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COMMNETARY Robert Reich and Heather Lofthouse ... June 21st, 2024 How Did the Bullies Take Over America? \| The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich and Heather Lofthouse PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA7PlWmF5x8 Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess
How Did the Bullies Take Over America? \| The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich Robert Reich June 21st, 2024 675K subscribers ... 18,788 views ... 2.3K likes The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich Samuel Alito is a fraud, and the Supreme Court's far-right justices are acting as Trump's flunkies. Heather Lofthouse of @imcivicaction and I delve into this and more in this week's Coffee Klatch. Please pour yourself a cup and join us. Transcript 0:00 and it is the Saturday coffee clotch with Heather loft house and yours truly Robert Rice and Heather we've got a lot this week to talk about so much the Supreme Court the Supreme Court Donald Trump Donald well actually there is an overlap between the Supreme Court and Donald Trump big because they have not decided the most important case of the docket Trump versus United States I love that title uh I mean it does encapsulate a lot what people don't realize is that by not deciding that case the Supreme Court has decided the case essentially uh the court has decided that presidential immunity is enough to push this case 0:43 until after the election and that's what's going to happen I mean even if they decide differently the the 0:49 Practical effect is that Trump wins and if he wins the election obviously the 0:54 whole case is destroyed uh but the know the Justice delayed is is Justice denied 1:01 right and this is what the justices are doing it feels like it's been ages since it all started right yes uh Jack Smith referred the case to the court system before Christmas 2023 last year uh and a lot of people thought well I mean there is time and the district court just I mean it's just a stupid question I mean do can a president be immune uh criminally immune for everything that he does including you know a a cou d' I know uh but and the district court basically said oh this is crazy and the court of appeals for the District of Columbia said this is crazy and then it went to the Supreme 1:42 Court and the Supreme Court has basically had oral argument in April and then it sat on it right so this is 1:49 actionless action actionless action this is this is the what was that uh Sherlock 1:54 Holmes case the dog that didn't bark this is the dog that doesn't bark right 2:00 and so uh and I'm your Watson over here you are John Watson thank you you're great uh but you know there is a there is a a question of responsibility this this court this Supreme Court is the most irresponsible Supreme Court uh in living memory certainly living memory and let's be clear they can move quickly when they want to including on President Trump right well look at the Colorado case y uh the question of the 14th Amendment section three uh was you know was Trump entitled to be on the ballot or not and they moved very 2:35 very fast yeah they did so this is it's so interesting to watch them do nothing so your point is it's interesting to 2:42 watch them do nothing but they don't make headlines for doing nothing that's the point uh and they are already held 2:49 in such low repute by the public that's it uh that you would think I mean what 2:56 they're doing now they're they're not only slow walking Trump versus the United States States but they are slow 3:01 walking all the controversial cases they're putting them right to the end of the term they're going to come out with a bunch of them so the media uh is going to fall over itself trying to sort it all out for the public and I think this is a way of uh just avoiding the fact that they're going to be making some decisions that um are are very anti-democratic small d right and there is so you mentioned you know they're in ill repute but it's trust right it really is people do not trust institutions and this is not helping No in fact the Supreme Court as the founders of the Constitution said is the least dangerous Branch at least theoretically because it doesn't have 3:43 the purse it doesn't have any money to spend it doesn't have uh the sword as 3:48 the founder said it doesn't have the military behind it it doesn't have any way of enforcing its decisions it only 3:55 has public trust and if there were to be a president mhm I mean I can't imagine 4:01 who it would be but if there were ever to be a president who said I'm just not going to follow the Supreme Court right uh well what's the court going to do public opinion is so important in terms of the Court's legitimacy right uh that the absence I mean the right now it's around 35 to 40% of the public trusts this supreme court right and John Roberts the Chief Justice I I think it falls on him you've said so first of all you have argued before Supreme Courts 4:32 you've been around longer than I have with all due respect the most respect so you with all du respect that was a very 4:39 disrespectful thing to say so you have seen many Supreme Courts and you have said there's no big mind on this current 4:46 one what does that mean well there's not other Supreme Courts uh such as in the 4:51 late 19th century that I argued before U they did have uh some leading brains 4:57 they had certain justices who set the tenor of the court because they had such overriding judicial philosophies that 5:05 you were either with it or you came up with a counter philosophy uh this court has no overriding philosophy except if you if you actually think that originalism you know the the idea that you interpret the Constitution according to what the framers of the Constitution actually thought at the time in the 18th century that's hardly a guide and maybe the the most pretentious intellectual on the court the person who says basically to the world and to the other members of the court that he knows a lot is Samuel Alito uh who is a fraud I mean well he 5:38 is he is that Do's decision has nothing in it uh there is a very important 5:45 Doctrine called star decisis which means you follow the previous Court's decisions unless you 5:53 have a very good reason not to and unless you have basically all of the court with you in changing your mind and 6:00 well that Do's decision over overruling you know uh years decades uh of uh a woman's right to have reproductive Freedom uh that decision by Alo was intellectually uh just intellectually embarrassing yeah there's nothing there and then so there the non-decision is a decision it feels like they're eing out decisions in a way that's very interesting and we're still waiting to hear a number of things so emergency rooms can they accept patients who need an emergency abortion coming from another state that's coming up Chevron Defence all these other things why is it 6:39 the case that it's I mean what's with the timing of it all well they're waiting they're waiting I think they I 6:45 think John Roberts the Chief Justice uh the only thing he has some control over is the timing of when these these 6:52 decisions actually are published there is no court in the last 50 years that has waited this late to to actually 7:01 publish its opinions and so there's some controversial ones the public already dislikes the Supreme Court I think we can expect that when the Court's opinions come out they are going to be counter to what the public believes and the public uh and and public opinion and there will be no accountability for that no accountability I think that's the key Heather there is no accountability I mean we've got to have even in the code of ethics that's that that silly code of ethics they put out on conflicts of interest which they've already thrown into the IGN waste B um there is no 7:37 accountability that's why uh I think uh if the Democrats take both houses of 7:43 Congress and we get a Democratic president please God uh there there has got to be uh a an effort to both limit 7:53 the number of years somebody can be on the court on the Supreme Court uh and 7:59 then also uh maybe even expand the sides of the Court mhm yep these re forms um 8:06 one case that has been decided Remember the Time When Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felonies I think I remember yes I do so that has been decided and it was interesting because we were all saying what's going to happen is it going to be a is he going to be a hung jury no is it going to is it will it be all 34 I'm sure it won't be all 34 and then it was what has that made a splash in terms of polls I'm not sure well it's a good question and the jury as it were is still out on the effect on the election 8:38 uh the polls are pretty much where they were before uh that verdict against 8:44 convicted felon Donald Trump uh now one thing we did see is a huge bump in money 8:51 to Trump a small donations and a few big donations the day after the verdict 8:58 Timothy Mel uh the billionaire uh gave Trump and the Trump 9:04 campaign something in the order of 50 million $50 million a huge donation um the largest single disclosed public donation in history and remember something else Timothy melan is the grandson of Andrew melan who was Secretary of the Treasury for 12 years from Harding kulage Hoover days presided over the administrations that gave us the Great Depression the great crash U and uh also changed the tax code to allow money to move from generation to generation without much 9:44 taxes and guess what his legacy is Trump yeah money to Trump his grandson his 9:51 grandson Trump his grandson by the way also gave a lot of money to Robert F Kennedy Jr interesting 9:59 so maybe maybe maybe what maybe maybe he's making terrible choices well he's 10:06 not only making terrible choices but I think it may be that there is some ex some expectation that Robert F Kennedy Jr is going to take more votes away from Trump from Biden than from Trump right I mean of course but we shall see because his campaign isn't doing well besides his running mate and apparently Andrew melon yeah and if it weren't for Timothy melon Timothy melon well it's Andrew M's money that's the point it really does 10:31 come from the you know from the 1920s um if it weren't for Timothy melon uh yes 10:38 you're right uh there would be very little money in Robert F Kennedy Junior's campaign right now so next week 10:45 is a debate the debate one of two in Atlanta it's a big deal it's a huge deal 10:52 and uh because I because it's it's nothing has happened really to change 10:57 dramatically uh the tides in this election right A lot of people are not concentrating 11:04 they're not focusing That's Not Unusual they don't Focus usually until after Labor Day I wasn't listening but but but uh but this the the stakes are so huge that you would expect and hope particularly after the convicted felon has becomes a convicted felon Trump uh but so Trump's been so interesting so he was you know kind of being his bombastic self for a while about the debate and then he's kind of backtracked recently where he said you know well I mean it's kind rigged against me and you know Biden will 11:36 probably do fine I mean I don't know maybe he'll do better than I do I mean what is happening well the debate rules 11:42 now this is not under the presidential debate commission these are this is just negotiated with CNN and the two 11:49 campaigns when but there are two things to to be mindful of number one it's going to be in the studio without 11:56 anybody else without an audience yes and Trump feeds off of an audience for sure so it'll be interesting to see what 12:02 happens uh secondly the microphones will be muted uh when the person asked a question the candidate asked a question is not there is not responding uh which is hard for Trump it'll be so interesting he do you see all these people at his rallies at these events and it's almost like people are planted and they go from event to event I mean it's the same people like a parade it's like a pub well and and they're they they're entertained yep they love it and they're shouting and their t-shirts and it's you know but it's his fans his groupies uh it is a cult I mean a lot of it is a cult uh and the cult members go from place to place but they won't be able to 12:48 go to CNN headquarters in Atlanta now is that going to help Trump I mean some 12:54 people say it's going to help Trump because Trump really goes a little bit crazy when he has an audience and he can 13:01 talk over a microphone about sharks and all of it now we're doing something fun we are next week we're going to try to do a live coffee clotch everybody okay live put that on your calendars live coffee clotch uh next week next Thursday night and we're going to do it so you're going to be seeing the debate and then in a little corner of your television uh Heather and and I are going to be making faces and commentary and holding up signs and doing all kinds of things 13:31 it'll be interesting we'll see if people like it we need I mean that's all that matters is it helpful is it interesting 13:36 is it yeah so we'll we'll be seeking feedback um right so the debate if people want to 13:44 see us it'll be on YouTube on YouTube yeah it'll be and substack and substack 13:50 yeah we'll see how it goes it'll be fun um are we going to drink coffee at that late at night we'll have to see might 13:56 have to switch to water I don't know um yeah but so Trump and his economy so 14:03 let what do you so you put in your substack this week that you recommend to President Biden that he call out big business he call out greed flation these populist economic messages at the debate do you think he will well uh interestingly uh in 1936 see I'm I'm that old I really am 1936 Frankin de Roosevelt but you weren't alive in 36 Frankin de no I was I was C I was circling you were thinking about I was I was thinking about I was choosing my parents uh Franklin D Roosevelt in 1936 going into his second election uh made a speech he actually 14:41 gave two speeches one speech at Madison Square Garden and the second speech uh 14:47 uh taking the accepting the Democratic nomination for president uh and those 14:52 speeches he basically called the Republicans and the big money behind the 14:58 Republican Party economic royalists and said I welcome their hatred they hate me 15:03 I welcome their hatred uh and I think that that I would recommend not that he's listening President Biden if you're listening uh you might consider calling the big money that is behind Trump economic royalists and you welcome their hatred because this is not just this is all this is the business Community now big money big corporations are nowos now moving to Trump because they get a tax cut he's promising them another tax cut an extension of the of the 2018 2017 2018 tax cut that ends on in 2025 and he says he's going to if they 15:44 get him elected he's going to make that permanent why did he pick that window 2018 to 2025 because he didn't at the 15:51 time he you know the Congressional budget office does an estimate of the cost to the United States of a tax cut 15:58 and he didn't want want the public to see that if it were permanent that cost would be I it would just explode the 16:04 budget deficit as it did actually but it would exploded even more the CBO has done an estimate if those extensions if it's extended that tux Trump tax cut if it's extended permanently it's $4.4 trillion added to the national debt Heather that means that if uh Trump wants to do anything else he obviously can't he's probably going to have to uh take money away from Social Security and Medicare which he every one of his budgets that he submitted when he was president he cut Social Security and Medicare but 16:44 it's going to trickle down yes it's really horrendous okay so the election 16:51 is coming up I think we have 19 coffee clotches until the election I did a back of the envelope well that's soon 16:59 is that a lot no I think it's soon um and so economics is going to be a huge 17:04 issue trumponomics this week I really enjoyed you on the last word with Lawrence O'Donnell by the way on Wednesday talking about Trump's latest crazy plan to get rid of income taxes and issue a whole bunch of inflated tariffs I mean this is wild it's wild I hope um Biden calls him out on that I hope so I hope so because we learned um in 1930 the Smoot Holly tariff uh which raised not nearly as much uh tariffs as As Trump is talking about but did raise tariffs uh almost every 17:42 Economist understands that that helped plunge us deeper into the Great 17:47 Depression of the 1930s right uh and H act and Trump is Trump is talking about 17:54 getting rid of the income tax which a lot of people might say woohoo yeah uh 17:59 and substituting tariffs now to do that you would you 18:05 would and actually make uh not and avoid a an even larger uh Federal deficit and debt you would have to have tariffs that are in the range of 130 to 160% 130 you would everything coming from everything coming from would cost twice or three times as much and it's absurd because people would buy much less of everything coming from abroad and it means their tariffs would have to continue to go up in order to make up for the loss of the and who's impacted the most by this kind of thing is it the people with the giant paychecks or is it the working class and the poor well that's a very very good question obviously the income tax uh is 18:46 slightly Progressive in the sense that to a slight degree people who are 18:51 wealthier um pay a little bit more of their income uh but no this would be the equivalent of a giant a g gantic sales 18:59 tax uh which would be very regressive people who are middle class lower middle- class workingclass and poor 19:06 would be paying through the nose and the rich would be getting off much much less yeah um so the elections coming up there was some new interesting data out of sister District that was talking about the fact that people who roll off the ballot so those that start filling things out and then they just put down the pen and get out of the booth and they don't fill out the entire ballot those those people on average get their news more often from social media than than traditional ballots from us I mean traditional media yeah from I mean God willing from us um but it's kind of wild 19:40 this came at the same time as the Surgeon General has said we need warning labels across social media it's not good 19:45 for the mental health of young people and probably anyone um so it'll be interesting to see all this very 19:53 interesting I mean do you think that that I mean the implication of that study is that social media people who 20:00 get their news from social media are not really uh thinking about or particularly sensitive to their local conditions or their state economy or their state politicians uh they are only thinking about the big issues that affect the country as a whole and even then they are having a distorted highly distorted view of what those big issues are uh I mean that's a that's to me that's a troubling Trend well also I think if you look at the 50 million that's going from Timothy melon to Trump I mean I think it's maybe already has all been spent on ads online probably some television as 20:37 well I think there's huge spending and so that disproportionately gets into people's feeds and then they're overly 20:43 focused on it and as a culture I feel like we're obsessed with the presidency in a way that I don't remember having 20:49 been obsessed now there's reasons for it but it's still I think showing up on social media too in the way people you 20:55 know in the 1950s When I Was A Boy Yes uh Dwight Eisenhower was President uh now I 21:02 don't know how many do you remember Dwight anybody remember Dwight Eisenhower do you remember T very well he was so boring he was the the quintessence of boring boredom uh and he in 52 and in 5056 uh aday Stevenson MH uh was opposed to him he was boring I miss those boring guys believe I mean it was nobody paid attention to the presidency at least as much as we do until jnf Kennedy that yes I'm sure many people have written about that but that track tracks makes sense okay what else uh I don't know I mean 21:41 the one other thing I think we should talk about is the fact that Biden is getting blamed for so much of this and 21:47 that's also a trend right so people who are people kind of don't fill out the bottom of the ballot on average um 21:54 people I think of course blame who's in office right now we're to blame that person right in front of me for all the 22:01 economic woes oh for the economic problem well here's what we can conclude now I'm not a big poll person I am a poll skeptic I think polls this early are worth very very very little love to hear you say that but when you see when you see poll after poll after poll after poll uh saying the same thing it's worth your attention and what they're showing is that the big issue for the public not surprisingly is the economy and the big issue in the economy is the cost of living still yeah uh and the big issue in the cost of living are rents MH and 22:37 food yep gas and gas y uh and people are paying a lot of attention to those and 22:43 they are blaming Biden because those three categories the prices have not come down corporations might have an 22:49 issue to do with that a lot of the studies show that it is really corporate power it's pricing power it's big 22:56 corporations whose profits have never been as high yeah record levels CEO pay has never been as high executive pay has 23:03 never been as high the stock market uh is going gangbuster right Biden doesn't get credit for that by way and uh not only does Biden not get credit but you can look at all of these indicators and see in a way while why consumers and regular people are being shafted I know um you had um a powerful well we put out a video this week but yesterday was was the anniversary of the horrendous murders during Freedom Summer right and you wrote about you've written about it and we put um a video together where you talked about the death of Michael schwarner and it was so powerful so I wanted to thank you for sharing that 23:46 horrendous story from your Vantage Point do you want to speak a little bit about it I know it you knowa it's a little 23:52 it's still as painful for me to talk about it when I was a little boy because I'm very very short I was was teased and 24:00 uh sort of uh it was worse than teasing I was I was you know beat up I can't imagine um and I looked to a few older boys as protectors one of them was Mickey I didn't really know his last name it's cute fellow he's about six years seven years older than I was little sailor cap but very warm gracious lovely lovely young teenager I was about 8 years old at the time um and uh it was not until I got to college that I heard that what had happened to Mickey i' you know I didn't need that kind of protection when I was N9 and 10 by the 24:35 time I was a teenager U Mickey had gone to Mississippi in Freedom Summer of 24:43 1964 and he along with two other civil rights workers trying to register black 24:50 voters in the state of Mississippi uh Cheney and Goodman the three of them 24:56 were brutally murder Ed and uh this is just about the time by 25:03 the way that Barry Goldwater mhm uh accepted the Republican convention at the Cow Palace in da City and you know he said uh extremism in pursuit of Liberty is no Vice uh well the fact is that the clan who murdered Mickey schwarner the clan was extremism in pursuit of their vision of Liberty which was a a country that would not have black voters and certainly a state uh and the state of Mississippi didn't want to press charges uh there was you know ultimately not one of the clansmen who and who had killed Mickey and the two other civil rights workers 25:49 uh were in jail for more than six years uh but when I heard about this uh as a 25:54 college freshman it really did change my life it changed my because up until then 25:59 I had thought about bullying only in terms of you know being teased and 26:04 occasionally roughed up by second graders I hadn't thought about bullying on the large scale of you know the clan um and black people being bullied by white people and women being bullied by men and uh people with disabilities being bullied by uh and made fun of by politicians and uh like Donald and workers right by their workers being bullied by Employers in other words in other words we have a a society uh and it's not it's it's worldwide in which people with power very often abuse their 26:43 power and they bully people without po power uh and I think it just uh it was 26:49 like a veil was lifted from my eyes so it was 60 years ago 60 years ago 26:54 yesterday that must be wild to think about too well I I it it is wild to 26:59 think about I mean personally but also just that we thought the country was so 27:04 far from that well the Civil Rights Act Lyndon Johnson did pass even Goldwater voted against it but the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act I think of 64 I think many of us thought we are finally on the road to uh a more Equitable and just society and I think in many ways we were but but uh that momentum has been lost and going back to the Supreme Court you the Supreme Court that has opened the floodgates to big bunny in politics for all the corporations talk about bullying uh it's the same Supreme Court that said in Shelby County versus holder uh no no no no no no if you are uh relying on the Voting Rights Act uh no no no we're 27:52 getting rid we're we're gutting section five of the Voting Rights Act the most important section which was the 27:58 pre-clearance States like Mississippi if they were going to change voting laws they had to get pre-clearance from the 28:04 justice department no so the Supreme Court we don't need that anymore it's horrible well the Supreme Court this supreme court has been to go back to our initial discussion has been on the side of the bullies oh it's ugly well so thank you for sharing that story with us all well I'm sorry it has to be I mean of course but it's so important I mean we can't just ignore the past I mean we have to look at it and I think look at it with different through different prisms so hearing your story I think adds a new angle to it all that is 28:37 important for everyone to hear whether we like it or not it's horrible well we are all in the same Society in the same 28:46 world and what happens to one of us happens to all of us uh you know the 28:52 society to me is defined by the duties we owe one another as me MERS of the 28:58 same Society I mean look at the heat wave for example uh a lot of people in America are suffering uh particularly 29:05 poor people who don't have air conditioning but a lot of people are suffering why are they suffering it's not just the heat wve it's also because uh the oil and gas industry refuses refuses uh to support uh green technologies uh Donald Trump is right now promising them a roll back in all the Environmental Protections of the bid Administration if they will give him a billion dollar talk about bullying I mean this is all related just connect the dots yep yep yep yep and also heat related deaths are the highest they've ever been I mean this is no this is not this is really important and it's all around the world and it's and a lot of people say oh we can't do anything about it well of course we can do something about it uh we here in the United States are the richest richest country in the history of the world uh don't get me going I think we did it's been great all right okay live clotch we're doing a live coffee clotch for the 30:03 debate we'll see we'll see you there see you there and we'll see you there uh everybody you have a great weekend and um and don't let you know the heat get you down hope you're safe hope you're well and we'll catch you Thursday [Music]

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