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Last one of the year, people. And what a year it’s been; but hey, let’s not get into that now. To help us put a bow on 2020, we asked our official election law analyst, John Yoo to stop by to delve into the latest suits filed and what options are left (hie National Review piece published earlier this week worth reading before you listen to his segment). Then, we wanted to end things on a happy note, so we asked our podcasting colleague Arthur Brooks, host of Ricochet’s Art of Happiness podcast to help us reset our attitudes and psyches for 2021. We also asked to give some TLC to a certain misanthropic member of this crew. Did it work? Only time will tell. Finally, we do some spelunking of bad Christmas tunes (and some good ones, too) courtesy of Lileks Post of The Week winner @cliffordbrown. Also, are people with grad degrees doctors? What say you?
Thanks for sticking with us through a turbulent and yes, often contentious year. We very much appreciate the listens and your feedback. We wish everyone a happy and healthy Christmas break and we’ll see you back here on January 8th.
Music from this week’s show: Baby It’s Cold Outside by Ella Fitzgerald (feat. Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five)
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Move along, folks. There’s nothing to see here.
Great post!
Haley’s interesting in that both sides seem to hate/distrust her — the #NeverTrump crowd was angered that she didn’t join the attacks on Trump when she left her U.N. post. So both sides think she’s in some way trying to hide who she really is, which is not a recipe for success in 2024.
The one the #NeverTrump people really appeared to be setting up opposition to going all the way back to 2018 is Josh Hawley, who they seem to think knows better than to court Trump’s base but is doing so anyway. I think that’s how 2021-23 is going to shake out before the candidates announce, in that you’ll have certain candidates who get love from the Trump-haters and others who get it from the Trump-lovers. The question is will there be the anti-Haley candidate, who instead of being distrusted by both sides can at least bridge the gap between the ‘soft’ #NeverTrump people and Trump’s backers (you’re not bridging the Grand Canyon between Trump’s fans and the hardcore #NeverTrump crowd).
The “hardcore #NeverTrump crowd” will come up with some kind of flimsy rationalization for opposing the Republican candidate in 2024, regardless of who he is, and supporting the Democratic candidate, regardless of who she is.
One, John has tenure, appears on Fox News regularly, is a Fellow at two (!) conservative think tanks, writes or podcasts constantly for several Conservative publications including this one, and has never been shy about expressing his opinion — popular or not. Two, does this look like a guy who lives in fear of losing his job to the woke mob?
Does it ever occur to you guys that maybe some things are as they appear? Not everything is a conspiracy theory. 🙄
Again, consider the possibility that John actually believes what he is saying. Just because you don’t agree doesn’t make him insincere.
Yes, it’s very nice to see that meme makers know how to use Google Images. P.S. Rightly or wrongly, the Biden campaign made a point of creating events that were attempting to be COVID safe because they thought it would appeal to their base. But you knew that already.
LOL.
I come at this from a more basic level. Two points:
An actual person moved Republican poll watchers away from the counting. Since this nullifies the basic poll watching function, the FBI should interview the responsible individuals, check their bank statements and contacts. An actual person delivered a truckload of ballots in the middle of the night. Again, law enforcement determines where the truck picked up the ballots and work backwards. When claims like the ones we’ve seen in this election come up, it warrants an investigation by FBI personnel who work with fraud, embezzlement and other white collar crimes that involve fraud. And that doesn’t take years. If there are violations, prosecutions should follow. And it puts the judges in a position where they cannot claim that there is no evidence or not enough evidence. It’s my understanding that no judge involved to date has reviewed evidence. It means a lot if the evidence has been properly gathered and documented by the FBI.
Secondly, as an accountant, I can say that there are pretty simple ways to provide an audit trail that survives the separation of envelopes and ballots. Matrix barcodes are discreet and can permit checking that the ballot was properly recorded while protecting confidentiality. That type of barcode can include voter name, address, date received, ballot counter, all sorts of information we wish we had now. And it would permit stat sampling, signature verification, isolation of suspect ballots (like a pallet of ballots being delivered to Harrisburg from New York state) and some easy high level checks of the counts. Like whether a batch of ballots was counted twice or if a voter submitted more than one ballot or if the voter was properly registered to vote or capable of legally voting. It’s not 1958. Any system that does not lend itself to audit just begs for fraud.
Remember, “man is the rationalizing animal”.
Yoo is aware that opposing the stolen election narrative is — comfortable, not likely to result in his colleagues turning their backs on him. While supporting that narrative might put him beyond the pale.
So he gratefully embraces his comfy conclusions and doesn’t dig any deeper. As I have pointed out more than once, he doesn’t appear to be very well informed on the issue of election fraud, or on the facts of the 2020 election. Maybe he doesn’t want to know … ?
Like the German villagers who said they were unaware of what was going on behind that barb wire fence, I think he is sincere. Pretty much sincere!
P.S.: The technical term for this is “motivated reasoning”.
The controls are patently absurd.
Zuckerberg’s ballot harvesting is absurd.
Never Trump is satisfied, regardless.
The whole situation is comprehensively un-American.
Yes, John’s grasp of the facts and legalities concerning the election pale in comparison to those towering intellectual jurisprudence and complex election law experts Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Lin Wood. John definitely has one thing going for him those guys don’t: He was right.
P.S. How’d those crack lawyers actually do for the President? Has any one seen any Kraken roaming around lately? Because I was promised Kraken…
Also, in your German villager analogy, are you actually comparing the people who believe there was “massive fraud” to holocaust victims? If so…..wow.
You’re missing the point, and an opportunity. Jon has firmly taken one position, and his arguments follow along that line or reasoning, but there are others (smart, tenured, articulate individuals) who hold opposite opinions. It looks like you are only choosing guests who push the National Review narrative which makes for one way, echo chamber conversations that make for lazy content. The beauty of Ricochet has always been the airing of contrary positions on the topics of the day. I’d love to see a lively debate about the actual evidence instead of flippant dismissals of it.
Some people have clearly gone off the deep end, and no, I am not referring to you. According to some, the “Kraken” is a highly classified computer program that allowed a number of people in the White House SCIF to watch the fraud occurring in real time. If such an advanced program exists, I’m pretty sure that Sidney Powell would not have a clue about its existence.
If you are referring to John Eastman, this idea has come up before. The man has serious credibility issues which I previously commented on here. Eastman is also apparently very careless when preparing briefs, even when his client is the POTUS and the venue is the Supreme Court. He’s also very bad at predictions. John Yoo has been right on (as far as I know) every prediction he’s made about the election cases.
More recently, Eastman charged (and several people on this site breathlessly pointed out to me as proof of a conspiracy) that the Supreme Court was heard by a witness on the other side of the door “screaming at each other” about being fearful that refusing to hear the PA case would result in mass rioting. The tweet with the video of Eastman telling this story to an audience has been deleted. Wonder why.
I’ll cop to the charge of being flip when it comes to Eastman. He’s a hack.
We had one with Rob and John O’Sullivan two weeks ago. Granted, neither of them are lawyers but the top level issues and attitudes were well represented in that debate.
Getting two lawyers from the two side of this debate is difficult because (in my experience — and yes, I have asked), the lawyers on the Trump side don’t really want to have a debate. They want to speak unopposed into a microphone. Yes, I am aware that there are some notable exceptions — Mark Levin, maybe Alan Dershowitz come to mind — but I am not comfortable with putting Dershowitz on our network for reasons I am sure you are aware of.
I also take issue with your contention that we are amplifying the “National Review echo chamber.” We’re doing what we have always done: putting on the most credible people we can find. That credible people are overwhelmingly on one side of this issue should tell you something about how this controversy is playing out.
I wasn’t referring to John Eastman. Previously we mentioned Mark Levin with regard to the law talk but there are others: reporters, writers, business people etc..Sharyl Attkisson, Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, Joe Oltmann, Eric Metaxas, Charlie Kirk, heck even Rand Paul can make the case. Don’t their areas of expertise warrant a thoughtful, coherent discussion of the issues that so many of your members are talking about?
Sharyl Attkisson’s not credible?
I listened. John O’Sullivan only touched on the topic and not with a fully-grounded understanding of the entire issue, but it was a step in the right direction.
She’s not a lawyer. Not going to host a debate about the Constitution, federal and state election law, and court procedures with a layman and one of the best legal Constitutional scholars in the country. Then you guys will just tell me I put John up against an easy mark. And you’d be right.
I’m suggesting you put her, or any of the people I’ve mentioned, against Rob, Peter, and James and see which ones learn something new. Jon Yoo doesn’t understand much of what this issue hinges on (it’s not even really about the courts at this point) including whatever Alito and Thomas agreed on.
OK, well, I’m being asked to do two different things here: bring on a legal analyst to debate John and now, have someone come on for the sole purpose of schooling Rob, Peter, and James. OK.
Our next show is in 3 weeks on January 8th. Let’s see where things stand in the first week of January. I am happy to consider it, but it may well be water under the bridge at that point.
P.S. John Yoo doesn’t “understand much of what this issue hinges on”? You’ll have to enlighten me as well, because I thought (and was told repeatedly here) that it was all about how the courts were mis-interpreting existing election law.
John Yoo doesn’t understand the issues revolving computer code, voting machine algorithmic manipulation and so forth. The courts are only one aspect of it this topic, but they’ve been ignoring all of the evidence, not ruling on it. He also doesn’t see the law regarding the Texas lawsuit (now Trump’s lawsuit) the way that Thomas and Alito do. Which of the three are right? If you want a lawyer to debate that issue you have options, Robert Barnes is one but surely there are others.
Yes this will all be moot by Jan 8th but that just goes down as a lost opportunity.
I don’t want to see them be schooled, I like these guys, always have. I do want to hear them entertain and discuss some perspectives that are in opposition to what the establishment GOP have settled on. It’s about the conversation, not about proving one person wrong or right, at least it used to be. Maybe that’s not what Ricochet is about anymore.
That’s fair and a very good summation of what we’re trying to do here. Not opposed to at all. Have to find the right person to rep that POV who would be willing to come on explain/defend their position. It’s not easy (again, in my experience most of the people on that side of the issue don’t want to debate, they want to advocate). But post some suggestions here and I’ll try to make it happen.
Merry Christmas Yeti. I hope you get some well deserved time off.
RE: the section with Arthur Brooks. He seemed unusually angry and hostile in his remarks about Trump, very odd for someone that is preaching about love and happiness. Perhaps he harbors some internal fear or other complex emotions that hinder his ability to calmly and objectively understand and comment on the last four years. Wish there was something (maybe a podcast that he could listen to?) that could help him deal with his underlying fears and anxieties, to achieve a more positive outlook. After all, we should be thankful that we have just had the most conservative administration since Ronald Reagan, and made much progress on many fronts for the conservative cause, while avoiding a Hilary Clinton administration that would have been potentially devastating. A grateful heart is warranted…
“Wow”, indeed — talk about Reading Incomprehension!
Just pointing out that sometimes people go to great lengths not to know something uncomfortable or unpleasant. And for a great many people the idea that the election may have been stolen is very uncomfortable and very unpleasant. (Another analogy I’ve used is the wife who refuses to see that her husband is molesting her child.)
Setting aside all the sneering, you seem to think that it’s a choice: either John Yoo is right, or Giuliani-Powell-Wood. (This is known as the Fallacy of the Excluded Middle, or the False Dichotomy.) They might all be wrong, perhaps in different ways.
I don’t give Yoo too much credit for predicting the courts will not overturn the election, since I’ve been saying the same thing all along, and I am no legal expert. Once illegal ballots are cast, the only remedy is to re-run the election, and the courts simply aren’t going to order that. The way I like to put it is, Joe Biden stole the election fair and square.
If Yoo supported the stolen election narrative, what might be the consequences to him? Well, if a future Republican President nominates him for a high position, with the Senate in Democratic hands, this would probably be enough to block him.