The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Alan Dershowitz and Kim Potter, Daunte Wright

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

Alan M. Dershowitz is Brooklyn native who has been called “the nation’s most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer” and one of its “most distinguished defenders of individual rights,” “the best-known criminal lawyer in the world. He was a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School for  fifty years.  He has published more than 1000 articles in magazines, newspapers, journals and is the author of fifty books.

Welcome to Live from the Table, the official podcast from New York's world-famous comedy seller. Our guest today is Alan Dershowitz, who is a Brooklyn native and has been called the most distinguished defender of individual rights and the best-known criminal lawyer in the world. He was a professor of law at Harvard Law School for 50 years and the youngest professor ever at Harvard Law School. He has published more than 1,000 articles and is the author of 50 books. Thank you very much for joining us, Mr. Dershowitz. I am Perrielle, and I am here with the host of the show, Mr. Noam Dorman, who is also the owner of the Comedy Cellar. Hey, I love the Comedy Cellar. I love comedy.

If I hadn't been a law professor, I probably would have been a third-rate stand-up comic. But my family thinks that I actually chose that profession, at least in the home, because I'm the constant jokester. I love good comedy. There's nothing better than good comedy, and there's nothing worse than bad comedy. You also have the comedian's mind for remembering lines and jokes. I've seen that many times in your interviews. You remember all Yiddish jokes. You remember them all. And I've used jokes in court. I actually won a case by using a Jewish joke in front of three WASP judges in the United States court in Massachusetts. You want to hear the joke? Absolutely. nudity and sex in it today would be probably GP rated, but in those days it was banned. And I made the argument to Judge Bailey Aldridge, a descendant of the Aldridge and Rockefeller

family, that it's none of the government's business what goes on inside a movie theater. It's only important what's outside when the public can't help but seeing it. And so the government has the right to ban posters outside. But if you make a wise decision to go into a movie theater, adult decision, it's none of the government's business. And Bailey Aldridge said, well, you know, that's a problem. My maiden aunt once walked into a French movie thinking it was a travelogue and she hasn't gotten over it since. And how would you prevent that? And I said, well, you put up on the outside signs that make it clear. I said, let me tell you about a Jewish guy walking around in the countryside in the window and he says mister can you fix my watch and the guy says fix your watch i don't fix watches i'm a mile i do circumcisions the guy says you're a

mile you do circumcisions so why do you have watches and clocks in the window he said mister what do you want i should have in the apparently went around telling that joke to people so in one case by telling a joke i won another case by singing um presenting the play hair and i started out by singing the song from here. How dare they try to ban our music? How dare they try to ban our music? I didn't win any awards for my singing, but we won the case. So, you know, you need to be eclectic. You need to have a sense of humor. You need to like music. You need to be in the real world to be a good lawyer. Have you ever considered going on stage and telling jokes? So a few years ago, somebody at Harvard University decided to do Harvard stands up for the poor or whatever. And they asked for volunteers.

I was the only volunteer at Harvard. And so they canceled it. They said, no, just one guy is not enough. So I've never had a chance. Are you going to give me my big break at age 83? You just had it. Professor Dershowitz, by the way, just as, and then we'll get onto it. I'd asked, I really want a picture of yours, a signed picture of yours, since you have done debates at the Cellar, that I can put on the stairs with our hall of fame. I was very insulted when I went to the bathroom and I didn't see my picture.

There was Larry David who was screaming at me recently. There was, you know, Woody Allen, but no Alan Dershowitz. So yeah, you're getting my picture picture you know i i did have a stand-up routine once i was a laugh i was on old jews telling jokes i don't know that you you don't know old jews telling jokes it was an off-broadway play it was fantastic it was a hundred jokes i knew 99 of them only the one i didn't know i'll tell you the one I didn't know, I'll tell you, the one I didn't know is the Russian guy, the English guy, the French guy and the Jewish guy are in the desert. And the Russian guy says, I'm so thirsty, I must have vodka. And the French guy says, I'm so thirsty, I must have red wine. I'm so thirsty, I must have beer.

And the Jewish guy says, I'm so thirsty, I must have diabetes. Only joke I didn't know. And then, wait, they invited me to be on All Jews Telling Jokes to tell a joke. So here was my joke. These two 80-year-old guys go to the same club and have lunch every day, the golf club, they have their pastrami sandwich, their chicken soup with matzo balls, and they schmooze and they talk. They're both 80 years old. They're short, they're fat, they're bald, and they're very rich. One day, Misha walks in, one of the guys, and he has his arm around the

six foot two inch supermodel, beautiful, beautiful woman. And Sam says, Misha, you can't bring a prostitute into the club. No, no. She's my new wife. Your new wife? You're 80 years old. How did you get this beautiful woman to marry you? Don't tell. I lied about my age. Oh, you said you were 70?

No, schmuck. I said I was 90. That's a bad joke for old Jews. Okay, let's get serious. All right. Kim Potter. This was a hot button for all you. Okay, let's get serious. All right, Kim Potter. This was a hot button issue for you. And last time you were on, I asked you whether or not, given all the changes in society, that a high profile defendant can expect to get a fair trial. And you seem to think that a fair trial was still something to be expected,

given Twitter and social media and everything. fair trial. And you seem to think that a fair trial was still something to be expected, given Twitter and social media and everything. What do you think about the Kim Potter verdict? And has it changed your mind about anything? It's horrible. It's horrible. Kim Potter did not commit a crime. She simply didn't commit a crime. The judge said in sentencing her, it was a tragic accident. The prosecutor and prosecutor said it was a mistake. But Keith Ellison, the very, in my view, racist chief prosecutor in Minnesota, decided not only he was going to get her convicted, but he wanted to throw the book at her. He wanted to give her 15 years in prison. Finally, the DA's office, the attorney general's office said, no, she should only get six to eight years.

You shouldn't get a single day. You know, it's it's like Alec Baldwin. It was a tragic, terrible mistake. What's the difference between Alec Baldwin and Kim Potter? Kim Potter thought she was firing a taser. That would be perfectly lawful to stop a fleeing felon who had a gun charge against him and who was in a car driving, endangering his fellow, her fellow officer and possibly endangering other people. What's the difference between what she did and what Alec Baldwin did? He didn't intend to shoot. Maybe he didn't even pull the trigger, but accidentally the gun went off and somebody was killed. In America, it's not a crime to make a mistake. If you're driving home from work and a kid runs in front of you and you slam your foot, you think on the brake, but by accident, you put your foot on the gas and you kill the kid. Terrible, terrible. It's a tort.

You should have to pay money, but you don't go to jail for an honest mistake. So I will not rest until Kim Potter is out of jail. I don't know why her lawyers haven't made bail applications or haven't moved for an expedited appeal, but I think she should be able to win her appeal. So to put it in context, and I wonder if you would agree with this analogy, I think you will. I was just reading that 250,000 people a year die from medical errors. And just like, for instance, I was reading about one, a surgeon with all the time in the world, took a die, looked at the die. The die said very explicitly, this is not to be used for this situation. He injected the patient with the die. I don't mean to laugh. And the patient died a horrible, painful death. That to me, and nobody ever thought of criminalizing that,

the surgeon not going to go to jail. My wife's brother died from medical malpractice. A doctor, also an injection. It was, something was wrong with the injection and a very young child died needlessly. The doctor left the practice. The family could have sued. They didn't. But nobody talked about him going to jail. There was a case in Massachusetts where it was much more serious.

A doctor at I think it was Mount Auburn Hospital was in the middle of performing surgery, and it was five to five. And in those days, this was years ago, before the banking machines, he left the surgery in the middle, left it to a young intern, ran to the bank to deposit his check, because it was a Friday, he wanted the check to be deposited over the weekend. And by the time he came back, the surgery was completed. And there was no problem. The surgery was fine, but the doctor was of course suspended, but he wasn't charged with criminal conduct. And there, that was real, real negligence. So, you know, we have torts every day. We have the law of torts. The law of torts is designed to make people whole from accidents, from negligence. And in this case, it was nothing more than negligence. She tried her best.

She pulled the gun out. She said, taser, taser, taser. She warned him, I'm going to tase you if you don't submit. And then she shoots him with a gun. She says, oh, and then uses a word and said, I shot him. I shot him. She was devastated. It's not a crime. And just to show you how the politics enters in, Vox.com, which obviously represents the wing of thought which would think that Potter should be punished, has an article from 2016, Fatal Mistakes. Doctors and nurses make thousands of deadly errors every year. They are reprimanded. Do they also deserve our support? His story of a nurse who makes a ridiculous mistake, kills a child, and then the nurse kills herself as well. And Vox is upset that there weren't proper support groups for the nurse who killed somebody with her errors. I don't see, I mean, Perrielle, you're probably the most progressive here.

I can't distinguish between these types of mistakes and the police error, except I think the doctor's mistakes are worse. Well, I think that obviously all of these are tragic, but I do sort of really struggle ethically with the idea that at that level, shouldn't you be held to a higher standard of responsibility? And why didn't Kim Potter, in all of her years of experience, why wasn't she be able to tell the difference in her hand between a gun? Okay, let Alan answer all that. Go ahead. They conceded that it was not deliberate. You know, there were some people, you know, crazy people on both sides who were saying, oh, she claimed she thought it was a taser, but she knew she was shooting with a gun.

She wanted to kill him. Even the prosecution disclaimed that. He said, no, it was purely an accident. Look, you remember that the vast majority of policemen never fire a gun in their 30-year careers? Never fire a gun. I think Potter was one of those people. She was under extreme stress. She had brought this young rookie with her who she was training. His life was in danger.

She had to make a split-second decision. She made the wrong decision. Yes, she should be held to a higher standard, but that doesn't reach criminal standards. A higher standard of tort liability, and she should have to pay. And look, she was so sorry for what she had done. She's just not a criminal. You know, we know what a criminal is. She's just not a criminal. She's a woman with 26 years of experience as a good police officer who had one bad minute in her life. And you don't go to jail for having one bad minute of making a tragic mistake like that. And so I am committed. And why isn't the left

concerned about this? The left's supposed to be concerned. I've devoted my life to trying to help innocent people. Where is the Innocence Project? Where is the ACLU? Where is the left? They're nowhere because a black kid was killed by a white policeman. And, you know, the Torah has a very interesting line. It talks about judges. The portion of the week is called Shofdim Judges. And it says a judge shall not take a bribe. That's the second thing a judge shall not do. You know what the. Wear a blindfold. Do not recognize faces, races, or anything else. Just do justice. And we're not living in that society today. Today, everything turns on faces, races, gender, and not enough on the individual culpability of the person. Take, for example, this guy who shot, shot at a Jewish candidate or mayor in a small town in the South. He shot at him. He actually grazed his shirt. He did it for anti-Semitic reasons. Black Lives Matter put up the bail for

the guy, and he's out free. Whereas the folks who went to the Capitol, who I don't support their protests, but many of them now are in solitary confinement without bail. This is a guy who shot a Jewish candidate because he was Jewish. And Black Lives Matter that calls Israel an apartheid and genocidal state. Israel just appointed a Muslim justice to its Supreme Court. I don't remember South Africa doing that to any Black justices. But Black Lives Matter today engages in that same kind of racial injustice and we need one rule for all we need to have everything past what i call the shoe on the other foot test if it's good for the goose it's good for the gander you can't have different rules based on race or face well barry weiss when she

quit the times made a memorable remark where something like she said that twitter has become the ultimate editor of times um i'm wondering if twitter is twitter has become the ultimate editor of everything and if we fully uh come to terms with the gravitational force that twitter and things like twitter have on every decision that's being made every juror who knows his name is going to come out and these high profile cases how can you get a fair trial in a high profile case it's not look what happened with um with sarah palin the jury is deliberating and the judge thinks he can dismiss the case without the juror knowing about it the jurors know about it. But it popped up on their feed. You know, if you read Twitter, who am I? If you read Twitter, I'm a pedophile all over Twitter.

I'm a pedophile. I rape young girls. You know, some woman who I never met and whose lawyer admitted she was wrong. And, you know, her other lawyers withdrew the charge. And I've been completely, completely vindicated in every possible way legally, but not on Twitter. On Twitter, I'm still the bad guy. And if you go on Twitter, I'm the most horrible person in the row and I've done half my pro bono. You wouldn't know that from Twitter. On Twitter, I'm just this horrible person who was once accused. That's why I had to write a book called Guilt by Accusation. If you're accused, you're guilty. It's just like McCarthyism. Imagine how much worse McCarthyism would have been if we had Twitter. Yeah. Today we have McCarthyism plus Twitter. So any reforms that you could suggest to the criminal system?

Where are we going to begin? I have some reforms. First, we have to decriminalize a great many things that shouldn't be crimes. The things that today, you know, should not be crimes. Smoking marijuana, obviously, is one of them. We have to decriminalize a lot of things that are taking up a lot of energy and resources from the criminal justice system. Second, we have to reform the bail completely. Too many rich people who are dangerous are out on bail, and too many poor people who aren't dangerous are in without bail. So we have to

turn bail into something much more specific that doesn't focus on how much money you have, but rather on how dangerous you are and how much you're likely to flee. And people are denied bail today for political reasons. It's a way of saying, oh, what they are accused of is so serious that we have to deny them bail, but they're presumed innocent. So you can't say that what they're accused of is so serious, we deny them bail. So that's another big issue. A third issue is disparity in sentences. You get the same crime and people will get probation or 20 years. So there's so many things wrong with our criminal justice system. And, you know, for 50, what now, seven years, I've been fighting the injustices in the criminal justice system. And, you know, for 50, what now, seven years, I've been fighting

the injustices in the criminal justice system. One of the worst things, and it's happening to me, is that criminal lawyers are regarded as the criminals themselves. You should read the emails that I get. And it's not only this case, it's when I defended OJ Simpson, it's when I defended Mike Tyson, it's when I defended Mike Milken, it's when I defended Klaus von Bulow. All these letters saying, how can you do that? How can you defend somebody? And the alternative is, you really want to live in a system where unpopular people are not defended? You don't have to imagine that. Just go to the former Soviet Union. Go to the current Iran. Go to China, go to Belarus, go to the present-day Russia, even though Russia is better than it used to be. You don't want to live in a system where people aren't defended. The other, some time ago, New York Magazine said I was today's answer to Clarence Darrow, the devil's advocate. And I'm proud to be that. I have defended people who are the most unpopular. But the most trouble that I've gotten from defending people was not O.J. Simpson, not Klaus von Bülow. It was President Donald Trump.

Even though I voted against him, I'm a liberal Democrat. I didn't want to see him elected president, either the first time or the second time. But I defended the Constitution. He was impeached on improper, unconstitutional grounds. And I defended him. And I lost a lot of my friends, mostly Hollywood people. Larry David screaming at me on the porch of the Chilmark store, you're disgusting. You're disgusting for doing that. And people whose kids I helped get into college, people whose kids I defended free of charge, won't talk to me because

they don't like who I defended. And that's something very wrong with our criminal justice system. And what about insulating the jury from the political pressures that they face either by knowing that the wrong verdict can lead to riots or whatever it is, and from knowing that their name is going to come out and it's going to be broadcast all over town that they voted the wrong way on something. How do we handle that? And it's terrible the way we pick our juries today. We don't give the defense enough of a chance to challenge the jurors. And you're an unpopular person.

Take, for example, the Harvey Weinstein case. I consulted on that case as well with Ben Brofman, a great lawyer. In that case, there was a juror who desperately wanted to get on the jury because she was writing a book about an older predatory male who took advantage of young girls. And she denied having done that when she was picked for the jury. And then in the Ghislaine Maxwell case, the same thing. You had a juror who claimed that he was abused as a kid, never said to that to the judges or the defense attorneys. And then he says he had a big influence on the jury deliberations. And, you know, when you have a case like the Sarah Palin case, the jury should be sequestered and the judge shouldn't be making

decisions in the middle of the jury deliberations on the assumption that that information will not get it to the jury. Everybody should know that that information would get to the jury. And it did, of course. And of course, in the Ch chauvin trial and nobody wants to defend chauvin but in the chauvin trial one of the juries one of the jurors was seen wearing a t-shirt uh get get your knee off my neck or something like that before the trial he was you know he he wore a t-shirt about chauvin's guilt and then he's still on the juror deciding chauvin's guilt how How can that happen? And what was worse than that is Maxine Waters, the congresswoman from California, basically threatening riots. And if a jury acquits, their houses will be burned down. How do you get justice when that happens? The Chauvin, I have no sympathy for Chauvin at all. What he did was beyond horror. But you should

have gotten a fair trial. It should have been outside of the city where it happened. It should have been in a rural area and it should have been put off a year. And there should have been an opportunity to disqualify any jurors who had any preconceived notions about his guilt or innocence. He probably still would have been convicted. I don't see how any juror could fail to convict based on the videotape there, but he probably still would have been convicted. I don't see how any juror could fail to convict based on the videotape there, but he's still entitled to a fair trial. All right, you mentioned Sarah Palin and the way that you've been dragged in the press and Twitter.

You, if I'm not mistaken, you worked on New York Times versus Sullivan, the Supreme Court, which set the standard for liable cases. Do you have any second thoughts about that standard now that you've been on the other end of it? It's interesting because I didn't work on the majority opinion. I worked on Justice Goldberg's concurring opinion. My co-clerk, Lee McTernan, did most of the work, but I did some of the work on it. I do have some concerns. I would make a sharp difference

between public figures who are in government, elected officials, appointed officials, on the one hand, and people like me who don't know anything to anybody. We're not elected, we're not appointed, but we're just well known. I don't think the same rules should apply to both. I think you should be much freer to criticize government officials. By the way, you should be freer to criticize them in their public functioning, not in their private life. If you lie about their private life, I think that should be defamation, and I don't think malice should have to be proved there. So I think there are some refinements that are necessary, and the Sarah Palin case may do that. I'm also suing CNN.

CNN doctored a recording of mine. I went in front of the Senate and answered a question in which I said, if a president engages in anything unlawful or illegal, if his quid pro quo was unlawful or illegal, he can be impeached. But if he's just trying to run for re-election, that motive alone wouldn't be enough to impeach him. He has to do something illegal or unlawful. So CNN took out the words illegal and unlawful, and then had their commentators say, Dershowitz says the president can do anything. He can kill people. He can commit crimes. And totally distorted what I said. So I'm suing them.

And I don't know that they'll have any money left now that they fired Cuomo and they fired Jeff Zucker. And the other woman has quit. The beating's a way down. I hope they have enough money to pay me what they owe me based on their defamation against me. So you use the word lie, that they shouldn't be able to lie, but you also mean they shouldn't be able to make negligent mistakes where they show no care whatsoever into determining whether or not they've got it right or wrong, correct? Right. Let me give you an example. The New York Times and the Sarah Palin case. If I had been Sarah Palin's lawyer, I would have gone through every mistake the New York Times made in the last 20 years, every mistake, and prove that every single one of them favored the left and disfavored the right. Every single one of them relating to the Middle East disfavored Israel and favored the Palestinians. So if every mistake is ideological, if the Times always makes its quote mistakes on one side rather than the other, that begins to show for me malice.

Well, I mean, tell me if I've got this wrong. It seems to me it's just common sense, and I've seen it, that this standard creates a moral hazard where people understand very well how far they can push it, what they can and can't get in trouble for. And when they know it's virtually impossible to get in trouble for a mistake about a public figure, they're not very careful about checking out what they do. They'll issue a retraction worst case scenario and then i had a personal experience where when i was defending louis ck um things outrageous things were written about me that i could prove were not true i would contact like for instance slate magazine and they would acknowledge that it was wrong but they would wait 10 days to correct it you know basically at the time when no one was

reading it anymore. So, and I had no recourse whatsoever. And it was clear to me that they were, had internalized the New York Times, Sullivan Standard, and knew that there was, you know, they could say anything they wanted about me. They could say, oh, it was something they heard on a podcast. I said, oh, we misheard it. Shoot us. What are you going to do? And you're absolutely right. When this woman who I never met accused me of having sex with her when she was 18 years old, that became a front page story. When the judge withdrew and struck the complaint and when the lawyers said they were wrong for making that complaint and that they withdrew all the allegations, that appeared on the bottom of

page 28. Nobody read it. So people still think that the accusation is there against me. So the accusation always gets more press. You know, it was Winston Churchill who said a lie makes its way halfway around the world before the truth can get its shoes on. And with the internet today, it's much quicker than that. Churchill said it before the Internet. So if you could rewrite the standard, would you change it? I would. Even for public figures, I mean, even for politicians?

Well, I would keep it the way it is for elected officials and people in high positions of government. But I would not keep it that way for you, for me, for actors, for anybody else. And I would make a sharp distinction between giving some degree of protection to statements made about your professional career and statements made about your personal life. I think statements made about your professional career and statements made about your personal life. I think statements made about your personal life, even if you're the president of the United States, should not be subject to the malice standard. About how you govern, yes, but how you conduct your private life, I think that the right of privacy, the right of integrity and dignity have to be given weight there as well. You know, it's interesting. Brandeis, who was one of the greatest justices in history,

wrote an article in the 19th century calling the right of privacy the most important right of all, the right to be left alone. But then he also wrote many opinions on the right of free speech. And often the right of free speech and the right of privacy clashes. Take, for example, the man whose name I'm flipping at the moment, who recently died of his head banging against the back of the wall. Off Saget. Yeah. And they want to reveal his autopsy reports. No, no, it's nobody's business. He's not a public figure when it comes to his death or his autopsy reports. No, no, it's nobody's business. He's not a public figure when it comes to his death or his autopsy reports. If he had told a terrible, terrible joke, you know,

using bad words, that would be one thing. But how he died, there you have a clash between the right of privacy, the family doesn't want it revealed, and the kind of gossipy, gossipy right of page six. And I think I might there err on the side of privacy rather than gossip. I don't understand why it was anybody's business to read anybody's autopsy report in a situation like that. It made no sense to me. I was actually very surprised that they released that. Well, because you don't want a precedent that says no autopsy reports can ever be released. Say, you know, for example, John F. Kennedy's autopsy report has been the subject of dispute for, you know, 60 years. And did he, you know, did he die of one bullet wound or two, all that. So you can have cases, but I think the burden of proof should be on those who want to see it released when it's something as private as an autopsy report. I mean, we used to have it pretty easy because we live in an open society. And so by default, many, many things were public record. But in practical terms, these things would not get disseminated to a billion people because there were only a few newspapers and a few TV networks.

And unless it was really, really something hot, these things were out there, but nobody actually did the work to get them and spread them. Now, anything, anything can be broadcast to, a you know three billion people in seconds by anybody with a cell phone and although the principle maybe hasn't changed the the the it's different the exigencies are different so i don't know what you think about that well girls it used to be a gentleman's agreement and i use the word gentleman appropriately because it was all done by men a gentleman's agreement that you don't report on the private life of public figures. John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and so many other people who it was well known were doing things that would have obviously hurt their electoral chances

had they been revealed. The press didn't reveal it. And that agreement has been negated. And I think for good reason, because I think women today are much more powerful in the media than they ever were in the past. And gentlemen's agreements don't work anymore. You know, it's interesting. I just the other night, my wife and I have been watching old movies on television and really, really appreciating some of the great old movies. And last night we watched A Gentleman's Agreement, which I had first seen, I think in, I don't know,

1947, 1948, when I was, you know, 10 years old, or something about the agreements that were made among upper class people to discriminate against Jews without them knowing it. And it was the first film ever made in Hollywood about Jews. And it was the first film ever made in Hollywood about Jews. Interestingly enough, in order to make it, it had to be made by non-Jews. Elia Kazan was the director. And it's a great film that I strongly, strongly recommend. It really holds up after 60 years or more. I'm on vacation. I'm going to watch it. Okay. Another couple of quick things. I know you got to go. Whoopi Goldberg. I didn't even think she should have apologized, let alone been suspended. And I'm happy that Joe Rogan and Spotify didn't blink. What do you have to say

about all that? Well, I think that she should have apologized. She made a mistake, but that's all. She should have simply apologized. She should have said, you know, I live in an environment where race has to do with color and Jews are not a race. She's right. Jews are not a race. Only Hitler regarded Jews as a race. But I, you know, I don't I think that's the end of it. Well, let me let me just rephrase. I'm happy if she apologized because she's sorry. I don't mean that. I mean, yeah, but I mean, if she if she's not convinced, she says, no, I don't think so. I'm like, OK, bring people on there and debate it with her. And that'd be that. I mean, yeah. But I mean, if she's not convinced, she says, no, I don't think so. I'm like, okay, bring people on there and debate it with her. And that'd be that, right? Completely agree 100%. But I think she was sorry. I think she did make a mistake. She didn't realize that in Hitler's terms, Jews were a race much like, and treated much like, much worse, of course,

but like Black people in America today, or like Black people when they were slaves, enslaved. So I think she made a mistake. But I do think that the apology, which was heartfelt, was enough. I feel a little different about the British guy who told that horrible, horrible joke about the Romani people. His name is Jimmy Carr. Jimmy Carr. I think more than an apology because that was a planned joke and that was designed to get laughter over the death of Romani people. You know, again, turn him off.

If you don't like what he says, don't listen to him. I won't go to see a performance by him, but that's my choice. I don't believe in censored comics. I believe in answering them. You know, it's interesting, when I was still friendly with Larry David, he would call me from time to time to run a Jewish joke by me to make sure it passed. You may remember there was one in which a Holocaust survivor is at a party and he meets somebody who was on the show, The Survivor. Yes, of course. And they both were survivors. And he ran that by me. And I laughed. I said, you know, that's really funny. There are going to be some people who are upset by it, but it's funny. And, you know, you have a Broadway play by Mel Brooks and Springtide to Hitler. That's funny. And also, if you're Jewish, you can mock yourself. But if you're not Romani, I think that joke was beyond the pale.

But I wouldn't put him in jail and I wouldn't censor him. I want to put it in a nutshell. If Netflix didn't censor anything, then they shouldn't censor him. But if they censor jokes that are offensive to some groups, then they can't not censor jokes that are offensive to other groups. They have to have a single standard. They can't say, and they do say, it's much worse to insult gays and blacks and women than it is to insult Romani people. That's what Netflix is saying.

That's what happens when you start censoring. Then you censor equally. That's why it's better not to censor at all. That's why my, I have a podcast. It's called The Dershow. The only thing missing is the wit and that's provided by the audience. So The Dersh Show and it's on Rumble. Why is it on Rumble? Because Rumble doesn't censor. I want to be on Rumble, not on YouTube, because I don't have to worry about what I say and who I offend if I'm offensive don't watch me but don't cancel it so I just wanna say I know

Jimmy Carr I didn't really I didn't hear the the joke that he got in trouble for but I know him I like him very much he's no anti-semite that's for sure as a matter of fact and and but his whole stick is to is a series of outrageous things that no one would ever say. And within that context, I think the joke would play differently if you were to watch it beginning to end. Or he may have just overstepped. But I just want to say that I know him and I would stand by him and his character 100%. It's interesting. I wasn't as critical of him as I was of the audience.

The audience laughed hysterically at the joke. It wasn't that funny. You know, when Sacha Baron Cohen did what I thought was a hysterical bit in one of his movies, he led a bunch of people in the South or the West in a song, shoes in the well, you know, you get rid of all your problems. And they're all singing along. I didn't blame Cohen for that. That was great. I blamed he elicited from the people a feeling that is very significant. And I think the same thing you could say is true about the anti-Romani joke. It was the laughter that was most upsetting. I have to watch it. But I would just say it's possible that that was just the momentum of a series of progressively worse and worse, more outrageous jokes that led

to that laughter. It may not tell you anything about what the audience feels about that. When I'm asked to debate the Holocaust, every year or so I get a letter from a Holocaust denier saying, debate me on campus. And I answer always the same way. I'm willing to debate you, but it has to be part of a four-part debate. The same night, we'll have four issues debated. One, John F. Kennedy is alive and well and living in Hyannis. Number two, nobody landed on the moon. It was all just a fake. Number three, the earth is flat. Number four, the Holocaust didn't occur. Okay, it's in that company that Holocaust denial belongs. So you're absolutely right. Context is everything. All right. Final question, because not only are you a legal expert, but you're one of the most savvy foreign affairs

analysts that I know and have been right over and over again. And we're seeing a very interesting thing happening in Ukraine with analogies to the lead up to World War II. What is your take on it all? First of all, there's no analogy to World War II. That let's be clear. Putin for whatever you want to say about him is not a genocidal murderer who's going to put people in gas chambers, etc.

He's bad enough, but let's not compare him to world. Well, I only say that, for instance, in The Atlantic, there's an article we have. He's not no Chamberlain, but no Churchill either. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, of course. Now, you know, Churchill. Let's remember, Churchill did not.

Churchill was against invading Germany in 1936, 1937. The smartest thing in the world would have been for France and Germany, for France and England to have invaded Germany when they violated the Versailles Treaty and before they were strong enough to defeat them. So Churchill also didn't move quickly enough. Once, obviously, he was attacked and his country was at risk, he was a phenomenal leader. I have a sculpture of Churchill next to my sculpture of Theodor Herzl and Abraham Lincoln. Those are three of my heroes. I don't know. I represented the president of Ukraine, President Kuchma. And he was up on charges of murder, and I helped get him acquitted. And I was in Kiev a lot. And I've been there, and my family comes from around there. So I care deeply, and I have friends

in Ukraine. I think that Putin is testing the waters. This is a great test for President Biden, for Tony Blinken, for Austin, for the entire administration. I can't predict. I don't think there'll be an all-out war. Certainly, the United States has no obligation to defend Ukraine. They're not a NATO country. They'd like to be a NATO country for precisely that reason. And for precisely that reason, we have to restrict NATO countries because we don't want to invite us to have to go to war every time there's an incursion. So I think the two choices are whether or not Putin will move in and try to get a little bit more ready as the Crimea. He already has two little statelets that are his, even though they're technically independent parts of the Ukraine, and he'll probably want more, whether he'll invade Kiev. It's impossible to know the answer

to that question. And it's very difficult to know what Biden will do. Even what would Churchill do under those circumstances is not completely clear to me. Putin has the tremendous advantage of being able to surprise us and being able to catch us off guard. And I think he'd be smart not to move in completely, smart to just take little advantages and put us at disadvantages. And remember, the goal of Russia has always been to divide Americans. So I have one message, please, stay divided over Biden and Clinton versus Trump. Stay divided over a virus if you want. But please unite at the water's edge. Please unite and support what our president does on Ukraine, because Putin's goal is to divide and weaken. That's what he's always done, and we should not fall in that trap. Whether you're a Republican or a Democrat,

please give deference. Don't necessarily agree, but give deference. Assume good faith on behalf of this administration as it fights a difficult challenge. So is this a recurring mistake we made? I sometimes tell my friends that negotiation without leverage is begging.

For instance, in the Iran deal, which you were probably the most vocal opposer of in the country, we took the military option off the table right away before the negotiations. And so what we were – especially the rest of the negotiations to me was essentially begging. We think we have leverage, but if they don't see that leverage as that scary economic leverage, then it's meaningless to them similarly in ukraine was it smart to announce right at the beginning well whatever happens we're not we're not doing anything militarily here it's basically seeding the whole thing no can we bluff there's a big difference uh i think you're absolutely right about iran we should have kept and we should

keep our military option on the table because they're not a nuclear power. If they became a nuclear power, the military option becomes far more difficult, as we know from North Korea. So let's keep Iran in non-nuclear power. Russia, of course, is the second greatest nuclear power, second or third greatest nuclear power in the world. So it's not a bluff. We can't go to war with Russia. And they know that we can't risk a nuclear war. We can help arm the Ukrainians. We might be able to send advisers. But just remember, every time we've sent advisers from Vietnam to Korea to Afghanistan, we've lost. So I don't think I'd have done anything different. Tony Blinken's a very smart guy. Jake Sullivan's a very smart guy. I happen to think Biden's a smart guy. I don't think he's the most articulate. I've known him for 40 years and he's a nice, decent man. He's a good person. And I hope he does the right thing. I just I just wish him well.

I often imagine what Trump would do in these circumstances and also imagine would Putin have done this if Trump were the president? Because sometimes sometimes there's an advantage to being regarded as almost crazy. And you don't attack people who might do something irrational, like go to war. Whereas we know that Biden is only going to act rationally, and the people who are in his administration are going to act rationally and rationality sometimes can be a disadvantage when playing poker or in this case when playing very very very high stakes yeah i mean i mean i understand that taking risks with the survival of the species is not something you want to do but it does seem to me if nato had said nope we're putting our troops in there and we're going to fight you if you come into Ukraine.

I can't believe Putin would do it. Well, you may be right. And that's what, of course, John Kennedy threatened to do, essentially, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was in Washington during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it was scary. It was scary. The judge I was working for said, go home and be with your children. We really thought back then that there could be a nuclear confrontation. And in the end, Khrushchev and Bobby Kennedy both saw a sensible way out. The Russians won that confrontation in the sense that they wanted to remove missiles from Turkey and other places surrounding them.

And I think the United States said it was going to do that anyway, probably in years to come. So we'll do it now. And ultimately, a resolution was possible. There are resolutions possible here as well, too. And, you know, let's not always imagine that negotiation means Chamberlain. Sometimes negotiations can be a much better alternative than Churchillian action. So the key is to know when to be Churchill and to know when to be

Chamberlain, not to always praise one and demean the other. And Israel hopefully has learned never to give up its nuclear weapons, no matter what deal is offered to them. No doubt. There's no doubt about that. And of course, Israel's in a tough position. It maintains fairly tolerable relationships with Russia and excellent relationships with the United States. And of course, the anti-Semites in the world are pointing to Israel and saying, why don't you impose sanctions? When's the last time a mouse imposed the sanction on a lion? You know, Israel is not in a position, it's a tiny little country, to impose real sanctions on Russia. So Israel has to do what it has to do and worry about its own survival. And the large countries of Europe and the United States can take care of themselves and Israel's involvement in this.

Exit question. Canada. What do you say? Well, I thought Trudeau did something not very smart when he attacked a Jewish member of parliament and said, how are you supporting swastika-waving protesters? You don't use swastika language when you're dealing with a Jewish member of the parliament. The vast majority of Canadian protesters aren't swastika-wavers. They have a point. I don't agree with it. They have the right to protest. They don't have the right to block. I, you know, I was one of the advisors to Justin Trudeau's father, to Pierre Trudeau, when it very well, I thought. And and Junior, maybe I didn't like his language when he said your views to the truckers are unacceptable. No, they're they're maybe wrong. But in a country dedicated to freedom of speech, free speech is not unacceptable when it's part of a dialogue about government action. So I would give him a B minus for how he responded. His father got an A minus. But, you know, these are difficult times.

We live in very difficult times today. We live among division. And it's hard for people to judge people other than based on who they are, what party they're in, what their race is. And I think we have to get back to a situation where everything is judged on the merits. I have a new book coming out called The Price of Principles and how difficult it is when you put principles over partisanship and you try to decide every issue on the merits. The reason I think people listen to my talk show, The Dershow, is because it's unpredictable. People don't know how I'm going to come out on an issue if they think I'm going to support either the Democrat side or the Republican side. I'm going to always think for myself why I love your show, why I love the comedy basement, because we think for ourselves there we tell jokes you don't like our

joke i think the one thing you and i agree on never clap at a joke don't laugh clapping at the joke sends a message to me oh that wasn't funny but i um uh the guy who gets the most claps is Seth Meyers. He gets clapped more than he gets laughed. And when that happens, when people are showing support for your side rather than bursting out in laughter, I don't think that's a compliment for a comedian. Agreed. All right, Professor Dershowitz, it is always a pleasure to have you on the show. The time flies by. I mean, flies by when I hear you talk about these things. And I consider myself very fortunate. This is corny, but it's true. At this point in my life to be having people like you on my show that I can speak to, it's really a pleasure and I get a

lot of personal satisfaction out of it. So thank you very, very much. Your show. Thank you so much. And send me a copy of this. I'm going to send it to all my friends. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you.