All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
You can also sign up for the podcast feed.
The full archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthorton show.
All right, you guys, introducing Michael Tracy, this time writing for Real Clear Politics, Democrats dubious impeachment subtext of treason.
It was the spotlight the other day on antiwar.com.
Welcome to the show, Michael.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great, Scott.
Thanks.
I've just mentioned this to you off air, but I'll repeat it for posterity.
I've listened to your stuff going back years.
I don't know for how long.
Oh, that's great.
Good to be with you.
Yeah, I'm really happy to hear that.
I was going to say that I've been meaning to have you on the show.
I've been reading your articles for quite a few years now myself, and for some reason I've never gotten the occasion to have you on, but really happy to have you on about this one here.
And you know what?
I think you said it best right in the article, something about how nobody read this thing.
I sure didn't.
The 658 page report by the House Judiciary Committee underlying their whole impeachment case against President Trump.
And I've just not taken the thing seriously at all, so I haven't done the work, but you really found some important stuff in there.
Yeah, I mean, this is a critical document, and it's shocking to me.
Well, maybe not shocking, but it's galling to me how few people in the media or in the political class appear to have bothered to read it.
As I mentioned in the article, this report was put out less than 72 hours before the impeachment vote took place.
And so, you know, most Republicans already decided they were never going to vote for it.
They already decided they were going to vote in favor of it under any circumstances.
So almost nobody really took the time to look at this report, but there's some pretty ominous stuff in there.
I think the most significant is what I sort of delineate in this article, which is that it makes clear in the report that they phrased the wording of the first impeachment article, which is to do with abusive power, in such a way as to insinuate or imply that they are impeaching Trump on the basis of committing treason.
Now, they don't use the word treason explicitly in the impeachment articles, but they define their terms.
So in that first article, it accuses Trump of, quote, betraying the nation.
And then if you look at this supplementary report put out, again, by the House Judiciary Committee, it defines betraying the nation as treason.
So if you follow any of this impeachment melodrama, and I don't blame you at all if you don't follow it, but one of the points of contention is that there are no specific criminal offenses alleged in the impeachment articles.
And the Democrats claim they did this because they want to group together a variety of offenses under this rubric of abusive power.
So they're saying, as Gerald Nadler did during the trial, that all the elements of, for example, bribery have been established and they were enveloped into this abusive power offense.
And the same goes for treason, although they're not as explicit about it.
You have to really read this document to get a full understanding.
And so once you acknowledge or you recognize that what they did was, in effect, accuse Trump of treason, you have to sort of suss out what the implications of that are.
Because if somebody commits treason, what they've done, at least per the traditional and even statutory understanding of treason, is that they've given aid and comfort to the enemy.
And the enemy, or the alleged enemy, that Trump has given aid and comfort to over the course of this impeachment saga is Russia.
Because they're saying that by withholding military aid to Ukraine, which was never actually really withheld, by the way, it was a future dispersal of military aid that was temporarily withheld.
And so as the Democrats' own impeachment witnesses, George Kent and William Taylor, clarified, the flow of military aid to Ukraine never was interrupted.
And I'm not in favor of military aid to Ukraine in the first place, but it's worth getting the facts straight that the aid never stopped.
But the Democrats allege that in withholding these temporary aid dispersals, Trump empowered or emboldened Russia.
And if you take what they're saying in their impeachment report seriously, they're accusing Trump of committing treason at the behest of Russia.
So now what does that do?
It means that regardless of how this trial ultimately turns out, and we're hearing that there's going to be acquittal vote, acquittal or impeachment, or a conviction vote tonight potentially, may drag out for a couple more days.
It's yet to be seen.
But regardless, the damage was already done on December 18th when the House voted to approve these impeachment articles, because that alone sets a precedent, irrespective of whether Trump is convicted or acquitted, because it's only the third impeachment ever in U.S. history and the only impeachment that was ever centered on U.S. foreign policy, the only impeachment in our entire history where foreign policy was a core factor.
And so what the impeachment articles really do is that they embed into the very fabric of American governance this idea that we're in essentially a permanent state of war with Russia and that taking actions which somehow could be portrayed as benefiting or helping Russia could be construed as treasonous.
And so the long-term ramifications of this are pretty dire, and it's just amazing to me that so few, whether on the Democratic, Republican side or anywhere in between, have been calling attention to these, I think, pretty salient details.
What the Republicans do when they're rebutting the Democratic case is they brag about how hawkish Trump is on Russia, which is true.
Trump and the neocons and hawks surrounding him have implemented a variety of policies that are incredibly antagonistic toward Russia, whether it's attempting to overthrow Russia's chief ally in the Western Hemisphere, Venezuela, or bombing Russia's client state in the Middle East, Syria, or ripping up the INF Treaty, which was intended to reduce the nuclear stockpiles of both countries.
Trump has reneged on his campaign pledge in 2016 to seek better relations with Russia or achieve some form of detente, and he hasn't done that.
But the Republicans, for the most part, are happy about that.
They brag about it.
And the Democrats have no standing to challenge Trump for reneging on that promise because they're putting forth their own version of hawkish arguments to advance their impeachment case that, oh, Trump is allowing Russian aggression to go unchecked.
He is in the pocket of Putin.
We've heard this endlessly time and time again, whether it was over the course of the Russiagate saga, which ostensibly you would have thought would have ended when the Mueller report came out, but of course it didn't.
It just took on a different permutation with this impeachment episode.
And you even have people like Adam Schiff constantly invoking the legacy or the specter of Mueller over the course of this trial, basically saying that part of the motivation for this trial was to seek revenge for Robert Mueller, who's full fantasies in holding Trump, quote-unquote, accountable for inviting, supposedly, election interference in 2016.
Adam Schiff says that never went adequately punished.
So this is the way that they chose to enact or exact that punishment.
And it means that now we have, as part of the fabric of American governance again, probably for the rest of time, as melodramatic as that might sound, some very militaristic and new Cold War premises that, for the most part, have gone unexamined, but are now going to dictate for the foreseeable future, potentially as long as the US remains a republic with a constitutional order, how future government officials behave vis-a-vis Russia and more broadly.
Yeah.
You know what?
I'm a little optimistic about that because this seems to me to be such a sham that I'm counting on enough of a backlash, and hate to say it, but from Republican and Democratic Party royalists who absolutely worshipped the presidency and put them so far above the law in every other case except for this guy that I think, you know, and also the Democrats, the last time they were in power, they were afraid to arm the Ukrainians that they had put in power when they supported the coup of 2014, that Joe Biden, in fact, had been an integral part of, according to Victoria Nuland, in putting the whole thing together.
And then Obama chickened out on arming these guys when they started a war against the people in the East.
And that's, you know, a big part of this, as you're talking about all these baked in premises, a big part of it is just this, not just the false narrative about who started it and that kind of thing, but even that Ukraine is at war with Russia at all, where the Ukrainians are at war with other Ukrainians.
And at worst, the Russians have sent some deniable special operations forces across the border to help at certain times.
But even though they claimed so in 2014 over and over again, there never was a Russian invasion.
There never was infantry across the border.
And when the people of Eastern Ukraine asked to join the Russian Federation, Putin told them no.
So this whole thing about Russian aggression itself, the whole narrative is bogus.
But anyway, point being that once the Democrats get in there, say it's Elizabeth Warren or I don't know, God forbid, Joe Biden, I don't know.
Even he might back down because, you know, the war is coming to an end actually now, you know, they're negotiating.
They're trying to not fight right as the Americans are trying to put all these weapons right in their hands.
Yeah.
And it's in their interest to sort of foster this perception that there is this really extreme hot war going on because it sort of serves their respective partisan interests.
So for example, over and over again over the course of this impeachment trial, you hear Democrats blaming Trump for somehow being personally responsible for the deaths of Ukrainian military personnel.
Because for a roughly two month time period over the summer of 2019, these temporary dispersals of military aid were withheld.
But again, those aid, that aid never stopped flowing to Ukraine, even during that particular time period.
But they're trying to create this fantasy land version of what transpired that said Trump betrayed these loyal Ukrainian soldiers and caused their deaths by enabling Russian aggression to persist.
And of course, that furthers the narrative that Democrats have been going with since before he even assumed office, that Trump is compromised by Putin and he's always secretly trying to advance the ambitions of Putin, whether through his rhetoric or through his policy.
And while Trump's rhetoric at times can be somewhat conciliatory toward Putin, the action policy-wise shows a totally different story.
Democrats have it as in their interest to continue depicting Trump as this Russian pawn.
And likewise, like I mentioned, Republicans have an interest in puffing Trump up as somebody who's really tough on Russia.
That's what they are bragging about in general and even within the impeachment trial itself.
So the version of events that you just laid out, sailing back to 2014 with regard to Ukraine and the coup and the subsequent involvement of Russia to the extent that that actually occurred, that's never going to be rationally presented by either side.
Right.
Yeah, it hasn't been addressed at all, right?
Yeah, because they're too wrapped up in their domestic political narratives to ever give that adequate representation.
But meanwhile, you know, in case people have a real question about this, the Russians could march to Kiev in about a week if they wanted to conquer all of Ukraine.
There's nothing that the Ukrainian military could do about it.
And it's highly doubtful that the Americans would truly go to war to prevent that if it came down to it.
And it's also highly likely that if that ever did happen, it would be in reaction to America illegally overthrowing the government for a third time over there or something like that.
Yeah, exactly.
But again, it's all about sort of constructing these fanciful scenarios that enhance whatever domestic political position they're taking.
So I don't even think some of the most ardent new Cold War hawks would demand a ground war in Ukraine in the event of a true Russian invasion, although who knows with some of these people.
Having that specter exist allows them to advance their domestic political objectives.
And so any reasoned understanding of foreign policy has been totally missing from this impeachment spectacle.
Look who the Democrats trotted out as their key witnesses over the course of the testimony.
You think it's a sham.
I agree to some extent.
But I also thought that it was important to follow it closely just to understand what has been presented to the American public as the exemplars of rational or what they sometimes call official, quote unquote, U.S. foreign policy that Trump supposedly thwarted.
So they put out these figures like the two I mentioned, William Taylor and George Kent and Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, who's now this supposed hero, Maria Yovanovitch, who's the ambassador, Fiona Hill.
All of these people are tried and true Russia hawks.
And what they're saying is because Trump temporarily offended their sensibilities with regard to how U.S. policy should be oriented toward beating back, quote, Russian aggression, that means he did something impeachable.
And it sort of exalts these people as the guardians of what Schiff and many others are calling official U.S. foreign policy.
So I would think that the democratically elected president has a mandate to conduct U.S. foreign policy as he sees fit.
And if you don't like it, you can vote him out or you can hold him accountable in a variety of other ways.
But they're now implanting this logic where U.S. foreign policy exists as this sort of untouchable and streamlined force within the permanent bureaucracy of government.
And if the president does something to thwart it or undermine it, then he is committing a high crime or misdemeanor.
Well it's amazing too.
I mean, in this context, we have no treaty with Ukraine whatsoever.
And even if it was a NATO country like Latvia, the notorious Article 5 of the NATO alliance treaty says that the other nations will do something.
And it's deliberately vague right there, weasel words, even when it comes to defending Germany or France.
When it comes down to it, we will decide whether we're willing to trade Houston and New York City and Denver for what they've got.
But meanwhile here, Ukraine is the furthest thing from a true ally and is essentially ruled by an illegal junta that America put in place by way of coup d'etat.
So it's completely ridiculous in this context.
But as you said, that's not part of the story.
The part of the story is, if anything, history began when Russia invaded Crimea and conquered it and has been aggressing ever since.
But no more details than that.
Yeah.
And this impeachment has been so suffocating that there's just been no room for anybody, virtually anybody, to provide a countervailing perspective.
Because again, if you provide a countervailing perspective from the standpoint of Trump being excessively antagonistic toward Russia and perpetuating this new Cold War, then you're a Trump apologist.
But if you provide a perspective about Trump actually being antagonistic and belligerent toward Russia, then you're just a pro-Trump, reflexive defender of his.
The one exception I have to point out, and I'm sort of following her around in New Hampshire as we speak, is Tulsi Gabbard, who voted present on the impeachment articles and did so not because she was seeking to absolve Trump of culpability for his wrongdoing.
In fact, she simultaneously put out a censor resolution highlighting other more egregious abuses of power that Trump has committed in the domain of foreign policy, and also that she could not endorse what everybody with half a brain, I would think, would have known, that this impeachment process was fatally flawed and had baked into it so many of these untested militaristic new Cold War premises that totally countervail the core themes of what she's campaigning on.
So I've been gratified that there is at least one person with some degree of stature in the political scheme who has sort of had the discernment to recognize some of the adverse consequences of what's transpiring and isn't exclusively motivated by pure partisan interest.
Yeah.
Well, you know, as long as we're talking about that, you know, I wonder if, it just seems to me like her big weakness is not just in not going far enough in opposing the entire war on terrorism, which is the correct position, but also in going far enough in, like say for example, she's great on opposing all this Cold War garbage, but what about telling the truth about it all?
What about saying and explaining that, look, this is all Hillary Clinton's husband's fault.
Him and George Bush and Barack Obama who expanded NATO, who overthrew, what, eight or ten governments of countries that were friendly with Russia in any way in all the color-coded revolutions, who sided with al-Qaeda in Syria for six years, and now they want to cry that the Russians are aggressing when they pulled their army back behind the Ural Mountains.
They used to rule all of Eastern Europe.
These are the good guys who overthrew the communists for us.
What the hell are they talking about?
It's wrong.
It's not true.
And if she would say that, I think she would get a little bit more mileage than, you know, it's almost like the difference between Ron and Rand, you know?
If you don't contradict the premise, you're not going to get very far saying, well, yes, there's a crisis, but we shouldn't do anything about it, you know?
Yeah, that's a fair point.
Although, on the other hand, I was at a number of her events last week where she started her town hall by talking about the doomsday clock going closer to midnight, by talking about how the new Nicole Bohr has contributed to the deterioration of U.S.-Russia relations stemming from Trump's belligerent foreign policy actions, but also from this domestic obsession that we have with calling everybody a Russian conspirator.
And in the context of the American political scene, that's an interesting and singularly, I think, unique contrast that she's trying to generate, because it was on that same day that you had Adam Schiff ranting on the floor of the Senate as the lead impeachment manager talking about how, you know, if stuff to the effect of, he was quoting Tim Morrison, who was this former National Security Council official under Trump, who in impeachment testimony said that the reason why this aid to Ukraine is so necessary is because we're giving them aid so they can fight Russia over there and we don't have to fight them here, which of course implicit in that premise is that there's some threat of Russia invading the mainland United States.
So when you compare her area of focus to that of the almost entirety of the Democratic Party, it is striking.
And, you know, there are times when I also wish she would maybe delve a little bit further into some of those details, but I think her instincts are roughly on target and, you know, she already gets so much consternation from the media that I think getting into the minute details of NATO expansion might not be totally advantageous, although I wouldn't put it past her to discuss that.
Well, yeah, it's not a matter of dwelling on the details, though, but it's a matter of challenging the whole narrative that they're based on.
You know, this is the Chomsky propaganda model is you can fight like hell over an agreed upon premise of which side are you on about that.
But it's much more difficult for them.
They won't tolerate it.
But a presidential candidate has a unique opportunity to say, actually, the premise of your question is wrong.
It's like this.
And she's smart enough to she can say these things with authority when she really knows what she's talking about, like when she disputes on who's on whose side over there in Syria and Iraq and stuff like that.
So no, I think I think you're right about that.
And but, you know, over the course of the campaign, I followed her very closely.
I've been in New Hampshire for another past month and went to pretty much all of her events.
And she has gotten more incisive and cogent in her critique of U.S. foreign policy.
Well, I'm really looking forward to the others dropping out as they start losing in Iowa and New Hampshire and this and that and all the different Cory Booker's are sort of out of the way.
And it becomes, you know, a fewer man race, including her and Sanders and Biden and whoever stays in there, I guess, Warren, whatever.
And hopefully, you know, with a little bit of less, you know, fewer opponents, you'll have more opportunity to really make some good points.
Yeah.
Like, for example, last night she did an event in Portsmouth.
Right.
And somebody brought up this Israel, this fake Israel peace plan that Kushner and Trump just put out.
And she said that the U.S. needs to be neutral between the U.S., between Israel and Palestine.
Now, it's one thing to say that you need to be neutral and it's another to actually implement it.
And of course, you have to remain a little skeptical that that was ever going to be followed through on, given the institutional constraints that almost always encourage U.S. presence to be partial, let's say, to Israel.
But even saying that she would want neutrality there is sort of a big step.
And, you know, she said she condemns, she used the word, she used the words imperialism to describe the permanent political class in D.C., which is always hawkish, whether it's the humanitarian interventionists or the neocons or now something like the MAGA nationalists who love assassinating foreign officials.
And so, you know, I have noticed her, I have observed her rhetoric becoming sharper and more, more incisive on these matters.
Although, again, everybody, there's always room for improvement, right?
I mean, Ron Paul is sort of a voice in the wilderness and, you know, he, as a matter of fact, he said that Tulsi Gabbard is the one candidate that he finds tolerable on foreign policy in particular, which I thought was somewhat significant, given that Ron Paul overperformed in 2012 in the Republican primary.
He came in second place to Romney.
So if some of those voters transition to Tulsi, I think she could maybe exceed expectations in the state.
I actually, at her event last night, I met, I believe that he was the state director for Ron Paul in 2012 in New Hampshire.
He just kind of came up, came to the event just to check it out.
So maybe it's an omen that some of those people are going to, are going to go her way and be a little bit of a surprise when the primary comes in a week.
Yeah.
Well, I sure would like to see, you know, a little bit of an upset there and, and, you know, for, well, for the American people, for the American voters to prioritize this, that look, if I got to choose among the four or five of them, I guess she's best on the war.
So that's what really matters, right?
And she's the only, she's the only Democrat, really the only politician, again, with any national stature who's challenged core tenets of this new Cold War narrative, whether it's taken the form of the Russiagate with Russian interference and Mueller, and now it's utterly said stepsister, the impeachment saga.
She's the only one that's really challenged it and to find in a way that I find rational.
And so that's part of the reason why I've been motivated to extend her a little bit more focus than I might other candidates, just because we need somebody who's challenging this stuff.
Otherwise, it's just going to engulf the American political system, which it already has, but it's just going to continue for the indefinite future.
And there are so many adverse side effects of that as evidenced by the impeachment articles, which once more, I'll reiterate, ratified into the very fabric of U.S. governance that the U.S. is effectively in a permanent state of war with Russia.
I mean, think about that.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, especially on the Democratic left where people tend to lean anti-interventionist usually anyway, but this is a huge short circuit in that it's sort of like putting Barack Obama's smiling face on the invasion of Libya.
Yeah.
I mean, maybe what people will say, oh, this is sham and doesn't create a precedent, but you know, it will create a precedent.
I mean, there's no way that it could not.
And so you have to have somebody who has some foresight and is able to look below the surface of some of these prevailing narratives and understand the deleterious consequences of what's now been instantiated into the makeup of our of our government.
And she's the only one doing it.
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Step one, go to scotthorton.org slash LP to sign up for the National Libertarian Party.
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You know, it's funny.
There's this old Bill Mortis quote from the Bush years where he says, you know, something that's really changed in our time is that the delusional are no longer marginal.
And they were always there, but now they're ruling the place.
And I don't know if that's really true.
I mean, you look at some of the wars that got us into before on some bogus excuses and theories back then.
But it is to me, it's a pretty rough equivalent between the weapons of mass destruction and all of the George Bush dead enders on that.
I mean, I still get emails from people's right wing uncle Bob talking about how they did to find those WMDs over there and this kind of thing.
And the liberals really are the same way with this Russiagate stuff.
And in fact, it's almost more comparable to QAnon or one of these more ridiculous kind of Obama from Kenya, secret Muslim terrorist infiltrator, usurper kind of just on reality.
But once you've bought into that stuff, it's pretty hard to break out.
And you know, it's one of the reasons I quit Twitter was just everything was getting so dumbed down.
But whenever I look at it, that's the first thing I see.
No matter what the comment is, the comment below that is a liberal saying, you're a Russian.
You know, I mean, if I had a ruble for every time I've been accused of being a pawn of Putin, I'd be I don't know if I'd be rich, but what's the ruble trading for these days?
Not much, but still, I'd at least be able to stay in some nicer hotels here in New Hampshire.
But, you know, it's yeah, the Russia stuff, which, again, began during the 2016 campaign and never really subsided, has become so psychologically instilled into the minds of the media and the Democratic political class that they were never going to be able to give it up.
And they were just going to find keep lurching for different outlets to give expression to their basic angst on this whole Russia situation situation regarding Trump being, you know, allegedly compromised.
And I agree that the parallel should be to the weapons of mass destruction.
I think the scale of the media failure.
On this is in a way worse than the weapons of mass weapons of mass destruction, because it's so unified and only at least you had some dissenters that were around during 2003.
And but a lot of those people now, because their their hatred of Trump is just so extreme, their judgment got totally clouded by that.
And they ended up either mindlessly or mindfully, in some cases, getting on board with this really destructive Cold War narrative that sort of reshaped how U.S.-Russia relations are going to exist going forward.
And with the doomsday clock going closer than that, you have Mikhail Gorbachev constantly going on TV and writing comms warning that we're on this intractable collision course toward nuclear war.
I mean, it's it's potentially cataclysmic.
And, you know, I generally consider myself as roughly on the left.
But a lot of those people don't like me now because I've been a pretty consistent critic of this insanity for years.
And they think that that means I'm somehow a Trump apologist, when really it was the opposite.
I always thought that Trump, if he's going to be opposed, needs to be opposed on rational grounds.
And this ground is totally irrational and, in fact, incentivizes some of his worst instincts.
And, you know, Daniel Lazar was pointing out on the show that actually Adam Schiff is one of the worst Democratic hawks in the House, that he supported Iraq War II in defiance of Nancy Pelosi, who led at least the majority of House Democrats then to oppose Iraq War II, not him.
And he supported Libya, all the intervention in Syria and in Yemen to explicitly, I guess, voted against the war powers resolutions and has said that, you know, I guess as long as Obama started it, it's all good.
And so this is the one thing out of all of them that he really could be impeached and removed and prosecuted for breaking the law in persecuting, continuing to perpetuate the war in Yemen, which he could turn off like a light switch.
I mean, they call it the Saudi led war, but America is the empire and Saudi is our satellite state, our client state.
And, you know, they came to Obama for permission and help to do it in the first place.
And it's been like that ever since.
And not only was it never authorized, but Congress, both Houses of Congress, invoked the war powers resolution to demand an end to it.
And he pretended to have the authority to veto that and tell them no and and continue the war.
And it's a war based on a strategy of a deliberate siege starvation campaign against the civilian population, which is in violation of several American laws, enforcing several American treaties.
And instead and look who's in charge of prosecuting him is a guy who thinks that, well, at least he's committing genocide in Yemen.
I will give him credit for that, but he's just too close to this Putin character, you know?
Yeah.
Back in 2017, shortly after Trump took office, I was in Los Angeles and I went to one of Adam Schiff's town halls.
This is before he was as prominent a figure as he is now.
And it's a bad thing, I think, that he's so prominent now.
But most people weren't aware of him back then.
And the point of his town hall that night was supposed to be about kind of rallying support or galvanizing opposition to the Trump travel ban.
And what ended up happening is that the people in attendance almost ignored the travel ban issue and were just screaming about Russia and the need to impeach Trump over Russian interference.
And so I knew then and that's what I that's when it was crystallized to me.
I think this was February of 2017.
Of course, they were going to impeach Trump on something to do with Russia at some point.
It was a foregone conclusion in my mind after witnessing that, knowing what the pressures were on him and the rest of the Democratic coalition, especially in some of these affluent districts like the one he represents in Hollywood, where you have these sort of political hobbyists who spend every day following the latest development on Mueller and Roger Stone, Michael Cohen and now Lev Parnas and all this stuff.
So I knew right away that that was the course they were going to go with.
But I said to myself, you know what, I know that Adam Schiff was a key proponent of the initiation of this Yemen war in 2015.
You go back and look at the statements at the time when that was launched.
And so I tried to ask him about it and asked him to explain why he was abetting the immiseration and really genocide of Yemenis.
And of course, he didn't answer the question.
He ran away.
He didn't want to talk about it.
And so if that doesn't tell you something about the priorities of these people who have been the champions of impeachment, I don't know what will, because that that really is a grave offense of the kind, like you mentioned, that somebody could, you think, be impeached for, but they ignore it.
And Adam Schiff, you know, he's a long history of hawkish foreign policy views.
And even just days before the impeachment vote took place in December, he voted to approve the mammoth warp defense appropriations bill that allowed Trump to create his own new branch of the military, Space Force.
So obviously, if they, you have to kind of question what they really, they really think that he's been compromised by Russia if they're willing to give him appropriations to start a brand new branch of the military.
I don't know why you would give a Russian pawn that kind of power.
So you have to, you know, the rhetoric is meaningless.
You have to look at what they're actually doing.
Yeah, well, and that was the whole thing all along, too, was, wow, if this guy really is a Russian agent, you'd think that Mueller would try to hurry up and not leave him sitting there with a nuclear football for years on end while he's getting to the bottom of this case.
Apparently, he's not too worried about it for some reason, but he wouldn't tell us that.
He kept the case going and wouldn't tell us that he had nothing on the president until the last day, finally, when he turned in his report and resigned.
Yeah, exactly.
So but when you put it that way, it just it just heightens the absurdity of the entire farce.
The whole thing is an obvious hoax.
And back to the Hollywood liberals.
I love that story.
All the Hollywood liberals pressuring Adam Schiff that enough about the Mexicans, let's talk about Russia and and that this is pressure from below on him, making him, you know, conform to their narrative in a sense.
Anyway, you know, that's really impressive to me.
And it reminds me that Phil Lox love me.
I'm a liberal.
You ever seen that or heard that song?
Yes, yes, yes.
Yeah.
I mean, boy, that's it just says it all, doesn't it?
Yeah, it really does.
I mean, look at the look at the people who are leading the who are the impeachment managers.
You have Adam Schiff from Hollywood.
You have Gerald Nadler from lower Manhattan.
You have Hakeem Jeffries, also from New York City.
You have you know, those are pretty much the main people.
And it's not a it's not a shock that they represent these affluent liberal districts where people can afford to be less concerned about their material well-being than they are about watching the latest installment of Rachel Maddow for updates on, you know, what Lev Parnas is up to on a given day.
Right.
I mean, they're political hobbyists and their opposition to Trump has always been out of aversion to his character, logical features.
And that's the fact that they find him vulgar and they find him not to be not a good steward of the American war state.
They don't have any problems with the war state itself, just as the guy about with the guy who's at its helm.
Well, now, so I know you like Tulsi, but you got any predictions to make about the Democratic race here?
So we go into Iowa and all this stuff coming up.
Yeah, I mean, it should be interesting.
I mean, we have to wait to find out if they're going to finish up this trial today or if it's going to extend for a couple more days.
I'm seeing conflicting reports about that, but it would be pretty amazing.
It's almost like a way I've kind of put it is it seems like U.S. politics, fan fiction to say that some of the leading Democratic, some of the leading presidential candidates who are senators are going to be have to be holed up physically in D.C. on the day of the cause.
So they can't go to Iowa.
I mean, come on, that's insane.
It sounds like somebody who writes like Harry Potter fan fiction just applying their same analysis to U.S. politics or something.
Anyway, you know, I think Bernie's obviously he's all the polls show that he's gone up pretty substantially in the past couple of weeks.
But the idiosyncrasies of Iowa make it so that it's hard to predict.
I mean, an extremely last minute shift in public opinion could really have a dispositive impact.
I don't know if you remember, but in 2012, Rick Santorum ended up winning the Republican Iowa caucus.
Well, they claimed he did.
It was really wrong.
They admitted later.
But yeah.
Yeah.
Ron Paul won the delegates.
Right.
But at least it was announced that by quote unquote popular voter, whatever Rick Santorum won.
Well, whatever.
But the point is, like, he only became viable in the very, very late stages of that race.
So you have fluctuations in voter sentiment that I think are going to continue until the last minute.
And because of the whole issue with second choice voting in the caucus, it's hard to predict with much certainty what is going to happen.
I think if I had to bet, I would say that Bernie is going to win.
But who's to say?
And he's way ahead in New Hampshire, too.
He's substantially ahead.
Yeah.
But again, again, I think back to 2008 when I was also here in New Hampshire and pretty much every poll showed Obama thumping Hillary in the New Hampshire primary because he had just come off a win in Iowa and Hillary ended up eating it out by three point two points, if I'm remembering the margin.
So primaries are pretty unpredictable and you have you have a lot of volatility up until the very end.
I'm here in New Hampshire.
I'm sort of taken aback at how many people I talk to who are undecided.
Well, who do you think has the best chance to beat Trump?
Of the candidates now, I would think Bernie, for sure, just because he expands the electorate in ways that definitely a Warren would not.
Even a Biden would not.
You know, I think Trump is actually pretty vulnerable, notwithstanding the allegedly good economy, just because I don't know that he's really expanded his base much since 2016 and his margins of victory in the key states in the Midwest are pretty fragile.
So just getting, for example, black voter turnout up in Milwaukee and Philadelphia could be enough to swing the election.
And Hillary was a uniquely terrible candidate, which is why her black voter turnout in particular was depressed under her.
And, you know, Trump gave in to Paul Ryan over the course of his first two years in office when they had unified Republican government.
And obviously that's not a pretty that's not a popular agenda, which partially explains why Democrats took back the House in 2018.
So, you know, I think most of the candidates would probably stand a pretty good chance against Trump, I think, with the exception of probably Pete and Warren.
But if I had to pick one who would be best, it would be Bernie, just because he really can, I think, to some extent, awaken working class consciousness and to put it in a Marxist way in a way that's going to broaden his electorate.
And I think, you know, if Tulsi were to be, for example, picked as VP, Trump would have no idea how to contend with her.
I don't think there's a playbook on how you run against Tulsi Goward, you know, because of her military background, because of her unwillingness to indulge in sort of culture war theatrics and play along with like the carnival roadshow of a Trump.
So that that to me would be a winning ticket.
But we'll see.
Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.
It's really Trump's margin of victory were those Reagan Democrats who, you know, crossed the aisle and voted against their labor union bosses just for cultural issues more than anything else.
Right.
And it seems like something like Bernie Sanders, who really is on the supply side, it ain't the owners, it's the producers, you know, the labor types that he really does prioritize and always has.
And that seems like that would probably be the best way for the Democratic Party to win those voters back as far as that goes.
And then the rest of them, too, well, including him, I don't know, they all have a lot of problems, not least of which is his age.
But then, you know, neither of us should even begin to describe all the baggage that the rest of these candidates carry.
They seem to be a uniquely weak bunch.
You know, I agree with you that he probably has the best chance out of all of them, but even that seems like kind of a stretch.
It might be, you know, there's there are a couple of states that I could see being a problem for Bernie.
Like, I think he'll struggle to remain in contention in Virginia, which is trended Democratic since 2008, where you have more affluent Democrats concentrated in northern Virginia, who I think would have problems countenancing him.
Florida, I think, would be a little bit of a tough one for Bernie.
But, you know, it's you got to take a gamble on somebody.
Right.
So I'm voting libertarian.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, there you go.
You know, there are a lot of libertarians, like I mentioned, a lot of libertarians seem like they are pretty taken with Tulsa here in New Hampshire, even though.
They might not be totally on board philosophically with some of her domestic propositions, but just as a matter of what she emphasizes, it's similar to to Ron Paul, where you would always have sort of a subsection of like.
Anti-war lefty peacenik types who seem to gravitate toward him just on purely on foreign policy grounds.
Yeah, so this is sort of an interesting continuation of that dynamic.
Right.
Yeah, well, and that's really good to hear, and it helps, you know, set a good example as well about what should be everybody's first priority.
It's not your own tax rate.
It's where that money is going, killing innocent people.
And this is what has to be first things first, you know?
Yeah, I would agree.
All right, you guys.
Well, I really appreciate you coming on the show and talking about this stuff with us.
Hope we can do it again.
All right.
Yeah, I enjoyed it.
All right, you guys.
That is Michael Tracy writing for Real Clear Politics.
And this very important article is called Democrats Dubious Impeachment Subtext of Treason.
And, you know, as he said, he leans left.
I think this is a really good one to show your left wing friends maybe who are buying into this stuff that there's a lot more at stake here than just punishing the bad orange man or whatever kind of thing.
So check that out, realclearpolitics.com.
