Jason Chaffetz on Russia, Biden, and the Durham Probe
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Welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds.

Actually, if you're used to tuning into the program here in Phoenix, Arizona, you know us as the Broken Potholes Gang. But like a room full of caterpillars turning into butterflies, we are taking off for a new market today. You might also be listening to us in Tampa, Florida and potentially across the state of Florida.

So for those of you who aren't familiar with us, we go out there every week and talk about the big issues affecting the states of Arizona, now Florida, other battleground states, national issues. We probably have the best guest list of any program in Arizona. And we have some amazing guests for you here today. My name is Sam Stone. My partner in crime in the studio, Chuck Warren, as well, the irrepressible.

Kylie Kipper. She keeps us all in line as our producer. And we want to give special thanks to Jeremy in the booth who drives the whip and drives the ship for all of us.

Chuck, today we have a fantastic guest. Why don't you introduce Jason Chaffetz? We have with us today former Congressman Jason Chaffetz. He's a contributor to Fox News Channel. He also has Jason in the House podcast. He's written two New York Times bestsellers. He's one of the most articulate speakers on the conservative side. Jason, thank you for joining us.

No comment. Humility. He's also number one in humility. So, Jason. Yeah, that's why I got to where I was at because humility was my greatest asset. I keep telling people that. It's the old Mac Davis song you sing every morning. Oh, Lord, it's hard to be humble when you're perfect as me. Is that basically what happens over there? Yeah. As far as I can tell, that is the number one qualification for anybody to get elected to Congress. Right.

Yeah, well, yeah, there's anybody gets elected to Congress. They got a good size ego that has trouble scooting in the room with another person. Yeah. Jason, we're going to play a clip quick clip here from the 2012 election. Go ahead. Governor Romney, I'm glad that you recognize that Al Qaeda is a threat because a few months ago when you were asked what's the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia.

Not Al-Qaeda, you said Russia. And the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War has been over for 20 years. But, Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s. So, besides the fact Mitt Romney was basically a prophet in 2012, are we back in a Cold War?

I think there's a good case to say that a Cold War has begun because if you look at what goes on in cyberspace, if you look at what goes on in outer space, and now you look at what's going on in Europe, Russia is on the march. And without a pushback, without a deterrent, without talking to Vladimir Putin in the language that he speaks, which is power and force, then guess what? He's going to continue to reap mayhem on literally millions of people.

And I worry that--look, he went into Georgia in 2008, and essentially nothing happened. And then he went, took over 25% of that country, signed a document with the United Nations saying, "Oh, he's going to withdraw."

But actually, during my time in Congress, I actually went to Georgia, went up to that border, and you can see that literally the Russians building permanent structures. Fast forward to 2014, takes over the Crimea region. Barack Obama and Joe Biden stand up there and say, oh, we're going to put in sanctions. And well, evidently, those sanctions were such a deterrent, so unbearable that nobody would ever, ever want to do that again. And now here we find ourselves saying,

with potentially the entire country of Ukraine being taken over. And I think if you look at the Baltic states, if you look at Poland, you look at those others, I think they're worried that without somebody who actually steps up and says no more and a leader in the United States pushing back and saying, no, come on, world, this is what we're going to do. We got to put this tyrant in a place where he does not expand his borders.

Then, yeah, I think we have a Cold War. You know, Jason, I mean, I would say it is a Cold War for us and for Western Europe. But if you're Ukraine, but let alone them, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, all the Baltic states, this is a hot war. They're being invaded and they have to look and wonder if they're the next domino.

Yeah. And when I met with the, you know, the key leaders in Georgia, that's what they're afraid of. They're like, this is real. They came and took this. Now they're sitting there right outside of our capital. I met with the president of Romania. I talked to them about, you know, they were afraid of where this is going and what we were doing. And the United States was putting in Aegis ashore and some other very smart military types of things. And look, we can't do this all alone. I guess one of the best things

The biggest disappointments in Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, you know, Kamala Harris goes over to her first trip to Europe, first trip ever there, and just puts out these word salads that do nothing other than make the mess worse, not better.

And you don't have a Joe Biden who knows how to lead out in the world and build a coalition to push back against that. That's what I see. I see a Joe Biden who's just weak in his communication, weak in his presence and weak in his leadership in order to get the world community focused on this. Because Vladimir Putin put out a manifesto back in July of last year, told us, told the world what he was going to do. And then he did it.

Yeah, he pretty much keeps his word, doesn't he? I mean, he did. You had it. You had a I think it was a general or something for Russia who back in November foreshadowed that on February 22nd of 2022, that's when they were going to make their move months in advance. It literally gave us the starting date of when this war was going to happen.

Who's responsible for reading those type of memos, letters and telling me saying, hey, by the way, they've just they've sent us a card and telling us what they're going to do. Who's responsible for that? Well.

Well, it's a combination of the State Department, it's the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Advisor is supposed to bring all of that stuff together in a cohesive manner to be able to share it with the President of the United States. But look, I think Joe Biden let the secret out. I think Joe Biden said the loud part, the quiet part out loud when he had that press conference. And he said, well, you know, if there's a minor incursion, we might not do much.

I mean, I think they probably role played this and that was the conclusion. It's just, you know, Sleepy Joe, Uncle Joe wasn't supposed to be able to actually say that out loud. Jason, in my lifetime, I think Biden is the worst president, Biden-Harris, the worst combination to handle a crisis like this that we have had. I mean, even Obama was stronger on foreign policy than these two are.

It's it's terrifying. And look, for all the criticism and believe me, it is never ending with me. The criticism of Hillary Clinton, when she was the secretary of state, she had a reputation of being very hawkish. And she did get after the people around the world. And again, I disagree with her just about everything. But when she showed up into town representing the United States as the secretary of state,

She got the respect and the attention that Kamala Harris can't even dream about. What would you what do you think is the proper moves for the United States right now regarding this? I mean, Russia's there. They basically have entered two parts of Ukraine. They're sort of breakaway republics. You know, you can argue that question. What should the United States be doing, do you believe?

We need to be proactive with our European partners in the world community and say, if you want to be in the modern day, in the modern era, we will help you and we will support you. It starts with energy. I've always thought it was whoever is able to fuel our future is the one that's going to control our destiny. And we were an energy exporter, now we're an energy importer. We take 100,000 barrels of Russian oil a day here in the United States.

We need to turn on that spigot again and be able to go back to Germany and Poland and those that are right up there on the front lines and be able to say, you don't need Russia. We have the United States. We're a reliable partner. We can fuel your future. Liquid natural gas, petroleum products. You don't have to worry about them. You need to pony up and make sure you've got a deterrent and make sure that they have the latest, greatest military equipment so that Russia doesn't really think twice about the casualties that they're going to take.

But you can do that now. I think Donald Trump was moving in that direction. That's why the world was a better, safer, quieter place. His foreign policy was really good in those four years. Correct. Yeah, correct. It's amazing that we're taking the amount of oil we're importing from Russia. I mean, it's just mind boggling when we are basically energy independent two years ago. And why why do you can't can we how fast can we turn that around again?

Well, if you signal to the market, if you tell the market that you're going to increase that supply. But this is totally counter to how Democrats think. Democrats like high fuel prices because they think if you have high fuel prices, you won't drive your car. If you don't drive your car, then you're going to save the planet. And remember, they think the biggest

Existential threat to the United States of America is global warming. So if that's your approach, you want high gas prices. And guess what? They got high gas prices. So you can turn that around almost immediately. I think you talk to the world and say, don't purchase products from Iran. Don't purchase product from Russia.

And while that supply will be a problem, you can go to Saudi Arabia and the others and get them to backfill the supply that wouldn't be on the market from those two rogue states. At the end of the day, doesn't Russia taking Ukraine, particularly the portions they've already essentially annexed with all the resources that are there, the pipeline routing, this is essentially a robbery writ large. I mean, this is a disaster.

global scale robbery of the Ukrainian people that puts Russia in a stronger position to control the rest of Europe going forward with those assets. Yeah, I heard an interesting analysis by Marco Rubio, who's pretty smart on this stuff, and he's on the Intel Committee, and his assessment was, look, not only do they

Are they important in terms of their geolocation and ports and all those kinds of things and energy? But they're also the world's breadbasket on a lot of key goods. And if you want to be able to feed the people of Russia and Europe, you need Ukraine. Ukraine is a breadbasket. They have a lot of agriculture that is very desirable. So...

What I'm tired of is a president going forward and saying, well, we're going to put the toughest sanctions out there like sanctions. It didn't work because of Georgia. It didn't work with Crimea. And don't tell me you have other other sanctions up your sleeve. Let's let them all loose. Every sanction you could possibly think of. Don't tell me there are more that you're holding back on.

And they're not going to jump in. And Europe is not going to jump into this fray in the way that they would need to because if Russia cuts off the supply of gas right now. They're dependent on it. They're dependent on the commodities. People freeze and die. Yeah.

That's exactly right. That's why unless they have the safety and security that the United States has their back and that we as the American people can supply them with energy and food. But that's one of the best things that could happen to our economy. We could have productivity in the United States that we're exporting and to have those dollars flowing into our economy,

It's just I mean, that's just that's the it's the best for all. It creates a more peaceful world economy. It creates more prosperity here at home, creates more jobs, good paying jobs and jobs. We need breaking battlegrounds coming right back with Jason Chavits in just a moment.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. On the line with us, former Congressman Jason Chaffetz, host of his own podcast, Jason in the House, contributor on Fox News, written some number one bestselling books. Jason, you're a very busy man, but you're staying on top of everything going on right now. One of those things, frankly, bigger in many ways, or it should be, than Watergate is the Durham investigation, which is turning up

Well, Trump was right when he said he was being spied on. And that's a big deal. You know, when that happened, I was the chairman of the Oversight Committee. All of a sudden, Donald Trump, the president, says I'm being spied on. So I immediately, like within minutes, called over to Don McGahn, who is general counsel at the White House, and said, what's going on? You know, like, I'm about to get a whole deluge of media calls and inquiries. What in the world is this about? And he's like, I don't know. I got to go figure that out. And so...

There is always this question mark that was never really answered. And look, my proximity and knowing the president as I do, and it's not exceptionally well, it wasn't like I was with them week in and week out. I don't want to overplay that or over, you know, tell you that I was, I was interacting with them all the time, but with his key staff is, you know, I was interacting with them a bit, trying to find some answers and do what I was supposed to do in the oversight committee. But

My experience with Donald Trump is he wouldn't just say that. He wouldn't just like fly off the handle and make up an allegation unless he really felt it had some some evidence of that. And he was very insistent on it. And now it comes to light that, yeah, he was being that the effort there was infiltration that was happening not only at the White House, but at his residence.

I'm very intrigued by what Durham, the allegation that Durham has made in this court filing. Keep in mind, Durham is a very serious federal prosecutor, U.S. attorney, filing court papers saying that one of the things that these people did is try to infiltrate a, I can't remember exactly the phrase, but it was like the medical provider to the President of the United States.

So going after medical records and other things, these people were essentially spying on the president. I think you can make that case out loud that, yeah, this is worse than Watergate because if you follow the money, the money leads from Clinton and the Democrats through Perkins Coie, a law firm that's headed up by Mark Elias in this practice that he has, and Michael Sussman and others,

And the question mark is, you know, did they break the law? How much of the law did they break? I think there's a lot more to come. What do you think Republicans should be doing on this? One thing you hear from grassroots activists is like, oh, the Republicans are just going to let this flame away. Right. We're just going to ignore it. What do you think Republicans in Congress should be doing to keep pressing the Durham investigation or do they need to not do anything?

Well, they need to continue to make the case that this needs to be funded, that Durham needs independence, just the way the Democrats argued that that the Mueller investigated needed funding and independence. I think it's the same parallel.

I think the current ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, or the Oversight Committee, which I used to chair, Mr. Comer from Kentucky, as well as Jim Jordan from Ohio, ranking member on Judiciary,

What they should be doing are issuing letters of preservation. A preservation letter from Congress means not only do you have to keep the things in place that are required by the Federal Records Act, but you need to keep all of your notes, all your voicemails, all your texts, all those expands the scope of which they're responsible and be prepared.

If hopefully you win back the House to be able to issue subpoenas on, you know, hour one of day one. Well, I think that's kind of the biggest thing. You've got to win back the House first. I mean, yeah. So, OK, so go say we went back to House here in twenty twenty two.

What do you think the steps Republicans should take? I mean, first of all, they need to focus on one thing I always hate about the Republicans do is we try to hit these grand slams instead of hitting a bunch of singles. Right. Just things that improve people's lives. But regarding the Durham investigation, say we have the majority and say you were speaker, what would you push your caucus to do on this?

I think you have to look at the Department of Justice. You have to look at the reforms and things that are happening or supposed to be happening at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I would get Michael Horowitz, the inspector general back up there and continue to learn what he has learned. But then I would compel the testimony, public testimony from those people who are engaged in this. Mark Elias, Michael Sussman, and they have about a dozen other attorneys.

that get up there if they want to plead the fifth, they want to plead attorney-client privilege, go right ahead. But then they should start going through the people that were involved in this financial scheme and follow the money. And that's the only way to do this. Look,

Democrats have now opened the gate and said nothing's off the table. I mean, look at the way they're doing with January 6th, going after members. OK, that's opened up the door for Republicans to get more aggressive instead of saying, well, you can't really touch those people or you can't really ask them a question. Yeah, yeah. Evidently, according to Nancy Pelosi, you can. So let's go for it.

We're with former Congressman Jason Chaffetz, contributor to Fox News, also has his own podcast, Jason in the House. Jason, what was your biggest surprise when you're oversight chairman that when you took the job, it just, wow, this just surprises me. This goes on this way. What was it?

I think the biggest disappointment and Trey Gowdy, who is my colleague from South Carolina, who was arm and arm with me on so many of these things. He and I both had the experience, both came back. We've kind of compared notes. I think we would both,

without a doubt, say the lack of intellectual curiosity and honesty from the traditional media was probably the biggest disappointment. Types of stories that we were diving into that easily could have been, you know, page one, top of the hour, you know, 60 minutes type stories. New York Times, Washington Post. I thought they were going to be the ones of the record, you know, the

Of an integrity? No, they got political agendas. Biggest disappointment, biggest surprise. And tried to work with them, answer every question, always made myself accessible. But they didn't call balls and strikes the way they were coming across the plate. There is no independent, honest media. No, there's not. You know, and I was that hard for you being I know when you were college, you want to become a reporter or become, you know, was that hard for you to see this? There's basic rules. There's basic rules you're supposed to follow as a journalist. And they didn't follow them.

I just thought exposing the truth, being about openness, transparency, the only place I've seen it, and granted, I'm getting a check there, but that's where I put my money, where my mouth is, is with Fox News. I think they make a genuine effort. They do it on both sides of the aisle. They try to expose the truth, and they take a lot of criticism for it, but it's also why it's the most popular network in the country. It's not even close. Combine MSNBC and CNN.

It doesn't touch the numbers of what Fox does because they're providing an open, honest look at what the how the world's really working. Jason, real quick before we go, I know Chuck doesn't love Republicans going for grand slams, but Perkins Coie has been running all over the country for years, affecting laws in every state, not just Washington, D.C., and they're doing it through consent decrees where they conspire to sue a Democrat official who then settles with them on a consent decree. How do we get rid of that?

Well, you have to expose who Mark Elias is. And Molly Hemingway at the Federalist has done a good job. I have been saying for a long, long time, the center of evil universe is run by Mark Elias. So unless you understand what he's doing and how he's doing it, you're not going to solve these problems. And the problem is no one in traditional New York, D.C. media is going to tell you who he is. Because they don't want to because they like what he's they agree with them.

Yeah. Well, fantastic interview, Jason. Thank you so much for joining us on the first old episode of Breaking Battlegrounds as we transition into our new market. And really, really appreciate you being on the show today. Hey, thanks for having me. I always appreciate it. Thanks, Jason. Bye bye.

The 2020 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2021. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web with a yourname.vote web domain from godaddy.com. Get yours now. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren.

On the line with us now, Charles C.W. Cook. He is the senior writer for National Review, former editor of National Review Online, graduate of Oxford University, and one of the smartest people in journalism today. Charles, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. Are you in Florida today? Absolutely. Sunny, beautiful, free Florida. How long have you been in free Florida now?

Since 2017. I guess we didn't know it at the time, but we lucked out moving when we did. We were in the Northeast, New York and Connecticut before, so we got out just in time. That is good timing. Did you just move because you thought, I need warmer weather?

warmer weather better laws lower taxes all that fun stuff all that good stuff yeah why the why half the state of New York is applying for their visa to move to Florida right now yeah Charles we're gonna play a quick clip here and then we want to talk about Ukraine go ahead Jeremy on this and everything else President Obama in my view has demonstrated that he's totally in touch with our times but just a month ago

Governor Romney called, and here again I quote, without question, our number one geopolitical foe is Russia. As my brother would say, don't figure. Look, I think it's fair to say when it comes to Russia, based on only what we know he's said so far, Governor Romney is mired in a Cold War mindset. Charles, it's too bad that Biden doesn't have a little bit of a Cold War mindset because we've clearly got one on our hands.

Yeah, not just with Russia, but with China. I think the worst thing about that clip brought it all back.

is how many of Biden and Obama's attacks on Romney relied upon their knowledge that the audience would applaud whatever they said. I mean, there's no argument there. It was like the binders full of women case. You remember that? Oh, yes. They just sort of said it over and over. But, you know, the binders full of women and the audience said, aha, that sounds terrible. Of course, it wasn't. And what Romney said about Putin was not either. Yeah.

This is a guy who has posed problems to many American presidents, not just Joe Biden. He posed a problem to Obama, to George W. Bush and to Trump. And although I don't blame Joe Biden solely for what's happening now, I think that can be overstated. Clearly, Biden's out of his depth. He wasn't prepared for this. His posturing was.

never had much to it. And I mean, once you add in what happened in Afghanistan, you can see why Putin chose now to do this. And we've seen China at the same time jump out and sanction a bunch of American arms manufacturers while this is going on. Right now, the world stage is totally out of control for this administration. Charles, what does this mean for China as they look at Taiwan?

Well, that's why I think it's important. And I understand that Americans don't want to get into a war with Russia. I don't either. I also understand that we have limited options here. But

America is and should be the preeminent global power. I don't think people understand quite how much they benefit from that. Before America, it was Britain. We've had essentially 200 years of Anglo-American dominance. And one of the things that the Anglo-American peace has relied upon is a protection of borders.

And one of the reasons that it has focused on the integrity of borders is because if you let one invasion go, then you have less security.

of a leg to stand on next time. And you raise a great point. What happens if we say, well, whatever, it's a long way away. Americans don't care about Ukraine. They don't. We'll let Putin do this. Well, China watches it and it says, well, we have a similar relationship or at least a similar claim over Taiwan. And then the United States, I think, should say, no, no, no, no, that's an independent country.

And China says, well, it's not. It's within our sphere of influence. We have a complicated historical relationship with it. And besides, you let Russia get away with it in Ukraine. Before we go to break here, I think that brings up a good point. Actually, our recognition of Ukraine is more significant than our recognition of Taiwan, which is still not officially recognized as an independent nation state by the U.S.,

Right. Right. I'm calling Taiwan an independent. Yeah. No, no, that isn't. Yeah. I think we would fully agree with you that it absolutely is. But that highlights the danger that we have on the international stage right now when you let an actor like Putin free to do whatever he wants.

That's exactly right. The guy does not care about the same things that Americans and American politicians do. No, he does not. Nor does China. I apologize, Charles. Breaking battlegrounds coming right back.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. Today we have with us Charles Cook, senior writer at the National Review, resident of the Free State of Florida. You can also find him on Twitter and his website's CharlesWCook, with an E at the end, .com.

When COVID started, I want to talk a little bit about COVID here. When COVID started, Charles, one of the things that surprised me, of many surprises, was just how crazy Australia went. And it seems like Canada has said, hold my beer. Let me go from there. And this trucker strike thing has been interesting. I think Canada had options to just simply arrest the truckers if they're blockading or tow their trucks. But instead, they've gone full force.

martial law. They've gone full Putin, right? So they've gone and enacted this Emergencies Act, which give these banks broad authorities to basically eliminate people's banking ability. Did we see this coming? What are your thoughts? Well, I think the point you make is the key one. And that is that before we get to the severity of the invocation of the Emergencies Act, it should be acknowledged that it was in no way necessary. Right. They could have cleared this

protest with their traditional everyday powers. You could have cleared the blockade of the bridge in colonial America. There is nothing innovative needed here. And for them to have invoked a law that was passed to deal with an invasion or a successful coup or a terrorist attack. For something that should be a ticket for obstructing the right-of-way. It's a misdemeanor. Right.

It's extraordinary. And what it did is it essentially demonstrated that the prime minister of Canada was going after his political opponents.

I watched this and felt extremely grateful to be an American citizen because in the United States, which is not perfect, but in the United States, we have a constitutional system in which the highest law in the land, the Constitution, sits above Congress and the states. And what that means in practice is that the government can get as angry with me or you as it likes, but I always have some recourse.

I can go to a court and say, what this government has done is illegal. It is in violation of our sacred law. There is no such system in Canada. Parliament is in charge. Parliament invoked an act that essentially wipes out all of the other laws and everyone has to deal with it. And I've seen people say, well, why did the banks go along with it? The banks didn't have a choice. There's no court system for the Emergencies Act.

at least not one that is timely. So I am

I'm thrilled to live in the one country that has that set up because Australia does not, because Canada does not. And it's been crazy in some ways, but not to this extent. My country of birth, Britain, does not. Americans should be grateful. Charles, Britain appears to be backing off of it. But really, the difference, I think, in many ways between the United States and those other countries during this has been the power of the states. And the fact that you had a governor, for instance, Ron DeSantis,

who could be shown leading a different way and making it much tougher for the authoritarians to seize that additional power for themselves, which, frankly, they did try to do in many, many states. Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

In America, the states occupy a sovereign role within the system. They're not regional departments of the federal government, however much some politicians would like to make them that. They are the building blocks. They are where the action happens. They are where most of the laws are made.

This has given us a chance to experiment. It's given us a chance to have a different set of policies in Florida than in California and New York. And I think it is instructive that we have seen huge numbers of people going into Florida from New York, California, and elsewhere, but not the other way around. Clearly, what Florida has done has worked because it has managed to

do okay at mitigating COVID, it's about the middle of the pack, while keeping its economy open, keeping the schools open, keeping people free and happy. I think it got the balance right. And it wouldn't have had a chance, as you say, to do that in a country with a highly centralized system. I think one thing's been amazing about what's happened in the last couple of years too, is again, just how much foresight our founders had.

And you being born in Britain and coming to the United States, what are your views of the founders? I mean, they just seemed like they just saw a lot of things around the corner, not everything, but pretty darn good vision in a lot of ways. I think it's extraordinary.

You know, there's this moment in Plato where he says, you'll get these philosopher kings. They'll come down from the mountain. They'll sort everything out. It never happens, ever, except once. It happened once. Lightning struck in Philadelphia, and we got this extraordinary document that we should be grateful for and that we won't get another chance at. I mean, if we can't keep it, we won't get another chance. If you look at the Constitution...

It puts into aspic a whole range of classical liberal ideas that were once popular in Britain, that came out of 18th century, early 19th century Britain, but have been lost in Britain because they weren't written down.

In America, they're still regnant. In America, they're still vibrant. Without that constitution, they may not be. If that constitution were to fall or if the courts were to wipe it away by pretending it says things that it does not, that will be it. Americans won't get a second shot. Well, and personally, I've thought that was part of what was going on with the entire defund the police movement to an extent where you have some members of Congress on the left

saying we need to get rid of local policing and replace them with national police. If you want to enforce the end of states' independence, the end of states' rights, you have to start with that basis that you control the law enforcement. Yeah, and wasn't it strange that they were proposing that while Donald Trump was president, who they thought was the dictator? Yeah.

I mean, one of the great advantages of Western societies, and this is not just the United States, this is true in Britain as well, for example, is the localized police force system. You don't have one police force. I'm not saying that every country that has a more centralized police system is a tyranny, but there is no tyranny that doesn't have a centralized police system. You want to have 400, 500, 1,000 police departments because you have all these veto points, these checks where people can say, I'm not doing that.

And, you know, to try to turn it into a federalized police force while the guy you're saying is the next Hitler is in charge is just. We talked about the Constitution earlier and about how, you know, if we can keep it, what do you think we need to be doing to talk about the beauty of the Constitution and what it's done and what it means? Well, if you were in charge of this, what would you do?

I'd do two things. The first one is practical. The second one is more educational. The practical side of it, you've got to keep appointing judges who stick to the Constitution as it was originally understood and as it is clearly written, because otherwise you can get constitutional amendments in through the back door. You can lie about what the text means. You set the precedent and the Constitution, although it is still nominally there,

has gone. Educationally, gone. Oh, no, I was just going to say the dishonesty of the left on that very issue, because of course, we have mechanisms where you can pass the laws that they're wanting the courts to impose or implement. They just can't get them passed, right? Right. And so they tried to do it via judges informally. Yeah. The second part of it is educational. We have to

insist upon the Constitution as a glorious liberty document, as Frederick Douglass put it. This is America's North Star. And the problem historically has been that it has been ignored or subverted. There's no point denying that slavery, segregation were great blots on the American escutcheon.

But they weren't mandated by the Constitution. They were either tolerated by it or they represented a subversion of it. The Constitution is a beautiful colorblind document that promises to everyone, irrespective of where they're from, a certain set of liberties in a government that works. And the attempt by the left at the moment to

throw the whole thing out and to say, well, because it hasn't stopped this, that or the other, then it must be useless. It is devastating because if you lose that, then you lose what America is. And I think conservatives have to be very clear and very confident in defending the document and saying, no, this is how we got to this point. This is how we got past all of those ills, most of which

had actually plagued human beings in every country for all of human history. They weren't unique to America. Well, and what was most interesting to me was the founders were fully aware of that and specifically left room in the Constitution to erase those blots, right? When there was pressure not to do that, to lock them into place. Yeah, and also there was a hundred year gap between the promises made by the 14th and 15th Amendments and they're actually being

put into law. Now that is a flaw in American history, but it's not a flaw on the Constitution. It's an unwillingness to follow the Constitution. Absolutely. Well, one last question here. So tell us, how did you end up in the United States being born in Britain? I'd always loved America. Ever since I was a kid, we used to come on vacation here. We had great family friends. And ever since I was three years old,

I had resolved that I would live in America. I just saw it as inevitable. And when I got a chance to come over for an internship with National Review,

In 2011, I jumped at it and then I held on for dear life. Once I was here, I asked if they would hire me, if they would sponsor my green card, which they did. And I became a citizen in 2018. So it probably sounds odd, but really, ever since I can remember, I loved America. Not politically. I didn't have any political views until I was maybe 20. But just I loved the culture.

dynamism of the place, the friendliness of the people. I love Disney World, I guess, when you visit when you're a kid. And I thought, well, that's where I'd like to be. And it is, thankfully, where I've ended up. Have you become a sports nut, which is an American tradition?

Oh, absolutely. I am, for my sins, a Jacksonville Jaguars fan, so I've spent most of the last three years with my head in my hands. As Cardinal fans, we understand this completely. Exactly. Charles, you are also the co-host of the Mad Dogs and Englishmen podcast, which I personally just love. I highly recommend everyone out there, if you're not checking that out and downloading it. But also, and I always enjoy your appearances on Real Time with Bill Maher.

I really felt like he got so turned off by Trump that that changed him for a few years. But he's really come back strong on that civil libertarian basis that was always his forte. And I think he's speaking some truths right now that maybe people on the left haven't heard in a while. Are there other folks out there that people should be tuning into if you're trying to get some of that sanity back? Well, yeah, I think that.

we are seeing something of a convergence between left and right on the question of elementary liberalism. What you see in Bill Maher is not his conversion into a conservative. No. But his belief in the basic building block of society, which is tolerance and forgiveness and open-mindedness. And I see this in some other people on the left with whom I disagree profoundly on most of the everyday issues, taxes, guns, what you will.

you know glenn greenwald matt taibbi barry weiss these aren't conservatives what they are though is people who are highly alarmed at the council culture that is creeping in and at the unwillingness of many people especially in the press academia and entertainment to listen to anyone who disagrees with them so i think what you're seeing from bill maher is this disbelief um that a movement that describes itself as liberal as being anything but and so half the time i watch him and i think

Yeah, you know, you can see this threat and you're fighting against it. Now, if we were to have a drink and start talking about everyday politics, I think we'd quickly fall out. But that's fine because we would be willing to talk to each other, which you have to be able to do. Charles Cook, thank you so much, folks. You can follow him at Charles C.W. Cook on Twitter. One of the great thinkers of this time and someone I highly, highly recommend people stay up to date with.

Chuck, any last words before we go to our... No, we hope you'll join us again in Britain's Lost. Thanks for coming on over, and go Jaguars. Thank you. Talk soon. Thanks. Well, that was fantastic. Breaking Battlegrounds, coming back next week.

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