Well, whiskey, come and take my pains all right, Oh whiskey.

Why think alone when you can drink it all in with Ricochet's three whiskey Happy Hour, Join your bartenders, Steve Hayward, John You and the international woman of Mystery, Lucretia where.

They slapped it up and David, ain't you easy on the shoulda tap?

Got agive me?

And let that?

Well, folks, we are I want to say live that's not really correct but for listeners, and we don't have the live stream working.

John and Lucretia are sitting two feet apart from each other.

I haven't smacked him once.

And you know, for the people who try to find me after my death, I have my Apple tech.

Track it right.

And you know, there's of course some risks that not only will Lucretia reach over and smack you some point, but you could catch her cooties John, and so who knows.

But I feel like I'm in an episode of Breaking Bad and Lucretia is going to bury me in the desert out here in Arizona.

And you know what they say in casino, always dig the hole first, because if you don't, somebody's didn't come along.

You'll be digging holes all night.

You know that.

Well, now, why don't we just tell listeners what you guys are?

What brings you two guys together?

Uh, since you're not about.

I'll tell you because I'm excited about it.

So John is here.

It started out that John was coming to speak to uh, mister Lucretia's intelligence intelligence studies.

The actual program is Intelligence and Information Operations Program, a class to talk about his sundry things.

And John you is such a celebrity that it has ballooned and blossomed into a major talk with under cover police officers of course, because for security and whatnot.

And he's actually going to talk.

Yeah, he can take him.

But all he asked for actually was the opportunity to be able to carry concealed Unfortunately, the even though the police are good friends, they wouldn't allow me to do that, So they're going to be there undercover.

Actually, I'm looking for Lucretia's handbag because I want to see the guns she must have in it.

You left your guns in the car, Oh my god.

Well, I mean, look, things are getting kind of I mean to be semi serious for a minute.

I mean, John, you and I are around.

But I'm assuming you guys have seen the news that Antifa turned up at Berkeley in force a couple of days ago.

I was teaching that day and we were oh, yeah, I was on campus, but it did as far as the law school.

But I know if you were there, Steve, you would have gone down, of course in person, to oh yeah, I miss the insanity.

But I was like, I hope they don't block traffic on my way home.

I don't want to have to run over more people than I usually do when I drive in downtown Berkeley.

But yeah, I know they I mean, you saw that our friend Harmeat Dylan, head of the Civil Rights Division, is announced that the Justice Department has announced an investigation, and you know there's questions about whether the security is adequate for people to exercise their free speech rights.

Yeah, yeah, right, Well, I mean, you know, borrow a statement of an old friend of mine.

I would think that the only thing to protect Antifa in Arizona would be the game laws.

But I don't know, right, But who knows well.

So, first of all, so this is a little unusual episode since where you guys are there together, and we'll see how that goes.

I did have a few people tell me they listened to last week's episode, which we taped live in the lobby of the Washington Hilton in a you know, sort of a random fashion of who was available, and they said, well, that was interesting, but that was strange, and you know, is it normally like that?

And I said, of course, oh no, it's usually much worse.

But that was rather gonzo.

And maybe we'll come back to all that.

Look, we got some serious things.

Well there's always serious things going on, but we're not going to follow the headlines today exactly, but I do want to just plant a sequel.

Well, Sidney Sweeney's back in the news, and it's always fun to be able to mention her.

But also, wait a minute, I want to point something out here.

So Sidney Sweeney lost thirty pounds in order to be able to well, she gained thirty pounds in order to be able to be the be in the movie Christy, and she lost back the thirty pounds seven weeks.

All I want you guys to know is and she talked about how she went from a size twenty seven back down to a size twenty three.

And I want you all to know that Sidney and I have something in common.

I wear the size twenty seven that she wires when she's thirty pounds heavyer.

Yes, but the difference is while she was just playing a boxer temporarily, you do that at three sixty five twenty four seven.

I'll just put it that way.

She's in a movie as she plays a one boxer.

Yeah yeah, really yeah yeah, and.

You would never know what was her just looking at her, not even because she's thirty pounds heavier, but because she's got dark, curly hair and yeah, it's all.

Much yeah yeah, And apparently the movie did very poorly.

That's opening box office weekend.

But interesting she picked up.

I mean, okay, we'll spend twenty seconds on this.

All the sensation about her interview with a Gentleman's quarterly where she humiliated the interviewer.

That's happening a lot of fun.

Oh oh yeah, it was so good.

So imagine if I was at that age, mature and had the same attitude as I was today.

That's Sydney Sweeney in that interview.

She just the lady says, well, you know, are you sure you don't want to apologize for making those comments about your jeans and you know a lot of people to you know, anytime I actually feel I need to explain myself about something, I can assure you I'll do so.

Oh yeah and she oh, and she had this wonderful dismissive look on her face because she is a you know, a talented Hollywood performer.

My my favorite one, by the way, my favorite meme on that was the obnoxious chick from MSNBC asks her, you mean happy holidays, right?

Oh?

Then, and Sydney Sweety's in this you know, Santa Baby costume right that.

Look, I have a whole collection of those memes.

But I mean, needless to say, when they finally make the movie of the three Whiskey Happy Hour, uh, Sidney Sweeney will obviously play you, Lucretia, and then John.

I mean, you've already been played in at least one movie I can think of.

And so like twenty year old Korean you know, Maile.

After I told you in the report, I was offended because they made the guy instead of this handsome squash playing worked out, they made him kind of a dopey, little chubby Korean guy and it really busters.

That is most Korean guy that was.

I was very offended by.

That stereotypes, right, oh god right?

Anyway, you know Don Rickles is no longer.

I know it was Don Rickles.

And you want to find the you want to find the human equivalent of the Swedish chef from the Muppets.

That's always the one that's practically your avatars.

I know exactly.

So I'll just say last word on Sidney Sweeney.

I've seen a couple of interviews with her which makes me think she's supremely intelligent, and only because of the way she discussed how she thinks about her career and business opportunities and other things.

So, and she's willing to take risks like playing this role, but you wouldn't expect from what she's done before.

You know, rom Comms, and you know some of the White Lotus she was in, which I never watched because I don't have time, So you know, keep your eye on her.

Uh.

The other bitter story, a little more serious, uh, in ideological terms, is what I'm calling Helen's legs, and I mean Helen Andrews, and I am.

I've never obsessed with this article.

Well, but the thing is a feminization.

Of well, I just make this obsert Well, right.

I mean there there continues to be a lot of chatter about it, and this is now a month old article, and so you know Ross doubt that had a podcast about her with somebody disputing it and greading some and lots more secondary commentary on substack by all the you know, a lot of different substackers.

And I'm starting to think, I think I know what's going to happen next.

And I think she's I expect she's going to write a book on this.

If not, some publisher is going to beat a path through her door, and that book will be the next closing of the American mind, in other words, a big public publishing sensation from the right that will then spark a whole lot of discussion and debate for months or years.

And the reason I think that is, you know, not quite a historical analogy, but you know, Bloom's famous book, which took everyone to my surprise, began as a magazine article in National Review in nineteen eighty three.

I remember the article was the cover story.

Jack talked about it all.

A bit.

Well, but Bloom and Helen Andrews have so much in common, well, I don't know, Well, no, actually, he's a pull up, professor of political theory at the University of Chicago, and his book had nothing like you know, his book was like most people write it, probab didn't understand like ten percent of it.

Well, I'll come back to that polarization of you know, just feelings people have about society.

Well, i'll slow down you too, political theory in it.

Well, when i'll slow down you two.

You know that book began as an article in National Review.

Jaffo actually brought to class and talked about it.

It was the semester I had with him, the first semester I had with him.

And then lo and behold, five years later he's got or four years later, he has a book out about it because somebody said you should do a book on this.

Uh, if you know the story.

Simon and Schuster printed ten thousand copies and was hopeful they'd be able to sell those, but they weren't sure, and of course it becomes this monster bestseller.

Now why did it become a best seller?

Well, a couple of things, but one of them was he had that somewhat ridiculous chapter on rock and roll music where he obsessed with Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson.

It doesn't read very well, but a lot of people seized on that.

But then there was the very long and very very serious chapter towards the end, which was called from Plato's Republic to Heidegger's Rector's Address, although he put the hidigger in German and that was very dense and difficult, and nobody got through that, and it was not included on the audiobook's version of the book.

So you had everything from soup to nuts in that book, and you know, it caught everyone by surprise, including Bloom.

I could see Helen's book and probably she'll throw in something outrageous.

That's the equivalent of taking after Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger, and then we're off to.

The racist after Boomers.

Sure, but that's an easy target now exactly.

Well, actually, well maybe that leads us then to our first a serious topic on the agenda.

So to put it bluntly, Washington, d C.

Where I am right now is in the grip of gropersm Do you know what grouperism?

John is?

John?

You probably don't.

It's the followers of Nick fun Days.

Is that right?

It's kind of like it.

I think it goes beyond him.

I'm not sure I could define it, but it's definitely.

After the stupid frog.

Yeah, that's it was, see right, and that's been around a while now then I've ignored that.

And but you know there's a I'm calling this, by the way, new right four point five, and I could go through one through four and why it's four point five, but I won't.

I'm going to be doing that on Friday up at Yale for the Buckley Institute.

And.

Rodreer wrote a substack note because he was here over the weekend along with the Hungarian delegation visiting President Trump and Vice President Vance.

And he wrote a long substack here a couple days ago.

That's getting a ton of attention.

He's a good writer and a good reporter, and he's saying, gosh, we got a ton of these gropers, and by most estimations of in fact, there's an ambulance going behind me.

I don't know if you can hear it.

I'm on Connecticut Avenues.

Okay, good.

Anyway, he's saying that, you know what we're told is And the backdrop here, of course, is this the STM and dron at the Heritage Foundation and Kevin Roberts going on right now, that's also gripping the town.

And so the point is is he says, you know, like thirty to forty percent of the young conservatives working on Capitol Hill and for the think tanks and the media organizations are you know, Flente's adjacent.

I'll put it at least that way, right, And they like Tucker Carlson, and they hate the baby boomers.

They have contempt for Ronald Reagan and William F.

Buckley and you know boomer conservatism, and the twitter wars right now on this are quite intense, I'll just put it that way.

So I don't know, if you didn't know that that's that's the right figure, that seems like a real exaggeration to me.

Well, I don't know.

I mean, he said, that's just I'm talking to people around town.

And yeah, I'm a little suspicious too, but I think I do think this is a five alarm fire because well, I mentioned to you guys, I mentioned on the Ricochet podcast that these really bright students I met at Mississippi a month ago.

I really like them.

They've read stuff, they're smart, they're going places, and several of them said, we kind of think Nick Fins might be the successor to Charlie Kirk.

And I said, but you know what about the crazy You know what he's said about Hitler, and you know Eddie's an anti Semitic and all the rest of that.

And they said, oh, yeah, that's kind of crazy stuff.

But we like that he's outrageous.

And then he's you know, just rejects all the conventions.

And so a key sentence in Rod's piece was, h this is not people who are looking for an end of wokery and return to normal.

They're looking for revenge.

And I don't that may or may not be an overstatement.

I didn't get that from the students I talked to at Mississippi, but they certainly there.

If they're out for revenge, they're taking you out against old boomer conservatives like me and you.

I suppose to right.

These people, as far as I understand their views, are ignorant and racist and misogynists and ill deformed, fairly educated, and I think are much smaller proportioned.

I've met no students who say good things about Nick flent Days or any of these gropers.

I mean, it sounds to me like they're these people sitting in their basements of their houses, you know, posting and engaging in social media, which has effective exaggerating how many people you think really agree with them because they post a lot.

But that doesn't I mean thirty or forty percent.

I think that.

I think that's might be three or four percent or five percent.

I've not met anyone who takes these views seriously.

Amongst the young people.

They might like that, you know, he's raising a ruckus, and they might like a chaos going to the Heritage Foundation.

But actually people who agree with his views, which I take it he thinks Hitler was cool, and that he thinks Stalin is interesting and Maw too, I suppose, And I mean they actually go.

I've not heard young people say they actually agree with these things I have.

That doesn't mean I necessarily disagree with everything you said.

I have actually talked with quite a few young people.

And you guys probably don't remember this.

It might have been with Richard epste We were on a podcast and I mentioned this, Oh, I think.

It was Amy.

It was Amy Wax And I.

Mentioned that there's a at my university, there's a course on the Holocaust that teaches that it was all the Jews fault, really really, and I guess what I would argue when you said that they're ignorant, and then you said that they're racist and anti Semitic.

They are racists and anti Semitic because they're ignorant, because they, as Reagan would say, they know so much that isn't true true, and that that's the failure that and you know, let's give some credit to conservatives for at least taking seriously the idea that however large that percentage of call it the conservative, the right wing, whatever, however large that is, we don't just ignore it, thank goodness, or we're going to find ourselves with, you know, a Nick Flintes type becoming mayor of New York City before you get it right.

I mean, it's, you know, all of this angst over Tucker Carlson and Nick Flintes.

I find all of that stuff highly, highly objectionable.

But at least, you know, conservatives actually look at the views of each other and and do demand a certain kind of call it homogeneity on these views.

We tolerate Libertarians.

John and I were having a really interesting discussion about libertarianism before this.

Sorry the Gora, but I was telling John that I saw this.

I think it was the website, the huge banner on the website of the Colorado Libertarian Party abolish Ice.

Yeah, you take at all.

These nuts that come under the big tent on the conservative side.

But we at least pushed back on some of these things, and hopefully we make those ignorant young people who are resentful about what they've been through.

You know, there's white males don't go to college anymore.

Why not just because college is a waste of time, as we've all learned recently, but because they.

Weren't welcome, right, they weren't welcome.

And you know, and if they got there, what were they going to study?

And even if they went into a stem field, they'd be like one of my kids who went there and was told on the first day and his physics first day with his physics advisors, that your only purpose here is to make sure that you may get marginalized students through this program.

Your success depends on this, you know.

So they have a reason to be resentful.

Yeah, and we didn't protect them when we should have.

Right, Well, let me give let me give one Crusius said that I agree with is that you have someone on the Democrats side who's now the right.

He's the mayor of the largest city of the city with the largest number of Jews outside of Israel, and he's clearly anti Semitic, and his party in the end embraced him.

And because they don't, I think that's there.

They don't police is the wrong word, but they don't, you know, cultivate what's right and wrong amongst their members.

And the one healthy thing I think out of all this is that you see a number of leading people coming out and condemning what Nick Flin takes thinks.

Tucker carlsrom for giving him such a softball interview, and he and Kevin Roberts for giving Pucker pass.

I think that's entirely healthy and good for conservative movement.

That's out in public and we can have a debate about it.

And yeah, I think people, you know, you know that this view should be stifled, not for First Amendment, not stifled in first Ammican, stifled because it's wrong.

Right, The Democrats are very happy to have antison Mites in their political coalition.

Oh no, I think that's quite right now.

Sean Davis, of whom I'm a huge fan, by the way, but he can be a little extreme.

From time to time.

Sean Davis from the Federalists says that this whole reaction by the you know, the donors that these think tanks and on and on and on, is really because they're they're desperate to turn the Republican Party away from Mega to ruin any chance that JD Vance becomes the heir apparent and and get the GOP back on its country club and Chamber of commerce routes where it belongs.

Yeah, now I've heard that, and I I think that's overdone.

But let me offer I.

Like to put the ideas out there right.

Well, I don't think it's wholly wrong.

And let's hold the JD answer for a moment because that's and we maybe end on that.

But let me give you an end of one, in other words, one data point, first for John's benefit, but also to show that the framing of this it's a young male problem, right for all the reason that are quite right.

And that's my driver in Mississippi on now four trips to and from the airport over this last year.

She's graduated but working at the Declaration of Independent Center.

She's really smart.

She knows stuff she's a good evangelical Christian, but but young lady, right, And she says, yeah, I kind of like nickquentn taste.

And I said, okay, why and yeah, he said some crazy stuff and all that, and she's just very sweet, and she says, but you know, I really don't understand why we give so much money to Israel.

And by the way, I don't None of the students there struck me as having a rop of anti Semitism.

There's none of that there, but I think in this particular by the way, then John I went and explained why we did.

Here's the whole history of it, and this is a little bit like a Ukraine argument.

We're developing military technologies jointly that benefit us and that we're using and they buy our stuff and so forth.

And at the end of my explanation, that was just on that part of it.

You know, I've never heard that before.

That's a good explanation.

So we're following.

And I think we've assumed that we conservatives Republicans didn't need to make this case.

Well now actually we do.

And then the second thing I talked about, and this is the week before Vance went there for his big appearance, and if you remember the highlight reel, there was a student that got up, had a maga hat on and he was asked a very anti Israel question happed with the sentence at his last sentence was and by the way, you know, they're a country that's not even our religion.

And I did we Okay, I didn't know if I had with you or not.

But the point is Ronald Reagan would have said we called through Judeo Christian tradition for a reason.

Vance didn't do any of that.

He just said an America first explanation, which I think actually played into what's driving all this.

I think a lot of foreign sources, other bad faith actors have been insidiously trying to reach people like some of these students I met there and elsewhere.

I think our argument has to be stronger than that, because I guess you can make that argument right, which I've made, about why Israel is a good ally of ours, regardless of it's exactly just significance.

Yeah, I think that.

I personally think people who don't want Israel to exist, and so they're saying, oh, you know, they're against Zionism.

What are they called it?

That is anti Semitic too.

So there's this idea that you saw in these questions and the conversation, you know, with your new girlfriend from Mississippi, whatever her name is, that there's something it's okay to say, I'm not a Zionist, but I'm not anti semi sub that it's okay for me to think Israel should not exist as a state, but I'm not anti Semitic.

That's totally different than saying, Okay, well I don't think that.

Now, who's been a great prime minister or I would have run the gods of war differently.

You know, those are questions, you know, of policy, But I think there's this theme now that's emerging.

You know that Israel shouldn't be a state.

But I'm not anti Semitic for believing that.

I think that's wrong.

I do.

You don't hear people coming out challenging that view like you're saying, Jade van Stein, come out and challenge that view.

And you know I was talking.

I was talking to a liberal student who said, what's so wrong about saying from the river to the sea Palestine shall be free?

It just means that everybody should get along and live together.

God, I was like, do you realize what territory this is the river.

To the sea.

If it's Palestine, that means Israel actually can't exist because that's the entire state is Israel.

A lot of young people think think this, that the state of Israel has no legitimate right to exist.

I think we should harder on all those people who think that are really useful idiots for anti Semitism.

What's the only country you know?

The answer this what's the only country in the Middle East where Arabs get to vote in free elections?

It's called Israel.

To the student, if you will behind the veil of ignorance or in the state of nature, and you knew you were going to be Arab, and you didn't know where you were going to be born, you would hope you would be born in Israel.

Well that's good, that's a good Arab country, right.

Yeah, although I hate even leaving the door open a crack sneaking rolls in his veil of ignance.

But oh that's okay, all right, yeah, okay.

Well, now, speaking of libertarians to change gears, our friend Richard Epstein has what he's written this article about, Oh, the unitary executive theory threatens to eat up the independent judiciary, and this is terrible.

And maybe John, you're going to or have already done a law talk with Richard about this question.

The part I thought the mean, I thought, this is John, youugh bate was where he said there's very little textual support for the unitary executive in the constitution.

I think I'm gonna turnover to you.

But I think what we have here at Lucretia is this is a proxy debate between Thomas Hobbs who is John, and Adam Smith, who is Richard.

And because Richard is pure libertarian and so I don't know, a lot of the article is dense about the cases going back to the eighteen fifties, and I got kind of bored with it in hurry.

But I do think I thought it was quite wrong headed.

Actually, John gave gave me an excellent sort of summary of the article.

Okay, well, give sure, go ahead.

John.

Why it is that Richard came to this.

Yeah, I mean I think so.

One thing is I think he's wrong about the text.

And most of the article, as you said, Steve, was a strange technical discussion of not even the executive branch, but of these weird courts that Congress has created called Article two courts, which are not federal Article three one Article one courts.

Article three courts are the ones that we know and love, like the Supreme Court.

Right, but people will be shocked to know most cases under federal law, like social security benefit disputes and things like this, get heard by these courts which are not really federal courts.

They're handled by these fake judges, and they're called articles.

We call them Article one courts because.

That would be just give an example.

Isn't the Court of Federal claims an Article one court claims a tax court?

But then number immigration courts are the best example.

These are people who do not have lifetime tenure, their salary can be reduced, they don't have judicial independence.

And before you go on, I just don't have it in front of me.

But the one line that he threw in there was, of course, their their development was not constitutional.

It was haphazard.

And he had a funny turn of phrase that he said.

In other words, this was just sort of thrown at us, and we accepted it.

But now, of course we have to bow down and realize that our constitutional fall apart without it.

Go ahead John Well.

So one thing is Richard's a libertarian, and so libertarians traditionally like ineffective government, right, They don't like to have an effective executive branch.

They would prefer Congress do very little and a very powerful judiciary because they want the judiciary to protect individual rights against the government and against majorities.

Right.

They also fear just majorities, especially because majorities trample on individual liberties.

So Richard's argument, you know, when you look at it, is basically just fitting into the traditional libertarian approach to government.

But the second thing is he then overlays us with this weird approach to constitutional interpretation.

He's not an originalist, he's not a textualist either.

He is actually very close to what you may think of it as like a history and tradition guy.

So when he talks about these weird article on courts, he just as Lucretia says, he just accepts them because they've been around a long time.

Which is strange because he doesn't have that same attitude to the executive branch, which he thinks must be stripped down to some magical eighteenth century, you know, tiny executive.

But he accepts.

So we've had these debates about affirmative action, and I give him a really hard time.

See supports race based affirmative action.

It's been around a long time, and it you know, things that have been a long time constitutionally have some claim to permanence, which I just think that's completely wrong because why writing down the constitution that quick question.

On that does that?

Does his view differ in any substantial way from just reliance interests, which is often comes into play.

It's not so much narrow idea about Okay, Starry decisive, but this is just you know, it's like treating the Constitution as if it were just the common law and you just build on it and build on it, you never go back to the original beginning.

And then the last point is the one you suggest to see, the idea that there's no textual foundation for the unitary executive is just exactly right when the Constitution says, right, the executive power has vested in the pre and then it gives them the commander chief power and the take care clause.

I mean, it's like, what what what part of it is not justifying?

I mean he has a throw off line about Locke in there too, as if somehow Locke says something about.

It, but who cares.

Let me ask you a question.

You and I actually believe that the the the beginning of Article two that says the executive power shall be vested in as compared to the beginning of Article one, which says the legislative powers hearing granted, But that he and granted that's the hearing granted.

Okay, I'm but but I have a minor point here.

Article three begins, the judicial power shall be vested in.

So how is it we are not arguing that all of these Article one courts in and of themselves are unconstitutional.

No, that's exactly rightly a cretia.

This is why Richard doesn't like the constitutional text, because if you actually read the constitutional text, he would be utterly wrong because he's saying, oh, the executive power of being vested in the president.

That's just ceremonial language that has no substance.

But Article three says the judicial power is vested in the Supreme Court.

Right, that sentence is the only sense that really justifies judicial review, justifies the independence of the Article three courts in their power over certain classes of cases.

Is why the Congress can't just take cases away from the Supreme Court.

Whenever it feels like the claim of you know, this judiciary is an independent, equal branch comes from the same exact language.

But yeah, Richard would say, oh no, that vesting of the judicial powers undermined by the history of these fake courts.

But at the same time, right, he was like, oh love, but the same language an Article two has no meaning at all, and we can reduce executive branch to basically I think, you know, a president at a desk with a pencil in the White House and no substance of powers at all.

Now we gotta have Richard on the show, and I'm sure he could speak for thirty minutes straight about why he's right.

So this is cause, he said, he wrote a book about it.

I called it up out of library.

He says, the constitution is we have a constitutional convention.

By not convention, isn't a meeting, but conventions like just things.

The way we do things, he calls us exactly, he calls us the prescriptive constitution.

We do things which are good policy.

They might be unconstitutional, but we accept them.

And so another example he would use would be the independence of the Federal Reserve Bank.

He said it doesn't make sense under the Constitution, but it's just such a good idea.

We've accepted it and now we have to keep it because it's so efficient.

Yeah, maybe it's a good idea.

Well, I would.

Say that, however, that this, you know, we're kind of making a little fun of Richard and don't mean too, because he's obviously very serious.

Call no, no, no, no, I mean to I don't.

But here's this is actually an important question because the context of the article you should probably link to it, Steve.

The context of the article is the Supreme Court needs to reign in all of these needs to reign in Trump and.

At least uphold all of these.

Other court decisions that have tried to reign in the executive power.

And that's the context of the article, which is very important and one of the things that you I think we have to give credit to the Supreme Court.

Maybe not Katangi, although Katangi came through last week.

Let's get credit where credits do.

They are indeed trying to separate what the Constitution says about executive power, even what their prior decision said about executive powers, from Trump and realize that it is as Marshall would say, it is a constitution that we are expounding.

It is not the Trump presidency.

And I hope to God that Robert he seems to have so far, keeps on the straight and narrow and doesn't cave because of all the criticisms that are coming about coming against the Court because they're taking Trump's side in things, because it really, I mean, Trump is making some really important corrections to our constitutional system, not out of any because he wants to be Hitler or an Autocrat, but because those corrections needed to be made.

And I hope the Court sees that and looks to the future and says, yes, of course it can be abused by a future president.

Of course it can.

Of course it could have been abused by one in the past, which it was.

But the answer to that is not the Court's reigning it, and the answer is the American people.

Right, Yeah, well, okay.

I tend to incline to the old fashioned and maybe too simplistic view that Article one is the first article to Constitution for a reason that the founders thought Congress ought to be the most important and dominant branch for driving American progress, not the president.

President proposes and all that I know, and maybe that's too strong.

On the other hand, I've always liked someone who said, I don't know who it was, John, someone who said that Richard's ideal bill of rights would have consisted of the sentence Congress shall make no law, period and we all go home.

Right.

Yeah, that's right.

But my thought experiment here that would be fun is, uh, you know, I just thought of this while we were talking.

It would be fun to lock Richard in a room and force him to read Harvey Mansfield's book on executive power, Taming the Prince, and watch his head explode and just wait for all the emanations from Richard's very fast thinking brain.

That could be pretty amusing.

So maybe one thing to also say in his defense is he has different reasons for it, but his view is probably the same view that most American constitutional laws scholars have, right, which is they think the executive branch is out of control.

Trump has stopped and you need a especially strong judiciary to do it, and you shouldn't let it be broken up with all these weird courts.

You should just focus on, you know, the bolstering the independent federal Article three judiciary so that can stand up to Trump.

That's right.

They don't make these arguments when Obama and Biden are president.

They didn't make these arguments when Biden tried to cancel all the student loans in the country or force everyone to get a vaccine.

But right when Trump's president, they suddenly resurrect this this suspicion of executive power that is part of the American American political tradition.

There's always been this suspicion of power.

You don't need to you don't need to go into some deep theoretical justification for it.

On the surface, the idea of a powerful, responsible and accountable executive makes perke sense.

Yeah, it really does.

If you and you can look at the experience across states that have plural executives.

You know, the governors elected separately from the lieutenant governor.

Ex that a lot of them do that nowadays as this way of supposedly, I don't know, who do you blame for the abysmal ca UH state of schools in California?

Right?

Yeah?

Who has to be who's responsible for that?

Yeah?

We have an elected supervisor in public instruction who you know, used to be a big deal, but now the governor Okay, right.

So, but you can't hold someone accountable either if they're not responsible, if they don't have the power and the responsibility to make things happen, you can't hold them accountable.

So who do you hold accountable for the mess that are our interest rates?

Right now?

Who do you like for that?

Well?

Well, interest rates are not set by the Federals.

There only the like the overnight rate, that's the only thing that but they're.

Not also not doesn't there there's a perfect answer to my question, or illustration of the answer to my question.

Nobody knows who you blame.

Yeah, well, okay, that's a I think it's some of a different category.

But one other point, though, John is I'm having fun pointing out to my liberal friends that Trump isn't asserting any powers.

That Franklin Roosevelt didn't want it, and it was always a controversy when the court got in his way, right, and they finally capitulated, right.

And I do think Trump's.

Face all the cases we've been talking about so far, the court even was there.

Trump is just saying the statue grants me the power.

Yeah, He's not like FDR saying I can just close the banks because I feel like it for a week, right, go off the gold standard, right right, right, right, yes.

Right, right, Well, I mean I do think we'll follow this, you know, maybe at the end of this next term.

But it seems to me the Supreme Court is getting the kind of workout by the assertion of executive power that it has not seen since the nineteen thirties, Right, Roosevelt and the Congress were doing all these crazy things.

And yeah, I mean, I think the last big moment there were some cases when you know, the Reagan attacks on the independence of the Special Council, But I think I think the other big moment was Watergate and Nixon.

Yeah, you know this this is a similar moment of you know, what constitutional cases going to think of all the cases they got the Pentagon papers, you know, and you know, Nixon himself being subject to subpoena.

There are a lot of big nick but ye, Nixon, and then the previous one would be FDR.

Now Trump would like it to just stay at the Nixon level and not elevate to the FDR court, Packing right, packing level, although that's the court.

You know, then we could just move the podcast to the Supreme Court.

Since all three of us will be there.

Yeah, yeah, all right.

So uh on related matter, Uh, you know, I knew John last week when we were talking to Aki Lamar about his new book Born Equal, that oh boy, we're gonna be in trouble with Lucretia and I should mention the Creatia that after your trip to Hawaii got canceled.

I thought the last minute, I thought about mention this to John, maybe we should make Lucretia come back here for the Federal Society Conference just to sit in.

Problem was, it was sold out, and so it was a moot point.

And next year, right, and they're gonna move back.

And ask that we be able to do our yeah pod cast next year at the Federal Society Convention for a live audience.

That'd be huge fun.

Right.

We've got a lot of listeners there.

A lot of the judges will hide in the back, you know, with masks on or something.

I don't know, listen to us, right, you know who you are out there?

Anyway?

You know, it's really great to get a kill.

Right.

He's a busy guy, the big deal.

We thought we'd be lucky to get him for five minutes to say what's your book about?

But he hung around for a while, you know, despite it, despite the interventions of Roger Palan, and you know Hadley turned up and Judge Pryor was great, and anyway, I don't know hard to handle all this.

This is the second book of a trilogy.

As I understand John that he's writing on how we quality is unfolded under the Constitution from the founding up to present time, and LUCRETI did you want to make him observation just that.

He doesn't understand anything about equality, and he doesn't understand anything about jaffa.

I find his his deference to feminism revolting and evolution of Lincoln's thought.

M But we don't have time to do that today.

I'm afraid because I have to take the celebrity here.

Important engagement.

So Steve, with your permission.

I'm just gonna do a couple of Babylon bes with your permission, of course, the top one of Democrats sombrely remove some breros singing and of shutdown.

I thought you'd like that one.

Fans, this one's not political.

But for those of you who you know follow any kind of social media fans can't believe how much rock singer has aged And the last fifty years or sixty.

Right, it's amazing.

Jack's still alive.

I heard, I.

Know, dances across the stage like he's forty five or something.

I don't know.

Banks now requiring your grandkids to co sign your fifty year mortgage?

Oh boy, yeah, Auschwitz Guard explains he doesn't hate Jews or anything, just Zionists.

Yes, that one's for you.

And then I'll end it with this Congress prepares to pivot from doing nothing because of the shutdown to doing nothing because they're Congress.

That's good, right, all right, John.

I'll kick us out.

Well, always drink your whiskey, Neat, buy more books than Steve.

What latest ai confection do you have for us?

I didn't have time to do a new one because I was taking down my government shutdown decorations and putting up my Jeffrey Epstein decorations.

Since let's go back to that, right, So, by the.

Way, I have to end with the only the only negative thing that's come out of at least the release of stuff today is the fact that that Jeffrey Epstein ended his relationship with Bill Clinton because he was a pathological liar.

All right, by bye, right, Bady We'll be back next week with a more normal like me.

So h

Ricochet join the conversation.