The Ricochet Podcast - That IS so B'crat

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

It's a big legal stuff week for Donald Trump. Naturally, we phoned our pal Andy McCarthy. Andy brings breaking news on Judge Merchan’s sentencing schedule, his hot take on Jack Smith’s superseding indictment in the election interference case, and adds a detailed reaction to Mark Zuckerberg’s admission of acquiescing to censorship pressure from government officials. Plus: Charlie, Steve, and James weigh in on Harris's airy interview, wonder (again) who's running the country, and ramble on the many curiosities to be found in Iceland—from cute cuisine and baffling museums to monuments of the anonymous meddlers that make up the amorphous blob. - Sound this week: CNN’s Dana Bash “grills” Kamala Harris with multiple choice quiz.

Oh, sorry, James. I'll go ahead and ask a question if you want. I will, and you can take it wherever you wish. That's what we do here. Imagine you're Rob Long, and I'm asking a question, and he's just going to go where he wants to go. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Stephen Hayward and Charles C.W. Cook. I'm James Lilex. Today we're going to be talking to Annie McCarthy about Trump's legal woes and more. So let's have ourselves a podcast.

How should voters look at some of the changes that you've made, that you've explained some of here in your policy? Is it because you have more experience now and you've learned more about the information? Is it because you were running for president in a Democratic primary? And should they feel comfortable and confident that what you're saying now is going to be your policy moving forward? Welcome, everybody. This is the Ricochet podcast number 706. I'm James Lileks, drinking a cup of tepid office coffee in a skyscraper in downtown Minneapolis, which did not burn to the ground.

Parts, yes, but the fires did not lap on the shores of our corporate office here. And I'm joined by Stephen Hayward and Charles C. W. Cook. Gentlemen, hello. Between Florida and California, once again, we spam the nation. Actually, James, I am coming to you today from Reykjavik, Iceland. We're combining a business and pleasure trip. But I have found something for your Lilacs Museum of Curious Cultural Collections, whatever you call it. Did you know?

Yeah, because right next to my hotel turns out to be the most visited museum in Iceland. It's called the Icelandic Phallological Museum. No, it's the Phallological Museum. Okay. No, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking of the hot dog place. That's the other side of my hotel. No, I believe it was a hamburger that was put under glass in Iceland about 20 years ago.

McDonald's hamburger, and it's not decomposed in the least bit. Anyway, so phallological. Yeah, it's the only penis museum in the world. It is exactly what you think it is. Ah, okay. The brochure says it's family friendly. I'm skeptical of this, but there you go. I'll send you the brochure.

Well, since my site is the Gallery of Regrettable Food, I am not sure whether or not that would constitute a gustatory experience, but of course it depends on one's orientation of preference, I suppose. Well, they have a phallic cafe bistro, James, so maybe it will make your gastro... Okay. You know, I missed that when I was there, and I advise that everybody in their lifetime should go to Iceland because it really is an Incredible spectacular amazing place this little island of civilizes little this this this civilization that they built on this rock Which has in the you know a certain part of the day a certain part of the year

It's just always bright and then a certain part of the day, a certain part of the year, it's just always bright. And in a certain part of the year, it's always dark. So everyone has two jobs and an alcoholic habit, and they're in a band. I just love the place. Charles, how are you? How's Florida? Muggy, I assume? No, it's really nice. It's really nice.

I've been to Iceland. I went in 2007. I agree everyone's drunk, but that's why they have no money, because it's so expensive to drink in Iceland, as in Scandinavia. And I annoyed my sister on that trip by eating a puffin in a restaurant.

Ooh! Braised puffin. Why not? Did they bring the beak? No, but it was on the menu and I thought I'll try that because I like trying random and unusual things. And then she said, well, you can't eat a puffin. They're so cute.

And I thought, well, now I have to eat a puffin. Well, don't they taste like spotted owls, I think? Yeah, exactly. With a little snail darter relish, if you will. One of the things that i love about uh iceland reykjavik and and also what it sort of says about europe and northern europe is that they have this

incredible modern cathedral this church but you don't really get the sense that anybody believes in any of that stuff i mean if you were to believe it if you were to build a church for a culture that was nominally uh habitually, ritualistically Christian, but really didn't believe it, it would be that church. That was just the feeling that I got. It's so spare. It is absolutely so white and so pure, but so somehow lacking that wonderful, effervescent divinity that you get in Baroque churches, for example. But enough of our travel log here. We're here to discuss the ways and means by which the country is going to come to rack and or ruin or success or, as usual, middle and muddle in betwixt the two points. So we had an interview with

Kamala Harris this week on CNN in which she laid everything out. And I get the impression that the problem that we have been suffering in this country is an insufficient amount of government. Is that basically what you get? We're about four percent away. If we had four percent or maybe seven percent more government, we would solve housing. We would solve the middle class problems. We would solve climate change, which we have to do on a schedule that is of time and to hours and the weeks that she said. So what did you take away from this? Do you think this is a fresh breath emanating from the Biden administration, a clean break, a revitalized attempt to drag Joe Biden's great policies over the goal line? Well...

Don't everybody talk at once. No, I don't know what I made of it because she didn't say anything she didn't interview well she answered questions but she didn't really advance anything and there was a tweet that went out afterwards by cnn where they said we got closer to understanding they always talk about her if she's an ancient mayan civilization we got closer to understanding uh what kamala harris wants to do and i thought well actually that's not true at all she didn't account for her shifts in policy she said my values haven't changed now what she should have done if she was going to make that argument is say here are two or three examples of where the policy has changed, but the values that informed them were different for this or that reason.

In fact, Dana Bash tried to set her up to do that by giving her the answer before she gave it, but she didn't. She then said that, oh, I know that in 2019 I said I would banacking. But in 2020, I said I wouldn't, which isn't even true. In 2020, she said Joe Biden wouldn't ban fracking. She didn't explain why she shifted her view or even if she has. So throughout, yes, I got the vague, effervescent sense that she wants more government and that she thinks that we have been beholden to some ancient ideology for too long. But she never actually really outlined what she wanted to do. So I don't think it was particularly useful as a voter.

Stephen, there have been attempts recently, devious attempts, I think, rhetorical slights of hands that have attempted to tether. That's the word. Kamala Harris with a Biden administration. Was there was there tethering going on? Was there breaking going on? Was there was there was there anything going on that made you sit up and say that's new? I don't think so. One of the blessings of being on overseas travel is you got to miss it. And I've only caught up with a few things I've seen online.

I think Charlie puts his finger on something. The most important part of it is her saying over and over again, her one message was, my values haven't changed, which ought to be the four most terrifying words in the English language today. You know, after what's the old Ronald Reagan line, I'm from the government and I'm here to help. Because what are those values? They're all pretty deeply radical, as any check of the record will show. And if you had an alert Trump campaign, it's still not clear whether we have one or not, they would be running ads and they just have a clip of her saying, my values haven't changed, and then just throwing up on the screen some of her previous statements on what her values are.

I think that it was a wink and a nod to progressives and the media who are carrying water for her you know, don't worry, I'm still the progressive you want and, you know, backing down on fracking and staying relatively quiet about climate change. For the most part, it's going to be, you know, Biden times 10 when I get past the electorate in November. I think that this is not new, by the way, this has been a democratic playbook for quite a while. And people like Obama going all the way back to Dukakis can try and get

away with it and have in some instances like Bill Clinton. But in her case, she's got such a long record of very radical views that it still astounds me to think that she can get away with it. On the other hand, as has been pointed out, the election is not 65 days off or whatever it is. Early voting starts in three weeks. And so the votes will start getting locked into the can very, very soon. Well, the CNN story about the interview says Harris laid out an economic plan earlier this month, did you know, focused on bringing down costs on food, housing and child care, in part by going harder after corporations. Stunning new development. She's going harder after those corporations. Her proposals include efforts to combat price gouging.

My, my, my. Okay, so we are going to do that again, where we're going to go and investigate. And, of course, it doesn't matter whether or not anybody actually is price gouging. What matters is that they're going to be dragged through a process that will just add to their costs and, you know, cripple them and keep them from doing things. And he would hesitate to do this and a lot of rippling effects throughout the entire economy. But, oh, well, you know, she's doing something. She's doing something. Recently here, we had an institution which raised its prices by 8%, 8%, just announced 8%. And the strange thing about it is here is that you don't have the option not to pay. You have to, because

there are property taxes. Our property taxes are going up 8%. And what's more, because of the new evaluations, it's a tax on unrealized gains. It's just perfect. Do we have any say in this? No, no, no, no, no. We just absolutely have to pay. That's not gouging at all, though. No, that's an absolutely reasonable response to the needs of the particulars of the people. But she also said that she was going to ramp up construction of affordable housing. Now, low information people may not look at that and nod and say, well, that's good. Folks need housing. That's something. But this is not the job of the federal government. The reason that you don't have affordable housing in

so many of the cities that need it, leaving aside whether or not the homeless crisis is a result of the lack of affordable housing, usually isn't, is because you have any number of heavy boat anchors that are draped around the neck of the people who are trying to build these things, from the code requirements to, you know, the cost of, you know, material for this to that to that. I mean, San Francisco does not have a lack of affordable housing because there are people just for some reason who can't build there. I mean, it's the process.

It's the rules. It's the NIMBYs. It's the rest of it. Things over which Kamala Harris has absolutely no control whatsoever, unless we want the federal government to march into our communities and say, well, you know what? You don't have enough affordable housing in this neighborhood. Therefore, we're going to build some,

which they've been trying to do for years and years and years and years and years and if that's what she's talking about redoubling that effort to just sort of sweep aside what people in particular communities want and say we're doing it from washington we're telling you what in idaho you got to have in your neighborhood um that's again dare i say i i get the idea that she's in favor of expansion of the state. That may be just me. Where could you have gotten that idea, James? Look, the land thing, I mean, the talk of bringing back price controls, let's be clear, that's what she's really talking about. That's a bad idea we thought we'd gotten rid of for the last time in the 70s.

You may remember, James, I know you follow these things and know the history of it. There was a push back in the mid 70s at the time of price controls to have the federal government get directly involved with local zoning. In other words, we weren't just going to leave it to states and cities. And there were bills in Congress that was back in the palmy days of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act and all the other national legislation we passed after the first Earth Day. And, you know, it got shot down in Congress because of massive resistance by the states and local governments and the home building industry and others. But I wouldn't be at all surprised if we're, there have been sort of backdoor ways to try and coerce states and cities for a while now, but I wouldn't be surprised

if we did not see from the Harris administration a brand new initiative to get the federal government directly involved in local zoning decisions. I just think it's worth saying that this line that I've started to see that Kamala Harris is some sort of yimby, yes, in my backyard, is ridiculous. are struggling on this issue is that there are a whole host of interest groups on whom they rely that stand in the way of the production of new homes and development more generally. And those are environmental groups, unions of various sorts, and other left-wing interest groups that don't like development for various reasons and this is a problem that will only be solved when a democrat stands up and says to those people no it is more important for us to fix this on the supply side than it is for you to get what you want. And I just don't see any evidence that this is happening. If you read left-leaning, self-professed wonks in the United States, you will see

that they are aware, especially in California, New York, that they have an issue here, but they don't really know how to fix it because the internal politics within the party makes fixing it really tough. And I just see nothing in the history of Kamala Harris's life, public role, that suggests that she has an interest in doing that whatsoever. Which is why, in addition to saying all of these things that some reformers have said are encouraging, she said, I'm going to give $25,000 to anyone who's buying. Because that's actually something that won't be upsetting to the people she needs to win the election and keep on side. Right. Yes, well, I think that's all very unfair, Charlie.

We know that she curls up at night with a glass of wine and a copy of St. Jacob's Life in Different Cities. It's a great book. It is indeed. But that's another podcast. In this podcast, we bring you Andy McCarthy. Andy McCarthy. We're proud to do so. Again, senior fellow of the National Review Institute, and a contributing editor there, as well as at Fox News. Andy, welcome back. Breaking news, right?

Hi, gents. How are you? Good. Yes, breaking news. Trump is trying to get is sentencing in the Manhattan case postponed by moving again in federal court to have the state proceeding removed there, that is, to have the federal court take jurisdiction over it. And the point of this is there's now a profound immunity question in connection with Bragg's prosecution, and immunity is supposed to be litigated, whether Trump wins it or not is a different matter, but immunity is supposed to be litigated through appeal before other proceedings in the case happen. And that's obvious enough that even Alvin bragg the district attorney of manhattan who brought the case has conceded that there should be a postponement at this point sentencing is supposed to happen on september 18th for whatever reason uh judge merch, who has been, I think, credibly accused of being biased against the

defense in this case, has not acted on the motion to postpone the sentencing, even though the prosecutor agrees that it should be postponed. And the way this is teed up at the moment, Marchand has said that he'll rule on Trump's immunity claim on September 16th and then proceed to sentence him on September 18th, which certainly suggests that he's trying to frustrate Trump's appellate rights by not giving him enough time to get to another court to stop the sentencing from going forward until the immunity is decided. So they're going to federal court at this point now to try to make them act. Before I hand it over to Stephen and Charles, I just want to bring everybody up to speed because memories are short. Remind everybody what Trump fell for in this case. I use fell in the old Dragnet sense of having been found guilty. Yeah, this is a very strange case. You know, I think there are some really strong allegations against Trump that come out of the lawfare stuff.

This case is just a joke. He was accused in 34 counts of falsifying his business records in order to conceal a second crime. Ordinarily in New York, nobody gets prosecuted for these kinds of offenses, particularly under Bragg, who was like a textbook progressive prosecutor. And ordinarily, business records offenses are misdemeanors. These misdemeanors happened, I think now, 2017, so seven years ago. The statute of limitations on misdemeanor to a felony and thereby did an end around the misdemeanor statute of limitations. payments that occurred here and charging it as a separate felony, which totals up to, I think, 134 or 136 years of criminal exposure. It's capped at 20 in New York, but that's still a lot of penalty. So that's the crime. And I think the outrage, well, there's a lot of outrage about the case, but the worst part of it is that the judge did not require the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt what the second crime was because the judge misinterpreted the law of conspiracy. What Bragg relied on as the so-called second crime was a New York election law conspiracy to influence an election

by unlawful conduct. And therefore, Bragg said, as long as the jury finds beyond a reasonable doubt that he conspired to influence the election, then that's sufficient. So we don't have to figure out what unlawful conduct he agreed to participate in. And the problem with that is, in conspiracy law, first of all, it's not a crime to influence an election. That's what campaigns try to do. What makes it a crime, what makes it a conspiracy, is the agreement, the meeting of the minds by two or more people on the criminal objective. So you can't have a conspiracy in the criminal law unless the jury agrees beyond a reasonable doubt on what the statute, the criminal statute, the crime that makes it a conspiracy. Otherwise, if it's just an agreement to influence the election, that's not criminal. So there's a lot of problems with the case. Well, Andy, it's Steve Hayward, who said a couple of days ago, why don't we have Andy here since so much legal news is breaking

this week? And it turns out to be timely. Look, my summary for laypersons, which I think as a lawyer, you may find a little too cute, which was they try to elevate a misdemeanor jaywalking into a felony by first counting every step taken across the road as a separate felony, and two, saying once the person reached the other side of the road, he was either going to mug somebody or rob a liquor store, and you can decide which crime you think the person was going to do. I mean, it seems that's silly to me, but then the other, I still have a question about the appellate process, but the other big story that first brought your attention again was Jack Smith introducing a new set of indictments against Trump for election interference. And it just took my breath away. I mean, I thought even this Justice Department would at this point say it's

too late based on their rules. I know there's some ambiguity this Justice Department would at this point say it's too late based on their rules. I know there's some ambiguity about whether it's a 60-day deadline or a 90-day deadline ahead of the election that you do not bring a case against somebody who's up in an election or a political figure, but they've gone ahead and done this here. And I'm simply, it takes my breath away that they would do this. It seems politically reckless. But then also the legal grounds, I haven't quite figured out the legal grounds yet. So why don't you comment or say your own thoughts on what's going on there and whether I'm right that it's politically reckless or legally dubious? um but in this particular i think he's getting a bad rap so let me explain why okay yeah um so we all know the supreme court didn't throw out the election interference case in the immunity decision right what they said is that uh judge chuckin who was the presiding judge, Obama appointee in Washington, was supposed to get input from the parties and do an exacting examination of the indictment in order to determine which acts are official presidential acts that would be amenable of an immunity claim and which conduct that's alleged in the indictment is private and could be grist for a criminal prosecution.

So she wanted to have Smith weigh in on that issue and originally directed him to do so on August 9th. He asked for a three-week delay. And the interesting reason why he asked for a three-week delay is this is a dilemma for the Justice Department. Ordinarily, the Justice Department's job is to defend the executive branch. So the immunity ruling by the Supreme Court is a godsend to DOJ because in the future, they will be able to use it to very expansively argue that presidents have immunity. Smith's case cuts against that. So anything that Smith does to try to argue that the presumption of immunity can be overcome in his case creates potentially a precedent that's going to hurt the Justice Department in the future. And therefore, it's

not just a matter of the Trump prosecution. Everybody in the Justice Department needs to get on board about what they think this decision means, which is why he asked for the delay. Obviously, August 30th is today. This would have been the day that Smith had to file. So if Smith had simply done what Chutkin said, he would have been providing this week his vision of what the case is going to look like. That is, what things can still be prosecuted and what things Trump has immunity for. Instead, what he did was what I would have done, which is, I don't want to consult with the court and the defense about what the case looks like. the one advantage i have as a prosecutor is i can rewrite the indictment and that's what he did but all he did in rewriting the indictment is strip out the allegations that the supreme court said he can't run with which is

mainly trump's control over the justice department and to the extent that that piece of the indictment furthered the schemes that are alleged. So the four crimes that are in the new indictment are exactly the same as the original indictment. And the only thing he's done is strip out the stuff the Supreme Court told him had to be stripped out. But whether he had done this by making a submission on Friday, or done it by filing a superseding indictment on Tuesday, it's the same thing, one way or the other. So, Andy, in the Bragg case, it was assumed before the Supreme Court weighed in on the immunity question, once Trump had been found guilty, that there would be a sentencing and it was possible that Trump could go to jail

while he was running for president. And the question got a bit scrambled, partly because of the immunity case and then a few other legal developments. So my question is, given the changes that you described in your first answer, what is most likely to happen next in the Bragg case? And if there's no way of telling what's most likely, what are the options in the next, say, six months to a year? Yeah. So, Charlie, I think Bragg wanted to press ahead with the sentencing because he knows that Trump is not actually going to prison.

And I think kind of almost perversely that incentivizes him to give Trump an even more stiff sentence than he would otherwise have given him because what's going to happen here this is a non-violent crime trump is not going it's not like he's going to get carted off to the rikers the second that uh merchant imposed sentence but what they've always wanted out of this case was for the democrats to be able to say he's a convicted felon facing a stiff prison sentence in the run-up to the election and they would have that uh the problem legally that they now have, and this is a, I think, reckless and certainly gratuitous presentation of the case by Bragg, they didn't need the Trump presidential acts as evidence in the trial. They could easily have proved up what was charged in the indictment by just sticking with employees of the Trump organization and the testimony of Cohen and called it a day. Instead, what they did was they called two of Trump's White House staffers to testify about his customary, the way he ran the White House, you know, the way he conducted himself as president, etc. Bragg is now in the

position of trying to argue that that was just harmless error. But when his prosecutors summed up to the jury, they described it as devastating proof of guilt. So he's got a tough time saying it was harmless error at this point. The other thing he did that I think was pretty outrageous was he had Cohen testify that Trump had told him that Jeff Sessions would make the Federal Election Commission investigation of the nondisclosure agreements go away. There's no corroborating evidence that that happened, but it's important evidence, even though it was fleeting, because Bragg didn't prove anything that would indicate to anyone that Trump was even thinking about federal election law, much less that he was willful beyond a reasonable doubt in conspiring to violate it, right? So this was all stuff that Bragg threw into the case that he didn't need and didn't have any business in the case.

And at the same time, they proved that they knew that the Supreme Court was considering immunity and that the oral argument had happened. And during the oral argument, a number of the justices had seemed to be sympathetic to Trump's position. Yet, they kept insisting to Bragg that there was no presidential immunity and certainly no derivative evidentiary privilege not to have proof of presidential acts come into a criminal trial. So Bragg understands now that he's stuck with having made this decision. There was proof of presidential acts that came into the trial, which if they had just waited until the Supreme Court ruled, as Trump's lawyers asked them to, the judge would have known you can't let that evidence into the case, but he let it into the case. So that gives Trump a strong immunity claim. Now, Trump is not going to win his ultimate

claim. Trump is saying that the indictment should get dismissed. I think ultimately what the courts will probably decide here is that the guilty verdicts need to be vacated. And if Bragg wants to try him again, at some point he can try him again. I don't think they're going to throw out the case on a ruling that would end the case on a ruling that couldn't be, that would end the case completely. It'll be up to Bragg whether he wants to bring it again. That's what I think will happen. But this is going to take a long time to play out because it seems to me that Merchan being Merchan, and we've seen the way he's performed the whole time he's had this case, He's going to rule against Trump on the immunity. And then I think Trump is entitled, if that's the state of play, Trump is entitled to go to the appellate division

first. And before Merchant can sentence him, he should be able to go to the appellate division and litigate the immunity because immunity is supposed to be decided first. What Trump is trying to do now is circumvent the process of going through the New York appellate courts and just get the case brought back to federal court again and have, at the very least, have a federal judge tell Merchan he can't impose sentence until immunity is litigated to the ground. I think Trump would rather, if he could, litigate the immunity in federal court rather than in the New York courts. But at a minimum, and his immediate objective here is to get the sentencing postponed. Well, now, Andy, a quick jurisdictional question here, sort of law 101.

It's usually not simple to jump from state to federal court. The federal courts don't like to admit you until you've exhausted all the state courts and so forth. But on the other hand, on political grounds, I can see some federal judge saying, hey, wait a minute, this is out of hand. Maybe one way of asking is this. Is Judge Merchan's, I think, pretty obvious bias, is that sufficient grounds, legal grounds, for a federal judge to leapfrog the state courts and assert jurisdiction? Not in and of itself, but, and there's always a but when you have me on, right? And there's a but to the but. So, if it was just, if the only claim here was biased by Merchan, that would be one of the bundle of things that happens in a criminal case that all goes up on appeal together, right?

There are a handful of issues in criminal law that have to be decided before anything else happens in the case because they go to the legitimacy of the proceeding itself. In other words, if you have immunity, the constitutional offense is not convicting you, it's trying you in the first place. You have a right not to be tried, right? So there's a handful of these issues. Immunity and double jeopardy are the ones that come immediately to mind, where those actually are issues that you are allowed to have what's called an interlocutory appeal on. That is, you don't have to wait till the end of the proceedings in the trial court. You get to appeal those immediately. One, because this is an immunity issue, and two, because it's a question of a state prosecuting a federal official, arguably in connection with activities in furtherance of his federal responsibilities. I think Bragg should have been able to obviate the second one by saying, look, I'm not proving any of his federal activities.

This is strictly private. But he went there. He shouldn't have gone there. And on that, Congress has had, I think, since sometime in the 19th century, a removal statute on the books that is pretty forgiving. That allows federal, if a federal official is charged with a state crime and the federal official can argue that he's being prosecuted for the furtherance of his federal duties or, and this is usually and actually, that he has a federal defense to the charge, that case is supposed to be removed out of state court and brought into federal court. You know, this reminds me, I was going to, I'm going to ask you a political question in a minute,

but this is starting to remind me a little bit of the obscure 19th century case called Kirby versus New York. Do you want any chance to know that, Andy? It was where some local Kentucky officials, local Kentucky sheriff arrested a person from a mail-carrying barge for murder. And I don't remember the exact details, but the claim was made that this was the state interfering with the delivery of the lawyer. The person's lawyer argued this is the state interfering with the delivery of the mails. That's illegal under the Constitution. You have to dismiss the murder claim and put the sheriff on trial.

Anyway, an absurd case, and the Supreme Court saw right through it right away. It's a fun one to bring up with students. But I want to ask you a political question. Can I just say, Steve, there's analogous modern cases where, you know, a lot of these states think that they're safe havens from the immigration laws, right? So the fear always is that if the federal officials go in and try to arrest somebody or do a search and furtherance of the immigration laws, that the state will arrest the federal officials.

That kind of stuff is a concern all the time. Hi, this is Ann Coulter. You can hear me every Monday on Ricochet with the five things you need to know this week. And on Fridays, I'll give you the big stories of the week that you may have missed. Look for it every Monday and Friday on Ricochet or wherever you get your podcasts. Ricochet. Join the conversation. If I may just jump in here for a second, I was attempting to find out exactly what case this was. And so I typed Kirby versus into my search bar. And it auto-populated, completed with Kirby versus Goku, Kirby versus Jigglypuff, Kirby versus Dyson, Kirby versus Sonic, Kirby versus Meta Knight, Kirby versus Mario, and Kirby versus Superman.

So I take it that there is a game character named Kirby out there. There is. My kids have this on the Nintendo Switch. Yeah. Right. That's what I'm thinking. Very, very nice. It might be USB Kirby. I might have had it backwards, so I might have screwed everything up.

There's a lot of United States cases, so, you know, good luck. Right. So, Andy, a political question. What was being thought for the last year and seemed to be borne out by events was every one of these indictments of Trump strengthened him, at least with Republican voters and Republican base. And everyone's been saying for months, well, gosh, if Merchan puts him in an orange jumpsuit and marches him off to Rikers, Trump's going to win in a landslide. And I still kind of think that. On the other hand, everything has suddenly changed here in

the last 60 days. You had, you know, Biden was replaced by Harris. Harris is running on joy. The latest polls show her pulling ahead by, you know, incredible pollsters. everything but i'm questioning whether it's still true uh that uh the legal harassment of trump uh helps him or not i can actually see that maybe this is in other words voters are going to say well harris is untested we know what she thinks but yeah trump is this convicted felon and i'm worried now it's just it just might work what do you think well i think i've all along thought that this was a conspiracy, a brilliant one by Democrats. Our pal Jonah Goldberg has argued that I've been a little bit too conspiracy minded about this, but I don't think it's one they ran in 2020 and 2022 as well. And that is that the indictments at the beginning, when the target audience was the Republican base, rall Haley, to get traction with Republican voters. The Democrats wanted to run against Trump, but they always thought, Steve, that phase two of lawfare was going to be in the run-up to the election. They were finally going to get their trials, and they thought they were going to get two or three of them and dump out all the bad evidence in the form of

riveting testimony that the press was going to cover in every gory detail. And then at that point, the target audience is the voter, the electorate at large, rather than the Republican base. In the electorate at large, Trump is much less popular. I think it's fair to argue that he's unpopular with about 55% of the country. So I think that was the target audience. It was probably a good strategy. And to me, I think Charlie probably agrees with me on this, but I'll let him obviously speak for himself. I think that what's left on the table now are kind of low information voters, if you haven't made up your mind about what you think about this. And while we look at this stuff very closely, I think all those voters are going to hear is that Trump got convicted of felonies. They're not going to look into it the same way that we have. And I

just don't think this can help Trump at this point with those voters. I think there's a way that you can, like people who are informed could look at Bragg's case and go, just like a lot of, you know, progressive commentators did. And I don't think Democrats are happy that the Bragg case went first, because I think the Bragg case tainted lawfare as an enterprise, whereas if they had gone, say, with the Florida case, where there was a pretty strong obstruction element to it against Trump, they would have had a much better time with this than Bragg's case, which is even people on the left left at least the credible ones diminish small poll small poll but but they think it's um you know they think it's a joke i think that low information point

goes both ways although i do think it probably hurts him more than helps but if you're told it's a low information voter by trump or surrogates that the system has gone after him and you don't know any of the details, then you perhaps believe that. And then if you're told on the other side, well, he's a convicted felon, you don't know any of the details, then you believe that. So the question is who gets to them first? I guess. Well, that's a problem. I always say that low information voters is one of those, you know, three-word euphemism for morons. I'm sorry, that's just me. How much, I mean, I always hate these, a little rant here. I always hate these debates with undecided voters that are in town hall format with three weeks to go before an election.

Who can be undecided with three weeks to go in a presidential race? Well, morons. And that's why those debates so often are moronic and why it always disfavors Republicans, it seems to me. Yeah, well, race. Well, morons. And that's why those debates so often are moronic and why it always disfavors Republicans, it seems to me. Yeah, we don't want morons. I thought about this a lot when we... I tried the blind shake back in the 90s, and one of the things that the defense wanted

was anybody who had heard about the World Trade Center bombing or some other notorious things that we had shouldn't be on the case because they've already formed and i said like anybody who hasn't heard about this has been living under a rock that's not somebody that you want as a juror in a case you know right right uh before we go one and we've plenty of time here i'm not trying to hasten you off the broom or a hook, but to change the subject, Mark Zuckerberg had a letter where he said, you know what? Yeah.

Yeah, they did ask us to take some stuff down. And it's interesting that some of the things that the Biden-Harris, I'm sorry, there I go tethering again, administration wanted to get rid of was satire and humor when it came to things like COVID and the virus and the vaccine and the rest of it. What are we to make of this? And isn't it a little late for this information to be coming out? Or have we all just decided, as we did, that the laptop was fake, that the Twitter files and the Facebook files that they were coming out with, that that's all settled and factored in and baked in? Isn't this something that somebody would want, that a canny campaign would want to make a point of?

I mean, when you talk about authoritarianism, which we're supposed to be worried about because it's going to destroy our democracy, this seems kind of authority. This seems kind of fashy to me, to use their terms. Yeah, I'd say two things about it. First, it would have been nice to have Zuckerberg's testimony in the case that the Supreme Court decided at the end of the term. You know, remember, they threw out this challenge because they said that the states and the social media users whose communications or postings had been suppressed, that they didn't have standing. And the big problem with the case was there was a tenuous connection. This is always a problem when you're going after the third-party actors, right? Their communications were suppressed

directly by the social media platforms. But what they were saying was that the government officials were the ones who were responsible. When you have a case like that, you have to show a tight connection between the actions of the third party and, you know, hear the suppression. And what Justice Barrett said, in her majority opinion, was that the case was poorly pled by the plaintiffs, that the lower courts had just gotten some stuff flatly wrong in their analysis of the record, and that the claims were too attenuated. Now, Justice Alito had a pretty good pushback on that, but a lot of what Barrett said about the standing was very persuasive.

It would have been nice to have Zuckerberg's testimony. Zuckerberg's testimony could have helped them on the causation part of this. So, you know, I think to the extent people think that the Supreme Court has now said you can't bring a case like that, that's not what they said. What they said was that this one was poorly pled and that you have to show a better chain of evidence. The more important thing, I think, and this really goes to the Hunter Biden story, and this should be a major, major scandal. The Hunter Biden laptop stuff that got suppressed happened in October of 2020, in the run-up to the election. The FBI got Hunter's laptop in December of 2019. They had it for nearly 11 months when they were going to the social media companies and telling them, watch out for that Russian disinformation. There could be Russian disinformation about the Biden family and about Hunter.

And I think if you, I tried to do this in a piece at NR this week, if you trace the chronology of what happened, the FBI had Hunter's laptop, knew it was, they had subjected it to forensic testing. They knew that it was authentic. There was no reason to think it wasn't authentic. But what happened was in 2020, the two Republican senators, Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson, are investigating the Biden influence peddling scheme. And they're getting all kinds of evidence about it, mainly financial records.

That was really what the House built its investigation on, the scut work that Johnson and Grassley had done. And they're collecting all these bank records and suspicious transaction reports from the banks and all this other stuff that show that there's a lot of smoke here at the very least. And the Democrats in Congress were very concerned about that. asked their pals at the FBI, in particular, a guy named Tim Thiebaud, who was running the Washington field office and was later forced into early retirement over his anti-Republican, anti-conservative social media postings. They call up Thiebaud, the Democrats do, and they say, we would like a briefing from you on Russian disinformation and interference in our elections. And Thiebaud assigns to it a guy named Orton, who we know as the handler for the guy who provided the information for the Steele dossier. So that's where he's coming from. He's under investigation by the Bureau for his participation

in the misrepresentations that were made to the FISA court in connection with the Russiagate stuff, and yet he gets brought in to do an analysis of Russian disinformation as it may affect the election. So what Grassley says in the letter is, we never asked for a briefing, and this stuff wasn't Russian disinformation. These were bank records.

There was no reason to think any of this stuff was coming from the Kremlin. And as I've pointed out a number of times, the fact that something, even if it is disinformation or information that's provided by the Russians, that doesn't make it inaccurate. Sometimes the Russians actually leak true information if they think it could put somebody in a bad light. So the whole thing Biden and Ukraine. And then what the Democrats did was they began to leak that to The Washington Post and all the usual suspects. And well, we have a, you know, a gaslight situation where they've created this story that this is all Russian disinformation.

And at roughly the same time when all this is going on, we now know that Antony Blinken, who was then a Biden campaign official, is working with Mike Morrell and these other, Clapper and Brennan and these former Obama intelligence officials, you know, national security officials, and they crank out the letter that 51 of them sign off on saying that, we're not saying that we have any of the inside facts here, but this sure looks like Russian disinformation, which Biden then, a couple of days later, when they have the debate with Trump, like I think it was the last of the debates between Trump and Biden, when Trump raised the Biden evidence, Biden used the letter from the 51 officials saying that it was Russian

disinformation, like inclusively saying four former CIA directors have said this is Russian disinformation. So to me, the big issue here is not just what Zuckerberg said, which is remarkable on its face. But if you trace what happened here, this is an elaborate fraud conspiracy. And if it had been pulled, if Republicans had even tried to pull it off, it would be the scandal of the century. Now, I think it's basically being dismissed as old news. Maybe it's because the Trump campaign's not competent enough to make a big to-do of this. Maybe it's because the media just won't let it be a story, but I think that's one of the most scandalous things I've ever seen. I agree. If you have a laptop that has videos of an own drug addict

chopping up some coke in a mirror, Occam's razor says that's Hunter's razor. Andy, it's been a pleasure talking to you, as usual. We learn so much. And we'll talk to you again down the road. Again, when something legal that we don't like or is annoying or frightening happens. So take it easy. Have a good Labor Day weekend. Have a great weekend. Great weekend. Before we go, we've got a couple of other things.

And, yes, that's the second time I've said before we go. It's almost like I've got to be somewhere. I don't. You know, I've got lunch. I've got the gym. I've got a nice weekend other things and yes that's the second time I've said before we go it's almost like I got to be somewhere I don't you know I got a lunch I got the gym we got a nice weekend ahead of me three days in which the wife will put me to doing various things around the house she's decided that there should be more stones in the front yard we got three big stones last week and then she cogitated a while and and sort of study them the way an artist does when he steps back from his canvas to see how it's working. She's decided that we need more geological formations in there, which is my lot in life, to haul stones. If I was the sort of person who enjoyed gaming on the internet, and I do,

and if I was the sort of person who also did things like fantasy football, and I don't, I'd be right up there with Ricochet's new fantasy football league. Luckily, Charlie Cook is a great fan of football and is a guy who can tell us what it's all about and encourage people to sign up and play. Right, Charlie? Yeah, I think the exact details of this and how it's going to be executed still need working out and will be very soon. But what is more important is who wants to do it.

So if you want to do it and you're a member at Ricochet, and there do seem to be a whole bunch of people. I just don't want anyone to be left out. This is why we've mentioned it a couple of times and we pinned it on Ricochet. And we will soon be sending out messages subliminally to all Ricochet members just to say football, football, football, football. If you want in, say so. There's a little logo icon graphic on the right-hand side of the site at the moment,

which has a football picture and says Ricochet Fantasy Football. And if you are interested, click it and register your interest. And the details will be forthcoming this week. And if you're thinking, what exactly is a center-right political site doing, And the details will be forthcoming this week. And if you're thinking, what exactly is a center-right political site doing talking about football and fantasy football, it's because Ricochet is so much more than just chattering about politics. If you go to the member feed, which does cost a little bit, yeah, not a lot, but it's worth it. I mean, the sites that are free, they're worth every penny. Ricochet, we're talking old-time radio, new-time music,

meme-dumps, literature, fiction, I mean, it's just, there's so much going on in the member feed, you ought to check it out. One of the things we've been talking about, though, in the main, in the member, is this question that's vexing me, and I'll end with this. That's the third time I've mentioned we're ending.

It's a nagging question. I know it probably is ridiculous to bring it up, but I'm going to ask you guys, give you's a nagging question. I know it probably is ridiculous to bring it up, but I'm going to ask you guys, give you both a shot at this. Who's running the country right now? You can tell by our silence, we have no idea who's running the country, right? No, serious question. I worry that it's some intern or somewhat more seriously, that it's the chief of staff whose name I don't even remember right now, or that Susan Rice has been the shadow president from perhaps the very beginning. I have no idea, lot before Joe Biden disappeared from public view. When he seemed senile and indolent, I was asked who was running the country. And usually the question came in connection with a theory that the person asking me had. You had a particular figure in mind.

Is it Barack Obama? Is it Susan Rice? And my answer then is the same as it is now which is if you understand how the left works the answer to the question is the progressive blob the progressive blob is running the country they are not reliant upon a president in the way that the constitution envisions a president which is a person who has control over the executive branch not over legislation not over the supreme court but over the executive branch this is another reason incidentally why they're so horrified by the idea of the executive being able to control all aspects of the executive branch including these supposedly free floating institutions the department of justice and the fbi the fourth

branch of government that we are supposed to have we don't have that but in their estimation it works much better if we have that set up because the progressive blob is this sort of permanent, lumbering, self-executing thing that knows that its basic task in the world is to advance progressive policy and the prospects of progressive politicians. And they don't need Joe Biden to be active for that to work. They don't need Kamala Harris to be able to speak English or have any ideas for that to work. They don't need Kamala Harris to be able to speak English or have any ideas for that to work. On the Republican side, because this exists, you actually do need someone, and I'm afraid Trump is not this person, as the last administration showed, you actually do need somebody like a DeSantis in Florida who is full of vigor and ideas and resolve who is going to, through his own sheer force of character, make the executive branch do what the elected head of that executive branch wants. So the answer is

the progressive blob is how democratic administrations work. They're not suffering from the lack of Joe Biden right now because everything's running on autopilot. Can I offer you one last observation from a traveler? Believe it or not, here in Reykjavik, there is the Monument to the Unknown Bureaucrat. I am not making that up. And our listeners won't be able to see this, but I'm going to show it to you guys here if I can. Yeah, there it is. And if listeners look it up, it's the solid stone block that goes down to about the waist of a bureaucrat.

And I think it couldn't be any more perfect than it is. I encourage listeners to Google the monument to the unknown bureaucrat. It's a perfect, if unintended, I think, an ironic description of what Charlie describes, which is the blob that actually runs the country that is impervious to outside pressure or erosion or lightning strikes, whatever metaphor you want. That art is a work of staggering genius. I heartily endorse it, and I think that it should be put up outside of every state capital in this great country of ours.

Stephen, as long as you're in Reykjavik, do me a favor. Go down to the bar when you do and have a re Rika, R-E-Y-K-A. It is the best Icelandic vodka, I think. They filter it through lava rock or something like that. You can really taste the lava, but it's really good. Charles, I can offer you no advice for Florida cocktails, except to say that I hope you have one on this great weekend. And, of course, as an American, you're going to be grilling.

I'm going to be grilling. I don't know what you're going to be doing, Stephen, out there when it comes to Labor Day, but I hope somebody can supply you with hot dogs, ribs, beef, hamburgers, and the rest of the staples. Happy long weekend. And puffin. And puffin. That's right. That's right.

If you have some puffin thyroid on a toothpick or something like that, I'm sure that that's gourmand enough. We leave you with whatever song our producer says, and we thank you for listening to us. We enjoin you to give us good reviews at Apple iTunes, and we will see everybody in the comments. Where? Why, of course, Ricochet.com. Next week, guys, have a good weekend.

All right, thanks, James. Next week.