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Listen as I interview Legal Dad from TikTok about current news in politics and his legal perspective on it. Welcome to Shout Your Cause with Sally Hendrick, a digital magazine where you can get found, get heard, and get inspired with content that challenges us to be globally minded. Our focus is on raising awareness around social justice issues, cultural differences, and to bring you the people dedicating their lives to tackling challenging topics as their way of giving back. Let us be your advocate to make your voices heard around the world.
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Hey everybody. Welcome back to Shout Your Cause. Today I'm excited to interview Legal Dad. That's how he is known on TikTok Legal Dad. Hello. How are you?
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Good morning. How are you doing?
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I'm doing great. I have been watching you on TikTok for a couple of years now, and I really do appreciate how you are just matter of fact about things and very structured. You come with receipts. I love how you also have lives with, there's another attorney. What is his name? He's got glasses. Who?
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That would be barrister.
(01:29):
Barrister, yeah, exactly. Like Barrister 4, 2, 4 or something like that. Yep. 2, 4, 2. I don't know. Anyway, I love the discussions you guys have and how you also respond a lot to people on TikTok and that's what really gets the TikTok community going and the algorithm moving is when you have those continued conversations with people about pretty much current topics in the news and you give the legal aspect that perspective so that we know what's going on and I really appreciate it.
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Well, I appreciate you appreciating it and I enjoy doing it and I enjoy the interaction with people.
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Yeah, it's been really great to see today you or yesterday, just very, very recently, Trump testified and you had some comments to say about that. Why don't you go into what you've been talking about on TikTok and give us some insight.
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Well, he was called to testify, which can happen in a civil trial. That can't happen in a criminal trial because you don't have to incriminate yourself, right? So many times defendants will not testify in a criminal trial, but this isn't that. This is civil. So he was called to testify and he did. It started out, as I understand, a little contentious with the judge trying to keep him on topic, telling his lawyers to control the client. They took a break and afterwards the judge kind of let him go a little bit and just let him talk However he wanted to talk about things, which I think is probably the better thing, especially in a bench trial where there's no jury. The judge can weeded out those sorts of things that are just grandstanding. So he's done now and I think they're taking a break today, or at least nobody's testifying today. And then he vanta Trump testify on Wednesday and then it will be the defense's turn to try and convince the judge that what happened wasn't so terrible.
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One thing I want to mention is that today is November the seventh, 2023. So whoever's listening to this that'll give you some perspective as to the time point we're talking about. Would you rather work or would you rather play? If we're going to go through all of this business building stuff, it better be for something that we love doing, right? Take a moment to do this quick life purpose challenge to discover what makes you truly happy. It's free. Visit sallyhendrick.com/lifepurpose. So is that what you made your video about when talking about Trump testifying or did you go into anything that he said?
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I didn't really go into anything that he said specifically other than this kind of ongoing notion that his financial statements have what he calls a worthless clause that he claims means you really can't take anything. What he said at face value and the video that I made and from my experience in doing real estate finance is that it doesn't really work that way. There will be reps and warranties, representations and warranties and loan documents that say everything I give you is right, or it's mostly right or it's materially right. So we're talking about minor mistakes are okay, but to intentionally mislead in these financial statements, even if there's something that says you can't take these at face value, that's not going to work. That's a red herring and I think the judge will see through that.
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Very interesting. It will be interesting to see what comes, and by the time we get this episode published, I'm sure the trial will be much more past what we're talking about now, what about election day? You said today is election day in many states it's not happening here in Tennessee. We had our a couple months ago, but what is it that, what's going on today?
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Well, there are a couple of gubernatorial elections in the south that should be close, and traditionally red states that have democratic governors, particularly Kentucky. So we'll see what happens there. The entire Virginia legislature is up for election, including Jess mother runner who is a well-known talker and has been on TikTok for quite some time. She's running for a legislative seat in Virginia, but probably the biggest one nationwide is the abortion referendum in Ohio where they would attempt to enshrine abortion rights into the Ohio Constitution. And so that's happening today. And in fact, just a few months ago they had a related election that would've required a 60% majority to change the constitution and that failed. And everybody really understood that to mean you're going to try and hinder the abortion referendum by requiring this higher threshold, but that failed. So it's just 50%, 50% plus one today say that abortion rights should be in the Ohio Constitution, then they will be.
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Wow. My second episode that just came out last week was about a woman in Tennessee who actually had an abortion in New York because Tennessee had banned the type of abortion she needed. Her child had fatal anomalies and then ended up dying in utero while she was in New York or somewhere between her appointments. And she is suing the state of Tennessee and now she's running against a man that she called to ask for help to write a bill and he was her representative, but he just was very ignorant about women's health in general and ended up it was very, then she's running against him, and so that's an interesting twist on that. She's on TikTok too. Her name's Allie Phillips and I interviewed Jess's mother runner a few seasons ago on here to talk about what was going on in Virginia, and it was before she ran last time, and then she stopped and stopped her campaign and then she started it again this time.
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So it'll be good to hear the news on that. Thanks for giving a little synopsis of what's going on there. Turn what into what you do. Join the platform with the most ways to monetize what you know, whether it's online courses, coaching memberships, podcasts, newsletters, communities, or more. Kajabi gives you all the tools you need to build market and sell it with just a few clicks. Sign up at sallyhendrick.com/kajabi. That's k Aja ABI. Also, you mentioned that a year ago was last year's election and this, or not last year's election or what was one year ago? Say that again.
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Well, there's elections every year. So last year for example was the Arizona election where Kerry Lake is still suing people saying that she won a year later and now she's running for Senate United States Senate in Arizona. So every year we have new election things going on. It's not just those Olympics years where we have leap years and presidential elections, but every November there are elections going on in some states.
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Yeah, exactly. And I didn't realize that it had already been a year since Kari Lake lost
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Time flies.
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Wow. Was that for governor?
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Yep, she ran for governor.
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Now what's the scandal that's happened this year with the governor that a lot, some stuff was made up and I'm not sure what was going on with the one that beat her.
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Oh, there's been all sorts of stuff that's been going on. So there were claims of fraud and there were claims of interference by Mexican cartels and it just got stranger and stranger and of course none of it is, but it doesn't prevent people from claiming it.
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So did you hear about the Franklin mayoral election in Tennessee? There was a woman named Gabrielle Hanssen and this journalist named Phil Williams created this whole, he went and found this whole story about these white supremacist groups that were supporting her and showed up at a town meeting to protect her and she ended up losing in a landslide like 80 to 20%.
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I did not hear about it, but doesn't surprise me.
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Yeah. All right. Well, is there anything else that's current going on that you would like to talk about?
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Well, it seems like there's a bunch of conflict in the world, but I'm not an expert on Israel Palestine matters, so best to leave that to the military experts, not me,
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But there's just always something happening as of the making of this, at least on November the seventh, there was some polling out that suggests Joe Biden isn't doing very well in some swing states that he won last time. Question of course is are these polls right? Are they polling the proper people? Of course, Biden hasn't been doing any campaigning and people just seem kind of generally upset even though the economy seems to be doing relatively well. So time will tell as to whether any of those polls are correct, but Democrats have to make sure that they don't take anything for granted as Republicans are not, and actually get out and campaign and vote when it comes time.
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Yeah, very important to vote and to research a little bit before you go and push the buttons on the screen.
(11:40):
Absolutely.
(11:41):
Because we get something mailed to us. Do you get something sent to you as well?
(11:46):
We do. Nevada is now a mail-in state, so you can choose to mail in your ballot if you wish, or you can take it directly to the election department or you can vote in person on election day if you are so inclined. So the Covid emergency rules basically became codified in Nevada. And of course the goal, at least from my perspective, should be a hundred percent turnout. Everybody who's eligible to vote should be encouraged to vote and it should be made easy for them to vote. That's obviously contrary to what some people think, but I like the everybody votes model.
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Yeah, I do too. That's the only real way for democracy, and people overseas are really surprised that in the presidential election about half the eligible voters will vote and then they're surprised that it's even less in other times when you're not voting for the president, all the in-between elections because they are very much involved in their politics and in voting, and I feel like some countries, especially in Europe, really feel like they have a say in things because they have multiple parties, not just two. They have like 5, 6, 7 different ones that depending on what country you're talking about. So I do feel like we've got limitations here because really you just have the Democratic and the Republican sides of things to be able to get candidates that can actually win.
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Well, the Republicans seem to be showing at least recently that maybe they aren't one party, and you can kind of see how if the United States had multiple political parties where some of those lines would be drawn, we could very easily have three or four parties within the Democrats. And it looks like the same within the Republicans, but they're all forced into a two party system. It'd be interesting to see what would happen if we had multiple parties and more of a parliamentary system when it comes to parties.
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Yeah, it would be interesting. I mean, if that's what happens, that's what happens and it'll have to suffer through for a few years. But I think a lot of democratic people will also try to make a choice between the others if they feel so inclined or are more moderate then just being in the Democrat, being registered Democrat.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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So I'm curious, have you and the barrister had any discussions lately,
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Just in general
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On TikTok, your lives that you do?
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I haven't seen him in a live in a while. He hasn't done 'em in a couple of days, and I was out of town last week, so I've just kind of been popping in for 15 or 20 minutes. Part of the problem is the time difference, so he likes to start right when we're having dinner.
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Ah, gotcha.
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Because he's three hours ahead, so he's starting around nine Eastern time, which is six Pacific time, and we're sitting down for dinner and then cleaning up, and by the time we're done, it's an hour into it and they're already established so
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Well, what's he been talking about lately? Online?
(15:35):
Well, he doesn't do too many videos. He mainly does the lives and he just kind of lets the flow go with whatever people want to talk about. So he doesn't usually come into a live with a set topic. He invites people up and especially people who have differing opinions so that they can discuss those opinions. And sometimes that goes well and sometimes it doesn't.
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Yeah, I can see that I've seen him. I like how he responds too. He does really well responding. You both of you kind of have similar platforms in that manner, but I have seen you a lot more. I haven't seen him lately, and it probably is because he's doing a lot of lives.
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You kind of got to catch his live in the evening to see what barrister's thinking. He doesn't do as many videos. I do a lot more videos than he does, and I don't spend nearly as much time being live.
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Gotcha. So is there anything else that maybe that's going on with the Supreme Court that you've got anything to say about or
(16:37):
Yeah, the court today, in fact, I was just reading this before we hopped online. The court today heard one of the gun cases, and this is the one that asks whether guns can be taken away from somebody who has a domestic violence restraining order or potentially other orders. This will at least initially be a domestic violence type thing, but you can see how it could be expanded. And it sounds like from the Washington Post piece that I'm reading that the justices are inclined to say that that's okay. Even Kavanaugh was suggesting that it doesn't really seem like it's that difficult to say that somebody with a domestic violence restraining order should not have guns. And of course that takes away the whole shall not be infringed argument from the Second Amendment crowd that says it's somehow absolute, which clearly the Second Amendment is not the Supreme Court has already held as much, but this could suggest some pairing back of recent decisions that suggests that gun rights are very expansive.
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That's interesting. Maybe that's going to be a way forward and finally have some sort of sensical legislation around guns.
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Yeah, absolutely. And then of course, that will be tested. So if you say a domestic violence restraining order recipient cannot have guns, well then what about a former felon or a different kind, not a domestic violence restraining order, but some other kind of restraining order or somebody who has made threats like the guy in Maine apparently had been making threats and just seemed generally unstable. So you'll see more progressive states. I think if this decision comes down the way it looks like it will start to test the boundaries of that decision and start to take or attempt to take guns away from people who don't just have domestic violence in their history, but other suggestions of past or future violence.
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Wow, that's a whole lot going on. A lot to think about. Well, I appreciate how you shared everything today. I think that if anyone wants to go listen to you on TikTok, just look up legal dad and you'll find him there. And I really appreciate everything you're doing to talk to people sensibly to help them understand what's going on online because it's really hard to find somebody that you can trust and count on, and I just am grateful that you're there.
(19:11):
Well, I appreciate it and thank you very much. I'll continue to try and do my best, and thanks for having me on the show.
(19:19):
Awesome. Thanks for listening everybody. Thank you for listening today. My name is Sally Hendrick. Be sure to visit our website for show notes and more information on how you can inspire others. If you would like to contribute content to our magazine, please apply on our website at shoutyourcause.com.
