David French on the Supreme Court, Race, and the Miracle That Confirmed His Faith #555

what happened 150 years ago, 90 years ago,

and quite honestly, even a decade ago,

isn't really particularly consequential

in understanding the state of affairs today.

Hard object to that.

And I appreciate that, and I'll permit it,

but I will say that by my own all the while that I love that.

We know of new methods of attack.

The fifth column.

Greetings, and welcome back to another exciting installment

of the fifth column podcast.

This is your weekly rhetorical assault

on the new cycle, the people that make it occasionally ourselves.

I'm Camille Foster, I'm delighted to be here.

Thrilled, in fact.

I'm joined by Michael Moynihan, Matt Welch,

and our friend, David French, who is back for,

I think this is your second time on the podcast.

Yeah, I think it's number three.

Yeah, maybe my second time was so forgettable.

No, you didn't have for a long time the,

I think most downloaded episode for a while.

It was when it was when we had 14 listeners.

And I got you to all the way to 14.

Yeah, yeah.

When I've been waiting for my check-up for that, okay.

You did about 10 minutes.

Well, it's definitely your first time on camera with us.

Yeah, here in the new palatial studios.

I love it, these studios are fantastic.

Yeah, well, thank you for joining us here, David.

And honestly, the timing couldn't be better

because we've got a bunch of scotus decisions,

which I haven't even bothered to evaluate at all.

But I suspect you have, and you talked to us

about what the hell is going on there.

Yeah, we had two big cases.

One was unanimous, and there was a free speech,

free association case involving crisis pregnancy centers,

but really was about more than that.

And that's the more boring one because it's 90.

This is a very speech protective court.

There's a lot of precedent.

Basically, the question in this case was,

if I'm a state attorney general,

can I send to a private organization, a nonprofit,

a demand for a list of their donors?

Okay, so we know the answer to that is no,

but the question at issue was,

when can I challenge that?

Can I just go straight into federal court when that happens?

And the spring court said, yeah,

that it is an injury in fact

when a state law enforcement officer

demands to know my donor list.

And this goes all the way back to NAACB versus Alabama

in the civil rights era when the state of Alabama

was saying to the NAACP, to do business here,

you have to disclose who your members and affiliates

and allies are, which would be for some of those people

a potential death sentence in the Supreme Court said,

all the way back in the civil rights era,

that you can, as part of this right of association

that's embedded within the free speech clause

and the first amendment or broadly,

that within this right of association

you can maintain privacy.

You can keep some secrecy in privacy

about who your members are,

which is under a populist pressure

on right and left right now.

Yes, absolutely.

Anything liberal that is happening

is happening on the right and on the left.

And we can argue which one's more or less

on any given issue,

but it is a very clear reality right now

that you are having pressure on liberty from right and left.

It is, it's just omnipresent.

Including very specifically,

let's get the nonprofits to co-op the names of their donors.

Right, and those are legislative proposals

that are kind of constant not going.

You know, in this case,

and then a case from last year

involving the National Rifle Association

and New York State Government attempts to pressure people

to not do business with the NRA,

both of those cases were free speech cases,

where the plaintiffs were the petitioners in the case,

were conservative organizations,

a pro-life pregnancy center,

National Rifle Association,

but they won 9-0.

All three liberal justices were definitely on board

because this was just basic first amendment free speech stuff.

If there's one thing this this current court

is very relentless and consistent on, it is free speech.

So the 9-0 decision didn't surprise you?

Not, not a bit.

I mean, it's the kind of thing that after is argued,

I thought, maybe it might be 8-1, but it's a 9-0.

So the forces of good have won in this particular case.

And the forces of racism, though?

Well, this is what I was going to say next.

I was going to say next.

It would be nice to talk about why black people shouldn't be able to vote.

Which interestingly, David,

I saw the headlines to make sure that you'll never vote again.

I've been telling you for years, not black.

This is not my problem.

I've been told repeatedly in headlines that I've scanned

that this case is about, you know,

oh my goodness, like voting rights.

But when Matt was reading to me earlier, as he usually does,

we arrive here maybe an hour early and he just reads the news to me.

And it's like one hour straight and I kind of like curl up in his arms.

That's nice.

Yeah, you can read, too.

I hope you read it.

One day.

One day.

But he read a portion of it to me and I screamed out Haza,

and I slammed the table because the idea was there.

I ain't even telling that.

I would bet money you did.

Haza, I'm not here.

You did not say Haza.

Yeah.

Essentially, okay.

But there are aspects of this that make my individualist heart sore.

So tell me why I shouldn't be excited about this or why I should.

So because the whole gerrymandering situation is a giant, complete total mess.

Oh god.

And this does not make it.

It's a cluster of fuck.

It's fine.

I do not say that now.

It is a...

That's a straw fuck.

It's okay, but there's people in Gus, too.

It is a giant mess and it's still a mess.

Okay.

So the decision isn't all bad nor is it all good.

So let's do a little history.

Okay.

You go back.

Section two of the Voting Rights Act was actually amended in the 1980s

into the Reagan administration to revamp it, strengthen it for a more modern era.

Now, when that happened, the Supreme Court would review a gerrymander that was a racial gerrymander.

And it would also review gerrymanders that were political gerrymanders.

In other words, the Supreme Court was kind of like the school principal

disciplining the states for bad gerrymanders kind of across the spectrum,

whether it's political or racial.

And were those tests equal or the racial and the different tests?

It's all super complicated.

But in around 2018, 2019, the Supreme Court basically said,

we're out of the political gerrymander business.

So if you want to do a political gerrymander, however stupid it is,

however ridiculous it is, whether you look like crap,

there was a crab district, I think, in Virginia in the new gerrymander.

Lobster, I think.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, whatever it is, you can do it.

It can look crazy.

It can look weird.

It can be wild.

It can be unfair.

But if it's political, you're doing it to maximize your party.

We're out.

We're not.

That's a political question.

That's for the voters to deal with, etc.

But the Supreme Court still paid attention to the racial gerrymander issue.

And the question is, okay, let's suppose you have a state

that's two thirds white, one third black.

Like that's roughly the demographics of Louisiana.

Is it required that the representation would then be roughly two thirds white,

one third black?

The answer that's no.

In the statute, that is not required.

But what is prohibited is you cannot engage in a gerrymander that's

designed to diminish black voting power.

Okay.

So you can't do a gerrymander that is specifically designed,

racially designed to diminish the voting power of black voters.

Okay.

All of that sounds like it can make some sense.

You political gerrymander is left alone.

Racial gerrymander, we're going to intervene if we see that we believe that there was an

effort to diminish the strength of black voters.

Okay.

And would that apply to white diminishing the strength of white voters?

Yes, but that's not typically the issue.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, yeah, it would apply equally unrate.

You know, if you say we want fewer white voters or if we want fewer white elected officials,

it would apply.

Okay.

Okay, here's the conceptual problem.

Okay, and a lot of states in the union, this distinction will make easy sense.

In other words, voting is not so racially polarized to the point where virtually all white

voters vote Republican and virtually all black voters vote Democratic.

And a lot of states, black voters are still voting Democratic, but not 90 plus percent necessarily.

And white voters are still voting Republican, but not 90 percent.

And Hispanic voters are much more up for grabs.

But in Louisiana, it's about almost, you know, the latest figures, I haven't seen the latest

figures, but from some of the vignettes I've seen, I've seen from 2024.

If it's a white voter, it's 85 percent chance they're voting Republican.

If it's a black voter, it's about 90, 91, 92 percent they're voting Democratic.

So how do you tell the difference between a racial gerrymander and a political gerrymander?

Because if you're going to do a political gerrymander, it will be a racial gerrymander.

And if you do a racial gerrymander, it will be a political gerrymander.

How do these things stand the test of time?

When things change, conversations that people have been having about affirmative action,

you know, what is the kind of time frame on this?

I mean, Supreme Court Justice talked about this.

In 30 years, I don't suspect this will be necessary.

These kinds of things.

That's the hope, right?

That's the hope, right?

In you're making law based on Supreme Court is weighing on this, things change when you look

at, for instance, Hispanic voters.

We saw a huge shift.

I mean, the idea that race is that maps on perfectly to like voting identity.

It might be unique in Louisiana, but the Supreme Court is ruling for the entire country.

How does that change?

Because you can see that happening when black voters in the 1950s and 60s are being disenfranchised.

Yeah.

In a very like systematic way.

Explicit.

Explicit.

We're having to send the national guard, right?

There's people standing in the door.

James Meredith can't go to school, etc.

I mean, it seems like it's a different ball of wax now.

Well, and that's why the voting rights act was upgraded or updated in the 1980s.

So they, in the 1980s, you were not dealing with like the poll taxes, the literacy tests,

the explicit, you know, the explicit blatant racial discrimination and voting.

But in the early 1980s, we were not past racial discrimination, especially in

districting and things like this.

And so how do you deal with, especially in a lot of these very deep south districts?

Because it's worth really emphasizing.

This is a big diverse country and not all of the parts of our country have the same

reality of race relations right now in 2026.

And so how do you deal with this?

And so the new section too that was crafted in early 1980s.

Honestly, honestly, if I pulled it up and read it right here,

you would think, you would say, come again, what does that mean precisely?

And it's just not a very well-written statute.

So it specifically disclaims the idea that proportional representation is required in the statute.

However, it's all been clear for a very long time if your gerrymander is resulting in

disproportionate racial representation, then it's going to invite additional scrutiny.

And so the question is, when is a political gerrymander, a political gerrymander,

and when is a racial gerrymander, a racial gerrymander, and the basic bottom line of this case?

The way I read it is if you're a smart racist in the deep south, you can get away with it now.

If you're a dumb racist in the deep south, you can't.

And here's what I mean.

If you're the dumb racist, you're going to say, we need fewer black members of the house.

You'll say, you'll talk about your racial motivation out loud.

And in that case, under this opinion, once you see explicit racial motivation, you can act.

You can move, right? But let's say you're a super smart racist and you say,

you know, I really don't want more black representatives, but because a political gerrymander

is totally fine, I'm just going to tell the court that our desire to diminish black representation

was actually a desire to diminish democratic representation.

And if you challenge me on this, I'll say, well, look, it's not my fault that 92 percent of

black voters vote for Democrats. I'm aiming at Democrats. I'm not aiming at black voters.

And so what this then, you don't even have to be a racist to think.

No, you can also be just a partisan Republican.

Exactly.

Right. But then the question is, when you have that level of overlap

between such highly polarized racial voting, how do you know the difference in the absence of

a confession and the absence of a confession of racism? How do you know the difference? Because

that it becomes very, very, very difficult at that point.

And so the practical result, I think, is going to be that the political gerrymander,

even if it is almost 100 percent maps under race, is going to be acceptable in the absence of

a confession of racism. I think that would be the shortest bottom line way of analyzing the case.

I'm trying very hard. And I think I'm going to be able to do it successfully to resist the urge

to go after the conceptual nonsense at the core of all of this, which is just the notion of race

at all, like in the law, whether it's being used in a discriminatory way or in this beneficent way

where they're trying to help these people. It really is utter nonsense and perhaps we'll get to

that later. But even your articulation of the smart racist, I don't understand what we're getting

at here. Like how are these two things actually different? Because I imagine what they what they never

say is we don't actually want more black representation almost never. But the way I see it reported

whether it's gerrymandering that's happening in Virginia or Texas or anywhere else is always

with respect to race. And I asked that question, kind of set up another thing, which is

if gerrymandering is the concern, why not just go after gerrymandering and institute some sort of

national system like California had before they decided to abandon it where you have independent

redistricting entities that are responsible for this activity, that actually fixes the problem.

And I think ultimately the defect of the civil rights program was always to try and enshrine

in law these improvements of society that are racially obsessed. That is the mistake.

Well, so I would say there are a couple of mistakes here. One is that lots of people in America

racially obsessed in very negative ways. And especially in benevolent ways in my estimation.

Negative and benevolent. But trust me when I say the South while having made a lot of strides

has made a lot of strides, there's a lot more going on there than that's negative than we might want.

And so I'm very careful about over-racializing and I also think we should be careful about

under-racializing at the same time. There is, I agree with you that a lot of the coverage on gerrymandering

is over-racialized because what's actually happening in most circumstances around the country is

it's all just political gerrymandering. It's all how can Democrats get more Democrats, how can

Republicans get more Republicans and that has a secondary racial effect because of legacy

racial disparities in voting. But the primary reason for the gerrymandering isn't racial, it's

political. They want more Democrats or they want more Republicans. However, at the same time,

there are circumstances in which you would see. So for example, if you had a sweep of redistricting

in the South right now as a result of Calais, the bottom line result would be if maybe 10 or more

fewer black representatives almost certainly and 10 or more white representatives almost certainly.

Now you might sit here and say, I can absolutely say that that is just partisan. That's we're just

wanting more Republicans and fewer Democrats. We're not wanting more whites and fewer black

representatives. That's not what's going on. You're putting a lot of faith. If that's your assessment,

I'm going to have a show your work moment like here. But is there work to be shown? How can

you even demonstrate that in who cares to in a way? I imagine if there was a regional Republican

club in Louisiana that had the ability to have Clarence Thomas come and speak, they were very

happily do so. Because I see so many black Republicans that fill up mega churches of white

Republicans because they are motivated by the ideology. And so to disaggregate that now,

number one is at the job of us, the court. It's very, very hard to determine that. I think you

see it happen in a different direction. I mean, remember when Donald Trump in 2016 said the judge

was ruling against him because he was Mexican. He was Mexican. And it's like everyone was in

high-dudgeon about that. And Trump even kind of walked it back and said he was misunderstood by the way.

He wasn't misunderstood. He was not misunderstood. But he even understood the sensitivity of it. But

the that's what we're doing now. That's what we do all the time. And then Donald Trump does that

in an individual level when people get absolutely out right away. So I would think there's a great

way to show your work. How many black Republicans have been elected in these states in the 150 years

since the end of reconstruction? So you've got 150 years of which you would have an opportunity to

demonstrate that we have, we're completely race neutral in our approach to voting. And so for

example, a Tim Scott in South Carolina is a great argument that, hey, look, what we're dealing with,

here really is partisanship. If there is a black Republican who shares our values, we'll vote for

them in big majorities as South Carolina voters have. But you know, there's some interesting facts,

for example, in the Alabama redistricting case, which Allen V. Milligan that came out two terms

ago, where the Supreme Court ruled for essentially endorsed or protected a gerrymander that was

designed to increase black representation in Alabama. And Justice Roberts began it by saying,

looks since reconstruction, there's not been these, these majority white districts have never,

never voted for a black representative. And so you can say, well, does that mean that there's

just never been a black Republican to run? I don't know the history there. I don't know across all

of these districts for 150 years as there never been a black Republican. We certainly know there

were a lot of black Republicans early in the reconstruction of post reconstruction era. And they

didn't win post reconstruction. They did, during reconstruction, because black voting rights were

protected post reconstruction, definitely not. But also post reconstruction, the South was white

Democrat dominated. And so one of my arguments about the show, your work point would be, look guys,

you would have a lot stronger argument if there is no racial component here. If you can point to

any, any, any in more than a hundred year, in more than a hundred years in states that are 40,

30, 40% black. I appreciate the spirit of the exercise. But I also think it's quite obviously true

that what happened 150 years ago, 90 years ago, and quite honestly, even a decade ago,

isn't really particularly consequential in understanding the state of affairs today.

Hard object to that. And I appreciate that, and I'll permit it. But I will say that my own

experience of the world suggests otherwise. Someone can go from being obscenely racist,

or bigoted in one, in a variety of ways. For sure. Far less so. Very quickly, we've seen

a profound change in public opinion on stuff like gay marriage, on drug legalization, over the course

of mere decades. And again, if we're going to chalk this up to just election cycles,

I mean, this is a small category of people who are ever going to run for office and who are ever

going to stand a chance at getting elected. It's like a lottery. Like that doesn't really seem

like the appropriate litmus test for trying to tease this out. But either way, even if I allow

your argument, it still feels like a circumstance where the law is interesting, interested in policing

conscience. And I think having a high standard for something that is actually discriminatory

makes a hell of a lot of sense to me, even if it's complicated and it's hard. And staying away

from worrying about conscious and focusing specifically on not whether or not there's a disparity

or something like that. But specifically, what is the harm? Legislatures pass bad laws all the time.

I live in California. Nearly every law that they pass is bad. And they're being, and it's

injurious to the citizenry, irrespective of their race. And I think that that is kind of the

circumstance in the worst parts of the deep south where there might, may in fact be, and perhaps

even I'll grant it. There is some malignant racism there. The real question is, are the policies

good or bad? What remedies do people have for addressing those? And some of it is like voting with

your feet and all sorts of other stuff. Like racism has pernicious consequences not only for the people

who are being discriminated against, but for the racists themselves. But see, my issue

is the law a Supreme Court decision should not present us with the conceptual impossibility to

essentially untangle. I agree. And so what they've essentially said. So here's what

what Alito says, which is true, which is as soon as we eliminated our review of partisan redistricting,

the arguments shifted to these are racial redistricted, racial jambanders, right? So he's

absolutely correct about that. Once the partisan redistricting was removed, the Supreme Court decided

not to adjudicate partisan redistricting. Then a lot of the arguments then were, okay, well,

if it's not a partisan gerrymander that's unlawful, it's a racial gerrymander that's unlawful.

And I agree a lot of that was just a litigation tactic. They were trying to undo the partisan gerrymander

in the only way that was left to them, which is calling it racial. But at the same time,

under the same conception now, in a state like Louisiana or Alabama, unless somebody confesses to

racism, then the partisan, the racial gerrymander and the partisan gerrymander are indistinguishable.

And one is unlawful and one is lawful. And so what you have is a Supreme Court contract,

where my critique is, what's the standard here, guys? Because I'm fully of the belief that if a

legislature is saying, we want fewer black representatives, that's the goal. That's unlawful.

That's a violation of the Constitution. If the legislature is saying, we want fewer democratic

representatives, that is gerrym, that's partisan gerrymandering. And that's the kind of gerrymandering

that is. But as you say in Louisiana, it doesn't always map these days perfectly, but it's a

distinction about a difference. It's so, and that's what makes it so difficult. As you say,

the smart and the dumb racist thing is just say the right thing and you'll get the right thing and

what is the test after today? The test after today is essentially this. So this is why

it is not as a lot of people on the left were thinking that this is going to eliminate section

two of the Voting Rights Act. I mean, in a Kagan in her dissent was very upset about this.

Very explicit and sounded almost like a partisan editorial. It said, you know, something today,

and you read this, I was half asleep and hung over like one eye looking on me. That might be

the best way. That might be the best way to read it. But the line with some of your

defective, it's, you know, it continues the evisceration of the Voting Rights Act. You take that

out. That is quite a headline for people, right? Yeah, because, and the reason why she would say

that is it's more difficult to make a claim than it was prior to this case. It's not impossible

to make a claim as I was saying. And a lot of people were worried about section two, essentially

ceasing to exist. But what Alito basically said is, look, section two exists. It is its purpose

is to eliminate explicit racial intentional racial discrimination. And we are upholding that.

But in this circumstance, what you have, you know, appears to be a partisan gerrymandor and not

a racial gerrymandor, even though there is a correlation, almost perfect correlation. And so

this is the, this is where it gets very difficult. And, and so the Allen V. Milligan, which this is

the case from a couple of years ago, was a little bit different in that essentially the way the

opinion was written, it was almost as if the Supreme Court said, now we're going to dive deep into

the weeds here for a second. That's okay. So it used to be that there was something called a

pre-clearance requirement. If you were going to be doing voting rights, voting changes in a

jurisdiction with a historic record of really malignant racial discrimination, you were going

to have to go through what was called a pre-clearance process. You were going to have to get

federal officials to say, this is okay. Several years ago, the Supreme Court, and by the way,

that's not all just the deep south. Some of the pre-clearance jurisdictions were right here in New

York City, because guess what? Some New York City politicians could be some racist.

It's not just south of the Mason-Dixon line. And so some of these pre-clearance jurisdictions,

they all had this really toxic record of malignant racism. Well, you know, Justice Roberts and the court

not too long ago eliminated the pre-clearance requirement. Basically said, look, times have changed.

We're not in the world of Jim Crow. These very malignant jurisdictions have really changed a lot.

However, what ended up happening through Alan V. Milligan is it's almost as if the court said,

but those same jurisdictions that have this really malignant past, we're not doing pre-clearance,

but we're giving them close scrutiny on the challenge, on a challenge. So it's not pre-clearance,

but it is close scrutiny. And that is what I would support. If you do have a jurisdiction,

because one of the very few circumstances in which a racial category or classification

can pass what is called strict scrutiny, that's the highest level of scrutiny. And almost in

almost every case, once a racial classification comes up, it fails under strict scrutiny. But there's

some very limited circumstances where it passes. And one of those limited circumstances is when

you can tie a racial remedial measure to the amelioration of a precise racial harm.

And so if you go back, let's say, let's go back to affirmative action and higher education.

One of the interesting quirks of history is that these affirmative action cases did not arise

out of the jurisdictions that had been most explicitly racially discriminatory. The first one was

the Bucky case in California. And one of the next really big cases was Michigan. And so these

are not jurisdictions. Of course, the racial relations have never been perfect, but they weren't

the deep south. This was an Ole Miss, right? This was an Alabama, and where there was much more

relatively recent record of direct and video-racial discrimination. So you have a very limited place

where when there's been direct evidence of an video-racial discrimination, you can reuse racial

classifications to remediate that. And that's it. And what I would say is when there is

an old pre-clearance, including in New York City, an old pre-clearance jurisdiction,

there should be a period of extra scrutiny. Now, a period, not indefinite, but a period of extra

scrutiny. One follow-up on that is this is the hard one, right? Because when you have a time

in recent history, and people who went to universities in the 90s also understand this time,

when what is considered racism? What is considered the result of racial discrimination? So poverty

exists because of racial discrimination. You can say, well, sure, at one period, but when is it

no longer that you get into these very, essentially having historical debates for all this stuff,

which is kind of a difficult thing for the court. And one other kind of amendment to that

is when you talk about Tim Scott. It seems true to me. I've met Tim Scott. I've been to a couple

of his rallies. I shot a piece in his home state. And Louisiana, obviously, different. I mean,

I have never reported Louisiana, but I do know that in the 1990s, David Duke did get some votes.

The wizard of the clan was the GOP nominee. Correct. And he used to, there's a famous photo of him,

in a Nazi uniform. And I think the sign he's holding was gas the Jews. I don't know. So I'm

just saying he wasn't subtle. He was the dumb blatant racist. He was the dumb blatant racist

that was clever enough to get not elected, but you know, get pretty far. So I understand it. So

how when you're making federal law to map onto the historical thing, you know, it's not the same.

I mean, it is very, very different. And this is going to apply everywhere to Louisiana and to places

like North and South Carolina or maybe Tennessee. Well, that's why I very intentionally use the term

in video racial discrimination. So there is a difference between let's, you know, defines

them over terms, disparate impact. Yeah. Is when like, let's suppose you have, you know, 4% of the

American population is Asian American, but not 4% of the NBA. You know, I'm just making this up.

You just say stifers in high school or in here, which is like 92% right? Or whatever. So in other

words, what disparate impact says is looks at a demographic group and says, are you proportionally

represented in that particular industry? And then if you're not proportionally represented,

the extreme version of that says there's racial discrimination. The mild version of it says

we need to do an extra look to see if the reason for the disparate is that why the affirmative

action cases were kind of easier in the sense that the back case and the Michigan case,

there were people that were saying that under every like very distinct qualification, their numbers

here, their SAT scores, their GPAs, I didn't get in in this person did. You can actually measure that

easily where should there be more yow mings in the NBA? Well, that's a little different because

the argument in the back case in Michigan was that there was this extra thing that was diversity

and that the fact that you would add diversity on X or Y front was like an additional

bonus for you. And for me, I'll just be completely honest, I think I'm a diversity

admittee to Harvard Law School in this sense that I am why it's a very simple question,

geographic diversity. So I was from a small town in Kentucky and do you take literally the 50th

undergrad from Harvard or the first undergrad from Lipscomb? Do you take the 200th

citizen of the acela quarter or the first citizen of Kentucky? And so these things actually do

come into the admissions. So I freely admit, like I called it, you know, when I talk about it,

I joke that I got in on the redneck diversity ticket, like they needed at least one. Are you the

only redneck at the near times? I don't know how much redneckery I have left in me, but

you know, there was only two of two, two others of us from Kentucky when I was at the law school

and it's the largest law school, what third largest law school in America? So these,

these diversity measures apply on various fronts, but their argument was that there was

a bonus of that's related to diversity that you can't, you just can't look at test scores or

not the only thing. So, so that was the argument. But so when I talk about NVIDIA's discrimination,

what I'm talking about is something totally different. What I'm talking about is we are explicitly,

intentionally, on purpose discriminating against people in the basis of race. And so an example

of NVIDIA's discrimination would be like the poll taxes and the literacy tests and all of this

of the Jim Crow era. Or, you know, another example from my point of view of NVIDIA's discrimination

was some of the evidence against Harvard, although Harvard can test this to be fair. They can test

this very strongly, but to me, when you were systematically downranking Asian applicants

on the, on personality and temperament. If you're judging Asian people on personally,

that's in and of itself very right. Well, I mean, you did have this sort of interpersonal way

because he's like some violin playing Asian guy. I'm like, wait, hold on, you can't do it. But

it's in those institutions where they are particularly good at reverse engineering these standards,

so that they achieve these particular outcomes. And we've occasionally had moments where people

just like, it leaks out. Yeah. This is precisely what we're doing. Oh, yeah. But there's a

universe of people who find that kind of, that kind of practice not just acceptable, but an

audible moral necessity. Right. They find it laudable. Yeah. And it just makes me come back again

to this. The primacy associated with racial identity in this country is a particular sort of

derangement. And I frankly, if just I'm beyond the point of caring whether or not people are doing

it for benevolent or malignant reasons. And the reality is that most of what happens is benign

in the way that you just described. And the examples of explicit overt belligerent racism directed

at minorities in this country are few and far between. And as I said earlier, I really think

we have to just accept and embrace the fact that people who have those ideas, they are suffering.

They are sick. Their lives are generally not going to be as good as the rest of the president.

Well, we can maybe get there. But I don't know that I don't know that that actually just

qualifies any of the things that I've just said, even if it's true. Like that, that reality

is really important. Most people aren't suffering that other thing anymore. And it feels like

the law and the aspirations of the wider public, like really need to catch up with that fact.

Like we have to deal with people as individuals. That is the appropriate way to do this.

An Asian kid, quote unquote, who applies to a university, having worked exceptionally hard

and doesn't get in on the basis of their race, the notion that my application to your university

is being judged against a cohort of people who kind of sort of look like me is so obscene

that I cannot, cannot muster any amount of sympathy for people who obsess over diversity if that

is their mechanism of doing it. People are individuals. I do not care if your kid is being

consigned to an underperforming public school in Baltimore City or in Appalachia. It doesn't matter

to me. One more student consigned to that circumstance is too many students. And that is the

appropriate way to look at this, not to obsess over disparities to actually address the deprivation.

So I want to live when it comes to understanding what's happening in a reality-based environment

and not an ideology-based environment. And here's what I mean by that.

So the ideology-based environment filters reality through presuppositions that would say,

for example, America's inherently racist and it's not getting any better. That's an ideological

filter that would then say that you're then going to look at reality in a different, you're going

to have an off-kilter view of reality because if your view is overlaid with an absolutely

unrelentingly negative view of American race relations, then any sort of negative outcome for

somebody of a minority background is going to be proof to you, right? But then on the flip side,

I've been or spent much of my life around people are like, that's all over, it's all done.

It is, if there is race, race problems with race in America, it's very isolated, it's very rare.

And so they will look at adversity that somebody experiences, who's black, or another minority group,

and immediately presume that it has nothing to do with race. My argument is don't make the presumptions.

Take things on a case-by-case basis. And what we're often doing is we have these two warring

tribes left and right. And well, that's not exactly right because parts of the right are now

viewing things through massive racial lenses and prisms. But it's just for the sake of brevity

and clarity, say you have two sides. One over-racializes. One, in my view, under-racializes what's

happening. What's the reality? What's the truth of the matter? And I think that one of my problems

with the Cala decision is it doesn't necessarily lend itself to bringing us closer to the truth.

It appears to be an ideologically filtered sort of decision that takes the situation where it's

just as likely, like it's conceptually, conceptually. It's the exact same thing to say if you're

gerrymandering on the basis of politics and race in a place like Louisiana, they're going to look

identical. And it essentially presumes that it's not racial. That there's an essential presumption

that it's not racial. And I'm question whether that's warranted. And so that's one of my beef's

here is I really want to get past this notion that says we're one group of people are saying

we're overrun with racism and therefore I'm interpreting negative interactions or negative

outcomes for people with minority backgrounds as proof of that. And another side is saying we are

so over that outside of isolated circumstances. And so negative outcomes I'm going to presume

the opposite. And I'm against the presumption. I want to, you know, to, for lack of veteran.

Sometimes comes from the frequency with which people talk about race and not observe racial

discrimination in real time with their own eyes. Yes. I've heard people say that to me quite a bit.

And also just in the culture when I was covering the Trump campaign in 2020 and 2016, I've always

pointed out that people would always say to me it's like, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm tired of

being called racist. And I realized that every time no one had ever called them racist,

but they had presumed that people thought they were racist, right? In that, like nobody had culture

them that person. And then I would ask for examples and never kind of kind of thing,

but it was just that culture that was out there that had changed. But I want to ask you something.

You said the left and the right and they both have this kind of racial balance to a lot of the

stuff they talk about these days. You were hired at the New York Times as a conservative,

right? That was come in as a conservative. You worked at National Review. Things have changed a

lot since 2006. What is conservatism? No, we don't have a whole podcast. But no, no, you know,

we, we have a about 750 episodes. I know you do. But are you a conservative? Yes. You still

count yourself not as a Republican, but you stick count yourself as a conservative. I mean,

I am a classical liberal. Yeah. And that's how I would describe myself first and foremost. I'm a

classical liberal. And in my view, a classical liberal is a conservative. That is the definition of

a conservative when I was coming up in the world. And so an individual rights focused person who's

one of the fundamental, I love the way George Will puts it. What's the essential project of

conservatism, our kind of conservatism? It's to preserve the American founding. What is the

American founding? The American founding is classical liberal. But there are a lot of people if you

spend any time on Twitter, which I don't recommend you do. They don't love you there. No, but

yes. But it's David French. I won't quote so so Robyn David French ism. But it's very flattering

to get an ism. If I ever got a Moynihan ism, please, it would be like useless person.

Let me put it this way. If the ism is supposed to be negative, yeah, it doesn't always work.

You got to flip it. You got to own it. You got to flip it. But people said this David

French isn't a conservative. One of the things where they might be right on that if this is

the conception of conservatism today, is it something like the Second Amendment? Is it abortion?

Where have you moved on issues? Because everyone presumes that you've moved very far. He used

to be a conservative. Saw that the other day. I've not moved on abortion. I've not moved on

individual liberty. I've not moved on life. I've not moved on foreign policy. I've not moved on

military policy. I have not moved on religious freedom. I have not moved on any of these things

that are core elements of what it means to be a conservative as I was growing. So I'm not just

classical liberal. I'm a pro-life classical liberal. There are classical liberals who approach

choice, for example, obviously. But I'm a pro-life classical liberal. I've not. And when it comes to

foreign policy, when it comes to my posture towards Russia, towards communist China,

towards Iran, towards jihadism, I am what I was. Now I have changed on a couple of things. I will

say number one is I have absolutely changed in my perception of the severity of lingering

severity of race problems in this country. I've absolutely changed on that. And a lot of that is

due to a very, very distinct and personal experience because we adopted a child from Ethiopia.

And I'll put it like this. So I grew up in middle class, slash upper middle class, new south.

So like post civil rights era south, especially came of age during the 1980s. This is when like

Atlanta was the city too busy to hate. This is sort of the high day of chamber of commerce,

conservatism in the south. And there was just this big effort to push those racists away. Like

no, we're not this, absolutely not this. When I was in law school, you know, one of my favorite

politicians with Jack Hemp, who came and I talked to our fed sock for like two, three hours about how

to heal the rift between black voters and the Republican party. This is the world that I grew up in.

That's the Federalist Society for people who don't know. Federalist Society. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Sorry to use the lingo. Yeah, no lingo here. Yeah, so sorry. And so, so that's the world that I

grew up in. And I will tell you honestly, I heard virtually no racism, virtually none. Now,

also when I now realize as I was living in a specific bubble, I was in a very highly educated

family. My family had a history of supporting civil rights. Our friends of my family and my dad

friends were highly educated white people who supported civil rights. If anyone was racist in

that social circle, they would not say that in front of my dad. They would not say that in front of

me, right? And so I'm in this world where my black friends are saying, I got a problem with this

and this that happened. And I'm like, I don't, I don't see it. You know, like it's just not, I don't

see it. And so so many of us, we're more influenced by experience than education. So if we don't see

something, it's hard to convince us that it's a real thing. So I was very, I had, this might sound

super naive, but when we adopted our youngest daughter, I did not have in my mind that she was

going to come to my community and have a substantially different experience as a child than my two

older kids. But by golly, she had a substantially different experience than the two older children.

There was not a school that she went to where she was not called the N word repeatedly. Wow.

She was, there was a point where I picked her up after a high school football game. This was

a Nashville at a game at Montgomery Bell Academy, one of the highest end schools in all of

middle Tennessee. This is a very wealthy school. Her, her, her high school father Ryan, a Catholic

school was playing NBA. They went to the football game. We went to pick her up and she was shaking

and her friend who was Latina was shaking as well and was like, what happened? And she said a

truck full of guys was screaming the N word at us and drove straight for us and they just swerved

away at the very last second. And so you can imagine, like that was terrifying. There was, there

were written work product, there was written work product from her educators that was blatantly racist

about her. And, and so, you know, all of a sudden, a lot, you know, and that's just a very

tip of the iceberg thing. Like, like, report cards, something like that. So, like, evaluation,

you know, you do these more, nowadays they have more comprehensive evaluations than just A and

writing and, you know, so temperament, attitude, et cetera. And so you're just, I'm very curious

about this. So I'll give you a good example. Most of all of her teachers would say things like

my daughter is a very compassionate and a very kind person that she is very caring of her

classmates, which she is a caring kid. Like, she, you know, kids who've been adopted, they've

been through things. And that has turned her towards, she has heart for suffering people.

She loves to help the homeless. She's a very, like, she has a heart for suffering people,

very proud of her. But then one of the evaluations talked about her propensity to violence.

Now, um, what, like, what that is not a thing that is not a thing with that kid, that has never

been a thing with that kid. And, and you're just sitting there going, wait, where is this coming

from? And there was never a disciplinary incident involving violence in her entire career, like,

you know, high school career, things like this. And so you're like, where's this coming from?

Like, where is this? What is happening here? And so, um, all of a sudden, I realized that I'd

been in a bubble and that my white educated upper middle class bubble in the South had really

intentionally screened out racism. When you approached the teacher about that, what did they say?

How do they, well, we only learned about that, like, after we were out of that school. So,

but I, you know, I will tell you, I could show you a picture on the phone also of Suastika's

drawn on the board of her school. And, you know, we intervened then, like, we intervened

at that point and, and we're, you know, very upset by that. And, you know, so,

I don't want to overinterpret experience myself, okay? I don't want to make the same mistake in

the opposite direction. Sure, sure, sure. But what I will say is, that is, has made me feel extremely

embarrassed that in years past, I did not hear people and understand fully what they were telling me

about their own lives. And that I had viewed it and perhaps is more aboriginal. It's not that I

disbelieved them, right? These are my friends of mine. I'm like, oh, that's horrible. That that

highly unusual thing happened to you. That would be sort of in my, in my mind. And, and so, I,

I really, this is a, this is probably the biggest area where I've made sort of political changes,

and is that I began to realize, oh, oh, okay. There are, there are, this is more prevalent than I

thought. It is more commonly experienced by black Americans than I thought, not uniformly in the

same and every location in place in this country, for sure. You know, I think, I think no less than

Tanahashi Coates wrote about how, like, one of his stories was of racism that he encountered was

one-tenth what my daughter has encountered. Like, and, you know, reading his book, my daughter

went through worse things than he has. And, and so, not all things are happening equally around

the country in all locations and places at the same time. But what it did for me was, may, it opened

my mind that had been previously, I think, closed in an ideological direction. And that was to

minimize the reality of continued and video-racial discrimination versus acknowledge it in its

actuality. There's an interesting to me, maybe, only comparison between you and I. We're both 57

years old. At least I was told that before we started. I mean, we're spring chickens. Spring chickens.

I would also primarily call myself a classic liberal, although I've never described myself as

conservative and don't see that there's any connection to those two things in my life. I also grew

up in a place where I was face-to-face with a lot of racism. It colors difference that Camille and I

have sometimes when we talk about these issues because I like new cops who bragged about

intentionally beating up black people. And that wasn't the word that he would generally use.

And so, saw this and was like, it's foundational to my experience and all of this. And so,

that was baked in. Yours was not baked in. Yours came later, led you to think this. Whatever has

come later to me, in part of his exposure to Camille and even this asshole over here. But,

I don't see the Supreme Court as being the place where we are achieving a factual resolution.

I see the Supreme Court as interpreting statute or interpreting constitution and thinking to

ourselves, what is the remedy that we have here? Is the remedy for this thing? Is it remediation?

Is it remedial? Remedial? Remedial? Remeditable. I think I did. I like that. I'm four new words!

Can we find a remedy for this thing in the law? In a law and in a way that doesn't create new

considerations that then discriminate against new groups of people because we are using consideration

of race to try to get rid of consideration of race or some of the variation of John Roberts kind of

of quote the best way to stop discriminating on discrimination on the basis of racist to stop

discriminating on the basis of race, which I completely agree with.

And also, I mean, it gets to what Camille's point too is that we're talking about conscience

or matters of the heart and how do you measure and judge that?

I mean, it's a real thing that there aren't X number or any number if that's the case

of black elected Republicans in the South, but that's a disparate impact story too.

That's literally you're talking about a disparate impact, you know.

I've seen disparate impact abused everywhere, especially in this city,

especially with with left of center kind of policies too, that don't then get judged and don't

then get like treated on a constitution level. So first, let me say, at some level,

everybody does disparate impact. So I'll give you a perfect example. Do you remember the

compact magazine story that was really interesting that came out like maybe three, four months ago

that was about how all of a sudden there were no white writers being hired, right?

All of a sudden, there were no white screenwriters, young adult novelists, you know, white

straight. I think the New Yorker magazine had had published fiction by a white male writer

in 20 years, right? That's a disparate impact. That's what I've been told.

Yeah, that's a disparate impact, right? So my view on disparate impact is that's not

proof. It invites inquiry, okay? It invites inquiry because a lot of times you'll have a disparate

impact that if you inquire, you will find the NVIDIA's discrimination. Because if you're outside

an institution, you're not in the meetings. So it's the first trigger towards it is it raises a

question that can't that's that's answerable or not answerable. And so because if I'm outside of

an institute, so for example, disparate impact was one way that the civil rights attorneys

and the Harvard litigation were able to discern that something might be going on is they they were

looking at disparate impact in the Harvard admissions process. And then that caused them to do

additional inquiry. Right. And then when they did the additional inquiry, they found things like

that personality element. And there was even a kind of a mock memo that surfaced where I believe

was I can't remember exactly if there's a government official who wrote a fake memo mocking Harvard's

known bias in his view against Asian Americans. So the disparate impact allowed us to take a look.

Right. And so I don't think there's any way, especially since everyone who's first analyzing

an institution like a court or lawyers are outside of it, that I don't think there's any way to

completely shed disparate impact is any kind of shed it totally. It doesn't answer the question,

though. Right. It raises the question. I want to tie back to what Michael, the path that he was

going down to too. So is David French to look conservative? How have you changed? We've heard how you

change is fascinating and heartbreaking too, honestly. You are a pro-life classical liberal

conservative for Kamala Harris. How does that work? I also would prefer Kamala Harris to have one

against Donald Trump and said so on the Megan Kelly show and other places that wasn't very,

didn't land very popularly. But it didn't occur to me to endorse her, let alone endorse her in

the pages of the New York Times. So two things. One, my style is I'm a very transparent columnist.

So I'm going to tell people how I've voted. For example, I tell I'm very biographical in the way

that I write because I feel like that's being honest with the readers. My point of view, my outlook

is influenced by my life. And so it's not handed down on tablets and Mount Sinai. That's not my

ideology. My ideology and my point of view is influenced by things like I've just talked about,

my experiences, etc. And so I tend to be at what you might call a confessional columnist. I'm

going to tell you what I'm doing and why. So that's one reason why I just went out ahead and

said it. Number two is I wanted to show people that a lot of their ideological categories were now

sliding quickly out of date. So for example, one of, if I was going to say the thing that made me

Republican, it was resistance to the Soviet Union and the Cold War. More than anything else.

That is what made me a Republican was the resistance to the Soviet Union and the Cold War.

The resistance is Soviet aggression. I saw the Democrats as being hopelessly naive about the

nature of the Soviet threat and hopelessly, you know, they weren't trying to leave NATO or anything,

but just under-prepared. The scoop jacks in the Eurasia. Under-prepared. I know. But as by the time

I'm voting, you know, by the time we're dealing with Mondale and we're coming out of them

a governed influence, democratic party. And so I play say very high value. And I mean very high

on what's happening in Ukraine. And so my view is 100 years from now, what are we going to be talking

about in the 2024 election? I guarantee you we're going to talk about the Eurasian War.

They just lost another ambassador. So number two, I take an extremely high view of the necessity

of accountability and rule of law in a constitutional republic. And I believe that it was a

seminal moment in American history when we, as a people, did not succeed in prosecuting Donald

Trump when there was overwhelming evidence that he committed criminal activity. And I think that

January 6th and in the and in the classified documents. And why is that so important?

The fundamental nature of this republic is that it's not a monarchy. The purpose of the 1787

constitution was to establish a republican form of government. A republican form of government

means that every single person is under the rule of law. And as of right now, I cannot sit here

and tell you that the president is under the rule of law in this country. We're going to take a quick

break. It's just an ad. It's going to be great. We do good ad reads. Do you know what that is?

They're like the best ad reads in business. All right, let me be right back with David French.

All right, you know, we have one single solitary sponsor. There's a sponsor because we trust

them and we use them and that's ground news. If you're just hearing about this for the first time,

a great app that, and we always talk about our favorite feature, because this is what we do here.

We talk about media bias a lot and they track that with their bias meter, it's not really what it's

called, but it just, it's an, and by the great one that I saw today, there was a story, a really

interesting story in Politico about Barney Frank, the liberal lion from my home state of Massachusetts.

He's written a book and he's in hospice care. So we hope Barney is doing well. And he's,

at the end of his life, he's written this book about here is what the left has to do that it's

really screwing up and it's actually screwing up and being a little too indulgent towards the

extremists on their side. And I said, wow, that's a fascinating story. I didn't see it anywhere.

And ground news confirmed that for me. And this was their blind spot for the left was Barney Frank

has more to say click through. It's a bit of an anodine title, but Barney Frank has a lot more to

say. It's in Politico and you can find out this stuff too. And you can do it for 40% off. 40%

What? Unlimited access vantage plan. If you go to groundnews.com slash fifth cameo anything

on your ground news radar? Well, you know, there's, we've talked about the blind spot detector.

We've talked about the top stories. But one of the things that I've recently discovered is the

like local news pipeline that it creates. You go into the app, you let it pinpoint your location,

and we talk a lot actually and we talked about it on this podcast about how local news is

disappearing. Yes, surfacing those stories, helping to serve them up to people so that you get

stuff that is relevant to you in your particular area. And similarly, get the quality ground news

tools and assets that help you understand where the story is coming from. Get you these great

summations. And of course, link through to the publication in your area. Yeah, very good. And

they wouldn't do that because you are paying subscriber. You're helping to to defend journalism

in this in this way. And you're also frugal and you're smart. So you went to groundnews.com

forward slash fifth. You got 40% off. You enjoyed your unlimited vantage point plan. And then

you sent us an email to tell us about how great it was. So I'm glad for you. Thank you. Good

choice. On that point, do you worry starting out? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't like a

weird back. You know, just, you know, um, because then they listen to the ad because it flows right

in. It's the same voice. I was making sure. Um, yeah, on this kind of talking about race in

particular, you had that you were talking about the Republicans in the 80s, the sort of chamber of

commerce people who wanted to get away from that kind of stuff. The democratic party obviously

after the 1960s, the 68 convention in Chicago, whether underground, that kind of extremism

of the new left, you end up with Reagan and you have all these things where people go so extreme

that it kind of comes back the other way. On race, I think that is what happens into your point

of, did I pay a lot of attention to it in the past? Not a ton. And I sort of undervalued it. And

I think in a lot of ways, I was probably right about a lot of that stuff. Um, but to see what's

happening now, which is the backlash to the backlash of the woke idiocy and going way too far

and all this stuff. And now, and, you know, even you came out, we've, we've talked about this,

of the race realism, which is basically calipers and, yeah, yeah, yeah. Who bred crackery.

Yeah, this crackery, but I mean, yes, and we were talking Michelle Goldberg about this. This,

James Fishback guy, he's only got 4%, but he's still filling up, you know, not arenas, but he's

filling up, you know, he's got a lot of stuff online, Nick Fuentes, all this stuff. People have come

out in the other direction, I think, in like it now is the time to destroy this. Trump pushes back

and now we're on this other edge. I fear, and I wonder if this is something that you fear too,

because you've talked about that with the right, that this is happening on the left in some ways too,

with the fact, and it's not your responsibility that your newspaper won't stop talking about

Hassan Piker, who thinks the end of the Soviet Union was actually a tragedy. Yeah, that wasn't

common in the Democratic Party. And even in the pages of The New York Times, back in the 1980s,

when they were saying, you know, maybe we shouldn't mind Managua Harbor. That was one thing,

but saying, what a great regime this is. I mean, are we also CCP good, Hamas better than Israel?

Of course, there's so many great hits. Let me put this, just a lot of that snapback now that we see

with the squad was three people, and now it seems to be a lot bigger, including the mayor of this city.

So there is a, which law of motion is that for every action, there's an equal and opposite

reaction, whatever it is. Third law, maybe I don't know if the law of the pendulum. But the law

of politics is for every extreme, there's an equal and opposite extreme. Now, when I say equal

and opposite, I mean, in outlook, not necessarily in numbers, you know, I'm not saying that far

left and the far right of equal numbers, but there is a horseshoot theory. And that I'm very much

believing that as right and left grow more radical and more, they become almost identical,

especially in the tactics in a way they approach the public square, cancellations, violence,

intimidation, all of that stuff. So my view is this, if I will not ally with brown shorts,

brown shirts, or red shirts, brown shorts, also brown shorts, definitely not. There's problems

there. There's other problems, but I will not ally. And that's a great way to speak. And

I will not ally with the browns. So grateful. No, I'm not going to defend liberal democracy

to then sort of invite illiberal authoritarians, because they also dislike fascist

authoritarians. No, no, no, no. In my view, both the far left and the far right are enemies of

American liberalism. I oppose both of them. And so, you know, and in that, I have disagreements

with some friends of mine about this. And on both sides, like there are people, friends of mine,

on the right, on the normie right, who will ally with some pretty awful human beings to defeat

the woke left, right? That hasn't served them very well. It's not served them well. And a lot of

those people are now kind of seeing what's happened. It's backtracking. And similarly,

my friends on the left, I will not join them. And allying with, I say, a Hassan Piker,

who has celebrated political violence, who has said, here's a good litma. If you have one

syllable of positive things to say about Hamas, I'm already like, what are we doing here? Right?

Free breakfast program. Wait a minute. Why do we do it here? But, but so I,

in this, this has been leading both of these parties astray as that they have been so terrified

of losing some people on their edges that they have allowed into the tent. Some pretty,

pretty terrible people. And what do these terrible people do? They fuel all the terrible people on

the other side. And they make you accommodating to the terrible people on your side. So, you know,

every story that you will read about, say, the anti-semitism, the gross anti-semitism on college

campuses that we saw in some of the encampments, for example. Unless you were sort of, unless you

were like center left and you're like, that's gross anti-semitism. I'm utterly opposed to it.

A lot of people are saying, well, that's who you're with, right? And the similar thing on like the

Fuentes and Tucker Carlson and all of this, you've seen Kevin Roberts like flailing around,

trying to do everything in his power not to say something negative about Tucker Carlson, right?

What a joke. What a joke. I mean, it's striking that the mayor of this city was trying very hard not

to say negative things about terrorist groups. I mean, he, like, backed down, backed away from the

question about should Hamas disarm. And he says, well, I'm going to be the mayor of New York City,

perfectly fine answered, by the way, until you start commenting on foreign policy in other

capacities at other times. I mean, look, if you're going to say that the US should not

fund or sell arms to Israel, and then you're going to say, well, I don't have an opinion on my,

or I'm, you know, I'm the mayor of New York and when it's Hamas, now I don't know that I have not

followed Mamdani's. I'm not a New Yorker. I do not follow all the twists and turns of the

Mamdani tale. So I don't know everything. I do know he said some pretty gross stuff, you know,

and I didn't surprise anyone. His wife was caught liking things on Instagram. Right. I mean,

I'm not that this is my shocked face, right? And he's a mayor of the city. And I guarantee and I

guarantee you that a lot of your colleagues, not only voted for him or have very positive feelings

about him, it just seems and the question that I'm asking is not for you to hold your colleagues

to account. I don't care about, or less about that, but is, you know, is that seeping into the

ground, but it doesn't happen in an instant. It doesn't happen in a blink. It's over time that,

you know, you can have a podcast that we discussed on this show last time last episode of three people

under the banner of the great New York Times, if you work, and is my hometown newspaper, and I

read it every day, and I subscribe to it, in which there wasn't pushback, like very substantial

pushback against someone who says he loves the Soviet Union, and it was a great catastrophe.

The only other person that I can think of who said that were two, Ken Livingston and Vladimir

Putin, and saying, you know, well, you got to, you got to, you got to understand the Luigi

Mangione stuff. It's, there's no categorical denunciation of murder on the streets of our

fucking city of a guy why disagreed with what he did for a job, and that's getting into a newspaper.

That's getting into without substantial pushback. I think that times are changing in a way that

it was a long time of everything, and rightfully so, by the way, that Donald Trump said every

syllable encouraging people towards violence, whether it was January 6th or somebody, you know,

rough the guy up, well, he's being thrown out of my rally, is that that was rightfully condemned.

And I fear that it's, you can condemn it if you disagree with the person who's saying it,

but they're a little bit soft. This is happening a lot now. Oh, I mean, we have an epidemic in this

country of partisan people on the left, minimizing, rationalizing, excusing, extremism, including

violent extremism on their own side, and partisan people on the right, minimizing, rationalizing,

excusing, violent extremism on their side. This is a big, big problem. I don't think there's any

question, and I'm definitely not going to get in. I'm sharing my views right now. I'm aware of that,

and I'm not asking you for that. And so I think we have a big problem with that. And the way I would

put it is here, here's how to, here's how to check yourself. Here's a good way to check yourself

to see if you're becoming a part of the problem. If you hear about violence on your side as your

first instinct, that that can't be right. And if you hear violence on the other side as your

first instinct, yep, that's exactly how they are. And what we have are two or well, what about?

Right. Or we have two opposing sides that are like that that that again on the, and especially

the numbers regarding acceptance of political violence in young Americans. Yikes.

I said that yesterday. Yikes. Okay. And so what I would say is, and, and, you know, look,

I am, you know, I'm a Christian. I believe in the ninth commandment. Do not lie. I believe in

the amplification of the ninth commandment and the Westminster larger catechism that essentially

says this, that I should be reluctant to receive a bad report about my neighbor. And I should be

eager to hear a good report about my neighbor. In other words, if I'm hearing that somebody is doing

something terrible, I mean, I should have proof. I should wait for proof before I sally forth,

right? And, and I think one of the things that we've done is we've reversed that. Yes. And what

we've said is I'm very happy to receive a negative report. And I'm very reluctant to receive a good

report if it's somebody on the other side. Amen. And, and I feel like if we want to heal as a

country, we've got to reverse this. We've got to have enough grace for our opponents that I'm not

going to jump up and down every single time I hear a rumor of a scandal, I hear a report of a

scandal. I'm like, show me, show me the evidence. Show, show me the money, so to speak. You know,

so for example, we just had this indictment of the Southern poverty of the SPLC. I am no fan of

the SPLC. It labeled my former employer a hate group. And I thought that was slander.

Was that the air in nations when you were in the States? Wolves of Vinland. No.

I don't know why you were with them for so long. I thought there was enough that you really

got to go. Yeah, you know, I had friends. I mean, no, ADF, Alliance Defending Freedom,

pro-life conservative Christian legal organization, and SPLC called it a hate group.

Look, I totally get I totally get disagreeing with conservative Christians on sexual morality.

I get that. I understand that. I know that my view about sexual morality is very much

in the minority of this country. People are going to disagree with me. What I really object to

is somebody labeling me a hateful bigot because of my view about human sexuality and my view

about sexual morality. And I completely object to that. And I was angry. I think SPLC

wandered from its core mission and began to become a more hard left partisan organization that

was categorizing people who are arguing in good faith in the same way that they categorize

members of like the Aryan nation. And so I have a lot of I do not have a lot of love for the SPLC.

That doesn't mean that when I read an indictment of it, that I'm going to go, oh, yay.

I will say on the show we did discuss it. And I said it's not worth discussing because I don't

know anything. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is and it turns out there's some interesting stuff.

And by these people, it's both the DOJ and the SPLC. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I want to see, you know, show

it. Let's see evidence. But with respect to the DOJ in particular and actually the FCC this week,

I did want to get to the latest news and the ways in which it seems that the Trump administration

is once again using the apparatus of the federal bureaucracy to go after their political opponents.

Yeah. Specifically the re-enditement of Comey on another thing, which has explicit free speech

implications and seems like a case that is absolutely going to fail. And when I see Cash Patel

and various other representatives of the administration say in public, we've been working on this case

for a year. I'm like, yeah, okay. Right. Yeah, your three-page indictment screams that you've

been working on this for a year. And then I found an Instagram post and had Donald Trump write,

which appears that he wrote that this document, if you haven't seen it, is have you, did you read this?

The glance has incredible. It is absolutely amazing. It's a true social post. I mean,

again, what was it? I haven't seen it. This was the actual filing in the case. The court filing,

which was like Donald Trump, who I don't think there's anyone better than in the world.

And like, it's things are in caps, like, your capitalizations. And I was like, oh, we're going

to fucking do this. Is that what we're doing now? I mean, I'm sorry for swearing in front of you.

No, you're bad. I always do that. I always do that. Look, I have a podcast with Sarah who you

just hosted. And Sarah is like, she can launch, man. We're working on it. That's the post,

which is the seat show. Yeah, yeah. That's an imminent threat to the president. Have any of you

at the table ever used 86 locally? When you were using it, did you were you plotting an assassination?

Yes. I was talking about this earlier. I used to be a waiter at all through college.

And I can't tell you in a number of times I had to say we're 86ing the chocolate lava cake.

You murder. Yeah. Yeah. We're not believe racist. Yeah. I know. Can't believe it. Yeah.

We were not murdering the chocolate lava cake. My expectation was that there would be violent

agreement about this. Yeah. So if you all will indulge me for a moment, here we go.

There's something about what you said a moment ago, like this, like moral disposition,

perhaps even an obligation to kind of essentially presume good faith.

I love that. I think that's incredibly healthy. And it just reminds me of what you were saying

earlier about like racism and the presumption of it, like not being part of the explanation and

us at least giving it the opportunity to maybe we got to look into it. We got to see I want to

make the case from my own like radical personal perspective on this informed by my experience.

And the thing that I'm trying to impart to my children, there is a talk that I will give my

children at some stage. And I haven't quite gotten there yet. But it is not the hysterical absurd.

And I think quite dangerous talk that people often talk about with respect to race, that when the

police stop you, you've got to know that you have to do everything exactly right because you know,

this is a unique danger to you. I'm always reminded of that Baldwin quote about the gates

of paranoia closing on you and reaching a point where you fail to perhaps even refuse to without

knowing it, try to discern whether or not this is a real or imagined incidence of racism.

And the reality is that there is a super abundance of that today. Baldwin talked about it at the time.

My radical individualism and my violent allergy against race and identity stuff is barred in

part from Baldwin who didn't get there completely. But even more so, more directly from Zoraniel

Hurston, who she lived it. And at the same time came out of it saying, I'm not tragically colored,

she recognized the insidiousness of race pride, et cetera. And I see all of that stuff.

And the goal for me is generally speaking to presume that if I'm having an encounter with someone

and it doesn't go in the way that I would prefer, there's a universe of reasons why that might be

the case. And it is actually dangerous, harmful, injurious for me. And for my children to presume

of the microaggression, oh my god, it's racism. Now we're all on high alert. We know that this

thing is happening. The reality is that it's possible that the bad outcome is because of that.

Always. But I yet to get to a place where I can understand why the presumption that that is

what's happening is at all beneficial. I'm aware that it's possible. But the reasons why

someone might hate me are so varied that I just can't get over it. Yesterday I did Abby Phillips

show on CNN. And I got just a deluge of tweets by which I mean three people saying,

Camilla, it was so refreshing, you are so articulate. And I laughed to myself because I thought about

what that's the first problem. But I also thought about Joe Biden and Barack Obama and him getting

in trouble for insisting that Barack Obama was so clean and articulate. I am super articulate.

I just think you are he's clean relative to relative to the others. You know,

maybe that's the part he should have gotten trouble for. I just I want to I want to try to suggest to

you that while it is awful that your daughter has had to endure those things. And I I lived in

northern Virginia like close to Ashburn, Leesburg when I was 10 years old and experienced some

things directly to the point where my dad had to go confront a neighbor whose kid told me he

wasn't allowed to play with niggers anymore. I've had that happen. At the same time, I recognize

that race pride in all of the rest is so bad, is so actively harmful and that the hysteria

surrounding it is so bad and so actively harmful in helping to create the current backlash. We're

suffering through that the disposition I've adopted is I'm not going to presume that it's racism.

And in general, it's probably not beneficial for you to do that either. If it is, we'll get there

and we'll figure it out. But in general, this is this is a malignant thing and what is best for us

is to see each other as individuals not to do this like, you know, spotlight searching for racism at

all times. Well, sure. And I don't teach my daughter that adversity equals racism. I can acknowledge

that the N word equals racism. But do you teach? But do you teach or encourage or tolerate race pride?

What do you mean by race pride? I'm black before anything else. Black is beautiful. We are

we're brilliant black. This is black excellence. We are very weird if David French. I'm just I'm

saying like I'm saying this now, but you could but you could discourage that sort of attitude

within one's household, even like buying buy black. These are all popular sentiments. I think

we're talking about very different circumstances. I think you're very different circumstances when

you've got a and this is getting personal. Yeah. Black child and a white family surrounded by white

people who have different there are different styles of hair. For example, and so it'd be very easy

if you are a young black girl who has hair that is very different from every single person.

How does that experience to feel as if and they're there come you know in your and your own

family is you've got a blonde blonde blue eyed older sister to feel as if there is an beauty

ideal that you don't match. And so in that circumstance, I'm going to absolutely affirm her beauty.

But her beauty is not black beauty. It is individual beauty. There as it's a quote Barack Obama

and various other people. There is no one way to be black. My mother has freckles. My son has

red hair. So does my mom actually though it's going great now. Like their hair textures are varied

and I get it. I hear what you're saying. My daughter goes through this like she gets long braids

sometimes. Sometimes she wears the two afro puffs. Sometimes she wears it up and no one else in

her class in Marin has hair like hers. It is something we've talked about. But what you're saying to

her is this is our black hair and it's beautiful. No, you liel in that Emerson Foster are singularly

beautiful and wonderful. And that is a fundamentally different sort of message and attitude to adopt

personally and as a family and as a community and certainly as a society. I appreciate your

perspective. You have not changed my mind. That's about telling my daughter to you today. Yeah,

to convert you to my daughter. No, but I'm not. I'm definitely not like yeah. In any way a race

supremacist. I didn't suggest that at all. Yeah, but I'm absolutely like I you know I

I'm somebody who finds the different racial diversity to be beautiful. Like I find that

with diversity within races. All of the so I'm a Christian. Okay. There's no Jew, no Greek,

no slave, no free. There's there's there is in Christ. We're all one. Yeah. Okay. And also

some scripture. The way I was just thinking like I find it's so different. I was like I do find

all different races of girls really. And also and also and also also at the same time we know

that though that ultimately like the wedding feast of the lambs every tongue and tribe and

nation. So there are tongues. There are tribes. There are nations. They do exist. And I think we

can absolutely view them as beautiful in their own right while also one. But there are no races.

Yeah, I think that's that's the actual problem. Like conception when I said the conceptual nonsense

like that's like there are no races. There is no way in which you guys are are uniformly white

in a way that is fundamentally the same. Oh, I think no way in which I am black in the way that's

fundamentally the same as all other black people. And that's irreducible. I think it is a it is a

fiction. I do think it race as we understand race now is a social construct. Right. It is not a

real thing in that sense. Although we redefine. But also I also think there is a a tapestry of nations

and peoples and cultures. And I'm you know I look at say saying it you know my daughter's blackness

is beautiful as also very equivalent to saying your Frenchness well I'm not you're not your y'all

aren't French. But like if you were French. I was hopped across that day. I'm sorry. You're a

little artistic quirky Frenchness charming right. And so I do think that there is a situation where

you can without supremacy and without insecurity without feelings of superiority and for your

already say that there is beauty here. There is beauty. I think the qualification of the compliment

though is always a degradation. And when I hear people say and it's happened multiple times

because she is gorgeous. Your wife is such a beautiful black woman. You could have stopped it

beautiful. You could have stopped it beautiful. I agree. I agree. The beautiful black woman is

actually it's not just that it's like awkward. It's weird. It's weird that we do it and we

should stop. And I don't say that's because I feel like if you add black as a qualifier.

But anything you do it it is. But I would say your hair is beautiful. And the thing that

she's you know that people are often self-conscious about isn't is the blackness of the hair

is that the curliness, the tightness, all of this stuff that's very different from the waves

and the long straight hair that often you see. And sort of the Instagram wave that's just like

everywhere, south of the Mason Dixon line. There's you know there are distinctly it's very

difficult. Wow this conversation has gone in places. I was wondering if you're going to get to

Jim Comey's hair. Yeah. Yeah. It would be very dramatic. It's very difficult if not impossible

for her to have especially you know earlier in life the exact kind of hair that a lot of other

people have. Yeah. And so when I say your hair is beautiful within that the the meaning is your

hair as a that is distinct that is distinct because of your heritage is beautiful. It is beautiful.

The hair episode I my great humiliation of a dad non-racial was with my daughter's hair because

she was a gymnast and when her mother wasn't around you had to do it. Yeah. And I was like baby

I'm one second I was looking I was looking on YouTube. Yeah. It was my first humiliation. She was

like you can't do this and I'm like no. No. I don't know. I don't pay attention to this stuff. So

it is universal. It could successfully do her own hair now. We we succeeded at that last week

literally last week. I hope she's precious. Yeah. I promise you. I speak from one hand when I say

it's more fun just to tell your daughter that her hair looks like crap. Yeah. I always

conversation I have my daughter is you're not going out like that which I have reason and she was like

you know she was like you don't own me. I was like too. In fact the shitty clothes you wearing

eye in fact purchased and I didn't realize what I was purchasing online. Good. David I think

we probably have to let you lose because it sounds like you need to be back someplace at three or

I got a little more time but yeah. Yeah. Can I say something about the Comey indictment real

fact? Yeah. That's easy. Okay. Yeah. I think that was the question. Guys. This is such garbage like

and if you're a First Amendment lawyer you really understand how garbage it is. So in 1969

there was a case called Watts V United States and the facts of Watts V United States is that a

person was speaking and he was facing the possibilities 69. This is the Vietnam War of being drafted

and he said he's not going to be if he didn't want to be in the army but if he is the first person

he's going to put in his sights as LBJ. That is referencing the sights of what? Not a nerf gun

an actual rifle right. So he's referring to putting the President of the United States in his sights

with a rifle. He's convicted, goes up to the Supreme Court, Supreme Court in a per Curium decision

with only one descent says no no no this is political hyperbole. Okay. So if if I get a gun and I'm

going to put LBJ in my sights is political hyperbole 8647 is barely even hyperbole. Yeah. I mean

it's just saying get rid of the guy right and and so this is an absolute clownish indictment and

they keep sort of implying that they have this something there's something there's something

but I'm sorry why is it not in the indictment now their argument would be well we didn't have to

include it. Well you know you're going to face motions from the defense where they're going to say

if this is all there is judge this isn't a crime throw it out and so sooner rather than later

they're going to have to come up with something other than 8647 or they're out on their ear and

they're not going to and this is process is the punishment. I think that's it. They don't care if

they get the position yeah yeah and I just want to say David that you've been so steeped in the

culture wars that if you go back on your tape right now or if you go back on YouTube you did

refer to LBJ as LGBJ. Yeah you know you said yourself you want to murder the JBJ

wow and either you are soaking in these waters too much or you are suddenly implying that LBJ

was gay and I don't know what you're doing but either way I find it distasteful I find it

disgusting. Wow LBJ can you jump over every light. Can I ask you one question about about that

and about work and being a person because I've often done this who is the kind of political outlier

somewhere and you said you know my visions of sexual morality I don't know exactly what you mean by

that but I can I have a very my personal orthodox view of sex yes I've violated this sex is

hilarious sex is for marriage you said yeah you said it's very narrow of you yeah I also have a

very narrow view but I think it's on the other side yeah you may call it a disgusting view but

that's up to you but if you're at the times does that have an effect on you in what you write about

in those pages considering you know the people in the building the readership are you avoiding those

issues and I'm not saying you are but would you write the same thing for a national review about

sexual morality that you would write the New York Times or is there kind of a subconscious because

for me there always was I didn't pitch stories that I knew that I agreed with that I thought it

would be would fall with a thud in the room no that is not a factor for me now what I will say so

a lot of the cultural issues I write about as they arise organically in like the new cycle so I've

written about transportation in sports for example when it was there was a big second circuit case

I've written about youth gender transition when the skirmetti case came so I wrote about that

or I wrote about in support of the six-week heartbeat bill abortion ban in Florida when it was

up for a vote so I usually tie especially for what I'm writing about is is topical I tie it to

news events and so that that will dictate more if it's if like a cultural issue it so I recently

talked about the conversion therapy case that just came out in a in a podcast or a conversation

with my colleague wonderful colleague Emily Baslan so I tie it to events and and I would say I

will say though that I think if you're a writer and you don't know who your audience is you've got

a problem yeah no I agree I mean it's in no way a you know you should take on these issues that

your readers might not necessarily like because being in those situations myself it's just a

natural instinct and something like Emily Baslan who's sister Laura Baslan is a great friend of the

show a ton of bunch of times and I know Emily wrote something and I wonder if she would ever write

about that again I mean she wrote a trans story for the magazine and it provoked yeah moving

billboards yeah on the back of trucks parked out in front of the New York Times building and that's

when I realized the culture war stuff had gone crazy because I then went and read the piece because

not any shared much about and I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it yeah yeah it was Jesse

single writing for the Atlantic too I was like I don't get you know what your big beef is here

but no I think it just is a natural thing and it's a weird transition I mean because you come from

a background of organizations I mean talk about the federal society the pro life group and natural

review to hear but a culture shock yeah well not really I mean I I've spent a lot of time in

really deep blue places so I was when I was in law school it was so hostile to conservatives then

and 91 and 94 that it would there was an article written in 93 called Beirut on the Charles

yes and I would urge you to go read that because everything from the height of cancel culture 2020

was happening in 1992 and 1993 at Harvard Law School everything yeah everything and so I'd

seen all this before I'd been shouted down in class I'd had classmates write letters because I

was ahead of a pro life group why don't you go die you effing fascist and these are classmates and

and now I want to be clear those are not death threats those are death aspirations

and so yeah and then I taught at Cornell Law School very very blue lived in center city Philly

first year of our marriage was in the middle of Manhattan we lived in Manhattan I worked at a big

law firm here in Manhattan so I've spent a lot of time in very very blue spaces and so it wasn't

that much of a culture shock but I would say the times has given me real the best analogy I have

is academic freedom I have very real academic freedom I have never proposed a topic that they said

nope you know I've never written something where they say you can't say that nothing like that

the furthest you know why people would be skeptical of that right I mean oh I know

Tom Cotton stuff and right right right I know but that has just one million percent not been my

experience and and I have written about every single hot button issue I've written about the

trans issues I've written about the religious liberty I've written about affirmative action I've

written about abortion multiple times and you know it's it's funny though here here's the reality

so there's a lot of people online who you may have noticed this on occasion but there's a couple

of people who don't like me online and there's a very interesting thing that happened so when I

write something that say critical of Trump or critical of the evangelical church they share it

like here he goes again this is the only it's always the same column you know and then when I

write something that is you know that they would agree with crickets crickets because the objective

is not to actually sort of agree with me when I'm right and disagree with them wrong the objective is

character assassination the objective is to try to because one of the things that MAGA has

basically sold to the especially the evangelical public is that if you're pro-life if you're for

religious freedom you have one option in his name is Donald Trump and if you have people who are

outspokenly pro-life outspokenly for religious freedom outspokenly for free speech and they're not

for Donald Trump what does that tell millions of evangelicals you have a choice you have a political

choice you do not have to jump on this bandwagon to defend these values and so what they then will

say about me in essence is I don't really defend the values that he pretends to be conservative

but if you just read all of my work at the times you know that's completely false it's so funny

because there's this really interesting difference you'll sometimes see between Twitter and the

New York Times comments section so on Twitter I'm this rhino sell out grifter or whatever

and in the New York Times comment sections will you please stop talking about Jesus

and so it's this funny dichotomy right and and so but you know I would I would also say though

that a lot of the issues that I really care about that I've talked about on this on this podcast

like Ukraine I write a lot about Ukraine rule of law separation of powers I write a lot about that

these things are classically what you would say classical in the 20 25 year time horizon conservative

positions they're not MAGA so you don't actually get a credit in the Republican universe for

being conservative right unless you're MAGA because if you're preserved pre-Trump conservative

then you're the dreaded never Trump or right and so giant giant amounts of my work are completely

you know they are straight ahead directly aggressively arguing my conservative position

it's just that they are opposed to the Republican party is there a crack in the evangelical

movement as you say like a hammer lock from the kind of MAGA conservative crowd with evangelicals

and then said you know we got rid of Roe v. Wade that's another one of these things that is

constantly invoked and then you see a truth social post where Donald Trump is dressed as a doctor

obviously he was a doctor in the sky and then people say oh my god it's like you know there was

a lot of stuff before the AI image but do you see that like changing at all amongst evangelicals

no you don't no I was expecting a very hopeful answer you root for your team yeah so I think

evangelicals now not I will say there's some defraying at that edges at the edges but you have

to understand the core of the evangelical vote for Trump is now very firmly in a bubble and also

it's not just a bubble of like Fox News it's a bubble of prophecy and and divine sanction and so an

awful lot of people have put out an awful lot of statements that this he is God's man for the time

okay that creates a firewall of support he's God's man for the time in other words he has

appointed by God to save America have you ever considered after hearing that of beponing an

attitude or assuring us through the last day and you know I will give you a perfect example I was

talking to a friend of mine who I went to law school with you know a good friend lovely person

really like her she's still a good friend and she said something to me she said David I was with

you on Trump until God told me to support him so if you're operating under that level and what

you that's a tough thing to argue that happened how does God communicate that but like actually

in honest question I grew up I grew up evangelical I still have many friends and family my my mother-in-law

who absolutely loves this podcast for some reason and watches like every episode and some members

only subscribers she she likes these two for some reason like I we talk like that and I hear it

all the time like God is telling me you are a believer you're also someone who has this like

profoundly analytical mind I suspect you are familiar with all of the evidence for like evolution

cosmological and biological yeah this is a David Frank really is how do you think I don't have a

plane to catch go on how do you sustain your belief in brief oh that's a great it's right that's

a great reason the French could have that has visited upon David French in ways that I've never seen

before wow okay so that's yeah well fortunately that's a very short so I have that's a big one

star he said it's very short no no I'm teasing so number one I'm not and I don't

think I've ever been a young earth creationist so I've never you know to me evolution is

real I mean and I don't read the scripture as as contradicting it I look at the the creation

story as not a scientific text but a description of it's it's a it's a very simple way of telling

all people over all time that that we are living in God's creation it is not a scientific textbook

about how it all happened and in many parts of scripture we recognize allegory many parts and

it's always kind of mystified me why a lot of scriptures obviously allegory but that's got to be

obviously completely literally you know literally true and I think it's allegorical or

allegorical is probably the wrong word but it's a it's not intended to be a scientific explanation

for the creation of the universe it's supposed to be a declaration that God is the creator of the

universe and so I have never been a young earth creationist but I will tell you this you know

how can I say this God has been very real to me throughout my life in some just not just in

academic ways but I I'll tell you a story I wrote about in the New York Times I when I was in my

mid-twenties I was diagnosed with a incurable disease called chronic ulcerative colitis it's

it's an audio immune disorder that attacks your large intestine your colon and I got very sick guys

I mean so I'm 25 years old and I'm six feet tall and I was down to I can't remember exactly

120 yeah like I if I sat in a wooden chair I would bruise myself my tailbone would bruise my

body because I had no flesh on my bones and and they were about to take out my colon it was very bad

and this is something that especially at the time was tough to even you could manage it with

medication but you were never gonna get over it and so I'm on the verge of surgery and I get a

call from my very dear friend Ruth the Kedigy who is now the a tenured professor at Harvard

Law School and the head of their Center for Biblical Legal Studies which is at Harvard Law Schools

and she called me and she said David it's over you're healed it's over and I was mad at her so

there's no placebo effect here like she told me this and I'm I'm kind of angry because what I

really wanted was I've been praying for you and I've praying for you to have strength and courage

you go through this trial that's what I'm and no she says you're healed now and intellectually

I read scripture and there's healing and scripture and I thought well intellectually I thought

this could be real but emotionally new it wouldn't happen to me so the next morning I woke up

and the guys I'd been in pain like unbelievable pain I had a secretary had chronicle sort of

cliest and she said it's comparable to childbirth the pain of it and I'd been an unbelievable pain

for weeks in an end and I woke up the next morning I had no pain at all I went through the first day

and probably two months with no pain the next day I wake up I have no pain I call the doctor and I

said I'm feeling better and he's like why don't we add some food just plain rice plain chicken don't

put a molecule of salt on it or pepper just plain rice plain chicken ate it kept it down kept it

in and he goes just to eat as much of that as you can and so I started eating like platefuls of

chicken plain chicken and rice and within you know a few weeks I had gained back all the weight

that I'd lost I went and got a colonoscopy the doctor said your colon is totally fine everything

is totally fine and then he went and he changed my diagnosis from chronic ulcerative clitis to

acute colitis syndrome or something like that so that I could be insurable in the future

now is there a is there a possibility like the skeptic would say look they just misdiagnosed you

and you know there's this luck right there's this luck Ruth calls you right when you were going

to get better anyway and it's okay I didn't ask you for money at any point no no no that is she

is not like that and so that's just one example and I could do this we could sit down and I could

tell you story after story after story that where God in my view made himself real to me and so

it's not just that I read the Bible and agreed with it or that my parents taught me this in fact I

I went to a church the whole church I grew up and taught me that all miracles had stopped with

the death of the last apostle so when I'm encountering miraculous things my whole training as

religious training as a kid said this isn't real but then I keep encountering it and and so so not

not only did I have the the you know the sort of the faith of my parents in the sense that they

instilled faith in me but then I experienced things that were not what I was taught I was going

experience that that where God was very real to me so I would say this Camille I would say in my

hierarchy of beliefs or doubts is God real is not really one of the things that I have a lot of

doubt about at all but I will say that what is the proper way of interpreting scripture what is the

you know what are you know what is the nature of God what is the mind of God like all of these things

there's a lot of room in my view for an enormous amount of mystery enormous amount of grace

an enormous amount of disagreement so I believe you know I don't believe that my interpretation of

scripture is divinely inspired is a way of putting it I hope some of what you shared gets through

to these these fallen I just got to get this lady Ruth you will I will tell you I will tell you

this you would love her you would love her to death she's one of my favorite people in the world

refrigerators not making ice you know she could do something about that I don't know I don't know

how it works come on I'm just something honest I don't know thank you thank you thank you thank you

yeah this this was fun by we know our new method of attack the code you know what the fifth column

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I don't know Moynihan, if you have anything to add to that, but I just, I don't know what else to do.

It's a good pitch for Ground News, but I'll tell you something.

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Turn it to be true.

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And I got to put my glasses back on.

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