Physician, heal thyself!
>> Speaker A: Well, that's enough of this drivel. Drivel. Let's find out what we
want to know about. Let's check it out. Let's check it
out. Keep music.
Keep music.
>> Bryan Schott: Check it out.
Hey, it's special session. I'm your host, Bryan Schott. This is
the podcast where a cranky Utah journalist. That's
me. Breaks down the political news of the week. I covered
politics in this state for more than a quarter century, so I've
seen it all, and I can help you understand the story behind the story.
On, uh, this week's show, the US Attacks Iran, and Utah's
members of Congress are mostly on board, despite
the whole violating the Constitution thing.
Senator Mike Lee causes outrage for his cruel
social media posts after a deadly shooting in
Minnesota. I'll explain why he won't face any
consequences for that. Utah Republican
leaders say they want to turn the political temperature down,
but they should probably take some time and look in
the mirror. And Senator Mike Lee is bristling at, uh,
criticism of his plan to sell off millions of acres
of public lands. Before we get to that, I'd like to ask you for a
favor. If you or someone you know would like to sponsor this podcast,
please send me an email. You'll find it in the show notes, and that
will help make more podcasts like this possible. Also, I'd
like to hear from you as a listener. What do you want to hear on the show? Is there a story
you'd like me to address? A guest you'd like to hear? Drop me an
email.
Okay. With that out of the way, let's dig into this week's news.
As you know by now, on Saturday night, President Donald Trump announced
via social media that the United States had carried out a,
quote, successful attack on three
Iranian nuclear sites. And I'm not going to get
into the news of that. You can find that coverage all over
the place. There are people who are much better
positioned to talk about it than I am. But I want to talk a little
bit about the reaction from Utah's members of
Congress, because I think that is relevant. The first thing you
have to understand about this attack is that
it's probably unconstitutional
and probably illegal. The President
does not have the authority to attack a country
that does not pose an imminent threat to the United States without
the authorization of Congress. And there's
no current authorization of force in place
that would allow this attack. It just does not exist.
The President decided to do this by
himself, which is not allowed.
The President claimed that there was
intelligence showing that Iran
was building a nuclear weapon. And there's nothing that
actually supports that. Back in March, Director of
National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified
to Congress that there was no intelligence.
She has since changed her tune on that after the President
said she was wrong. But there's just no
evidence to support that at all. In fact,
early on Sunday morning, the Rolling
Stone had a fantastic article basically saying
that, quote, there is no intel,
and these attacks were based on pretty
much vibes. They spoke with a number of officials
about this, and one told them there is no
intel, nothing new that I'm aware of. The President is
protecting the United States and our interests, but the
intelligence assessments have not really changed
from what they were before. And those intelligence assessments were
that there was no indication that
Iran was building a nuclear weapon, which
was the justification for this attack.
And the reason that I say that this attack was
unconstitutional is because the power to
declare war is in Article 1 of the Constitution,
and it gives that to Congress. Congress has
sole authority to declare war because
they have to pay for it. They have to declare
war on another country because they're the ones who have to pay for it.
The President does not have, uh, the authority to
unilaterally declare war on another country,
especially when it is unprovoked. Now, the
reaction from Utah's elected officials
is quite striking. Senator Mike
Lee, who loves to wave around
a copy of the Constitution, was on board
with this, which is surprising given how
much he likes to talk about the Constitution and
how Congress has ceded its authority to the executive
branch. On his official Twitter
account, his official Twitter slash X account,
he says, tonight the Iranian nuclear program
was wiped out. Please join me in praying for the safety
of the brave men and women of America's armed forces in the
Middle east and around the world, and that these strikes may lead to
the lasting peace called for by President Trump.
So he acknowledged it and was in support on his
official account. But on his personal based
Mike Lee account, where he tweets and tweets and
tweets and doesn't seem to really do anything else,
the only mention, the only acknowledgment of the
attack was reposting the President's social
media post that the attack had been carried
out, and he said, time to pray for peace,
that's really striking, given how Senator Mike
Lee likes to talk about the Constitution, about
how much he professed his reverence for the
Constitution, waving around that copy of
it. The fact that the President did something that is
clearly unconstitutional is striking,
especially when you contrast that with his
constant hand wringing on social Media that the
U.S. support of Ukraine
in its conflict with Russia
in, uh, the United States providing military
support to help Ukraine fend off
Russia's invasion. He has been hand
wringing for about how that would
lead to World War Three. He wants to get the United
States out of NATO because he's worried that that's going to kick off World
War Three. But an unprovoked attack
on Iran just is
not worthy of the same kind of concern. So I find
that striking. Senator John Curtis also
posted support for the
military operation. He reposted the President's
social media post and said Iran's relentless
pursuit of nuclear weapons is a direct threat to
American interests, our allies and global st.
Today's action was a serious and necessary response to
that danger. I honor the brave service members who carried out the
mission with skill and courage. Strength paired with genuine
diplomacy is how we create peace, prevent conflict and
preserve freedom. I joined the President calling for a return
to diplomacy. Again,
the intelligence does not support
any assertion that Iran was
seeking to build a nuclear weapon.
The only other member of Utah's Congressional
delegation who acknowledged the attack
was Representative Burgess Owens, who again
reposted the President's social media post and said,
we have a peace through strength president who doesn't bluff and
knows the world is safer without a nuclear Iran. God
bless our U.S. armed forces. Everybody else in
the congressional delegation, nothing. Representative
Blake Moore, who is a member of Republican House
leadership, as of the time of this recording, he has not
acknowledged or said anything about it. Representative Celeste
Malloy. She also has not said anything. And Representative, uh,
Mike Kennedy has not acknowledged this attack
as far as I have seen. Curiously,
there's one other elected official who
came out in support of this attack, and that's Utah Attorney General
Derek Brown. He posted on his official
social media account last night a quote that said, a
nuclear Iran presents a clear and dangerous threat to global
peace and regional stability. I'm proud of our courageous
service members whose actions have protected America,
Israel and the world from terrorism. Please join me in praying,
praying for their safe return. God bless America.
Very curious that Utah's Attorney
General has decided to get on board with this
when, I mean, really, who cares, right? I
mean, he's an Attorney General in Utah. He has nothing
to do with this, but he decided that he needed to step into
this. So what happens next? Well, what will Utah's members
of Congress do? You have to wonder how they're going to approach
this. Everything that they posted, they said, you know, now it's
time to get back to peace. Is that going to happen? I
seriously doubt that. There's not going to be any sort of
escalation. Iran has already vowed
retaliation against US Military
interests in the region. So how are Utah's members of
Congress going to respond to this?
Senator Mike Lee has been a big proponent
of Congress having to declare war
Congress's war powers. In 2018,
he partnered with Senator Chris Murphy and
Senator Bernie Stan Sanders to to
introduce and introduced a war power resolution
to end the unauthorized US
Military involve movement in Yemen. He's done
this throughout his career, saying that the President does
not have the authority to launch a
military strike to use the military without the
authorization of Congress. And that's exactly what
happened last night, and Lee is in support of
it. One of Lee's biggest allies, Representative
Thomas Massie, immediately posted on social
media after the President announced the attack that
this is unconstitutional. Just last week,
Representative Thomas Massie introduced in the
House a bipartisan war Powers
Resolution that prohibits United States
armed forces from unauthorized hostilities in
the Islamic Republic of Iran. There is a
companion resolution that was introduced in the
Senate by Democratic Senator Tim
Kaine of Virginia. Will Lee get on
board with this? Will lead join Kane in his War
Powers Resolution because Congress can vote
to block the President from dragging the US
into a wider war with Iran. That's exactly what this
seeks to do. Will Senator Mike Lee, who has
been a harsh critic of the
President, unilaterally, uh, using military force
without congressional approval, without
congressional authorization? Will he get on board with this?
That's something you need to watch. Now there have been some calls
for impeachment over this, and this is clearly
an impeachable offense. It is the President
launching an unprovoked attack against another country
without the authorization of Congress.
Forget about that. Impeachment is not going to happen. But
Congress does have the ability to vote to
block the President from more attacks. And you
wonder if that's going to happen. You wonder if our members of Congress
are going to get on board with that. So far
they haven't. But there's precedent in the
past that Senator Lee has done this. So keep an
eye on that.
Last weekend we woke up on Saturday to the
news that a gunman had shot and killed a
Minnesota Democratic lawmaker and her spouse house and
also shot a state senator and his wife,
severely injuring them. We also learned that this
person had gone to two other
lawmakers houses with the intent to
attack them. Just a few hours after
this story broke, Utah Senator Mike Lee
decided it was time to Fire off some sick
burns about Democrats. He took to his personal X
slash Twitter account to spread misinformation about the
shooting. He insinuated that the alleged
shooter was a Marxist when everything we've
learned since tells us that he's a hardcore
conservative and a fervent Donald Trump supporter. Lee
also made a joke. He posted a picture
of the shooter wearing a latex mask
that was taken from a security camera. And he posted
Nightmare on Walt street, which is a, uh, misspelling
as he think he meant Walls, which is a dig
at Democratic Minnesota Governor Tim
Walls. It looked like with that tweet, he was
celebrating the deaths of those two
lawmakers. In the aftermath of this, Lee was
widely condemned there lot of outrage for
it. And Lee remained silent. He would not
respond to anybody reaching out to him about
these really, really heartless and cruel
tweets. On Monday, Minnesota
Democratic US Senator Tina Smith actually pulled
Lee out of a private Republican meeting
and read him for filth. She
told him the hurt and damage that his social
media posts had led to,
and she said that he was
surprised when she confronted him, but he didn't seem
apologetic. In fact, he still has not apologized for
these tweets. Senator Smith's top staffer
sent a scathing email
to Lee. Staffers just tearing
them apart over these social media posts from
their boss. You should go online and read the whole thing. I've
got it linked in my story about this on Utah Political Watch
dot News. He said, why would you use the awesome power of
United States Senate office to compound people's
grief? Is this how your team measures success,
using the office of US Senator to post not
just one, but a series of jokes about
an assassination? Is that a successful day of
work on Team Lee? Did you come into the office
Monday and feel proud of the work you did over
the weekend? He also said you exploited the murder of
a lifetime public servant and her husband to post
some sick burns about Democrats. Did you see
this as an excellent opportunity to get likes and
retweets? Have you absolutely no conscience,
no decency? Because no matter how you look at it,
these posts by Senator Lee were gross,
they were disgusting, they were heartless, they were
cruel, and they were really beneath what
you, what anybody should expect from any
elected member of Congress, no matter which side of the
aisle they are. They were roundly condemned, as they should
have been. Most of the Republicans in the
state were pretty much silent about this. There was an
editorial in the Deseret News condemning
Senator Lee and his tweets. And Governor Spencer Cox
doing the least he could possibly do.
Just retweeted a post about the editorial. Other than that,
really nothing. Now, Lee did take down a couple of
the posts on Tuesday, but he still
hasn't apologized. And guess what?
He's not going to. He will not apologize for this.
In fact, he's starting to have some of his
allies rally around him. Right wing
commentator Benny Johnson, you know, the guy who was
taking money from Russia during the 2020
action to write pro Russia
propaganda, tweeted out that Senator
Mike Lee did nothing wrong. There was a post
in the Onion that I think sums up this whole thing
and Lee's entire attitude about this. The
headline was, mike Lee stresses he would have posted
same thing if own family savagely
murdered. And I'm gonna read a little bit of this article here. It says,
after being confronted about social media posts that blame
the shootings of two Minnesota lawmakers on the far
left, Senator Mike Lee stressed Tuesday that he would have said
the same thing thing if his own family had been
savagely murdered. Quote, democrats can say what they want
about me, but I would have absolutely called the shooter a Marxist
and made tasteless digs at Governor Walls had my
loved ones recently been killed in cold blood, said
Lee, adding that if his wife and his children
had been shot multiple times, he wouldn't have hesitated
to post photos of the incident and refer to it
as a nightmare on Wall Street. To anyone offended
by this, let me just say that had this happened to my family, I would have
done everything in my power to mock them and use
their deaths to my political agenda. Had I
been shot, I would have used my last breaths to fan
the flame and keep inciting violence. But that's
just the kind of man I am. Lee confirmed that
Elon Musk had used his family's brutal
murders to spread lies. He would have still
posted a reply reading fact check
true. Even though that satire, it
captures this whole incident perfectly. Lee took
down the tweets. He didn't apologize. He's
not going to apologize. There have been calls for
Lee's to resign. That's not going to happen.
He's not up for reelection until 2028.
I've seen some articles online
talking about how this might be the end of Lee's political
career. The biggest one was in the Bulwark, and
they usually do good work. But I've got a lot of problems with this article.
The headline was, is Mike Lee shit Posting his
way out of Congress? What this article does is it quotes
Democratic Party officials and Democratic lobbyists saying
they were quote, planning strategy sessions
about how sustain the outrage at Lee.
That's not going to work. Lee acts
like this because he knows he's
untouchable. Senator Tina Smith said
that Lee was surprised that
she confronted him over this. Lee thinks he's untouchable.
If you remember, in the aftermath of him winning reelection in
2022, his main political advisor Dan
Houser was gleefully responding to
any criticism of Lee on social media by saying,
he's still your senator for the next X number of.
He does this because he knows nobody is going
to hold him accountable. The Republican leadership in
the state is not gonna hold him accountable and he
does not give one rip what
the Democrats think about it or non
bootlicker members of the media think about
him. Lee only does interviews with media
outlets that are friendly, that are gonna carry
water for him. Lee knows that he is
untouchable and that's why the
Democrats aren't gonna push him out. The Republican bas
him. Republican voters love him and that's why
he acts the way that he acts.
There's a great example about this from
this week. During a media
availability, House Speaker Mike Schultz was
asked about Lee's posts and
he completely punted. In fact, he shut down
the conversation by saying, we, uh, really don't have any comments
about that.
>> Speaker Schultz: I, to be honest, I don't get
on Twitter, so I haven't even read that. I've seen a little bit of.
I don't, I don't want to. I mean if I
get on Twitter and look at what people say about me, it puts me in a bad
mood. So I don't even get on Twitter. So I don't think we have
any comments around that because I, we're focused
on Utah.
>> Bryan Schott: Uh, they don't want to talk about it. They will
not hold Senator Lee accountable.
They're not going to do that. And anybody who expects them to
is going to be severely disappointed.
Lee is untouchable. He knows it,
his supporters know it, and that's why he
acts this way. Has Lee learned anything from this?
No. And something similar
is going to happen again and there will be all
new outrage
on the subject of civility and politics.
There was a moment during the House leadership
media availability on Monday that was kind
of jaw dropping. Newly elected House Majority Whip
Candace Perucci decided to do some pearl
clutching about the shootings in
Minnesota that left two people
dead, two people severely injured.
>> Representative Bolender: I think when I saw the Minnesota story break,
I just kept thinking how we have got to find a way
to turn down the heat when it comes to politics.
And we need more people
engaging in civic dialogue. Who
are the moms at the water park as well dads at the soccer park who
just want to talk about how it impacts their family. And we have to
get to a place where we disagree
without, uh, thinking the other person is evil.
>> Bryan Schott: Turn down the heat.
Get to a place where we disagree without thinking the
other person is evil. You first.
You had an opportunity during that media availability
to condemn Senator Mike Lee's
horrible tweets. Tweets about that Minnesota
shooting where he made fun of people who were
assassinated. You punted. This is a
Republican state and the Republicans have a super majority.
Take a look in the mirror. How about Representative
Trevor Lee, who has a history of
posting hateful and
xenophobic things on social media.
Has he suffered any consequences from that? No.
In fact, Speaker Mike Schultz donated
$8,000 to Lee's reelection bid
last year. Year against a Republican challenger.
In fact, Schultz has done quite a bit that actually
does the exact opposite of turning down the heat in
recent years. Last year in the election, we found
out that he spent
$120,000 to
fund the pack that was behind some
anti trans mailers that went out to
voters in Democratic districts. These
mailers had a very anti transgender
message. And speaker shot Schultz was
the only person who donated. He funded this
effort to the tune of $120,000.
Also last year, former state school board
member Natalie Klein falsely suggested that
a female high school athlete might be
transgender, which caused a huge
online mob to attack the girl's family.
To attack the girl, they had to be protected by law
enforcement because there were so many people
going after them because of the this false post.
House Republicans passed a resolution m
condemning her, but they did it really
quickly. They didn't really want to talk about it. Essentially,
leaders sat on their hands because they knew they did not have
enough support to do what they would
have done in almost every other instance and probably
try to impeach Klein. Klein did get
defeated in her reelection bid, but again, the
legislature, who loves to exert their
authority in pretty much every level of government,
decided they didn't need to get involved in that one. And
also I think it's worth noting that
Speaker Schultz also in 2024,
spoke at a Christian nationalist event
about the Constitution. I reported about that.
So when you're talking about turning down the political
heat, physician, heal thyself.
Why is this responsibility on the media,
on everybody else, when it
should be the Republican legislature leading the way?
I think that that's A valid question. Question when the
Republican controlled legislature, who has
had a super majority for years, has had an
opportunity to lead out on this. They haven't.
So maybe it's time to lead by example.
As expected, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee,
which is chaired by Utah Senator Mike Lee,
unveiled a plan to raise as much as $10
billion by selling publicly owned
land for housing development in 11 Western
states, including Utah. It could be be
nearly half a billion acres of land that
potentially could end up for sale. When this
plan first came out, you had environmentalist groups rush
to condemn it. And that criticism of Lee's
plan stung him. Lee's proposal, which
he revised last week, requires the sale
of at least 2 million acres of, uh,
Forest Service and Bureau of Land management lands in
11 Western states, including Utah
over the next five years. An analysis from the Wilderness
Society that had a helpful map, and we'll get to that
map in a second, identified up to
250 million acres of
public lands that would fit the criteria
to be sold under Lee's plan. This
proposal is part of the massive tax and spending
bill that is currently making its way through Congress.
Representative Celeste Malloy tried this
in the House version of that bill. She partnered
with, uh, Nevada Representative Mark Amaday, and then
they introduced an amendment at like the
11th hour of a committee hearing that would have put about
half a million acres of land in
Utah and Nevada up, uh, for sale.
That was stripped out of the House version before it was passed over to the
Senate. Lee has resurrected this idea and
it got revised last week, put back into the
reconciliation bill. And the idea behind
it, according to Lee, is to promote housing development and
support local economic growth, even
though no specific development plan plan
has been released. Critics are
arguing that the bill is much more
expansive than what Lee says it is.
And they also say that it lacks safeguards to
prevent misuse over development. The Wilderness
Society released an analysis and a map
of lands that could meet the criteria of
Lee's proposal to be put on the auction
block. And that map has really upset
Senator Lee. He has been pushing back, back
very hard against that map, claiming these maps
are wrong, claiming that they're misinformation,
misinformed. He went on the Glenn Beck show
last week and said this.
>> Mike Lee: The federal government owns 640 million
acres of land, nearly a third of
all land in the United States. The
vast majority of that land has zero
recreational value. Uh, disposing
of a fraction of 1% of that so that the
next generation can afford a home
is a common sense solution. To a national problem.
First of all, uh, when this
bill puts land up, uh, puts, uh, it in the
category of eligibility for sale, it doesn't mean for sale.
It just means there's a process by which it
could be transferred. That's impossible right now. And it
doesn't authorize the sale. It authorizes a
process whereby it could be considered for that
purpose.
>> Bryan Schott: Now, Lee's allies in the Utah legislature are
scrambling to try and control the
narrative, because right now the narrative is that Republicans in
Congress want to sell off public lands. And
polling shows that people do not support that
idea. Although if you talk about the housing
crisis, they do think that something needs to be done. I got
ahold of an email that was sent out by Senator Dan McKay,
Republican from Riverton, that had
talking points that he had obtained from Representative
Malloy about Lee's
proposal. One of the talking points in this email levels
significant criticism of that map from the Wilderness
Society, which has a particular
sore spot for Lee and defenders of his
proposal. The talking point says chairman Lee's
proposal does not list a single acre for sale,
and maps created by activist groups like the
Wilderness Society are inaccurate. The
legislation does not reference any maps and does not directly
offer any parcels for sale. Instead, it creates
a robust public nomination and identification process
to identify unused land, land close to existing
infrastructure that is appropriate to address the housing crisis.
Crisis, sure. Lease proposal does not have
any map, doesn't reference any map. This analysis from
the Wilderness Society looks at lease proposal and
identifies publicly owned land that
meets the criteria to be sold so two
things can be true at once.
Lee's proposal does not have a map that is
true. The Wilderness Society map looks at least proposal
and said, hey, these are the public lands that would be eligible
under lease proposal. Proposal. That's also true. So two
things can be true at once. The
talking points go on to point out that only lands
close to existing population centers within 1
to 5 miles can be considered for auction.
And any public lands where there's already grazing
permits, the special authorization for ski area
mining claims, mineral leases, rights of way,
those are ineligible to be sold. The reason
this proposal is being put into the reconciliation
bill is to offset, offset some of
the cost of the massive tax cuts
that are the centerpiece of this
legislation. And we've talked about that before. The
Congressional Budget Office has said that extending
the tax cuts that were passed in 2017
would increase the deficit by $2.4
trillion over the next 10 years.
And what this sale would do is it would raise about $10
billion, not nearly enough
to offset the cost of those tax cuts.
But it would some revenue and it would also accomplish something
that Lee has been trying to do for years. He has introduced
legislation in the past to sell some
public land for housing. This is an
opportunity for them to do this
without going through the regular legislative process.
Because every time he's introduced that piece of
legislation, it's gone nowhere. This is
now a reconciliation bill. He only needs
51 Republican votes in the Senate Senate to
get it through, instead of the 60 he would need in
order to avoid a filibuster, because the Democrats cannot filibuster. Uh,
this. The bottom line on this provision that is
being put into this reconciliation bill is another case
of two things being true at the same time.
One, it is true that
selling these lands could be a way to
help alleviate the housing crisis. Selling these
lands is a place to build houses. Housing could be
a way to alleviate those problems of
people finding homes. But it is also true
that it raises some revenue to help pay
for tax cuts which primarily
benefit the wealthiest Americans. We've talked about that
analysis in the past. Most of these tax cuts goes to
the people at the top. The wealthiest households will see
the biggest benefits, while those at the bottom are actually going to
lose benefits because of other cuts in the
legislation to Medicare and food
assistance programs. The problem with Lee's proposal
to use this to offset some of the cost of
those tax cuts is that when you sell something, you get that money
once. It's not ongoing money. It's kind of like
selling your house to help pay your mortgage. In the end,
it doesn't work because once you sell those lands,
they're gone.
That's going to do it for this week. Thank you so much much for listening.
Hey, do me a favor, subscribe rate and review this
podcast wherever you can. Leave a comment if you want. That
helps us grow our audience. Also, take a moment and
subscribe to my newsletter. You'll find it at Utah Political Watch
News. It's free, but if you become a paying
subscriber, you'll get some extra stuff, including the morning News
brief. That's a subscriber only newsletter that I
send out every morning with the top political news stories of the day.
It gets you up to speed before you head out the day door. You also
get access to our subscriber only Discord, where we
discuss what's happening in Utah politics. And I'll send you
some exclusive Utah Political Watch stickers. You'll get
all of that for as little as $5 a month. And that will
help support this program and my
work as an independent journalist. Again, thank you so much
for listening. We'll be back with another episode next week.
