My Alex Stein interview began with Alex announcing that his air conditioner was broken and Dallas had become, in his words, “Satan’s anus.” That was the first clue this would not be a normal political interview.
I joined Alex on After Hours with Alex Stein this week for a conversation that managed to cover AOC’s love life, Donald Trump, Iran, Dolly Parton, warrantless surveillance and my early days as a Ron Paul guy shouting about the Constitution in the New York City subway. So, a fairly restrained half-hour by Alex Stein standards.
What my Alex Stein interview covered: AOC, Trump and changing your mind
I started by asking Alex the question serious Americans needed answered: Now that AOC is reportedly single, is he finally going to make his move?
From there we took the scenic route through presidential politics, criminal responsibility and Iran. Alex stopped me when I said national security decisions can be above my pay grade. He asked whether I really thought Pete Hegseth was that much smarter than me. Fair hit.
My answer was less about ducking the question and more about intellectual humility. A president sees intelligence that the rest of us do not. I opposed Trump loudly in 2016, even calling him a fascist on CNN. I was wrong. Publicly, spectacularly wrong. That experience made me less interested in forcing every new fact through the same ideological cookie cutter.
Alex, who lost nearly all of his $22,000 investment in the Trump meme coin, was not about to let the president off quite so easily. I cannot blame him. Nothing sharpens political analysis like watching 99 percent of your money disappear.
We agreed on Flock cameras, which was suspicious
After the break, Alex finally handed me a topic guaranteed to make his audience like me: Flock cameras.
These automated license plate readers can record a vehicle’s plate, identifying features, location and time. Police say the systems help find stolen cars and violent suspects. The civil-liberties problem starts when a tool built for specific investigations becomes a standing record of everybody’s movements.
I brought up the case in Joplin, Missouri, where an officer was found to have misused the city’s Flock system. I also pointed to the danger of bad matches. Innocent drivers have been detained at gunpoint after license plate reader errors. “The technology will get better” is cold comfort when you are the person staring down a police weapon because a camera got a character wrong.
My position is simple. If police need to search a database that can reconstruct where a citizen has traveled, they should get a warrant. “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” is not a conservative argument. It is the slogan every surveillance state keeps in the glove compartment.
Three felonies a day and one very patient judge
That led us to Harvey Silverglate’s book Three Felonies a Day and the problem of overcriminalization. With enough vague laws and enough data, government does not have to discover a criminal. It can choose a person and work backward.
We closed with Judge Andrew Napolitano, whose Fox Business show I produced early in my career. The judge taught me that the most important word in the First Amendment may be “the.” The Constitution recognizes the freedom of speech because that freedom existed before the government did. Our rights are not gifts from Washington.
Somewhere in the middle we also paused to remember Dolly Parton, her generosity to children and her rare ability to be famous without lecturing everyone about politics. I then made a joke about Dolly helping my adolescent self realize I was straight. It was a heartfelt tribute, mostly.
That was the Alex Stein interview in miniature: strange, funny and serious in exactly the right proportions. Alex called me a “true American patriot” and praised political nuance before admitting he does not even want his own audience watching his show. I plugged Wake Up America anyway. If you like your politics independent, your liberty arguments warrant-based and your morning news served before the crystal meth crowd goes to bed, come join me.