It's hard to read the news these days without asking yourself, how did we get here? Viasco is a history podcast for the co-creators of Slow Burn. In our first season, Bush v. Gore, we examined an unmistakable turning point in American politics, the 2000 election, which resulted in a high-stakes stalemate, ended with one of the most controversial rulings in Supreme Court history.
So if you're trying to make sense at the present moment, check out Fiasco Bush v. Gore. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome, it is verdict with Senator Ted Cruz. Ben Ferguson with you, Senator. Let's just start with this. I hope you had a fabulous Christmas and everyone else listening. I hope you had a fabulous Christmas as well. You got to give me some anecdote from Christmas Day. Did you get anything cool? Was an exciting moment before we get into politics.
well i'll just say mary christmas happy hanaka happy new year actually christmas was awesome i i was just at home with with heighty in both our girls my my parents were here uh... we relaxed we had uh... christmas dinner we had about big ham i i will say we do have a new puppy uh... the new puppy is rooty uh... rooty is a golden doodle he looks like a giant teddy bear come to life uh... he is catherine's puppy uh... he is fourteen weeks old
Rudy yaps a lot. In fact, you may well get some some podcasts with Rudy yapping in the background because I do many of these at home and And I met Rudy he is cute man like Rudy is next level cute He is majorly cute and and and I will say art on Christmas Day So we had a ham which was great and at the end I turned to Heidi and said what do you think should we give Rudy the ham bone? She said sure so I tossed Rudy the ham bone and I cannot believe this little puppy and
became a wolf. He began consuming and he's tiny. He is the size of a teddy bear. But he's like shouting into this hand bone and then he runs into her bushes and he's in his cave and he is a wolf. And I'm sitting there, I'm kind of feeling mildly concerned. So I pull out my phone and I Google, should you give a puppy a hand bone?
I cannot wait to hear what Google said back to you. And it turns out that Google says, no, this is a very bad idea. Ham bones can splinter and they can stick in their stomach and kill your puppy. And I'm sitting here thinking, okay, Catherine is going to kill me. If I kill her dog, I'm in trouble. So I go try to get Rudy and he does not want to give up the hand bone. And the problem is, is I'm approaching him.
everywhere i go he he runs in the bushes and runs in the bushes so i have to drag hidey out of the kitchen because we need a picture movement to come from both sides because rudy is running we finally got him and got the handboat away from it i didn't amazing a scary google can be though in those moments it's like it tells you basically everything that is fun is no longer fun i'm convinced that's what googles job is and he was such a happy puppy this is this is
absolutely the greatest joy uh... that this this animal has had since he has been on planet earth was chowing into that ham bone uh... until haiti and i had to but he had he had actually he didn't know the ham so he was in the chewing into bone moment where like i find that's probably enough
That's enough. All right, so we got to ask, how did you get the name? Who named him? How did we come up with the name Rudy? Where is it? I mean, instantly after a movie show, everyone's going to think Rudy, we're going back to Notre Dame here in the famous movie. Okay, except for the fact that I didn't name the dog. Catherine named the dog.
So Caroline has three cats and this puppy was for Catherine. So Catherine got to name the dog and Rudy, it actually is connected. So our last podcast, by the way, if you didn't want your Christmas Day podcast or didn't listen to it and then it is on YouTube, so you can watch it too. I'd encourage you to go back. It's a very different podcast from what we do normally, which is Ben and I talked about 25 of my favorite movies and we went through a bunch of movies and I love movies and we go through a ton of them.
And by the way, I told you this story, Ben, as we're getting ready to record. In the afternoon of Christmas Day, we went over to a friend's house, a few blocks away from her house, who had a Christmas Day party. And it was very cool. There were lots of people out walking their dogs and out on the street. And this one family stopped me. And this very nice woman said, hey, I listened to the podcast this morning. I loved it. Great movie recommendations. I'm going to go watch them now. And so I thought that was very cool. It made me happy.
If you recall, at the very beginning of the movie podcast, you asked me what was the most recent thing I was watching. And I told you it was the Outer Banks. And the Outer Banks is this teeny-bauper series on Netflix that Catherine is very into. And Catherine had asked me to watch it so that we could talk about the plot development. So I watched the whole thing. Well, one of the stars of the show is JJ. And then the actor who plays JJ is Rudy. I don't remember Rudy's last name. Rudy's something that Catherine knows his last name.
uh... but but Rudy something plays jj who is the sort of kind of cute surfer boy rebel sort of a lot of trouble but listen i can get why if you're uh... fourteen-year-old girl he would be sort of a cute attractive guy so our puppy is named after the actor who plays jj and outer banks
But as a Houstonian, I'm treating Rudy. I call him Rudy T because I treat him as Rudy Tom Johnovich, the coach of the Rockets when we won the NBA championship at 94 and 95. So for Katherine, he's Rudy. But for me, I think the T is silent.
I love it. That's that that is nice. And by the way, on the movie list, so you'll you'll laugh. We got a new TV, right? That was one of those like Christmas things. Have you seen these frame TVs where it puts up artwork on the TV? Oh, yeah. You're getting highfalutin. I'm sorry. I'm not sure I can hang around such a fancy pants guy.
So this has been on the Mrs. List, and she's like, look, I just love it. It doesn't look like a TV hang on your wall in the living room. It can have like art up there. So Black Friday, I grabbed the TV. So fast forward to today. My dad's in town, and he's helping me mount this new TV.
And my mother-in-law comes over and she's like, hey, I've got the list of movies that you guys talked about. Why don't you guys hurry up and put that TV up there and we'll watch one of Ted's favorite movies. And I'm like, okay, great. The only problem was we ran into a mounting issue with this fancy new TV because it doesn't mount like the other normal TVs in the world. And finally she gave up. She was like, I'll see you tomorrow or whenever and we'll watch the movie then.
So I disappointed my mother-in-law, but she was excited about your list. So there is that there. At least there's a silver lining in the, and I don't know which TV it was, but she had written down the list of movies that she had never watched that you had on your list and then it turned into a thing. So now I have a feeling I'm going to be watching some movies with the mother-in-law. She's a movie fan like you are. And then she asks, she goes, does he go to the movie theater? I said, yes, he loves to go to the movie theater. Did you go to any movies over the holidays?
I did. I saw Gladiator 2, which I enjoyed. It wasn't as good as Gladiator 1, but Denzel's awesome, awesome, and so it was fun. So Rotten Tomatoes has their rating system. If we're going to have a TC rating system, what would you have rated the new one?
Oh, I don't know. On one to five, I'd give it a 3.7. I enjoyed it. But gladiator one is like a 4.9. I don't remember what gladiator one in my top 25. If it wasn't, it could easily have been. Gladiator one is an awesome movie. Gladiator two is fine. So hold on. On a five scale, zero to five. What is a perfect five movie just so everybody has a barometer here? The Princess Bride.
is right at the top of that list. There you go. 5.0 there. I love it. All right. So let's get back to the world of politics as well. And as we said, I like it. We get to talk a little movies here. We got a 5.0 Princess Bride. If you've never watched it, if you better do it, that's just part of it. If you like this podcast, that's like a price of admission. If you've not seen Princess Bride because you've watched it, what, 50 times in your life?
probably more a lot more than that i did get from a friend uh... for christmas this year a leather bound copy of the book the princess bride the book princess bride is wonderful too but the movie is exquisite and and i do take sort of odd uh... i don't know like reverse psychology joy the entire cast of the princess bride are all lefties and and they periodically get together and they do events to support democrats and many of them in critical would be
and actually oddly enough carry out was who is the who is the dread pirate roberts and also wesley so is the male lead in the movie uh... is is a big lefty who i've gotten in twitter wars with and he finally blocked me but like he was bashing me and these guys think i can enjoy the movie because they're little communists and so they say no no you have to be communist to enjoy the movie like screw you you made your art it's for the world to enjoy you don't get to decide how i enjoy it
and amusingly enough so when i got into twitter war with carry out was uh... i have in my office you've been my office in d c hanging on the wall is a signed photograph
of carry out was is the red pirate roberts and it is inscribed not just a ted but to ted crews and and i don't remember what he wrote i should remember what he wrote but i don't but it's signed by him it was my first year in the senate and we had an intern in the office who went to a like a comic-con convention
and he was there signing autographs and she got him to sign it to me by name and i think at the time he didn't know who i was because he probably would refuse to do it but when we were in the twitter fight i'd i took a picture of the framed uh... photo of him inscribed to me on my wall and tweeted it out and he got so mad he blocked me that that's that is actually hilarious alright so i have my princess bride story and then i promise we'll get to the political world so in high school there's a lot going on in politics
There is, there is. But in high school, you can judge me for this. We had to do a book report on the Princess Bride. Had to read the book. You will not be shocked to know that when I was focused solely on playing tennis and trying to make decent grades, there is a chance I went and bought the cliff notes. Oh.
Not even the movie. Not even the movie. The cliff notes. I was like, I got it. And then I overachieved it. I went and bought the sport. By the way, let me ask you something. Do our younger listeners know what cliff notes are? Do those still exist? They do. Cliff notes and Spark notes still exist. Okay. So that's still a, I mean, look, it's been a while since you and I were in high school and college. So I haven't looked for cliff notes or whatever now, right? But if you look at them, it's that so Cliff notes is the one that had the yellow and black. Yeah. No, I remember them well.
Yeah, and so someone in the class said, hey, make sure you get the spark notes. Well, the joke was on me. I was a new student at Westminster Academy and my teacher, I will never forget her best teacher. I've ever had my life, Mrs. Perry. She made sure that every single question on your test for your book report could not be answered by reading the cliff notes or the spark notes. So I got enough.
I got enough. It was the last, the first time I ever bought Cliff Notes, and the last time I ever bought Cliff Notes in high school, because she made sure there was not a single question that could be answered from Cliff Notes. That is a good teacher. Benjamin, you have fallen for the second oldest blunder in the world. The first, of course, was never get involved in a land war in Asia, but the second only slightly less famous is never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
It definitely worked more than quoting Francis Brides. That's a low bar. I don't know what that's actually saying, but you know, it's barely there. But you know, I could go to a Dungeons and Dragons convention and then like hang out and be just fine.
be honest did you ever go to one because i never know i did not go to a convention i did play Dungeons and Dragons as a kid but i did not actually go to a convention it's sort of it's kind of like Star Trek i'm sort of a Trekky and then i've watched all the movies i've watched not a hundred percent of the episodes but most of them and i really like Star Trek but Trekkies are such so intense about it that i don't actually dress as mr. Spock so i don't feel like a full-on Trekky i just
really enjoy Star Trek. The first TV show you and I would have ever connected on then clearly would have been the West Wing. West Wing is fabulous. That was, I've watched it, I don't know, six, seven times. I only think I've watched it once. I watched it when it aired live and that was before streaming. Heidi and I were on the George W. Bush campaign at the time, so every night it aired Wednesdays, I think at 9 p.m.
And we had TVs at the end. We all had cubicles. We're all in little cubicles at 301 Congress Avenue in Austin, Texas. And at 9 p.m. Wednesday, at the end of every aisle of cubicles was a TV. And we would stop. And for an hour from 9 to 10 p.m., every campaign staffer would watch the West Wing. And I watched it live, but I don't know that I've ever watched a rerun of the West Wing. So I loved every episode.
So every time I get sick, every time I'm like, the flu or I've had a surgery, that's when I will binge watch it because I have the DVD set and it's like comfort food. It's like you're sick and you can kind of doze off and take a nap and wake up and you know exactly where you are in the series. And that's when I watch it. Never watch outside of when I'm sick, but if I am really sick in bed, laid up, it is West Wing for me the entire time. All right. By the way, what series are you watching now? This is a complete digression.
Oh, I'm 100% I am all into Landman. Landman is so good. Landman is crack cocaine inserted into my veins. Billy Bob Thornton, I love the man and Taylor Sheridan can write like nobody's business.
Yeah, he's like the new Aaron Sorkin of my life. And it's Sorkin for people that don't know, he did West Wing and several other amazing shows. The American president. American president. The movie out in newsroom, the show on HBO. What's the newsroom, by the way? I did. It was well done. Yeah, it was one of those. And I actually knew a couple of the people that were, quote, consultants on that the same way that Sorkin had consultants, Idi Myers and others on the West Wing.
and they want to make an extremely accurate newsroom at the time i was a commentator seen in wind newsroom came out and i've been to like every time i think it was every saying i came out nine on hb o and i was just like watch it religiously those guys like you said charan can write but yeah land ran landman right now is amazing and then obviously they're wrapping up yellowstone with this like last season
uh... and by the way we're going to do a different episode that is not this episode but we are going to do an episode like the movie episode uh... on on streaming series to watch because i've got a i'm on a lot of airplanes and so i watch a lot of streaming series but that that will not be this episode will be the last thing what's the top one on your list right now with what are you watching streaming besides landman uh... so streaming and watching the gifted which caroline my oldest daughter asked me to watch that it's sort of a mutant series that had two seasons on the middle of the second season of that
And then I'm in season seven of The Walking Dead, which I never watched The Walking Dead when I was on air, and so what I'm now, when I'm on airplanes, I'm- Is it working? Because I've never watched it.
Look, it's a bunch of zombies eating your face like it's not it. Is it literature? No But it's fun. I'm enjoying it and it is you know I do get strange looks on an airplane when I'm sitting there on a plane and people walk by and there's a zombie eating someone's face and there's you know people who who don't like me like figures Yeah, he'd be right here's exactly what I expected he'd be watching yeah for the record I'm not rooting for the zombies, but but haters gonna hate
haters gonna hate i love it alright now let's get back to the political world i enjoyed that by the way that was nice after christmas so joe biden's administration uh... has got some coverups going on at the wall street journal centers reporting on uh... behind the closed doors we found out that the lab we cover up was a legit cover-up and now since he's lost it's like all we can report on this now
Well, this was a story that came out of the Wall Street Journal December 26, and it really is a bombshell story. And it describes how the federal government, essentially the deep state, under Joe Biden, but this is also true under Trump. The journal article doesn't talk about Trump, but I'm very interested to what was happening under the Trump administration as well, but how the deep state covered up
The evidence and covered up the scientists that were arguing that the COVID virus escaped from the Wuhan lab in China. And it focuses on, in particular, it starts with Jason Bannon. So here, I'm just going to read you the beginning of the article because it lays it out.
A car and driver had been ready to whisk Jason Bannon from FBI headquarters early one morning in August 2021 to brief the White House on a novel virus that was killing hundreds of thousands of Americans at its stop the world in its tracks. Bannon had been told by his superiors to be on hand to encase the Federal Bureau of Investigation was asked to join a top intelligence community briefing for the president.
but the White House summons never came. Bannon, a PhD in microbiology, had joined the Bureau after the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington when the agency bulked up its expertise to deal with the threat of germ weapons, toxins, and other weapons of mass destruction. But for more than a year, he had spent most of his waking hours on the COVID-19 virus that had seeped out of China in 2019.
Frustrated by China's stonewalling, President Biden had ordered an urgent assessment by the U.S. intelligence agencies and national laboratories on whether the virus had leapt from an animal to a human or it escaped from a Chinese lab that had been doing extensive work on coronaviruses. The dominant view within the intelligence community was clear when Avril Haines, the Director of National Intelligence, and a couple of our senior analysts briefed Biden's and his top aides on August 24th.
The National Intelligence Council, a body of senior intelligence officers who reported to Haynes and that organized the intelligence review, had concluded with quote, low confidence that COVID-19 had emerged when the virus leapt from an animal to a human. So did four intelligence agencies. At the time, the FBI was the only agency that had concluded that a lab leak was likely, a judgment that it had rendered with quote, moderate confidence.
but neither Bannon nor any other FBI officials were at the briefing to make the case firsthand to the president." Being the only agency that assessed laboratory origin was more likely, and the agency that expressed the highest level confidence in its analysis of the source of the pandemic, we anticipated the FBI would be asked to attend the briefing, Bannon recalled in his first on-the-record interview on the subject.
I find it surprising that the White House didn't ask in this article in the Wall Street Journal. It goes on and on discussing Bannon, this FBI scientist, but also scientists throughout the federal government who had laid out evidence early on that COVID came from a Chinese lab.
And that evidence was systematically shut down. It was systematically de-emphasized. And it appears that it was systematically blocked from going to the White House under Joe Biden. And as I said, I'm very interested. The Wall Street Journal doesn't report this. But my suspicion is they were doing the exact same thing when Donald Trump was president.
In the aftermath of a transformative election like the one we just had, it's hard to read the news without asking yourself every five seconds. How did we get here? That's exactly what we're always trying to figure out on fiasco, a history podcast from the co-creators of Slowburn.
In our first season, Bush v. Gore, we examined an unmistakable turning point in American politics. The 2000 election, which came down to a recount in Florida, ended with one of the most controversial rulings in Supreme Court history. In many ways, it's the beginning of the story we're living through right now. So if you're trying to make sense at the present moment, check out Fiasco, Bush v. Gore, and find out how a statistical tie in the Florida vote count put the nation into an unprecedented holding pattern.
during which American voters waited with bated breath to find out whether Al Gore or George W. Bush would be the next president of the United States. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
So here's my question, and this is a political one. There are people that are really frustrated with so much that happened around COVID, and the answers we didn't get, and Fauci line to Congress, the list goes on and on. And there's people that are frustrated and all right, now that Republicans are in charge, what are they gonna do about it? Are they gonna investigate? Are they gonna hold people accountable if they were lying to us, whether it's on the origins, whether it's getting a function research? There's a long list.
should Republicans go down that rabbit hole and do that? Or is that going to be looked at by many Americans like move on already? We've done this already. What are you doing already? There's a real political price that you could pay from being out of touch with what the American people want. I know there's people that are angry and they're frustrated, but what should the strategy become January 20th?
i think the strategy should be serious transparency and it should be accountability it it it should be no you are in favor of it yes yes yes yes yes yes okay so let me stop let me start with transparency
And, and this is a conversation I have had the last couple of weeks with Pam Bondi who's been nominated to be the attorney general and with Cash Patel who's been nominated to be the director of the FBI and also with the nominee for the deputy direct, uh, deputy attorney general and with other senior law enforcement nominees. I've said very simply make the information public, make it public on January 6th.
the confidential informants that were there don't give them the names don't out obviously people who are undercover but but make the information public it is a public interest and on covid 19 put the evidence out there and make it public i believe china was directly culpable and and by the way i will say this is a prediction
that verdict laid out almost before anybody else. We had two different podcasts, I believe in March and April of 2021, right at the very beginning of COVID.
where we laid out the evidence that the covid virus came from a chinese lab and and that evidence we're going to do for for for new years we're going to do an episode going through all of the predictions that verdict has laid out that have come true because because look we have not been shy on on taking a risk on on making a prediction making a a counter intuitive look when i when i said
COVID came from a Chinese virus at the time that was almost universally labeled misinformation. Oh, it wasn't social media. You couldn't post that. They'd shut you down. It remains remarkable to this day. I don't know why they didn't block verdict when we said it because others were getting blocked. Somehow we got through.
And by the way, I will say it wasn't just this scientist at the FBI. Let me go back to the Wall Street Journal article. Here's a couple more paragraphs. Quote, three scientists at the National Center for Medical Intelligence. Part of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency conducted a scientific study that concluded that COVID-19 was manipulated in a laboratory in a risky research effort.
But that analysis was at odds with the assessment of their parent agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and wasn't incorporated in the report presented to Biden. The DIA Inspector General's office opened an inquiry in the spring into whether the scientist's assessment was mishandled or suppressed. People familiar with the matters said. And look, I think this is important.
Number one, because we need truth and accountability. I think the Chinese government bears enormous responsibility for the people who died, for the millions who died. 1.2 million Americans are counted as having been killed with the coronavirus. Seven million people worldwide. It was a massive consequence, and the economy shut down globally. Trillions of dollars was destroyed.
millions of lives trillions of dollars and i believe the chinese communist government has direct culpability for that and and and and and i think
the Trump administration would be doing America and the world of service for making that evidence public. But I also think it's important. Listen, there's going to be another crisis. We don't want career bureaucrats within the government suppressing evidence that they don't like. We don't want career bureaucrats, the deep state pushing their preferred narrative. You got to ask why they were leaning in so hard to protect China. Why was that the dominant narrative and why?
Why was everything else shut down because the next crisis we face? Let's go back to the Wall Street Journal article because we also saw the scientific community lean in like crazy. Here's another two paragraphs. Talking about two theories, one that it came from an animal naturally and the other that it came from a lab leak. Quote, those two theories have also divided the scientific community in February 2020. More than two dozen scientists published a statement in the medical journal Landsat.
calling the lab leak hypothesis a conspiracy theory that would jeopardize global cooperation in the struggle against the virus. One of the authors was Peter Dasek of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that has worked extensively on coronavirus research with the Wuhan Institute.
That statement was followed a month later by a March 2020 paper on the proximal origins of COVID-19 in which Kristin Anderson of the Scripps Research Institute and four other scientists argued that the virus wasn't purposely manipulated in the laboratory and almost certainly had natural origins. Now my view right now based on the evidence that is public, I think it is overwhelmingly likely that the COVID virus escaped from a Chinese government lab.
And I think it is likely, I wouldn't use the word overwhelmingly, but I think it is greater than 50%, that the COVID virus was manipulated by those Chinese scientists through gain of function research to make it either more deadly.
more transmissible or more in particular uh... able to impact humans that has not been as conclusively proven as has been has been proven in my judgment that it escaped from a government lab it's possible it was a natural virus and and they screwed up and and and and it escaped it is indisputable that china covered it up and did everything they could to suppress it after the fact
But I think it is more likely than not that not only did it escape from a Chinese government lab, but they created it through gaining a function research. We need to know that. And I got to say the paragraph I read, Peter Dazzack,
got a whole lot of money at the eco-health alliance for doing research in coronavirus research at the wuhan institute there's every reason to expect he was deeply invested in not having anyone know that and by the way so was anthony fauci and out that anthony fauci's culpability dasics culpability i hope we have congressional hearings on this i hope we get to the bottom of what actually happened because i think there's that there is a virtue to transparency and clarity
both for accountability and responsibility for the Chinese Communist government, but also to prevent manipulating the science for the next crisis. So final question on this and that's going to come back to Fauci. What does accountability look like for a guy like that?
look i don't know i i i think it is likely that fauci lied to congress under oath line to congress under oath is is a felony i've called repeatedly i've asked merit garland uh... if he's open an investigation if if he's willing to prosecute fauci merit garland had no interest in prosecuting fauci as i'm sitting here right now i don't remember the dates i think it is likely the statute of limitations has expired on prosecuting him so it may be
uh... i i i'm not remembering the dates as you and i are doing this right now but i think there's a good chance that trump cannot prosecute fauci for lying to congress uh... but i think laying out that accountability is important and i think the reason the biden doj didn't want to do so is because this has been the most politicized apartment of justice and hence history fauci went before congress and insisted that that the u.s. government had not
paid for had not funded gain a function research and actually the nich came back and had to correct that after the fact and and make clear that what he said was was false
Which this, by the way, brings me to a perfect segue to the second topic I wanted to hit. And the way that you're talking about accountability maybe explains why we are now seeing Democrats write articles saying that it's time to steal the election from Donald Trump in the Hill, for example.
Congress has the power to block Trump in from taking office. But lawmakers must quote act now. This was an opinion piece written by two different individuals demanding that the Democrats refuse to accept the outcome of the election so much for the party that's obsessed with democracy, right?
yeah i gotta say this is this is an article that was in the hill that it came out again on december twenty-six day after christmas it is entitled congress has the power to block trump from taking office but lawmakers must act now and it is by evan davis and david shulty
uh... who i don't know either one of these individuals i don't know anything about them their bio uh... says evan davis was editor-in-chief of the columbia law review and david chilte was editor-in-chief of the yellow journal both clerk for justice potter steward davis is a new york lawyer served as president of new york city bar and chilte is chicago investment banker i don't know these guys
But it's been a long time since Potter Stewart served on the court, which means these are not spring chickens. They were law clerks a long time ago. I mean, I clerked for Chief Justice Rehnquist in 1996. And by the time I was there, Potter Stewart had been long, long God.
And I got to say that the most screamingly funny part of it is they begin their bios with they were editor in chief of the Columbia Law Review and the DeYale Law Journal. Like, I'm sorry, these are presumably accomplished lawyers who are grown as adults and they're quoting the law review they were on when they were 24 years old.
That's just ridiculous. Actually, it makes the rest of the article make sense because, listen, part of the reason our academy is so messed up is you have people who are disconnected from reality, who are hardcore leftist,
far too many people in our universities are openly Marxist. When I was at Harvard Law School, there were more professors on the faculty who were explicitly Marxist than there were who were Republican. It wasn't even close. There were more than a dozen by their own self-description Marxist professors. There was only one open Republican on the faculty when I was there.
But what these two numb skulls are arguing is that Congress, when we come together on January 6, should block Trump from becoming president, and we should do so, they argue, under the 14th Amendment, section three of the Constitution that says no person shall hold any office, civil or military who, having previously taken an oath to support the Constitution, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same. Now, they argue this has been
disqualification, the evidence of Trump's engagement and insurrection is overwhelming. It has been decided in three separate forums, they write, two of which are fully contested with the active participation of Trump's counsel. The first was Trump's second impeachment trial. The second contested proceeding was Colorado's five-day judicial process hearing where they found that Trump had engaged in insurrection and barred him from the ballot.
And finally, there is the bipartisan inquiry of the House Select Committee to investigate January 6th. Now, the stupidity of this argument literally leaps off of every syllable of every word that they have written. Let's take the first. Okay, a bunch of partisan Democrats in peach Trump.
because they hate him. And by the way, to be clear, verdict was launched in response, not to the second impeachment, but in response to the first impeachment trial, because we have seen law fair against Donald Trump. Trump derangement syndrome is real. It is a serious mental illness. These people are friggin nuts. They hate his guts. They've lost their minds. And at this point, understand
these two numb skulls and every other democrat who engage is in fantasy about this is an election denier and an insurrectionist they are trying to say we don't care that the voters voted we don't care that the result was overwhelming we don't care that of the seven contested battleground states donald trump one not one not two not three not four not five nine six but seven all seven we don't care we are angry leftist and their argument is
We should block it. Now, to be clear, they said there were three different proceedings that had determined he was an insurrectionist. The first was the impeachment trial. Of course, the impeachment trial is two parts. One is the impeachment of the House of Representatives and partisan Democrats did impeach him, but then it went to the Senate and there was a trial. And at the end of the trial, Donald Trump was acquitted.
they ignore that fact that literally is not mentioned in the rapid the second is the colorado the radical partisan decision of the colorado supreme court except for the fact that the u.s. supreme court unanimously
reversed that decision by the way that's another prediction i made on this podcast when the colorado spring court came back down i said this will be reversed and it will be reversed unanimously that's what the court did they barely acknowledge the supreme court reversed it but they just kind of ignore it say well that's another way it was determined in a decision that has been reversed unanimously by the supreme court
and the third i really laugh is is the quote bipartisan inquiry of the house select committee to investigate january six now it's bipartisan because liz chaney and adam kinsinger two people fully afflicted by trump derangement center more included course nancy plossey allowed no republicans on it and by the way voted for comma heres and and joe by yeah let's not forget that but they're like oh they act like they were republicans no they're not
i'd look to be clear and by the way both of them also campaigned against me i was really grateful for that i think that was quite helpful probably drove over to my way to call that inquiry bipartisan when the way committees are put together on capital hill is is that
both sides pick the republicans picked the republicans on the committee the democrats picked the democrats on the committee well for the january six committee nancy polosi said no no no i'm picking the republicans and the only republicans i will allow on our people who hate donald trump who are foaming at the mouth it will do everything they can to destroy donald trump they're the only ones i will allow on ends and so uh... you know what when you had other republicans that kevin mccarthy was was trying to put on as well as said nope they are not welcome we only take
Republicans who agree with the Democrats on everything, that ain't a bipartisan inquiry. And by the way, we're getting more and more evidence of just how skewed that was. The point is, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what this op ed was other than it is a window into the eyes of what the hard left is. They hate Trump so much.
Sigmund Freud talked about projection and the left engages in projection all the time. Everything they accuse their enemies of doing is what they are doing. They claim to be defending democracy. This may be the most anti-democratic article I have ever read.
which is saying that Congress should say, I don't care that the voters elected Trump. And by the way, they don't dispute that the voters elect Trump. They fully accept, yes, the American people came to vote and want Donald Trump, but we know better than they do. And so take a stand and take a stand to block what the voters want. Why? Because we are Democrats and we hate democracy. They don't say that, but that's clearly what they can include.
Yeah, so much for the party of, hey, we're all for whatever the people want. No, when it comes down to it, this is what they do. Don't forget we do show Monday Wednesday and Friday. Hit that subscribe or auto down below button on those in between days. Grab my podcast. I've been Ferguson podcast. I'll keep you up to date on what's going on on those in between days. And we do this. Like I said, Monday was in Friday. So we will see you back here in a couple of days.
It's hard to read the news these days without asking yourself, how did we get here? Fiasco is a history podcast for the co-creators of Slow Burn. In our first season, Bush v. Gore, we examined an unmistakable turning point in American politics, the 2000 election, which resulted in a high-stakes stalemate, ended with one of the most controversial rulings in Supreme Court history.
So if you're trying to make sense at the present moment, check out Fiasco Bush v. Gore. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
