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another day another crazy report about republican congressman matt gates tonight nbc news citing a law enforcement official reports that federal investigators are looking into his travel into the bahamas with women and specifically whether those women were paid to travel for sex which could violate federal law according to cbs news gates allegedly traveled with and i'm quoting here a marijuana entrepreneur and hand surgeon named jason pirazzolo who allegedly paid for the travel expenses accommodations and female escorts pirozolo did not respond to requests for comment cbs news also reporting investigators want to know if gates was accepting paid escorts in exchange for political access or legislative favors gates denies that he engaged in sex trafficking including with a 17 year old girl who was reported to be part of the investigation a spokesperson told cbs news representative gates has never paid for sex nor has he had sex with an underage girl what began with blaring headlines about sex trafficking has now turned into a general fishing exercise about vacations and consensual relationships with adults important to remember as these stories keep breaking matt gates is not some plucky young guy who made a name for himself in his own he's the son of the former president of the florida senate whose connections and deep pockets helped his son become a state senator and a member of congress in 2008 gates was charged with dui after getting pulled over for speeding in his daddy's bmw he refused a breathalyzer test and the charges were ultimately dropped this is someone who's always coasted on his privilege so it's no surprise he glommed on to another child of privilege whose dad opened doors for him donald trump when gates associates started being questioned by investigators last year new york times reports gates sought a blanket pardon from trump who had been loyal to for years not clear how much gates knew about the investigation of the time gates didn't get the pardon but after a long delay trump did come out today with a brief carefully worded statement claiming the congressman had never directly asked him for a pardon adding that gates has totally denied the accusations against him totally denied it's one of the most damning things donald trump can say about a person i mean remember roy moore the alabama theocrat credibly accused of sexual misconduct with underage girls moore denied those allegations but they likely cost republicans the senate seat and here's what trump said at the time well he denies it look he denies it i mean he totally denies it he says it didn't happen and you know you have to listen to him also what about vladimir putin who our intelligence agencies say meddled in u.s elections to help trump president putin he just said it's not russia i will say this i don't see any reason why it would be president putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today then there's saudi crown prince mohammed bin salman who a u.s intel reports has approved an operation to capture or kill journalist jamal khashoggi the king firmly denied any knowledge of it the denial was very strong it wasn't like there was a question in his mind the denial was very very strong the denial was not only a denial it was a very firm denial roy moore gates uh you know mohammed bin salman putin they all denied it case closed for the latest on the gate saga i'm joined by orlando central columbus scott maxwell he's been writing about matt gates and his career and roots in florida um and scott i wonder you know how this all plays in florida where gates and his father particularly are extremely known entities yeah they are uh back in florida don gates was pretty respected uh matt gates was known as baby gates uh when he started to uh develop a career thanks large to his father but most of it is par for the course in fact one of the things that i have been uh writing about lately is there's sort of this famed shock and awe of pearl clutching among uh particularly republicans who who seem to act like they're surprised by the stuff with uh matt gates i don't know anything about the current accusations they you know they have no they still have yet to play out but there's plenty that has been absolutely proven about gates behavior in the past that was wide in the open that we've written about for years and uh folks down here didn't seem to care until now when it was a political liability say more about that what do you mean well you know just to give you one example one of the reasons we followed gates here in orlando it wasn't sexy but because he was involved in asking florida's governor to stop orlando's airport with appointees who tried to mount a bid and mount a coup and hand out these no bid legal contracts that may not sound like something your viewers probably care about but let me tell you something that is orlando's swamp and every one of your viewers in every town in america they have their own swamps and while gates was up there uh screaming about draining the swamp in washington he was trying to fill the sludge here and in fact one of those board members that he helped that he was buddies with appointed was the one you just mentioned at the top of the block uh who's being investigated for taking a flight to the bahamas with and all of this stuff feeds together there were lots of questions there have been investigations but most of the time when matt got cornered he would start you know screaming about antifa or undocumented immigrants and it was red meat for the crowd that would usually end up supporting him again wait i'm sorry so i mean clearly there's a congressman have all kinds of connections you're talking about the um marijuana entrepreneur and hand surgeon mr perezolo as a matter of fact i have pulled up emails i had with mr dr pirazzolo and uh matt gates just today from two years ago when i was trying to understand why matt gates and i don't know that this has been widely reported tried to make dr pirazzolo florida's surgeon general even though his expertise seemed to be medical marijuana at the time that one didn't pan out as a consolation prize he got to be a member of the orlando airport board and control about two billion dollars uh worth of contracts oh so this i mean it's established these guys have a relationship there's some association between the two it's just a matter of of record the question of you know the allegations themselves being distinct what you're saying is like there's a connection there oh there's definitely i i can share my emails with yes i've swapped notes with both of them about this and they didn't uh deny that and that's the thing chris a lot of this stuff has been open you know the the the the shock about the the sex games talk well more than a year ago one of gates's former legislators came right out and accused and said gates that created a sex game when he was in the legislature where young male legislators scored points uh based on how many people they could sleep with and the accusation was that they got fewer amounts of points for sleeping with lobbyists and the most for sleeping with say another married uh legislator this has been out for a year now chris laval was the legislator said it uh there are suddenly people who seem to be uh surprised and interested in it but uh it's been reported down here for quite a while scott maxwell with some fascinating context about the world of florida politics always lots to learn about that state thanks for sharing your reporting tonight so yes what is happening now is not jim crow literally but the historical parallels well they're pretty illuminating nonetheless as jamel bowie points out in the new york times a lot of people have misconception about the voting laws during jim crow the laws that disenfranchise black americans in the south and established jim crow did not actually say they were disenfranchising black americans and creating a one-party racist state it's true when we think about jim crow this is what springs to mind we usually think of these images right segregated water fountains and bathrooms that said what they were doing explicitly whites only restaurants businesses segregation that was clear and obvious on its face voting laws however did not work that way this is really important to remember right because we had the 15th amendment the right to vote enshrined in it paid with the blood of hundreds of thousands of union soldiers and freed slaves right so it was illegal and unconstitutional in the constitution to deny the right to vote based on race so the whole decades-long regime of jim crow and voting rights was coming up with regulations that were race neutral on their face as gml bowie explains there was no statute that said black people cannot vote instead southern lawmakers spun a web of restrictions and regulations meant to catch most blacks as well as many whites and keep them out of the electorate that's been the entire cat and mouse game to stop multiracial democracy in this country for over a century for the majority of the time it has been uh a non-slave country right since the civil war the majority of the time there were these rules in place this is what it looked like on the actual front lines of the voting rights fight in 1965 in selma alabama the dallas county courthouse steps became a dramatic stage as prospective voters lined up for the registrar's office inside the key actor was sheriff jim clarke [Applause] more than half of dallas county citizens were black but less than one percent were registered by 1965. throughout much of the south custom and law had long prevented blacks from registering in selma the registrar's office was open only two days a month registrars would arrive late leave early and take long lunch hours few blacks who lined up would get in and getting in was no guarantee of being registered oh no no no uh proof uh the office is just closed today ma'am register's not here has nothing to do with race oh we just took some drop boxes out of your neighborhood nothing about race here that's a clip from the amazing the legendary uh pbs documentary eyes on the prize which i recommend everybody watch if you can and you can see why this is a problem and why in 1965 with a lot of pressure and blood and sweat and tears and protests the federal government had to step in with the voting rights act now the voting rights act had a few brilliant provisions one being if certain states or localities or districts not restricted to the south we should note with a history of discriminatory practices wanted to change their voting procedures they had to go through a process called pre-clearance the justice department would evaluate whether the proposed law was a harmless change or whether it was just another one of the old tricks that are ruled for so many years the key innovation there was that they were concerned with what the effect of the law would be the disparate impact so no one can say oh wow closing the registrar office early hurts all the black folks who work until five who would have guessed we were just we wanted the register's office uh to be closed early because it saved money you see now conservatives gutted precisely that provision of the voting rights act right back in 2013 conservative supreme court justice john roberts famously writing things have changed dramatically in the south and throwing out uh the pre-clearance requirement at least the formula for it telling congress to come up with a better formula for which areas should be covered by it now republicans since then have shown zero zero interest in doing that even though they're in congress they could take it up if they wanted to and so what it means is that court decision has set off nearly a decade of attempts to suppress the vote battles in state after state as republicans get back to well let's say new tricks so here we are in the year 20 2021. the republican governor south carolina the state i should note for just historical accuracy of the nullification crisis and fort sumter is arguing against another federal bill h.r 1 that would protect and restore voting rights this bill hr1 threatens the constitutional sovereignty of the state of south carolina now those are not just words that's very important this this country our state is built on the sovereignty of the states this bill takes that away sovereignty of the states our country is built on sovereignty the states it's a claim you've heard before throughout american history right a federal voting rights law would be an egregious affront to the sovereignty of the states particularly the sovereignty of the great state of south carolina how can anyone listen to governor henry mcmaster braying about the indignity the federal government coming into his state to preserve equitable access to the ballot and think this is anything at all to do with jim crow ilya shapiro is the vice president director of the robert a levy center for constitutional studies at the libertarian cato institute wrote about what he calls the outrageous double standard of the backlash of georgia's new election law in the national review this week and he joins me now it's great to have you on ilya i i wanted to start with just some sort of historical conceptual level setting right because i think you and i would agree on a few basic things one is that clearly it is the case that is his that is a conceptual matter one could devise a facially race neutral voting change that actually is designed to or has an effect that's disproportionate racially right sure particularly if you have legislators saying you know i want to make sure that democrats don't vote or i want to make sure that racial minorities don't vote if you have evidence of that kind of intent um then and you're you're harming only areas that are predominantly you know democrat or minority that's a suspect right but you don't i mean i guess it's interesting you introduced the point of intent right because to me you know in some cases if you go through the historical record particularly in jim crow laws you do catch legislators saying things like the goal of this law is to restore white supremacy to the state that's an actual quote i think from a felon disenfranchisement debate back in those days but in a lot of times they don't say that right because they are aware of the 15th amendment so they say things like no no no we just want to protect ballot integrity right so in a historical sense it's also just a historical matter that people have used facially race neutral changes in the project of keeping particularly black people away from the polls well to the extent that whatever voter reforms in the last decade or so since shelby county or otherwise are meant to suppress votes they've done a tremendously bad job voter turnout has increased mississippi and georgia have higher black turnout rates than white turnout rates uh after voter id was introduced whether it's in places like indiana or georgia or tennessee uh people came out more to vote including blacks so i mean you know you can talk about voter suppression but it's just as much of a myth as republicans going around talking about voter fraud all over the place well that's not true right i mean first of all we know that there are disparate impacts to things like in the state of georgia right so we know that uh black voters not sure well we know that black voters for instance wait on longer lines right than white voters we know that okay it's it's it's not good to have long lines which is why the georgia law says that if the precinct has two long lines you have to create more opportunities next time but wait a second but but if we say that you you've got you know 51 minutes on average for black voters versus seven minutes for white voters right now you can say hey look at this when all was said and done that black voters voted at a higher rate which again that's great right look at this this is data that we got from jonathan rodden who did a great study of this but it's still the case that like you are taxing people so if people manage to overcome that well that's good you and i agree but you know who sets out voting prices you shouldn't have a disparate time tax on people like that right but chris you know who sets up uh polling places it's counties and the democratic overwhelmingly democratic counties are the places where a high percentage of the black vote is in georgia and elsewhere so for whatever reason they should you know create an incentive they should have the counties do more and the state is trying to do that by expanding opportunities for early voting for absentee voting uh you know and in fact in georgia there is more of that opportunity than places like new york or delaware right of course but the the well the direction of the change matters here's my question to you about georgia which is the law that you've defended and you think it's crazy that anyone's reading too much into this my question with this and the thing i s the law i've seen in iowa in texas is what is the problem you're solving so it's like if you come to me and say we're now going to change the ballot matching the signature matching we had on the ballots with the voter id and ilya shapiro and others say that's perfectly fine that's race neutral why does that matter and my question to you is what's the problem you're solving why are you doing that what was the problem you honestly chris come on you're doing a disservice to you're doing a disservice to your viewers by saying that uh signature matching is somehow more accurate or less susceptible to suppressing votes that the officials don't like than matching up by computer the social security number the driver's license all these things that blacks have at the same rates that that whites do and in fact you know states like colorado where major league baseball moved its all-star game has even more of that stuff where they have all mail-in ballots and they have even more of that kind of ballot integrity measures right and they have to say look chris we can agree on so many things especially that you want to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat and you want to increase public confidence in elections that in georgia there is not that confidence on either the left or the right and that is why this law was passed but that's that public confidence that is that that's the that's the crux of it here right because what you just articulated which is the rationale that many georgian republicans have articulated is that you have to restore confidence but again we all live in the world we read the news we understand the context here right the context of that confidence particularly on say ballot matching right signature matching is the president united states the most powerful man in the world formerly and the leader of the republican party waged a campaign to say that that ballot matching specifically was fraudulent that there were many fraudulent votes the fraudulent votes were particularly coming from black counties predominantly places like fulton gwinnett and other places like that's what is causing the law so to turn around and say well why would you people think they're up to no good after we just watched this donald trump makes accurate statements from time to time signature matching is a sham science and i'm glad that they're moving to something more exact and precise and objective rather than is your curl eq matching whatever you were writing you know 10 years ago when you're a younger person in a different body but there's no evidence that there's a problem with it there's no evidence like again but it's a solution in terms of a problem that is happening after this massive moment you know what there's neither systemic voter suppression nor systemic voter fraud but we introduce certain measures to increase public confidence the greatest argument for voter id which is hugely popular including among non-whites including among democrats including especially in georgia isn't that it prevents fraud but that increases public confidence a lot in the election the logic of that is that there will be tremendous public confidence for republicans in georgia if you said only republicans could win and that's the that's the dog that we're chasing here ilya shapiro who's devoted 15 years of his life to working on these issues you should read what he has to write thank you very much i appreciate it

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Length: 18min 59sec (1139 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 08 2021