Trump Loses in Court — But Pressure Remains on the Press and Late Night (with Mike Pesca)

<v Speaker 1>Welcome to The Oath and the Office Podcast. I am
<v Speaker 1>John Fiegel. Seang, it's been quite a week. Judge Alien
<v Speaker 1>Canada's back at a sequel nobody asked for. The UK
<v Speaker 1>police have arrested Prince Andrew. What does it mean when
<v Speaker 1>Written sacrifices their spoiled, lecherous prince to save an institution,
<v Speaker 1>and America sacrifices an institution to save our spoiled, lecherous
<v Speaker 1>prince while their monarchy is acting more republican than our republic.
<v Speaker 1>We need someone smarter, braver, and bolder than most mortal men,
<v Speaker 1>and that is Professor Corey Bretschneider, Political Science Ivy League
<v Speaker 1>professor and the author of The Oath in the Office
<v Speaker 1>and the Star and mac daddy of this podcast. Corey,
<v Speaker 1>it's so good to see you.
<v Speaker 2>Welcome.
<v Speaker 3>Thanks John.
<v Speaker 4>Your intros get better and more extreme every week, which
<v Speaker 4>I appreciate.
<v Speaker 1>Just try to endanger your tenure, Professor, That's all I'm
<v Speaker 1>trying to do.
<v Speaker 4>That's what we're doing here. And we'll talk about the
<v Speaker 4>tariff's case. You know, there's some good news on that front.
<v Speaker 4>Of course, we'll talk about Prince Andrew, and then I'm
<v Speaker 4>also happy to say, in the second half, we're going
<v Speaker 4>to get to a great discussion with Mike Pesca about
<v Speaker 4>the question of journalism, and the question in particular about
<v Speaker 4>whether or not, in a time in which democracy is
<v Speaker 4>under attack, the rules of journalism alter or whether they
<v Speaker 4>can stay the same. And it's a spirited discussion. I
<v Speaker 4>hope you'll hang out and listen to that too.
<v Speaker 2>It really is.
<v Speaker 1>We don't see eye to eye on everything, and yet
<v Speaker 1>it's a really fun funny conversation. But Professor, obviously we
<v Speaker 1>got to talk about the elephant in the room. The
<v Speaker 1>six to three majority of the Supreme Court last week,
<v Speaker 1>including two of Trump's own appointees, decided barely that the
<v Speaker 1>rule of law now does apply to Donald Trump. The
<v Speaker 1>court rule that he cannot use the International Emergency Economic
<v Speaker 1>Powers Act IIPA to impose his sweeping global tariff tantrums.
<v Speaker 1>Right wing folks are mad. They're saying the Court made
<v Speaker 1>a mess for Trump and the American people. I'sretty sure
<v Speaker 1>it was Trump who made the mess. And of course
<v Speaker 1>one hundred and seventy five billion in tariffs already collected.
<v Speaker 1>People are suing to get their money back, and all
<v Speaker 1>we know so far is Trump's response cory, which is
<v Speaker 1>to have no game, have an unhinged hissy fit, and
<v Speaker 1>attack the judges personally and talk about their families in
<v Speaker 1>kind of a creepy way. So let's begin with that.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, why is this decision so significant that they
<v Speaker 1>have struck down Trump's tariffs?
<v Speaker 4>Well, let's just start with the awfulness that has been
<v Speaker 4>the Supreme Court during this assault on democracy. The Court
<v Speaker 4>in particular, using what's called the shadow docket. We've talked
<v Speaker 4>about this before, but for listeners, I want to remind
<v Speaker 4>them this is a technique where the Supreme Court of
<v Speaker 4>the United States doesn't give reasons for its opinion. Part
<v Speaker 4>of what gives the court legitimacy in the first place
<v Speaker 4>is that it explains why it's doing what it's doing
<v Speaker 4>and what the law is. And yet in the shadow docket,
<v Speaker 4>they don't do that. They refuse to do it, and
<v Speaker 4>they have found overwhelmingly for Trump again and again, undermining
<v Speaker 4>the lower courts that have often stopped them. And now,
<v Speaker 4>in the most significant case that we've seen, the Supreme
<v Speaker 4>Court has said, the most significant case in which they've
<v Speaker 4>stopped them, the Supreme Court has said very clearly, you know,
<v Speaker 4>it's dictators that act by dictate or executive order, especially
<v Speaker 4>when the Constitution gives Congress the powers that are being usurped.
<v Speaker 4>And here in the terrorist case, it couldn't be clearer.
<v Speaker 4>I say this in Mi amic is brief with our colleagues,
<v Speaker 4>which prefigured a lot of what.
<v Speaker 3>The decision said.
<v Speaker 4>The theme no taxation without representation. It's taxation that was
<v Speaker 4>given to Congress, and a tariff is nothing but a tax.
<v Speaker 4>And yet here the president comes just claiming to usurp it.
<v Speaker 4>And more than that, I mean, the other real insult
<v Speaker 4>in these teriffs is that after Nixon, the Congress actually
<v Speaker 4>had a moment where it pushed back in a historical
<v Speaker 4>way against the president and the presidency and it said, look,
<v Speaker 4>we're going to constrain the use of emergency power, including
<v Speaker 4>in economic emergencies. We're going to limit what you can do.
<v Speaker 4>And the real horror show of what Trump did is
<v Speaker 4>that he took this statute that limits his power and pretended,
<v Speaker 4>in the most grotesque way, that he gave him the
<v Speaker 4>power to unilaterally impose these tariffs. It does anything but
<v Speaker 4>And guess what the Supreme Court made both those points.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean, I can't wait to see how the
<v Speaker 1>one hundred and seventy five billion in tariff's already collected
<v Speaker 1>gets returned to people, Corey, I mean that's not crypto money.
<v Speaker 1>That is actual money paid by American importers, which means
<v Speaker 1>American businesses, which means American consumers, which means all of you.
<v Speaker 1>So what the obvious question is at first, who gets
<v Speaker 1>that back? Is there going to be a VENMO request
<v Speaker 1>to people? Do we all get store credit at Trump's
<v Speaker 1>merch side? Is there going to be a fifteen percent
<v Speaker 1>processing fee to retrieve our illegal taxes? But one of
<v Speaker 1>the things that really stood out for me was the
<v Speaker 1>Major Questions doctrine, which I think is a thing that
<v Speaker 1>John Roberts just made up to knock down Joe Biden
<v Speaker 1>trying to fulfill a campaign promise to help out Americans
<v Speaker 1>with interest rates on student loan debts. The Major Questions
<v Speaker 1>doctrine was widely viewed as a tool used by the
<v Speaker 1>right wing majority to limit administrative agencies like the student
<v Speaker 1>loan case. Now they just used it to limit presidential power. Corey,
<v Speaker 1>What exactly is this thing that John Roberts made up
<v Speaker 1>for the rest of us?
<v Speaker 3>I think, first of all, that that is right.
<v Speaker 4>The origin story of major questions is largely about limiting
<v Speaker 4>the administrative state, limiting the rules that the Environmental Protection
<v Speaker 4>Agency can make, and other agencies that are trying to
<v Speaker 4>engage in taking Congress's law and implementing it as.
<v Speaker 3>Best they can.
<v Speaker 4>So now the question was, in a time in which
<v Speaker 4>the administrative agencies are increasingly the same as what the
<v Speaker 4>president says and does under the theory of the unitary executive,
<v Speaker 4>is this doctrine that before was used to constrain the agencies,
<v Speaker 4>including experts in those agencies, now going to be the
<v Speaker 4>tool that we can use to stop a president. And
<v Speaker 4>skeptics of the Supreme Court said, man, this is only
<v Speaker 4>about stopping administrative agencies. It's not going to be used
<v Speaker 4>by this court against Trump. And what we argued in
<v Speaker 4>the brief is that there is no difference under the
<v Speaker 4>unitary executive theory, good or bad. In the current world.
<v Speaker 4>The president and the administrative agencies are essentially the same,
<v Speaker 4>and so it has to constrain a president.
<v Speaker 3>That was our hope.
<v Speaker 4>Skeptics of our argument and of this Court thought, no
<v Speaker 4>way are they going to do this. They're just purely partisan,
<v Speaker 4>and you know, some of us expected that we would
<v Speaker 4>get a majority of decent justices who came on the
<v Speaker 4>side of the law, and that's exactly what happened here.
<v Speaker 4>Six justices said, by the way, what is obviously true,
<v Speaker 4>which is that a statute that stops the president can't
<v Speaker 4>be used to aggrandize his power. Of course, we had
<v Speaker 4>three dissenters, including the hackiest of the Hackey.
<v Speaker 3>Justice's happen on, Oh, Jess, I'm going to give that
<v Speaker 3>to Justice coust.
<v Speaker 4>Going in a tough competition, But this is somebody who,
<v Speaker 4>in his opinion, just repeated what the administration said. And
<v Speaker 4>one of the subtle things about this opinion, one of
<v Speaker 4>the things I love that I haven't heard commentators comment on.
<v Speaker 3>It's the Supreme Court called them out.
<v Speaker 4>Six justices said, Justice Kavanaugh, all you're doing is repeating
<v Speaker 4>almost word for word what the administration said in their brief.
<v Speaker 4>And that's not judging. Judging means actually applying the law.
<v Speaker 4>And you know, thankfully it hasn't always been the case.
<v Speaker 3>Six justices here did apply the law.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>So what I didn't have on my bigo card was
<v Speaker 1>Justice Neil Gorsich basically saying, in very polite federalist society language.
<v Speaker 1>The Constitution lodges the nation's law making powers in Congress
<v Speaker 1>a loan, which is, I think that Supreme Court speak
<v Speaker 1>for I'm going to have this job longer than the
<v Speaker 1>guy who hired me. Read the first article. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>Gorsich even said that legislating is supposed to be slow
<v Speaker 1>and deliberative because that's stability. Let's ordinary folks plan their
<v Speaker 1>lives when the rules shift from day to day. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>he was pretty much saying markets like predictability, not your
<v Speaker 1>damn mood swings, right. I mean, the Constitution gives Congress
<v Speaker 1>the power to regulate tariffs. This liberal ruling is actually
<v Speaker 1>being constitutionally conservative.
<v Speaker 3>I think.
<v Speaker 4>You know, Justice Gorsicch and Justice Kavanaugh are often mentioned
<v Speaker 4>in the same breath, and Justice Gorsich is worried about
<v Speaker 4>that being grouped in with a hack like Kavanaugh, and
<v Speaker 4>you know, he's proven himself in a couple of key
<v Speaker 4>moments to be.
<v Speaker 3>Much more of a serious justice.
<v Speaker 4>One example actually which really parallels this is when interpreting
<v Speaker 4>the nineteen sixty four Civil Rights Act, which protects against
<v Speaker 4>discrimination based on sex an employment.
<v Speaker 3>In Title seven of the nineteen sixty four Civil Rights Act.
<v Speaker 4>Justice Gorsich said that includes gay and transgender people.
<v Speaker 3>Plain as day.
<v Speaker 4>The word sex in the text obviously applies to discrimination
<v Speaker 4>against gay and transgender people. That's the plain meaning of it.
<v Speaker 4>And what he said here is that the plain meaning
<v Speaker 4>both of the lawed issue, which is called IIBA, this
<v Speaker 4>International Emergencies Act, constrains a president.
<v Speaker 3>And what does the Constitution do.
<v Speaker 4>It gives, as you said, the taxation power, including the
<v Speaker 4>tariff making power to Congress. So you know, these aren't
<v Speaker 4>brilliant points. They are basic points that any judge should say.
<v Speaker 4>But he shows himself to be a person of integrity,
<v Speaker 4>especially in contrast to his co clerk, who also clerk
<v Speaker 4>for Justice Kennedy and that's Kabina.
<v Speaker 2>By the way.
<v Speaker 1>Within moments of the Supreme Court saying presidents can't do
<v Speaker 1>this only Congress, Trump announces a new ten percent global
<v Speaker 1>tariff and then he upgrades it to fifteen percent, because
<v Speaker 1>I guess when the Supreme Court says you can't do that,
<v Speaker 1>the logical response is, oh.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, watch me do something slightly different.
<v Speaker 1>So I guess we should expect more lawsuits Corey in
<v Speaker 1>the months and months to come, and they will be
<v Speaker 1>litigating this long after the Lord has had Donald Trump's
<v Speaker 1>arteries do what the Lord is going to have his
<v Speaker 1>arteries do.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, a couple points on that, if you don't mind Johnson. Sure.
<v Speaker 4>One is that absolutely his speech unhinged after the ruling
<v Speaker 4>which attacked his justices for betraying him.
<v Speaker 3>Essentially, I mean, this president has.
<v Speaker 4>No idea of what the idea of an independent judiciary
<v Speaker 4>is supposed to be and can't even imagine it. And
<v Speaker 4>you know, he's criticizing them for doing their jobs. I
<v Speaker 4>think that only is going to reinforce to them that
<v Speaker 4>we are facing and attack on democracy and that we
<v Speaker 4>need an independent judiciary. That's my hope, and it also
<v Speaker 4>is a message to the lower courts of the need
<v Speaker 4>to stand against this president who thinks that they all
<v Speaker 4>work for him.
<v Speaker 3>Is he defying the order, that's an interesting question.
<v Speaker 4>He certainly would want to, but the reporting seems to
<v Speaker 4>suggest that the lawyers internal to the executive branch are
<v Speaker 4>telling him, no, you can't just defy the Supreme Court.
<v Speaker 4>Now they're trying to find other laws, including a trade
<v Speaker 4>act that would authorize some of these tariffs. And now
<v Speaker 4>the question is are they going to get away with it.
<v Speaker 4>But those laws, when you look at them, are much
<v Speaker 4>more constrained than this emergency statute. They have time limits
<v Speaker 4>on them, for instance. And so although they'll try to
<v Speaker 4>revive these tariffs, and though we're going to face litigation,
<v Speaker 4>I think the Supreme Court, these same six justices are
<v Speaker 4>going to slam them down again. And that's a good
<v Speaker 4>thing for the country.
<v Speaker 1>When we come back, Judge Alien Cannon is back and
<v Speaker 1>Prince Andrew is going away.
<v Speaker 2>Don't go away. This is the Oath and the Office.
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<v Speaker 1>Welcome back to the Oath on the Office. I'm John
<v Speaker 1>fugel Sang and Professor Bretschneider. Judge Aileen Cannon like a
<v Speaker 1>sequel no one wanted. She has now blocked the release
<v Speaker 1>of volume two of Special Counsel Jack Smith's report on
<v Speaker 1>the voluminous evidence of guilt in Donald Trump's classified documents case,
<v Speaker 1>and her reasoning was it would plainly offend her previous
<v Speaker 1>dismissal of the case and contravene basic notions of fairness.
<v Speaker 1>In other words, she's saying, you can't know the crimes
<v Speaker 1>he committed because of basic notions of fairness. We have
<v Speaker 1>entered the Hallmark Channel version of fascist jurisprudence. Cory, I
<v Speaker 1>don't know where to begin. She said, we can't release
<v Speaker 1>the evidence because no adjudication of guilt has been reached,
<v Speaker 1>and that's because the case never reached the jury. But
<v Speaker 1>it never reached the jury because she dismissed it. So
<v Speaker 1>is this the new legal standard? If the trial didn't happen,
<v Speaker 1>the crime doesn't exist.
<v Speaker 4>Wow, she really is a pale imitation of a judge,
<v Speaker 4>and she's not really engaged in judging. She's just engaged
<v Speaker 4>in trying to defend Donald Trump at all costs. We
<v Speaker 4>saw that during the document's case, and we talked about
<v Speaker 4>this at length, but she essentially said that Jack Smith's
<v Speaker 4>role as a special prosecutor, long established as part of
<v Speaker 4>the executive branch, was somehow unconstitutional and illegal. That was
<v Speaker 4>one thing she did to destroy the case. And now
<v Speaker 4>what she's doing is preventing the American people from seeing
<v Speaker 4>the evidence, seeing actually what Smith as. He's under attack,
<v Speaker 4>by the way, for legally trying to shut down Donald
<v Speaker 4>Trump to show the truth, which is that this president
<v Speaker 4>committed a crime and he was doing nothing more than
<v Speaker 4>looking into that wrongdoing. I think we've got to do
<v Speaker 4>some history here to see how wrong she is. The
<v Speaker 4>long history of investigations of presidents and former presidents involve
<v Speaker 4>special counsels like Jack Smith looking into wrongdoing, and this
<v Speaker 4>is crucial exposing the evidence to both Congress and the
<v Speaker 4>American people.
<v Speaker 3>And the idea is that sitting.
<v Speaker 4>President, certainly who commits wrongdoing might be subject to impeachment.
<v Speaker 4>And the role since Nixon has been of the special
<v Speaker 4>prosecutor to reveil the truth again to the American people
<v Speaker 4>and to Congress.
<v Speaker 3>So let me just give you the examples.
<v Speaker 4>What happened during Watergate, and I talk about this and
<v Speaker 4>the presidents and the people at length, is that the
<v Speaker 4>special prosecutors, Archibaldcox first and then after he was fired
<v Speaker 4>and replaced by Leon Jaworski, compiled massive evidence of Nixon's crimes,
<v Speaker 4>and the decision was made to hand over in what
<v Speaker 4>was known as the Roadmap, to Congress and to the
<v Speaker 4>American people details of what were happening. And that's what
<v Speaker 4>brought the Judiciary Committee during Nixon to vote up articles
<v Speaker 4>of impeachment and led to Nixon's resignation. During Clinton, the
<v Speaker 4>Grand Jury looking into Clinton's perjury, accused perjury and obstruction
<v Speaker 4>of justice. The information was passed on to the Congress
<v Speaker 4>and impeachment. You agree or not agree, We got to
<v Speaker 4>see what the report said. Mueller, even during the first
<v Speaker 4>Trump impeachment, looked into his wrongdoing, looked into his crimes,
<v Speaker 4>and exposed through his report this information. We should have
<v Speaker 4>had a fourth report, a report from Jack Smith, letting
<v Speaker 4>us know, letting us decide as Americans about whether or
<v Speaker 4>not impeachment is justified, not just a precedent, but one
<v Speaker 4>that goes back decades. And here's this rando judge just saying, no,
<v Speaker 4>I'm going to shut it down.
<v Speaker 2>That's it.
<v Speaker 1>I mean again, she argued it would be unfair to
<v Speaker 1>release a report when there was no adjudication of guilt.
<v Speaker 1>But it's because she canceled the damn trial and my
<v Speaker 1>favorite lie from the whole thing, look at what you've
<v Speaker 1>done to me. I'm reading these rulings now. But she says,
<v Speaker 1>the court need not countenance this brazen stratagem. Brazen stratagem perfect.
<v Speaker 1>That's like a boss fight in Dungeons and Dragons, the
<v Speaker 1>brazen stratagem. Historically, special counsel reports have always been released
<v Speaker 1>to the public. Right, there is precedent here for this.
<v Speaker 1>We paid, our tax is paid for this information. And
<v Speaker 1>she's not saying the evidence isn't completely true.
<v Speaker 4>And let me just reiterate my examples Nixon, Clinton, and
<v Speaker 4>Trump in the first administration. In none of those was
<v Speaker 4>there a conviction, and yet we had them released. And
<v Speaker 4>so the idea that she's just claiming this precedent that
<v Speaker 4>if there's no conviction, then we can't release. You know,
<v Speaker 4>it wasn't like he was found not guilty after a
<v Speaker 4>trial in all those instances. In fact, this process of
<v Speaker 4>releasing the information to the Congress and to the American
<v Speaker 4>people was in lieu of a trial. Y, And so
<v Speaker 4>she's just making it up as making it up, as
<v Speaker 4>she did make up this story about that the special
<v Speaker 4>prosecutor was somehow an illegal or unconstitutional appointment.
<v Speaker 1>Well, here's my last question on this, and then we
<v Speaker 1>can move on to Prince Andrew, because that's what all
<v Speaker 1>the kids want to talk about. She's saying fairness to
<v Speaker 1>the defendant who hired the judge. Fairness because there was
<v Speaker 1>no jury verdict because the defendant hired this judge. But fairness, Corey.
<v Speaker 1>In a constitutional system, I think has to also include
<v Speaker 1>public accountability. If fairness is what's driving all this, Fairness
<v Speaker 1>includes transparency when extraordinary events occur. Fairness I think allows
<v Speaker 1>history to see the record. If a trial never happens
<v Speaker 1>due to judicial rulings, does the public lose access to
<v Speaker 1>the investigative findings by default? It seems like a future
<v Speaker 1>wiser court on the appellate level might overturn this well.
<v Speaker 4>In order to get to that stage, Jack Smith would
<v Speaker 4>have to appeal it, and it's you know, there are
<v Speaker 4>questions about standing. We'd have to think more about how
<v Speaker 4>we would get that kind of appeal, and I'm not.
<v Speaker 3>Sure if it will happen.
<v Speaker 4>But the bottom line is, if it doesn't become transparent,
<v Speaker 4>if it doesn't become released, we've really undermined.
<v Speaker 3>You know, there's so few.
<v Speaker 4>Let me just put it in the most blunt way,
<v Speaker 4>there are so few checks on a president, so few
<v Speaker 4>checks on a criminal president. And as you know, I'm
<v Speaker 4>fond maybe too much quoting Patrick Henry who said, the
<v Speaker 4>system is not designed to handle a criminal president. There's
<v Speaker 4>nothing to stop such a force. That's the word he uses.
<v Speaker 4>And now one of the things that we do have,
<v Speaker 4>at least to slow down a criminal president is transparency.
<v Speaker 4>And she's really seen our weakness in our constitutional system
<v Speaker 4>by denying us even the ability to see these things. Now,
<v Speaker 4>would impeachment come about if we saw what was released?
<v Speaker 3>Maybe, but even if it didn't, it.
<v Speaker 4>Would at least be a kind of accountability, and the
<v Speaker 4>kind of accountability that we got in the first Trump administration,
<v Speaker 4>and that without these details is really being denied to us.
<v Speaker 4>I mean, you know, another thing that might happen is
<v Speaker 4>a subpoena by Congress in the instance, as I think
<v Speaker 4>about it, in the instance in which the Democratic Party
<v Speaker 4>takes the House, they might subpoena the report.
<v Speaker 3>That's going to be an interesting case.
<v Speaker 4>But I think they're you know, in pursuit of impeachment,
<v Speaker 4>they would have a right to see it. And the
<v Speaker 4>idea of grand jury secrecy and all of the examples
<v Speaker 4>that I gave was trump by these interests and transparency.
<v Speaker 1>I just think alien Cannon has bought a one way
<v Speaker 1>ticket to Pambondy Island, where short term power out weighs
<v Speaker 1>long term disgrace. All Right, I got to ask you
<v Speaker 1>about the UK because you know, they just went and
<v Speaker 1>arrested the arrestee formerly known as Prince Prince Andrew has been.
<v Speaker 1>They pulled up to his house and they took him
<v Speaker 1>in and his brother, the King signed off on this.
<v Speaker 1>Because no one is about the law here, Corey. In America,
<v Speaker 1>we treat no one is above the law. That's more
<v Speaker 1>like a decorative throw pillow, you know, like like here
<v Speaker 1>pambodies like well, define above. But I just want to say,
<v Speaker 1>like in France, yes, they have announced new investigations on
<v Speaker 1>Epstein related to human trafficking through his longtime associate Jehan
<v Speaker 1>look Brunel, who was found dead in his cell. But
<v Speaker 1>they're opening that up. In Brazil, they just sentenced their
<v Speaker 1>former president for his efforts to overthrow the government and
<v Speaker 1>illegally keep power. South Korea impeached a president and sentenced
<v Speaker 1>him to life in jail for insurrection. This week, Britain
<v Speaker 1>arrested a prince and in America we re elect the
<v Speaker 1>convicted felon and sex offender who had cops beaten for
<v Speaker 1>a lie. And we call that strength. And Trump sighed
<v Speaker 1>the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law. They were supposed
<v Speaker 1>to release everything by December nineteenth. They've broken the law
<v Speaker 1>every day since. My question is in the UK they
<v Speaker 1>can do this. What institutional difference has allowed that process
<v Speaker 1>to move forward?
<v Speaker 2>There?
<v Speaker 1>Is it just that Pam Bondi's not in charge in
<v Speaker 1>the UK?
<v Speaker 4>Well, you know, I think that the systems that we
<v Speaker 4>have are often compared in a way that we teach
<v Speaker 4>in Civics that turns out to be wrong.
<v Speaker 3>The Civics one on one version of it.
<v Speaker 4>The Civics version is America is a democracy and Britain
<v Speaker 4>is a monarchy and in democracy, no one is above
<v Speaker 4>the law.
<v Speaker 3>We're all equal. And monarchy, the king is above the law.
<v Speaker 4>And here's the reality, and it goes back to the
<v Speaker 4>founding of the United States.
<v Speaker 3>We've always had.
<v Speaker 4>Two views about Britain. One the view that you and
<v Speaker 4>I hold and that many Americans. I think most Americans hold,
<v Speaker 4>which is exactly that that no person is supposed to
<v Speaker 4>be above the law, not even a president. And we've
<v Speaker 4>had cases, including ones that connect to what I was
<v Speaker 4>talking about before US versus Nixon eight to zero, saying
<v Speaker 4>a president doesn't have immunity from a criminal subpoena, that
<v Speaker 4>they can be investigated the same as everyone else. But
<v Speaker 4>there also is a very different understanding of America, and
<v Speaker 4>it's one that goes back to John Adams, who thought
<v Speaker 4>that the British king was too limited in his power
<v Speaker 4>and that democracy had gotten too vast, and that we
<v Speaker 4>needed to increase the power of a president beyond the
<v Speaker 4>power of a British king. That might sound wild, but
<v Speaker 4>I document that in the presidents and the people. We've
<v Speaker 4>talked about it here, and with the immunity case, we've
<v Speaker 4>just doubled down on that authoritarian, monarchical idea of the constitution.
<v Speaker 3>And so here's the result.
<v Speaker 4>And you know, your your analysis gets it perfectly that
<v Speaker 4>in the rest of the world, where they have functioning democracies,
<v Speaker 4>you see indictments of a former prime minister, right, a
<v Speaker 4>former prince.
<v Speaker 3>I love that line. By the way, John, I'm still
<v Speaker 3>laughing about it.
<v Speaker 1>The oh the arrestee formerly noticed Prince.
<v Speaker 4>Thank you.
<v Speaker 2>I was up late on that one.
<v Speaker 3>It's just too good. And I'm glad you admitted you
<v Speaker 3>didn't just come up with it because that would be
<v Speaker 3>too brilliant. You had you had to have time for
<v Speaker 3>that one.
<v Speaker 1>But you know what one of the survivors, marie Ja
<v Speaker 1>k Shartuni said, if only DOJ acted as decisively. It
<v Speaker 1>took British police less than three weeks from the release
<v Speaker 1>of the latest tranch of Epstein files to arrest Andrew,
<v Speaker 1>making Pambondi and Cash Hotel look increasingly inept. And she's right.
<v Speaker 1>This thing was, this thing was never about one predator.
<v Speaker 1>It's about access of influence and money in this aristocratic
<v Speaker 1>ecosystem where power or proximity to power or was the currency,
<v Speaker 1>and you're allowed to rape children.
<v Speaker 4>Let me just double down on my point, right, because
<v Speaker 4>I think partly it's the immunity story, and Trump's immunity
<v Speaker 4>is the opposite of the democratic idea that no person
<v Speaker 4>is above the law. But the other thing in our
<v Speaker 4>system that is a real weakness is that the attorney general.
<v Speaker 4>And this is actually the origin story of the idea
<v Speaker 4>of the unitary executive. The founder is actually debated should
<v Speaker 4>the attorney general be independently elected? In New York for instance,
<v Speaker 4>Letitia James, the attorney general is independently elected and doesn't
<v Speaker 4>work for the governor, doesn't work for Hoclo. And you
<v Speaker 4>know that has benefits of independence that you can investigate,
<v Speaker 4>for instance, criminality within the executive branch. In our national system,
<v Speaker 4>the federal government, we don't have that situation. We have
<v Speaker 4>an attorney general who works for the president, and that
<v Speaker 4>you know, good president. The president would say, hey, I
<v Speaker 4>don't want to have contact. You heard during Obama the
<v Speaker 4>attorney general was worried even about conversations on a ttarm
<v Speaker 4>with Obama. Oh yeah, Now contrast that to what the
<v Speaker 4>abuse right now? And you heard Preeparara talk about how
<v Speaker 4>he saw things that way. Don't even take the phone call.
<v Speaker 4>That was part of his thought process But what this
<v Speaker 4>president has done is blown through those norms and shown
<v Speaker 4>the weakness of the system by essentially ordering the Attorney
<v Speaker 4>General not to look into the crimes of the century,
<v Speaker 4>the vast crimes that are documented in these files.
<v Speaker 3>And that's what we've got here.
<v Speaker 1>Anyone who helped bring girls or women across state lines
<v Speaker 1>or to Epstein's private island could be charged with trafficking.
<v Speaker 1>Anyone who abused these underage children could still face charges
<v Speaker 1>of sexual assault or soliciting prostitution, which is what Epstein
<v Speaker 1>got nabbed for the last time. And this Department of
<v Speaker 1>Justice is investigating zero of the criminals cited in the files.
<v Speaker 1>They've named the victims and taken away their privacy, but
<v Speaker 1>they are protecting the guilty. They want you to believe, Corey,
<v Speaker 1>this was a child sex trafficking ring with no actual clients.
<v Speaker 1>We are witnessing a shift in democracies where some nations
<v Speaker 1>are enforcing a lead accountability and the United States is
<v Speaker 1>choosing not to. I don't think this story is going
<v Speaker 1>away before midterm time, Professor to.
<v Speaker 4>You, no, and I think it should go away as
<v Speaker 4>we defeat the Republican Party in Congress, and this president
<v Speaker 4>we're going to talk to Mike Pesco, who's a journalist
<v Speaker 4>and neutral. I'm not neutral at the Democracy and I
<v Speaker 4>don't mind saying it. And we're not on an FCC
<v Speaker 4>airwave so that we'll use our freedom.
<v Speaker 3>But I will say that's not enough.
<v Speaker 4>What we really need when it comes to this issue
<v Speaker 4>that we need to talk much more about lead accountability.
<v Speaker 4>And that's really what you see in the Epstein files
<v Speaker 4>is a grotesque and unaccountable elite. We need to have
<v Speaker 4>legislation that ensures that this isn't going to continue to happen,
<v Speaker 4>and that holds the Attorney general, that holds the president
<v Speaker 4>to account. One thing we need, and I've said this
<v Speaker 4>many times, is an independent prosecutor that can look into
<v Speaker 4>this doing by the executive branch without being fired by
<v Speaker 4>the person at the top, by the p Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>I think Democrats who run on a special independent prosecutor
<v Speaker 1>just for Epstein files alone are the Democrats who are
<v Speaker 1>going to clean up with fundraising. And you know, we
<v Speaker 1>shouldn't need a special prosecutor for this because we're supposed
<v Speaker 1>to have separation of powers. Good God, professor, you beat
<v Speaker 1>this intem me. You look at the tariffs, you look
<v Speaker 1>at the judicial defiance, you look at the blocked reports.
<v Speaker 1>We are in a separation of powers crisis right now.
<v Speaker 1>Because Mike Johnson is not the Speaker of the House.
<v Speaker 1>He appears to be Donald Trump's human diaper, holding in
<v Speaker 1>a lot of crap for this guy before he hit
<v Speaker 1>the break really quick, Corey, What should Americans watch most
<v Speaker 1>closely in the next six months.
<v Speaker 3>Well, I think the question of separation of powers.
<v Speaker 4>We've talked about that in relation to the Supreme Court,
<v Speaker 4>which is pushing back against Trump's illegal usurpation of Congress's power.
<v Speaker 4>Now the question is is Congress is also going to
<v Speaker 4>push back against the usurpation of its power, including its
<v Speaker 4>powers of investigation and oversight over agencies like ICE. And
<v Speaker 4>of course, the real thing to watch for as the
<v Speaker 4>midterms heat up is are there candidates out there that
<v Speaker 4>are really taking a stand and saying we're going to
<v Speaker 4>impeach this president. We pushed Senator Whitehouse Representative lou on
<v Speaker 4>that question. They didn't fully come on board with what
<v Speaker 4>we were saying, but they indicated to me that that
<v Speaker 4>is on the agenda, and I think we need to
<v Speaker 4>see an impeachment of this president at this point.
<v Speaker 1>Oh, we need to see a lot of them. Come on, Democrats,
<v Speaker 1>start doing another article every week, Please fund raise off it.
<v Speaker 1>You know what I think. I think Democrats need to
<v Speaker 1>do what the Republicans did with their doomed, suicidal repeal
<v Speaker 1>Obamacare votes. We laughed at them, but they were saying,
<v Speaker 1>this is our messaging, and they fund raised off of it,
<v Speaker 1>and they were consistent. They were trying to take healthcare
<v Speaker 1>away from poor people because they're evil, but they were
<v Speaker 1>consistent in doing it and it wasn't the folly that
<v Speaker 1>we thought it was. So I say, start loading up.
<v Speaker 1>Just have different articles every week until something sticks. I
<v Speaker 1>know we have to hit a break that Mike Pesca
<v Speaker 1>is waiting in the wings. We'll be back in just
<v Speaker 1>a moment with the Oath and the Office.
<v Speaker 6>Here's what you've been missing on the Stephanie Miller Happy
<v Speaker 6>Hour podcast.
<v Speaker 7>I had to bail out at ten thirty. I was like,
<v Speaker 7>I can't deal with this anymore. I'm having a blast,
<v Speaker 7>but this is too much. Donald all in one big
<v Speaker 7>chunk with his refrigerator magnet speech of fining, and it's
<v Speaker 7>like every five seconds he's got to go back to immigration,
<v Speaker 7>and it's just the copy and paste structure of the
<v Speaker 7>whole thing.
<v Speaker 6>It's just gotta beech sassified his torture under the HAG
<v Speaker 6>or something. I yeah, other people stronger than I. Someone
<v Speaker 6>posted my favorite part of the State of the Union
<v Speaker 6>when he said they got two point four million people
<v Speaker 6>off food stamps, but didn't mention it's because they cut
<v Speaker 6>them off.
<v Speaker 8>Oh yeah, yes.
<v Speaker 6>Seeing an anchor, Abby Phillips said, Trump is once again
<v Speaker 6>falsely claiming there's rampant voter fraud, but even his administration
<v Speaker 6>has failed to find any evidence of that. Subscribe to
<v Speaker 6>the Stephanie Miller Happy Hour podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stephanie
<v Speaker 6>Miller dot com, or wherever you get your favorite pod guests.
<v Speaker 1>Welcome back to the Oath on the Office. I'm John Fiegel,
<v Speaker 1>sang Professor Bretschneider. I am very excited about this guest.
<v Speaker 1>I am a longtime fan of his podcasting prowess, and
<v Speaker 1>we've also lived kind of parallel lives in the past.
<v Speaker 2>Two tell the kids who's coming up.
<v Speaker 4>It's a thrill to invite Mike Pesca. And there was,
<v Speaker 4>of course a Long Island reunion between the two of you,
<v Speaker 4>both from Long Island Mike Pesca is an award winning journalist.
<v Speaker 4>He's the host of the longest running daily news podcast,
<v Speaker 4>which of course is called The Gist. Was my honor
<v Speaker 4>to be on The Gist and to talk about the
<v Speaker 4>presidents and the people with him soon after it came out,
<v Speaker 4>and I'm also happy to announce that he's the brand
<v Speaker 4>new host of the award nominated podcast how To. So,
<v Speaker 4>Mike Pesco, Welcome to the Oath in the Office. It's
<v Speaker 4>a pleasure to have you.
<v Speaker 8>Oh thanks for having me. I know that one of
<v Speaker 8>you is from Suffolk County and I'm from Nasau County,
<v Speaker 8>so we're gonna have to get over that during this interview.
<v Speaker 8>That is a big barrier between the two counties of
<v Speaker 8>Long Island. But I'm sure by the end we'll be
<v Speaker 8>able to find common ground, maybe in farming down.
<v Speaker 4>And I hate to pull out my trump cart, whige
<v Speaker 4>is that I'm from Queen's base side.
<v Speaker 3>So oh no, it's another.
<v Speaker 4>It does right, that's right, technically it is Long Island.
<v Speaker 4>So Mike, I mean, we love to jump right in
<v Speaker 4>and ask you a question.
<v Speaker 3>With your journalism.
<v Speaker 4>One thing that we're talking a lot about on the
<v Speaker 4>Oath in the office is the various ways that this
<v Speaker 4>administration is trying to shut down the opposition. And some
<v Speaker 4>of that, of course, is being done through criminal indictments
<v Speaker 4>and political opponents, but we're also focused on the way
<v Speaker 4>that this administration's use the FCC as a kind of
<v Speaker 4>weapon threatening opponents late night. So I would like to
<v Speaker 4>ask you just your thoughts about what's happening. And one
<v Speaker 4>of the themes we're also talking a lot about that
<v Speaker 4>your thoughts on is how can journalists respond and fight back?
<v Speaker 4>How can comedians and those in entertainment.
<v Speaker 8>Comedians, I think, maybe have the easiest assignment right make
<v Speaker 8>the people laugh, and there are a lot of great
<v Speaker 8>comedy clubs for that. Journalists they kind of need. I mean,
<v Speaker 8>independent journalism is burgeoning these days, but I still think
<v Speaker 8>it's better to have actual newspapers, if nothing else, as
<v Speaker 8>launch pads for the future independent journalists of America. And
<v Speaker 8>we're seeing fewer and fewer of them. And then we
<v Speaker 8>saw huge cuts of the Washington Post, and that's pretty
<v Speaker 8>bad for democracy because if you look at you know,
<v Speaker 8>you'll often hear the counterpoint. We'll look at all these
<v Speaker 8>people who are doing journalists outside the mainstream. But how
<v Speaker 8>do you even hear about them in the first place.
<v Speaker 8>You know, Matt Taibi was at Rolling Stone, or look
<v Speaker 8>at who's you know, top ten in sub stack it's
<v Speaker 8>guys who are on CNN, or if it's Jennifer Rubin
<v Speaker 8>from the Washington Post. So without these both farm systems
<v Speaker 8>to teach people journalism or these like I said, launch
<v Speaker 8>pads way to get people identified. It's not a system
<v Speaker 8>like the comedy clubs where you kind of rise up
<v Speaker 8>and then you know, maybe you get a sick coompanybe
<v Speaker 8>you just do a podcast and sell out an arena.
<v Speaker 8>The whole journalism model is pretty broken. We could get
<v Speaker 8>to the FCC. But you know, I was just wondering, like,
<v Speaker 8>since John is a foot in both worlds, does he
<v Speaker 8>have talked to a lot of comedians about this. I
<v Speaker 8>also have a show called Funny. You should mention it
<v Speaker 8>used to be that comedians were pretty sour on the
<v Speaker 8>ways to actually get noticed, and there was a big
<v Speaker 8>there was a big you know, the pipeline wasn't exactly open.
<v Speaker 8>But now I think journalists have a tougher time.
<v Speaker 1>It's a good question because when I was starting out,
<v Speaker 1>you know, I was getting a lot of work doing
<v Speaker 1>dopey TV jobs that didn't really feel right for me.
<v Speaker 1>And I always wanted to talk about politics and religion
<v Speaker 1>as a comedian. And I'll always give Bill Mark credit.
<v Speaker 1>He was the first person to encourage me to go
<v Speaker 1>deeper into politics and religion and alienate potential employers in
<v Speaker 1>other realms. So, I mean, for a comedian, you have
<v Speaker 1>to recognize that and you take it on. You know, yes,
<v Speaker 1>you can have that superpower of talking about what's going on.
<v Speaker 1>You can travel to other rooms where just comics who
<v Speaker 1>joke about normal stuff can't. But when you decide as
<v Speaker 1>a comedian to take on politics, you're signing on for
<v Speaker 1>having half the audience potentially hate you, for having most
<v Speaker 1>of your material be dated in two weeks, and for
<v Speaker 1>pretty much agreeing you don't ever want to be on
<v Speaker 1>late night TV shows because the only people who ever
<v Speaker 1>do political comedy on TV, you might notice, are people
<v Speaker 1>who have their own TV shows. It's really tricky outside
<v Speaker 1>of like CNN Paddles, to go on TV as a
<v Speaker 1>comic and talk about this stuff. But that's why you're right.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I think you have two feet in the
<v Speaker 1>same world as well, because podcasting is allowing so many
<v Speaker 1>comedians to branch out and to be funny and yet
<v Speaker 1>talk about social issues at.
<v Speaker 2>The same time.
<v Speaker 1>And I think you set a model for it, Mike,
<v Speaker 1>not that you're a stand up, but that you always
<v Speaker 1>keep it entertaining first and preachy last, which is, I
<v Speaker 1>think you know what this is about. It's not just
<v Speaker 1>about delivering the information. It's also got to be highly listenable.
<v Speaker 1>And that's something I don't really think they teach a
<v Speaker 1>journalism school.
<v Speaker 8>No, the budsmen, which is it's not a gendered role.
<v Speaker 8>This is a Swedish word. But when they had budsmen,
<v Speaker 8>they would always weigh in on, oh, that wasn't well sourced,
<v Speaker 8>or oh you could have given more information. They always
<v Speaker 8>default to more and more, give more information, you know,
<v Speaker 8>your forty five second news slot to convey facts tersely. No, no,
<v Speaker 8>put three minutes worth of information there. But they never
<v Speaker 8>prioritize be interesting. And I always said, you have to
<v Speaker 8>be informative, but you also have to be interesting. Now
<v Speaker 8>the algorithm just defines interesting in a way that I
<v Speaker 8>think is sort of more like a meth head would
<v Speaker 8>find things to be interesting, right, And the old way
<v Speaker 8>of being interesting as a journalist is maybe your lead
<v Speaker 8>graph is compelling, right, you don't start with statistics. But
<v Speaker 8>do people even have the opportunity to consider the lead
<v Speaker 8>graph or to consider a well craft did written piece.
<v Speaker 8>I think not. But to Corey go back to your
<v Speaker 8>question and Brendan Carr and the FCC, I think it's
<v Speaker 8>important to talk about the two big forays he had
<v Speaker 8>trying to influence the discourse and late night talk shows.
<v Speaker 8>So a few months ago he jaw boned stations to
<v Speaker 8>essentially intimidate them to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air
<v Speaker 8>Jimmy Kimmel critical of Trump and a disfavored host. And
<v Speaker 8>so he made the point, especially with the station groups
<v Speaker 8>that are considering a merger before the federal government. Uh,
<v Speaker 8>you might want, you know, will anyone rid me of
<v Speaker 8>this meddlesome priest. You might not want to put that
<v Speaker 8>wisecracker on the air. And there's a lot of case
<v Speaker 8>law that I think you could talk about. It's very interesting,
<v Speaker 8>you might say. One might say, well, you know, just
<v Speaker 8>talking out loud about things is that allowed? And the
<v Speaker 8>Supreme Court has weighed in on jaw boning as an
<v Speaker 8>if you're a First Amendment advocate, as I am, it
<v Speaker 8>is a violation of one's First Amendment rights to essentially
<v Speaker 8>threaten the use of federal agencies to come in and
<v Speaker 8>regulate without actually doing the regulation. There's a case. It's
<v Speaker 8>very interesting because it was a New York case called
<v Speaker 8>I Think Volo in New York where she now teaches
<v Speaker 8>at Fordham Law School. She was a New York state administrator.
<v Speaker 8>She was jaw boning to try to get certain companies
<v Speaker 8>to not do business with the NRA, and the jaw
<v Speaker 8>boning itself was deemed the federal government impermissibly overstepping its bounds.
<v Speaker 8>And so that's what I think car was doing there.
<v Speaker 8>But now when we come to the latest of what
<v Speaker 8>Carr was doing and try to maybe intimidate CBS from
<v Speaker 8>airing an interview with James tel Rico's running forward Dan Senate,
<v Speaker 8>there's a question which is was car overstepping his bounds
<v Speaker 8>or was he advocating for a more rigorous enforcement of
<v Speaker 8>what is within the FC He sees ambit and purview.
<v Speaker 2>For the first time, for the first time.
<v Speaker 8>That is true. That is true. But you know, if
<v Speaker 8>you have laws on the books and you decide to
<v Speaker 8>enforce them, that's allowed. If you decide to enforce them selectively,
<v Speaker 8>that's probably not allowed, and it shouldn't be allowed. And
<v Speaker 8>we should also note that he doesn't like what these
<v Speaker 8>late night comics are saying, so he wants to enforce
<v Speaker 8>the law, and he wants to enforce the equal time rule.
<v Speaker 8>He however, does not want to enforce that with AM
<v Speaker 8>talk radio. Wear off everyone, so we all know what's
<v Speaker 8>going on.
<v Speaker 1>Greg Guttfeldt's guest list is safe. You're so right, I mean,
<v Speaker 1>for so many well years, I got.
<v Speaker 8>To say, I gotta say. And he actually pillayed a
<v Speaker 8>senator from Nevada about this when she was like, why
<v Speaker 8>don't you weigh in on Fox? He is correct and saying,
<v Speaker 8>because they're not a broadcaster, I can only weigh in
<v Speaker 8>with the broadcasters, and that is antiquated and old, but
<v Speaker 8>that's the world we're living in. He sees himself as
<v Speaker 8>I have a lever. I can shut up Colbert or
<v Speaker 8>at least make his life hard, or at least convinced
<v Speaker 8>the CBS lawyers that if he interviews tel Rico. He
<v Speaker 8>also asked to interview Jasmine Crockett, and that might not
<v Speaker 8>be an outrageous interpretation of what Carr was saying.
<v Speaker 1>Well, yeah, I agree with everything, except we have to
<v Speaker 1>remember the equal time rule is the most sacred, sacred
<v Speaker 1>of all rules to the f season, next to no
<v Speaker 1>nipples at the Super Bowl. Oh, that equal time rule
<v Speaker 1>is so sacred to the FCC that they never thought
<v Speaker 1>to bring it up until last week because they don't
<v Speaker 1>want Tallarico getting the Democratic nomination for Senate, because they're
<v Speaker 1>terrified of all this Jesus talk. And you know you're
<v Speaker 1>right about Kimmel the unsung hero. There was Monday Night
<v Speaker 1>Football threatening Sinclair. Okay, you don't need us either, and
<v Speaker 1>that's what made Sinclair back down. But what's amazing to me,
<v Speaker 1>and I ask both of you, because your brains are
<v Speaker 1>much bigger than mine at this point, how do we
<v Speaker 1>distinguish between legitimate oversight and intimidation? As corporate media is
<v Speaker 1>finally finally learning what stochastic terrorism is, we're learning this
<v Speaker 1>new stochastic self said censorship, I mean regulatory pressure, even
<v Speaker 1>without a formal ban or policy, can create a really
<v Speaker 1>chilling effect. And do you think soft censorship that we're
<v Speaker 1>seeing here with Colbert with Kimmel, is this more dangerous
<v Speaker 1>than overt censorship precisely because it's so deniable.
<v Speaker 8>I think that it's not, but it is dangerous. And
<v Speaker 8>I always come back to, you know, isn't this subtle
<v Speaker 8>racism worse than when it's out in the open. And
<v Speaker 8>we used to say that when it was subtle, and
<v Speaker 8>then it got really out in the open. One to
<v Speaker 8>ten ones is seven and a half stochasticity. That is
<v Speaker 8>a really interesting frame to put on this. I do
<v Speaker 8>think it's actually more apt than the terrorism thing, because
<v Speaker 8>what it means is that it's just iterative and little
<v Speaker 8>by little, drip by drip, you get the effect that
<v Speaker 8>you want. And there is a censorship or there is
<v Speaker 8>a shutting down of speech that the FCC is engaged in.
<v Speaker 8>They have an interesting theory of the case, which is
<v Speaker 8>that car will say I can't well, he won't say
<v Speaker 8>I can't regulate, but he knows it's very hard for
<v Speaker 8>him to regulate the networks. And when people think of ABC,
<v Speaker 8>they think of Kimmel or Monday Night Football, and they
<v Speaker 8>think of CBS, they think of Colbert. But the networks
<v Speaker 8>aren't licensed by the federal government. The broadcasters are. So
<v Speaker 8>he looks at the end users and he knows that
<v Speaker 8>he could use that lever there. I do wonder, however,
<v Speaker 8>if his I use this phrase before, but I'll set again,
<v Speaker 8>if his theory of the case was so detailed that
<v Speaker 8>he literally or the Trump administration literally thinks that they
<v Speaker 8>want tall Rico not to be the nominee. They'd rather
<v Speaker 8>have Jasmine Crocket because maybe that's a sophisticated analysis of
<v Speaker 8>who is best to win that Texas race. Also, but well,
<v Speaker 8>I can't see Trump weighing in to help Jasmine Crocket.
<v Speaker 2>Exactly exactly about it?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, because they would think they think the people
<v Speaker 1>of Texas would never go for her. They think that
<v Speaker 1>tall Rico is so riskier because they he's fluent in
<v Speaker 1>Jesus and they don't want to hear that at all.
<v Speaker 1>And b they assume that Texas is so bigoted that
<v Speaker 1>a black woman in the Senate would be impossible, whereas
<v Speaker 1>they're both great and she could be the most transformative
<v Speaker 1>Texas politicians and San Richard's professor.
<v Speaker 2>Go ahead, I'm sorry, tot.
<v Speaker 3>Y'all, No, not at all.
<v Speaker 4>I was going to ask Mike to bring it back
<v Speaker 4>to your original point about journalism and sort of the
<v Speaker 4>way that it's falling apart. I mean, even if these
<v Speaker 4>things that Brendan Carr turns out to do are illegal,
<v Speaker 4>I mean, is there a worry the way that you're
<v Speaker 4>looking at the landscape, that people are getting intimidated that
<v Speaker 4>you're not seeing journalists stand up. I'm thinking of Barry
<v Speaker 4>Weiss and CBS and a lot of the traditional ways
<v Speaker 4>the journalists came up rather than being a CBS, for instance,
<v Speaker 4>being a bastion of independent journalism and fact checking. It
<v Speaker 4>looks like it's anything. But I mean, are they winning
<v Speaker 4>in that sense even if what they're doing is illegal
<v Speaker 4>and ultimately they have to back down.
<v Speaker 8>Well, I know you guys are open to debate and
<v Speaker 8>counter opinion, so I'm going to lay this on you.
<v Speaker 8>I wrote a piece called why is no One Nice?
<v Speaker 8>To Barry Weiss at Rhyme, so I went with the
<v Speaker 8>headline it was that it is true there were a
<v Speaker 8>couple of high profile incidents that were alleged to have
<v Speaker 8>been some example of interceding to help Trump or to
<v Speaker 8>help the Trump agenda. However, I talked about those incidents.
<v Speaker 8>One was she got in there. She told CBS's sixty
<v Speaker 8>Minutes that a couple of hours or not even twenty
<v Speaker 8>four hours before air that she had problems with a
<v Speaker 8>piece on Seacott Prison and Sharon Alfonsi, who is the
<v Speaker 8>reporter on that piece, Yeah, it didn't go public, but
<v Speaker 8>wrote a widely circulated memo that is a sophisticated person
<v Speaker 8>in the news she knew would go public and she
<v Speaker 8>used the word censorship. I do not think it was censorship.
<v Speaker 8>I made the case that but for the fact that
<v Speaker 8>it was so close to airtime that it had the
<v Speaker 8>effect of not spiking the piece, and that's an important distinction,
<v Speaker 8>but holding the piece, many of the edits were legitimate,
<v Speaker 8>and then the piece that did air a few weeks
<v Speaker 8>later was unchanged the actual body of the piece. But
<v Speaker 8>there was a long addendum afterwards that I really thought
<v Speaker 8>as a news consumer gave worthy and excellent information, Like
<v Speaker 8>there was a question about if tattoos would have warranted
<v Speaker 8>inclusion in a prison, and during the piece they talked
<v Speaker 8>about this. One guy's tattoos were the Jumpman logo from
<v Speaker 8>Michael Jordan, and he didn't have any tattoos that would
<v Speaker 8>you know, flag an investigator. However, the guy did have
<v Speaker 8>a swastika tattoo and he had a sixty six six
<v Speaker 8>tattoo and then and then sixty minutes. I think they
<v Speaker 8>noted that.
<v Speaker 1>That's all you need, really, that's that's all you need
<v Speaker 1>to pay somebody in a goolag.
<v Speaker 8>No, it's wrong. You're right, there's absolutely no justification for that.
<v Speaker 8>But as an explanation, I would just say, if you
<v Speaker 8>want to strengthen and if you want to make a
<v Speaker 8>piece as air tight as possible, you even include the
<v Speaker 8>portions that don't open you up for critique on the
<v Speaker 8>back end. So I would say during the piece they
<v Speaker 8>could have talked about the swastika as a he did
<v Speaker 8>have this on him, however, and he doesn't even know
<v Speaker 8>what it is, and in many cultures it doesn't have
<v Speaker 8>the valance that of Nazism. Okay, So there's a long
<v Speaker 8>way of saying that what Barrywise did or what CBS
<v Speaker 8>did in that incident was I think justifiable in terms
<v Speaker 8>of the substance of the piece. The timing was rather bad.
<v Speaker 8>Then there is the bigger question of you know, is
<v Speaker 8>she trying to turn CBS into some Trump water carrying network.
<v Speaker 8>And there are a couple of high profile examples, including
<v Speaker 8>Tony Dikoppo, the new anchorman saying we salute you, Marco Rubio,
<v Speaker 8>and you don't want an anchorman saying that. However, if
<v Speaker 8>I my sister was saying this to me, and I said, okay,
<v Speaker 8>how can I falsify that thesis?
<v Speaker 3>Right?
<v Speaker 8>Because if the thesis is true, it has to be falsified.
<v Speaker 8>What other evidence might I be able to introduce such
<v Speaker 8>that you would say, ah, it's not a water carrying network.
<v Speaker 8>What if I pointed to one hundred or two hundred
<v Speaker 8>incidents of their anchor people asking extremely tough questions to
<v Speaker 8>and of the Trump administration since Weiss took over, and
<v Speaker 8>that has happened, and they gave They did one of
<v Speaker 8>the best interviews with Homan right after the the Ice shooting,
<v Speaker 8>and Margaret Brennan has been great on Face the Nation
<v Speaker 8>and other sixty minute pieces have absolutely filaid the Trump administration.
<v Speaker 8>So if you watch what people say about CBS, it's
<v Speaker 8>I think, become a pile on. If you actually watch CBS,
<v Speaker 8>and there's too much time to watch everything, I do
<v Speaker 8>think that it would be indistinguishable to most viewers. If
<v Speaker 8>you put up the CBS Evening News and ABC World
<v Speaker 8>News Tonight and Tom Yamas's News, you wouldn't be able
<v Speaker 8>to say which one's the supposedly pro Trump one I
<v Speaker 8>do not believe.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, I mean, I guess to push back, one thought
<v Speaker 4>might be that all the networks are to some degree
<v Speaker 4>not doing the kind of reporting that you would want
<v Speaker 4>to see when you have an assault on civil liberties,
<v Speaker 4>including what we started with. I mean, here's just a
<v Speaker 4>follow up question about WIS in particular, And one piece
<v Speaker 4>of reporting suggested that she was really criticizing the show
<v Speaker 4>for not interviewing Steven Miller and giving him his full due.
<v Speaker 4>And I guess in that case it was a normal
<v Speaker 4>official I might see the point. But Stephen Miller, of course,
<v Speaker 4>is known for lying, for for just you know, acting
<v Speaker 4>in a way that words don't seem to connect to
<v Speaker 4>truth necessarily, and I guess I wonder about that.
<v Speaker 3>Also.
<v Speaker 4>The other worry was, you know, the sort of affection
<v Speaker 4>that she showed for Trump in person at one point.
<v Speaker 4>And so I mean, to any of those concern you,
<v Speaker 4>and also more broadly, I mean, what about the thought that, yes,
<v Speaker 4>they might not be that different than the other network players,
<v Speaker 4>but maybe we're in trouble in that corporate media more
<v Speaker 4>generally just isn't.
<v Speaker 3>You know, And it's not.
<v Speaker 4>It's not I don't think disconnected from ourther discussion, because
<v Speaker 4>there is a chilling effect going on when you see
<v Speaker 4>Trump threatening his critics as he has across the board.
<v Speaker 8>Yeah, I have no I have no problem with purveyor
<v Speaker 8>of news trying to establish decent relationships with newsmakers. This
<v Speaker 8>happens all the time. It happened when there was this
<v Speaker 8>kerfuffle when the host of Morning Joe went down to
<v Speaker 8>Lamara Lago and I think a lot of people talked
<v Speaker 8>about bending the knee, and I don't know what actually
<v Speaker 8>happened there, but this is just a tried and true
<v Speaker 8>tactic of you talk to the people you're going to
<v Speaker 8>be reporting on and say, and Bill Maher too, oh yeah,
<v Speaker 8>people filayed Bill Maher for taking that meeting, and Bill
<v Speaker 8>Maher has a quasi news show. It's what you do
<v Speaker 8>with the actual coverage, not the optics of if you're
<v Speaker 8>nice or not or seemingly nice or kiss someone on
<v Speaker 8>the cheek. You know. Then again, many of us might say,
<v Speaker 8>I think my lips might melt off if I tried
<v Speaker 8>to kiss him, But then again, don't take the job
<v Speaker 8>of running a news organization, because that's what a news
<v Speaker 8>organization has to do and to convince the people that
<v Speaker 8>you're reporting on that you're going to be fair. I
<v Speaker 8>think is fine now as far as getting a reference
<v Speaker 8>or a quote from Stephen Miller, if you can't do that,
<v Speaker 8>the piece would probably be better if you get one
<v Speaker 8>of his classic uh bit old flecked effectives. I don't
<v Speaker 8>know else, but I think she also tried to get
<v Speaker 8>home in, you know, and she had or that organization
<v Speaker 8>has shown that it has a decent in with Homan
<v Speaker 8>because he was on the evening news right after the killing,
<v Speaker 8>the second killing in Minnesota. So I'm saying it's worth
<v Speaker 8>a try. It's probably wasn't worth a try at that
<v Speaker 8>last moment. But Sharon Alfonsi said, if we allow the
<v Speaker 8>administration to have the last say in this and they
<v Speaker 8>could spike a piece, then we're not engaging a journal.
<v Speaker 8>That is true, that's not what happened.
<v Speaker 1>But the sixty minute piece had been legally vetted and
<v Speaker 1>finalized for broadcast.
<v Speaker 8>Wet isn't the same right legal? I mean, I've had
<v Speaker 8>many pieces you probably have the equivalent of yes, this passes, muster,
<v Speaker 8>we won't get sued. It doesn't mean that you know
<v Speaker 8>it wasn't that best piece.
<v Speaker 1>It can be, right, But I think Sharon Alfonsi's whole
<v Speaker 1>critique was that this was political. This wasn't editorial. This
<v Speaker 1>was because it was yielding to political pressure because Trump
<v Speaker 1>was publicly complaining about sixty minutes and now Anderson Cooper
<v Speaker 1>apparently has more free time on his hands to be
<v Speaker 1>a dad. I mean, seemed to scream to be connected.
<v Speaker 8>Right, they seem to be. I'm not saying you're wrong,
<v Speaker 8>And there's certainly there's something going on politically in that
<v Speaker 8>Paramount and sky Dance do seek approval a merger if
<v Speaker 8>that happens. If I was al Phonsie, I'd be unbelievably upset.
<v Speaker 8>She did the piece in the way that sixty minutes,
<v Speaker 8>which is the most highly regarded broadcast news program out there,
<v Speaker 8>they have like a murder room of a murder board,
<v Speaker 8>which is a phrase where people ask you the toughest questions,
<v Speaker 8>and the pieces past that, and the regular process of
<v Speaker 8>the sixty minutes piece, which is like the gold standard
<v Speaker 8>had been passed. So she doesn't want to have to
<v Speaker 8>fly back from Texas and redo a piece, and she
<v Speaker 8>got upset, and it's understandable and she made allegations like censorship,
<v Speaker 8>and she said that it seems political. I can understand
<v Speaker 8>her being upset about that. I don't think the process
<v Speaker 8>was great, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was political.
<v Speaker 8>Many other explanations for what it could have been. Then again,
<v Speaker 8>I can't disprove that there wasn't some political motivation, and
<v Speaker 8>it could be broader, like here's the politics of it
<v Speaker 8>where redefining CBS as something different from what it had been,
<v Speaker 8>and everyone at CBS will say something like, well, that's
<v Speaker 8>horrible because what CBS had been is and they'll reach
<v Speaker 8>for Morrow and harvest of fame and the CBS has done.
<v Speaker 8>But if you look at the ratings, what CBS is
<v Speaker 8>is the last place network and if you don't and
<v Speaker 8>kind of buy a lot in a lot of its news.
<v Speaker 8>And I'll also add that sixty minutes is still a
<v Speaker 8>highly rated news show after football, and when it doesn't
<v Speaker 8>air after an NFL game with its lead in, it's
<v Speaker 8>a mediocre news show. It doesn't even do as well
<v Speaker 8>as forty eight, not mediocre in quality, but if it's watched.
<v Speaker 8>And so these broadcast networks want viewers, and they want money,
<v Speaker 8>and they want to maybe take a few more Hail
<v Speaker 8>Mary's than the people within the CBS who think that
<v Speaker 8>they're the guardians of this great institution that cannot fail.
<v Speaker 4>And I might just pull back a little bit to
<v Speaker 4>the big picture and ask, and you know, this is
<v Speaker 4>a really interesting discussion. You're giving a defense of journalism
<v Speaker 4>as it's you know, traditionally practiced in a normal time.
<v Speaker 3>I would say absolutely, But I guess I.
<v Speaker 4>Think what makes this moment different is that the president
<v Speaker 4>of the United States is in an all out attack
<v Speaker 4>on free speech and on our institutions of democracy. And
<v Speaker 4>so my question to you, you know, thinking about all
<v Speaker 4>these journalistic principles, is whether or not the sort of
<v Speaker 4>traditional balance and neutrality that we might associate with journalism
<v Speaker 4>has to shift a little bit. Maybe you think it doesn't,
<v Speaker 4>But even we had Jake Tapper a few weeks ago,
<v Speaker 4>and I was surprised that by the end of the
<v Speaker 4>discussion he really just came out and said, yes, it's
<v Speaker 4>not a two sides moment, you know, even for me,
<v Speaker 4>even for traditional journalism, because when you have an attack
<v Speaker 4>on democracy, you have to cover it as such. So
<v Speaker 4>I guess that's my I don't know if it's a
<v Speaker 4>pushback as we abstract from the Barry Weiss's case and
<v Speaker 4>pull back from that specific example.
<v Speaker 3>But I mean, what do you think.
<v Speaker 4>My sense is that it really isn't a moment in
<v Speaker 4>which we hear equally from two sides, or we consider
<v Speaker 4>Steven Miller's view alongside its opposite, that we have to
<v Speaker 4>do a kind of coverage of the moment that understands
<v Speaker 4>the historical place that we're in, which is that democracy
<v Speaker 4>is fragile and that all the institutions that we've for
<v Speaker 4>a very long time taken for granted are under attack.
<v Speaker 3>As you said quite rightly, there was a lot.
<v Speaker 4>Of talk in previous decades about subtle forms of racism,
<v Speaker 4>and now white supremacy is so overt. You know, we're
<v Speaker 4>facing a different kind of threat, different magnitude. And I
<v Speaker 4>guess I think that too about the president. So just
<v Speaker 4>invite you to react to that.
<v Speaker 8>Yeah, I most identify with Marty Baron, who was then
<v Speaker 8>editing the Washington Post, and there was this discussion in
<v Speaker 8>the newsroom right after Trump was elected the first time,
<v Speaker 8>and what Baron said was, we don't go to war,
<v Speaker 8>we go to work. That's what I think you should do.
<v Speaker 8>You shouldn't issue fairness, you shouldn't issue I am still
<v Speaker 8>a believer the ideal of objectivity, not that it could
<v Speaker 8>always or maybe even ever be achieved, but this notion
<v Speaker 8>in journalism circles of there's no such thing as objectivity,
<v Speaker 8>so let's just pre define the truth and report from there.
<v Speaker 8>I do not think that that is the best way
<v Speaker 8>to actually arrive at the truth. So, yeah, Jake's absolutely right,
<v Speaker 8>there's no two sides to Hey, maybe the January sixth
<v Speaker 8>rioters had some really good points or shit on Nancy
<v Speaker 8>Pelosi's desk in a really good way for their balance. Right,
<v Speaker 8>there's no way, there's no way to do that, and
<v Speaker 8>there are so many stories like that. But when you can,
<v Speaker 8>and I don't think the Seacup prison is, you know,
<v Speaker 8>some example that we have to orient ourselves around. You
<v Speaker 8>should consider the sides, the accurate sides of an issue,
<v Speaker 8>not come predetermined. There are some things, there are some
<v Speaker 8>points that even the Trump administration makes correctly. And then
<v Speaker 8>I think your discernment or a journalist's discernment doesn't even
<v Speaker 8>necessarily come from let's give Trump his due or the
<v Speaker 8>Trump faction there full due. It's more like of the
<v Speaker 8>people correctly who are upset or up in arms about
<v Speaker 8>what Trump is doing. What is the best and most
<v Speaker 8>rational tone or analysis, right? So I'm just thinking of
<v Speaker 8>this recent Supreme Court case, and beforehand there was a
<v Speaker 8>lot of analysis saying the Supreme Court is illegitimate and
<v Speaker 8>we're in a constitutional crisis. So you can report on
<v Speaker 8>it like that. You could report on it as if
<v Speaker 8>that's your assumption, or you can say, well, what's a
<v Speaker 8>constitutional crisis. Let's define what that is. What are the
<v Speaker 8>costs of calling the Supreme Court illegitimate? If the Supreme
<v Speaker 8>Court then comes and strikes down something like the tariffs,
<v Speaker 8>if we already define them as illegitimate, doesn't that give
<v Speaker 8>Trump a lot of room in leeway to act as
<v Speaker 8>if that ruling was illegitimate. So I think that that
<v Speaker 8>is where it's not both sides, but it's a full
<v Speaker 8>analysis and a fair analysis of different ways of interpreting
<v Speaker 8>all the phenomena that's going on in our society.
<v Speaker 1>I just want to say The New York Times has
<v Speaker 1>a great series that's starting about how we need to
<v Speaker 1>listen to the economic concerns of people who defecate On
<v Speaker 1>Nancy Pelosi's desk, I highly recommend it.
<v Speaker 2>Mike, You've been so jars.
<v Speaker 8>With Midwestern diners and they've difficult.
<v Speaker 1>We found so many men who deficated in the Capitol
<v Speaker 1>that day, and we're listening to them.
<v Speaker 2>You're so generous, We're.
<v Speaker 8>Able to put it in little boxes and ship it
<v Speaker 8>into that company where we could find out if they
<v Speaker 8>have bowel disease.
<v Speaker 1>I wanted to just ask you one last question, if
<v Speaker 1>I can drag you here for a little longer. Your
<v Speaker 1>new show How To Your work is really known for
<v Speaker 1>engaging people you disagree with to an admirable extent, and
<v Speaker 1>I'm just curious on how to level What have you
<v Speaker 1>learned about arguing without dehumanizing?
<v Speaker 8>Well, one of the last hosts of that show is
<v Speaker 8>Amanda Ripley. She wrote the best book on this about
<v Speaker 8>how we spin out into conflict that we can't pull
<v Speaker 8>back from. And so what I try to do, what
<v Speaker 8>I said to you is some like if I were
<v Speaker 8>to falsify that, and as people who believe in the
<v Speaker 8>enlightenment and the ability of to falsify a thesis, that
<v Speaker 8>struck you as oh yes, yes, for something to be true,
<v Speaker 8>that is it something we have to engage with. And
<v Speaker 8>then I said something like, might I present to you
<v Speaker 8>some counter ideas? And then you know, this probably tickled
<v Speaker 8>your self conception of men who are open minded. So
<v Speaker 8>that was I don't know if it's a tactic. I
<v Speaker 8>fell into it quite logically, but that's the sort of
<v Speaker 8>thing that I try to do when disagreeing and coming
<v Speaker 8>out with coming out with a blunderbuss of counter statistics.
<v Speaker 8>It actually it does get the most engagement in our
<v Speaker 8>algorithmic world. And all these headlines like Fugel saying owns pesca.
<v Speaker 3>Oh, that's the title of our show. How did you know?
<v Speaker 1>Oh, please spell it with a pe Corey, please spell
<v Speaker 1>owned with a piece so I could pay her the millennials.
<v Speaker 9>Please, my god, you really guessed it the opponent of
<v Speaker 9>Oh my god, that'll find my friends who like the
<v Speaker 9>Confederacy really like the concept of owning people.
<v Speaker 1>Wow, Mike, what a pleasure. Thank you so much for
<v Speaker 1>joining us today.
<v Speaker 8>My pleasure. Thank you guys so much for having me.
<v Speaker 2>Mike.
<v Speaker 1>What is the best way to follow you and to
<v Speaker 1>keep up with your brilliance all the time?
<v Speaker 8>You know, my show is the Gist. It's on every day,
<v Speaker 8>and then I have the show how to so the
<v Speaker 8>recent one is how to emigrate to the Netherlands as
<v Speaker 8>a throat ble because Dan Savage as that question, he's
<v Speaker 8>actually more than a throuble, it's polyamorous. So you can
<v Speaker 8>check out those two shows wherever you get your podcasts,
<v Speaker 8>or go to Mike Pesca dot.
<v Speaker 2>Com right on. Thank you so much, thank you.
<v Speaker 4>Thanks so much, Mike, what a pleasure to have you
<v Speaker 4>on the opening the office.
<v Speaker 1>Much gratitude to Mike Pesca, Corey, great booking. Thank you
<v Speaker 1>so much. You get the best guests as professor, what's
<v Speaker 1>the what's the best way for our listeners to keep
<v Speaker 1>up with your brilliance the other six days of the week.
<v Speaker 4>Well, you can find me on Blue Sky as Democracy
<v Speaker 4>prof of course you can review us wherever you get
<v Speaker 4>your podcasts. We're on Spotify, we're on Apple. We're way
<v Speaker 4>beyond five hundred and thirty now and almost all five stars.
<v Speaker 4>So thanks for that, and you know, tell your friends,
<v Speaker 4>send an email let them know what a great discussion
<v Speaker 4>we had today, including the great discussion about journalism with
<v Speaker 4>Mike Pesca following up on other discussions, and of course
<v Speaker 4>good to have people that we don't always agree with
<v Speaker 4>right on.
<v Speaker 1>Well, thank you, Professor. You guys can hear me on
<v Speaker 1>Sirius XM five nights a week on Channel one twenty seven.
<v Speaker 1>Corey joins me live every Monday, and we do take
<v Speaker 1>your calls.
<v Speaker 2>I got a substack.
<v Speaker 1>My book is Separation of Church and Hate, and Professor,
<v Speaker 1>thank you so much.
<v Speaker 2>Once again for another great episode.
<v Speaker 1>We'll see you guys next time on The Oaths and
<v Speaker 1>the Office.