george washington was a slave owner. was george washington a slave owner. will george washington now lose his status. are we going to take down excuse me. are we going to take down statues to george washington? how about thomas jefferson? what do you think of thomas jefferson? do you like him? i love him be. he was major slave owner. are we going to take down his? it s fine. you re changing history. you re changing culture. changing culture. that was where donald trump s presentation landed on today. igniting controversies all of this is significant because these fights over history are not about the past. they are also about the future. they don t appear to be going away. with me is the new yorker cobb who has written about charlottesville and the former may mayoral candidate of baltimore. when you hear this president go
brave man. that s a judge s judge. calling it like he sees it. each case as it comes. writing clearly said that people can understand exactly what he s up to and he s not hiding behind jargon or legalese or 4 million footnotes. senator cruz earlier asked you a series of question about originalism. i appreciated your probably, paraphrase you. you said you worry that the labels sometimes put us into boxes that eliminates the requirement or reduce the requirement we have to actually engage each other s ideas. i won t pin you down hard on the term originalism. many have critiqued originalism including yesterday and today, as backward focused or too rigid in adapting to changing culture. do you believe that originalism
under duress? do they double their workload and work extra hard and get this done or do they do unfortunately what it looks like they ve done? it s cook the books. and here s the question it seems to me. was it possible in these places where it looks like we have this systemic manipulation of the data, do we have a situation where people are just clocking in and clocking out every day and saying i ll fudge the data instead of working or do we have a situation in which people are working past the breaking point and still unable to make the benchmark that had come down from washington to make sure these wait times happen? if that is the case, if the latter is the case, it seems there s a whole bigger problem to deal with than eric shinseki. yeah, you re right. and look, this is not a new problem. the allegations of fraud, the possibility of sexual misconduct, of bullying, that comes out of the inspector general s report, but we ve known for years about these backlogs. and let me draw
springs, they weren t talking about tax increase. they were talking about nafta and guns. because the brady bill had passed, and nafta had passed. you know, i remember wandering around north florida, and i m, like, nafta? why are they worried about nafta? it symbolized something very big that was happening. no doubt about it. a changing culture that they and americans, whether it s wisconsin or northwest florida, were concerned about. democrats need an 800 number. they have to establish an 800 number. call this 800 number if anyone threatens to come and confiscate your guns. we ll take care of it. no one s going to confiscate your guns. call this 800 number. the great challenge is right now, a great challenge is just being able to explain to americans that universal background checks to keep guns out of felons hands does not equal registration, gun registration, and nobody s
statue? so it s fine. you re changing history, you re changing culture. you re changing history, changing culture. what do you think about that argument and how the president has handled this overall? i think again we have to realize the history is the important part of this discussion. if we have a complete understanding of the history, then we can have a very good discussion about that and put it in context of what is important in that individual s life and what little bit of it we may not like. do you think that we have a complete understanding? enough understanding of history in this country? because you know what happened with the holocaust. elementary school kids have to go to monuments and places of remembrance for the holocaust. you don t have that in this country. i believe exactly what you said. i don t think we have a great understanding of american history.