Latest / The Oath and The Office / Trump’s White House Press Ban & Religious Coercion (with Mickey Dollens)

Transcript

Trump’s White House Press Ban & Religious Coercion (with Mickey Dollens) · The Oath and The Office

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by the Freedom From
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Religion Foundation.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: Quick civics question. When public officials.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Swear an oath to the Constitution, does that mean protecting
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: everybody's rights or promoting their own religion? Because as students
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: head back to school, that question matters. Public schools serve
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: families of every faith and no faith at all. They
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: should not be used to pressure students, promote religious messages,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: or make any child feel like an outsider. FFRF says
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: the oath is to the Constitution, not a creed. The
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Freedom From Religion Foundation works to keep state and church
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: separate and speaks up for free thinkers, atheists, agnostics, and
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: non-religious Americans.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Learn more at.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Ffrf.us slash office. That's ffrf.us slash o-f-f-i-c-e.
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: So what exactly does the Constitution allow a president to
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: do if he doesn't like the coverage he's receiving? Is
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: access to the White House a privilege a president can control?
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: Or can government access to the press become a constitutional
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: issue when it's conditioned on favorable coverage? I'm John Fugelsang.
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: Welcome to the Oath in the Office podcast. As you
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: know by now, Trump announced that CNN, MSNOW and Politico
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: are That left-wing socialist rag Politico were banned from the
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: White House, accusing them of publishing what he called fiction
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: and lies. Reporters were denied access to the White House.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: They've now gone to federal court, arguing the administration violated
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: their First Amendment rights. And then it got weird because
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: suddenly all the other networks, including Fox News, along with CBS,
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: ABC and NBC, joined forces to support the suspended TV pool.
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: For more, let's go to the smartest player in the game,
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: the author of The Oath in the Office, Professor Corey Bretschneider,
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: the star of our podcast. Hello, Professor. Good to see you.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much, John. What a great setup.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: You know, this sounds like something that, you know, 10
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: years ago we would have thought of as a far-fetched
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: law school hypothetical, but of course it's real. And what's
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: going on is that the President of the United States
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: has essentially said that he only wants his allies in
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: the room in the press briefing, and he's tried to
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: ban them. those that he considers fake news. But really,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: in saying that phrase, fake news, what he's really doing
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: is saying, I want to ban my enemies. And of course,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: this fits a theme that we're going to look at,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: his total disregard for the law. I'll talk about why
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: this is an unconstitutional barring of the press, violating the
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: freedom of speech in the First Amendment, the freedom of press.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: But also, we'll look too at the Kennedy Center controversy,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: the controversy over this planned warped arch that he.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Wants to build.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: And of course, we'll be joined, too, by a courageous
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: representative from Oklahoma who's really fighting in the trenches to
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: preserve religious freedom.
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: Fantastic. Listen, Corey, I just want to ask, Do you
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: appreciate that we all lived long enough to see Fox
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: News tell Donald Trump, you leave CNN alone? Because I
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: wouldn't have predicted it. I mean, I want to ask
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: the most immediate question about this press pool saga. What
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: is the constitutional issue when a president says, essentially, I
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: don't like what these news organizations are reporting. Therefore, they
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: are banned from the White House. I should point out
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: the White House said they were being banned for fiction
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: and lies. Which specific lies? They never said. And apparently
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: they still haven't been asked.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Well, the issue has been really teed up by the president.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: He's often his worst enemy when it comes to these
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: legal cases.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: And he's giving us.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: The argument straight up for why this is about freedom
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: of speech. If he was saying, oh, I don't trust
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: these reporters or there's a security issue or the pool,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: you know, the number of people we can fit into
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: the White House is limited. We would have had a
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: real battle about whether or not this was even a
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: free speech issue. But when he says, I'm banning those
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: fake news organizations, what he's really telling us is that
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: he's discriminating based on the opinions, or to use the
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: language of the First Amendment, the viewpoint of the reporters
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: that are in the room. And let's not forget, too,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: the audience of those reporters, all of us who are
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: listening to CNN and watching CNN, watching MSNOW, And that's
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: why I think in the end, just to sum up
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: the conclusion that we're going to get, this really runs
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: head on into not just the text of the First
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Amendment that guarantees the freedom of speech, but a case
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: that's already been decided about this issue in the 1970s,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: which essentially said that presidents and the White House can't
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: discriminate against reporters based on their opinions or viewpoints once
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: they've invited in a array of different kinds of perspectives
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: into the White House, into the briefing room.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: And that case really decided this issue.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: And so I do think that the president of the
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: United States is going to be pushed back, certainly by
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: the lower courts immediately. And even if it goes to
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, I think it'll be more complicated. The
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court can overturn lower courts. But I think this
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: is a definite loss for the president of the.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: United States and will already be a lesson and a
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: victory for the First Amendment.
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: I think you're In other words, is there a constitutional
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: difference between limiting access for a legitimate security reason and
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: excluding a news organization because the president just doesn't like
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: the facts they report?
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. You know, if this wasn't about speech at all,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: if it was about, as I said, number of people, say,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: in the briefing room, which is.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: Not that large. then maybe there wouldn't be a free
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: speech issue.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: And after all, not everybody in the United States has
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: a right to enter that room. You need credentials, and
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: there are non-speech-based restrictions that are necessary in order to
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: run who gets into the White House and who doesn't.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: But the president of the United States, even though in
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: a normal, you know, a strategic president would rely on
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: something aside from speech, when he says, I'm banning fake news,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: He's just telling us that he's banning those reporters that
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: he doesn't want in the room. And you can't distinguish
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: based on opinion. That's the whole idea of the First Amendment.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: And again, just to set it up, what the court is,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: the Court of Appeals, the Federal Court of Appeals has
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: already decided for the D.C. Circuit in this case involving
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: the Nation magazine, is that you cannot have a president say,
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: I don't like the opinion and that's why I'm banning
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: The reporter that case involving the nation was about whether.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: Or not security, a security rationale could be used. And yes,
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: you know, if it.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Really was a security rationale that would override even any
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: kind of concern about the First Amendment. But when the
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: president says I'm banning fake opinions, he's robbed his team
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: of the ability to say this has anything to do
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: with security.
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. But I mean, national security is his line
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: to get whatever he wants that the courts say no, right?
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: That's how he's getting his ballroom. That's how he's trying
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: to get his big Nazi arch, which we'll get to
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: later in the show. But, you know, Corey, when I'm
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: talking to callers on my SiriusXM program about this and
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: the ones who are pro-Trump, I ask them, what is
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: the specific fake news? What is the lie that CNN
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: told where they did not issue a retraction? And they'll say,
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: the Russia hoax.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: No, no, no.
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: What's the specific lie that they're accused of? And I
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: think we're so used to this blanket fake news talk
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: that I don't hear anyone asking the president those specifics.
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: There's a really important distinction here between government censorship and
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: government access, right? Because some folks would just say, well,
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: he's not stopping CNN from airing things and publishing. He's
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: just saying CNN can't come into the White House. Can
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: you explain that distinction for listeners?
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: I think that would have been a plausible argument if
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: they were just saying, well, we've got to restrict the
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: number of news organizations to 20, and we've just, based
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: on criteria that have nothing to do with freedom of speech,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: picked MSNOW and CNN out as those people who don't
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: fit our criteria that have nothing to do with speech.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: If they would have tried something like that, okay, now
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: the burden.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Is on CNN and MSNOW to make an argument that
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: this is a lie and that what's really going on
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: is a limitation on speech. But when he uses his
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: insults to essentially say, I don't want these people in
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: the room because I don't agree with them, and he
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: uses his phrase that we all know is a way
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: of disparaging his opponents, fake news, that just lets you
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: know that, no, that's not going to work. He's undermined
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: his defense. And so the motivation matters. And the statements
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: of the president tell us that the motivation is to
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: suppress speech. And, you know, you don't have a right
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: to free speech everywhere. You can't come into my house
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: and say whatever you want. If I want you to leave,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: you know, I can. People can throw somebody out of
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: a guest out of a party who's being offensive or,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: you know, even partisan the way that they don't like.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: But the difference.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Is when there's a government entity that invites in a
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: range of viewpoints, creates a forum of free speech, which
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: is essentially what's happening in the briefing room. The courts
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: have been so clear. It's almost a bedrock idea of
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: the First Amendment that government can't pick and choose. I
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: like this view. I don't like that view. They can't
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: say it's a discretionary privilege?
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: In other words, invite everybody in and.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Then pick and choose which views you want to allow
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: or disallow.
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: But that's the argument, right? They're saying there's no constitutional entitlement.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: You know, we don't let Hustler Magazine in here. It's
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: a discretionary privilege to be in the same room as
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: the president.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Well, if you were saying, for instance, you know, we're
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: not going to invite Home and Garden or we're not
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: going to invite pornographic magazines or and we're going to
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: have a.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: Standard of journalism and people who are really going.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: To cover the issues, that actually would be a plausible argument.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: But when the president says fake news, he's essentially admitting, yeah,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: these are news organizations.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: I don't agree with them.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: So yeah, those could have been arguments that were made
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: by the president's legal team, and he's essentially undermined them. Now,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: I don't want to say this is a done deal.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: There are ways that.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: Two of the justices are, you know, Alito and Thomas
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: might find for the president.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: I'll explain.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: Oh, you don't say, Professor.
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: Really?
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: Maybe Alito and Thomas would automatically go?
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: But, you know, I'm just giving you the straight legal argument,
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: which is this is an obvious violation of free speech.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: And I think that, you know, he did it in
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: a moment where he wasn't being supervised by the adults
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: left in the room. And, you know, he's going to
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: learn a constitutional lesson as a result. This has happened before.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: You know, I don't want to pretend this is unprecedented.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: I'm hearing that phrase a lot. And as listeners to
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: this podcast know, and John, as we've talked many times,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: John Adams signed the Sedition Act and used it to
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: shut down reporters that he didn't agree with to, in
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: that case, not just deny them access to the president's
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: mansion at the time, which was in Philadelphia.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: Not in Washington, D.C., but to.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Actually imprison them and try them for writing what he
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: regarded as fake news. But the reaction to John Adams'
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Sedition Act, to those prosecutions, really created the ideas of
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: the First Amendment, of the way we understand free speech,
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: as a right of all to have opinions free from prosecution.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: This isn't as bad as the Sedition Act. It's not
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: about prosecution. It's about, you know, a more general idea
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: of who gets into the White House briefing. But the principles,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: the rebuke of John Adams remain on the table.
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: Well, hey, thanks, Fox News, for defending norms. Welcome to
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: the resistance. Corey, I want to ask you about the
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: separation of powers. House Speaker Mike Johnson, America's creepiest youth pastor,
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: he just sent all the lawmakers home early, delaying any
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: consideration of Thomas Massey's privileged resolution yesterday. seeking to impeach
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. This is crazy. Massey's resolution has
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: eight articles that are about various specific constitutional abuses, including
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: claims involving military operations, War Powers Resolution. Johnson has said
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: that's a publicity stunt, and he says the early adjournment
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: was unrelated. But wow, it's like Mitch McConnell disease. They're
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: going to go off and get paid for not showing
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: up to work for the next 43 days. Corey, does
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: Congress have a responsibility to to consider an impeachment resolution
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: once all the procedural requirements for bringing it to the
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: floor have been met?
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is such a sad state of affairs
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: because the one place where the framers, I think, were, well,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: naive and overly optimistic was when it came to what
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: they thought was the main check, not just on a president,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: but also on the most senior officers in the executive branch,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: including certainly cabinet officials. And what the framers did is
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: they created a system in which through examination of abuses
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: of power, that these people could be removed, not just
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: the president, we've often talked about impeachment and a president,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: but also high-level executive officers, including the Secretary of Defense,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: Pete Hegseth. So their idea, here's where they really, I think,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: were naive. Even from the beginning, they thought, look, this
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: was a nonpartisan, not a political issue. And in fact,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: the way they set it up, is that the process
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: of impeachment, where 50% of the House is required for
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: the first step, impeachment, and then a trial, what they
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: call the trial, it's not a trial in the sense
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: of the judiciary. The Senate is supposed to transform itself
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: into a new kind of nonpartisan, bipartisan body, which is
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: the Senate acting as a court, in a court of impeachment.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: And then to decide, has there been such an abuse
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: of power? And the framers use the phrase, high crimes
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: and misdemeanors, that we've got to protect ourselves from this
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: administrative official.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: And what they got wrong was that.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: The whole process is never going to get started if
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: you have a Speaker of the House who is a
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: partisan defender of the administration and its top officials.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: And that's what you have here.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: You have from the beginning, you know, a member, Thomas Massey,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: trying to say, member of the president's own party, you know,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: this has been an abuse of power by not just
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: the president, but the secretary of defense when it comes
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: to the war, when it comes to the killing, I
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: should say too, just to get the issues on the table. Please.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: I mean, but you know, the Republicans right now are
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: all about oversight when it comes to their own party. Professor,
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: we're going to take a break, but before we go,
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: I got to ask, what does it mean constitutionally when
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: like the leader of the house changes the whole legislative
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: calendar and In a way that prevents a privileged resolution
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: from receiving a vote. I mean, this sounds like Mitch
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: McConnell cutting the Supreme Court down to eight members for
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: a full year.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: You know, I just have to say, you know, to
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: emphasize the point that the framers really made a mistake
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: here because the Speaker of the House has enormous power
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: that they didn't anticipate. And what's really going on is
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: an ability to just bypass the entire process of what's
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: supposed to be a nonpartisan process of impeachment by the
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: House of Representatives and then removal by the Senate and
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: coming together in order to save the country when we
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: have a Secretary of Defense who's not only engaged in
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: an illegal war, but really, you know, in killing what
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: are supposedly drug traffickers, but very likely are migrants in
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: these boats that are just... No, fishermen. Fishermen.
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: We know they did. October 16th of last year, they
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: had two survivors, and so they put them on a
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: Navy ship and eventually returned them to their home country,
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: which means either we are killing people or we're letting
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: narco-terrorists go. And after that, as you know, Professor, they
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: did double taps. They did not allow any more survivors.
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: This is murder.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: That's right. And, you know, that's exactly the purpose of
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: impeachment and the trial is to partly to get the
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: facts on the table, to remove a cabinet officer like
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: Pete Hegseth, who's engaged in not just illegal activity. This
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: is really undermining the principles of democracy when you're engaged
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: in essentially killing people without any due process or without
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: any reasons. And the information that's supposed to come out,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: the idea is that now the American people know what's happening,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: the Congress knows what's happening, and that could in turn
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: lead to an impeachment removal of the president if he's
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: ordering it, which of course in this case he is.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: And so what the Speaker of the House has done
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: is really undermine this whole process for solely partisan reasons.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: You know, we heard Representative Jared Huffman talking about how
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: Speaker Johnson is, you know, a Christian nationalist and affiliated
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: with so many of these organizations that on January 6th
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: threatened our democracy. And yet he's able to now again
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: threaten our democracy by depriving us of basic information. So,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: you know, this was a hopeful idea that the people
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: through the Congress, through the House of Representatives, and through
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: the Senate could check high crimes and misdemeanors, abuses of power.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: This is a paradigm of it.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: And yet here you have one person, the Speaker of
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: the House, able to undermine it all.
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: When we come back, Donald Trump loves putting his name
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: on things he had nothing to do with at their creation,
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: like the Institute of Peace, the Kennedy Center, Tiffany. We'll
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: talk all about the Kennedy Center and the legal ramifications
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: around what he's trying to do. We'll be right back
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: on The Oath in the Office.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by the Freedom From
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Religion Foundation. We talk every week about the oath, the
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: promise to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. So here's
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: the church state version of that question. When public officials
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: take that oath, are they promising to protect everyone's freedom
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: of conscience or to use government power to promote their
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: own religion? Because as students head back to school, that
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: question is not abstract. Public schools serve children from Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: Buddhist, atheist, agnostic, and many other families.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: No student should be made to feel like they belong
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: less because they don't share the government's preferred religious message.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: The First Amendment is not a bridge to government-backed religion.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: It is a limit on government power. The Freedom from
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Religion Foundation works to keep church and state separate because
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: freedom of conscience means the right.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: To believe, question, doubt, or not believe at all.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: FFRF also speaks directly for freethinkers, atheists, agnostics, humanists, and
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: non-religious Americans who are too often erased from the story.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: Learn more at ffrf.us office. That's ffrf.us slash o-f-f-i-c-e.
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: Welcome back to The Oath in the Office. I'm John Fuglesang. Professor,
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: the Kennedy Center is a different kind of constitutional question,
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: isn't it? Presidential power over a federally chartered cultural institution. Again,
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: we have to remind folks the Kennedy Center was dedicated
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: and named in an act of Congress by a grieving
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: nation for a slain president.
• 19:48
  Speaker 5: Donald Trump looked at that. and said, oh, my name
• 19:50
  Speaker 5: should go on that, but my name should be first.
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: Before Kennedy, put my name up. I hope he tries
• 19:56
  Speaker 5: to do this with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. I hope
• 19:58
  Speaker 5: he tries to do it with the Lincoln Memorial.
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: But the board, the Trump-aligned board appointed by Trump, or
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: as I call them, all the little Lee Harvey Oswalds,
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: They voted to close the center for renovations after a
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: federal judge blocked efforts to put Trump's name on the
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: building without congressional approval. There's millions and millions that have
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: already been appropriated by Congress for renovations, but they have
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: not taken those. The fix is in. If Trump can't
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: name this building for John Kennedy after himself, his handpicked
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: board will shut down the building over renovations that they've
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: already got the money, but they don't care to fix.
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: I mean, if Congress established a memorial to President Kennedy,
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: can a president or presidentially aligned board simply just change
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: the name?
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Absolutely not. And I'm going to go into those details.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: But I also want to just start off by noting
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: the similarity between the main story that we started with,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: his exclusion of the press from the White House and
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: this story, which is that this president thinks of government
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: property as his own.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: And he thinks that, you know, everything is his mind, mind, mind,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: the petulant child. He thinks the White House gives him
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: the right to exclude who he wants because he doesn't
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: like somebody's opinion as if it's his private home.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: And just to reiterate, you do have the right to.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Exclude people from your private home based on their opinion
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: or viewpoint. But you don't have the right to do
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: that when it comes to the freedom of the press
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: and their right to be in the press room and
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: cover the president of the United States. And here, too,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: he's taking what is an act of Congress that guarantees
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: a memorial to our slain president, to John F. Kennedy.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: And what this president, Donald Trump, thinks is that he
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: can just erase all that. But the legislation is what
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: keeps not only him But the board from doing that
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: in the same way that, you know, a bequest, for instance,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: would limit trustees from doing whatever they want with a trust.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: The trust that's established basically and.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: The building that's established by an act of Congress prohibits
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: the name from being removed.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: And so what he's doing, he wants to just, you know,
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: take it all down.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: He sees he's not going to win in court. And
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: my worry is, you know, it'll result in the destruction
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: of the building.
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that seems to be really what these incompetent supervillains
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: want to do. I mean, is this fundamentally a separation
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: of powers question? Is this a statutory question or is
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: it both at the same time?
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it, John.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: It's both a separation of powers and a statutory question.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Statutes are just the word that we use today. for
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: laws passed by Congress. And what's going on here is
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Congress used its power, which is the power to create
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: an entity and to protect it. And they protected the
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: name of John F. Kennedy on the Kennedy Center.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: That's its purpose.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: And a president can't just, the president is charged with
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: executing the laws, following them. A president can't just say, hey,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: I don't care about those laws passed by Congress. I'm
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: going to put my own name on it. And that's
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: what Trump is learning. He thought he could bypass all
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: of this by getting control of the board. But the
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: board can, any more than the president can, override what
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: the law says. And the law says that name is
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: going to be on there. It's named for John F. Kennedy,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: not for Donald Trump.
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: I mean, Corey, are presidents supposed to leave physical monuments
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: to themselves? We've never witnessed this before, where this neurotic
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: narcissist is trying to name things after himself now because
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: he knows no one will want to once he's gone.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: You know, as listeners know, and John, you know, what
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: I think is the most important inaugural address ever given
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: is the second inaugural of George Washington, which is only
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: just a few words, a few sentences. He says, I
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: just took the oath of office and it requires that
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: I respect that the office is above me. And if
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: I violate the oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: I want you to subject me to criticism and upbraidings
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: and to go back to the other theme that we
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: were talking about. to impeachment, what he calls constitutional punishment.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: The whole idea is that the person is not the office,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: and the office stands above the person. That was an
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: idea reiterated by Democratic and Republican presidents.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan gave an.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Entire speech about the idea that he's a temporary occupant
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: of the.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: Office, there for the public good. This guy's got no clue.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: You could tell him that. He won't listen.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: But he has the opposite instinct.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: He thinks that government property, the White House, the Kennedy Center,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the Arch, that it's all his.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: And that couldn't be a more fundamental misunderstanding. The name
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: of our podcast, the name of my book by the
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: same name, unfortunately, is so relevant. It's something that in
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: the past we would have thought, of course, that's the case.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: But when you have a president trying to claim the
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: office as his own office, as his personal property, it
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: becomes so important to reiterate what our structure of government
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: is supposed to be.
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. I mean, I barely understand this stuff, Corey, but
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: I'll tell you, it seems like this is really about
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: the difference between political control of an institution and legal
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: authority over that institution. And they're not the same thing.
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: And I think if you explain this to most Fox
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: News viewers, they'd get it.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: I think that's so well said, John. That really is
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: what it's about. Donald Trump only understands power. And that's
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: not how our system works. It works by law and
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: by legitimate authority. And powers are distributed among different branches.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: And when you have somebody, the bull in a china shop,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: John Mulaney talks about a horse being in a hospital.
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: Horse in a hospital is a great bit, yeah.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: And that's what's going on, that we have this delicate,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: careful structure. And a president whose every instinct, every decision
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: is to destroy that structure. And that's why we're in
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: a dramatic moment. Because what's going to win? The structure
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: defended by judges, especially the lower court judges, since the
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court is so often, as we'll talk about with
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Mickey Dolenz, abandoned the Constitution, areas like religious freedom, free speech,
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: civil rights. We don't have that structure there as solid
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: as we'd want.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: We have the lower courts.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: We have the ideas that citizens are demanding. And that's
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: why it's really, you know, we're not sure how this
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: story is going to end.
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: Well, this then brings us to Donald Trump's gigantic marble arch,
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: which is not Third Reich-like at all, people. Please stop.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: Stop accusing this man of being like a fascist just
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: because he repeats the same behavioral and architectural patterns of
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: fascist folks. Please lay off. Corey, when Donald Trump first
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: proposed this ridiculous idea monument to himself. It was a
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: triumphal monument connected to America's 250th anniversary. Turns out he
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: can't do major public works programs without the approval of Congress.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: So now, again, like everything else, he's been shut down.
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: So he changes it to a national security issue. And
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: now he says, well, the triumphal arch It's also going to,
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: which is over a traffic circle, is going to have
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: a drone fleet on it and there'll be snipers and
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: we're going to store lots of live ammunition above all
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: the vehicles. Corey, I'm old enough to remember the phrase
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: DC snipers being a bad thing. But what, I don't
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: even know where to begin on this. What constitutional questions
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: come up for you when a president proposes a major
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: federal monument to something that without Congress clearly authorizing that
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: particular project in any way. I know Alito and Thomas
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: are going to love it.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: You know, we talked about why the president, I think
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: if he was aware of what he's doing, he might
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: have watched his words more, but he cut off the
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: idea that somehow there was a security rationale for the
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: ban on journalists.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: We talked about that at the very beginning of the episode.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Well, here, I guess he's counting on the fact that
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: it's not too late to try to save what would
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: otherwise be an illegally- constructed arch by claiming national security,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: national security, national security. And unfortunately, courts do tend to
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: defer a lot to presidents on issues of national security.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: And one place where he certainly used this before was
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: in the building of the wall, where he reallocated military
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: budget saying that this was a national emergency related idea.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: So D.C.
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: Needs a giant sniper tower now to kill people in D.C.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: Here's the thing.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: You know, courts are smart.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: And as they get into the facts, I think they're
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: going to see that this is obviously just a subterfuge,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: that this is a fake rationale that's meant to cover
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: up the fact that he just wants to do what
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: he wants to do. And, you know, saying national security
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: doesn't always save you. I'm sure Richard Nixon, you know,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: his preferred outcome of Watergate was never to turn over
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: any tapes on the grounds that this was national security.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: But as Judge Sirica said, looked at the case, he
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: said essentially, okay, fine. And U.S. versus Nixon says this
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: as well.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: In issues of national security, the president does get a
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: lot of deference, but the president doesn't determine alone what
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: is or is not a national security issue. And you
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: can't just cover up the violations of law by yelling
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: that phrase, national security. So I think that's ultimately what's
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: going to happen here.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: Now, it's not that it never works.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: In the travel ban litigation, which I come back to
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: a lot, the president was engaged in a complete, as
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: he put it, a complete and total shutdown of Muslim
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: immigration into the United States. I had a brief that
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: was filed and that gained traction in multiple instances in
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: the travel ban case, an amicus brief that I did
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: with colleagues. And what we were saying was you can't
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: cover up using national security religious bigotry. But unfortunately, in
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: the final instance of the travel ban, when North Korea,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: for instance, was added and Venezuela to try to cover
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: up religious animus and claim this is just about national security,
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: the court essentially said, OK, we'll believe that this is
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: a security issue and we'll defer to the president on it.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: That was a big part, I think, of what happened
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: in the travel ban case.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: And my worry is that although.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Lower courts, I'm sure, are going to stop this thing,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: that if it gets to the Supreme Court, you know,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: I'm a little worried. I think there's a big difference,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: I should say. The travel ban case concerned people outside
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: the country. This is Washington, D.C. And so I think ultimately,
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: you know, as is the case when it comes to
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: the free speech issues with the press and in entrance
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: into the White House, that the courts are going to
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: stop this.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: But it's just it's so fake. I mean, it's a
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: fundamental change in the purpose of the project. This was
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: to celebrate America's 250th anniversary. He said it so many times.
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: When the president describes a monumental structure and then changes
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: it to explicitly military terms, does that just change the
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: whole legal analysis? I mean, or is it still about
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: statutory authority? It seems like national security is the Hogwarts spell, right,
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: that they just cast.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, you know, if it really was, this
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: is not the case, but imagine that he was building,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: I'll give you a hypothetical. There's a military base and
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: the president wants to work with the military to shore
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: it up and ensure that there are no attacks on
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: the base by building structures outside the gates or something
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: like that. You can imagine there are all sorts of
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: instances where there really is a military rationale that I
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: think there are arguments that, you know, the president is
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: commander in chief and he controls the military budget in
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: the end.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: And yeah, you could build stuff, but that's not what's
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: going on here.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: And I think that the parts are going to recognize that.
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: Are we ready to are we able to start bringing
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: Hitler into the conversation over this particular architecture or should
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: we hold off on that just yet?
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, sometimes you want to avoid, of course,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: going too quickly to the analogy with Weimar.
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: I've waited 11 years, but go on.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: But sometimes the aesthetic resemblances, you know.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: Are calling out to us.
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: I mean, I just want to wrap this one up
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: by just asking you, I mean, this is going to
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: be in between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: I mean, this is not a normal use of national symbols,
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: is it? This is kind of weird. I mean, How
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: much independent authority does the executive branch have to just
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: repurpose federal land for a project of this magnitude and
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: cost to the taxpayers?
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, Congress controls federal property. And that's what
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: was issued in the ballroom case where there is significant pushback.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: I think Trump will lose that case. And Arlington National
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: Cemetery matters here, too, as it did in the ballroom
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: case and that they're standing. for those who are trying
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: to defend the integrity of Arlington National Cemetery. So sometimes,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: you know, it's not enough to say the government lacks
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: the power. The way that our system works is that
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: you need standing to sue. And so this really matters,
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: I think, in that that's where the standing comes from.
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: Well, we got to take a quick break. But when
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: we come back, I am so excited to talk to
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: the bride of Oklahoma, Democratic legislator Mickey Dolenz.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: This guy sees it from both sides really well.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: We'll be back in just a minute. This is The
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: Oath in the Office. Welcome back to The Oath in
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: the Office. I'm John Fugelsang. Professor Brettsider, I'm especially excited
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: about this next guest. You really, you got a good Rolodex, man.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: You booked some good people, sir.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: Well, it's really a pleasure to introduce Mickey Dollins, who
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: is has been a member of the House of Representatives
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: for Oklahoma since 2016. He was previously also the minority whip.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: And I wanted to invite him because he really is
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: a leader, not just in Oklahoma, but also nationally in
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: speaking out about abuses of coercion when it comes to
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: religion and really a champion of the freedom of religion itself.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: And so we're going to talk about the dynamic of.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Religious coercion in schools and especially in sports. I should say, too,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: that Mickey was a NCAA Division I athlete. That's right.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: And so, you know, has multiple perspectives as a lawmaker,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: as an athlete. And, of course, he also works very
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: closely with our sponsor, the Freedom From Religion Foundation. And
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: so it's really a pleasure, Mickey, to have you with us.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: Welcome to The Oath in the Office. Welcome, sir.
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: Well, Professor John, great to see both of you. I'm
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: happy to be on the show.
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: Thank you. I find your career so fascinating. It's crazy.
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: You've spent years serving as a Democrat in a state
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: where Republicans dominate every level of state government. What does
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: it mean to be a Democrat in Oklahoma?
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: Well, I'm going on my 11th year now. I was
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: first elected in 2016 when I flipped a red district
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: in South Oklahoma City. I came right out of teaching.
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: Before that, I was a roughneck in the oil fields.
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: And when oil went bust, we were all laid off.
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: I used my English degree. I became a teacher the
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: next day. I was like, this is what I want
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: to do. I was enjoying coaching football, wrestling and track
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: and teaching English. Bought a house right next to the school.
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: And then a year later, The oil or lack of
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: oil revenue caught up with public services. 800 teachers were
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: laid off. I was one of them. So I started
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: looking around saying, what's going on? And I ran on
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: mental health, education and jobs and flipped a red seat
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: and going into my 11th year now.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Amazing. Tell us how you got interested in the issue
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: of religious coercion in schools and in sports. Was it
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: a personal experience or just thinking about the issues themselves?
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: You know, with Christian nationalism taking over almost every sect
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: of society, from our sports to our entertainment and youth
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: and education, this is one of the big issues that
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: often gets overlooked. I grew up in small town Oklahoma,
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: played football, wrestling, and track. Christian culture was just infused
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: in our locker rooms. It was led by coaches. It
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: was taught by teachers. And it was something you never
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: thought twice about. And it wasn't until I was playing
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: college football, and that same infusion of religiosity was permanent
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: through the locker room culture. And I had a friend
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: who was trying to get a scholarship. He was a walk-on,
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: which is much harder. They do everything that the scholarship
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: players do, but they're not getting compensated or their school's
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: not being paid for. And he was Muslim. And our
• 36:45
  Speaker 4: coach had a tradition of picking a player at random
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: to give a team prayer the night before a game,
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: like team meal. and then also before a game at
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: pregame chapel. And my friend was asked to give the
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: prayer and he stood up and without hesitation gave a
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: Christian prayer to Jesus. And it startled me, but as
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: I asked him more about it, he said, I've put
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: too much into this to be an outsider, to not
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: be all in, to not be a team player. So
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: if that means I need to give an inspirational message
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: to Jesus, I'm gonna do it. And it worked out
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: for him, but it came at a great cost. And
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: that is when my eyes started being open to this
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: is wrong. And whether it's a coach or if it's
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: an elected official, anyone in a position of power who
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: uses that authority to coerce or pressure other people into
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: believing what they believe is wrong. Now, if it were
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: student-led or athlete-led, more power to them. That's fine. But
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: anytime someone uses that power in an abusive way is
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: when I start to care.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: I want to ask you. I want to ask you, Mickey,
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, one of the reasons why I was very
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: eager to have you on the podcast is that the
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court has really eviscerated the Establishment Clause. Of course,
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: the First Amendment does exactly what you're talking about. It
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: says we don't have an official church in this country,
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: and we shouldn't have government action that relates to or
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: respects an official church, and certainly the kind of situation
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: that you're talking about, a government led prayer in a
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: football game or anywhere in his school where students are
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: essentially coerced into messages that they don't share. That's what
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: our First Amendment was meant to ban. But one reason
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: I was very eager to talk to you is, you know,
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: in the past we might have said.
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: Well, the Supreme Court will take care of this.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: And of course, in the Kennedy versus Bremerton school district opinion,
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court did exactly the opposite. It really abandoned
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: its obligation to stick up for kids in the situations
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: that you're describing. So talk to me about how that opinion,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: which of course is about, and just for our listeners
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: to remind them, this is an instance in which there
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: was a, what to my mind is a school-led prayer,
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: but the Supreme Court said, no, this is individual. It's
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: just a coach that's leading this prayer. And so there
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: is no violation of the establishment clause. And The court is,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: in this opinion and many others, really abandoned this principle
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: of not having an official religion or government action that
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: relates to it.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: So tell me, Mickey, how do you.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: Answer that sort of critique that says, well, the Supreme
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Court said all this stuff is fine?
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you're exactly right, Professor. In my opinion, the Supreme
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: Court really missed the mark on the Kennedy decision. I
• 39:28
  Speaker 4: was actually talking to Coach Kennedy yesterday. and it's an
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: interesting dynamic. The Supreme Court just focused on the last
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: three prayers that he did on the field by himself.
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: But we cannot forget that prior to that, he was
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: proselytizing players. He was leading player prayers in the locker room.
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: And this really upset parents and players and coaches. And
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: he was creating a media spectacle around this. He was
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: using his time when he should have been supervising kids
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: to talk to the media. And it became a problem
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: to where the school suspended him. And then the media
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: really got on. And unfortunately, what these power players do
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: behind the curtains is they'll use people, naive people usually,
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: to advance a religious agenda, whether it's the OU student,
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: Samantha Fulnacki, at University of Oklahoma, or it's Coach Kennedy.
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: I think at the heart, most coaches truly care for
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: their players. All they really know is that this is
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: the way I was raised. It was infused in my
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: sports when I was a kid. And I want to
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: create young men and women of moral character. And they
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: don't even think half the time that what they're doing
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: is creating religious pressure. They're creating that someone could be
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: felt left out if they don't participate. And sports is
• 40:46
  Speaker 4: all about conformity. The coach says, get a water break,
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: that's when you get a water break. Coach says, take
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: a knee, that's when you take a knee. When coach says,
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: let's pray, what do you think the second string 16-year-old
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: non-religious linebacker's gonna do?
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: They're gonna pray, of course.
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: And then you take that to the college level, and
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: you start introducing name, image, and likeness, millions of dollars.
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: They have connections to the NFL. They dictate whether or
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: not you see playing time. You're going to do what
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: they say. And they don't even have to say it.
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: They could simply take a knee in the locker room,
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: and I promise you, everyone else is going to take
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: a knee. So by a coach in this Kennedy decision—
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: Even though he was taken, I believe in the dissenting opinion,
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: the last three games, there were no students out there
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: with him, but he was taking a knee and that
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: was sending a clear message to the rest of the team. Now,
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: Coach Kennedy wasn't the head coach. The head coach was
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: so disgruntled with him, he actually preferred, he actually recommended
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: they not rehire him. But if that were the head coach,
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: you can guarantee the other students would be out there
• 41:49
  Speaker 4: doing the same thing. And so what this said was,
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: is that, uh, coach Kennedy, uh, the Supreme court ruled
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: that he had the right to, uh, participate in self
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: religious expression to himself, not to proselytize anyone else, not
• 42:04
  Speaker 4: to give a verbal prayer, but to simply go to
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: the 50 yard line, take a knee and pray while
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: other coaches are talking to family or, um, you know,
• 42:13
  Speaker 4: maybe checking their text messages, that type of thing. But, and,
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: and what happened was, so they, the, um, The power
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: brokers behind all of this, they got the outcome they
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: wanted in the Supreme Court. And this goes far beyond
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: football because they did away with the lemon test. And
• 42:28
  Speaker 4: now you have a much more ambiguous establishment clause where
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: they have to prove that this is historical precedent. And
• 42:37
  Speaker 4: then there's one other thing. You're the constitutional law, you'll mention.
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: But they did a way of the lemon test, which
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: really muddied up the waters and put schools in this
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: almost impossible situation is, are we protecting religious expression? Are
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: we protecting kids from religious coercion? And what this really
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: did is open up the floodgates for Ten Commandments in
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: classrooms and for other Supreme Court precedents that protected religious
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: freedom going back to the 1940s.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: I've got to say, it's exactly right that the Supreme
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: Court has largely abandoned the establishment clause, a bedrock of
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: our constitution. And unfortunately that fits with other areas where
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: they've abandoned the equal protection clause and they've abandoned our
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: free speech rights in many important instances or warp them
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: into meaning something that.
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: They haven't even been told about the emoluments clause.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they have. Right.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right. So, so I couldn't agree more.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: I have to ask you a question because you said
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: something that, that I don't want to miss which is
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: that you've been in discussions with coach kennedy and i
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: just want to hear and i know john has a
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: bunch of questions and he wants to jump in but
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: i have to ask you what are those conversations like
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: what do you say to coach kennedy what does he
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: say back and let me just say you know i
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: i appreciate that rather than just trying to win in
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: court trying to use reasoning in order to make these
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: principled points because as much as the supreme court has
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: abandoned the first amendment guarantee against an official religion against
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: the establishment of religion One thing we've been talking about
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: is citizens still have to defend these principles. So tell
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: us about those conversations, if you wouldn't mind.
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, anytime I'm going to talk about someone, I
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: want to be able to, I tend to give them
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: the benefit of the doubt. And I want to have
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: the validity of saying that I've actually spoken to someone.
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: And I've been messaging with Coach Kennedy, and I haven't
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: had the chance yet to talk on the phone with him.
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: He's working now in Wyoming and very odd hours. And,
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: you know, he wrote the book and he's got a
• 44:35
  Speaker 4: movie and stuff. So we've been talking. But I've asked him,
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: He said he wouldn't have got the lawyers involved. So
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: First Liberty, of course, they got the settlement, $ 1. 7 million
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: that SCOTUS awarded them. There were millions of dollars that
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: were donated to the legal funding. that to my understanding,
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: First Liberty has kept. So he was used as a
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: vehicle to advance an agenda. And I truly wanted to know,
• 45:03
  Speaker 4: was it your intention to coerce and pressure students? And
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: I don't think, I don't necessarily think it was. I
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: think originally it was to build up strong moral character,
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: which goes back to the late 1800s. It's why the
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: YMCA was established But once I think he started to
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: get a bit of recognition and some notoriety, I think
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: that was contagious. And I think he is still grasping
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: for that relevance. And so while our conversations have been
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: kind of at the superficial level right now, I've asked
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: him also about what he's up to these days. And
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: he's still fighting for, in his opinion, religious liberties. I
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: do think that the way we make progress is by
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: asking questions, by opening dialogue, and by maybe planting a
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: seed that could help the coach see that what he
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: was doing was uncomfortable. Now, it's really hard for me
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: to actually have much sympathy on him because all of
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: these arguments were brought up to him by the players,
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: by the player's parents, by his own head coach. But
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: I think at this point, the media and the people
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: like First Liberty have given him so much attention and
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: confidence that he felt maybe an obligation or a mandate
• 46:21
  Speaker 4: to continue it on. And I'd love to see where
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: the conversations go. If possible, I'd like to get them
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: on one of our shows to interview. Because from my experience,
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: the coaches that I've played under truly wanted the athlete's
• 46:34
  Speaker 4: best intentions in mind.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: Fascinating.
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: I have so much to ask. Representative, you have a
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: terrific op-ed I want to recommend to everybody in the
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: progressive called School Coaches Shouldn't Be Pushing Religion. Really well written,
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: and I really appreciate how you share your own personal
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: experience as a Division I football player and what you experienced. Corey,
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: I know the Constitution matters a lot, but I just
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: want to point out the words of Jesus for a minute,
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: because Jesus of the Bible, if you believe in that guy,
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: was against religion. religious coercion. He's famously said, if anybody
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: wants to follow me, let them pick up their cross
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: and follow me. Christianity is about transformation, not a domination.
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: And this intimidation really strikes me as being something that
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: we talk about in terms of religion that has nothing
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: to do with the man the religion's named after. Jesus
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: tells us not to trust those who pray just to
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: be seen by others in Matthew 6, 5. So with
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: that said, I'm thinking about this young Muslim man. that
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: you described for an athlete who's like 18, 19, 20
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: years old and dependent on a coach for playing time
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: and scholarships and recommendations and maybe even a professional career.
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: I mean, can we really call religious participation voluntary if
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: the coach is, you know, reaching it?
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right. And, you know, my time on the
• 47:58
  Speaker 4: team when I was in high school, that was just
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: the culture. That was the norm in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Going
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: from small town Oklahoma to play in Dallas was a
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: huge eye opener as a perspective. It was actually my
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: college professor who opened me up to like the history
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: of the Bible and how books were added and removed
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: in the Council of Constantine. And that's when it all
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: really started to shore up for me that this just
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: didn't make any sense for me. So, yeah, it was
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: infused at every level until I after college football, I
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: tried out for the United States bobsledding team. And I
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: went to Lake Placid, New York, and I did the
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: combine right after I did the NFL combine. And I
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: actually made that team. So I was a second pusher
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: and a four-man bobsled. And we got to compete all
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: around the world. So I thought it was a big
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: change going from Oklahoma to Dallas. Well, now I'm in
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: Austria and Switzerland and all over Canada. And I was
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: getting to meet and talk to people from all over
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: the world. But you know one big difference between Team
• 48:57
  Speaker 4: USA bobsled and my time as an American football player?
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: was there was zero religious coercion. There was no pressure
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: from the coaches or pregame, send me, go to war
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: type speeches. That's very common. What we're seeing from Hegseth
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: sounds like a pregame football speech. So that same thing,
• 49:15
  Speaker 4: but now that was, you know, on the Olympic bobsledding team,
• 49:18
  Speaker 4: USA bobsled is sitius altius fortius, bigger, stronger, faster. It's
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: about using your own strengths and confidence to bring about
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: your own, your best potential, what you have in a,
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: in already in you and relying on your teammates and coaches. They,
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: they led from that. I'd never heard a team prayer
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: or anything like that while on the United States bobsledding team.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: One thing that this conversation is really bringing home is
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: the founding idea of religious freedom. And I'll just say again,
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: and listeners have heard me say this, but this conversation
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: just brings out the quintessential reason why you have to
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: think about two parts of religious freedom. One is the
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: free exercise of religion. And you often hear Christian nationalists
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: and others on the right talking about that clause, which
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: is important, the idea that government can't prohibit the free
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: exercise of religion is what the text says. But the
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: part that they often leave out is what you've been
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: talking about so well, Mickey, which is the idea that
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: if there's an official religion or there's an official agent
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: of the government that's pushing their own religion, that that's
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: itself a restriction on the free exercise of religion.
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: And for some reason, that dual message that.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: We have to both limit what government does when it's
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: prevent it from proselytizing and that that's the way to
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: protect the free exercise of religion that so often gets lost.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: So I wonder, I mean, John asked you in the beginning, Mickey,
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: about in Oklahoma being in the minority party or minority whip.
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, are you finding sympathy?
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: You talked about your conversation with Coach Kennedy and And
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: I thought that was fascinating that he might not have
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: fully understood the way that he was being used by
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: the religious right and litigation groups. But are you finding
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: the reception of that message out there? I know, of course,
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: John has been doing a lot of work talking about, yes,
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: you can both be, of course, a believer in religious
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: traditions and still believe also in religious freedom. So I'm
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: interested as you try to take that message to your
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: fellow citizens of Oklahoma, how they receive it, how you
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: go about persuading people and the general atmosphere?
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great question. And being in the Oklahoma
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: State Legislature for over 10 years as a Democrat, I've
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: debated against almost every possible theocratic piece of legislation you've
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: seen introduced across the country. They all come from the
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: same bill mill. And let's just take the Ten Commandments
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: in classrooms, for example. This comes up every year. And
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: I'll ask the author, do you believe.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: In religious freedom?
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: Well, of course I believe in religious freedom. Okay, and
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: you want to hang the 10 commandments in the children's classrooms.
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: Yes, I do.
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: What is the first commandment? Thou shall have no other
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: gods before me. Sir, where's the religious freedom in that?
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: And then it's one of those like cartoons, you know,
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: and then that's when the bill dies. And it can
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: do that with religious school chaplains replacing trained mental health
• 52:15
  Speaker 4: professionals with uncertified, no clinical pastoral education chaplains from this
• 52:21
  Speaker 4: National School Chaplain Association.
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: It's a total grift.
• 52:25
  Speaker 4: Just ask a few questions. Hey, would you accept this
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: amendment to require CPE, just like our government chaplains and
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: military chaplains have clinical pastoral education? Would you accept that amendment?
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: National School Chaplain Association says, no, no, no, we can't
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: accept that. You ask why? Well, it undermines their business
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: model where you and I could become one of their
• 52:47
  Speaker 4: chaplains for $ 1, 000, a six-hour online course, and $ 25 a
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: month after that. We can be volunteer chaplains that go
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: as well.
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: Oh, no way.
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: How do they pay their bills as volunteers? Well, they
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: get connected to Americans for Prosperity, the Heritage Foundation, and
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: they dial for dollars and they can literally raise as
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: much as they can earn as much as they can
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: get on the phone and raise. And so exposing the
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: grift behind many of these, where they take advantage of
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: well-meaning do-gooder politicians, who look at some anecdotal statistics and
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: then spout them off as fact on the House floor,
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: and then having to show them that little asterisk at
• 53:25
  Speaker 4: the bottom of that list they're reading says all statistical
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: data is anecdotal. You have to make them look stupid
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: sometimes to get the point across, and then guess what?
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: The good thing about it is the bill fails. And
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: we can do that, and that's what I help lawmakers
• 53:39
  Speaker 4: across the country do, is prepare them for debate and
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: talking points. and push back on this theocratic legislation, because
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: it's not just in sports, it's at the grade school level.
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: I've got a kid in first and third grade in
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: public schools, and you gotta be vigilant. But people, parents,
• 53:55
  Speaker 4: especially these days, don't have the time to go to
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: every school board meeting, so they may not know when
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: LifeWise is coming in to take their kids out of art, music,
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: or PE, and take them across the street or down
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: the block to a school, to another church, and then
• 54:07
  Speaker 4: bring them, give them this PragerU theocratic indoctrination. But it's
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: coming from all over the place. But the way that
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: we push back is by educating the public. This is
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: why I just love the Freedom From Religion Foundation, largest
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: free thought organization in North America, over 41,000 members. And
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: we protect the separation of church and state. And we
• 54:31
  Speaker 4: educate the public on non-theism. So our pluralistic secular government.
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: We definitely got our work cut out for us, as
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: you can tell.
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean, you're doing the Lord's work, honestly.
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: I mean, the religious freedom argument is so American, and
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: it is so New Testament at the same time. And
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: I so appreciate the advocacy you've taken, and I know
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: it's not easy in Oklahoma. Let me ask you, with
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: that in mind, I'm in love with this debate. How
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: would you draw the line between a religiously neutral team
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: And a team culture. And then a coach who's just
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: simply sharing something that's personally meaningful to him. I mean,
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: where does that line go? Maybe that's a question to
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: both of you.
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: Well, for me, I've been in this experience before. That's
• 55:15
  Speaker 4: why I asked.
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: Your op-ed's amazing.
• 55:17
  Speaker 4: I do think that player-led prayer is perfectly fine. If
• 55:21
  Speaker 4: one of my teammates wanted to evangelize me, go for it.
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: I think the coach should keep their religious matters to themselves.
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: And it'd be like a coach trying to give you
• 55:31
  Speaker 4: relationship advice or marriage advice. Just leave that to the parents.
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: Stay out of it.
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: I'll take the USA bobsled example again. They not once
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: had to mention one Bible scripture or talk about anything theological.
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: It was, you're going to get in a 400-pound sled
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: and go 90 miles per hour, one mile down a mountain.
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: What you choose to do, pray, not pray, is up
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: to you. But we're going to train you to be
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: the very best in the world at it. And that's
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: what it comes down to, because that's where the real
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: values come from. Perseverance, resilience, grit. I mean, you go
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: down a bobsled and you turn over going 90 miles
• 56:10
  Speaker 4: per hour and hit every turn on the way down.
• 56:12
  Speaker 4: That's how you build resilience and grit and strength and courage. And,
• 56:16
  Speaker 4: you know, no Bible scriptures required.
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: No, I'd be praying the entire time having said that.
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: But yeah, absolutely.
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, John, just to add on
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: to that, I mean, such a nice way to put it,
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: that certainly there is a right of individual students to
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: say whatever they want about religion, to express their religion,
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: to say why they believe in it, why others should
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: believe in it. That's a matter not just of religious freedom,
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: but of free speech in the same way that secular
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: people can do the same thing. And private individuals have
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: that right. The difference is when a coach is acting
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: as a coach, which is an employee of a public school.
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: The First Amendment also has something to say.
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: It says that we protect people from government coercion and
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: influence by limiting what they can say in their official capacity.
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that they can't go to church, that
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: they can't, you know, on their own time, say whatever
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: they want. And the court, unfortunately, it's such a subtle point,
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: but the Supreme Court, a different Kennedy, Justice Kennedy, in
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: a case involving a junior high school, Nathaniel Bishop Junior
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: High School in Rhode Island, in Providence, where I teach,
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: of course, where Brown is, said, you know, laid this
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: out so beautifully. He said, look, you know, it's not
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: enough if the school says it's voluntary, and he was
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: dealing in this case with what was supposedly a voluntary graduation.
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: If kids are involved, they're going to feel pressure. That
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: was the point of the opinion. And it's not enough
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: to just say it's voluntary. If it's an official school function,
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: that's where the line is drawn. And that's what's so
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: unfortunate about this Kennedy versus Bremerton decision, that it's sort
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: of added this fiction that Coach Kennedy was somehow, this
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: time Coach Kennedy, not Justice Kennedy, was acting of his
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: own volition in his private capacity. And Mickey, I think
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: that story that you began with of what it was
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: like to be in the team meetings and to hear
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: this supposedly personal story that, of course, feels coercive to
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: the non-religious people. That's what Justice Kennedy was trying to
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: get at. And that's one of many areas where the
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: court has just abandoned it. I should say, too, when
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: the framers talked about religious freedom, this is what they
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: were worried about. George Washington responded to the Toro Synagogue
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: by saying, we're not going to have an official religion.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: We're not going to have the vestiges that were part
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: of the long history, the unfortunate history of the inquisition
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: of forcing people into religion. We're going to be the
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: opposite in the United States. And Washington understood in this
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: correspondence to Toro Synagogue in this promise that it wasn't
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: just a matter of putting people in prison. It was
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: a matter of respecting them by not having government send
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: messages that were exclusive to one religion. So that's why
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: this fight, I think, really is about foundation of America.
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: We're not a Christian nation.
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: We're a nation that guarantees the freedom of religion. And
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: that's what Mickey and his allies and John, you know,
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: what all of us are trying to do on this show.
• 59:17
  Speaker 4: Professor, I'm glad you kind of touched on the history
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: of where this takes place. You know, in our original
• 59:22
  Speaker 4: Pray to Play report, the Freedom from Religion Foundation, back
• 59:25
  Speaker 4: in 2015, so a little over 10 years ago, They
• 59:27
  Speaker 4: looked into public universities who were hiring school chaplains and
• 59:32
  Speaker 4: their job was to proselytize student athletes. And that has backed.
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: Off a little bit.
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: Of course, there are plenty of schools that still have
• 59:40
  Speaker 4: religious chaplains at the university level, but they're not as
• 59:43
  Speaker 4: compensated as.
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: They were now.
• 59:45
  Speaker 4: But we're about to release... an updated pray to play
• 59:48
  Speaker 4: report that goes into the history of how religion was
• 59:52
  Speaker 4: infused into sports and the fun blue laws about that
• 59:55
  Speaker 4: in Pennsylvania. I'll get into that in a minute. But yeah,
• 59:58
  Speaker 4: I mean, the whole evolution of this is fascinating. Early
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 4: in the 1800s, it was looked down on to do
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: anything on the Sabbath. The Sabbatarians said, there's no way
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: you can have sports on Sunday. We have college football
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 4: on Saturdays. That's good enough. And so this also solved
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 4: a problem at that time because praying and being religious
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 4: was looked as kind of like weak.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: They were weaklings.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 4: So they had their manosphere moment in the mid 1800s
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 4: where they created something called muscular Christianity.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: And they started infusing religious scripture into bodybuilding and getting
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 4: this type of like macho reputation built up. And then
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 4: in the 1920s, right after World War I, professional sports
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 4: became like America's pastime. Think baseball and the NFL. Well,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 4: the professional football at the time had just been incorporated. However,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 4: the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Philadelphia Eagles, they didn't exist because
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: Pennsylvania had the blue law that says shall not do
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 4: anything on Sundays. And so they had to petition that
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 4: in the state legislature. It got nasty. And then it
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: wasn't until 1933 when they actually created this law called
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: the Sunday Baseball and Football Law in 1933. And then
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 4: immediately the Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburgh Steelers started playing
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: on Sundays. And then in my home state of Oklahoma,
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 4: the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, one of the largest student
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 4: athlete groups in America right now, extremely influential. started in 1954,
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 4: the founder of that realized that America is a hero
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: worshiping society. These professional athletes were selling razors and shaving
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: cream and other things on commercials, Wheaties, that type of thing.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 4: He said, why can't we have our professional athletes sell
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: Christianity So he started writing to these professional athletes and
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: getting them to endorse Christianity. And then all of a
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 4: sudden you have this infusion of religiosity into sports. And
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 4: I thought maybe it could have been the other way around.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: You know, NFL, they may have like lobbied to get
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 4: more religion into NFL to make it acceptable to watch
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: on Sunday. But it was actually a more of if
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: you can't beat them, join them by the Protestants. And
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 4: so they use sports as a vehicle to evangelize the youth.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: And now you've got, in our new Pray to Play report,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 4: we go very into detail about the top three student
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 4: athlete religious groups that are proliferating around America and really
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 4: indoctrinating and infusing religion, narrow-minded Christianity into youth sports. And
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: not all of it is bad, not if it's nefarious,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 4: but if you look at children who, are still learning
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: critical thinking skills and they're taught that from a very
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: young age. And I will say this and then I'll
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: just be quiet for one second, but there is such
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 4: an intersection.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: It's your interview, sir. You're not supposed to be quiet.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: Please go on.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 4: This is, I think for anyone, especially like the Supreme
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 4: Court justices who may have not played sports before, especially
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 4: a violent sport like football or bobsledding, they don't understand
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 4: like how having the superstition or a belief that you
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 4: have divine protection can enhance your athletic performance. It can
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: make you feel more confident. And heck, now as an adult,
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 4: I can only imagine my college football coaches whose jobs
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 4: and livelihoods and family stability are dependent on a bunch
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 4: of 18 to 21 year.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: Olds You get pretty religious too, maybe.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: Please, for the love of God, when you're not on
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 4: the field, make good decisions. Otherwise, we're gone. The turnover
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 4: rate in college football, you have two bad seasons, you're done.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: And then that extends to your whole family. So coaches
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 4: are looking at it from make good decisions. Please, I'm
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 4: begging you. Here's some Christian morals you can follow. And
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 4: then for athletes, we put in so much time and
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 4: energy and training and preparing and one step the wrong way.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 4: like millimeters can be a blown out ACL, a torn Achilles, CTE, concussion,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 4: all of these things that you have no control over,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 4: believing in something like that, whether it's a superstition or
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 4: a prayer can give you a competitive advantage. And when
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 4: it does work out, then it reinforces that belief and
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 4: you go back to it and back to it, but
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 4: it becomes so strong. It's part of your identity.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: And then I blame God when I don't win the
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: game and say it's his fault, too. But that's just me.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 4: There's a reason for everything. That's right.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Yeah.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: God really cares about the outcome of this match. Representative,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: it is such a pleasure to talk to you. And
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: I kind of resent the fact that I'm in New
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: York and I don't get to vote for you.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: But let me ask you something. What's the biggest misconception
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: Democrats in other parts of the country have about Oklahoma
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: and Oklahoma voters?
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 4: Oh, that's a great question. I had a chance to
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 4: ask Mayor Pete this the other day. About four months ago,
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 4: he came to Oklahoma to campaign for a Democratic gubernatorial nominee,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 4: Representative and Minority Leader Cindy Munson. And he gave a huge,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 4: great speech. The room was packed. There was nowhere to
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 4: sit down. There were thousands of people packed into this auditorium.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 4: And a couple months later, I went to a national
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 4: conference for state legislatures in Chicago. And he was hosting
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 4: a forum and I got to ask him, what was
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 4: your biggest takeaway of getting to meet people in the
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 4: reddest state in America? And I do believe it's the
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 4: reddest state in America because every single county in Oklahoma
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 4: voted for Trump for the last three presidential elections. Not
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 4: a single county went for the other candidate. And he said,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 4: you know what? There's a lot of good Democrats in Oklahoma.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 4: There's a lot of common sense people. And they support
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 4: the good ideas, but they're not well versed on the
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 4: political media environment that has overtaken people's thought process. And
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 4: I'll put that in a little bit different way. This
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 4: is the way I took that. And Oklahoma, we're one
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 4: of the few states that has the citizen-led ballot initiative process.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 4: And the past four years, that's been decimated by the
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 4: Republican-controlled supermajority. But prior to that, Oklahoma citizens went out
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 4: and gathered signatures to pass medical marijuana. We gathered signatures
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 4: and passed Medicaid expansion that the legislature has punted for
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 4: 10 years. And now, as a result, more than 275,000
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 4: Oklahomans have health insurance who otherwise wouldn't. We gathered signatures
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 4: and passed criminal justice reform. And we gathered signatures and
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 4: we almost got a increase in the minimum wage, which
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 4: in Oklahoma is still $ 7. 25. Oklahoma is a pretty populous state.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 4: They love progressive ideas. But the moment you put a
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 4: letter D in front of it, they have like an aversion.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 4: So I am a real big proponent of talking about
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 4: ideas like 3D printed housing for older populations, for older adults.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 4: You know, that's just some of the things I talk
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 4: about that solve real problems and they're innovative ideas. That's
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 4: what gets people around. And I felt like that's exactly
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 4: how Mayor Pete felt too when he came here.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: What a conversation this has been.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: Mickey Dolenz, former college football player, a bobsledder. I'm glad
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: to learn that about you. I didn't know that, and
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: I'm sure the listeners enjoyed hearing about this as well.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: And of course, a defender of religious freedom and of
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: the founder's idea that the free exercise clause has to
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: go hand in hand with the resistance to religious coercion.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: You brought that out so clearly in the stories of
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: what it was like to play sports at a high level,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: to be in those huddles. And also, we really appreciate
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: the discussion of what you're doing on the ground in
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: Oklahoma as a member of the House of Representatives to
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: really persuade people to reclaim this idea of religious freedom
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: at the same time, too, that you're doing so much
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: to advance other issues.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: So really, it was a pleasure to have you on
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: The Oath in the Office. Thanks so much for joining us,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: Mickey Dolenz.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 4: You know, the freedom of religion wouldn't exist without the
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 4: freedom from religion and government. And what you're doing is
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 4: a great service to that, too, protecting that constitutional principle.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having me on the show.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 4: I hope to be back soon.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: I think he was talking to me there, Corey, by
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 3: the way. I think that was to me. Thank you
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 3: so much for being with us. What a great guest, Corey.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: I actually really learned a lot. Normally, I hear that
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: we're going to talk about football, and I'm like, I'd
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: rather have a head injury. But this was a really
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 3: terrific conversation.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: You know, John, I have really spent my whole career
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: writing and talking about the First Amendment, including these ideas
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: that we've been talking about, the free exercise of religion,
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: the ban on the establishment of religion. But what I
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: really loved about the conversation is that we really brought
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: it into the locker room.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: This is what it's like to listen to a coach.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: And Mickey is really unusual in that he's got this
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: perspective of really witnessing violations of religious freedom and then
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: in the Oklahoma State House fighting for religious freedom. So
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: it was really a great Great guests appear as well, too,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: with the special episode that we had with the two
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: governors from Tennessee, one of whom talked about how he
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: vetoed a law that would have made the Bible the
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: official book of Tennessee. And, you know, there are people
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: out there who really see what Christian nationalism is doing
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: to our country and how it threatens our democracy. And
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: I'm glad that we got to talk to Mickey about that.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: How to fight back yeah there's nothing like uh politicians
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: who force the ten commandments up in public schools and
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 3: then vote for a president who has publicly broken all
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 3: ten of those commandments just so we know how seriously
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: those republicans take the top ten professor always a pleasure
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 3: thank you so much i want to thank wendy and
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 3: beyer wolf and all the people who put this show
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: together i want to tell everyone please if you listen
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 3: please give us a review and like us and subscribe
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: and tell all your friends and share our episodes on
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: the social media And we read your emails as well.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: Right, Corey?
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: We're taking questions still. I'm compiling them. We'll, in a
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: future episode, talk about them.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: And you could send.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: me an email at cory.brettschneider at gmail.com. And also be
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: sure to put that subscribe, push that button if you're
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: watching us on YouTube, or if you're listening, push on
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: Apple or Spotify.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: And the other thing I'll just say is a thank.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: You to our listeners who continue to push us into
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: the top three on Apple Trending Podcasts.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: We're often number one.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: And one way that that's happened, too, is sharing it
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: with friends. So just push that share button, send it
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: to one friend that you think would like the Oath
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: in the Office podcast.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 3: And John, I just want to.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: Thank you, too, for. joining me here every week. You know,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: it's a difficult time, but you make it fun.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 3: Part of my parole. You know that. You've talked to
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 3: my parole officer. I have to be here, so it's okay.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: I hope you appreciate that we just talked for like
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 3: half an hour to a guy named Mickey Dolenz, and
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 3: I didn't make the monkey's joke once. Not one reference
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 3: to the last surviving monkey. I think I didn't mention
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 3: Davy Jones. I think I deserve a little credit for that, Professor.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 3: Just saying.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: You do, John.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: As your least favorite student, I deserve a little. Thank
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: you all so much for joining us. And we will
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: see you. You can see Corey, by the way, on
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 3: my Sirius XM show live. And he takes your calls
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: every Monday. And we'll see you next week on The
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 3: Oath and the Office.