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Good, good morning, and welcome, welcome to Man There on Air.
Jane Man There, Greg Buck, and Calvin Butenoff, coming to you live-ish from our home at Radio Park in Racine.
You can always join us.
Call or text.
The number is the same.
It's 855-752-4842.
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We have a very, very busy show coming up for
you
today.
And I want to just be honest about this, that from today forward through next week, because we're coming up on my last few broadcasts.
Wait, what?
I'm retiring next Friday.
Calvin we have a meeting every day when there was this no one told
no
one told
me December 12 But so we're this the show is gonna is gonna have lots of moving parts It's gonna look different.
It's gonna be a little bit different fun Yeah, as we as we slip in some extra guests.
We always have fun We do but the the structure that you are used to will not be the same, but we will pack those
portions of the show with great people having great discussions talking about Shane Matton there so much as what she loves
hear and Bring literally bring some Kleenex cuz you'll probably or your or your facial tissue of choice because there will be tears shed I have a feeling
you're right, but yes, we have lots coming up for you this morning Jim Santel our friend and colleague and host of amicus a law review will be here after 9 30 Wow this Pete Hegseth and
I gave the order, I didn't give the order, it's perfectly fine.
Everything is good.
Maybe it's not so good.
He did it, he did it.
did it.
That guy
Wasn't me, I wasn't there, I didn't see it.
We're gonna talk to Jim Santel coming up after the 930 News.
Hour number two, we're gonna start off with the Acme Packing Company sports guru, Paul Noonan.
1006.
1006, he will be joining us, bucks one last night.
Thank God.
And all the Yanis.
We'll talk about that rumors
abound and also he wanted to talk about the bears It's probably because the bears are doing really well.
That's great.
I'm not I have no snarky comment for that No, none don't care save it up.
I mean, it's it's it's We'll see because the bears do really good at
wasting their destiny.
Let's just put it
that way.
That's a good way to phrase it.
That's pretty good.
Yeah, so Paul Noonan will be here after the 10 o'clock news.
After 10.30, Aaron Carino, our friend and colleague, part of the management team, leadership management team here at Civic Media.
Aaron and I go back a really long way.
Yes.
Is it true that he was like the first person, you were the first person you worked for?
I
think so.
He was our intern.
Oh boy.
Yes.
Oh boy.
Gosh, I hope I was
nice to him.
He's just gonna he's just gonna come here and be like all right.
Here's my list
of gripes.
These are all the terrible things Jane did to me when I was.
Festivist comes early.
My grievances.
So Aaron Carino will be here after 1030 and then we'll wrap up the show with this shouldn't be a thing like we always do.
Today it is the this too shall pass.
Literally.
There might be an accent.
Addition.
Stay tuned for that.
Wanted to start off with this very briefly.
They have finally arrested a suspect in connection with those two bombs that were left outside the DNC on January 6th, the attack.
on the Capitol on January 6th of 2021.
Feds announcing this morning they have arrested a suspect who is allegedly reportedly a man from Virginia identified after the FBI went through footage and more evidence.
He is supposed to make his first appearance at court later on today.
Is his name Bob Antifa?
It has not been released at this point.
We'll have to wait and see.
Another thing just to give you a heads up about, and I know this, if you stepped outside, you know it's really cold.
Oh my goodness.
I once again made the huge, I was like, oh, it's not going to snow.
I can leave the car in the park and then in the driveway.
No.
Yeah, I think we're at about eight degrees right now and it's gone up It was three when I left the house this morning.
Well, it's a veritable heat wave But just a good reminder again take care of yourself.
Yep It really doesn't take very long for you to get frostbite If you're spending out to any time outside mindful
of the
pets Yeah, and that that also applies to your pets dogs Especially they their pads can freeze
and also, you know, well, I'm not telling anybody anything They don't know already but also check pads for salt
Yep.
That can cause irritation.
That's can cause further damage.
Also, you know, some elderly folks make sure you're calling them and make sure their heat is working.
It's on if, you know, that just be a good neighbor.
Yeah.
And just looking ahead to the forecast a little bit, it looks like over the weekend, we're going to have a little snow heading our way.
40% chances, 30% chances.
So, but it's always nice if you can maybe help out your neighbor.
Especially if you have a snow blower, but.
That
would be
nice.
And then of course, looking ahead to next Wednesday, a high of 35.
It's Wisconsin, where we have whiplash weather.
Nothing is consistent.
No, that's one thing you can count on.
Yeah, exactly.
In Wisconsin.
We wanted to start off with this and thank you to our colleague here at Civic Media, Jenny Brand, who is the one who shared this.
This is from the Ashland Daily Press.
We have Seth Carlson with the byline.
The headline reads, Time taxpayers know.
School asks the city to disclose voucher payments on tax bills.
We have
talked about this time and time again.
We have discussed the matter that I have to credit civic media for this working here.
You know, you don't dive into the news as much as you should probably.
And this job very much has me looking at headlines all the time and learning a lot of things.
And one of the things I learned is that money just doesn't come from anywhere, out of the sky.
And I think when it comes to this topic, as far as voucher programs, charter schools, private schools getting, and more specifically, private schools getting voucher money.
that that has to come from somewhere and that somewhere comes from your tax dollars and that tax dollars specifically are the tax dollars we are supposed to be spending on public schools.
If you have a huge gripe with how public schools are being run and the quality and the results, look at how much money is diverted from your public school system and sent to the private school systems or private schools through vouchers because it is
a
lot.
Yes, it is a lot.
We are funding two separate schools.
Correct.
The Ashland School District has now asked the city council to show taxpayers just how much of their property tax money funds private school vouchers.
The answer $870,247 or 11%
of the district's levy for 2026 goes to private school vouchers.
The city administrator in Ashland says they can't modify the actual tax bills for this coming year, but they're gonna include an insert to point out again how much you're paying for these private school vouchers.
Say that number again.
How much money?
870,247.
And
you might be sitting here going, well, that's not a lot.
It's not a million dollars.
But remember, the population of Ashland is less than 8,000 people.
So that is a great deal of money.
Well, and here's an even bigger point, I think.
Superintendent told the Common Council, a lot of folks in Ashland don't realize
that the district is paying almost $14,000 for every high school student at private schools through vouchers.
Public school kids get $12,230.
$14,000 for private school vouchers, $12,000 for public school kids.
And I am going to once again include this chart, or it's a dropdown,
searchable privatization impacts by district for 24, 2024, 2025 from the Wisconsin public education network.
You're going to put your school district in there and you're going to see the total cost on the far right side of how much money from your tax dollars.
And those may be tax dollars that were increased by your vote because you wanted to increase your property taxes for public schools, because our current
Madison group of lawmakers will not properly fund our schooling.
Some people think that it's on our backs to take care of, and even when we are footing the bill and saying, yeah, charge me more, I'll do it, they're then still taking that money and diverting it to private school in which you may have zero interest whatsoever.
I mean, I'm looking at Brown Deer right now on this list.
Brown Deer, also not a huge city.
$1.2 million total from taxpayer money going to the voucher program.
It is Burlington.
Burlington is one point, almost $1.9 million.
It is ridiculous.
So I will put this in the show notes.
Please look it up.
Please share this
with people.
Because not every municipality is going to put into your tax bill.
how much is being spent on the second school system.
You can look it up for yourself.
This is a Wisconsin public education network, their privatization impact by district.
In the show notes, I'm happy to send it to whomever reach out to Jane says at civicmedia.us because it's important to know this.
This is our money and.
When our leaders in Madison aren't at least partnering and investing, why are we the ones who always have to foot the bill?
In case you've forgotten, Wisconsin expanded the school voucher program statewide under Scott Walker in 2013.
Two years later, they shifted the costs from the state budget to local property taxpayers.
So they made this change.
when it was the state's responsibility.
And then two years later, they shoved it onto property taxpayers.
Well, and that's the thing too, is that back in, so a little bit of a story, I'll tell it very quickly, back in 2009, 2010, when the whole Tea Party thing was happening, and they were talking about in Madison, when the Republicans took over in 2010, they were saying, we're not going to raise property taxes anymore.
But then if we do it,
And Robin boss has said this on on air on upfront last year.
He has no problem if we want to do it, right?
As long as they don't have to do it, right?
But again, this is a partnership and as Tony who lives in
actually
on the live stream says $800,000.
We don't even have big private schools and they're debating going to a four day school week to save money.
And that then puts a burden on the parents for childcare.
Guess what?
Childcare is either unavailable or not that
cheap.
So again,
it's on us.
And call your lawmakers, myvote.wi.gov.
Tell them that we need a real investment plan on our schooling.
And it's kind of too late now unless we do a budget repair bill.
But we vote next year.
We vote.
We vote.
Keep that in mind.
Yes.
Also keep in mind, we are in the midst of our multi-state
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Good morning.
Welcome back to Mattnare on Air.
Jane Mattnare, Greg Bach, Sweet Calv, coming to you live from our home at Radio Park in Racine.
You can join us, call or text at 855-752-4842.
Leave a comment if you're watching on the live stream, on Facebook, YouTube, and what used to be Twitter.
Coming up after the 1030 News, friend, colleague, host of Amicus, a law review, Jim Santel will be here to talk about all things legal.
Remember, Hunter, bye.
Remember the guy that the Republicans said had all the dirt on Hunter Biden.
Remember him?
Yeah, I remember
him.
Yeah.
He went to jail because he lied about that.
Oh, he's out.
Oh, not Hunter Biden, the guy.
No, not Hunter Biden, the guy who allegedly had all the dirt on Hunter Biden.
Yeah.
We're going to have a little update on him and also talk to Jim Santel about our Secretary of Defense.
and blowing boats out of the water, and the legality or illegality of that.
And Pete Hagseth says, yeah, no, not me, I didn't see it.
War crimes, I hardly knew them.
Yeah, Jim Santel coming up in just a little bit.
Also, we are in the midst of our grown-up gift list multi-state text-to-win contest.
That's a mouthful.
So grab your phone, open up the Civic Media app, go to your favorite station, for example, WAUK.
Click that and then text in the word trim t-r-i-m trim is this ours keyword You have until 10 o'clock to enter the keyword get yourself in there running for 200 bucks in cash That's our daily prize and then you're in there running for one of three grand prizes brand new snowblower stainless steel cookware set or a portable air conditioner
But you cannot win if you do not play.
And you can only play on the Civic Media app.
Exactly.
So text in the word trim, T-R-I-M.
Tom Hartman, we'll have the next keyword for you coming up in the 11 o'clock hour.
So stay tuned for that.
Not going to have a lot of time to spend on this, but this isn't a surprise.
And we kind of expected this
the Wisconsin Examiner.
Tim Henderson with the byline, more industries now want Trump's help hiring immigrant labor.
after farms get a break as we Break are they actually getting well, but as we said last year.
Yep, but this mass deportations now and what that was going to mean economically for a lot of industries and now we're here So now of course the Trump administration has made it easier for some farmers to hire foreign guest workers
And now other industries that use a lot of immigrant labor want the same deal.
It's almost like if you took a step back and you said, let's make this entire process from, let's overhaul this entire process and make certain aspects of it easier because we're doing it right now.
One of the biggest complaints you hear from people in politics is say, well, if we do this, then A, B and C to C, D and E, but if we are deporting undocumented folks,
But now we're saying we're going to make it a little easier for farmers.
Well, here's something we can do now.
We can do this for everybody.
You found a solution.
Apply it to all.
And let's work off of this.
And then maybe we review HB1 visas.
And then we do like, I mean,
step by step.
And then we can have, maybe we'd say it's 2025.
By 2035, we have an overhauled immigration process that's easier, not free, not.
You walk in the door, you're a citizen, but we give ourselves a timeframe.
We look at all of the information and we say, we've made it simpler for those who want to work here to work here and you can do your thing.
And I feel like the solution they gave the farmers, which felt like they did as they always do when they're cornered, they're going to expand it.
Great.
But as you're implying, we could look for some permanent solutions
this.
That's not what this is.
Yeah.
Visas for temporary foreign workers are a quick fix right now with bipartisan support in Congress.
Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins, her office says that streamlining visas for agriculture and other jobs is a priority for the administration.
But other experts say these visas can be harmful if this will postpone immigration overhauls.
Because again, this is a quick fix.
This is not a long-term fix.
Our immigration system has been broken for decades.
Oh, absolutely.
Decades.
And both sides have been kicking this can down the road.
Yeah.
They have.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
You're correct.
I have other thoughts, but we don't have time.
But yes, you're absolutely right.
And I think that when it comes to this topic, especially now when people are going to
Court or going to their appointments or going to sign up for a green card and getting arrested on the spot It makes it a little bit harder does for this process to be Simplified or you know more efficient.
It's really hard when people are afraid to do the legal thing let alone
Crossing
the border illegally.
We have people who are
going through the process legally and still getting nabbed at their appointments Restaurants construction and landscaping businesses so far have lost a combined 315,000 immigrant workers through August of this year more than any other industry
And the construction industry also needs more foreign worker visas.
And they're not being filled by Americans, I'm sorry to tell you that.
And also when they're being taken away and these companies need to stay in business, the projects that you want to get done are slow to get done because they don't have enough people, and it becomes more expensive on top of tariffs.
Well, we
need more housing.
That's all we hear about is we need more housing, but now we don't have any people to work within the housing industry.
Oh, I'm sorry.
If we just get rid of all the immigrants who are sucking us dry on all our social programs, but are also at the same time buying up all our housing stock, I'm still trying to understand how that works.
Yeah.
It seems like there's some issues with that logic.
It seems like a
well-thought-out plan,
but I'm sure there
are people out there who say we're liars and disagree, but I don't care what they think.
All right, we have news coming up, and then Jim Santel will be here.
You have about a half an hour to text in the word Trim.
Trim?
TRIM is this hour's keyword for our multi-state text to win grown-up gift list contest.
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News is next, keep it here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Good morning.
Welcome.
Welcome back to matinee on air.
Jane Matinee, Greg Bach.
Doctors slide on the board coming to you from our home at Radio Park in Racine.
You can join us call or text.
at 855-752-4842.
Leave a comment if you're watching on the live stream.
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Do you know what rhymes with trim?
Jim.
Jim.
Jim.
Nice.
Lots.
Nice transition there
Jim Santel, our friend and colleague and host of Amicus the Law Review joins us on Thursdays at this time.
Good morning, sir.
How are you?
in
There is so much to talk about.
Yes, there really is.
And I do want to start off with our Secretary of Defense, Pete Hickseth.
Yeah, he doesn't get to call
Sure, he can call himself whatever he wants.
That's he doesn't get to rename it.
But anyway, yeah, this blowing boats out of the water and blowing people who survived the initial blow up.
And blowing them out of the water, this just gets worse and worse and worse, it seems to me.
And again, the explanations keep shifting.
Do they not even from early this week?
And this morning, of course, we've got Admiral Bradley, who's appearing before a congressional committee to try to explain this as well.
And I go back, as we often do, on this wonderful program to basics.
And that is that none of this had to happen.
And by that, I mean this.
People ask, well, gee, these boats are suddenly causing great problem, according to our president.
There have been, for 200 years, boats along international waters, along our coasts, been bringing things into our country, contraband, drugs, other things like that.
How have we always responded to this?
Not with military action.
That's new.
You know who's always done this?
It's called interdiction.
We interdict.
We send what?
The Coast Guard out there with the Navy support often and we shine the bright lights on those boats and we board them and we say, what are you doing?
We seize their contraband.
We often will arrest the people on those boats.
We'll often bring them into the federal courts in America and try them for violations of our laws.
And you know what?
Nobody is killed.
No violations, no, there's no war going on.
We are interdicting by virtue of an appropriate process endorsed by the Supreme Court, endorsed by the courts.
And that's why, once again, I go back to fundamental notions.
Why are we doing this?
this now, even aside from the calamity of this now likely war crime that happened on September 2nd.
None of this had to happen if we had just continued the routine way in which we respond to this, which is to ensure that our safety and security is preserved.
People are arrested, contraband is taken.
You can argue that that may be a low level of violent conduct by virtue of arresting people, but nobody is hanging on the side of a ship.
of a boat, nobody is killed by virtue of a military action.
None of this had to happen.
And once again, the real thing we're doing here, of course, is just to flex our muscle, right?
And to send messages to somebody in a country named Venezuela we do not like, using this for entirely wrong purposes.
And now, of course, we've got our Secretary of Defense, we've got Bradley, the Admiral, we've got the President.
Telling various stories about what didn't do that who ordered this all these questions need to be sorted out now by the Congress Thank goodness, maybe maybe finally Congress stepping up and doing some oversight here.
Well, and that's the thing too is we're seeing the I Don't want to say there they feel I feel like there are cracks there are certain cracks happening over the past few weeks But one of the things that has come out of the news was you know Pete Hexeth famously
Saying don't look at me.
It was that guy was my admiral.
Well now the question I have for you Jim from a legal standpoint is one He is the one who gives the order, but even if the admiral were to say I was doing what I was told that's also not a defense for what has taken place if it has been found to be At the worst a war crime if not a complete ethics violation of you know I mean like that the admiral can't hide behind these were orders because that's not a viable excuse
Right, and we invoke words again much in the news these days like Nuremberg those kinds of things I'm just doing what I was told to do and again the through line on all of these news stories is what last week what we'll be talking about we were talking about members of Congress telling us Reinstructing us affirming the law that says military people have an obligation to the Constitution and if they are told to do something
Milai massacre, right?
Yes.
Shoot people in the knees on Lafayette Square.
If you are directed to do something that's unconstitutional, you've got an obligation to say no.
We recognize that that is a very difficult thing to do often in the moment of war.
Once again, it underscores the problem that we have with mixing all this up.
The story related to the Senator Kelly from Arizona, the others, and this one,
are direct,
here you've got members of Congress saying, you've got to be certain that what you're doing, even with a direct order, is proper and is legal.
And if you go ahead to do it, and the answer to your question, Greg, is yes, you can be held responsible for committing a war crime, for violating the basic rules of war, as strange as that particular phrase may sound.
And you can't simply say,
That guy told me or it came from here or there.
If you are responsible for endorsing it, for passing it along, for accomplishing it in some way, you can also be held responsible.
Ultimately, Congress should get to the bottom of this and figure out who was it?
Was it Pete Hegstedt who said, fire?
And again, was there a second strike?
There was.
Who ordered that?
Those kinds of factual things have got to be a part of what the Congress does.
In another time and place, that's also what the Defense Department would do, what the Justice Department would do in figuring out whether this was basically wrapped up.
Murder and again those agencies do not do this.
We rely upon the Congress now to figure out and purse through a very difficult factually unclear situation, but it can be done and Responsibility can be identified among someone maybe several someone's Responsible for this event and other events 21 of them by the way,
yeah in
If you're just joining us on Mantnair On Air, Jim Santel is our guest.
He is the host of Amicus, a law review fantastic program, Saturday mornings from 9 to 11 across the network.
We are talking about Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, this instance where we blew a boat out of the water, allegedly drug dealers, and then went back and blew it up again because there were survivors clinging to this vessel.
We are not in a state of war with Venezuela.
There is no declaration right now, as far as I'm aware, Jim, that President Trump or Congress declared that we are at war with Venezuela.
Even if we were, say we were, and that declaration had been made, do you go back and bomb survivors if it's a war situation?
And that's a tremendous point.
That's a great point, Jane, which is let's assume
Let's not assume for factual purposes because we are not at war with Venezuela.
We know where this is coming from against the president's own focus on that country.
Let's assume that we are at war with the nation and we have been at war, whether you are in Iraq or Afghanistan
and you can, can you attack the enemy?
You bet you can.
Is the purpose behind war the ultimate destructive thing that people can do to each on another to destroy the enemy?
Yes, it is.
And then once you have done that, once you have hit the boat
the building, the other forces out there, as there are people who are plainly no longer in combat with you, maybe they've got their hands raised, maybe they're identifying themselves as no longer in that combatant situation.
The obligation them, yes, is to take them into custody.
They become prisoners of war.
You do not shoot them.
You do not do other things to undermine, again, that relationship.
We know when that has happened before, there have been huge problems.
I'm sure many of your listeners historically, or maybe from their own recollection, remember a thing called the Milai Massacre in Vietnam, right?
Where we had troops that went in after a legitimate military operation there and basically destroyed civilians in a city and went far beyond, far beyond what the military operations were.
And we had people not only court-martialed, found guilty of violations of fundamental law.
the war of engagement, that kind of thing.
If that's what happened here, that there was a second strike ordered for the purpose of killing those two additional people clinging to the boat, not only should that be a source of horror, but should be a source of response by our military system, by our justice system, for violating the ways in which our nation and other nations
engage in this again all that presumes for a war and we're not
well and and it also leads to questions about were they just trying to cover something up by destroying the remains of this boat and i go back to if we were in a state of war if this were normal war procedures we would never have any prisoners of war everyone would be dead
Right.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And even to that point, you know, the other predicate, going back to basic core issues, the president has said, well, you know, these boats, not well, he's been steaming an awful lot of discontent here.
He said they're bringing fentanyl in, cocaine in.
Well, we all know as a practical matter, fentanyl doesn't come from Venezuela.
We know that cocaine doesn't come from other nations.
Yes.
South America, overseas.
Honduras.
The basic
The predicate for all this is also wrong.
We're not at war.
The predicate's for it wrong.
The engagement is wrong.
And again, I am hopeful, I'm sure you are, your listeners are too, that somehow the Congress in a bipartisan effort should sort all this out.
And once again, tell the president, you don't just have the right.
An undeclared war, once again, constitutional issue here.
The Congress has not, they haven't declared a war since World War II, right?
But under these circumstances, we do look back to the Constitution to say, who makes that decision?
It is the Congress.
They haven't done it.
The president does not have the authority to do this kind of thing unilaterally, to make up his own facts, put together his own systems, and begin to blow boats out of the water that may, in fact, pose a threat of some kind.
But that's not the way we respond to this.
It's all wrong from start to finish.
Well, and we're seeing every single day, just this year, from January 20th to
this very moment, that the Constitution is really just a cute little document sitting in a room in Washington, D.C., and you can look at it or not, doesn't matter because...
as much as they wanted to worship it in the past few decades, they are certainly shirking it and saying, well, we don't have to worry about that right now.
We don't have to worry about the Constitution.
It's not, as long as the Second Amendment's good, we're good.
But everything
else?
Yeah.
We're going to continue our conversation with Jim Santel.
He is the host of Amicus, a law review Saturday mornings from 9 to 11 across the network.
Remember Hunter Biden, remember the guy who had all the dirt?
On Hunter Biden?
Oh, there's a little update.
On that, stay close.
You are listening to Matt and Air on Air.
This is the vast statewide, countrywide, you can pick us up around the world on the Civic Media Radio
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Good morning and welcome back to Matt Nair on A.J.
Matt Nair.
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Jim Santel is here, host of Amicus, a law review Saturday mornings, nine to 11 across the network.
I just wanted to share this, Jim, because again, there is always so much and we miss things.
And I think it's important just to remind folks about this.
Remember, Alexander Shmurnov.
Alexander Smirnov was the guy who the Republicans touted as he had all the dirt on Hunter Biden and Hunter Biden's nefarious activities.
He had it all.
Yep.
Well, Alexander Smirnov pled guilty to lying to the FBI about Hunter Biden.
He was in prison.
He was sentenced to six years in jail.
And now he's out.
Now he's gone.
The US Israeli citizen has been missing for at least four months from the low-security LA prison where he has been staying.
He's still listed as a prisoner at FCI Terminal Island in Los Angeles.
His expected release date was supposed to be February of 2029, but he's not currently housed there.
And now we don't know where he is.
They can't find
They can't find him.
He's not here.
Well, if he has escaped, that's big news, right?
Somebody needs to be on top of that if we've got a convicted felon again who made these completely unfounded allegations that animated a lot of our politics not too long ago, saying that Hunter Biden received
Millions with an M in bribes from barisma and it causes all of this turns out as a complete lie You know how difficult it is to prosecute false statement cases.
This is one of those that was so clear It was easy to do the FBI did it everybody said goes to jail for for six years as you've just said Jane and All of this comes of course now in the wake of the latest
Pardon and commutations free of our president does it not yeah, and you wonder if at some point soon later today next week We're going to hear about a Smirnoff commutation that has somehow been accomplished or a pardon completely You know tying this even back to the last discussion.
We just had the other big big pardon We know just from a day or so ago Juan Hernandez.
Yes, this is the fellow
who again, former president of Honduras, tons of cocaine brought into this country, 45 years in prison.
That is huge in the federal system.
And he is also pardoned by the president.
Again, many other cases.
Henry Quay are yesterday, George Santos.
We can go on and on.
And Michael Grimm, David Gentile, all these people are suddenly being pardoned.
Why?
Because, well, all animated by things that are not appropriate for pardons.
And if this, we're not fellow, again, what is the underlying notion here?
If you're an enemy of my enemy, you're my friend, right?
If you said bad things, even if they're lies about Hunter Biden,
I will take care of you, right?
All of these fall into that category of using the pardon power, which again is a constitutional power.
It is vested in the president.
It is virtually the one thing in the Constitution that is unconditional, that the president can do this and he can do whatever he wants here without the legislative response or judicial response.
And this president is using it to wild abandon
Every president has gotten in trouble for doing these kinds of things.
Some.
These things are over the top, and the Smirnoff one may be just the latest one in this whole series from just this past week.
I saw a chart yesterday about the number of pardons.
Donald Trump has well over 1,000.
And in his first term as well, that's way above other former presidents, way, way more
partons.
And they don't just happen on a daily basis.
There's usually a time when partons are issued.
And I want to make one point on the both the topics we've talked about, whether we're talking about Pete Hegseth and possible war crimes and the partoning, both situations.
The White House has come out and said, Joe Biden has pardoned too many people.
We're getting rid of the pardons and executive orders.
And Mark Kelly and his group, they're a bunch of traitors.
And at the same time, the administration are taking part in what would be claimed as war crimes and excessive pardons for people who don't deserve it.
Every accusation is a confession every single time.
And I want to just also bring up the point that when the Republican Congress was
prodding Hunter Biden to come in and talk to them.
He said, yeah, I'll do it, but I'm not going to do it behind closed doors.
That's what you guys want.
I'm going to be in public.
And they said,
let's
not do that.
So really, I mean, this is just every accusation is a confession.
And every time they say, oh, look what they're doing, they're doing it themselves.
And if that's what you want out of your leaders, leaders, I use very loosely with huge bunny Fufu air quotes.
Well, and the whole thing about, again, we're blowing boats out of the water because drugs are so bad.
You look at who some of the people that Trump has pardoned, including the guy from Honduras.
We have the Silk Road guy, Russ Albrecht, one of the biggest online drug traffickers.
It's unbelievable.
The blatant hypocrisy.
That's what it is.
Corruption.
An additional point again about process.
There's a thing called the office of the pardon attorney that takes these in, makes recommendations.
We have completely dropped that concept.
Typically it's been five years.
Something about your past would suggest that you deserve it.
We're not doing that anymore at all.
Jim Santel is host of Amicus, a law review Saturday mornings 9 to 11.
Check it out.
It is fantastic.
Thank you so much, Jim.
Really appreciate it.
News is coming up next.
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