The Freedom Of Speech, The Senate, And The Impeachment Trial
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The freedom of speech and information is critical for a nation’s growth. It is not supposed to hinder people from telling the truth. Today, Bill Stierle and Tom share their thoughts about this topic and how this fundamental right is used in purchasing truth. They talk about the impeachment trial of Trump and how the Senate is handling it. They also talk about what Democrats did during the trial, including what they were doing to the whistleblower. Listen to their conversation about bias and how truth is applied in the biggest law-making body of America.
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Watch the episode here
There’s a lot to discuss, Bill. We set up last time that we are going to talk about freedom of speech and how freedom of speech, while one of our fundamental rights, is also used to purchase truth. We see a lot of that in our political climate with impeachment and everything else going on.
The polarization is now going to continue and escalate where targeted ads are going to be placed into certain states and certain communities. Their view is going to be skewed towards the experience of either nothing happening or everything happening. It’s going to be hard for the reader to discern whether it’s a teacher, a nurse, an engineer, a graphic artist or a manager somewhere. All of those different people are going to be saturated with a message. The nothing happened message and/or the message that something did happen, but it wasn’t all that bad. There is the message that there was something bad that happened and the senators didn’t have the courage, will or political fortitude to stand up to the thing. It’s going to be a tough time for those people in those swing states. It’s all about the swing states that are going to have these consistent messages and this consistent barrage of this way or that way. The brain doesn’t do well with that messaging.
There are a lot for people to sort out. We can start with this one, although there are many examples with what different senators are saying about their decisions of voting and such. Let’s start with this interesting one that the President’s counsel was arguing back when the House was trying to subpoena John Bolton, subpoena documents, and subpoena John McCann. That one’s still working through the courts. Both people who have knowledge and documents, the President’s council denied submitting any of those documents or making those witnesses available saying, “You can fight it in the courts.”
In the courts, they’re arguing that, “If you don’t agree with us, your recourse is to impeach the President. Through that process, you can get the witnesses and the information you want.” Now that we’re in an impeachment trial, the President’s counsel is arguing, “You should have done it back when the House was investigating. You should have requested the people and the documents and gotten them back then, not here when we’re in the Senate.” They’re arguing both sides of it. That’s through the looking glass and a bit of purchasing truth in and of itself.
It causes the opaqueness and the inability to see where truth is because of that separation, because of those different points of view. With those different points of view, it’s hard to get ahold of, “Is it over here?” A mind that holds doubt struggles with decision-making. A mind that holds that has to fight with skepticism struggles with clarity. It does because if all I’ve got to get to do is get this mind to that place, I don’t have to get them to the place of commitment on one side or another in order to impact that human being, to take them out or get them feel like it’s not going to make a difference. All I’ve got to do is create doubt and skepticism in their body by alternative messages.
Injecting the doubt and skepticism makes a lot of sense. It reminds me of what we said way back in one of our earliest episodes, maybe our second or third episode, about tapping the elephant brain. That doubt and skepticism that they keep injecting move people in their brains to believe something may not be as true as they first thought it was. It suggests something to them. If you keep people away from the absolute then the politicians, in general, have succeeded in their goals.
Do you want to know what the Democrats did wrong during the Senate trial?
I would love to know that because I listened to quite a bit of it as much as I could, especially when there were all the questions of the senators being asked. I listened to that especially when they would answer the questions on both sides. I don’t know if that’s what you’re referring to but I would love to know what the Democrats could have done.
You’re still right in alignment with that. The main thing that I’d like the readers to take away from this is that number one, it wasn’t a court case. The judge was not acting like a normal judge because a normal judge realizes and sits in the place of, “Here are two parties that are advocating for their side and I’m not going to let them step over the line of truth to influence the jury.” It’s watchery, the public that’s watching the jury. If it was a real trial, the judge would’ve said, “That’s contempt. That’s out of order. That’s out of alignment. Reframe your question. That’s not a true statement.” Maybe not all those words but legally, the judge would have said, “You are not influencing the jury with that story. You’re not going to do it because the fact does not support that. We’re not going to let you influence the American public by creating a message that’s not in alignment with truth. We’re not doing it.”
That’s eliminating. You’re right about that. There is no jury and they were allowed to make any statement they wanted. There’s only one point at which where I saw Supreme Court Justice John Roberts who’s presiding over the Senate trial refused to read a question that was submitted to him. It was submitted by Rand Paul. I forget what he called himself but the Supreme Court Justice says that the chair or he declines to read the question as submitted. We later learn that Rand Paul had put the name of the suspected whistleblower in his question. The question might have sounded something like, “Can the House managers confirm that so-and-so is not or there was a blower?” Somehow, he wove who he thinks the whistleblower’s name into the question. That’s the only thing that I saw John Roberts refused to do and take a little control over and not turn it into a completely out of control circus. If that question had been read aloud, the House managers would have raised all kinds of heck.
It was explicitly illegal to do that question. You’re not as a deliberative body or as a Senator allowed to ask. That’s the whole point of having a whistleblower is to have them protected from the onslaught.
The other thing that’s a complete sideshow in this whole trial is talking about the whistleblower. Anything about the merits of the whistleblower coming forward, if he was partisan or not, if he was biased, if he had any political leanings. We can all acknowledge a little bit of truth here on Purchasing Truth that every single one of us in this country has some form of political bias. Either you lean a little bit one way, a little bit of the other way or you’re more independently minded. Regardless of what it is, you have that bias which means you have certain beliefs.
The belief bias is in place. Human beings want to confirm their bias rather than investigate, check into, put under a microscope, change their belief. People don’t want to change their beliefs. It’s hard to change a belief.
What the Republicans were doing throughout this entire impeachment process is trying to attack and demonize the whistleblower itself or the very idea of the whistleblower shedding light on this misconduct by the President. They’re saying that because we can’t ask questions of the whistleblower. Somehow, whatever the President did or may have done is unimportant or not the real issue. The reality is the whistleblower, by the time where we are now in this trial, is completely irrelevant because we have witnesses that have testified as to what the whistleblower had reported anyway. You no longer need the whistleblower. He was the spark that lit the fire.
All that stuff is true. That is when John Roberts stepped in and said, “I’m going to act like a real judge in this. I’m going to stay with the side of the law. I’m not going to go down the disclosure piece. I am not asking this vertical to be introduced into this trial because it’s not a legal vertical to discuss.” Rand Paul made it like, “See, he’s biased. He’s not reading my bias question.” Notice the doublespeak there. That’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) George Orwell doublespeak. It’s like that person’s bias because he’s not illuminating my bias and that I’ve overstepped my legality as a lawmaker. That’s who these people are. They are lawmakers.
Sometimes they forget that because I’m sure Rand Paul would argue, “John Roberts suppressed my biased freedom of speech by not reading my question.” We have these things called laws that limit freedom of speech in certain situations. The old classic example is you can’t run into a theater and yell fire to disrupt everybody and get away with that because you have freedom of speech and you can say whatever you want. It’s that type of a situation.
Freedom of speech, a building right next to a Jewish temple being decorated and Nazi propaganda swastikas on the outside. Will that ever take place in America? If somebody put up all of the Nazi propaganda, swastikas, colors, banners in a building right next to a Jewish temple, will that be allowed?
I think it would be, wouldn’t it?
No, not really. There are particular laws against hates and expressions. You can’t meet your needs in a certain way. You can’t meet your needs fully at the expense of another person to scare them.
I don’t have awareness of those laws. We see people can organize, march and speak whatever they want like they did in Charlottesville. They can march down the street right in front of a synagogue with their Nazi signs and everything and cheering whatever they want to cheer. I didn’t understand about the building next door.
Is that a tolerable something that our society goes, “It’s okay. We’re going to allow them the freedom of speech to establish themselves right next to this other thing?” It’s a hard discussion to get ourselves into. How do we still meet the individual needs that we would like to hold, yet uphold the greater community needs, state and national needs, in order to create a healthy society that’s not escalated, violent, arming themselves no matter what? That’s a challenge.
We have freedoms of speech but there are limits so you cannot meet your needs for freedom of speech at the expense of certain others in certain conditions. It’s interesting because I know it may seem contrived at this point, but I do like how every political ad that’s paid for by an official political campaign, there is a law that says, “You can’t say anything you want in a political ad and put it up there without the candidate declaring that they’re aware of it, that they have approved it.” That statement has to be made explicitly that, “I approve this message.” They have to stand behind their words on those messages. Very interestingly, if you study the difference between let’s say candidate Donald Trump’s official campaign television commercials, and this is even the President, he is a candidate also, and what he says from the pulpit at a campaign rally are miles apart.
Let’s get back to the senators. What could they have done differently? What could have the House managers done differently?
I would love to know that. From my perspective, they made a very strong case.
Rules, laws and facts don’t count as much.
They did not. This is a prime example.
Look at that whole thing. Rules, laws, facts and truth don’t count as much.
What this whole exercise has proven is that the party in control of the body, in this case the Senate, can make the outcome whatever they want despite those three things you mentioned, rules, laws, facts and evidence. That is a very discouraging place to be.
Let’s talk about the solution because the solution is where we need to land. There are a couple of steps that need to take place to restore truth here. Step number one, state and observe the untrue message. It might sound like this. “I’m Adam Schiff, the other side would like you to believe and embrace that for us not to look at this and for us not to call any new witnesses.” Watch the next sentence. “I hear how important that belief is because this President would like the level of freedom that every American gets about expressing themselves any way they want or getting support from anybody they would like even if it’s for another country.” It seems like he would like to be able to do that as a part of his skilled negotiation and his talent in negotiating as a business person. In the business world, many times they do a tactic called quid pro quo where businesses trade things for each other in order to get fairness. I’m not talking about what he did as much, I’m talking about fairness.
What fairness and protection look like to me and for the American public is for only our votes to be influenced with our country because there are many other countries that don’t like our belief system. If you ask them for support, they’re going to help you because they don’t like that we all have a voice here. They’d be very happy to influence the voter by creating and putting money towards the messages that are in favor of their country. Part of it is us protecting ourselves from countries that don’t like us that much or don’t like our system of things or aren’t appreciative of the way we do things and not sure that would work for us as a nation moving forward to have that level of influence. I’m guessing that the President might be feeling a little doubtful and scared that he can do it on his own inside the United States that he might need some foreign support. I can appreciate how he would like to get support from others outside the nation in order to support his re-election. It’s so important because he is a fighter. He is somebody that wants to do whatever it takes to get it.
Regrettably, the House is bound by a set of rules and don’t want to be here fighting this battle. He crossed the line that made it important for us to say he crossed the line. I’m guessing the senators are going to vote and they might not have the courage or will to do that because they want to support his decision-making and the style of decision-making. This is not a democratic style of decision-making that he’s choosing. I guess at the end of this trial, they choose to vote to support freedom of speech from the President that he gets to choose to cross any rule or break any rule he would like. They could do that but I’m not sure if we’re going to be a stronger nation. When they do and when they vote to acquit him, which most likely they’re going to. Notice I’m playing into the future normative. I broke my speech.
I can hear where you’re going. It is compassionate and empathetic. You’re definitely making everybody hear and think differently about this, pointing out the President’s needs and pointing out that it’s not in alignment with our systems of government, our Republic and all that. I agree with all that. That would be a powerful speech, but it appears that the senators are all caring more about not crossing Donald Trump than upholding our laws and the constitution itself.
What I did was try to activate their integrity because the jury is the people on the TV watching this, having compassion and empathy for the 10% to 20% of Republicans. I need to move over to my side to vote for me next time. Those are the people I’m interested in. Essentially, I gave a pass. They’re probably going to vote. They’re not interested in what truth looks like. They’re interested in what a win looks like.
That’s the best part about what you did. I truly appreciate your perspective on what you said there. I believe you had the House managers seek your counsel. They could have made much more effective speeches on the Senate floor. What it does is it gives more ammunition for the Democrats in all the different districts and states around the country who are running for election in 2020 to unseat Republicans. You gave them talking points for that re-election. You gave them messaging that they can use where they were more interested in this than that. If the House managers had spoken that way, you think it would have changed some of the votes on even to see witnesses?
Maybe because if you have compassion and empathy for how tough it is for those people to stay out of integrity. If I want to put a nail in the coffin for the other side, it might sound like this. It’s like in the playoff game between the Saints and the Rams where there was clearly a pass interference that took place, but because it wasn’t called, the play stood as an incomplete pass. Meanwhile, if we look at the rule, it was passed interference and the Saints had to live with that decision and the Rams we’re able to take advantage of that situation and go on to play in the Super Bowl. It took about twenty million football fans and put them in the acknowledgment. After this whole situation takes place, we’re going to have to put some rules in place in order for this not to happen again.
All of a sudden, I’m going like, “This thing took place? You would like us not to look? You don’t want us to do a review?” We’re not going to have a review on this play because it’s not in the rule book. We’re not going to look at witnesses. We’re not going to play the tape back. We’re not going to put a referee. With all due respect, the justice in the referee box to look at the rule that was broken. We’re not going to put him in that place because if you as a body vote 50/50, we’re deadlock. He has to become the referee to look in the box and decide on which way it goes. I’m guessing Republicans don’t want to put them in that place because he would need to be the referee and he’s not the referee in this setting. In a normal criminal place, he would be the referee but in this place, he’s not a referee. You don’t want to put them in that place to decide, “Here’s the rule and here’s how it’s broken,” then we get to see the witnesses. We get to replay. Can you imagine if they stuck that metaphor on the Senate floor?
It’d be perfect. You would get many independents and even a number of Republicans in Louisiana saying, “The rule was broken and we didn’t get into there. The President broke the rules and we’re going to give him a pass.” What it says is he’s going to get away with it despite the rules. That clearly paints it as wrong.
As a Congressman, it was my and our duty to point out this rule that was broken and it comes to this deliberative body to see if they’re going to have the courage to be like the referee to look underneath the review. That’s what the witness calling the witness will do, but it looks like they’re not even willing to look underneath the review box. The simplicity of that metaphor for the 100 million people that watched the Super Bowl or the 70 million people that watched the NFC playoff game would have been gone like, “That’s exactly what we’re doing here.” As a good fan and somebody that fights for democracy, I’ve got to get on the field whether or not the Republicans choose to look underneath the box. I’m going to be fighting for the rule to change from this moment on.
This does not go away with a no-call because the Republicans are making a no-call on a rule that has been broken. I’m guessing that our democracy is going to be stronger, at least from my perspective, when the American public goes to vote on who they would like to change the rules or are you going to leave the rule-makers because that’s what we are as lawmakers. Are you going to let the rule-makers to keep the rules the same and allow things like this to take place in the future? Are we going to allow a very rich person in any country, in Russia, China, India, or any country at all? I would pick natural enemies here. Any country at all to take place? Are you going to allow that rich piece person to influence a district because the person they would like is running in that office and you’re going to allow millions of dollars to be funneled into that?
Right now, that’s the way the current system is set up. I don’t want to not look at the rule and have a second shot at it. My job going forward after the Senate has voted to let him off. We’re going to need some new rules for this and the senators. If they have their jobs after 2020 because if they keep their jobs, then we’re going to keep not looking to enforce the rule or not having a second shot to deal with the rule because this is what this is. The impeachment is like a play that is under review and having a witness is the replay that would make the difference so we can slow down, look at it frame-by-frame and see for ourselves the people that are in the room. When did it start? What was the level of intensity? How much pressure was on there? They have the paperwork and they didn’t give it to us. They’re not allowing us to look under it. The Republican senators here get to choose whether or not they want to look under the hood, look under the viewer.
The football metaphor is great because football is so universal across America and it crosses party lines. The way people think and support their team, there are many similarities. We’ve used that analogy here on the show a few times before. That would have been brilliant.
It’s compassionate for the loser. I want to have compassion for myself right now because the chances of us winning here are pretty slim because they have the votes. All they’ve got to do is stay on party lines. Regrettably, just like the Saints, I have to deal with it and wake up the next day and fight again and get ready for the next season. As a Democrat, I’m fighting for democracy right now doubting the officiating that is going on inside this deliberative body. It doesn’t look like they want us to look underneath the viewer to look at the play again.
This is brilliant and I love it. It’s right on point. How do you square the circle of the senators who have come all the way from back before the impeachment proceeding started to say, “There was no quid pro quo. There was no evidence of that?” It then becomes evidence of a quid pro quo, “There’s evidence of quid pro quo but.” They’ve come all the way to several senators including Lamar Alexander who was one of the people that potentially was considering voting for witnesses saying, “I don’t need any more witnesses because I agree that the President did what he’s accused of. He did those things, it’s not in dispute. Therefore, we don’t need witnesses, but I don’t think it rises to the level of impeachment.” They keep moving that goalpost and now saying that it’s okay that he did it. That’s pretty scary.
We just came off the Super Bowl. It’s like the play where the Chiefs had the tip of the ball crossed the line and the foot hit the out-of-bounds line above the line. That referee is at a disadvantaged point. Here’s the weird part. I’m going to screw with the rules committee now in the NFL. They have the pylon cam looking this way. Why don’t they put a pylon cam looking down the other line? They would be able to look at the two pieces at the same time and granular get it because that referee who is doing their best like the Republicans are doing their best to hold the play in place where clearly there’s pass interference here.
If that referee is in such a disadvantage because he’s looking for the tip of the ball, he can’t necessarily see the tip of the ball and see the foot at the same time. He’s got to make his best judgment there and he sees the tip cross and he can’t see this. He says to himself, “It’s got to be reviewed.” He raises his hand and says touchdown because he knows it goes under review. It was close enough with the evidence that they had to go, “That is as close of call as you can get.” If Democrats own the Senate after 2020, they get to put the pylon cam going in the opposite direction and then they compare. They can literally take two pieces of footage, attract them on real-time and say, “This is where that thing is.”
That’s what a lawmaker does. A lawmaker is writing and using words and using the choices to define the stability and the structure for society. They’re giving us the guidelines because if the guidelines are not fully in place, then what winds up happening is society has a denigrating or degeneration process to it. It’s like there’s one rule for this one person and I don’t know if I’m going to get caught and this person got caught so even if I do get caught, I’ll get an attorney to be able to do this to get me off of the thing that I got caught with.
I hear you about there will be consequences for the senator’s actions. Most notably at the voting booth in November 2020 and then in the next election after that, these senators are going to end up being accountable for their vote here.
Only for awake people. Only for people that are paying attention to the rules and the 10% or 20% of the nation that are interested in exploring the ability or a belief. If you interview both the far-right people and the far-left people, you’ll see the polarity. They go like, “I want the rule to be this way.” That’s not the way we work here. When you present them with this, they say, “I don’t care. I’m a Rams fan. My team is going to Super Bowl and your team lost. Too bad.” They’re not trying to retry the 2016 election. What they’re doing is setting rules up or attempting to set rules up so that a foreign country cannot influence our social media. That’s like, “We need to put this under review.” The other side goes, “No, I don’t want that under review. Are you kidding me? They voted in my favor. I need any foreign help in order to influence it. I don’t care.”
They’re not saying that even though they’re thinking that. There’s a lot that isn’t said. Speaking of freedom of speech and open spaces, the senators are not saying they’re afraid to cross Donald Trump. They’re twisting themselves into pretzels not to cross Donald Trump and try to appear like they have some integrity. Here’s the thing that is disappointing to me and you saw this too. Lamar Alexander was interviewed why did he not vote for witnesses. He said, “Because I didn’t need witnesses. He did it, I agree but it doesn’t rise to the level of impeachment.” He was asked a question. There’s a big difference between President Donald Trump and President Bill Clinton.
President Bill Clinton expressed remorse for his actions that led to his impeachment where President Donald Trump has not expressed any remorse for the actions that led to his impeachment. He in fact quite done the opposite and said, “There’s nothing wrong with what I did. What I did was perfect.” Lamar Alexander was asked by Chuck Todd, “Do you believe the President has learned anything and that he wouldn’t do this again? Is he now embolden? Is he going to keep doing it more?” Lamar Alexander said something to the effect of, “He will think twice before doing it again.” Honestly, I felt that was laughable.
There’s a naiveté to it. It’s also old-school integrity. He’s thinking that the person is going to act like an adult, that he’s going to act like an accountable person. One of the things that we’ve learned through tweets is the accountability of being wrong is not a strong suit. The clearest example of this is the Alabama Hurricane thing. All they had to do is say, “I misspoke. I threw Alabama in. I’m a human being. I make mistakes.” It would have all been over and instead, it was a month and a half of Sharpiegate. That is the length that he goes to stay in the place of, “I’m in charge, I get respect. What I say is go and what I say is true, even if it’s at the expense of all the truth finders that are in front of me that I rely upon.” He’s done it with his general. You haven’t won anything. He’s like, “You don’t know how hard it is.” There are all kinds of stories where his bias about the way the world works can be solved by his way of thinking. If you fly him in and put him in hard decision-making, the situation crumbles and he leaves, he walks out. He won’t stay in a hard situation. He can’t stay focused that long. He can’t process the call.
You may be correct that Lamar Alexander’s statement may be old-school integrity and somewhat naive that he thinks the President is going to somehow learn from this entire impeachment episode. I’m more cynical. I don’t think this President is going to learn from it. He’s going to be emboldened by it. I’d like to read to you the statement that Marco Rubio made about his decision not to vote for witnesses. It’s very telling and it’s very interesting. He’s said, “Just because actions meet a standard of impeachment does not mean it’s in the best interest of the country to remove a President from office. I will not vote to remove the President because doing so would inflict extraordinary and potentially irreparable damage to our already divided nation.” That’s his statement. He’s saying just because he did it and it’s impeachable, it’s going to do more damage to the country to remove him. I think that he’s making a statement that’s trying to be married to two different wives honestly.
He’s scared. The way it sounds is and I’ll be empathetic to him, “Senator Marco Rubio, are you feeling scared because you want safety for the nation and you want to keep people from getting hurt? You have a thought that if you vote in a way that’s in alignment with the law, that people will get physically hurt. You’d want some safety and some peace to come back to the nation. By voting this way, it’s more out of protection for the people that might get hurt if the divided country becomes angry and furious. You want to make sure people don’t get hurt. Is that correct?”
I’ll be Marco Rubio and I’ll say yes.
“I see that you’re going to vote to protect people that would be affected by the violence that would take place if you were in integrity with your vote. You are looking for a peaceful settlement to this and this is the best way that you can keep peace in place. Is that correct?” I’m not saying to him if you vote this way, Donald Trump is going to come after you. I’m saying you’re voting this way to protect certain violent people to not only act against you but also act against others that they see as opposite with a violent act. If it was explained or empathized that way, that’s not a bad vote. It’s not a correct vote, but it’s not a bad vote. It’s a vote that says, “This guy is stoking the base so much that he’s invigorating the fringe of the right Republicans.” I’m going to make up a story now. The individual with a gun that says, “Those people will take it into their own hands and make it this one senator’s or this one congressman’s fault and take violence out on that person.” We don’t have to go too far back. Look at the Gabby Giffords case where she got shot at one of her rallies. All she was doing is talking and this guy shot her rhetoric up to that point was violent Fox’s narrative that incited that.
They had to tone it back and stop. They didn’t go against the guy. They did call it out for a short time as being wrong. They went back to not be violent but just enough to infuriate. They’re keeping their foot on the gas pedal inside that bubble to keep that voting group in place. The only problem is it’s also affecting the other group that they’ll have to see after November. Will it be enough to invigorate that group to go like, “It’s not going to happen on our watch this time. We’re not going with this guy.” I think there’s 10% or 20% that will swing over to the other side. That’s the thing to have awareness. All the top four candidates are pulling greater than Donald Trump but the consolidation. None of those percentages are leaving the party at the current moment. There’s only which one of this group is going to go over to this other side. It depends on that philosophy or that belief structure.
As we’ve said, it may end up not being as much a reaction to what’s taken place with trying to hold Donald Trump accountable for his past actions or not. It may end up happening if we can get a candidate who’s going to set a vision that is better for America than the vision we currently have.
Let’s pick that up next time. How do we create a vision where the referees get together at the end of the game and say, “We need a new rule about this and we need to put some solid rules in place?” We’ve got to make this the level of criminality because right now, it’s not fully at the level of criminality. If a President does this, they’re jailed for a year or two or five. If Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman do this from a foreign country, they elect a thing by giving them $250,000 like they did or whatever the number was that they get twenty years in jail. It’s got to have this severity to it. This rule is so extraordinary that we do not want this in place and it’s got to be severe. Paul Manafort is trying to wait it out. Roger Stone is going to wait it out and they have a few years, they might get pardoned at the end. If they do, that’s a whole other problem. More to come on how the rules will be rewritten in a way to restore trust, fairness and integrity moving forward.
Bill, thank you so much.
Thanks.
