many of them under-age. los angeles police reveal a taste of the daily challenge no if you're going to exploit a child here in los angeles they were going to come out of your busy offices going undercover as 6 workers and customers to fight 6 trade. islamic radical radicalism strikes again in france says president emanuel mack wrong calls the beheading of a teacher in paris an act of terror. washington rejects russia's proposal to extend a major nuclear arms treaty between the 2 nations just months away from expiring. also with coronavirus numbers now surpassing the peak from earlier this year curfews in restrictions are being reimposed across europe. as your latest news headlines for this hour my colleague neil harvey will be taking over at 8 am moscow

time and on behalf of myself and everyone here at r t international thanks for watching and have a great day. oh and welcome to crossfire all things are considered i'm the confirmation process that will most likely see judge bear become the next supreme court justice is in full swing them in their liberal media doubt over the proceedings legally their doubts don't have any merit whatsoever however this is not once in a way simply said the supreme court has been politicized maybe forever and packing the court is a real possibility. ross

stocking the supreme court i'm joined by my guest we'd enables he is a presidential historian and a former white house advisor to 2 american presidents his latest book is inside trump's white house the real story of his presidency and in washington we cross to robert but tell me as an attorney as well as executive director of the rainbow push coalition are joining hospitals in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate it ok robert let's go to you in washington. what do you what is your assessment so far of the proceedings that it will see most likely judge bear become an associate justice on the supreme court i was very troubled to be honest with you the number of times the democrats said shameful shameless i mean what is shameful about the legal process that we're seeing right now i

understand fully well that there's a lot of issues that divide people here but the proceedings themselves are pretty straightforward and it's not the 1st time it's happened but the media doesn't give you that impression so what are your thoughts are on these proceedings. proceeding square square with them $26.00 to $16.00 remember them in a sort of the better mitch mcconnell and lindsey graham and ever sort of a sort. of. supreme. mess so. some sort of happens and. the. numbers are. going to be so that. their cards are better than the benefit that i request of veterans there but there were times our best. estimate that was announced well you know action and. well there were

a mundane day i may go to judge you but they voted for the senators and they're sent the senators it's their job. as i said in the constitution to to advise and and eventually vote here doug i agree with robert here i have but i don't really care what lindsey graham says i don't care mcconnell i don't care what they say about this i care what it says in the constitution i care what is legal and what is not legal here and so when a politician says it's neither here nor there in this situation go ahead. yeah. it's legal and it's constitutional there's a big difference between this year and 2016 the democrats couldn't get the votes in the senate to get their nominee it's. that simple they have the opportunity and they had the presidency but you have to have the senate to this time the republicans have the presidency and the senate and as you may know 29 times there's

been a vacancy during an election year the business of the government has to go on past it continue. ok let's talk about the substance here. obviously to mean that the entire proceedings of forest been turned into a democratic campaign event here because i think it was jurgen i mean he spoke the entire time to the nominee and he didn't even ask her one question but he certainly went through all of the hot wire issues of this campaign i mean it is that dignifying the entire process and even ask her a question absolutely. but this is a question of. this one question you have to have the best. interest of the passes and embedded i suppose that we're never going to have a situation where. there's an exit have been some of the.

jobs are. but what passed the sad. and the kind of these things have less impact sequences are. giving them good. dressing. room. sure. doesn't have one of. them and. we'll get there but i mean ok i agree i mean wear green on one point you know there is that level of politicking but the the the role of the senate in this whole process is advised consent ok it's it used to be when you and i were a younger man let's put it that way you were basically the senate's job was to determine if the nominee was capable they were if they had a good judicial mind but that's not what we saw on display during these hearings here it is much more trying to pin someone down on

a political issue and we all learned since bork it's not going to happen anymore go ahead. yeah well what what the big elephant in the room here that we're not discussing is for many years now the democrats have been using the courts to try to change not just american law but american culture they couldn't when at the ballot box for example referendums in the most liberal states in the country like california they would lose to the voters and so it was important for them to get judges who would override the will of the voters and impose laws which is what happened and i work for a president george herbert walker bush back in that day the republicans would appoint a conservative and then to be nice they'd appoint a liberal because the democrats couldn't get their own on the supreme court so david souter was put on the supreme court but you don't have that today donald trump was elected because he said i'll put conservatives on the supreme court is

one of the main reasons people voted for him many oldham upset in the election so he's kept his promise he's kept his word and he's got the votes so he's doing it so when you say conservative judges and it's i think we may should make it clear we're looking at original lists ok now not not using the constitution to get the laws you want but to in to interpret be. laws as that was defined by the constitution so i think we have always have to make it clear you know. conservatives tend to be originalists obviously we're able it would speak to their i mean and for me i throw a plague on both parties if you can't get what you want to the legislative process both parties throw it to the courts is that a good idea and it doesn't make the court dysfunctional and become more dysfunctional there's going to talk about hacking in the 2nd half program so i mean it seems to me as an abdication of responsibility from the congress they can't get

it done they just punt. every computer every. i think i better read something so. much better than sure. about. the american people when every. conservative justice were too generous and. it was better to be. married to a tooth that was with the baby american people sometimes i was to have a good was trying to do. so. and i stand in the family to the mention that together we have to start them better parents and conversations with simple instead of sad. so matt matt sees that the markets are there's a bad american majority into some to become actually better and the becomes a campaign to be stranger than political elections. that. have become the tired

because and that's what we become and. that's a terrible terrible place to be and but having said robert you know i i'm still very very angry how the democrats treated kavanah i thought that was unconscionable behavior on national television destroying a man's reputation without a shred of evidence in front of his family and this is what the courts have gotten down to is some kind of you know. drudge for that's being played out here joe i mean how does that influence the perception of the court because if you blow enough and you're angry enough and you get and you start islands that was the case some people being pushed around here i mean i thought the supreme court was the place where that exactly that kind of stuff exactly doesn't go ahead yeah i think that in the case of cavanagh it backfired on the democrats they realized that that's why their tactics it's changed this time they didn't know what they may call the

parents she just sits there like mona lisa. i don't think silence is ever spoken so loudly as that as through her she doesn't seem to react if the questions are friendly are if the questions are hostile she just expresses on her face intelligence an irony and i think she's the perfect appointment for this ball but i think they did a good job in making her brilliant can't make robert it in looking at some of the questions that were asked by the democratic senators senators you would get the sense that the entire supreme court is about a woman's right to choose the having abortion i mean and as far as i understand there's nothing on the court docket right now that even has anything to do with abortion rights whatsoever what line is that isn't just the red button issue that the democrats use to whip up the base and whip up interest in this whole process. i

think that's. sort of down to the pats web user so many good. jobs and they are better most of the. time so. the intention of going to a. republican majority out of those routes so it was meant as a. request and so if there's any. question round trip with. the kids and i think that's the. best you said it was. and there's time and then bitch of the bench and american people and in chairs that list i'm trying to determine. the temperament of this justice every step of terms of justice so you have to ask and searching questions and. to mention the rest of the social. so. you know

robert i am so glad you brought up the commerce issue because it seems to me. as the republicans and the democrats you know they fight these cultural wars so many of these judges you know go under the wire you know under the radar and so much of what they actually do has to do with commerce and with the economy but again the way the media projects the court it's about j. writes it's about abortion rights but there's a whole lot more to it ok and i think that you know we like with calvin i have no idea what he thinks about those things because all they talked about was his yearbook ok and we'll see what they do with amy ok i mean this senator from hawaii had a very bizarre question of the judge i'm not to repeat it here because i thought it was so disgusting but you know there are they disappear or does a whole lot of things but the way it's betrayed in the media you wouldn't think so what do you think. well as to abortion as you know the whole question is

moved beyond the initial polls favoring a woman's right to choose when you have these visual moments where a baby is delivered and set out on a table and then a governor from a state says the baby can be executed or killed that that's an abortion for the babies already exit at the womb you've reached an area where the polls would not necessarily sustain a right to choose so that issue but you really have a point we don't talk about chi have a lot of a good point and i want you you have a good answer but i have to get a hard break we're going to go to a break right now kind of notion of if you can discuss it on the supreme court say .

let me. give me to meet up with him he said. just that. there's an awful lot of time i don't know but i'm also the most companies he knows i've been a good who says you know. not emotional when i meet. those companies he most people almost come pianist came in nobody goes from didn't you know to speak to c.b.c. as pro you struggle. with them and i'm going to hit a thief honest enough to see. you i don't like them in this. they. don't look to your list. so no men because here.

is your media a reflection of reality. in a world transformed. what will make you feel safe from. the isolation community. are you going the right way or are you being led to. direct. what is true what is faith. in the world corrupted you need to descend. to join us in the depths. maybe in the shallows. secret prisons and usually would come. to mind when thinking about europe however

even the most prosperous can be deceived within the zeros on their work to view houses were allowed labour's prison was located and the only people had access to the story for investigators sure hell they uncovered the darkest dealings of the secret services but i mean. the great of nor in thought. yes or no for. crying for justice on r.t. . welcome back to crossfire for all things are considered i'm peter lavelle remind you we're talking about the supreme court.

let's go back to don't don't wait before i went my heart break you were going to bring up a good point and i'm waiting for it now go ahead. well the the elephant in the room the thing we're not discussing is the fact that this is all about big corporations that america that are battling and the big corporations want regulations they depend on regulations that's what freezes out the mom and pop shops and the big companies can't afford regulations so they'll get behind any special interest group on the left or the right it doesn't matter they'll fund them as long as they've got more regulations to freeze you and i from starting our own business if we wanted to start a business we'd have to pay a lawyer thousands of dollars just to read the regulations let alone an act that you'll notice even with the shutdown target didn't shutdown cosco didn't shut down

the big companies walmart they continued it was the mom and pop shops the restaurants that are wiped out and that's why the big national media supports the democrats they hate donald trump these the deregulator he's the man that came in and busted all the regulations and allowed small businesses to thrive it's why billionaires supported hillary 21 and billionaires right now you can google this with a look at up support biden short seem to want because the big corporations want big government regulations you know but you bet it does same time let me go back to robert here i mean even the conservative vote with anomaly what people call conservative judge is they tend to have a very strong. business preference ok and it's something that is not pointed out in the open and i'm really glad that we were talking about it here because i think it gives the gives it cover again fighting these culture wars everybody gets their temperature up but you know what about the condition of the economy and the supreme

court actually plays a very important role that and i and before we go on to packing i tend to think that a lot of liberals conservatives can find common cause that we focus this part of the court's work and not always on all these cultural wars ok ok i already mentioned the word packing i know a lot of democrats but they won't say it out loud but they do like the idea back in the court and parent gets that the spot what do you think robert. i think of the nonsense argument i things will move on to things pops up you know we were going to limit the leper colony we're going to in the filibuster donald trump in the movie form both say they want to limit the filibuster we're going to the court the ori watching your concerts and have no bearing on reality because in order to do any of those things you have to have the sort of political maturity that would. make those things look good toward that if you get the votes in united states and if you get a majority house representative yet the white house and do you think legislature is behind you in order to do something like the courts or in the filibuster or to get

rid of the electoral college we would need to do those things because you have the sort of political majority that would be available to fix the problem. in the case of packing the court but doesn't that doesn't apply i mean electoral college separate but doug no i mean that this of the the constitution does not determine the number of justices matter but with had more than 9 at one point in time in history ok no consensus for a very long time it was a 150 years now it's been 9 now we know that franklin delano roosevelt in 137 tried to do it and his own party ball it him but if biden becomes president there is nothing in the constitute. bar him from appointing more justices he can do it ok it's not even legal job but here yeah yeah that's the scary thing. i agree with robert about the electoral college anything that would require

changing the constitution but this is like a loophole and it's a loophole that out of respect the 2 parties have not used but it's pretty clear that things are getting tough the battles getting tough and this is an opportunity for the democrats to go for broke and take take over the whole country for another lifetime it would be it would not be socialism in the european sense it would be an american corporate socialism with some some more favored than others but what's new but it's a real possibility that is robert it is a real possibility and one of the things i find interesting is that the fact that joe biden won't say any much about it because he knows it was just a by coalition going into the election and you know it's politically smart that way ok i totally disagree with everything about him and his entire career in politics

but he's smart by keeping his coalition together however there's a lot of promises or implicit promises as he's made you know you know we've got rid of all the abbott government bernie sanders and the progressive they're saying well what about up ok and i do think that is the to the buyer if he's in the white house in january it's going to be a real temptation to do to appease that part of his base don't you think from an ingenue of the families of the question of retail politics so what do you do on the question of who gets what when but on this idea of core packing i just think it's an unrelenting realistic solution because as we saw with ending the in the. a need for 60 votes for judges ending the filibuster when it comes to to bring court justices what we've seen is just a continue race to the bottom of the senate rules that were previously in place where they are for a reason the summit is supposed to be the cooling saucer. being the most

deliberative body in the world so if you start adding justice that the republican president justice system and the democratic president will have justices and that's you know the court will just like the congress with nothing still getting done what we really have to do is start thinking about what or be brought across the board political and social solutions that can bring the country together instead of fighting about the things that draw us apart and we've been governing in this 5049 version of america for a few decades now and it is not advantageous to any of us we keep bouncing the ball back and forth so instead of talking about packing the court instead of mcconnell and lindsey graham simply said we will give merit girling a hearing but just are working on the things that can actually get things done for americans and that simply for the politicians and as doug said the people who are proffering most of those or the corporations you know just these owes them the most don't really care who the president is because they're they will be billionaires under obama they're even bigger billionaires under from the corporate elite in this

country that's one place where we can all agree are not screwing over the little guy so the focus on those those issues at the home the. more ridiculous and ludicrous idea such as court packing into the filibuster getting real the electoral college and was at work on the breast of the american people care about you know i thought my goodness that it better however robert let me go to doug right now i don't see that might be this polarization as much in the in the way there are so many of the members of the political elite and probably across the aisle is this is that chris sensually this will be the moment if there is a democratic now a democratic senate and and why now they are there are many people that want to completely remake this country not be conciliatory the my. norty but if you go you go for the long stretch and they wouldn't have the power that would be nothing that would stop them and of course the liberal media will share all the way ok i find this very worrying and i i think every other episode of cross like they just people

read the federalist papers because the boundaries were very worried about the the the the tyranny of the majority and we were seeing consolation of course is where the myth that the journey of the majority can actually be put into play. yeah. that's that's what's scary my friends on the left are saying oh socialism in america you're so afraid it's not going to be bad at all we have socialism already on american campuses or if there's there's no free speech on american campuses as isaiah berlin said in his lectures that the voice of the individual should not drown out the voice of the community that's the rationale that socialists use to eliminate free speech but i have a question for you peter and for you robert and that is who we're missing this

right now statehood for washington d.c. in puerto rico does that require a constitutional amendment are can that be simply voted by congress well 1st of all i think would be in violation of the constitution because there is a cart way for washington d.c. a very specific one where it would not become a state ok about puerto rico that's something completely different as far as i understand it was under general war that you're there in the story and of the president president gerald ford or a general court in the case of the the option to become unstable from that mistake and. i don't know you coming flatfooted on this one all i do know is that people have been calling or it's ok. and there is a process and i'm not prepared to go through that right now because i don't want to be back. i think we have they're very different situations as you said for puerto rico and for the washington d.c. washington d.c.

was the status as an independent federal city to be d.c. the government the entire concept is that you should not have the federal government being subsumed by state government if you didn't make washington d.c. a state that who's in charge the governor of the state of washington d.c. or the pres in the united states by being in federal jurisdiction something that is a. more more difficult question on the question of puerto rico puerto rico can be admitted the same way we made it hawaii or that we made in the. middle alaska or any other territory i think democrats frankly should be focusing on statehood for wal-mart more for the statehood for washington d.c. because that process is a lot more clear cut as to how they will be admitted to the union. along ok that's a new one for me without pay when americans hear that we need a large population the been represented again with 2 senators from guam. well i mean but it does you know and with all due respect to robert i mean this is not about representation it's about power obviously you want to have you know

a bigger majority in the senate that's what this is all about i respect the citizenship issue ok but the reason why it's being part of his power but i said. yeah the reason i brought it up it's the combination that is frightening and that is imminent that's upon us right now we can't wait the decisions we're making now may already be too late but if the democrats for example win this election they pack the court it dilutes the power of the court as robert said it guarantees back and forth but that's the problem there will be no back and forth at the democrats are able to create news new senators. and they're able to allow the immigrants to vote and have medicare why wouldn't immigrants vote for the democrats if they're going to get free education and free health care it would mean that the democrats would assume power that one party hasn't had

a long time and that power would be driven by the socialist corporate socialist wing of the party its it would be covered by the national media viacom c.b.s. disney. a.b.c. $4087.00 of their income comes we don't run out of. the job is painted my worst nightmare. my guess the neighbors are what i want to thank our viewers for watching as iraq is the annex i remember. americans love by and homed. this was a fundamental part of how our political leadership and our country a large understood the bar.