Best of The Program | Guests: Thomas W. King & Carrie Severino | 9/21/20

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Hey podcasters, what a show today.

Actually, it was a really fun show.

And

you know, you never know what to expect these days.

It could be, okay, we're all gonna die, or like today, I think a fun show, even though we're all gonna die.

We tell you all that you need to know about

what the House and the Senate are saying, what the Democrats, what the far left is saying, what the president is planning on doing.

And we talked to Carrie Severino from Judicial Crisis and the Judicial Network, and she said

some really positive and encouraging things.

We can get this done.

There's no excuse to not get this done by Election Day.

33 days for O'Connor, Ginsburg, it was only a 42-day process.

19 days for Stevens, it can be done.

And

all of these guys have already had their FBI vetting.

They've been seen by the Senate before.

They've testified in front of the Senate.

So

we can go.

And Donald Trump tells us we'll go by Saturday.

Find out all about it on today's podcast.

You're listening to the best of the Blanca program.

I think we just need to start with, first of all, the president

finding out

while being asked a question by the press, he comes right off of the stage from a rally, and they're playing Elf.

So, if you don't know this already,

it wasn't something they added, but he comes right off the stage, and everything I mean, seeing, I'm like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, wait, what is he gonna say?

Everything that he said is exactly what you've ever wanted from Donald Trump.

Listen,

walks up to the press.

She just died?

Wow.

I didn't know that.

I just, you're telling me now for the first time.

She led an amazing life.

What else can you say?

She was an amazing woman.

Whether you agreed or not, she was an amazing woman who led an amazing life.

I'm actually sad to hear that.

I am sad to hear that.

Thank you very much.

So absolutely true.

And fantastic.

Now, I don't believe he didn't know because he had to, you know,

he had to tell him to up the morphine just to push him.

No, kidding.

But

that is the way the president should have reacted.

I think that's the way everybody reacted.

I was out to dinner with a bunch of friends on Friday, and none of us were wearing masks.

I mean, we wore a mask while we were standing up to come in and out.

But then when we sat down, they said we could take our masks off, which made total sense.

It's a COVID-free zone when you're sitting at a restaurant table.

Yeah, right, right, right, right.

So, anyway, we were at dinner, and my first reaction was,

oh no,

oh no, oh no, not another log on the fire.

This is a big, big log.

This is the Yule log.

This is the third log that Doc Brown put into the steam engine right before it went off the bridge.

Yeah, that's this is the last log.

This is number three.

And so my reaction was that first,

and then I told everybody at the table that she had just died, and everybody did the same thing.

That's sad.

Sorry to lose her.

And especially at this time.

And it's not like we didn't like her rulings.

No, I mean, look, she was a...

You mourn for her family and the people who knew her.

And you know, I want people to live.

I actually respect all human life.

So

would want want everyone to be alive.

Doesn't seem to be the

opinion of a lot of people these days.

Oh, I know.

But I will say, you know, as a Supreme Court justice, she was obviously terrible.

Well, like, I don't know.

Now, what makes you say that?

And she was on the wrong side of literally every single issue.

Okay, let me just say this.

In an interview in 2012,

she said that she wouldn't look to the U.S.

Constitution if she were drafting a Constitution in the year 2012.

She said, quote, I might look at the Constitution of South Africa.

I mean, that was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced human rights and have an independent judiciary.

Really, I think it's a great piece of work that was done.

So she wouldn't look to our constitution.

She'd look to South Africa.

Also,

she called for the sex integration of prisons and reformatories so that conditions of imprisonment, security, and housing could be equal.

She said, if the grand design of such institutions is to prepare inmates to return to a a community as persons equipped to benefit from and contribute to civil society, then perpetuation of a single-sex institution should be rejected.

Okay, it's a little out there.

I mean, might cause some problems, but she called for the sex integration of the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts because of the stereotypes of gender roles.

She insisted on integrating college fraternity and

sorority chapters,

having college social societies.

She may have missed the point of the sex drive.

You know, putting all these people together.

She may have, anyway,

she also cast constitutional doubt on the legality of Mother's and Father's Day as separate holidays because mothers

can be fathers and fathers can be mothers, I guess.

She asserted the laws against bigamists, persons cohabitating with more than one woman and a woman cohabitating with a bigamist are unconstitutional.

I agree with the way they're reading it now.

I happen to agree with her on that one.

She objected to laws against

prostitution because prostitution as a consensual act between adults is within the zone of privacy protected by recent constitutional decisions.

She's right about that.

The way it's being interpreted now.

Well, thanks to her, right?

She's a big reason it's being interpreted that way.

Right.

She also said that the concept of a husband-breadwinner and wife-homemaker must be eliminated from the code if it's to resle if it's to reflect an equality principle.

She called for a comprehensive program of government-supported child care.

She also wrote that the Man Act, listen to this, that publishes those, punishes those who engage in interstate sex traffic of women and girls,

the Man Act, that punishes those who engage in interstate-estate sex traffic of women and girls is offensive.

Such acts should be considered within the zone of privacy.

So she's not exactly.

She's not my favorite.

She also found words offensive, and she said these words needed to go from all official documents: man, woman, man-made, mankind, husband, wife, mother, father, sister, brother, son, daughter, serviceman, longshoreman, postmaster, watchman, seamanship,

and

to man a vessel.

I agree with all that except longshoreman.

Right.

I have a strong disagreement on the longshoreman.

Very strong on that one, and I understand with your history.

She even wanted he, she, him, his, and hers to be dropped down the memory hole, had to be replaced by him, he, she, her, him, or his, hers.

Boy, she's out of date, huh?

Not only was she very pro-abortion, she was also on the record as opposing what was settled law, that the Constitution does not compel taxpayers to pay for abortions.

She said fully funded abortions should be a constitutional right.

Again, I might disagree with her here and there.

She also called for affirmative action, hiring quotas for women, using the police as an example.

She said affirmative action is called for in this situation.

So anyway, she's done a lot of things that you disagree with.

However, today,

today,

after her death, I think it's important to remember one of her

really strong arguments.

She said she couldn't imagine Donald Trump back in 2016 getting

elected

for the country.

It could be four years for the court.

It could be, I don't even want to contemplate that.

But so she didn't really like Donald Trump at all.

But she did come out in 2016 and make it very, very clear that the sitting president, even a lame duck president in the last months of his term, had to fulfill his constitutional duty.

And she made a very, very big point about this.

Now, I have heard from AOC that her dying wish,

which we can't violate, her dying wish is that Donald Trump does not nominate somebody else.

Didn't realize the Supreme Court was a make-a-wish foundation.

I did not realize that's how this is.

Well, they're taking her body to Disneyland right now.

She wanted to see that one last time.

And this was her final wish.

That was her make-a-wish.

This one's her final wish.

Okay.

I was like, really?

They're bringing her to Disney World?

So weird.

So strange like.

2020.

Cooper.

You'll be like, okay.

I was like, wow.

All right.

She's laying in state in the magic castle.

Okay.

Screw to the series.

I totally felt that.

And I'm the one on tranquilizers.

Oh, man.

This is the best of the Glen Beck program.

Thomas King is the attorney in Pennsylvania that went into court fighting the COVID-19 lockdown.

We welcome you to the program now.

How are you, sir?

Oh, I'm just fine.

Thank you, Glenn.

I'm honored to be here.

Thank you.

Congratulations on the win.

Tell me what you were fighting and how it went.

We were fighting the governor of Pennsylvania and the Secretary of Health, like in a lot of places across the country, decided that it would be a great idea to lock down 13 million Pennsylvanians in their homes and to shut down half of our businesses, to put people out of work in order to,

on the guys that they were going to protect the public health.

They also prohibited people from attending rallies for 250 people or more or any sort of events.

Although our governor marched in a protest that had hundreds of people, and our health secretary did a secret deal that came out in our case that allowed 20,000 people a day to go to a car show in Carlisle.

And they told President Trump he couldn't come to Gettysburg and accept the Republican nomination if he had more than 250 people.

Wow.

So what happened in the court case?

We were in front of Judge William Stickman in the federal court, in the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

And Judge Stickman last week issued a wonderful opinion and order upholding the constitutional rights of Pennsylvanians, striking down their stay-at-home orders, their business closure orders, and their congregate number orders, allowing people to have to go watch their kids play high school football, have weddings, have political events.

And so, Pennsylvania,

the yoke of the governor and Secretary of Health were lifted by a federal court from our backs and shoulders in Pennsylvania last week.

Are they going to argue and take it up to a higher court?

Oh, they are.

They've already said that they intend to appeal.

Actually, we have until noon today to tell Judge Stickman why he should not stay the order.

And so we're, after I get off this interview, we're going to be filing with Judge Stickman and telling him to stick to his guns and

do not issue a stay.

So we hope that we're successful.

And Pennsylvanians are breathing

some breath of freedom here today, today, Glenn.

There's some frightening things happening in Pennsylvania now with

the

vote that is coming up.

You're looking now, it's going in through your highest court on

they're trying to get this cleared through the court to be able to say you don't need a postmark for your mail-in ballot until the Friday after the election.

There's no way people will

you think that they will rule against it?

They already have, and it's worse than that.

They've okayed

putting in these collection bins,

much of which is being funded by Mark Zuckerberg.

$250 million was put into

a very small charity that he's now using to try to

fund the blue cities and counties to put in these boxes and really to obviate what would have been years and years of election law in Pennsylvania.

Our Supreme Court has already ruled that recently this past week they've ruled that they're going to be able to count ballots three days after the presidential election.

And they're going to collect these things in bins so there's not going to be any postmarks on

most of these ballots.

So it's really abominable.

I look for

almost instantaneous challenges.

I suspect that the House of Representatives will file a challenge here and that will be in federal court, not in the state Supreme Court where the Democrats hold a five to two majority in our state Supreme Court.

Because this won't, this won't.

Americans won't accept things like that.

I mean, you know, the rest of the country, Pennsylvanians might, but the rest of the country won't.

If you didn't play by the rules and you can just throw things in even without a postmark,

you know, three up to three days after the election,

Who's going to believe that's real?

Well, I don't believe it's real, and

I don't think most Pennsylvanians think it's real, but it is certainly where we are today.

And this so-called new normal, you know, when Judge Dickman said there is no new normal

under the United States Constitution.

There is no new normal.

We have a Constitution, and that's what we have to abide by.

It's bad news, Glenn.

It's really bad news.

Our good.

I don't think people are going to stand for it.

Are good

attorneys who are on the right, are they volunteering their time to fight and to monitor and to be there to be able to file the other side?

Because we know the left has attorneys already assigned all over the country.

Yeah,

we have lots of legal power.

We have, just from our case, we've received literally dozens and dozens of offers and calls.

And so we also know that in Pennsylvania, we have terrific lawyers representing the Republican Party

and the people in this particular fight.

So I look forward to

a real battle here over these recent pronouncements from the Supreme Court.

All right.

Let me just take you back one last question on Pennsylvania, the ruling that happened last week with you,

where you got a judge to to say these things are unconstitutional.

You can't lock the people up like this for COVID.

If the judge grants the stay,

then that means it goes to

the higher court, right?

No.

Well,

whether he grants the stay or not, it's going to go to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and the Virgin Islands.

And so it'll go to that court, which is the court right below the U.S.

Supreme Court.

But

what does he have to rule so you can start to open things up?

He just has to deny the stay option.

Deny the stay.

Yeah, and that's today.

Now they can also file again for a stay in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

So we'll see what happens there as well.

Okay.

Thank you very much, Thomas.

I appreciate it.

Thomas King, attorney for the Pennsylvania counties that were fighting COVID-19.

You're listening to the best of the Glendeck program.

So you said you'll make the announcement this week.

Can you tell us more about that?

Will it be the beginning of the week?

What day?

I think it'll be on Friday or Saturday.

And we want to pay respect.

It looks like

we will have probably services on Thursday or Friday, as I understand it.

I think, in all due respect, we should wait till the services are over for Justice Ginsburg.

And so we're looking probably at Friday or maybe Saturday.

So I think that's nice.

I would imagine that there are some radicals out there going, well, just don't bury her for a month

because we can make it in time.

And I think it's really important that the Republicans and the president do this.

We have Carrie Severino on with us.

She is the president of Judicial Crisis, and we wanted to talk to her.

And I guess, Carrie, the first question is, do we have enough time to confirm a SCOTUS replacement before the election?

The answer is yes, absolutely.

You look at like Justice O'Connor.

She was confirmed 33 days after her nomination was submitted, and she was unanimously confirmed.

You have Justice Ginsberg herself, 42 days, again, almost unanimously.

And Justice Stevens, 19 days.

Now, that was, you know, that was

a couple decades ago, but we can totally do it.

And what's interesting is all of these women that the president is looking at, they have been recently confirmed by the Senate, and I think all with bipartisan majorities.

So the Senate has seen them recently.

Their information, like their background file from the FBI, all is almost up to date already.

I think there's not a lot standing in the way of moving forward.

We already know, you know, even the senators are familiar with all of these potential nominees already.

Okay, so he said he had a list of five, but three of them we know.

Are you familiar with those three female judges?

Yes.

Yeah.

The three that we hear a lot about

are Amy Coney Barrett.

Obviously, everyone remembers her dogma lives loudly within you moment with Senator Feinstein last year, those anti-Catholic attacks that went on.

She held her own with grace under pressure.

She's the mother of seven, including two children who were adopted from Haiti.

Just a really inspiring story in her life.

Barbara Lagoa, who has spent over a decade in the Florida state courts, now is on the 11th circuit thanks to Donald Trump.

She is the daughter of Cuban immigrants who really speaks eloquently about her own parents' desire to come here because they wanted their children to grow up in a nation of laws, not a tyrannical government.

And so she's very committed to making sure that the role of a judge is to just interpret the law, not make it up.

And then Allison Rushing is someone else the president mentioned.

She's a fourth circuit nominee.

She is someone who has a distinguished legal career.

She clerked for Justice Thomas like I did.

She also came under fire like Barrett during her confirmation process because she'd been involved in the group Alliance Defending Freedom, which stands for religious freedom and things like that.

So she understands also what it's like to be attacked for your faith.

So the one that, I mean, let's just play politics here for a second, then I'll quickly switch to Constitution.

But the one who makes sense, I think, on both sides, politically and also with the Constitution, is Barbara Lagoa.

I mean, the background of her being Cuban, she's from Florida, Cuban, and then

more importantly, being the first American generation, I think those people get it much more than anybody else.

And I think that that's a strong vote for her on sticking to the Constitution.

Would you agree, or all three of them that way?

Who's the best on holding to the Constitution, do you think?

You know, the great thing about these final shortlisters that we're hearing about, honestly, I think all of them would be outstanding.

I could put my seal of approval on all of them in terms of what I've seen of their record on the court.

So that's really encouraging.

Yeah, they all have slightly different stories, but I think all have inspiring stories.

And it's interesting.

They're going to all,

thankfully, very much diverge from where Justice Ginsburg would be in terms of her jurisprudence, right?

But I do think they carry on that same tradition of being strong women, you know, being path-breaking in many ways.

You know, in particular, when you think of Barrett, you know, doing all this with seven kids.

How many mothers of seven do you know who are that accomplished in their field and have risen that far?

Lagoa, obviously, with her inspiring story of coming here and being the first generation.

So

these are people who can really fit into that

legacy nicely in terms of all of the best things I think about Justice Ginsburg of her strength and her courage.

Do you see any of these fitting a Scalia or a Thomas kind of standard?

Oh, that's the reason they're on the list, right?

I mean, you've got people like Barrett, who was a Scalia clerk, and I've heard one of his favorite clerks.

Rushing was a Thomas clerk.

And Lagoa didn't clerk for either of them, but I love that there was a meme that went around right after she was nominated.

It It said, Lagoa, it's Spanish for Clarence Thomas.

And that's really how I think a lot of the conservative movement in Florida views her.

I don't think she has as much, you know, known as much nationally.

But so I think all of them, that's the reason they're picked, is this approach to the law where you look first and foremost at what the text says.

It's not what I wish it said.

It's not what I think in 2020 we should update it to say, it's what did our elected representatives pass?

What does the Constitution itself actually say?

And then, you know, let the chips chips fall where they may.

And if it's not the result you want, go back to Congress and fix it.

So we're just concerned.

I think all Americans are just concerned that we would have another Roberts pick.

Oh, yes.

You know, that's been devastating.

Devastating.

Well, that's why I think what you're seeing, and this is something that all of Trump's list was really chosen with Roberts in mind.

When Molly Hemming and I were working on a book on the Kavanaugh nomination, Justice on Trial, we learned that part of his vetting process was trying to find the anti-Roberts, someone who they thought would be strong in the face of pressure.

That's why it's so exciting to see people, for example, you know, like the Barrett or the Russian who got pressure during their confirmation process and nonetheless stood up to it.

You know, Lagoa has had, she already on the 11th Circuit has had people trying to launch politically motivated recusal campaigns and she stood firm.

She's like, no, I don't have to recuse in this case.

This is an important case.

I'm going to sit on it.

So you have to have someone who has illustrated in their career that they've got that spine.

And what's exciting is all these women have shown they have spines of steel.

But Lago is the only one that hasn't been already in front of

a hearing, right?

Oh, no.

She was just recently confirmed to the 11th Circuit by the Senate.

So all three of them have been confirmed by this Senate, well, or this or the previous Senate, but within the Trump administration.

So again, all of their, you know, their vetting has been been recently updated.

They have been,

they've gone through that kind of harrowing process once recently.

So I feel like, you know, we're talking about people all of whom are ready.

Well, if you can ever be ready for what we expect is coming.

Because we know that, you know, the Kavanaugh nomination was crazy.

I don't know how you make it crazier, but I know that there's Democrats right now having brainstorming sessions trying to figure out.

Javi, but you're a little boy that cried wolf.

I mean,

you do that a second time.

I think that galvanized the country.

A lot of people changed their view of what was going on in the Democratic Party because of that.

And to have that kind of an outrageous scene again, I think would be devastating to the Democrats.

Yeah, I think you're exactly right.

They totally overstepped, and I think it really hurt them.

Yet somehow, you know, when you look at all the stuff going on, They don't seem to have gotten that message.

I think that the radical edge of the party is, you know, going crazy and they're kind of setting themselves on fire sometimes, literally, in ways that I don't think is what most Americans, certainly not independents and the moderate wing of the Democratic Party wants to see.

So

have at it.

Overstep again.

Let's see how that works for you.

Is there anything in their records that has been drug out that

could be expanded?

Have you seen anything that is bad, or not bad, but just like, oh, geez, that's there.

and they had to explain it but it could be made up into something bigger have you seen any trouble or weak spots in any of these people

well there's certainly stuff in their records that's going to get controversy but i think generally it's controversy for all the right reasons you know it's going to get it's going to get stuff people going oh my gosh how could you have you know there's there's cases where they've all ruled and someone's going to go well that's a really sympathetic plaintiff and their answer if which is the right answer to be you know what that's what the law said and i don't write the laws that's not my job as a judge yeah so so what i what i have seen is: of course, you're going to get controversy, but I think it's going to be the right kind of controversy on these nominees that we're looking at, and that's really exciting.

Now, none of them have had case in every single area of law.

No one has, but I think we have a lot of really, you know, these are all people with records that we can look at, and that's what it has to come down to: is you look at the objective record that they have, so you can see how they really perform on the bench.

Is there anything that the Democrats can do, seeing that the Senate is controlled by the Republicans and a lot of weenie Republicans.

But is there anything that the Senate can do, the Democrats can do, to stop this dead in its tracks?

Is there any trick

in the parliamentary rules to be able to stop this?

Or

can Mitch McConnell, if he can keep his crowd together, proceed?

I think if he's got 50 votes, he can do it because we've got the vice president, and I hope he gets more than 50 votes.

But

obviously, I am not a Senate rules expert.

That stuff is crazy.

It's brilliant.

I'm sure they're out there brainstorming, again, trying to find some hole.

But if they couldn't do it for Kavanaugh, I don't think they're going to be able to find it now.

And

we'll see crazy stuff going on, like where they, you remember even during the first Kavanaugh hearing where they tried to just talk over Chairman Grassley, oh, it took an hour to get through attending, stuff like that, you know, made-for-TV little moments.

Right.

But I don't think they actually, at the end of the day, are going to have to vote.

And last question.

As they go through and you're looking and saying you know they need to have 50, we're going to lose Romney, which would bring us 250.

We've got

the two that have already said they're not on board.

And then if you lose Romney you're at 50.

Is there anybody else that you're concerned that might go?

Would you watch any of that stuff?

You know, it's hard to keep track.

I know there's people who they don't want to have a vote now or whatever.

I do think it's going to be hard when you are are looking at one of these women in the face and you see the outstanding role models that they are, the pathbreaking careers that they've led.

I think it's going to be hard to come to a point and say, yeah, I don't think this person deserves to vote.

So, you know, we'll see.

I think Leader McConnell knows better than anyone where his votes are, and he's going to be in charge of how to navigate this through the Senate.

He did it for Gorsuch.

He did it for Kavanaugh.

Those are really controversial.

I'm confident he can do that again.

That's great.

Well, I feel so much better talking to you.

Let's please stay in touch because

I'm going to need to stay in a happy mood and I think America needs to.

Carrie, thank you very much for your analysis.

Appreciate it.

Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other.

When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a four-liter jug.

When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.

Oh, come on.

They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia Trip Planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip.

Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.

Whatever.

You were made to outdo your holidays.

We were made to help organize the competition.

Expedia made to travel.