ExclusiveAlan Dershowitz on Why He Left the Democratic Party After Voting for JFK in 1960

I went out on the street and campaigned for John Kennedy in 1960. I have exactly the same views. It's the Democratic Party that has changed its views. Everything that I voted for in 1960 has now been completely abrogated by the Democrats. The Democrats are not the party of John F. Kennedy. The cover of my book shows a donkey kicking me out of the Democratic Few legal figures in America have spent as long in the public eye or drawn as much debate as today's guest. Today we're joined by Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard Law Professor Emeritus and Criminal Defense Attorney, behind some of the most highly publicized criminal cases in modern American history, for a second conversation with us. Last time we covered his theory of preventive justice and his landmark cases. This time we're headed into politics. His reaction to RFK Jr.'s recent RNC speech, a debate over socialism's influence inside the Democratic Party, what he says is broken on elite college campuses, and where he thinks free speech, AI, and the courts are headed next. This is Bay Area Innovators and I'm your host, Steve Esposito. Alan, welcome back to Bay Area Innovators. Happy to be back. This is my 63rd book. I literally got the first copies yesterday. It's just been put on Amazon and it'll be published in a few days. So you can get it, I think, at a discount now. Fantastic. So we'll get to the book and we'll get to your thoughts about the topics in the book. Last time we talked about preventive state and we talked about your highly publicized and historic cases. This time it looks like we'll be talking more about politics. And I want to start with Robert Kennedy Jr.'s speech at the RNC just a few days ago. There's one thing he said, and I want to get your take on it and also how you parallel that to your experience and to your book. He said that his uncle, our 35th president, he ran on a platform of cutting taxes, a strong defense and fighting communism. And he said that the Democratic Party is now against those principles. Can you talk to us about that? Everything that I voted for in 1960 in support of the Democratic platform has now been completely abrogated by the Democrats. The Democrats are not the party of John F. Kennedy. They're not the party of Bill Clinton. They're not the party of Lyndon Johnson. They are the party of hard left socialists, anti-America, anti-Israel, anti-free speech, anti-meritocracy, anti-decency. They are today the most dangerous party in modern American history. And I can't be associated with that party, and I don't think John Kennedy would be associated with that party. I don't believe that Bill Clinton, I don't believe that Hillary Clinton really supports the current Democratic Party. Hillary says she does. Bill Clinton's been very quiet lately. But this is not the party of Bill Clinton. This is not the Bill Clinton party when Bill Clinton tried to make peace and offer the Palestinians a state in 2000, 2001, and the Palestinians rejected it and created an intifada and killed 4,000 people. This is not Bill Clinton's Democratic Party. This is not Lyndon Johnson's. This is not John Kennedy's. This is not Bobby Kennedy's. This is Mamdani. This is Al Saeed's Democratic Party, and that's not my Democratic Party. Now, one thing I hope we can clarify for us, so the U.S. Congress has 435 representatives and 100 senators. Out of those, two of them are part of the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America. Two, AOC in New York, in New York State, and of course Rashida Tlaib in Michigan. Two out of 435, Bernie Sanders is not even registered as a DSA. How is there so much influence, which we do see every day of socialism in America, when there's only two elected DSAs in Congress? I guess they don't have the courage to declare what they really are, but we know how they vote. We know that Elizabeth Warren is a socialist. We have no doubt about that. No doubt that Senator Murphy, no doubt that Senator Booker. No doubt that so many of the senators, for example, in all of New England, if the Republicans manage to lose their one seat in Maine that they now have, if the Democrat wins the seat in Maine, there will not be a single Republican in the House or the Senate in all of New England. New England will turn into a place of socialism. It will turn into essentially the Cuba of America. They may not declare themselves to be a socialist, but they vote socialist and they identify with socialism and many of them share the values of socialism. They're certainly not standard Democrats who believe in free market and free speech and meritocracy. Take meritocracy, for example. That's been a key to open values in America. People deserve to be judged on their merit. I can't imagine a single Democrat today who would say that. To be a Democrat, you have to be against meritocracy and in favor, essentially, of identity politics. The other thing you have to be to win in a Democratic primary is you have to be against Israel. You have to be against Zionism. You have to be against American support for its most important allies. So this is a very different party and it's not my party. It's not my grandparents, my parents' Democratic Party. They don't want to clearly identify themselves for what it is, a far more radical, far more leftist party than a centrist, middle of the road, liberal party. Liberal is now a dirty word in the Democratic Party. I am a liberal, a genuine liberal, anti-radical liberal, but there's no room. Look at the senator from Pennsylvania, Fetterman. He can't even go into the cloaking room of the Democrats. He won't win the Democratic primary for the Senate, even though he's extremely popular in the state. But he's more popular with Republicans than he is with the Democrats because he's committed the cardinal sin in the Democratic Party. He's actually expressed support for Israel. Speaking of Fetterman, do you see more Fettermans coming out? No, I don't. I don't think we're going to see more Fettermans in the Democratic Party. I don't think we're going to see Fetterman in the Democratic Party. I think he will become an independent. What's happened to Fetterman is what happened to Joe Lieberman. Joe Lieberman was a great senator and he suddenly abandoned or was abandoned by the Democrats. He lost the primary and ran as an independent. And fortunately for America and Connecticut, he won. I think Fetterman will have the same experience. He can't possibly win a Democratic primary. Nobody who supports Israel can win a Democratic primary. And let me tell you what that's going to mean for the next presidential election. There are four Jewish candidates who are among the top six for the presidential nomination in 2028. Four of them are Jewish. Ossoff and Shapiro, then two others, Pritzker and Rahm Emanuel. A Jew will not get the Democratic nomination unless that Jew stands in front of the convention and swears that he's an anti-Zionist. And so what we're going to see is what happened last time. Shapiro was clearly the most qualified to be vice president. He would have won Pennsylvania for the Democrats, but he couldn't get the nomination because he's Jewish and he wouldn't renounce Zionism. Now, I suspect come 2028, all four of these candidates will to some degree renounce Zionism in order to qualify themselves to be the Democratic nominee. But that's not the party I want to be associated with. Now, let's talk about the anti-Israel sentiment. Some people say that there's an alliance, a red-green alliance, and not because they share any ideals or any goals, but they have a common enemy, and that is Western society and the United States. And also some say that that was the background of the Iranian revolution in 1979. Do you see it that way? I think that's true. And similar coalitions occurred in Cuba and where young people brought Castro and others to power. It happened in Russia, where young people brought the communists to power. In Germany, where young people at the Universities of Munich and Heidelberg brought the Nazis to power, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong. So I think we see coalitions of convenience. But the one between the left and the green is absurd because the left is strongly supportive of women's rights and of gay rights. And green, not all of them, but green countries, execute gays and execute transgenders and subordinate women. And yet we see so many young college students today cheering for Iran. Iran is murdering dissidents and murdering women, and leftists are cheering for them for one reason only, because they have a common enemy. The common enemy is the Jews. If you're against the Jews, a lot of coalitions will form in your support. And you cannot understand the world today and the changing alliances without understanding the 2,000-year history of anti-Semitism, which went into a short moratorium just for 50 years, between about 1945 and about 2000, 55 years after the Holocaust. But shortly into the 21st century, the moratorium and anti-Semitism ended. And the single uniting force that brings together the left and the right and so many others is anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, anti-Judaism, anti-Israelism. Now, you taught at Harvard. What would you say failed in these elite institutions since you were there? I have to tell you, from the day I got to Harvard, I realized how disappointing it was as a university, with some exceptions. There are some brilliant, brilliant professors at Harvard. But Harvard has always been, for me, a place of high mediocrity. In order to succeed at Harvard, if you're comparable, if you're talented but mediocre, you can make it if you're charming and if you play along to get along. So I've always found Harvard to be a kind of place of mediocrity, but it was a place of centrist mediocrity. And now, in the last, I would say, 10 or 15 years, it's turned very, very hard to the left. And the faculty and the administrators and even many of the students don't have the courage to stand up to the hard left. The hard left is not a majority at Harvard, either among the faculty or among the students, but it's tolerated and it has the loudest voice. And as the result of that, they appear to be in the majority and they dominate the school If you want to know what a university, what a country will look like in 20 years, look at what universities look like today. And if you want to project forward, you'll see that America does not have a happy future if the current students and the students in the past three or four years become the leaders of America. Now, let's talk a bit about October 7th. What would you say that most institutions have not fixed or have still gotten wrong since the October 7th massacre? Well, October 7th was the second worst day in modern history. October 8th was the worst day because on October 8th, many student groups at Harvard supported Hamas, blamed Israel for the fact that 2,500 Israelis were murdered and raped and kidnapped and taken hostage. It's what happened after October 7th. October 7th was a horrible tragedy, but it would be as if right after the Holocaust was revealed, the world suddenly turned in favor of Germany and against the Jews who were murdered. That's what's happened at universities, an enormous groundswell of support for Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the Houthis. They're the good guys, suddenly, and the bad guys are America and Israel. Look at this man, Hassan Piper, who is essentially running for the Senate through a surrogate named El-Sayed. He says that America is at fault for 9-11 and that Israel is at fault for October 7th. You tell that to the widows of the young people who were murdered on those two horrible days. Altogether, thousands of people were killed in those two horrible events caused by Islamic extremism in both cases. And yet the perpetrators of those events are seen as heroes by some and the victims are seen as deserving. And the man who says that is campaigning for the man who probably will be the next senator from Michigan on the Democratic Party. Well, we do see that theme often, right? In San Francisco, where we are here, there's homeless and there used to be the theft. There used to be the, you know, people walking into stores and stealing stuff and you could not stop them. The security guards were not allowed to stop them. And it wasn't their fault that they were stealing stuff. It was some other problem. I still want to connect all of that to the way communism thinks, because I think it's related. Look, the person who allowed all this to happen was Chesa Boudin, the district attorney of San Francisco, who was thrown out of office. But he was an overt socialist. And I think it got him drunk. He would admit to being a communist. I know his family. His grandfather was a friend of mine. These are people with very, very strong pro-Castro leanings and pro-communist leanings. And Chesa managed to get a majority of the votes. You know, his parents were both sentenced to prison for murder. And he presided over a district attorney's office that essentially welcomed crime. And finally, even the people of San Francisco were better for that. And they got rid of him. But we are seeing, particularly in large cities in California, a tolerance for crime that the public doesn't accept, but the elitists seem to be willing to tolerate. I want to shift gears a bit and ask you about another issue, and that is the U.S. Constitution allows for babies being born in the U.S. to be U.S. citizens, of course. And this seems to be taken advantage of. I just read an article about a Chinese billionaire who is having surrogates, has hundreds of kids that are born in the U.S. to surrogates. Do you see that as a loophole? And what can be done to resolve that? Let me start by saying that birthright citizenship is the dumbest thing in the Constitution. I can't imagine any sane constitutional writer saying that the accident of where you're born determines whether you're a citizen or not. That's it. We're the only country, reasonable country in the world, that has that. That's not what was intended by the 14th Amendment. What was intended by the 14th Amendment is that children born of slaves in the United States are citizens. But there is a way around the constitutional rule, and that is the Constitution also says the 14th Amendment, born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction, subject to its jurisdiction. And so Congress can pass a law saying no child born in the United States is automatically subject to its jurisdiction unless he and then she fill in the blanks, lives here for a period of time, goes to school here, expresses allegiance to the United States, etc. But I think Congress can effectively limit birthright citizenship by declaring who is subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. That's not a constitutional issue. That's a statutory issue. And so Congress has a way to essentially limit birthright citizenship considerably. Now, as one of the most famous lawyers in the United States, what would you say is today the most dangerous trend in American courts? Oh, I have no question what the most dangerous trend in the world is today. It's not sexism. It's not racism. It's not anti-Islam. It's not anti-gender politics. It's anti-Semitism and Jew hatred. We're back in 1932. It's the most dangerous trend in the world. And it's all over the world. We're seeing it today in Italy. We're seeing it in Africa. We're seeing it horribly in northern Europe. Ireland is one of the most anti-Semitic countries in the world. Norway is one of the most anti-Semitic countries in the world. And so anti-Semitism disguised as anti-Zionism is the most serious problem in the world today. Now, if you want to ask me what the serious problem of the courts are, I would say the most serious problem is that the courts are overactive. They're doing too much. They're supposed to resolve cases. Particularly, they're not supposed to have roving commissions to do justice. And yet the courts are interfering in every aspect of American life. You know, there's a book in the Bible that starts, when judges ruled the land, there was famine. We don't want a world in which judges rule. Judges should play a very limited role in enforcing rights and in deciding controversies that are real. And that's what the framers had in mind. Alexander Hamilton called the judiciary the least dangerous branch. And it's become one of the most active branches in government. And I think it's stepped out of its lane. And there's going to be a reaction. Now, we are, of course, here in the Silicon Valley technology. Do you see, there's expectation that AI is going to provide a lot of fake evidence and a lot of fake answers in the court system. Do you see that as a problem going forward? Yeah, there's a problem and there's a solution. I mean, technology always provides for the possibility of misuse. And then usually technology solves it. For example, we know that AI can give you the ability to produce fake images. You can make anybody have sex with anybody over AI and there's going to be false accusations. But there's going to be a technology that exposes the fakes. And so I'm not too worried about that. I think technology tends to solve the problems of technology. And you can't stop technology. Even if you pass laws, there are always going to be the bad guys who will misuse technology. And often laws just prevent the good guys from playing catch up with the bad guys. So we have to be more realistic about how we deal with the problems with AI. Now, I want to ask you more about your book in a minute. But first, still on tech, because we're here in the Silicon Valley. Tech platforms these days, in so many ways, decide what speech stays and what gets canceled, what doesn't get canceled. Is this a First Amendment problem or a customer problem, the tech companies themselves? It's all of the above. It's the First Amendment problem when the government gets involved. After all, the First Amendment only says, it says Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. But that's been interpreted to apply to every form of government action. But it doesn't apply to private conduct. So that, for example, when the owner of the New England Patriots decided to ban an anti-Semitic singer from Patriot Stadium, which he owns, that didn't raise a First Amendment question. If the government tried to ban a singer, that would raise First Amendment questions. But if a private party says you can't be anti-Semitic on my property, you can argue with that, whether that's right or wrong. But that in and of itself doesn't raise First Amendment questions. But the First Amendment is in great danger today because it's being used so selectively by free speech for me, but not for thee. And the left, particularly, is censoring everything. When I wrote my book and when I started doing my talks on why I left the Democrats, I got banned from speaking at public libraries, public schools, public community centers. People on the extreme left were never banned. But I got banned only because I was no longer a Democrat and I was now supporting the Republican Party. And the library in Chilmark, which is paid for by government funds, will not tolerate a supporter of Trump speaking at the library. And so they violated the Constitution, violated my rights, but more importantly, violated the rights of people in Chilmark who want to hear me. And they won't permit them to hear me. They make the decision for them. That's censorship. That's patriarchy. That's just dead wrong. Tell us more about the process you went through as you not just wrote the book, but as you have changed your stance, your political stances. When did it happen and what was the straw that broke the camel's back? I haven't changed my views at all. I have the same views on the merits that I did. I went out on the street and campaigned for John Kennedy in 1960. I have exactly the same views. It's the Democratic Party that has changed its views. And, you know, the cover of my book shows a donkey kicking me out of the Democratic Party into the hands of the Republican Party, the Republican elephant. So I am the same person. The process involved my recognition that I can't change the Democrats, that I tried, but I can't change the Democrats. And so I know that John Fetterman, I had dinner with him recently, is going through the same process. He would like to try to change the Democrats. But as he said, there are certain red lines that he won't tolerate. And if they cross those red lines and he can't change them, he's going to have to leave the Democratic Party. They've already essentially kicked him out of the Democratic Party. Today, you can't be a Democrat and a Zionist. That's the rule. You know, the Democratic Socialists of America actually have a rule, written rule, that unless you reject Zionism, you can't be a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. The Democrats don't have that rule in writing, but they have it in practice. You can't win a primary today. Take, for example, a primary in New York with Dan Goldman, one for Congress two years ago, four years ago. And he was a great congressman and he ran against another liberal Jew. The difference was Goldman was moderately supportive of Israel and the other Jewish candidate was vehemently opposed to Israel. And that was enough. That was the only thing that separated them. They had no other difference except that, you know, Goldman was more charming and brighter, but that didn't matter. The anti-Israel candidate won and the anti-Israel wins today virtually every Democratic primary. And that's why a Democrat, if you want to remain a Democrat, you have to turn against Israel. And I can't belong to a party that has that limpicest. Was there a specific moment where you changed parties or is it more of a gradual observance of the trends that happened? It was gradual with a few clear earmarks. I first left the Democratic Party and became an independent. My wife did the same thing and we thought we would register and vote as independents. And then I decided that for me, not for her, but for me, that was a cop out because I actually want to see the Democrats lose. I'm not an independent. I want the Republicans to control the House and the Senate. Not that I love everything the Republicans are doing. I don't. But I'm terrified of a House of Representatives in which chairmanships go to people like AOC or Senate, where chairmanships go to people like El-Sayed or Elizabeth Warren or some of the other radicals. And so I am determined to try to help the Republicans maintain control of the Senate and House. I probably won't win on that. Probably the Democrats will maintain, will obtain control of the House. I think the Senate is up for grabs. We're not sure. What would you say is the fairest attack on you that it's worth responding to? Well, there are so many attacks on me. People misunderstand. They think I've changed so much. I'm the most boringly consistent person. Probably that's a fair criticism of me that I don't change enough with the times. I'm boringly consistent. And, you know, people have accused me of all kinds of terrible things based on who I've represented. I mean, I represented Jeffrey Epstein, but I never had any association with any of the issues that Epstein had. I never had sex with anybody other than my wife during the entire period. I've never met Jeffrey Epstein. But I was charged and accused falsely of sexual misconduct. I disproved it. And I will continue to disprove any allegations. Just today, the New York Times ran a story that a woman who claimed to be a victim of Epstein and collected, I think, $750,000 was exposed as a fraud. She had never met the guy. She had never heard of him. She was put up to it by her lawyer. I think there are hundreds of women like that out there who never met Jeffrey Epstein and who have been parading in front of Congress and who Congress won't even look into. And I think this is the worst form of McCarthyism since the 1950s, what's going on with the Epstein claims and the failure to even look into whether and how many of the claims are utterly false and made up. Yeah, well, you certainly had a lot of historic cases, a lot of important cases, and I'm sure there's a lot of controversy on a lot of those cases. Next question is Bill Maher. How much do you know him? Have you talked to him? And how much do you line up with him? And how many things do you disapprove on? I line up with him almost completely. I think I was on his show once. I don't really know him. I've met him. I like him. We share a lot in common. I'd like to get on his show. I think I would be a good guest, but he hasn't asked me. I think you have to fly out to California to be on his guest and be on a show. And, you know, I'm 88 years old, so I'm not doing as much flying to be on television as I did when I was 64 years old. But for Bill Maher, I would do it. So a lot of founders here in the tech capital of the world are writing a lot of checks to universities and fund politics. What should they stop writing checks for? What would you recommend on that front? Well, I don't think that funders should fund universities today unless the universities do more to combat bigotry and do more to promote equality and egalitarianism. I think universities are not serving the best interests of the United States. So I wouldn't myself write a nickel check to Yale, where I went to law school, Brooklyn College, where I went to college, Harvard, where I taught for 50 years. That would not be my priority for charitable giving. My priority today is on health care, obviously, trying to cure horrible diseases, but also trying to slow down the spread of anti-Semitism. So I do a lot of my pro bono work on behalf of Jews who have been silenced and falsely accused. And so that's my personal priority. But everybody should make decisions based on their own personal priorities. But giving should be a reflection of what you think is important today. And it changes with time. Ellen, you just turned 88 a couple of weeks ago. Happy birthday. You've wrote 60 plus books. What's next for you? What are you working on now? Well, I'm working on my 64th and 65th books. So I've written a lot of books. And I'm trying very hard to see what I can do about helping to promote peace in the Middle East and trying to bring people together in America. But also, I am trying to make sure the Democrats don't get too much power in the United States. I think a divided country is a safety. I think the premise of the Constitution did not write the Constitution for efficiency. They wrote it for checks and balances and for safety. And I think they did a good job. And today, more than ever, I think we need our checks and balances because for the first time in our history, we have become a country of extremes. We are today more like Europe in the 1930s than any time in American history. In the 1930s, you had to be either a communist or a fascist in Europe. There was no middle. And today in America, you have to either be on the extreme right or the extreme left. There's very little room for a middle liberal like me or middle conservatives like others. And I think we have to do more to build the middle. Speaking of that, one last question. Talk to us about reaching across the aisle. How much of that is happening now and how can that happen more? I don't think reaching across the aisle is going to happen. I think people who reach across the aisle get defeated. They lose. I think that voters today want you to be on their side, not to reach across the aisle. That's why Fetterman is so unpopular among the Democrats because he reaches across the aisle. That's why Senator Collins may lose her election for the first time in many years because she's known as a Republican who reaches across the aisle. And instead, the Democrats first nominated a Nazi thug to replace her who had a Nazi tattoo. And now they replaced him with some right wing ignoramus who will never reach across the aisle. So I think reaching across the aisle today is a death sentence for politicians. So that's one of the terrible things about what's going on in America. I explore all of these in my book, Why I Quit the Dems. I'm very proud of the fact that President Trump went out of his way to endorse the book. He wrote a long, whole back cover endorsement saying this highly respected elder is a powerful book and, you know, this is a book for you. So I hope that people who want to see balance restored to our political system will order and buy this book and read it and act on it. And if you're in my situation, a former Democrat who is concerned about the direction of this party, read the book. See if you join me in leaving the party or see if you join my wife in just becoming an independent. But in any event, you can't just do nothing. Alan, we thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it. Amazing career. Thank you. Thank you for watching another episode of Bay Area Innovators. If you enjoyed this episode and you know someone who should be on our show, please send us an email at sfbay.epochtimes.com. We would love to hear from you. Thank you and see you next week.