File away for future Xmas and B-Day shopping

John Yoo is back this week, bringing the 3WHH up to full strength again after last week’s astonishingly congenial episode, which can mean only one thing—not even high tariffs, which this week’s host (Steve) vainly tried to impose on ths discussion—could stop a vigorous free trade in ideas.

As if to put an exclamation point to the crazy story of the week about the Trump national security team adding a hostile journalist to their Signal group chat about bombing Houthi and the Blowups, Steve accidentally texted the Zoom link to this week’s taping to John Eastman (who was otherwise pre-occupied).

In any case, after reviewing the completely out of whack signal-to-noise ratio of Signalgate, and the latest machinations in the lawfare against Trump, we take up as our main subject the question of whether the burst of enthusiasm among a few liberal thinkers to build stuff again—like liberalism used to in the New Deal—has much prospect of success. As Steve notes, Ezra Klein has called for “supply-side progressivism,” but notes that the newfangled “abundance liberals” don’t have a napkin or a curve, and if you don’t have a napkin or a curve, it’s just sparkling neoliberalism. Needless to say, John is mostly oblivious, and Lucretia is unimpressed. But maybe the movement can start with making their own blue hats, “Make Liberalism Great Again!”  Of course, the acronym this generates sounds like a mumble, but isn’t another mumble a perfect fit for Democrats right now?

The only truly functioning high-speed rail in America today is the Trump Train, and not even the prospect of a 200% tariff on the core commodity of this podcast—single malt scotch whiskies—can dampen the 180-proof spirits of Lucretia, host of this week’s episode.

But we still manage to get in some disagreements about how to understand what is going on, especially with the Ukraine War endgame. In fact, we got John Yoo to out himself as the OGNC (“original gangsta neo-con”) on the question of whether American foreign policy has been overly dominated by Wilsonian internationalism for the last century, or whether it has been more realist. John was responding to my two Substack articles (here and here) on different aspects how idealism and realism play out in the Ukraine matter, disliking both. Lucretia responded with a great harumph.

The whole gang is finally back together behind the bar this week, with John Yoo in the host chair skillfully leading our unruly gang in a round-robin three-subject format that we’re alternating this year.

Steve leads off wondering if Gavin Newsom, and Senate Democrats, are at last having their “Sister Souljah” moment about the transgender millstone around their neck, though Steve points out that Democrats will have great difficulty pulling this off, and lays down two additional markers to judge whether Democrats will really make a serious move to the center. The underlying thesis is that the success of a political realignment is not merely changing your own party and assembling a new majority coalition, as Trump has largely accomplished, but the extent to which it compels the opposition party to change some of its core positions, as Democrats had to do after three landslide losses to Reagan and Bush in the 1980s, and the Labour Party had to do after Thatcher kept crushing them in England at the same time.

Our long-running intramural argument on this podcast over the Ukraine War has become just like the Ukraine War itself—lots of casualties on both sides, but very little movement from week to week. But is Trump actually on the cusp of a breakout? There’s one thing Trump did this week that is surely causing Putin to wipe the smile off his face, and no one seems to have figured it out. It’s all part of Trump’s Great Reset.

There is more unanimity amongst the 3WHH bartenders about Gaza, and once again Trump’s seemingly outrageous or whimsical ideas of making Gaza into Atlantic City doesn’t just move the Overton Window in the Middle East—it remodels the whole structure. Forget the two-state solution.

With Lucretia hosting both the episode and the bar this week (with three different whiskies just for herself), we manage to keep John Yoo from excessive gloating about the Eagles win in the Super Bowl by distracting him with his favorite subject—executive power, about which he seldom thinks there can be excessive use. But maybe we found some limits this time?

The intensifying pace of President Trump’s exertions of executive power look to be the most serious attempt to contain spending, reorganize the executive branch, and discipline Congress since Nixon in 1973, and we know how that ended. We also give three cheers and host a glass in celebration of Vice President Vance’s throwdown at the Munich Security Conference.

We’re only 19 days into Trump’s term, but it seems like 19 months have passed already since January 20. When Alexander Hamilton wrote of “energy in the executive,” he had no idea that a real estate tycoon would become the greatest example of this understanding of the presidency.

This week’s episode reviews five of Trump’s biggest fights that are interrelated in ways that could rebalance out constitutional order in ways conservatives have hoped beyond hope for decades might be possible. Trump’s challenge to birthright citizenship is forcing a long overdue debate on the issue along with a challenge to district judges issuing nationwide injunctions; his freezing of spending revives the issue of presidential power to impound funds Congress has appropriated; and his firing of civil servants and termed appointees to federal boards and commissions will force a reconsideration of the old Humphrey’s Executor case that a wide spectrum of scholar believe was wrongly decided.

Nothing “jejune” about this edition, except perhaps for the first-ever use of “jejune” in a podcast, but it is the perfect term to describe Joe Biden’s “farewell address,” which, aside from its jejune content, is a most welcome sound, since he will be gone in about another 48 hours, never to be heard from again one hopes.

This week we take up three topics—one from each of the bartenders: Behold, President Biden amended the Constitution on Friday—all by himself! Aside from the obvious absurdity and low comedy of it, what does it tell us about the state of leftist presumption? Special counsel Jack Smith released his magnum opus, which seems more of a parvum opus if not an opusculum (ask your nearest Latin geek), Finally, Biden’s farewell address—and presidential farewell addresses in general—was our third topic (summary: it was absolutely Biden’s opusculum).

Our final podcast of 2024 looks back on the top story and bottom story of the year, and you won’t be surprised to see some symmetries in our answers.

But then we move on to the main event—a question from a listener (initials RW) about whether the 14th Amendment, rightly understood, actually permits the federal government to outlaw private discimination. We go several rounds (but not really enough rounds) about aspects of this issue before realizing after we finished that we didn’t reach a verdict. Perhaps we’ll return to it in our first episode of 2025.