 I'm Marcia Joyner and this is Community Matters. As you know, we have been doing a series of instant, as close to instant as we can get issues that show up maybe once in a while, but not every day. And today was one of those days. The president of the United States said that he could get rid of part of the 13th Amendment by executive order. And that is children that are born to immigrants. He wants, right now, they are citizens, American citizens. He wants to do away with that. And so, I asked our former Attorney General, Lieutenant Governor, and dear friend, because you know that I only talk to dear friends, my dear friend Doug Chen, to talk to us about the 14th Amendment, 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, what they mean, and can he or cannot do away with it. Doug? Great. Thank you for coming. Marcia, it's always great to be on your show. Anytime you want to call me up, I'm here. That's how special you are. Oh, your show. I know that with all your viewers, you always talk about very important issues. And so, it's an honor to be able to talk about this, even though it's a very serious day and our president continues to just flummox all of us with the various statements that he makes. Yeah. For anyone that doesn't remember, this is the gentleman that did the first, the very first time that Trump said something stupid about keeping the Muslims out of America. You were the first Attorney General to go get him. Certainly. So tell us about the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, what they are, and can he do anything? Sure. Well, I mean, I think if you really want to ask about the amendments to the Constitution and why they became such a part of our U.S. history, it really was, those were parts of the Constitution that came into place after the Civil War, when slavery was abolished, and the United States, through its leadership, through Abraham Lincoln, and through so many of the people that are our heroes of us, all of us in American history, made decisions that were deciding that people are equal, that there is no one superior race over another, that you can't enslave people, and that you need to treat people equally and justly in everything that the American government does. And so that's really the most basic standpoint of where all of this comes from. And so part of those amendments that came through during that time was the amendment that says that everybody who is born in the United States is a citizen of the United States, and really the history behind that was the idea that if somebody was born of a slave or somebody who was formerly a slave, that that person, that child, was going to be a citizen of the United States. And so what you see is that these amendments are really in the idea of a birthright that allows you to become a citizen of the United States. It came from that kind of history, that kind of desire to really be able to make sure that we were able to treat people justly. There were some U.S. Supreme Court cases that actually even came from, had to do with Chinese American immigrants that came to the U.S. that were decided by the United States Supreme Court, so it has been addressed by our U.S. Supreme Court, saying that the children of Chinese immigrants that come to the United States, when they're born in the U.S., then they're citizens of the U.S. So our U.S. Supreme Court held that back in the 1890s, so this has been around for a long time. So here we are today. President Trump has said what he said, you're so timely, I feel like we're on CNN. This is how present day we are and what's going on. I mean, I think what everybody's saying, bottom line before, I mean I think we can talk about this issue. I mean, bottom line, everybody's saying this is just a political stunt by President Trump before the midterm elections to appeal to his base. But if anything, I can see what we get out of all of it, it's a great opportunity for us to be able to revisit history, for us to remind ourselves why it is that we believe the things that we do and to really reaffirm those values. What do you think, perhaps, that he really is a ploy or do you think he doesn't know that he can't, with an executive order, do away with an amendment to the Constitution? Do you think that's just a ploy or does he really believe that he can do that? Because the reason I asked you to talk about it, so many people do not understand what it takes to remove an amendment to the Constitution. Sure. Well, your first question is whether or not President Trump really understands the Constitution. I don't think he does. That's why he makes all the decisions that he does, and whether or not he means to do it just to be able to stir up the U.S. or to get people to focus their attention on him. I don't know, I don't really care, but I do care in the sense that whenever this comes up, it really makes people have to ask themselves, okay, well then why is it that our Constitution stands for what it stands for? So bottom line, when it comes to this, first of all, it's wrong for the President to say something like this, because when he took his oath of office, then he swore to uphold the United States Constitution, just like when I became the Attorney General or when I became the Lieutenant Governor, I swore to uphold the United States Constitution. So that's why it's incumbent upon me, not just as a private citizen, but within my office, to call him out on whether or not we have these violations of the Constitution like the President is talking about. Do you think that he truly understands that? No, I mean, I just think that it's just something that... He would just assume be a dictator, where he could do this. Right. Well, and it appeals to a certain portion of the population that wants to go back to a time where you were able to exclude certain races, certain minorities, based upon things like whether or not they were born in the U.S. or things like that. And I just think that that's very troubling. It goes against the history of the U.S., even trying to set himself up by taking sort of dictatorial type actions like this. Even that goes against what the U.S. government stands for. So there was this Chinese Exclusion Act, and there were times when in spite of these amendments, minorities were not treated very well. Right. Even the war in Korea. The Koreans had to petition, the American, the Koreans living in America, had to petition the government to allow them to fight in that war. Sure, sure. And it all starts with leadership at the top. I mean, I think what I hear from what you're talking about is that oftentimes when you end up with bad decisions or even worse, that the public being kind of the average person in the public being riled up against a certain minority group, a lot of it comes because you have a leader that says things that denigrates or puts down or characterizes a minority group as a stereotype or something that's less than human. So back in the day when the Chinese were excluded from the U.S., it all started with a lot of political cartoons, a lot of just different words that were said by the leaders at the top. Is that what the Coolies were building the railroad? Right. So in other words, describing the people who had built the railroad as somehow less than human, portraying them in cartoons as such, that's not that far off. I mean, that was like more than 100 years ago, but that's not more than 100 years ago. But it's not that far off from just the president today, describing Mexicans as people who are all criminals or rapists or people who are bringing firearms across the border, describing Muslims as all terrorists. It's that same kind of rhetoric that I think then the average person hears the leader of our country saying, and then it starts to weigh on them. It's like a horrible, negative marketing campaign. Do you think that he knows that the Americans took Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, California from the Mexicans? Sure. Does he know that? No. I just think that I don't begin to understand his mind because there's nothing to consider. Yeah. All I know is that what ends up coming... All I know is the result of it or the consequences that it revs up a certain group of people to now feel empowered to be able to say, well, look, my president is talking about something like this, so therefore the worst instincts that I have inside of me, I can now be able to verbalize those prejudices or even worse, I can act on them. Act on them. Like this week or last week, I guess it was, Saturday before last, and the man went into a black church, the doors were locked, so he couldn't shoot up the church. So he goes to a grocery store and shoots two people who just happened to be black. He didn't know who they were. Right. And you're actually bringing up a story that didn't get much reported, that didn't get reported much because there were so many other stories going on of somebody who was sending bombs to all these other... And then after that is the synagogue. So tragedy after tragedy. It's like this week has been an unbelievable week. Right. And then today, even though the mayor of Pittsburgh had asked the president not to come for the funeral, and he came anyway, and so now we've got all these people in this little town trying to surround his car, trying to say, no, we don't want you here. We want to bury our dead in our sacred time and place. We don't want you. Which was an incredible scene as they surrounded the car, the president's car. So he goes off to the hospital where there were still some people. Right. I don't actually know enough about the details in today, but what I do think is happening is that there are people who want to hold the president or his administration responsible for the words that they say, that it's not enough to just say all of these things and then at the time of tragedy occurs to then pretend that you never said those things. Yeah. But I think that they were right in saying, we want to take care of our dead. We want this to be a sacred moment. As you know, when the president comes, all the security people and all of this entourage comes with him, and that just gets in the way. And I think that they wanted that time to be sacred. Sure. I would assume that simply because you know about all the security that goes lockstep. Tell us now about this thing of wanting, saying that he was going to change the 13th Amendment. Now, I'm sorry, the 14th Amendment. Now tell us, what would it take to change an amendment to the Constitution? How do we go about that? Well, I think changing the amendment to a Constitution requires the vote of the people and it requires Congress actually to be able to get an amendment like that to even be teed up for that to happen. So I think there would be a lot of very serious steps that would have to take place. We're going to take a break and we'll be back in 60 seconds. One minute. Hello, my name is Stephanie Mock and I'm one of three hosts of Think Tech Hawaii's Hawaii Food and Farmer series. Our other hosts are Matt Johnson and Pamai Weigert. And we talk to those who are in the fields of our local food system. We talk to farmers, chefs, restaurateurs, and more to learn more about what goes into sustainable agriculture here in Hawaii. We are on at Thursdays at 4 p.m. and we hope we'll see you next time. Hey, Stan Energyman here on Think Tech Hawaii. And they won't let me do political commentary so I'm stuck doing energy stuff but I really like energy stuff so I'm going to keep on doing it. So join me every Friday on my lunch hour. We're going to talk about everything energy especially if it begins with the word hydrogen. We're going to definitely be talking about it. We'll talk about how we can make Hawaii cleaner. How we can make the world a better place. Just basically save the planet. Even Miss America can't even talk about stuff like that anymore. We got it nailed down here. So we'll see you on Friday at noon with Stan Energyman. Aloha. Aloha, I'm Marsha and we're back. This is Community Matters. Today we are talking to, of all people, my dear friend, Lieutenant Governor Doug Chen. I have to get used to all the different titles. Correct. Me too. And we're talking about the President of the United States saying that he was going to change the 14th Amendment so that children born here in the United States to immigrants were not citizens. And he said incorrectly that we were the only country, nation in the world that allowed this kind of thing to have people that were born on this territory or in the state to be a citizen. A. That was wrong. The 30 other nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights addresses that sort of thing. But those are things he doesn't know about. So tell us, what would it take to change the Constitution? Not just this, but obviously not an executive order. So what does it take? What are the mechanics of changing an amendment? Well, let me start off by saying that President Trump isn't trying to introduce a constitutional amendment because what he was saying was he wasn't able to order and get around what the Constitution says and basically create a constitutional crisis if he were to do something like that. Senator Lindsey Graham who's South Carolina who is known conservative tried to introduce a constitutional amendment back in 2010 that addressed this very issue didn't get out of the starting locks. Who knows if these new statements don't empower him to do something like this. But getting to your question of what would it take to be able to make a constitutional amendment take place it really takes a large majority of the states, two thirds to all be able to go along with something like that as well as just a vote of the people, a vote of the Congress in order to be able to get all these things to happen. It's unlikely that you would be able to pull off that kind of constitutional amendment. I think the danger is that like I said earlier when you have a leader that says these very radical really just statements that just go so far against what we would normally believe in as Americans or as people who live in the state of Hawaii when you have those statements made that empowers people to say I'm going to introduce a constitutional amendment like that or I'm going to begin a discussion on those topics. In Hawaii where we have so many people from so many different countries, cities, states do you think especially those coming from countries where they are dictators do you think that that kind of rhetoric would scare them? If they have children do you think that would scare them? Do you hear him say that? I think the anti-immigrant rhetoric that takes place now is scary to people even when it doesn't apply to them so that was something that I experienced firsthand when I saw the Muslim ban go through it caused a lot of people who were foreign thinking about going to the University of Hawaii to reconsider the offer that was made to them from UH even though they didn't come from one of the countries that was banned they said well it doesn't really sound like the United States is a very conducive place these days that's very welcoming to foreigners so I'm going to be educated in Canada or Australia or I'm going to work for companies in Canada or Australia so there is no question those of us who disagree with the President might scoff at how effective he can actually be it does have an indirect effect because it tells the rest of the world well America is not what you were accustomed to seeing in terms of the values that it stood for and so you should rethink how much you want to do business with or to have a relationship with people who are in the US Has that hindered foreign business? Do you think? We certainly made that argument that basically for foreign commerce or for being able to help make our economies more productive whether it's in the rest of the US but right here in the state of Hawaii where a quarter of our businesses are foreign owned and a quarter of the people who live here one out of four of the people who lived here were born in a foreign country so I'm not even counting children of immigrants like myself or grandchildren of immigrants like Governor Ike this is just this is a place that has long celebrated diversity and being able to reach out to the international community being welcoming to the international community so I think that there's a lot of evidence that these kinds of statements eventually it does hurt our economy right here in Hawaii Now back in the 70's I forget when it was when we had the oil strike and all of the 49 states had the oil strike and we didn't and finally there was this great cartoon and it showed this traditional dress and a Hawaiian dressed in hula so you could really funny you don't look like Americans oh goodness then they rationed the oil when they said oh that's a part of the United States then we'll ration it but you know I thought that was so precious that people sometimes don't think that way until they like you said they weren't willing to come to school here and all of a sudden that's like oh that's a part of America right right I heard Vice President Pence talk about how he was trying to draw a distinction saying well I think what the president is really trying to do is he's trying to stop people so let's just be completely fair to the president and I think what Vice President Pence is saying is that we're talking about the children of illegal immigrants those are the people who should be denied citizenship again I think that's a very slippery slope that we're talking about because the bottom line there's something about being born in the US just like you said that's part of our international moral fabric being born in a country that makes you a citizen of that country what about the dreamers weren't they born here correct actually no I take that back so dreamers were people who were brought children were brought into the US so that's how that that took place they can't become citizens they're not eligible for citizenship correct because they were brought into the US and then were raised here if they'd been born in the US they would have been citizens of the US but because they were brought into the US and then grew up within the American culture there's not really a mechanism under our immigration laws that allows them to become citizens because they're the children of people who illegally entered the US so right away even what we're talking about now the fact that we're having this discussion it just shows you how far off we've gone because there's a lot of aloha even in Hawaii for people who were dreamers we most recently know how the community was so upset when that coffee farmer was deported no it seems to me that he had a family and a farm what happens to the family when you just throw him away what happens to them well and I think that that's part of the attack that takes place so as much as we you know those of us on the legal side of these things we'll fight to try to stop these things what we have to see is that once you make a bad policy decision and starts to be implemented it has an effect what about the families that are separated at the border right now that still haven't been reunited even though the US is supposedly trying to reunite them there are still reports of children the courts say they have to the public opinion says that they have to do that and yet we all know that there's many parents and children who still haven't been reunited well that affects the family it does and you imagine little children who grow up like that what does that do to them in the long run are we raising a generation of terrorists so I don't think it's necessarily they would become they would become terrorists or they could create an embitterness but I just wouldn't want to suggest that everybody who is bitter towards the US would become a terrorist well no because the last few terrorists that we've seen were born and raised right here in the United States they didn't come from some strange place so in fact most of the violence that's taken place in the last two years has been from domestic terrorists that didn't even come from the banned countries that were talking about they didn't come from the banned countries they came from other countries where they were born here right in the US those last three incidents we were talking about all came from people who were home grown yeah and I hate to say the social media because I hate to brand all of it with a big brush but the sites that these people gain energy let me put it that way they gain energy and embolden them like the site is called the red seed SEED and that does exactly that it seeds these people in their hate not only against Jews but everybody everybody so I hate to say that this is what's going on with the internet but that's where it is well that's all the more reason why it's important to have shows like these where you can be able to inform people, educate them so that they can be able to hear another side another side that's really been a part of how we have values that respect people that believe in freedom quality for people that's what America is all about yes and we want to keep it that way and I really thank you for always taking a step the stand being out there now you're going to encourage your new attorney general to take a stand oh absolutely and he's great I like him so thank you as always for being our guest thank you for being who you are taking a stand and we will see you next time aloha marsha aloha to the people