Power Politics Episode 4 - A Mishpacha Podcast

yeah I want to explain what the problem is with the Supreme Court's decision uh which has nothing to do with you know whether it's a good idea for David to be a minister or not [Music] welcome to power Politics the mishpacha podcast exploring the flashpoints of American and global current affairs and how they impact the Jewish Community I'm Benjamin Rose wishbaha's editor at large and I'm Maury litwack a two-decade veteran of political campaigns at Capitol Hill join US Weekly as we delve into these critical topics and more on power politics in today's program why we can't trust our presidents with classified information also as anti-Semitism rages on campus and in the streets do we have an effective response Professor Eugene kantarovich will give us his ideas on what we're doing wrong and what we should be doing right and later in the program Maury and I will let you in on our influencers of the week as well as our fearless forecast for what's ahead so today we're going to start with why we can or can't trust presidents with classified information and it's obviously from what's going on in the news that we cannot former president Trump and now President Biden both have Scandal swirling about taking classified information home with them and is something that concerns many Americans and the more we were talking about this before we went on the air and one of the questions you asked me was why why should we be concerned about classified information so I just want to give a quick dictionary definition of classified information for the listeners for the purposes of our discussion we can Define classified information as information that requires protection against unauthorized disclosure and why because it's in the interests of National Defense and National Security or the Foreign Relations of the United States to make sure that this information does not become public and there are basically three levels of classified information uh the first one is top secret that if that got out it would cause exceptionally grave damage then there's secret information which according to the dictionary definition would cause serious damage and then there's just plain confidential information which is something that shouldn't be shared there's also a fourth category that people speak about less some of the top secret information is so top secret that it can only be viewed in a skiff which is uh basically an acronym for sensitive compartmented information facility that information comes from Secret sources and closely guarded intelligence methods it could come from intelligence gleaned from an electronic intercept or information provided by an informant in a foreign country and certainly if we have spies working in foreign countries we don't want anyone to know who they are or how they're operating now we know that neither Mar alago nor Biden's garage or is Corvette for that matter is considered a skiff and that that's why people I think have the right to be upset that you have a former president I think that's worse in a way and Biden when he was vice president spiriting away information that no one else is supposed to see or know about and that's why people I think are right to be upset and they deserve answers I think this issue is um I think when people hear about it they're concerned they say it's not right that there's classified information kept by these presidents but at the same time I think it's a very confusing issue as we talked about and I'm glad you gave the explanation the average person the average American is not holding classified documents they've never seen that these types of classified documents they don't know the four levels of clearance that you talked about so the average person is sort of left to wonder well is this a problem or it's not a problem and where things get more complicated are that the president was publicly very concerned about the former president's keeping of classified documents and now he's been caught in a similar Scandal now they're going back and forth and saying that the content is different the entire environment is different but there's really two things going on here number one is is that these scandals are hard for the American public to grasp and number two you now have the Democratic party saying it's a problem because of the former president Republican party saying it's a problem because of the current president and uh I love football analogies it reminds me of the example of the offense committing a foul on a play and the defense committing of following the play neither one is penalized both sort of end up back in the neutral position offsetting penalties offsetting penalties so it just seems like we have that situation here but what I wanted to bring up is your column that just came out where you talk about the fact that to add to this confusion we have a very long history Benjamin of presidents doing this exact Behavior engaging in this absolutely one of the examples the prime examples I brought up was Lyndon Baines Johnson he basically took a huge secret home with him to the LBJ Ranch when his term ended in the early part of 1969 as I wrote he discovered that Richard Nixon who was the Republican candidate for president in the 1968 election was trying to undermine Johnson's efforts to bring about last-minute negotiations to end the Vietnam War and Johnson found out about it through his National Security adviser Walter rostow as soon as Johnson found out about it he said well we have to start putting Nixon and the person who was suspected of working with Nixon under surveillance which they did and when they finally got more information again nothing directly linking Nixon but when they got enough information Rossdale begged LBJ you've got to come public with this it's right before the election if people find out about this nobody will vote for Nixon and then Hubert Humphrey might have won that election anyway LBJ for reasons which we can only speculate and I did in my column he declined to come public with the information Nixon won the election and in this particular case as I pointed out we don't know what would have happened if Nixon lost and we don't know if Johnson's uh would have been successful at bringing about a peace treaty but in the interim of the Vietnam War went on another six years and twenty thousand more American servicemen lost their lives in Vietnam so that's a very very serious consequence and and that's an example of what can happen when there's classified information and maybe LBJ didn't uh want his surveillance methods to be known maybe he didn't want it to be known that he was conducting surveillance on domestic political opponents but whatever the case may be he ended up taking that documentation with him back to the LBJ Ranch and it took over 20 years until anyone found out that was one in LBJ librarian opened the envelope that rosto had given with that information the roster himself by the way it requested that not be open for 50 years and I can understand why and then it took until maybe three four years ago until a Nixon biographer finally found that Smoking Gun linking Nixon to it so this is some pretty bad stuff my own opinion is I don't think that anything anything that Trump or Biden has or did is going to end up causing that kind of damage but you never know when you look at this issue it really comes down to the following which is precedent and confusion precedent in the sense that you had Hillary Clinton with her Scandal on this you have LBJ which you talked about you have past presidents this whole issue is about precedent and now you have the current a former president both involved in this issue and then you just have this sort of vagueness around this which again I just don't think this resonates with the average American they don't understand this the average American May understand when someone steals they may understand when someone cheats they may understand what someone does bodily harm to another person but they're not in possession of secret or top secret documents or have ever seen those documents or understand those documents and as you've mentioned in your column this is many times presidents are looking at this either from a vanity perspective for their Memoirs or they're trying to protect things again from a vanity perspective as well uh more often than not it's not because there's some nefarious purpose involved that's what the history of this is but it also goes to why it's going to be very difficult for either party to sort of tie the other party into knots over this that's true although going ahead to 2024 I would say this hurts Biden more than Trump for the simple reason that people expect this kind of behavior from Trump he's much more unconventional Biden he was such chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Once Upon a while and he should have known better so I think that all things taken uh into consideration and most people point out that Trump had more documents and maybe his offense was greater but somehow I think this comes back to haunt Biden more than it does uh Trump well all we know is is that the top secret transcripts from Power politics we are going to keep uh for the public they will go to the National Archives Benjamin and I will not be placing these in our private domiciles that's very true I don't think it's going to be like the tape that self-destructs in 10 seconds like Mission Impossible but yes yes we'll keep it our little secret in the meantime on a much more serious matter Our Guest today is Professor Eugene contarovich he heads the international law department at Jerusalem's cohellit form it's a think tank that many people consider to be the architect of the controversial judicial reform program that's been proposed by the nintanyoga government in addition to that Eugene is also spends money one semester a year in Arlington Virginia teaching at the George Mason University's Antonin Scalia School of Law and that's where he established a center for the Middle East and international law to train young scholars to take a deeper dive into the intricacies of the Middle East now before we bring Eugene on I want to talk about anti-Semitism and what it actually feels like on the street and I want to bring it up in this way I live in Israel and many many times people say wow Israel it looks so dangerous and so unsafe their terrorist attacks and how do you live there and I tell them you know yes there are terrorist attacks and there are times that it's unsafe but you don't feel it when you're on the street you really don't basically the streets are fairly Crime Free I don't feel the slightest bit uncomfortable walking the streets but that's because I live here but someone who's looking at it and they're just looking at the headlines thinks wow it's dangerous so I say the same thing I look at all the headlines I read the stories I see some of the videos of the Jews being beaten up on streets in New York especially and I say wow that's terrible but what I want to know from you Maury you're really there on the scene what does it feel like when I was a kid I was playing with my brothers in our front yard and uh a bunch of older boys came by started calling us negative names swearing with the word Jew in it they knocked our yamakas off and I never forget that feeling of of helplessness and the feeling that it wasn't fair or wasn't right and um fast forward to probably a month ago where I was just walking in downtown Manhattan and someone spit near me and again said something horrible with you don't you dirty Jew X and I I I just think that the climate is such where there is more of that than I think we're used to seeing and people are feeling it especially visible from Jews are feeling it more so than than anybody else and I think it's important to recognize the fact that that's occurring and understand also you know where I hope we learn from our guests is what is the average person like me do do when those have situations like that what do we do for our college kids on campus who are having their own unique challenges with anti-Semitism what do we do with those forces that are fighting for BDS and uh what do we do just the sort of the open anti-Semitism that existing in the world because I don't think any little boy should feel that helplessness or any adulthood and I think unfortunately now more and more of us are feeling that okay without further Ado if Eugene's ready uh let's uh let's bring them on in so Eugene it's good to speak to you again we've spoken many many times over the years I've often described professor kontarovich as one of my go-to sources I want to review something you mentioned to me in our last interview where you said that anti-Semitism is a term that needs to be retired I'd like you to explain that to our listeners and also check if you still feel that way first of all it's a term that kind of dropped into the language fairly uh randomly from some German thinkers the problem of anti-Semitism is it suggests a kind of Nazi like eight-filled primitive bigoted archibanka type bigot and so many people think if you're not like that if you address properly and you have a good education and you care about human rights and oppression you can't be an anti-semite right that's for those uh knuckle dragons and as a result much of the polite anti-Semitism or sometimes the less poet anti them of the educated classes gets excused because people think those people can't be anti-semites they're nice people and it's important to understand that anti-semites have always had a motivation they have typically not said we don't like the Jews star we don't like the Jews just because they're not like they've hated Jews because of things they've accused Jews of doing in the world harm to the world right inventing monotheism not accepting uh the Messiah inventing capitalism inventing communism all the ills Jews have been blamed for and today the state of Israel is the harm in the world that uh the Jewish people is blamed for but the fact that they have a reason an account of the harm Jews cause does not differentiate them from Hitler who also had an account of the harm Jews cause and wrote a whole book about it Professor there's a growing debate within American Jewelry about whether or not anti-Semitism is rising or sort of has always been there and now it's sort of hit that moment when the media has to start to pay attention into it how do you feel about this issue because it's coming up against each other in terms of the two dew points within the community where one feels like it's it's always been there and this is just everyone else is catching up to it and others feel no something is really rising and bubbling up to the top I would love to hear also just your comments on things like BDS things like college anti-Semitism because I went to school I'm old now but I went to school once upon time and I remember BDS being a thing that was smaller but was growing and it just wasn't as mainstream as it is now what do you think uh is happening here sort of business as usual or really something is starting to Bubble up here that we haven't seen before it has always been anti-Semitism and it takes different forms right in the 50s Jews could not buy houses in many neighborhoods because of restrictive covenants the whole movie about it gentleman's agreement so in the 40s 50s just couldn't join clubs uh live in certain places there was a real anti-Semitism of that kind of a wasp at that cemetism would say but what we see today some things are clearly new the inability of religious Jews to walk down the streets of New York without being attacked attacked on a regular regular basis this is something new and extraordinary and has really changed in New York from like the Haven for Jews in the diaspora the greatest diasporic city everywhere Jews fell completely at home to a dangerous place and there's also a sense that this violence is Downstream from a combination of government policies and signals that both signal hostility to the Jewish people and also combined with lax approaches to policing you know suggests that it's a Open Season that's clearly new you know the New York Times has never been a friend of the Israel or the Jewish people my former boss Seth lipsky likes to cite their editorial about the Eichmann trial where they uh suggested the fledgling Jewish State turned the other cheek so they were very critical as much of the world of the athman trial but we see now with the coverage of Hasidic schools is completely flabbergasting I used to be a journalist I've never seen anything like this it is a real Dearborn independent that's Henry Ford's anti-semitic news about it is a real campaign against the Jews which is who substituted in any other group than the Jews it would be Unthinkable and they are on a crusade that's another it's probably good that they are on a crusade and combined with pressure through policy on the educational Assad and the lack of safety on the streets I think it makes it a particularly challenging time now our organized Jewish groups in America too so often fighting against this you gentlemanly shall we say again the uh of course the criticize them that they speak out against it but they are limited in various ways first of all they rewards you don't represent Pacifica groups and heredity groups and those interests may be somewhat far away from them what's happening in the streets of Brookwood is often far from their minds but the question is also what are you going to do are you going to recommend tougher leasing policies that would you know conflict with many of the positions they feel they have to take today after the black lives matter protests and in many ways they might culturally share some of these criticisms of the Orthodox educational establishment and you know I think for many Jewish organizations the New York Times is like a Holy Grail uh source of Revelation that can't come out too much against it at the same time I think the group is protesting it it isn't enough right you can make lots of reports against anti-Semitism I think also I think there's a real problem that many Jewish groups because they're non-partisan they feel the need to be balanced they say we want to you know we're going to produce a left-wing anti-Semitism and right-wing anti-Semitism but as far as I know right-wing people aren't beating up uh Jews on the streets of New York I don't think the people who are are particularly political uh in general I wouldn't say they're politically motivated in a clear sense but that's the problem there's a clear problem that they're sort of unable and uh afraid to name do you have any recommendations for a course of action so first of all I don't want to get one back to the you mentioned called the college Council college is the easiest situation first of all it's not bind and you don't have to go the college thing is part of a long-standing decline in American higher education where I'm getting uh less bang for one buck in the product uh it's you know election less education and more and more social justice uh activism practicum so College simple recommendation don't go study engineering they don't protest so much um otherwise I think uh basic assumptions need to be questioned the Jewish diaspora communities have always been uh peripatetic and mobile that get comfortable in one place and they have to uh go somewhere else you know it is hard for me to imagine on this trajectory New York remaining uh comfortable environment for Jews of course moving isn't simple it's simple now right there's Israel there's Florida but that possibility needs to be explored and considered that would be a disaster for New York by the way you know I think the public call for such a move right before bam Community leaders would just say you know our community is going to have to consider pulling up States New York's not safe for us that would also send a loud political wake-up call Eugene before we let you go I have to ask you a couple of questions on the Israeli uh justice system in fact as we're recording now uh people won't be listening to this for a week but just five minutes ago the Supreme Court ruled that Arya Dairy is not eligible to be a minister in the Israeli government to give a few seconds of background Derry had a plea bargain about two or three years ago on a tax charge because of that he was disallowed from serving in the knesset then but the deal was that if there was a new election he would be allowed to run again the question that was never settled was whether he could be a cabinet officer if he runs in a new election and is named to the Coalition so this Supreme Court decided today that because of his plea bargain on the tax charge he's not eligible if anything that probably adds the fuel to the fire to the campaign to try to reign in the Supreme Court and not have them making these kinds of political decisions uh Eugene how do you see this playing out because uh again as I introduced you the think tank that you're involved with here in Israel is uh what I would consider to be one of the architects of the uh Netanyahu judicial reform plan so you know you're obviously a partisan I think on this issue but considering what's happened to Derry who I think is still pretty popular in the Orthodox Jewish Community how do you see this playing out yeah I want to explain what the problem is with the Supreme Court's decision which has nothing to do with you know whether it's a good idea for David to be a minister or not the Supreme Court in Israel has vast powers like no court anywhere else with no limits in America the politicians the president and the Senate pick the Supreme Court Justices in Israel the Supreme Court is actually picking the government Minister and without any law allowing it to do so that's the crucial thing there's a law that was passed specifically for Derek saying that someone in Darius situation can be a minister in the government that's what the law says the Supreme Court does not argue that's what the law says and they don't argue that the law is unconstitutional but that's also a brand new law that they just passed right now in order to let him in it's not like it's long-standing and bid on the books to make it a clear question to make it not a question of interpretation the swim Quest that he had the law but the law is not a good idea the law is unreasonable against what standard can they judge unreasonable in America a statue says that someone who's been indicted can be a minister which they can then no court would ever consider saying it's not a good idea here instead of the democratically elected representatives picking the Supreme Court the justices of the Supreme Court get to undemocratically pick the composition of the legislative branch there's nothing like it and that's why the court needs to be limited because it is not interpreting the law it's not sitting as a Corp it is acting as a Supreme Council of vast and unchecked Powers with absolutely no Democratic accountability what do you say to those who say that if the government is successful in reigning in the court and passing their judicial reform that it's going to spell the end of democracy in Israel we haven't just heard that from the left wing in Israel we've also heard that whispered from people high up in the Biden government it would be the beginning of democracy how is it democracy if you elect a government and the Supreme Court said you know what the people who you want to have as a minister it's not a good idea we decide right currently the results of elections don't matter because uh the Supreme Court can set them aside not for being against a written Constitution but for being against their own best judgment this is essential to restoring democracy which again this is not such a crazy idea the system in which the court does whatever it wants like this was only put in place by Justice Aaron Barack in what he called the judicial revolution in 1995 was Israel democracy in 1994 I don't hear people saying it wasn't nobody was complaining that there was no democracy when the left was in power for the first 40 years when um you know the second leftist parties ran Israel for the first four years of its existence there was no judicial review at all and Israel was certainly a democracy so this is crucial to restoring democracy and making elections matter in Israel Gene Contour of it show once again we thank you again for being with us we look forward to having you on again I certainly look forward to keeping in touch with you as this very uh important and breaking story in Israel rolls forward and it will over the next few months thank you so much Maury we just heard from Eugene kantarovich and he spoke about two very important topics of course uh anti-Semitism in the U.S BDS college campuses and he also spoke about the breaking news about Derry who the Supreme Court decided cannot be a cabinet minister by the time this program airs next week and we'll see what appeals there might be on that and what might happen with that but in the meantime Eugene had a lot to say what's your big takeaway from the interview well first off I learned that uh I should not have gotten a bachelor I should have gotten a BS instead so uh the professor taught me that he's encouraging people to be Engineers instead of instead of getting those Ba's I did think it's interesting whether he's talking about the judicial system in Israel or anti-semitism in America for him to bring in that history which we love in this program demonstrating explaining whether it's going back to the Eichmann trials or it's talking about the 1995 judicial decision in Israel it's just interesting for people to take a long view look at some of these things as opposed to the way they're sort of bottled for us into you know quick sound bites and an assumption that this is the first time this has ever happened the first time we've ever thought about it or the first time that people have had a bias against our community it's just fascinating to once again hear that repeatedly from guests Eugene to me also made a very important point when he mentioned that an anti-semite is not necessarily a nasty person it could be a person who addresses in his uh finest and who has great manners and speaks well and who really feels that he's promoting important causes in the meantime he still advances uh theories and ideas that are classic anti-Semitism and that we have to be careful about that unfortunately our enemies as we know through history very you often have not been the waters yes there's been the Cossacks and the Crusaders etc etc but there's also the people in business suits and uh who are very courteous but they can be very dangerous enemies in fact in some ways more dangerous enemy so that was my big take away from the interview now we come to uh the portion of the program where we talk about our influencer of the week Maury who's yours to me it's a no-brainer I hope we'd end up with the same one to me it's Merrick Garland I mean now the attorney general has a special counsel appointed to President Biden he has the already special counsel and the work not one but two situations with President Trump one for January 6 and the second for uh his own classified documents issue so you've got the attorney general who has multiple investigations going on against both parties biggest spokespeople in what's very interesting about it is that the appointee to the special counsel for Biden happens to be a former Trump pointy as well you gotta look at him and say to yourself if you're DC and you're walking around and you have someone with the authority and power that he does doing this on the Republican side and the Democratic side this guy is a force to be reckoned with right now in politics and I wouldn't be surprised if he may be our person of the week next week or the week after that I think he has the potential to be the man of the year we'll see you at the end of 2023 Who Time Magazine puts on their cover Mori we almost have the same person because I I was also thinking the same way about Merrick Ireland but I took one of your accused because you sometimes come up with something offbeat and softer and I decided to go for that also my influencer of the week is representative Ronnie Jackson Republican of Texas basically we have this whole controversy where the consumer product safety commission decided that they might start looking into the possibility of banning gas stoves because there are some health issues and of course uh this basically fell upon the predictable Democratic Republican divide but what representative Jackson said as he tweeted and he said if and I quote if the Maniacs in the White House come from my stove I'm sorry I don't have his Texas accent but they can pry it away from my cold dead hands come and take it that's what he said but what happened next is he encouraged supposedly his 550 000 Twitter followers to sign a petition to stop the consumer product safety commission from doing this and not only because of Jackson but because of other people who got involved so the uh consumer product safety commission said listen it was only an idea it's something we're thinking about we're going to look into it but he basically stopped them dead in their tracks but I do want to say one thing the consumer product safety commission did recently issue a recall on one particular stove of one particular company which involved 28 000 units so I'm not minimizing the health and safety issues of this it's absolutely important to make sure that the whatever stove you have gas or electric is working properly and is vented properly but I can also tell you that when it comes to uh gastos my wife would not give up her gas stove either in fact one time I suggested it I said you know we're dealing with the electricity company and we're dealing with the gas company it's too many bills why don't we just get an electric stove and consolidate and she said absolutely not I cook on fire my mother cooked on fire my grandmother cooked on fire and we're keeping our gas stove it's also a problem of when the electric goes out when you have a power issue you could still you know we've had many many situations where you just like a cook Arab Shabbos on Friday if the lights are out but the gas is still on Benjamin so there's multiple reasons there's a lot of cases to be made that's a good point Maury especially if you're living in Florida where there's sometimes power outages because of hurricanes or in New York there can be very bad weather that causes the electricity to go down and more often than not the gas will still be working I also just want to say that I love your person of the week for the listeners please message us or talk or tweet us if anybody can identify from quote from my cold dead hands where that comes from a very articulate way of making your point Benjamin an oldie but goodie in politics I and finally today Maury uh our fearless forecast so uh first I have to uh eat some Crow because my last Fearless forecast basically uh had Joe Biden announcing that he was going to run again for president on around Martin Luther King day uh I make an excuse that because of the classified document Scandal it would have been a really bad look for him to announce he's running again until this thing is either settled or blows over so I'm going to give myself that excuse but what I will say is that next week the Federal Reserve board is having another meeting on February 1st to discuss interest rate policy my prediction is is that they're going to give a very strong hint that they are going to start slowing down the increases or even give a hint that they might start stopping them because I think if you take a look at the action of the financial markets things have calmed down enough and I don't think the FED wants to induce a recession with their uh raising of interest rates and I think they're going to give a very clear hint that they're just about done I love it now I think you deserve a mulligan on the first forecast because of the uh various political things that occurred I don't think you could have predicted that despite your incredible forecastability has been young and so I think that if in the next few weeks Biden does announce I think we'll still give you on the on the big board we'll still give you a check for that so I don't think it's over until it's over yep in Yemen so uh we appreciate the humility but I I think we're going to give a couple more weeks to see what happens here Benjamin I I accept that I have my Fearless forecast is the comeback of Kamala Harris the LA Times just produced a uh a poll which showed that her favorable was 40 with her unfavorable at 53 percent of those polled those are very high in favorables and the margins are very high and the LA Times goes on to talk about how her predecessors whether it was Cheney or it was Gore or it was Biden when he was vice president or even Pence to some degree uh just did not have the unfavorables that she's had now the midterms are over she's going to be now on a path where I think she's a little more free there's not as much scrutiny on her she doesn't have to go in there and break a bunch of ties in the Senate so I think that she starts to get her footing a little bit better she wasn't attached Biden went to the Border she didn't have to go to the border so that issue isn't as attached to her anymore so I think she gets a little Freer in terms of uh her ability to go out there make her case make the argument I think that we start to see these favorables tick up uh and the unfavorables tick down so I think she's gonna have a comeback uh and I think we start to see a lot more positive press her away and getting her some wins as well and really the body Administration cannot afford to have their vice president in a funk uh and so I think they push out they're careful more careful than they were in the first two years about the things that they associate with her and if there's ever been any talk about Biden looking for a different vice president in the 2024 I think higher approval ratings will put an end to that conversation for sure 100 that wraps it up for today and thank you for listening as always once again and special thanks to Professor Eugene kontarovich for joining us today and discussing BDS and anti-Semitism in America and also knowledgeably discussing in a knowledgeable fashion as he always does the Israeli court system and how it differs from the U.S system and why it needs reform until next week you are listening to power politics unpacking the Power Players shaping our world a mishbacha podcast enjoyed this episode leave us a rating and share with your friends have a topic you'd like us to discuss or a guest to suggest we'd love to hear from you drop us a line on Twitter at the mishbacha OR at nishbahad.com forward slash powerpolitics this episode was produced by Jag and Detroit podcasts with sound design by Cedar media Studios see you next week [Music]