the headlines on the. russian military saying he said may have killed the leader of islamic state in a bombing raid on the syrian city of. the u.k. furious protesters stormed all in the demanding justice for the dozens of people killed in the. berlin threatens to retaliate against the united states if you use sanctions against russia and german interests. we go in depth on all those stories. crosstalk tell me increasingly polarized nature of

american power. flowing welcome to cross talk where all things are considered. the concept of a loyal opposition has long been the hallmark of western political life this is now under attack it would appear healthy debate is rejected respecting differing views dismissed in violence deemed acceptable this is how civil wars start. cross talking political debate i'm joined by my guest bruce fein in washington he is a constitutional lawyer in a former associate deputy attorney general under president ronald reagan also in one. and we have ivan eland he is

a senior fellow and the director of the center on peace and liberty at the independent institute and in imperial beach we cross to dr jean allowed in she is a psychology expert and host of american trends with dr gina are across the uk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciated you got up early as for this program and it's much appreciated here you know from a psychological point of view reflecting upon what i had to say in my introduction is that you know the terms and conditions of of debate now have been broken down i mean it is so polarized right now that if you disagree with someone you're called a hater you're called. a racist you're marginalized and and they and i see this is really getting worse and worse in the us what is the psychological mindset because debate resolves issues what we're seeing right now is just rejection of engaging someone that disagrees with you go ahead. well i think that

when you are capable of pitting people against each other creating whole status as a victims as the left has done in this country then you create a sort of a class warfare where people feel justified perhaps in dehumanizing the other side and i think that's where we are i think when they're calling this president things like hitler or pol pot and other things i think that you know then then it gives justification for you know saying horrible things about him or anyone who would support him and we've seen some of those things carried out in our political system over the last several months since the campaign ended and so i think that we'll continue to see that until people take responsibility for looking at looking at political situations with a little more evidence rather than with pure emotion i think that's always a danger in a political perspective you know bruce it's almost gotten down to kind of religious

elements i mean it's you know there are certain tendencies or you cannot cross a line it's a group think mentality and i'm and i'm saying this on both sides you know pull left and right here but primarily from the left these days here and one of the things that i find very disturbing if you look at the riots that were at berkeley i mean this is the left wing ok we have this image of donald trump's head in an ice is like imagery we have pop stars like madonna saying she wants to burn down the white house i mean that's not any kind of engagement it's a form of rejection is women and like i said in my introduction and i want to be too dramatic here but that's how civil wars start when do you reject a part of your own society go ahead bruce. well first there is some balance that needs to be put into the equation we had a recent candidate for a congress in montana assault a reporter for asking a question and he was elected and that wasn't engagement and there also been true at the trump campaign there were statements of what we ought to hit somebody in the

face rather than escort them out of the pavilion if they were disrupting things but i'd would agree that on the whole the pathology is not limited to politics since in the campuses as well yeah where you have these free speech zone disobey the freedom from an opposing ideas as though they can't even tolerate their the expectation that maybe they could be wrong and maybe they would profit by listening to an alternate viewpoint and i think that kind of you call. plunging it in our discourse in generally is what is very frightening it's that facts don't count anymore you just make up whatever you want to believe for altera motors and whoever has the biggest fist wins and that is a recipe for conflict rather than discourse and compromise this isn't the only time you know we encounter that kind of atmosphere and it is in an area allusion to history that's what happened in the priest civil war days in the united states we had a very wise bully brooks attack on charles sumner because they didn't like his views

on the on slavery issues and we actually did end up in a civil war now i don't think we're there at present but certainly there's got to be adults that stand up and say this is not acceptable you know we can be dissed we can disagree but we don't disrespect viewpoints we argue them vote and that's how we resolve well in a peaceful manner we had a vote in and it's still open it's contentious who want apparently i mean if you watch the mainstream media missed in b.c. c.n.n. all the rest of them they're still be litigating or have anyone you know it was bruce brought up the priests of all war days and i want to stick with this theme here for a moment is that there's another interesting historical example in it's the bomb in a republic after the first world. war in germany and that country became so polarized that its democracy completely collapsed and we all know what happened after than here there are historical lessons to be learned here i mean it lead to this campus stuff that you know bruce brought up you know you know all white people get off the campus for one day i mean the irony of the left supporting segregation

again it just it i find it just the thought only go ahead ivan. yeah i think it we're preparing polarized politically i don't know where near civil war i think it was worse during the sixty's and seventy's during the vietnam war where we had riots that were caused by the war we had protests that got out of hand we had a national guardsman students on campus and that sort of thing but certainly it's a polarized time although i have to say i think it's both sides trumped it is. part to help stoke up the the. flames of the. partisanship i think during the campaign and of course the left as you mentioned is doing so the anarchists and other on campuses but i think people are responsible the politicians can affect i think you know what people see on t.v. but the wall holds individuals responsible for their actions and i think you know

the shooting that we just had the guy was obviously very partisan and partisan democrat but he was also that's not the appropriate way to make your views are known and i think these incidents get in the media and i think they're somewhat overblown statistically you know we were talking before the show about terrorism being a very low probability event so are all these things school shootings shootings like we just had the riots on campus and that sort of thing but they get in the media and they're there overblown like where about ready for a civil war and i really don't think that's going to happen well you know one of the it's a thing that we just heard the example of the of the of vietnam war but you know jane if i can go to you in. in california the biggest difference is that the media actually told the american people about what was going on in the war and then we had the pentagon papers and the media talked about that i mean they were a big supporter of that now we live in a very different dates here and when you have mainstream media that is in lockstep

with one particular party with one particular goal and i would say that we are at the civil war element is put being played in because the media is an enabler there enabling this do it twenty four seven every single day i'm not surprised people are taking these kind of moves because they're legitimizing violence and hate speech and hatred in general go ahead in california. yeah you make such an interesting point because it is the left who really is in lockstep with the media most of the media anyway and you make that point well i think there's something in the american fiber that's not going to let this go as far as a civil war there's just something about americans that i just don't think that will happen but i but here's what concerns me just that we remain so divided that we're not as effective as we could be in battling things that really do matter to the american people things like the problem of terror things like the problem of.

bettering our economy all the time making our government smaller the things that really the people voted for when they elected this president and yet we are constantly distracted by these tactics of the left that are almost nonsensical and here is the difference because people want to say this is on both sides and i would really object to that if you look at the tea party movement for exactly for example that took place you never had an arrest you never had any violence on the part of the tea partiers we had more than seven hundred arrested and the occupy wall street movement let's not forget those comparisons let's also look now at this resist movement at the complacency and even the complicity if you will of the democrat politicians who think it's ok no one can defend madonna where's the where's the condemnation from the democrat elected leaders who are what madonna said about blowing up the white house for what chris kathy griffin said and you know holding up these severed head of our president where is the condemnation where is the apology where is the mayor culpa you won't see that and that tells you where the

where the guilt really belongs without me having to impose it in court you know bruce i mean i think there needs to be some bell peter i got to interject here some balance you know fox news fox news the most watched cable news station is hardly in the in the lap of the left you know it's clearly in the course of course and moreover moreover it in bernard and bernie sanders amongst others a dent. pratt roundly condemned the violence yesterday against republicans now that doesn't mean everything is perfect but i think it's overbroad to say where to they have adding it is on the left and nothing on the right now i do think that that the to my mind the deeper problem we have is we no longer cultivate a culture that celebrates reason and discoverers and enlightenment as the way in which you were so all things it's just you just get your fixed opinion you look for what reinforces it you don't read anything you don't think you don't philosophize

that's out the window we exalt all people who can jump up and down they can throw footballs they can sing but we don't exult anybody who knows how to think and knows how to try to resolve ways in a civilized fashion and understand something about history and that is why our collective i.q. when it comes to philosophy is at a like a one level even if we can ok but as rulings on the internet and rule that truth before we go to the break here of the real shortly we'll show question here but you have that kind of conversation then you have to see the president of the united states as legitimate and that's not going to happen is that they don't see him as legitimate he's not a partner for a conversation that's the problem here that's the problem in part i'm going to jump in here we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on poisonous political debate stay with. you we.

finally in the full knowledge that it can get up late now how does it play out on donkey the point. lining if you knew you wouldn't be that easy to find a friend that i had in me. plus. plus the city people. what i've done my duty by my little bit of a wonder that i little bit that we are shut out of my good job out of much of the woodwork to mop up to get a job but in. this london life.

some forces of. the sea. you can be no problem. welcome back to cross talk we're all things are considered i'm peter lavelle remind

you we're discussing a poisonous political debate. ok and i go back to ivan in washington all of this really started heating up really intensely with the election of donald trump and his inauguration and one of the things that the of the perception is in the in the public here is and some of these people that are very far on the left this person that committed this crime against attacking the g.o.p. congressman they see donald trump as a traitor ok and this is constantly turned out in in the media they may not use exactly that word but they they're undermining him repeatedly and we have a we have a permanent government officials leaking to the media incessantly undermining this president and of course you know the conduit for the washington post and the new york times and others and they constantly are turning this around to to to do

diminish the president here again this is also a conspiracy within the media and open one against this president here and people like this shooter this is just this is just energizing them this is just giving them more enabling abilities to continue with their thinking i mean killing congressman is not going to achieve his goal it just maybe it gives the left in these haters some kind of satisfaction so i mean you know it's if if the if the media were playing along with this this discourse all the time we might have a different picture but they show no signs of changing their tune go ahead. well i think. that's a bit of a bit one sided i mean we do has bruce appropriately pointed out earlier you do have i think what we have is polarized media we have two cones you know they have the left and the right and it's very artificial. and we have fox news and the talk radio on the right and then we have the what you call the mainstream media on the

left and certainly the mainstream media are critical of donald trump but if you go on fox news or talk radio you'd never know that there was any problem at all with the election and foreign penetration of the election was so. but. we also have the other we also as the other systemic problem that donald trump we always have in our country when you have an electoral college winner that doesn't win the popular vote those presidents are always inherently weak to begin with and there are a lot of times people don't see them as legitimate whether that's right or wrong he won under the current system there's no doubt about that but the question is that probably leads to more opposition to him to begin with as true but his own behavior has been rather shocking on the campaign trail and i think that's led to some of the some of the problems that we're having as well as the left i think both parties

are equally. responsible and i first of all i think politicians should stop doing what trump did and what other politicians on the left do as well by stoking up the violence but but we can't blame them for it and i don't think they should apologize for it i mean these are people they're whacked out nuts or they're they're people who are criminals or whatever they're just were too radical and they commit acts that are illegal and they should be prosecuted but i'm not sure that we're i think we're casting to blame too wide to blame politicians on both the right and left individual cases back up back of a few years back we. a leftist politician gabby giffords who was assaulted by a right guy so i can go the other way as well well ok jane if i can go to you i mean if we can go back to look at weeki leaks here and we know that there were so many members of the mainstream media that were in cahoots with the clinton campaign and this is what i'm getting at here i don't think it you know

a plague on both your houses no i think that the it was it's very much rigged ok and the amount of donations even from media organizations to the democrats here this is the this is really the core of the problem i see here i see elements of the deep state that do not want this president will not let him succeed and the you have a very very pliant a mainstream media that is willing to do their bidding look at all of these leaks not what is the mainstream media interested in who these leakers are all they're all heroes you know people that leak are criminals that's the law but you won't hear it from them go ahead. yeah i don't know you stated that so well i'm not sure how many you're absolutely right and you've read it well and we can't gloss over it and we can't just continue to to say oh it's both sides it's not both sides ok let's get that straight right now because the things that the right is talking about are based on facts and evidence there are no facts and evidence to the rhetoric that is being produced from the left it's just not the truth you know when

it with all due respect to your other panelists here you know that when you when you say that one network or another only discusses one side that's not true they discuss both sides and or i would take part in that conversation i myself really enjoy civil discourse some of my very best friends of my own father are leftists and i can tell you that civil discourse is what saves america it was what made america your viewpoint in the very beginning of this conversation to the politically correct montra that is only allowed in this country anymore that's where we've fallen down that's what's become the most dangerous part of our conversation as you will that if you will that you're not allowed to say certain things even if they're one hundred percent true anymore and so we have to look at everything through this window but here's the other problem briefly if they think this is important and has been left out of the conversation and that is the dying left media they are dying i mean they're laying off people they are not doing well

and because that because because of the positions they've taken but in desperation they have resorted to a sort of a click beat mentality where they'll do anything or say anything to capture an audience that is extremely dangerous as well i'm not sure what the answer is to that a little honesty would be a good thing but i'm not sure anyone cares about that but that is a big part of the problem as well and has added to the decision is that is has overtaken us you know bruce let me voice josie understand here i have to. go here goes three so called facts this challenge the. well it is all on one side and member mr trump said that mr obama had ordered the tapping of his phone to trump towers in new york city there is zero evidence to support that no one has ever substantiated any of that including mr trump we have they're not and should have had. the n.c.c. they are now after the n.s.c. stand for this in they know they did they did not tap trump tower

phones and there's never been any evidence that the president never orders the tapping of anything under the foreign intelligence surveillance act one that we part of judge has no value in court or you don't know that we don't know where is it you don't know let us hear you we don't know whether the moon is made out of radio show not yet what we actually i then would be and that that that he had brown said afterwards i am still i am it was illegal d. and c. and that is that is not illegal to unmask it's written in the fights the statute and i worked on the face a statute you can on mass people and it's done routinely it's at least given times if i'm not a private citizen understand the intelligent guess that's illegal. well to. get you know precisely and for that we can find that friend i did say that we get a call per leak it to the media is legal that's illegal ok ok it is not i'm just an automatic are they going to it's not classified information and then you know but i want to point this out peter the people who are leaking the trump administration people know who his administration i'll keep thinks they all know he needs to get

us all so people that have been hanging on from the left over it ministration here ok that is also we actually know who he was they if they notify him but you may have really wanted to fire them all you make it would probably don't last that they should be a special prosecutor to find out who's leaking and it's a it's a felony and people should go to jail because they're all protecting each other and he has authority presidents don't want to run on crime and various already you know these people who didn't try to do anything to do that tomorrow and then you have sessions ok already to appoint a special prosecutor tomorrow good you know point especially right here with law and here he should do that ok because it doesn't look like a i don't mind it was just it should be done i agree we had somehow it's decided that that's his issue you know it's his i made a strange and i'm sure it is i'm sure it ministration and his if you're going to say i'm sure it will grieve with you that just should be done here ok i have

a new but it kind of stuck in the middle anywhere where is this discourse going because you know i went through all the cable stations for i sat down here and you know everyone wants this thing for maybe about half an hour maybe less and then we're going to go back to the battlefront here ok i mean where is it where does this go because what bothers me is the d. literately give legitimacy is our institutions in america the democratic process and it's giving power to people that were not elected people in the media and people in the deep state and the deep state in the media have such a cozy relationship with a good part of the media and they like this here they make everyone else fight because they're making the decisions go ahead i've been. well i don't see the i don't see the problem i mean if you go back in american history this is not the nastiest political period i'm not just talking about what bruce mentioned the civil the pretty civil war days but you know early in the republic they used to make up stuff. about other candidates which was just blatantly false and i think we have

more of the the average person in america has more information whether you choose to access it that's another thing and i think we the only thing that troubles me about this robust debate and that's what democracy is different viewpoints is that people seem to be you know assembling their own facts used to be exactly back exactly had are you know about the opinion on top of that now we've seen we have one group of people what their networks and the other group the other networks and they each find their own facts and we you know we really need to establish what facts are and then we can have the debate but out but i mean this is still a robust debate in a democratic society or republican society whichever you'd like to like it to be i guess but you know this is i think it's fairly healthy i don't see gloom and doom and i think we need to. both sides as long as thomas jefferson said if you don't

try to censor the media what you do is you just put out your story and as long as there are various media outlets that you can go to you can you can flick with with your finger and go to fox news m.s.m. b.c. c.n.n. you can tune in talk radio here so if you don't like what's going on you can always search for more information right now a lot of people tell me that and that's unfortunate let me get at the beginning of the last word of the program what with everything that we heard from the. and i think a really good but the there's one more element here and it's called social media and this is what makes this all different from any other time period before go ahead jump in thirty seconds before we end. well i think the danger ultimately is that it is affecting other things that could get done for example the relationship between russia and the united states being strained when it could be made stronger for the purpose of fighting terror there are so many other examples of ways that this is interfering in progress that could be made on the fronts of terror and

economy and other things that really do matter to the american people and frankly to the entire world with america as a leader well not good for a very contentious debate we ended on a good note ok many thanks to my guests in washington and imperial beach and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r.g.c. you next time and remember stuff. we will.

yes your bone in their village like my real age and you are the kind of which i have for sure. your house too soft slop people think we do not to die by being hunted thing as being a while but the parts we are being isolated to because i was skinny. believe both of. you to go on at the start of.

the football not. about the old and i mean we had positioned. us down but they were. ok. drinking water to this village once a week. but it's rations only.