Biden is OUT! Republicans Cry Foul and Lie About the Law

Transcript

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

0:00:44 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1053. I'm your host Thomas Smith and this is an emergency episode. How's it going? Matt, real-life attorney, how are you doing?

0:00:55 Matt: Ah, it is with some regret that I announce that I'll be releasing my delegates so they can let you know.

0:00:59 Thomas: Yeah, I will not be seeking nor will I accept the... no, I won't be seeking it, But I would accept it. I'm just saying.

0:01:09 Matt: Sure. Same.

0:01:10 Thomas: Yeah, like I'm not going to try for it. But like if the DNC, if it gets together and everybody's like, where's Thomas? Like, he should definitely be our candidate. I'd be like, well, I'd Be a fool not to accept. Why wouldn't I accept? That would be crazy.

0:01:11 Matt: Absolutely.

0:01:24 Matt: Got to get the East Coast vote and have, you know, maybe Matt Cameron VP. Sounds like a pretty solid ticket.

0:01:28 Thomas: Hey, all right.

0:01:29 Matt: Wouldn't turn it down myself. Myself.

0:01:30 Thomas: From sea to sea. Shining

0:01:33 Matt: Two middle-aged white guys.

0:01:34 Thomas: Good. Yeah. The finally the demographics that the country needs. Yeah. I. All right, we'll get working on it. No, this is this is somewhat fortunate because we had a great Monday episode already recorded, but it is something that can wait. So, yeah,

0:01:50 Matt: It'll still be great next Monday or whenever.

0:01:52 Thomas: I want. Unfortunately, it wasn't something that was like time sensitive. Was kind enough to come out from your island. I don't know what you're doing right now, but you're on some sort of vacation. Kind enough to join us again?

0:02:01 Matt: I would have spent all day reading about this anyway, let's be honest. Might as well talk about it. We have a chance to revitalize and to, you potentially get a new story out. And now we've got the oldest person ever running for president we're running against. So there's that.

0:02:04 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Yeah. Can you believe those Republican assholes putting up the oldest candidate ever to run for president? Idiots. Can't wait to hear. There are so many legal questions around this. I have I heard that Republicans think this is just like illegal or something like that. I can' t wait to get to those questions and more, you know, about the ballots, about th e fundraising, about all that stuff. After this break, we'll get on to all those answers and figure out what in the hell is going on here.

0:02:30 Matt: It's not. Oh, yeah.

0:02:47 Matt: Let's talk about history because one of my first questions was, has this ever happened before? And it has not. We've never had anybody after the primaries are concluded drop out before the convention. Convention. Don't think we've had anybody drop out after the convention. So there's some new territory here, some things that we don't really know. But I will mention 1968 was the closest thing to this. Lyndon Johnson was facing all kinds of opposition from the left, he was obviously getting a lot of pushback from Vietnam. He himself was suffering from some pretty serious health issues I don't think would be reported as much at the time. So I wanted to listen for a minute to his speech, what he had to say to America. This is about 40 minutes into a speech about Vietnam. He completely shocked everybody with what you're about to hear.

0:03:24 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:03:25 Clip: American sons in the field far away, with America's future in the challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world's hopes for peace and balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour a day of my time to any personal partisan causes. Now, to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office, the presidency of your country.

0:04:04 Clip: Accordingly, I shall not see and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another time as your president. In

0:04:17 Matt: So you can imagine before social media, before the 24-hour news cycle, before these kinds of things were leaked, Very few people knew about this. Very, very few people. So you can imagine, you know, a couple of people hearing about it thought it was an April Fool's joke because it's March 31st. But, you can just imagine just watching this, you're just watching like a regular speech about Vietnam, just hearing this at the end. It was quite a bombshell in 1968, which is already stripping up to be a tumultuous year.

0:04:41 Thomas: He bored them to tears with the, the, with preamble. There, I've, there must have been a lot of people are like, why did you make me listen, that you're not even gonna be president anymore, I man. I had some really amazing records I could have been listening to this whole time, it's 1968.

0:04:43 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. It's true.

0:04:54 Thomas: Man. Oh

0:04:55 Matt: One of the best years for Iraq, it's true, yeah.

0:04:56 Thomas: Boy. Those late 60s.

0:04:58 Matt: But no, he was setting things up, though, for a pretty contentious convention. And of course, this was the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, as it's going to be this year again, one of the most contentious political events in American history. It became, as I'm sure you know, a big event in the streets with violence in the street. But it was also extremely contentious inside because LBJ, kind of at the last minute, tried to stab his own vice president in the back when he thought he might be changing positions in Vietnam. He had his phones bugged by the FBI. Eye. There's just, yeah, it's a whole mess. The And delegates were just almost fist fighting on the floor. And this is all on live TV, obviously not great. One of the reasons, of course, that he was dropping out because he had almost lost in New Hampshire and he was about to lose in Wisconsin within a couple of days because Robert F. Kennedy had just entered the race a couple of weeks before this announcement.

So he had every reason at this point, even though he'd won in a landslide in 1964 to drop out, including his health. So, So, you know, this is the closest that that we had. But at that point, we were midway through primary season when LBJ dropped out and said he wouldn't seek the nomination. So his vice president was able to kind of clean out Hubert Humphrey. Name never actually appeared in any primaries, but he's able to win all the places that

0:05:23 Thomas: Yeah.

0:05:58 Matt: Had caucuses.

0:05:58 Thomas: I was gonna say, worth noting that primaries didn't even matter back then at all. They were just like to make sure that, yeah, go ahead, yeah.

0:06:02 Matt: Right. Yeah. They actually, yeah. Right to lock down the convention. Yeah. No, they did change the rules in 72 because the 68 convention was so contentious. So really the modern primary system began after that. There's really no precedent for this at all. And I just wanted to mention that up front because it's the closest thing we have and we just have to see how things go from here. We haven't had an open or a brokered convention in many, many years, I think, since 50s, the 50s maybe with Eisenhower. So just open season. Now, one question people had was, why didn't Joe Biden just resign instead of making this announcement?

0:06:08 Thomas: Yeah. Whoa. Yeah. Okay, just to go with that. I mean, the thinking might be, does it complicate things less to have Kamala take over? Then she's running, uh, a kind of, well, not really for a second term, but then she's writing as the incumbent. Does that make, make things any easier? Oh.

0:06:49 Matt: Because actually makes things substantially harder if he were to resign right now. Because thanks to the 25th Amendment, which designates presidential succession, there's a vacancy in the office of the vice president, this is, of course, what happened when Nixon resigned, that the president nominates a vice president. But the vice President, the new one, can't take office until confirmation by majority vote of both houses of Congress. So you can imagine the mess we'd be setting up for.

0:06:51 Thomas: Really? So No. More Vice President, okay, yep.

0:07:14 Matt: There just wouldn't be one. I can't imagine who the House would sign off on as a Democratic vice president at this point. It. It's an unimaginable mess. So it's really just as well.

0:07:22 Thomas: I'll Be honest, I'm not sure how much it would matter if we didn't have a vice president, but that's just, it's

0:07:25 Matt: Yeah, sure. It'd be nice to have one, but you know, it's, it'S optional. Yeah. But yeah, there's just no reason to voluntarily get into that mess though, of sending that through Congress.

0:07:28 Thomas: Good to have. Yeah. Yeah. No kidding, yeah.

0:07:35 Matt: It's the last thing we need right now. So in, one of the reasons that Biden had to do this right now is because the party was meeting as of yesterday, we're recording the day that he made this announcement, were meeting to try to figure out new rules. They've pushed this off until next week, I think, probably anticipating this was going to happen. They were talking about doing a virtual roll call where they would walk down the nomination ahead of the convention. And this was getting pretty controversial because it was clearly just for the purpose of sweeping Biden in and making sure there wouldn't be any kind of a mess at the convention.

Now they were saying, and this, this is reasonable, to talk about the reasons for this for a second, which I don't know if you know, but it's just, it's, it's a mess in Ohio. The state legislature is dominated by, like, Republicans, so they passed something, they, it's been the rule for a while, but they claim they have something with a 90 day certification such that the candidates would have to be locked down for the ballot purposes by August 7th ahead of the election. And

0:07:58 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:08:22 Matt: Of course the convention year is on August 19th to 22nd. So, you know, they wouldn't actually be able to submit that to Ohio until after that deadline. And that was pushed back by legislation to September 1st. But the problem is that that doesn't actually take effect until the day of, on September 1. So Republicans, I think, quite reasonably can't be trusted to actually honor that. When it goes into effect on September 2, there's a concern that they would sue immediately on 7, or sue after the point had finished and the nomination was done and say that he can't go on because he's passed the August 7th deadline.

0:08:21 Thomas: That's -huh, so The point being that was happening regardless of Kamala or anybody. It's just they were already trying to keep Joe Biden off their ballot. In the name of free and fair elections, yeah.

0:08:58 Matt: Right. Right. And right. And, and you know, election security or whatever, right? They would get up that 90 day period. Obviously we can't have Joe Biden or any Democrat not be on the ballot in Ohio. That's pretty important.

0:09:06 Thomas: That would be pretty insane, party

0:09:13 Matt: Would be bad. So they basically as a, out of a complete caution, they were saying they want to get this done before the 7th, so there's no grounds for suit. Because as we're going to talk about, they are going to try to find every opportunity they can to sue to keep whatever Democrat ends up on this off the ballot. And in Ohio, I don't know. I think that, who knows. But the fact is that they were going to try to do a virtual roll call by the end of this month, I believe. And it looks like that might get pushed out to August 1st, which would give them time to have it locked down by August 7th. So they could actually resolve all of this ahead of the convention. There's been a lot of pushback from Marianne Williamson and others to say, let's have an open convention.

0:09:50 Matt: Don't go after my girl. Come on. I have such a crush on her. I can't help it. I don't know why.

0:09:48 Thomas: Leader Marion Williamson, uh, noted Jeez. What

0:09:56 Matt: You heard her really actually speak? She's fantastic.

0:09:56 Thomas: I don't I, I don't think I want to put that on air, Matt. This This is, yikes. Okay.

0:10:03 Matt: I'm allowed to have a crush in a 72-year-old woman. Come on, there's nothing wrong with that.

0:10:05 Thomas: I mean, you're allowed, I guess, but we're allowed to not like it. Age isn't the problem, Matt. Nothing to do with the age.

0:10:13 Matt: I was deflecting a little there. Know She's kind of weird, but I actually, I don't know. I was watching her. Just went back I can watch some Marianne Williamson videos the other night. And I don't know. She's a good speaker. I like what she has to say. A you little too out there, a little too fringy for us, unfortunately. Point being, it very likely, very possible that this will be wrapped up over the convention and won't be too much of a mess, that the delegates will pretty much be pledged.

0:10:30 Thomas: Well, okay. I think we need to get to some basics here. I very basically speaking, at this moment, just so everybody's on the same page, Joe Biden wasn't the nominee officially because we haven't even had our convention. And it sounds as though there's a way he could have been the nominee before that via this virtual, you meeting thing you're talking about. But regardless, he wasn't actually the nominee. So on one hand, you might think, this well, being illegal can't possibly be right if literally he wasn't even the nominee yet. That seems that seems crazy. Like what would what would that law be if Republicans are saying this is illegal, the law would be, well, if we're pretty sure that it's going to be one guy, even though he hasn't accepted the nomination yet, you can't, is we're all pretty sure, so you can change it. That's the law. Letter of the law, uh.

0:10:44 Matt: Right? Right. We'll talk about the Heritage Foundation's theory by the end of the show here. But yes.

0:11:17 Thomas: But point is, I, so know that now that we, um, the primary system we have, uh, in addition to what happened in, you know, the '70s like we're talking about, also after 2016 there was a lot made of the superdelegates. And so they have less power than ever, um, have some power but not until like after a first ballot type thing. So basically you wouldn't want to just completely do away with the whatever voting that has taken place in primaries. And yet on the other hand, I find that voting to be, be pretty meaningless, because we didn't, nobody had a real meaningful choice there. And so point is technically does he, technically, I don't know if legally is the right word or the, or if it's by the bylaws of the democratic party, but like, where where are the statuses of the, delegates, you know, like, are they pledged still? Are they unpledged? Can you give us some of those details?

0:11:33 Matt: That's fine.

0:11:47 Matt: No.

0:12:00 Matt: Yes. Thank you. Let's back it up. So 99% of the delegates have been pledged to Biden. And just to remind everybody, when you vote in a primary, a primary is completely a political process. It is not really run by the government. It's run by parties. And 14 million primary voters, I think, something like that, picked their delegates. Now, they weren't voting for Joe Biden. They were voting for delegates who would vote for Joe Biden, just as in the general, we vote for members of the Electoral College who will vote for the people that we are voting for. So 3,894 delegates are pledged to Biden. I just will note that Dean Phillips got four delegates. So those are actually, he's leading.

0:12:32 Thomas: So he's the candidate now.

0:12:33 Matt: That's right. He's the leading candidate at the moment because those vote, the ones pledged to Biden now that he said he won't accept the nomination are no longer. I also want to note Jason Palmer, dark horse, campaigned actively in American Samoa without going there. He did it by Zoom. Just a school teacher in Virginia who picked up three delegates. And Marianne Williamson, my girl, has zero, sadly.

0:12:45 Thomas: Oh, yeah, that's right. Got this delegate's heart. Matt Cameron, everybody.

0:12:55 Matt: That's right. Send me. I'll take it. Also meant to wish you a happy National Ice cream day. I'm here on Black Island, which has a wonderful selection of ice cream I've already indulged several times today. Dean Phillips, of course, is a gelato magnate, owns the Talenti, or did own the Talente company, if you've ever had some Talenti gelatos.

0:13:11 Thomas: Well, I thought the point we made was the classic Joe Biden with the ice cream cone, you know, picture or whatever.

0:13:16 Matt: That for sure.

0:13:17 Thomas: That's that's really funny that he really, really should have done this in video form with an ice cream and been like, all right.

0:13:19 Matt: Too, with cone.

0:13:23 Thomas: You guys don't want me? Fine. It's plenty of ice cream to be eaten.

0:13:27 Matt: He should have done the LBJ thing. He did a 40 minute video about ice cream and how much he loves it. And then, oh yeah, by the way, no, not going to be the president. It's fine. I just wanted to mention Talente because I'm a big fan and congratulations Dean Phillips on developing that company, but you're not going going to be the president. The delegates are no longer pledged by party rules.

I was looking through the most recent round of DNC rules, and there is a procedure, and the DNC was being kind of cagey about this, but there is procedure for if the candidate had dropped out after the convention, and that's done by a quorum of party leaders. There were some talking points that were going around that were pretty stern earlier this month from the DNc that start with, Joe nominee for president.

And it mentioned several times that he is the only person in the United States who is qualifying for our nomination. Not that he's the only one qualified, but the only ones qualifying. They're just stressing that we care about democracy, that people have voted, that this is what's going to happen. These talking points don't look so good at this point.

0:13:35 Thomas: Yeah. Huh. Yeah, lot of what was said, I don't believe was said in the best interest of like accuracy or fairness. And it was more about how do we lock down this nomination for Biden? And yeah, exactly.

0:14:27 Matt: No. Yep. As quickly as possible. This is not good faith. But again, we're here. We can't be too mad at this. We can be mad, but we have to vote. We can do anything. So,

0:14:32 Thomas: Exactly. I only bring it up just because any of that information, I don't know how reliable that information was, you know, what they were saying at the time is all. Yeah.

0:14:45 Matt: Of course. Yeah. And how much good faith they were acting in, of course. But, I will note that even the pledge delegates are not even obligated to vote for Joe Biden, even if he were still in the nomination process. DNC tried in 1980 to have what they called a bind and yank rule, which is when they tried to get people to stick with Carter because there was a big movement to defect to Ted Kennedy. And they threatened to pull any delegate who voted.

Would It have been a rule that allowed them to do this. They voted voted against Carter, voted with somebody else. That was changed four years later in 1984 to the good conscience rule, which exists right now. That's rule 13J of the DNC rules. Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.

So there is kind of an exception there that if you feel like somebody turns out to be, I don't know, if an Access Hollywood type came out or something with Joe Biden, then you could actually vote your conscience. That is as possible. That's still in

0:15:35 Matt: Effect, but right.

0:15:35 Thomas: So, I mean, you could make an assumption that, like, sure, they supported this candidate, candidate X, but we find out candidate X is a serial killer. You can imagine that those voters, well, OK, it doesn't work on the right, but on the left, on the Left, you can imagine that those voters wouldn't have voted for that person.

0:15:49 Matt: Yeah. And there was already some talk of trying to pressure some delegates to do this just under the current state of things, because remember, it was just one of the many mistakes that the Biden campaign made was pushing for a really early presidential debate for June 27th. I don't think any of us who saw that debate will ever forget it. Not Joe Biden's finest moment, unfortunately, and really kind of the signifier of the beginning of the end. I think that we knew at that point that there was at least going to be a lot of pressure to get them off the ticket, so they, they really dug their own grave on that one. If we hadn't had that debate yet, I think there might be a very different conversation happening, and honestly it's probably for the good, but

0:15:56 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, well, I don't know if I'd even be comfortable calling it a mistake because you act

0:16:28 Matt: Yeah,

0:16:28 Thomas: Under the information you have. And I think it's very clear that the people close to Joe Biden thought that he was able to do this. I don't think there was some cover up going on. I thought I, the the reasoning in the reporting I've heard is that they thought they'd be able to get out there early and make a big impact against Donald Trump, and they would make him look worse and Biden look better by having that early debate. And they were shocked by what they saw.

0:16:52 Matt: That's quite, uh, a lot hubris, I still think, but

0:16:54 Thomas: Would be the hubris? I don't understand the reasoning of like the more modest thing to do would be to have a later. Like, what's the connection of that?

0:17:02 Matt: They really thought that he was going to do so well against Trump that it would be obvious, you know, that he should be the guy. But I think if you're spending day after day with him and seeing where he's at, and if he was, if he's been sort of in the place that he Was in, and I don't want to say anything bad about him. I mean, it was just, this is his condition. This is his cognition. It's where he is at right now. And it's completely normal for somebody of his age. If you've You've been spending that kind of time with him and see where he's at. It doesn't seem like somebody you should be pushing out to a national stage that quickly. That's just, that's me. Know. I wasn't spending time with them. So I don't know. Maybe this has come on more suddenly.

0:17:04 Thomas: Yeah, no, that's what I'm saying.

0:17:32 Thomas: I think that's kind, that's of the conclusion I'm drawing, is that they don't want to lose. So I The other conclusion you can draw about their mindset is that they're so dumb that they thought, they didn't know that he was, 'cause I just think they, that it was more sudden than they thought. And I think that can often happen with elderly people. They can, change very quickly. I, I you're assuming good faith, I feel like that's what happened, but I, who knows? I don't know what the other motivation would be otherwise, but it's almost good. It happened Because who knows where we'd be without that.

0:17:36 Matt: Yeah. Yeah.

0:17:54 Matt: It's true. No, absolutely. No, it could have certainly been a lot worse, I think. And certainly I will say that sort of the stubbornness we've been hearing about from the last few days and sort of a lot of what I'm hearing about the way that Biden has been facing this decision is unfortunately not inconsistent with somebody who is on the decline.

0:18:12 Thomas: Yeah, I was very worried about that. I actually had been predicting I post on Facebook. I predicted he was probably out, I think, sometime last week. But only thing that stopped me from being fully confident in that is if he just refused. Like, honestly, I especially as you say, I've dealt with, you elderly folks and sometimes it could be hard to convince them of things. And I don't know that we had a great option if he just had refused. I don't know what option is.

0:18:37 Thomas: But fortunately, now we don't have to even think about that. And

0:18:37 Matt: No, it's true. Would have been a mess.

0:18:40 Thomas: But back to what we're talking about, just to make sure there's no sense or anything that makes these delegates that were Biden's now officially just go to Kamala Harris. Correct.

0:18:49 Matt: And she has announced just a few hours ago that she intends to earn and win the nomination herself. And certainly she has the boost because Biden has said specifically that he backs her and he wants to see her be the president. That does not guarantee anything.

0:18:59 Thomas: He's backing her. Does that do anything official wise, rules wise, or

0:19:02 Matt: No, no. It's just symbolic. I mean, it's important, obviously. He's the head of the party right now, so he's saying that's what he wants to happen. If you play this out and a new nominee steps up and somebody has to announce they want to be in contention if they want zu do it, it would require 300 delegate signatures, but no more than 600. And each delegate can only sign for one person. So mathematically, that works out to potentially 15 candidates. That's not going to happen, but I'm just saying that could happen mathematically in some universe. They'd have to go go through 20 minute nominating speeches and then you'd go through rounds of voting. And, you know, typically what we've seen in every political convention, pretty much in our lifetimes, has been just a first round of voting where we know exactly who the president's going to be and it's official and we've dropped the balloons and we're done.

But, you know, if you want to have a more open convention and you want the convention to actually be a convention, then you have round after round of boating until you get to a majority and it could get messy. Certainly, we don't have a lot of time and we don't have a lot of space to have a messy convention. So, you know, I do hope that there's some resolution here.

And, you I have to say that I'm, I think we all have issues potentially with any one of the pre people who could step up at this point, but Kamala Harris makes the most sense as a person who was the vice president. It's kind of hard to argue against

0:19:04 Thomas: OK. Of course. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah,

0:20:08 Matt: Her at this point.

0:20:09 Thomas: I think it has to be here. Harris. She's not my favorite, but I think it has to be. Again, I guess this is back to punditry. There's no legal reason. There's a rules reason why it has to be, I don't think. I think it would, in my opinion, the imagining that Harris does not get the nomination for whatever reason, I just can't imagine surviving those attacks from Trump. I mean, I think it would be so easy to be... Look at that. Not only did the guy I was running against have to quit. I made him quit. They wouldn't even run the vice president from the same administration. That would just be, to so many people, I think it would be a full confirmation of the rights theory of Biden, that he was terrible, ineffective, the administration was correct. I just don't think you could survive that. Personally, I could be wrong. This is just, again,

0:20:11 Matt: Yeah, no, yeah.

0:20:39 Matt: Yeah. Yeah,

0:20:53 Thomas: My opinion. I really wouldn't like that position. That Would Be a Tough One. On.

0:20:53 Matt: Sure. Have to really justify why you're going to skip over the current vice president in a situation like this. And it probably, maybe we might have some regret that Biden made her the borders are for all those years, but that's Maybe another conversation. Yeah, let's assume though that it is actually her, and there are some, some challenges we can expect, no matter who it is. Let's start with the money, because there's Been a lot of talk about the money and a lot back and forth about where the money goes and how it might work.

So right now, there's about 96 million sitting in the Biden-Harris campaign account. But as of a few hours ago, I just read that the campaign's name was changed officially, and the money has been transferred to Harris's name, which is how it works. Yeah, pretty straightforward. Forward under 11 CFR 103.4. I wasn't aware of this until I started researching this today, but the vice presidential candidate campaign depositories are the same as the president. So they actually raise money together. They're running on the same ticket. You don't actually elect the vice president separately. So that money is pooled together.

0:21:00 Thomas: Yeah, yes. Yes. Wow. Right.

0:21:52 Matt: It's now, it could be easily switched over to her by

0:21:54 Thomas: Makes That sense. I I really hadn't thought of that being the reason it makes so much sense. Like, yeah, they're campaigning together. So it's like it's almost like, you know, your partner and you have a joint account or something. It's like that's a lot easier than if somebody else is going to get the nomination. The process legally, I'm sure. How How would that even work? Did you look into that at all if it had been someone else?

0:22:00 Matt: Yeah, right. Pretty much. Yeah? Yes. Some interesting interesting news around that too. So you look back at the example of Michael Bloomberg in 2018, of course, pretty much self -funded, had all the money in the world. And when Michael Bloomberg ended his campaign, he actually just gave all of his money back to the RNC. And this was a very controversial idea.

0:22:27 Thomas: The RNC, the DNC. That

0:22:30 Matt: I'm so sorry. Okay.

0:22:30 Thomas: Would be controversial.

0:22:31 Matt: That would be really weird. Okay. When Michael Bloomberg entered his campaign...

0:22:33 Thomas: It's like, I'm taking my money. Fine. Screw you guys. I'm giving my money to the opposite party.

0:22:39 Matt: You know, it says a lot that I just assumed he was a Republican all these years later, because yeah, pretty much. Yeah. So he gave the money back to the DNC. And that was super controversial at the time, because this is for the extra wrinkle that this was mostly his money. So, he was overcoming campaign donation requirements by just basically self -funding his campaign and then dumping all that money back on the party. But that at the same time, was actually the FEC allowed it. And there isn't any reason that it shouldn't be allowed to be done today, from what I can tell, that the because I've seen a lot of sort of back and forth in both sides about this.

And what's really interesting too, is the current chair of the FEC appears to have the law wrong on this subject, or at least is misleading us. The current chair of FEC is a Republican who is nominated by Trump and doesn't like Joe Biden very much apparently, but he tweeted out earlier today, 11 CFR 110.1 B3, and he took it out of context, because if you read this, it kind of doesn't sound great. But if the candidate is not a candidate in the general election, all contributions made for the general elections shall be either returned or refunded to the contributors or redesignated.

0:22:41 Thomas: Ah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Whoa. Okay.

0:23:41 Matt: So that doesn't sound great, first of all, most Of the money here was given to primaries, and there's a whole other rule for that. But the real point is, this is extremely misleading, because 11 CFR 110.1b3, and I confirm this from looking at the FEC's own interpretation of it, thing the he's supposed to to be the chair of. Context is that that rule only applies to contributions made after elections to help with campaign debts. So totally misleading and really concerning that this guy is the chair of the FEC if he does not know his own regulations that well. Doesn't he know this? I don't know. I mean, he was Josh Hawley's personal lawyer and clerked for the Fifth Circuit, so probably not the most qualified legal mind and certainly a partisan, if nothing else. But the fact is that that on July 8th, I went back and found a review because I was really interested in this just to see why the chair of the FEC was like badly misquoting campaign

0:23:42 Thomas: Sounds bad. Yeah.

0:24:28 Thomas: Yeah.

0:24:28 Matt: Regulations. There's something that I could figure out in five minutes and I'm not an election lawyer. Cooksey, in an interview with the Washington Reporter on July 7th, he said that it probably would take an FEC advisory to confirm this, but he gave the Bloomberg example and he said he didn't see any reason why a campaign couldn't transfer its cash back to the DNC if Biden were to drop out. He said that earlier this. So that's what the current chair of the FEC said on record a few weeks ago, at least. That does seem to be possible. As it is, if it just goes to Harris, then that's pretty straightforward. It's already her money, and there's nothing to worry about.

0:24:28 Thomas: Oh, So if it hadn't been Harris, then there could have been this way that it goes just to the DNC, and then the DNP would kind of, I assume, give it to whoever. Yeah, okay, gotcha.

0:25:04 Matt: Right, right. Redistribute it. Yeah, yeah. And that would have been messier, and no doubt there would have Been a lawsuit to try to stop that. But, you know, clearly, the easiest way to keep that 96 million is just to have to run Harris. I But will say at the same time, I just double -checked this, the DNC and the state parties between sort of the whole DNC operation, there's about $240 million floating around between all that. So we're not cash -strapped here. But it wouldn't be great to try to have to fund a campaign from zero in July of 2024. for. As a sort of last -ditch alternative, and I'm not totally opposed to this, we could just run Oprah. It's not that hard to draft Oprah, I wouldn't think.

0:25:13 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Jeez. First Marianne Williamson, then Oprah. What in the world?

0:25:45 Matt: I'm just saying she could self -fund it if she had to. She's got a lot of money, and she'd probably win.

0:25:47 Thomas: Yeah. I just now, I, yeah, I mean, maybe call me crazy. I'm not as worried about the money thing. I mean yeah, you need money, but like, it's just, yeah. I think it's important down ballot a lot more, personally, um, but who knows, but that's interesting. Okay.

0:25:54 Matt: Yeah, we do. But yeah, is. It is. Worth noting, I don't actually want Oprah to be president, I'm just saying she probably has a better chance of winning. But, true. She's got plenty of it.

0:26:06 Thomas: Let's just ask her for her money then.

0:26:14 Matt: So that was my first concern, was making sure that the money actually worked out. But there are a couple of issues that have been raised legally that I wanted to mention. So let's from Mike Johnson, what he has to say about this.

0:26:26 Thomas: Genius and scholar, Mike Johnson. Now who, Who who the hell is Mike Johnson? Oh, yeah, that guy that her.

0:26:31 Matt: Louisiana Republican Republican Speaker of the House. I know, it's easy to forget. Yeah.

0:26:34 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. I cannot. OK, Mike Johnson. I get apparently Matt says this is the speaker of the House, everybody. Let's see what he has to say.

0:26:36 Matt: Yeah, very

0:26:40 Clip: A long period of time, 13 million Democrats voted to make Joe Biden the nominee. Need. So it would be wrong, and I think unlawful, in accordance to some of these states' rules, for a handful of people to go in a back room and switch it out because they don't like the candidate any longer. That's not how this is supposed to work. So I think they would run into some legal impediments in at least a few of these jurisdictions, and I think there'd be a compelling case to be made that that shouldn't happen. And so I think they've got legal trouble if that's their intention and that's their plan. So we'll see how it plays out. We don't know. I know the Democrats are in in total disarray, and I know the Republican Party is united like never before, so we're looking forward to November in this election cycle. It's going to be an interesting time for the American people.

0:27:22 Matt: You want to guess where he got this?

0:27:24 Thomas: Ass, his own ass.

0:27:26 Matt: Probably, but also the Heritage Foundation, so close enough. That's not too far off.

0:27:29 Thomas: God. First off, I mean, right away, I'm not just legal questions aside. Do we have proof that some random group of Democrats, small group of immigrants in a back room did this? Like, for all we know, Biden, what if he got a cancer diagnosis and was dying and couldn't complete it? Nope, sorry. The rules are, if your candidate dies, you lose. Like, that can't be it. I'm just saying, as a guy, that cannot be what it is.

0:27:50 Matt: Yeah? That is not what it is. And so the Heritage Foundation wrote a memo on June 21st. Honestly, a very forward -looking memo, because they actually stated specifically in this memo, we think that Joe Biden's debate performance will be so bad that they're going to have to reassess. Yeah, so I guess good work predicting that. Bad work on the rest of the memo, but the memo sucks. It's really bad. I will read you my favorite sentence from this memo so you can see exactly where they're coming from. It is so cynical. It is so obviously designed just to put out that there might be legal problems without actually identifying any legal problems.

0:28:07 Thomas: Wow. Yeah.

0:28:25 Matt: But say pretty much directly, as the Heritage Foundation has wanted to do these days, exactly what their evil plan is right in the memo. It says, says, three most contested states have some potential for pre -election litigation aimed at exasperating, with legitimate concerns for election integrity, the withdrawal process for a presidential candidate, aimed at exacerbating the process.

0:28:25 Thomas: Mm -hmm. Yeah. Wow.

0:28:45 Matt: That is not a good faith, like, here's some actual problems with election law. That is just like, how can we wear these people down and make this as painful as possible? State in the memo that they're are ready to sue in Georgia, Wisconsin, and Nevada, the states they think are the most liable for challenges. State pretty directly that because 31 states defer to the national party in the case of candidates' withdrawal, that it would be only marginally beneficial to challenge there. This thing that's been going around, a talking point that is not true, that in In Wisconsin, you can only get off the ballot through death. You can't actually withdraw. I assume that's not Joe Biden's plan.

0:29:17 Thomas: Yeah, sorry, man. We're going to have to take you out back. I don't know what to say. Law is the law.

0:29:20 Matt: It's not what happens. That is not true. That's 3rd deadline for the final registration of the party. That's The Only Way. So after that, it would have to be death.

0:29:32 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, again, he's not even the official nominee. That can't be right. None of these takes, doing no research on my own at all, and relying on just my logical brain, he is not the nominee yet. It would be pretty crazy if there was some law saying that he has to be the nominee. That would seem impossible to me.

0:29:35 Matt: Exactly, exactly. Exactly.

0:29:51 Matt: Not like the ballots have been printed and are sitting in a warehouse on July 21, 2024. Like, that's just not how it works. And that's basically what the Heritage Foundation is trying to say is that all these withdrawal deadlines have passed, but that's different. That's a totally different thing. And there is absolutely no reason. And I mean, even though they hedged it, I watched a video of one of the Heritage guys from this project that came up with this memo saying this, and he said, well, you know, if they do it properly, we won't sue. Sue. Well, come on. I mean, they're going to sue.

0:29:55 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:30:18 Thomas: It will be a bloodless revolution if the left allows it to be.

0:30:21 Matt: They're Right. And of course, of course. Yeah. And

0:30:22 Thomas: Just have to point out, I'm so sorry, Matt. I have to point out there was a constitutional effing amendment that said that Trump shouldn't be on the ballot. It just said it. It said, Hey, this exact guy should not be on the ballot that that's fine. Oh, but a guy who's a hundred years old and is about to die in his brains left him, uh, wants to drop out before he's officially the nominee, illegal.

0:30:31 Matt: Yeah can't have it. 14 million Democrats were very concerned about the votes of 14 million Democrats. We have to honor them. We do care very much about them.

0:30:46 Thomas: Yeah. The only time they've ever cared about the vote of a Democrat.

0:30:50 Matt: Yeah and actually since you mentioned it, that Supreme Court case, if it came down to it, the Supreme Court court case could actually help quite a lot here because you might remember, uh, John Roberts was very concerned with the patchwork of state laws, right? That, and saying that we can't have states going and disqualifying or getting people off the ballot.

0:30:51 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah. Yeah.

0:31:07 Matt: So there might be actually some precedent here in the off chance, and I really hope this doesn't happen, but in the oft chance that somehow Georgia, Nevada, or Wisconsin have challenges that actually make it up through the federal courts with injunctions. That's the only way that this could really become a problem. Obviously those are all swing states. We need to make sure that we have those states locked down as, you know, having a Democrat on the ballot. If it went up just in the nightmare scenario where, and none of these are in the fifth circuit, I will point out. So that seems like the only way it really works to me. But, if uh, somehow this gets up to the Supreme court, I would think that they could, well, who knows? I mean, it's, again, it'S not like they need to be logically or legally consistent, but if they want it to be, they could use that case.

0:31:43 Thomas: Yeah, this this would be pretty crazy to they kept Biden off the ballot. I mean, that would be a pretty that I would say that would go further than they are currently. And by they, I don't mean all Republicans. I mean Republican enough justices on the Supreme Court or something. That would be great. I don't think they would go that far or keep Harris off the ballot, I guess.

0:31:54 Matt: Yeah. Yeah, I, yeah. And that would would really just be a horrific October surprise. That would be really bad. I can't think that

0:32:08 Thomas: I think the backlash would be pretty harsh to that. I really do.

0:32:10 Matt: It would.

0:32:11 Thomas: I think there are some things that are still too far. There's not a lot of things, but there's some things that are too far currently. Oh, by the way, until they're more normalized. So like until we spend another few years of of the MAGA normalizing it, then it'll be fine. But for now, there's that I think is too far day

0:32:25 Matt: Is. And I think there'd be actual riots in the streets. And I think that would be justifiable at that point, because that is just, yeah. But I took a look through the Heritage memo. I don't see anything that I understand as a viable challenge. I went looking to see what election lawyers are saying. Certainly, it doesn't seem like anybody thinks that there's actually a real meritorious issue here. But there's, there's plenty that they can use to obfuscate and confuse and mislead and slow things down. They can do what their best, but I don't think it's going to actually result in real outcomes for them.

So that's the good news, at least from that. Question that I had, this is, I guess, maybe more of a political question, but Biden had just announced his first hundred days policies on July 12th, very bad timing on his part, unfortunately, because someone took a shot at Donald Trump the next day. And that was all the the news cycle was talking about for three days after that. You know, I have to say his first 100 days platform, from what I've seen of it, looked pretty good. He's got, because Bernie Sanders actually met with him.

0:33:22 Thomas: One, not be Donald Trump. Okay. I'm sold. Good job. I love that agenda.

0:33:24 Matt: Yes, right? There we go. Yeah. You know, he's promising for a state introduce a bill overturning Dobbs. I'm not sure why he wouldn't just do that now to make Roe v. Wade wobble in, but I guess you have to wait till the next election to see how that goes. Yeah, Yeah. We're still writing it.

0:33:34 Thomas: It's not, it's not ready yet. They're still cooking it. Yeah. In fairness, it might be like we're going to win the, you know, the house back. You know, is it dependent on that?

0:33:43 Matt: Of course.

0:33:43 Thomas: Like, yeah, yeah.

0:33:44 Matt: Of course, yeah. No, but his intention is to restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land, which certainly, I like that as a top agenda item. I think that's something to remind everybody. That's something that Democrats stand for. He was apparently persuaded by Bernie Sanders to adopt more policies to help the working class, including some housing things. But most relevant for this show, he was about to announce, and I don't know if this is official yet, but he was going to be talking about SCOTUS reform, like actually reforming the Supreme Court, and things that I think that we generally have supported on this show including term limits and enforceable ethics codes, both something, right?

0:33:47 Thomas: Yeah, yeah mm -hmm mm -Hmm. Yeah just feel like we need to expand the court But yeah, I Mean, I if We had the system, term limit thing, and we were able to take control of the court to fix a bunch of bullshit. Maybe, but I'm not interested in Okay, well, we'll start with term limits. We'll still allow, you know, them to have ruined all this stuff, and we'll grandfather that in, then we'll do term limits starting with, like, the Democratic nominees or something. You know, that kind of thing.

0:34:23 Matt: Yeah, yeah. Better than no term limits, I think, but yeah, I would rather just see legislation that adds more more Supreme Court justices, which would be pretty easy to get behind. Enforceable ethics codes sound nice. I mean, I don't know how that would work exactly, but I'm willing to see a bill for that. I'd like to see how that goes. I'm glad that he was trying to talk about making it a priority though, because I do think that should be in the conversation. I hope that Harris or whoever does pick that up because we need to keep talking about how to make this court more accountable. But yeah, so that's just sort of another open question. The platform hasn't been announced That's another piece of it. Did you hear about the making of the Republican platform this year?

0:34:50 Thomas: Yeah.

0:35:07 Matt: Pretty funny.

0:35:07 Thomas: A little bit.

0:35:08 Matt: It was basically dictated by Donald Trump, and he insisted on making sure they didn't mention abortion, which I thought was pretty funny, but

0:35:14 Thomas: Is weird stuff capitalized. That would be really funny.

0:35:18 Matt: From having largest mass deportation campaign in history to keeping men out of women's sports, quote-unquote. Those are things of equal importance, I guess. Uh,

0:35:27 Thomas: Oh, good news. Aren't There men in women's sports.

0:35:29 Matt: No, those are women, so yeah.

0:35:30 Thomas: Boy, yeah. We agree.

0:35:31 Matt: Yeah, Uh, solve that one, yeah.

0:35:33 Thomas: Men should be out of women's sport. Wow. Bipartisan. Absolutely. No men in women's sports.

0:35:37 Matt: Yeah, Well, I mean, it's, this is honestly, it's better this year with the RNC campaign platform because they at least actually adopted one, because the year before they just said it's whatever Trump wants, they just literally passed something saying that, um, which was not normal, uh, yeah.

0:35:52 Thomas: That they're like, all right, we got to do something. Well, what if instead of we hail Lord Trump, we just let him write it? That's slightly better, I guess. It's not much different.

0:36:02 Matt: I'd like to keep a watch on the platform and on what Harris or whoever, I mean, again, let's just say Harris for now, because that looks most likely is going to be saying, because I would like to see those policies continued and potentially better ones even.

0:36:07 Thomas: Yeah. Did want to note on that topic I meant to say earlier, there isn't really anything else Harris could say other than I intend to win the nomination. There's no no mechanism to just... I know some people are looking at that as though like, oh, that means there's going to be like an open convention or whatever. And it's like, no, the only thing she could say is that. It's not like she could say, I hereby declare myself the nominee. So I don't think that means that she's anticipating. I think what's likely is to happen, and if you were going to get to this, sorry, but think I with enough momentum of delegates her, I feel like it should just coalesce around her, and will understand that they will be on the outs with party if they try to mess with this, but that's just my guess.

0:36:35 Matt: Yeah, I think the virtual roll call is still the most likely outcome. It seems like they're pretty intent on that.

0:36:57 Thomas: Really? Okay, so that I didn't know know about. So, roll call just because of that, like, Ohio thing, or to, hmm,

0:37:02 Matt: That's the justification for it. There has been some some pushback. Because again, it's true. To avoid any possibility of lawsuit, they have to have this thing locked down by August 7th. So there's criticism before that this was just to get Biden in as quickly as possible, but they still can do it. And they're talking about doing it before August 7. That's still the plan, apparently. So up quick. We will just continue to track this as it goes. But So I did want to talk about this, well, pretty much the stupidest thing I think that we might've read in the New York Times. It's hard to narrow that down.

0:37:19 Thomas: That's coming up.

0:37:30 Thomas: You, I don't know. Okay. So Matt tells me what, right when we're playing this, he's like, okay, I think we have have to comment on this Aaron Sorkin New York Times column. And I thought, well, I hate Aaron Sorkins, so that's going to be dumb. I will read it. And started to read. It was pretty usual stuff about, oh, hi, I wrote The West Wing, an irrelevant show that Thomas hates. Then he pivoted to something so stupid that I couldn't have even been predicted. I was, I gasped when I read the stupid thing that he suggested. Did he suggest,

0:38:00 Matt: Would you like me to read it?

0:38:01 Thomas: Matt? Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead.

0:38:03 Matt: So this is Arian Sirkin writing and saying, this is what I would do if it was the West Wing. So there's a red flag right there. Let's not do what the West Wing would do. Here's my pitch to the writer's room, colon, the Democratic Party should pick a Republican. It gets worse.

0:38:10 Thomas: Get the [bleep] out of here.

0:38:18 Matt: It gets much worse. Let's pick a republican who left with one of the worst approval ratings in US history from his state. Their convention next month, the Democrats should nominate Mitt Romney. How about it?

0:38:28 Thomas: Why?

0:38:28 Matt: Mitt Romney. Yeah, no, this is some kind of fantasy for somebody.

0:38:31 Thomas: So his reasoning seems to be,

0:38:33 Matt: Buddy.

0:38:33 Thomas: I read it, but it's so dumb. His reasoning seems to me, look, we need to make the point that this is about more than politics. Like this can't, if he is truly a threat, if Donald Donald Trump is truly an existential fascist threat, then nominate a because then all the never Trumpers who can vote for them, all of the people on the left who are just voting against Trump can vote from, and then we're just guaranteed. And then it'll go away and we'll all clap and we're good. And I will get a standing ovation because I wrote this. Think that no part of that sounds right to me, please.

0:39:04 Matt: Me just read. I have to read this paragraph just very quickly. Does Mr. Romney support abortion rights? No. Does he want to aggressively raise the minimum wage, bolster public education, strengthen unions, expand transgender rights, and enact progressive tax reform? Oh, probably not. Let's say no. I think that's a no. But is he a cartoon thug who did nothing but watch TV while the mob he assembled beat and used tasers on police officers? No, great. That's our standard now. We're going to pick somebody who didn't do January 6th. That that's all he cares about.

0:39:21 Thomas: Incredible. What? What? It's just I can't

0:39:34 Matt: It's insane.

0:39:34 Thomas: Imagine somebody on the left with a straight face being like, do they support abortion rights? No, but oh, well, like, Do you not know your audience? Like, there's no chance that any but a few of his weird audience would possibly get behind Mitt Romney for president. I just love the logic of this, by the way. The logic is, hey, political parties, if you go fascist enough, you get a free win. You get a free, we get, we'll elect, you'll spot you in.

0:40:04 Matt: Yeah.

0:40:04 Thomas: So I'm thinking, nevermind.

0:40:05 Matt: Well, grab your guy.

0:40:05 Thomas: Joe Biden, get back in the race. You turn fascist, turn even more fascist than Trump. And then it's like, well, now Republicans need to nominate a Democrat in order to prevent the fascism because you get a Free Win if your side goes crazy enough in the name of democracy.

0:40:06 Matt: Yeah, I mean, I get it. He's like the most reasonable Republican, which is not saying much right now in 2024. But as somebody who lived under Mitt Romney's rule for eight years, I don't recommend it. Let's not do that.

0:40:30 Thomas: Hey, Yeah. You know who maybe should nominate Mitt Romney if he's the most reasonable Republicans? Republicans could nominate him because he's a Republican. Why in the world? This is this, I can't, who would print this? This is the stupidest thing I have ever read.

0:40:44 Matt: Also, I just said eight years. It was actually four years, but I guess it felt like eight. I just realized that. All right. Anyway, I think that'll do for today.

0:40:47 Thomas: It felt like a, yeah. Bad. Idea. Yeah.

0:40:54 Matt: Yeah? Just don't do do that. Then again, I will say, good on the New York Times for just finally acknowledging they just want a Republican to be president. Thank you. Just saying it out loud, just allowing that to be printed.

0:41:03 Thomas: I get and I serious. Is he? I took it as serious. Is he joking? Yeah. What

0:41:08 Matt: Oh, completely serious. Yeah, no, he's a serious man. He doesn't joke.

0:41:12 Thomas: We just get a a good president and win. Why is that not what we do? Why don't we have a good nominee? Harris is probably going to be fine. I'm very curious where she will come down on some policy issues. Show, I'm sure, but I'll be very curious as I'm sure you will be. Do you think she'll be different on the border than Biden?

0:41:29 Matt: Don't think so, but best we can hope for is a continuation of the current policies, to be honest.

0:41:34 Thomas: Really? Don't think there's any sense in which she might be more progressive than a a hundred year old white dude. I don't know.

0:41:40 Matt: I'm Remembering her campaign. It was all over the place, and I just didn't really know if she had any real policies locked down at all. I just, I don't know, I hope we can do better this time with with what she's got, but we'll see. Um,

0:41:50 Thomas: Yeah. Interesting. Right. Well, thanks for doing this on short notice. And I, to Biden, I guess, I don't know. I, I hope this ends up being the right decision. That's a hell of a thing to do. So I'll give him credit for, I mean, that's, that's tough.

0:42:00 Matt: Think it was making history for

0:42:04 Thomas: That'S a tough decision to make. And Hey, everybody, you know, what we can do is just make sure whoever it is, likely Harris just wins. Let's just do that.

0:42:04 Matt: Sure. It's Gonna be a long few months. All

0:42:13 Thomas: All Right, Matt. So much, everybody. Thanks for listening. We'll save that cool episode we had. It's a very fun one. We'll save it for next week.

0:42:20 Matt: Right, see you soon. All

0:42:20 Clip: This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved. It is produced and edited by Thomas Smith, who also provided the fabulous intro and outro music used with permission.