Hot Swap growing, donors revolt, President Kamala? SCOTUS breakdown: Immunity, Chevron, Censorship

26:08So I think you're starting to see the sort of leaks and the fissures. Yeah. And then that's sort of this next phase that will make things a little bit ugly and contortive. I mean, it's one question here because we got to move on to the Supreme Court stuff. Sacks. Two, poor question. One, is there a chance that he has had a diagnosis already and they're covering that up? And two, if they covered up something like that, what is the ramification of it? Because it's cleared everybody. He's in cognitive decline. It's clear it's been a couple of years of cognitive decline. No, no, no, that was asked of KJP in a press conference yesterday She was very explicit no and the reason no that she can say no she doesn't know no No, no, no the answer was much more explicit has he been diagnosed and she said no and the reason she said no is because that is very credible for her to say because he hasn't taken the test Okay, so that's your there look it was obvious now for months if not years that there's been a huge cover -up of his cognitive decline and the media has participated in this anyone who raised that question was treated as being a partisan or a liar and just for a good example of this I know you described George stuff and opposite a straight shooter but when niki hailey was on his show a few months ago and i'm not a fan of niki hailey at all but she started making this point and stuff and i was basically when let her finish and we basically shot her down so the media was actively suppressing the story you take morning joe a scars burrow He was saying that this version of Biden is the best he's ever been and we've been hearing all of that kind of stuff for months They were describing true videos showing Biden being out of it.

27:46They were describing those as being fakes clean fakes. They invented this new term for perfectly real videos that basically would reflect his condition So the media has been engaged in a gigantic cover -up of this and as a result the country isn't really bad shape because we have to go through the next six months either there with a C -NOT president who has limited cognition or we could end up with a new president who was untested, inexperienced, and based on every interview she's given in the last four years, it appears to be completely clueless at a moment in time where I think we have the most dangerous foreign policy situation since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

28:25Okay, so this is a really horrible situation and hold on, it's the media bears a lot of responsibility and what should have happened, okay? What should have happened is we should have had a robust Democratic primary a year ago Sure, based on concerns about Biden's cognitive abilities reported by an honest media. We never had that yeah So, uh, did you guys see this clip by the way? There's a clip on Twitter where somebody put together a clip on next six minutes of a hundred sort of Spokes people and proxies and they all had the same thing to say about President Biden, which is he is sharp as a tack.

29:03Sharp as a tack. Sharp as a tack. Which end of attack? The round part? What was so funny to me is I thought to myself, if I asked 100 people on the street, what do you think of Elon Musk? You'd have 100 different statements. There'd be a general theme, but you would not have even 50 people repeat the exact same words. working points, obviously. And so you have this funny situation where a hundred different people were basically saying the exact same talking point. So it's not even a point of view. It was just something that they were told to say by somebody else. And that is your point. Both sides.

29:36Both sides. Exactly. And the real issue, which is that you don't really have an honest media here. And so there is no check and balance on power right now. Imagine if this feeding frenzy happened a year ago. Well, the contrast and compare I want to make is everybody has a point of view about Donald Trump. and I was thinking about this, the reason why everybody has a point of view about Donald Trump is everything that has happened in his life is completely transparently documented. There really is nothing hidden at this point. And so you have a point of view because you've been given all of the stuff right and there's endless amounts of new stuff that come out about the old stuff.

30:11And so you know and that's what's so interesting. You have the ability to come to your own decision and it's not package through these filters. Yet with President Biden, I think it's so constrained and controlled. And I think you have to understand and appreciate that cognitive decline lets assume that he isn't for the sake of the United States. But if he is in it, it only gets worse from here. And it compounds and compounds and compounds. That is what happens. And so not only do you have to wonder what's the next five months are like, what does it look like in 18 and 24 and 36 months? That is a really important issue here clearly Biden can't serve a second term but the question is what what we do now and I got to say it's amazing to me that the Democrats are not considering the one option that is kind of obvious which is you let the man run the most dignified campaign he can he's the candidate you chose and oh you know our sacks is back here is not sacks this is not sacks this is not sacks the real problem here is the democrats refuse to lose they want to cling to power however they can't they refuse to let democracy just work democracy working would be to do the speedrun i have a question what would you do with the money would you just not spend it then and just save it well this is really interesting so there is an analog okay in nineteen ninety six bob dole was the republican candidate for president and quite frankly he was too old he was seen as a relic flinton was fairly popular and it was pretty obvious that he was to lose or any was going to lose.

31:44The Republicans engage in shenanigans to try and fix the situation. No, they just accepted the inevitable that Dolas going to lose and what they did is they pulled financing from his campaign at least in the final month and they redistributed it to House and Senate candidates and actually they did better in the House and Senate. They held on to the House and Senate. I think they lost a few seats but way less than they were expecting to and they kind of ran on a campaign that, you know, you can't trust Slick Willie. So keep us on, split the ticket, and keep us on as a check against him. And it actually worked really well.

32:19It was the best Republicans could do. But frankly, they let Bob Doloran a dignified campaign. My advice to the Democrats would be, don't have Biden resigned doing a shakeup. Yeah. Listen to sacks. There's your political cancel. You do a shake up right now when you put an untested at inexperienced, clueless president in there, he was gonna wanna show out tough she isn't bringing her own team. No, no, no, no, no. That's a common one. Of this dangerous situation, let Biden run a dignified campaign and lose. My advice to the Democrats is to embrace an outsider, give the people what they want, freedom of choice, freedom to elect a leader, and bring someone in that falls outside of the traditional, political spectrum that does not wanna hold public office, because it's not their career.

33:07They can bring money to the table, they can bring credibility to the table, and they can win votes and compete effectively against Trump. If your goal is to retain the White House, Kamala, give us a five. Give us two names. Jamie Diamond. Jamie Diamond. Bob Iger. Give us a second in. Bob Iger, yeah, it's a great one. Jamie Diamond and Ols. Jamie Diamond and Ols. You know, you're gonna try another great one, yeah. It's called wish casting. You're doing wish casting. Sax, I'm not speaking about realism. I'm speaking, I'm speaking about what it would take to win. If they actually want to bring out a win, someone that could win a popular vote, someone that could actually win votes away from Trump, because you can't introduce someone like Whitmer or Moore, this late in the season, when no one in the United States knows who the heck this person is.

33:48But when you have someone with credibility, with economic and business success, with executive authority, with capital and connections into the Democratic Party, but isn't part of the political machine that you and many others in the Democratic Party are now starting to hate. Let's go have an opportunity to actually win. Yes, and if they were smart and they got their together they would say, you know what, it's time for a change just like the Republicans had to do and use the Republican playbook really in Freeberg. Okay. Well, you guys better have a magic lamp with a genie in it because that's the only way this is going to happen.

34:19Well, listen, it's, I'm just trying to keep the show fresh. Okay. Okay. Here we go. Next topic. Freeberg is the final word. Here we go. I'm giving freeberg the final route. He had the best take. I'm giving freeberg the final word. Oh, you're pulling your McNeil era. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Here we go. There were seven rulings in a bunch of scotus activity over the last week. But these are really important consequential decisions. We are going to talk about three of them. And I'm going to try to get through this quickly. Obviously you could talk about these for hours and people will be, you know, doing case studies on them for a long time.

34:56But let me try to do this quickly so we can get everybody's take on them. The first one I want to talk about is net choice. This is the content moderation cases that you may have heard of. There were two very controversial laws passed in Florida and Texas in 2021 in the wake of January 6th. The Florida law, if you weren't aware of it and I don't suspect most people are, would cover platforms with over a hundred million multi -active users or a hundred million in annual revenue. In other words, they're targeting X, YouTube, Facebook, Matt, and those kind of sites. and they would require those platforms to notify users if their posts are removed or altered.

35:31And the platforms would have to make general disclosures about their operations and policies. And the Texas law was very similar for platforms over 50 million monthly active users. And it would require them to notify users whose posts were removed and providing explanation of why, all that kind of stuff. Both of these laws were challenged in court in 2021, anyone just to give you an idea like why I think the conservatives were upset about this. Obviously, Trump being suspended indefinitely on Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms, or the labeling of content like we've seen on our own channel on YouTube.

36:04Net Choice is a tech industry group that includes Facebook and YouTube and the parent companies of those. And they sue to block these two laws, Justice Kagan, a liberal wrote the unanimous decision. Obviously, no dissensions here. And the majority held the editorial judgment and the curation of other people's speech is a unique, expressive product of its own, which entitles it to first amendment protection. So just to give you an example, if you wanted to create a social network, we can't be anonymous like LinkedIn. You can do that if you want to do something like Twitter X and have anonymous accounts.

36:34You can do that as well. If you want to create a social network with adult content, you can do it. Or like Zuck is doing on breads interestingly, they are downplaying political content. obviously other platforms amplify political content. So let me end the end of all this in terms of how the court handled it is. They offered some guidance and sent the cases back to the lower courts to clarify a bunch of stuff. Just to keep this brief, Shemoff, what are your thoughts on this? Obviously, some of the ideas here, like letting users know why they were banned or why content was taken down, I think the overwhelming majority of users would like to have that.

37:12But is this the government's role? I'm not enough of a legal scholar to know the details of this case except to say that when the entire court goes in one direction, it's probably because this never should have been brought to the court in the first place and they're giving a very clear message. It wasn't even ideologically strained to figure out what the right answer should be. So, Sachs, obviously your chosen party was the one who brought this. who have concerns about the platforms doing this, but do you have equal concerns about the government than I guess being the ones who have to enforce these?

37:48Is this a good ruling? Well, I think that with respect to that Texas of Florida laws, I think their heart was in the right place. They were motivated by the right things which was to reduce censorship on these social media platforms, specifically censorship of conservatives, which is to say they're citizens. But those laws probably were overly broad and they infringed on the free speech of corporations. Because I guess corporations get free speech too. And basically what the ruling says is that content moderation receives the same First Amendment protections as any other kind of speech. So the decisions of what content you're gonna keep up or take down on your own property is itself a speech decision and the government has to respect that.

38:34So that's what the ruling here was saying. I think it's not a bad decision. I wish the Supreme Court, however, had coupled this with a better decision in the Missouri versus Biden case, which they basically said that the plaintiff's lack is standing to pursue. So they didn't necessarily give it a dispositive ruling in that case, but they threw it out. And basically what that case was about was the Biden administration was engaged in attempts to influence or pressure social media companies to take down speech as the practice known as jaw boning. And I wish they had coupled this decision with a better decision in Missouri -Verse Biden saying the government's not allowed to course social networks to take down speech either.

39:19And they are refused to do that. So I wouldn't say these are like the greatest set of decisions with regard to free speech that the courts have ever done. I hope that they will come back in the future once they find a plaintiff with the right standing to address that issue. Yeah, that's a key issue. Free Berger, that's? Yeah, so I've said for a long time, we've obviously had conversations about Twitter and Shadow Bannering and some of the other activities on what are typically called social media platforms. At the end of the day, these are all, as I've shared in the past, my belief is they're all content companies.

39:51They have a choice as executives and as editors of those companies to decide how to editorialize the content on their platforms. They can choose to create content with writers that they pay on staff like a newspaper might. They can choose to create content with actors and directors that they pay to create a novel video series for them like HBO might or they can choose to make content creation available to third parties that don't get paid like users. And at the end of the day, what they choose to do with that content and how they choose to display that content is up to them as an editorial platform that is ultimately creating content for other consumers.

40:28I don't view that user -generated content platforms are a right of the consumers to have access to share their thoughts. They have the internet to do that, and they have many other places that they can go to, to create blogs, to create websites, to do whatever else they want to do to express themselves, but to have a technological platform that lets them submit content that then the editors get to decide how and where they show that content. I think they should understand because it's in the terms and conditions when you sign up. So I don't believe in social media platforms as utilities, and I don't think that the government should have any role in deciding what is or isn't on those platforms.

41:03This goes both ways. I think that the companies should decide what kind of platforms they wanna have, whether they wanna have free speech that allows inappropriate content or content that might be offensive, or whether they wanna have a highly moderated platform to make it more broadly available or appealing to users. It's entirely up to them, and I really do appreciate the ruling, because I think that the government should have less of a role in intervening and deciding how media companies create content and how they editorialize that content. Yeah, so I think that's well said. And I was in the same sort of campus, you freeberg, which is like a battle of snowflakes here.

41:37The liberals obviously were canceling people on these platforms. And now like the Magglovoaks want to come in and have the government regulate it. If you want to compete here, just create a new product or service in the market. You're on the board of Rumble Sacks. Like they're doing really well. And if you squeeze too tight and your platform doesn't work, it's the marketplace should figure out who the winners are and you know, it's not a situation where you want the government getting in there because then they're going to go to a newspaper and there's so much precedent here. I actually read some of these rulings, which is really interesting.

42:10They're written phenomenally while I put in the show notes, the actual links to the PDFs of these decisions, they're well worth reading. And in this case, they brought up a bunch of the previous long, it was fascinating. like people wanted to force a newspaper to allow, you know, one candidate to reply and give him space. They were like, no, you can't do that. It's their newspaper. They decide what they publish. Another person wanted to have a corporate newsletter before us to give information about the other signs. You just don't get to do that. I'll just say one more thing. What else is striking is just how insulin protection is texas and florida or being, and it's not just with this law.

42:47It's also with the lab -grown meat or cultivated meat laws that they've passed. And other states are passing similar laws, which is limiting innovation in the state and limiting freedom to operate in the state in order to protect interests of individuals and corporations that already exist within that state. So it's really important to note, this isn't a good or a bad thing, but those states are operating in a way, the lawmakers of those states are operating a way that's trying to protect the interests of the individuals and businesses in the state over the freedoms that might and the liberties that might otherwise be available.

43:16I think we often talk about these states being more free, but these laws and the cultivated meat ban laws, in my opinion, indicate that these states are actually on the contrary. They're much more kind of protectionist. Where's your take on that, Sacks? To Freeberg's point, I mean, I think this ruling might have been necessary from a constitutional standpoint because corporations do have free speech rights. But again, I would say that I think that the laws of Texas and Florida were coming from a good place, which is they were trying to protect the rights of their citizens to engage in free speech.

43:45I think it's just unfortunate that in this case, it's a zero -sum game. And as a result, those laws were invalidated. I think that makes sense, but I still think we have a problem. I agree with you. The platforms have too much power. What do you sure propose solution? If you obviously don't want to have the government in there running a newsroom or running Twitter X because you yourself were saying, hey, the government's too involved in X and these platforms and doing this jaw -burning. So obviously, having the more involved is bad, right? You're against them being involved. Yeah, I think it's really tricky to figure out how to solve this.

44:18Got it. I think for one thing, you don't want the government jaw -burning these sites to take down content. That clearly should be a free speech violation. I'm disappointed the court didn't get to that. I think we're totally missing the bigger picture. There's like a lot of fear mongering that I think has happened with respect to the Supreme Court and that it's all of a sudden become some super ideological, super rigid, super activist this place. And I think it's in fact much of the opposite. And the data supports that. And so I think it's important for people to know that what's actually happening is that many of these decisions are very much split along non -ideological lines.

44:59And I think that that's an important thing. So I just like I'm pulling this up and I just want to read some of these things to you. US versus Rahimi, which is a federal law that prohibits people subjected to domestic violence, restraining orders from having a firearm. That was an eight to one decision where all but Thomas supported them. Makes a lot of sense, you would think. Racial gerumandering, that was more ideological where it was a conservative block versus Sotomayor Brown and Kagan. Trump the Anderson, which is Trump getting back on the Colorado Brato Ballet 9 -0. FDA versus the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, which was access to the abortion pill, 90 maintaining access.

45:44Moil versus US, which is whether Idaho's strict abortion law conflicts with the federal law, non -ideological, where it was Gorsuch, Alito, Thomas, and Katanji Brown -Jackson, who descended. So it goes on and on, and I think what's so interesting about all of this is that I had thought that this was not like what it was. What I thought, what had happened is Trump's track, the Supreme Court, all of a sudden we are ripping all these laws apart, this long standing sort of doctrine of what has passed. But yet, I think what's actually happening is people are pretty thoughtfully pushing the responsibility to the states.

46:22And I think that the court's decisions are relatively unpredictable in the sense that it's not just a conservative block versus a liberal block. I think that's the real story. And when you unpack a bunch of these decisions in that context, that's what's so interesting to me is like these are pretty nuanced decisions that get at the heart of a lot of key important issues happening across non -ideological lines. Jan 6, one Katanjee Brown Jackson was the Biden appointee that basically supported this thing that may throw out 200 plus convictions for Janssix. And Amy Coney Bear was on the other side.

46:54This is an unpredictable Supreme Court. I think they think for themselves, they seem to be independent. And I think they're coming to their own conclusions. That's the only thing to take away from the distribution of the votes. That should make people feel a little bit better. So I think this next ruling is the most important one. And I think it'll be the most important one that we've seen with this new court that has three of the nine justice is placed by Trump to your point, Chimoff. And this one is seismic. The looper versus Remando decision overturned Chevron. Okay, so this one takes a little explaining the court overworld a landmark 1984 decision in the Chevron case from 40 years ago.

47:34For context, the original ruling created the Chevron doctrine where the government and federal courts generally deferred to the the status of federal agencies, unless Congress has written specific laws on an issue. The 1984 ruling upheld the EPA's interpretation of the Clean Air Act. It's very influential. This has been cited by federal courts over 18 ,000 times in 40 years. It was overruled in another six to three decision where the justice is voted along party lines from up. Basically, this shifts power back to federal judges and courts instead of administrative agencies staffed by experts, academics, all that kind of stuff.

48:08In the majority opinion, Roberts, conservative, obviously, said the chevron, Dr. Antviolates, the administrative procedures act to federal law that directs the courts to review actions taken by federal agencies. He also pointed out that the courts are regularly expected to deal with technical questions so they should not be considered beyond their ability to scope. Kagan, a liberal, wrote a critical dissent. She said the agency staff with scientists and experts are more likely to have the expertise to make these decisions rather than the judges. She also pointed out that the system had been functioning for 40 years and this ruling will create a massive quote, jolt to the legal system, Chimoff get in there.

48:42Do you remember when President Biden tried to pass the budget two years ago and he was one vote short? And Joe Manchin ended up putting it over the top, but he negotiated what was a redo of a bunch of regulation. And he was promised that there would be this regulatory overhaul that happened and that was sort of why he had decided to vote for that budget bill. It ended up not happening. So the reason why I think he had saw that and he discussed this is that there are so many businesses that now suffer from the regulations of these agencies because when the agency enacted that regulation, it was just a different time and place.

49:25And there was no clean way to go back to an independent and body and say, I understand what your intention was in 1985 when you wrote that regulation, but in 2024 things have changed. Can we reconsider? And basically what the courts have done now will allow companies who believe that regulations are either overwrought or misguided for today's market landscape and bring it to an independent judiciary and have them decide. And I think that that's a very reasonable check -and -balance. And I think that makes a lot of sense. Folks can pass laws, and if folks believe that those laws do you undue harm, now you have a mechanism to go and actually explain your case to somebody independent who can then make a judgment.

50:14I think that that's a good check -and -balance. Fribberg, I know this was the one you most wanted to talk about. What's your take on this end of the age of experts and throwing things back to the court? what will be the practical ramifications for this? How much experience you guys have had dealing with federal regulators. You have a lot more than I think agencies. Yeah, I've worked in a lot across a number of federal agencies in businesses I've been involved in. And I can tell you it is, as I'm sure you would expect, there's a lot of bureaucratic moraths in these agencies. And if you think about it, it's because the agencies are effectively under the Chevron doctrine, invested, unlimited authority to create rules and regulations that they then determined are meant to represent the laws that were passed by Congress.

51:06But more often than not, those rules and regulations begin to bleed outside of the lines of the intention of the laws when they were passed. And this is because those agencies by creating new rules and regulations. This isn't this isn't some like, you know, I have a subversive reason for doing this, but these agencies have an incentive for creating more rules and regulations because they then get to go back to Congress and ask for more budget and hire more people and grow the importance and the scale of their agency. This is the natural kind of organic growth that arises in any living system and any organization of individuals is also a living system and has the same incentive.

51:49It wants to have more resources. It wants to get bigger. It wants to do more stuff. It wants to be more important. And the Chevron doctrine has allowed agencies to operate, independent and outside of the lines that were defined in the laws that were passed that then vested them this authority, that then they can go and say, I want more budget, I want to get bigger. And I'm optimistic that this ruling will limit the agency's authorities and limit their ability to create more bureaucratic overhead, more headcount, more individuals that need to now go and administer the rules and regulations that they themselves create.

52:26And so I'm actually very optimistic and hopeful about this change. Now, the downside, the negative to this, is that there are a number of really important regulatory rules that agencies have come to play that never got past as bills like environmental protection rules. And there's a negative consequence that will arise to some degree with respect to help of the environment, health of people, etc. But I think net net Congress needs to do its job. It needs to go back to session and it needs to sit down and needs to pass laws that really clearly define What is and what isn't going to be legal going forward?

53:01And then the agency's operates strictly within those bounds. So to recap it could get a little messy But it's a better healthier system because this system has become super bloated over 40 years That was my take on it as well. Sax, what's your take on this? This feels like a huge win to me. What do you... Well, I agree with that. And I agree with what Freeberg said. Look, when this decision, the Chevron decision, came down in 1984 at the height of the Reagan revolution, conservatives actually liked it. They praised it because we were coming off a period of an activist court, you know, the Warren court.

53:36And they thought that shifting power from the courts, the agencies would actually be a good move. Well, it turns out it completely backfired, whichever one it came out was not a widely noticed decision since then it's been cited 18 ,000 times by federal courts. It's turned out to be enormously important and influential. And the reason for all those citations is it's the courts deferring to the rule making of an agency. You know, whichever on basically says is as long as the agency's interpretation is reasonable or you could say not unreasonable, then the agency can basically promulgate the rule.

54:09And what this has led to is an orgy of rulemaking by all these federal agencies. And so most of our laws now effectively are being made by unelected bureaucrats who are part of this three -letter alphabet super government agencies. It's not the Congress, it's not the court, it's not the president. It's this fourth branch of government that's not in the Constitution, which is the administrative state. And so the administrative state has become incredibly powerful as a result of Chevron doctrine. And now I think by reversing it, you actually give a chance for the restoration of democracy. Basically, the agencies are not empowered to essentially make whatever rules they want as long as they superficially appear reasonable.

54:51They actually have to show that their rules are within a statute that they were directed by Congress to effectively engage in the rulemaking. So this is step -in -the -right direction for sure. But again, the real problem here is raining in this unelected ministry of state. Yeah, Tremac any final thoughts here as we move on to the next one. It seems like the Supreme Court is doing a great job. I agree. All nine of them. I mean, they really, they really seem to be doing a tremendous job. I give them a lot of grit. I feel like I've become a conservative. Maybe I'm a conservative now, Sacks. I don't know.

55:27I may have to sit down and confess to you because I read a number of these decisions and I was like, I agree. I agree and this is supposed to be a conservative court. So I'm not sure. Well, maybe I am. It's actually it's not it's not an originalist court. It's not a conservative court. This is what I'm saying like these are words that are planted by people that want you to believe their version of the lie. Good point. There are a lot of originalists on the court and what the originalist doctrine says in Saks you can correct me is I read the Constitution with faith and fidelity and I just see what it's what it says.

55:58not I interpret it, not I fill in the words. I just what it says is what we're allowed. And I think that there's some, there's a really good version of America in that view of the world. Yeah, I mean, I would say it's not even necessarily an originalist or conservative court. It's a 333 court, meaning there's three conservatives, there's three liberals, and there's three justice in the middle. You have this middle block led by the Chief Justice Roberts with Kavanaugh and Barrett, and then you got the conservatives with Gorsuch and Thomas and Alito. And sometimes the middle block goes with the liberal sometimes it goes with the conservatives.

56:32Again, it's more of a triangle. And as we know, the triangle is the best shape for Equipois, right? Because it creates balance. And I think what we have right now is a balance court. And I think on the whole, they've done a good job. And I think it's kind of sad that in reaction to some of these decisions, you've got powerful lawmakers like Elizabeth Warren who are explicitly calling for packing the court. They're actually saying, you know, put a bunch of justice on here to ruin this equipoids that we have. I think it's really sad. I think that the court right now is one of the last highly functional institutions in American public life.

57:06And for elected leaders to be calling for its destruction is just sad. Well, I think what here and here's an image from Axio showing, you know, six Republican nominated and three Democrat nominated. I think to give the counter -argument, you know, Roe v. Wade being overturned with something, the majority of the country didn't want. These three people were added for that explicit purpose by Trump. People have trauma pain over that reasonably, I think. And then the truth is, though, if they are, you know, just one standard deviation here, as you can see in this axioste chart, which is based on some data.

57:46I don't trust this term. I think this chart is worthless Jason. I think you explain to you actual articles. No, but I'm saying, no, no, look at the actual articles. You don't even know what it is. If you look at it, it's just, my point is, this is meaningless. A child could have drawn this. It means nothing. No, no, a child didn't draw it. Schema, this was a mark. How do you know? Was I reading the source of the data? This is based on something called the Martin Quinn score. An analysis by political scientist, Andrew Martin Kevin Quinn. Now what is the Martin Quinn score? Places judges on an IDL, ideological spectrum.

58:16a lower score indicates a more liberal justice, or a higher score indicates a more conservative justice. And then they went through all of their decisions. So you're saying this objective classifier, a subjective classifier is created by these two random people, and you're now regranding the score like it means something. No, I think it's an interesting way, it's an interesting chart to discuss, to understand a little bit of their meanings. What I would encourage anybody to do is to look at the actual substance of the decisions and the votes and what you will see is that people are not as easily predictable as that chart would show.

58:52And I think that's what's important. Okay. I think that chart supports exactly what you just said, Zach's, right? Yeah. I mean, not exactly. I mean, again, I view it as a 333 court. A lot of other people have written about that and they've got their own diagrams and charts to show that. Look, I think it's a court, like I said, in Equipois. I don't think it's partisan. I think it's being reasonably fair. I don't agree with every single ruling. Like I said, I would have liked to see a different result in Biden being Missouri, however, I think on the whole, they're doing a good job. And it really should be a scandal that you've got powerful lawmakers explicitly calling for the court to be packed.

59:33I mean, that would be a disaster, right? Because you have nine justices, which is a good number. You try to increase that to 13, then the next time the Republicans have control, they're going to increase it to 15 or 21 or whatever. And pretty soon we're going to have 100 justices on the court. You'll ruin it. You know, really nine justices should be a constitutional requirement. We should just fix it at nine and not mess with that. So it's just a scandalist to me that you've got politicians who are reacting to reasonable decisions by saying that we need to pack the court. Okay, quick hit here.

1:00:04This is an important story for you, Chimoff's code is also agreed to hear a case on the limits of online porn in its next term Which starts in October The law and questions pass Will it impact in Cognito mode because if it is that I think this is a really ugly or you Could you imagine if they banned in Cognito mode? I think you might want to do a deep dive into how incognito incognito mode is. You may want to get a VPI. I'm pretty sure Texas is going to bend incognito mode. Texas and Florida. I think a couple of these sites because of the threat of these laws of age -gating, they've just decided to wholesale leave certain states by IP address.

1:00:55Therefore, the sale of VPNs in Texas went up because when you went to certain porn sites I said, hey, because of Texas's proposing these laws, we're not going to allow you to visit this website. Nick, do the MDZ thing the more you know, the more you know. Okay. Scoters agreed to hear a case on the limits of online porn in its next term, which starts in October. The long question was passed by Texas legislature in 2020. They require porn sites to verify the age of their users and restrict access for my It seems reasonable. Fifth circuit court in New Orleans, appellate the law sending it to the Supreme Court if appellate users would have to submit personal info that verifies the road rating to watch porn.

1:01:34The law is opposed by the ACLU and the free speech coalition, which is a trade group representing adult entertainers and companies They argue it places an undue burden on adults wishing to access constantly protective free expression. Oh speaking of porn and its related businesses is the Rick's Cabaret Recession Index is back on. Did you guys see this? It was published on Twitter. So Rick's Cabaret is a collection of public strip clubs. I mean, that's cool. And what's interesting about the Rick's Cabaret Stock Price is that it has presaged the last two recessions. So whenever the stock dies, people have said it actually predicts an upcoming recession and the stock just puked up 25 or 30 % in the last week.

1:02:20There it is. So people do not have the cheddar to go to the cabaret and go splashy cash in the cabaret. It's called Rick's cabaret, but the strip club index as recessions is on the office. I prefer cabaret. It's more charming. All right, so. So take out the surprise here and not discussing in the immunity case. That's the one that all the puns are not ventilating. Oh, we'll get to reventilating about it. I made it, I made it last. I'll counter the Rick's caparet recession indicator as valid anymore based on the theory of our good friend on the group chat, who I think has done a very good job highlighting that the strip club industry has been decimated by only fans.

1:03:03As a result, Rick's caparet is more likely down because of only fans and the lack of, Hmm. Shall we say employee base available to work in these establishments because they make more money working online at OnlyFans now? That was a theory posted positive by one of our good friends. But you got to think that that showed up in the data at least a year or two years ago, no? Because how long has OnlyFans been around a long time? I'm guessing. Well, but I think it peaked during COVID because you know, you couldn't go to a camera, right? If you wanted to take in a cabaret show and have a, you know, a bottle of champagne at a cabaret show, you can do it.

1:03:41So the thesis of our friend is, the thesis of our friend is that only fans, yeah, only fans took all the entertainers out of the strip club industry because they make more money online. Cabaret, cabaret industry, I'm sorry, please edit that, Nick. And as a result, the quality of the product at the cabaret business has declined. And as a result, revenue has declined. And it took a little bit of time to earn that in. So the virtual cabaret industry that's our friend's theory we give him a big shout out. We will yeah shout out to Book called the beep theory. Yeah the beef theory so the the elite cabaret artists We can make more money on only fans but go there and then that leaves the less refined artists Why it's so good I'm trying to navigate this and not get labeled.

1:04:34Zach, where are you on this? What's your opinion? Zach's going to wait next. I'm trying to get into cabinet position. So anyway, so far 16 red states have passed or agreed to pass age gaming. Jake has got the Dundrumiflin index of whatever. Sorry, I couldn't hear you guys. Come on, we'll have to say again. Cut out. You are the Dundrumiflin K -score of XYZ Red Dundrumiflin. Johnson. Under Mifflin. So, which way do you count? Dr. Mifflin score. I don't understand the doctor. I'm not sure. Didn't you? Is that from the office? I don't watch the office. Oh, okay. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. What is wrong with you?

1:05:19You would never get into it. I never got into it. But yeah, I've probably watched it like four times. That's the paper company where they work. Yeah. Yeah. Apparently, we've had a huge victory for Trump in the immunity case. Trump sued, in this case, based on special counsels, Jack Smith's prosecution of Trump for alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election in his role in January 6th. If you don't remember that case, since there's so many cases against Trump, this was based on Trump pressuring Mike Pence to not certify the election, his phone call to get the 11 ,780 votes. that were missing in Georgia or Giuliani and the WACPAC trying to fake electorates to overturn the election.

1:06:01Trump argued that he should be immune from prosecution for acts committed while he was president. So go to rule six three along party lines that former presidents can't face prosecution for actions that related to core powers of their office and that official official official. That was literally what a core powers of their office and that all official acts receive at least the broad presumption of immunity. Here's the quote under our constitutional structure of separated powers in nature of presidential power, entitled former president to absolute immunity for criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and reclusive constitutional authority.

1:06:43And he has entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official There is no immunity for unofficial acts that would be outside the duty of the president's chief justice Roberts emphasized that decision that the decision doesn't necessarily mean presidents are above the law and her Descending opinion just as such a my or wrote that under the new ruling criminal law can't be applied to presidents Even if they misuse their office for personal gains. She wrote that if the president orders the navies seal team six to assassinate a political rival he is now insulated from criminal prosecution.

1:07:18Another quote, the president is now a king above the law. She closed with this line with fear for our democracy. I descend. Notably this breaks the tradition of closing with respectfully dissent. So Trump's attempts to overturn the election results case now hinges on whether Trump's conduct was private or related to his official duty. For example, the lower courts now have to determine when Trump pressured Pence to not certify the election. if that was an official business of being president or not or when he called Georgia and said, hey, can you find me 11 ,000 votes? Was that official duty or is it outside his duty?

1:07:56President Trump has already cited the immunity ruling in requesting a New York judge throw out his conviction in the hush money case sentencing for that was pushed back from July 11 to September because of this ruling. Sax, there's your run. What do you think, Jacob? Well, Jacob, what do you think? I mean, I read the, I'm halfway through the original PDF and I do think the president needs immunity, obviously, for conducting business. And then I do think if they step outside the lines, they should not have immunity. And then the devil will be in the details here. And that's what courts and juries exist to do.

1:08:37So when he told Mike Pence to not certify the election, he's obviously not doing that as part of his duty as president when he called Georgia to get the 11 ,000 votes. He was not doing that. That's why he had outside counsel there. That's why he hired Giuliani and the whack that. What do you think of Sotomayor's hypothetical of using CLT6 to kill a political rival? Well, I thought that was... You think that he would be immune from prosecution? Anybody would be immune from prosecution for that? No, that seemed a little bit historical. And actually that came up in the discussions. I actually listened to the audio version of this when they were doing the Q &A basically.

1:09:16And I think you listened to it too, Fred. We had talked about it. So yeah, I think that Dev will be in the details here and how they execute it. Obviously you need to have immunity if you're going to, I don't know, take actions to assassinate Osama bin Laden, right, or whatever it is. But, you know, it's a bit concerning this concept of being able to shield the president when he asks, I don't know, the attorney general to do something illegal. So these are the details that are going to need to be worked out here. And obviously it's a split decision. So the Supreme Court themselves can't agree on this.

1:09:50I think that there's just so much we don't know about what it takes to be the president of the United States. The example that I gave you guys in the group chat is like, look at the whole Iran contra affair. here. How complicated was that? Can any of us really understand what all of the interplay was when Ronald Reagan decides to work around a weapons embargo, sell weapons to Iran, take money, funnel it and fund the send in East does. In the middle of all of that, there was a huge cocaine trade that was kind of enabled or supported. I mean, how do we know? I think there's just a lot of latitude that you give to the one person that you elect to be president And so maybe it's just a good reminder for all of us that we are electing one person We cannot be electing five or six people.

1:10:36We're not electing a shadow cabinet. We're electing one person And this is just a reminder of how much power that one person has Sacchia votes I Think this was an easy decision All the majority did was codify explicitly what has long been presumed that presence and joy brought immunity for official acts that they undertake in the exercise of their constitutional authority and the duties of their office. It was established decades ago that presence and joy brought immunity from civil lawsuits. So it's already been the case that presidents can't be sued civilly. Well, criminal liability is even harder to prove.

1:11:15So if you have the broad immunity from civil, you should have broad immunity from criminal as well. And the Supreme Court, I think, had never ruled on criminal immunity because they never had to. No former president's ever been subjected to the type of law fair that's been deployed against Trump. It also happens to be the political opponent of the current president. So I think it's a shame that the Supreme Court has had to rule on this. Did they get every detail right? I don't know. I don't know had the Sun President Lawfare against Trump. And that's why they've been forced to do this. So ultimately, I think this is the right decision.

1:11:52No, it does not authorize drone strikes against the President's political enemies. It's insane. It does not make the President above the law or a king. And I think that Roberts in his ruling said the key things. He said that the dissent's position in the end boils down to ignoring the Constitution's separation of powers and the Court's precedent. and instead fear mongers on the base of extreme hypotheticals. And then he says that the dissents overlook the more likely prospect of an executive branch that cannibalizes itself with each successive president free to prosecute his predecessors, yet unable to boldly and fearlessly carry out his duties to fear that he may be next.

1:12:35I think that's really the key line here is that you're posing all these insane hypotheticals Instead of recognizing the practical reality that if you don't give president's immunity, then the next president is going to prosecute the old president. And future presidents will be hamstrung in doing this very important job that's already difficult enough. So I think that this was just a necessary decision. There was no way around it. And the president already has civil immunity. You got to give him criminal immunity too. But, Friberg, your thoughts, I guess, the steel man on the other side would be, you know, Trump doing things like calling Georgia and asking to find votes or pressuring the president, the vice president to overturn the election results after 60 -failed legal cases is what's concerning the other side.

1:13:24So do you have a take on it? I think that the distinction between acting in their executive capacity as president of United States versus their personal capacity as an individual candidate or an individual that could benefit through some other means is a really good distinction. I think how the courts ultimately adjudicate that distinction is what's still ahead. But I do think that the clarity of that distinction is critical. It seems like the right thing, how this is going to play out with respect to election interference. does interfering in the election constitute one's role as an executive overseeing the federal election process?

1:14:06Or does it constitute one's personal benefits that may arise if one is individually elected as the key determinant that the lower court will likely have to make? Maybe that gets kicked back up again in the future if there's a disagreement over the decision that the court does make with regards to that distinction. Where do you stand on that, Saxo? In previous episodes, it said you didn't believe even this election interference, and you thought Trump lost. Have you changed your position on that, or are you still in that position? That's totally relevant to the course decision. Let me ask you a follow -up to that then.

1:14:37So in the case of, do you think Trump was acting officially when he asked Georgia to find the votes, when he has Pence to overturn the election, or do you think he was acting in his duty? I think that what you just described there is what's known as a question of fact in the legal system. There are questions of law and questions of fact. And what the Supreme Court has done is given us a doctrine. They've answered the question of law. They've basically given us a three -part test. They said that when the president acts within his exclusive constitutional authority, he gets broad immunity when he does an official duty, but that's not in that category.

1:15:11He gets presumptive immunity, meaning that the prosecutor can still go after him. They just have to rebut the presumption. And when he gauges in a personal act, there's no immunity. So, look, what has to happen now is if Jack Smith, wants to continue this prosecution of Trump, he's going to have to make the argument that Trump's acts are either personal or were part of his duties, but he's going to rebut the presumption. So that is the now the question of fact that Jack Smith would have to litigate. And I'm not going to litigate it here. I don't know the answer to that. But again, I would separate questions of long questions of fact.

1:15:45With the Supreme Court has done, I think, has given us a useful doctrine that the presidency now needs in light of the reality of law fair. So this is the one I think, Chimoff, that is super fascinating because I could see President Trump and his lawyer saying, hey, very simple. We think there was election interference. So yeah, we called Georgia to make sure that those 11 ,000 votes were there. And hey, we thought this was not a fair election. So I was acting in my duty and when I told Pence to not certify the election, I could see them making that argument. What do you think? I don't know the specifics of these cases, but I think it's going to force a prosecutor to have a really strong point of view and have evidence and then go after somebody.

1:16:31But again, I think you're focusing too much on Trump. Robert said in the decision, you have to look past the exigencies of the current moment. This is a set of rules that's about past presidents and future presidents. This is forever. And so that's the most important thing here, which is there's a set of rules that I think we can all agree on because the man that we all elect, dutyfully elect, is the most powerful person in the world. We knew it before. We know it now. So even more important that we make sure we're picking one person and that person is capable of doing the job. You may not agree, but they need to be competent and capable of doing the job.

1:17:12Yeah, well, they definitely have to be competent and this case was brought by Trump over this specific issue. So I think that's what we look at this specific judgment here. That's what they're going to have to determine in the coming months or years with this case is was he acting in his duty or was he not? That's going to be a really interesting case. I think that between this ruling and another case called Fisher versus US, which is the January 6th obstruction case where the Supreme Court in a six -stream majority found that Sorbaine's oxyly was being misused to create a new crime called obstructing an official proceeding.

1:17:48When you combine that judgment with this judgment, I think Jackson is just a resign. It's pretty clear that from court has kicked the legs out from under his case. And by the way, Katanji Jackson supported that decision. That's right. So again, not a hyper -adulterated logical, not a hyper -parsent court, they just ruled that Sorbaine's oxyly had nothing to do with what happened on January 6th, and it was being misused by a creative prosecutor. And I told you, when these Jack Smith cases first came, I said, it's not the job of prosecutor to be creative. Their job is to narrowly interpret the law and to enforce the law.

1:18:23And you combine these rulings together and you can see that Jack Smith has now an even more uphill battle. It's time for him to resign, start with the three -� -two hundred convictions. It's not just one. That's right. It's two hundred of them, small percentage of the overall convictions now. They took hundreds of people who did not engage in any violence on January 6th. Many of them just wandered through an open door in the capital and they were prosecuted to the hill. They were sent to jail for that because this DOJ wanted to send a statement. They wanted to use them as a political talking point.

1:18:57And that's a shame. I think hundreds of people were hardly mistreated by the judicial system as part of a political prosecution. Now, there are some people. Except for the ones who beat police and brought on violence. No problem putting those people in jail. No problem. Anyone who use violence, go directly to jail, do not pass go. But some of these people just took a tour through the Capitol. And all those people got suspended sentences and trespassing. No, it's being taken. So once you went to jail. Take a chance, Lee spent three years in jail. Yeah, the ones who went to jail were the ones who beat cops.

1:19:30No, not take it a chance, Lee. That's because he wore the Viking. Remember the guy with the Viking? Oh yeah, so they also went to jail. If you did damage, if you vandalized, yeah, that was the other reason people went to jail. I saw a video of him getting a guy to tour through the Capitol. I mean, if you vandalized a Capitol building, I guess you have to do something. What do you do? He moved to Dei's room. No, I think they like shattered the windows and, you know, he did. I never saw any video of him doing that. Anyway, they picked on him because he used an easy target because he looked like a weirdo.

1:20:00And he had the Viking horns. and he has a history of mental problems. And so they put that man in jail for years. Yeah, I'm not concerned about him. I'm concerned about the ones who brought all the long guns to the hotels around the Capitol to have backup firepower. But hey, everybody's got a different opinion on this. We, that kind of stuff. He all in podcast. You can have those concerns. I don't think let's you put it in some people in jail. Yeah, I think you can hold both of those ideas. I don't think anybody in a sense you go to jail. I don't think the old keeper should have brought guns to the capital.

1:20:32Okay. They didn't they've bumped to Virginia. It just be clear. Yeah, they brought them to the hotels around them. Huge large cash. In Virginia. Yeah. Yeah. In Virginia. Yeah. They drove to the capital. Okay. I'm not defending them. I'm not defending them. I'm just clarifying that there are no guns at the capital because that's they were in the hotel. That's a lie. But I don't think innocent people who just wanted to do the capital should go to jail and that clearly we agree. We agree. that you're not going to get trust passing tickets. Okay. This episode 186 of the world's number one podcasted Biden resigned while we're shaping.

1:21:08Biden just went on a campaign call and he said, let me say this as clearly as I possibly can, as simply and straightforward as I can, I am running. No one's pushing me out. I'm not leaving. I'm in this race to the end and we're going to win. Whoa. I think it's more likely than not that they're not going to replace Biden and because the only feasible alternative is Harris and should be worse. And I think it's more dangerous for the country, frankly. I'd rather to see Biden finish out his term than put someone new and experienced. Even if he had control. Control, control. Control, control. Control.

1:21:41It's too bad choices, J .K .L. and I don't agree with Biden's policies, but there's continuity there. Okay, four, the chairman dictator from the home office in Italy, Chimapahapetia, your Sultan of science, and the Rainman, yeah definitely definitely cabinet position. David Sachs, I am the world's greatest moderator of the number one podcast in the world. See you next time. Bye bye.

1:22:27Besties are gone, don't drink. That's my dog taking a wish to drive away. Oh man, my ham is a bit asher. We should all just get a room and just have one big hug or two because they're all just just like this like sexual tension that we just need to release that out. What your feet, what your feet? Here are Fee. Fee, what? Good, good. Where did you get my cheese? I'm doing all it.

1:23:00I'm doing all it.