Leonard
Leo
(Photo
by
Michael
Robinson
Chavez/The
Washington
Post
via
Getty
Images)
When
NPR
Morning
Edition
announced
yesterday
that
they
would
have
a
“long
talk
with
Leonard
Leo”
this
morning,
my
first
thought
was
that
it
would
be
incredibly
superficial
and
bad.
As
it
happens,
it
was
incredibly
superficial
and
bad.
The
architect
of
the
Federalist
Society’s
infiltration
of
the
judiciary
and
bag
man
for
Ginni
Thomas
is
riding
high
with
a
Supreme
Court
willing
to
rewrite
history
willy-nilly
to
reverse
engineer
contemporary
right-wing
political
preferences.
Leo
calls
this
“interpreting
the
Constitution
as
it’s
written
and
it
was
understood
by
the
founding
fathers,”
which
isn’t
even
the
dominant
definition
of
Originalism
(which
is
“as
it
would’ve
been
understood
by
the
public
at
time”),
but
Originalism
is
just
PR
fluff
devoid
of
real
meaning
anyway.
The
“long
talk,”
defined
as
seven
and
a
half
minutes,
began
with
host
Steve
Inskeep
asking
about
the
federal
judiciary.
With
an
incoming
administration
openly
bragging
about
using
the
Justice
Department
to
retaliate
against
the
president’s
critics,
Inskeep
explicitly
asked
Leo
if
he’s
“concerned
about
the
rule
of
law
in
this
moment?”
Leo’s
response
amounts
to
mealy-mouthed
doublespeak,
but
the
NPR
ad
placement
algorithm
earns
an
A+
on
this
one.
Sadly,
the
juxtaposition
of
Leo’s
“the
rule
of
law
is
FINE,
stop
asking”
response
with
“Donald
Trump
plans
to
give
free
passes
to
the
guys
trying
to
hang
Mike
Pence”
would
be
the
edgiest
the
interview
gets.
“Protects
against
any
rash
or
hasty
action
by
presidents…”?
My
brother
in
Christ,
Trump
took
the
legal
position
that
a
president
could
order
Seal
Team
6
to
assassinate
a
political
rival
and
the
Supreme
Court
affirmed
that
position.
What
guardrails
does
Leo
envision
in
light
of
that
opinion?
Too
bad
we’re
not
graced
with
any
specifics
from
Leo.
Because
it’s
certainly
not
impeachment
in
a
world
where
they
couldn’t
even
scrounge
up
the
necessary
supermajority
among
Senators
who
had
literally
just
fled
for
their
lives.
RUN,
JOSH,
RUN!
While
touching
on
the
courts,
the
predominant
topic
for
the
interview
was
Leo’s
new
initiative
to
carry
his
judicial
takeover
over
to
the
rest
of
American
society.
Or
to
use
the
precise
language
from
the
interview
“to
bring
conservative
influence
to
businesses
Wall
Street,
Silicon
Valley,
Hollywood,
in
the
same
way
that
you
brought
more
conservative
influences
to
the
judiciary.”
Promoting
subpar
talent
to
high
positions
based
on
ideology?
Who’s
against
affirmative
action
again?
Leo
agreed
with
the
Inskeep’s
assessment
and
said
they’re
looking
to
promote
more
professionals
to
produce
“family-centered
entertainment,
where
there’s
a
high
demand”
as
he
unironically
described
every
project
that
you
quickly
blow
past
on
your
way
to
literally
anything
else
on
streaming.
And
there
are
a
lot
of
young
professionals
in
entertainment
and
in
journalism
and
in
business
and
finance
who
are
looking
for
opportunities
to
inject
their
traditional
values
and
the
Western
cultural
tradition
into
other
aspects
of
American
social
and
cultural
life.
The
only
appropriate
journalistic
follow-up
whenever
one
of
these
people
uses
“Western
cultural
tradition”
is
to
ask
them
to
define
what
that
means
in
a
way
that
isn’t
just
flagrantly
bigoted.
It’s
a
Pepsi
challenge
that
doesn’t
get
invoked
nearly
enough.
When
someone
finally
asked
Penn
Law’s
Amy
Wax
to
flesh
out
what
she
meant
by
white
cultural
tradition
she
said
she
wasn’t
shying
away
from
the
word
“superior”
and
then
started
explaining
that
she
thought
Black
law
students
weren’t
intellectual
capable
and
that
the
country
needed
fewer
Asian
people.
It’s
wild
what
comes
out
when
you
pull
that
thread
with
these
folks.
At
this
point,
the
interview
asked
him
to
react
to
a
quote
he
made
in
a
video
obtained
by
ProPublica
that
his
goal
is
to
“crush
liberal
dominance.”
Leo:
Yes!
And
the
reason
Steve
–
and
I
would
really
call
your
attention
to
the
words
I
used:
I
want
to
crush
liberal
dominance.
In
other
words,
I
want
to
make
sure
that
there’s
a
level
playing
field
for
the
American
people
to
make
choices
about
the
lives
that
they
want
to
have
in
their
country.
I’m
perfectly
happy
having
a
world
where
people
can
make
choices
between
various
kinds
of
things.
But
what
I
don’t
want
is
a
system
where
our
entertainment
system
or
our
world
of
news
media
or
our
business
and
finance
worlds
are
heavily
dominated
by
left
ideology
that
either
chokes
out
other
ways
of
thinking
about
things,
or
that
just
creates
a
system
where
sort
of
inappropriate
political
and
policy
decisions
are
being
made
in
places
where
politics
and
policy
don’t
really
have
a
proper
place.
Florida
passed
a
law
against
saying
“gay”
and
then
engaged
in
government
retaliation
against
companies
with
executives
who
chose
to
exercise
free
speech
rights
to
criticize
it!
Texas
is
actively
banning
books!
Louisiana
is
trying
to
make
public
schools
display
the
Ten
Commandments!
When
Leo
says,
“I’m
perfectly
happy
having
a
world
where
people
can
make
choices
between
various
kinds
of
things,”
the
proper
follow-up
is
“so
are
you
prepared
here
today
to
denounce
Florida
governor
Ron
DeSantis
and
Texas
governor
Greg
Abbott?”
The
answer
would
almost
certainly
be
a
cowardly
dodge,
but
if
not
it’s
an
interesting
quote
to
have
on
the
record.
Alas,
that
was
not
the
follow-up.
Also,
did
Leo
just
suggest
that
the
problem
is
a
world
“where
news
media
or
our
business
and
finance
worlds”
contribute
to
“a
system
where
sort
of
inappropriate
political
and
policy
decisions
are
being
made
in
places
where
politics
and
policy
don’t
really
have
a
proper
place”?
A
Fox
News
personality
is
nominated
to
head
the
Pentagon
and
Elon
Musk
is
the
shadow
president.
Isn’t
this
indicative
that
the
cultural
break
he’s
describing
is
at
least
as
bad
if
not
much,
much
more
pronounced
on
the
right?
Anything
on
this?
No?
Look,
in
NPR’s
defense,
I
think
they
may
be
so
deep
in
the
weeds
that
they
think
someone
saying
“yes,
I
intend
to
circumvent
the
free
marketplace
of
ideas
to
give
affirmative
action
to
conservatives
who
otherwise
couldn’t
get
hired”
sounds
batshit
crazy
enough.
Unfortunately,
the
era
of
audiences
appreciating
subtlety
has
passed.
While
Leo
imagines
that
they
might
be
in
for
a
long-haul
with
some
of
these
changes,
he
took
delight
in
some
recent
developments:
And
I
am
also
very
impressed
with
how
quickly
you’re
seeing
efforts,
for
example,
in
the
journalism
and
entertainment
spaces,
the
standing
up
of
new
production
studios
and
news
platforms.
Very
impressed
with
the
speed
with
which
the
debate
about
ESG
has
kind
of
flipped
and
changed.
Well,
Leonard,
doesn’t
it
seem
a
bit
hypocritical
to
say
that
you
need
to
invest
tons
of
dark
money
to
astroturf
conservative
influence
into
cultural
institutions
while
simultaneously
slagging
ESG
initiatives?
I
mean,
isn’t
the
basis
of
your
beef
with
ESG
that
companies
have
artificially
advanced
liberal
causes
that
would
crumble
on
their
own
merits
otherwise?
And
despite
the
general
level
of
criticism
above,
Inskeep
really
does
try
to
get
an
answer
out
of
Leo
on
this
point.
Inskeep:
ESG
–
environmental,
social
and
governance
–
the
idea
of
having
socially
responsible
investing.
That’s
a
thing
you
want
to
change,
you’re
saying.Leo:
Yeah.
That’s
the
other
area
where
we’ve
seen
some
really
quick
changes.
Right.
You
know,
we’ll
walk
back
from
companies
and
finance
firms
for
doing
and
again,
it’s
a
speed
of
change
that
we
really
didn’t
see
in
the
law.
Again,
I
can’t
explain
why
that
is,
but
it
does
seem
to
be
that
there’s
a
slightly
different
dynamic
in
play
when
you
see
these
other
networks
building
up
in
these
other
sectors
of
American
life.
That’s
not
responsive
to
the
question.
He
asked
if
you
supported
getting
rid
of
ESG
and
you
said
it
was
happening
fast.
And
then
the
interview
ended.
NPR
justice
correspondent
Carrie
Johnson
joined
after
the
interview
to
list
all
the
disturbing
opportunities
Trump
has
to
abuse
a
pliant
federal
judiciary
going
forward.
But
when
Leo
was
on
the
line,
he
avoided
all
these
difficult
questions.
After
Judge
Edith
Jones
used
the
Federalist
Society
convention
to
launch
unhinged
attacks
on
Steve
Vladeck,
a
lot
of
media
coverage
tried
to
deliver
a
matter-of-fact
account
that
would
woefully
mislead
anyone
trying
to
figure
out
what
actually
happened
from
the
article.
As
Hunter
S.
Thompson
put
it
decades
ago:
Some
people
will
say
that
words
like
scum
and
rotten
are
wrong
for
Objective
Journalism—which
is
true,
but
they
miss
the
point.
It
was
the
built-in
blind
spots
of
the
Objective
rules
and
dogma
that
allowed
Nixon
to
slither
into
the
White
House
in
the
first
place.
He
looked
so
good
on
paper
that
you
could
almost
vote
for
him
sight
unseen.
He
seemed
so
all-American,
so
much
like
Horatio
Alger,
that
he
was
able
to
slip
through
the
cracks
of
Objective
Journalism.
You
had
to
get
Subjective
to
see
Nixon
clearly.
Chaos
is
a
ladder
in
the
game
of
thrones
and
objective
journalism
is
a
ladder
in
a
democracy.
You
can’t
cover
guys
like
Leo
—
or
Trump
or
Judge
Jones
—
with
all
the
niceties
of
“objective”
journalism.
They
depend
on
the
journalistic
impulse
to
stay
“balanced”
to
paper
over
their
outrageousness.
Trust
that
they
know
that
they’re
winning
this
exchange
in
the
mainstream
media.
And
it’s
going
to
get
a
lot
worse
and
the
media
just
isn’t
ready.
The
man
who
helped
roll
back
abortion
rights
now
wants
to
‘crush
liberal
dominance’
[NPR]
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Patrice is
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Law
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of
Thinking
Like
A
Lawyer.
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