Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 12/28/23 Jim Ostrowski on the Effort to Keep Trump Off the Ballot

Episode Date: December 31, 2023

Scott is joined by Jim Ostrowski of LibertyMovement.org to discuss the ongoing legal campaigns against Donald Trump. The news about Maine broke hours after recording, so Scott and Ostrowski focus on the ruling in Colorado. They also discuss some of the shortcomings of Trump’s first term. Discussed on the show: “How Trump Plans to Wield Power in 2025” (New York Times) “Houthis and Saudis Commit to New Ceasefire and Roadmap for Peace” (Antiwar.com) Jim Ostrowski is an author and constitutional lawyer. He runs LibertyMovement.org, where he teaches libertarians how to better their lives and communities without relying on electoral politics. Follow him on Twitter @JimOstrowski This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Moon Does Artisan Coffee; Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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we've got an old friend of the show, Jim Ostrowski. He runs Liberty Movement.org which is all about direct action for liberty and he actually wrote a book like that direct citizen action how we can win the Second American Revolution without firing a shot and you know what on top of that? He wrote a lot of other

great stuff like Free the Children against government schools also government schools are bad for your kids. Oh no Free the Children is actually not just school. I think there's more to than that. Anyway, I'll let him say. A Crime Against Humanity, Essays Against the Lockdowns, and the masterpiece, progressivism, a primer on the idea, destroying America, and a lot of other great stuff. So, and as I said, direct citizen action. And he's a lawyer. And I like him, which is kind of rare. I don't like too many lawyers. And anyway, I'm just so happy, Jim, honestly, to talk about something that I don't care about for a little bit here. I am just up to my eyeballs in dead bodies, and I can't stand it no more. So let's talk about something that more or less is bullshit. The Colorado Supreme Court, they've done thrown Trump off the ballot there, and all Democrats did it, and they think they're going to get away with it.

I don't know. Maybe they're not, but it seems kind of like a big deal that he is, by far, the presumptive major party nominee of one of the two major parties in America to be the nominee for president here coming up here. And what in the hell do they think they're doing? And does the 14th Amendment really say that? And is what happened on January 6th, an insurrection in the dang first place? And could you say some founding father lawyer talk for us all so that we understand more good?

I can quote some Jefferson, maybe little John Adams, if you like, dead white European-American males. How you doing, buddy? Great to see you. It's been a long time. I saw you at the Tom Woods' 2000 party. Oh, that was fun, dude. That was great. Yeah.

Yeah, it's great to talk to you again, Jim. I didn't even give you a proper introduction. Jim Ostrowski, everybody, how are you, man? Welcome back. It was a great. No, it was a fabulous. You're plugging my books and everything. My wife will appreciate that.

Great. Teller it. Look, I don't take the, this stuff too seriously like you. I kind of have a Machiavellian theory that they know the Supreme Court's going to reverse. And then they'll just make an issue, oh, you know, Clarence Thomas is a bunch of. of Trump's, you know, his wife is a buddy of Trump, whatever, and it's all corrupt and everything. I don't, I do think the Supreme Court's going to take the case and, and reverse. I think if they didn't, we'd have, you know, some real problems in the country. But, yeah,

we could, we could talk a little bit about, a little bit about the issues. There's some procedural issues. There's some, you know, the, the question of, of the merits of the, of the issues. the case and that's that sort of, you know, lawyer talk. But so did you hear about Michigan today or yesterday? Yeah, I did see that they chose the other direction here. And by the way, we are talking about, they removed him from the primary ballot, which is its own important detail here. Yeah. And some people are talking about whether they can write him in. And my answer to that would be, I don't think so, because if he's disqualified, he's disqualified. But Michigan, apparently, that was a procedural ruling, and they are claiming somewhat oddly that the case is not ripe for a decision.

I think it kind of is. So the Michigan case was not on the merits. In other words, it didn't have to do it, didn't have anything to do with the insurrection, alleged insurrection. So in Colorado, so the lower court found that there was an insurrection and that Trump was involved in it, but they don't think that Trump is covered by the 14th Amendment as the president of the United States, which sounds a little odd. But when you read the 14th Amendment, it lists the officers. It doesn't explicitly list the president.

So it gets down to this really, you know, lawyer-like splitting hairs about what the term office means, what the term officer means. Okay, so I have it here, by the way. So let's talk about this real quick. I'll just take a second. I don't have it in front of me. I'm glad you do. Yeah, I have it here. It's the stack of tabs I got here, man.

You wouldn't believe. No person shall be senator or representative in Congress or elector of president and vice president or hold any all. office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath as a member of Congress or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection of rebellion against the same, or given aid and comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may vote of two-thirds of each house, oh, pardon me, but Congress may buy a vote of two-thirds of each house

remove such disability. So it does say hold any office under the United States, and it's specific that this would have been someone who not a citizen, but someone who had ever been a government employee before and had therefore had to have taken an oath to the Constitution, and therefore in the eyes of the victorious north in the Civil War had rebelled and betrayed that oath and now would be disqualified. So that raises a couple things. Obviously, an unlimited number of things according to you, but as far as you want to go with that. But the two obvious things that jump out at me is the word any office. But also just the entire idea, what we're talking about here is people who took arms in this civil war.

not the stupid riot from January 6th, which you can call it whatever you want. They're calling it an insurrection here, but nobody's been convicted of any crime like that or even if there is one. I don't know. Well, you know, you're making my lawyer-like points. But the way, you know, I heard about this argument the president's not covered before I really took a careful look at the language. But if you read the language, it starts out with a senator in Congress. And then it goes to electors for president, which are, you know, the delegates to the electoral college.

I was actually a candidate in 1980 for Ed Clark that shows you how old I am. But the fact that it leaves out president and vice president, as pointed out in the GOP brief, the writ of certiority of the Supreme Court, which I read, the lawyer actually happened to know him slightly, Jay Sekulow, who was one of Trump's impeachment lawyers, I think, in the first impeachment, you'll lose count at the impeachments of Trump. But I thought they pretty persuasively argued that the president is not included, and that in any event, it gets down to splitting hairs about what the term office means. They split hairs about, there's apparently two oaths in the constitution and the oath i think recited in the 14th amendment is not the president's oath oh is that

right yeah really interesting um j seculo's a sharp lawyer um and uh my father worked with him years ago on uh on unrelated legal issue so um i i think it's a pretty good argument that that the president is actually not encompassed within the 14th Amendment as counterintuitive as that might sound. And I think one of the arguments is if you look at the Civil War background, it was obviously a sectional regional conflict. And the drafters of the 14th Amendment could easily have said, look, this was designed to knock out people from the south. If the public generally wants to elect an officer covering the entire United States, the president. They can certainly have the right to do that. And the other couple other, there's actually a number of interesting legal issues.

Well, wait, by that, do you mean that they wrote it this broad deliberately as opposed to saying this is about the South in the 1860s? You know, what, when you, there's a lot. whole issue of how do you interpret things and you know scolia was famous for sticking to the the letter of the original language i don't have a particular axe to grind but certainly you look at the the language seems not to include the president and then if you're justifying that by some sort of a logic of the drafters um they could have said look the office of president president that's up to the people uh senator congressman not quite as momentous in office and we're just going to say no if you you know we're fighting at the battle of gettysburg on the wrong side

we're not going to let you in but we'll let the people decide president and vice president that's very plausible so i i i don't you know there's some speculation how the Supreme court would come down in that that it's uh you know strict construction would argue uh against trump on this but i don't necessarily think so because if you look at the plain language it doesn't it could very easily you know they had ink in those days they could have said president vice president senate congress electors they didn't they start with congress they go to electors it's odd that they use electors for president, but not president and vice president. Hey, let me ask you this.

Do you know about the debate about this at all? Because you're right that it's very particular the way that they chose even to order the thing. I don't know that much about the debate. I'm schooling myself on it, but there's apparently some contemporaneous decisions that hold that the president was not included in that. Hey, by the way, I should stipulate, and I don't know about you at all, but I don't give a damn about Trump. I've never been a Trump guy. I know people in this very, what, postmodernist deconstructionist age, everyone is supposed to immediately presume the intentions of everyone else and tear apart their every syllable to find the hidden Strousian meaning behind what they're really saying and all this crap. Right. But I'm a Ron Paul guy, which is Thomas Jefferson, not Andrew Jackson. Sorry.

And so, you know, I'm not a Trump guy, but, and quite honestly, man, you know, I, my level of hatred for, say, Bill Clinton and W. Bush is just absolutely pathological in its degree, right? And yet, I still wouldn't be for anybody taking him off the ballot in this kind of a way. Just the same as, you know, quite honestly, in a vacuum, all of the things being equal and all of his enemies to the side. What Trump did in Yemen makes him tied for most despicable man of the century in keeping that war going. And that, for four years straight, is just absolutely horrible. So all other things being equal and aside, you know, he really is not a good guy. No, no, and I have a particular interest in Syria, and I do not understand why he kept that nonsense going in Syria. You know way more about that than I do. Well, they rolled them three times, I can tell you that. He tried to get us out three times, and they told him, no way.

And he said, okay, I don't know, three times in 17, 18, and 20. Yeah, and you know a lot more about Yemen. So my view of Trump is real simple. Some people think I'm anti-Trump. Some people think I'm pro-Trump. I'm in favor of Trump when he's pro-liberty, and when he's not, I'm against Trump. And I do think that in a broad sense, he was an improvement over the W. Bush GOP, but he had many, many flaws on the domestic front. And as you say, in Yemen, and you know more about Yemen than I do.

But I think, would you agree with me that he didn't start any new wars? Am I correct? Yeah, absolutely. I just only was trying to say that, you know, like I always saw him for being, you know, I mean, look, my ideal is Ron Paul, and then I'm very, very cynical about anyone else. It's just simple as that. I don't know. If Dan McAdams ran, I'd go for that.

But otherwise, just forget it, you know? So I just come into it that, and I knew he was going to be that bad on quite a few things. Starting with Israel, and once you're bad on Israel, that means you're going to be bad on a lot of Middle East stuff after that, particularly Iran and that kind of thing. But anyway, my point just being, I can't remember exactly what the hell is going to say there. It was going to be some brilliant nuanced thing. But my real point was just that I would, I'd go to the mat for Ron. I ain't going to the map for Trump.

It's not about that. It's just, you know, they framed him. I think I was going to say something about, like, you know, as much as I'm mad at him for what he did in Yemen, it's not okay for them to frame him for treason with Russia and to come up with this whole story that he worked with Putin to steal the election and all that, you know, the secret police basically working to frame him like this at. that point, it doesn't matter whether even if he was Bill Clinton himself, you can't just go framing a guy when he's the elected president. When you're talking about the FBI, counterintelligence division and the CIA who are just completely like black ops, secret police, far beyond accountability here, going up against the guy who won the MFN election, dude, you can't do that.

even if it was Bill Clinton or even if it was W. Bush or even Donald Trump on his very worst, most genocidal day of the Yemen war, or in Afghanistan too. Remember, he got us out of Afghanistan but he also escalated the air war for four years first and killed

hundreds, at least tens of thousands of people, I'm sure hundreds. Anyway, that's the whole thing of it, man. No matter who it is, he stood for election. Who the hell do they think they are? Yeah, I tend to agree with you.

I've always thought the best thing about Donald Trump is he's got the right enemies. And if you look at the people who opposed him, you have to have at least a little bit of sympathy for him. But, you know, Rothbard years ago, we talked about the virtues of democracy, and democracy has, you know, certainly things to criticize about it. But I think Rothbard said that the best thing about the best you can say about democracy is it's a way to change power peacefully. So if democracy is a way to change power peacefully and half the country wants Donald Trump as president, you say you can't vote for him, there's kind of an implicit statement in there as to how things are going to turn out. So I think it would be a catastrophe if he wasn't allowed to be on the ballot. who about half the country supports him, and those people weren't given their choice. I think that's going to end very badly.

If you want to argue that he did something wrong in J6, let the voters decide. But so the next argument that they make in the brief, you know, getting back to boring legal stuff, is that the 14th Amendment isn't self-executing, that Congress has to pass legislation, executing it, or we already have the fact that Congress certifies the electoral vote count. So if Congress thought that Trump was insurrectionist, they certainly have the right to, I think they have the right to not count his votes. So that's another pretty good argument that the J. Seculos crew makes. And if you disagree with their argument, he makes the argument.

he makes the argument that, well, you're going to have every different state deciding this, and that's just not going to work. You're going to have Trump on some ballots, Trump on not other ballots. And this should be a federal election. It should be a federal decision. And I think that's a pretty darn good argument. Well, and there's got to be some standard, doesn't there? Who says that he insurrected anything?

The ladies on CNN? That's their opinion? Or what? I mean, there's not a court case. hasn't been charged and convicted or even arraigned or whatever on insurrection or on sedition charges. I mean, you would need some kind of benchmark, no? Yeah. Well, I think it was Tucker Carlson who recently said, well, geez, we now know why they called this an insurrection so that he could later on make this legal argument. But no, you just can't, you just can't say it's an

insurrection um the argument let me ask you this jim isn't it right let's say worst case scenario here seriously okay some of the rioters who none of whom had weapons or at least display them or use them against anyone yeah but uh assuming that they had gotten through and had i don't know cornered uh let's not go so far as like in prison but let's say cornered Mike Pence and said you send those votes back to the states to be recertified because we don't believe in them you and then Pence gave in and refused to certify them

until the states had a second shot at it because Trump was so sure that he could get them to change which slate of electors that they wanted to send based on their new take based on new information about what had happened to the votes in those states like take it from there what's the process is that an insurrection or did james madison and the guys

account for well what would happen if a president tried to screw around and the final decision of the electoral college was in doubt then what would happen well i think the problem is that the term the term insurrection is not really clearly clearly defined but the the point i make is that leaving trump aside if if there was an insurrection um what was the plan and who agreed on this plan wait what about my worst case scenario thing where he was able to disrupt the vote count i'm saying what would happen if it was in dispute i think you get a little closer um if they actually i i i think the best case for for the anti-Trump people is that, well, they delayed the vote count, but you're saying

something a little further that if they influenced Pence, but I think that's more coercion of a public official. It's not really overthrowing the government. But that actually didn't happen. And, you know, it's interesting that once the people got inside the building, there's really all the congressmen skied addled by the way before they did running through the halls apparently afraid of what i don't know a bunch of old ladies and middle-aged men but the the the protesters really didn't engage in any acts of violence that i'm aware of there were some skirmishes outside so really when they got inside being having no weapons and you know how they can overthrow a government of a million a million troops albeit many of those

those troops are not in the country, but it wasn't an insurrection. I mean, I think that's pretty clear. And in Colorado, they didn't really have a trial. They just allowed a bunch of hearsay evidence in, which I think raises some due process questions. But I think given the fact that the term insurrection is pretty vague, given the fact that there was a little bit of violence on the outside of the building as opposed to inside the building, Given the fact that you can argue that they delayed the meeting until later that night, they might be able to win on that point. But I think the really weak point is that how was Trump involved in this thing?

And if you read the decision, I've read it a couple of times. Everything they, everything they accused Trump of in terms of being involved in the so-called insurrection is really just pure free speech. And I've always believed that. I've always believed that everything he said was protected by the First Amendment. Just shifting to that case involving the Georgia phone call with the Port of Elections, I've listened to that call. And all it is is Trump, you know, saying, look, my lawyers have given you all sorts of evidence or alleged evidence of improprieties. And I'm urging you to take them seriously, look at them and see if that changes the vote. So everything that Trump did was really, in my view, and I am a First Amendment lawyer.

I've litigated the First Amendment, you know, a number of times in federal court, albeit different contexts. I think everything he did was protected by the First Amendment. So really, I think that this is just the sign of people who are pretty desperate. They see they can't believe that Trump is still there after everything they've thrown against him. He's leading in the polls. he looks pretty good in the swing states. The GOP nomination is over, and this is their last-ditch attempt to stop him. Yeah.

So that's how I think it's going to go. I think the Supreme Court will take the case. The Supreme Court will reverse. They'll put Trump on the ballot, and if they don't, I think we're looking at some pretty interesting times as the ancient Chinese proverb states. Yeah. Hey, guys, I've had a lot of great webmasters. over the years, but the team at Expanddesigns.com have by far been the most competent and reliable.

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Support the show and support your brain at Moondoseartisancoffee.com. just click the link at the right margin at scott horton dot org well a few things there first of all i was just trying to kind of steal man the argument for like what they said was happening there was he's trying to force pence to stop certifying the vote so that they could have a revote on the electoral college in the states and whatever

and all i was just saying that's the steel man argument really was the constitution says if there's no clear majority in the electoral college then it goes to the house of representatives and the house of representatives votes So unless Donald Trump is calling out some infantry division to seize the house and force them to vote for him, then all we're talking about is a real messy civil legal process that ends up working in his favor or not based on sound legal theories or based on bogus legal theories. Essentially, at all times, everyone other than the rioters is wearing a suit in a tie. and is in court. And the riot,

they call it January 6th because it was over by suppertime, right? It didn't it wasn't an ongoing thing. There were no arms. No one was seized, as you said. No one was kidnapped and truly coerced. But even if they had forced Pence to somehow

cease the certification, it had, let's say a few of the states had gone into controversy about which slates of electors to send and this kind of thing, it still would have just gone to the house because James Madison is already ahead of you anyway on all this because they knew that that could happen. Something like that could happen, right?

And so, in other words, we know what a coup looks like. America does it all the time. And in fact, you know what? This is something that gets so little play because of the way the thing worked out. But remember, in the buildup in the summer, they were announcing that their plans for essentially a color-coded type revolution against him and they were not shy about it it was in the atlantic i think the new republic definitely the washington post hillary clinton said specifically if trump wins with anything less than a clear landslide we fight and they were talking about withholding electors from california organ

and washington state and wisconsin or something i think they thought they could get away with yeah there was discussion uh-huh and they were they were talking about they were going to pull out all the stops to prevent him from winning if he won. And then they were prepared for all that, but it turned out that they won anyway. And then I think it's true and fair to say, too, that what he did is shameful and embarrassing. I mean, I kind of think they ripped him off,

not with the vote count, like his lawyers said. I think it was mostly all in the rigging of the media game against him. Direct government interference, his own government that he was the chief executive of, intervening to crush all of his biggest, name brand, new right wing, you know, pro-Trumpian influencers in social media to just an absolute detrimental degree, which is a proven fact now. And along with their interference when

the FBI, we know now, knew a year in advance, had the laptop a year in advance and primed all the social media companies to believe a Russian hoax was coming. And then when it came that this was it. And in order to crush the laptop, that's government intervention. FBI CIA intervention, no less than the Russia gate hoax that they did in 2020. But I still kind of think that even if a guy cheats in a race, you

can't just sit there whining at the finish line like he cheated fair and square and sometimes you take one on the chin, what are you going to do? And Trump kept whining after the electoral college voted, called for people to show up that day, which I think he should not have done. But that's just

nothing still. That's just me thinking that he's a child. That's not me thinking. he's a criminal. Yeah. He's criminal for other reasons. You could question the wisdom of it, but it is protected by the First Amendment. I'd buy that. Another interesting point that I don't think has really been emphasized is that generally

speaking, an insurrection is a forceful attempt to overthrow the executive. Well, who was the executive on January 6th? It was Trump. And Trump had control the armed forces. So the notion that Trump's going to sort of insurect against himself by having a bunch of unarmed old ladies and middle-aged men, you know, tour through the Capitol, shaking hands with the guards. It's really pretty silly. But the point you made before a moment ago is a solid point. The election wasn't rigged on an election

day. The election was rigged before that. There was no coverage of the Biden campaign. All the coverage of Trump was that Trump was an evil incompetent, whatever he was. There was no actual coverage. The debates were rigged by the moderators. I like, I'm a sort of a, you know, I love to check out the polls and do prognostication. The polls always had Trump down way more than he was on Election Day. And is that an accident? Is, you know, that Trump's, you know, that Trump's points lower for six months than he actually ended up. You know, he only lost by 42,000 votes. So I think that the election was rigged long before Election Day. It wasn't a fair election. And when you provoke, you know, people enough, they're going to do things that are unwise. And we still don't know what happened on January 6th.

We know there were spies in the crowd, undercover agents. There's suspicious. you know, they, they lobbed tear gas into the crowd before actually any, anything. And fired rubber bullets at them, we know now. Rubber bullets. Yeah, that had not been disclosed. Out of all the footage that had been released, selectively released by the newspapers, like the New York Times, and the committee, it only just came out when the new speaker of the house came into power. They only just released this new footage that shows the cops firing rubber bullets into the

crowd, which is sort of right, like a kindergarten version of the Maidan, firing up the crowd, forcing a confrontation? Yeah. And look, the history of Trump rallies is that they're pretty peaceful. I went to see them speak in Buffalo. And, you know, these are sort of, you know, people in their 40s, 50s, 60s. they really didn't show a propensity to violence. This was, I think, something that really kind of had to be provoked.

And again, it was a very small portion of the crowd. And Trump isn't, although Trump could have maybe condemned them sooner. That's not, in the Western legal tradition, non-feasance is generally speaking, not criminal. unless you have a special duty of care for, say, an elderly relative or something like that, and you starve the person to death. Doing nothing is generally not considered to be a criminal act. It might be subject to criticism, but so I think really overall, this is a very weak case. It's politically motivated.

It's going to be overturned by the Supreme Court. We hope, I think, because I think you and I both agree, whether you're, I voted against Trump twice. I voted for I think Ron Paul one of those years as a writer. I was his election lawyer in New York State when he ran both times. So I think we want the voters to make this decision and I don't think we want to go to the other place because we don't know what's going to happen if you deprive people of, as Rothbard said, a way to change the government peacefully because if you if they don't have that peaceful way what what what what alternative do they have yeah all right uh last thing here and i'm sorry for ranting so much about

this i just hate these damn democrats so much and once i get going i just but it's not even them it's really a secret police behind the thing but well in the whole damn war party which is funny because he's so friendly with certain factions of them but boy the rest of them hate him for whatever different reasons but you know so here's the other thing about it you say that they kept calling it insurrection over and over and over again so that they can say uh-huh now that we all agree it's an insurrection they can do this just like they did i think you're quoting tucker saying that i totally agree with that it's so obvious but that's you know the email went out this is what we y'all call from now on everybody

okay you know uh take a note but here's the thing now is they keep saying dictator dictator dictator and this is you know i want to say led by but anyway one of them is the evil Robert Kagan, Victoria Newland's wife, or I was the other way around over there in the Washington Post. And there's this big thing in the New York Times. I'm looking at the front page right now and I can't find it. But I just saw it earlier, the headline of it, was this whole thing about Trump's plan for his second term. And it's going to be he's going to seize total control the Justice Department in a way that presidents never do. They always just let it do whatever it wants and he's going to use it to persecute all of his enemies he's going to send his generals to

death he's going to you know i don't know i didn't read that was only the the highlights i read but it was um you know he's going to create a dictatorship and and he's openly admitting it and saying that this is his plan and all this i swear to god i i saw like the new york times tweet about this crap earlier what was it i saw the new york times summary of this um there's someone summarizing with a quote from them about what Trump is planning. Maybe I had the date wrong and it wasn't brand new out, and I had just missed it and it was from a few days ago. But anyway, you know what I'm talking about.

They keep saying this. Yeah, they're incredibly sophisticated and they think these things out. You know, the left, you know, they're obsessed with politics. And, you know, I think we on the other side are, I think, more interested in living a normal life. And they always have the edge. They're always thinking these things out in advance. But, you know, when I think of Trump's actual administration, he brought in people that you and I wish he hadn't brought in.

He was trying to create a coalition, kind of a Lincoln thing, where you bring in some of the opponents. The generals rolled him, as you say, on Syria. I mean, he got rolled by Congress. He got rolled by, was it Ryan, the former speaker, wouldn't let him build a wall. I mean, when he was actually president, he was the opposite of an authoritarian. he was he he kind of got steamrolled a lot so i don't know where they get this concept that he's going to be hitler in the second term i think it's a complete fabrication for whatever reasons and uh you know aside from a coup d'etat or whatever there's other speculations that i don't even

want to talk about as to why they're analogizing him to hitler because of course there was a guy named von Stauffenberg i believe who did try to do his thing so i think i think that's a concern too when you villainize a guy like that he's setting him up for something bad yeah it's crazy and i found it by the way it's from two days ago how trump plans to wield power in 2025 what we know and it's by the disgrace charlie savage who you know forwarded on the cia's afghan russian bounties hoax in 2020 in that the beginning of the summer to prevent trump from pulling the troops out that summer yeah well you know these people never pay a price for being wrong the neocons have never paid a price for their you know misadventures in the middle east which you've documented in your

magnificent book um but uh yeah this is this is what we're up against and you and i are not huge trump backers but uh you know you've got to you've got to see that uh keeping them off the ballot is the wrong move uh legally morally and just practically for the sake of the peace of the country. Yeah. And, you know, some of the things that he has been saying lately, I actually saw, and this is something that it's not just me, it's libertarians in general, even no matter how sick and tired of crime we are, somehow just can't get over the idea of government sovereign immunity and qualified immunity and absolute immunity, as the judges and prosecutors and cops claim it. And I saw Trump in a live speech the other day,

uh talking about i'm going to indemnify all cops from anything they ever do on the job no matter what and that's his version of being anti them is being more pro their enforcement than anyone at all that's his real that's the real constituency of the republican party right it's not the leaders of the government it's the rank and file government employees right back back the blue Well, the real problem with Trump is that he's not really an idealogue. So you never really know what's going to come out of his mouth. And I think, you know, early on in the Trump days, I know a few people who know Trump, and I was, of course, trying to, you know, push some libertarianism into that camp.

And he never brought libertarians in. I think if he brought them in, both the country and Trump would be a lot better off. and maybe we'd know somebody like ran paula's vice president nobody seems to be talking about it but i think that would check a lot of boxes yeah don't you think yeah hey quite literally he never used the word freedom or liberty once in 2016 2015 i was clock in that first campaign that was not the point it never was and it's not what he thinks about or talks about it's not you know i'm sure he's mentioned it once or twice in the last campaign or maybe this one but um he's a he's a populist national and then every other issue he's a pragmatist, which is generally speaking, not a good thing.

So if Trump would wise up, he'd bring some libertarians in, it's like, you know, it's like I said, one of my podcasts the other day, you know, libertarians know where the bodies are buried were good policy wonks. And he just didn't have anybody who could get rid of, like, housing and urban development and some of these other useless agencies. And spending exploded. So I think the best you can say is that, yeah, had the right enemies. He didn't start any new wars. He continued some bad old wars like

in Yemen, which is a shame. I think we still, the public still doesn't understand what happened in Yemen, which is a tragedy. And we're dealing with the consequences now because what they're firing missiles out of there. And you know more about what's going on there than I do. Well, yeah, no, you're totally right. And these are the same guys that at the end of 2014, our current secretary defense was allied with he was the head of centcom at the time and he was giving them intel to use to kill al-Qaeda guys until two months later he and barak obama switched sides in the war and started bombing them and have been their enemies ever since and the good news despite their intervention recently in palestine shooting missiles uh over the gaza war if you call it that the gaza slaughter um they still are signing the peace deal with Saudi the Saudis want no more of losing refineries to these guys' drones

and so they are, it looks like I'd just, you know, knock on wood there, but on anti-war.com it was the headline two days ago, I think, or yesterday, that they are finalizing the peace deal with Saudi. So hopefully it doesn't turn into a whole new American war there.

Can I turn it to tables on you and ask you a question? Yeah, of course. What the hell what's going to happen in Ukraine, Russia. I know you follow that closely. Yeah, well, I don't know how long it's going to take, honestly. You know, it's the unstoppable force versus the immovable object is the way I look at it. And I think everyone who says that the Russians are destined and bound to win or right, but a lot of times they seem to think that it's going to be sooner than it comes.

and in fact you know the ukrainians have a smaller country they still do have millions of people to conscript and including yes they are going for like older and older people and um nursing homes yeah and people are running away yeah i mean people are running away interesting interesting but um so great uh yeah i'm sorry i was just sushing my dog there i was just going to say that i think it could be a while but i think the time is on Russia's side and that in the end what the Russians want is what used to be

Russia, Nova Russia, which would be the four eastern provinces and call it five if you include Crimea, which they've already held since 2014. But Donetsklohans, Kersan, and Zabrosia there in the east, that's going to be Russia from now on. I don't think anybody can do anything about that. No, so you can name the provinces unlike Nikki well i thought that was what was funny is she should have turned around and said oh yeah vivick well you name him because it was he said oh yeah named the three provinces in question well they've annexed four provinces right so he doesn't know what he's talking about either which was it was hilarious though that she's the hawk so she's the one who the burden is on her you know

he knows enough to stay out of there she claims to know enough to know why we ought to be setting these people on fire and apparently she doesn't know the first thing about it at all so you know that's a whole other level that she owes of knowledge there or expertise if she's going to claim the right and the duty to do such a thing but um it just goes to show there are all a bunch of cartoon characters up there it's completely ridiculous absolutely and and and look i i i the good news right jim is that after two years it looks like it's not going to turn into a general war between nato and russia that they've somehow been able to more or less keep this thing contented inside Ukraine. There's been terrorist attacks and drone attacks and sabotage strikes and things inside Russia, but there's been no major infantry attack inside Russia, nor could there be any long-term or sustained one. So ultimately, it's at more or less stalemate with, well, the advantage to Russia because they got more men and more money and more weapons and just a bigger country and also with the advantage to Ukraine because they're sort of fighting on a

defensive even though really they're more attacking Russian defensive positions and losing on that basis. I don't know. In other words, hell, Biden's plan is to keep the thing dragged out through the next election because you can't lose a war right before an election. Exactly. So, yeah. It's so callous and cruel.

Yeah. So pray it doesn't turn into a nuclear war due to. Joe Biden's public choice theory incentive structure interests here that have nothing to do with the good of mankind whatsoever. Yeah, because I'm 16 miles from the Niagara power plant, which powers the entire northeast, which is like target number one. I'll be gone in about two seconds if the war breaks out. Well, the capital of Texas and 100 miles up the road is Fort Hood, the biggest military base

in America for a reason, you might imagine. and San Antonio was probably due for 8 or 10 or 15 nukes, man, with all the military stuff going on around there. So, yeah, Texas would be done. It'd be nice if we had peace. I think the number one job of the president of the United States is stay out of war with Russia. You would think that that would just go without saying,

but they would all know that. Hey, man, on your first date, this is what the last president secretly says to the new president. Listen, man, there's really only one. job getting along with Russia. Okay? Exactly. Exactly. The rest of this stuff is ranked, you know, 15 through 120. All details. Yeah. All right, listen, I'm sorry for wasting your afternoon, but I'm so happy to talk to you again. It's always a pleasure. We've got to do this again soon, man. Yeah, thank you so much for coming on the show, man. I really appreciate it a lot, Jim. Anytime and see you soon and keep up the great work. All right. Appreciate that. And you too. And

By the way, do you want to talk about liberty movement.org for a minute before I let you go? Well, yeah, I'm just, you know, I'm kind of shifting out of a lot of practice. The kids are grown and, you know, out of the house. And so I'm going to get back into the libertarian movement heavily. And, you know, I advocate direct action. Just things that don't involve electoral politics, which I think is kind of rigged and voting is kind of a scam. So just things like voting with your feet. pulling your kids out of government school, you know, being, trying to stay healthy as opposed to

reforming the medical system, which is, you know, all screwed up because of government intervention, things like that. So, you know, I'm on the very social media and, you know, my very small website needs to be screwed up, but the basic ideas there, it's at liberty movement.org. And I have a bunch of books on Amazon that talk about, you know, why I favor direct action as opposed to political actions. So people can check that out. Yeah. And can you give us an example of what you're talking about there? Because sometimes people might just think of like a hippie throwing a brick through a Starbucks or something. No, no, no. And look, I'm an attorney. So everything I advocate is peaceful and legal. So I started out with say, look, we can't reform the government

schools just pull your kids out and in my book i explain how you can do that without bankrupting yourself and we did it we're not you know my wife and i are not wealthy but we had our kids uh in a private schools now homeschooling is actually cheaper we didn't do the actual homeschooling thing another idea you know a lot of people during the lockdown they they voted with their feet to move to other states so like the free state project in new hampshire for example just a way of simply by moving you can improve your situation as opposed to if you stay there and mess around in politics you're not going to accomplish anything because i've spent 40 50 years in electoral politics and realized how difficult it is to change anything things of that nature educating yourself as to the nature of economics and foreign policy staying healthy i have a program called uh walking for liberty where it sounds kind of corny and counterintuitive but walking 10,000 steps a day will do you much more good than trying to reform the health care system or the Medicaid

system or the Medicare system or big pharma walking is a way to improve your health and improve your state of mind and gives you more energy and makes it cut your risk of death or your need for medical care almost in half. So things like that, things that the individuals can do without waiting around for the political system to finally get its act together. Because as I like to say, the last election that improved increased American liberty was 1800 when Jefferson beat Adams. And nobody's contradicted me yet. So that's basically the concept that I'm advocating, and I will be pushing that for the next several years while I'm still young enough

and healthy enough to do it. I just turned 66, but I'm pretty fit. I got a lot of energy, and I'm going to go out there and kick some rear end in the next three, four years. Awesome. Well, listen, man, thank you again so much for coming on the show. It's been great. Great.

Always great to see you either in person or on the radio. great well i hope we can meet again in person sometime soon yeah i'll see you soon guy all right take care you all right you guys that is jim ostrowski he wrote a bunch of books including progressivism a primer on the idea destroying america a crime against humanity essays against the lockdown and direct citizen action how we can win the second american revolution without firing a shot the scott horton show anti-war radio can be heard on kpfk ninety point seven fm in l a psradyo dot com antiwar dot com scot horton dot org and libertarian institute dot org