All right, Alexander, let's talk about the Supreme Court ruling in Colorado. The Colorado Supreme Court ruling with Trump being on the ballots or not being on the ballot in 2024, actually. So what is your take on this, this ruling from the Colorado Supreme Court?

Well, I am absolutely astonished by it. It makes absolutely no sense to me. Legally speaking, it didn't seem to make much sense to three of the seven judges on the Colorado Supreme Court, including the chief justice of Colorado, who made it absolutely clear that he was very skeptical about the entire process whereby this case came before the court in the first place. And he thought that there were serious questions of due process there. It's the understatement of the age, by the way, I cannot believe that the Supreme Court of the United States, which will be ruling on this question in January, is going to uphold this decision. I am confident. I am, in fact, so confident, I'm all but sure that the Supreme Court of the United States will set it. You know, I could go into the weeds. I will go briefly into the weeds. I'll explain why. There are aspects of this decision which seem to me to be very strange, to the point of being bizarre. Firstly, there is the predicate that Trump engaged in an insurrection against the government of the United States. Now, that is purely something that has been talked about in courts, but there is no actual judgment, final judgment, what lawyers call Rez judicata decision, that actually says that he hasn't been prosecuted on the basis of leading an insurrection or trying to overthrow the government of the United States.

There's lots of cases against him, but none of them allege that everybody has their opinions about it. But it's important to stress that there is no judgment about this. There are opinions expressed by judges in other cases which deal with other issues, what we call what lawyers call obiter statements. In other words, they're just expressions of personal opinion by judges, but they are not legal judgments. They do not count as proper, fully reasoned, properly decided judgments by the court that are binding authorities until set aside on appeal. So given that there is no judicial finding to this effect, given that there is no prosecution to this effect, on what possible basis is the Supreme Court of Colorado deciding that he can be disqualified from standing, either for the primaries or even in the general election in November, on the basis that he has led an insurrection? I mean, there is no judgment of this. And that already is a hugely serious problem in and of itself. Secondly, there is the fundamental problem of the text of the 14th Amendment. The text of the 14th Amendment says that various people who have been involved in insurrections and violent actions seeking to overthrow whatever it is, the government of the United States.

The Constitution of the United States are not allowed to stand for certain elected offices. The presidency and the vice presidency are not amongst those offices. They're not actually identified as those offices. Now, the four judges who made the decision to disqualify said that it makes no sense to think that the framers, the people who wrote the 14th Amendment, intended to exclude the highest offices when they drew up the amendment in the form that they did, that violates a fundamental principle of legal interpretation. Again, what lawyers call legal construction, which is that you do not second guess the words of a statute, certainly not of a constitutional statute. You look at what the statute, the law, the constitution actually says. If it doesn't say that somebody can be disqualified for standing for the presidency or the vice presidency, then you don't second guess the Constitution. You just say the statute. The Constitution doesn't say that you can disqualify someone for standing for the presidency or the vice presidency. In fact, there are many good reasons why we can be confident that the 14th amendment was framed, was written in the way that it was, with the intention of excluding the president and the vice president, which I'm not going to discuss in this program, because that's a big historical topic, which I am not going to dwell on.

And the third problem, which these judges don't really address, is that we already have decided cases on this subject, specifically from other courts, not yet from the court. The Supreme Court of the United States. Well, actually, I believe there is one case from the Supreme Court of the United States, which shows the very, very limited scope that this amendment, the 14th Amendment, has. The fact that it was essentially created to deal with former officials of the confederacy. They can be applied in other cases, but only in very limited and extreme circumstances, which do not apply to Donald Trump. So there are problems with this decision from every side. They have spent 200 pages trying to argue their way through these problems. And I think virtually everybody who's looked at this agrees that they fail. They fail dismally. What I am saying is not just my opinion, it appears to be the consensus amongst most constitutional lawyers, and it looks overwhelmingly likely. Therefore, in fact, it would be staggering if a decision were made otherwise, that the Supreme Court of the United States in January is going to strike this decision down. So that brings us to the question of, why was it done?

Why did we have a eccentric decision like this, when on a major constitutional question, four judges in the Supreme Court in Colorado went against the opinion of their own chief justice, and by the way, contradicted the opinions of the judge at first instance. The first, the judge whose appeal they were hearing and also went against a decision on a similar issue recently made by the Supreme Court of Minnesota. So why did they do it? Well, I think that's our next question.

That was my next question. Yeah. The consensus from everybody, from all the experts, I would say even experts that are against Trump are pretty much saying this is not going to hold up when it reaches the Supreme Court. So the big question that everyone is analyzing and trying to figure out is why, obviously, these judges, the four judges, they must know that what they're doing is crazy, but they did it anyway. Is it just a case that these judges are so infected with Trump Derangement syndrome that they just can't help themselves? Is this some sort of plan to perhaps make this ruling in Colorado so that it sets a precedent and other states do the same? Is this meant to accomplish something else? Is this some sort of narrative creation construction? That's what I think it is. I think this is about arming the Trump's, Trump's opponents, the Biden White House, the mainstream media, with another talking point about how evil the orange man is. He's been indicted a hundred times. He started an insurrection, and now he's been found guilty of that insurrection and he's been barred from the ballot in Colorado. I could see them coming up with that type of narrative, even though it's not true.

But when have they ever reported stuff that is accurate? So, I mean, what do you think is the, why to all of, I.

Mean, I think before we even begin, can I just say that at the moment, he's not banned from standing in Colorado, either at the primaries or in the general election.

I agree.

It's been suspended pending the appeal. It's an important, actually, I think you are abs in every, I just want.

To say one thing. People read the titles. They don't get into the actual article, the detail. They know this. Everyone knows what you just said, the people that are covering this story. But when they pass this off to the american people, I imagine there is going to be a large percentage or maybe not a large, but a significant part of the american people that will actually believe that Trump has been barred from running in Colorado and he's been found guilty of know they'll create the narrative of it. And even though it's false, even though it's know that's what they'll get out there.

You are absolutely right. And I think that is the reason for this decision. I think there may be some quality, a visceral quality, to know if you read the mean. They clearly don't like Donald Trump. They clearly are partly swayed by the feelings that some people have about Donald Trump, which they clearly share. So, I mean, there is that element there. But fundamentally, I think you've hit it is narrative construction. They know perfectly well that most people in the United States are not going to be terribly interested in the legal mechanics. They're not going to be concerned too much about the due process issues. They're not going to be concerned very much about the legal arguments. That's not something that most people follow, at least not in the detail that people who watch our program, perhaps, and we ourselves do. So it's exactly what you say. You could create a narrative. You say that courts around the United States have found Trump guilty of insurrection. They've tried to disqualify him from standing in the election because he's clearly an unfit person to stand for the presidency and certainly an unfit person to become president. And the only reason he's standing at all is because the Supreme Court of the United States is insisting that he should be allowed to stand.

And of course, it is the same supreme court of the United States, which has a republican majority, three of whose members Trump himself has chosen, and which is, of course, the Supreme Court that overturned Roe and Wade. That's what they're going to say. That is the narrative that they are constructing. And it is all about narrative. And anybody who thinks that this isn't that, and that the judges all came to these decisions by themselves should look at who the petitioning claimants in this case are. As has been pointed out, these are not people who are entirely independent of the current administration or even of the Justice Department. One of them appears to have some involvement, at least with the Department of Homeland Security, or so I understand, and I suspect you'll be finding other connections as well. But that is what this is all about. It is about creating a narrative. So you set up Trump as the wicked person who has done all these terrible things and who's being protected by the same Supreme Court which he largely selected. Even that isn't true, but that's what they'll say, and which overturned Roe and Wade, and that's what they're going to be doing.

Does this work?

Well, that is a very interesting point, because there was a big article before this decision was made in the Financial Times by Edward Lewis, a british commentator with somebody who is very, very close to the US, who's a strong opponent of Donald Trump, who does not want to see Donald Trump elected, and who is, to put it mildly, sympathetic to this administration. And this article actually was really very interesting, one of the most interesting articles I've seen in the media for a long time. And its title is Americans won't be terrified into rejecting Donald Trump. And it takes on the whole idea that you can defeat Donald Trump through pure narrative construction. It says that that massively underestimates voters, that they can see through much of what is going on, and that Democrats need to understand that most Americans do not have these passionate feelings about Donald Trump, that they have and are going to decide who should be their president, not on the basis of all of these weird and wonderful cases, but rather on who they think is going to be better as president for themselves and for the United States. And that the Democrats, by engaging in all these maneuvers, are not addressing the true concerns of the american people.

And on the contrary, are irritating more and more american voters who feel that the Democrats and the political class and the establishment in the United States are trying to interfere with their choice, the american people's choice, on who they want to elect as their president. So Edward Lewis is saying it's counterproductive, it's going to work to Trump's advantage. And I think he is right. And if you've tracked the buildup of Trump's support ever since the cases against him began in March of this year, you could see that with every single piece of lawfare that takes place, his support grows.

How does this affect the United States on the international stage? Bucalay. The president of El Salvador, he actually put out a tweet, and he said that after this decision, the United States has no right to lecture any country about democracy anymore. Is that true?

Yes. More and more people are going to be saying this around the world. They're going to see what looks to them like a deeply politicized judicial and legal system. They will note, well, it's all over the place that every single judge on this Supreme Court panel has been appointed by Democratic Party governors. They're going to be noting all of this. They're well aware. Many of the, remember, many people, many leaders of governments around the world are lawyers. I mean, lawyers are the people who generally become politicians. Most people who are in government have some kind of legal training or background around the world, and they are horrified about what is happening. And not just horrified, they're utterly dismissive. And they can see that the United States is behaving exactly like the countries that it so regularly criticizes. And there's going to be many people who will say, you go, you say, what effect will this have on the United States? It is going to do its international image immense damage. But that's not even the biggest part of it, in my opinion. Think what it is doing to the United States itself. We're seeing every opinion poll now telling us that Americans are increasingly losing trust in their institutions.

I mean, the media lost its trust a long time ago. So did Congress. Now the judicial system is being dragged into this, into this party political battle. It is terrible in that respect. And, of course, beyond anything else, you are now setting up a scenario next year for the most bitterly fought election that there has ever been in the history of the United States, going all the way back to the elections that took place on the eve of the civil war. And I don't say that lightly, but I don't say that lightly at all. But I think that that is actually, again, an emerging consensus which is being shared by more and more people. Just let the election happen. If it results in Donald Trump getting elected president, well, you deal with that then. But that is how the United States is supposed to work. All these strange and weird and wonderful legal devices. All that they're doing is that they're discrediting the legal system and they're deepening the partisan divide in the United States. And as Edward Lewis said, they're making people.

Mean, you know, you deal with it when Trump becomes president. If Trump becomes president, you deal with Trump becomes president. We saw the first four years of Trump's presidency and how they dealt with it, Russiagate and the phone call with Zelensky and all that nonsense, and you look at where it led, the, the whole Russia gate thing, you could make the argument, and we have made the argument, that the Russia gate lie has actually led to, or at least contributed significantly to the conflict we now have in Ukraine, this proxy war between the United States and Russia. So, I mean, this Trump derangement syndrome, it's fun at times to joke around about it when you're discussing it, but it is very destructive and very dangerous for the world and for the United States because this proxy war with Russia has led to much of the US's power diminishing around the mean. I guess my question is, even if Trump was to become president, they're never going to stop.

What?

I mean, they, the deep state, the establishment, the permanent states, they're never going to stop going after Trump and effectively destroying the United States. What is it about Trump that drives them so crazy, that makes them so destructive that they're actually inflicting harm on themselves? Because when you take a step back and look at Trump's first four years, he didn't really do anything that was that radical or malicious to the permanent state. I mean, he employed quite a few of them. Bolton and McMasters and Pompeo and Esper. I mean, Nikki Haley. What is it about Trump that makes them so crazy? Is it because he defeated Queen Hillary? Is that reason to destroy your entire country because he defeated Hillary Clinton?

Really? Yes. I think that there are two basic reasons for mean. I think at the end of the day, it's always very difficult to give an explanation on something which I find, like you, I think, ultimately impossible to know why Trump Derangement syndrome exists to the extent that it does. Given that there is nothing about Trump's past or his conduct as president, that really justifies it to anything like the extent that it exists. I think that there are two basic reasons, and I want to just quickly touch on these. I've spoken about them before. The first, actually, I think there's three reasons. The first was that he did defeat Hillary Clinton. And you see, he did that as an amateur in a political system which is run by professionals. Now, as someone who has been a professional myself, I can tell you that nothing riles a professional so much as being beaten at one's own work by an amateur. It is absolutely infuriating. I mean, it will have made their head explode that this man who came from nowhere, who's never held elected office, who's hardly been involved in politics in the past, should come along, take on the entire system and win.

I mean, that is something that they don't understand. They don't like. It scares them. They see the connection that he has with the american people, the way he's able to work crowds, something that they can't do, and it infuriates them and it scares them. The second is what he actually said back in 2015, which first attracted people's attention to him. He talked about the swamp. He talked about draining the swamp. He talked all about those things. Well, you only have to look at some of the cases that are going on in Washington at the moment. People like Bob Menendez, the son of a certain person who holds the highest elective office, all of these sort of cases to see that Trump actually had a point. And of course, again, the entire political class knows that. And their party, to a certain extent, or to a great extent to all of these things. And again, that will have both frightened and scared them. And then last but not least, there is the overarching issue which you touched on, which is, yes, it did massively deteriorate relations with Russia. Russiagate did do that. But bear in mind that hostility to Russia was already there, hardwired in the system.

And here you have somebody coming along and saying, this is a mistake, we've got to reverse it, and he wins the highest office planning to do that very thing. And again, that threatens the deep state's control over foreign policy. So again, you could see all of these reasons. Now, they're not sufficient in themselves, even taken together. There is something strange about this obsession with Trump. But I'm not going to delve into psychology. I'm not a psychologist. So I just note the fact that it exists and it is driving people to take these utterly bizarre decisions. But you're absolutely correct. What you mean, one of the reasons why we have a crisis in Ukraine now is precisely because the whole debate about Russia in the west has been poisoned by Russiagate. And in fact, it isn't just relations with Russia, because the entire world knows that instead of the United States conducting its foreign policy in an orderly and efficient way, in effect, it's paralyzed by its own internal difficulties, its own internal arguments, and by this extraordinary campaign that the permanent state in the United States insists on conducting against the country's most popular politician.

So the world can see that. Xi Xinping can see that. Putin, of course, can see that. Modi in India can see that. And that makes them, mbs in Saudi Arabia can see it. Netanyahu in Israel can see that. And that makes them very, very careful about getting too close to the United States at this time. So I think that this is a major problem, actually, for the conduct of us diplomacy right across the board. There's one last point, however, I do want to make, and it is an important one, and that is that when Donald Trump was elected in 2016 and when he became president in 2017, most people in the United States didn't know all of the details about the Russia gate allegations. And I think quite a lot of people who were know parties to Trump Derangement syndrome probably did think that there must be something in it. I mean, there's all these people, the FBI director, the CIA director, the ex CIA director Chuck Schumer, all those people in Congress, they're all saying that there's something that fishy about this relationship between Donald Trump and the Russians. And I think a lot of people thought, yeah, well, there may be something there.

There might be something that actually happened. That is true. I think now, after all that has happened, Russia gate itself, all the other cases that have been brought against Trump, the events of January of, well, 2021, I think that has dwindled away. If the Democrats and the deep state and all of those people come after Trump again, this time, what they will find is that they will need not just skepticism amongst vast parts of the US electorate, but they will discover that this time, most of the electorate just doesn't believe them and that on this occasion, their sympathies will be with Donald Trump. So you'll see that the balance will change. We're asked in 2017 and throughout, especially the first two years of his presidency, it was Trump who was on the back foot. People believed, well, Robert Muller might come up with something. This time. They won't believe it. They will say, they've tried this all before. They've tried this all time and time again. Why don't they leave the man alone so that he can do his job? And I think the dynamic this time is going to be different if he's elected, which, of course, he hasn't been.

And we must remember that.

Yeah. I wonder if Hillary Clinton and Robbie Mooc, when they were coming up with Trump Russia, lie the fiction, which essentially is what happened, they kind of fabricated the whole thing. I wonder if they knew how much damage they would be doing to the United States and to the entire world. I wonder if they understood the amount of damage that they were about to unleash on everybody.

Probably not.

You wrote an article. You wrote an article four or five years ago, and you said Hillary Clinton with Russiagate, Hillary Clinton has just sabotaged or blew up us democracy.

Yeah, I said it's planted a bowl.

That was like five years ago. I believe that was like five years.

That was before I wrote that, but before the November 2016 election. It's there on our archive somewhere. You can find it if you look hard enough. Yeah, I said that then. But you see, this is it. I don't think they did understand it then. But you know something? And this is what's really scary about this. They do know it now. And I think they don't care. That's what makes this thing so chilling and so sinister. I think that fundamentally, they don't care. They don't care about all the trouble that has caused the paralysis of the political system, the crisis in us foreign policy, because inhabiting this extraordinary bubble that they do, they are obsessed with this political fight that is taking place inside the bubble, and that is a terrible thing. When that happens, then a crisis can become existential for the country in which it is happening. There are many examples of this. In mean, I did my live stream on locals yesterday, and I mentioned there a case of what happened in late hand dynasty China when the intrigues within the court got so completely out of control that the people lost touch completely and lost interest completely in the effect that all this was happening on the country and it led to a political explosion.

And you can find example after example of this. The same thing happened in France in the 1780s when the court members of the aristocracy were resisting the king's attempts to carry out some entirely needed and very necessary financial reforms. And there was all sorts of intrigues and power struggles taking place. And again, that led to an explosion. The same thing happened in Russia, as we've discussed in various programs, it's happened in many places at many times. It happened, by the way, in the late republic, the late roman republic, and the United States is dangerously close to that situation now when, as I said, people who are within the political system, instead of being concerned about the wider interests of the country, subordinate everything to the conduct of their own political feuds.

Yeah, I agree. All right, let's wrap this video up. They're not going to stop. I agree with you, but they're not going to be able to pull back.

It has become compulsive. Now, the great thing that it does give one some hope is that, as I said, I do get the sense that the american people are becoming less and less impressed and are able to see through this more and more clearly. As I said, it's not 2017. We've now had six years of this sort of thing going on, seven years of this sort of thing going on. And most people have figured it out by now. They may not understand it to the level of detail that we do, but they do understand at some level that this isn't a real campaign against someone. It's just a feud that the political class is conducting against the most popular political figure in the country.

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