Watch the full episode HERE
Note: In this System Update Flashback, we review some of the many examples of the rife political hypocrisy in the United States.
Canceling Israel Critics
(Click here to watch clip)
Even those Harvard we had on the show who were put on that ‘no hire’ blacklist and had trucks driving around Harvard, signed a letter essentially saying the reason for the October 7 attack was the Israeli occupation and brutal treatment of the Palestinians but they didn't praise Hamas or call for the murder of Jews either. Almost nobody who lost their jobs in these high-profile cases did anything remotely like that. Again, this sort of thing is exactly what has been condemned by people on the right for years.
Here is just one of many examples, a tweet by Christopher Rufo, who I think is one of the most influential right-wing activists, on December 20, 2021.
You also see the quote from that teacher, Tony Khan, at Indianapolis Public Schools, who just fired me for “sharing that IPS recorded children and required racial justice sessions, not sending IEPs to personnel info, quoting Dr. Payne's racist comments to students sharing public files.” So, the idea was nobody was saying their own school districts have the right to fire whoever they want, including teachers who express views on controversial issues. The idea was “This is outrageous.”
Here from the New York Post, June 4, 2020.
NBA voice Grant Napear was unjustly fired over ‘All Lives Matter’ truth
Grant Napear, 32 years the TV voice of the Sacramento Kings, is a goner this week, fired from his gig as a Sacramento sports talk host and “resigned” as the TV voice of Kings TV broadcast because he’s a racist. Perhaps. There’s no evidence.
Like Hilary Clinton and presumably millions before him, Napear was naïve to the new presumption that “All Lives Matter” is now considered by some to be a racist response to the BLM movement. (New York Post, June 4, 2020)
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 oppression we face.
And again, I largely agreed with the people critiquing that, it's just I didn't change my mind on October 7 when it came to Israel.
Here from the Daily Wire, February 12, 2021:
Shapiro: Gina Carano Firing Part Of A Movement To ‘Expel’ Half Of America
Daily Wire editor emeritus Ben Shapiro ripped the mass media company Disney and the “hard Left” on Thursday after actress Gina Carano was fired from her role on the Star Wars TV series “The Mandalorian.” (Daily Wire, February 12, 2021)
I'm sure there are going to be fanatical fans of Star Wars angry that I 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 that 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 U.S. He said that Carano’s firing “is indicative of where we are in the culture, and it is a terrible moment for American culture.”
“Social movements have consequences, and we are now in the middle of a mass social movement to expel half of the American population from the body politic,” Shapiro added. (Daily Wire, February 12, 2021)
Do you see here how there was this very pervasive sense of getting people fired for political views that many people in the United States consider to be offensive it 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 cease-fire of 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, is Bari 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 Magnum Opus where she said “We got here because of cowardice. We get out with courage. Say no to the Woke Revolution.”
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 are socially vilified for expressing them. This is what she wrote when describing how terrible this environment is – in 2021.
So, the tools themselves are not just replaced but repudiated. And in so doing, 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 de-platforming. Diversity is replaced with homogeneity of thought. Inclusion, with exclusion.
As Douglas Murray has put it: “The problem is not that the sacrificial victim is selected. The problem is that the people who destroy his reputation are permitted to do so by the complicity, silence and slinking away of everybody else.” (Bari Weiss. Commentary Magazine, November 2021)
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 and after October 7.
Here is the case of James Damore. This actually occurred before MeToo, before the Black Lives Matter movement. One of the people who was a big celeb, was David Shaw. 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 Shaw gets fired for expressing his opinion just because millions of people find it offensive. It 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 cause. But the idea was there is nothing worse than a country that fires people for expressing their dissenting views.
James Damore’s case was one of the first. He was an employee at Google and he sent an internal post on 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 is a private company, they have the right to fire him if they want.” They were saying, this is dangerous, we have to stop this.
Here is Dave Rubin putting James Damore on his show so they could commiserate on the injustice of all of this.
(Video. The Rubin Report. September 7, 2017)
Dave Rubin: […] It's harmful. Don't look at it. That's what executives were saying. I mean, that's good.
James Damore: And also, there are a ton of memes within the company just talking about how horrible this was and just blasting me as a person.
Dave Rubin: 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 your conclusions or all that, but you were being attacked personally by people then within the company. Was there any retribution from those?
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. 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 7 for people who criticize 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 in the street and protest in favor of the French policy, which is to support Israel. What you're barred criminally from doing is going 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 that 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.
I should note 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 will be happy to do it. So far, that hasn't happened. He's welcome on the show any time. I'd love to have him on to explore this, try to reconcile all this.
But just to show you how oppressive things have gotten, let me show you this. Here is David Jacobs, and he's very angry 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 and to debate difficult issues – one of the things you go to college to learn how to do. Remember all that? No safety as I am at college. College students don't have the right to be shielded from ideas that make them uncomfortable. They have to confront what learning to be an adult is all about. How many times have you heard that? And yet look at this.
Here's the thing that is apparently anti-Semitic “bile.”
So, the point of the question is: you're a 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 Pinkwashing in the headline. It's a common term that pro-Palestinian activist uses and 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 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 and 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.” 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, that you're forced to agree with it.
So, the question is what is pinkwashing referred to? And you see there the highlighted answer, which is the correct definition of this term as people use it: “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 historic high amount of civilians in this bombing campaign,” people 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. How is that 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. They want to get this person fired.
Here is Jonathan Kaye. He's a writer at Colette, which is a magazine in the U.K. that is almost about nothing other than defending the virtues of free discourse, free thought and free speech, they claim.
“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.
There have been people, I should note, not many, but it has spilled over into the pro-Israel side as well. Here from the L.A. 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 vocal supporter of Israel, and he went over to them and was offended by their protest. And here's what happened.
The economics professor’s interactions with students that day ended with the 72-year-old Strauss, who is Jewish, declaring: “Hamas are murderers. That’s all they are. Everyone should be killed, and I hope they all are killed.” (LA Times, November 26, 2023)
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 reshared on X, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
Within a day, an associate dean told Strauss that he was on paid 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 “racist, xenophobic behavior” and comments that “promote and incite violence” had collected more than 6,500 signatures. (LA Times, November 26, 2023)
I have no problem vehemently condemning the notion that he should be punished for that, especially on a college campus and 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 are killed.” But I have the 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 firings since October 7 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, 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 Bari Weiss spent her career on. That's what Ben Shapiro built his career on. That's what so many rich political pundits and journalists claimed they believed in. Until October 7 happened and everything changed. And now there are all of 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 protected free speech, no question about it but that isn't what they said. They said things like, “I want a cease-fire,” “I believe Israel is the wrongful party here” and “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 destroyed or their reputations vilified, please, please just don't ever pretend again for the rest of your life that you believe in free thought and free discourse, that you oppose cancel culture or anything else like that because you have zero credibility to make that claim.
Ignoring the Constitution
(Click here to see the clip video)
However, 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 to usher in these radical theories of executive power under Article II, which I know about because they're the reason I started writing about politics. I was practicing constitutional law at the time and felt that there was not nearly enough attention in the 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 cheerleaded it from the sidelines, but who implemented it while in power now posturing and feeling as though they're offended by the very theories that they played such a key role in ushering into our political life.
That is the context for what has just happened, on Thursday, when 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 somewhat informal ceasefire, being held by 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 and bombed the Houthis. We have been 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 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:
The Regional War No One Wanted Is Here. How Wide Will It Get?
Of course, the Biden administration has been saying we don't want to be in a 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 has 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 and Hezbollah. Early on in the conflict, back in 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, if 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 the United States, the Biden administration, and 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's what The New York Times said:
With the U.S.-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 costs, 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: 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?
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 in 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 questions now are the conflict’s intensity and whether it can be contained. This is exactly the outcome no one wanted, presumably including Iran. “This is already a regional war, no longer limited to Gaza, but already spread to Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen,” said Hugh Lovatt, a Mideast 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 it, 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 an 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 New York Times, January 12, 2024)
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 hard-core 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 cruise 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, the United States, or 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. It is a powder keg in the Middle East and always is and we are now involved primarily due to Israel and yet another Middle East war.
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 U.S. in a proxy war there, just like they cheered his policy of supporting Israel, just like they cheered his antagonism 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 goes to the heart of how our constitutional republic and our structure of government functions.
Here is Congressman Ro Khanna, the Democrat from California, on January 11.
Senator Mike Lee, the Republican of Utah, said,
Senator Rand Paul, the Republican senator from Kentucky, said,
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 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 a 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:
That's what he said as part of the Democratic debate. “We will not go back to forever wars in the Middle East.”
Here is what he said when it came to the question of whether Trump could bomb Iran in January.
Here's Kamala Harris in February of 2020.
So, when Democrats were seeking power, Biden and Kamala Harris 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 for a decade in Congress as a Republican, from Michigan. And here's what he wrote earlier today,
That is the claim that you constantly hear—that the War Powers Resolution allows the president to just a 60-90 delay-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 Congress, that says only Congress has the power to declare war. That makes the president commander in chief of the armed forces, in Article II, which defines executive power. But only when there's an actual war when there is a military that's convened. We weren't supposed to have a standing army in the United States. The founders were petrified—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 the president as commander 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 start a war and then execute it, as has now become the norm in the United States for very dangerous reasons.
Amash goes on.
Of the three cited authorities, not one indicates a presidential power to take a unilateral offensive military action. The first two authorities allowed 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's approval, in the event of a specific type of national emergency, such as a sudden and 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 aforementioned 48-hour report.
Now, think about what that means. It's very common sensical. If a foreign military attacked the United States homeland or just suddenly started 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, 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 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 attack. If these attacks didn't stop, they’d been planning it, they’d 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.
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 from Congress is that Congress doesn't actually want this responsibility. They don't want to have to run for reelection 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 $1 trillion 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 now become the normal way of doing business in Washington because Congress doesn't want this responsibility.
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, in the blog that I started called Unclaimed Territory, I write about these issues. I started it in late October of 2005. This article is from December 17, 2005, so, less than two months after I first began writing about politics. The title was “Bush's Unchecked Executive Power versus the Founding Principles of the U.S.” 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 were a core violation of everything the founders warned about.
Bush's unchecked Executive power v. the Founding Principles of the U.S.
Underlying all of the excesses and abuses of executive power claimed by the Bush Administration is a theory of absolute, unchecked power vested in the Presidency which literally could not be any more at odds with the central, founding principles of this country.
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. In particular, 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 to each department an equal power of self-defense. In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates.” An extremely potent demonstration that 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, 124 S.Ct. 2633 (2004):
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 read it carefully 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, and he wrote 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, the "blessings of liberty" were threatened by "those military establishments which must gradually poison its very fountain." The Federalist No. 45, p. 238 (J. Madison). No fewer than 10 issues of the Federalist were devoted in whole or part to allaying fears of oppression from the proposed Constitution's authorization of standing armies in peacetime. Many safeguards in the Constitution reflect these concerns. Congress's authority "[t]o raise and support Armies" was hedged with the proviso that "no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years." U. S. Const., Art. 1, §8, cl. 12. 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 "much inferior" to that of the British King:
"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 which, by the constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature." The Federalist No. 69, p. 357.
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. (Glenn Greenwald. Unclaimed Territory, December 17, 2005)
The whole point was that no more consequential decision 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 pervades all the Federalist Papers, was for the citizens to 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 the function.
Just to underscore how it was the Bush and Cheney administration when all of this became in and 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 news article, from December 2005.
Behind Power, One Principle as Bush Pushes Prerogatives
A single, fiercely debated legal principle lies behind nearly every major initiative in the Bush administration's war on terror, scholars say: the sweeping assertion of the powers of the presidency. From the government's detention of Americans as "enemy combatants" to the just-disclosed eavesdropping in the United States without court warrants, the administration has relied on an unusually expansive interpretation of the president's authority. 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 Justice Department have argued that previous presidents unjustifiably gave up some of the legitimate power of their office. The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, made it especially critical that the full power of the executive be restored and exercised, they said. (The New York Times, December 17, 2005)
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,
The Particular Structure of the New Government and the Distribution of Power Among Its Different Parts
The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. (Federalist Papers No. 47, James Madison, February 1, 1788)
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. in 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.
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.
Our Supreme General has spoken
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 (though it does impose that much-ignored requirement), but also by requiring Congressional approval every two years merely to have an army. 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 "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 the fact that insufficiently restrained leaders "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, ambition, 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." (Glenn Greenwald. Unclaimed Territory, January 25, 2007)
I know when you talk about the Federalist Papers and all the court rulings it seems crusty, it seems archaic, 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 explains 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 worth having, whether the risk of escalations is 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 afterward. 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.
Michael Tracey’s interview with Political Analyst Bill Scher
(Click here to watch the clip)
Okay. Joining us next is Bill Scher, the politics editor at the Washington Monthly.
M. Tracey: Hello, Bill. How are you? Bill, I think it's fair to say that you have been a long-time pro-Democratic writer and pundit, whatever you want to put it exactly. I don't want to cheapen your contributions to our discourse, but that seems about right to me, having followed you for a while. 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, I think you would have to acknowledge it, in an unprecedented fashion. There 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, it seems, by somebody who had to compete for zero votes, had one 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.
I just feel like this is being swept under the rug at breakneck speed because the media, you know, as they want 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? Like, 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 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?
Bill Scher: 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 health reasons and parties had to make light 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. There's 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, it's why you're not going to see a lot of complaints. This is somehow anti-“small d”-democratic.
M. Tracey: Okay. So, let's just narrow it to the presidential level. You're right. There are previous instances where for Senate races, House races or state and local races there is a switch made at the last minute, but the presidential races 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. But 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, and primaries. Kamala Harris stands alone in 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?
Bill Scher: I mean, keep in mind, you know, modern presidential primary start in 72. So...
M. Tracey: All right. So, let's leave it there. But even if you go back to 68, well, not entirely, but there were beauty contest primaries.
Bill Scher: There's a smattering of primaries, but still generally delegates […]
M. Tracey: I’ve had on historical diatribes on the show – people probably tune me out – but even in 1968, Hubert Humphrey had to go around and advocate […]
Bill Scher: He did not do a lot of primaries. Humphrey was not a big primary guy.
M. Tracey: 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, let's just put the 70s okay? The advent of the modern primary era came in the 70s. So, let's just use that as a cut-off. Would you acknowledge that Harris has the least democratic legitimacy, small d, of the modern primary era of either party's major nominees?
Bill Scher: I would not put her 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 did it. 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.” That's why the media said this is 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.
M. Tracey: 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 caucusgoers 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 more than entitled to select a different vice presidential nominee if you 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 electoral input by the masses, you know, which is what the modern presidential system was supposed to enable.
Bill Scher: Right. 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, even though there's no voting process that's created post-primary, politicians can read the rules. 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,” or “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 mad about this.
M. Tracey: Okay, so let's go to this July 8 letter. You probably recall this that Joe Biden issued to congressional Democrats. It was the same day that he turned in his defiant phone 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 faired 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 two aldermen soundly 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 declined 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 have 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 name 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. 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 8. What's the answer today? They're negating the entire process.
Bill Scher: 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 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, but everyone was pretty clear – most, I mean, obviously Biden diehards, 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 then 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 8 arguments are completely moot and obsolete. He is literally just not the nominee anymore. He is 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 Kamala Harris.
M. Tracey: Right. But the argument here is 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 will undermine we Democrats in our ability to make the case against Trump and the Republicans that we stand for democracy because it'll show that we're 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 show. 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, and I'm missing something?
Bill Scher: It would be a valid argument if he were still standing for election. […]
M. Tracey: It was valid on July 8th.
Bill Scher: And 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 while 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. If Trump or anybody else wants to prosecute this case – they 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 up until the debate. So, I'm not someone who's had a liberal animus towards Joe Biden. I'm just telling you that everything we're seeing in the past week show is, practically, a euphoric sense of excitement for what is happening here. And so, I think being a kind of a sour puss about the process just isn't going to get anyone very far.
M. Tracey: Well, I guess I'm inclined to be a sour puss 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, Iowa and lots of places. 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. Basically, what they did that was incredible: they tried to more or less disenfranchise New Hampshire, despite its vaunted first in the nation’s primary status, I mean, the DNC sent a threatening letter to the New Hampshire Democratic Party saying, “You have to instruct candidates in this primary race that the outcome is going to be meaningless.” They use the exact word “meaningless.” And so, I don't know, I guess I just remember this stuff and you just say it's all flushed down the memory hole with such abandon. I know it just throws me the wrong way. You're probably right that this euphoria that's overtaken a lot of Democratic elites and people in the media, 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?
Bill Scher: Well, let me say three things I'll try to say quickly. Number one, well, I think the euphoria we're talking about is not strictly elites. I think, again, polls suggest this is a broad base. I think the average American didn't think Joe Biden should be in the race, the 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. Cleanup is a great place to be, it's better than being first. It was this superficial notion that we should have a small white state go first we should have a primary 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, the whole thing was dumb.
But the third thing, I would say, is Donald Trump, he was the incumbent very much during the 2020 primary process to make that a not 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 being off-putting, but hardly unprecedented, hardly unique to Democrats.
M. Tracey: So, Bill, as a fellow white dude, I'm curious about 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? –Samwise [played by Sean Astin], from “The Lord of the Ring” movies. We had Mark Hamill who recited his Luke Skywalker taglines. And on and on and on. And this got a ton of coverage. So did the white women for a Kamala session. So, I have declared this particular edition of our show a “white dudes-only show” inspired by the Democratic Party's seemingly 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?
Bill Scher: 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 dude's thing, it's not the official Kamala Harris campaign doing yet. This thing has sprung up on its own, it's got a lot of celebrities involved. I know some elected Democrats […]
M. Tracey: But you had every potential vice presidential nominee who could get on the call Tim Walz, J.B. Pritzker, Roy Cooper, they all fell over themselves to get on this. So, even if not run by the official campaign apparatus, it was the closest thing to it.
Bill Scher: Yeah. No, no, it's no one's disavowing it, of course. But this is less about trying to tailor a message to a constituency, I think it's a little bit tongue-in-cheek. It's a little bit trying just to send a message, to, you know, the average white person. You don't need to be afraid, annoyed, you know, put off by not having someone who has your demographic at the top of the ticket. I heard you're talking about Obama with, Mr. Ziegler before. I mean, Obama was a master at navigating those racial waters and trying to not seem scary to white voters. And did it, you know, 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.
M. Tracey: Okay, so final topic, Bill. You've written for the Washington Monthly, you called on Biden to withdraw on July 5, but you also call 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 thought interesting people should read that article.
And if they want to get some historical context on that, Woodrow Wilson 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 Lawson 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. in 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, 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, I know 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, 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 it’s so diminished, in fact, that it led to you call it to resign. So, isn't there a huge political liability there? And what about on a substantive level? I mean, shouldn't we just, 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 not only have a very intimate and direct operational role, you never know, it 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 can happen in six months. So, what's your response to that?
Bill Scher: 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 when he got a 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, 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. […]
M. Tracey: And 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? Wouldn't you think that at least on, 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 concern for you? But nobody's even mentioning it anymore because they're so overcome with this euphoria. That seems a little odd to me.
Bill Scher: I think she's going to get all those questions. I think when she has her first sit-down interview, which I don't think she's had, which […]
M. Tracey: Which is also a bizarre sign of how seamlessly she's been able to circumvent any standard hurdle to getting this nomination, like the point of a protracted primary process is not only that you would have to compete for votes and delegates, but you'd have debates, you 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 have given her a pass.
Bill Scher: Well, I wouldn't blame the media for that. She was able to lock up that sufficient delegate support, which got her crowned presumptive nominee by the media and […]
M. Tracey: 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?
Bill Scher: I mean, I think it will happen very soon. This is literally a week ago, you know, or 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.
Well, let me shift to the substantive part of the question. I think the Wilson history is instructive here. Again, they're two different people. The 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, [which] left him, basically incapacitated. He did recover somewhat, but he never copped publicly fully. There's no entertainment of him resigning and he just, you know, power through with the help of his wife doing a lot of a lot of the heavy lifting. But there were signs of problems in the months before that, even in the years before that and he was having mini-strokes decades before, but never really had his underlying neurological condition properly diagnosed and didn't have his high blood pressure properly diagnosed. So, it 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 delegated 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 know 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 8000-mile, 29-city train tour, even though his doctor and some of his inner circle said, “I don't know if you got the strength for this right now.” But he felt he was the indispensable man, he did 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 ended up having a full-blown stroke.
So, whether this is potentially relevant is… I don't think Biden is, like, 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. I don't think there's been I got three and a half years of cover-up but 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, it doesn't count. I think something happened since February. But I'm not a doctor. I can't diagnose it 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 from 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? Well, I think probably I can't know for sure, but I think probably. But it may not stay that way and, say, 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.
M. Tracey: Well, I tend to suspect that this outburst of euphoria of 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 Politico leaks on Joe Biden's ability to conduct his basic duties of office in the past ten 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 established her even sitting down for an interview to answer some of these very fundamental questions.
But, Bill Scher, we’re gonna have to leave it there. Thank you for joining us. And thank you for joining White Dude Summer here at System Update. This is a whites-only, white dudes-only space, again, inspired by the Democratic Party. So, we appreciate you joining us.
Bill Scher: My pleasure. Take care.
That concludes our show.
