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For conservatives, is the Supreme Court reason enough to vote for Donald Trump? Also, if you’re a conservative and you’re voting for neither Trump nor Hillary, are you really voting for Hillary, as so many allege?
Jay explores these questions with a brilliant colleague of his from National Review, Ian Tuttle. They also talk about Tuttle’s alma mater: St. John’s College. There, young people study the best that has been thought and written. Are they better off for it? Is their society?
Well, those are easy ones. Ian Tuttle is an exceptional thinker, and talker, as you will hear.
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Jay Nordlinger, 2005 – “As usual, Thomas Sowell has spoken for me: ‘A nightmare for the 2008 presidential election: Hillary versus John McCain. I wouldn’t know whether to vote Libertarian or move to Australia.'”
Ian Tuttle said Trump would “prosecute journalists.. who offer unfavorable coverage” and claims Trump said he would “require American Troops to commit war crimes.” Perhaps someone should fact check those claims by Ian, I suspect those claims are based on Trump statements taken out of context.
Hmm, insular echo chamber elites who have never dug a ditch or had a fist fight in their lives.
Yes the supremes are enough for some of us.
I find it disturbing that we’re now valuing the loss of judges more than the loss of senators, like Ayotte or Rubio or Toomey. These folks actually vote on laws…..yet we care more about the guys that may interpret those laws.
As Tuttle implied, the only way Ginsburg or Breyer is leaving the Court while Trump is president is in a casket. No WAY do they retire. I even think Kennedy wouldn’t want to be replaced by Trump. So, Trump would only likely get one appointment anyway. Then of course theres the lower courts. Overall though, if you admit that you can be placated by nothing but judge promises….get ready to be politically irrelevant in the Trump Party.
Placated isn’t exactly the word for how I feel
I also disagree with your reasoning about judge numbers.
I have also been actively helping our senatorial candidate in Nevada which may be the most critical race in the nation .
Given how the national race is going right now along with the republican civil war and the possible negative coat tails I think every senate race is equally important.
The first statement probably refers to Trump’s desire to “open up the libel laws” so he could sue, rather than prosecute, journalists who “do not treat [him] fairly.”
The second statement I did hear Trump say almost verbatim. When he said, I believe at a debate, that he thought it would be a good idea to kill the families of terrorists, he was told that the military would refuse to carry out such illegal orders because they would be war crimes, to which he replied, and I quote from memory, “If I order them to do it they’ll do it. That’s what leadership is all about and I’ve always been a great leader.”
Yes, I think your are right. That would mean Tuttle took the liberty to equate libel to “unfavorable coverage.” Not an even handed representation of Trump’s words.
continued..
There is obviously some context and qualifiers missing in his quick statements. But he was asked to clarify in a debate what he meant. Here is the answer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_LjFIU87ss
His answer was directed at families who knowingly support their children or husband in their terrorist activities. That is, accomplices. It is a peculiarity of Islamic terrorist culture (Hamas, Iran, and others) where the families are paid cash or stipend when a family member martyrs them self. How many videos have we seen of Palestinian parents offering their child to be martyrs? Lots. That is the context as Trump explained. His recommendation was not to indiscriminately kill “innocent” civilians, recasting it as “require American Troops to commit war crimes” willfully ignores the context of the proposal in favor of casting it in as negative light as possible. But I must say, I will not defend the wisdom of making such a statement.
Duplicate post.
I was referring to an earlier debate, from which his statements drew widespread condemnation. He did not contextualize his recommendation to only kill accomplices, except for a wild accusation, unfounded so far as I can tell, that some of the 19 terrorists on Sept. 11 sent their wives home from the US a few days before the attacks.
There were unsubstantiated accusations as expected. But the bias is mostly easily made clear in looking at the title for the podcast. It was not Talking about Trump or Talking Trump but:
Talkin’ Trump, so that is sounds like Talkin’ Trash
And to make the low esteem in which he holds Trump perfectly clear, the full title is:
Talkin’ Trump (Plus Higher Things)
I might be getting tired, but it seems like the same answer with the same limitation of families that are accomplices. I think the opposition spoken of in the video clip are reacting to the prior to debate media presentation of Trump’s words.
By the way I found this article supporting Trump’s approach of targeting accomplice families. It is from the unlikely source of the New York Times (a former newspaper).
I interpret Trump’s statements differently. I think he came up with the “accomplice” idea only after he was challenged about ordering war crimes. Notice that when he was told the soldiers wouldn’t obey, he said, “If I order it they’ll do it.” He stressed “taking out their families,” not “taking out their accomplices.”
Finally, the NYT article strikes me as very critical of the Russian practice of killing terrorist family members, many of whom are not accomplices. This is simple murder.
It will be a tooth and nail contest and Joe Heck will either keep us at 51 or not. The dems are pouring money( tens of millions) in to NV like crazy because they realize what I said is true. Yes all races are important but this one will be down to the wire bc of crooked Harry.
Maybe, but the family as support for terrorism seems inherit in the idea or else why kill them? Yes, the NYT article arthor was conflicted. He portrays it as working, but also as unacceptable.
That’s a very interesting question. My answer would be that, as Trump suggests, the terrorists actually care about the lives of their families, and so going after them hits them where they live (no pun intended). It’s a staple of thriller fiction that if you have an enemy who might not care whether he lives or dies, you go after his family because that is what he probably does care about. That is what pretty much everyone heard Trump say during that Fox debate: kill their families. Only later did he start to qualify that to mean “if they knew about the terror activities.” The original formulation, i.e., murder the families, is the reason why it was assumed by everyone, including Trump, that the order would be illegal.
And the story he told about the 9/11 “wives” going home just ahead of the attacks is another crazy story that he seems to have made up out of whole cloth, or maybe he’s confusing some other story in his mind. It’s unfortunate that he keeps doing that.
You have isolated the connected multiple arguments for Trump’s proposal and then are claiming that the individual arguments are sufficient to trigger the proposal. Trump’s argument, formally stated is, if A & B & C then do X. But it does not follow: if A then do X. One of the effects of threatening the family is the dissuasive influence it has on the terrorist, we will call that A. But you can’t isolate that and make it the sole justification for the proposal. So to make it a moral action you need B: the family must be accomplices. You may argue that he didn’t make that initially clear. Not sure if that is true, but let’s say it is. He has elaborated and made them connected requirements.
Next point, everyone is assuming he means kill the family, I don’t recall him ever explicitly saying that. In the clip he said “I would be very very firm with families.” Since he has opportunity to clarify, but has not. I believe he likes the ambiguity. Israel “targets” families also, but only destroys the home of the family of a terrorist. Could that also be considered being very very firm?
Actually, I think the “wives” leaving was referring to another event and not 9/11. You can clarify if I am wrong.
I would love to hear reporters question Obama on his use of drones to kill terrorists. Aren’t those already indiscriminately killing family members? However, it is Trump saying it, so that makes the statement encouraging to war crimes. It’s a good thing these people claim to be Republicans, otherwise they might be considered Democrats.
Here is the transcript of the interview he gave to CBS on the subject:
He does leave that a bit vague. In the same interview he says, “And I guess your definition of what I would do, I’m going to leave that to your imagination. But I will tell you I would be very tough on families, because the families know what is happening.” You tell me what that means within our laws and international law.
But even if by “going after the families” he means something less than killing them, he needs to make clear that he means within the law, and not something that would be a war crime that our soldiers would perform just because he orders it and he’s a great leader. His formulation led everyone to believe he meant war crimes. He didn’t say otherwise when he was on the first debate stage. Later, he walked it back ever so slightly, because he was told to. That does not instill confidence when it happens so regularly.
Many Saudis did leave after 9/11, but apparently not until the flight ban was removed. However, there seems to be plenty of questions surrounding GWB protecting the Saudis. I don’t believe one Iraqi was involved in the Trade Center, Pentagon, Pennsylvania attack on 9/11. Weren’t they all Saudis? I should say, our allies, the Saudis.
Going after accomplices is so obvious that it doesn’t need to be argued one way or the other. I challenge anyone to find any person anywhere who would say, “I am not in favor of going after accomplices.” Headline in the NYT: “Trump says we should go after accomplices in terror attacks. Democrats criticize.”
This is a subsequent justification that doesn’t suffice, in my opinion, to obviate the wrongfulness of his first reaction.
On a different subject, he said two days ago we might not defend Japan if they are attacked by North Korea. If he decides to walk that back in a couple of days it is already too late. The Norks heard it, and they probably can’t wait for him to be elected. They will believe (correctly) that he means the initial statement and that the walk-back is what his political advisors told him he has to say.
I believe it was a post-attack exodus, not pre, which makes all the difference. It was probably arranged to provide for their safety, as the administration probably already knew most of the hijackers were Saudis.
Trump’s statement gets the identities and the timing wrong. So, it’s altogether wrong and fails to support his larger point that it’s okay to go after families.
Back to the drones…
BTW, what were Allied forces doing in WWII when they fire bombed Dresden or nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
The Islamic terrorists kill innocents indiscriminately on purpose. They want chaos and fear in our hearts. I want them to pay for their mayhem and death. Killing their families may actually be the most effective and long term humane way to stop this.
Why stop at terrorist’s families? Why not firebomb (or nuke) their cities and kill every last man, woman, and child?
Or, if we want their families killed, let’s round up those families and make videos of us chopping their heads off, and then we can put those videos up on youtube.
Maybe the better analogy is that when we captured German and Japanese soldiers we should have identified where their families were and sent assassination teams to kill them.
In fact, I don’t know why we don’t kill the families of those guys who shoot at cops. That will deter them.
Agreed. Except not everyone thought he meant war crimes (like me) but certainly you are right that the media portrayed it that way. I would expect the “respectable” people who have endorsed him do not believe he means war crimes.
It’s not fair to blame the media for reporting his remarks accurately.
He’s claims to be smart (“I have a great brain.”) And he wants to be our president. He needs to be able to handle a simple question so that people get his meaning.
Watch this clip. Please explain to me what you think he meant by what he himself said, and not what any of the media said he meant. Explain how this could be interpreted as anything other than saying, “If I order war crimes, they will commit war crimes.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zle7YThX2r8