Introducing We Don't Talk About Leonard
Trump, Inc.
WNYC Studios
4.6 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 29 September 2023
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, Trump Inc. listeners. It's Andrea Bernstein. I am so excited to be talking to you now |
| 0:06.0 | to tell you about a new audio series, Ilya Maritz and I have been working on for ProPublica |
| 0:10.4 | and on the media. It's called We Don't Talk About Leonard. Ever since Trump was president |
| 0:16.7 | and then tried to not let go of power, Ilya and I have been thinking and reporting about |
| 0:22.0 | the stresses in our democracy. About a year ago, we started to work with ProPublica |
| 0:27.1 | unraveling how one of the final backstops of our system, the courts, have been under pressure. |
| 0:32.4 | And at the center of that effort is a conservative legal philosopher general named Leonard Leo. |
| 0:39.8 | You might know his name because he was Trump's judge Whisperer. Leo was responsible for the |
| 0:45.7 | nominations of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court. |
| 0:52.2 | But Leo is more powerful than that. As we found his influence stretches to state supreme courts |
| 1:00.6 | and attorneys general to the whole of American culture. To report this story, Ilya and I teamed |
| 1:07.1 | up with ProPublica's Andy Crowell, an investigative reporter who's been breaking stories on Leo |
| 1:12.6 | and the three of us dug deep. Ilya and I think you are really going to like We Don't Talk About Leonard. |
| 1:20.3 | And here it is. |
| 1:25.5 | The court has ruled that states can decide whether abortion should be legal or illegal. Roe versus |
| 1:32.5 | Wade is history. The conservative majority on today's Supreme Court has been redefining American's |
| 1:39.4 | constitutional rights in one decision after another. And one largely unknown man has played an |
| 1:46.1 | outsized role in making it so. Leonard Leo has single-handedly changed the face of the judiciary. |
| 1:55.9 | This is on the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. This week an investigation into the man who spent decades |
| 2:02.4 | working toward a conservative takeover of America's courts because this is about way more than |
| 2:08.2 | just the US Supreme Court. The rights revolution in the United States didn't happen just because |
| 2:14.0 | you magically got five justices on the court who agreed with you. It's all coming up after this. |
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