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March 4, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
47:07
SCOTUS SPEAKS Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep782
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Coming up, very good news from the Supreme Court.
I'll review SCOTUS' 9-0 landmark ruling in the Colorado case.
Brandon Gill joins me.
We're gonna hit back at a Never Trump pact that claims he supports Black Lives Matter and defund the police.
And I want to argue that Carrie Lake is doing the right thing by trying to mend fences with GOP moderates, even though she's taking some abuse for doing it.
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Massive ruling from the Supreme Court today.
A 9-0 decision, essentially overruling the effort of Colorado, the state of Colorado, which was including the Colorado Supreme Court, overruling that decision, which would have removed Trump from the ballot based upon a claim that he engaged in insurrection and the 14th Amendment supposedly gives Colorado the right to toss Trump off the ballot.
Debbie and I have been talking about how this decision is going to come out.
We've been doing a little bit of back and forth on what we expected.
Debbie's kind of expecting 8-1.
And with Sotomayor being the holdout, if we think back to the Supreme Court hearing on this topic, Sotomayor was very quiet.
She really didn't play her hand.
It seemed very obvious that the other justices were not on board.
Their reasoning seemed to differ a little bit.
Kagan, for example, would raise one type of issue.
And then Judge Katonji Jackson would say, well, when they talk about officers here that can be removed, They don't talk about the president.
Why is it that they leave out—if they wanted the president to be included as somebody that a state could remove from the ballot, why didn't they say so in the 14th Amendment?
Now, the telling point, in a sense, came up in argument from the Chief Justice, John Roberts, where he said, hey, listen, this is a— This would create, wouldn't it, a kind of free-for-all because if you let Colorado throw Trump off the ballot, other states, other blue states are going to throw Trump off the ballot.
And of course, there were a handful of blue states ready to do that in the wake of the Colorado decision.
And then the Republican states are going to start throwing Biden off the ballot.
And so what do you have?
I mean, you have a virtual dissolution, a collapse of our whole electoral system in which you have a Republican who's only on the ballot in the red states and a Democrat who's only on the ballot in the blue states.
I mean, what kind of a constitutional democracy is that?
Now, interestingly, even though that may be the practical reason why all nine judges decided, we can't allow this.
This is absurd. This will open up a Pandora's box.
This would really destroy our whole carefully constructed structure of government.
Even though I think that is an overwhelming practical reason to tell Colorado and other states, you cannot do this.
If you look at the reasoning of the Supreme Court, you don't hear that argument raised at all.
The court engages in not, let's say, practical reasoning, but judicial reasoning.
And that's not inappropriate, because what the court has to do It has to do a closely reasoned analysis of what the 14th Amendment says in this regard and then apply things like what is the history of this amendment?
What is the precedent?
How has it been interpreted in the past?
And I've actually taken the trouble in a relatively short time this morning to read through the decision very carefully.
And the decision is, as I say, of practical significance because guess what?
Colorado has a primary tomorrow.
It's part of Super Tuesday.
So in a way, it's very important that the Supreme Court made this decision now because it is now.
Admittedly, Colorado and other states said, we've got to leave Trump on the ballot pending the Supreme Court review, but I think the Supreme Court thought it important today, before Super Tuesday, to resolve the matter.
Now, the court makes the following conclusion.
It says, because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the states, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse.
Section three, against federal office holders and candidates, we reverse.
So the Supreme Court's reasoning here is really simple.
They're not gonna get into whether or not Trump did an insurrection.
That would be a factual question.
And in fact, this is kind of what Colorado was hoping for.
Well, it's a factual question, your honors.
We have examined the facts really carefully.
We think that as a factual matter, he did engage in insurrection.
So the court is not going to start fighting with them about the meaning of the word insurrection.
I think that probably a majority of the justices know that it is absurd to call January 6th an insurrection, but the court decided that's not the basis of this decision.
Let's focus on the question of who makes the determination about whether or not somebody is engaged in insurrection and whether there is authority, constitutional authority, to toss them off the ballot.
And the Supreme Court says that responsibility is given to Congress and Congress alone.
Now, how does the Supreme Court reach this conclusion?
Well, the court basically says, let's look at what the 14th Amendment is.
What is the 14th Amendment?
What is its underlying rationale?
It's an amendment that's designed to alter the balance of power away from the states and toward the federal government.
Why? Because the states had just engaged, a number of them, in insurrection.
This is the Civil War.
And after the Civil War, the 14th Amendment was passed to say, listen, we are not going to let the states deprive people of due process of law.
We're not going to let the states take away people's privileges and immunities under the Constitution.
We're not going to let states deny people the right to vote.
This is the meaning of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.
And so you can see that the thrust of these amendments is to reduce state power and increase federal power.
Now, so, says the court, it would be really odd if, given the fact that we're passing amendments here to reduce the power of the states, the court says, quote, Silently no less to disqualify a candidate for federal office.
The silently no less is a real dig here because the Supreme Court is saying there is nothing explicit in the wording of the 14th Amendment, even the relevant section, that says that states can do this.
And so the power of states to decide, Trump engaged in insurrection, we the states have the right, we Colorado has the right to remove him.
This would be a kind of Let's just say it would have to be said it's an implicit power.
In a sense, Colorado is saying even though it's not stated, it is implied.
And the court is saying when the overall thrust of the 14th Amendment is to move power toward the federal government, toward Congress, it would be really weird to put all these hidden powers that are now given to the state.
So the court goes that doesn't really make any sense.
The court then goes on to say that when we think about the presidency, the presidency represents, quote, the united voice of the whole and not a portion of the people.
Now what this means is actually pretty clear that the president represents the whole country.
Even if some states elect him and other states vote against him, he represents the whole country or she represents the whole country.
The point being the president is not a representative of a particular state alone, but a representative of the people as a whole.
And because of that, it seems incongruous to give an individual state or a handful of states the ability to deprive the American people as a whole of selecting a president through the electoral process by removing him preemptively from the ballot.
And the Supreme Court says, you can't do that. There's no power that's given to you in the Constitution to do that.
Now, Clarence Thomas raised the point during the hearings where he said to the Colorado representatives, the lawyers representing Colorado, he goes, show me some examples of where states have in fact, in the past, I mean, let's think about it.
The 14th Amendment was passed in the aftermath of the Civil War.
So we're talking about the late 19th century.
It's been over 120, 130 years since then.
Show me some examples of where states have exercised this power that you say they have and removed people from the ballot, federal officials, forget about the presidency, removed any federal official from the ballot due to, quote, engaging in an insurrection.
And the state of Colorado was unable to give a single example.
And the Supreme Court picks it up here, quote, nor have the respondents, that's Colorado, identified any tradition of state enforcement of Section 3 against federal office holders or candidates in the years following the ratification of the 14th Amendment.
The court does go on to say, but states did disqualify people from holding state office following ratification of the 14th Amendment.
And the Supreme Court goes, here's an important clue.
States do have certain powers under the 14th Amendment and under presumably state constitutions as well.
And that is, states can decide internal matters within a state.
So if a state decides, oh, the Secretary of State was an active participant in some insurrection, okay, you can then decide if you think the guy should be...
There's a process you've got to go through, but you might have the ability to remove someone from the ballot of a state office.
But federal office?
It's never been done.
It's never been understood that way.
That's not what the language says.
You can't do it.
There is simply no precedent for it.
Now, the Supreme Court goes on to then lay out that under Section 3, Section 3 is the relevant section that we're talking about here, and let's look at Section 3 a little more carefully.
It says, it talks about the fact that No person shall be a senator or representative or elector, president and vice president or hold any office, civil or military under the United States, blah, blah, blah, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.
So that's the provision at issue.
And then there's a very interesting next line, which is, but Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each house, remove such disability.
Now, what the amendment is doing, this section is saying that you can't hold office if you've engaged in insurrection.
But Congress can excuse you.
So you could have engaged in insurrection.
And in fact, there were people who fought in the Civil War.
And then Congress said, no, no, no.
We realize that you were on the Confederate side.
But you have now, the states have now rejoined the Union.
You can run for office.
So Congress, in other words, has the enforcement power to...
To remove the effect of this clause as it applies to particular persons.
And that, right away, gives you a clue as to who is enforcing this particular article.
Answer, Congress.
Because if Congress has the power to excuse you, that means Congress also has the power to carry out the provisions of the article.
But notice that there's simply no mention of states having any power here at all.
So, now...
All of this is really kind of important because let's look at the media lead up to the Supreme Court decision.
If you had been only reading the New York Times or only watching CNN or MSNBC, you would have seen a parade of commentators and analysts, the most prominent of which, by the way, Judge Michael Luttig, a kind of never-Trump guy.
And this guy's credentials have been trumpeted to the skies.
He's a judge's judge.
He's highly respected by the Supreme Court.
This is a guy who has a deep understanding of the Constitution.
He's been considered for the Supreme Court himself.
And this guy has been going out there, supported, by the way, by the left-wing legal scholar Larry Tribe, who teaches at Harvard.
And these guys go, not only is this a difficult decision.
They say it's not a difficult decision.
They say that the language of the 14th Amendment could not be more clear.
States do unambiguously have the right to remove officials and to remove Trump.
So, in other words, if Judge Michael Luttig was right and Lawrence Tribe was right, the Supreme Court would have decided 9-0 the other way.
The Supreme Court would have decided 9-0 that Colorado could remove Trump.
I mean, they were saying it's so... So obvious that it doesn't really even need, quote, interpretation.
Just read the language of the 14th Amendment, Section 3.
It is a kind of a self-enforcing article.
What do we mean by a self-enforcing article?
Well, in the Constitution, there are certain things that require interpretation.
So, for example, cruel and unusual punishment.
That's a matter of interpretation.
On the other hand, the president needs to be at least 35 years old.
Well, that doesn't really require interpretation because either he's 35 or older or he's not.
It's not up to Congress to say, we think he's over 35.
Either he is or he isn't.
So, according to Michael Luttig and Lawrence Tribe, this is like that.
The provision stands by itself.
It's not up to Congress or anybody else to say what it means.
It means what it says.
It's just a factual matter of whether or not President Trump engaged in insurrection.
Colorado decided he did.
So, whoops, they can take him off the ballot.
And it's really telling that not only did all the six conservatives swat this down, but so did the three liberals.
And not one of them, not two of them, but all three.
Even Sotomayor, I think, reflecting on it, realized that this is a very dicey road to go down because...
Well, not only because of the textual reasons, not only because of precedent, but because it just opens up an absolute free-for-all in which suddenly red states would have an open invitation to say that because of the border or because of corruption or because of something else, Biden engaged in insurrection.
And again, insurrection according to us.
And so by our definition of insurrection, Biden is no longer eligible, not only no longer eligible to run, He's no longer eligible to be the president right now.
In fact, we don't recognize him as the president because after all, he's an insurrectionist.
And an insurrectionist by definition, according to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, cannot be the president.
I think all the justices realize that they cannot have the Supreme Court be party to such a ridiculous charade.
And so Michael Ludwig and Lawrence Tribe need to go back and hide under a rock because they have both gotten a massive slapdown, 9 to 0.
A very important decision and even more important for being unanimous.
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Tomorrow is Super Tuesday and one of the states is Texas.
I'm delighted to welcome Brandon Gill, who is in a big race in Texas Congressional District 26, to talk about the race and talk about some very interesting and vicious attack ads that have been launched against him.
Brandon, welcome. Thanks for joining.
This is the day before Election Day, and I'm assuming it's a day with, you know, heightened sense of urgency and tension.
So how are you feeling going into the race with, I mean, there's been early voting, but the majority of the votes are going to be cast tomorrow, Election Day.
So describe your sort of psychological state.
We're feeling really good.
I mean, as you mentioned, we've had about $2 million worth of attack ads coming in over the past three weeks.
But at the end of the day, DC doesn't vote.
Super PACs in DC, never Trump or Super PACs in DC, don't vote.
It's the people of Texas 26 that actually cast their votes, and they can see through these attacks.
The energy here on the ground has been nothing short of phenomenal.
We were at a rally last night that Steve Bannon was at, and it was, I mean, just palpable energy.
I mean, people yelling, they're ready to go to the polls.
They're ready to fight the swamp and beat the Never Trumper establishment.
So we're feeling really good going into tomorrow, going into March 5th, and we'll see how things shake out.
I mean, interestingly, Brandon, it appears that we are dealing not just with an effort to fight the swamp in D.C., but in a way also the swamp in Texas.
And I say that because there are a lot of Texas races that are also in play.
And the rally yesterday was a rally that has candidates for federal office, but it also has candidates for...
Do you see this as a kind of...
There's a micro-level fight going on Inside of Texas and then a macro level one going on in Washington D.C. and do the two kind of mirror each other?
They do. And, you know, the impeachment is a really good example of that.
Democrats have been throwing mud against the wall, trying to hit Trump for anything they possibly can.
You know, it was Russia collusion.
And then it was the impeachment for, you know, a pretty, you know, just fine call with Zelensky.
I mean, they're throwing everything they can at President Trump, whether they have a case against him or not.
And he's still going through this.
But what happened with Ken Paxton is actually pretty similar.
There was no case for impeachment, and yet, Democrats and Republicans, who are weak, spineless Republicans, impeached Ken Paxton.
And I think that voters in red districts like Texas 26 are sick of seeing this kind of stuff.
They're sick of seeing Republicans collude with Democrats to attack our own side.
So I do think that there's a lot that's happening in Austin that really does mirror what's happening in D.C. And people are fed up with it.
I mean, you have, the Republicans often get outspent by the Democrats.
The Democrats have access to a pool of billionaires who put in huge amounts of money.
It seems to me incredible that in the wake of that, you have Republicans taking, you know, millions of dollars of money and then throwing it against a candidate like you.
I mean, what was striking about these Never Trump ads, and we're talking about TV ads, radio ads, mailers, I mean, the full gamut, Is that they were not advocating for another candidate.
It was essentially just stop Brandon Gill, which I suppose is a sort of a backhanded compliment because it almost makes it seem like the whole race is either Brandon Gill up or Brandon Gill down.
Talk about part of what they alleged against you in the ads and why those allegations are preposterous.
Yeah, first they were the never-Trumpers trying to do anything to take President Trump out.
Now, in Texas 26th, they're the never-Brandons.
And again, they're just throwing mud against the wall.
The way I see it is that if the swamp doesn't want me in Washington, that's definitely a good thing.
But what they're saying is ridiculous.
They're saying things like, I'm not in favor of law enforcement.
I'm the anti-law enforcement candidate is what they're saying.
And I'll tell you where they're getting this from.
As you know, we made a movie last fall called Police State, which hopefully most of the viewers here have watched.
And Police State is about how the federal government has been weaponized against conservatives and Christians, and that's especially true at the FBI. And I've been very clear since the start of my campaign that I think we should be defunding the FBI because it's targeting patriots, and it is. And this super PAC has taken that and they've warped it and lied about that and said that I want to defund the police.
I mean, this is about as dishonest as you can possibly get.
But that's what they're saying.
And, you know, it'd be one thing if they're just sort of saying this, but they're spending $2 million right now.
As you said, they're sending out mailers.
They're sending out texts. They're on the radio.
They're on TV, on broadcast, and on cable.
They're everywhere bashing me for this.
But again, the people can see through it.
Whenever, you know, it takes about 10 seconds for a voter to think about this and they think, well...
There's this guy who's been endorsed by President Trump and Senator Cruz, and yet these guys are saying he wants to defund the police.
That doesn't really add up.
So people can see through this stuff, and once they dig a little bit deeper, they realize where this stuff is coming from.
And most voters in this district agree that we should be defunding the FBI. So I think that the attacks aren't sticking, but what's amazing is how egregious the lies are.
It seems like there's a relatively short runway in a campaign.
And so, with regard to this pact, they didn't come out with this stuff right at the beginning.
I mean, one of their allegations against you is that you're not really from Texas.
And I think this makes me laugh because, of course, I've been to your family's ranch.
You grew up on a ranch.
You raised cattle. You know pretty much everything there is to know about ranches.
Yes, you went to Dartmouth, and yes, you worked on Wall Street for a few years, and then you came back to Texas.
But the idea that you're not a Texan is so laughable.
And yet, they held back and sort of dropped this atom bomb on you, if you will, at the last minute.
So it's almost like they want to do it before you have a chance to respond.
But fortunately, you've been responding.
That's exactly right. I've been telling people that I'm not going to Washington to go along to get along.
I'm going there to fight the swamp.
And that starts right now.
As soon as these attacks came against us, we started swinging back hard.
We're getting the word out.
And listen, the conservative grassroots here are behind me.
I mean, they really have coalesced and they are amazing.
Because they're the people who are going out and telling their friends, knocking doors and saying, listen, these attacks against Brandon are lies.
So the patriots in this district really deserve the credit for fighting back against the swamp.
They're the backbone of the party.
They're the backbone of the MAGA movement.
But we've been fighting back.
We've been swinging back against these guys really hard.
But you're right. They waited until the last minute because they knew that what they were saying was dishonest.
Whether it was that I was against law enforcement or not a Texan or whatever kind of nonsense they're trying to spread, they knew that if people have very long to dig into this, they're going to realize immediately what's happening.
But we've been so aggressive fighting back against this stuff.
I don't think that it matters that this PAC waited until the last minute because people can see through it.
What is the kind of last 24 hours agenda before the election?
Is it just relentless door knocking today?
Because early voting is now over.
People aren't voting today, but a big portion of the vote, maybe 50%, maybe a little more, comes in tomorrow.
What's like on your calendar for today?
Yep, so we're here right now.
We've done a couple other media hits, and then we're going to be going door to door until the sun goes down today.
We're trying to reach every single voter we possibly can.
And you do that through word of mouth, through knocking on doors, doing the hard work on the ground to push this thing across the finish line.
Tomorrow we'll be at the polls from 7 a.m.
to 7 p.m., and then we've got a little watch party tomorrow night.
But we're out there knocking doors, we're talking to voters, and we're getting the word out.
And we are not slowing down for a second until we get this thing done.
Brandon, this is all very exciting.
As you well know, Debbie and I are making our way.
We will be on the scene and we will be at the watch party and watching eagerly to see what happens in your race.
But of course, President Trump is on the ballot in a number of Super Tuesday races.
So it's a big day coming up tomorrow, Election Day.
Thank you very much for joining me.
And of course, all the best for success in the election.
Thanks for having me. We're good to go.
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I've noticed some very odd skirmishes involving Kerry Lake on social media, and I want to lay out what's going on here, because I think there's a larger issue involved that has to do with how Republicans need to come together to win elections.
win national elections, and win the general, not just the primary, but win the general election.
Now, Carrie Lake, as you know, is running for Senate in Arizona.
It turns out to be a three-man race, and I use that term in a general sense because two of the three men are women.
You have Carrie Lake, you've got this leftist Ruben Gallego, and then you've got Kyrsten Sinema, the incumbent senator, who's also running, but not running as a Democrat, but running as an Independent.
The polls currently have Carrie Lake ahead by about six points.
Gallego second.
Sinema a distant third.
And this to me is a little bit surprising because I would have thought that Sinema would have drawn from the middle right and the middle left.
And Arizona, by and large, is a pretty moderate state.
It's been moderate, slightly right-leaning for many, many years.
But nevertheless, I would have thought Sinema would be further ahead than she is.
But nevertheless, here we are, Carrie Lake leading.
And Carrie Lake realizes that, you know, maybe the last time I ran a campaign that was a little too polarizing.
I want to win over...
Centrist and right-leaning voters.
I want to win over even Republicans who didn't vote for me the last time.
Now, this is common sense.
It's also the only way to go.
There is no point in running in such a manner that you only draw from the far right of the party, you lose the middle, and you lose the election.
Now, I'm not saying that Carrie Lake lost the last time.
I actually think she won.
And I think that that election, as with Trump's, was, in a sense, stolen from her.
But nevertheless, the point is, maybe Carrie Lake now believes, as Trump does, I need to win in a manner that's too big to rig.
So we're going to watch the election.
We're going to try to stop the fraud.
But some fraud is probably going to go through.
But it's not going to matter if I win decisively enough.
But how do I win decisively enough?
I need to reach out as much as I can.
So Carrie Lake's been saying some nice things about...
The McCain voters and even the McCain family.
And then here comes Meghan McCain and basically tells Carrie Lake to F off and calls her B-I-T-C-H. And so Meghan McCain is obviously kind of familial loyalty.
Go to hell, Carrie Lake.
We don't want you coming to our doorstep.
Now, it's sort of understandable for Meghan McCain.
She's kind of a tribalist.
She's protecting, if you will, the McCain dynasty in Arizona.
But who can fault Cary Lake for at least trying?
And remember, Cary Lake's not trying to get Meghan McCain's vote.
She's not trying to get Cindy McCain's vote.
In fact, Cindy McCain has been palling around with Biden, with Obama.
So the McCain family appears, maybe as a result of this acrimony, to have been pushed to the left.
But there are McCain voters that Carrie Lake wants, and I think she is right to reach out to them.
Now recently, Carrie Lake posted a meme basically thanking John Cornyn.
Now John Cornyn is the moderate senator from Texas.
Texas has two senators, Ted Cruz and Cornyn.
Cornyn is sort of the guy who's more of a centrist.
Some people say he's a rhino.
And nevertheless, Kerry Lake goes, John Cornyn endorsed me.
Thank you, John Cornyn, for your support.
And if I look at the feed, all these guys are like, I can't believe this, Kerry Lake.
Why are you touting John Cornyn?
It's important to realize, guys, that Carrie Lake is not touting John Cornyn.
He is the one endorsing her.
She's not the one endorsing him.
So doesn't it make sense for Carrie Lake, as for any Republican, to try to draw the widest support that you can?
I think the answer to that is quite obviously yes.
Look, there is a MAGA takeover of the Republican Party that is underway.
But it doesn't have to be a, quote, hostile takeover.
In other words, very often the takeover is most effectively achieved if it's a soft takeover.
In other words, if the people that are being taken over don't see you as running roughshod over them, stomping on their face.
When Reagan came in in 1980, Reagan was the outsider.
Gerald Ford represented the establishment.
Many of the establishment people were not happy about Reagan, and so you had a Reaganite takeover of the Republican Party, but it was a soft takeover.
Reagan didn't go out there and denounce Ford.
He didn't start trying to throw people out of the party.
He didn't start, you know, he didn't create so much acrimony that all the people who were, quote, taken over rushed into the Democratic camp.
No, they stayed in the Reagan camp.
There was a Yale football coach many years ago who was asked what the attitude is that he wanted to have for the alumni.
And he goes, I want them to be sullen, but not mutinous.
In other words, they might be grumpy, but they shouldn't be like up in arms.
And this is a pretty good formula.
For us, with the moderate Republicans, they may be a little sullen to see that there's a kind of a Trumpian takeover of the Republican Party, but we still want them in our camp.
We want them sullen but not mutinous.
We want them at the end of the day to go to the polls and go, do I want Trump?
I may have some issues with Trump.
I may have some issues with Carrie Lake, but I certainly don't want Biden.
I certainly don't want this Ruben Gallegos, guys.
These are the people leaving the border open.
These are the true nefarious forces in America today.
And so, even though I might have some issues with the guy on my own side, he, or in Carrie Lake's case, she, is infinitely preferable to the really bad guy on the other side.
Guys, I'd like to welcome to the podcast a new guest, Logan Hall, Digital Director at Blaze Media.
He's written for Town Hall, The American Mind.
He formerly wrote for The Daily Caller.
You can follow him on x at Logan Clark Hall.
Logan, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you for joining me.
I want to talk to you about the case of one of your colleagues.
This is Steve Baker, who also works for The Blaze.
And Steve Baker was just recently arrested and charged in connection with January 6th.
So my first question, before we even get to what it's all about, It's been three years, three and a half years since January 6th.
Isn't it a little bit weird, if not downright absurd, that they're chasing this guy down three and a half years later for misdemeanors?
Well, first of all, thanks for having me on, Dinesh.
And yes, the timing of this is a bit suspicious because, like you said, it's been three years.
We have just recently, Steve Baker came on at The Blaze a few months ago, and we were starting to roll out these separate investigations into the narrative around January 6th.
And several of these investigations went viral and ran counter to the legacy narrative and the government narrative.
And so they had this threat sort of like a sword hanging over his head for three years, but suddenly he is charged after the Blaze hires him and we produce several...
Video documentaries and articles and certain type of content around this story, and it really, really damaged their narrative.
And so, yes, it's certainly suspicious.
Do you think, Logan, I mean, I think I know where you're going with this, because it could be that the Biden administration was a little reluctant to charge Steve Baker, reason being that he was a journalist, he was covering January 6th, He was not the only journalist.
There were journalists from the New York Times and other publications who also went into the Capitol.
And so the only, I guess, differentiating factor was that maybe Steve Baker was a little sympathetic to the January 6th guys.
The other guys were hostile.
But frankly, if you're arresting people for being in the wrong place, in an unauthorized area, parading in a public building, you got to arrest the New York Times guy.
You got to arrest all these guys.
So there might have been...
Anxious and thinking, we don't really have a way to go after this guy and not go after the other guys.
But what you're saying is that when he starts doing sort of frame-by-frame exposés of what really happened, they're like, we got to teach this guy a lesson.
Let's go after him now.
Yeah, that is what's weird about it is he did the same thing that a bunch of these journalists from the legacy institutions did.
They were there. Steve wasn't there as a Trump supporter.
He was there as an investigative independent reporter.
And so now, you know, he came over to the blaze, but he's not publishing it in the New York Times that these people are all evil, traitor, insurrectionists.
He's saying that, hey, maybe the story the government's telling us didn't completely add up here from that day.
And so, yeah, it's very weird, but this has become all too common in America 2024.
We see that there's clearly a double standard of justice, and Democrats are very loyal to their media lapdogs, and they are seeking to punish people who tell a different story.
Yeah. I mean, I think here we have to take a moment and commend the handful of people.
And off the top of my head, I think of, say, Julie Kelly.
I think of Steve Baker.
I also think of the guys at Revolver Magazine.
And these are guys who don't just pontificate about January 6th.
What they've done is a lot of sort of boots on the ground hard work.
In looking at what happened frame by frame and saying, look, this guy claims that he was over here, but in reality we know from the timestamp that he was over there.
And so this kind of stuff is busting the narrative, but I think it shows the importance of this kind of detailed work on our side.
That's what really threatens the other side and what really threatens the narrative.
Yes. Yeah, and I would say we need a lot more investigative, good, solid investigative reporters on our side to be able to counter...
I mean, the left, their media is so big and dominant that it's tough to overcome them when they have 100, 200 people in lockstep about what happened, and we only have maybe four or five on our side.
So I will say one good thing that I think came of this, after Steve was arrested and that...
This story went mega viral on Friday.
This happened past Friday. I believe it did prompt Speaker Johnson and some of the House GOP members to say, we're coming forward with, we're going to release a lot more of this footage because what happened to Steve was so wrong.
I mean, that's an excellent point.
I mean, Johnson had agreed in principle to release this footage.
He released some of it at the beginning.
It appeared to have stalled, and I noticed some people were kind of impatient, like, Speaker Johnson, is this just a promise that you make that you don't intend to keep?
And apparently now he's agreed to put out another trove of information.
And this stuff is vital, right?
Because isn't it true that in the January 6th cases, very often the prosecution has gotten away with convincing the judge, oh no, we cannot make all the footage available.
We need to show just some selected snippets because otherwise, you know, national security will be threatened.
So... This pretext has worked all this time, and only now is, you may say, the general public even getting access to information where they go, this doesn't really match the narrative.
Yeah, this doesn't add up.
And yeah, in many cases, like you said, the government was hiding potentially exculpatory evidence from the defendants.
So yeah, I don't know how you can have a fair...
I mean, even just in D.C., I don't know how you can have a fair trial with prosecutors like that.
This goes back to, like, this is a double standard.
There are two systems of justice in America, and when that happens, you don't have a justice system anymore.
Now, like you said, it is very good.
The American people deserve to know the truth about that day.
When I come in, you know, when I walk into The Blaze every morning, for the past few months, I've just seen Steve here working with a couple of our video guys, pouring over hours and hours of footage from that day, and hopefully we get a lot more of that.
And we are not going to just let this story die.
We're going to keep investigating and keep trying to find out the truth about that day.
Do you think, Logan, and this is maybe something I should email Glenn Beck about, is it possible, even though the charges involved here are misdemeanors, so on the face of it, they don't seem to be, they're not felonies, you're not looking at serious jail time and so on, but so what?
Is it possible to make an argument that combines both press freedom and selective prosecution?
Press freedom because Steve Baker was there as a journalist and And then selective prosecution because, hey, you're going to charge me?
You got to charge all the other guys in the building.
This is not a case where the government can say, well, you know, we don't catch every speeder on the highway because you know who all the other guys are.
You know their identities as much as you know Steve Baker's identity.
So why are you singling out this guy to charge and not the other guys?
Yeah, and after Steve was released from the federal courthouse on Friday, his lawyers made this exact point that they want to make this about the freedom of the press.
We have a right to it just as much as the New York Times does.
I'd say the New York Times is a lot less free than I'd say Blaze Media is.
We have much more differing perspectives on events and people and things that happen in the news than I would say the New York Times newsroom does.
I mean, we have a lot more variety of opinion there.
But, yes, again, yeah, his lawyers made it very clear they want to make this about freedom of the press and that Steve was there as an independent reporter just like any one of these other people from the legacy institutions, so he has afforded the same rights under the First Amendment that they are.
I mean, guys, this is a real injustice, a real outrage, and it's particularly suspicious, I think, this is a point that Logan's already made, that this is happening at a time when Blaze is uncovering new information about January 6th.
And so let's hope this has a favorable outcome.
Guys, I've been talking to Logan Hall, Digital Director of Blaze Media.
Follow him on x at Logan Clark Hall.
Logan, thank you very much for joining me.
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