Kavanaugh Hearings, ‘Resistance’ Inside the White House, Arizona’s New (Old) Senator, Tech Threats

The Politics Guys

Michael Baranowski

Politics, News

4.5 • 772 Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2018

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, Mike and Jay open the show with discussion of the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh. They agree that the hearings are almost entirely political theater at this point and that everyone’s mind is made up. Mike argues that despite this, Democrats’ claim that they should be given sufficient time to review all of the potentially relevant documents relating to Kavanaugh’s career in public service is a good one. Jay is skeptical. Next is a look at leaked material from journalist Bob Woodward’s upcoming book on the Trump administration as well as the bombshell New York Times Op-Ed in which an anonymous senior White House staffer suggested that he and others like him are actively working to frustrate parts of President Trump’s agenda. Mike and Jay think it would be in the best interests of the country if this anonymous source revealed himself. While Mike is strongly against almost everything that President Trump has done, he doesn’t believe that Senator Elizabeth Warren and others on the left are right in calling for the potential removal of Trump through the 25th Amendment, as in Mike’s reading of the amendment, it doesn’t apply to President Trump (though impeachment and removal might). After that the Guys evaluate the choice of former Arizona Senator John Kyl as the replacement for John McCain. They share the views of almost everyone outside the extremes that this was a solid choice, though Mike of course laments that McCain wasn’t replaced with someone equally if not more liberal (a relative term, to be sure). Finally, Mike and Jay discuss the testimony of Facebook and Twitter on Capitol Hill regarding free speech and government regulation, potentially anti-competitive behavior, as well as the threat posed by voting systems lacking paper trails. Listener support helps make The Politics Guys possible. If you’re interested in supporting the show, go to politicsguys.com/support. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-politics-guys/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the politics, guys, a place for bipartisan, rational, and civil debate on American
0:04.6	politics and policy. I'm Michael Barronowski, political scientist at Northern Kentucky University.
0:09.8	With me today is my regular co-host, Cleveland Area Attorney and Republican Factotum, Jay Carson.
0:15.1	Good morning, Mike. Good morning, Jay. How are you this morning? I'm good. This has been a fun
0:20.0	week. I mean, you could say good or
0:21.7	bad, but it's been interesting. Yeah, interesting. That's the word I keep on coming back to. Yeah,
0:26.4	well, you know, before we get to, I think sort of, well, really particularly who done it sort of story.
0:32.6	Let's, let's start by talking about the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
0:39.3	You know, I'd say that things went really more or less as expected.
0:45.1	Because, you know, most Senate Republicans tossed out what seemed to me to be softball questions.
0:51.4	Though there were, you know, a few expressions of concern about Kavanaugh's views on
0:55.8	executive power, which I appreciated hearing. And of course, Democrats tried to get Kavanaugh to comment
1:02.2	on substantive legal issues, which like pretty much every nominee, he artfully dodged and evaded.
1:09.2	I mean, that's been the rule for the last few decades.
1:12.4	Well, and properly so.
1:14.6	Yeah, well, and we can talk a little bit about what's proper evasion and what's just saying nothing.
1:19.6	But, you know, the other thing I wanted to point out is, of course, a Democrat, a number of Democrats expressed, I guess you called it, outrage over the process, particularly
1:29.8	that the committee confidential classification of just about 200,000 pages of documents that were
1:36.5	related to Kavanaugh's time as staff secretary and a George W. Bush administration,
1:41.9	then in addition to that, there were 100,000 more pages of documents
1:45.5	that weren't even available to the Judiciary Committee because the Trump administration
1:50.6	is claimed they're protected by executive privilege. Now, some of those committee confidential
	...

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