The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report.
Welcome, welcome. Welcome, Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. Great to be together again. Hope you had a great weekend and it is. The summer is going well for people. I know a lot of folks are traveling out and about and a lot of vacations going on. Good on ya as the Aussies say.
In fact, last week I did an interview on Australian radio. TNT, it’s called a radio network in Australia. The host is a well known guy named Chris Smith and he has been a a host kind of on the scene for decades in Australia and Sydney and Queensland and he does a show and he had me on and it was I did well enough. We had a great conversation. They asked me to come on every two weeks. I’ll be on in Australia, huge in Australia, great guys. So that was fun. I have some great memories of Australia. I I went there in 2017 for about 10 days and then when I was in 1992 when I was. I guess 1993. I was out of college. I spent seven weeks in Australia. It’s an amazing place. Very easy to travel there as an American, it kind of feels like America with some funny accents and a little different geography. So anyway, good on you.
But what are we talking? About today in. A few minutes we’ll talk with Cheryl Chumley, my friend from The Washington Times. She is a super insightful, interesting woman writer, editor and now a podcaster, and we will also spend a few moments and. Catch up with Cynthia Hughes of the Patriot Freedom Project, get a J6 update later this week. There is a January 6th hearing, January 6th hearing and one of the subcommittees is meeting to do some oversight. We’ll see what they find out, so that will all be great and we’ll look forward to that. All right.
What do you need to know today? Well, the here’s the thing. Hypocrisy, as I’ve told you, is not a distinguishing characteristic. So let me set this up and set this up by saying Mark Paoletta is a very respected guy. He’s a a partner at a big law firm. He is a a well known lawyer. I think in. The Trump administration, he was the general counsel over at. OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, which is a very complicated job because OMB is very complicated has to do with the budgets and spending and all he served in the White House under, I think George W Bush, HW Bush. Anyway, he’s a Well known guy around the the swap. Not a swamp guy, but around the swamp. But he also is well known for a book he wrote, and the book is called Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in his own words. And it’s actually a little bit of a, a little bit of a a misnomer because Mark Paoletta it, it really was an interview, a series of interviews. With with. Clarence Thomas. And so it’s really his own words, but Mark Paoletta has a long history and is a a very close friend and a and a a confidant of Clarence Thomas. And so it was a a wonderful and important and sort of necessary guy to be able to get someone like that to open up. And to and to be able to talk about the issues and and to be so comfortable. And that is what Mark Paoletta did anyway. So Mark Paoletta is a well known guy, very well respected, everybody likes him. I think people just generally think he’s one of the nicer guys around and is well respected and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So and ohh, he worked at one point. He worked in the Pence’s office, too. So. He’s been all over the place. He’s not. Particularly known as an ideologue or a a firebrand, he’s just a a good old-fashioned conservative guy.
Well, he has a series he’s been really deeply, deeply hurt, I would say, offended by what they’ve tried to do to Clarence Thomas in the last six months, a little bit less actually. So he has a thread on Twitter and and the thread. So basically he’s been saying Paoletta has been saying publicly sort of in defense of Clarence Thomas. Hold on, they have Rules in the Supreme Court. He abides by them. Why are you targeting him? You’re not targeting other people. What’s the double standard he was talking about this with regard to judges, you. Know it it it, it cannot be. Just because you’re a Supreme Court judge, you have to lose your friends. It cannot be that just because you’re a Supreme Court judge, you have to give up friends who happen to be rich, which is sort of what the the dynamic was. And it can’t even be the Supreme Court justices, all of them, both party appointees. They go on these trips where they teach courses, and they get paid. A decent amount of money. None of that can be illegal, it just can’t be. The system can’t allow that, right? You can’t. You don’t lose your life because you’re on the Supreme Court, and more importantly, it applies equally to everybody.
Well, here comes Paoletta, Mark Paoletta on Twitter @MarkPaoletta. Paoletta. And it’s a wonderful thread. It’s 12 tweets long and it basically takes to ta-. Not basically it takes to task. Senator Durbin and Senator Whitehouse, who have this sort of political stunt. Which they call an ethics law, but it’s just a political stunt meant to try to be nasty to Clarence Thomas and it’s all these rules.
And here’s the best part about it all. These ethics rules, right? This is going to be this amazing ethics rule and all that. But the great thing about. It is, as Paoletta points out, Congress, the members of Congress are the most exempt from any of these rules of. Anybody you could have. They’re the most – and and again, they’re not just hypocritical, they’re just plain nasty.
But even better, when you look at it, you say to yourself, holy cow, you know, this, this, this law that they’re proposing, which is a political stunt. They, you know, do you know that how the House and Senate are are are exempt from FOIA, from Freedom of Information, they don’t have to disclose any of that because they don’t want to. They don’t want to. They don’t have any rules about recusal at all because they don’t want To.
So you can have a wife who is Trading in whatever you can have a brother who is trading in whatever is doing whatever. Other than Rules that apply to people who are lobbyists. There’s no application to the House member or the Senate Member to act differently, and all Paoletta points out is you guys are just such hypocrites. You guys are just such hypocrites and and he points out that Senator Durbin complains and justifies this by saying That the court has a low approval rating, 37 per cent. Then and he says that we really need an ethics bill because of the approval rating and Congress’s approval rating is about 16%. If if that’s what your judge is. If your judges, if you’re, if you’re if, you’re if, if you you are judging whether something is valid based on the approval rating, well, you’re in deep trouble if you’re the Congress.
Anyway, of course they’re not. Of course they’re not. And of course it’s hypocritical. And of course it’s a political stunt and it doesn’t matter.
But I’ll tell you this. Insofar as guys like Durbin and Whitehouse are willing to drag the Supreme Court down and willing to spend their time and be aided by the media and by big tech in saying ohh. Yeah, we need an ethics. We need an. Ethics law for The court as as. In other words, as long as they’re willing to tarnish The institution, which is what they’re doing. All their ensuring is that Drain The Swamp is is expanding in its scope because I’m glad Mark Paoletta is fighting back because the real swamp that needs to be drained is Congress. The real swamp that needs to be drained is also the executive branch. It’s not so much the Supreme Court. I I.
Look, I’m for more transparency, but I just don’t see it. I just don’t see it. I mean, the bigger problem is that Congress and the executive have so much money and so much power. And so the Supreme Court is ruling on so many things. Has such a large scope, that’s the increase in its power. If you could limit government, if you could limit the size and scope of government through Congress through the executive branch, you’d go a long way to be limiting the power of of the Supreme Court because there wouldn’t be as many incredibly complex pieces of litigation to adjudicate. So that’s the way to fix it, but I gotta tell you, drain the swamp is coming. Drain the, I I I if there is anything that I can feel. And you know, I I I was a part of the Tea Party that really swelled in ’08/’09. It was really ’09, right? It was ’09 is when the Tea Party was swelling 9 into ’10. It culminated in some ways it crested with the 2010 election. I’m not sure that it really continued on into ’12, Obama Obama. Sort of backstopped it in terms of national politics. But at the local level and at the state level, that was the that was the Tea Party. What’s coming is drain the swamp. What is coming in 2024 is drain the swamp. If you are in office. It’s the old example.
The old example 2016. Donald Trump won Missouri. The state of Missouri by 16 points over Hillary Clinton. And Roy Blunt, who had been in office for decades and was a Republican. And in that era, that year was running against a woman named Robin Carnahan. Very liberal. He only won by 1.5% because he had been in office so long, she could run on drain the swamp, and she tried. Of course she was. Herself from the Carnahan family, her mother had been a senator. Her brother was a congressman. Her dad had been governor so. She wasn’t exactly outside of the swamp. But if she tried and it was working. And my point is, that’s what’s coming. It is coming in 2024. It will be a drain the swamp Election and guys like Durbin and Whitehouse. They’re colleagues more than them. I don’t know if they’re up for election this time, and they’re in such safe states. It’s hard to imagine. Those, the the people they’re going to face, they’re going to face a incredible. Onslaught from people the voters that want to drain the swamp. That is what’s coming like you could see it. I I can feel it and it’s it’s it’s not even beginning. It’s not even getting close to cresting. You watch.
Alright, we’ll take a break. We’ll come back. Cheryl Chumley. Cynthia Hughes. Back in a moment, it’s Ed Martin here on. The Pro America Report. Visit the proamericareport.com. Sign up for the daily e-mail right there. Be right back.
