SIO26: The Trump Administration and Russia - An Incredible Amount of Smoke

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode number 26, and I'm your host, Thomas Smith. Joining me is a cold, unfortunately, making an appearance. Oh, that just reminded me, we had a pretty funny little rant going about colds over on Comedy Shoeshine this week, check that out, it was a lot of, it was funny, I liked it. But that aside, I'm going to do my absolute best not to let it make me sound annoying through the magic of technology and production quality, so there we go, and a little bit of medicine. Okay, quick little announcement, I mentioned this on Opening Arguments, my wife and I are traveling to Europe, we are going to be in London and Paris, and I would love to have a little get-together with any listeners there. So, this is just a little informal thing, but here's what I'm hoping to do.

0:01:17 Thomas: The date we can meet up in Paris would be Friday, March 31st, and the date for London would be Wednesday, April 5th. I'm trying to find little coordinators in each of those places because I know nothing about Europe or any cities or anywhere you would go or anything. So, being established that I know zero things, I want to find somebody to line up a little place, very informal, just go have a drink somewhere, talk. Something I did at a convention in Milwaukee last October. It was really, really fun. So, I'm still ironing out the details, but here's what you should do. Go find me on Facebook, facebook.com slash Thomas Podcast, and as soon as the details are ironed out, I will create a Facebook event, and then I'll send out the invite, and I think that'll be the best way for us all to have all the details.

0:02:06 Thomas: Of course, I'll also probably briefly announce it on the show, but that might be, I don't know if that'll late notice. If you're trying to be able to plan ahead of time, then Facebook will be the fastest way to coordinate. Nate. It's something I'm thinking it'll be, I don't know, handful of people, maybe 10, maybe 15, maybe three. I don'T know. Whatever it is, it will be fun because every time I get to speak to my listeners, I'm blown away by how intelligent and fun they are to hang out with. So that's what I'm trying to do. And if it doesn't work out, that's okay. My wife and I will just have a, well, I'll have a drink and she'll be pregnant and just sit there and have some soda water or something. It'S It's pretty miserable being pregnant, just as I'm finding out, no doubt late to that party. But anyway, that's what I'm trying to do.

0:02:51 Thomas: I am really excited about it. I hope to see some of you there. That being said, let's get to today's show. There is an immense number of things that I could talk about today. This was a heavy news week. We had a slower news week a couple weeks ago for once, which was weird. It was very un-Trump. But this week, things are blowing up all over. And as I'm recording, things were developing. So that's always tough.

I'm probably going to steer clear of like the super duper fresh information things that are likely change as different websites redact news stories about different stuff. So I'm going to hold off from like anything too pressing, but there is a lot to talk about. I want to talk about the Gorsuch hearings. I know that's more of an Opening Arguments topic, but I came across an old case that Gorsuche dissented on that you may have heard about, but I want take a few minutes later on to go over the details of it because it perfectly illustrates how bankrupt I think, and I've learned from from Andrew, the originalist, kind of literalist method of interpreting the law and the Constitution is. I think it's terrible jurisprudence. I'm using a fancy word like that to show that I know things. I think this case I heard, we didn't go over it on opening arguments, so I thought it would be a good thing to do here. And it really does illustrate the difference in approach that somebody like Gorsuch or Scalia take and why it just doesn't work. It's not a good way to do it.

0:04:28 Thomas: And we should not have people on the Supreme Court that use originalism. It is not a good way of doing things. So, I have got that. I want to talk about Trump and Russia. And I've been researching that a lot this weekend. We'll let you know what we found. And I also, someone sent me an article by Glenn Greenwald, who Sam Harris fans will probably have a bit of a sour kind of taste in their mouths at hearing that name. But an interesting thing happened when I listened to a Glenn Greenwold interview, and then I read this article, and I would like to pose the question that I'll try to answer later in the show. Are Democrats being a little bit hypocritical when they are criticizing Trump and Republicans for being friendly to Russia? Because not so long ago, the situation was flipped.

0:05:15 Thomas: So I'm going to look at that question a little bit too, and then I got a couple of voicemails and that'll round out the show, so with that little roadmap laid out, let's get to Trump and Russia.

0:05:34 Thomas: You know, I've talked a little bit about this before, but there is a really weird overlap right now between people on the far left who wanted Bernie Sanders, I think, for the most part, as... And people who are still buying into Donald Trump's line of BS, which is that the Russian hack didn't really happen and all that kind of stuff. There's a weird overlap, and on the left it's led by people I think like Glenn Greenwald and a group that think that liberals are trying to blame Russia for an election that liberals lost, because in their view, they should have, we should have gone with Bernie, there was DNC corruption, all that kinda stuff. So it's sort of looked at on that side as, this is a way to try to explain losing the election without saying Hillary was the wrong candidate.

0:06:25 Thomas: And so in their mind, that's what's going on there. I think, people who, are putting their heads in the sand about Trump and Russia and the Trump campaign in Russia, I Think they are missing Pretty obvious evidence now it's not gonna be smoking gun evidence it's Not gonna be a big sack of money from Putin dear Trump please use this to win a like It's not going to be anything like that. And if you're looking for that kind of thing, you're not going to find it. But that doesn't mean there's nothing going on. And that's what we need to try to clear up. So let's talk about a The evidence that we have that something weird is going on here. First off, Trump's business relationships with Russia is something that's not really in dispute. It's something that goes back further than I even was aware of actually, and it comes from Trump himself.

0:07:17 Thomas: In 2013, Trump tweets, the Miss Universe pageant will be broadcast live from Moscow, a big deal that will bring our countries together, and he later added that day, do you think Putin will be at the Miss universe pageant in November in Moscow, if so, he will become my, will he become my new best friend, and then there was a David Letterman interview October 17th, where he said, I've done a lot of business with the Russians, they're smart and they're tough, he goes on to say that Putin is a tough guy and that he's met him once.

Which is a kind of contradicting what he says now, which is, oh, I don't know him. I don't know him, I d'on't know. He says that over and over nowadays.

Also, Trump said at the GOP debate that he got to know Putin very well because they were both on 60 Minutes, and that's when he said, if Putin wants to go and knock the hell out of ISIS, I'm all for it, 100%, I can't understand how anybody would be against it, and then later on in the year, Putin had this to say about Trump, he's a very flamboyant man, very talented, no doubt about that, but it's not our business to judge his merits, it's up to the voters of the United States. He's an absolute leader of the presidential race as we see it today. He says that he wants to move to another level of relations, a deeper level of relations with Russia. How can we not welcome that? Of course we welcome it.

Here's how Trump responded, It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond. I have always felt that Russia and the United States should be able to work well with each other toward defeating terrorism and restoring world peace, not to mention trade and all the other benefits derived from mutual respect.

And furthermore, in February, Trump said, Putin called me a genius, in an event in South Carolina, and according to PolitiFact, Trump would repeat that claim three times in April, and in a May interview on CNN, and a June rally in California, twice in July, and an August town hall in Ohio, so he He was quite proud of the fact that Putin called him a genius.

0:09:16 Thomas: And it's now that you might ask, if you're a skeptical person, or if you are a Trump devotee who's not very skeptical, you might as well, what's wrong with all this? What's wrong with wanting a reset? After all, Hillary had the famous reset button that had the Russian version misspelled. It was actually, instead of reset, it read overload, which is kind of an interesting twist of fate there. There. But anyway, what's wrong with it? It seems like a normal thing, that it seems like almost a Democrat platform item that you would want to reset with Russia, that you want a better relationship. Well, that's a question that I want to look at a little later. I'm just bringing up now because I think it's important to these initial facts. But that's what the Glenn Greenwald article I'm going to talk about later mentions.

0:10:04 Thomas: It talks about the fact the whole thesis is that that Democrats are such hypocrites because they have wanted better relations with Russia until Trump wanted them. And then now, now we don't want them. Now we want a more militaristic kind of conservative, uh, relations with Russian sort of flip-flopping. So keep that in the back of your mind. That is a claim I'm going to talk about in a bit, but let's talk about the more, uh, more weird Russia stuff with Trump. So, we've at least established from all this that they have some sort of relationship, some sort of relationship. And, furthermore, Trump's done business there, he's been there, He we seems to view it pretty favorably at a time when relations between the US and Russia are actually going downhill. So that's what we've established so far.

0:10:49 Thomas: Nothing criminal going on yet, but but let's see what else is going on. What starts to get weird is the fact that Trump and his aides have repeatedly and falsely denied ties to Russia. There's a USA Today article that counts at least 20 denials, and we know that there were contacts by at least half a dozen people in Trump's campaign with Russian officials, and we know, because the Russian side of these conversations were monitored, and therefore, But for because of that, we know what these calls were about, and this is what led down to the downfall of Michael Flynn, Trump's former National Security Advisor, because he had told everybody, until Trump, he told everybody that they had no conversations with anybody in Russia, and then with Russian intelligence, and then he said that they didn't talk about sanctions, which is another whole mess in all of this.

0:11:47 Thomas: Thank You you might for watching. Remember I've talked about this before so I won't go too in-depth into it, but it's what allegedly might violate the Logan Act. I think that that part of it was maybe a little exaggerated by liberals because it is the incoming administration. It's not like it's that uncommon for them to speak to diplomats and that sort of thing because they're going to assume power soon. Soon.

But when Obama imposed sanctions due to the fact that there's overwhelming evidence from the intelligence community that Russians had interfered with the election, the The fact that Putin did not respond at all, did not, you know, counter those sanctions with acts of his own was very, very curious, and it looks like the reason is because behind the scenes, Flynn had been talking to the Russian ambassador and had been discussing the sanctions that the Obama administration imposed, and had said, don't worry about it, we'll roll those back, essentially. That seems to be the conclusion, the very obvious conclusion that we can draw from that. But I got ahead of myself, because I was talking about Flynn in December.

Now, this, it's worse than that, because according to the New York Times, and it's pretty well established now, there have been repeated phone calls between Trump campaign people and Russian intelligence officials going back way before this, way before the election was was over, way before it was decided. It's one thing to look at Flynn's calls and say, okay, even though that's definitely shady stuff, there's still at least a reason that kind of makes sense that he would be talking to the Russian diplomat. For these calls, there is just no obvious reason that makes sense.

0:13:35 Thomas: There's no, there's no easy explanation, or even difficult explanation, other than some sort of weird collusion, and I invite anyone to let me know if you have any theories as to why they would have been in contact. But Christoph of the New York Times, Nicholas Christoph, makes a great point that there really is no reason for these contacts. And when Mike Pence was asked on January 15th, he was asked whether or not there had been contacts between the Trump campaign and Kremlin officials, he answered, of course not, why would there be? Now, that's important. This is, is, this is Mike Pence saying, no, that there, why would there be? And the, and, And that's how, you know, that it's, it's a pretty nonpartisan conclusion coming from Mike Pence, that there is no reason for this.

0:14:26 Thomas: There would be no reason. For these contacts. What might be the biggest red flag in all of this and again, this is all by this point This is actually old news But I'm going over it because there's still liberal resistance in some circles to this to these charges of some sort of Russia collusion but the The the biggest red flag in all of this is Trump associate Roger Stone, who had somehow advanced knowledge of Russia's disclosures through WikiLeaks of the Hillary Clinton campaign emails. So, in August, two months before campaign chairman John Podesta's emails were released, Stone tweeted, Trust me, it will soon be Podesta's time in the barrel. And then in October, six days before, still six days before the dump of the Clinton campaign emails, Stone tweeted, Hillary Clinton is done.

0:15:15 Thomas: Hashtag WikiLeaks. So he knew. I mean, that is, you cannot deny that he knew, that is not just a coincidence. His claim is that he had some legal back-channel way of knowing this, but it's not legal if you're discussing hacked, stolen emails. That's a crime. It's not illegal to have advanced knowledge of a crime like that and the fact that they're going to be dumped onto the internet and have it be legal. That's just not really possible. So he's currently under investigation for that. But the reason this is all in the news now is there was yet another pretty big bombshell. To be honest, I don't again I do my best to keep my liberal bias in check as much as I can and not get too carried away. I don t want, and that's a big, I, the real don't know. Challenge with this kind of thing is how do we look at this data objectively and not turn into Glenn Beck with his crazy chalkboard conspiracy theory nonsense.

0:16:11 Thomas: I don't want to be Alex Jones, I don't want to any sort of conspiracy theorist, but at the same time, there are sometimes conspiracies, and that's the next thing that every conspiracy theorists says. So it's been a real challenge. I'm sure a lot of you, maybe critical thinkers out there can relate. It's been a real challenging to not feel like you're just going down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theory. But in the end, you have to just be as critical as you possibly can, multi-source things, trust major news sources, make sure that you're not getting everything from, you Occupy Democrats or, you know, some sort of Mother Jones, just super liberal websites, and that's not what I'm doing. I make sure that everything I'm talking about here, I source to the New York Times, Washington Post, other, you know, any major, the AP, any new major news sources to make sure it's going to be as vetted as possible.

0:17:05 Thomas: We can never be 100% sure about anything in life, of course, but using the the best sources we have, this is a pretty document. I mean, this is pretty well founded. So anyway, what the bombshell of today was, Paul Manafort. Now, a little review on Paul Manafort, because honestly this last year has been a little rough, so I sometimes I don't blame you, and hopefully you won't blame me for not remembering all of the Trump campaign people perfectly. So here's a review for both of us. He was the one who, so he joined the Trump campaign in March 2016. So, wow, it's been a year now. Like I said, yeah, last year has been rough. And he was leading Trump's delegate corralling efforts. Efforts.

But in April, Trump terminated Corey Lewandowski as campaign manager and they promoted the campaign, promoted Manafort to the position of campaign manager. And Manafort gained control of daily operations, a $20 million budget, hiring decisions, all that kind of stuff. And he was the guy. Was all the until August I know I and I think a lot of people and and Spicer Sean Spicer is spinning this as some kind of you know Paul Manafort very minor figure in the campaign not you know he's just small short time was kind of involved that's how he spun this literally he is said he's a very minor figure involved for a minor amount of time well not really because Manafort was the guy from April all the way until August.

0:18:40 Thomas: I mean, do the math. That's more than just a little bit. In fact, when you look at the Trump campaign, in terms of, you know, when he started the campaign all the way up until his election, Manafort was the manager more than anybody else. He had the majority of the time there. So what happened on August 17th and around August was it was revealed that Manafort had connections to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych or something like that, I don't know the pronunciation. And he may have illegally received $12.7 million in off-the-books funds from his party. So that was a big scandal, of course. And for a while, Manafort issued a staff memorandum saying that Manafort would stay in the campaign.

0:19:32 Thomas: It's funny, he did it himself. Oh, he will remain in the camp as chairman and chief strategist, providing the big picture, long-range campaign vision. But then two days later, Trump announces that he has accepted Manafort's resignation. And then you think, oh, good, we got that guy out. Well, that's when Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway took on senior leadership roles, and they are still there. So this is not a minor figure. This is somebody who was a major figure in Trump's campaign and would have continued to be so until it became public that he may have illegally received $12.7 million from Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who, by the way, is a pro-Russia former Ukrainian president.

0:20:18 Thomas: So, today's bombshell comes from the Associated Press. I'm just going to read a few paragraphs here. Before signing up with Donald Trump, former campaign manager Paul Manafort secretly worked for a Russian billionaire with a plan to greatly benefit the Putin government, the Associates Press has learned. This is just today, by the way. The White House attempted to brush the report aside Wednesday, but it quickly raised fresh Fresh alarms in Congress about Russian links to Trump associates. Manafort proposed in a confidential strategy plan as early as June 2005 that he would influence politics. Business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe, and former Soviet republics to benefit President Vladimir Putin's government, even as U.S.-Russia relations under Republican President George W.

0:21:08 Thomas: Bush grew worse. Manafort pitched the plan to aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, a close Putin ally with whom Manafort eventually signed a $10 million annual contract beginning in 2006. according to interviews with several people familiar with payments to Manafort and business records obtained by the AP. Manafort and Deripaska maintained a business relationship until at least 2009, according to one person familiar with the work. All right, in fairness, the Trump response, just to make sure I represent both sides here, the campaign, I wish it was a campaign, the administration response from Spicer has been that A, Manafort had a very small position within the Trump campaign, which we know is BS, and B, to expect that Trump would know who Manafort's clients were from almost 10 years prior is unreasonable.

0:22:06 Thomas: So that's the defense that they are raising. But it's hard to believe that all this would be coincidence. Again, now am I a conspiracy theory guy? Am I? I don't know. Then add to this the fact that Trump, as I talked about with Dr. Price when I had that little debate with him, Trump refused to accept, until he finally did, he refused to accept the conclusions that the Russians had hacked the DNC, that they were, something that the intelligence community agrees on, and so why is it, why would he refuse to believe that? I mean, there's no he didn't say that there had been no hacking. Obviously, you couldn't make that claim. But he made the claim, though, maybe it's some fat guy in a in a basement somewhere refusing to acknowledge the conclusion that Russia was responsible.

0:22:59 Thomas: Basically, there's a whole lot of smoke here. There's a WHOLE lot. Like, a LOT. Not just a little. This is not Benghazi. That's the thing. And that's something that we liberals, if you are liberal, we need to be careful of. We need to careful of not being as bad as the other side. But there's a whole lot of smoke and we aren't even getting to have a real investigation of it. There needs to be a full-on investigation into this matter performed by someone who is not part of the Trump administration and ideally not a Trump and surrogate. This is where I think I'm going to temper expectations a little bit, I think we should.

0:23:45 Thomas: Keep in mind that everybody knew that Hillary was going to win, and that includes Republicans, that includes some people in the Trump campaign actually, and then includes Putin. Everybody thought that Hillary is going to be the winner. In. So I don't think it will be the case that there will have been some clear quid pro quo arrangement with Putin and Trump where Putin was going to make him president and then there would be some in exchange. I think what there was and what I've heard experts say is that Putin likely wanted to just delegitimize Hillary as much as possible and weaken her as much possible going into her inevitable presidency, which turned out to be quite evitable, actually.

0:24:34 Thomas: But that was the plan. So for that reason, there might not be as big of a bombshell as you might think. But this is where we have to ask ourselves, what level of bombshell is acceptable? What level of this arrangement is acceptable in a president of the United States? For me, and I think this is a pretty unbiased view, I'm doing my best to, if the tables were turned, to say I would be the same way. If it's true, which we know it is, that Russians were influencing this election, they, they literally hacked the DNC, it was wasn't a passive thing, this wasn't, an active hacking, and if we know, if we come to find out that Trump's campaign was aware of it and in communication about it and coordinating about it, I think that's impeachable to me.

0:25:34 Thomas: That's the kind of thing that's way over the line. And of course there were those hearings on Monday in which the Republicans wanted to know who was responsible for leaking stuff, for leaking the fact that there was illegal activity and lying going on, and then the Democrats wanted to know about the, you know, the actual illegal activity in potential lying going on, so that was fun. And then we're butting up to right to now, so this is going to have to be obviously a continuing story, but Adam Schiff, just as as I'm recording this, just said that there is direct evidence of deception between Trump's campaign and Russia. Someone said, oh, circumstantial evidence? He said, no, direct evidence. So that could be, this could be a whole new thing because that was in response to this guy, Devin Nunes, or Nunes.

0:26:24 Thomas: I'm not sure. N-U-N-E-S, who just decided to give a briefing, like a weird kind of press conference where he talked about evidence that he had that certain Trump campaign members had been caught up in, not wiretapping, but had been heard because the people they were talking to were under surveillance. So this is a mess and we'll have to leave it to later on to figure out how this will all develop because this is all breaking kind of as I'm recording this. But here's my bottom line, something is going on here, and it's looking more and more like maybe we will get the investigation that we need, I'm hoping, and if not now, at a minimum, in 2018, if, if we can take back enough seats, maybe then we'll have more than enough to go back on and figure out, but I think it may happen before then.

0:27:17 Thomas: His approval rating is through the floor. I think its the lowest of any president at this time that we know of, that we have record of. So that's that. Now I want to talk quickly about this Intercept article by Glenn Greenwald about how Democrats, the title is, Democrats now demonize the same Russia policies that Obama long championed. I don t have time to get too deep into it. Got a lot other stuff. I want to get into the Gorsuch stuff and your voicemails. But essentially, it's talking about the fact that the thesis of this article is Democrats Democrats are such hypocrites because now, instead of the typical dovishness, we're looking at what Trump's doing. We're looking at how he's cozy with Russia and we're saying, oh, you ought to be hard on Russia.

0:28:05 Thomas: And we're abandoning our principles. And the evidence he offers is the fact that Obama was soft on some of these things, on not giving weapons to Ukraine and some of these other things. So here's what I think that his fundamental misunderstanding is. He's right that if this were 2008 or 2009, I think he would be correct, because Democrats did have, like I referenced earlier, they had the reset button, they had, they had a very positive attitude, and it was because Medvedev was. This is a kind of a weird thing about Russia that I don't totally get. But there's both a prime minister and a president. The prime minister is appointed by the president and reports to the president.

0:28:53 Thomas: As an American, I don't understand the system, I apologize. But he was somebody that Obama thought he could work with. And then essentially Putin and Medvedev switched, which is, we, I don't know how that works, but now it's the opposite, now currently it's Prime Minister Medvedov and President Putin, when, in up until 2012, it was the opposite. Kind of bizarre, but that really did change a lot in the U.S.-Russia relationship, relationship. So, this Glenn Greenwald article, I think, takes a naive view of Democrats' relationship with Russia. It looks at it as a monolith, it looks at as this has been one thing they've always wanted to reset and now they're backing down. That ignores how bad things have gotten with Putin under control.

0:29:42 Thomas: Things were going well. There was non-proliferation treaties, there was a lot of work done. I went back and I listened to another, I listened something I had already listened to, which which is an interview with a Russian previous Russian ambassador on Pod Save the World, where they talked about some of the things they accomplished. And they also talked about how that changed when Putin became president. And this relationship has soured, and yes, it's true that Obama has maybe not been as tough as he could have been, but to use that as evidence of Like a soft stance toward Russia is inaccurate. It's more a cautious one. The reason Obama gave for not giving weapons to Ukraine was he didn't think it would help the situation. That's a little different than just being pro Putin.

0:30:27 Thomas: And there's, I think there's every reason for Democrats to be very concerned, for Americans actually, to be very concerned about what's going on with Trump and Russia. It's one thing to have a stance toward Russia based on the content of the relationship, based on what we're doing, what Russia's been doing, how they've been behaving, how have they been acting toward it, it's one thing to a relationship based on that that could be maybe positive, it started a little positive in 2008 and greatly soured once Medvedev was no longer president. Isn't it? It's one thing to have that. And then it's another to have it look as though sanctions are being taken away potentially. And our stance is being softened because of collusion.

0:31:17 Thomas: I mean, that's just a totally different story. Even if you think the end result is the same, it's a completely different thing. And it's not as though, no Democrat that I know of wants war on Russia, and if you have somebody, if you've seen that, let me know, send me sources, I don't know of any real ranking Democrat who wants to turn into, like, conservatives on Russia. It's not a total flip-flop, but it's def- it's a totally different thing to say, they're totally fine, we should go with a reset, uh, tensions should cool, Oh, oh, by the way, they hacked our election, no big deal, we'll cool those sanctions that Obama placed on them for hacking or for interfering with our election.

0:32:03 Thomas: It's one thing to be like a hawk and want to go to war, I don't know of any Democrat that wants that, but these are serious things that are happening. When we have actual evidence that Russians are interfering with out democracy, that calls for something. It doesn't mean we're nuking Russia. It doesn' t mean we are going to war with them. It calls for a response. And the fact that there isn't one from Trump and that Trump is remarkably soft on Putin is really concerning.

0:32:41 Thomas: Now let's talk about the Gorsuch hearings briefly. You may have seen the article, I think it's pretty funny, that while Gorsuche was testifying, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned one of his decisions, and that's it, that's funny too, because it's not as though the eight-member Supreme Court is all liberals or something, it should be a 4-4 split, there's still plenty, a couple of originalists, there are still plenty of Republican, or I guess conservative-leaning justices on the Supreme Court, but they unanimously overturned a decision of his. I don't think that that really means anything. I don'T think there's anything you can like, I'd disqualify him over with that, but it is really interesting.

0:33:26 Thomas: It's a funny story. But what I want to talk about is this story that I saw Al Franken and others, actually, not just him, but questioning Gorsuch on. And the reason I picked out this particular case, the frozen truck driver case, is because it so perfectly illustrates originalism. Now, I know a lot of you probably listen to opening arguments, if not pretty much most of you. Andrew has taught us a lot about originalism, but I thought just briefly here going over the facts of this case and why and how Gorsuch decided the way he did. It was just such a perfect illustration of why originalism and this literalism is just bunk. And Andrew would also be very proud because I read the actual opinion.

0:34:12 Thomas: I've got the actual Opinion Up source document. I'm very proud. Hopefully Andrew is too, but you can too with help of opening arguments. You can understand these things. So let's talk about the facts of this case. So there's this guy named Madden. He was employed by Trans Am as a truck driver. In January 2009, he was driving a tractor trailer and he was on I-88 in Illinois at approximately 11 p.m. I can virtually read this from the, uh, from the court opinion, approximately 11 PM Madden pulled to the side of the highway because he was unable to find the Trans Am mandated fuel station and his gas gauge was below empty. So he pulls over cause he's like out of gas. You can't find the gas station that he's supposed to go to when he attempted to pull back onto the road, I guess, after figuring out where he was or something like that.

0:35:00 Thomas: Not sure, but anyway, he attempts to pull back onto the road, and minutes later, but he discovers that the brakes on his tractor trailer had locked up. They had frozen, essentially. So he calls his employer, Trans Am, must be a trucking company, I don't know, I'm on the West Coast, and he says that, you know, my brakes are frozen, whatever, and the road assist service says they will send a repair person.

Person, he's waiting for this repair truck, he discovers that his auxiliary power unit, which I'm not a truck driver, I don't know anything about this, but it looks like it's a power unit that will, that helps heat the cab essentially, uh, when, you know, there's no power and it's freezing temperatures, and when I say freezing, I mean way worse than freezing. Freezing would be what, 32, is it, uh, this was 15 below zero Fahrenheit, and his heater's not working, so he's waiting for out a couple hours, this guy is just stuck on the side of the road in 15 below 0 temperatures with no heater, approximately 1 18 a.m. he gets a call from his cousin who wakes him up, and according to his cousin's cousin testified that Madden's speech was slurred, he sounded confused, which is like hypothermia, indicates hypothermia potentially. He also, the truck driver also discovered that he couldn't feel his feet. He was really worried about the symptoms he was feeling. He was worried that he could die because you very well could freeze to death in that temperature. So he calls the dispatcher again.

0:36:34 Thomas: He says, I'm worried, you know, I am freezing to death, essentially, in so many words, but the dispatcher says, no, you need to stay with your truck, you need to wait for the repair person to come. Now, some more time, a little more time goes by, he's worried, he is worried he is going to freeze to death. So, what he does is he unhitches the trailer, the tractor trailer, which is, that has the frozen brakes, and he leaves in the truck, which, it wasn't completely out of gas, apparently had a little bit of gas left. I don't know if he was leaving to just turn on the engine, get warm, turn on heat, maybe find some gas, I'm not sure, find some fuel, I'm sure, but that's what he does. And then the repair person does arrive 15 minutes later, so it's been, you know, a little bit of bad luck. He could have waited 15 more minutes maybe, but he thought he was gonna freeze to death. It had been over two hours in 15 degree below zero. So So naturally, you're going to be quite worried.

0:37:30 Thomas: And so he comes back. And then when that happens, after he comes back, the whole thing eventually is resolved. And the trucking company fires him for not following orders, essentially. Now there's a law against firing employees from when they don't follow orders when they're ordered to do something unsafe. So when they are being compelled to operate a vehicle in unsafe conditions, if they refuse, they can't be fired. Seems like a good law. You would not want a supervisor telling somebody, I don't know, running a crane or any sort of equipment, do such and such. You wouldn't want the operator to think this is unsafe. It could hurt either me or other people. So it's not just about the employee. It Could be about the public as well. I'm not going to do this.

0:38:32 Thomas: You and After he lost initially and then after appealing all the way up to the Tenth Circuit, the Tenth Circuit, which was the court that Neil Gorsuch was on, sided with Madden two to one. Guess who the one was? Well, it was Gorsuche. He dissented. And And here's what he said. Here's a quote. It might be fair to ask whether Trans Am's decision was a wise or a kind one, but it is not our job to answer questions like that. Our only task is to decide whether the decision was an illegal one. The Department of Labor says that Trans Am violated federal law, in particular 49 U.S.C. section 31105, blah blah blah, blah, but that statute only forbids employers from firing employees who, quote, and here we go, here we get ready for some good old-fashioned originalism, literalism to piss you off today, quote, refuse to operate a vehicle, end quote, out of safety concerns.

0:39:30 Thomas: And of course, nothing, he says, of course nothing like that happened here. The trucker in this case wasn't fired for refusing to operate his vehicle. Indeed, his employer gave him the very option the statute statute says it must. Once he voiced safety concerns, Trans Am expressly and by everyone's admission permitted him to sit and remain where he was and wait for help. The trucker was fired only after he declined the statutorily protected option, refused to operate, and chose instead to operate his vehicle in a manner he thought wise but his employer did not. And there's simply no law anyone has pointed to giving employees the right to operate their vehicles in ways their their employers forbid. Maybe that, and this is where he gets really sarcastic about his ruling, which essentially would have demanded that a freezing to death person sit in a cab and freeze to death.

0:40:23 Thomas: Maybe the department would like such a law. Maybe someday Congress will adorn our federal statute books with such a Law, but it isn't there yet. And it isn'T our job to write one or to allow the department to write One in Congress's place. So he's getting there on a very literal interpretation, on technicality, because you could clearly say, you could clearly deduce, as the other two judges did, well no, being told to sit in your vehicle, which is going to be in 14 or 15 below zero, whatever it was, being told to do that for, by the way, over two hours, long time, I think it would be by that point even longer, being told to that is essentially being told to operate your vehicle in a way. Now, yes, your vehicle isn't on, but you're being told to do a certain thing with your vehicle that is going to result in your health being, potentially you could die, basically.

0:41:19 Thomas: Or you could hitch your tractor trailer and try to drive it with frozen brakes. That would also be dangerous to drivers. That would be dangerous to him and other drivers. So, therefore, he was being told to operate the vehicle, in a sense, and he didn't want to do that because he thought it was unsafe for him and or other people. Very rational. The other two justices, according to them, on the 10th Circuit, say, yes, this is essentially, of course, when Congress or whoever wrote this law, of Of course, they would have meant it in this way. The spirit of the law is this should be covered. You can't be told to do something with this equipment that's unsafe. But his little originalist conservative brain says, oh, technically, he didn't operate the vehicle.

0:42:11 Thomas: He was being told not to operate the vehicle. And that's not the same as being told to operate the vehicle in a way that's unsafe. So that's originalism and literalism in a nutshell. And there, why is that so stupid? It's so stupid because anyone would have done the same thing. Anyone would have not risked freezing to death. And could you imagine that Congress should have imagined this exact scenario and written into the law? Or if they tell you to not operate your vehicle when you would freeze to death, you know, do you really think that that's the solution, that Congress needed to adorn the federal statute books with a law that says precisely this situation? Or can you take what the law was in all likelihood trying to do, what it's been interpreted over time as doing, the spirit of law, all that, and you can make the judgment that, okay, this should be covered under this law.

0:43:08 Thomas: And that, in a nutshell, is the problem, and why originalists should not be on the court, however, who knows what difference this will make, but I have to say I'm very impressed with Al Franken, I think he's doing a tremendous job lately on every key issue, it's really cool, I like him a lot, I don't have, people are Mumbling talking, about him for president in 2020, I don't know about that, but, you know, I just want to say I really like the job he's doing. I think he's hitting on the right issues and questioning people well and what's to be a very interesting next few years, so it's good to have him on the Democrats team, in my opinion. Alright, with that said, let's go over to the voicemail segment, shorter than last week, don't worry.

0:43:51 Clip: It's time to check the voicemail. And of course, if you'd like to leave a message, that's 916-750-4SIO. That's 9-1-6-7-5-0-4-7 4-6. Let's check out this week's messages. Hello

0:44:12 Voicemail: Thomas, this is Barry from Atlanta, Georgia. I just finished listening to your most recent episode and wanted to give a little input. As far as the Trump-Republicare dilemma is concerned, concerned, I feel like you have to, the entire reason behind calling it Obamacare was mostly a marketing decision. It worked very well. And you have to consider that a lot of the Republicans that have their seats against the platform of Obamicare. I think Republican.

0:44:56 Thomas: Hey, Barry, thanks for the voicemail. Yeah, but I would have to ask, though, I am taking that into account that it was a marketing thing. I mean, it's sort of like, in a weird way, it is like the Big Bang theory. That was created as a way of belittling the theory, and then it was adopted by everyone. Obamacare is sort of like that. It was taken on by Republicans, but why would they have taken that on? Because without other explanations, that is just calling it by the name of the person who was sort of responsible responsible for it, what you also need is the fact that Republicans have a huge hatred for Obama.

0:45:36 Thomas: So that's why that worked. I mean, if you call it Obamacare, but everybody loves Obama, then it's all of a sudden, it's not some marketing ploy that results in Republicans winning seats. I know that sounds obvious, but I think that people are forgetting that that's why it worked because there's a lot... I think what really motivated all that was, was, in my opinion, somewhat racist tendencies among a lot of people in the Republican Party. They made up a lot OF stuff about Obama. They had a lot Of horror stories. They had a LOT of misinformation. And this is, of course, not to say there's no valid critique of Obama and his presidency. Of course there are. But that's not what was happening in the Tea Party far right and mainstream right, really, Fox News narrative against Obama.

0:46:21 Thomas: Obama. And so that's why calling it Obamacare resulted in such success. And that's why, if you ask people if they like Obamicare, you get one answer. If you ask them if they liked the Affordable Care Act, you get another. So that doesn't answer the question of what we should call this plan, because we would have to know what's going to poll better later on. So I'll assume that you are making the claim that Republicare or something like that will result in more Democrats winning seats later on. But I'm not so sure. It sounds to me like Trumpcare would do that. And so, all in all, though, I mean, I think this is so relatively unimportant. It doesn't even sound like we're going to, as of right now, there's going to be a pithy name for it, because it's just being referred to as the Republicans' bill.

0:47:10 Thomas: And in the news, there is no pithing name that I'm seeing that's really taken off. And despite that, I don't believe this thing's going to pass, so it may be a question that we just don't have to worry about. You know, a little bit of a chance to do some healthcare updates, healthcare bill updates. A little factoid that came out in the last few days that you might have missed, I thought was really funny, was the CBO projected that the bill currently being proposed would result in fewer people covered than a full Obama repeal. So not only is a full Obama repeal obviously a bad thing, and we all, Democrats know that. The only people who don't know that are staunch Republicans who think that, you know, the bill is horrible and it's failing and all that.

0:47:56 Thomas: A full repeal is one thing. This plan that they're proposing would result in even fewer people covered than just a repeal. And that's pretty mind-blowing. They're not just repealing something good. What they're trying to replace it with is even worse than nothing. It's worse than nothing. It's worse than starting at zero, which is incredible. Now, the latest rumblings that I'm seeing, and again, this is all very live kind of data because it's happening like now is that this bill doesn't have enough votes. And a lot of the part of that is because of the Freedom Caucus. So the bad news is they want that it to be even more conservative. So for them, it's not that it's, you know, going to result in 24 million people losing insurance.

0:48:41 Thomas: That's not the problem. They have a problem with something like the essential benefits, like the mandates that require plans to cover specific medical benefits, uh, like mental health care, prescription drugs, preventative care, those kinds of things. So they want to remove that ostensibly to reduce premiums. But it seems like to me that that's going to make the little coverage that people are already, fewer people already are going to have as a result of this bill. And it's going to just make it worse so that the coverage is even more sparse. So obviously, I don't agree with that. But it's funny that this bill really doesn't have a home right now. It's not as though it's a hardcore conservative bill that just Democrats hate and people are are worried about it getting bipartisan support. That's not what's happening at all.

0:49:27 Thomas: What's really happening and why I've elected to call it Ryancare is that Paul Ryan and a few others, you know, have made a health care bill that they like that does a bunch of stuff that no one wants. No one wants the stuff that Paul Ryan has put in this bill. And this is evidence of that. The far right doesn't like it. None of the Democrats like it, of course. So it's basically just this very tight-knit group of people that Paul Ryan thinks is a big constituency that just doesn't exist. And that would be a constituency of people who want to reduce taxes on rich people and repeal Obamacare, which that constituency certainly exists. But now the repeal on Obamacaire is mainly because of Trump's populism, is mainly because people want something better, not because they want the government to get out of healthcare.

0:50:17 Thomas: There are a few of those people But that's a group that I think Paul Ryan thinks exists more than it does. I really don't think that group is very large anymore. And as evidence of that, when I talk to somebody like Dr. Price, a Trump supporter, he's under the impression that there's going to be a repeal and a replacement with something even better. And that's what Trump has promised. And I think that's what a lot, if not pretty much all of his followers believe. So there's some healthcare updates. We'll keep an eye on that vote. Of course, it may be happening. I think it's scheduled to happen as of maybe when you're listening to this, but we'll see if it actually goes to the floor. Long story short, lots of development still going on there. But I don't think, my prediction is it's not going to pass unless maybe they do substantial revisions, and then we'll have to revisit the question after that.

0:51:14 Voicemail: The first thing I want to address is actually from an older episode. I've been catching up on a bit of a podcast backlog. During the show where you spoke about Milo's appearance on Bill Maher, I think that women are protected from men who are confused about their sexual identities in their bathrooms. And Maher says that's not unreasonable. And this is the point where Maher received most of his critical recall with something along the lines of, "This is what I, Bill Maher, have heard from women. Don't their opinions matter?" The answer is no, their opinions don't matter. Maher invokes women here towards his liberal-minded critics as a sort gender shield for criticism, as though speaking against women who have said such things is anti-feminist.

But the truth of the matter is these women are transphobes. Their opinions don't matter. Everyone's aware of the distinct differences between the difficulties of racial and the opinions of these women. Maher invokes, as would Maher say, it was reasonable that white people should be protected from black people in their bathrooms. It makes as little sense for transgender people as it does for race. The second thing is actually in reference to 20, can we change minds? You point out that there's only so much terrorism that a country can take. I don't really have an argument to make, but I would urge UK listeners who might have been living in London during the IRA terrorist attack, if they might be able to share how they felt about

0:52:48 Voicemail: Frequency of attacks and anything our country has. My personal opinion is that the US is a bit of a special snowflake about attacks on their own soil. That's not to say that I minimize September, Oklahoma City or any other devastating attacks.

0:53:10 Thomas: Hey, Michael, thank you for the very well thought out and prepared voicemail. That is excellent. Lots of stuff to talk about. The first issue on trans people and the bathroom stuff and what Bill Maher said. Yeah, I think I pretty much 90-something percent agree with you. I don't know that I would go so far as to say that any women who are uncomfortable with a trans woman who maybe still has male genitalia or something being in their bathroom, I wouldn't go so far as to say it absolutely doesn't matter. I think that it matters in some way, and it's a slightly different thing. I think it's actually a significantly different thing than race, in my opinion.

0:53:56 Thomas: You already know, everybody listening should already know, if they're familiar with me, I'm fully supportive of trans people using whatever bathroom they want, absolutely. But I just, I don't know that it's 100% as straightforward. I mean, I think it is. I don't know. I'm not sure. I think it's like 94% as straightforward as you're making it, just because of certain factors. I mean, and you know what, I was going to expand on that, but what I think I might want to do is maybe I want to, uh, do an episode with some actual trans people and get some actual trans people's voices on here rather than, than me pontificating anymore on this kind of thing. Uh, I, I don't, not that there's anything wrong with anyone expressing an opinion. I don't mean to say that anyone's opinion is necessarily invalid unless they're literally the group we're talking about, but I think that's something that I haven't done on the show in a while.

0:54:44 Thomas: I have done it, but it's been quite a while, so it's something I should revisit. Because we always assume, too, that trans people are a monolithic group that have one opinion on all this stuff. I think that's what a lot of people assume, and I don't think that's true. I think when it comes to some of the intricacies of these issues, there's going to be difference in opinion even among trans people. It might be fun to get a little trans panel going, maybe get all kinds of diverse voices heard on this issue. I think I might want to do that. That's something I've had in the back of my mind for a while. And I do think that ultimately, this is conservatives making a mountain out of a molehill. It's such a tiny issue. Trans people already are such a small group, that in the grand scheme of things, for Republicans to be so worried about it is a little weird in and of itself when it's such a tiny thing.

0:55:37 Thomas: And when all indications are that the most dangerous people to be in a bathroom are conservative politicians. I mean, that's who's really the troublemakers in bathrooms. So it is making a giant thing out of not a thing. However, since Republicans have put us in this position, and since Republicans are doing things that are taking what should be a nothing issue and making it a big issue, it is a big issue now. And for that reason, though it's weird to just have an episode talking about bathrooms, I think it's something that's kind of important. So maybe I'll try to do that, try to get that put together. I would love to get some guests in on that. Your second issue is very interesting in terms of talking about terrorist attack and just how much can a country take.

0:56:23 Thomas: I want to point out that the context of what I was saying was, how much can a country take before it turns kind of right wing, before there's a backlash against the group? And I don't know a whole lot about the troubles, as it were. I'm not, it's not something I'm an expert in. I've endeavored to read up a bit about it, but in doing so, I've realized that it's too broad of a topic that I'm just not an expert, and it would take a very long time to know know everything I would need to know to give you some sort of educated opinion on that. But I think it's a really fascinating question you bring up. And it might be something that maybe we have a guest on, like you suggested, to talk about. But my preliminary thought, this is my preliminary thoughts, I want to hear from people if you know better than I do, is that a sort of right-wing reaction, quote unquote, I don't know that right-winger applies applies perfectly when we're talking about the, that conflict.

0:57:20 Thomas: That is kind of what happened though. Like a, like a backlash effect is what happened. And there were two sides that got very polarized and very violent. And, and that is what I'm talking about. I'm not, I'm not saying that there's a set number of terrorist attacks until a country just like dissolves. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that it can only take so much, a country can only take so much before there's a lot of reaction. People just don't like it. And I think you saw that. I think the troubles is sort of an illustration of how violence can escalate on both sides and both sides can dig in. But I'd like to add another little wrinkle to it to say that, first off, when you say that Americans have been special snowflakes in reacting to terrorism, I have to say, I think there's this sense, and I'll give you, I'll be charitable to your opinion, I think there's a sense in which you're right.

0:58:13 Thomas: I think we did overreact. It's hard to even come close to wanting to minimize the fact that 9-11 was such a vicious, huge terrorist attack and such a visible, visceral attack on U.S. soil, a very unprecedented thing. I mean, it really is the largest international terror attack that I can find. I've looked it up and it's listed as the largest international terrorist attack. So it's hard to just compare that to other smaller kind of domestic terrorism, that kind of thing. It's hard to compare apples to apples there, first off. But yes, I do think we overreact. I think that's certainly true. I think that if we look at the statistics, largely the world overreacts.

0:58:58 Thomas: There's an attack literally today that I can't really talk about because it's too sudden. There there's nothing to say yet about it, so we'll have to keep an eye on it, but the attack on British Parliament, or near British Parliament rather, that looks like as of now it's killed four, injured 40. I'm seeing some reports on Twitter that the TV, you know, makes it look like London is on standstill, and then on Twitter I'm seen people saying this is nothing to Londoners, like they don't care. What's the correct thing there? What's a more accurate depiction of the effect on actual Londoners. I don't know. I'm not there. But I think what ends up being more important is what the actual policy reaction is, if any.

0:59:44 Thomas: So I'll have to keep an eye on that. Again, way too early to tell. But the added wrinkle that I wanted to put into this whole equation is how do the troubles compare back in the, I think it started in the late 60s, went through the 70s, 80s, and all the way into the 90s, and somewhat kind of now, but vastly diminished.

But how does that compare in time period to now when attacks are on cell phones, they're on social media, just, you know, brutal, vicious, violent imagery and video going viral? That sort of thing, there's more of a terror effect now. Like the terror aspect has been magnified by technology to where it's one thing if you were, I don't know, in Ireland in the 70s and you read in the newspaper that a bomb blew up a couple people, who knows what that's going to feel like versus you can jump on Twitter now and you could probably see, I do not because I avoid this kind of thing, but you could possibly see video of whoever was killed in this London attack.

I'm sure somebody has it somewhere, and if not that, many other attacks where there's just gruesome footage instantly available. So I think that has a magnification effect that hasn't happened in history, really. But overall, very interesting thoughts. Thank you very much for the call. Everybody, thank you for all your calls. Keep them up. I really appreciate the voicemail. It's a fun way to interact with you guys. And with that said, I thinkthat's it for the voicemail for this week.

1:01:26 Thomas: And that's the show for today. Thank you for listening as usual. So many interesting things and questions and topics and everything and that's why I love doing the show. There's always more to talk about and to learn about. So, I want to thank this week's new patrons and they are Adam Ronhovde, I don't know how to pronounce that, sorry, Daniel Hawkins, Ryan Aech or something, and Matthew Vernon, thank you very kindly for being my new patrons for this week. And of course, I will have to thank my all-time greats. They are Travis Peterson, Matt Garrett, Dale, Brian Garefort, Peter Skelton, Steve Sigmund, Adrian Borschoff, Roger Metcalf, Adam Hicks, Matthew Maxson, Andrew Waddington, Zabby, Matthew Statton, John Bodley, Esquire, Ian Ryan, Ian Rosano, Matthew Vernon, Jonathan Moyet, Kaylee Reiser, Jesse Sakashita-Fukasumi, Michael Rops, Michael Schaefer, Hunter Ash, and Sammy.

1:02:22 Thomas: Thank you guys so much for making the show happen. And with that said, I will see you guys next week for some more serious inquiries. See you then.