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To read more about Episode 222, visit the main episode page.

Michael Moore [00:00:24] This is Rumble with Michael Moore, and I am Michael Moore. Thank you, everybody for tuning in here today to my podcast. I’m going to do something on today’s podcast that I’ve never done before. I listen to a lot of podcasts. I don’t think I’ve heard anybody do this. It’s not usually how podcasts roll. But today, as I’m recording this here on Wednesday evening, December 1st, Rosa Parks Day, 66 years to the day when she was arrested for not giving up her seat to a white man on that bus in Montgomery, Alabama. I always like to remember her on this day and probably more so on this particular day because the Supreme Court today listened to the arguments as to whether or not women in this country are second class citizens. 

Michael Moore [00:01:19] And it was clear that the majority of this court was licking their chops and excited, eager, to be able to rule that they the justices, the government, has a right to put its grubby paws on the reproductive organs of half, more than half, the population of this country, and it was such a profound day and we’ve only been able to listen live to the Supreme Court audio only. No picture. But we’ve only been able to listen live for a couple of months now. It’s a brand new thing to listen to the arguments today from the state of Mississippi, as they were essentially trying to overturn Roe v. Wade, but also the attorney for the Biden administration, trying to stop this from happening and then listening to the nine justices, Oh my God. 

Michael Moore [00:02:25] I’m going to do something here today. Again, we’ve not done this before, but I think this was such a historic day. And as one commentator said today, probably no day, no day, since whatever the last vote was in the late 1800s, early 1900s that forbade women from voting. The last time that happened before it finally became an amendment to the Constitution, that was the worst day for women until today. And this will go down in history today. And I’ve been very upset since this morning and we were going to do something else today on Rumble. I wanted to talk about the shooting of the students in the high school in Michigan, a high school, about 20- 25 miles from where I went to high school. And I have some things I want to say about that, so at some point here in the next few days or weeks, I hopefully will be able to do that too. 

Michael Moore [00:03:28] There’s so much going on, I know. But we decided that this was of utmost importance. So hang on for just a couple of minutes here while I just take care of some business here with you. First of all, I want to thank everybody who sent me a comment or a response from my last piece, my last online column I wrote and my Substack site. I write usually one a week, and this was called “Stop Watching And Reading The Pundit Boobery.” And in this piece that I posted on Sunday, I attempted to upend some of the current myths and half truths that are currently in our national discussion about the economy and our politics. You know, when you’ve just watched too much television or you have looked at too many items or things on the screen where there’s not just air coming out of your ears, but steam and your head’s exploding, frankly, and you can’t take it anymore. That’s the impetus of what I wrote on Sunday. 

Michael Moore [00:04:40] I’d love for you to read it if you hadn’t read it. And these columns are free every week. You just sign up by going to MichaelMoore.com. You can get all my writings and you can read this thing about the pundits. And also, I just want to let you know for those of you who are thinking of getting some of our gear for our friends or family for the holidays, that December 11th is the last day to order so that you have a guaranteed Postal Service first class delivery by Christmas Eve. So if you want this for yourself, you want to give it to somebody, whatever, you’ve got a couple of weeks left, not even a couple of weeks, really, so I encourage you to go to what we call The Moore Store. The address is Store.MichaelMoore.com and you can get a whole bunch of great Rumble and Dog Eat Dog gear there and whatever. It’s a thing we started, part of it is to raise money for the things I support, like progressive causes and movements, and also the efforts to return arts and civics to our public schools. 

Michael Moore [00:05:48] So if you’d like to be supportive of that and walk around with a Rumble ball cap, go to my store. I’ve been asked to do this for 30 years by those of you who are fans since my first film and whatever, and I’ve never done this. And so now I’m doing it. And I think you’ll enjoy it. I’m having a little fun with it. So thank you for that Store.MichaelMoore.com. Also, for those of you who are members of my Substack, who are members of this, who pay the five bucks a month, whatever, we have some, you know, special things that we do for you. But you don’t get any extra podcast, you don’t get an extra column or whatever. Everything I write or everything I do on this microphone is free to everybody. But if you do want to support our work and we’re raising money for the next film and everything right now, I encourage you to become a member. 

Michael Moore [00:06:45] And one of the things that we do for members is you get to ask me questions in a livestream. So our next livestream Q&A is going to be on Sunday, December 12th. That’s a week from this coming Sunday. Sunday, December 12th at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time. All right. And if you’re a member, you can participate in that and ask me whatever you want. It’ll be the second time I’m doing this. We did one of these a month or two ago and we had a great time with it and those of you who are paid members participated. And it’s really great. 

Michael Moore [00:07:43] And we’re going to do another one called Mike’s Movie Night, where you and I will watch a movie together, all of you. And then we’ll have a discussion afterwards about the movie. Sometimes we’ll have the director or one of the stars of the film or whatever. That’s another thing you get if you are a paid member. And so we’re going to be announcing the next Mike’s Movie Night coming up here in the next little bit. But right now, the next Q&A is Sunday, December 12th, 2 p.m. A member only for that. We look forward to talking to all of you out there who are supporting our work now.

Michael Moore [00:12:51] Welcome back to Rumble with Michael Moore. As I’m recording this just hours after the Supreme Court heard arguments as to whether or not to remove a woman’s right to choose from one of the rights that we have in our democracy, I thought of doing something different here today and and the idea hit me as I listened to Justice Sotomayor ask this question to the Mississippi attorney general and to the world about what they’re in the process of doing. She’s in the minority on the court, obviously. So you got the nine up there, six conservatives, three liberals. And of the six conservatives, three were appointed by Trump and two of them also worked for George W. Bush to convince the Supreme Court to stop the counting of the votes back in 2000 and just put him in the White House, even though he had essentially lost the election. 

Michael Moore [00:14:01] They were part of that. And Clarence Thomas was a five to four vote. And he’s sitting there today. Clarence Thomas, one of the five, made up the majority that gave us George W. Bush and everything that came with him. So now today at the podium, arguing the case in front of the Supreme Court are two women, one who represents the Center for Reproductive Rights and the Abortion Clinic, the women’s health center in Jackson, Mississippi, and her name was Julie Rikelman and along with her, President Biden’s solicitor general, Elizabeth B. Prelogar. So they’re arguing in favor of women’s rights. A woman’s right to choose and then arguing against that was the solicitor general of the State of Mississippi, Scott Stewart. Of course, his name was Scott Stewart. And so for about 100 minutes, the case was made to the Supreme Court as to why the Mississippi law that forbids any abortion from taking place after the fetus is more than 15 weeks old, right now, the law of the land, Roe v. Wade, allows an abortion up to 24 weeks of pregnancy at 6 months. 

Michael Moore [00:15:32] And Mississippi brought it down from six months to 15 weeks. And if you’ve ever been pregnant or known anybody who is pregnant, you know, sometimes you don’t go and find out, you don’t know. Or you do know and you want some time to think about it. And the law has given you 6 months to think about it. It’s a big decision, right? So that’s how it was set up back in 1973. The vote at that time was a seven to two vote in favor of a woman’s right to choose. And of those seven votes were four Republicans, three appointed by Richard Nixon – Justice Blackman, Justice Powell and Chief Justice Burger. Burger voted for Roe v. Wade. Well, we have a different situation now today. And as I listened to the Supreme Court, the arguments pro and con by the attorneys and the questions that they were asked by these nine justices, I just could not believe what I was hearing. 

Michael Moore [00:16:41] And you can see very clearly the Times has already written a piece about this. It’s sort of almost a done deal at this point. But I never like to feel that way, especially when it’s about evil, and I like to think that maybe good will triumph over it and that there’s enough of us who are good. And who will fight for the good. I have not given up on that after all these years, I have plenty of evidence as to why I should, but I don’t. I don’t because I have too much other evidence to show how far we’ve come, how far we can get if we just rise up. And today, as I was listening to this and some of you are listening to this now on Thursday or Friday here this week, but well, let me read you what Justice Sotomayor said, so I’m listening to this and all of a sudden, Justice Sotomayor, one of the three liberals on the court, frustrated, exhausted, decided to ask the existential question of the day. A question that went beyond how we’re going to vote on this abortion issue, but to the larger issue of our democracy. 

Michael Moore [00:17:57] And this is what she said. She asked this question: will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts. I don’t see how it is possible, how it is possible to play out in any other way. Wow, that just hit me like a lightning bolt. We are creating a stench in this room, she says. And I thought, you know what, this is the podcast today. Not me complaining about this, fighting this and doing everything. I want to scream bloody murder about this, but I decided to turn this episode over to the United States Supreme Court. I want you to hear what they said and what they did. I want you to hear the arguments from the attorneys. The whole session only lasts 90 minutes. That’s it. Nine justices ask the questions. These three lawyers have their time at the podium. You think this would go on all day. 90 minutes. I’d like you to hear it unedited. Uninterrupted, and I know 90 minutes is a long time for some of you to listen to a podcast. That’s OK. Come back to it. 

Michael Moore [00:19:37] Listen to a little now. Listen to the first 30 minutes now. Very powerful opening 30 minutes, by the way, or come back to it later. But I think all of us as citizens of this democracy must listen to these words that were spoken inside the Supreme Court today, because I’m telling you my head was just going back and forth. They’re actually going to do this. They’re in the process of, in their questions and in their and thinking out loud, it’s not so much of whether they’re going to overturn Roe v. Wade. They’re trying to work out how can we do this? How can we get away with this? How do we make women second class citizens? There’s nothing more I can say. 

Michael Moore [00:20:35] There’s no guest I could have on today that would be more powerful in giving you the true sense of a historic moment where the majority gender is about to be nullified, where the majority gender is about to be placed into second class citizenship. And what we do about it, what we’re all going to have to do about it in the coming months, I’m going to save that for part two in another week or two. Well, I just want you to think and hear what was said in your Supreme Court this week by your justices of the Supreme Court. And the valiant effort of these two women attorneys who tried to argue and plead with the court to not reduce the majority gender to second class status. They think they can do it. They think they can do this to women with God on their side. So make yourselves comfortable. I’m going to play this in its entirety. It goes for only about 100 minutes, a little more than 100 minutes, and listen to as much of it as you can now. 

Michael Moore [00:22:00] Listen to the rest later, but please listen to the whole thing, because it is a civics lesson that we don’t usually get. We’re only in the second or third month of them actually letting us listen live to the Supreme Court. You know, before we act in the coming weeks or months, we need to educate ourselves and we need the knowledge of what was taking place in our name in this court today. I’m going to now turn this over to our United States Supreme Court. And I’ll come back with a closing word at the end. 

U.S. Supreme Court Oral Argument: Dobbs v. Jackson [00:25:04] Listen or read to the full oral argument here: https://www.c-span.org/video/?516168-1/dobbs-v-jackson-womens-health-organization-oral-argument 

Michael Moore [02:15:39] So there you go, my friends. That’s it. That was the whole shebang. Unbelievable. Those questions from those justices, the men. Oh, my God. So that’s it, my friends. You’ve now heard the whole argument. A historic day, as one historian said, maybe the worst day, certainly the worst day in our lifetime, for women. And it may go down in history that women were spoken of and talked about, questioned in this way in our top court in this democracy. Thank you for listening to it. Thank you in advance for committing to join the movement to stop this. This may take a serious, serious effort amongst all of us to have our voices heard. They must not be able to get away with this. 

Michael Moore [02:16:50] Thank you for listening to Rumble today, thank you to our executive producer, Basel Hamdan, editor and sound engineer Nick Kwas. Donald Borenstein, our chief of all things that Basel and I can’t do. And also Harrison Malkin for all your help here on this podcast. Thanks to all of you who are listening. Thanks to all of you who are going to help continue and participate in the struggle. We are the majority. Our voices have to be heard. And when we’re talking about the majority gender, all of us have a responsibility to stop this madness. Thank you very much for tuning in to this today. Thank you.