« Commentary Magazine Podcast

Commentary Podcast: All Come Tumbling Down

2017-11-16 | 🔗
In the second COMMENTARY podcast of the week, the crew (Noah’s still on vacation) makes sense of the continued allegations against Senate candidate Roy Moore, the new allegation against Senator Al Franken, the reemerging allegations against Bill Clinton, and the whole state of our post-Weinstein culture. We also reflect on the Republican tax-cut push and what its success would mean for Donald Trump. Give a listen. Don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Welcome to the commentary magazine. Podcast today is Thursday November. Sixteen twenty seventeen John put words. The editor of Commentary magazine the seventy three robots intellectual analysis, political probity and cultural criticism from a conservative perspective join us a commentary magazine dot com, where we give you a few free reads and asked you to subscribe. One thousand nine hundred and ninety five get to a digital subscription moment if I'll get you on all access situation, including our beautiful monthly magazine in your mailbox eleven times. Here with me, is always a grievance, senor earlier high Abe, I John and
Murray are senior writer high, so Rob combining John, no Rossman, still on vacation, so you'll be back with us next week Do some business here and say that I need you guys to go to Itunes and put up. Some reviews cause I'm very annoying varying very humiliated, very upset, Jonah Goldberg remnants remnant started only a couple weeks ago. Yes, like six hundred and fifty reviews, we have three, read reviews I have already done a twitter Paul in the last day, trying to establish who is a better twitter, Joan or made Jonah put up a whole bunch of dog pictures, and has and away with this thing in the most illicit possible fashion, and he can't have everything he can't be. The commentary Rosty of Twitter seventeen at a number one best selling author and have more reviews on Itunes than the Commentary magazine podcast. So I beg of you go to
Tunes and leave a review. I I would love it if it were positive, but even if its negative, I just gotta of some numbers here. Ok, so just rack up some numbers because, let's face it, you know you just have a charmed life like John and get away with it. That's that's all. I'm gonna say it's just enough already it's enough, with this and I will say one very important thing and then move on, which is like Jim Demand, who said that he would rather have forty good republican senators than sixty, but I would rather have twenty five huh good good twitter people saying that my twitter feed is better than Jonas than forty five hundred people who are hypnotized by Q, dog pictures and are therefore squalling. Swayed Joan is evil seduction, so minor better. I win he loses, but you know, though nominally it appears that he one I am table. I won
and I would also like you now to please go to Itunes when you get a chance and legal review. Ok what's he gonna kill you going to kill you for free. This is like free we're sitting here. We will provide quality entertainment. All I'm asking for is a lousy, we're shoe on Itunes so from the Dick Iulus to the I would say the sublime, but I think one can describe the occurrence of the current sorted new, that is dominating all our lives as sublime in any way shape or form Alabama centre. Candidate. Roy more continues apace, with more women coming to say that he called them during trick of arbitrary class. Sorry, but the very specific, detail the wasn't impose last night that he had been chasing list. You now this teenager at that
at the mall and then actually had called out of class, so that he could ask her out really. I think, That's a new one. I think I'm I'm intrigue class. She says she said to him from the principal's office at the Gadsden High School assuming that she was not just to show that a wonderfully imaginative wire who came up with that very salient novelist detail and thus should at least get a book contract for her for her imagination, assuming that this is actually the detail which rings. True is true, which now I think beyond question that we have established the fact that here as a chaser of Timor, lose what we, for two. I believe what we learn, to refer to as an a feeble file that somebody who is here chasing very much younger girls
hovering around the age of consent. Let's say as it when he was in his early thirties. Now, of course, is the larger death is a political question. What it means we Alabama sent a race like we care, I mean we care, we care whose yet we care it's possible again. Probably the democrats- and so the Senate, the parent Senate, should a guy be, yes, Should I be a senator with this kind of record or not do what you say about America, so we can all go into that, but let's, let's put that alter one side because Let's face it, you don't live in Alabama, its barely your business anyway, so Alabama now holds the moral faintly made states in its hands and and is not confident that moral fate will be will be determined in the way the one wish? Nonetheless? Here we are, I think we want to take a step back
and asked the question of what this means in a larger sociological sense about you know about our society as a whole- have now been you now, no six weeks or something into this into this, sir, of general social crisis that seem to be inaugurated by the New York Times story. You know date detailing the sexual offences of the moon producer. Hurry wide steam- and here we are was later, the latest piece of news being a an anchor news anchor on a talk. Radio show Channel where some not sure. Whatever, in LOS Angeles, former modeled was, until you are so tour with Senator L, Frank and who, she has age. She has personally photo story about him, forcibly kissing her and then a picture of it.
Sleep and frank and groping her, and there is no question that he did it that this happen. He has put out a quick statement, not denying that happened in saying. Maybe he remembers differently, but you know you shouldn't have done it. Now we're getting into a sort of its this war. Against all in which, in which anybody, anybody anywhere could could it Guenaud could have to anybody at any time, and there's also is this: this new dimension, that's very much worth mentioning by liberals are now revisiting the bill, Clinton accusations right of assault and expressing their regret. Not having taken them seriously. I having take them seriously, it's quite the opposite that that the funny part
But this is that there is an interesting form of historical revisionism going on with the. I should have believed that victims of Clinton I should have. I should have taken more seriously. It wasn't just that people didn't take it seriously. It was that there was an affirmative argument being made that what was being visited on Clinton was Puritanic all christian right, moral majority, sexual morality. That was insisting that private consent, we'll sexual relations between a man and a woman. We're not, it was not legitimate for those two. Disgust of anybody who wanted to discuss it wanted to go into your bedroom and wanted to take pictures of you would have you arrested for sodomy and do whatever else they wanted to do was not simply that they chose not to believe him, Thank you know. I really am summit back to me, do during the
We have all these recent articles about that clean. I recall like the early part of the twenty first century, licking the early two thousands. I remember whose, with one of his movies or whatever, but Michael more, was talking about serve recent american political history. He said you know report didn't like Clinton, because he was good, looking and got all the girls. I thought That was here was ninety. Maybe eight with Clinton needed mean a burly reporter with Newsweek He was quoted in the New York observer at the time as saying that she was so grateful for Bill Clinton protecting her right to abortion. That she would happily perform a sex act on him she's on the porter for Newsweek. I knew her at the time. It seemed like a perfectly plausible thing, for her to say that was not the reason. The deck called became well known. Wasn't that it seems
shocking and outrageous, but rather with total, pure reflection of the way people think But how will you be another example? More endowed, conversely, our times Maureen attacks the Clinton's for relentlessly for years for years, taxes from liars, cheater, bad stuff with where, with Hillary Clinton files discovered a man build doing bad things, never being terrible when Monica Lewinsky came out and when it was clear that his presidency was in jeopardy, not in the way that she wished over the issues that she wanted, but over something that she did not want to appear to have been Prudish scolding finger, wagging boring using. We know, MRS Grundy
suddenly. She turns on Lewinsky in the Republicans she had been making the case. The current was unfit for the presidency for far for four years and then the instant that this comes out. She turns on a diet that was that dishes of social liberalism in the late ninety Ideas- and it is so different today we actually so much more weirdly. This is how its talk this question, because we have to talk about trumpet Alice, but we're weirdly more straight waste today than we were, though the latter that was server overhang of the law Terry in sexual revolutionary social revolution of the sixty stuff. That was still going on where you now the line of third way Feminism was. We are just as sexually aggressive we're just as you now
justice overtly sexual. We we do exactly what men do where no different right. That was third way feminism, riot girl feminism at the time was you know you, don't don't think that we don't go out and have a terrorism. We don't exude sexuality and you know the aggressors and all that so I think that that was gone, I think I think that still there I think that still there in the sense that the culture on the one hand maximum permissiveness right that you can't judge any sexual practices. Almost any sexual practices exit except pedophilia right any else as long as is its within boundaries of consent I think that demands that are being made on the culture are Europeans, high level in that sense, because on the one hand we want none, to do with the Judeo. Your christian sexual ethic,
on the other hand, we also want there, too, for sexuality to be safe, safe from the depredations of powerful men safe from what happens on college campuses, and those to you that a new they will have to emerge to make that work. Or an outward or account work it's to me. I can't work. It is so we I think in terms of campus stuff, a lot of people, including us and our colleagues. Debts of coverage of the stories of you now or false campus can a record some are that we are trying to threaten evil to say: look there waiting, Is old and older, you know the Genie, the sex, the sexual and drinking Genie's. Out of all you can't stuff it back in, but it is, it is illegitimate. Have a system that presumes that a person saying days after there was an encounter between them.
That she decides that she has been raped or molested, as opposed to saying something at the time, as opposed to any any indication or any contemporaneous entails contemporaneous indication that she did not grant consent that that's illegitimate? It's not fair! You cannot do that. Two people. She is a consenting adults, and if she decided later that she really didn't want to do at that doesn't mean that you them accuse the guy, that she did it with rape. But maybe even that effort to thread that needle misses the point, which is, let's think about what created the conditions under which these women on these campuses. Are our arms hurling?
charges at these young men who they're doing it. I think, because there's something about the poor culture of permissiveness, that they are finding humility, having a noxious and yet addictive and and captivating and in In that sense, the worthy roundel or their so young and early thing, where the first time they got blackout, drunk or whatever, and that their finding it's so repellent to them that they are reaching for the only weapon at hand to say stop! This leave me alone at something happened to me that I make some. I did something, or I was involved in thing that makes me feel sick about myself about about.
Sexual relations about everything. Do something like do something about this, and, of course, what is campuses do is, after the fact they just they throw they throw everything they can at the guy. I, because there is somebody there who sang I'm in pain, I buy something, horrible is happen and there like ok, we're good, it will fix it. Bye bye bring all the levers to power to bear on this young man, but he's not the problem. It's not there's something about culturally it has gone totally arise. There's a there's, a theologian and a friend of my name: Chad, penalties on Twitter as Cecy, Peck, north and very wise Any says at precisely this point that if in a society in which there is no kind of deal questioning about what is here. Sexuality ordered to and what is its purpose beyond enjoyment and consent. You get this and I'm I'm persuaded by that right. Why
I five analogy yesterday which I'd like to flow two guys that that there is some in in we learned in the Sixtys and Seventys that there was this Naples. People defaulted to this new kind of policing, which is called nine one. One policing cops state in their cars and when there was a crime, they responded to reports of the crime they drove there and they tried to fix it later. Ok, so what this meant was effectively that the police was giving up on the notion that crime could be prevented Ito could that that the actions of of order and authority could prevent crimes from here in the first place, by putting eyes on the street by walking around by doing whatever you could and then also having a system of of consequences that was so clear to possible. Perfect
It is that they would decide they didn't want to do it at all in the first place and that some of what's going on now, including with the this reckoning now, but also on college campuses, is a version of nine when one policing, which is that we're saying, there's nothing, we can do to prevent an eighteen year old from getting blackout drunk and then having sex on a bit. But if, after the fact, one of the two parties says this was really horrible, and we go in and we cut we, we cut it off at the knees We are not. We have zero tolerance for once it happens, but we have given our society absolutely no structure or these values eighteen world, but also in the inn, a business out, there's no structure of prevention. Structural prevention, now is going to be. If you didn't thirty years ago, you're a dead man and that could be perfectly fine. The question
whether that will hold with anybody? Who would do it now or will it? Will everyone now be so terrified that they won't ever touch a woman who cannot work or invite them up to a hotel room or do you mean a society that sets up standards, that says men and women and we're not married to women who are not there. What do not invite them up to their hotel room she. This is the thing you know in conservative thought there were these two pieces that work in concert with each other. One is the idea that should be small and not intrusive, other has to do with personal conduct and sir, The idea is that the more you are concerned with your own conduct, the less need and the less, occasion there is for for government to come in to swoop in and You are correct to an end and and and sort of fill that fill that gap with, the sort of Vienna the liberal edge. Action of the personal conduct
as is, as you know, is seeing it, as some sort of you know, moralistic scolding that that is no longer required and Davy is not that we were everything is is about. Liberation. We have now the sort of emergency deserve nine one one for swooping down to me to sort of fill that huge gap that that that no you just now. The thing is going full where does the? Where does the personal conduct said? Come back in the personal conduct cited in the conventional societal terms, not that there has ever been a perfectly good society handles levy. This is under girded- are supported by a series of social restraints that are placed on individuals by not by government entirely but by
and codes of morality by religion by general sense of social order and shame and what is proper and what is improper. That is much more powerful in some sense than law. Obviously, I think a lot of what what is being said in college campuses even keep defaulting there, because it such an obvious moral ploy is: look you can't their air. You know you can't stop people from scratching the Z champion, they want to have sex. They're gonna have sex Emily. What what are we supposed to do about it they doing more than years ago? They do more than that day when they, when you come in at the orientation and this in my case I mean I'm talking about early two, thousands you know they would. There will be, as I said it would be her. You know. A puppet show of of of people said they would. You know. As part of the media is a concern part, and then there was a part of of ink
urging you how you to go out. Did it well exactly would proper precise right about as it, but you know I mean again. I don't mean to say that you know in sixty years ago everything was better because everything was worse than there was racism, their segregation and women. Were you know, women didn't have freedom at the workplace and all that? Ok, but Sixty years ago, men and women lived and seven dormitory sixty years ago. Men were not allowed to go upstairs and dormitory and leave the first floor of a girl's dormitory. Sixty years ago was not hotels, wouldn't accept people who did not register as husband and wife stuff like that. Like again, I'm not. I never lived under that regime and I dont really. You know, I don't think you can recreate it. You know in some schematic. Fashion, but the idea that you know eighteen year olds warrant didn't have an eighteen year. Old girl didn't have a waiting to prevent a young man from
manhandling her when she didn't want to be manhandled simply was not the case. I mean that a lot of you were, and there were others a lot more teenage birth oh that, but nonetheless, there was a social structure. That said, if that happens, then you're gonna get beer or really net you we're gonna this boy into a social structure by forcing them to be buried. Among other things, like goes too far, it. That's not It's not the greatest solution that not saying it's not a horrible solution, but now it's about all of these things now, but all of these things were was understood and you can't let people you know it's like you know, setting life as a buffer everything, so their people are just wander their lives through an endless buffeted Vegas, Buff a food and there not all gonna get obese every do that and every euro
everybody lives in Vegas, buffeting, they're, all everyone's gonna end up obese and with you know the heart, disease and harbour cholesterol, and all that and I do not think to your point that you know who you it's it's dangerous to look back and say. Yes, everything was better when things were stricter. If you get all the high profile cases now of these aggressors? These are all people old enough to have been sure shaped in the old regime and that didn't stop them right. Well, I've been reading a book right now about the the motion picture director, Michael Cortez elsewhere, as well as Casablanca, is one of the he's, the greatest director who doesn't have a major reputation, and so it's very long book about him because he made to hundreds of movies Anti goes.
Twenties sixties- and he was a horn dog- and he slept with everything and moved and remind you that you know there was a man if an ethos developed around the motion picture industry, that this was a place in which it was legitimate for there to be kind of, a side, sexual trade for favours and job, and women seeking get ahead and men. Miss using their position. All that- and I think that's part of the other thing is you know that she was there seem to me to be there to have two worlds in which that has been true in its less true and other forms of practical commerce. Show business as one in politics is the other, and these figures are also reflecting
the v string, creasing merging of those two worlds in our life. I mean that's where we get to the point that you were. If you were going to make- and you wanted to talk about in relation to Trump in the access Hollywood tape and where would we be Harvey Weinstein if Hardways they come out before But I just want to tell you guys that yesterday, justly yesterday, I have to say that often cause. I now have a beer, but yesterday I have to say very quickly: used Harry Shave and boy. They get a great shave quickly and thin and it was just great cause. I had didn't have my kid night previously, use. The different razor in ahead allows you shave when I had a great harry's experience, great shave with a fair price, which is why we're three million guys are switch to Harry's, Jeff and Andy to ordinary guys, who
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Yeah. What did the thought occurred to me? It's an open question. I don't know we started kicking around. Who will continue to do so now, My fault was what, if this whole ball got rolling? What, if the Harvey Einstein story broke not about. I guess what is its use about six weeks ago. Think so. But what have you been Let's say six weeks before Donald TUSK Access Hollywood tape was revealed, so something like the climate we are seeing now around questions of sexual harassment and and and sexual predation eggs. Did and then into this mix. Suddenly there is a success Donald Donald Trump tape that talks about bright chosen bragging about groping people would what would that? done for his political fortunes and then
it's interesting where I live. I had one thought that would say that it wouldn't it wouldn T have mattered and that that has to do with Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton that they act Hollywood tape in and of itself would have been enough under other conditions to to to do that. That it needed to do to get those hundred thousand voters in those three states not to vote for tromp, but killers Clinton, for every reason that we have now seen liberals trying to reckon with over the past week. Hillary Clinton was uniquely an ill suited to making political, hey out of the access Hollywood tape because she could not stand up and say we can't have somebody like this in the White House. I mean she tried, but it came improperly from her mouth, because not only was she the spouse of Bill Clinton who acknowledge
Then he had had a relation with Mark Lewinsky, eight months after he lied to the american people and said that he hadn't he acknowledged to the spot. Do you know how to cancel, but he said I did not have sexual after he had said. I did not have sexual relations with that woman. He paid Paula Jones, eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars to settle her sexual abuse case in the middle, in the middle of the Lewinsky scandal in ninety ninety eight and acknowledge that he had had an affair with Jennifer flowers. So all of this happen and what Hillary Clinton do she stood by her man. She said right after Lewinsky that this whole thing was a vast conspiracy, design, to get her husband out of office. She sent her cat a Mite Sidney Blumenthal. Out to trash Monica Lewinsky's reputation to call her crazy person. She did everything she possibly could to make sure the Clinton stayed
in power rather than believing the women wear them one is that I believe the women she was the and I think it's unquestionable had gone the other way had she wept in front of the cameras were, you know, remained silent, like Silva Wall, the wife of value, Spencer, who at the time of his closure of his scandal. Have any of that happened. He would in toast he would gone. She was the hint she was the piece that of the puzzle that kept Democrats or that this is a terrible mixed I therefore sign it. She was the cork in the book, how they kept the genie from escaping from the while we're Democrats were running for the Hills rights happened over the last week like which were conall as more and more should go this one says that one says if Hilary web
it hadn't. Seventy thing Al Gore could have gotten up and said: I think Bill Clinton needs. I'm sorry, I'm yeah he's a great man, gray press, but his country Campi, led by him. I'm ready to take the reins of office is, of course the joke. Is that somehow Clinton managed to contrive to make people believe in the course of this entire year that if he went, the country would be. You know he his would be thrown into the hands of these troxler Derek monsters. Gore would have been. The president of Clinton had left office, Nuke Gingrich, wouldn't even the president. You know, midday Bob Dull, wouldn't have been the president he would have in the present. Al Gore and you know what. George W Bush might not have gotten elected, and you know what Donald Trump wouldn't be president. Today I mean that's, that's the joke of it. So that's I counterfactual is Hitler is there Harvey wine steam happens doesn't make a difference.
I do agree with you also because there's a factor that that makes it so that no matter what the Clinton side and up looking worse, the matter what which it, which is, because there are. There is a credible rape accusation against Bill Clinton. It'll forgotten, right and which was deliberately by embassy. New NBC News had interviewed money abroad, wreck LISA, my maybe see had interviewed her and it was not until after the impeachment the the trial of plant was over. The NBC air. The Broadway interview, I think also you couldn't have had the Harvey once in story, have the impact that it had without tramping president habit that anybody response. I think that a lot of this was is: oh, my god. The skies president
It would have broken if you, without it being present, and because this has caused starting one scene is such a Klingon Harvey one scene is, is again another example of the merging of of entertainment in politics Harvey one scene is: is such a big figure on the handle on the left and on the active it among act? Was liberals? I think this heat this wouldn't do. This will have maybe not be able to sort of before the fall of the Clinton sort of allowed this to happen. We also think that there is something in the world of media that were reporting on this, that this inability to figure out to get trump there is no way to get it trump. You know they, you know their every every effort was made and the king was not killed right before the election, and so Question then was whose trump, without being Trump
and believe me in the world of entertainment that was Harvey. Weinstein is trump of that Trump. You know I mean he's a Sorvino Volger disgusting PIG was known, had mistreated, manhandled people and was kind of a bit of a fraud, and you know claimed to be an artist but basically destroyed. Other peoples are in was most. Arthur was on reputation and there are many stories for years. Nobody ever touch them more. No one ever really got to it. The more interesting question is: what happens? Try this the italian actress model acute gets. They m wipe the ip. Wires her. She goes up to Weinstein's Sweden March of twenty fifteen okay and Cyrus Vance Cyrus Vance Manhattan handicap
if it refuses to indict on the grounds that the and why out of some weird turf battle with him, I pity saying that they had asked the wrong question. They made her asked the wrong questions, so they even want to indict say that had happened and he had indicted white steam. Ok, so there would be a story. The Harvey wine stena- maybe it would have had no larger residence, because that really would have been a legal and cast a case. About whether Harvey Wednesday had done this to this one when and then others then actually job would have commander rose. Mcgown would have come out noise. We would have said the stuff about him, but it wouldn't have had this quality of here is this powerful guy who misused his power against me and I had to remain silent, because I was too scared to speak out his what if he had been arrested in box and charged and had to go through a trial. That is an entirely different.
End of story, but maybe I'm wrong, and maybe under those conditions, you have had a major figure in american pop culture and politics in the dock it for rape or attempted rape and an adult comes along and the access Hollywood tape comes at a lot earlier. I don't think he's destroyed by. He just says get this world of hypocrisy, why you know why should this sick to me The whole look bill. Look at Harvey. Looking this whole world of hypocrisy, gonna pick on me It's some version of what he actually did say to take him out. He said: look I'm just I'm just talking, I'm just talking with guys bilbil. Oakland actually did you did a whole lot worse. Believe me and look here: didn't do that. Well in the election, it's important to point out. How do you got forty six percent of the vote? He got point six percent more of the vote. John Mccain did being blown out by Barack Obama
Eight years earlier, there are three million illegal those jobs remember what but I've just saying like she. He was This whole also. This idea that he wasn't hard by all of it sure was heard it just that he he needed She made him to be heard with this small cohort of people that she was uniquely unable to reach, to talk to, to get them to listen to, to make them nothing that she was horrible and in a way There are other circumstances, a different kind of can it whatever could have reached them. I think is probably we the story of the next thing. You know I mean we could literally be in exactly the same situation trumpet around and then we'd owns their mid forties and a Democrat in the high forties, and the question is can scan he can the Democrat who runs against him in twenty twenty talk, those people who flipped from Obama to Trump or came out and voted for Trump when voter buffet
in those three states to do it again or or to go back home and at home or to order or to vote for him and in It doesn't seem to me to be enormously heavy lift if you not doing anything to encourage other people to come and do not be on the side It was an interesting part of this that, without going forward and in terms of the future relations and in one ever know. The answer, of course, is given the climate now, how many peoples, people are they're out there, whose political aspirations have now been completely put on put permanently Down because they know they can go forward, given whatever they know, they have in their path. We need more names going to come out. More people will fall, but there can be so many who are going to try to to avert this fate entirely that that day, that's very interesting. The story. The last twenty years was entirely the reverse, as it were a whole bunch of people
excuse me who decided they could run for office, even though they done cocaine in their teams and twentys, or something like TAT, because other politicians had come out and had this experience, whereas in the ninety days, if you said you done drugs, you were dead with. No one would allow you to you know like Europe. Your party would do whatever it could to cut you off at the knees soap. This. This is a serb, weird reversal right and, of course, there was talk that Al Frank and might for president in Germany, for example, method with the idea that may
their main issue for Republicans this week in this month in that has something to do with whether voice more gets in the Senate or not. Is the tax reform bill which is gonna, be voted on by the house? Supposedly today there are two wildly different versions of the tax reform bill. There's house version of senators in the house is about to pass the house version which has allowed these provisions. We won't go into even look them up. So as these provisions and Democrats hated and loud people say, it good enough for there's too much corporate tax, cutting a man of personal tax coming and defenders of it say that there really isn't that what you can do to cut the personal tax rate any more for the middle class and you carefully cut peril taxes does that will harm entitlements, and so the great thing about corporate tax cuts is that they have an immensely stimulating effect on the economy, which will just be great and will be more common
They live with other countries, and people will bring their businesses back here and in a revenue effect because they all these companies, large firms, have revenue that they ve basically parked. Rob shore rending websites are right. You'll get all this money, be reinvested in the country in my bed a lorry rate, but it did they did the other alternative, isn't get tax, and at a higher rate its non taxing in it all right, so we don't know so that so that's the argument for, as the current imbalance YO its they promised. Everybody would get attacks, got every power by the middle class task cut but appears not to be true. Most people in this house will get a task, but that means that they'll be a bunch of people in the less it will not get attacks that are mighty a small tax increase and so its controversial then there's a Senate version of the bill, which is which is not anywhere near completion All we know about is the fascinating. The two fastening developments one run
Johnson, the senator from Wisconsin, who won a surprise, victory in twenty sixteen and isn't up till twenty twenty two, so he could have has a free ride here, says and he was a small business owner says he will oppose the spill, because it is too skewed toward big business and offers very little relief to small businesses, and that's one of the three no votes that can doom the bill They only need to more for the bill to go down and there's an Anwar. Alaska, while Ref refuge provision. I think in the Senate one that Mercosur, really excited about social labelling at their legs. Ok, so there's something that she'll get but they're, so the boot, the interesting and, I think politically, possibly unbelievably really prove that happen
nowhere largely driven by Tom cotton. The senator from Arkansas was to include the repeal of the Obama CARE individual mandate and the tax reform bill so that, after all, the failures to get at o bomber care that led to this idea that they were the gang who couldn't shoot straight. Maybe they can combine a success and getting a tax reform bill through
with a stake in the heart of the single most unpopular aspect of a Mamma care with the individual mandate, and that in turn, meant might make it hard for people like Susan Collins of Main and John Mccain to oppose the tax bill if they were to do to the taxpayer what they did to the health care bill. Now. I think, what's so politically brilliant about this- is that it hosts democrats and liberals on their own enormous potential here, because the reason that a bomb care would did not get overturned by the Supreme Court in John
Roberts is unbelievably sopwith. Sophistic and disingenuous decision was that he ruled, or they were, will rule that Obamacare was a tax and not a penalty. So if it, if it's a tax, then Congress has almost unlimited rights to and on people, and if it's a penalty, that's the question whether you can penalized someone for not buying products in the private market so as long as it inconceivable penalty would be unconstitutional, but as a tax, its constitutional? Well, this is a tax reform bill, so you just eliminate attacks. Its attacks, you lower the tax or eliminate the tax that I do it and it gives you. According to one reckoning, almost four hundred billion dollars to play with, because its attacks and remember. Robert said look. I can't I can't really. Bad law right he said
Elections are for the go ahead, and then we have the election. We have an election seventh and tat, I think, and and then, as I You were things or of the there's, a hilarious democrat heads or exploding among Democrats in the left, because there's some Scipio score says what at that of third in Billy sorry, thirteen million Americans would lose insurance as a result of it lets defiant see. This is the great things that we are now going to define. The word lose yeah. Ok, this means people will now have the choice. When you go into the Obamacare system or not go into the Obamacare system, be as demand days later, they will not have to pay a penalty, they will have to pay the tax if they don't go in right, but some sixty presented shoes. They, choose not to go into the system, and this has been characterized as a loss of income.
Parents, as opposed to a deliberate choice to opt out of the Obamacare insurance system. This is so soft, a story of an incredibly high order. Every single one of these thirty million people could go right into Obamacare or Medicaid or if they can, for yes, if their, if their poor enough to go to but every single one of them can go into Obamacare and, and tomorrow any moment any tat. They would not live to do during this often period, but what they go into it if they don't their choosing consciously not to do so. That is not a loss, it's not being taken away from them. They are saying I want it. Even with the mandate, were far from full enrollment in Obamacare. It was forty percent short sea these people are still willing to pay the tax rate. Nowadays, it happened. Terrible clerical plan that data
it costs them six thousand dollars a year before they even can can take it to get any care. So it's like the ultimate kids like giving poor people catastrophic health insurance. It's it's not a good system anyone. Here's my question. So if you look at this very small window in time right now, I think it's a very good moment for Trump in terms of legislation, you see this event that their onto something here that that that could work. That is genius and in all sorts of ways back cast all the legislative chaos. That's that's come up this point as just a prelude to two to getting something accomplished. My coat, is what does he do to mess it up now rifle? He's got six waste of ass an outbreak five weeks some because they ve said they want a bill on his desk before Christmas, and it is five
have weeks before Christmas. I remembered the Senate has to actually make up its mind to do this thing and then they have to then the house in the Senate bills have to be reconciled and process called the Rio Conference Committee and then go see him for for signature. So clear right, the house is going to vote this today without question and then the questions were there other details of the bill. It's not that popular, it's not pulling well or the last pulled wells. I'm suspicious that its draft fifteen percent in a week since no one's paying attention to- and everybody is talking about, rowing whore and by the way, if Roy more, if Doug Jones winds in Alabama special election, the weak its work on the next day, if he wins a Democrat winds and there's a vote against it? If Roy more wins, then there's a vote for it and from what I'm reading Senate has no would have no grounds on which not to see him they have,
to see him a star export them. Would have to start expulsion procedures, but they might get his vote for tackling or if we really wanted to screw Mitch Mcconnell, he would vote against tax reform because no one's being nice to him, the Republicans are being nice to him, so he destroyed is tax reform, just to give them a big thumb, you know those summit, but I hears my fear of how is out trumps gonna, ruin ahead with as it needs to do is sell policy. He needs to x, and he has not done that over the year, all these sort of big legislative battles that came up and he lost you couldn't ask anyone what ask me what really was in that Healthcare Reformed Hill and seventeen different variations, because no one the level of the president's cell sold it so hill. Just due to eating he'll, say like loser. John Mccain is being a loser again and Macao ski above about and that that will be his that's. It
Treating will be his effort, it selling it, and I think that's how it's gonna go down a musician question if there really are serious prospects for a kind of weird snatching, victory from the jaws of defeat with Obama care in it, stuck in there, so that he can claim that he repealed the most noxious, Obama care and all to do is give a placid nation nationally lies the dress about it and keep his mouth shut. Even he might be able restrain himself because he's gotta he's got the the gold ring like in the his mere nearing? is grass, but aim is wincing and arid and shaking my head. I don't. I just I see him as key or logically not above any fight any day
at any time, no matter what the stakes is more likely that a bit so, but why can't you just continue to focus on how awful that Russia Progress but praise the tax effort, right, we could have got other fish to fry shorn, I'm sure he's got, aren't Mueller he's got an granting basketball team to deal we're getting, does that's right. They didn't sacred ague. You now think she too,
Thank you too. That's right bank share that yeah. He thanked the totalitarian dictator of China and complained that the american athletes were insufficiently grateful. So it's one another wonderful moment for you now for freedom and democracy in our here here and the second decade of the twenty first century. Well, guys know women back on Monday. We will back on Monday and will probably do another show on Wednesday and then, of course, Thursdays Thanksgiving. I don't even know what I'm going to accept I'll, just say for everyone and swore Memoriam John put Hornets keep the camel burning.
Transcript generated on 2019-12-13.