Episode Transcript
Transcripts are displayed as originally observed. Some content, including advertisements may have changed.
Use Ctrl + F to search
0:14
I pledge allegiance to
0:16
the people of the United
0:18
States of America and
0:22
to the Republic, this democracy
0:25
for which we stand. One
0:29
nation, part of one
0:31
world, indivisible,
0:35
with liberty and justice
0:37
for all. Happy
0:47
Independence Day, everyone. Or
0:50
as I like to say, happy interdependence
0:52
day. Independence
0:55
is good. Be independent.
0:58
But I
1:01
also like to think about how we're all connected
1:03
to. It's not just independence,
1:05
it's interdependence. And we
1:08
all are part of this one planet
1:10
that we all share.
1:13
We're all connected.
1:15
But on this particular day, we
1:18
celebrate the signing of our Declaration
1:21
of Independence.
1:23
And wow,
1:26
it's been a rough
1:28
few years, hasn't it? We've
1:31
gone through a number of
1:33
these years, probably
1:36
since the day of the golden escalator at
1:39
Tower in Midtown Manhattan, where
1:43
he rode, rode it down. June
1:47
of 2015. Jeez,
1:50
this is 23. That's
1:53
like eight years.
1:57
And we're still fighting.
1:59
still trying to maintain
2:03
what we had and
2:06
try to gain that which
2:08
we've never really had, a
2:12
work in progress. And
2:16
I thought it
2:18
might be a good idea on this day. And
2:21
you may be listening to this. On the
2:23
fourth, you may be listening to it. After this week,
2:25
the fourth this year is
2:27
the fourth of July is
2:29
in the middle of the week. So we don't really have like a fourth
2:31
of July weekend. Although
2:34
we all have gotten creative over the years
2:36
of trying to figure out how to stretch
2:38
the holiday when it lands
2:40
in the middle of the week. So
2:43
you might be listening to this on the fourth of July, maybe
2:46
fourth of July weekend, it may be fourth of July
2:48
week, whatever it is. I
2:51
thought this would be a good time to reflect
2:54
on what
2:56
we've had to put up with and go through recently.
3:00
Speaking specifically of the
3:02
Supreme Court,
3:05
just this last week. So
3:13
at the end of the week last week, we
3:16
had the Supreme Court issue three
3:18
rulings. Number one,
3:21
eliminating affirmative action, colleges
3:24
and universities in this country. Number
3:29
two, stating that
3:31
a business has a
3:33
right to deny LGBTQ
3:36
people services. If
3:39
they believe providing that service somehow
3:42
negates their rights to free speech.
3:48
And then finally, they got rid
3:50
of Joe Biden's plan to
3:53
provide student loan debt relief
3:56
to the 30 million people that are
3:58
holding the bill. holding these outrageous
4:01
student loans. It
4:06
was a rough, rough week for
4:09
the rights of people of color, rights
4:12
of the gay and lesbian and queer
4:15
community, and the
4:18
right not to be settled with debt for the
4:20
next 20 or 30 years of your life, simply
4:23
because you wanted to go to school.
4:30
And I know a lot of you have been pretty bummed out
4:34
ever since the end of the week, thinking
4:38
just how far will the Supreme Court
4:40
go? So
4:52
I wanna talk about that, but I wanna share
4:54
with you maybe a different viewpoint
4:57
of what they've done.
5:01
But also what we've done to them. And
5:05
this has not been discussed much
5:07
in recent days since these rulings last
5:10
week.
5:11
But I wanna give you my take on
5:13
this, and I want you, I know
5:16
this is gonna sound like what has happened
5:18
to Mike, he's become such the eternal
5:21
optimist. Believe me,
5:23
if you have followed
5:25
me and watched my movies or read
5:28
my books over the years, optimism
5:30
is not necessarily a very
5:33
good descriptive word for
5:35
where I'm usually at with things. But I
5:37
do pause when these moments
5:40
happen, when awful crap
5:43
happens, to try and find
5:45
not the good in it,
5:47
because there is no good in what the Supreme
5:49
Court has done here this
5:52
past week. But there
5:54
is buried
5:56
inside of their evil. The
6:00
key, the
6:03
way out, the
6:06
key that they've sort of handed us
6:09
and they don't know they've done that.
6:12
I'm hoping they don't. I'm guessing
6:14
they don't know. They don't listen to this podcast.
6:17
So I want you
6:20
to hear what I have to say about this and what I
6:22
think we can do about it and
6:24
how we can perhaps slow
6:27
down or even stop the madness that
6:29
comes from our Supreme Rulers,
6:32
the Supreme Court.
6:35
I think you're going to like what I have to say, or
6:37
at the very least,
6:38
you'll think about it.
6:41
What better way to celebrate the birthday
6:44
of this country than to
6:46
take back
6:47
the one third of our government
6:50
populated by these individuals who
6:52
are hell bent on bringing down our democracy.
6:57
There's a way to fight back.
6:59
And I'm going to tell you how I think we can do this.
7:02
This is Michael Moore,
7:04
by the way, happy 4th of July. This
7:06
is my podcast. It's called Rumble with
7:09
Michael Moore. And let me just give a brief
7:12
thank you and acknowledgement to the underwriter
7:14
for today's episode.
7:17
And that is stamps.com. You're
7:22
living in a digital age, my friends, as you
7:24
know, and we can pretty much
7:27
do anything from grocery shopping to
7:29
doctor's visits from the comfort of
7:31
our couch. With stamps.com,
7:34
you can add mailing and shipping to
7:36
that list. Simply print postage
7:39
and shipping labels right from your home
7:41
or your office. It's ready to go in minutes.
7:43
No long lines or complicated setup
7:46
required. All you need is a computer
7:49
and a printer. They even send you a free
7:51
scale. If you need a package pickup, you
7:53
can easily schedule it through your stamps.com
7:56
dashboard. And if you sell products online,
7:59
stamps.com.
7:59
seamlessly connects with every
8:02
major marketplace and shopping
8:04
cart. Plus they have amazing
8:06
partnerships with the United States postal service
8:09
and UPS for unbeatable rates
8:11
up to 84% off. So
8:15
avoid the hassle and get started with stamps.com
8:18
today. Sign up with the promo code more
8:20
M O O R E for a special
8:23
offer that includes a four week
8:25
trial plus free postage and
8:27
a free digital scale. No long-term
8:30
commitments or contracts whatsoever.
8:32
So just go to stamps.com, click
8:34
the microphone at the top of the page and
8:37
enter the code more M O O
8:39
R E. And thank
8:41
you stamps.com for continuing to
8:43
support my voice here on this podcast.
8:50
Okay. And, uh, we're
8:52
back here. So a
8:54
little over a year ago, the
8:57
last week of June of 2022, the
9:01
United States Supreme court started
9:03
issuing a bunch of
9:06
pretty disgusting
9:08
opinions, rulings, whatever you want
9:10
to call them. One
9:12
of them hugely
9:14
gutted the environmental protection agency,
9:18
but
9:19
the crowning disgrace
9:22
of what they did a year ago, June
9:24
here was
9:27
to essentially declare
9:30
women, all women in this country
9:34
as second-class citizens. They
9:37
ruled that women do not have the
9:40
same rights that men have.
9:43
Men, we men have the right
9:46
to control our own bodies to decide how we
9:48
want our reproductive
9:55
organs, how they're
9:57
going to work when we want them.
10:00
to work, basically
10:02
the government has no say on
10:04
what I or any man chooses
10:06
to do, as long as
10:10
it's in a consensual situation with
10:13
our bodies. But
10:16
a year ago at this time, the
10:18
Supreme Court said that women no
10:21
longer can decide when they
10:24
will have a baby,
10:26
that if they become pregnant, they
10:28
will have that baby, that
10:32
the government will
10:34
now decide when a fetus
10:38
is a human being, when a fertilized
10:40
egg is an actual human being.
10:43
And that was that. And that was the end of 49
10:46
years of abortion
10:48
being legal in this country.
10:50
49 years since the decision
10:52
called Roe v. Wade. During
10:57
that time, Democrats for a
10:59
number of years controlled both
11:01
houses of Congress and the White House
11:04
and could have at any time during
11:07
those 49 years, where they were in charge,
11:09
they could have codified
11:12
this decision Roe v. Wade made
11:14
it an actual law.
11:17
Never did it. They were so
11:19
scared of this issue, even
11:21
though it was decided in 1973
11:23
by the Nixon court
11:27
with a chief justice appointed
11:30
by Richard Nixon and
11:32
written by a Nixon appointee.
11:38
Republicans.
11:42
So the Democrats could have made
11:44
this the actual law and then
11:46
we wouldn't be dealing with this, but they
11:48
didn't. They ran from it. Number
11:51
of years, they were afraid to even put it into their party
11:54
platform that they supported the
11:56
right of a woman to choose.
11:59
Well,
12:03
I don't want to go there. You already know how I feel about
12:05
this. I'm sure a lot of you feel the same
12:07
way too, that the party that is
12:09
supposedly on our side
12:12
is often weak,
12:13
frightened,
12:16
and trying to placate and please
12:18
the other side, which has no
12:20
interest in supporting the rights of
12:23
women, people of color,
12:25
young people, immigrants, go
12:28
down the whole damn list. They've
12:30
shown their colors that we know who they are. They're
12:33
not the Republicans of 1973.
12:37
And they allowed the Catholic church and
12:39
the right wing, born again, Christian
12:42
organizations to
12:44
take charge.
12:47
And now have packed the court, Trump
12:50
in particular, these last
12:52
three justices of his, two
12:54
of them in his last year in office,
12:58
after the Republicans would not
13:00
allow president Obama
13:03
to make an appointment to the court during his last
13:05
year when
13:08
he still had 11 months left in office and
13:11
there was an opening on the court and he proposed
13:13
Merrick Garland and Mitch McConnell
13:15
on the Republican said, Oh no, that's not right.
13:18
This is the last year of your presidency. The
13:20
new president will decide this.
13:25
And so as soon as Trump got
13:27
into office, he got Gorsuch in
13:29
there and then, uh, in his
13:31
last year, Kavanaugh and actually in
13:33
his last weeks,
13:36
weeks in office
13:39
appoints Barrett. It
13:42
was stunning, but you
13:44
know, this is the one thing you have to say
13:46
about the Republicans of today. They
13:48
don't give a rat's ass what you think.
13:51
They believe in it so strongly.
13:53
They will fight to
13:55
the bitter end to the last day he
13:57
was in office. They were fighting.
15:43
were
16:00
so happy, but
16:02
then something happened. It happened right away.
16:06
The American public got angry. People
16:10
were upset at this decision to
16:12
eliminate Roe v. Wade. They
16:15
spoke out. There were demonstrations
16:18
everywhere. There were all
16:20
kinds of things on
16:22
social media and the actual mainstream
16:25
media itself.
16:29
New organizations were formed to fight this. People
16:35
started working on ideas on
16:37
how to get around it, how
16:40
we prevent the States from concurring with the
16:42
Supreme Court's decision. And the opposition of this got louder
16:47
and louder. They
16:51
started taking polls of the American
16:53
public and every single poll showed
16:57
that the majority of Americans disagreed with what the
16:59
Supreme Court did.
17:02
That the majority of Americans believed
17:05
that Roe v. Wade should remain the law of the land, that
17:10
women had a right to choose. Instead
17:13
of being now told by the government, there
17:16
will be a forced birth of
17:19
this fetus that you're now carrying. And you
17:21
will have no say in it. And
17:25
that drove the majority of Americans
17:28
crazy, including
17:31
the majority of Republicans.
17:39
And right away elections were being held because last year was a, you
17:41
know, the midterm elections. And immediately
17:43
the people going to the polls, started
17:48
passing laws, constitutional amendments,
17:50
or supporting existing
17:53
amendments to their constitution that made abortion law.
17:59
legal. States
18:03
like Kansas, Kansas
18:07
nearly 60% of the people of Kansas
18:10
voted to keep their Constitution
18:12
the way it was where women had the right to
18:14
choose.
18:15
Kansas,
18:16
Red State Kansas.
18:21
Then Montana, then Kentucky, Red
18:24
States, Red States were the first
18:26
out of the gate to say no no
18:28
no whoa whoa whoa wait a minute
18:30
here. You're
18:34
not taking women's rights away from them.
18:38
This has been the law of the land for nearly 50 years
18:43
and the Republican hierarchy,
18:47
the religious hierarchy and
18:50
the six justices that
18:53
voted in some form or fashion to get rid
18:56
of abortion. Roberts,
19:00
Kavanaugh, Barrett,
19:02
Gorsuch,
19:04
Alito and Clarence Thomas were
19:10
stunned. Kansas,
19:12
Montana, Kentucky and it just
19:15
kept going. It kept going right into
19:17
the November elections.
19:19
Constitutional amendments that didn't exist before
19:21
were now being passed in states
19:24
like Michigan and a number
19:26
of other what we call blue states
19:30
and they could see that
19:32
the Supreme Court that they were against
19:36
the American people. They were on the other side
19:38
of the American people. They were on
19:40
the other side of even Republican
19:43
American people.
19:46
And then after that
19:50
the shit started hitting the fan.
19:53
ProPublica, this incredible
19:56
investigative news organization that
19:59
I've asked. in the past for everyone to please support
20:02
them. Non-profit, non-partisan,
20:06
ProPublica, and other
20:08
news agencies started doing
20:10
investigations into
20:13
the members of the United States Supreme
20:15
Court, the justices of the court, started
20:18
doing investigations into their
20:20
personal finances. Who's
20:22
funding these people? What kind of
20:24
corruption is going on here?
20:28
What don't we know about them? Who
20:30
are they? And one
20:33
story after another in the second
20:35
half of 2022, and
20:37
then right up until now in 2023,
20:39
story after
20:42
story after story of some of the most
20:44
disgusting behavior on the
20:46
part of these so-called
20:48
conservative justices.
20:52
I don't even wanna say conservative, I don't really wanna
20:54
insult, like really
20:57
kind of true conservative people, you know,
20:59
the old school. My grandfather
21:02
was one of the leading Republicans in our
21:04
town, but you know,
21:07
he was born just three
21:09
years after Abraham Lincoln. So, you
21:11
know, that Republicans meant
21:14
it was the party of Lincoln.
21:17
He and my grandmother, they supported
21:19
women's right to vote, advocated
21:22
on the behalf of the constitutional
21:24
amendment. But that's what,
21:26
you know, when I was growing up, conservative just
21:29
meant, you know, conserve your money, don't
21:31
spend money you don't have, conserve the
21:33
earth that God gave us. It was a gift
21:36
from him, him.
21:39
You know, let's all eat at
21:41
the table for dinner. Let's
21:44
be good to people, let's be good neighbors.
21:47
Let's give 10% of whatever
21:49
we earn to
21:51
the poor, to
21:53
charities, to the church, to
21:56
whatever. That's
21:59
such bad, I eat. ideas. But
22:01
of course that's not what it means anymore. And so now the
22:03
conservatives, as they're called, you
22:05
know, these are really radical ideologues
22:07
who
22:08
believe in the superiority
22:10
of men, of
22:16
white men, of
22:19
older white men, of white men
22:21
with money, lots of money.
22:26
That's who they represent on our Supreme court and pro publica in
22:28
the New York
22:29
times
22:31
and other publications have done
22:33
some incredible work digging
22:36
into who are these scoundrels
22:39
and guess what they have found out? They
22:42
are scoundrels. They are corrupt.
22:46
They are shady. I
22:49
mean, starting at the top of the heap here
22:51
with Clarence Thomas, all
22:55
the things that they revealed about him, about
22:59
all the money he was taking from this billionaire,
23:01
Harlan Crow, he's been on the
23:03
take. This guy, this
23:06
Harlan Crow billionaire
23:08
has been giving Clarence Thomas and or his wife, Ginny,
23:13
who is involved in and
23:16
helps to run a number of very right wing
23:18
organizations. Ginny Thomas, who was there on January
23:20
6th at the
23:22
Trump rally there in the
23:26
ellipse, right
23:31
there, the wife of the Supreme court justice. Well, she
23:33
has a right. It's her life to be there. But just
23:35
so you know where the Thomas's are
23:37
coming from.
23:40
Anyways, I'm not going to get into
23:42
the details of these stories, but
23:44
if you go online, go to Google,
23:47
pro publica, Clarence Thomas, go
23:49
to New York times. Wow.
23:54
I mean one so-called gift
23:56
after another.
24:00
Crow, he's bought
24:02
up some of the property that Thomas owned
24:04
or co-owned down in Savannah,
24:08
Georgia, his mother's house. Yet after
24:10
Crow bought it, his mother
24:12
got to keep, of course, living there because this was really
24:15
just a sly way to
24:17
put money into Thomas's pockets.
24:19
I'm telling you, if
24:21
you know anything about the rules that House
24:24
members and Senate members have to follow
24:26
in Congress, the list
24:28
of things that Thomas has done, the money
24:30
he has taken,
24:32
would have him removed from Congress.
24:37
If he was in the White House,
24:39
there would be impeachment hearings. There would
24:42
be an impeachment. There would be a possibility
24:44
that he'd be convicted by the Senate because this
24:46
isn't a partisan issue.
24:49
The taking of,
24:51
quote, gifts. And
24:55
then you keep ruling the way that the
24:57
billionaire class wants you to rule, especially
25:01
your patron here. I
25:05
mean, most of it, you wouldn't care who was in the
25:07
White House. If the president of the United
25:09
States was taking kickbacks,
25:12
bribes, money,
25:14
gifts, trips, any
25:19
of that, and
25:21
you could draw a straight line to the decisions
25:23
he was making, the bills he was signing,
25:26
that president would be removed from the White
25:28
House. That member
25:31
of Congress would be removed from Congress.
25:34
But the Supreme Court gets to
25:37
essentially
25:38
exist without having to follow
25:41
anything that has
25:43
to do with ethics or morality or
25:47
just the basic stuff
25:50
that we all, I think, agree on that
25:53
the people who are representing us and who are voting
25:55
on the laws of the land,
25:59
their hands shouldn't be on the table. be in anybody's pocket
26:01
and nobody else's hands should be
26:03
in theirs. And
26:08
then it turned out it wasn't just Thomas. It
26:10
was Alito. Gorsuch.
26:14
Some of it was just basic ethical stuff
26:16
like Barrett. Her husband
26:18
is a lawyer for corporate
26:20
criminals. He defends white-collar
26:23
criminals.
26:27
Now, you
26:31
know, they all have to fill out this disclosure
26:33
form in the Supreme Court. And
26:36
she withheld the names of his clients.
26:38
We should know that
26:40
information, right? So
26:43
that we know if she should
26:45
be recusing herself, should one
26:47
of those corporations or rich people come
26:49
before the court with a case. But
26:52
we have no way of knowing that because she refuses
26:55
to provide that information.
27:01
Roberts, his spouse,
27:04
is a high-paid legal
27:07
lawyer consultant who
27:10
essentially is like a headhunter and
27:13
goes looking for people to bring to the
27:15
top of the line richest law
27:17
firms in the country.
27:19
She finds them new partners,
27:21
new lawyers, and
27:24
she has received over
27:27
ten million dollars just
27:29
by suggesting the right
27:31
people that should be in these law firms.
27:35
And one of these law firms,
27:37
one of them argued three times in
27:40
front of the Supreme Court in 2022 alone.
27:47
This is called a conflict of interest. So
27:50
we have no idea how much bigger
27:53
this really is because they
27:55
don't have to disclose. And
28:01
in these stories that are being done, they
28:03
show
28:04
whether it's Gorsuch,
28:06
Alito, how
28:09
many times they've actually voted for
28:11
what the people who gave them the money
28:14
wanted them to do.
28:19
We didn't know any of this was going
28:21
on. I
28:23
mean, the times, they did a story like a decade
28:26
ago, I think on Thomas, but
28:29
again, we wouldn't have known about this
28:31
without our free press.
28:35
What little is left of it. It's
28:38
been devastated with
28:40
layoffs, closures, bankruptcies,
28:42
you know this. A lot of you
28:45
listening to me right now, the paper in your hometown
28:48
no longer exists or they're only publishing
28:50
it once a week
28:52
because of what's happened to our media.
28:55
And because of the greed of the media, the
28:58
big companies that own the media,
29:01
they just started laying people off.
29:04
All of a sudden, nobody was covering the police.
29:07
Nobody was covering the courts. Nobody
29:09
was covering. It's been a bad couple
29:11
of decades for this. And we know
29:14
less as a result of it. And yet,
29:17
wow. I
29:19
encourage you who are listening to me to
29:22
look up some of these stories and read them about
29:26
Clarence Thomas, about Alito, Robert
29:29
Skorsich, Barrett.
29:31
And
29:36
I gotta say, those
29:39
six justices, they
29:41
have to be just shitting themselves. God,
29:44
I wish I could be a fly on the wall when they're
29:47
just in the room by themselves.
29:50
You know, the three liberals on the court are
29:52
nowhere in sight. They've
29:56
just gotta be like, I thought we did
29:58
a good thing getting rid of. getting
30:00
rid of abortion. You know,
30:03
everybody hates us. There
30:05
are approval ratings. Some of these polls of
30:08
the Supreme Court, they're lower than Congress. How
30:10
bad do you have to get to get a lower approval
30:13
rating than the one for Congress?
30:15
You know, Congress ratings are always, they're
30:19
down there, as they say, with the approval ratings of
30:21
used car salesmen and,
30:24
but they've got to realize that
30:27
they screwed themselves. They
30:29
created this. No, they
30:32
never would be investigating us if we had, why
30:34
did we do this? Well, because the bishops
30:36
said you had to.
30:38
Yeah, but well, I know,
30:40
but you know, remember for the
30:42
longest time here, the nine
30:45
justices, six were Catholics and three were
30:47
Jewish Americans. There
30:49
was not a single Protestant on the court for
30:51
many, many years. Now I think they've,
30:53
the Protestants finally have,
30:55
well, they have at least one, and I think Gorsuch
30:57
actually was raised Catholic, but then switched to
31:00
Catholic light, which we
31:02
call Episcopalians, but
31:06
they've just got to be wondering, if
31:08
they hadn't done this, would they be all these investigations
31:11
into them? These
31:14
are impeachment offenses. You
31:17
can impeach the Supreme Court justices. You can remove them
31:19
from the court. They
31:22
know that. Yes, it's a lifetime
31:24
employment, except Congress
31:27
can impeach you. You
31:30
can be removed. You can be convicted and
31:33
removed, and they know that,
31:36
but they also care about their legacy. They care about,
31:39
you know, they're just gonna be remembered
31:41
in history as the scam,
31:45
Trump's scam court, and
31:49
they're gonna be thought of. I
31:55
don't wanna say the word. I
31:59
just, you know, just you know this
32:01
is how we are right people like us and
32:03
are just kind of yeah I don't
32:06
want to dehumanize them they are human beings
32:09
and they're deserving of our love at
32:12
least for being a human being that
32:14
part of it nothing else really but
32:20
if you've studied history if you've read history if
32:22
you enjoy history you know what
32:24
happens when the corrupt
32:27
the corrupt politician the corrupt president is
32:32
found out as they
32:34
have been when
32:37
the entire world knows how
32:40
unethical they are how
32:43
deceitful they are
32:47
yes they can be impeached they
32:50
can be removed and
32:54
not just on these issues they
32:56
could be removed because they
32:59
perjured themselves when they testified
33:01
to the Senate about their feelings
33:03
about Roe v. Wade
33:06
let me just read you a few of the
33:09
actual quotes from these
33:12
Republican conservative right-wing
33:15
supremacist justices when
33:17
they were questioned about their
33:19
views on abortion when
33:21
they were nominated to be
33:24
on the Supreme Court but they have to you have to be confirmed
33:26
by the Senate
33:28
Clarence Thomas this is quote unquote this goes
33:30
way back I can say
33:32
on that issue meaning abortion
33:35
and on those cases I have no agenda
33:38
I have no agenda I have an open
33:40
mind Wow
33:47
his actions have spoken much
33:50
louder than those lying
33:52
words here's
33:56
another quote from Thomas we
33:59
justices have to understand that
34:01
we must shed the
34:03
personal opinions that we have.
34:07
This is a guy who has imposed
34:10
his religious beliefs,
34:12
his personal religious beliefs on
34:14
the rest of the country for many, many years.
34:18
What the Catholic Church wants, especially the
34:21
church, I'm talking about the organized religion now,
34:23
the hierarchy. Not
34:26
the good people are trying to live a good life as
34:28
Catholics. Here's
34:32
another quote from Thomas's nomination
34:35
hearing. He
34:38
said it would be inappropriate for any
34:40
judge, including himself, to
34:42
take on a case on an issue
34:45
that,
34:46
quote, in which he
34:48
or she, oh that was nice of
34:50
him, included she in that sentence,
34:53
in which he or she, the justice, has
34:55
such strong views
34:57
that he or she cannot be impartial,
35:00
should not take on that case.
35:03
That's what he testified under oath
35:06
to the Senate. Gorsuch.
35:10
Let me give you a couple of his quotes to the Senate
35:12
committee. I
35:14
would tell you that Roe v. Wade, decided
35:16
in 1973, is
35:18
a precedent of the United States
35:20
Supreme Court. It has been reaffirmed.
35:23
So
35:27
then Senator Dick Durbin from
35:30
Illinois questioned Gorsuch
35:32
about this and wanted
35:35
to know, because in 1973, Roe
35:37
v. Wade was decided based
35:39
on the 14th Amendment, the Due Process Clause,
35:42
and basically the Supreme Court back in 1973
35:45
held that a fetus is
35:48
not a person. If
35:50
the fetus cannot live outside the
35:52
womb of the mother, then
35:54
it is not a human being. It
35:56
is a fetus, just like
35:59
you for me say. say before in this podcast,
36:02
a seed is not a flower. We
36:05
don't call it a flower, we call it a seed. A
36:07
stem is not a flower, it's
36:10
a stem. A flower is a flower.
36:13
A baby able to live outside of
36:16
its mother on its own. It
36:19
can have all the help from the ICU
36:21
and everything else that science has
36:23
given us.
36:25
That's fine. But if
36:27
it has to be inside the mother
36:29
to survive, well then it's not a human being.
36:32
That's what they ruled. So
36:35
Durbin asks Gorsuch in
36:37
his confirmation hearing, do
36:39
you accept that as the legal underpinning
36:42
of Roe v. Wade? That a fetus
36:44
is not a person for the purposes of the
36:46
14th Amendment's due process clause? Do
36:49
you accept that? Senator Durbin
36:52
asks him. Gorsuch replies,
36:55
that is the law of the land.
36:58
I accept the law of
37:01
the land, Senator. Yes. Wow.
37:06
I don't know what book the rest of you were reading, but
37:08
in my book, that's called perjury. You're
37:11
just lying straight up
37:13
because you're not on the Supreme Court very long
37:16
before you are upending
37:19
what is accepted as the law
37:22
of the land. Brett
37:26
Kavanaugh, here's his confirmation hearing.
37:28
You remember the beer hearing, the kegger
37:31
hearing, the woman that nobody would listen
37:33
to about him raping her. That's
37:36
what he said to the Senate committee
37:38
under oath quote from
37:41
Brett Kavanaugh. It
37:44
is important precedent of the Supreme Court
37:47
that has been reaffirmed many times.
37:50
And then continuing his quote.
37:53
It is not as if it's just a run
37:56
of the mill case
37:57
that was decided and never been. reconsidered,
38:01
but Casey, he's referring to a
38:04
later case after Roe that
38:06
got to the Supreme Court where they had a chance
38:08
to throw out Roe and make abortion
38:10
illegal. But the Casey case reaffirmed
38:13
the court reaffirmed
38:15
that abortion was legal, that Roe
38:17
was the law of the land. And he
38:19
reminded them, he says, Casey, Casey
38:22
case specifically reconsidered
38:25
whether abortion should be legal. And
38:28
they applied these factors
38:30
to it. And then they decided the
38:32
court to reaffirm it
38:34
years and years after Roe v. Wade.
38:38
And then I'm quoting Kavanaugh again. He
38:40
said that makes Casey a
38:42
precedent on a precedent,
38:47
a double precedent. I
38:51
mean, can we no longer define something
38:53
that a lie, when a lie is a lie, can
38:55
we call it a lie? He's
38:57
lying to them. They know he's
39:00
lying to them. Susan
39:02
Collins, the Republican Senator from Maine afterwards
39:05
said that Kavanaugh told her in her
39:07
office in a private meeting that
39:10
he considered Roe v. Wade to
39:12
be quote, settled law,
39:15
settled law, meaning the
39:18
issue has been settled or not talking
39:20
about it anymore.
39:23
So it is against the law to lie when you're under oath
39:25
testifying in the Senate or
39:30
in the House of Representatives. And
39:33
one after the other,
39:35
bullshitted their way onto the court.
39:39
They could, they could just make this up, lie.
39:42
Nothing will happen to them.
39:45
Just like they thought nothing was going to happen when they
39:47
took away a woman's right to choose, when
39:49
they set themselves up as the arbiters
39:52
of when women would be forced to
39:54
give birth. Nothing.
39:56
We got the people
39:58
behind us, the people.
39:59
No. What bubble
40:02
are you living in? People don't
40:04
support this. They don't support
40:06
not just this. The people love
40:08
their Environmental Protection Agency because
40:11
no matter whether they're a Democrat or Republican
40:13
or an independent or whatever, most
40:17
sane people
40:19
want to breathe clean air
40:21
and drink clean water. Sorry,
40:25
that's what I would call an indisputable
40:28
fact. So
40:30
the people of this country, they like the EPA.
40:34
They like their environmental laws that
40:37
protect them and their children. But
40:40
when they started carving away at the
40:43
EPA, when they started giving and
40:46
approving more gun rights for
40:49
people that shouldn't have guns, and
40:52
when they took these rights away from
40:54
the majority gender, by
40:57
the way, just a quick lesson, folks. What
41:00
do we call a country where
41:03
the minority of anything, whether it's
41:05
the minority race,
41:08
I mean by minority, I mean whites
41:10
in South Africa were the minority,
41:13
the majority were black.
41:16
When it's the minority gender,
41:18
men are the minority. There's fewer
41:20
of us than there are of women. Women
41:24
are anywhere from 51 to 52% of the population.
41:27
They're
41:30
the majority of the country.
41:33
So when the minority rules, the ones that
41:35
don't hold the powers because of their
41:37
numbers, but hold the power because
41:40
of the rich bastards that
41:42
have put them into office or whoever
41:44
they're working for, because they ain't working for us, they're not
41:46
working for the majority. What
41:49
do we call that?
41:50
What
41:52
do we call it in South Africa? When
41:55
the white minority told
41:57
black people how they would live their lives, what
42:00
they could and could not do. And
42:03
those black people had little
42:05
or no say in this. What
42:07
do we call it? We call it apartheid. That's
42:12
what it's called. You could call this gender
42:14
apartheid
42:16
because they singled out one gender
42:18
because it's the gender that brings life into the
42:20
world. One
42:23
gender
42:25
has their rights taken away.
42:28
And it's over a thing that is actually, it's
42:31
a gift to the world. None
42:34
of us would be here without
42:36
our moms, without our mothers, without
42:38
women.
42:42
Wouldn't that be the last group you'd punk on?
42:45
Wouldn't that be the last group that you would take rights
42:48
away or pay them less or
42:50
treat them like, the
42:55
gender that brought you into this world.
42:59
If you just step back from it, it just, I
43:02
mean, I swear to God, when they, if
43:04
the planet survives somehow, if the species
43:07
survives 100 years
43:09
from now, 200 years from now, they're gonna write about
43:11
us.
43:13
They're gonna go, God, they hated, they
43:16
hated women. Why?
43:18
Women, no women,
43:21
no babies, no life, no nothing.
43:26
Why would you do this? And
43:29
wouldn't you want, wouldn't you want the women
43:32
to decide when and how and
43:35
whatever they would bring
43:37
life into the world that kind of has, they
43:39
have to be like the final call on this, because
43:42
it's their bodies.
43:44
We have to leave a note behind.
43:46
I say this a lot. We gotta leave a note behind
43:48
to the future to explain ourselves,
43:52
because nobody will understand this behavior.
43:57
They lied in their confirmation area. They
44:01
should be removed because they committed perjury.
44:04
Perjuries against the law, they should be
44:06
removed. They
44:09
should be removed for that. They should be removed for
44:11
all their ethical and financial violations.
44:15
For being on the take, they should all
44:18
be removed for that. But
44:21
I know you're thinking, Mike, how do we do that?
44:24
Because, you
44:26
know, Republicans control the House.
44:30
You know, they control it by what? You
44:32
know, on any given day of five or six Republicans
44:36
either vote the
44:38
other way or don't show up or are
44:41
sick or have, you
44:43
know, passed on and they haven't been replaced
44:46
yet. It's so close
44:48
right now. Yet it's
44:50
so wrong that in a country where the majority of
44:52
Americans agree, vast
44:55
majority agree with the Democrats on their issues.
44:58
Again, I'll just repeat what I've said before. There's
45:01
a reason why since 1988, the
45:04
election of George Bush the first,
45:06
that only one time since then have
45:09
the majority of Americans voted
45:12
for the Republican on the ballot to
45:14
be president of the United States. Only
45:16
once
45:18
in 2004, Bush the second. And
45:22
there's even dispute over that county
45:24
because it was, came down to
45:26
one state. 100,000 votes in Ohio.
45:31
But even giving them that, okay, just for
45:33
the purposes of argument here. Only
45:37
once since Daddy Bush got elected
45:39
in 88. 88, that's
45:41
like, that's 35 years ago. So
45:45
in 35 years, only once have
45:47
the American people said, you know what, I want the Republicans
45:50
running this country. I'm voting for a
45:52
Republican in the White House. Once. In
45:58
every other election since. then. They
46:01
voted for the Democrat to be
46:03
in the White House. 1992, Clinton. 96,
46:05
Clinton. 2000, Gore
46:10
won by a half a million votes. Didn't
46:13
get to be in the White House. 2004, certified
46:17
that Bush got the most votes. 2008, Obama
46:20
wins. 2012, Obama's reelected. 2016, Hillary
46:26
wins by 3 million plus
46:29
votes over Trump,
46:31
and yet is not seated in the White House. 2020, Biden
46:37
wins. Seven times voted
46:40
for the Democrat once for the Republican.
46:42
What does that tell you? What do the
46:44
American people want? They
46:46
don't want the Republicans in the White
46:48
House. They don't want them running the country.
46:53
Trump ends up losing in 2020 by, what
46:56
was it, seven, eight million votes? Huge.
47:02
Get them out of there. That's what the American
47:04
people want. And yet they've got a Supreme
47:07
Court that in
47:09
many ways is to the right of Trump. If
47:13
you pay any attention to the right wing media,
47:15
I know you don't want to spend your time doing that. That's
47:17
why I do it for you. But there's
47:19
a lot of kind of low
47:21
level talk. They don't want to say it too loud,
47:24
but they aren't happy
47:26
with Trump's appointments only
47:28
because they know how weak they are
47:32
and how they're not really quite
47:34
the ideologues that Scalia
47:36
and Alito and Thomas and the
47:38
others have been and still are.
47:41
Scalia no longer with us. And
47:45
so they're not happy. Because
47:47
they don't think Kavanaugh, Gorsuch
47:49
and Barrett are right wing enough.
47:55
And how do they know that? Well, now I'm
47:57
getting to the happy part of the podcast. It
48:00
took so long to get here, but I want to
48:02
delay this out for you because There
48:04
are ways to remove them and
48:06
I wanted to make that clear
48:08
And there is an election
48:11
coming up next year and my god my friends
48:13
I know we're not gonna complain about
48:15
the Democrats today Plenty of time
48:17
on other podcasts to do that and to fight
48:20
for the things that they should
48:22
be fighting for
48:24
still aren't What
48:26
happened last week? As
48:28
god-awful as it was these
48:31
three decisions Where
48:33
they told people of color? That
48:37
they were no longer going to get any help
48:39
in trying to right past wrongs from
48:41
them not being able to get into universities
48:44
and colleges
48:45
That right was taken away by
48:48
the Supreme Court last week a vicious
48:51
vicious decision And
48:54
Then they told the LGBTQ plus
48:56
community that they're going
48:58
to take away more rights from them
49:02
They're trying to pair this thing down. Of course, they've
49:04
already been on the record Thomas and the others that
49:07
gay People should not be allowed
49:09
to be married and any member
49:11
of the LGBTQ plus community
49:15
Marriages a man and a woman and
49:17
no animals can be involved. So so
49:21
So last week They
49:23
had
49:24
a made-up case. You got
49:26
to read about this I'm not gonna get into
49:28
the depth of it, but it's so damn
49:31
crazy. There was no real case
49:33
Nobody been discriminated against
49:35
but this woman who ran
49:37
a graphic design company out in Colorado Said
49:40
that she felt that the Colorado law that
49:43
prohibits businesses from discriminating
49:47
Against gay and lesbian people
49:49
that that violated her free speech rights
49:52
because she doesn't support gay and lesbian
49:54
people and Therefore by
49:56
forcing her to do graphic design for them
49:59
just like
49:59
the cake issue from a year
50:02
or two ago, they can't be forced
50:04
to do that. Except
50:06
there was nobody who was
50:09
forcing her to do graphic design
50:11
for gay people. It was a hypothetical
50:13
case. I mean, if you've listened to any
50:15
of the legal analysts about this in the last
50:17
week, they're just so dumbfounded. How
50:19
did a case
50:20
that was never a case, nobody
50:23
was sued, nobody was arrested, nobody's
50:25
rights were violated, just
50:28
a made up hypothetical case. How did a hypothetical
50:31
case get to the Supreme Court? That's
50:33
just how desperate
50:35
these six justices are to go
50:38
against people who are not
50:41
heterosexual, people
50:44
who are not like us, that
50:49
they allowed a made up case in front of the court to
50:53
be heard quote marks, heard.
50:57
And then they issued a ruling on it, saying
51:01
that a business does have a right to discriminate against
51:03
gay people and that it's their first
51:05
amendment right to do so. You know, this is
51:07
not going to last folks, nutcases,
51:11
supremacists, haters, you
51:13
know, this isn't going to last because the
51:15
crazies that you're supporting
51:18
and helping here are just going to keep
51:20
at it. And sooner or later, very
51:22
soon, the next case is going to be a landlord
51:25
is going
51:26
to say, my rights are being
51:28
violated if I have to rent an apartment
51:31
to a gay couple. And
51:33
when it comes to that, when it comes to housing
51:36
accommodations, I'm not
51:38
going to serve that couple
51:40
over there at table five in my restaurant.
51:43
It's two men holding hands. They're
51:46
going to bring these kinds of cases. And
51:48
this report is going to have to say,
51:50
yeah, no, the restaurant has a right to deny food
51:54
to people that are holding hands of the same gender. The
51:58
American people, you know. some point aren't going
52:00
to put up with this. I know they're thinking they might be thinking of themselves,
52:03
jeez, I don't know. We took these rights away from women
52:06
and women haven't burned down any courthouses
52:08
or there's been no real,
52:11
you know, no,
52:12
no real. What do you call real?
52:14
How about, how about those votes in Kansas
52:16
and Kentucky and Montana? How about no
52:19
red wave last November that we
52:21
stopped
52:22
the predicted red wave predicted even
52:24
by Democrats that there was going to be a red
52:27
wave and people
52:29
showed up in record numbers in
52:32
a midterm election to
52:36
stop Republicans from
52:38
having all the power. You
52:42
haven't seen anything yet. You keep doing
52:44
this to people of color, taking the rights away
52:47
to LGBTQ plus people, and
52:50
it's just going to be quiet. Just
52:52
going to take it from you. No. Student
52:58
loans. So that was the third big case last week. Biden
53:00
trying to provide some student loan
53:02
relief for like the only industrialized
53:05
democracy on the planet that
53:11
puts a teenager starting when they're 18
53:13
into a sometimes a lifelong debt just
53:18
so they can go to college. All
53:21
the people that are carrying 30, 40, 50, 30, 40, 50, a
53:24
hundred thousand dollars of student
53:26
loan debt can never get out of it, can
53:28
never crawl out from under it. Affecting
53:32
their lives in their forties and their fifties. Unable
53:36
to get other loans because they haven't paid off this long.
53:40
That's all Biden was trying to do. Most
53:42
people got it. 30 million
53:45
people had already had loan
53:47
payments suspended during the pandemic. So
53:49
for three years,
53:51
a lot of younger adults all
53:54
sleep, didn't have to pay
53:56
on their student loan during the pandemic.
53:59
And now, Now they've got to start paying. No
54:03
relief. They've
54:05
lived these last three years. It hasn't been in the budget.
54:08
Now it's in the family budget. Less
54:10
money making life more
54:12
difficult for them. Can I just ask a political
54:15
question too? Why would you
54:17
piss off 30 million Americans who
54:19
make these student loan payments? They're not all Democrats.
54:22
Some of them are independents. Some of them are
54:24
Republicans. Some of them don't
54:27
usually vote, but
54:29
they may now because
54:32
of what you just did. So
54:34
those are the, those are the three big cases
54:38
last week and as awful as
54:40
these are, and please do not
54:43
hear me backing away
54:45
one inch from this, but
54:48
I think this is, you know,
54:50
I'm not a pundit. I'm not
54:52
an expert on any of this stuff.
54:55
Common sense is telling me that
54:58
Kavanaugh and Robertson
55:00
Gorsuch and Barrett, at
55:03
least them, Alito and
55:05
Thomas are so far gone to the wind that
55:08
I
55:09
don't know if they actually do care.
55:12
They don't care about their legacy. They
55:15
don't care that they may face impeachment hearings.
55:18
That's how rock solid they are in their
55:20
hatred. But
55:23
the others, I'd
55:25
be worried if I
55:28
was a right winger supporting this
55:31
court, because you've got four of them that
55:33
do care, at least to how, what
55:35
people think of them. You
55:39
know, most people want to be liked. It's
55:42
just kind of a human nature thing. I
55:45
like it when people like me, they
55:47
got the whole, you know, majority
55:49
of the country against them now. They
55:53
got reporters doing their
55:55
reporting, doing their job, investigating
55:58
them. And
56:00
they saw this right away right after the road decision
56:03
last year. And and this
56:05
was I want to now tell you something
56:08
that people, including people on
56:10
our side of the
56:11
political fence have not really told
56:13
you in the last week. I don't know
56:15
why. I don't know why this isn't reported
56:18
or maybe it's just because, you know,
56:22
if you get three or four or a dozen
56:25
emails a day from various candidates,
56:27
Democratic candidates or, you
56:29
know, groups that we all support trying
56:32
to do good work. But the letters
56:35
in the last week are so filled
56:37
with fear, utter horror stories.
56:40
You know, the country
56:42
is over. We're doomed. Send
56:45
money. Send five dollars by midnight
56:47
tonight. It's like, OK,
56:50
can I just ask that Democrats
56:52
stop doing this?
56:55
Yes, I know we need the money. We still have a system
56:57
where elections are based on this. We've
56:59
got to get rid of that, too. But
57:02
for the time being, for right now, people
57:04
don't need to be anymore. They're already scared enough.
57:07
Most of us can't believe we got through
57:09
the four years of Trump. I mean, got through it in the
57:11
sense any of us are still here. So
57:17
if we just stop with the fear mongering for
57:20
just a few minutes and listen
57:22
to some things I have to say about what
57:24
happened. In the 12 months
57:27
since they took women's rights away,
57:30
since they upset the majority of
57:33
the country.
57:35
And how this court is running scared.
57:38
And that's because you made
57:40
your voices heard. And
57:42
now they are scared
57:44
shitless. And because
57:47
they're scared shitless, let me tell you what's happened just
57:49
in the 12 months with this court,
57:52
this so-called
57:53
conservative court. So
57:56
remember now there's only three liberals on the
57:58
court. Jackson. Kagan
58:00
and Sotomayor. Okay, there's only
58:02
three. You
58:04
need five votes to get
58:07
something done. They'd be a majority five to four, right?
58:10
So we have three and the whack
58:12
side here has six, six
58:14
votes. Okay, but
58:18
slowly, step by step,
58:21
that leaves these four Roberts,
58:25
Cavanaugh, Gorsuch, Barrett.
58:30
They started siding with the liberals. Sometimes
58:34
just one of them, sometimes two of them,
58:37
a few times three of them, a
58:40
couple times four of them
58:45
sided with the three liberals to
58:47
create majority opinions in
58:50
favor of the liberal side of the opinion.
58:54
Let me spell this out in statistics.
58:57
Don't worry, I won't make this too
58:59
difficult for those of us who weren't good in
59:01
math. In
59:03
this last term, what's called the 2022 term, 2022 to June
59:05
of 23, the three liberal justices
59:12
were in the majority 64% of
59:15
the time.
59:17
Doesn't feel like that, does it? But that's the
59:19
fact. The three
59:21
liberal justices were in the majority 64% of the
59:23
time. Now, granted, because it
59:26
is a conservative court, that means
59:28
the six conservative justices were in the
59:30
majority 73% of the time,
59:33
but only 9 percentage points more than
59:36
when the liberals won. Now,
59:40
let me tell you what it was last
59:42
year's term. Okay, this is the 2021 2022 term where they
59:47
eliminated Roe v. Wade. All
59:49
right. There
59:51
was a 34 percentage point difference
59:54
between how many times the liberal justices
59:56
were in the majority versus the conservatives.
1:00:00
This last term, nine percentage points.
1:00:02
Wow.
1:00:06
This is amazing. And thanks
1:00:08
to Adam Littak of the Times
1:00:11
for running this down and coming
1:00:13
up with these stats. Okay.
1:00:18
So last year now, not this past
1:00:21
year, but the year before, 2021-22,
1:00:22
Roberts
1:00:25
took the liberal position only 26%
1:00:28
of the time. Okay.
1:00:33
In this last year, 2022-2023, the
1:00:36
one that ended last week, Roberts
1:00:38
took the liberal position 44% of the time. 44% this
1:00:43
year, 26% last year. That's
1:00:49
a huge leap. Roberts
1:00:53
actually voted with Kagan, one
1:00:55
of the three liberals on the court. He
1:00:58
voted with Kagan 62% of the time.
1:01:04
He only voted with Clarence Thomas, 48% of
1:01:07
the time, his own side. So 62%
1:01:11
of the time this past year
1:01:14
with Kagan, only 48% with
1:01:16
Thomas. That's
1:01:19
a jump for Roberts from the Roe
1:01:21
v. Wade,
1:01:22
get rid of Roe v. Wade year.
1:01:25
That's a 14 percentage point jump
1:01:29
from how he voted with Kagan
1:01:31
the year before to
1:01:33
this past year. And Kavanaugh,
1:01:36
get this, Kavanaugh this past
1:01:38
year voted with
1:01:41
Jackson, Katonji Brown
1:01:43
Jackson. He voted with her 62%
1:01:45
of the time and
1:01:48
only voted with Thomas, Clarence Thomas, 45% of
1:01:51
the time. I
1:01:53
know, do I need to read this again? Because
1:01:56
it doesn't make sense, right? I'm reading
1:01:58
the truth for you. I'm reading the facts.
1:02:01
Kavanagh voted with Katanji Brown
1:02:03
Jackson 62% of the time
1:02:05
this past year and
1:02:07
only 45% of
1:02:09
the time did he vote with Thomas.
1:02:12
That is a 17 percentage point
1:02:14
difference with him siding with Jackson
1:02:17
over Thomas. Wow.
1:02:22
This is amazing. Oh, here's listen to this
1:02:24
one. David Cole. I'm quoting
1:02:26
from the Times here. The
1:02:29
ACLU's national legal director
1:02:32
said that our losses this past year
1:02:34
in the affirmative action and gay rights
1:02:36
cases were unprecedented
1:02:38
setbacks for equality.
1:02:40
But he said civil
1:02:44
liberties and civil rights actually
1:02:46
fared surprisingly well this
1:02:49
term far better than
1:02:51
anyone predicted. And
1:02:53
then he goes on to say the
1:02:56
ACLU in this last year,
1:02:59
they were part of 18 cases heard in
1:03:04
front of the Supreme Court, mostly
1:03:06
civil rights and civil liberties cases, 18
1:03:08
cases. They
1:03:12
won 11 of them this
1:03:14
past year. The year after the
1:03:17
court took women's rights
1:03:19
away and then got beat
1:03:21
up by the American public and
1:03:24
then started being investigated
1:03:26
by ProPublica in the New York Times.
1:03:29
They started to pivot like
1:03:32
in a 180 fashion. They
1:03:35
saw the writing on the wall. They weren't
1:03:38
so smug about their decision to
1:03:40
kill Roe v. Wade. They
1:03:42
realized that they had fucked
1:03:45
themselves. And
1:03:47
so what did they do? As soon as the court
1:03:49
went back into session last October, 22,
1:03:53
just a few months after eliminating
1:03:56
Roe v. Wade, they
1:03:58
start voting with Katanya Brown. John Jackson.
1:04:01
They start voting with the liberals, Roberts,
1:04:05
Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and
1:04:07
Barrett voting over
1:04:09
and over again with the three
1:04:11
liberal justices.
1:04:14
And as a result,
1:04:15
the ACLU won
1:04:17
or came in on the winning side in 11
1:04:20
of the 18 cases they had before
1:04:22
the court. Nobody's telling you that
1:04:25
this week. Are they just want to leave
1:04:27
you depressed? Here it is birthday
1:04:30
day here, our nation's birthday.
1:04:34
And we're all bummed out and we should be bummed out
1:04:38
because we're going to now have to fight to get these rights
1:04:40
back affirmative action. The
1:04:43
Colorado gay rights decision
1:04:45
student loan relief.
1:04:49
Yeah, we have to keep fighting. Got
1:04:51
huge blows given to
1:04:53
us. But in
1:04:56
order to find our way to win, in
1:04:59
order to develop the strategy to
1:05:01
outsmart the Clarence Thomas's and
1:05:03
the Samuel Alito's, we
1:05:05
have to figure out what worked,
1:05:08
right? This is what you do in anything. We
1:05:10
try to, okay, how do we make this better? How
1:05:12
do we get ahead again? You
1:05:13
know, and yes,
1:05:16
we need to, we need to vote next November
1:05:20
and get both houses out of the hands of the Republicans.
1:05:24
The one we already have the Senate, we
1:05:26
need more senators need to replace
1:05:29
Kristen cinema. We need to, there's 10
1:05:32
Republicans, I think 10 or 11 up for
1:05:34
reelection next
1:05:36
year. We
1:05:38
don't need to remove all of them. It'd be good. But
1:05:40
seriously, if just a couple of them were removed
1:05:42
and get rid of cinema, we'll have a
1:05:44
stronger Senate on our side and we
1:05:46
need to get the house back. We get both
1:05:49
of those houses. We can start impeaching
1:05:51
Supreme court justice or we can start doing
1:05:54
other things. I'm going to, before we leave here, I'm going
1:05:56
to tell you what some of these groups are doing
1:05:58
and how you could get involved.
1:06:00
in turning this thing around.
1:06:02
But right now, I just want you to just stop and
1:06:04
think about how,
1:06:07
you know, these other things that happened here in
1:06:09
this awful year with the Supreme
1:06:11
Court, the majority,
1:06:13
the three liberals and the ones they convinced
1:06:16
to vote with them, the majority
1:06:18
rejected Alabama's gerrymandered
1:06:21
map that took power
1:06:23
away from black voters. They
1:06:26
supported the Voting Rights Act when it came
1:06:28
to Alabama this last year. That hasn't
1:06:31
happened. And they've been voting for gerrymandering
1:06:33
forever.
1:06:34
The Supreme Court stopped it in
1:06:37
Alabama this year after
1:06:40
they humiliated and soiled
1:06:42
themselves with the Roe v. Wade decision.
1:06:45
But that's not all that happened
1:06:47
this year.
1:06:48
Morvey Harper,
1:06:50
this was this case, every one
1:06:52
of us thought we were gonna lose. It's
1:06:56
one of these so-called legal theories that the
1:06:58
right wing has, that state legislators
1:07:00
are independent of their own state constitution
1:07:03
and they're independent of the federal government so
1:07:05
they can pass whatever laws they want to gerrymander
1:07:09
or to oversee their own elections the way they wanna
1:07:11
oversee them.
1:07:13
Okay, we thought this
1:07:15
court was definitely gonna vote against
1:07:17
what's right. And
1:07:21
they didn't. They voted in
1:07:24
favor of
1:07:26
the liberal position on this, the Supreme
1:07:29
Court this year. Morvey
1:07:32
Harper, no, they
1:07:34
said. The state legislators
1:07:37
can't overrule their constitution or
1:07:39
the federal election system. So
1:07:43
all of a sudden in all these states that
1:07:46
were hoping that this would pass, were
1:07:49
sure that this would pass, the
1:07:51
Republicans on the court, they couldn't pass it.
1:07:53
In fact, they joined the liberals because they're
1:07:56
trying to get people to like them again.
1:08:00
Then they ruled in favor of Biden
1:08:02
and his immigration rules. They
1:08:05
said that Biden had the right to
1:08:07
decide which undocumented
1:08:09
immigrants would be let in and
1:08:11
which, if they had a criminal record,
1:08:14
could be arrested. But it was up to the Biden administration,
1:08:17
the executive branch.
1:08:18
That's how the Supreme Court ruled this year. Again,
1:08:21
the three liberals convinced some
1:08:23
of the ones who were trying to get their reputation
1:08:25
back who were hoping that they're not going to be investigated
1:08:27
by another publication about where
1:08:29
their money is coming from. Boom.
1:08:35
Native American rights.
1:08:36
Again, the Supreme Court goes against
1:08:39
the supremacists in the right wing and
1:08:41
they uphold a 1978 law
1:08:43
giving adoption preference of
1:08:46
native children to native families.
1:08:50
Everybody was certain they were going to overturn
1:08:52
this law from 1978.
1:08:57
Because not fair
1:08:59
to the white people. We're
1:09:02
being discriminated against. Boom.
1:09:07
Supreme Court sides with the three liberals on
1:09:10
the court. There's four
1:09:13
huge cases. And
1:09:15
then there were these other rulings. I don't know
1:09:17
if you remember this. Remember the federal judge down in Texas
1:09:20
that after Roe v. Wade, he was so quick
1:09:23
to want to rule in favor
1:09:26
of the crazy anti-abortion people saying
1:09:29
that the abortion pill
1:09:32
was abortion and therefore illegal. And
1:09:34
so he ruled that
1:09:37
the abortion pill couldn't be handed out. This
1:09:41
Supreme Court, again,
1:09:44
the three
1:09:47
liberal justices convinced all
1:09:49
four of these ones who
1:09:51
are running scared,
1:09:54
Horsage, Barrett, Kavanaugh,
1:09:56
Roberts,
1:09:57
they all voted with the three women.
1:10:00
to block that ruling
1:10:03
from the federal judge in Texas, banning
1:10:05
the abortion pill.
1:10:08
Unbelievable. I
1:10:10
mean, that is the impact of
1:10:12
your voice being heard. Yes,
1:10:15
it will be hard to try to impeach or remove
1:10:17
these guys, but we're gonna try
1:10:20
because we have to.
1:10:22
It's the right thing. But
1:10:25
to get all four of them to vote
1:10:28
with the three liberals, seven
1:10:31
votes to block the
1:10:33
ruling saying the abortion pill is
1:10:36
not legal anymore. Boom. And
1:10:40
then another time
1:10:43
they get seven to decision where
1:10:45
the court allowed
1:10:47
a transgender girl to compete on the
1:10:49
girls cross country and track team at
1:10:52
her middle school in West Virginia
1:10:54
while her appeal moves forward.
1:10:57
In the end, this may not go their way,
1:11:00
but again, Clarence
1:11:02
Thomas and Alito are left by themselves
1:11:05
in a dissent with the rest
1:11:07
of the court saying this little girl should
1:11:09
be able to compete on her track team
1:11:12
while her case is moving forward. I
1:11:16
mean, I'm not gonna take any more time. You're
1:11:18
getting the gist of this, right? Where we won
1:11:21
and the ACLU won 11 of their 18 cases. That's
1:11:27
what happens when
1:11:30
the press does their job and it investigates
1:11:32
politicians, Supreme Court justices,
1:11:36
and finds out whose hand is in
1:11:38
the till, finds out
1:11:40
who they're on the take for. And
1:11:45
then we, everybody makes
1:11:47
it clear, including the majority of Republicans,
1:11:50
that women should have the right to choose. That
1:11:54
gay rights, what's the latest
1:11:56
poll on this one? Look at this, eight
1:11:59
in 10.
1:11:59
Americans favor comprehensive
1:12:02
non-discrimination protections for
1:12:05
the LGBTQ plus community.
1:12:08
And that includes 90% of Democrats.
1:12:12
What they're saying is they believe that gay rights should
1:12:14
be part of our Civil Rights Act. Another
1:12:17
thing that the Democrats failed to do when they
1:12:19
passed it back in 64 and
1:12:22
couldn't do it any other time when they
1:12:24
were in power, they should have been
1:12:26
made part of the Civil Rights Act, just
1:12:28
like we already have the 38 states now that
1:12:31
have passed the Equal Rights Amendment for women, yet
1:12:33
it's still not in the constitution.
1:12:37
Now, there's gonna be a big court fight over this because
1:12:40
they're gonna say they didn't get the 38 states for the Equal
1:12:42
Rights Amendment in enough time, blah, blah, blah.
1:12:45
Well, we'll fight that out in court at some point,
1:12:47
but still
1:12:49
do the right thing should
1:12:51
be in the constitution. And
1:12:53
when it comes to gay rights, let's get that in
1:12:55
the Civil Rights Act because 90%
1:12:58
of Democrats support it, 82% of
1:13:01
independents support gay rights, and 66%
1:13:04
of Republicans favor comprehensive
1:13:08
non-discrimination protections for
1:13:10
LGBTQ people.
1:13:12
Come on. We've
1:13:15
got work to do. We could do this. We're
1:13:17
in the majority, all of us. We're
1:13:20
not on some weird limb. We're
1:13:23
the majority now of this country.
1:13:26
If you're my age, since the voting
1:13:28
age was lowered to 18, there's
1:13:31
been two, almost all three generations
1:13:34
of young people that have been raised.
1:13:37
We're in the third generation of them
1:13:40
where now some of them are gonna vote.
1:13:43
I was just thinking like right now, like
1:13:45
if you have a kid, say
1:13:48
that kid is eight years old, right
1:13:51
now, it'll be nine next year. That
1:13:55
means that they will be 18, 18. in
1:14:00
the 2032 presidential election. So
1:14:04
that means after next year's election, there's
1:14:06
only one more election
1:14:08
that your eight or nine year old
1:14:10
is not gonna be able to vote in. That's 2028, they'll
1:14:13
be too young. But
1:14:16
this, we've raised a whole group
1:14:18
of kids. And when they're adults
1:14:21
in 2028 and 2032,
1:14:24
this is only going to get better and you know
1:14:26
it.
1:14:27
We've got to start that work now.
1:14:30
We've got, everybody should have a plan in their neighborhood,
1:14:32
in their communities, how they're gonna get
1:14:34
the vote out next year, how we're gonna have
1:14:37
another record turnout post
1:14:40
the elimination of Roe v. Wade. We've
1:14:42
got to support groups. And I want to tell you about a
1:14:45
couple of these groups now, of what
1:14:47
they're doing to impeach
1:14:49
these justices
1:14:51
or to get term limits passed.
1:14:54
It's not in the constitution how many
1:14:56
seats
1:14:57
should be on the Supreme Court. It's been
1:14:59
anywhere in our history
1:15:01
from five seats to 10 seats. It's
1:15:04
flipped all over the place. And then after
1:15:06
the civil war, they landed on nine
1:15:08
and they've been there ever since. But
1:15:11
it doesn't have to be nine, it could be 11,
1:15:13
it could be 13.
1:15:15
If there were four more justices right now that
1:15:17
actually represented the majority of the American
1:15:20
people, 13 justices, four
1:15:23
of them on the side of
1:15:25
us, the majority of the people, that
1:15:29
would be seven
1:15:31
liberals on the court, six conservatives.
1:15:35
And there are groups trying to make this
1:15:37
happen. First of all,
1:15:39
there's a group called Take Back the Court. You can look
1:15:42
all this up online.
1:15:43
They want to expand the court by at least four
1:15:45
seats. There's another group called Demand
1:15:48
Justice. They too want to expand
1:15:50
it by four seats and create
1:15:53
term limits and
1:15:55
a binding code of ethics.
1:15:57
There is of course the Brennan Center.
1:15:59
for Justice, a very good group in
1:16:02
this country. They
1:16:04
want a staggered 18-year term
1:16:07
for justices, just 18 years, and that's
1:16:09
it. And they want them staggered
1:16:12
so that a new justice would have to be
1:16:14
appointed every two years. There's
1:16:17
all these things happening. You should look this stuff up. Brennan
1:16:19
Center for Justice, take back the court. Demand
1:16:22
justice. There's another group that just
1:16:24
did a
1:16:25
bus tour with 20 stops,
1:16:27
a nationwide bus tour, pushing
1:16:29
these agendas for trying to clean
1:16:31
up the court,
1:16:32
and they're called just majority.
1:16:36
I want to read you something from
1:16:38
John Roberts, the Chief Justice,
1:16:41
one of these conservatives, what
1:16:44
he wrote in
1:16:46
October of 1983. This is a
1:16:48
quote from Chief Justice
1:16:51
John Roberts. The
1:16:53
Framers,
1:16:54
you know, the founding fathers here. The
1:16:57
Framers quote, adopted
1:16:59
lifelong tenure for
1:17:02
Supreme Court Justice at a time when
1:17:05
people simply did not live as
1:17:07
long as they do now.
1:17:09
A judge insulated from the
1:17:12
normal currents of life for 25 or 30 years
1:17:14
was a rarity back then.
1:17:20
And it's becoming commonplace though today.
1:17:24
Setting a term for Supreme Court Justice
1:17:27
of say 15 years would
1:17:29
ensure that federal judges would
1:17:32
not lose all touch with reality
1:17:35
through decades of ivory tower
1:17:37
existence. It would also
1:17:39
provide a more regular and greater
1:17:41
degree of turnover among the
1:17:44
justices.
1:17:46
Health developments would, in my view,
1:17:48
be healthy ones. That's
1:17:51
Chief Justice Roberts in 1983. They
1:17:54
know that the way we do this
1:17:56
is wrong. They know
1:17:59
we need to fix this. And they
1:18:01
know that their ethics are
1:18:03
in serious question right now. And
1:18:06
they know that the majority of Americans, the
1:18:10
vast majority of Americans, the
1:18:13
women of this country have
1:18:15
had it. They've
1:18:18
had it with the right wing. They've
1:18:20
had it with insurrection. They've had it with
1:18:23
these Republicans taking away
1:18:25
their rights, forcing
1:18:27
them into more student debt, not
1:18:30
helping out their kids to get
1:18:33
just a bit of a helping hand because they
1:18:35
want to go to college. They
1:18:38
take the mean position, the
1:18:41
majority of this court, on most
1:18:43
of these issues. And,
1:18:46
you know, people, most people at
1:18:48
their core, are not mean. That's
1:18:51
why they've lost the Republican majority
1:18:53
in this country, the people. Side
1:18:57
with gay rights being the law
1:18:59
of the land. Side with women's
1:19:01
rights being the law of the land.
1:19:03
That's the country
1:19:05
we live in now. So
1:19:08
I encourage you to contact these groups,
1:19:11
get involved, start something locally in
1:19:13
your school or at work or in your
1:19:15
neighborhood.
1:19:17
We need to fight the Supreme Court.
1:19:21
Some of them, if not all
1:19:23
of the six, need to go. You
1:19:26
know, yes, difficult,
1:19:28
yes. But, you know, history
1:19:31
is full of a lot of examples where when
1:19:34
they're called out and when there is
1:19:36
such a cacophony of opposition
1:19:39
from the public to something, they
1:19:42
will resign.
1:19:45
They will want to get out of the
1:19:47
chaos and the hatred toward them.
1:19:51
It's also possible that one or two
1:19:53
of them could have their road
1:19:56
to Damascus moment where they get knocked off the
1:19:58
horse, where all of a sudden the law of the land is the light
1:20:00
bulb goes off or the conscience
1:20:02
kicks in and they say, you
1:20:04
know what, this is wrong. I
1:20:07
mean, this has happened in our lifetime.
1:20:10
President Eisenhower, a Republican,
1:20:13
appointed a Republican, I believe, who's
1:20:15
the Republican governor of California,
1:20:17
to the Supreme Court to
1:20:20
carry out the Republican agenda, pointing
1:20:23
them as Chief Justice in 1953. In 1954,
1:20:27
Earl Warren, the Chief Justice, the
1:20:30
so-called Republican conservative,
1:20:33
issued the majority opinion in Brown
1:20:35
v. Board of Education that eliminated
1:20:38
segregation in our schools. And
1:20:40
he went on to head the most liberal
1:20:43
court
1:20:44
in modern history. Decision
1:20:46
after decision to
1:20:49
support free speech, to support people's
1:20:52
rights, were
1:20:54
decided during those years that he was Chief
1:20:56
Justice from 1953 until 1969. He
1:21:03
had a change of heart. He
1:21:06
had a moment of conscience in
1:21:08
a huge way. Justice
1:21:11
Souter, who was from New Hampshire, a Republican
1:21:14
appointed by Bush I, he
1:21:16
was appointed as a conservative to
1:21:19
strengthen the conservatives on the court.
1:21:21
He wasn't there long before he started
1:21:23
voting for the liberals,
1:21:25
because it was the right thing to do, not because he
1:21:27
was a liberal.
1:21:29
But when you're talking about people's rights, when
1:21:32
you're talking about not serving them because
1:21:34
they're gay, or
1:21:38
making life more difficult with them, because
1:21:41
they have all of this debt
1:21:43
from a college that
1:21:46
if they'd lived in any other democracy,
1:21:48
would never hold
1:21:50
this kind of debt. Sometimes,
1:21:54
yes, my friends, sometimes someone
1:21:57
who was on the other side of you. can
1:22:00
wake up one morning and say, you know what, I
1:22:03
do know right from wrong. And
1:22:06
that's how I'm gonna live my life from this point on. Any
1:22:10
of these things can happen. It won't happen if
1:22:12
we are silent. We need to be
1:22:14
loud, we need to be present.
1:22:16
We need to vote.
1:22:18
We are journalists
1:22:21
and even citizen journalists.
1:22:24
You're on Facebook, you could share this
1:22:28
with people. What I've told you about today, we
1:22:31
can do this. And in the meantime,
1:22:34
keep them running scared. Keep them voting
1:22:36
with the three liberals on the Supreme
1:22:39
Court.
1:22:40
It's an amazing fact.
1:22:43
And I, again, thank Adam Liptack of
1:22:45
the New York Times for sharing that
1:22:47
with us. And I ask Democrats
1:22:50
to please stop
1:22:52
depressing everybody. We know it's
1:22:55
depressing. Start telling
1:22:57
us how we can win. Start
1:22:59
participating in the win. Make
1:23:02
it happen. That's
1:23:04
why we elected you. Come
1:23:07
on, my friends. I know it looks
1:23:09
dark. It's been
1:23:11
dark for some time. We've
1:23:16
never fully realized what the founding fathers
1:23:20
said that we were, that we were all created
1:23:22
equal. We know that they
1:23:24
meant white men who owned property. We
1:23:29
know that they considered black people only
1:23:31
three fifths human. The
1:23:34
other two fifths some kind
1:23:36
of animal. Yeah.
1:23:40
That's what they voted for. That's what they stood for.
1:23:43
But they also, man, they did some
1:23:46
amazing things with this constitution
1:23:48
and with our Bill of Rights. But
1:23:53
it doesn't end up on just one generation's
1:23:55
shoulders. It's on our shoulders now.
1:23:59
And we wanna leave our. kids and our grandkids with a
1:24:01
better world, don't we? Isn't
1:24:03
that what we said back in the 60s and the
1:24:05
70s and the 80s? And if
1:24:09
we haven't done that, well
1:24:12
then it's not just these justices
1:24:14
on the Supreme Court that have to look in the mirror,
1:24:18
have to be worried about what
1:24:20
are they gonna think of me? What are they gonna think
1:24:22
of us decades
1:24:25
from now? This
1:24:27
is not how I want to be remembered as
1:24:30
being part of this, any of this. I don't
1:24:33
think you do either. So
1:24:35
let's celebrate this birthday
1:24:38
today on this day
1:24:40
of interdependence. We
1:24:45
have a lot of work to do, but
1:24:47
there's a lot of us where the majority, it
1:24:50
means there's a couple hundred million of us. Let's
1:24:55
do the work. Let's have
1:24:57
our voices heard. Let's
1:24:59
let these four justices
1:25:02
who are voting with the liberals now
1:25:05
to do more of that.
1:25:08
We have more power in our hands than we realize.
1:25:13
Thanks for listening today. I hope
1:25:15
you're spending it with friends and family,
1:25:19
having some good barbecue, taking
1:25:22
a dip in the lake, enjoying
1:25:24
your time off. I'm
1:25:26
gonna leave here sort
1:25:29
of the way we began, except
1:25:32
this will be another version of
1:25:34
America the Beautiful
1:25:36
by the great Ray Charles. This
1:25:38
is from the Dick Cavett show. He performed this.
1:25:41
It's now a classic. It's the
1:25:43
late 60s, early 70s singing the song
1:25:45
on national TV. He doesn't
1:25:47
start with the way that we
1:25:50
were taught to sing it in grade
1:25:53
school.
1:25:55
You hear the heartbreak in his voice as a black
1:25:57
man. I
1:26:00
want to play the whole thing for you. Ray
1:26:02
Charles at the piano on
1:26:05
the Dick Abbott show some 50 or so
1:26:07
years ago. We feel
1:26:09
the same. The
1:26:11
same heartbreak, same
1:26:14
heartache, but
1:26:17
also the same realistic
1:26:19
hope. Some
1:26:21
things do get better. Sometimes
1:26:24
it takes a while, but there's
1:26:26
now more of us, many
1:26:29
more of us than there are of them. Let's
1:26:32
act like it. Happy birthday,
1:26:35
everyone. This is Michael Moore.
1:26:38
Take care.
1:26:54
Let's act like it's the permanently bad.
Podchaser is the ultimate destination for podcast data, search, and discovery. Learn More