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Feb. 7, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
49:44
HOLD THE LINE Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep764
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Coming up, I'll talk about what happened with the Mayorkas impeachment.
I'll also examine the prospects of the Supreme Court taking the Trump immunity case and affirming Trump's immunity from prosecution in the January 6th case.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton joins me.
We're going to talk about the border, the perniciousness of the Senate border bill, and expose the political machinations behind it.
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This is the Dinesh D'Souza Show.
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The first one is that the House narrowly failed to impeach Mayorkas.
Now press reports are that the motion failed because four Republicans joined with the Democrats to save Mayorkas, but in fact three did.
Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, Tom McClintock of California, and Ken Buck of Colorado.
The fourth guy, Blake Moore, actually wants to impeach Mayorkas, but he joined at the last minute.
Why? Because if a vote fails like this, then one of the guys who voted in the majority can introduce a motion to reconsider, can change his vote, I want the whole matter to be reconsidered.
And so Republicans are mobilizing to have this vote again, probably in a week or so.
Steve Scalise was out of town.
And with Blake Moore switching his vote, the Mayorkas impeachment should go through.
So it was a blow that there was a miscount.
In fact, Democrats wheeled in a guy at the last moment who had just been through surgery.
So they were able to sort of Save Mayorkas, but maybe only for a few days.
So I'll be talking a little later in the podcast to Ken Paxton, the Attorney General of Texas, and we're going to cover this topic as well as other issues related to the border.
So I want to talk about the other big issue, and that is the The D.C. Court of Appeals.
This is a three-judge panel.
And yeah, there's an Obama judge, a Biden judge, and then an 80-year-old judge appointed by George H.W. Bush, who's been on the court for over 30 years.
So this is a, well, I have to say a kind of a left-wing slash establishment coalition of D.C. judges.
And they say Trump does not have full immunity for his actions that he took on January 6th.
And I'm going to quote from the decision, quote, former President Trump's alleged efforts to remain in power despite losing the 2020 election were, if proven, an unprecedented assault on the structure of government.
And so in other words, he can be held accountable for it.
Now, right away when you read the statement, you have to pause at least once, maybe twice.
Former President Trump's alleged efforts to remain in power...
What were those efforts? How did Trump sort of attempt to remain in power, except by contesting the result, which he's fully entitled to do?
So the implication is that Trump sort of refused to leave the White House.
He's surrounded himself with military men and said, try to get me out of here if you can.
I'm not leaving. But...
All of this is like fanciful and absurd.
But what the court is saying is, well, it may be fanciful and absurd, but that comes out in trial.
That's not our job to figure out.
This is the allegation being made against Trump.
And second, despite losing the 2020 election again...
Yeah, really? Maybe.
Who knows?
How can we adjudicate that without looking at what actually happened in the 2020 election?
So there are a couple of huge kind of factual premises that are smuggled in here.
But what the court is essentially saying is that Trump, if he did these things, is responsible for a massive kind of assault on the government, and therefore he can be He cannot have immunity.
Now, what's very strange about all this is that the reasoning of the court appears to be a kind of, I would call it suicide reasoning, because it's a reasoning that blows up on itself.
And let's look at this very carefully.
It says, since then, meaning since January 6th, hundreds of people who breached the Capitol have been prosecuted and imprisoned.
On August 1, former President Trump was charged in a four-count in diamond, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Former President Trump moved to dismiss the indictment and the district court denied his motion.
Today, we affirm the denial.
Quote, this is the important part.
For the purpose of the criminal case, former President Trump has become Citizen Trump with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant, but any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as president no longer protects him against this prosecution.
So what is the court saying?
Trump used to be the president.
While he was the president, he perhaps, in fact he did, enjoy presidential immunity.
But once he ceases to be president and is now citizen Trump, the immunity is gone.
Now, the reason this is really weird and makes no sense and I argue is kind of a suicidal type of reasoning is the actions that we're talking about for which President Trump is being criminally charged occurred when?
January 6th, 2021.
Who was the President of the United States on January 6th, 2021?
Donald J. Trump!
So, is the court seriously saying that you take an action as president?
You cannot be prosecuted for that action because it is undertaken as part of your official duties.
You have immunity. But, once you cease to be the president, you can be prosecuted not for things you did subsequently, but for the exact action that you took while you were the president.
This is crazy.
This would be like saying this, and this is not really, I mean, I'm giving an analogy, but it's a direct analogy.
It's applying the exact same reasoning.
It would be something like this. Obama was responsible for Benghazi because he was the president when that happened.
It is possible for Obama to be criminally charged for the deaths in Benghazi because he doesn't have presidential immunity, to which the court's reasoning would be, well, when he was president, since he took those acts when he was president, he enjoyed immunity then, but what is he now?
Is he still the president today?
Well, some would say yes, but officially, legally, no.
He's citizen Obama, same as citizen Trump.
So can Obama be indicted right now, criminally, for actions that he undertook while he was president since he is no longer president and no longer enjoys immunity for those same actions?
This I think is a complete desecration of what presidential immunity means.
Why? Because presidential immunity means immunity for the things that you did while you were president.
And, of course, the Constitution, as we know, doesn't say that the president is immune altogether.
It says that the president is criminally immune.
He can, however, be impeached.
He can be thrown out for abuses of power, high crimes and misdemeanors.
So notice the Constitution locates the way for dealing with these presidential actions, even crimes, high crimes.
How do you deal with a high crime?
You impeach the president.
And Trump's point is not only is that the remedy, impeachment, but if you are charged in an impeachment and it goes to the Senate and they acquit you, then basically the process has run its course.
They tried to impeach you. Now, if they had successfully impeached you and said, you've committed all these high crimes, you're found guilty of these high crimes, and not only are we going to throw you out, but now you're vulnerable for a separate criminal prosecution of these high crimes, that could be debated.
But that's not even an issue here because in this particular case, Trump was not successfully removed from office by the impeachment process.
He was exonerated in the Senate.
So this is, I think, going to go to the Supreme Court.
And, in fact, yesterday in my local Q&A, somebody was asking me, like, how do I consider the prospects that Trump will prevail in the Colorado case?
By the way, the Colorado case to remove Trump from the ballot is coming up this week, February 8th.
It's going to be heard. Probably the Supreme Court will deliver a decision pretty promptly after that.
So there's the Colorado case, and then there is the immunity case.
And my reply, which I sort of repeat here, is I think that Trump is quite likely, in my view, to win in the Colorado case for the simple reason that it's a Pandora's box.
I mean, the court is not going to want to say that blue states can throw the Republican nominee off the ballot because then red states are going to throw the Democratic nominee off the ballot.
And I can guarantee you that We're good to go.
So I don't think that is going to happen.
I think that the court will rule in Trump's favor on that.
But on the immunity case, I'm a little bit less sure.
So I'll continue to talk about this topic in the days ahead.
But I think that Trump is more vulnerable on the Supreme Court either not taking the immunity case or taking the immunity case and saying that, yes, Trump has a substantial degree of immunity, but he does not have, as he seems to contend, A sort of absolute immunity.
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Guys, I'm really delighted to welcome to the podcast our friend Ken Paxton.
He's the, well, you know who he is, the Attorney General of the State of Texas.
His website, KenPaxton.com.
Ken, thanks for joining me.
I know you've got your hands full.
This is a crazy time.
So much going on.
I want to talk, I want to focus on the border, but before I do that, let me ask you about this business with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and why that is so significant, not just for Texas, but for the country.
Yeah, I appreciate you asking that.
It is, in my opinion, more important than any issue we've got going.
It will determine the elections that we have coming up in mid-February, early voting, and then March 5th will determine which way Texas goes.
Let me explain really quickly. We have a bifurcated system in Texas, legal system.
Half the civil cases go over to the Texas Supreme Court and file a bill.
Other cases The criminal cases go to the court of court of appeals.
So there's no appeal right from the court of court of appeals.
Well, George Soros figured this out.
He came into Texas and he got Democratic DAs elected and liberal Democratic DAs in the bigger counties.
Where Austin is in Houston, Bayer.
So none of those DAs are really interested in prosecuting crime, including voter fraud.
So the other person that can prosecute voter fraud is the Attorney General of Texas.
That was granted by the legislature in 1951.
We've done thousands of cases.
As a matter of fact, when the Court of Criminal Appeals came in two years ago, two days after the filing deadline to run against the three members that were up, I was prosecuting about 900 cases of voter fraud.
So the narrative that there's no voter fraud, we had lots of voter fraud, and we didn't have enough people to do it.
We had four people doing it.
And so this was going on.
They came in out of the blue.
After 71 years of precedent, they overruled their own precedent of thousands of cases.
And I don't know how many judges agreeing that this was good practice.
And they overruled the legislature and they overruled the Constitution and said, no longer can the Attorney General prosecute voter fraud.
And so right now we're trying to unelect three of the members of the court of parole appeals with three challengers.
I want to name their name because it's super important that people vote because people don't know who's on the court of parole appeals.
And that's how George Soros has accomplished this.
And their names are Gina Parker, Lee Finley and David Shank.
And that's, again, I'm going to be at Sheena Parker, Lee Finley and David Shank.
And then there's a Supreme Court justice, John Devine, that that same group is going after.
We want to make sure that he gets reelected.
So those races are more important than any races I've ever worked on in my life.
And the reason is, in fact, I think I believe I saw one of the justices who was making a kind of apologia for her ruling, and she was saying, in a sense, I'm helpless.
My hands are tied.
I have to follow the Constitution.
So this is not a matter of what I think about the merits of the issue.
I don't have the prerogative to rewrite the Constitution.
But what you're saying is that the Constitution doesn't say or even mean what she says it means.
The legislature has the authority.
Under Article 4, I have four responsibilities.
One of those four is to do such things as are required by law.
The legislature can require me to do certain things, and one of the things they require was I prosecute and fraud.
She came in, along with her allies.
By the way, it was an 8-1 boost, Kevin Urey being the only good one.
She came in and said, oh no, it's unconstitutional because there's a separation of powers argument here.
You're the executive branch.
You're not allowed to go into court on criminal matters at all, period.
So that means that literally every attorney general in the country is violating the Constitution because that separation of powers argument would be applicable everywhere across the entire country.
And that means that the founders got it wrong.
That means every state's gotten it wrong except for this criminal court appeals.
They're the first ones to understand the Constitution that attorney generals can't go into court on criminal matters or any matter, I guess.
I mean, what makes this particularly disturbing and shocking is that these decisions are coming from Republicans.
In other words, they're coming from people who are not on the left, but they're enabling, it seems, the success of the left.
Yeah, and I think the way this was done, the Court of Appeals is virtually unknown.
I speak almost every day about this issue somewhere.
And I have the most educated Republican audiences.
But I'll ask them, can you name the nine members of the Court of Appeals?
And there's never been anybody that's been able to do it.
The most I ever got, I got one guy to name three and a half people.
So, typically, no one in the most educated Republican voters in our state knows that.
So, very easily, a guy like George Soros was able to get these people on, so-called Republicans, but we don't know who they are.
They just showed up, they got elected, and boom, we were stuck with this terrible decision that now I'm trying to overturn.
Ken, let's turn to the border.
Can you update us on what is happening?
Well, first of all, it seems like the wire fences and so on are still up in Eagle Pass.
Explain the significance of Eagle Pass.
Is it that it is a kind of a favored crossing point for the illegals?
Why has Eagle Pass become the sort of center or locus of this controversy?
Well, you know, it's a great question.
It's really kind of surprising that it is.
We have 1265, 66 miles of border in Texas with Mexico.
And this is public lands, Texas public lands, not federal lands.
And the governor took it over to block them from using it as a logistics point for the cartels to bring the people to Biden, to the border patrol that Biden is controlling.
And we blocked it off.
I don't know why the Biden administration is, you know, why the other 1,250-something miles are not better.
As a matter of fact, this is a more dangerous spot for people to cross.
So I don't know why the Biden administration is insisting on a dangerous place for migrants to cross where some have drowned and others could potentially drown.
It's a weird thing that they care so much.
I think it's more the point that we can do whatever we want.
No one can stop us.
We can work with the cartels to bring anybody in we want, let them bring their drugs in.
We can do whatever we want, and the states cannot stop the damage that we're doing.
We're allowed to do it. That's their argument, and they really believe in it.
I mean, they seem to be in a weird position of saying that.
It's sort of like the firefighters who are saying, you know, it's our job to control the fires.
But hey, if we decide to let the fires burn, that's our prerogative.
That's our responsibility.
Texas has nothing to say about it.
Even worse if they decide to help start the fires.
Which is what they're doing with the cartels.
We're going to start the fire. And by the way, because we're entitled, it's our job to stop the fire.
You can't put out the fire.
You're not allowed to. I don't care if burned your whole town down.
You can't stop us. Where is this case?
Explain, you know, the Supreme Court issued, lifted the injunction that had been placed by an appellate court, essentially saying that the Biden regime can step in and cut the wire.
Is that all pending the full hearing of this case?
And when is this case supposed to be heard?
Right. So I filed that case.
It was on the wire, the wire and the fences, because I was Actually, I was out of office when all this was happening.
I got back in. The first thing I did was file this lawsuit against the Biden administration because I thought this is insane that they could just start cutting down fences on our property.
So we got an injunction to the Supreme Court at a very narrow vote with Roberts and Barrett siding with the liberal judges.
We lost 5-4 and we lost the injunction.
But that doesn't mean we can't still put up wire.
It doesn't mean we can't put up wire after they cut it down to let cartels transfer their people in or let the cartels come across.
We can still put it back up.
There's nothing stopping us.
And so we are going to continue to put it up.
And if the Biden administration wants to, as you said, set the town on fire, well, guess what?
We're going to put the fire out and stop the fire.
I mean, Ken, is it possible?
I'm just thinking out loud.
I mean, is it possible for Texas to wire fence the entire border and then sue the federal government to reimburse Texas for the cost of doing what the federal government should be doing according to the law anyway?
So it's a little challenging because we don't control all of it.
A lot of it's private. Most of it's private.
So we'd have to get permission.
The points of entry, some of those are controlled by the federal government.
So we can't stop that.
All we can control is the public property that we either, you know, some governmental entity has ownership of.
So, you know, we're very limited, but we're trying to do what we can in the places that we can.
Understood. Now, let's turn for a moment, and I want to go to this in some depth, but let me start by asking you this question.
There's been this sort of border bill in the Senate, and it appears to be kind of like an airplane that's been hit by a missile, so it seems to be spinning in the air right now, headed for the ground.
I saw that Mike Johnson said it's dead on arrival in the House.
I'm not sure if it's completely dead in the Senate, but it does appear to be sort of gasping.
But would it be right to say that this bill, if it became law, would completely strip Texas of its authority to do what it is currently doing and transfer that authority to the D.C. courts and the federal government?
Yes, and we fired one of those missiles yesterday by sending a letter to Congress, and we had, I think, 16 different attorney generals sign that letter.
Yes, one of the secret little plots in this, I do not understand why the Republicans are helping the Biden administration with this, because right now the Biden administration is in trouble on the border.
I mean, he's losing on that issue.
It's the number one issue. And the Republicans are saying, well, let's bail out, you know, right before the election.
Let's take ownership of its failure.
Let's let the 5,000 a day in.
Let's make, let Mayorkas, the complete failure that he is, do the asylums on his own and make his own decision.
Let's tell Texas and all these other states they have to sue in the D.C. Circuit.
Where it's a lot harder to win, where it's a lot more liberal than maybe a circuit that we would choose.
Let's take over the courts and not let the Texases of the world stop this illegal action by the Biden inspection.
These are Republicans. I don't understand.
It's got to be one of the most ludicrous, idiotic Republican things I've ever seen done.
When we come back, Ken, I want to ask you to think about the psychology of why Republicans would even do this.
We'll be right back with Ken Paxton.
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I'm back with the Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, his website KenPaxton.com.
Ken, look at this Senate border bill.
You know, it, first of all, even in classifying aliens, it says we're only going to focus on Mexico.
We're going to sort of pretend like it's just Mexico.
Any aliens coming from any other country are not counted in this bill.
Wow.
It's true.
It says that Biden gets to essentially set aside the law on his own discretion.
If he decides it's in the national interest of this law not be in effect, he can do that.
Money goes to NGOs that are actively involved in bringing the illegals over in the first place.
So this is a, an utter disaster.
As you look, I mean, you're at the state level, but as you look at Washington, D.C.
When you look at the Republican Party.
What do you think is going on here?
I mean, is this a case where McConnell only cares about Ukraine, and so he's like, you do something about the border that's going to pass, and this is the way we can funnel $60 billion to the Ukraine?
Or is this a case of Republicans, as you say, they're snatching defeat from the jaws of success?
Well, that's exactly it.
And I don't understand it.
I can't pretend to understand what the motivations are.
It certainly doesn't benefit America, any part of this bill.
I think they've had money going to Gaza in this for humanitarian reasons.
I don't understand any of the bill.
I don't understand how it benefits America.
I don't know why Republican leadership in the Senate, a guy like James Lanford or Mitch McConnell would want to do something like this.
And of course, even my own Senator, Senator Corrin, didn't say he wasn't going to vote against it.
I think he's open to voting in favor of it because...
But it doesn't make sense to me. It's not good for America.
It certainly is helping Joe Biden potentially stay as president.
It hurts Trump because now, even if he wins, it takes away his power to do things at the border that need to be done.
So I can't give you a good explanation.
It's not good. It's one of the worst bills I've ever seen.
And it's unfortunate that some Republicans in the Senate are actually pushing it.
I don't understand it.
I mean, I saw Crenshaw talking in a clip, and he was saying something to the effect of, you know, it's making the situation better than it is.
That's not true. It's making it worse.
It's making it worse, yeah.
I mean, it's... It's making it worse because even though there are some controls in the bill, it is shifting the locus of institutional power so that ultimately the Biden guys have all the levers that they need to do whatever they want.
I mean, that's what you said in your post, that ultimately this is a loss on every front.
It's horrible. It's basically...
Looking at the situation where Biden has ignored the law, he's dismantled what Trump did, and now we have a disaster.
We had more people come across more in December than I think we ever have, over 300,000.
And so all this does is the Republican Congress, the Senate in particular, says, you know what?
Let's just accept what he's done and let's just sign on to it like a great thing and we'll just say it made things better.
That is just as wrong and false as it can be.
That is the dumbest thing I think I've heard from the Republican leadership.
It doesn't make any sense and it's harmful to my state.
It's harmful to the entire country.
There is no good in it and Crenshaw is absolutely wrong on this.
Well, the other thing I find odd about it is you got this border bill.
It's tied to an Israel provision, which is tied to a Ukraine provision.
And what are the Israel and the Ukraine provisions about?
Basically enabling Israel to secure its border.
Basically about Ukraine being able to secure its border.
Frankly, if Ukraine didn't care about its border, well, think about it this way.
Why don't we have a provision that says that Ukraine allows 5,000 Russians to come in every day?
Right? They'd never go for that.
The Republicans would be going nuts.
The government would be going insane.
Or allow Hamas to go into Israel.
Let them, you know, have $5,000 a day going to Israel.
Why don't we do that? It's the same kind of thing.
That's how insane this is.
Let's turn to Mayorkas.
There was an effort to impeach Mayorkas in the House.
I think the Republicans did a bit of a miscount.
The Democrats apparently wheeled some guy who just had surgery in at the last minute.
Scalise was out of town, so the Republicans lose by a couple of votes, but apparently it's coming back next week.
Again, you know, I'm watching Ken Buck, and I've had Ken Buck on the podcast, and, you know, Ken Buck is sort of making a sort of what I think he thinks is a highly principled point, which is he's like, Mayorkas is doing a bad job, but it's because he's following bad policies.
It's not because he's a crook.
It's not because he's taken money.
So we can't really impeach him.
Because after all, he is a functionary.
He's simply representing Biden.
And therefore, on principle, we've got to stay away from this impeachment business because it's not appropriate in this situation.
I mean, this is sort of Republican reasoning.
Now, I cannot imagine any Democrat even thinking this way, right?
So aren't we talking here about a weird psychological difference between the parties that we hear this kind of...
Rationalization, but only from our side, apparently.
Well, this seems to be...
Look, the Democrats have never impeached their own.
I went through an impeachment where the Republicans sided with the Democrats because the power of our Texas House is controlled by the Democrats.
So we do it all the time. We cave all the time.
Carsell just walked the drugs across.
There's also the terrorist risk.
So we're talking about fundamentally altering the safety of our country.
That seems to me like something worthy of being impeached for.
If there's nothing worthy of being impeached for, that's worse than many crimes that we could impeach for.
I would think this is on the edge of treason and deserves to be dealt with by Congress.
I mean, I think that is the key point, Ken, that, you know, if you have this facilitation of cartels, of trafficking, of drugs, I mean, that is a high crime if there ever was one.
And let's say that it's not Mayorkas' idea.
Let's say it's Biden's idea, the idea of the junta that's running the country.
And Mayorkas is just the hitman.
He's just the guy who's sort of carrying out the orders of, you know, the Don Corleone's running the country.
Well, guess what? The hitman needs to be locked up too, right?
I mean, the hitman is participating in the crime.
He's part of what is necessary to carry out the crime.
So I don't understand this idea that he's immune from responsibility because he's merely following orders.
No, I mean, your analogy is great, and it speaks to the point, if we catch the hitman first, don't we put him away?
We don't want him to shoot anybody else, right?
So why do we want Mayorkas?
If we haven't gotten to Biden yet, hopefully we will in November, don't we want to take out the hitman?
That's Mayorkas. He's the hitman.
And I agree with you.
He needs to go because of all the damage he's doing every single day to our country.
Ken, it looks like the strategy of the left here on this border issue is this.
They put up this border bill.
I think they've now realized the border bill isn't going to work.
So they are going to try to use it to say Republicans now own the issue.
Republicans had a chance to fix it.
They chose not to fix it.
It's now a Republican problem.
All of Biden's rhetoric is to the effect of, and I think you and I both know how deceitful it is, he's acting like he doesn't have the authority right now to do anything.
But he's waiting for this authority from this new law, and then he will spring into action immediately.
But if he doesn't get the authority, his hands are tied.
The problem is one...
I mean, they literally are trying to put the blame on Trump.
I'm going to just say it, but Joe Biden is a liar.
He's lying about that.
He has the authority, just like Trump did, to stop illegal immigration.
The difference is Trump enforced existing federal law.
He didn't need anything new. He enforced Remain in Mexico, stopped catching the release, started building a wall, enforced Title 42.
to all these things actually work. We can compare the numbers. Joe Biden on day one said I'm not deporting anybody else and then he dismantled federal law and started working with the cartels to get people here.
That is an absolute false city. It's a lie.
It's a deception.
He is not telling the truth.
Do you think, and you said this phrase, which kind of got my attention, working with the cartels, do you think it's a case where the cartels kind of know what they're doing, the Biden people know what they're doing, each one knows that they're sort of relying on the other, so they don't have to have any direct communication, the one with the other, but they're operating like the two prongs of a scissors, which you can't cut the paper without both prongs, and yet each prong pretends it doesn't know what the other's doing.
You nailed it. It's exactly what's going on.
When Biden started talking and saying we're not going to deport anybody, the cartels were like, wait, we can just bring them to the border.
We don't have to hide them anymore.
They'll actually help us.
So now we can build a network outside of the United States on the border and then into the United States for drugs, for people, and we'll make billions of dollars.
And it's not going to be as hard because the Biden administration, we just take them right to them.
They don't hide. We don't have to hide.
We don't have to do a lot of work. Just get them there.
We charge each person $10,000, $8,000 to $12,000.
And then we have an open border for all the other things we want to do.
So yes, the Biden administration, without signing a written contract, has told the cartels openly, blatantly...
We are helping you do this fast.
Get people here and you will make money.
That has never been said publicly.
It's never been put in writing. But it is the communication that everybody understands on both sides.
The Biden administration and the cartels both understand what the deal is.
I mean, Ken, this is not just scary.
It's downright horrifying.
Thank you, Ken Paxton, for joining me.
I appreciate it. Thank you.
You guys have been huge allies of Mike Lindell and MyPillow over the years.
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I'm talking about the case for Douglas in Harry Jaffa's great book, Crisis of the House Divided.
This is Stephen Douglas, the supreme antagonist of Abraham Lincoln.
These are their debates in 1858 while they're both running for the Senate in Illinois.
And we're talking about these debates because they go to the core of the issues that caused the Civil War, the divide in the country. We're facing a somewhat similar divide today, although in a somewhat different context.
So, it's important to realize that the Democratic Party in the 19th century was a national party.
It had strength in the North, particularly in the cities, kind of the same as now.
But it was also the party of the South.
It was the pro-slavery party.
The Democrats defended slavery.
They protected slavery in the South.
And so any Democrat had to figure out a way, if they were going to win a national election, to create a coalition of the South and the North.
The Republican Party, started in 1854, was a regional party.
The Republican Party was almost entirely in the North, in the free states.
There were a handful of Republicans in the border states, virtually no Republicans in the southern states, And so the Republican.
The Republican Party needed to overwhelmingly win the North, which was the bigger part of the country.
And the Democrats had to figure out a way to balance their votes in the North and the South.
And then as I mentioned yesterday, there's also the emerging power of the West.
So the West is the Midwest, which saw itself as neither exactly North, but not entirely There were obviously Southern parts of the West that tended to be more pro-Southern.
Northern parts of the West, which were vehemently anti-slavery and more disposed to voting Republican.
So this is the background.
And now we come to Douglass himself, and Douglass as a Northern Democrat, an inhabitant of a free state, namely Illinois, it's a little hard to portray Douglass as pro-slavery.
Why? Because he's not in a slave state.
He's not like Andrew Jackson, who came from a slave state and owned slaves.
But Douglas didn't own any slaves and yet Abraham Lincoln accused Douglas of being in effect pro-slavery.
He says your popular sovereignty argument is a hidden recipe for slavery, to promote slavery.
In fact, to extend slavery even to places where it's not there now.
Why?
Because new states, new territories are coming into the Union and if they have a chance to vote up or down and they vote yes for slavery, obviously the number of slave states would now be extended.
And Lincoln argued that you Douglas even believe that northern states could have slaves.
Why? Because again, popular sovereignty is a principle of the state.
The territory decides for itself.
So let's say if Wyoming decides we want to have slavery, there would be slavery in Wyoming.
If California decides, there'd be slavery in California.
Now, none of this in fact happened, but Abraham Lincoln said it could happen if we adopt this popular sovereignty principle.
And interestingly, historians today tend to agree and say of Douglass, here's a common statement that is quoted by Jaffa, that Douglass was admittedly anti-slavery prior to 1845.
Douglass was, in fact, a defender of the Missouri Compromise.
Remember, the Missouri Compromise is the compromise that draws a line directly Across the country, the Mason-Dixon line basically allows slavery south of the Mason-Dixon line, prohibits it north of the Mason-Dixon line, and Douglass supported this and,
in fact, introduced amendments over the years incorporating the Missouri Compromise, which was passed in the 1820s, into subsequent laws so that no laws—when Texas, for example, wanted to be part of the Union— Basically, Douglass goes, hey, listen, we are subject to the Missouri Compromise, and it has to be brought into any resolutions that annex Texas.
So Texas, in other words, is allowed into the Union, but it's subject to the Missouri Compromise line.
But, say historians, in the 1850s, particularly 1854, Douglass becomes totally pro-slavery.
He, in fact, leads a movement in the Congress to overthrow the Missouri Compromise.
The Missouri Compromise is superseded.
Douglas champions something called the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
And the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which divides basically Nebraska into two states, Kansas and Nebraska.
And this division is made subject to popular sovereignty.
Should Nebraska have slaves?
Well... The Nebraskans will decide.
Should Kansas have slavery?
The Kansans will decide.
So, this is Douglass.
This is the application of the popular sovereignty idea to a kind of new way of thinking about the country.
And, say, historians, and one is quoted here, from this sharp corner, his course, meaning Douglass' course, is wholly and utterly pro-slavery.
Now, says Harry Jaffa, is this in fact true?
Is this fair?
Was Douglass really a pro-slavery guy?
And Harry Jaffa says, too, to figure this out, it's not enough to look at Douglass' public statements.
Why? Because Douglass' public statements were deliberately neutral on the issue, and they were neutral on the issue for a point of principle.
The point of principle being, it is not I, Stephen Douglas, who gets to say whether slavery is good or bad.
I'm saying that this should be decided at the local level, at the state and territorial level.
And since it's up to each state and territory to decide, I can't decide for them.
It's kind of absurd for me to proclaim my views on the subject when my whole point is that this should be settled in a decentralized way.
So, Douglass here is kind of the champion of federalism, and also, as Douglass saw it, he's the champion of democracy.
He's letting people choose, through the normal process of elections, what they want to do about this controversial and divisive issue.
But, says Harry Jaffa, when you look at Douglass's private correspondence, the things that he was saying in private, it's pretty obvious that he didn't like slavery.
And here is Jaffa quoting...
From Douglass, writing to a young man who was the son of an old friend and benefactor.
I'm now quoting Douglass.
Very important, because this kind of statement from Douglass is very rare.
You won't find a lot of it, and not in public.
But nevertheless, here's Douglass stating his true views.
Quote, I am not pro-slavery.
I think it is a curse beyond computation to both white and black.
Very interesting statement. Douglas is saying, I think slavery is bad for blacks.
That's sort of obvious.
But I think it's also bad for whites.
Now, you may right away go, how can it be bad for whites?
Whites are basically getting blacks to work for them for free.
But think about it. Slavery makes whites lazy.
It basically gives all the skilled work to blacks.
Who are the people who develop those skills that will be useful later?
Blacks. The areas that are dominated by slavery in the country become economically backward and sluggish.
Very little innovation, very little mechanization, very little technology.
Why? Because you've got the slave to do it.
Who needs a tractor?
And so this is what Douglass is getting at here when he says that slavery is a curse to both white and black.
But we exist as a nation by virtue of the Constitution, and under that there is no way to abolish it.
I believe that the only power that can destroy slavery is the sword, and if the sword is once drawn, no one can see the end.
So Douglass is saying, we don't want a civil war.
We don't want to take a problem that should be settled and can be settled democratically and settle it by force.
The fact that I'm proposing a solution to do that, a formula to do that, popular sovereignty, doesn't make me pro-slavery.
I'm in fact not really for slavery.
I may not say that in public but if you want to know my true feelings this is what they are.
So, this is all important for the simple reason that here is Harry Jaffer showing that the caricature of Douglass as a pro-slavery man is not entirely correct.
Later, we'll see in what sense Lincoln is saying that Douglass is pro-slavery, but just to say that Douglass approves of slavery, he's sort of a northern guy who's sort of in league with the slaves...
True, Douglass does benefit politically from support for the Democrats, both in the North and the South.
But here you can see Douglass as a statesman.
He's trying to resolve a problem that is a national problem.
He doesn't want it to lead to a war.
And so he has a way out.
Now, the way out, which I'll talk about tomorrow...
And it's a surprising way out because you think, well, what's the way out?
It's got the north, you got the south.
And Douglas' answer is, the way out is the west.
The country is becoming bigger.
More and more states are joining the country.
We're going to get, ultimately, we would get, of course, Arizona.
we would get Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, California.
And Douglas knew that those states were not likely to have slaves.
In fact, slavery made no sense in states in which there was no plantation economy.
In fact, those states were being flooded by immigrants coming from Europe who were moving further out west.
So Douglas could see that without a civil war, under popular sovereignty, more and more free states joined the Union.
They joined the Union by choosing to be free states and not slave states.
But the long-term picture, says Douglass, or thinks Douglass, will be an alteration of the balance of power between the North and the South.
Let's remember that in the 1850s, the free states and the slave states were evenly balanced exactly.
How many free states?
13. How many slave states?
13. 13.
But, says Douglass, more states are going to be joining and they're going to be in the free state camp.
So slavery is kind of on its way out.
Why do we need to have a civil war to achieve by blood what will be achieved automatically by demographics and expansion and history?
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