 Okay, it's Friday, whoo, I'm Jay Fidel, this is ThinkTekken. Every Friday we take a look at Trump week. I wouldn't say celebrate it, I wouldn't say that, we just take a look at it. And one of the things, last hour in life in the law, we had Scott Horschberger, who was former Attorney General of Massachusetts, and my brother Gene Fidel, who teaches law at Yale. And they talked about an organization called Lawyers Defending American Democracy, which is an effort to sort of invigorate, mobilize lawyers around the country who be, you know, to be more articulate and more forceful about protecting the rule of law, which they're not doing. The silence is deafening about lawyers and people, you know, who are trained to defend the rule of law and not involved in the conversation. You know, one of the things is they, you know, they're not going to be a leader, they're just going to try to foment more conversation, more action by lawyers and legal organizations, especially like the American Bar Association and law schools all around. This is really a serious problem, because if the lawyers don't do anything, then they buy in. The acquiescence is deafening. So what do you guys think about that? I mean, this is a problem of major magnitude. Is this a solution or why? I think it'll help. I think everybody needs to put in their two cents. Like what Chairman Cummings said at the end of that hearing, when someone asks you in 2019, what did you do? Did you stay on the sideline silent or did you say something? And I think it's important for everyone to start talking about this again. Yeah. And if the administration comes up with some cockamamie legal twist, which is just not true and not constitutional and unfair and mean, somebody has to say something. Who better equipped to say something than a lawyer who's trained in the law, who has dedicated his career and often his life to protecting the rule of law and advancing the rule of law. So I think, you know, we should talk about that on the show. We should find out what the lawyers are saying. We should compliment them when they are speaking. And we should try to mobilize them just as my brother and Scott Horschberger are trying to mobilize them. Maybe we could start inviting one to come on the show. Don't talk about it. They said they'd come back. One by one by one by one by one by one. Lawyers in this community, which are not so easy to get lawyers in this community to talk about it. The members of the law are to talk about it. And maybe we can do our own lawyers defending American democracy right here on Trump weekend. Right. Hey, what do you got? Well, the way I see it is the gears of government, the way this government was intended to function was a system of checks and balances. And for, in my mind, we're not seeing the balances or the checks, excuse me, the checks stand up. We're not seeing the Senate. We're not seeing, well, we are seeing the House now stand up as one of the checks and balances. But there's a whole litany of other sources to stand up when something's not quite right. And we definitely are in a world of something not quite right. So the question is, at what point now does the citizens or the voters of this country, are they going to start writing to their congressmen and saying enough's enough? The Bar Association. I'm sorry, but also the media. When is the professional society of journalists going to stand up and say, you know, enough is enough? And we're not seeing anyone stand up to the level of now's the time. Actually, I'm sorry, but it was a year and a half ago. Two years ago was the time. But we've lapsed in two years and here we are. And so if not now, when? We can't miss this moment. We just can't. I think in my mind, he goes more powerful every day that we don't actually do something concrete that stops him and says this is wrong. I don't know why they are so hesitant to file this impeachment. Even if it doesn't go all the way through, they keep saying, well, there's nothing worse than a failed impeachment. No, there is something worse. No impeachment at all. The status quo is way worse. Thank you very much. Because the status quo is eroding under us, yeah. It is. Well, let's look at a case where the attorneys of this country, be it in the colleges, the universities, the Bar Association, let's look at an example right now that's taking place this week. And that is, Trump is denying his age to be called in on a subpoena basis. He wants to prevent McGahn being called in on a subpoena basis. He's calling him a liar, too. He's now Stephen Miller, because of the immigration issues. He's saying he's not going to come in on a subpoena basis. Since when does the President of the United States bar a legal subpoena from Congress? Don't use the word bar. OK, well, try not to. Legal bar over that bar. OK, but here's a point, and here's an opportunity for the Bar Association to say, wait a minute. Stop this. And they're not at this point. Yeah. Now, what's interesting in these few moments, and for that matter in the show last hour with Scott Hoshberger and Jean Fidel, is this. We're not talking about the Democratic candidates advancing their platforms. We're not talking about them fighting among themselves and their constituents fighting among themselves about who's best and who's not best. We're not talking about that. We're talking about reacting to what is going on in Washington right now. This is not, we're not talking about the election. We're talking about dealing with what is happening right now. Because there is so much bad happening right now, that's right now is when we should face those issues. The election is the biggest issue, I think, that we have that is the most important thing that people need to start looking at, thinking about, talking to all of our new little tech geniuses that are coming out of college on how to protect our country from the same thing that happened before, because Trump is doing nothing. He's doing absolutely, why would he? He helped him win last time. Why would he want to change it now, right? So somebody has to do something about it, at least to start talking about it. How about impeachment? You mentioned that there seems to be more reason, more we seem to be more open to impeachment, at least I think the three of us anyway. I know I am. Yeah, and I am. I know it's hard, and I know a failed impeachment is not so good, and there's a lot of resistance. But what are our choices? We can go back to censure. You talked about censure the last time. I'm more in favor of that. I'm more in favor of that. I looked into that, and I'm less in favor of it now after looking more into it. It's really nothing. It's really nothing. It's just a statement that's not going to make a lot of difference. All it's going to do is create a lot of hoopla. That's not going to make a difference. So if we're going to create hoopla anyway, I say let's create hoopla about something that's going to make a difference. So I used to be for censure, but I'm not. Sorry. I have to disagree on this one. That's all right. That's good. I know you're coming in our direction on this. I feel it, but you don't know it. OK, again, I mean, Trump is actually using this on the White House lawn yesterday like a maestro. He's saying, oh, well, they're just, you know, they're mad, madly driven to further, you know, trying to damage my presidency. They're obsessed. And go ahead, because the American people are waiting for things to get done, and that's what my administration is here to do. So we're playing right into his song sheet. Yeah, well, I think what's interesting, you know, and we've talked about this, is that it's really brilliant. It's brilliant in the way, you know, dictators have been brilliant in the past. What you do is you divide the country and you make you polarize the parties. And then you say that anybody who doesn't agree with you is operating on a political basis. So I mean, it's a step transaction sort of thing. And that's what he's doing. He's saying, if you don't agree with me, then you must be politicizing this. But he's politicized it. He's already politicized it. Well, remember, in the last week they're saying, he's both the victor and a victim all in the same sentence. Yeah. You know, if you listen to his overtures, that's exactly how he's playing it. Yeah. You know, how schizophrenic is that? Well, I think it's really getting crazy, you know, to trip off schizophrenic is really getting crazy. Now, the things that he's doing are so outrageous, even against what he was doing a few weeks ago that we really have to, we have to step up. The lawyers have to step up and everybody has to step up. So what happens if the oversight committees and the committee on the judicial in the house, they subpoena and there's this blocked. They're just blocked by Trump himself. They have to enforce it in court. And how long does that take? Well, you know, you have courts that have been stocked with conservative judges. I don't know exactly what would happen and where it would wind up. And if it winds up in the Supreme Court, I certainly don't know where it's gonna, I mean, I believe notwithstanding an article in this morning's times, that the Supreme Court is going to allow the citizenship question on the census. It's gonna allow that, even though it's obvious the way to suppress voting. And change the dynamic of distributing funds, tax money out into the community. So it has to go to the courts. And I think that he's setting it up that way, but can we rely on that? I mean, if you look at a timeline, it looks like before you can go down the road of impeachment, you have to get these answers, more answers from again, from AIDS. You know, all this more information, more than what Mueller got in his investigation. The problem is that that's gonna take so much time. It's gonna take the way that political capital that you were given in the midterms to do something for the American people. So go ahead, just keep running out the clock, and that's what the president's doing. And in the meantime, the Democrats are being damaged by all these investigations, all investigation, and no work in Congress. And yeah, frustrated investigations. So that's why I say censor now, based on the report today, censor immediately, and get that out of the way. Checkmark that off as a mission accomplished. Then start drafting laws and passing laws. Don't fall into the trap of not doing anything because you're like a dog with a bone and you can't let go of it. Both houses to pass a law, you know? But at least you say, we sent to the Senate and they sat on it and it died. At least you have a story to tell. And that's the whole point of a censor. We had a story to tell, and here's why we did it. And this is for the American public to understand these are the provisions of the censor and let the American public take it as it is. And when you're finished and you finally get the Senate to come around to a major miracle on anything that Trump doesn't want, he'll veto it. Just as he vetoed the Yemen bill and stopped supporting the war in Yemen, he vetoed that bill in order for that to become law now and has to be overridden. You know, lots of luck, lots of luck. That's not going to happen. Is it the chicken or the egg? If enough citizens get riled up enough, based on the censor and the information within that censor, will they not call their representatives and knock on their doors? That's the only thing these people understand. How many times in a day do you want them to knock on the doors? As these constituents are actually protesting, then they start paying attention. But until that happens, they sit on their thumbs. Not only the lawyers, it's every one of us. Every one of us, and I'm afraid what's happening is everyone is overloaded with all of this. They are done with this, what I hear from so many people. Oh, I don't want to hear anymore about that. Oh, I can't watch that anymore. I can't take any more of that. And it's like, wait a minute, that's what all of this has led up to, so that we would do that. It's almost as... Burned out by design. Yeah, by design, we have been overwhelmed and burnt out, so nobody wants to call their, what good does it do? That's why everyone sits in here. You see how, you see how troubled this is, because, you know, he's knocking on the press. It's still a war against the press, and he's trying to undermine the press at every turn. And Sarah Huckabee Sanders, she's undermining the press at every turn, and there's lies going on. And at the same time, the press as an economic model is losing money in less profitable and small regional papers are going out of business every day. My brother was talking about that. And so who is going to report on what is actually happening? For example, the peace in the times, I think this morning, about how the military lawyers are going to be assigned to act as immigration lawyers. That's outrageous and in violation of policy that's existed since World War II. He's like, he's recruiting military to do everything. They're going to be doing everything to keep people out of the country. He's enforcing the border with them. Okay, how do we know this about the lawyers? I was reading that article, I was saying, how do we know this? Do we know this because Trump made a press release on it because the Sarah came out at a little press conference in the Rose Garden? She's not doing press conferences anymore and neither is he. It's filtered news, it's all planned. It's a, you know, strategical, you know, dissemination. Sound bites and that's it. How do we know this? Somebody leaked it. That's how we find out what's going on in this government. Not because the government tells us or shows us or allows us access, just to the contrary, it always has to get leaked. This is a road to disaster. And he stands there this morning and says I'm the most transparent president that ever was. I mean, this morning he said that on his way to the NRA thing. And then at the NRA conference. The NRA. The NRA, I'm listening to him talk about how Democrats want to take your guns. They want to let all the illegals in. They want crime to go unchecked. This is crazy comments. And the crowd is eating it up. He wants to reverse the bump sock thing. And this takes me to the whole thing about, it happened this week, didn't it? The militia. Right. The militia was, was. On the border. On the border of capturing and imprisoning people they felt illegally crossed the border. They had guns and they were operating outside the law completely. And I guess the government was letting this happen. The FBI stepped in, I think the FBI, good for them. And they stopped it. But wow, and it reminds me of that whole story about the motorcycle guys. He has the motorcycle guys. Bikers for Trump. I've got the bikers for Trump. Bikers for Trump. And all the bad guys. He has these militia guys for Trump, you know? And he does. And this gives me such a headache we're gonna have to take a short break. I'm sorry, we'll be right back. Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. My show is based on my book also titled Beyond the Lines. And it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership, and finding greatness. I interview guests who are successful in business, sports, and life, which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness. Join me every Monday as we go Beyond the Lines at 11 a.m. Aloha. Aloha, I'm Wendy Lowe, and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at two o'clock, live from Think Tech Hawaii. And on our show, we talk about taking your health back. And what does that mean? It means mind, body, and soul. Anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're gonna be talking about. Whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health, whatever it means, let's take healthy back. Aloha. We're back, we have much more. Tim, what else do we have? Well, let's just touch a little bit about your concern about the upcoming election. And also let's talk about the candidates. The field of candidates now, a full 20 candidates. It's a horse race. But there was, I share your concern about the integrity of the 2020 election. And we now are finding out, again, maybe a few leaks, that former DHS director, Kirsten, was actually prohibited from talking to the president about her concerns about Russian interference. McVaney, director of staff, said, you're not gonna talk about it. You're not gonna bring that up. He doesn't like to talk about it because it reminds him that maybe his election as president was somehow not legitimate. And so any talk about Russian interference for 2020 will not be discussed with the president of the United States. How frustrating would that be for you as the director of Homeland Security and say, I can't talk about real evidence that the Russians are planning midterm and trying to work on our magic on 2020? You're not gonna do anything about it. Well, because the DHS Congress is not gonna do, we are at the brink of a major disaster, crisis. It's every day. The other thing is that, I forget the guy's name, but the one who was just made Homeland Security. McElene or whatever McElene, McElene, McElene. McElene or whatever McElene I think, McElene. He was the one. I'm sorry, I can't remember. He was the one who was told that he should violate the law, okay? And because ignore that law, go do bad things with the people trying to cross the border. And then Trump would pardon him. Oh my gosh, that was... That itself to me is impeachment, right there. Yeah, right there. That one thing. You've broken your oath of office to protect the country, follow its laws. You've broken the law by ordering someone to break the law. And then to offer him a pardon. That's abuse on top of law-breaking, abuse on top of law-breaking. How does nobody investigate him? What is the House of Representatives waiting for? Not only do they have the MULUP report, they have all these other things that they can cite and move ahead. What are they waiting for? Again, I'm not ready for the impeachment because I'm ready for the censor. What do you think the House should do right now? Censor. No, in terms of investigation. They're done investigating. They have all they need. All they need is in that report right now. Talk to most attorneys. They go, if I was a prosecuting attorney, which I used to be, it's all right there and I can move forward. If it was anyone else, it would support on conclusion. Right? Do you know what I have? Even just one thing, one thing alone would have been enough to go forward with an impeachment, right? And I think now, after what I learned about censor, because they don't just say, okay, you're censured and it's a stamp, we say, oh, we got the evidence, bam. There's a fight that goes on about it. So he would fight back against the censor. Okay, what's the next point? Next point, yeah, we already did this one. Okay, so let's talk about, again, the pending election and Trump's invited the CEO of Twitter to sit at his desk and complain that Twitter was removing some of his followers. Oh yeah, he's complaining against Twitter. The CEO of his followers are down. The CEO, Jack Dorsey, was sitting there in front of the Oval Office, in front of the United States, saying, yeah, we do remove bots and we do remove fake accounts. Yes, we are going to remove your followers. And Trump was incest about that. Also, he's incest about all the other social medias are not playing ball with him and not being as kind and being loyal to the Trump as they should be. Well, Pew Report just came out with this study and what it showed was that most people on social media are younger, they're wealthier, they're more educated, they don't see immigration necessarily as an evil thing. They see it as an improvement, how the country improves by getting in all sorts of new ways of thinking and doing work. And so the demographics of social media isn't really in line with Donald Trump right now. But he wants to make it as so. Well, there's a desert. So what I'm saying is, if you look at this chess game, it's one of the many pieces that he's already preparing for the 2020 election. And that is to get his control on social media and get the CEOs in line and or else maybe we'll do something in Congress about your company. Who knows if he's threatening them, but... An interesting fact about Twitter that I thought was pretty amazing, they can block pornography, they can block any kind of ISIS recruitment stuff. They don't block white supremacy. They don't block white supremacists and the little aside thing, and this is coming from the higher people in the company of Twitter, they might have to block some politicians if they block white supremacy. And I thought that was an interesting one. Here's part of Donald Trump's angst. He's not number one in the Twitter followers. You know who is? Well, excuse me, number two is Barack Obama. Now, Donald Trump has about 60 million followers. That's a lot, but he's behind Kim Kardashian. That's so... But you know, the thing is, when it comes to Twitter, it's amazing statistic is that about 10% of the posters are 80% of the messages. We have a very finite population of people who are posting and getting the attention of the audience. Well, we found out in the last couple of years that these social media organizations are very dangerous to democracy. They're very dangerous to public opinion. They're very dangerous to the truth. A great concern, and he is trying to manipulate that, as you say, for the election, but also running up to the election in everything he does. We're seeing an acceleration, don't you think, of all this. It's very, very concerning. I will argue on one benefit of social media, and that is campaign funding and how raising a grassroots campaign of the $27, for all these candidates, rather than one big megalithic corporate donation. The big tax money. So it's nice to see social media being used to get that grassroots money from voters. Yeah, I'll tell you though, I get requests for money from every candidate all day long and I have total fatigue over it. And maybe I'm early, maybe other people don't have total fatigue, but I think they will because it keeps on going and going and going. And it's not provocative, it's not telling you anything you don't know, it's telling you something, they think you want to hear, they think you already believe. I think it somehow perverts the process to have you to send all this mail to you and see how many fish it can catch. What else you got? Well, let's talk a little bit about, again, I'd like to go back to the subpoenas and how that's been blocked for everything. By fiat, by fiat. What's that? By fiat, by his command. That's how it's been blocked. I guess his reason, you tell me his reason is, oh, that's a political subpoena. Right. That's a political purpose. What did he say? It was a coup. It was a coup. An attempt, they're just trying to overthrow my administration. That's what he keeps saying. I'm just starting to see examples of running away from the Constitution and breaking the laws of the land. We are a nation of laws. And come on. Well, maybe that's what the election's all going to be about. Look at Joe Biden. He threw his hat in the ring this Thursday. If you watched his first political ad, it was talking about laws and the nation and where have we gone since eight years ago? Where have we gone in the last two years? And what a dramatic decline. And he highlighted Charlottesville, Virginia. And basically, his message was, this is a battle about the soul of America. And he wasn't talking about himself. He was talking about where we've gone in the last two years. And I thought it was a very powerful, powerful campaign ad. You know, he's got the Anita Hill problem. She's still mad at him. Yeah, she's still mad at him. Well, he went to her and apologized. But he didn't say, I'm sorry for what I did, is what some of the people are saying. He didn't say, I'm sorry for what I did. He just said, I'm sorry for the way you were treated. And there are various groups that are after him for now. His lack of full apology was what he did in the first place. Some of the chrism's well-founded. I mean, he's had many, many years to talk to her and have a one-on-one. He only did it recently. I'm sorry, but timing is everything. You should have done this a long time ago. This is an example. You take a good candidate. I mean, I think he's a good candidate. I'm not sure he's my favorite candidate, but he'd take a good candidate and then take him apart. And it's not so much that Trump would criticize Biden right now. He can wait, he can wait. But he can have his proxies criticized Biden. Thinking of other people, third parties to come and criticize Biden. He can undermine Biden by using social media attacks that are totally anonymous, coming from who knows where, Russia, for example. And it's those little things that one by one, they knock off the Democratic candidates. And I think we're gonna see that. I think we are seeing that. Well, we've already had Trump, and we knew where the nickname was coming. We've talked about it. Sleepy Joe. Sleepy Joe. Sleepy Joe said, he's too old. I'm all energetic and young, right? And so, I loved Joe Biden's response to that, though, because he just said, well, we all know who Trump is. And then he just kinda smiled. Just stay with me and you'll see how much energy I have and you walk away. Here's why Joe Biden really does have some gravitas to him. And that is, if you remember the 2016 election, what was he doing? He was going into all the blue-collar towns in the Midwest, mid-terms. I mean, Joe Biden does have a corner on blue-collar workers. And that's what Trump got in Michigan, in Wisconsin, in Ohio. He got those folks to get out of their chairs and vote for him. Well, I think Joe Biden is a real threat to that. I hope so. So people have really gotta wake up to the problem. So last week, I predicted that we would have a distraction following the week of Mueller. And now we're in the week post, the Mueller phantasmagoric. And Trump has gotta do a distraction to get away from it, to get away from the inevitable conclusion. There are lots of bad acts revealed in the Mueller report. So what does he do? He goes to Iran. And he tries to impose sanctions against anyone who buys Iran oil, which creates this big tumult in Europe. We haven't seen the other shoe drop on that. Oh, it's not just Europe. We are not. Remember, Iran got injured. India gets 85% of their oil from Iran. Isn't East Asia too? I mean, pardon? East Asia too, yeah. Yeah. And it's not just Europe. So you're gonna have some angst with this. Yeah, I mean, it's really awful what was happening in Iran declared everybody in the American military a terrorist. So we're coming to war with Iran. And I suggest that's not gonna be the end of it. There's more to come next week. So if he wants to stay away from the Mueller report, we should predict there'll be further distraction and it'll be in some direction opposite the Mueller report. Some new thread. Something that makes him a hero. So next week, looking forward you guys, Tim Appachella, Cynthia Sinclair. Thank you very much on Trump week. Thank you for having us, Jay. Aloha, Nui, Loa. Aloha. Aloha, Nui, Loa.