On Tuesday’s episode of “The Andrew Klavan Show,” Klavan talks about Attorney General Bill Barr’s speech at the Federalist Society’s national convention and Devin Nunes’ statement at the impeachment hearing. Video and partial transcript below:
Everyone is attacking Bill Barr, the attorney general, for a speech he made at the Federalist Society. The Federalist Society is a highly successful right-wing group — right-wing? Conservative group that basically wanted to breed constitutionalist judges, not right-wing or conservative judges, but judges who read the Constitution as it was meant to be read. People who were not activists — to get them on the Supreme Court.
You know, we’re always attacking the Left and saying they planned their march through Hollywood, they plan to take over the academies, they plan to take over the news media — and they did. Well, the Federalist Society was a conservative plan that really worked, and Bill Barr was talking there the other day and he pointed out that it is not President Trump who is actually operating within the coloring, within the constitutional lines. It is the Left who is breaking the rules and has been for a number of years.
BARR: Immediately after President Trump won, election opponents inaugurated what they called the “resistance,” and they rallied around an explicit strategy of using every tool and maneuver to sabotage the functioning of the executive branch and his administration. The fact of the matter is that in waging a scorched earth, no-holds-barred war of “resistance” against this administration, it is the Left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and undermining the rule of law.
And how can this not be so? I mean, how can it not be so when the Right appoints judges who interpret the Constitution — some of the rulings that have been coming down from the Supreme Court with the help of Gorsuch have been results that the Left wants, but they have been decided on grounds that the Right wants — namely, what is the right interpretation of the Constitution.
It is only the Left, every time the Left loses, they want to destroy the system, they go after the system. If they lose an election, they want to go after the Electoral College. If they lose the majority on the Supreme Court, they want to go after the Supreme Court and stack the Supreme Court. And if they start losing arguments, they want to ban free speech and declare that anybody who disagrees with them is hate speech.
It’s just important to realize, because this is the difference. It’s not that political parties haven’t always had a corrupt side to them, it’s not that democracies don’t have a corrupt side. The important thing now is that the press, the corporate press — which is most of the press, which is most of the information you’re getting — is part of this. Devin Nunes, who is at these impeachment hearings, took some of his time to outline the way the press has been covering these stories from Russian collusion on. Listen to this:
NUNES: New York Times: Trump campaign aides had repeated contacts with Russian intelligence. Also false. Slate: Was a Trump server communicating with Russia? This was false. New York Magazine: Will Trump be meeting with his counterpart or his handler? This was false. The Guardian: Manafort held secret talks with the Assange in Ecuadorian embassy. Also false. BuzzFeed: President Trump directed his attorney to lie to Congress about the Moscow Tower project.
All of these were false. There was no objectivity or fairness in the media’s Russia stories, just as a fevered rush to tarnish and remove a president who refuses to pretend that the media are something different from what they really are — puppets of the Democratic Party.
It is about time — and it is because of Trump — it’s about time the Republican Party started saying this. When … you run for office as a Republican, your opponent is the press. When you try to pass a law as a Republican, your opponent is the press. If you haven’t got the guts, if you haven’t got the fortitude, if you haven’t got the spine to stand up to The New York Times and ABC and NBC and CBS News, you better not go into this business as a Republican.
Because if you are a Democrat, as we now know, and you are raping young women, they’ll cover up for you. They will cover up for you. But if you get on the phone and say to the guy in Ukraine, maybe you ought to investigate some corruption in the Democrat Party, they will come after you. The Democrats and the press are doing this together.
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