Friday 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 Phil Wegmann discuss the latest on the Epstein files, the story of aanother “Maryland Man” — a VOA employee who threatened to kill Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, and CBS canceling Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show. Plus, the weekly “You Can Not Be Serious?!” roundup of the goofiest stories of the week. After that, Carl Cannon talks to RCP contributor Peter Berkowitz about the meaning of the Declaration of Independence, and Andrew Walworth talks to economic historian Phillip W. Magness about his book: “The 1619 Project Myth” *** First, the gang breaks down the Wall Street Journal publishing a “lewd” letter President Trump allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein more than 20 years ago and Trump’s threat to sue over it. “There’s going to be enormous pressure on Donald Trump to appoint a special prosecutor or independent counsel,” Carl Cannon predicted. “I don’t think the pressure is going to go away for them to just release everything the government has. And that’s their own fault, because they stoked the interest so much.” “A lot of my sources are now saying, this Jeffrey Epstein business-can’t we get over it? That’s clearly a line all the way down from the president,” RCP White House reporter Phil Wegmann, who asked about this at yesterday’s White House briefing, said. “Attorney General Pam Bondi overpromised, underdelivered. And when the White House tried to turn the page, they really did a Streisand effect.” “Trump said it’s a birthday card and he wrote little doodles on it, kind of off-color-he said he didn’t do it,” Cannon said. “Would you remember a card you sent 20 years ago?” “Vice President Vance is torn between protecting the president and going with the company line that there’s nothing to see here-and considering that those who want to see the documents are very likely his primary voters in 2028,” Wegmann added. “They want everything. They were told a billionaire on a sex island was a conspiracy theory-and then found out a billionaire had a sex island.” *** In the next segment, around minute 12, Maryland man Seth Jason, a 64-year-old Voice of America employee, was arrested for threatening to kill Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who voted to defund his agency. “You get the impression that the Washington Post is trolling conservatives who lost their collective minds over that deported Salvadoran being called a Maryland man,” Cannon commented. “But now we have another Maryland man. But the more salient point is he worked for the government, and it’s a very disturbing case, actually.” “What we’re living through is that political violence is becoming mundane, it’s not always a front-page story,” Wegmann added. “So it’s just all-around bad-and pretty shortsighted for someone who thought threatening a member of Congress was going to change the discourse. What an idiot.” *** And then, at minute 16, CBS announced that they’re going to cancel Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” next year, despite the show’s history going back decades and remaining the second most watched talk show in the timeslot — after FNC’s Greg Gutfeld. Was the cancellation political, or does this reflect how much the media landscape has changed? “First-it hasn’t been funny for a long time. That’s a subjective judgment, but it’s mine,” Cannon said. “But having said that, it’s pretty suspicious that Trump sues CBS over something that isn’t even a tort-editing of a Kamala Harris interview. There’s no cause of action there. And his Justice Department is looking at this merger that’s worth billions of dollars.” “Would you put it past Donald Trump? If you’re SNL, watch out,” Wegmann quipped. “It’s not just Colbert that’s going into the dustbin of history. It’s what used to be a monoculture institution. Now that’s over. You can get news and entertainment a la carte.” “The problem is that all these late-show hosts have become hyperpartisan. They’re all left-wing. They all do the same shtick. Consequently, their ratings are in the toilet,” Tom Bevan added. “Greg Gutfeld is now the top-rated show. He proved people will watch late night-it’s not the time slot, it’s the content.” *** After that, at minute 21, our weekly “You Can Not Be Serious!?” segment, featuring a New York Times op-ed from a Biden staffer suggesting ways to fix the immigration system, the argument from Congressional Democrats that cuts to NPR will impact emergency services in rural areas, and a CBS news reporter saying he has PTSD from witnessing the Trump assassination attempt in Butler — because he thought the crowd would have murdered him if Trump wasn’t okay. *** In the next segment, starting at minute 34, Carl Cannon speaks to frequent RCP columnist Peter Berkowitz about his upcoming piece defending the Declaration of Independence from critiques on both the left and the right. “The authors of the 1619 Project contend that the truest fact about the United States is slavery,” he said. “They say 1776, the Declaration, the self-evident truths, were all window-dressing whose real purpose was to obscure and perpetuate slavery … It’s not just that Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and others all invoked the Declaration to demand reform. They abhorred slavery, but on the basis of what idea, what notion?” “The New Right argues that almost all of the ills of contemporary America can be traced back to the classical principles of freedom on which the country is based,” he said on the other side. “They blame all of America’s contemporary problems on the demand for absolute freedom … They don’t even pause to say it is a radicalization or misunderstanding of John Locke. They argue that this is what Locke always intended.” *** Finally, starting at minute 34:30, Andrew Walworth talks to economic historian Phillip W. Magness about his new book: “The 1619 Project Myth” “They claim American economic development in the 19th century was fueled by capitalism infused by the cotton industry and slavery — America gets rich and wealthy by exploiting the labor of enslaved Africans. While that sounds horrific, and it is, but the empirical data doesn’t support this claim. In fact, it was the free states in the North that powered industrial growth-not the stagnant, backwater agrarian economy of the South,” he explains. “It’s a modern political narrative that uses the past for present-day goals,” Magness says. “The 1619 Project evolved from a magazine issue to a book and a Hulu series, and it’s become more openly Marxist as it progressed. By the time you get to the Hulu series, they devote an entire episode to portraying capitalism as evil.” “Slavery is a central part of American history. It was the major political issue from the founding through the Civil War, and its effects extended into the civil rights era,” Magness argues. “But slavery is not the entirety of the American story. In 1776, the founding introduced a reconciliation of the philosophical principles of liberty that conflicted with slavery and caused many to question it.” *** 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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