Thursday on the RealClearPolitics radio show — weeknights at 6:00 p.m. on SiriusXM’s POTUS Channel 124 and then on Apple, Spotify, and here on our website — Tom Bevan, Carl Cannon, and Andrew Walworth discuss what’s going on in the world of politics today. *** First up, should an Instagram post by former FBI director James Comey of seashells spelling out the numbers 8647 be interpreted as a threat aimed at President Trump? “A child knows what that means,” the president said in an interview with FNC’s Bret Baier. “He wasn’t very competent, but he was competent enough to know what that meant.” “Certainly, when it comes to Donald Trump — they’ve tried to kill him twice already — you have to be a little more sensitive,” Tom Bevan commented. “Comey has a book coming out, I can only assume he wanted to re-inject himself into the conversation.” As Donald Trump says, “Any publicity is good publicity.” “What he deserves is ridicule; we don’t want to suspend the writ of habeas corpus over this one clown,” Carl Cannon commented. “I’m going to be watching the beach more carefully,” Eastern Shore resident Andrew Walworth added. “I didn’t know they did political statements by arranging seashells.” *** Also in FBI news this week, at minute 8:30, the new director, Kash Patel, announced that 1,500 agents will be moved out of Washington to field offices around the country, and the “unsafe” Hoover building downtown is going to be closed. “It’s the ugliest building in Washington, named after a person who had an ugly side to him,” Cannon said about the buckling brutalist behemoth on Pennsylvania Avenue. “J. Edgar Hoover blackmailed presidents and tried to extort Martin Luther King; he sort of epitomizes the worst of this agency.” “The FBI has always been politicized. They’ve switched targets; they used to go after liberals and now they go after conservatives,” he added. “Kash Patel says they’re going to get back to crime-fighting.” *** After that, starting at timestamp 13:40, Pennsylvania Democrat Rep. Summer Lee reintroduced a resolution to give reparations to the descendants of slaves, to the tune of $ 14 trillion. Is this good politics? “I wrote about the reparations bill for Japanese-Americans in the 1980s,” Cannon recalled. “One hundred twenty thousand of them were locked up and put in concentration camps… Did it make up for it? No, it was $ 20,000. But it was a sign, it was a symbol. This doesn’t seem to be that; this seems to be a scheme for wealth distribution.” “And then the question becomes: Then what are affirmative action, Head Start, all of these social programs? When you get into who is owed what, everybody who fought for and against slavery is long dead. Hundreds of thousands of white men gave their lives to end slavery in this country, and hundreds of thousands more were wounded.” “I think this is terrible for Democrats,” Bevan added. “First, it’s unworkable. But number two, it would create more division in the country.” “A majority of people in this country are descended from people who didn’t even live here in 1865,” Cannon continued. *** Plus, at timestamp 19:30, this week’s “You Can Not Be Serious!” segment – a look at the most outrageous statements or events of the past week. Tom nominates Rep. Shri Thanedar, the Michigan congressman who introduced the latest impeachment against Donald Trump, for failing to name five cities in his district off the top of his head. Carl picks a NY Times op-ed arguing that “Maternal Instinct Is A Myth That Men Created.” Andy suggests Hillary Clinton’s comment that “no one gives someone a $ 400 million jet for free, without expecting anything in return,” inadvertently reminding us about Qatar’s donations to the Clinton Foundation, which rival the value of their gift to Trump. *** After that, at timestamp 22:45, Carl Cannon talks to author and public historian Jason Steinhauer about Trump’s decision to fire Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress. He also dismissed the head of the national archives and the copyright registrar, and appointed an acting librarian whose position is now disputed. Does Trump think the presidency has been too weak? Is this an expansion of executive power or just spiking the football in the culture war? “I do not currently work there and I do not speak on behalf of the Library of Congress,” he qualified. “The Library of Congress has been around since 1800, and it is the actual library of Congress. It is part of the legislative branch.” “He’s also issued an executive order targeting the Smithsonian, took over the Kennedy Center, and dismissed people from the Holocaust Museum council. So we could see this as part of a broader trend of the White House trying to assert more control over America’s cultural institutions.” “The Library of Congress has collections in 470 languages, 100,000 stories of America’s war veterans, the largest collections of baseball cards and comic books, American music, courtroom drawings,” he said. “These institutions must remain bipartisan.” *** Finally, at timestamp 34, RCP contributor Maggie Miller talks to journalist John Murawski about his recent reporting on the University of Austin (UATX) and the School of Civic Leadership at the University of Texas. Both are part of a growing national movement hoping to revive classical education by emphasizing the Great Books, free markets, and individual liberty. *** Don’t miss a single episode of the RealClearPolitics weeknight radio show – subscribe at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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