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April 19, 2021 - Dinesh D'Souza
01:04:13
COURT PACKERS Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep 71
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The insidious court packers.
The Derek Chauvin trial.
He may be guilty, but is he guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?
And the pastor who took Gavin Newsom all the way to the Supreme Court.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza podcast.
The times are crazy in a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
Court packing. That's what the Democrats are now up to.
There is a new bill that's been introduced by Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts in the Senate, and also Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the House.
So these are two influential Democrats.
They're supported by Hank Johnson of Georgia and Representative Mondaire Jones of New York.
And they want to add just enough members to the Supreme Court to give the Democrats an immediate majority.
So the current right-leaning majority is 6-3.
This is, of course, assuming we count Justice Roberts as a conservative.
He's a little bit more of a centrist these days.
But nevertheless, let's just say 6-3 right-leaning.
So by adding four justices, it gives the Democrats a one-seat majority.
And they want Biden to have all these nominees and have them right now.
Now Biden himself is a little more cautious about all this.
Biden wants a commission to study the issue.
But that can be understood as a kind of nothing more than a delaying tactic to sort of get to somewhat of the same result.
Biden is pretending, and of course you hear Jen Psaki talking about this, well, you know, we're not just studying the number of justices, we're studying the processes of the court.
So all kinds of excuses to sort of, we're looking at the whole thing to try to make it sort of run better.
But it's very clear that the motive behind all this is to pack the court.
And so the Biden program, which Pelosi is also on board with, is to have this commission produce recommendations for how to pack the court, and then for Biden to point to the commission to gain legitimacy and try to build public support for what is surely an unpopular, but also kind of, well, I won't say unprecedented.
FDR tried to pack the court.
We're going to be talking more about that.
But FDR failed, and his effort was defeated in part by opposition from his own Now, here is Ed Markey talking about the need to pack the court.
Listen. And we do it by adding four seats to the court to create a 13-member Supreme Court.
These four new seats to be filled by President Biden will reconstitute the United States Supreme Court.
The bench will then rightly reflect the values of the majority of the American people on whose behalf they serve.
Now, there are two things that jump out at me right away with regard to Marky.
The first one is the rank hypocrisy of the man, because not many people remember.
In fact, I didn't even remember, but Debbie remembered.
Debbie's like, wait a minute. Isn't this the same guy who was talking about the need to keep the court exactly at nine, not to increase the number of justices?
Of course, he was doing this when Republicans had a majority in the House and the Senate, and Trump was the president.
He was a little worried that the Republicans might try to pack the court.
So he's like, listen, let's be very sure that we don't need more than nine.
So this is the same guy.
Now, in a completely unprincipled way, when he sees the political winds have shifted, the wind is sort of blowing at his back now, so he goes, wait a minute, who cares about principle?
Obviously, that was a tactical move before to block the Republicans from doing it, but it's a completely different matter if we're doing it.
So this shows that the Democrats are deeply unprincipled here, as the marquee example illustrates.
Now you might say, wait a minute, aren't Republicans equally unprincipled?
Don't Republicans believe the exact opposite?
Weren't Republicans for packing the court before and now they're not?
Actually, no. Republicans never tried to pack the court.
There was never any kind of movement with any kind of leadership behind it to pack the court, even when it would have been to the Republicans' advantage to do that.
So, Republicans are standing and have stood on principle on this.
And Democrats have shown that they don't have any principles.
Well, the other thing that Markey says, which I think is very striking, is this idea that the court must reflect, he says, the will of the majority.
The will of the majority.
And I think this is not only a kind of a popular idea among Democrats, it's kind of the underlying assumption for why they have a moral justification for packing the court.
Even though courts are not supposed to reflect majority sentiment.
Now, why not? Why shouldn't a court simply reflect the will of the majority?
Well, the answer is that the court is supposed to serve, as you may say, a kind of umpire in a game.
Now in a game you have two sides and you can almost think of the audience as reflecting the popular majority.
The audience is going to, by and large, back the home team.
And so if it were up to the audience to decide every time, the home team would always win because the majority is cheering for its own side.
The problem is that the game has rules, and the rules are intended to protect both sides.
Both sides play under the same rules.
When you're playing basketball, you don't lower the net for one side.
If you're playing tennis, you don't move the net up and down depending on who's hitting the ball.
You have rules that are intended to protect all the players in the game equally.
And majorities and minorities in democratic society have got to be assured that they're playing by the same rules.
We're not just talking here about majorities and minorities.
We're also talking about due process of law.
Citizens are entitled to be treated equally.
It doesn't matter whether they are Trump supporters or Democrats.
By and large, an American citizen who is charged with...
American citizens who are charged with the same offenses should be treated equally if they are in the same circumstances.
And so the concern here is that the Democrats, in the name of appealing to an electoral majority, are running roughshod over these protections.
They're basically saying, we don't need an umpire.
Now, many times when you watch a game, you'll notice that the home team might lose.
And the audience goes silent.
The audience goes silent because the other player is doing better or the other team is scoring more points.
And the audience is grudging, but the audience accepts the rules of the game.
Why? Because the audience realizes that we need fair rules and we need a fair adjudicator who is not a partisan of one side or the other side who is calling the shots.
That's why we need an independent judiciary.
Now, it's not perfect. Umpires can make mistakes, but we have processes in place to try to make sure that, as best as possible, we can have an independent judiciary, nominated by the President, confirmed by the Senate, but then appointed for life so they're able to ultimately, you may say, live beyond the immediate circumstances of their appointment.
The bottom line is that it is the rule of law that is essentially up for grabs here.
It is the rule of law that the Democrats want to override in their effort to pack the court and in doing so, destroy the independence of the judiciary.
I want to probe the insidiousness of court packing kind of at the deeper level, which is to say, to go beyond the claim that the Democrats want to establish a one-party system They want to reconcile the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary.
They want to push forward with all this legislation that they otherwise might be blocked by the court.
So we know what they want.
We know their goal.
Their goal is to run roughshod over their opposition and to do it in the name of democracy.
Earlier, I played a clip of Senator Ed Markey saying, in effect, that we've got to have a court that will do our bidding because that's what democracy requires.
That's how you respect the will of the majority.
And just now, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says pretty much the same thing.
She says, I support the court backing.
I'm going to quote her. She goes, I do think we should be expanding the court.
Why? Here's the key point.
The idea that nine people, that a nine-person court can overturn laws that hundreds and thousands of legislators, advocacy and policymakers drew consensus on, we have to ask ourselves, I think as a country, how much does that current structure benefit us?
And I don't think it does. Now, what she seems to be saying is that why should anyone, let alone a court, stand in the way of the majority?
And why shouldn't the majority have its way every single time?
It's kind of like saying in a game, why do we even need umpires?
The umpire might block what the crowd wants.
Why do we need an umpire at all?
Now, she uses a very interesting word, consensus, implying that legislatures have achieved consensus.
We know, of course, that there's no consensus.
The country is deeply divided.
The whole point of majority rule in her case is to override the minority, even though there may be a five-seat majority in the House.
Disregard what the other 220 Republicans have to say.
Let the Democrats have their way.
In the Senate, it's 50-50.
It's a draw. But nevertheless, bring in Kamala Harris, 51 now to 50.
We have the majority.
So what she calls consensus is no consensus at all.
Obama, by the way, had said something very similar.
He complained, this was during the Obamacare debate, that, quote, an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.
So, by duly constituted, he seems to say that is...
Along the lines of the Constitution, that is in sync with the Constitution, but of course, that is the question before the court.
Is Obamacare, in fact, constitutional?
Can you mandate that people do certain things that Obamacare mandates that they should do?
So it's important here to go to sort of first principles and think of a very simple question.
We keep hearing about democracy and majority rule, and I want to ask the fundamental question, why should majorities rule?
What gives majorities the moral right to rule?
At all? Now, you might say, well, that's because there are more of them, and that would seem to be an argument that appeals to force.
In other words, we're ten people, we are six of us, you're only four of you, six beats four, we can wrestle you four to the ground.
But presumably the argument for democracy is more than a naked contest of force, because then it would resemble the king of England saying, I have the army on my side, we've got the longer spears, we can kill all the peasants if we have to, and therefore we have a right to rule, because we are the stronger.
So what is the case rooted in justice or morality for majority rule?
Well, this was taken up by the founders.
And the founders had some very interesting things to say about it.
I'm going to now read from the Federalist Papers.
This is Hamilton, Madison, and Jay writing under the name of Publius, Federalist 47.
Very remarkable statement, worth keeping in mind especially today.
"...the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands." Whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.
Notice that the American founders here, or the spokesmen for the American founders, the defenders of the Constitution are saying that tyranny can come from a king, it can come from an aristocracy, or it can come from the people.
Even a majority is not immunized from tyrannical impulses.
Even a majority can tyrannize over who?
Well, over the minority.
Here's a line from Joseph Story, the great political, the great interpreter, judicial interpreter of the Constitution.
He goes, the Bill of Rights is an important protection against unjust and oppressive conduct on the part of the people themselves.
In other words, the people themselves, the majority, has to be kept in check.
Now, why is that?
Why does the majority have to be kept in check?
Isn't it true that the majority gets to decide for the whole?
No, that's not obvious.
If I'm in a group of 10 and someone goes, why don't six people decide whether or not we can take all your money?
I'd be like, no, I don't agree.
I don't agree to that system.
I would never join a club in which I would be in the four.
I'd be like, I'm out of here.
So, according to Madison...
We have majority rule as a kind of inferior substitute for consensus.
Even though Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talks about consensus, we don't have consensus.
And in fact, admittedly, consensus is very difficult to achieve.
If you have ten people, you may not always be able to get all ten to agree.
So why do you agree to have a system in which the six decide?
Well, that's based on two premises.
One, the six are going to decide for the welfare of the ten.
In other words, the six are going to keep in mind the interests of the other four when they decide.
That's the first thing. The six have got to be ultimately deciding for everyone's benefit, not just their own, not just their own at the expense of the four.
And the second point is that the six don't get to decide everything.
There are certain decisions that are kept outside the bounds of the six.
That's the meaning of limited government.
And the second is the four have certain inviolable rights, minority rights, but rights enshrined in the Constitution, in the Bill of Rights.
And those rights have got to be protected against the majority.
When the six are in violation of those, we need an umpire to call foul, stop, not allowed, unconstitutional.
And who is that umpire?
That's the court. So the job of the court is to permit...
To clear the way, if you will, for majority rule, but only the type of majority rule that is consistent with limited government, which is to say constitutional government, and, on the other hand, consistent with the protection of minority rights.
So all of this gobbledygook from Markey and from AOC and from Obama, which is to say, hey, wait a minute, we have a majority, we've decided, we've cast our votes, nobody gets to stand in our way.
Yes, actually, we do.
We get to stand in your way.
We get to block and tackle.
The founders called this checks and balances.
The checks and balances are intended to block things, to slow them down, to make sure that majority rule can be reconciled with minority rights.
This is why we need a court.
And the fact that the Democrats don't see this, they don't care about it, or they see it and they're indifferent to it, and they want to push ahead, they want to establish, you may say, absolute majority rule, this is, to quote the founders themselves, right out of Book 47 of The Federalist, the very definition of tyranny.
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We're facing the threat of court packing now from the Democrats, and we faced the threat of court packing before, also from the Democrats.
In the 1930s, I believe 1937, it was President Franklin Roosevelt who tried to pack the court.
Now, Roosevelt's proposal would have added six justices to the Supreme Court.
So from nine, the court would have gone to 15.
And Roosevelt would have had an immediate, he would have had the chance to appoint all six, he'd have an immediate pro-New Deal majority on the court.
Now, the court has had nine justices since 1869.
So even in Roosevelt's time, there had been half a century, at least, of the court being nine.
And Roosevelt's idea was, let's have a court that's going to sign off on my stuff.
Now, let's ask why the court was not hospitable to doing that.
The FDR wanted to have all kinds of government intervention in the economy, and the Supreme Court's position was really simple, that it is the job of the court to protect not just civil rights, but also economic rights.
In other words, people have an economic right to the fruits of their own labor.
And the Constitution is equally protective of economic rights and civil rights.
And so government regulation can't just be signed off on because, well, the majority decided.
No, the idea was that people have a right to have their property and their possessions and the fruits of their hard-earned labor protected from the majority, which is trying to confiscate those resources.
So this was the court's rationale.
And FDR, of course, impatient with that, wanted to have his own court.
Now, interestingly, the moment FDR announced his court packing scheme, it was cheered.
It was cheered by whom?
It was cheered by the fascists in Italy and the fascists or National Socialists.
In Germany, they were like, wow, this is fantastic.
FDR is doing exactly what we do.
We pack the court here in Italy.
We pack the court here in Germany.
But in America, the reaction was more hostile.
By the way, not just from the Republicans.
The Republicans, of course, mobilized against this.
But so did a lot of Democrats.
So did a lot of Democrats.
Who read right through FDR's rhetoric.
And FDR's rhetoric was very similar to a lot of the mumbo-jumbo we hear today.
Let me quote FDR and see how familiar this sounds.
If we would keep faith with those who had faith in us, if we would make democracy succeed, I say we must act now.
So here is the old buffoon FDR sounding just like Ed Markey today or sounding just like Chuck Schumer.
And here's FDR again.
We must save the Constitution from the court and the court from itself.
Listen to this.
This is basically dictatorial language camouflage.
Save the Constitution from the court.
We have to save the game from the umpires.
We've got to make sure all the plays are called in our favor.
We've got to save the umpires from themselves.
They keep calling plays against us.
This is unacceptable. This is Mussolini language.
And of course, Mussolini was on the sidelines cheering it.
The difference between then and now is that a lot of Democrats jumped up There were accusations that FDR was becoming a dictator.
And in the end, FDR had to give in.
FDR, the champion, the guy who was trying to push the legislation through the Congress, this is Garner, comes to FDR and he goes, you're beaten.
You don't have the votes. And so FDR had to drop the idea.
Now, there's a little bit of an unfortunate twist to all this, which is that even though FDR failed in packing the court, The court, apparently intimidated by this fury and this attempt to pack the court, began to now bend in FDR's direction.
A crucial justice, who was on the, you might say, conservative side, pivoted To the Democratic side, this is sometimes called the switch in time that saved nine.
But of course, that is a kind of cutesy way to describe something really terrible, which is the intimidation of the judiciary, the destruction of the true independence of the judiciary branch, and the fact that justices, this is almost like a juror who says, you know, I'm afraid that I'm getting, I'm terrified of what might happen to me if I vote this way.
And therefore, I'm going to be voting another way, a complete perversion of the judicial system.
This is actually what happened, and FDR's gangsterism helped bring it about.
So even though FDR, you may say, lost the battle, he won the war in that the court, although it remained at nine members, now became more pliable to FDR's wishes.
So let's hope that today we can not only push back the court packing scheme in itself, but But also the atmosphere of bullying, intimidation, and gangsterism that goes behind it.
And this would call not just for pushing back the court-backing proposals, but pushing back on the Democratic Party and the left itself.
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I'm really happy to have on the podcast Pastor Jeremy Wong.
Jeremy is the Associate Pastor at Orchard Community Church in California, and this is the man that took Gavin Newsom all the way to the Supreme Court and won.
Jeremy, thanks for coming on the podcast.
Let me start by asking you, what provoked you to step out and challenge The government of California, the governor, Newsom, and push that fight all the way to the Supremes.
Sure. Well, Dimesh, thanks for having me on your podcast.
It's really a pleasure to sit here and talk with you.
And to answer your question, I love that you cast me in such a heroic light, you know, but I didn't do a lot of the legal legwork because it's not my wheelhouse.
But I think it was a confluence of several things.
That made me want to partake in this lawsuit.
So, you know, initially, last year when the pandemic first hit, we shut down like everyone else because we were told two weeks to flatten and we wanted to be safe.
And I think as time went on, some things were obvious, especially in how churches were treated different than other entities in society, especially in California.
So, for example, you couldn't go to church.
But you could go buy lumber at Home Depot.
You could get groceries at Safeway.
You could still get, you know, alcohol, marijuana, and like that.
And I think as time went on, it became more and more obvious because he had like a tiered system in terms of reopening, which was Sort of confusing.
There was a flipping back and forth.
But I think in all that, what was really obvious was kind of the inconsistency and the arbitrary nature in which they were declaring some things essential, other things non-essential.
Some things are safe, but other things like it were not safe.
So I think it was frustrating as a pastor because our people could do all these things, but we could not properly care for them.
You know, technology is wonderful, which allows you and I to talk this morning, but at the same time, as a pastor, it's not the same for me to care for you over the screen.
Real life goes on during a pandemic, and if you are suffering a loss of family member or going through depression, stress, anxiety, hopelessness, it's tougher to grant comfort and care over a screen.
And so for, I think, the government to also, in all that, dictate how many people I can or cannot have in my home and remove, I guess, our own personal risk assessment, which we do every day when we leave the house or partake in whatever activities, that has been completely removed off the table.
They just said, no, you may not.
And so I think in our particular case, we had a small group from our church that we were hosting regularly just to have Bible study and prayer and kind of talk about life and how God has been working in it and to share that together.
But that had been removed off the table.
And so all that frustration, I guess, pented up.
There was an opportunity that came up.
In May, there's a lady by the name of Paulette who wrote an open letter to our county health supervisor.
I subscribed to her newsletter, and I think in about September, she asked, hey, is there anyone who used to host meetings in their home because we're starting a lawsuit?
And I said, well, I am one.
So I'm one of, I think, 10 plaintiffs that signed on to this lawsuit.
My specific, I guess, lane is that I used to host meetings Theological conversation and Bible studies in my home, but I was no longer allowed to do that.
Now, I assume that part of your argument is that, listen, you know, if you're going to hold that grocery stores are essential, and medical centers are essential, and Home Depot is essential, and salons are essential, and bars are essential, then what about spiritual needs?
What about psychological needs?
What about, as you said, needs for counsel?
Why are those deemed to be less essential?
And who is the government to make that determination, right?
Right. Absolutely.
That's such a great point.
By what standard are these essential and non-essential?
I think to take it even further, the Constitution, as far as I can see in the First Amendment, extends special protection to religious freedom.
It doesn't extend that same protection to bars or even to restaurants.
So I think what the Supreme Court is, and I've been reading the decision carefully here, they seem to be saying, they're not saying that churches have a kind of special status, but what they are saying is that they have to be treated no worse.
than any of these other institutions.
You're allowed to impose rules, but you can't single out the churches and put them in the back of the line, so to speak.
And it looks like five justices.
I mean, interestingly, Roberts didn't go along with you this time, but the other five conservatives voted in the majority.
Do you feel good about the way the decision came out?
And do you think it's actually partly behind?
I mean, Governor Newsom, as I understand it, has ended capacity and location restrictions on churches.
Do you think that this latest slap in the face by the Supreme Court, very well deserved, has caused him to finally back down?
Yeah, that's a good question.
You know, and I think part of it is being out here in California.
When I first partook of this lawsuit, I didn't have very high expectations because I thought, and I don't know that much about this kind of stuff, but I thought, you know, it would probably die at the Ninth Circuit because that's where good things go to die.
And, you know, for it to go to the Supreme Court level and have a look at theirs, you know, exceeds expectations on my part and I think is huge in terms of the church being treated equally.
And, you know, to your point, I thought the same that we had And so that was also part of the frustration of, you know, what in the world is going on between the treatment of these places and of churches.
And in terms of Newsome, I think, you know, this is part of it being slapped down, but there is also another case that our church was part of, Gateway Church v.
Newsome, which also helped in terms of lifting capacities on how churches should conduct their business.
Now, I'm looking at the Eleanor Kagan dissent in this case, and I find it interesting because she doesn't say, of course, the government can do whatever it wants in an emergency.
She insists that the government of California is treating institutions equally, but she makes a couple of statements that strike me as very controversial, and I just want you to react to them.
She goes, number one, she goes, when people gather in religious settings...
The interactions are likely to be longer than they would be in a commercial setting.
Kind of like if you're in Home Depot, you buy your stuff and you get out of there, even though I've seen people spend hours at Home Depot, quite honestly.
But she implies that the religious interaction is different because it takes longer.
And then she goes, number two, she goes, private houses are typically smaller and less ventilated than commercial establishments.
And three, it's more difficult to enforce mask wearing and social distancing in a private setting than in a commercial setting.
So she's making all these kind of practical judgments, which I assume that she's not even really an expert to be able to do.
And pronouncing that because of this, there is no differential treatment for the churches.
It's just that churches are kind of more super-spreader environments, I guess is what she's saying, than commercial settings.
So maybe I could ask you as a last question to comment upon these practical judgments to say, are they even true in your experience?
Yeah. Well, I would find it funny then, in response to her statements, for example, at the end of last year, I got a tattoo in a tattoo parlor where we weren't spread that far apart.
Shania Twain was playing on the radio and my two friends and I were singing our guts out in a tattoo parlor.
That was a non-permissible activity in terms of singing indoors, but I could do that in a tattoo parlor.
At the same time, I could gather with people at an airport Right?
Sit at a gate for hours.
Or if we traveled, I could sit in a metal tube being hurled through the air, shoulder to shoulder with strangers.
As long as we had our masks on, no one would bat an eye.
But how dare we meet at church?
That's kind of crazy to me.
And then at the same time, in terms of hosting people in our homes, why would she assume that we are unable to do so safely?
Right? We have a yard.
We could safely use the yard and distance if we needed to.
So I think, you know, in trusting places like marijuana dispensaries or the NFL, which has large sweaty men slamming their bodies together for an entire season of activity, that's okay as well.
But I can't do similar risk assessments in my own home and host people for theological discussion and Bible study.
That just seems at best inconsistent, if not just downright silly.
Jeremy, you made your case very well.
I want to commend you for taking this battle all the way to the top and winning.
I think you struck a blow for religious freedom in America.
Thanks for coming on the podcast.
Well, thanks for having me, Dinesh. It was a pleasure.
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rockauto.com One of the most fundamental principles of American justice is due process of law.
And with due process of law go a whole bunch of things.
We need to have a jury of your peers.
We need to have a fair trial.
We need to have a trial in which the independence of the jury is protected.
Both sides need to be able to state their case.
And what I find deeply disturbing is to see the flagrant ways in which these processes are being challenged, if not blatantly violated, in the Derek Chauvin case.
Now, I recognize that the case generates passion.
I recognize that we all, I mean...
Seared into our memory is the eight and a half minute video of a knee on a man's neck.
There's a sense in which we can't unsee or forget those things and that's probably true of the jury itself.
But this is all the more reason that we take steps to make sure that this is in fact a fair trial and that due process is maintained.
So think of how disgusting it is in the face of all that.
To see Congresswoman Maxine Waters, a sitting Congresswoman, showing up in the middle of the mob outside the courtroom, showing up at the Black Lives Matter protests, and inciting, I shouldn't say inciting violence, inciting further violence, demanding in advance a verdict, and threatening more confrontation and more violence if that verdict does not occur.
Listen. Not just manslaughter, right?
I mean- Oh no, not manslaughter.
No, no, no. This is guilty.
For murder. I don't know whether it's in the first degree, but as far as I'm concerned, it's first degree murder.
What happens if we do not get what you just told?
What should the people do? What should protesters on the street do?
I didn't hear you. What happens- What should protesters do?
Well, we've got to stay on the street, and we've got to get more active.
We've got to get more confrontational.
We've got to make sure that they know that we need business.
So pay close attention to what she's saying.
She's basically saying we're looking for a guilty verdict.
And by looking, she doesn't mean we're onlookers looking out of curiosity.
She means we demand a guilty verdict.
And she goes, if we don't, we cannot go away.
We have to, we got to stay on the street.
And she tells the protesters to quote, get more confrontational.
Let's remember, these are protesters, by the way, who have been breaking things, they have been burning things, they have been attacking people.
So it's already violent.
And what she's saying is she wants to see more violence.
Now, not only is this a grave threat to the integrity of the process going on inside the courtroom, this is straight out incitement.
This is intimidation of the jury.
This is an effort to ultimately achieve mob justice.
And I say achieve because I think from Maxine Waters' point of view, that would be an achievement.
If you told her that the mob can help dictate the outcome, she would say, well, that's obviously why I'm here.
We want to dictate the outcome.
For fairness, for this idea of a judicial system where you hear both sides, you cross-examine witnesses, and you have informed jurors who are able to see close up what really happened.
Because the rest of us are watching this from some distance.
We're not close enough to be able to call the outcome, but the jury is.
That's why we have a jury system at all.
Now, I think what makes this What's doubly strange is that this is the same Maxine Waters who has joined a lawsuit in Washington, D.C., suing Trump for incitement for what he said on the mall.
Wow. Basically, Maxine Waters is saying that Trump, when he says to the protesters, let's go down to the Capitol, let's march peacefully and patriotically, that's incitement.
But what she's doing is not incitement.
Now, it seems to me that as this Trump case goes forward, in which there's an attempt to hold Trump liable, Trump can call Maxine Waters as a witness.
He can say, listen, Maxine, you come on up here.
Let's play the video. This is you.
What's your definition of incitement?
And what is your definition of incitement according to which I would be guilty of it and you would not?
And the truth of it is that Maxine Waters' statements are far more incendiary, far more directly connected to violence.
In fact, specifically calling for confrontation, which is not speech, it's action.
Get out there and go into people's spaces.
Confrontation. She's calling for it.
Trump never called for it. Trump never said, go in there and confront people.
Face to face, the people in the Congress.
Make them do your bidding.
And by the way, they don't do your bidding.
That's only the beginning. We're going to stay on the street.
None of that. So, this is a...
This is very bad.
Now, you might say... Am I saying that Maxine Waters should be prosecuted?
There are some conservatives who go, arrest her!
Prosecute her! Impeach her!
But I actually think that what Maxine Waters is doing is very irresponsible.
But it is protected speech.
It is protected speech because in a free society, political figures are able to...
They shouldn't. It's not fair for them to do this.
But they are protected in their ability to speak.
And even if their speech is incendiary, even if it is irresponsible, that does not make it illegal.
But of course, by the same token, that applies to Trump.
The things that Trump said on the mall were completely within the bounds.
You can find innumerable Democrats saying things like, we gotta fight!
So words that were interpreted in one way when Trump said them are completely considered normal if anyone else says them.
And that is the issue here.
The issue here ultimately is that We have irresponsibility coming from the Democrats while at the same time they're accusing Republicans who are not being irresponsible of irresponsibility.
And one of the chief malefactors is one Maxine Waters.
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Is Derek Chauvin guilty of murder?
Of third-degree manslaughter?
I don't know. And you don't either.
We have a jury in the courtroom that is trying to make that determination.
The case today goes into closing arguments and then there will be jury instructions and then the jury will try to reach a verdict.
Now, what concerns me about all this is the whole surrounding atmosphere that seems to be almost orchestrated.
The guilty parties here are the city of Minneapolis and the protesters outside and Maxine Waters being one of them, but also the media, all of which I think are trying to create a one-sided impression and indeed I would say a false impression of what is going on.
So the city of Minneapolis started all this by paying 27 million dollars publicly to George Floyd right before the trial.
Hey, here's this money! Message?
We're the guilty party.
Our guy did it. And so we're acknowledging blame, and here's some cash to make you feel better about the outcome.
And the message, of course, to potential jurors is to help them, you may say, prejudge the outcome.
Okay, we get the picture. We see who the guilty party is.
Second, the mob atmosphere around the courtroom every day.
Shouting, threats, Promises to all hell will break loose.
We're going to riot. Maxine Waters, be more confrontational.
All of this is going on.
And then the intimidation of witnesses.
Here's an expert witness on behalf of Floyd who said Floyd's death, in his view, was accidental.
Turns out a bunch of protesters went to his house and left a severed pig's head outside his door.
By the way, unreported in much of the Western American media.
I see this in the Daily Mail.
It turns out they didn't even know.
They went to his old house because they looked him up and he's moved.
But they went to the wrong house.
But the mentality is clear.
Let's intimidate witnesses.
I guess the underlying assumption is you can't be a witness for Chauvin.
He doesn't have a right to a fair trial.
We all saw what happened.
We know the outcome. Chelsea Handler, of course, saying, why don't we just skip the trial?
And so this mentality, and then when you look at the media coverage of the case, it's deeply misleading.
It's one-sided.
It's almost like watching a world chess match and only reporting the moves of one side.
And not only that, but every time one guy takes a pawn or takes a piece, you break into uncontrollable applause and cheers.
Fantastic move!
I mean, when you listen to CNN, you almost feel like laughing.
Deeply emotional testimony.
Riveting from the prosecution.
And then a recent CNN headline to the effect that the defense is walking on a slender reed.
New York Times, pretty much the same thing.
They refer to one of Floyd's friends who won't testify, but they don't say why.
Well, it turns out that the reason the guy won't testify is because he's a drug dealer.
He's actually been selling drugs to Floyd.
He might have been the guy who provided the drugs that killed Floyd.
No wonder he doesn't want to testify.
He could be indicted himself.
So to avoid self-incrimination, he doesn't testify.
Once the trial begins, it turns out that the evidence is cutting both ways.
I'll give you a couple of examples.
At one point, the prosecution with great fanfare says, George Floyd was calling for his mother.
And they refer to a statement by George Floyd where he keeps saying, Mama, Mama.
Well, the defense comes out and points out that George Floyd has the name Mama in his phone, but it's actually the nickname of his girlfriend.
This is the person who was actually dealing drugs to.
He wasn't calling his mom at all.
So this is embarrassing for the prosecution.
It's a small detail, but it's telling because evidently the prosecution didn't even know who Floyd was calling out to.
So, the bottom line of it is, this is a case where, on the one hand, I won't deny, there is a case against Chauvin.
And the case is, we can see your knee on the guy's neck.
He's begging you to let him go, and you won't release the pressure, and the guy dies.
So there is a certain type of logic or presumption that your knee had something to do with that, and you can't discount the power of that evidence.
But on the other hand, there's strong evidence on the other side.
Notably, The autopsy and the toxicology reports, which I have in my hand, by the way.
And when you read them, they are very telling.
Let me just read a couple of things from the...
I'm now reading from the Hennepin County Medical Examiner's autopsy.
Part 3. No life-threatening injuries identified.
Think about that.
No facial, oral, mucosal, or conjunctival petechia.
No injuries or anterior muscles of neck or laryngeal structures.
No scalp, soft tissue, skull, or brain injuries.
No chest wall, soft tissue injuries, rib fractures, vertebral column injuries, or visceral injuries.
Incision on subcutaneous dissection of posterior and lateral neck, shoulders, back flanks, and buttocks, negative for occult trauma.
So basically what the autopsy is saying is, Floyd doesn't seem to have been killed that way.
And then here I'm now quoting the Hennepin County Chief Medical Examiner.
If he were found dead at home alone and no other apparent cause, this would be acceptable to call an OD, an overdose.
The toxicology report says that in fatalities from fentanyl, blood concentrations are variable and have been reported as low as 3 nanograms per milliliter.
Floyd's blood shows almost 4 times that level.
He has 4 times the level of fentanyl in his system to kill him.
So the question is not whether it is possible that Chauvin's knee killed Floyd.
It's not even whether it's probable that Chauvin's knee killed Floyd.
It is whether that is known beyond a reasonable doubt.
Is there doubt, reasonable doubt, that Floyd could have died another way?
This is what that case hinges upon.
That's for the jury to decide.
And the protesters, the rioters, Maxine Waters, none of them know the situation close up.
None of them have heard the evidence straight on.
None of them are in a position to make this determination.
Fair trial means...
Due process means that this decision should be made by the jury that is asked to make it.
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In his famous essay on language, Orwell warned about the corruption of language.
But not just the corruption of language so that language is made blurry and confusing, or even language becomes imbued with cliché and meaningless words.
And all of that is, of course, common in our vocabulary.
In fact, sometimes I think if you...
Make a recording of a typical conversation over, say, ten minutes and you listen to it.
You're ready to blow your brains out because it makes no sense.
There's so little content to it.
It's so vacuous and ridden with cliches.
But Orwell was talking about something more specific, the political corruption of language, which of course has a motive.
And the motive is ultimately to make debate less clear, to rig the debate in favor of one side, to use terms that put things outside the bounds of debate that should be in those bounds.
And I've thought of this because I saw...
A scientific American has now decided to stop talking about climate change.
Let's remember, by the way, that climate change wasn't even the first term.
It was global warming. And when they realized that things get hot, things get cold, it doesn't make sense to call it warming because then people will go, wait a minute, how come it's cooling?
So then they decided, let's just call it climate change because climate change kind of covers everything.
I mean, talk about an unscientific theory, one that covers everything.
But nevertheless, even climate change isn't enough, so Scientific Americans decided to use the phrase climate emergency.
Climate emergency.
And the senior editor is explaining why he came to that conclusion, and his explanation is unbelievably obtuse.
A hurricane blasts Florida.
A California dam bursts because floods have piled water high up behind it.
A sudden record-setting cold snap cuts power to the entire state of Texas.
Now, these are, well, I guess we could call them weather events.
And we've been warned from the beginning of this debate by the climate scientists themselves.
Don't confuse weather with climate.
Climate is, after all, a global aggregation.
Climate is a weighted average.
Climate is what every single weather event put together does measured over long periods of time.
The climate change argument is that the climate has risen in temperature by a degree to a degree and a half over the past 100 years.
It has nothing to do with the fact that a windstorm has swept a little far south and is now hitting Texas when it normally would have passed north of Texas.
But evidently this header of Scientific American is persuaded.
Let's start calling it a climate emergency.
And apparently he's joined by the Columbia Journalism Review, The Nation, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, blah, blah, blah.
So this is exactly what Orwell warned about.
And the reason it's insidious is that it implies that there is no debate over whether we are in a climate emergency.
We are. Let's just take that for granted.
Now, we can debate how we should respond to the emergency, but that we are in an emergency is undebatable.
That's really what Scientific American is trying to do.
And that is, they're trying to gain an advantage in a debate by declaring things out of bounds.
It's not debatable. Then I turn to the AP Stylebook, where I notice, and this is even a little more worrisome.
Why? Because the AP, the Associated Press, the Stylebook is used by a whole bunch of other journalists, newspapers, magazines, and so on.
And AP has been moving toward a certain partisan leftism in its Stylebook.
You've got shadings of meaning and so on.
But now they're going all out.
Recently, the AP Stylebook tweeted that people should not use the term mistress to define someone quote, in a long-term sexual relationship and is financially supported by a man who is married to someone else.
Even though that is the classic definition of mistress, that is in fact the definition of mistress that comes out of the American Heritage Dictionary.
A woman who has a continuing sexual relationship with a man who is married to someone else.
That's what it is.
AP says, no, that's not what it is.
We're not going to use that term.
We have to use the term companion or friend.
Now, wait a minute. A companion does not imply there's any cheating involved.
A companion can be me and my companion decided to go take a walk.
A companion can be a buddy.
A friend is an even vaguer term.
It doesn't imply any sexual relationship whatsoever.
So, you can see that AP is moving not in the direction of greater clarity, but in the direction of greater obfuscation.
Here's AP again in September.
We're no longer going to use the term riot.
Well, I assume they brought the term riot back for January 6th.
But this was prior to January 6th.
They didn't want to use the term riot.
Why? Because they claimed that this word was, quote, So they said, if you're talking about Black Lives Matter or Antifa, you can use words like revolt.
And uprising, because that has a political dimension, even though what is going on is obviously looting and rioting.
So looting and rioting cannot be called looting and rioting.
I wonder what Orwell would think about it.
Going back to the summer, AP says, you have to capitalize the word black.
Why? Because it, quote, conveys essential and a shared sense of history, identity, and community among people who identify as black.
Well... What about white?
AP goes, no. No capitalizing the word white.
That should be in small letters because AP said, quote, White people generally do not share the same history and culture or the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color.
Capitalizing the term white as is done by white supremacists risks subtly conveying legitimacy to such beliefs.
So here is AP engaging in tendentious political argumentation, side-taking in political debates, conferring legitimacy here, withdrawing legitimacy there, based upon highly debatable propositions about history and current politics.
All kinds of nonsense.
Black people share a history, but white people don't.
That's not true. Black people share about the same amount of history as white people.
There's tremendous diversity among black.
Ever gone to Africa? Ever looked, for example, at the differences between East Africans and West Africans?
The differences between, say, Burundi and the Congo?
The differences between South Africa, say, and Tunisia?
Only a moron.
Only someone with no sense of history can claim, well, black people, of course, are very similar.
White people aren't. Don't white people share a heritage that goes back to Europe, transported to the American continent?
So these are preposterous assertions, laughable assertions, that are somehow presented as apodictic or demonstrable.
And it goes on.
AP doesn't like the term pro-life.
On and on it goes. So this is a case where I think an organization that is supposed to be, again, an arbitrator for the news is essentially saying, we're not.
We're not arbitrators for the news.
We're not fair adjudicators.
We are tangentious moralizers who are adopting the left point of view and we're trying to pressure other news organizations, which are already on the left.
Instead of pushing them in the direction of impartiality or fairness, let's push them in the direction of greater ideological bias and partisanship.
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Turn on the notifications so you're notified about it. Tell other people about it. I'd like you to help me get the word out, if you will. And if you have a question for me, audio or video, send it to questionedinesh at gmail.com. Let's go to our question for today.
Listen. Hi Dinesh.
Since Joe Biden has historically been against court packing, why do you think that he has suddenly changed his mind and appointed this new committee to evaluate whether or not there should be additional justices on the court?
Because I think we all know, since they're primarily Democrats, that they will all agree that there should be more justices on the court.
Thank you. I think that Joe Biden for much of his career was in the, you may almost call it in the mainstream of the Democratic Party, which held that court packing is a little bit of a dangerous game because two people can play at it.
And remember, American politics has been pretty pendulum-like for the past 30 years, ever since Reagan.
One side has the presidency, the other side has the Congress.
And it's only brief moments where either the Republicans or the Democrats have had all three branches of government.
The idea is that if the Democrats do it, the Republicans can do it.
I think it is this desire to preserve the independence of the judiciary that has led even a couple of Democratic nominees on the court.
I think, for example, of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who warned against She said, well, we've got nine justices.
It's been that way for a long time.
True, it's not in the Constitution, but there's every good reason to stay with that system of picking umpires and the number of umpires that we have on the court.
Similarly, very recently, a sitting court justice, Stephen Breyer, said, think twice.
Think long and hard. He was issuing a warning to his own party before you try to pack the court.
Why? Because he said this will diminish confidence in So, Joe Biden was, I think, bored with all this, but now, essentially, he sees that there is an opportunity...
Maybe a very small window of opportunity.
It might only last a year before we get to the midterms, in which the Democrats have narrow control of the House, very narrow control of the Senate, and they do have the presidency.
So if they can get the court somehow, they will have it all.
So what you see here is Biden, his own doddering way, and probably pushed by all kinds of people behind him, to press his advantage.
To the fullest. To take whatever risk is involved.
Why? Because there's this ultimate prize waiting for them.
We will control all the levers of government, and we'll be able to then run roughshod over our opponents.
So the greed and lust for power is driving these people, and I think that's behind Biden's sort of switcheroo.
He realizes he has to dress it up with the idea of a commission, but I think his goal is clear.
Let's pack the court in the small window of time that we have.
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