Fate of the Union (Conservative Politics & True Crime)
Fate of the Union (Conservative Politics & True Crime)
Episode 25 - ACB Levels Up & Final Presidential Debate
In this episode of Fate of the Union, Franklin provides an update on the nomination process of soon-to-be Associate Supreme Court Justice, Amy Coney Barrett. We review the lines of attacks leveled against her during the nomination process, and her ability to rise above it and move on to consideration of the full Senate.
We then review the second and final presidential debate between President Trump and Joe Biden, We take a look as what worked and didn't work in the debate, as well as where the polling stands in the home stretch leading to the 2020 Presidential election.
If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe on YouTube for more videos, as well as iTunes for the Fate of the Union podcast. You can also find out more about the show and its host on Twitter at Fateoftheunion_, searching Fate of the Union on Medium, and at franklinfotu@gmail.com.
Hello and welcome everyone to the fate of the union podcast, a weekly review of the biggest issues in national politics. Given from a conservative perspective, the show also periodically address current true crime cases from across the country. If you like, what you hear, please hit subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Now let's talk about the fate of the union. Welcome to fate of the union. The date of recording of this episode is Sunday, October 25th, 2020. So the two main stories that I want to go over in this episode are one, the passing on of the nomination of Supreme court justice nominee, Amy Coney Barrett beyond the Senate judiciary committee and into a full vote by the Senate for her confirmation and also some substance and really the effects of the second and final presidential debate between president Donald Trump and Democrat nominee, Joe Biden. So first let's review the latest happenings in ACBS Supreme court nomination process. Last week, ACBS nomination went up for a vote for the Senate judiciary committee and these 22 senators would vote on whether or not they saw her nomination and this particular perspective, Supreme court justice, as worthy of being passed onto the full Senate, uh, for a vote for our actual confirmation here, she would need a simple majority out of the 22 participating senators in order to be passed onto the full Senate for their majority vote, that would ultimately confirm her and finalize the process of her being appointed to the Supreme court. As you may have noticed, she passed with a 12 to nothing unanimous vote in favor of passing on her candidacy for the Supreme court onto the full Senate. And obviously the first thing that should come to mind is, well, Franklin I've, I've heard it in the news that it there's certainly more than 12 members on the Senate judiciary committee. So how she, how could she possibly be passed on beyond committee from a unanimous 12 to nothing vote that math simply doesn't match up? It's not even close? Well, the answer to that is that Senate Democrats sitting on the committee, well, they simply didn't show up. They didn't bother to show up. They didn't participate and seeing what would have culminated inevitably in a losing 12 to 10 vote. Their response was to not show up at all, unless you had 10, not present votes. So it was 12 in favor, no one there to vote in opposition and 10, not present kind of N slash a votes for the Senate judiciary committees, ultimate vote to pass on ACB to the full Senate vote. And some of the statements in, in the wake of ACB passing committee is really telling, because you heard from numerous senators where, whether it be, uh, Cory Booker, whether it be other senators who weren't actually on the committee, but were just giving their comments, whether it be, um, Chuck Schumer or even, um, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, all calling it a sham, it was a sham process. Now the first issue that should come to mind is all the Senate judiciary Democrats fully participated in the supposed jam up until the final vote. When it came to attacking ACB for being this kind of colonialist monster in modern day, adopting to Haitian childrens and really saving them from absolute destitution and poverty, they were there for that, that, that was legitimate enough to participate in when it was the contrived attacks on ACB, that she would help repeal Obamacare with a real lack of a judicial opinion and a real lack of track record for her short time on the bench, seeing issues revolving, um, around federal federally controlled healthcare regulations. But nevertheless, in making up that line of attack, Senate judiciary Democrats certainly were present for that, that wasn't too much of a sham for them to participate in. Of course, we went over last time, uh, Senator Hirono from Hawaii, her questions and her bizarre attempts to legitimize the smear or attack on pride Kavanaugh earlier in president Trump's administration to ask ACB if she ever committed any kind of sex crime sexual assault, that was legitimate, that all of these lines of questionings were within the bounds of decency and with, uh, the bounds of legitimate substantive inquiry into the background of ACB and in inquiries of how she would rule while on the bench. But when it came down to put pen to paper and to actually cast a vote, knowing that they would lose being the sore losers that they are, you've seen this in various other aspects of national Democrat politics, whether it be the years following Hillary Clinton's loss in 2016, whether it be Stacey Abrams, losing in Georgia, that a loss is not a loss, there are no legitimate losses for the Democrat party. It's always somebody else's fault. The ruse was in from the beginning and here it was no different. Now there is a sham. So we simply cannot show legitimacy to this one day of the hearings. We were all present for the rest of it. But now that we know that a loss is in the bag, it's, it's all but finalize it's it's all over, but the crying, as they say, now, it's time to not show up. And like I said, I think that's telling that once it was clear that they were facing a loss in the committee, then it just turned to statements in the media, trying to fight back. As far as public perception goes, the some kind of violation of norms. And they've kind of retreated in that aspect, especially in the final days of ACBS hearing. And the other, the vote to pass her on from committee has, has occurred. And it, she passed obviously unanimously from those present. The criticism from Democrats has changed at the beginning was that the process ended up itself is unconstitutional, which of course is not true. It's has no basis in the constitution that this process violated any provision. President Trump was fully within his rights to nominate Barrett and beyond that the committee was fully within their rights. And in fact was their duty to hear ACBS nomination hearing, to ask lines of questioning that were appropriate. We'll get to that in a second. And beyond that, now it's going to a full Senate vote and they're fulfilling their constitution and constitutional duties. It's not against the constitution. In fact, for them to take up the full vote. And once that really started to fall on deaf ears, I think a lot of people saw it as even if they opposed ACBS nomination. The simple proposal of her being questioned really didn't have a lot of backing for why that was unconstitutional. Even if you wanted the Senate to down-vote and have her not even pass committee, you'd be hard pressed to come up with a constitutional argument for why the hearing shouldn't take place in the first place, even callbacks to the issues surrounding mirror garlands, what would have been nomination still doesn't really resolve the question this time around for why putting ACB up to a hearing in front of the committee was violating the constitution. There are still no teeth to that argument. So after that failed, we started to hear the, that arguments against her judicial philosophy. And that's where it came to the Ginsburg question. The Ginsburg question of course, was as we spoke about last time, really invented, uh, championed by Joe Biden at the time in the Senate. And really kind of explained as far as a quick summation in RJ RGBs answers that essentially the power phrases that you wouldn't forecast or predict how she would rule in future cases.
Speaker 2:[inaudible].
Speaker 1:And of course, here being the smart and really brilliant jurist, but also logical and strategic of a prowess of ACB is that she did actually directly quote RGB on numerous occasions saying that she wasn't going to forecast our opinions, whether it be on issues surrounding immigration issues, surrounding challenges to the legitimacy of the election in 2020, or for things like healthcare and Obamacare, albeit that there isn't really a strong record in her opinions for speaking or deciding a whole heck of a lot on federally controlled regulation in the healthcare field. And then beyond that, you saw as a broader point, you've seen this from the more academic crowd on the left, especially in the legal field. Um, you saw Erwin Chemerinsky is a very, uh, well-known constitutional law professor. Um, I believe he teaches really just first amendment law at this point. I know he taught a lot of the classes on constitutional law when I was studying for the bar exam a few years ago. And he's pretty much a main staple and that kind of regards and teaching what they call black letter, or as much as you can devise one, a unanimous interpretation of the first amendment as it's applied in the courts. Uh, he really is a figurehead kind of in that way for constitutional law. But nevertheless, here he was one of the ones at the forefront saying that the originalism in judicial philosophy, what it is, is it's not a strict textualist type of thinking. No, no. In fact, it's your desire to interpret the laws as they were in, in slave days. And this was expanded upon by professor Chemerinsky and others that
Speaker 2:The
Speaker 1:Sticking to originalism is really just a proxy. It's a stand in towards things like interpreting the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment and the 14th amendment at large as an amendment, basically stuck in time from when it was enacted in 1870, the clear implication here. And it's one that you can make given that professor Chemerinsky and others are, are clearly aware of this implication. And I think it's safe to say that they had this in mind, if they didn't say it explicitly, that kind of being stuck in time when the 14th amendment was passed in 1870, of course you don't have Brown vs board of ed in 1954 Supreme court case, heck you don't even have Plessy versus Ferguson in 1896. That was kind of the Supreme court judicial branch confirmation that separate but equal is, is acceptable. It's legally and constitutionally sound. We now know that that's obviously not true. And I think it's, it's a really weak argument that has been popularized a lot. That just because one thinks that the constitution should be interpreted as it was written that the application at those times, whether it be 1870 or wherever the particular amendment was passed, it also implies that those interpretations were cracked. They were not correct
Speaker 2:Fact, but the strict,
Speaker 1:Strict interpretation of the 14th amendment is that everyone, all citizens are to have equal protection under the law. And a lot of the issues surrounding Brown vs board of ed is at the Supreme court. Finally got through their thick skulls that, you know, what equal protection under the law for everyone kind of means for everyone, the law should provide equal protection. They're just a groundbreaking revolution. But the through line there is, that was the correct interpretation that should have been expounded by the court from the very beginning, from the very beginning of the amendment and in its first chance to visit the amendment in eight, in 1896 in Plessy versus Ferguson now withstanding their failure to correctly interpreted, they finally stumbled upon the correct interpretation, but it's a, it's an interpretation that's clearly justified by a plain reading of the 14th amendment. Now you can look at things like the fourth amendment when a warrant is, is, and is not required, whether searches are reasonable or not. And then the legitimization of stop and frisk and other kinds of investigatory stops by the police. The fourth amendment has been carved up more than a Thanksgiving Turkey. There's a lot of, you know, if you were to make kind of a, a beautiful mind flowchart of the fourth amendment, it would look like Charlie and it's always sunny. There's just, there's things pointing all over the place. There's yarn and all kinds of convoluted roadmap to getting to your conclusion. But the quick summation is that the 14th amendment is not complicated. It's not long, it's not, it doesn't have a lot of phrases that are open for interpretation. So an originalist would point to the fact that not withstanding the Supreme court's Follies and their mistakes in arriving to the final conclusion, that nevertheless should have been the final conclusion based on the very plain reading of the amendment in the first place. And so here, I think that really, that so fell on deaf ears. I think a lot of people like to play the game. It's, it's a very convenient political argument and a line of attack to say that, Oh, you just want to go back to slave days. You want to go back to repealing the 19th amendment, regardless of the fact that you have a female nominee in front of you. It's very easy. It's very lazy to put forth these arguments, but that nevertheless, it's kind of the reason why you hear them so much. Um, and that kind of combined with the personal attacks on her, um, albeit her own religious views didn't really come into play as much as I think a lot of people forecasted that they would be, especially given her confirmation hearing to sit on the federal bench, to begin with what, with, uh, Senator Dianne Feinstein saying that the religious dogma lives loudly within you and thus you couldn't divorce yourself from your own personal religious views and making rulings on the bench that didn't really show up too much. And it was kind of a welcome surprise, but it was replaced on by personal attacks on her, uh, about her family, about her decision to adopt children and really give them a better life. And they seem to be a very happy and healthy family. So ACB we'll be moving on to the full Senate hearing. Um, you have seen from some of the troublesome Republican senators ones, you would be kind of worried about which way they're falling like Mitt Romney. Uh, and they've all seen to signal that they do intend to vote for the comm confirmation of the next associate Supreme court justice, Amy Coney Barrett. So it appears, and again, we have to take their statements with a grain of salt, but at least by all appearances of statements of senators like Mitt Romney, it looks like we are headed to a full confirmation and we have found our ninth Supreme court justice going forward here in 2020. And speaking of 2020, that of course brings us to what was the second and final debate between president Donald Trump and Democrat nominee, Joe Biden. Now going into this debate, one of the central issues was the mute button was the lack of ability of each candidate to interject into the answer of the other. And that was proposed by people really on the left and the right as what would most likely be a detriment to president Trump that he wasn't, he wouldn't be able to interject. He wouldn't be able to kind of work the room as he does so often. And so well, in my opinion, not only in debates, but also in his rallies and kind of the pageantry of, uh, president Trump's speech, basically, if you look back to the 2016 presidential debates, the line like, uh, because you'd be in jail. When, when Hillary Clinton said, we're lucky that president that then a nominee, Donald Trump, isn't in charge of the laws in this country. And he interjected and said, because you'd be in, and of course, Clinton was completely dumbfounded and had no response for this, but it was a real viral moment. It was a kind of a staple of his candidacy and being against the entrenched Washington PA uh, politicians here, there'd be no such opportunity for president Trump to do that. But I think a lot of people were surprised and I, I have to say I was as well, uh, pleasantly prized that the lack of interjection and preventing of, of interruption here, I think worked exceptionally well for the president. And that's sole really solely because it mandated, it made a definite in this debate that Joe Biden would have had to finish his speech. He has to finish it. He has to fill up the two minutes you saw in the Democrat primary that on at least one occasion, Joe Biden gave up the remainder of his time speaking, which you never see from politicians from either side of the, of the aisle are hard pressed to ever stop talking and to voluntarily not use every second of time, they have to speak. And really most of the time go over, go over there, allotted time. So here you saw him that being a former vice president Biden trail off on numerous occasions, seemingly have several kind of brain farts for now really knowing exactly where you're going. And president Trump did a really good job of using the very small window of time after Joe Biden's answer, but before Christmas or the moderator really got into her next question to kind of ask his own followup question, have maybe a 10 to 15 second explanation for why it was important that Joe Biden needs to answer it such as the issues revolving around a Hunter Biden and Tony, Bob Alinsky, and their business dealings, perhaps with Joe Biden and thus force the issue back onto Joe Biden to kind of add an addendum back onto his answer. He just gave because he, he missed, he, there was a hole in his answer. And I think president Trump really used that, that strategy and kind of playing with the time and not doing so much as to really interrupt Welker before she got into a question, but do his due diligence in making Joe Biden and follow up with what would be, uh, a porous and incomplete answer. I think that was a really good strategy from president Trump and one that he used, um, to his benefit throughout the debate. And before we get into substance, one of the other issues here very quickly is, and there's kind of an adage that is used sometimes and in the practice of law, but it's useful in the practice of law. And I think it's useful in debate, especially for politicians, is that whenever you have someone that you're trying to either extract information from, whether it be a witness or an adversary or certain an adversary, certainly an adversary. And if you want to extract almost too much information, if you want to have the record, be clear and have the records to your benefit, the best kind of person to be up against either an adversarial setting or in a fact gathering exercise in a witness is not a man. It's not a woman it's not gay straight, black, white, any of that, the best person that you, that you need to be up against is a person who doesn't know when to stop talking. You see this in evidence gathering all the time and the witness that they'll either confess, they'll admit to too much, because a lot of times an argument, if you've said everything you need to say, and you still have time or someone, whether the judge or the moderator or your opponent seems to think that your answer is lacking, it's a very uncomfortable position to be in, to be done with your statements yet someone out there, whether it be the appearance of time, still being left on the clock, or whoever's judging you so to speak, they're still expecting more from you. It's an uncomfortable position to be in because you're done giving your answer yet. You feel like you should fill up some more time with something. And that gets a lot of people in trouble, both in the practice of law and in politics. And here, I think both in his public statements and his stump speeches, that being a vice-president Biden and in this debate, he gets himself in a lot of trouble when he tries to just fill up time for the remainder of the answer is he cannot, he basically, he cannot leave well enough alone and have his answer be the answer and conclude. There were numerous times when he interject, just because he thought he should to match Trump's strategy or to finish an answer with either an adage or an analogy that really fell flat. You saw this once in one particular example where he said, it's not about president Trump's family, it's not about his family. It's about family sitting around the table and being worried about the pandemic. And maybe you wake up one day and your family members and it at the table anymore, because they've obviously, obviously the implication is that they died of the coronavirus. Really just to be quiet, candid with you, pathetic pandering on the T on the part of, of Joe Biden, but his, his in ability to not leave well enough alone, and to have to kind of engage in the debate tactics of president Trump or to not know when enough is enough, he got hammered on this president. Trump really took him to the cleaners for having what was as president Trump, president Trump pointed out a clearly canned line. Let's be honest. He was just waiting to pull that out. What he thought was the right moment. Um, and another point at the debate you saw president, uh, vice president Biden say that, that Hitler before in analogizing to president Trump's relationship with Kim Jong-un, that he had a good relationship and a good relationship is needed in order to negotiate something in your country's favor. Biden's response was, well, we had a great relationship with before Hitler started his reign, um, in Europe. And I suppose the implication is that in the same way, he, I thought that we had a good relationship with Hitler and thus we're blind to some of the effects and some of the policy of Hitler that we were unprepared in stopping his, his reign. So in the same way, president Trump's sometimes amicable relationship with Kim Jong-un is, is, uh, is a forecaster to the U S being complicit in further acts of, of human rights violations or foreign policy, um, disasters in the same way, the analogy didn't work. It doesn't make any sense of course, because we, the U S as a map policy, and really just a matter of general feelings, we're never, we're never friendly to Hitler. If you go back a lot of the television and, uh, print ads were anti Hitler before the U S even got involved in the war. Officially, the American people despised was going on from the very beginning before the U S actually took a role in the war. So not only was it factually incorrect, incoherent, the analogy didn't match up to what's going on in present day. Anyway.
Speaker 2:So now
Speaker 1:We're at the point where people are more and more looking at the polls because we are done with presidential debates. The second one was the final one in this occasion. So where are we right
Speaker 2:Now? And I think the
Speaker 1:Kind of 30,000 foot view, uh, I know it, Ben Shapiro has talked about this. Steven Crowder had a good video on this is the basic soup to nuts, as it stands now is although Biden appears, do you have forecasted a, an electoral college victory more or less equal to president Clinton's in some forecasts? It's a little bit bigger.
Speaker 2:If you, if
Speaker 1:You look at the more granule granular level of the swing States, his margin of victory in those swing States is actually much smaller than Hillary Clinton's was.
Speaker 2:So the, the
Speaker 1:Quick summary there is, although his electoral college victory may look to be forecasted as a bigger victory than the predictions had for Hillary Clinton, the Le the swing States that make up those electoral college votes are much more within president Trump's grasp they're are much more within striking distance. The, the rust belt States, the Sunbelt States, then they were predicted to be in the 2016 election. Now, of course, we know from the last election that polls can only be taken so seriously. And there is certainly certainly room for president Trump to gain in the next week and a half. Um, I, I would say that most of the States, uh, maybe besides some of the ones that were kind of wishful thinking, the, the Minnesota's, um, of, of the Midwest, where there were kind of just tacked onto other swing States, most of the traditional swing States are totally within reason to think that president Trump can grab them, whether they be, uh, Pennsylvania, Florida, uh, Michigan, Wisconsin, president Trump was just there last night, doing a stump speech and a rally in Wisconsin. All of those, if you look at the numbers are certainly within reach for president, and now specifically tailored to those States. He has some great sound bites and a great exchanges from the debate. We saw that Biden flat out admitted that he is going to get rid of fracking. He's going to really, for all intents and purposes scrap the oil industry completely. Now he's tried to play politics and try to toe the line that it's going to be gradual. It's not going to be all at once. Um, I was only talking about federal land only about fracking on federal land. He absolutely was not. Um, but the prospect of losing an entire industry that employs still employs tons of people in this country and in these particular States, I think is, is a jarring admission. And one that president Trump, you can be guaranteed. He already has in his speech last night, but we'll continue to use to his advantage in trying to capture those swing States and really make a strong showing on election day on election day. You want to look at the East coast, Florida is going to be huge. Uh, the Carolinas are always huge Pennsylvania. So if Trump can get one of the two Carolinas, Pennsylvania, and Florida, we are looking very good going into the rest of the night as the middle of the country and the West coast of the country start reporting their numbers in. So that's kind of the roadmap for the early part of the night as the East coast starts reporting. We want to look at the Carolina's. One of the, two of those, at least Pennsylvania and Florida, um, all within president Trump's grasps. And if he gets, um, three out of the four with Florida being one of them, we are on a very good course going into the rust belt and the middle of the country later on in the night. So that does it for this week's episode of fate of the union. You can reach me Franklin, the host of the program on Twitter or medium.com by searching fate of the union, and please visit our new YouTube page over at fate of the union as well. You can also reach us by email@franklinfothueatgmail.com. This has been the fate of the union. Thanks for listening everybody. Bye-bye.