SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello again, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another episode of Freedom's Creed. If you celebrate Christmas like I do, I do hope that you had a great and joyous Christmas Day and Christmas season as you prepare for the new year. Depending on the time of the year, I sometimes hesitate to talk about certain topics or bring up certain things. But in my mind, irrespective of the time of year, in this case, the Christmas season, there are things that I will be talking about today that may conjure up some feelings within you that you may not necessarily like, but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't talk about these things. And for heaven's sakes, disagreeing with me is not a big deal. You can disagree with me all you want. I don't care. What I care about, and what I've always cared about since I started this podcast, is that freedom and liberty are accentuated in our country, and that the freedom to speak our mind and to say what we want to say should not be inhibited. I have talked about these things before and will continue to do so. There are certain things that we can't say in our society, certain things that may cause harm to other people without question, like yelling fire in a crowded theater. You can't do it. Let me say again that I don't care about anyone's politics. I really don't. One's political position or affiliation is completely meaningless to me. That doesn't necessarily reflect one's character, integrity, or their decency as a human being. It just doesn't. We may often associate someone's character or their belief system with a particular political party, but that's different. Because deep down in their heart of hearts is a place that we do not know. We cannot know. We can only know what is in our heart and our mind. And we should probably do our best to, when it comes to making decisions about other people, give them the benefit of the doubt, irrespective of the political party which they belong to, or to none, if that's their choice. Now, having said that, here is something that I really do care a lot about, and that is the actions of the judiciary in the state or federal doesn't matter, and also the actions of the legislative, state or federal, again, doesn't matter. If you've listened to me before, if you've downloaded my episodes and the podcast in general, I thank you for that. I certainly appreciate it. But you know that I have an extreme love of the Constitution and of our founding documents in general and what that means to all people, not just people born here, but people who come here legally and are blessed and benefited by the great constitution that we have. I said great, yes. I didn't say perfect. I often refer to the Federalist Papers, which were written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and to a lesser extent, John Jay, but all three of these men were writing in defense of a new federal constitution, because what they had prior to that wasn't cutting it, let's just say. In Federalist 45, Madison was writing about the alleged danger from the powers of the Union to the state governments. And he said this, and I think it's very important that we recognize this in light of the things that are going on now and what I'm actually going to be talking about for the rest of the podcast. Madison said this quote, several important considerations have been touched in the course of these papers, which discountenance the supposition that the operation of the federal government will by degrees prove fatal to the state governments. The more I revolve the subject, the more fully I am persuaded that the balance is much more likely to be disturbed by the preponderancy of the last than of the first scale. In other words, it seems that Madison was more concerned about state governments getting over on the federal government, to put it in simple terms. He wasn't necessarily concerned that the federal government was going to become this big behemoth and walk all over the state governments, though it does seem clear to say that if Madison were alive today, he might think otherwise. But the point he's making here in Federalist 45 is that state governments could prove fatal to the federal government. Now, I've not researched it. I don't know the answer to the question. If I wanted to do it, I could. In fact, if you want to do it, you can as well. That is, look up the amount of times that state governments somehow were a threat to the federal government, not the other way around. In any case, all of us have heard, unless we're living under a rock or somehow have no access to social media or any news or anything, or talk to a person who has a pulse or anything like that, have heard what the state of Colorado did in basically getting Trump thrown off the ballot in Colorado. As I said at the beginning of the podcast, I don't care where you come down politically. I don't. I really don't care. You have the right to believe to vote how you want. It's none of my business. Big deal. Who cares? I do care, however, about the right to vote. For those eligible to vote, they should be able to vote. They should be allowed to vote. It should not be inhibited by anyone, it should not be coerced by anyone. That right is a sacred right that we have in this country and it shouldn't be taken away. Obviously, that right can be taken away if you're a convicted felon, and it may be argued that convicted felons should be able to vote. Well, I'm not talking about that today. If you want to have a discussion about that with your circle of friends, then by all means go to it. Here's the thing that not a lot of people may know. In September of 2023, six voters in Colorado filed a lawsuit seeking to remove Trump from the ballot in the state of Colorado. I admit I wasn't aware of that until the Supreme Court of Colorado case came out earlier this month. In this case filed by these six voters in the district court in Denver, they contended that Trump should be disqualified from running in future elections under Section three of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Very interesting. Shall we go to the Fourteenth Amendment and take a look at section three? I think so. Now, if it's been a while since you've taken a look at the Fourteenth Amendment, Section three, I'm going to read it to you. The bulk of it says this, and mind you, it's one complete sentence. It says this, quote, don't worry, I'll break it down at the end. It doesn't say that. I just said that. I say this again, quote. No person shall be a senator or representative in Congress or elector of president and vice president, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. I've said this before, and I'll say it again. I am not a lawyer, but I am someone who has I think decent intelligence. I have the ability to read. I have the ability to understand and comprehend. Now on something that is extremely complex, it may take me a while, and my brothers will tell you that's true. But I'll be damned if I'll be put into a category that says, Oh, well, you're not this, so you can't understand this or that. No, I don't believe that. It's true that much of the Constitution and even the amendments can be extremely vague. And the part in section three that says, quote, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion, unquote, is extremely vague. To my knowledge, Donald Trump was not convicted of insurrection. Now he was impeached a week before leaving office, but he wasn't convicted in the Senate. And what's the one word that is missing from section three of the fourteenth Amendment? Think about it. I'll give you some time. That word is civilian. Section three uses words like senator, representative, president, vice president, anyone who holds an office either in the military or any state or in any form is someone who is charged with a responsibility to the US government, and in fact, deference and allegiance to the Constitution. Only then can charges of insurrection or can a person be engaged in insurrection or rebellion. And engaged is a very vague word and hard to prove. Again, I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that this lawsuit that was brought by these six voters in Colorado should have been tossed out because you can't try a civilian. Donald Trump is a civilian. He's on a ballot so that voters can make the determination as to whether they want to vote for him or not, but as it stands right now to this day, he is a civilian, irrespective of the fact that he was a former president. End of story. You may think as I go throughout this that I'm somehow supporting Donald Trump, be it as it may, I don't care. You can say or think what you want. My point is this I believe that the law should be applied fairly to all people, no matter their political party, their sex, their age, the color of their skin, or anything else. The law is supposed to be applied equitably. Lady Justice has a blindfold on, and if you're not sure of that, look at my logo on my podcast. Lady Justice is right there with a blindfold on. There you go. That blindfold, ladies and gentlemen, is meant to denote the fact that justice and the law does not care what you look like or who you are. Unfortunately, it seems that nowadays Lady Justice is kind of peeking through that blindfold, if you know what I mean. Isn't it interesting, by the way, that in September, I believe, this case was filed by these six voters in Colorado, and that a mere three months later a verdict was handed down by the Supreme Court of Colorado? Remember, these six voters filed their lawsuit in a district court in Denver, and then it went to the state's Supreme Court. Doesn't that seem kind of quick for y'all? I mean, I don't know, I'm not a lawyer, like I said, but generally legal cases like this tend to drag on. But I guess when people want to get things done, regardless if it's just or not, they speed things up. In an article written by NPR that was published on december twentieth, twenty twenty three, it said this quote Colorado became the first to agree on Tuesday when its Supreme Court ruled that Trump is disqualified from appearing on its state primary ballot. It goes on to say, because he is disqualified, it would be a wrongful act under the election code for the Secretary to list him as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot. End of quote. Remember, it doesn't matter what any of us think or what our opinion is about January 6, 2021, whether insurrection happened or not, or whether it was instigated by the President of the United States or not. None of that matters at this point. And the following really doesn't matter either from the same NPR article, a man named Justin Levitt, a constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School, told NPR that as long as there's a petition for U.S. Supreme Court review in place by January 5, there's a 99.9% chance that Trump will remain on the Colorado primary ballot. End of quote. And let's face it, a lot of these things that happened to Trump, a lot of these things that were done to him, were for optics. It didn't matter to the people, I don't believe, who were bringing these things against him, these charges and what have you that led to impeachment not once but twice. It didn't really seem to matter to them whether the charges would stick or not. It was just the optics of the whole thing. They knew if they could put it out there and the media would run with it, then that's all it was going to take to get into the minds of people to say, hmm, I don't think I want to vote for this guy, or yeah, he shouldn't be on the ballot because of what he did on January 6th and on and on and on. Again, I couldn't care less about someone's political standing. I don't care. I just want to see things applied equally to either side, to either candidate, and then let the voters decide by a court deciding that someone is not worthy, quote unquote, to be on the ballot for election to the office of president. That seems to me to be a classic case of disenfranchising someone to be able to vote for the person that they want to vote for. And if the candidate has satisfied all of the rules and regulations and paid the money and done all the things that they need to do to be on the ballot, then the court taking that person off the ballot seems to be something that should not be allowed. And as was stated in the article that I quoted by the law professor that it's probably going to be overturned by the Supreme Court if it goes that far, which we all know it probably will. But that's not the point. The point is it was done in the first place, and again, the optics of it, they don't look good. You know, if I didn't know better, I would say that there are a bunch of people who will do anything that they can to ensure that Donald Trump is not on the ballot for the upcoming presidential election in 2024. It seems obvious to me. If you're confident enough in your position or your politics to have anyone be on the ballot, then why should you care? As a candidate or as an elected official, shouldn't you be focusing on what you promise to do to uphold the Constitution and to protect it against all enemies, foreign and domestic? Shouldn't you be touting your case as to why people should be voting for you? You shouldn't be involved in trying to get somebody off a ballot or denigrating another person to the point where there's no possible way that they're going to be elected again. That's not how it works. You talk about what you're going to do and then go and do it. If you're someone who upholds the Constitution and will defend it against all enemies, foreign and domestic, then there's a good chance that I'm going to vote for you. Unfortunately, in our society today, political party means more to people than does the Constitution. And that needs to be reversed. We all know that Trump was impeached twice, first president in history to ever be impeached twice in one term, or multiple terms, doesn't matter. He got impeached twice in the same term. But here's the really messy situation for those who wanted to see a conviction in the Senate, because we know that charges are brought up in the House of Representatives, and then it goes to the Senate if there's enough votes. And then once it makes it to the Senate, there has to be a supermajority of votes in the Senate to convict, meaning sixty-seven votes. And both times they were nowhere near that in Trump's case with both of his impeachments. And again, it seems to be no secret, at least not to me anyway, that the reason that both impeachments took place was all about politics. Plain and simple. The politics in our country today, ladies and gentlemen, and you don't need me to tell you this. It's pathetic. It's embarrassing. We're an embarrassment to the world at the way we conduct ourselves politically in our country. Not to mention a host of other things, but I'm not talking about that today. Nancy Pelosi said this, and this is from an NPR article again, from after the first impeachment. And at the time she was the Speaker of the House. She said this quote Sadly, because of the Republican Senate's betrayal of the Constitution, the president remains an ongoing threat to American democracy, with his insistence that he is above the law and that he can corrupt the elections if he wants to. In the same article, Adam Schiff said this, that he warned senators that if, quote, they let Trump keep his office, they not only were effectively approving his conduct, but were surrendering their own power to hold any president accountable. End of quote. It just goes to show you that these people in political power will go to no lengths, they'll stop at no lengths to tear down, to destroy, to ruin anyone who doesn't think like they do, who doesn't vote like they do. It's the most despicable thing that we are seeing right now in politics. And there's no letting up to it. It it seems to me there there's just going to be no letting up. It's going to continue to be like this for the foreseeable future, unfortunately. Making an accusation like Nancy Pelosi did, that somehow Donald Trump is going to be a threat to American democracy, it's just irresponsible. And it's ignorant. And it's designed for one purpose and one purpose only, and that's to maintain power. Maintain unchecked power. The Speaker in the House in the United States of America, ladies and gentlemen, is a very powerful person. They are three, really two positions away from becoming president if something were to happen to both the president and vice president. It's crazy. So yes, they'll do and say anything to try to destroy somebody. And then there's this guy, Eric Swalwell from California, who said that, quote, he, meaning Trump, built this mob over many months with repeated messaging until they believed that they had been robbed of their vote, and they would do anything to stop the certification. He made them he made them believe that their victory was stolen and incited them so he could use them to steal the election for himself. If that is not one of the most ignorant and irresponsible statements that I've ever read, then my name is not Rex Reed, and I don't have a podcast. Unbelievable. This is one of the things that just disgusts me to no end, where politicians completely and utterly destroy all confidence and personal accountability and responsibility. They don't take it upon themselves, so it's no surprise that they would, of course, accuse other people of doing the same thing that they're doing. It's just disgusting. Did anyone think that Trump would remain in office after the election had been certified in Congress? It's stupid. I guess the people who thought that were really dumb because they didn't play it right. They should have played it up and just said, okay, yeah, let's let's encourage him to be there so that law enforcement could drag Trump away and incarcerate him for truly inciting an insurrection and rebellion in government. Can you imagine? Trump is not leaving the White House and what a big news story. Law enforcement go in, drag his butt out of the White House. I mean, can you imagine? So So, yeah, if I was one of these people who was doing all I could to get Trump out of office, I would have encouraged him, hey, just get back to the Oval Office and chill out, man. No big deal. They'll come get you. I mean, you're not going to have this situation where after the vote has been certified by the Congress, that the sitting president decides not to leave before the inauguration of the other president. They didn't play that right, but hey, mark my words, it'll probably happen in our lifetimes at some point. We'll see it happen. Can you imagine the president of the United States being handcuffed and dragged out of the White House? Okay, maybe not literally dragged out of the White House, but taken with the cuffs on, coat over the head and over the cuffs. Can you imagine? Remember the summer of 2020, I believe it was, and all the riots that took place across the country? Fires, looting, murders, and all of the people in elected office who incited such riots by their rhetoric. No one that I recall, well, I shouldn't say no one, but isn't it interesting how the media just kind of dropped that ball and just let it go and swept it under the rug and didn't really talk about it very much?

unknown 23:24

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 23:25

Weird, right? I podcasted about this uh back then as well, so go back and check that podcast episode out if you want to see what I had to say about it at the time. But I'd like to point out two cases where sitting members of Congress had something to say about the president and also the other member of Congress having something to say about a member of the Supreme Court. And as I recall, the consequences were again forgotten about and swept under the rug. The first example is of Maxine Waters and what she said regarding members of Trump's cabinet. She said this quote, let's make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them that they're not welcome anymore anywhere. End of quote. A CNN article states that quote, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi referred to Waters' comments as unacceptable, but blamed Trump's daily lack of civility for provoking responses such as that of Waters, end of quote. Are you seriously kidding me right now? This is what I was saying. That there is this lack of responsibility. There's no accountability for the things that people say. It's because somebody else made them do it. They were coerced by someone else, and they were provoked by someone else to say the things that they did. They can't be held responsible for it. It's complete and utter BS, and everybody knows it. In the same article, another member of Congress who is a representative from New York, Adriano, and I'm going to spell the last name because I don't know how to say it, E S P A I L L A T had this to say, quote, to get sidetracked into these debates about whether or not somebody was welcome at a restaurant takes our eyes off what's going on in America today. Maxine Waters is entitled to her opinion, and I respect that. I don't know what this individual said about Trump and the election results of 2020, but my guess is he doesn't have the same respect for Trump's opinion as he has for Maxine Waters. And what could possibly be the explanation for something like that? Wait, what? You say they're of the same political party. Oh, okay, yeah. So if you're a member of the same political party, you can respect the other person's opinions and beliefs. But if they're of another political party, then absolutely not. You cannot respect their opinions or beliefs. Got it. The second case, very quickly here, is the case of Chuck Schumer, who is a senator from New York and the things that he had to say about Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, who are on the Supreme Court, with respect to the abortion argument that was going on a few years ago. Schumer said this, quote, I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. End of quote. What detrimental action was taken towards Chuck Schumer? Yeah, I'm done thinking, uh I can't remember anything. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a clear cut case to me of unchecked power in the United States. If you are the right political party, then you're okay. But if you're not, then well, you're not okay. That, ladies and gentlemen, resembles nothing to what the founders had envisioned for the country, at least in my opinion. Well, the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court had this to say about Schumer's opinions. He said, Statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous. He went on. We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. End of quote. In other words, our system of justice, among other things, says that you are innocent until proven guilty. That's it for today's episode, ladies and gentlemen. But if you have a comment or a question that you'd like to send to me, send to me an email at freedom's creed with RexRead at gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you. I want to end this episode, ladies and gentlemen, with a very short but powerful quote from James Madison, who said this The essence of government is power, and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse. End of quote. As citizens, we must guard against this by voting for people who love the Constitution and who will step aside if they have broken their covenant or promise, oath to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Ladies and gentlemen, if you can think it, you can plan it. If you can plan it, you can do it.