who don't have the political will either, probably because not because they're ideologically aligned with the equity policies, but because they're scared of losing their backing or seen as racist or whatever. So one, do you think that this will be an issue for people who are tired of the crime and the crime waves and the DA is not doing anything? The judge is not doing anything. and do you think at least Republicans will gain the political will to push back against this and make safe streets an issue for their campaigns?

Well, as to the Republicans deciding, that's a really good question. But I do think it's going to be an issue. And the reason for that is, look, as we're trying to build this multiracial working class coalition, people are worried about crime. They're worried about, you know, their kids. and making sure that they can send them to school and not worry about them getting mugged or hurt. And I think that's something that's gonna affect suburban women.

It's gonna affect Hispanics. It's also gonna affect African Americans. And so, you know, I think Republicans would be wise to focus on this. Unfortunately, it's just kind of a reality. Like as crime goes up, as this stuff continues to happen, we're gonna have to talk about it more. There's gonna be more tragedies. But I think it would be politically pretty silly,

not for Republicans. Republicans to talk about it and to make that a big issue. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Well, thank you so much for giving us your insight today. I really appreciate it. Where can people follow you, support you, all that good stuff? Well, thanks so much for having me. So I'm at Substack at johnshweppy.com and then on Twitter at John Schweppy. Okay, we'll provide those links to the description of this episode. Thank you so much for coming on. Hey, thanks so much for having me. This is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues

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