October 23, 2024 • 29 mins
Mia, Sophie and Robert relive the horror of the Kavanaugh hearings and discover how Trump made the FBI conduct a fake "investigation" to clear him.
Sources:
https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/KavanaughReport_final.pdf
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/donald-trump-brett-kavanaugh-misogyny.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/08/kavanaugh-trump-white-house-fbi-report/
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article214604235.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/us/politics/joe-biden-anita-hill.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/08/kavanaugh-trump-white-house-fbi-report/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media, what.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Brett my Kavanaughs? I'm Robert Evans, and this is it
could happen here? A podcast about it happening here with
me today is Sophie Lichterman and Mia Wong. We're going
to be talking about a guy who is near and
dear to my heart because the second to the last
conversation I ever had with my mom was about Brett Kavanaugh. Mia,
what are we going to learn today?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Boy, have you done the what's brending my Kavanaugh? Before?
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Like, I'm certain I haven't. Why would I have?
Speaker 1 (00:36):
I don't know if if oddly familiar, So if he has,
somebody let me know, thank you. Yeah, tell us the
good and the bad.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Yeah we already know the ugly. Yeah, I'm body shaming
Brett Kavanaugh. Yeah that's right, motherfucker.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
That's right, motherfucker.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
The worst thing he consequences he's ever going to suffer
are this bad news cycle and me saying something that's
not legally defamatory. And if he wants to fucking prove it,
you can sue me over it.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
He has a sweet gig for life. Yeah, he's set,
is set, bro.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, Yeah, he sucks so bad that even like you know,
Midwest dads hate him, so at least there's.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
That, yeah, he's he's really rad sid And so I
think I think the place to start with this actually
is not with kavanall, but with Trump, because what we're
talking about today is a thing that we kind of
knew was true but didn't know the extensive until now,
which is that the supposed FBI investigation into everything that
Brett Kavanaugh did was like fake and deliberately fucked by
(01:43):
Trump specifically, Like this is Trump specifically told them to
just like not do the investigation, and so they didn't
do the investigation and nothing happened. This is this sort
of how we got confirmed. And I think the interesting
thing about this partially is because I hate Breakabital. Yeah,
he sucks the worst guy, real dick, Yeah, But I
think the everything about him is like I feel like
(02:04):
everyone has forgotten what it was like to live under Trump.
I agree, because there was just so much shit happening
all the time, Like every single every single day was
like a new one of these things. And I want
to go back to what like one week of Trump
was like, because every single fucking week was like this,
(02:24):
and it was the most miserable thing. So who is
Brett Kavanaugh. He's one of the nine assholes who get
to decide whether we all have rights for people who've
sort of forgotten his background. So he's like an old old,
like nineties era kind of like protege of the nineties
Republican gruls. He's like one of the people who helps
(02:45):
Ken Starr do the like Monica Lewinsky trial. Like he's
he's involved in a whole bunch of sort of like
Republican rat fucking operations. He's also and I think this
one's actually important to remember as to go up to
the election, Kavidall was part of the legal team that
helped Bush do the original stop the steal in two
thousand years just like straight up stole the election in Florida.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
So I love that these guys keep getting jobs as
opposed to I don't know, getting the punishment for treason.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
And he's only fifty nine years old. Yeah, he's so
young for that job.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
We have like forty more years of him.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
If you ever wanted like a clear reason why we
shouldn't do things like the death penalty for treason, it's
because when people commit treason, nothing happens.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
To them.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
And when people I don't know agitate for Puerto Rican independence,
they get executed. Like that's that's that's what happens with
those laws. I just bad avoid laws existing.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yeah, and especially avoid all of your laws being dictated
by a bunch of a bunch of fucking serial predators. Yeah,
and this gets us too. So Kevinaugh's appointment was very,
very close. The Republicans at the time they controlled the Senate,
but they had a fifty two to forty eight margin,
and a lot of those kind of marginal senators were
(04:10):
like there were there was.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
There was a more realistic chance of it not happening
then typically Yeah, but they still fucked it in the end.
Oh yeah, of course.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
But you know the reason the reason why it was
close is, as I think most people probably remember, Kavanaugh
is a serial sexual predator. He has sexually assaulted so
many fucking people. People saw him do it. There were
times when he was the only fucking person there he
did there were times when we did it in crowds.
He definitely one hundred percent did it. And if he
wants to fucking sue me about it, like, I'll see
(04:42):
you in court, motherfucker.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
And while we're here, Clarence Thomas also a predator, thank you.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Yes, we're going to get to that.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Let's let's be clear here, Like if we're doing an
Olympics of predators, Clarence Thomas is up in the number
one spot. Brett Kavanaugh's down in place three. You know,
Thomas is a much, much more I don't know, expansive predator.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Yeah, there was some belief at the time in this
is sort of like every single article about this like
talked about how this is PEAKB two. But it is
sort of important that like this, it was a real
possibility that he was going to go down in flames. Yeah,
it has happened before, it can happen again, and it
was a real issue for him, And it was a
real issue for him in large part because Christine bloss
(05:25):
A Forge, who's a psychology professor, just like testified under
oath in one of the most like fucking harrowing things
I've ever seen on the floor of the Senate. Horrif. Yeah,
the thing I stuck with b was like he was
laughing while he did it. It's just like, this guy
is a fucking monster.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
I mean.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
One of the things that you do have to take
into account, is that, like the media infrastructure that world
up to defend Brett Kavanaugh to ensure that this didn't
take him down existed in part because about a third
of right wing media, like about a third of that
whole infrastructure system exists because of the Clarence Thomas hearings
(06:03):
like that and Nixon's resignation being forced are kind of
the two inciting incidents of modern conservative media. Those were
the things that made them really commit to the idea that, like,
we have to build a completely separate ecosystem of facts
because if we let reality in it, all, like our
guys who are all sex predators and criminals will never
(06:24):
be able to win or stay in office.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Yeah. And also, I mean it's worth noting too that
like Roger ayles Off, who is like one of the
people responsible for building all this infrastructure, was also himself
just a surreal predator on a like frankly incomprehensible scale. Yes,
And so all these people were also just defending themselves
because they also are all fucking their own sometimes miniature
(06:48):
capital sometimes worse Kavenaughs. And it into this sort of breach, right, like,
so this is this is this is a real pr
crisis to Republicans, this is this is going even worse
for them than then the last time that they fucking
did this, which was, as we've alluded to, when they
got Clarence Thomas on and when Joe Biden like personally
helped railroad Anita Hill to make sure that when she
(07:11):
would get fucked when she to testify against Clariss Thomas.
So that's great, incredible stuff. There was a point in
our nation's history where that was actually like a political
problem for Joe Biden. We're fucking no longer there anymore.
And into this breach steps what's supposed to be an
FBI investigation.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah, ostensibly.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Yeah, So I'm going to read from a recently released report,
and there's gonna be I'm going to quote from this
report a lot because this is this is the sort
of new information that we have.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Where can people see the report?
Speaker 3 (07:40):
It will be in the description. If you just like
search Sheldon Whitehouse Report, you should be able to find it.
There'll be a link in the notes.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Yeah, we'll link it.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah. It's like it's like thirty pages. It's actually out there.
It's more like twenty pages because like a bunch of
the mergercizations. So it's a pretty easy read. I'm going
to read some of it. And also I do want
to point out the fact that this any Senate Judiciary
Committee member who wrote this thing is named Sheldon white House.
Incredible name, incredible center.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
That is a great name. Where does that come from?
That can't be a real name. That can't be a
name that existed. That can't be a name that existed
before the White House, right, Like it has to have
at some point been named after the White House, right.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
I mean, why else would you have that name? Well,
it could just mean that this family historically lived in
a White House for seven hundred years.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
You'd have to be in a White House for a
long ass time to get that last name.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
So, just from the report quote, after hearing the testimony
by Ford and Kavanaugh, the Judiciary Committee agreed to request
the FBI he knocked a supplemental background investigation quote limited
to current credible allegations against Kavanaugh before the full Senate
voted on his confirmation. And so there's an important detail
here that wasn't clear to anyone at the time, because
(08:53):
fucking no one knows how the minutia of FBI investigations work.
But this was not actually a full FBI investigation. This
is this is something called a like supplemental background investigation,
and we'll get into what exactly that is in a second,
but it's not like a real FBI investigation. And this
(09:15):
investigation does what it was supposed to do, which was,
you know, clear Kavanaugh's name and offer Republican Senators to
be able to vote for him without immediately getting destroyed politically.
What it didn't do was like actually conduct an investigation.
R Trump very famously at this time it says that
the investigation had quote free reign and it unbelievably did
not bull fucking shit. Yeah, he just lied about this,
(09:39):
like yep. Yeah. The administration directly ran the investigation, killed it,
and then used its political power and the FBI itself
to you know, illegitimately railroad a serial predator or on
at the Supreme Court to take away of when's right
to get into abortion. And then after that they stonewalled
the investigation for six years. So this is how that
sort of process worked. I'm going to quote from that
(10:00):
report again. Third, although the Trump administration and the FBI
assured the Senate that the FBI's investigation was being conducted
quote by the book. They failed to disclose that there
was actually no quote unquote book at all. The FBI
produced no written records for supplemental background investigation, saying it
was merely acting as the quote agent for the White
(10:22):
House in such matters.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Which white house was it? Sheldon white House?
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Sorry? No, white House?
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Bad?
Speaker 3 (10:29):
The one with the president of the bad white House.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Yeah. By the way, I was, I was trying to
debunk his last name. He comes from the longest line
of nepotism of that held.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
I was like, I was like, oh, they must have
gotten named that back when like the fact that they
had a house at all was noteworthy.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Yeah, these people have paint.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
It literally kept going. I was like, okay, one level, okay,
two levels, okay, three leves okay for this Okay, when
does it end?
Speaker 4 (10:56):
And then I got bored. And the funny puartterback of
this again is that like, this is the good guy
in this story? Is my nepo baby, like like a
corruption guy.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Junior Senator of Rhode Island. Yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
And I want to kind of focus in on this
statement in and of itself, because this is just like
an absolutely hideous of you, just like the hideous power
of the unitary executive just do whatever the fuck it wants. Like,
what do you mean that the FBI produced no written
protocols for for how they're supposed to do supplemental background investigation?
(11:31):
What do you mean that they were quote acting as
an agent for the White House? That's batshit? Why why
their security service is literally directly answered to one guy
who could just tell them what to do whatever the
fuck he wants. That's insane. That is a that is
a fucking that is a drange political system. And yet
this is you know, this is this is the system
I'm supposed to be doing this stuff, which is also
(11:53):
very funny because White House is like not really trying
to get into a feud with the FBI. So there's
a lot of kind of like e sculpletoryself of the FBI.
But like, also everything the FBI does in this is
such a fiasco that it's very clearly like also very
much their fault. I'm gonna read another quote from this.
This is from a bit later in the report. Fourth,
(12:15):
the FBI's tip line was not used to facilitate the
FBI supplemental background investigation into the allegations against Kavanall on
instructions from the White House, the FBI did not investigate
thousands of tips that came through the FBI's tip line. Instead,
all tips related to Kavanall were forwarded to the White
House without investigation. If anything, the White House may have
(12:38):
used the tip line to steer FBI investigators away from
derogatory or damaging information, which is again absolutely nuts, insane
and like, yes, so this.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Is the kind of thing that like should be serious crime, right,
like yeah that you go, you get locked up for forever,
like this is a forever crime. Yeah, it seems much
more serious than I don't know, robbing a bank to
try and fund the Puerto Rican independence movement.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Yeah. It's not clear to me whether this would have
been a giant scandal for a normal administration, just because
the American presidency has so much power, but it should
have been like this was just like a thing that
would happen every week under Trump, was like he would
just do shit like this, do you know also what
you should do? Shit like I don't know, that was
not my best pivot, no, no, but but do shit
like yeah, like like these products and services that support
(13:26):
the podcast, and we are back. We've gotten to the
point where again the FBI's tip line is not actually
big years of the investigation, they're sending it all to
the White House. The report found that so the FBI,
(13:48):
like and I talked about the public at the time,
they talked to ten people who they said had like
direct knowledge of the situation. But again they only talk
to ten people, and there are there's a whole bunch
of people who had very relevant evidence about a lot
of important stuff in this Like, so one of the
claims that's going on here is that Kavanaugh was just
wasted all the time. And this is like every single
(14:09):
person you talk to who knew Kavanaugh in college and
that isn't like directly employed by the Republican Party was like,
oh yeah, this guy was wasted all the time, right,
And this became a big part of the trial. And
there were a whole bunch of people who try to
go to the FBI to be like, hey, he did this,
and they just like would not talk to them. People
who tried to come forward, like they wouldn't talk to
(14:29):
people who sent them information to the tip line. They
just like didn't talk to them at all, I'm going
going to read from the thing again. According to a
quote executive summary, if the FBI supplemental background investigation issued
by the Judiciary Committee majority, the majority of THAT'SIY was
Republican majority. So that's why it's fucked. These people were
(14:50):
quote all witnesses with potential firsthand knowledge at the allegations.
The FBI did not, however, interview Ford or Kavanaugh, the
witnesses potentially with the most first and knowledge, nor did
it speak to other potentially corroborating witnesses who had not
witnessed the events firsthand. Nevertheless, the Judiciary Committee's Republicans executive
summary concluded that the quote supplemental background investigation confirms there
(15:14):
is no cooperation of allegations made by doctor Ford and
Ms Ramirez, So they didn't talk to either Kavanaugh or Ford,
the two people who the thing was a ballant.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Well, I mean, you know, why would you need to
do that, right, Like.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Wait, what the fuck? This is so insane. The other
part of this is, so the FBI's initial background check
didn't turn up any of this, and so the supplemental
thing is being done in place of like the normal
background check. Because the normal background check was also done
like shit, and so they never figured out any of
this incredibly obvious stuff about him. And meanwhile, like the
supplemental one, just they just kept being like, oh, well,
(15:50):
we don't actually need to talk to the people who
this is about for incredibly nebulous reasons. And the other
part of this that's going on is that like, while
this process is happening, the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee
are trying to figure out how this process works, and
Trump just like refuses to talk to any of them,
and the FBI refuses to fucking send any of them.
(16:10):
People are fighting out like we we we know that
there's no specific process for this like supplemental investigation thing,
because like their staffers found it out from a YouTube video. Jesus,
Like they did not find this out from the FBI.
It was like this guy senator staffers were like watching
YouTube videos to figure out how this investigation was supposed
to work. So and it turns out we had known
(16:32):
at the time that the FBI was doing some kind
of shady stuff. But what we know now is that
so Ford and her lawyers repeatedly tried to talk to
the FBI and they were just never able to do so, right,
the FBI completely stonewalled them, and it turns out that
they still walled them because Trump specifically ordered the FBI
(16:52):
not to talk to her or Kavanaugh what what? Which
is absolutely insane? Yeah, I love the law. It turns
out this is this is this is the part of
this is the most insane.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Everyone thought that the FBI was doing a normal FBI investigation, right,
And part of what's going on here is that the
media is just these like absolute credulous idiots, right, because
every single day the media is reporting that like Trump
is allowing an open investigation because like somehow again this
is like two years into him being in office, right,
none of these people have figured out that every single
thing he says is a lie. They're all like, oh yeah,
(17:25):
Trump keeps saying that these people can talk to whoever
they want and they can investigate whoever they want. And
this gets to the point where the FBI is calling
the White House every day because they'll be reading the
news reports that say we could talk to anyone, and
they'll be like, hey, you told us we can't talk
to these people, and they'll be like, no, no, actually,
you still can't talk to these people. And it turns
out that what's happening is this like quote unquote supplemental investigation.
(17:45):
It's not an FBI investigation. They can only do things
that are like quote unquote directed by the President, So
they could only talk to the people who the President
tells them to talk to, and they can't look at
evidence that the President doesn't tell them to to look at.
And so what ends up happening is that, like you know,
there's initially like four people that they're they're supposed to
(18:06):
be talking to, right, and you know, they keep getting
these like press things that are like, oh, hey, this
is the full this is an open investigation. You can
like do whatever you want. And eventually they put in
like six more peoples, like they talked to ten total people.
But because this is an investigation that is not being
run by the FBI, really it's being it's being directly
ran by Trump himself, which he's lying about because of that,
(18:28):
they fucking never talked to anyone. And then also again
as we talked about, right that that tip line, they
set up a bunch of the people who tried to
talk to the FBI, who the FBI wouldn't talk to,
were like told Okay, go submit stuff to this tip line,
and the FBI later admits that the tip line was
like never.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Real, sure have a nice fake tip line.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Yeah, they never used any of an investigation. They sent
it all to Trump. Yeah. And the reason they did
it was that they were sick of people calling their
regular tip line, so they set up a specific tip
line so they could just have all the stuff that
they would never listen to and in sad the sense
of the White House, so they could do I guess
like opo research bullshit on it. So this is just
straight up a sham. There's no actual investigation going on.
(19:18):
The media people at the time should have been able
to figure out that obviously this thing was bullshit, right,
but nobody looked into it except for this one guy
and the Senate Dentiary Committee. And so the support comes
back and goes like, yeah, we did no research. We
talked to like ten people and we didn't like ask
them anything, and we didn't use any of the research
that we had, and we have cleared this guy. As
this is happening, right, the Judiciary Committee Democrats are like
(19:40):
trying to figure out what the fuck is going on,
and this begins a six year process of a senator
White House just fighting a war with the actual White
House and the FBI and the DDA to try to
figure out what the fuck just happens. And the interesting
part of this also is that so obviously the Trump
administration was never going to talk to them, right, which
is idiots of itself incredibly disturbing that like the Senate
(20:03):
Judiciary Committee, who in theory is one of the organizations
that supposed to be doing oversight of the FBI, would
send requests of the FBI for your information, the FBI
would tell him to fuck off.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
But the interesting part is they kept doing this under Biden,
So Biden's FBI was also doing this. It was awesome.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
I love I just love they do at GRETA, which
fucking liberals like have concluded politically at least that they
have to be as like vociferously pro law enforcement as
they can. And all cops ever do is say we
are just waiting for the chance to kill you. Like, yeah,
it's great, cool, it's stuff.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
I'm relign from this. It's so insane. When the Senators
followed up, they faced the challenge of aligning FBI, DOJ
and White House equities so they sent like requests for
the emails between Trump and the FBI right figure out
whether Trump was doing the thing he was doing, which
was like directly running the investigation himself. The FBI claimed
it cannot answer without authorization from the DOJ in the
(20:59):
White House. The DOJ directed the senator's inquiries to the
White House of the FBI, and the White House referred
the senators back to the agencies. So they're doing this
like they're doing the like the circular run around thing
you give him your insurance company where they tell you
to talk to three people and every single one of
them tells you to talk to the other one. But again,
this is the Biden DOJ, the Biden FBI, and the
Biden administration all doing this. The FBI finally provides documents
(21:22):
about like their contact with Trump for the investigation. They
finally provided the documents in November of twenty twenty three.
This investigation started in late twenty eighteen. It took half
a decade, almost half of which was under the Biden administration.
And also Senator white House literally threatening to torpedo and
(21:45):
nomination for the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel like he
had to threaten the Department of Justice in order to
get them to send the documents that proved that Trump
colluded to south Kavanaugh investigation, which even to some like
a political standpoint from the Democrats, Right, why the fuck
would you not want that in the open? I mean,
I guess, I guess unless you're Joe Biden, you don't
(22:05):
want to him remembering like all the shit you need
to need a hill. But like, this is literally free
political ammunisation of your opponent, like abusing the political process.
And it still took a Democratic senator just directly threatening
the doj of a democratic administration to get this out.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
I just like it also took so many years. Like, yeah,
Cavanaugh has has been able to take away and fuck
up our rights since what twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen. Yeah,
and the damage he's done is permanent.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah, he will be around in office, possibly very likely
for most of the rest of our lives.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Like I said earlier, it's only fifty nine years old.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Yeah, he could have another thirty years there at least.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Yeah. And if this stuff had been known, she absolutely
would not have gotten nominated. Right, there were two unbelievably
close votes to get him I'm appointed. Right, there was
a first vote where the Republicans straight up bypassed the
fellow buster and still almost lost, and it turns out
that Okay, the actual final vote ended up being fifty
(23:12):
to forty eight with two abstensions, and one of the
essensions is this guy was going to his daughter's wedding
or something. But the other abstention was Lisa Morowski, who's
the senator from Alaska, who's like the most sort of
liberal Republican senators and she does like a coward present
vote so it can happen, and if she had voted no,
and if Joe Manchin hadn't fucking cross party lines to
(23:34):
get to get him in office, which I think I
also people just forget about. Joe mentioned that he is
also like individually specifically the guy who got fucking Kavanaugh
pointed this would have failed, and the only reason that
it didn't fail, and that this guy was able to
fucking destroy ROPHI wade, is that Trump just straight up
ran a fake FBI investigation and lied to everyone about
(23:57):
it and fucking railroad of the nomination through. That's fucking Kavanaugh.
And I think I think the thing that close in
here again is like every single week of Trump is
just like this, yeah, right, like every single day has
some bullshit like this. It just like fucks everyone for
the rest of their lives.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
And it's deeply grim that he could take power again
and we could get back to like the stuff he
was doing at the end of his administratory. Who's just
like having protesters killed with federal marshols.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Like, yeah, that's the scary thing about it, right, is
there's not any kind of like functional resistance to this. Right,
the left has no power, has no serious organizing capacity
in the United States and can't get on the same
page about anything that matters, whereas liberals, when they have
four years of control of the federal government cannot adequately
(24:51):
prosecute an attempt to overthrow the government and murder them.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
So I don't know, uh, you know, make sure you
got clean water, folks, check on that garden.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
I don't know what to tell you.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
It's just so bleak because, like I said earlier, everything
is so permanent.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Yeah, you know what I mean, like just lasts so
fucking long.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Yeah, it lasts so long, and like and like we
we don't even know the damage that Kavanaugh is going
to do to our society because of Trump. And it's
also just terrifying that, you know, Trump was able to
manipulate the system in this way and that so many
people were silenced and now our rights are gone, yeah,
(25:35):
or our rights are going to be taken away.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
We have no idea.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
What else is going to be taken Yep, we have
no idea. What else is going to get fucked up?
We have ideas?
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Idea is that that Again, the problem is the root
of the problem is that liberals work tirelessly in this
country to stop the left from gaining any power, and
the left works tirelessly to stop itself from having any
kind of influence by having no capacity to organize or
compromise with people who do not agree with whatever their
(26:05):
little brand of leftism is right, whereas conservatives are willing
to work together with other conservatives they hate for forty
straight years in order to get us to the position
that we're in. That's what happened is they had message discipline,
they had organizing discipline, and they successfully pushed their madness
into the mainstream in such a way that now the
(26:27):
Democratic Party in a lot of ways is expending a
huge amount of its efforts on moving in the direction
of that madness, especially as regards immigration. Look at where
we've moved on immigration from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty four. Right,
that is the result of disciplined power building as opposed
to know what liberals and the left to do, which
(26:48):
is fight with each other and fight amongst each other
and engage in a mix of like craven power politics
and worshiping various con artists, and the right worships con
artists too. They just actually get power out of the deal.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Yeah, and just like this. The other terrifying thing about
this story is that it's not fucking everywhere. It's not everywhere.
Ten years ago, this would be the scandal of all scandals,
and it's barely barely a headline, no.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Because no one's going to do anything about it. It's
like it's like Elon Musk paying people a million dollars
a day to vote in Pennsylvania, Like that should be illegal,
Like you can, you can at least make a strong
case based on existing laws that that is election interference,
the kind of which that can land you in prison.
Everyone knows nothing's going to happen to him Nothing's going
to happen to him. If Kamala wins, right, if the
(27:42):
Dims have a blowout and wind up with both Houses
of Congress, nothing is going to happen to Elon Musk.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
It's yeah again, just like we have no idea how
how long this is going to get grow on and
how much worse it could get and uh, yeah I have.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Some idea, but I podcasted about those back in twenty nineteen, Sophie.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
I was there. I was quite literally there.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
But yeah, so thanks Miah, that was a.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Boomer, Thank you, Mia.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
No, this was good. I uh, this is solid and
a bot Again.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
When I started this by saying, my second to the
last conversation I had in person with my mom was
about Kavanaugh. It was hers almost screaming at me because
of how unfair what the Democrats did to Brett Kavanaugh
was because of the good man that they and she
felt the same way about Clarence Thomas right that like
these guys were the victims of media assassination attempts. She
feel the same way about Bill Cosby. By the way, anyway, whatever,
(28:40):
I don't need to yell about my mom. I've yelled
about enough this episode.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Well, tomorrow's episode will be more fun. I promised, we're
gon We're gonna yell about why the Kundable prizes fake
and read some of the doubleest things you've ever seen
in your life.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Hell yeah, there we go, there we go. Back to
the good stuff, Back to the good stuff. Yeah. Mea
has been.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Deeply excited to do this episode, So look look out
for that one. And I don't know, uh, touch graph
and peta dog if.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
It wants you to, Yeah, good bye.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly
in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Also media, what.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Brett my Kavanaughs? I'm Robert Evans, and this is it
could happen here? A podcast about it happening here with
me today is Sophie Lichterman and Mia Wong. We're going
to be talking about a guy who is near and
dear to my heart because the second to the last
conversation I ever had with my mom was about Brett Kavanaugh. Mia,
what are we going to learn today?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Boy, have you done the what's brending my Kavanaugh? Before?
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Like, I'm certain I haven't. Why would I have?
Speaker 1 (00:36):
I don't know if if oddly familiar, So if he has,
somebody let me know, thank you. Yeah, tell us the
good and the bad.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Yeah we already know the ugly. Yeah, I'm body shaming
Brett Kavanaugh. Yeah that's right, motherfucker.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
That's right, motherfucker.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
The worst thing he consequences he's ever going to suffer
are this bad news cycle and me saying something that's
not legally defamatory. And if he wants to fucking prove it,
you can sue me over it.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
He has a sweet gig for life. Yeah, he's set,
is set, bro.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, Yeah, he sucks so bad that even like you know,
Midwest dads hate him, so at least there's.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
That, yeah, he's he's really rad sid And so I
think I think the place to start with this actually
is not with kavanall, but with Trump, because what we're
talking about today is a thing that we kind of
knew was true but didn't know the extensive until now,
which is that the supposed FBI investigation into everything that
Brett Kavanaugh did was like fake and deliberately fucked by
(01:43):
Trump specifically, Like this is Trump specifically told them to
just like not do the investigation, and so they didn't
do the investigation and nothing happened. This is this sort
of how we got confirmed. And I think the interesting
thing about this partially is because I hate Breakabital. Yeah,
he sucks the worst guy, real dick, Yeah, But I
think the everything about him is like I feel like
(02:04):
everyone has forgotten what it was like to live under Trump.
I agree, because there was just so much shit happening
all the time, Like every single every single day was
like a new one of these things. And I want
to go back to what like one week of Trump
was like, because every single fucking week was like this,
(02:24):
and it was the most miserable thing. So who is
Brett Kavanaugh. He's one of the nine assholes who get
to decide whether we all have rights for people who've
sort of forgotten his background. So he's like an old old,
like nineties era kind of like protege of the nineties
Republican gruls. He's like one of the people who helps
(02:45):
Ken Starr do the like Monica Lewinsky trial. Like he's
he's involved in a whole bunch of sort of like
Republican rat fucking operations. He's also and I think this
one's actually important to remember as to go up to
the election, Kavidall was part of the legal team that
helped Bush do the original stop the steal in two
thousand years just like straight up stole the election in Florida.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
So I love that these guys keep getting jobs as
opposed to I don't know, getting the punishment for treason.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
And he's only fifty nine years old. Yeah, he's so
young for that job.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
We have like forty more years of him.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
If you ever wanted like a clear reason why we
shouldn't do things like the death penalty for treason, it's
because when people commit treason, nothing happens.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
To them.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
And when people I don't know agitate for Puerto Rican independence,
they get executed. Like that's that's that's what happens with
those laws. I just bad avoid laws existing.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yeah, and especially avoid all of your laws being dictated
by a bunch of a bunch of fucking serial predators. Yeah,
and this gets us too. So Kevinaugh's appointment was very,
very close. The Republicans at the time they controlled the Senate,
but they had a fifty two to forty eight margin,
and a lot of those kind of marginal senators were
(04:10):
like there were there was.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
There was a more realistic chance of it not happening
then typically Yeah, but they still fucked it in the end.
Oh yeah, of course.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
But you know the reason the reason why it was
close is, as I think most people probably remember, Kavanaugh
is a serial sexual predator. He has sexually assaulted so
many fucking people. People saw him do it. There were
times when he was the only fucking person there he
did there were times when we did it in crowds.
He definitely one hundred percent did it. And if he
wants to fucking sue me about it, like, I'll see
(04:42):
you in court, motherfucker.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
And while we're here, Clarence Thomas also a predator, thank you.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Yes, we're going to get to that.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Let's let's be clear here, Like if we're doing an
Olympics of predators, Clarence Thomas is up in the number
one spot. Brett Kavanaugh's down in place three. You know,
Thomas is a much, much more I don't know, expansive predator.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Yeah, there was some belief at the time in this
is sort of like every single article about this like
talked about how this is PEAKB two. But it is
sort of important that like this, it was a real
possibility that he was going to go down in flames. Yeah,
it has happened before, it can happen again, and it
was a real issue for him, And it was a
real issue for him in large part because Christine bloss
(05:25):
A Forge, who's a psychology professor, just like testified under
oath in one of the most like fucking harrowing things
I've ever seen on the floor of the Senate. Horrif. Yeah,
the thing I stuck with b was like he was
laughing while he did it. It's just like, this guy
is a fucking monster.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
I mean.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
One of the things that you do have to take
into account, is that, like the media infrastructure that world
up to defend Brett Kavanaugh to ensure that this didn't
take him down existed in part because about a third
of right wing media, like about a third of that
whole infrastructure system exists because of the Clarence Thomas hearings
(06:03):
like that and Nixon's resignation being forced are kind of
the two inciting incidents of modern conservative media. Those were
the things that made them really commit to the idea that, like,
we have to build a completely separate ecosystem of facts
because if we let reality in it, all, like our
guys who are all sex predators and criminals will never
(06:24):
be able to win or stay in office.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Yeah. And also, I mean it's worth noting too that
like Roger ayles Off, who is like one of the
people responsible for building all this infrastructure, was also himself
just a surreal predator on a like frankly incomprehensible scale. Yes,
And so all these people were also just defending themselves
because they also are all fucking their own sometimes miniature
(06:48):
capital sometimes worse Kavenaughs. And it into this sort of breach, right, like,
so this is this is this is a real pr
crisis to Republicans, this is this is going even worse
for them than then the last time that they fucking
did this, which was, as we've alluded to, when they
got Clarence Thomas on and when Joe Biden like personally
helped railroad Anita Hill to make sure that when she
(07:11):
would get fucked when she to testify against Clariss Thomas.
So that's great, incredible stuff. There was a point in
our nation's history where that was actually like a political
problem for Joe Biden. We're fucking no longer there anymore.
And into this breach steps what's supposed to be an
FBI investigation.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah, ostensibly.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Yeah, So I'm going to read from a recently released report,
and there's gonna be I'm going to quote from this
report a lot because this is this is the sort
of new information that we have.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Where can people see the report?
Speaker 3 (07:40):
It will be in the description. If you just like
search Sheldon Whitehouse Report, you should be able to find it.
There'll be a link in the notes.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Yeah, we'll link it.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah. It's like it's like thirty pages. It's actually out there.
It's more like twenty pages because like a bunch of
the mergercizations. So it's a pretty easy read. I'm going
to read some of it. And also I do want
to point out the fact that this any Senate Judiciary
Committee member who wrote this thing is named Sheldon white House.
Incredible name, incredible center.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
That is a great name. Where does that come from?
That can't be a real name. That can't be a
name that existed. That can't be a name that existed
before the White House, right, Like it has to have
at some point been named after the White House, right.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
I mean, why else would you have that name? Well,
it could just mean that this family historically lived in
a White House for seven hundred years.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
You'd have to be in a White House for a
long ass time to get that last name.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
So, just from the report quote, after hearing the testimony
by Ford and Kavanaugh, the Judiciary Committee agreed to request
the FBI he knocked a supplemental background investigation quote limited
to current credible allegations against Kavanaugh before the full Senate
voted on his confirmation. And so there's an important detail
here that wasn't clear to anyone at the time, because
(08:53):
fucking no one knows how the minutia of FBI investigations work.
But this was not actually a full FBI investigation. This
is this is something called a like supplemental background investigation,
and we'll get into what exactly that is in a second,
but it's not like a real FBI investigation. And this
(09:15):
investigation does what it was supposed to do, which was,
you know, clear Kavanaugh's name and offer Republican Senators to
be able to vote for him without immediately getting destroyed politically.
What it didn't do was like actually conduct an investigation.
R Trump very famously at this time it says that
the investigation had quote free reign and it unbelievably did
not bull fucking shit. Yeah, he just lied about this,
(09:39):
like yep. Yeah. The administration directly ran the investigation, killed it,
and then used its political power and the FBI itself
to you know, illegitimately railroad a serial predator or on
at the Supreme Court to take away of when's right
to get into abortion. And then after that they stonewalled
the investigation for six years. So this is how that
sort of process worked. I'm going to quote from that
(10:00):
report again. Third, although the Trump administration and the FBI
assured the Senate that the FBI's investigation was being conducted
quote by the book. They failed to disclose that there
was actually no quote unquote book at all. The FBI
produced no written records for supplemental background investigation, saying it
was merely acting as the quote agent for the White
(10:22):
House in such matters.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Which white house was it? Sheldon white House?
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Sorry? No, white House?
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Bad?
Speaker 3 (10:29):
The one with the president of the bad white House.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Yeah. By the way, I was, I was trying to
debunk his last name. He comes from the longest line
of nepotism of that held.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
I was like, I was like, oh, they must have
gotten named that back when like the fact that they
had a house at all was noteworthy.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Yeah, these people have paint.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
It literally kept going. I was like, okay, one level, okay,
two levels, okay, three leves okay for this Okay, when
does it end?
Speaker 4 (10:56):
And then I got bored. And the funny puartterback of
this again is that like, this is the good guy
in this story? Is my nepo baby, like like a
corruption guy.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Junior Senator of Rhode Island. Yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
And I want to kind of focus in on this
statement in and of itself, because this is just like
an absolutely hideous of you, just like the hideous power
of the unitary executive just do whatever the fuck it wants. Like,
what do you mean that the FBI produced no written
protocols for for how they're supposed to do supplemental background investigation?
(11:31):
What do you mean that they were quote acting as
an agent for the White House? That's batshit? Why why
their security service is literally directly answered to one guy
who could just tell them what to do whatever the
fuck he wants. That's insane. That is a that is
a fucking that is a drange political system. And yet
this is you know, this is this is the system
I'm supposed to be doing this stuff, which is also
(11:53):
very funny because White House is like not really trying
to get into a feud with the FBI. So there's
a lot of kind of like e sculpletoryself of the FBI.
But like, also everything the FBI does in this is
such a fiasco that it's very clearly like also very
much their fault. I'm gonna read another quote from this.
This is from a bit later in the report. Fourth,
(12:15):
the FBI's tip line was not used to facilitate the
FBI supplemental background investigation into the allegations against Kavanall on
instructions from the White House, the FBI did not investigate
thousands of tips that came through the FBI's tip line. Instead,
all tips related to Kavanall were forwarded to the White
House without investigation. If anything, the White House may have
(12:38):
used the tip line to steer FBI investigators away from
derogatory or damaging information, which is again absolutely nuts, insane
and like, yes, so this.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Is the kind of thing that like should be serious crime, right,
like yeah that you go, you get locked up for forever,
like this is a forever crime. Yeah, it seems much
more serious than I don't know, robbing a bank to
try and fund the Puerto Rican independence movement.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Yeah. It's not clear to me whether this would have
been a giant scandal for a normal administration, just because
the American presidency has so much power, but it should
have been like this was just like a thing that
would happen every week under Trump, was like he would
just do shit like this, do you know also what
you should do? Shit like I don't know, that was
not my best pivot, no, no, but but do shit
like yeah, like like these products and services that support
(13:26):
the podcast, and we are back. We've gotten to the
point where again the FBI's tip line is not actually
big years of the investigation, they're sending it all to
the White House. The report found that so the FBI,
(13:48):
like and I talked about the public at the time,
they talked to ten people who they said had like
direct knowledge of the situation. But again they only talk
to ten people, and there are there's a whole bunch
of people who had very relevant evidence about a lot
of important stuff in this Like, so one of the
claims that's going on here is that Kavanaugh was just
wasted all the time. And this is like every single
(14:09):
person you talk to who knew Kavanaugh in college and
that isn't like directly employed by the Republican Party was like,
oh yeah, this guy was wasted all the time, right,
And this became a big part of the trial. And
there were a whole bunch of people who try to
go to the FBI to be like, hey, he did this,
and they just like would not talk to them. People
who tried to come forward, like they wouldn't talk to
(14:29):
people who sent them information to the tip line. They
just like didn't talk to them at all, I'm going
going to read from the thing again. According to a
quote executive summary, if the FBI supplemental background investigation issued
by the Judiciary Committee majority, the majority of THAT'SIY was
Republican majority. So that's why it's fucked. These people were
(14:50):
quote all witnesses with potential firsthand knowledge at the allegations.
The FBI did not, however, interview Ford or Kavanaugh, the
witnesses potentially with the most first and knowledge, nor did
it speak to other potentially corroborating witnesses who had not
witnessed the events firsthand. Nevertheless, the Judiciary Committee's Republicans executive
summary concluded that the quote supplemental background investigation confirms there
(15:14):
is no cooperation of allegations made by doctor Ford and
Ms Ramirez, So they didn't talk to either Kavanaugh or Ford,
the two people who the thing was a ballant.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Well, I mean, you know, why would you need to
do that, right, Like.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Wait, what the fuck? This is so insane. The other
part of this is, so the FBI's initial background check
didn't turn up any of this, and so the supplemental
thing is being done in place of like the normal
background check. Because the normal background check was also done
like shit, and so they never figured out any of
this incredibly obvious stuff about him. And meanwhile, like the
supplemental one, just they just kept being like, oh, well,
(15:50):
we don't actually need to talk to the people who
this is about for incredibly nebulous reasons. And the other
part of this that's going on is that like, while
this process is happening, the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee
are trying to figure out how this process works, and
Trump just like refuses to talk to any of them,
and the FBI refuses to fucking send any of them.
(16:10):
People are fighting out like we we we know that
there's no specific process for this like supplemental investigation thing,
because like their staffers found it out from a YouTube video. Jesus,
Like they did not find this out from the FBI.
It was like this guy senator staffers were like watching
YouTube videos to figure out how this investigation was supposed
to work. So and it turns out we had known
(16:32):
at the time that the FBI was doing some kind
of shady stuff. But what we know now is that
so Ford and her lawyers repeatedly tried to talk to
the FBI and they were just never able to do so, right,
the FBI completely stonewalled them, and it turns out that
they still walled them because Trump specifically ordered the FBI
(16:52):
not to talk to her or Kavanaugh what what? Which
is absolutely insane? Yeah, I love the law. It turns
out this is this is this is the part of
this is the most insane.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Everyone thought that the FBI was doing a normal FBI investigation, right,
And part of what's going on here is that the
media is just these like absolute credulous idiots, right, because
every single day the media is reporting that like Trump
is allowing an open investigation because like somehow again this
is like two years into him being in office, right,
none of these people have figured out that every single
thing he says is a lie. They're all like, oh yeah,
(17:25):
Trump keeps saying that these people can talk to whoever
they want and they can investigate whoever they want. And
this gets to the point where the FBI is calling
the White House every day because they'll be reading the
news reports that say we could talk to anyone, and
they'll be like, hey, you told us we can't talk
to these people, and they'll be like, no, no, actually,
you still can't talk to these people. And it turns
out that what's happening is this like quote unquote supplemental investigation.
(17:45):
It's not an FBI investigation. They can only do things
that are like quote unquote directed by the President, So
they could only talk to the people who the President
tells them to talk to, and they can't look at
evidence that the President doesn't tell them to to look at.
And so what ends up happening is that, like you know,
there's initially like four people that they're they're supposed to
(18:06):
be talking to, right, and you know, they keep getting
these like press things that are like, oh, hey, this
is the full this is an open investigation. You can
like do whatever you want. And eventually they put in
like six more peoples, like they talked to ten total people.
But because this is an investigation that is not being
run by the FBI, really it's being it's being directly
ran by Trump himself, which he's lying about because of that,
(18:28):
they fucking never talked to anyone. And then also again
as we talked about, right that that tip line, they
set up a bunch of the people who tried to
talk to the FBI, who the FBI wouldn't talk to,
were like told Okay, go submit stuff to this tip line,
and the FBI later admits that the tip line was
like never.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Real, sure have a nice fake tip line.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Yeah, they never used any of an investigation. They sent
it all to Trump. Yeah. And the reason they did
it was that they were sick of people calling their
regular tip line, so they set up a specific tip
line so they could just have all the stuff that
they would never listen to and in sad the sense
of the White House, so they could do I guess
like opo research bullshit on it. So this is just
straight up a sham. There's no actual investigation going on.
(19:18):
The media people at the time should have been able
to figure out that obviously this thing was bullshit, right,
but nobody looked into it except for this one guy
and the Senate Dentiary Committee. And so the support comes
back and goes like, yeah, we did no research. We
talked to like ten people and we didn't like ask
them anything, and we didn't use any of the research
that we had, and we have cleared this guy. As
this is happening, right, the Judiciary Committee Democrats are like
(19:40):
trying to figure out what the fuck is going on,
and this begins a six year process of a senator
White House just fighting a war with the actual White
House and the FBI and the DDA to try to
figure out what the fuck just happens. And the interesting
part of this also is that so obviously the Trump
administration was never going to talk to them, right, which
is idiots of itself incredibly disturbing that like the Senate
(20:03):
Judiciary Committee, who in theory is one of the organizations
that supposed to be doing oversight of the FBI, would
send requests of the FBI for your information, the FBI
would tell him to fuck off.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
But the interesting part is they kept doing this under Biden,
So Biden's FBI was also doing this. It was awesome.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
I love I just love they do at GRETA, which
fucking liberals like have concluded politically at least that they
have to be as like vociferously pro law enforcement as
they can. And all cops ever do is say we
are just waiting for the chance to kill you. Like, yeah,
it's great, cool, it's stuff.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
I'm relign from this. It's so insane. When the Senators
followed up, they faced the challenge of aligning FBI, DOJ
and White House equities so they sent like requests for
the emails between Trump and the FBI right figure out
whether Trump was doing the thing he was doing, which
was like directly running the investigation himself. The FBI claimed
it cannot answer without authorization from the DOJ in the
(20:59):
White House. The DOJ directed the senator's inquiries to the
White House of the FBI, and the White House referred
the senators back to the agencies. So they're doing this
like they're doing the like the circular run around thing
you give him your insurance company where they tell you
to talk to three people and every single one of
them tells you to talk to the other one. But again,
this is the Biden DOJ, the Biden FBI, and the
Biden administration all doing this. The FBI finally provides documents
(21:22):
about like their contact with Trump for the investigation. They
finally provided the documents in November of twenty twenty three.
This investigation started in late twenty eighteen. It took half
a decade, almost half of which was under the Biden administration.
And also Senator white House literally threatening to torpedo and
(21:45):
nomination for the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel like he
had to threaten the Department of Justice in order to
get them to send the documents that proved that Trump
colluded to south Kavanaugh investigation, which even to some like
a political standpoint from the Democrats, Right, why the fuck
would you not want that in the open? I mean,
I guess, I guess unless you're Joe Biden, you don't
(22:05):
want to him remembering like all the shit you need
to need a hill. But like, this is literally free
political ammunisation of your opponent, like abusing the political process.
And it still took a Democratic senator just directly threatening
the doj of a democratic administration to get this out.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
I just like it also took so many years. Like, yeah,
Cavanaugh has has been able to take away and fuck
up our rights since what twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen. Yeah,
and the damage he's done is permanent.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah, he will be around in office, possibly very likely
for most of the rest of our lives.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Like I said earlier, it's only fifty nine years old.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Yeah, he could have another thirty years there at least.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Yeah. And if this stuff had been known, she absolutely
would not have gotten nominated. Right, there were two unbelievably
close votes to get him I'm appointed. Right, there was
a first vote where the Republicans straight up bypassed the
fellow buster and still almost lost, and it turns out
that Okay, the actual final vote ended up being fifty
(23:12):
to forty eight with two abstensions, and one of the
essensions is this guy was going to his daughter's wedding
or something. But the other abstention was Lisa Morowski, who's
the senator from Alaska, who's like the most sort of
liberal Republican senators and she does like a coward present
vote so it can happen, and if she had voted no,
and if Joe Manchin hadn't fucking cross party lines to
(23:34):
get to get him in office, which I think I
also people just forget about. Joe mentioned that he is
also like individually specifically the guy who got fucking Kavanaugh
pointed this would have failed, and the only reason that
it didn't fail, and that this guy was able to
fucking destroy ROPHI wade, is that Trump just straight up
ran a fake FBI investigation and lied to everyone about
(23:57):
it and fucking railroad of the nomination through. That's fucking Kavanaugh.
And I think I think the thing that close in
here again is like every single week of Trump is
just like this, yeah, right, like every single day has
some bullshit like this. It just like fucks everyone for
the rest of their lives.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
And it's deeply grim that he could take power again
and we could get back to like the stuff he
was doing at the end of his administratory. Who's just
like having protesters killed with federal marshols.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Like, yeah, that's the scary thing about it, right, is
there's not any kind of like functional resistance to this. Right,
the left has no power, has no serious organizing capacity
in the United States and can't get on the same
page about anything that matters, whereas liberals, when they have
four years of control of the federal government cannot adequately
(24:51):
prosecute an attempt to overthrow the government and murder them.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
So I don't know, uh, you know, make sure you
got clean water, folks, check on that garden.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
I don't know what to tell you.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
It's just so bleak because, like I said earlier, everything
is so permanent.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Yeah, you know what I mean, like just lasts so
fucking long.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Yeah, it lasts so long, and like and like we
we don't even know the damage that Kavanaugh is going
to do to our society because of Trump. And it's
also just terrifying that, you know, Trump was able to
manipulate the system in this way and that so many
people were silenced and now our rights are gone, yeah,
(25:35):
or our rights are going to be taken away.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
We have no idea.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
What else is going to be taken Yep, we have
no idea. What else is going to get fucked up?
We have ideas?
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Idea is that that Again, the problem is the root
of the problem is that liberals work tirelessly in this
country to stop the left from gaining any power, and
the left works tirelessly to stop itself from having any
kind of influence by having no capacity to organize or
compromise with people who do not agree with whatever their
(26:05):
little brand of leftism is right, whereas conservatives are willing
to work together with other conservatives they hate for forty
straight years in order to get us to the position
that we're in. That's what happened is they had message discipline,
they had organizing discipline, and they successfully pushed their madness
into the mainstream in such a way that now the
(26:27):
Democratic Party in a lot of ways is expending a
huge amount of its efforts on moving in the direction
of that madness, especially as regards immigration. Look at where
we've moved on immigration from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty four. Right,
that is the result of disciplined power building as opposed
to know what liberals and the left to do, which
(26:48):
is fight with each other and fight amongst each other
and engage in a mix of like craven power politics
and worshiping various con artists, and the right worships con
artists too. They just actually get power out of the deal.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Yeah, and just like this. The other terrifying thing about
this story is that it's not fucking everywhere. It's not everywhere.
Ten years ago, this would be the scandal of all scandals,
and it's barely barely a headline, no.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Because no one's going to do anything about it. It's
like it's like Elon Musk paying people a million dollars
a day to vote in Pennsylvania, Like that should be illegal,
Like you can, you can at least make a strong
case based on existing laws that that is election interference,
the kind of which that can land you in prison.
Everyone knows nothing's going to happen to him Nothing's going
to happen to him. If Kamala wins, right, if the
(27:42):
Dims have a blowout and wind up with both Houses
of Congress, nothing is going to happen to Elon Musk.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
It's yeah again, just like we have no idea how
how long this is going to get grow on and
how much worse it could get and uh, yeah I have.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Some idea, but I podcasted about those back in twenty nineteen, Sophie.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
I was there. I was quite literally there.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
But yeah, so thanks Miah, that was a.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Boomer, Thank you, Mia.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
No, this was good. I uh, this is solid and
a bot Again.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
When I started this by saying, my second to the
last conversation I had in person with my mom was
about Kavanaugh. It was hers almost screaming at me because
of how unfair what the Democrats did to Brett Kavanaugh
was because of the good man that they and she
felt the same way about Clarence Thomas right that like
these guys were the victims of media assassination attempts. She
feel the same way about Bill Cosby. By the way, anyway, whatever,
(28:40):
I don't need to yell about my mom. I've yelled
about enough this episode.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Well, tomorrow's episode will be more fun. I promised, we're
gon We're gonna yell about why the Kundable prizes fake
and read some of the doubleest things you've ever seen
in your life.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Hell yeah, there we go, there we go. Back to
the good stuff, Back to the good stuff. Yeah. Mea
has been.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Deeply excited to do this episode, So look look out
for that one. And I don't know, uh, touch graph
and peta dog if.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
It wants you to, Yeah, good bye.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
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now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly
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Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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