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Oct. 22, 2024 - System Update - Glenn Greenwald
01:23:33
SYSTEM UPDATE FLASHBACK: Exposing Free Speeech and Pro-Democracy Frauds

In this System Update Flashback, we review some of the many examples of rife political hypocrisy in the United States. - - - TIMESTAMPS: Canceling Israel’s Critics (0:15) Ignoring the Constitution (21:15) Michael Tracey Interviews Bill Scher (52:13) - - - Watch full episodes on Rumble, streamed LIVE 7pm ET. Become part of our Locals community - - -  Follow Glenn: Twitter Instagram Follow System Update:  Twitter Instagram TikTok Facebook LinkedIn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Even
those Harvard students we had on the show who were put on that no-hire list, blacklist, and had trucks driving around Harvard, signed a letter essentially saying the reason for the October 7th attack was the Israeli occupation and brutal treatment of the Palestinians, but they didn't praise Hamas or call for the murder but they didn't praise Hamas or call for the murder of Jews either.
Almost nobody who lost their job in these high-profile cases did anything remotely like that.
Now again, this sort of thing is exactly what has been condemned by people on the right Here is, as just one of many examples, a tweet by Christopher Ruffo, who I think is one of the most influential right-wing activists in December 20th, 2021.
Quote, outrageous.
This brave teacher stood against critical race theory indoctrination in his school district and they fired him for it.
And then here you see the quote from the teacher, Tony Kennett, Indianapolis Public Schools just fired me for, quote, sharing that IPS recorded children and required racial justice sessions, not sending IPS the personnel info, quoting Dr.
Payne's racist comments to students, sharing public files.
So the idea was, no one was saying there, oh, school districts have the right to fire whoever they want, including teachers who express views on controversial issues.
No, the idea was, this is outrageous.
Here from the New York Post, June 4, 2020, NBA voice Grant Napier was unjustly fired over, quote, all lives matter truth.
Grant Napier, 32 years the TV voice of the Sacramento Kings, is a goner this week, fired from his gig as a Sacramento sports talk host as the TV voice of the Kings TV broadcast because he's a racist, perhaps.
There's no evidence, like Hillary Clinton and presumably millions before him, Napier was naive to the new presumption that, quote, all lives matter is now considered by some to be a racist response to the Black Lives Matter movement.
But of course, millions of Americans do consider and did consider All Lives Matter as a response to the Black Lives Matter movement to be racist by denying that there's a particular need for black Americans to have attention called to the violence directed at them.
And there was no idea from the right, oh, well, people are entitled to fire him if they want for a phrase that many people now consider racist.
No, it was outrageous.
It was indicative of the repression we face.
And again, I largely agreed with the people critiquing that.
It's just I didn't change my mind on October 7th when it came to Israel.
Here from the Daily Wire, February 12th, 2021, Ben Shapiro says, Gina Carano firing part of a movement to, quote, expel half of America.
Daily Wire editor emeritus Ben Shapiro ripped the mass media company Disney and the quote hard left on Thursday after actress Gina Carano was fired from her role on the Star Wars TV series The Mandalorian.
I'm sure there's going to be fanatical fans of Star Wars angry that they didn't know that series.
Apologies in advance.
Disney fired Carano on Wednesday over an image the actress posted to her Instagram depicting a Jewish woman running from Nazi guards with the caption, "Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers, but by their neighbors, even by children." Because history is edited, most people today don't realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews.
How is it any different from hating someone for their political views?
Shapiro highlighted the incident on his podcast The Ben Shapiro Show on Thursday as an example of the cancel culture that is infecting leading institutions in the United States.
He said that Carano's firing is, quote, indicative of where we are in the culture, and it is a terrible moment for American culture.
Quote, social movements have consequences and we are now in the middle of a mass social movement to expel half the American population from the body politics, Shapiro said.
So do you see here how there was this very pervasive sense that getting people fired for political views that many people in the United States consider to be offensive was dangerous for the United States.
It was toxic and unhealthy.
Where is all that?
Where are all those people?
Now that so many people are losing their jobs for calling for a ceasefire of a war or deciding that they think the United States is supporting the wrong side or that they support Palestinians and don't want to fund the Israeli war.
Where are all the cancel culture articles about how terrible this is for America that people lose their jobs if they express views contrary to the U.S. government and its policies?
Here in 2021 in Commentary Magazine, Barry Weiss, another person who was one of the leaders and still is, when it comes to some issues of the importance of free speech and free debate, here was her magnus opum on this question where she said, we got here because of cowardice.
We get out with courage.
Say no to the woke revolution.
And it was a long article on how...
One of the worst things you can do as a country is create a climate where certain views are off-limits to the point where you get fired and have your reputation destroyed and you're socially vilified for expressing them.
And this is what she wrote when describing how terrible this environment is in 2021.
Quote, So the tools themselves are not just replaced but repudiated.
In doing so, persuasion, the purpose of argument, is replaced with public shaming.
Moral complexity is replaced with moral certainty.
Facts are replaced with feelings.
Ideas are replaced with identity.
Forgiveness is replaced with punishment.
Debate is replaced with deplatforming.
Diversity is replaced with homogeneity of thought, inclusion with exclusion.
As Douglas Murray has put it, quote, I agree with that paragraph.
I believe a healthier society is one where people are engaged when they express views that many find offensive, not when they're fired and have their reputations destroyed for it.
And I thought that before October 7th, and I also thought that after October 7th.
Here is another person, Dave Rubin.
You may remember the case of James Daymore.
This actually occurred before Me Too, before the Black Lives Matter movement.
One of the people who was a big cause celeb was David Shore.
He was a Democratic Party consultant who worked at a think tank, and he said he thinks nonviolent protests are more effective than protests that use violence starting the Civil Rights Movement.
And it was interpreted as a criticism of the Black Lives Matter movement.
He was fired, and he was turned into a complete martyr.
Oh, my God.
This shows America is ruined.
If someone like David Shore gets fired for expressing his opinion just because millions of people find it offensive.
David Shore turned out perfectly fine.
He has a very thriving career.
More so than ever, just like most of these people who built their careers based on this platform, based on this cause.
But the idea was there's nothing worse than a country that fires people for expressing their dissident views.
But the case that was one of the first was the case of James Damore.
He was an employee at Google and he sent an internal post and a message board that was deemed misogynistic about why women can't succeed in certain fields.
And he became the symbol of everything wrong with America.
How can you fire somebody for expressing a view because you consider it misogynistic?
You should debate him and engage with him, not fire him.
No one was saying, oh, Google's a private company, they have the right to fire him if they want.
They were saying, this is dangerous.
We have to stop this.
And here was Dave Rubin putting James Damore on his show so they could commiserate on the injustice of all of this.
Look at it.
It's harmful.
Don't look at it.
That's what executives were saying.
I mean, that's incredible.
And also, there were a ton of memes within the company just talking about how horrible this was and just blasting me as a person.
Now, was there any retribution on those people?
We'll get to you actually getting fired and called into the office, but as far as everything that I read in this document, which I did read, you didn't attack anyone personally.
You go out of your way not to stereotype.
People can argue with, you know, your conclusions or all that, but you were being attacked personally by people then within the company.
Was there any retribution from the...
Oh, my God.
People didn't even want to debate him.
They just wanted him gone.
They wanted him fired.
They wanted him disciplined.
And the people who should have been disciplined, according to Dave Rubin, were the people trying to stifle free debate inside Google.
Can't people getting fired for expressing offensive views just because other people are offended?
Toughen up!
We need free speech and free debate in this country, not people getting fired for their offensive views.
And now you have this pile of careers destroyed since October 7th from people who criticized Israel.
And one of the things I heard from Dave Rubin, the same exact Dave Rubin, Was when France issued a nationwide ban on pro-Palestinian protests while allowing pro-Israel protests to continue, meaning you're allowed to go out on the street and protest in favor of French policy, which is to support Israel.
What you're barred criminally from doing is going out on the street and protesting against the French position by having a pro-Palestinian protest.
Dave Rubin said in a tweet, maybe there's hope for the West after all.
Somebody who built his career saying the reason why the West is collapsing is because we don't allow free debate.
We fire people when they express offensive views.
He was very angry about it when it came to people he agreed with or felt an affinity for, like James Damore.
But Israel critics who get fired, that's the salvation of the West.
Now, I should know we invited Dave Rubin on our show.
Early on to come on and talk about all this, he unfortunately couldn't.
He's been on several other shows where the hosts were much more agreeable with his views.
Hopefully he will come on.
He said once the scheduling issues pass, he would be happy to do it.
So far that hasn't happened.
He's welcome on the show anytime.
I'd love to have him on to explore this, try and reconcile all this.
But just to show you how repressive things have gotten, let me show you this.
Here is David Jacobs, and he's very angry about the following.
About a question on an exam at Toronto Metropolitan University.
So, just to be clear, it's not an elementary school, it's not a junior high, it's not a high school for children.
It's a university for adults, for adult college students, where you go to learn about the world, to debate issues that are difficult.
It's one of the things you go to college to learn how to do.
Remember all that?
No safetyism at college.
College students don't have the right to be shielded from ideas that make them uncomfortable.
They have to confront those.
That's what learning to be an adult is all about.
How many times have you heard that?
And yet, look at this.
A Jewish student, not a child, an adult, took a picture of this anti-Semitic bio.
In today's upside-down world, the student will likely be reprimanded and the professor will get tenure.
Here's the thing that is apparently anti-Semitic.
Bile.
The question is, the term pinkwashing refers to.
So the point of the question is, you're at college and there's this term pinkwashing that gets used in political debates all the time about Israel.
There's been op-eds in the New York Times with the headline pinkwashing in the title.
It's a common term that pro-Palestinian Activists use, and so the point of this question is to be able to prove that you know the definition of pinkwashing.
You don't have to agree with the term, you don't have to agree with the meaning of it, you just have to prove that you know what it means.
I think like going to college, one of the things you want to do is learn and prove that you're able to explain other people's views, even if you don't agree with them.
Like, go in, summarize The political perspective of this political scientist or this philosopher.
You don't get to say, I'm not going to do that because I don't agree with this view that you're asking me to summarize.
No, you summarize the view to prove that you understand the argument and then you're free to disagree with it or agree with it.
Just because you're asked to summarize it and prove you understand the argument doesn't mean you have to agree with it or that you're forced to agree with it.
So the question is, what does pinkwashing refer to?
And you see there the highlighted answer, which is the correct definition of this term as people use it.
Quote, the state of Israel uses gay rights as a distraction from Palestinian human rights questions.
And that's exactly what pinkwashing means.
If you say, and trust me, this happens to me every day, hey look, the Israelis are killing a historically high amount of civilians in this bombing campaign, people will come and say, what about the fact that they have gay bars in Tel Aviv but not in Gaza?
The ultimate non sequitur.
Oh, I know you're angry that we're killing all these people and we're illegally occupying their land, but we're better on LGBT issues than they are.
That's called pinkwashing.
You don't have to agree that Israel does that.
You don't have to agree with the critique.
You just have to be able to summarize the argument.
That's what college is for.
That is what has these people worked up.
How is this anti-Semitic?
Even if you don't agree with it, it's a criticism of the Israeli government.
It doesn't mention Jews.
Criticizing the Israeli government is not anti-Semitic.
Jews do it all the time.
I do it all the time.
Israelis do it all the time.
And they want to get this person fired.
Here is Jonathan Kaye.
He's a writer at Colette, which is a magazine in the UK that's almost about nothing other than defending the virtues of free discourse, free thought, and free speech, they claim.
And here's what Jonathan Kay wrote, who's a local supporter of Israel.
Quote, a source from TMU, the university, has sent me the identity of the lecturer who did this.
a complaint has been launched against him with the administration.
I mean, that is the ultimate tattletale behavior.
This is a PhD student teaching a course.
He wanted to make sure his students understood the term pinkwashing in the context of this new war, this Israel-Gaza war, where that term is used a lot.
You don't have to agree with the term.
You just have to show you understand what it means.
And they're trying to get the guy fired on the grounds that it's somehow anti-Semitic to ask adult college students to summarize what is meant by the term pinkwashing.
Not just to object to the question, but to want the person fired.
These people, whatever they are, have nothing to do with free speech, as I've ever understood that concept.
Now, there have been people, I should note, not many, but it has spilled over into the pro-Israel side as well.
Here from the LA Times, A Jewish professor at USC confronted pro-Palestinian students.
He's now barred from campus.
I saw the video.
There was a group of students, pro-Palestinian students.
This professor is Jewish.
He's a local supporter of Israel.
And he went over to them and was offended by their protest and here's what happened.
Quote, the economics professor's interaction with students that day ended with the 72-year-old Strauss, who was Jewish, declaring, quote, Hamas are murderers.
That's all they are.
Everyone should be killed and I hope they are all killed.
That's a perfectly legal, free speech sentiment to express on a college campus.
No violence involved, no threats.
Within hours, Strauss' comments were posted online, shared and re-shared on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.
Within a day, an associate dean told Strauss that he was unpaid administrative leave, barred from campus, and that he would no longer teach his undergraduates this semester.
Within the week, A petition demanding that USC fire Strauss for his quote, racism, xenophobic behavior, and comments that quote, promote and incite violence, had collected more than 6,500 signatures.
I have no problem vehemently condemning the notion that he should be punished for that.
Especially at a college campus, an academic setting, that is the part of society we set aside where we say, this is the part of society where you're supposed to question everything.
That's why professors have tenure.
They can't be fired.
They have academic freedom.
It's the place in society where we specifically want every taboo to be questioned, every claim to be debated or debatable.
So no, I don't think this professor at USC should be fired or punished for having said, I think all Hamas terrorists are evil and they all should be murdered and I hope they all are killed.
I have credibility to object to that because they object to that in every case, not just where it's my views being attacked or targeted.
And if you aren't willing to stand up and object to this spate of firing since October 7th by Israel critics in the United States, if you believe the free speech rights of Americans should be eroded to protect this foreign country, Benjamin Netanyahu told Elon Musk in September, we need a balancing of free speech and the protection against hate speech, not in Israel, but in the United States.
There are people who want to erode free speech in the West, in the United States, in defense of this foreign country.
I'm not one of them.
I want to preserve free speech.
I don't want people to be fired for criticizing Israel.
I don't want people being fired for telling pro-Palestinian protesters they think all Hamas terrorists should be killed.
These are all adults.
We are a much healthier society when we can freely debate and express our views without fear of being fired.
That's what Dave Rubin built his career on.
That's what Barry Weiss built her career on.
That's what Ben Shapiro built his career on.
That's what so many rich political pundits and journalists claim they believed in until October 7th happened and everything changed.
And now there's all these people who got fired, not because they said, I want Israel off the map, or I want all Jews murdered, as they all claim.
And even if they were saying that, that would obviously be protective free speech, no question about it, but that isn't what they said.
They said things like, I want to cease fire, I believe Israel is the wrongful party here.
I don't believe the United States should give weapons to and finance Israel's wars.
And if you're not willing to stand up and defend the rights of people to think that and to say that without having their careers distorted or their reputations vilified, please, please just don't ever pretend again for the rest of your life that you believe in free thought, free discourse, that you oppose cancel culture or anything else like that because you have zero credibility to make that claim.
The idea that presidents have no limitation on their power is one that came not from Donald Trump, but from the Bush-Cheney administration.
They exploited 9-11 in order to usher in these radical theories of executive power under Article 2, which I know about because they're the reason I started writing about politics.
I was practicing Constitution a lot of the time.
And felt that there was not nearly enough attention in media paid to these dangerous and radical theories that were consuming civil liberties in the United States and checks and balances.
And I began writing about those.
And that's one of the reasons why it sickens me so much to watch the very people not just who cheerlead it from the sidelines but who implemented it while in power Now, posture and feign as though they're offended by the very theories that they themselves played such a key role in ushering into our political life.
Now, that is the context for what has just happened, where on Thursday, the Biden administration decided that it was going to bomb 16 different sites in Yemen.
We haven't been bombing Yemen for over a year.
There's a ceasefire that has been somewhat informal but nonetheless been holding between the Saudis who were originally fighting with the Houthis in Yemen.
That was a war that began under President Obama.
President Obama extensively helped the Saudis in that war in bombing the Houthis.
We were bombing them for many years.
We created the worst humanitarian crisis before Gaza in Yemen.
Where millions of Yemenis were on the brink of starvation.
We decimated that country, helping the Saudis bomb Yemen, but it hasn't been happening for quite some time.
And so the decision by the United States in partnership with the British to bomb Yemen is essentially a new escalation.
It's a new war in the Middle East that was not previously underway.
And it obviously emanates from the original conflict that the United States involved itself in, which is the war between Israel and Gaza.
Here is how the New York Times yesterday decided to describe what happened in its headline.
Quote, the regional war no one wanted is here.
How wide will it get?
Now, of course, the Biden administration has been saying we don't want a regional war.
The Israelis have clearly wanted one.
They've been attempting to escalate the war with Hezbollah, and Hezbollah has been playing its role but clearly been restrained thus far.
The Israelis clearly want to use the opportunity of what they're doing in Gaza to also go to war with their enemy in Hezbollah.
Early on in the conflict, back in October, mid-October, the Biden administration deployed to that region two gigantic aircraft carriers and a whole bunch of other new military assets that they specifically said were there to, in the first place, try and deter other attacks on Israel, but in the event that that was unsuccessful, to then protect Israel with our Military hardware there with our combat troops.
This is a deliberate decision to involve the United States in the very high likelihood of a new war, not just the one in Gaza, but any escalation.
And there was no attempt to go to Congress and request from Congress any kind of authorization.
Over the last month, the United States has been threatening the Houthis that if they continue their attacks on ships in retaliation for the destruction of Gaza, Then the United States will begin bombing Yemen.
So this isn't an emergency.
This wasn't something that was a shock.
There wasn't an attack on the American military that Biden had to respond to in an emergency way without time to go to Congress.
This is something that the Constitution is specifically contemplating Congress needs to approve if the United States, the Biden administration, the presidency wants to involve our country.
In the very high likelihood of a new war, or an escalation of a current war, Congress needs to assent to it because that's the way the American people assent to being involved in a new war.
And yet, that did not happen here.
Here is what the New York Times said.
With the US-led attacks in Yemen, there is no longer a question of whether the Israel-Hamas war will escalate into a wider conflict.
The question is whether it can be contained.
That is exactly right, that part.
We have been talking from the beginning of this war about all the different reasons why, as an American, you ought to be concerned about the full-scale support given by the United States government to Israel.
Not just because of the costs to American citizens, the financial cost, the security cost, the moral cost to helping the Israelis destroy Gaza, but also To the American standing in the world, but as well as the risk of escalation.
That's one of the things we've been emphasizing is that this war can very easily spiral to include many other countries in the region.
That's an extremely dangerous thing to do.
Remember, we've all been saying we're done with endless war in the Middle East.
And yet, we now have a clear escalation.
The question is, how far will this escalation go?
Quote, from the outbreak of the Israeli-Hamas war nearly 100 days ago, President Biden and his aides have struggled to keep the war contained, fearful that a regional escalation could quickly draw on American forces.
Now, with the American-led strike on 16 sites in Yemen on Thursday, there is no longer a question of whether there will be a regional conflict.
It has already begun.
The biggest question now are the conflicts intensity and whether it can be contained.
This is exactly the outcome no one wanted, presumably including Iran.
Quote, this is already a regional war, no longer limited to Gaza, but already spread to Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, said Hugh Levin, a media expert for the European Council on Foreign Relations.
And I think that's a crucial thing to note as well, as we've been covering this for almost two weeks now.
That before this bombing on Yemen, There was a bombing near Baghdad that infuriated the Iraqi government and blamed the United States for.
There has been repeated bombing campaigns by the Israelis in Syria as well as attempts by the American military bases in Syria and Iraq to launch what they call retaliatory strikes against Iranian assets in the Middle East that they say are attacking our bases in Syria and Iraq.
Why do we have bases in Syria and Iraq?
And then obviously there has been a flare-up involving Beirut and northern Israel between the Israelis and Hezbollah.
So there has already been escalation.
But this is now a direct engagement of American combat troops in this war.
Washington, he added, wanted to demonstrate that it was ready to deter Iranian provocations so it conspicuously placed its aircraft carriers and fighters in position to respond quickly.
But those same positions leave the United States more exposed.
The Houthis have been fighting a war now for many years.
They are very battle-tested.
It's a lot like the Russians, whose military has been fortified by two years of hardcore fighting.
They don't seem afraid of engaging the United States.
In fact, they continue to attack ships.
They haven't killed anybody, by the way, but they have attacked ships.
They have seized the boats.
They have taken the crews hostage, and they're obviously trying to make it difficult to pass through the Red Sea for any ships that are linked to either Israel or the United States, any country they blame for the destruction of Gaza.
They're doing it in the name of solidarity with the Palestinians.
Whether that's their actual cause or not, that's their stated cause.
And it is a powder keg in the Middle East.
It always is.
And we are now involved, primarily due to Israel, in yet another Middle East war.
Now, as I said, we're going to debate the merits of this.
Republicans are overwhelmingly, yet again, cheering President Biden, just like they cheered his policy in Ukraine, to involve the US in a proxy war there, just like they cheered his policy of supporting Israel, just like they cheered his antagonisms toward Beijing.
Republicans are largely on the merits, cheering President Biden yet again.
But there are some members of Congress objecting on what seems again to be this legalistic, annoying ground that President Biden didn't go to Congress and get congressional approval, but which in fact goes to the heart of how our constitutional republic and our structure of government actually functions.
Here is Congressman Ro Khanna, the Democrat from California.
Quote, the president needs to come to Congress before launching a strike against the Houthis in Yemen and involving us in another Middle East conflict.
That is Article 1 of the Constitution.
I will stand up for that regardless of whether there is a Democrat or Republican in the White House.
Senator Mike Lee, the Republican of Utah, said, quote, I totally agree with Ro Khanna.
The Constitution matters regardless of party affiliation.
Senator Rand Paul, the Republican Senator from Kentucky, said, quote, Once again, President Biden is acting without congressional authority.
Only Congress can authorize military action like this.
Now, I'm going to get to what I know a lot of people believe allows President Biden to do this, which is a law called the War Powers Act.
Which, the War Powers Resolution, which cannot override the Constitution, obviously acts of Congress and laws cannot override the Constitution, but if you actually look at what the War Powers Resolution said, there is almost no doubt that even if you want to give it all the credit in the world as valid law, it does not authorize President Biden to, out of the blue, bomb Yemen with no congressional approval.
One of the ways that you can know that is to look at what Democrats, including Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, said about this very question When it came to the question of whether President Trump in 2020 was permitted to engage in similar bombing campaigns, including in Iran.
Here is Joe Biden on February 7, 2020.
Quote, That's what he said as part of the Democratic debate.
We will not go back to forever wars in the Middle East.
Here's what he said when it came to the question of whether Trump could bomb Iran in January.
Let's be clear, Donald Trump does not have the authority to take us into war with Iran without congressional approval.
A president should never take the nation to war without the informed consent of the American people.
Here's Kamala Harris in February of 2020.
Quote, So when Democrats were seeking power, Biden and Kamala Harris, they were essentially saying...
That the War Powers Resolution does not permit the kind of bombing that they just ended up doing without congressional approval.
One of the most principled members of Congress when it came to constitutional authority was the former Republican Congressman Justin Amash who served as a Republican from Michigan for a decade in Congress.
And here's what he wrote earlier today.
Quote, one of the most frequently misrepresented federal statutes often falsely used to justify unconstitutional presidential war powers is the War Powers Resolution or Act.
If only more people would read it.
Contrary to what you may have heard about the War Powers Resolution, it does not allow the President to take military action for any reason for 60 to 90 days without congressional approval so long as the President notifies Congress within 48 hours.
That is the claim that you constantly hear, that the War Powers Resolution allows Congress, allows the President rather, to just a 60 to 90 day free shot of using the military however he wants.
Remember, it was Article I of the Constitution, which defines the power of the legislative branch of the Congress, that says only Congress has the power to declare war.
It then makes the president commander-in-chief of the armed forces in Article II that defines executive power.
But only when There's an actual war when there's a military that's convened.
We weren't supposed to have a standing army in the United States.
They were petrified, the founders were, of a permanent standing army.
And I'm about to show you that this is one of the things the founders most eagerly wanted to avoid.
And so the idea of presidents as commanders-in-chief simply meant that when Congress authorized a war, it was the president who then executed it.
You need one commander-in-chief of the military once there's a war, but only Congress can authorize the use of military force.
The president can't both start a war and then execute it, as has now become the norm in the United States for reasons that are very dangerous.
Amash goes on, the War Powers Resolution states clearly, quote, the constitutional powers of the president as commander-in-chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances are exercised pursuant to, one, the constitutional powers of the president as commander-in-chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances are exercised pursuant to, one, a declaration of
One, two, three, Of the three cited authorities, not one indicates a presidential power to take unilateral, offensive military action.
The first two authorities allow the president to take military action, but only with Congress's express approval.
And then the third authority, the emergency, allows the president to take defensive military action without Congress' approval in the event of a specific type of national emergency, such as a sudden unforeseen attack on the United States that happens too quickly for Congress to meet, necessitating immediate action to protect Americans.
It is that last situation that the War Powers Resolution provides for the oft-mentioned 48-hour report.
Think about what that means.
It's very commonsensical.
If a foreign military attacks the United States homeland or just suddenly starts attacking military bases or ships overseas, the president can't just allow those attacks to continue because he doesn't have time to convene Congress.
Imagine if Congress were on vacation.
If Congress couldn't be convened, of course the President in an emergency situation for a limited amount of time has to be able to order the Armed Forces to defend the United States until Congress can convene.
But that is only supposed to be in an emergency situation where there's no time to convene Congress.
That is not what happened here.
The United States has been threatening Yemen for weeks with this kind of an attack, if these attacks didn't stop.
They've been planning it.
They've been gathering an international coalition.
There was more than enough time to go to Congress and get congressional approval, and yet they specifically chose not to do that.
It is illegal and unconstitutional.
Now, you can write that off as being unimportant, and I'm going to show you why that is not a rational or cogent response.
What I will concede...
Is that, in general, the solution to this when the president starts a war without the authorization from Congress required by the Constitution is the branch of government whose prerogatives are being violated is the one that's supposed to defend those powers.
So Congress does have a solution.
Instead of just going on CNN and whining and complaining or posting grievances on Twitter, They could, for example, cut off funding for any further operations in Yemen to prevent Biden from proceeding with this military action.
The reality is that the reason Congress is happy for the president to fight wars without authorization of Congress is that Congress doesn't actually want this responsibility.
They don't want to have to run for re-election having cast hard votes about whether or not we should go to war.
They're more than happy to let the president make that decision on his own while they sit back and complain and chirp, oh, they should have come to Congress to do it.
And that in itself is a major problem in our government, that Congress has basically abdicated its responsibilities and its powers to the president.
But basically what we have now is exactly what the founders were desperate to avoid.
A standing military, so we have a permanent military, not one that is convened and assembled through conscript and voluntary fighting in the event of a war that Congress authorizes and funds and then the President executes.
That was the vision.
We have a permanent army.
Obviously, it's not going anywhere.
There's an army automatically and every year, not just funded, but funded to almost a trillion dollars a year, infinitely more than any other country on the planet spends.
And then not only do we have this permanent military under the president's command, but then he gets to decide which wars are fought and how those wars are fought almost with no input or checks from any other branch.
The exact kind of concentration of power in the executive branch that began in earnest after the war on terror and has really Now become the normal way of doing business in Washington because Congress doesn't want this responsibility.
Now, I want to show you a few of the reasons why this matters so much and why the design of our country depended upon avoiding exactly this situation.
So here back in 2005, on the blog that I started called Unclaimed Territory, I write about these issues.
I started it in late October of 2005.
This article was December 17, 2005, so less than two months after I first began writing about politics.
The title was Bush's Unchecked Executive Power vs.
the Founding Principles of the U.S. And the article was designed essentially to say that the unlimited presidential powers that Bush and Cheney were claiming in the name of the war on terror was a core violation of everything the founders warned about.
Quote, It's a theory of absolute unchecked power vested in the presidency, which literally could not be more at odds with the central founding principles of this country.
Quote, the notion that one of the three branches of our government can claim power unchecked by the other two branches is precisely what the founders sought first and foremost to preclude.
And the fear that a U.S. president would attempt to seize power unchecked by the law or by the other branches, i.e.
that the executive would seize the powers of the British king, Was the driving force behind the clear and numerous constitutional limitations placed on executive power.
It is these very limitations which the Bush administration is claiming that it has the power to disregard because the need for enhanced national security in time of war vests the president with unchecked power.
But that theory of the executive, unconstrained by law, is completely repulsive to the founding principles of the country, as well as to the promises made by the founders in order to extract consent from a monarchy-fearing public to the creation of executive power vested in a single individual.
The notion that all of that can be just whimsically tossed aside whenever the nation experiences external threats is as contrary to the country's founding principles as it is dangerous.
Madison, James Madison, emphasized in Federalist 51 that liberty could be preserved only if the laws enacted by the people through the Congress were supreme and universally binding.
But it is not possible to give each department an equal power of self-defense.
In Republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates.
An extremely potent demonstration of the Bush administration's claim to unchecked executive power is fundamentally inconsistent with the most basic constitutional safeguards comes from one of the unlikeliest corners, Antonin Scalia's dissent in Hamdi v.
Rumsfeld in 2004.
Now this was the dissent in this case, but he wasn't dissenting On the grounds of these principles, which he laid out.
I want you really to listen because this is Antonin Scalia, a defender of broad, robust executive power, talking about how crucial it is that we avoid a situation where the president commands a standing army and then can exercise the powers of the military without congressional approval.
This is what Scalia wrote.
Quote, and he wrote it in 2004.
The proposition that the executive lacks indefinite wartime detention authority over citizens is consistent with the Founders' general mistrust of military power permanently at the executive's disposal.
In the Founders' view, quote, the blessings of liberty were threatened by, quote, those military establishments which much gradually poison its very fountain, quoting the Federalist No.
45 written by James Madison.
Then Scalia said this, Except
for the actual command of military forces, all authorization for their maintenance and all explicit authorization for their use is placed in the control of Congress under Article I, rather than the President under Article II. As Hamilton explained, the President's military authority would be, quote, much inferior to that of the British King.
Quote, it would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces...
As first general and admiral of the Confederacy, while that of the British King extends to the declaring of war and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies, all of which by the Constitution would pertain to the legislator, the Federalist number 69.
A view of the Constitution that gives the executive authority to use military force rather than the force of law against citizens on American soil flies in the face of the mistrust that engendered these provisions.
The whole point was that there's no more consequential decision that can be made by a government than whether to go to war.
Typically, it means that the citizens of the country may be called upon to fight that war, and they certainly are going to be called upon to pay for it.
And the only way that decision could be just, said the founders, as recognized by Scalia, as through pervades all the Federalist Papers, Was if the citizens give their consent to that war through their elected representatives in Congress.
That was the whole design of the Constitution and how the separation of powers was to function.
Now just to underscore how it was the Bush and Cheney administration where all of this became really called into question for the first time in a long time.
Which is why it sickens me to watch Bush-Cheney operatives and their supporters or their liberal allies pretend that they're the ones defending these principles when they were the ones who waged war on them.
Here's a New York Times article, news article, December of 2005.
Quote, We're good to
go.
That stance has given the administration leeway for decisive action, but it has come under severe criticism from some scholars and the courts.
With the strong support of Vice President Dick Cheney, legal theorists in the White House and the Justice Department have argued that previous presidents unjustifiably gave up some of their legitimate power of their office.
The attacks of September 2001 made it especially critical that the full power of the executive be restored and exercised, they said.
That's where this all comes from.
From the very neocons and Bush-Cheney operatives that we are now told are the defenders and guardians of the rule of law.
Here is James Madison in the Federalist Papers number 47, quote, The particular structure of the new government and the distribution of power among the different parts.
That's what he was writing about.
Quote, 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 justifiably be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.
That, more than anything, is what they were seeking to avoid.
That one part of government made all the decisions, such as when to assemble the military, how to assemble it, whether to start new wars, and then how to fight it.
Here's an article I wrote from early 2007 where I said our Supreme General has spoken.
And this is so fundamental to the debate that people were having at the time that has now been forgotten.
The idea that Americans should refrain from debating the propriety of using military force, and I was responding there to an interview that Dick Cheney had given about the unpopularity of the Iraq War, where he said, look, we don't care if the American public turned against the war.
It's our decision whether to continue to fight it.
It's not for the American public to decide.
And so that's what I was talking about when I said the idea that Americans should refrain from debating the propriety of using military force is about as foreign to our political traditions as anything can be.
The Constitution, while making the President the top general in directing how citizen-approved wars are fought, ties the use of military force to the approval of the American citizenry in multiple ways, not only by prohibiting wars in the absence of a congressional declaration, but also by requiring not only by prohibiting wars in the absence of a congressional declaration, but also by requiring congressional approval every two Public opposition is the key check on the ill-advised use of military force.
In Federalist 24, Hamilton explained that the requirement of constant democratic deliberation over the American military is, quote, a great and real security against military establishments without evident necessity.
Finding a way to impose checks on the President's war-making abilities was a key objective of the Founders.
In Federalist 4, John Jay identified as a principal threat to the Republic.
A principal threat to the Republic.
The fact that insufficiently restrained leaders, quote, will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for purposes and objects merely personal, such as a thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambitions, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans.
These and a variety of other motives, which affect only the mind of the sovereign, often lead him to engage in wars not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests of his people.
I know when you talk about the Federalist Papers and old court rulings, it seems crusty, it seems archaic, it seems like it doesn't matter in the face of what people might think is an important and legitimate bombing of Yemen.
But it matters a lot in terms of the kind of country we have.
And John Jay is explaining why.
There are all kinds of corrupt motives that presidents have to start wars without the consent of the American people.
That's the reason why it's so much more than just some sort of legalistic obligation or ceremonial requirement that Congress openly debate whether this war is actually worth having, whether the risk of escalations are worth it, whether it's worth putting American lives in harm's way.
What the likely retaliatory effects of the war will be, how long we're going to stay in this war, what the purpose of it is, what the outcome is, what the mission is, how to define success, when it's going to be over.
Those are all things that get examined when you actually debate the war in Congress that you don't have when the president just gets to decide on his own to deploy the military and start bombing and then justify it afterwards.
And this is what we have lost completely to the point that now Biden can start a new war, which is what he just did in Yemen yesterday.
And very few people, you have a handful of members of Congress, are willing to stand up and object because it's treated as though it is just a bureaucratic and annoying requirement when it's actually fundamental to everything that the Republic is.
Bill Sherry, he's the politics editor at the Washington Monthly.
And we're going to go to him now.
Hello, Bill, how are you?
I don't have Bill's audio at the moment.
Hopefully we can get that fixed.
Can you hear me now?
Yes, I can hear you now.
Perfect.
Excellent.
So, Bill, I think it's fair to say that you have been a long-time pro-democratic writer, pundit, whatever you want to put it exactly.
I don't want to be cheap in your contributions to our discourse, but that seems about right to me, having followed you for a while.
And there's something sticking in my craw.
I mean, we're only a little over a week removed.
From Joe Biden withdrawing from the race, and I think you would have to acknowledge unprecedented fashion.
There really is no historical precedent for a major party nominee withdrawing that late in the cycle, having accumulated 99% of pledged delegates, having a glide path to the nomination, and just being replaced willy-nilly, nilly it seems by somebody who had to compete for zero votes had won zero delegates and at least in state and territory
popular vote contests either in 2024 or in 2020 where she also happened to have run and i just feel like this is being swept under the rug at breakneck speed because the media you know as they're wont to do
just want to like start rallying behind harris and just like pretend that joe biden wasn't adamantly insisting that he was going to run for a second term at age 82 and potentially be in office until age 86 So, I don't know.
What am I missing here?
Why is this...
Why does it not sit well with me that we've all seen, or the media has largely seemed to want to just have collectively moved on from this pretty staggering turn of events?
And I guess to crystallize it in the form of a question, would you concede that Kamala Harris is unique in at least modern American history in the lack of small-d democratic legitimacy that she has acquired, given her Having had to obtain almost zero votes or delegates through popular vote in order to become the presumptive nominee of a major party.
No, I wouldn't accept that premise.
I agree this is unprecedented at the presidential level.
We have other cases down ballot where people stepped aside for scandalous reasons or for health reasons and parties had to make late switches.
This is just happening on a grander stage.
And if there was any inkling That rank-and-file Democrats were upset about this.
Well, there would be a place to fix that at the convention, where the delegates are going to be.
Still, the delegates have to do the nominating.
And the delegates were elected through the primary process.
And if there was genuine upset...
With most Democrats, they wouldn't play ball.
But I think every poll shows there is just straight-up euphoria, just a huge amount of consensus around this.
And so that's why you're not going to see a lot of complaint.
This is somehow anti-small-d Democratic.
Okay, so let's just narrow it to the presidential level.
You're right, there are previous instances where for Senate races or House races or state and local races, there is a switch made at the last minute.
But the presidential race is on a much grander scale.
I think as we can all acknowledge, it's much more at the forefront of our collective mythology and consciousness.
And just in the modern era, Kamala Harris has drastically less Democratic legitimacy in terms of the metric that we always go by, which is receiving popular votes and delegates through public nominating contests, caucuses, primaries.
Kamala Harris stands alone in the annals of major party nominees in having received remarkably few votes or delegates, at least through public nominating contests.
Is that not correct?
I mean, why can't that just be acknowledged?
I mean, keep in mind, you know, modern presidential primaries start in 72.
Right, so let's leave it there.
But even if you go back to 68, well, not entirely, but there were beauty contest primaries.
There's a smattering of primaries, but still generally delegates on the floor.
I thought on historical diatribes on this show, people would probably tune me out, but even in 1968, Hubert Humphrey had to go around and act.
He did not do a lot of primaries.
Well, he didn't do a lot, but he did some.
He did more than Harris has done.
Like, he had to go...
I pulled up archives of, like, from the Vermont Democratic State Convention in 1968, where he had to go and send surrogates to campaign for his preferred slate of delegates, and then they won in Vermont.
That's just one example.
It's a minor point in the grand scheme.
But he had to do more than Harris did.
But if you want to just...
Let's just put it at the 70s.
Okay, yeah.
The advent of the modern primary era came in the 70s.
So let's just use that as a cutoff.
Yeah.
Would you acknowledge that Harris has the least democratic legitimacy, small d, of the modern primary era of either party major nominees?
I would not put it in terms of legitimacy.
So there were delegates elected through the primary process.
The delegates hold the power.
If some other candidate wanted to raise their hand and say, I'm going to run against Harris, they're allowed to do so.
They didn't.
And we're calling it the presumptive nominee now because journalists called all the delegates to say, do you support Harris?
And a majority said yes.
And so that's why the media said he's just a presumptive nominee, which is what they always do, just typically it's through in the middle of these electoral contests.
There are ways to stop Harris if Democrats wanted her to be stopped.
They don't.
And that's why this is going to be a legitimate process, even though it's not going through the traditional primary process as we know it since 1972.
But there's no way for voters to signal their preference for another candidate.
The primaries were over.
When the Democrats decided to pull this switcheroo.
Yes, you're right.
The primary voters and caucus goers elected delegates who were pledged to Joe Biden, not to Kamala Harris.
And this talking point that in electing Joe Biden...
The Democratic primary voters were also de facto electing Kamala Harris.
That's just not true.
There's no vice presidential primary.
There's a presidential primary.
Joe Biden would have theoretically been more than entitled to select a different vice presidential nominee if he had wanted to.
Now, in practice, he almost certainly would not have, but that would have been up to him.
So, I mean, when I say Democratic legitimacy, I'm talking in terms of I'm not arguing that voters, when they cast their ballots in the primaries, did so knowing, I know if Biden drops out in July, it's going to be Harris.
That wasn't top of mind when the votes occurred at the time.
What I'm saying is, delegates are elected through those processes.
The process literally sends delegates to the convention The party rules allow those delegates to make different choices on the convention floor.
And those delegates have chosen to back Harris.
And because, you know, even though there's no voting process that's created post-primary, Politicians can read the room.
We do have polls.
We do have anecdotal data.
If there was a market for an alternative candidate, a politician would step into that vacuum and try to serve that market.
But every bit of data that we have is that that market doesn't exist.
So you're not finding Democrats saying, I'm mad about this.
This is illegitimate.
Everyone's like, let us go.
Let us get this done.
So I just don't think there's going to be a way for anyone to drive a wedge through the Democratic base to say, you should be mad about this because the Democrats are not bad about this.
Okay, so let's go to this July 8th letter.
You probably recall this, that Joe Biden issued to congressional Democrats.
It was the same day that he turned in his defiant phone-in call to Morning Joe.
He also sent a letter to congressional Democrats adamantly insisting that he was going to stay in the race, come hell or high water.
And he said the following.
This was a process open to anyone who wanted to run.
Only three people chose to challenge me.
One fared so badly that he left the primaries to run as independent.
It's obviously a thinly veiled reference to RFK Jr.
Another attacked me for being too old and was sounding defeated.
Another veiled reference to Dean Phillips.
The voters of the Democratic Party have voted, Biden says.
They have chosen me to be the nominee of the party.
Then he asks, do we now just say this process didn't matter?
That the voters don't have a say?
I decline to do that, Biden says.
I feel a deep obligation to the faith and the trust of the voters of the Democratic Party that they've placed in me to run this year.
It was their decision to make, not the press, not the pundits, not the big donors, not any selected group of individuals, no matter how well-intentioned.
The voters and the voters alone decide the nominee of the Democratic Party.
And here's the kicker, Bill, and I want your answer to this one here.
I want you to answer Joe Biden's question, not my question, answer Joe Biden's question.
He asks, how can we stand for democracy in our nation if we ignore it in our own party?
I cannot do that.
I will not do that.
So Bill, that was July 8th.
What's the answer today?
They're negating the entire process.
He did not have a strong argument, which is why he quit.
It was very evident.
That he was unlikely to win.
And I believe, and I realize that Biden has not copped to this publicly, there appears to be a health problem there.
I would prefer transparency in that regard, that we're not getting.
I will concede that.
Everyone was pretty clear.
Most, I mean, I should say everyone.
There's obviously where Biden diehard, so I'm quite aware of them on X. Clearly Biden had his inner circle.
I think Biden was slow to get to the place where he got.
I think when he wrote that letter, I think that was probably written very sincerely in the moment.
But a whole lot of people recognized that he was not up to this task.
And what reporting we have, it appears that once the internal polling was shown to Biden by people close to him, he had to accept that.
And so once he decides he is no longer running anymore, all those July 8th arguments are completely moot and obsolete.
He is literally just not the nominee anymore.
He's not a candidate for the office anymore, and that frees up the delegates who were elected to choose who they want to choose.
And the majority of them would appear to be unanimously one Kamala Harris.
Right, but the argument here is that not just that the polls are showing me potentially losing to Trump.
The argument here was that if the donors and the press and all the know-it-alls try to coerce me out of the race, what they'll be doing is invalidating the Democratic will of the Democratic Party's voters, and that'll undermine we Democrats in our ability to make the case against Trump and the Republicans.
That we, quote, stand for democracy because it'll show that we're, quote, ignoring it in our own party.
So I don't understand how that same argument couldn't be made today because the exact thing that Biden was warning about has come to pass.
Whatever his poll results showed, the Democratic Party apparently in its upper echelons decided that it would be in their best interest to negate the results of the primaries.
So I don't see what is flawed about Biden's argument here in the sense that By negating those primary results, you're showing that the Democratic Party clearly doesn't have that same commitment to democracy that it likes to pontificate about.
Am I missing something?
It would be a valid argument if he was still standing for election.
So it was valid on July 8th.
If he was standing for election at the Democratic Convention and the delegates who were elected to vote for him turned on him and elected somebody else whilst looking at Biden in the face, that argument would hold water.
That would be delegates not doing what they were elected to do.
However, Biden withdrew.
That changes everything about that argument.
And if Trump or anybody else wants to prosecute this case to say Kamala Harris is an illegitimate candidate because she did not go through a traditional primary process, every bit of poll data that we have suggests that that argument is going to fall extremely flat.
Almost every American, regardless of party, wanted Biden to not be in this race.
And as on the Democratic side is concerned, there is a massive amount of excitement that they have another alternative instead of Joe Biden right now.
And I say this as someone who was a very big Joe Biden defender pretty much up until the debate.
So I'm not someone who's had a real animus towards Joe Biden.
I'm just telling you what Everything we're seeing in the past week shows just practically a euphoric sense of excitement for what is happening here.
And so I think being kind of a sourpuss about the process just isn't going to get anyone very far.
Well, I guess I'm inclined to be a sourpuss about many things, and maybe including the Democratic primary process of 2024, which I actually covered, you know, in fair depth.
I went to New Hampshire.
I went to Iowa.
I went to, you know, lots of places.
You know, I was talking to people about the process in New Hampshire, you might recall.
Biden actually wasn't technically on the ballot, and they had a write-in Biden campaign because what the DNC under Biden's effective control wanted to do was rejigger the primary process in 2024 to put a premium on South Carolina or put it first chronologically because that was where Biden's more natural support base was.
And basically what they did that was incredible was they tried to more or less disenfranchise New Hampshire despite its vaunted first in the nation primary status by saying, look, I mean, the DNC sent a threat letter to the New Hampshire Democratic Party saying, you have to instruct candidates the DNC sent a threat letter to the New Hampshire Democratic Party saying, you have to instruct candidates in this primary race They used that exact word, meaningless.
And so I don't know.
I guess I just remember this stuff.
And to just say it's all flushed down the memory hole with such abandon...
I don't know.
It just brubs me the wrong way.
You're probably right that this euphoria that's overtaken lots of Democratic elites and people in the media and whatever probably is superior in their minds to having any...
Cognizance of the bizarre process that got us to this point.
But I still can't shake my curiosity about it.
And, you know, maybe it's because oftentimes I feel like I'm in the weeds of a lot of these procedural issues.
So I'm unusually interested.
But, I don't know.
Do you sympathize with me at all on that score?
Well, let me say three things.
I'll try to say them quickly.
Number one...
Well, one, I think the euphoria we're talking about is not...
Strictly elites.
I think, again, polls suggest this is broad-based.
I think the average American didn't think Joe Biden should be in the race.
Average Democrat, very excited about Kamala Harris.
It's not just Nancy Pelosi.
It's not just donors.
So that's number one.
Number two, I think the New Hampshire play by Biden was stupid.
I think the obsession with putting South Carolina first was stupid.
I've written about this in the past.
South Carolina had all the influence that you could possibly want batting cleanup.
It's a great place to be.
It's better than being first.
It was this superficial notion that we shouldn't have a small white state go first.
We should have a probably African-American state go first.
Ignored the fact that the African-Americans in the Democratic Party were picking the nominee out of South Carolina every single time as it was.
So the whole thing was dumb.
But the third thing I would say is Donald Trump, when he was the incumbent, very much jerry-rigged the 2020 primary process to make that a non-contest as well.
It's hardly unusual for an incumbent president to have his thumb on the scale of the party machinery and make that a very smooth process.
So I understand it being off-putting, but hardly unprecedented and hardly unique to Democrats.
So, Bill, as a fellow white dude, I'm curious for your thoughts on the Democratic Party's seeming embrace.
Of white identity politics.
We saw this big Zoom call, white dudes for Harris last night.
Lots of big celebrities on the call.
Lots of white dude Democrats in Congress and so forth.
You had, who was the guy?
Sam Wise from the Lord of the Rings movies.
You had Mark Hamill, who recited his Luke Skywalker taglines, and on and on and on.
And it seems like the Democratic Party is now going out, and this got a ton of coverage.
So did the white women for Kamala Session.
So I've declared this particular edition of our show a white dudes-only show, and Inspired by the Democratic Party's seeming recent turn toward white identity politics, are you gratified by this?
Do you welcome being so personally catered to by the Democrats as a cohesive, racialized interest group?
Well, first, everybody does identity politics, and they've been doing it since the beginning of politics.
We just saw Donald Trump go to Turning Points Conference begging Christians to vote for him.
That's identity politics.
We've seen people stand behind Donald Trump with a Blacks for Trump sign.
That's identity politics.
So nothing new here, nothing surprising, nothing shocking.
I think this is a little bit different, this white dudes thing.
It's not, you know, it's not the official Kamala Harris campaign doing it.
The Senate sprung up on its own.
It's got a lot of celebrities involved.
I know some elected Democrats were participating.
You had every vice presidential nominee who could get on the call, Tim Walls, J.B. Pritzker, Roy Cooper.
They all fell over themselves to get on this.
So even if it wasn't run by the official campaign apparatus, it was the closest thing to it.
No one's disavowing it, of course.
But this is less about trying to tailor a message to a constituency.
It's a little bit tongue-in-cheek.
It's a little bit trying just to send a message to, you know, average white person.
You don't need to be...
Afraid, annoyed, put off by not having someone who has your demographic at the top of the ticket.
I heard you talking about Obama with Mr.
Ziegler before.
Obama was a master at navigating those racial waters and trying to not seem scary to white voters and did it as good as anyone could possibly do it in 2008.
This is sort of a different version of that.
But it's in the same vein.
It's just a way to say, look, this is not a candidate who's going to cater to a narrow slice of America.
We're trying to do things to show she's going to appeal to a broad swath of America.
And that's just the way politics works and it has since the beginning of time.
Okay, so final topic, Bill.
You've written for the Washington Monthly.
You called on Biden to withdraw on July 5th, but you also called him to resign the presidency.
You called for him to resign the presidency, and you followed this up by doing a long historical disquisition on Woodrow Wilson, which I found interesting.
People should read that article if they want to get some historical context on that.
Woodrow Wilson obviously was incapacitated effectively by a stroke as he was negotiating the potential entry of the United States into the League of Nations, which never happened.
In part, it's suspected because Wilson became erratic and even lost some of his political acumen, and therefore the Senate essentially rebelled against him, and he could not get the treaty ratified that would have been required to admit the U.S. into the League of Nations.
And you likened Biden's predicament to this.
Obviously, you can't make a perfect parallel for virtually any historical scenario.
But you've been saying that Biden shouldn't just withdraw from the race.
He needs to resign the presidency and make Harris the president.
And now, if we're taking Biden at his word...
He's saying he's going to serve the next six months of his presidency.
He's not going to resign.
He's not going to heed your advice.
So, number one, isn't that a huge political liability for whoever the Democratic nominee is?
Obviously, it seems like it's almost certainly going to be Harris, but even if it were somebody else, Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, anybody, they would have to be answering for the fact that the current Democratic incumbent, President is somebody who had to withdraw from the race on the grounds of diminished mental acuity.
You know, that became a consensus view within his own party.
And yet he's persisting on in the office of the presidency, even in that diminished state, to the point that you, so diminished, in fact, that it led to you calling for him to resign.
So isn't there a huge political liability there?
And what about on a substantive level?
I mean, shouldn't we, as Americans, be a little bit worried about Biden's ability to, for example, I don't know, there could be a war breaking out as we speak, or at least an escalated war between Israel and Hezbollah, in which the U.S. is going to inevitably have a very intimate and in which the U.S. is going to inevitably have a very intimate and
You never know what could spiral out of control with Russia and Ukraine, Taiwan, etc.
Are there any number of obviously hugely consequential scenarios that could unfold that the president has to be alert and capable to manage?
And we have somebody in office who is saying he's going to be there for the next six months.
It's a long time.
A lot could happen in six months.
So what's your response to that?
Well, I think you raised the two relevant points.
What's the political risk and what's the substantive risk?
And I had concerns on both those counts when I wrote that.
In terms of the politics of it, so far, Democrats have navigated Biden staying in office, you know, without fault.
Biden hasn't copped to.
Any kind of health issue, any kind of neurological problem.
Republicans were the ones that demanded he resign.
Democrats shrugged it off.
And we aren't really talking about that all that much anymore.
So I think in the short run, they've avoided the...
I mean, I was concerned that Harris would be bombarded with questions.
How can you possibly stand there while we have a sitting president with an obvious health problem and you think that's okay?
She hasn't been hammered with that question.
And why hasn't she?
And since no one has...
Why hasn't she?
I'm not one to just flippantly line up with Republican grievances or conservative grievances about mainstream media, but shouldn't that be a pretty obvious question?
Like, shouldn't Karras had to have...
Wouldn't you think that at least on, like, I don't know, one or two occasions since being crowned presumptive nominee, she would have to address that very straightforward question?
Were you aware of...
Joe Biden's diminished cognitive faculties.
Did it ever raise concerns for you?
But nobody's even mentioning it anymore because they're so overcome with this euphoria.
That seems a little odd to me.
I think she's going to get all those questions.
I don't think she's done.
I think when she has her first sit-down interview, which I don't think she's had.
Which is also bizarre.
Which is also a bizarre sign of how seamlessly she's been able to circumvent any standard hurdle to getting this nomination.
Like, one of the points of a protracted primary process is not only that you'd have to compete for votes in delegates, but you'd have debates, you'd have to do interviews to scrutinize yourself before the public.
She's done none of that.
You're right.
I don't think she has done an interview since Biden withdrew from the race.
And why should she?
The media is beside itself with euphoria, so she doesn't even have to do it.
Right?
I mean, they're giving her a pass.
Well, I wouldn't blame the media for that.
She was able to lock up that sufficient delegate support, which gets her crown presumptive nominee by the media.
Okay, let's be more specific.
Why is the New York Times and CNN and the Washington Post and MSNBC and the Washington Monthly, why aren't they clamoring for her to do a sit-down interview ASAP? I mean, I think this is going to happen.
I think it will happen.
It'll probably happen very soon.
This is literally a week ago, you know, or not nine days ago.
So I think these things are going to happen.
I think she's going to get those questions, and we'll see what the answers are.
I think there is a—well, let me shift to the substantive part of the question.
I think the Wilson history is instructive here.
They're two different people.
Their conditions are not necessarily the same, of course, probably not the same.
So I can't know exactly what is going to happen to Biden physically and mentally over the next six months.
But we do see in the Wilson example, people may know that he had a very big stroke in October 1919, the seventh year of his presidency, left him basically incapacitated.
He did recover somewhat, but he never copped to it publicly fully.
There was no entertainment of him resigning, and he just powered through with the help of his wife doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
Yeah.
But there were signs of problems in the months before that, even in the years before that.
I mean, he was having mini-strokes decades before, you know, but never really had his underlying neurological condition properly diagnosed.
He didn't have his high blood pressure properly diagnosed, so he wasn't being treated.
And so it was a very, very slow-moving progression of cerebrovascular disease.
And we had a point in April of 1919 when he's in France.
He's literally negotiating the treaty.
He's not delegating it to a Secretary of State.
He's doing it.
He's there for months.
It's a very stressful endeavor.
He gets a very high fever.
He has bouts of delirium.
Delirium is different than dementia, but if you have early signs of dementia, it can exacerbate it.
He has a mini stroke after the fever.
And there are people that say, like Herbert Hoover, who was in his administration, that he wasn't the same person after that.
Now, it's not total night and day.
It's not like he didn't go up from down.
But he wasn't as sharp.
He wasn't speaking as well.
He had a harder time selling what was a controversial treaty when he came back to the States.
But he wasn't so bad off That even his defenders didn't want him to quit.
His defenders said, we want you out there.
We want you to go on a speaking tour.
We want you to sell this treaty.
We want you to sell the League of Nations.
And he booked an 8,000-mile, 29-city train tour, even though his doctor in some of his inner circles said, I don't know if you've got the strength for this right now, but he felt he was the indispensable man.
He does it.
Some of the speeches were great.
Some of the speeches were not so great.
And then eventually he pushed himself too hard and he ends up having the full-blown stroke.
So what is potentially relevant is, I don't think Biden is so out to lunch he can't twiddle his thumbs, can't do the basis of the job right now.
But we're seeing some signs of decline.
And I don't think There's been like a three-and-a-half-year cover-up.
I think something happened more recently.
And I would very much like to have a fresh medical assessment so we can find out what that was.
Saying he got a test in February doesn't count.
I think something happened since February.
But I'm not a doctor, and I can't diagnose from afar.
We should have a fresh medical checkup, in my opinion.
We haven't gotten that.
If you want to criticize that, I would agree with that criticism.
But for a substantive standpoint, he's running a risk that something else might happen.
Between now and January, that would make him worse off than he is today.
Today, can he handle the base of the job?
I think probably.
I can't know for sure, but I think probably.
But it may not stay that way.
And if something does happen that's very obvious to the eye, that might end up being a bigger problem for Harris politically.
Maybe that would actually precipitate a resignation if it got really bad.
So it does leave me with a bit of concern.
But as a political matter, as of today, it hasn't proven to be a problem.
Well, I tend to suspect that this outburst of euphoria Within much of the media over this coronation of Kamala Harris has suspiciously lessened the interest in Joe Biden's cognitive aptitude.
I haven't seen many thorough New York Times or Washington Post investigations or political leaks on Joe Biden's ability to conduct his basic duties of office in the past 10 days or so.
Maybe that'll pick up again.
But it seems like it's been...
Set aside in favor of this cheerleading for Kamala Harris without, like we've established, her even sitting down for an interview to answer some of these very fundamental questions.
But, Bill Sher, we're going to have to leave it there.
Thank you for joining us, and thank you for joining White Dudes Summer here at System Update.
This is a White Dudes Only space, again, inspired by the Democratic Party, so we appreciate you joining us.
My pleasure.
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