In our annual 4th of July episode Hillari takes to the mic to work out why Independence Day feels different this year. She reflects on patriotism under strain, American exceptionalism, and the fundamental beliefs that form the American Identity. She comments on a recent controversial U.S. Supreme Court ruling granting former presidents immunity for certain official acts, the shifting balance of powers, and the broader implications for American democracy. Additionally, she addresses concerns about President Biden's mental fitness and the anxiety many feel about the country's future. Finally, Lombard delves into what it truly means to love your country—reflecting on how America's promise of individual value and rights has shaped her life, and emphasizing that real patriotism involves active participation and defense of democratic principles.

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Hey guys, welcome to Moderate Party.

2

I'm your host, Hillary Lombard, and

I'm recording this on the 4th of July.

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You guys probably won't hear it until

the 6th of July, but I think that that

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context is important because this is a

holiday that I take pretty seriously.

5

If you know me, or even if you don't,

you should know that I take birthdays

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very seriously, whether it be the

birthday of a friend or a loved

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one, or the birthday of the country.

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I basically go to bed on July 3rd,

just like a normal person, and I wake

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up on the 4th of July like Toby Keith.

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.

Toby Keith: My daddy served in the army Where he lost his right

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eye But he flew a flag out in our

yard Till the day that he died

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Hillari Lombard: But for real,

as I record this now, I am

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wearing red, white, and blue.

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I can't help it, and this is just one of

three outfits that I'll be wearing today.

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No joke.

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I thought that Chapel Rowan's Statue

of Liberty getup for the Governor's

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Ball was not too much, in fact.

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Maybe, just enough.

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I was recently out at a bar with some

friends, and for reasons unknown to

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me, there was this group of adult men

that were dressed up like the Founding

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Fathers, doing some version of, like, a

hybrid between Get Low and the Can Can.

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And my friends looked at those

people and one of them said, Oh,

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Hillary, those look like your people.

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They look like they like civics.

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And though that is the type of withering

burn that can only be issued from

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somebody that really sees you, I do like

civics and those kind of are my people.

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And that's just the level of patriotism

that I'm bringing to the conversation.

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on any day of the year.

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So when the 4th of July rolls around,

a level of patriotism comes out

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in me that I don't even recognize.

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In fact, if you're a long time listener,

you might remember an episode that I put

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out, I think, two years ago on the 4th of

July called It's Your Flag Too, in which

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I ranted and raved for about 20 minutes

about how my belief, fundamentally, is

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that you have 364 days to criticize this

country and one day to shut the fuck up.

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And shockingly, I have not developed more

nuance on this topic as time has gone by.

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I think that that's a take

that's aged pretty well.

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And the reason for that is

that I do fundamentally believe

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that America is exceptional.

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Truly, and I know that that's not

necessarily like a popular take

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at this exact moment in time, or

I guess really for the last decade

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we've been pretty down on America,

but I believe it, fundamentally.

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I mean, we lead the world in Nobel

Prizes, Olympic medals, cultural

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influence, higher education, tech,

innovation, and cold hard cash.

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We've got big GDP energy.

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We have the biggest military, we

produce the most food, and for all of

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the Europeans online that are talking

about how fat and lazy Americans are,

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it's just really hard to hear them

over all of our trophies and riches.

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Not only that, but America is only

248 years old, which is really young

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for a country, so we basically hit

the scene young, hot, and talented.

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We are the Zendaya of nations.

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And I know that other countries

like to give us a lot of shit, and

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whenever we fall down they like to

really zoom in on it, but I just like

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to think of that as how boomers hate

millennials or how everyone hates Gen Z.

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It's just old, cranky nations complaining

about how young and successful we are.

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Our receipts speak for themselves.

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We're exceptional.

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And we have been since

the day that we were born.

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Our founding and the creation of

our country was unlike anything

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that has been seen before or since.

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We were founded not around

territory or religion or race,

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but we were founded around an

idea, a creed, or a set of values.

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Chief among which is that every

human being matters, that we all have

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certain rights and freedoms just

by virtue of being alive, I mean,

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you guys all know the words to the

song, all men are created equal.

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We have fundamental rights, life, liberty,

the pursuit of happiness, free speech,

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due process under the law, freedom of

conscience, freedom of expression, the

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right to property, the right to assemble,

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the right to worship a God that you

chose, not a God that was chosen for you.

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The United States isn't the

product of accident or war.

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It's the product of reflection and choice.

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We were founded around values

and beliefs that we thought

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about, we debated, and we chose.

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The people of England are bound

together by nature of being English.

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They don't really have to think about it.

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Their king didn't want

them to think about it.

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The French are French.

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They're born together.

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But Americans choose each other.

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We always have.

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Think about how many immigrants came here.

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Historically, or even today.

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They're choosing us, and it's because

our values command a deeper loyalty.

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And innate in the promise that every human

being has value and is entitled to certain

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unalienable rights is this idea that

Americans would not be beholden to a king.

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And we're proud of that.

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We are proud to be a nation ruled

by laws, and that is why our

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birth was such a revolution.

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A people with no king showed the world

that life without tyranny was possible.

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That people could not only survive,

but thrive without a ruler.

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We lit a beacon of freedom for the

entire world, and we planted the

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seeds of freedom in every human heart.

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And if you think that I'm full of shit, or

that I'm just gassing up America, or that

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this is, you know, the Toby Keith song

that I played at the beginning, It's not.

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Just try to name a single

monarchy that has come into

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existence after our founding.

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Even one.

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A new monarchy.

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You can't.

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How many monarchies can you think

of that were more powerful after

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we were founded than before?

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I can't think of any.

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And that's such a beautiful thing.

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And it didn't happen by accident.

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Our founders were clear.

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Our constitution is set

up to balance power,

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we wanted to make sure that we didn't

create a king in our president,

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nor a house of lords in our senate.

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John Adams famously said that ours

is a government of laws, not men.

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Which is why I find this

so deeply unsettling.

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NPR - Nina Totenberg: The U.

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S.

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Supreme Court, in a 6 3 decision

along ideological lines, ruled that a

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former president has absolute immunity

for his core constitutional powers

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and is entitled to a presumption of

immunity for his official acts, but

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lacks immunity for unofficial acts.

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But at the same time, the court sent

the case back to the trial judge to

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determine which, if any, of Trump's

actions were part of his official duties

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and thus were protected from prosecution

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Hillari Lombard: I know that clip

is full of legal jargon and can be a

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little bit difficult to follow, so I'm

going to play you a clip that you might

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recognize that makes the exact same

argument that the Supreme Court majority

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just upheld, but in much simpler terms.

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Frost Nixon Interviews: So what, in

a sense, you're saying is that there

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are certain situations, where the

president can decide that it's in

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the best interest of the nation or

something, and do something illegal.

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Well, when the president does it,

that means that it is not illegal.

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Hillari Lombard: Yep, that's our friend,

former president Dick Nixon, making

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the same argument as Chief Justice

Roberts made in the majority opinion

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when he wrote that presidents must be

immune from prosecution for an official

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act unless the government can show

that applying a criminal prohibition

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to that act would pose no dangers of

intrusion on the authority and function

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of the executive branch, which is an

incredibly Thank you for joining us.

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We appreciate it.

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High bar to clear.

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And legal scholars agree like even

conservative leaning commentators

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were shocked at the breadth of this

ruling, which basically argues that a

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president could order the military to

assassinate a political rival so long

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as he did it on official stationary.

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It's ridiculous.

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It's also anti originalist.

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This court has used originalism

as justification for many

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contentious rulings, namely the

Dobbs ruling that overturned Roe v.

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Wade and restricted the

rights of millions of women.

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Originalism is an approach to the

law that argues that legal texts,

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namely, the Constitution should be

interpreted as it was understood

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at the time of its adoption.

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So in the Dobbs ruling, as an example,

the conservative majority argued

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that the right to an abortion was

not rooted in the text, history,

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and tradition of the United States.

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Therefore, even if they wanted to,

which they didn't, they couldn't

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rule in favor of reproductive rights

because, you know, originalism.

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And I'm sure that you guys all

know how I feel about that.

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Electricity, women's rights, and

racial equality weren't rooted in

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the text, history, and tradition

of the United States either, yet

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here we are, it's called growth.

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But, whatever.

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Originalism is thought by many to

be a credible legal theory, and

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one that the conservative majority

of this court swears to adhere to.

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Except, you know what is firmly

rooted in the text, history, and

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tradition of the United States?

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The idea that our president

is not above the law.

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That he is not a king, our founders

deliberately divided power across

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three co equal branches so that no

branch could become too powerful.

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And this ruling spits in the face

of text, history, and tradition.

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It makes a joke of originalism.

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Justice Sotomayor issued a legacy

defining dissent in which she

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actually does argue for the text,

history, and tradition, something that

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liberal justices don't typically do.

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She says, quote,

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Today's decision to grant former

presidents criminal immunity reshapes

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the institution of the presidency.

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It makes a mockery of the principle

foundational to our constitution

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and system of government

that no man is above the law.

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Relying on little more than its own

misguided wisdom about the need for bold

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and unhesitating action by the president,

the court gives former president Trump all

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the immunity that he asked for, and more.

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Hey, just in case it isn't clear, this

is the Supreme Court equivalent of a

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Drake or Kendrick Lamar level diss track.

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Like Sotomayor is dropping bars right now.

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The historical evidence that exists

on presidential immunity from criminal

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prosecution cuts decisively against it.

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For instance, Alexander Hamilton

wrote that former presidents would be

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liable to prosecution and punishment

in the ordinary course of law.

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For Hamilton, that was an important

distinction between the King of Great

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Britain who was sacred and the President

of the United States who would be amenable

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to personal punishment and disgrace.

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This historical evidence reinforces that,

from the very beginning, the presumption

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in this nation has always been that no

man is free to flout the criminal law.

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The majority fails to recognize or

grapple with the lack of historical

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evidence for its new immunity.

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With nothing on its side of the ledger,

the most the majority can do is claim

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that historical evidence is a wash.

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Our country's history also points to an

established understanding shared by both

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Presidents and the Justice Department

that former Presidents are answerable to

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the criminal law for their official acts.

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Consider Watergate, for example.

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After the Watergate tapes revealed

President Nixon's misuse of

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official power to obstruct the FBI's

investigation into the Watergate

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burglary, President Ford pardoned Nixon.

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Both Ford's pardon and Nixon's acceptance

of that pardon necessarily rested on the

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understanding that the former president

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Hillari Lombard reading Justice Sotomayor:

Today's court, however, has replaced

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a presumption of equality before

the law with a presumption that

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the president is above the law

for all of his official acts.

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Hillari Lombard: And it's not just

that they're spitting in the face

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of our founding documents, which

they are, and that's upsetting.

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They're also spitting in the face

of our balance of powers, which is

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actually a point that Justice Jackson

brings up, because she says that doing

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this takes Congress out at the knees,

because this level of immunity also

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goes so far as to say that Congress

can't criminalize the president's

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conduct in carrying out his official

duties, which means that Congress, i.

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e.

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our representatives in government,

cannot pass a law that makes it illegal

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for the president to say order a hit or

I don't know, incite an insurrection.

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And if Congress can't pass laws

criminalizing conduct, and he

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can't be reined in by the judiciary,

since the Supreme Court just gave him

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immunity from criminal prosecution,

how exactly are we staying true to the

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Founders vision of a balance of powers?

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How are these three co equal branches?

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This ruling has inflated the

power of the Supreme Court

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while hobbling the lower court.

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It has created a level of presidential

power that we've never seen, it hobbles

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Congress, the body that most closely

represents the people, who our founders

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say that this government is for.

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And it gets worse if you consider that

this ruling was divided along party lines.

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All of the conservative justices,

three of which were appointed by

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Trump himself, ruled in favor of

presidential immunity, with all

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three liberal justices dissenting.

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Which while not legally wrong, is a really

tough pill for this country to swallow.

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And I think that it's a damning blow to

the institution of the Supreme Court.

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I will say that justice Amy

Coney Barrett for her part.

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Didn't join the opinion in full

and actually did try to stake

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out a middle ground position.

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She sharply criticized the court

for going so far as to say.

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That the president's immunized

acts could not be brought forth as

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evidence in related criminal cases.

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She says that this is a problem because

though the constitution bars the

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president from accepting bribes, this

ruling makes it nearly impossible to

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prosecute that because you can't admit

the evidence of the bribes since he

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did it as part of his official duties.

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In a weird turn of events, Amy Coney

Barrett, the justice that so many of

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us, myself included, thought would take

the court down a more extreme direction,

243

tried to stake out a position for

moderation, and Chief Justice Roberts,

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who is typically a swing vote that

tries to stay in the center, said no.

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He made the choice to move towards

an extremist ruling that should raise

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alarm bells for democracy everywhere.

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Justice Sotomayor lays out the stakes so

I will defer to her once more and I quote

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Hillari Lombard reading Justice Sotomayor:

The President of the United States

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is the most powerful person in the

country, and possibly the world.

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When he uses his official powers in

any way under the majority's reasoning,

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he now will be insulated from criminal

prosecution, orders the Navy SEAL Team

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6 to assassinate a political rival?

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Immune.

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Organizes a military dissenting

coup to hold onto power?

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Immune.

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Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon.

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Immune.

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Immune.

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Immune.

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Immune.

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Let the president violate the law.

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Let him exploit the trappings

of his office for personal gain.

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Let him use his official

power for evil ends.

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Because if he knew that he may one

day face liability for breaking the

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law, he might not be as bold and

fearless as we would like him to be.

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That is the majority's message today.

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Even if these nightmare scenarios

never play out, and I pray that they

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never do, the damage has been done.

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The relationship between the

president and the people he

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serves has shifted irrevocably.

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In every use of official power, the

president is now a king above the law.

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Never in the history of our republic

has a president had reason to believe

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that he would be immune from criminal

prosecution if he used the trappings of

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his office to violate the criminal law.

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Moving forward, however, all

former presidents will be

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cloaked in such immunity.

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If the occupant of that office misuses

official power for personal gain, the

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criminal law that the rest of us must

abide by will not provide a backstop.

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With fear for our democracy, I dissent.

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Hillari Lombard: That level of alarmism

is coming from a Supreme Court justice.

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It is a much darker and more

alarmist tone than we've really ever

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seen in a Supreme Court dissent.

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And honestly, I think it's appropriate.

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This ruling scares me in

a new and terrible way.

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And not only that, it

offends me as an American.

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It goes against all of our

values and everything that I.

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know our country to be.

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America should not be ruled over

by a king nor a group of people

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that see themselves as king makers.

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And, I mean, it's not just the

stuff with the court or with Trump.

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It's the conversation

surrounding Biden too.

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After a devastating debate that

raised real and legitimate questions

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about his mental state, the news

around Biden has only gotten worse.

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The New York Times published a bombshell

piece that reported that people around

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Biden have said that his lapses have

gotten more frequent and more concerning.

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the Wall Street Journal and the Financial

Times have both reported that European

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leaders were somewhere between shocked

and horrified by Biden's mental state.

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and then there's the polling,

according to a New York Times Siena

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poll, 74 percent of Americans think

that Biden is too old for the job.

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A CBS YouGov poll found that 72 percent

of voters don't believe that Biden

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has the mental or cognitive health.

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To serve as president.

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And let's not even mention the Robert,

her report in which a government

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official, as credible as Robert

Mueller came out and said that Biden

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has some serious memory and cognitive

issues, Democrats are in a full panic.

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And it's not just like the

typical pearl clutching that

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Democrats are so famous for.

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This is real crisis.

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Yet every conversation that

I hear ultimately returns to,

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if Biden doesn't want to step

aside, there's nothing we can do.

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And then you hear from Biden that he won't

step down and he won't be pushed out.

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And Dems say that there's nothing to be

done if he doesn't want to step aside

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because the delegates belong to Joe Biden.

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Not the party.

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Not the ticket.

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To President Biden himself.

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To one man.

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Which is bullshit.

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The delegates should belong to

the voters that they represent.

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That's government for the people.

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But instead, we're told that those

delegates, which were handpicked by

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the Biden campaign, belong to Biden.

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If he won't step down,

we're just stuck with him.

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Even if well over 50 percent of

Americans think that he is unfit.

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Is that democracy?

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Is that a government that exists

at the consent of the governed?

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And Dems don't seem to know what they

want to do, and I don't really blame

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them, because a second Trump presidency

would be catastrophic for the country.

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But what does it say if we elect a man

that we know to be cognitively unfit?

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And what's really fucked up about that

actually is that that sentence could apply

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to either candidate depending on what

side of the aisle you're looking from.

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And this is where I start to

hear the heartbeat of my grief.

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How the fuck did we get here?

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And what did we lose along the way?

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Like, how did a nation so bold and

brave fall to its knees with a wound

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that we might not survive at a moment

when autocracy is on the march?

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So many people in my life, so

many people that listen to this

338

show, talk to me about the anxiety

that they have for our country.

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This fear.

340

And I feel it too.

341

More acutely in the last

couple months, honestly.

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And I think that maybe what

we're feeling is the turn of the

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earth or a change in gravity.

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Like maybe we're starting to feel

the world order shift away from us.

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Or maybe we're starting to mourn the loss

of something that we didn't know we loved.

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A love that's so big that it's unknowable.

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A love whose name we didn't know.

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A love that exists as a cornerstone

of our identity, whether we like it or

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not, to feel a loss of that love, or the

possibility of its end, is destabilizing.

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this 4th of July.

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I'm thinking about the love that I have

for my country, free of the pageantry

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or the performative patriotism,

just at its core, And I'm feeling

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all of the places in my life and in

myself that that love has touched.

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I grew up thinking that

I could be anything.

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I think that's a gift

that America gave to me.

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My mom was the first person in our

family to get a college degree.

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And she didn't have a lot of

support when it came to education

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And the expectations of her weren't high.

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But my mom and my aunt, her twin,

both grew out of their parents

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hope for what their life could be.

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And it's because in America,

the circumstances that you're

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born into don't have to be the

circumstances that you grow into.

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That decision, that change, that drive,

all of that exists within my mom.

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And all of it exists within

a lot of Americans like her.

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And it was able to come to fruition

because of the promise that every

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american just gets like you don't even

think about it It's not you have a

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birthday and you open this box and inside

it you get rights It's not like that.

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You're born having them here.

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You are not born having them everywhere

like I have a podcast where I routinely

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talk shit about the government And not

only does my country protect my right

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to do that, on some level, . It has

encouraged it I grew up knowing that

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the government represents me, and that

my elected officials aren't better than

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me, so they're not above my critique.

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And it is not like that everywhere.

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I hate how many toxic hot takes there

are on social media, truly, I do.

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But if you zoom out, I think

that it's because everyone feels

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entitled to have an opinion.

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Which, like, I still don't love, but if

you zoom out even further, I think that

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they feel that way because they think

that on some basic level, they matter.

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That they have an opinion

that is worth sharing.

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They have value.

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And that is our most fundamental belief,

and it's crazy that you can see it when

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somebody is just mouthing off on Twitter

and you can see it in our founding.

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It's the same idea, present today, that we

fell in love with all the way back then.

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Our country gave us that guarantee in some

basic and secret place that individuals

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matter and that nobody is better than you.

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No one.

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That is an American promise.

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It's something that people have

risked their lives for, whether

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that be to get it or to defend it.

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and when I think of that

gift, all that I feel is love.

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And beauty and wonder.

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The United States showed the world

that every individual matters.

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That's the love that it gave to us.

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So maybe loving our country is just

as simple as giving that love back.

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Maybe it's just holding in your

heart that this country matters.

397

That it's special, that we as a

nation have value, not just us as

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individuals, but if you put all of

those individuals together, if you

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look at our institutions, our lands,

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it matters.

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The decisions that this

country makes matter.

402

And it's easy to talk yourself out of

that, like, I hear from a lot of people

403

that are like, oh, I don't like either

candidate, my vote doesn't matter,

404

I'm not represented, and I get it.

405

I really get it.

406

But there are 8.

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1 billion people on earth

and 333 million in America.

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And if you're lucky enough to be one

of those 333 million, you get to vote

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for the most powerful person on earth.

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And that person has to respond to you.

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Maybe not as an

individual, but as a group.

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We command tremendous power

and tremendous influence, and

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it's time that we act like it.

414

It's so easy to be cynical or to

think that these things are too

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big to be stopped or too slow to

matter, but maybe the greatest act

416

of love that we can give to our

country is just to take it seriously.

417

It feels really played out to say

that our institutions are under attack

418

or that democracy is on the ballot.

419

Not to say that those things aren't true.

420

I think that they are.

421

But I think that we have a little bit of

a boy who cried wolf syndrome on this.

422

If you say it all the

time, It becomes less true.

423

Or if you say it and worse,

you don't act like it.

424

These words start to lose their meaning.

425

It's hard to look at the news right now

and think that our country is doing well.

426

I really liked Biden.

427

I think that he's good.

428

I think that he's decent, as I'm

sure that you've all heard me say.

429

And I think that he was a really

successful president, but there's no

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denying that he is not cognitively fit

for another four years as president.

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Trump is a liar, a lunatic.

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And by my measure,

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so when I was watching that debate,

I just kept thinking, how are these

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the two sole options for representing

the greatest country on earth.

435

How did that happen?

436

When did we stop taking

ourselves seriously?

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Then you look at Congress

and there are good and decent

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people that work in Congress.

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And there are also people.

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That make it seem like a clown show?

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They erode the public's

faith in government.

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They make it a joke.

443

How do we allow that to happen?

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We stopped taking it seriously.

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We became so disenchanted with government

and the role that it plays in our lives

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that we allowed that to be passing.

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That you can just go on the news

and rant and rave about the other

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side, and that that could be enough

to collect a salary and to represent

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the United States of America.

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Congress is passing less

laws than it ever has.

451

And we're letting that happen.

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We have allowed cynicism to weigh us down.

453

And we just keep looking to the

Supreme Court to save us, and it

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keeps disappointing us over and over.

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And I think that that just compounds

the sense of helplessness and doom

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that converts over to nihilism.

457

And there are all of these

micro moments, you know, like,

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do I decide to watch the news?

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Yes or no?

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Probably not, because it's

a real fucking bummer.

461

But when you choose to stop

looking at this, you say that

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it doesn't matter to you.

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I think a lot of us want to be the type of

person that calls their representative and

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a very small number of us actually are.

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Because we're not taking it seriously.

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We're not taking this threat seriously.

467

We're not taking this attack on our

values and our freedoms seriously.

468

And we need to.

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That's how I'm going to

try to love my country.

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By taking it seriously, and by defending

it like it matters, because it does.

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To quote my problematic fave Toby Keith.

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The nation we love is

falling under attack,

473

And that's where we're going to leave it.

474

Happy 4th of July, you guys.

475

As always,

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if you have thoughts or feedback that

you want to share on this episode, you

477

can always email them to me directly.

478

By sending a message to talk

at moderate party podcast.

479

com.

480

if you liked this episode, please

remember to like rate, review, follow,

481

verbally recommend, do all the things

wherever you listen to podcasts.

482

It helps attract an audience,

get us recommended and you

483

know, all the algorithm things.

484

Oh, yes.

485

Okay.

486

One more housekeeping note.

487

Um, if you haven't already

purchased your Mod Pod swag, head

488

on over to moderatepartypodcast.

489

com slash shop.

490

And check out some of the moderate

merch that we have on sale.

491

There's t shirts, a bag, buttons,

you name it, we've got it.

492

Nothing hurts moderates more than silence.

493

So check out the merch and get loud.

494

Put it on your body.

495

Spread the word that being moderate isn't

something that you need to be quiet about.

496

Alright guys, I'll see you next time.

497

Bye!