WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Social Mediators: Trump vs. the Colorado Primary Ballot

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

This week we return from a long winter break to discuss Colorado's recent court case deciding whether or not Donald Trump's name will appear on the primary ballot. Tune in to Jillian and Garrett struggle through technical abnormalities, Garrett dig through information that is qualified by "allegedly," and Jillian call January 6th everything from a "riot" to a "party in the USA." 

This is the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM, where we examine the truth disparity between what's on social media and what's actually true. I'm Julian Parks. And I'm Garrett Coolsby. This is so weird. Welcome, everybody. I'm just going to tell you the structure of what's going on right now so that you, I don't know, have a better picture of what's going on. Typically, me and Garrett in the same place, we can see each other while we're recording. And it's like a conversation.

It's super fun. Right now, I'm in Washington, D.C., and Garrett is in Hillsdale, Michigan. you know, because I'm doing an internship with our WIP program through Hillsdale. And Garrett is taking classes at Hillsdale. He's still a student, you know, the regular. And so we're doing our show via what's called Comrex, but basically we're just broadcasting our voices to each other from millions of years away. So technology is really cool, and we're going to keep doing social mediators,

even though I'm far away. But yeah, so we're really switching things up for the semester back. How is your break, Garrett? Oh, it was great. So this format should be interesting. If there's any really awkward silences, I'm going to apologize in advance. There are no social cues to read in this particular instance. Normally they're very helpful. We don't happen. Yeah, that's going to be a new thing to navigate for sure where he's like, I don't know where I can tell. Like, when I look at you concerningly, like you should say this. Like it's time for this to happen or we need to finish. That's not going to happen now. Both of those things I get looks for pretty much every episode where it's like, hey, don't forget to do this. And then I like can figure it out. But this time I'm on my own. I'm on my own. And that's a scary reality.

But we are really excited to kick social meditiers off for our, what, sixth semester? Is that true? I think that's right. Yeah. The next one number six. Crazy. Do we know what episode number this is? This is 51.

By my count. 51? Wow. Yes. Cheers. Okay, that's really exciting. And for our momentous 51st episode, we are doing, I guess, Colorado's, is it Colorado Supreme Court case. Is that what we're calling it? What are we calling it? Yes. So, I mean,

a momentous episode for a momentous court case, right? This is Donald Trump is being sued again. You know, he gets sued like a couple times a year, I think, for various things. But the latest is the Colorado Supreme Court is up against him and his right to be on the ballot for the presidential election. Yeah. So I will say it feels almost like less momentous as time goes on because I'm so used to him being like on trial for something. That's a very good point. And being like he's a criminal. And then it turns out he's not a criminal.

So I feel like we've been doing this for years at this point. I know. We've been doing this for years of like, Trump's in jail and be like, nah, he's not actually in jail. He's just normal and regular. So Garrett, we ready to get going? I think so. Okay.

So I'll tell you what I know, you know, the typical. I'll say first of all that most of the information that came up on my algorithm through Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, that sort of thing that I knew about this before actually going in and trying to do any quote-unquote research was just people from Colorado talking about how proud they were that their state was taking this stance. And that's basically all I had seen was that Trump might not be on the primary ballot because these states are saying he engaged in insurrection. And so that's all I knew from the beginning. And if you were a very casual social media user, you would probably know that much and really nothing more.

Doing my small little baby research deep dive into a typical scroll, I found that their basis for this is the 14th Amendment, the third section of the 14th Amendment that says basically something along the lines of like officials, government officials can't engage in or provide any sort of comfort to insurrections or insurrectionists. And they're saying that the January 6th riot, insurrection, whatever you want to call it, is an indirect violation of that. And so I guess from what I could tell Colorado was the first to take issue with this maybe. It might not be the first, but it was the first.

Okay, perfect. And then I know Minnesota, Michigan, and Maine also followed suit. There might be more. There might, that might be all of them. I'm not really sure. I'm not sure where, I think, from what I could tell, Michigan and Minnesota both ruled that, like, against it, that, like, Trump could be on the ballot still. And Maine might still be holding out, but that was from, like, 24 hours ago. So I don't know what's happened in the last 24 hours.

Maine could be holding out. I know Colorado ruled that he could be on the primary ballot. And it took me, I'm not going to lie, kind of a lot of scrolling. to figure out why because I had like kind of in it felt like inconsistent information because it was like the Colorado courts were upholding that Donald Trump was an insurrectionist that he what that he did engage in an insurrection like they were holding to that and that was not something they were like budging on and that seems to be the point on which conservatives on social media are really arguing they're saying he's not an insurrectionist he didn't engage an insurrection he made a speech

and people read between the lines and then chose to do what they wanted to do with their free will. And that seems to be the point where liberals are saying, no, he is an insurrectionist. But that wasn't the point on which the Colorado judge ruled that he could be on the primary ballots. To be honest with you, I am really confused by this because I don't know how many rounds of courts this has been through. I don't know if it will continue to get appealed by the group that is funding it. But I know as of right now, he's still able to be on the primary ballot. What I probably should have finished saying earlier was that she maintains that he did incite an insurrection, but that the 14th Amendment third section doesn't apply to presidents, just to officers of the government.

So she lists like apparently in this like very short little TikTok video as I will to find like senators representatives Electors for the electoral college Civil and military officers and state law officials but it never lists presidents and because elsewhere in the Constitution president is listed explicitly as like up being what they're talking about She assumes that the founders did not mean to include the president in this not founders or I guess 14th Amendment wouldn't be not quite the founders

but that's what the TikTok video said though and I'm now realizing like second second hand from like actual genuine critical thinking that that's that doesn't make any sense so maybe I really shouldn't have put as much shake into the explanation as I got I will say I did see a tweet actually it was more like an AI generated video on TikTok on Twitter that said

that Taylor Swift had spoken out about this. And I was like, oh, and I literally just believed it wholeheartedly. And then I went to all of her social medias, and she didn't. Like, that didn't happen. They just lied. They said that Taylor Swift had said that something about Trump on the ballot for Colorado and said it was like a good thing, but it was not a real tweet. It was a lie.

And I know that I should know by now that like, oh, Twitter lies and not everything you see on Twitter is true. But I still have trouble believing that sometimes. And I think that that says a lot about me as a person. Um, my question for you, Garrett, I mean, I have a lot of questions for you. One of my questions for you is, is this done? Is this over? Like, is he on the primary ballot and are we good? And then I also, some lovely Twitter pages that look like bots, um, posted some videos of this woman who's from the foundation or whatever that is supporting these lawsuits against Trump.

And she said that one of their donors is George Soros. but when I look up who George Soros is, the internet just wants to tell me that he is a very wealthy Jewish man and that's all that I can find about him and that people really don't like him. But it's only conservatives from what I can tell that really don't like him. The only thing I know about George Soros is that he was part of the group that bought Taylor Swift's music from her

and she didn't like that. That's the only time I've ever heard that name. So you'll have to enlighten me a little bit about George Soros. For those of you who are just tuning in, this is a social mediator. on Radio Free Hillsdale 1-1.1.7 FM. I'm Julian Parks. And I'm Garrett Goulsby.

That's the first time I've heard you talk so far in this, throughout my rant. And we're talking about Donald Trump being may or may not be on the Colorado primary ballot. Yeah. So let's talk about it. Yeah. So take it over. Take it over. Tell me what I'm missing.

So is this done? The answer is no. Basically, let's start from the beginning. Then we'll work to what we've got now. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled that President Trump couldn't be the state's ballot, like you said, because of the 14th Amendment. They want to argue that he as an officer of the United States is what they're claiming that he is. And because he holds that title, he incited an insurrection, so they say, and they want to disqualify him from running

for office on that basis and remove him from the primary. Now, his lawyers are arguing, one, that he is not technically an officer of the United States. He falls under some other designation, legal parlance couldn't tell you cool second thing would be that they say he didn't incite the insurrection so also just for context this is a section to the 14th amendment that

which was passed in 1868 so post civil war this is part of the amendments that helped free slaves and make them citizens so that's kind of where this comes from Trump hasn't I'm assuming can I ask is it like

was this section meant to discreasing qualify like people who had been prominent in the Confederacy or like what do we know the purpose of section three that's a good question my guess would be yes that that was the original intent but also this is a good I mean you have to understand these are back you know the 1800s it's a more tumultuous time even than now there are more people that are I think willing to take on the United States government so yeah it was a little bit more needed even though you know there are people that try to do that now it's just a little bit less successful

Okay, so Trump has, here's the thing. Trump has never been convicted of insurrection by a jury, which is what would actually, it would take a jury convicting him to actually conclude that he had incited an insurrection. Okay. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled against Trump in a four to three decision, so it's super close. And the dissent said, if they keep him off the ballot, he's being stripped of basic rights of due process. They said he hasn't had a trial by jury. He can't be stripped of this right yet. and so Trump kicked it up to the Supreme Court and that right now we're waiting right the Supreme Court has agreed to expedite hearing this case

but it still takes them forever because they're all really old and it just takes them a long time to do anything it's left it's left Colorado and it's now at like the United States Supreme Court United States Supreme Court so we'll talk about why here in a second but in the meantime what that means is that Colorado basically has said, okay, he's on the ballot until they rule against him because they couldn't really take him off and then say, all right, he's off until they say he can be on.

You know, that's kind of assuming what's going to happen, right? They can't really do that. It's flipping like innocent until proven guilty. Exactly, exactly. So they can't do that. And why is this important? I guess that's an important thing to ask. So Trump's not going to win Colorado.

Trump, he didn't win Colorado last time. He's got a way behind this time. So it's like, why does it matter whether he's even on the primary ballot? Because he's not going to win the state. The problem is that there's a lot of other states that are looking to this case as an example. Right now, there are 12 other states that have already tried to do something similar. I'm not going to name them all. It's a long list.

Did I get the ones right that I? Yes, Maine is actually one of the biggest holdouts are still waiting to, I think their case is still being heard, whether they can remove him from the ballot. All right. But so yeah, 12 states, right, already have. Seven have failed completely for technical reasons, just various legal issues with the way that the cases were brought. Five are still kind of floating out there. So this could have really, really big implications, not just for this election, but just for legal precedent more broadly. because if the precedent is established that when a person,

when a presidential candidate of a major party does something that the opposition really doesn't like, if they can cast it in the right light, they can get him removed from the ballot every time. Yeah, that sounds not good. Yeah. I don't like the way that sounds at all, actually. It's very, very, it's a sticky situation for the judges, because even if the judges felt like he deserved to be taken off the ballot,

the consequence of doing it in this instance is tremendous for the future. So hypothetically, if he gets removed from the ballot by the Supreme Court, which most people don't think he will, it's going to be with a ton of technical legal jargon attached to try to ensure that this delineation is made, that this isn't something that can happen all the time because that's pretty much the way it would go unless that was the case. So hoping for, you know, for the world not to fall apart on this, but you never know. Is Trump going to have a trial by jury to decide if he's guilty of this? Or like once the Supreme Court doesn't have to honor that?

Like, what does that look like? Yeah, that's a really good question. There's not a plan to right now, as far as I know, because no one's charging him. It's interesting because they're trying to take him off the ballot assuming that he's already inside an end of But he hasn't ever been like he was charged and acquitted, but he was never Charged by a jury and never it was never decided by a jury that he Incited insurrection. So we're in this weird space where no jury trial appears to be forthcoming, but that seems to be the thing that you would Absolutely need to verify whether or not

He actually decided an insurrection. What that tells me is that the Supreme Court doesn't think that whether it's an insurrection or not is is a problem They're looking at it from a completely different angle, which would be, does he even fall under this 14th Amendment Section 3? Does it even apply to him? Because if it doesn't, then who cares, whether inside an indisurrection or not. I mean, not who cares, but you know what I mean. No, yeah, yeah, yeah. Then the cases, you know, then they have no case, basically is the issue there. Is what I said about him being president and not one of the other kinds of like elected officials?

Is that true? Is that like also a sticking point for the Supreme Court or is that just something somebody made up? Yes, that is true. So I'm going to read some of the words straight from the text here. It says, no person shall be a senator or representative in Congress or elector of a president or vice president or hold any office, civil or military under the United States or any state who, having previously taken an oath, blah, blah, blah, blah, lots of other words, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, that being the United States. United States or give an aid to or comfort to the enemies thereof. Is, okay, is engage a vague word here because like, I feel like we're talking about if he incited an insurrection, but is that different than engaged or is engaged like the broader version

of that word? Yeah, so the public is wanting to talk about his inciting the insurrection. The court is going to look at whether he engaged in one at all. And I just feel like he did not, no. Am I wrong? that's up to them i mean it it's all optics right how do you how do you look at the way that his speech went how do you look at the words that he said were they um so powerful that the the people in the audience had no choice but to listen to him was he commanding them um that you know it's hard to

it's hard to say that without without voicing a strong opinion that i don't necessarily have a ton of basis for right i will say i wasn't there i don't know my basis for this this is crazy crazy, but I once heard somebody say, I'm not going to say this person's name, and I really doubt that this person listens to our podcast, but I did hear somebody say once that they went to the January 6th riots or insurrection or what's the other appropriate term for that? Protest maybe? Protest, okay. It's like a very mild way to put it.

Perfect. Thank you, Garrett. protest because the president of the United States told them to. So I don't know if this is a person who just like struggles with critical thinking skills or if like they really were compelled by this magical language. But there are people out there who are on the side of the January 6th riot slash protest slash instructions slash fun little game slash party in the USA. any of those work actually

but that engaged in such activity that did it because they felt like the president told them to so I don't know I hope the Supreme Court doesn't listen to this podcast because I just feel like I don't want to have that much responsibility on me they don't worry promise

but what if they do? Hillsdale has fans not well Hillsdale has fans but I don't think all the members of the Supreme Court would qualify. You know, if there's anybody, if there's anybody on the Supreme Court listening right now, it's Clarence Thomas.

If that's even in the realm of possibility. And Clarence, if you are listening, hi, you're an amazing man. That's all I'm going to say. It is so good to finally talk to you. All right. We're not going to talk to Clarence anymore. We're going to talk about George Soros just really briefly. Who is this guy?

He's a rich old Jewish guy. I mean, actually. Was I right? He's Hungarian American. So born in Hungary. And like you said, super rich investor dude. He just started investing when he was pretty young, did some really risky stuff, and it paid off big time.

No way. No way. There's weird stuff going on there, I promise. There's no way. He just got really lucky. Basically. I mean, okay, not really lucky. He was an extremely well-educated guy.

Oh, okay. He didn't just like, no, no. He didn't just like pull up and start investing. He wasn't one of the finance bros that just like got on Robin Hood and was like, I'm going to trade GameStop. That's what I'm picturing right now. He's like investing in foreign currencies and predicting whether their economic markets are going to thrive or not. He's doing some pretty heady stuff.

I don't know if this matters to literally anybody but me, but he's studied under the philosopher Karl Popper. I think that's cool. He's important. If you do science, you know why. But yeah, he does philanthropy. George Soros does, not Carl Popper, but he does philanthropy for liberal causes. The biggest, well, maybe not the biggest, but the one that at least hits the closest to home for us is that he pours a ton of money into the Democratic Party in Texas. Like he was pretty much the reason why Beto O'Rourke was able to even make a run for Senate a couple years back and is trying to do so again in the near future because he's like hundreds of thousands of dollars into these campaigns.

And he has the freedom to do that. He does. He made his money. You know, with this case, it sounds like, and a lot of this isn't made super available in terms of the numbers and everything, but it sounds like he's contributing to the people that are bringing the case against Trump. Right. Okay. Cool. Good to know.

And it makes sense why so many Twitter conservatives hate the guy. Yes. Were you ready to give it a very quick grade? Garrett Goulsby. I know what I'm giving it. Okay. Ready? Three, two, one.

C minus. Okay. Okay. Okay. I just think so. Social media sucked. They sucked. I did not know enough.

I didn't have any of the connecting pieces. I just had a lot of the general vibe. Yeah. This is why we need this podcast. It is. I always expect social media to do better and then it just doesn't. One of these days it will.

One of these days, but not today. It does good on Taylor Swift, I think. Yeah, they actually did. They know a lot about Taylor Swift, but not really anything else. Maybe they knew a little bit about Dungeons and Dragons. I don't know. It's not important. This was success.

Wow, I just said success. with eight syllables. This was a success. It was. Despite not being in person. Thanks so much for tuning into the social mediators, everybody. I'm Julian Parks. And I'm Eric Gouldsby.

And we'll talk to you next week.