3 Whisky Happy Hour

So your three bartenders weren't able to assemble even virtually this week for our usual format—John is away on a clandestine mission stalking the elusive McRib, while Steve and Lucretia are also largely indisposed.

But fear not! We decided that in lieu of our usual snappy brickbats, we'd share with our insatiable fans the talks we gave a couple weeks back at the University of Florence about the American election. It was great fun and the student questions were great, but we're just offering here our introductory remarks.

This a short episode—barely over 20 minutes. But never fear: we plan to be back with our usual format mid week, probably Wednesday or Thursday.

The Three Whisky Happy Hour gang is finally all back in the U.S. after weeks of galavanting overseas, and boy is there a lot to catch up on. Among our topics this week are the signs and wonders that the Age of Trump is fully established; the Biden pardons; the farcical Penny trial; whether World War III is indeed under way, and the attempted coup in Korea, about which our resident Korea expert (and resident Korean!) John Yoo has lots of thoughts.

Along the way some fresh new insults are thrown around, with John leveling the ultimate low blow against Steve—calling him a Hegelian! Thems is fightin' words!

Two-thirds of the 3WHH crew were back home in the states for Thanksgiving, while Steve is still galavanting around coastal Italy, defiling the reputation of this podcast by drinking Negronis at happy hour—a tergiversation that this week's host, John Yoo, does not let pass without censure.

In any case, by the miracle of Zoom we managed to assemble for a holiday weekend special edition, where Steve and Lucretia push back on the emerging narrative that Trump's election victory was so narrow that it doesn't deserve to be considered a landslide. On surface statistics, perhaps this has some merit, but even if this is conceded it should at least be considered an earthquake. Steve and Lucretia make the case, noting that, among other things, gthe media treated Bill Clinton's 43% of the vote in 1992 as a "mandate" for sweeping change, and that Trump's popular vote total is close to Ronald Reagan's in 1980, which was universally considered a landslide. The equally important question is whether this election portends a genuine political realignment—the elusive beast of political scientists. Some evidence suggests it might be, but realignments always require successive elections to confirm.

We also spend some time pondering the prospects for the Musk-Ramaswamy DOGE (Dept. of Government Efficiency) project, and mull over the last few Trump cabinet picks.

This week's special episode comes from Tuscany, where the Three Whisky Happy Hour gang put aside their whisky glasses and took up tasting chinati at Castello de Cacchiano between academic conferences in Milan and Florence. So for this week only, we become the Three Chianti Happy hour, though we had many more than three! We had to record this episode in two installments, as breakfast interrupted our first segment, and then returning only after a long day in the countryside sampling yet more chianti. 

We aren't taking our mind of what is going on back in the states with the Trump transition, however, and begin with an extended discussion of the proposal to use the recess appointments clause of the Constitution so that Trump can get around Senate opposition or delay for his senior cabinet level appointments. Then we briefly dig a grave for the International Criminal Court following its outrageous arrest warrent for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

And finaly we have a discussion and aide memoire of sorts from our extended panel discussion Friday with Adrian Vermeule about his controversial book Common Good Constitutionalism. (You can find Steve's review of the matter over on the Political Questions Substack.)

This is going to be unlike any previous edition of the Three Whisky Happy Hour, because it was literally recorded during happy hour at the annual meeting of the Federalist Society in Washington, in a corner of the mass reception hall where John Yoo and I invited all comers to swing by to offer a few comments. This completely unstructured (but therefore highly authentic!) conversation included Ilya Shaprio and Rafael Mangual of the Manhattan Institute, the esteemed Roger Pilon, emeritus of the Cato Institute, our old pal Hadley Arkes, prominent appellate attorney Eric Jaffa, and Utah lawyer (and loyal 3WHH listener) Jacob Minas. And it goes pretty much how you might expect a wandering happy hour conversation to go.

I had hoped that we'd have John Yoo outnumbered and outgunned on the natural law question, but several of our guests didn't do their part! But we also did some election talk, so there is something for everyone.

The Power Line single-malt whisky bar is still trying to process Donald Trump's decisive victory in the election, and this episode reflecting on the scene offers up a few fresh (we hope) takeaways from the result that we haven't yet seen elsewhere in the media, and then we turn our attention to some key priorities for the second Trump Administation starting in January. 

In such a target-rich environment, what should Trump aim at first on Day One in January: our ideologically corrupt universities, the Justice Department, ending the war in Ukraine and Gaza? And what should Congress do with the slim GOP majorities? Steve has some ideas for new committees, as well as a budget test.

Also, does it seem like Trump is president already (since no one believes Biden is really president any longer)? We notice that several foreign governments are rushing to get on Trump's good side before January, which seems prudent.

For our many regular listeners who were not able to join us last night for our live taping of this special mid-week episode that included Scott Johnson and (very late) John Hinderaker (hence the "Five Whisky Happy Hour"), much of what we talked about has been overtaken by subsequent vote counts and other results. But we did have a number of questions and issues that should still be of interest even after the dust settles today, such as why the polls were wrong again, what's wrong with the exit polls, why the legacy media looks increasingly mediocre as well as biased, why the big winner of this election cycle—and an important harbinger for the future—is Joe Rogan. 

On the Power Line main site for this episode over-eager listeners will be able to listen to a bonus "overtime" recording where we brought in a number of listeners to comment widely on a number of things, some of them beyond just the election.

In our last episode before the election, the 3WHH bartenders pour a stiff one in honor of the end of recycling, since were back to pure garbage now, though Biden getting in his last chomps of a baby was a special bonus to end the week.

We spend most of this episode reflecting on the final week of the campaign, arguing about what kind of vote fraud may or may not take place, and offering our final predictions for both the election result and the aftermath. You think it's over Tuesday! Think again. As the great Bluto Blutarsky asked so poignantly, Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?

So it was Hitler week for Democrats, who are still fuming over being cooked by Donald Trump in a McDonald's deep fryer, and covering up their indigestion with an E.coli outbreak. Behind the public polls catching up with the terrible body language of Democrats and the news media lies a growing recognition that Kamala's brat summer has gone splat as election day approaches. The 3WHH team covers this, a few of the Senate races, the underrated scandal of suppressed science about gender bending medicine that appeared in the (checks notes) New York Times! What next—a confession that DEI is a counter-productive waste of time and resources? Oh, wait—that was last week.

The news out over the weekend that Israel's attack plans against Iran have been leaked by our government and/or European governments ought to be a major scandal and cause for a serious criminal investigation, but in fact the real story to be followed may be much worse: is anyone asking whether Iran has penetrated our government—either with spies inside our intelligence agencies, or agents of influence in the State Department or even the White House? 

This seemed like a good excuse to revisit the groundbreaking research on Soviet penetration and influence on American policy during the Cold War, and whether a similar thing is happening now with regard to Iran. This episode recalls the work of M. Stanton Evans on this topic, which he published in his book Stalin's Secret Agents (with Herb Rommerstein) and explained in an excerpt from a talk he gave about the book 20 years ago. I think listeners will spot the parallel, and agree with the conclusion—time for recriminations!