WEBVTT

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They asked me every year to go
out and remind them that it's okay for

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different parts of the country to be
different. Ask not what your country can

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do for you and what you can
do for your country. I want you

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to listen to me. I'm gonna
say this again. I did not have

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a sexual relations for that woman.
I put him in. It's the Ricorshe

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podcast with Rob Long and Charles was
a C. W. Cook sitting in

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for Peter Robinson. I'm James Lylyax. Today we doked our old friend and

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the McCarthy about now you know what
the law. So let's have ourselves a

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podcast. Welcome everybody. This is
the Ricochet Podcast, number six hundred and

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ninety five. I'm James Lylyx in
a beautiful sunny summer day in Minneapolis.

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Rob Long is in New York and
we're joininged by Charles C. W.

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Cook in Florida. God's Country,
the place where freedom still claims high every

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day. Well, so here we
stand. General's welcome. Is there some

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recent development of DeSantis versus Disney,
Because I'm absolutely fascinated in the way that

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Disney has morphed its public image,
at least amongst the people who you think

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we're most inclined to love it because
it's you know, it's Americana, it's

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the rest of it. But now
it's just sort of one of those things

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that I hear Disney, and I
actually recoil a little because I don't know

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what they've done next. How long
have you got? We have about six

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hours here before my meter runs out, so I'll just lean back and let

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you go. Well, this is
an interesting topic, and I have a

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much more nuanced view of it than
I'm accused of having, in that I

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did not like what was clearly a
retaliatory move by DeSantis and was sold as

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a retaliatory move unless it was being
defended. But I also thought that DeSantis

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was going to win, which he
has. I thought he was going to

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win a pr battle, which he
has. I thought he was going to

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win the election, which he did. And I thought he was going to

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beat Disney, which has come to
fruition. In concert with that, Disney's

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decisions as a company in recent years
have been utterly baffling. And it's not

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just some of the more obvious work
stuff. It's the total lack of creativity

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in their movies. And I am
a big Disney fan. I grew up

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in the golden age of Disney.
I live two hours from Disney World and

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we take the kids there a lot. And that's the one part of their

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offering that is still magnificent. People
like to pretend it's gone downhill. Hasn't

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really, But we were the sort
of family that would say, if there's

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a new Disney movie, we'll take
the kids. You wouldn't even watch the

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trailer, they wouldn't read reviews,
you would just go to it. And

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we've stopped doing it because they're just
producing garbage. So yeah, it's an

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odd thing that's happened where they have
immolated creatively. They have taken on the

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governor of Florida on an issue that
they were likely to lose. I mean,

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DeSantis was right on the merits the
circle. Don't say gaybill is a

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good law. It's not about that. It doesn't prevent people from saying gay.

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It's not how it's been described.
Well, you've just said it,

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and you're in Florida, so no
one has. We don't hear the jet

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booted to your door yet, and
they decided to take him on. I

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thought, and I continue to believe
that the move was targeted and retalitory,

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and I just don't want governments to
do that. I don't think that it

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is illegal in this case because it
was a special dispensation, But I don't

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like it, and I wrote that
and I continue to believe that. But

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look, he won this. He
was always going to win this because Disney

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got special treatment. They took him
on on an issue where he was right

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politically and popular politically. And the
behavior that they then engaged in which they

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tried to sneak in or these bizarre
provisions in the law without Florida seeing it,

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and it was just never gonna work. So I'm I'm nuanced. I'm

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I'm I Thinks's behavior was retired in
a way I don't like. But I

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think Disney's conduct has just been inexplicable. Rob, you're in the entertainment industry.

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Before we get to the yes issues
of the day, are we right

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to Charles and I in talking about
the diminution of Disney's status as a cultural

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force or is this just echo chamber
bubble think nonsense and they're really actually incredibly

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powerful still are driving the culture?
Well? No, I mean, I

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don't I think that's true here here's
my beef with conservatives. They they tend

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to reason from a bad quarter and
say, see, it's all dying,

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you're gonna get, you're gonna pay, You're gonna go down. I mean,

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when when the Chucker Carlson fans found
that Kittucker had been canceled, they

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were convinced that Fox News would collapse
in of course two Disney actually has a

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pretty good quarter this year, I
mean compared to its its competitors in the

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enter him business. The stupid fight
they got into with the governor of Florida

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about you know, who is going
to run the county that they kind of

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had this strange, medieval kind of
feudal control over it was, you know,

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they call it an own goal is
the dumbest thing ever, right,

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I mean, they should have been
tiptoeing around every Florida state bureaucrat and elected

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official for the past fifty years,
because you know, when anybody opened up

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the books there thought, wait a
minute, is there another part of America

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where a company that isn't even resident
there controls so much? And you know

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that this stuff hadn't happened since well
actually since Florida in the twenties probably since

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Tampa. So those are two different
things. The creative trophy, yeah,

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probably, but I think I think
that happens to Disney all the time cycles

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and that is the truth for any
creative enterprise. There is absolutely no way

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to go from strength to strength to
strength in a creative enterprise without running out

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of gas. Well before we moved
to the important issues of the day,

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I will disagree with you on that
one because I think if it was just

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Disney going through some troughs, yes, you have those periods where your old

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animators go out, the new batch
hasn't got their feet yet, and you

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have a couple of bad products.
But we have a very large organization here

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that consists of Disney, Disney Animation, Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm.

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And in every single one of these
that they've gathered into their arms, they

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have ruined. They've ruined them,
and the people who just used to lap

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up their products and love them,
well, you can't, you can't you

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no, No, that's wrong,
that's incorrect. You can't say that.

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Somehow Bob Iger and Bob Shapik decided
to ruin Marvel. Marvel was a basically

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independently run company creatively for your Marvel. I'm not arguing that Marvel is garbage,

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but of course it is now,
but it might come back. And

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same thing with Disney. Looked everybody
hated Disney in the seventies. Disney was

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almost sold for like one hundred dollars
in the seventies, and it came back

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creatively. But the biggest mistake they
made in Pixar was they fired Elasador because

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he hugged too many people. And
they're going to pay the price for that.

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Creative enterprises are cyclical, and if
you if you, if you create

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a kind of a straw man corporate
argument, I think you're just you're you're

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you're just not accurately describing soy,
maybe inaccurately describing what is a coincidence that

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the nayder of these cycles all appear
in the time that they've been under Disney,

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and well they got bigger. But
the name, I mean, is

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anything worse than Jarje r Binks.
Disney had nothing to do with jarge oar

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Binks. But Rob, I think
the argument is slightly different than that,

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And I obviously deferred to you a
great knowledge, but I don't think the

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argument is that Bob Eiger and Bob
Tape. It came in and from the

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top down they said, we are
now work and all of our properties will

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be ruined. Ha ha ha.
I think that the argument is that Disney,

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like a lot of institutions at the
moment, and has proven itself incapable

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of getting out of the pit.
That it's dug because it has far too

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many people working at it who have
bizarre views about the world that do not

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map properly onto the consumer base.
And like at say The New York Times,

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where all of the older editors who
are more small l liberal and they're

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thinking, are terrified of all of
the twenty and thirty year olds on slack.

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So in the creative departments of the
various companies that make up the Disney

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Corporation, you have people who have
an agenda that is not the agenda that

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Disney had in the nineteen nineties,
which was make great movies, and they

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have not yet proven capable of getting
out of that. And in that way,

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it's analogous to some of these investment
companies that are actually making less money

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and making bad decisions because for a
while they were seduced by this ESG stuff

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where they would say, well,
that coal mine is actually very profitable,

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or that gun company is very profitable, but we will not invest in them

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because we think that it's morally wrong. That's starting to turn around, but

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until it does, you end up
losing. Right. I just want to

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say this because I'm responding to Rob
was jar Jar binks great? No?

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It wasn't. Were the where the
prequels that fantastic? No lucasfilms, of

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course made mistakes. What I'm talking
about is this explosion of slop that's come

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out of the out of the Star
Wars world in the last couple of years,

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and so it's one show after the
other hit and miss stuff. The

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New Accolyte show was absolutely dreadful and
saturated with identity politics. But if you

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liked did you like Mandalorian? Yeah? I like some Mandalorian. Okay,

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So look, I'm just telling you
that you are reasoning making a giant let

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Lai, which I probably agree with, by the way, But based on

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the current creative drought that every studio
is feeling, including Warner Brothers and you

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know the the Here's what I would
argue. There is the employee base of

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of the of the Disney Corporation is
no more woke now than it was ten

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or fifth teen years ago. Trust
me, I was there. The difference

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is it's huge now. All of
these companies are too big. You cannot

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manage nimbly a creative enterprise when it's
this large. You end up just being

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an HR company. And that is
ultimately where Disney failed because they and and

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and to its credit, Netflix did
not because they found themselves having to do

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all sorts of corporate things, not
for their customer but for their employees because

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they have tens of thousands of them
now they just fired about eight thousand of

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them. So there's a smaller company
now. And all of these companies,

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like what's going to happen to Paramount, is going to happen at Disney,

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Paramounts go about to be busted up. Disney's not going to be busted up

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by a purchaser, but it's going
to start shedding assets. And when it

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does, magically, because these are
how is how this stuff work, the

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creative will get better. And it
won't because they got more conservative. It's

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just because they started thinking about the
customer more, which happens when you have

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fewer employees to worry about. But
I got news for you. Everybody in

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the entertainment industry, all the creator
are weirdos, and they are all weirdo,

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lefty kind of crazies. And that
is what you want when you have

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a creative company comes you just don't
want them to be in charge of it.

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No, no, no, no, no no no no. You

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don't no, you don't. You
don't. You don't necessarily need and require

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weird lefto crazies in your artistic department. Disney was able to put together a

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you know, a zeitgeist in the
thirties and the forties, the fifties which

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reflected the America of the times.
It was not the product of people who

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were you know, quasi Marxist urging
and the over blow of America. But

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they were libertines at the time.
Even then. There are stories of those

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of what those animators would get up
to at night. My office was in

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the old animation building, trust right. There were old people there who could

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tell you stories that would curl your
hair. But that's fine. I don't

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doubt that. But they didn't put
it into the work. It was not

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something that was not something that was
necessarily part of the culture. In the

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I mean, yes, you had
to hide it. That was the whole

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thing about the time, is that
you had to hide your libertine repressive things

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and have your firehouse five is where
everybody did the square to answer and then

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went off the corner and you know, did Benz a dream and screwed?

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I get that, but that doesn't
manifest itself in the work. But I

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have a question about this because I
find the argument that you just made pretty

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persuasive. But the one thing that
I wonder is this I'm not I'm going

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to be very clear about this saying
Disney needs to be more conservative. So

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if the argument that we're supposedly making
here is Disney is too left wing,

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that's not what I'm saying. The
stultifying HR style or priate environment that you

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just described is bad for weirdos on
the left to agree. The sort of

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creative people who end up creating the
Ford Motor Company, or Tesla and SpaceX,

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or the early Disney and Looney Choose
cartoons and all of that. They

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might be left wing, that they
disproportionately are, but the thing that defines

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them is that they're weird, and
so their politics are all over the place,

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and personal habits are all over the
place. And one of the things

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that worries me about our cultural moment
is that those people, irrespective of whether

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they're left or right wing, are
sort of unwelcome. I mean, that's

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the HR is in the modern era
designed to destroy and remove those people.

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And I, and perhaps I'm wrong, but I have a suspicion that there

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are far too many people at Disney
who are HR compliant and therefore a lot

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less creative than they need to be
absolutely true, one percent true. I

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would say that the hrification of the
national business just whatever name anything has been

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a destructive force, but especially the
creative business. And I would say this

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even and I know, I mean, I would get in massive trouble if

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anybody who's liberal ever listened to this
in show business, which of course they

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would never do because they might encounter
different ideas. There is almost no way,

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I would say, there's no way
to run a vibrant, successful,

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creative, innovative enterprise in an HR
compliant slash woke slash new age employment practice

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way. John Lassiter was a big
left He is a big lefty, kind

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of a crackpot lefty. If I
recall it, correctly make great, great

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movies. Some of the best movies
really ever made came from Pixar. I

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really do believe that. I mean
Toy Story, the Toy Story Trilogy is

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actually a masterpiece, an American masterpiece, of of of everything, and the

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first being everybody says the first eleven
minutes up are more powerful than half the

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movies made that year. So he's
response for a lot of great things.

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But he's nuts and his politics wouldn't
fit on this podcast by any means.

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But I don't know how you run
a company that's supposed to be creative and

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enforce these things. And I think
people are discovering that now. I hope

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they're discovering that now. Well.
Ideological and you know, worldview conformity leads

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to a decreased mental metabolic rate in
the creativity of any organization because there's no

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00:15:16.679 --> 00:15:20.159
friction and there's no effort, there's
no work. Everybody knows what everybody believes,

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00:15:20.159 --> 00:15:22.799
so the metabolism doesn't have to spin
up and consume. And speaking of

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that, your own personal metabolism is
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I think about my metabolism a lot. Frankly, I've always that a pretty

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think I got it figured out pretty much

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take some additional information in any info
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Luman for sponsoring this the Ricochet podcast, and now we welcome back to the

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00:17:26.319 --> 00:17:30.559
podcast or old friend Anny McCarthy.
Can't have him on here enough. See

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Institute and a contributing editor there,
as well as with Fox News. What's

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so funny? We just can't.
I mean, you know, in an

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ideal world, we'd never have to
have Andy because there wouldn't be weird trials

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that make us upset, or you
know, questions of his Islamic terrorism that

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needs your expertise from the days.
But here we are, here we are

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again. All right. So you
wrote a piece earlier this week it's the

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charge, not the charges, and
you said a couple of things. One,

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the New York jury ultimately found Trump
guilty first stealing the twenty sixteen election.

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I guess he did that with the
twenty seventeen actions. And two you

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predict that they're likely to give them
time in the Great Bar Hotel because of

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the severity of what they eruliously you
say, found him guilty for. All

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right, explain you think he's going
to jail. No, I think he's

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going to be sentenced to jail.
I don't think he's going to jail.

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But I do think, James,
that the fact, if it is a

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fact, that he won't be put
in custody right away, increases Judge Merchon's

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incentive to impose a prison term,
because it's how is it, It's no

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loss to him. He's not actually
going to interfere anymore than he already has

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in the election, because I think
Trump will stay on his present release conditions

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pending appeal, which will take probably
close to the year to play out.

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But in the meantime, march On
can pose as a hero for all the

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people who he seems to want to
please by imposing a prison sense. It's

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not like he's gonna it's not like
the result of it is that, you

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know, someone's going to slap cuffs
on Trump and will be led away to

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Attica or Rikers. Andy. First
of all, congratulations. Have you ever

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had this much juicy material in your
entire career as a writer a journalist?

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Have you ever really, I mean, wake up every day, you must

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wake up every day just think,
oh my god, I just got to

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dig in. This is gonna be
great. I'm actually a little weary at

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this point. You know. Look, I thought that I thought the I

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wrote a book about Russia Gate when
I had more energy, because that was

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kind of an embarrassment of riches too, and it let me do what I

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used to like to do as a
prosecutor, which was kind of build the

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case and try to figure out sort
of, I mean, your biggest everybody,

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he has to figure out what they're
good at. And what I thought

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I did well as a prosecutor was
take stuff that was sometimes unwieldy and complicated

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and try to boil it down to
something that you could explain to twelve people

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in a way that could hang there
you had on So I enjoyed doing that.

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And but there is you know,
he's laughing when James introduced me,

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because even my mom recognizes that if
I'm getting a lot of air time,

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that means it's really bad for the
country, you know, and that you're

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a syndicator. I have a reverse
indicator's precisely right, so that you know,

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I think that it look it should
weigh on all of us what's happening

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here because and I must say it
was poignant at the end of the trial

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last week, because I got to
spend time with a lot of people who

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had similar experience to me, including
people who had grown up in the justice

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system years ago, and it's I
think we all had a kind of a

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like they know not what they do
kind of feeling about it, which has

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nothing to do with Trump. It's
just I think people don't appreciate how much

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the loss of this system as what
it was is going to cost the society.

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And you know, we're really only
in the early rounds of it.

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So yes, I get up every
day and think, you know, there's

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interesting, challenging, juicy legal issues
to deal with, but I'm also chagrined

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by what it all means in the
way it's all being applied. So I

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got a couple questions and then a
thought experiment, and so if anybody wants

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to jump in before my thought experiment
felt great with Franks. For question is

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how much trouble is Merchant going to
be during the appeals process for his jury

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instructions? Well, I mean it's
a very political system. I mean politics

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is kind of baked in the cake
of the system. I come from an

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appointed system, you know, the
federal system. All of the judges are

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appointed, all of the US attorneys
are appointed, and at least in theory,

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they have to go through a Senate
vetting process where they have to at

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least pay lip service to the idea
that you're not going to use your authority

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against your political enemies or politicize it
in any way. And they may not

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be honest about it. But the
fact that they have to take that position

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at least says something. Whereas New
York is an elective system, even at

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the judicial level, most of the
trial judges are elected. And I don't

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think you know this is this Rob
is much more of a cultural issue,

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I think than a legal issue.
But when I was a young prosecutor and

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Bob Morgenthal was the elected District Attorney
of Manhattan for like quarter of a century.

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In those days, if you took
the position that elect me as the

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state prosecutor and I will use the
power of the office against our political enemies,

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that would have been seen as disqualifying. Now they take that position and

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they win in a landslide, which
to me is not a legal problem.

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That's more of a cultural thing.
Right. So this is a long winded

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way of getting around to you a
question. But the thing is, I

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don't think Merchand will be in trouble
with the appellate court, like in terms

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of his career. Will he get
reversed? You know? I think it's

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judges. The judging in the trial
level of the New York courts can be

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appallingly bad, and it's not unusual
for those guys to get reversed. In

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fact, I think Judge edgarn has
already been reversed a few times in the

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civil fraud case, so I expect
he'll eventually be reversed. But I think

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career wise, it's not going to
hurt them all that much. In fact,

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when I was a kid, they
had a judge in the Bronx whose

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name was Bruce Wright, and in
the New York Post he would he would

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be featured on the front page occasionally
as Turnham Loose Bruce. He was like

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the only judge that anybody knew the
name of in New York. But he

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got elected every time he was up
because people knew his name, you know.

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So I don't know that. I
don't know how much it's going to

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hurt him. Then my next question
is just on the process here. I

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mean, how irritated, angry or
indifferent do you think Jack Smith and even

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Fanny Willis are Right now, there
are pending cases against Trump, and I

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note that they should be all be
looked at separately. But you know,

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in my I mean, I'm clearly
a child, but I they're all kind

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of the same thing in my head, and I can't believe that I'm that

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different from most Americans that think,
you know, you really made made me

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think about it. I think actually
the Georgia stuff does. I am actually

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concerned as an American citizen about a
president who lost an election who was working

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the levers to try stay in power. I am actually concerned in general about

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00:25:03.839 --> 00:25:11.359
the sloppiness that we treat, the
incredible laxity we treat foreign former presidents,

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whether when where they're stealing documents,
right, Biden or Trump. So these

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00:25:15.119 --> 00:25:19.039
are issues I think need to be
adjudicated. I don't think they're going to

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be because I think this stupid at
Manhattanda mess it up for these other two

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00:25:23.839 --> 00:25:30.359
guys. And I may be wrong. What do you think I think Smith

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00:25:30.599 --> 00:25:36.160
and Willis have themselves to blame as
much as they can blame. Now,

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let's remember, in terms of whatever
indictment in the colloquial sense that you want

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to lay on Alvin Bragg, who
I am no fan of, he was

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00:25:45.119 --> 00:25:51.960
willing to step aside for the federal
authorities. The only reason that that case,

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00:25:52.200 --> 00:25:56.880
which was originally scheduled for March twenty
fifth, Bragg said that he would

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00:25:56.920 --> 00:26:00.079
step aside to let Smith go.
Of Smith was going to go on March

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00:26:00.160 --> 00:26:04.119
fourth, which is what they were
hoping in Washington. And the only reason

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that the Bragg case got tried first
is because the Smith case got derailed.

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And I think Smith was foolish if
he thought that he was going to be

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00:26:18.200 --> 00:26:23.160
able to push a case against the
former president who has constitutional status and rights

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and privileges. If he thought he
was just going to be able to bang

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that thing to trial and it was
not going to be a problem, that

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00:26:30.279 --> 00:26:34.200
was very foolish thought on his part. But I think Rob where he really

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00:26:34.319 --> 00:26:41.400
drops the ball is in the Florida
case, because I'm convinced he could have

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00:26:41.480 --> 00:26:47.799
gotten the Florida case to trial if
he hadn't felt the need to lard thirty

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00:26:47.920 --> 00:26:53.440
six classified information counts in an indictment
that already had eight obstruction counts, because

359
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the eight obstruction counts give him fifty
years or more of prison exposure. So

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00:27:00.960 --> 00:27:03.960
it's not like they're not representative of
the seriousness of the offense. But the

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00:27:04.039 --> 00:27:10.039
good thing about them is it's a
very easy case. But most people,

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most people can understand that anybody who
lied to a grand jury would be prosecuted.

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And this is the most important thing
you wouldn't have to have all this

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00:27:18.480 --> 00:27:23.759
litigation under the Classified Information Procedures Act, which is very complicated because in the

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00:27:25.480 --> 00:27:30.839
obstruction case, the only issue is
do the documents bear physical classification markings,

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not what they substantially say, Whereas
if you prosecute them for classified information violations,

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then the defender gets to play the
game that everybody plays in classified information

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00:27:42.400 --> 00:27:45.079
litigation, where they come in and
say, well, I can't get a

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00:27:45.160 --> 00:27:48.880
fair trial unless I can put this
classified information in that's helpful to me,

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and then you have to litigate all
that stuff prior to trial. So I

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think if he had done that case, and I think Bill Barras said this

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00:27:56.240 --> 00:27:59.480
too, it I think he's right
about this. If he had done just

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like a kind of a fast and
nasty obstruction case rather than this elaborate classified

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00:28:04.640 --> 00:28:10.599
information thing, he could have gotten
a trial already. And the INDU,

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00:28:11.880 --> 00:28:15.799
well, it's a I think it's
a pretty slam dunk case. They got

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a grand jury subpoena, they represented
that they were turning over all the documents

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00:28:18.759 --> 00:28:23.240
and they didn't. You know,
That's all she wrote right on the doc

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00:28:23.559 --> 00:28:30.640
on the January sixth case. I
still think I'm not in the large category

379
00:28:30.720 --> 00:28:33.799
of people who think that there's no
way that case gets to trial now prior

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00:28:33.920 --> 00:28:41.480
to the election, because it seemed
to me watching the oral argument that Trump's

381
00:28:41.720 --> 00:28:45.079
lawyers gave a lot of ground in
terms of stuff that's charging the indictment that

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00:28:45.279 --> 00:28:51.960
can't conceivably be covered by immunity.
And if Smith is willing to do something

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00:28:52.039 --> 00:28:56.640
he has up till now shown no
inclination to do, which is to the

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00:28:56.759 --> 00:29:00.440
Supreme Court sends the case back with
some guide line saying here's how you figure

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00:29:00.480 --> 00:29:04.240
out what's immune and what's not.
If Smith goes to Judge chuck it,

386
00:29:04.319 --> 00:29:08.160
it says, you know what,
forget that we're willing to go to trial

387
00:29:08.400 --> 00:29:12.119
just on the stuff that they said
was not covered by immunity, and I'll

388
00:29:12.200 --> 00:29:17.200
leave the rest of my case on
the cutting room floor. I think you

389
00:29:17.319 --> 00:29:22.920
could get to trial because you'd be
talking about the false elector's scheme and the

390
00:29:22.319 --> 00:29:27.200
I think the false statement that they
made or allegedly made in the in the

391
00:29:27.279 --> 00:29:33.640
Atlanta case, you know, they
filed something in court that had false information

392
00:29:33.759 --> 00:29:37.519
in it, that they have texts
that show they know it was false information

393
00:29:37.640 --> 00:29:41.680
about voting data. You know,
for Smith, that's a home game,

394
00:29:42.119 --> 00:29:45.000
you know, in Washington with Judge
Chuck in, even if it's on a

395
00:29:45.079 --> 00:29:48.079
slip down case and he only wants
to get the guy convicted, right,

396
00:29:48.119 --> 00:29:52.039
I mean, it shouldn't matter to
him that, you know, whether he

397
00:29:52.160 --> 00:29:56.000
gets to present his whole war and
peace of the case or if he just

398
00:29:56.079 --> 00:29:59.480
gets to, you know, have
two or three felonies that he can,

399
00:30:00.039 --> 00:30:03.160
even if it's slimmed down, he
can get to trial and get Trump convicted

400
00:30:03.240 --> 00:30:06.880
on. That's exactly what he's looking
to do. So I'm not satisfied that

401
00:30:06.960 --> 00:30:11.319
that won't happen. As to the
fanny thing that anything is. That was

402
00:30:11.440 --> 00:30:14.839
just a foolishly charged case. That's
not a rico. It's moronic. There

403
00:30:14.880 --> 00:30:18.920
were there was significant misbehavior there,
but to do it as a rico,

404
00:30:19.039 --> 00:30:22.759
what it wasn't a rico and then
have the clown show down there with the

405
00:30:23.400 --> 00:30:29.039
affair with the other prosecutor and end
up in the Court of Appeals, which

406
00:30:29.119 --> 00:30:30.799
is where they are now, which
means the trial court can't act on it.

407
00:30:30.880 --> 00:30:34.880
I don't see how that case can
get to trial, but I still

408
00:30:34.880 --> 00:30:37.680
think Smith could, So I know, you guys want to jump in.

409
00:30:38.119 --> 00:30:41.359
So it's really not a case that
Trump is so smart that everyone else is

410
00:30:41.440 --> 00:30:47.759
so dumb. Well, you know, there's there's no heroes here, and

411
00:30:48.319 --> 00:30:52.680
it's not a it's not a it's
not a mensa meeting on either side.

412
00:30:52.079 --> 00:31:00.440
Okay, you go here, you
go, decline of empire. So let's

413
00:31:00.519 --> 00:31:08.640
assume that there are no other trials
before Donald Trump would be sworn in as

414
00:31:08.720 --> 00:31:17.559
president. If he wins the election
in November and becomes president for a second

415
00:31:17.559 --> 00:31:23.799
time on January twentieth next year,
can he essentially delay at least until the

416
00:31:23.880 --> 00:31:30.720
end of his presidency all the prosecutions
because two of them are federal and he

417
00:31:30.759 --> 00:31:34.519
would be the head of the federal
executive branch, and one of them is

418
00:31:34.880 --> 00:31:41.599
a state. But they've become real
problems about the prospect of certainly punishing a

419
00:31:42.559 --> 00:31:48.200
president. I was told by Dan
McLaughlin that in the early Republic, North

420
00:31:48.240 --> 00:31:52.359
Carolina and prisoned a Supreme Court justice
on a state charge. I think it

421
00:31:52.440 --> 00:31:55.720
was seventeen ninety one, but that
was the last time that happened. That's

422
00:31:55.799 --> 00:31:59.799
really not any president. So is
it the case as many people say that

423
00:31:59.839 --> 00:32:04.880
if Trump does win, and of
course that the brag debacle helps, and

424
00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:09.359
this will be deeply ironic that Trump
gets away with it. Charlie, I

425
00:32:09.400 --> 00:32:13.440
would just say that, during as
I understand it, during the War of

426
00:32:13.519 --> 00:32:20.519
eighteen twelve, when Jackson had martial
law in I think it was New Orleans,

427
00:32:21.720 --> 00:32:24.920
a judge tried to issue a writ
of habeas corpus to him, and

428
00:32:25.920 --> 00:32:30.480
Jackson had four soldiers march the judge
out of the city's limits. So we

429
00:32:30.599 --> 00:32:37.400
do have this wonderful tradition for Andrew
Jackson. But you know, look,

430
00:32:37.519 --> 00:32:40.920
I think the other thing that we
have to factor into this. I think

431
00:32:42.000 --> 00:32:45.599
on the state stuff, it's easy
because what the Trump Justice Department would do

432
00:32:46.400 --> 00:32:50.960
would be going too the courts of
New York, probably the federal courts and

433
00:32:51.119 --> 00:32:53.960
try to make an argument that,
based on the supremacy clause, the execution

434
00:32:54.119 --> 00:32:59.519
of his sentence has to be postponed
until after his turn, and I think

435
00:32:59.559 --> 00:33:02.799
he'd have a chance of winning on
that. The federal stuff is the wild

436
00:33:02.880 --> 00:33:07.359
card, because, first of all, I think in the next January sixth,

437
00:33:07.400 --> 00:33:12.079
if we assume that Trump wins,
the Supreme Court case on the insurrection

438
00:33:12.279 --> 00:33:15.960
clause only said that the states can't
invoke it, didn't say Congress can't.

439
00:33:16.039 --> 00:33:19.640
So you're going to get Democrats in
Congress who are going to try to not

440
00:33:19.799 --> 00:33:24.079
seek Trump on January six, because
he's an insurrectionist to start with. And

441
00:33:24.200 --> 00:33:29.680
then assuming you get by that,
as I understand the way the map works,

442
00:33:30.079 --> 00:33:34.039
the Democrats have a very good chance
of taking back the House, and

443
00:33:34.200 --> 00:33:38.880
no matter what happens in the Senate, it'll be close. So if Trump

444
00:33:39.079 --> 00:33:44.960
dismisses the cases against himself or orders
the Justice Department to dismiss the cases,

445
00:33:45.519 --> 00:33:52.920
I think that the House would impeach
him the first week overdoing that, and

446
00:33:52.039 --> 00:33:55.599
he might there might not be the
boat votes to remove him. On the

447
00:33:55.640 --> 00:34:00.240
other hand, don't think that this
is not crossing Trump's mind as he thinks

448
00:34:00.240 --> 00:34:04.960
about who to pick his vice president, because I think he worries that if

449
00:34:05.039 --> 00:34:08.480
he picked somebody that we all liked
as vice president, the Senate might have

450
00:34:08.679 --> 00:34:13.599
less enthusiasm for defending him when he
gets in. Peace to this, at

451
00:34:13.679 --> 00:34:16.159
least one one of the four people
on the national ballot would be somebody that

452
00:34:16.880 --> 00:34:21.559
the majority of Americans could live with. Right, that'd be good, But

453
00:34:21.840 --> 00:34:24.119
so at the other and the other
wild card here is and I wonder what

454
00:34:24.199 --> 00:34:29.559
you guys think of this. It
seems to me that Democrats, especially in

455
00:34:29.639 --> 00:34:37.119
the Senate Judiciary Committee, would make
it a condition of confirming a Trump Attorney

456
00:34:37.239 --> 00:34:44.800
general, or at least try to
that he not or she not dismiss the

457
00:34:44.960 --> 00:34:50.079
indictments against him. And I don't
know how that would play out. I

458
00:34:50.119 --> 00:34:54.320
mean, Trump could still order them
to be to be dismissed, but he

459
00:34:54.400 --> 00:34:57.639
might have to do it himself.
You know, I don't know even the

460
00:34:58.039 --> 00:35:01.440
mechanics of you would do that.
He would try, I think right after

461
00:35:01.519 --> 00:35:07.320
he got elected and right after he
took office, to have the Justice Department

462
00:35:07.440 --> 00:35:12.360
fire Jack Smith and dismissed the cases. But I don't know how easy that's

463
00:35:12.400 --> 00:35:16.679
going to be between the Democratic agitation
in the House, the difficulty of getting

464
00:35:16.960 --> 00:35:22.800
an attorney general confirmed, and the
other thing I think we should bear in

465
00:35:22.880 --> 00:35:28.840
mind is the Flynn precedent. Remember
the Justice Department tried to dismiss the case

466
00:35:29.159 --> 00:35:32.559
against General Flynn and Judge Sullivan wouldn't
do it. Now, I think Judge

467
00:35:32.559 --> 00:35:37.000
Sullivan was totally lawless, but he
managed to get away with what he was

468
00:35:37.079 --> 00:35:40.360
doing. This should be, by
the way, this is a unilateral executive

469
00:35:40.400 --> 00:35:44.960
branch call whether to whether to go
ahead with the prosecution or not. But

470
00:35:45.559 --> 00:35:49.679
the way the statutes written, the
court can interfere with it. Judge Sullivan

471
00:35:49.760 --> 00:35:55.119
certainly did that in the Flynn case. He got away with it because Trump

472
00:35:55.320 --> 00:36:00.880
was up against the time for leaving
office, so he basically had the only

473
00:36:00.920 --> 00:36:04.719
way he could guarantee that Flynn wouldn't
get prosecuted was to pardon them. So

474
00:36:04.880 --> 00:36:07.119
in the game of chicken, in
the end, he pardoned them. But

475
00:36:07.719 --> 00:36:14.960
I could see I could easily see
Judge Chucken doing what Judge Sullivan did and

476
00:36:15.119 --> 00:36:17.480
say, you know, I'm not
dismissing the indictment. You know you haven't

477
00:36:17.480 --> 00:36:22.440
shown good cause to dismiss it.
And the Trump Justice Department would go in

478
00:36:22.519 --> 00:36:24.000
and say, that's not your call, that's not our call. You can't

479
00:36:24.679 --> 00:36:30.639
force us to dismiss the case.
But that ended up in a lot of

480
00:36:30.719 --> 00:36:34.480
litigation, including I think two trips
to the DC circuit connection with Flynn,

481
00:36:34.519 --> 00:36:37.000
So that could play out for a
long time. And if I understand what

482
00:36:37.039 --> 00:36:44.239
you're saying here, twenty twenty five
January post inauguration, instead of the country

483
00:36:44.360 --> 00:36:47.960
sitting down, our leaders are elected
leaders sitting down to discuss the nation's problems

484
00:36:47.960 --> 00:36:52.920
of debt, of military reinforcement,
border security. Instead of doing that,

485
00:36:54.599 --> 00:36:59.599
the Democrats might actually engage in a
series of constitutional crises and laws and impeachments

486
00:36:59.599 --> 00:37:01.960
and the rest to get rid of
Donald Trump. Is is that what we're

487
00:37:02.000 --> 00:37:07.039
looking at. I mean, I'm
stunned that they would do that, But

488
00:37:07.119 --> 00:37:10.440
perhaps they're doing that so that we
can clear Trump from the table and forge

489
00:37:10.599 --> 00:37:15.079
a new America with President Tom Cotton. Or are you saying there's that that

490
00:37:15.239 --> 00:37:20.360
they're The number of arrows they have
in they're quiver are going to be infinite

491
00:37:20.440 --> 00:37:22.400
and going to be drawn every single
day the moment Trump is back in office.

492
00:37:23.239 --> 00:37:27.280
Yeah. I mean, you guys, there is good or better than

493
00:37:27.360 --> 00:37:32.280
I am of reading this stuff.
I just think the the the Democrats are

494
00:37:32.320 --> 00:37:38.079
so in the thrall of this fringy
base which punches way way above its way.

495
00:37:38.239 --> 00:37:42.360
I think most people in the country
are stunned at how much influence these

496
00:37:42.400 --> 00:37:46.199
clowns have. But you know,
they say jump and these guys say how

497
00:37:46.280 --> 00:37:49.840
high. I haven't seen any of
it, And the thing that animates them

498
00:37:49.880 --> 00:37:52.880
the most is Trump. So I
don't I don't see that going away anytime.

499
00:37:53.440 --> 00:37:59.599
So any I'm going to ask you
some political stuff put on your you

500
00:37:59.679 --> 00:38:06.760
know, political hat looks like trends
and polls in certainly swing states like Virginia

501
00:38:06.960 --> 00:38:10.679
seem like they're trending towards Trump.
So you're you're in the Biden White House,

502
00:38:12.599 --> 00:38:15.800
and you know, in the twenty
five or thirty minutes where he's fully

503
00:38:15.840 --> 00:38:23.760
there, why wouldn't he just figure
out a way to pardon Trump? Say,

504
00:38:23.800 --> 00:38:27.760
look, people are going to have
their chance to speak in November.

505
00:38:27.800 --> 00:38:31.320
Let's let it. Let's let them
decide. Let's just end all this nonsense

506
00:38:31.400 --> 00:38:37.840
now and have an actual campaign,
and then cross his fingers in hope that

507
00:38:38.079 --> 00:38:45.400
his son Hunter actually does time,
because then he can say, all you

508
00:38:45.519 --> 00:38:51.519
guys complaining about how the system's rigged, my son is in prison, My

509
00:38:51.639 --> 00:38:54.239
opponent is here on the stage with
me. I mean, am I just?

510
00:38:55.239 --> 00:38:58.159
I mean, when I be fired? I think I'd be fired if

511
00:38:58.159 --> 00:39:00.960
I would give that advice to the
sitting president right now at political advice,

512
00:39:01.360 --> 00:39:07.400
Well, yeah, I would already
have been fired because I made exactly this

513
00:39:07.559 --> 00:39:13.760
suggestion, including specifically I think it
would serve Biden well to pardon Trump at

514
00:39:13.880 --> 00:39:17.760
least on the classified information counts in
Florida, because you know, if the

515
00:39:17.840 --> 00:39:22.440
if the difference between the two cases. Is one guy obstructed the other guy

516
00:39:22.519 --> 00:39:25.199
didn't then try him for obstruction,
you know, but I don't think.

517
00:39:25.239 --> 00:39:30.760
I think for the same reason that
we just discussed that as a non starter

518
00:39:30.840 --> 00:39:32.719
in democratic politics, I just don't
think they can do it. And the

519
00:39:32.840 --> 00:39:37.760
other thing is, I think I
think Charlie and I are in the same

520
00:39:37.440 --> 00:39:40.800
place on this in terms of the
assessment of the election. I've always been

521
00:39:42.320 --> 00:39:45.599
I'm not saying Charlie's been a Trump
can't win guy. I've been a Trump

522
00:39:45.679 --> 00:39:49.599
can't win guy. From the story
to Charlie, he may give him like

523
00:39:49.719 --> 00:39:53.480
a little bit more chance of winning
than I do, but I don't.

524
00:39:54.360 --> 00:39:59.800
I wouldn't think I was wrong.
I Greeglis who said that with such certainty

525
00:40:00.159 --> 00:40:02.800
that everybody going forward should know that
we thought that and that we're probably wrong.

526
00:40:02.880 --> 00:40:07.400
And I still think that, So
I tell you, Okay, yeah,

527
00:40:07.679 --> 00:40:12.480
So I think I think phase two
has started. And what I always

528
00:40:12.559 --> 00:40:15.079
saw and I've been saying this for
a couple of years now, so this

529
00:40:15.239 --> 00:40:17.639
is not like new but I've always
thought that it was going to be in

530
00:40:17.760 --> 00:40:22.840
their interest to make him look like
a winner for a certain period of time,

531
00:40:22.320 --> 00:40:25.480
which is what helped him get the
nomination, the fact that the charges

532
00:40:25.559 --> 00:40:30.960
galvanized the base, and part of
that is he has to look like a

533
00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:34.800
winner. So he was always going
to enjoy some good polling. But there

534
00:40:34.920 --> 00:40:38.440
was a certain point in time when
think when the switch was going to be

535
00:40:38.559 --> 00:40:43.280
thrown, These cases were going to
come up in court, there were going

536
00:40:43.320 --> 00:40:47.480
to be convictions, and there's going
to be googabs of political money behind messaging

537
00:40:49.119 --> 00:40:53.119
that not only focuses on the stuff
that he's on trial for, and again

538
00:40:53.199 --> 00:40:58.199
and again and again on the January
sixth stuff, which which actually does no

539
00:40:58.320 --> 00:41:00.760
matter what the MAGA people think,
the January or six stuff is very upsetting

540
00:41:01.159 --> 00:41:06.599
to people in the country. And
our friend Jim Garritty has pointed out a

541
00:41:06.719 --> 00:41:14.400
number of times Trump says some crazy
ass stuff on that truth social that the

542
00:41:14.519 --> 00:41:17.280
country hasn't heard yet. But I
mean, you could, you know,

543
00:41:17.519 --> 00:41:22.039
rob the ads right themselves right about
what you know, the crazy stuff that

544
00:41:22.079 --> 00:41:23.880
this guy has said. Yeah,
but I guess, I guess. Here's

545
00:41:24.480 --> 00:41:30.840
my My calculation is that usually an
a traditional campaign at this point is that

546
00:41:30.920 --> 00:41:36.079
eleven, twelve, thirteen, fifteen
percent undecided in the middle and they just

547
00:41:36.199 --> 00:41:38.679
haven't made up their mind and there, we call them low information voters.

548
00:41:38.719 --> 00:41:42.920
We either we either insult them or
sometimes we smell them save the low information

549
00:41:42.960 --> 00:41:44.960
they're just out of it, or
we say, no, these are great

550
00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:47.400
and good Americans and they're just not
paying attention to this nonsense circus until after

551
00:41:47.480 --> 00:41:51.000
Labor Day. All that stuff that's
been true in the past. But it

552
00:41:51.039 --> 00:41:53.239
feels to me that the fourteen to
fifteen percent in the middle, maybe it's

553
00:41:53.280 --> 00:41:58.920
more now, I should probably closer
to twenty. I hate both of these

554
00:41:59.000 --> 00:42:05.840
guys with an incandescent biblical rage,
and so the the election is really going

555
00:42:05.880 --> 00:42:10.639
to be about giving you one extra
reason to maybe told your nose and vote

556
00:42:10.679 --> 00:42:15.840
for the guy that you hate a
little less. And to me it feels

557
00:42:15.960 --> 00:42:22.639
like, I, I mean,
I'm just maybe I'm just I'm using this

558
00:42:22.719 --> 00:42:27.199
as your mind now, my therapist, But I feel like Trump has been

559
00:42:27.920 --> 00:42:34.000
mistreated by a system and it's not
okay for me. And it's more not

560
00:42:34.159 --> 00:42:37.800
okay for me than all the other
horrible, you know, impotent, irrelevant,

561
00:42:38.679 --> 00:42:44.119
mentally emotionally unfit things there are about
Trump, and I don't think that

562
00:42:44.199 --> 00:42:46.639
I'm alone. How much of that
rob though, is because the brag case

563
00:42:46.719 --> 00:42:51.320
went first, would you have felt
different, maybe if it's in Florida.

564
00:42:52.280 --> 00:42:54.239
Yeah, But on the politics of
it, Andy, that's an interesting irony

565
00:42:54.360 --> 00:42:58.800
because, as you've pointed out,
the fact that this case, when first,

566
00:42:59.079 --> 00:43:02.480
does taint the others, and in
my view, does mean that if

567
00:43:02.519 --> 00:43:07.519
Trump were to win and then to
shut down the two federal cases, he

568
00:43:07.599 --> 00:43:12.519
would probably get away with it politically, now constitutionally, in my estimation,

569
00:43:12.679 --> 00:43:15.480
he absolutely should so called get away
with it because he's headed the executive branch,

570
00:43:15.639 --> 00:43:19.119
and if the president can't decide what
the executive branch does, then we

571
00:43:19.159 --> 00:43:22.760
don't have a democratically elected president.
The idea that the Department of Justice and

572
00:43:22.760 --> 00:43:25.119
the FBI and so one of these
free floating fourth branches of government is absurd,

573
00:43:25.440 --> 00:43:29.039
But politically there'd be a cost,
and the ultimate cost of that would

574
00:43:29.039 --> 00:43:31.239
be, as you say, that
he were impeached. But if I were

575
00:43:31.920 --> 00:43:36.599
guessing, and I'm of the view
as you said, that Trump can't win,

576
00:43:36.719 --> 00:43:39.079
so I'm not downplaying the damage that
this stuff does to him. But

577
00:43:39.199 --> 00:43:45.199
if I were guessing, given that
the process of prosecuting Donald Trump has now

578
00:43:45.239 --> 00:43:49.639
been tainted in a way that it
has by Alvin Bragg, I could absolutely

579
00:43:49.840 --> 00:43:52.920
see a scenario in which Trump wins, comes in and then says, well,

580
00:43:53.039 --> 00:43:58.679
obviously, I'm shutting down Joe Biden's
investigations into me. I'm shutting down

581
00:43:58.719 --> 00:44:04.559
the one where I I'm accused of
holding classified documents because he did it and

582
00:44:04.639 --> 00:44:07.440
so did Hillary. That would be
his argument. It's not entirely true.

583
00:44:07.440 --> 00:44:08.599
There's an obstruction side of it,
but that would be his argument. Most

584
00:44:08.639 --> 00:44:15.239
people don't know that. And I'm
shutting down the January sixth stuff because the

585
00:44:15.360 --> 00:44:21.119
Democrats also have spent a lot of
time denying elections, including the twenty sixteen

586
00:44:21.119 --> 00:44:24.639
election, and I was targeted for
Russia Gate and all of that. Now,

587
00:44:24.679 --> 00:44:28.960
I'm not saying that would be honest. I'm not saying that the Brad

588
00:44:29.039 --> 00:44:30.960
case and these cases are equivalent.
I don't think they are. But I

589
00:44:31.119 --> 00:44:36.119
actually suspect that if he'd won,
he might get away with that. Yeah.

590
00:44:36.199 --> 00:44:37.639
No, I think that's right.
And the other thing that I think,

591
00:44:38.079 --> 00:44:42.440
just to add on to that,
that I think if I was wrong

592
00:44:42.519 --> 00:44:47.039
about something in assessing this whole thing, the most wrong I've been has been

593
00:44:47.079 --> 00:44:51.960
about how terrible Biden is. I
mean, I just think you can't,

594
00:44:52.559 --> 00:44:58.239
like you watched the clips of what
of his performance in France yesterday, and

595
00:44:58.400 --> 00:45:01.920
it seems like I certainly didn't anticipate. I anticipated that he would be a

596
00:45:02.039 --> 00:45:07.519
terrible president and have terrible policies that
would hurt the country. But you can't

597
00:45:07.599 --> 00:45:13.039
help but notice, no matter what
you think of Trump, that he's operating

598
00:45:13.800 --> 00:45:17.239
in terms of functionality at a much
higher level than Biden is. And that's

599
00:45:17.320 --> 00:45:21.400
on display every day. I don't
know what the effect of that is going

600
00:45:21.440 --> 00:45:25.159
to be on people raw animal spirits, yes, compared to maybe crazy and

601
00:45:25.280 --> 00:45:29.840
wild and saying strange things, but
compared to Biden. We have a day

602
00:45:29.880 --> 00:45:32.960
where we try to figure out whether
or not he was trying to sit down

603
00:45:34.159 --> 00:45:37.679
or whether actually he was voiding his
bowel. And that's a completely reasonable thing

604
00:45:37.760 --> 00:45:40.679
to perhaps wonder. But you know, you're absolutely right, be fair.

605
00:45:40.760 --> 00:45:45.400
I have that problem too, No, I don't what is correct, And

606
00:45:45.480 --> 00:45:49.320
what you were saying is gregor by
people. How people hating January sixth.

607
00:45:49.360 --> 00:45:52.159
I hated January sixth. I wanted
everybody who went in there and did something

608
00:45:52.199 --> 00:45:54.320
on a desk, or stole something
or walked around, you know, to

609
00:45:54.360 --> 00:45:59.400
face the logical consequence, the legal
consequences of what they did. But on

610
00:45:59.440 --> 00:46:01.159
the other hand, what you have
is a government that seems to be intent

611
00:46:01.400 --> 00:46:05.880
on taking this Grammar hero walk through
there, charging her with parading and putting

612
00:46:05.920 --> 00:46:08.840
her in the can. And at
the same time, these are the intangibles.

613
00:46:08.880 --> 00:46:13.239
At the same time the government,
and again I'm talking about different branches,

614
00:46:13.320 --> 00:46:15.679
localities, whatever. We'll take somebody
who blocks an abortion clinic and put

615
00:46:15.719 --> 00:46:20.400
them in jail for two years,
But the people who block the streets or

616
00:46:20.480 --> 00:46:24.760
the highways, protesting oil or Palestine
or this or that, or crashing into

617
00:46:24.760 --> 00:46:30.320
a building and occupying it get nothing, nothing whatsoever. Now it's more complex

618
00:46:30.400 --> 00:46:34.199
than that, but that's the feeling
that people take away from this. Just

619
00:46:34.320 --> 00:46:37.760
as we're told every single day that
inflation is not a problem, groceries actually

620
00:46:37.880 --> 00:46:42.000
aren't more expensive, the economy is
doing great, you're not paying more,

621
00:46:42.119 --> 00:46:46.079
when people know and feel that that's
just simply not the case. So when

622
00:46:46.079 --> 00:46:50.559
you sense these two tiers of what
we're being told for our own good,

623
00:46:50.760 --> 00:46:54.840
which goes against the evidence of our
lying eyes, that's where the particulars don't

624
00:46:54.880 --> 00:46:59.840
matter. People don't want to be
people even forget what Trump did in the

625
00:46:59.840 --> 00:47:04.719
way last year of COVID completely because
this set of stuff we got now isn't

626
00:47:04.760 --> 00:47:08.159
working, and it's lying to us
this seemingly more compassment. This guy with

627
00:47:08.320 --> 00:47:12.760
more energy is probably on our side
and says the right things about this,

628
00:47:12.840 --> 00:47:15.039
that and the other. And you
know, if you want to drill down

629
00:47:15.079 --> 00:47:17.159
to what people feel about particular issues
and say, yeah, but I think

630
00:47:17.159 --> 00:47:21.280
at the end it comes down to
that same sort of vague. I'm throwing

631
00:47:21.320 --> 00:47:24.840
my lot in with this guy because
he's not that guy, and there's something

632
00:47:24.880 --> 00:47:28.840
we can get out of this.
I mean, it's same thing we engage

633
00:47:28.840 --> 00:47:31.239
in every four years, I suppose. But that's that's my take and I'm

634
00:47:31.239 --> 00:47:37.679
sticking to it. Yeah. Look, I think it's hard for us to

635
00:47:38.440 --> 00:47:43.360
get in the shoes of the voter
that we're talking about because we're immersed in

636
00:47:43.440 --> 00:47:46.280
this stuff all the time, and
we're trying to gauge what's the likely behavior

637
00:47:46.760 --> 00:47:52.480
of people who tune into politics shortly
before elections, if at all. But

638
00:47:52.599 --> 00:47:58.039
I guess in the end it's going
to be what animates them most. And

639
00:47:58.719 --> 00:48:05.719
Trump's best shot is that the the
couple of years right before COVID, when

640
00:48:05.760 --> 00:48:10.239
the economy was doing much better and
when people, you know, people's day

641
00:48:10.320 --> 00:48:19.079
to day lives and budgets went much
further given what they were taking home.

642
00:48:20.400 --> 00:48:22.960
That period of time is not ancient
history. It's it's fresh enough that that

643
00:48:23.159 --> 00:48:30.760
people remember it. And I guess
the question is, is there something about

644
00:48:30.519 --> 00:48:37.400
Trump who is the most recognizable person
in the world, and who's people who's

645
00:48:37.000 --> 00:48:43.599
who's people's attitudes about him are pretty
settled. Is there something about him that's

646
00:48:43.679 --> 00:48:51.800
so detestable that it outweighs the the
economic factor for those people who really don't

647
00:48:51.840 --> 00:49:01.159
tune in until prior to the election. I don't know. Part of the

648
00:49:01.400 --> 00:49:04.840
part of my problem with both these
guys is they seem really small. They

649
00:49:04.880 --> 00:49:07.559
seem much smaller than the job,
and the world seems much more big and

650
00:49:07.679 --> 00:49:10.840
complicated than either of these two men
can wrap around their head. For whatever

651
00:49:10.880 --> 00:49:15.599
reason, one is adult and the
other is preoccupied with his own weird neuroses.

652
00:49:22.199 --> 00:49:27.320
Have we ever been in this position, I mean, in your life?

653
00:49:27.400 --> 00:49:29.679
Have we ever been in a position
where where, I mean, I

654
00:49:29.760 --> 00:49:31.039
know, people have always said,
listen, I would vote for you know,

655
00:49:31.119 --> 00:49:34.360
a rock over they have a guy, But have we ever really been

656
00:49:34.360 --> 00:49:38.000
in a position where there's that much
consensus among the voter? It seems like

657
00:49:38.119 --> 00:49:44.679
Poles definitely say that, and that
little consensus in our national sort of media

658
00:49:44.800 --> 00:49:46.119
organs. I mean, we all
know who everybody in Fox Music can vote

659
00:49:46.159 --> 00:49:49.280
for. We all know who everybody
MSNBC's going to vote for. We all

660
00:49:49.360 --> 00:49:52.119
know who everybody in New York Times
is going to vote for. But there

661
00:49:52.119 --> 00:49:57.119
are a bunch of people in Pennsylvania
and Wisconsin and Georgia and Virginia and Arizona

662
00:49:57.199 --> 00:50:01.599
and Nevada who I hate both these
guys. Well, this seems almost worse.

663
00:50:01.920 --> 00:50:05.679
If you want some numbers, I
have some numbers. Yeah, But

664
00:50:05.800 --> 00:50:09.519
this is the first time in the
history of polling that both candidates have been

665
00:50:09.599 --> 00:50:15.000
disliked by the public, that both
candidates have elicited the response I wish that

666
00:50:15.079 --> 00:50:21.519
guy weren't running. That's one number. Second number, seventy eight to eighty

667
00:50:21.639 --> 00:50:25.119
five percent of Americans think Joe Biden's
too old to be president. So,

668
00:50:25.480 --> 00:50:30.639
for reference, rob the approval rating
of Social Security, the most popular program

669
00:50:30.800 --> 00:50:37.760
in America, is seventy six percent. So the contention third rail of American

670
00:50:37.800 --> 00:50:40.599
politics, by the way, right, So the contention that Joe Biden is

671
00:50:40.639 --> 00:50:45.519
too old to be president is agreed
upon by more people than favor social security.

672
00:50:45.800 --> 00:50:52.800
If you go back in time,
the last presidential candidate who even registered

673
00:50:52.880 --> 00:50:57.480
on the scale in that way was
Bob Dole in nineteen ninety six, and

674
00:50:57.559 --> 00:51:00.639
a number of Americans who thought he
was too old to be president was right

675
00:51:01.800 --> 00:51:06.519
before that. The last time anyone
worried about it was Franklin Rosevelt nineteen forty

676
00:51:06.519 --> 00:51:08.360
four. Now this is a bit
difficult to pause because we didn't have polling

677
00:51:08.400 --> 00:51:12.000
in quite the same way. Also, the press covered up a lot of

678
00:51:12.039 --> 00:51:15.039
it, and we're in the middle
of World War Two, and so people

679
00:51:15.119 --> 00:51:17.519
were reluctant to say it out loud, but there was it seems some worry

680
00:51:17.559 --> 00:51:22.199
about his being too old, although
not enough to kick him out of the

681
00:51:22.239 --> 00:51:27.760
White House is extraordinary. And then
with Trump, you've got all the new

682
00:51:28.039 --> 00:51:30.320
bits. I mean, he is
a convicted fell and I think he was

683
00:51:30.400 --> 00:51:35.199
railroaded in that case, but he
is one that's never happened before. But

684
00:51:35.400 --> 00:51:42.199
Trump is in an unusual position in
that he's actually now fondly remembered by about

685
00:51:42.239 --> 00:51:45.960
fifty five to fifty six percent of
the country. They like it. They

686
00:51:46.000 --> 00:51:50.480
don't like him, but they liked
it when he was president. They think

687
00:51:50.679 --> 00:51:53.880
to go back well, they think
that America, and I'll say the America

688
00:51:53.920 --> 00:51:58.280
that coincided with his being president,
and it's important to say that because presidents

689
00:51:58.280 --> 00:52:02.280
are on avatars or popes, but
the America that coincided with his being president,

690
00:52:02.320 --> 00:52:06.440
and they seem to have forgotten that
COVID was part of that was good.

691
00:52:06.639 --> 00:52:08.360
We were at peace, and we
were prosperous, and one and a

692
00:52:08.360 --> 00:52:13.920
half percent inflation and so on.
These are all really unusual things. And

693
00:52:13.960 --> 00:52:16.639
then the final point is we've actually
not since the late nineteenth century ever had

694
00:52:16.679 --> 00:52:22.039
a president who won then lost in
the run again. So the whole thing,

695
00:52:22.079 --> 00:52:24.280
as you say, is just absolutely
bizarre. But to me, the

696
00:52:24.480 --> 00:52:30.480
number that just blows my mind is
that Biden is tool and if you push

697
00:52:30.599 --> 00:52:35.159
people on it, a majority of
them think he'll die in a second term.

698
00:52:35.280 --> 00:52:38.679
Yeah, it's not just that they
think that he's too old, that's

699
00:52:38.719 --> 00:52:42.960
a supermajority right up in the seventies. But a majority think that he'll die

700
00:52:43.159 --> 00:52:46.760
or have to step down because he's
infirm. No one has ever thought that

701
00:52:47.119 --> 00:52:52.039
of a president in the modern era, except perhaps FDR and very weird circumstances.

702
00:52:52.320 --> 00:52:53.920
No one has ever thought that before. And we just don't know what

703
00:52:53.960 --> 00:52:58.280
they're going to do when they do. Think it so andy, here's my

704
00:52:58.400 --> 00:53:00.920
question, and I know you gotta
run, but I so in times like

705
00:53:01.000 --> 00:53:06.400
the political volatility, we've been living
through a very volatile period about thirty years.

706
00:53:06.519 --> 00:53:10.440
Right, house changes hands all the
time, didn't do it for fifty

707
00:53:10.519 --> 00:53:15.639
years, and then suddenly it did
it every two practically, And that's okay,

708
00:53:15.800 --> 00:53:17.880
Right, we're America. We know
we used to kind of crazy,

709
00:53:19.000 --> 00:53:21.639
you know, smash mouth politics too. Like everybody says, you know,

710
00:53:21.760 --> 00:53:23.960
Trump's outrageous, but like, I
don't know. Those nineteenth century pamphlets were

711
00:53:23.960 --> 00:53:30.000
pretty mean too, okay, But
we always had a judiciary that was kind

712
00:53:30.039 --> 00:53:34.239
of the backstop. It's like,
well, you know, you know most

713
00:53:34.280 --> 00:53:37.639
Americans think, okay, yeah,
I know, they're unelected nine judges and

714
00:53:38.039 --> 00:53:42.599
black negliges and that's kind of weird. But ah, I'm glad they're there.

715
00:53:43.280 --> 00:53:46.880
Like that's our house of lords in
a way. Right. What happens

716
00:53:46.920 --> 00:53:52.800
to us when we don't have that
faith brings us back to the beginning of

717
00:53:52.840 --> 00:53:58.199
the conversation and why people are so
despondent last week. I think rob that

718
00:53:58.320 --> 00:54:07.320
the judiciary hasn't changed so much as
prosecutorial discretion, and the old ground rules

719
00:54:07.719 --> 00:54:12.920
about like don't do to the other
side what you don't want to have done

720
00:54:13.119 --> 00:54:16.639
to you have changed. I mean, yes, there is more of a

721
00:54:16.760 --> 00:54:21.079
sense because of the way the law
schools have been through the last century that

722
00:54:21.679 --> 00:54:25.719
the law is a tool for implementing
you know, progressive social change, and

723
00:54:25.840 --> 00:54:31.519
judges are more apt to push that. Although the Supreme Court, the post

724
00:54:31.519 --> 00:54:39.079
Scalia Supreme Court, has imposed a
discipline on the judiciary that didn't exist in

725
00:54:39.159 --> 00:54:44.119
the nineteen fifties, sixties and seventies, and that's been a really good thing.

726
00:54:44.519 --> 00:54:49.000
But I think in the legal culture
that the terrible thing that's happened is,

727
00:54:49.880 --> 00:54:52.599
you know, these weren't this wasn't
stuff that was written down, but

728
00:54:52.719 --> 00:54:55.719
there were norms about who you charged
and under what circumstances. You know,

729
00:54:55.800 --> 00:55:01.199
Bill Barr talks about, you know
how no one's above the law, but

730
00:55:01.679 --> 00:55:05.280
if you're going to prosecute a president, it's got to be what he calls

731
00:55:05.320 --> 00:55:08.119
a meat and potatoes crime, right, one that everybody can understand, they

732
00:55:08.159 --> 00:55:14.519
can wrap their brain around, and
importantly they unders they can understand that if

733
00:55:14.679 --> 00:55:20.119
I did this, I would be
prosecuted for this, and whatever a meat

734
00:55:20.119 --> 00:55:22.119
and potatoes crime is. This thing
that happened in Manhattan last week is the

735
00:55:22.199 --> 00:55:27.679
opposite of that. It was like
something that was bespoke for for Trump.

736
00:55:28.800 --> 00:55:30.880
Well, it was a possible burger, it was lab growing. You could

737
00:55:30.920 --> 00:55:35.239
say yeah, but I don't.
I would just say I don't think it's

738
00:55:36.719 --> 00:55:40.039
I don't think that it's so much
that the judiciary is slipping because there's still

739
00:55:40.079 --> 00:55:45.920
decent checks on the judiciary. What
there's not checks on because Congress can't rain

740
00:55:45.960 --> 00:55:51.239
this in anymore. And the administrative
state, I think causes Congress's muscles to

741
00:55:51.360 --> 00:55:53.199
atrophy for what it for, what
we need it there for, which is

742
00:55:53.280 --> 00:56:00.920
to rain in executive excess. And
therefore you now have rampant executive exc and

743
00:56:00.119 --> 00:56:02.519
Charlie and I talked about this yesterday. But I think the other thing we

744
00:56:02.599 --> 00:56:08.960
need to come to grips with is
philosophically progressive simply think it's legitimate and fine

745
00:56:09.679 --> 00:56:15.159
to use the powers at their disposal
to push the ball up the field for

746
00:56:15.239 --> 00:56:20.800
their cause, including to to punish
their political enemies. And that's a again,

747
00:56:20.880 --> 00:56:23.039
that's a cultural thing more than a
legal thing. Well, what's going

748
00:56:23.079 --> 00:56:28.719
to happen is they'll probably say we
need a Supreme Court justice from every state

749
00:56:28.800 --> 00:56:30.719
in the Union, and the same
people who want to abolish the Senate because

750
00:56:30.719 --> 00:56:35.000
it's you know, puts New York
at the same level it is North Dakota

751
00:56:35.119 --> 00:56:37.719
will be perfectly fine with this idea, and we'll have fifty Supreme Court justices

752
00:56:37.800 --> 00:56:42.880
voting on whether or not something is
or is not constitutional. Can't wait anyway,

753
00:56:42.880 --> 00:56:45.400
can't wait till we have you on
next time, Andy, although I'm

754
00:56:45.440 --> 00:56:47.639
sure it'll be after a slew of
bad news, but you know, maybe

755
00:56:47.880 --> 00:56:52.639
of the is something, something that
will happen which is legally good, happens

756
00:56:52.800 --> 00:56:55.519
and moveless, and we'll have you
on. Then we'll just all be happy

757
00:56:55.679 --> 00:57:00.360
and yeah, holy hands and singing
tunes like the rabbits in a Disney cartoon

758
00:57:00.440 --> 00:57:04.480
from nineteen thirty four. So thanks
for joining us, Andy. We'll see

759
00:57:04.480 --> 00:57:07.960
you on television, on the web, here there and otherwise. And take

760
00:57:07.960 --> 00:57:09.719
it easy, my friend. Thanks
guys, have a great weekend, you

761
00:57:09.840 --> 00:57:13.400
too, See you soon. Well, we're about to leave here, but

762
00:57:13.519 --> 00:57:15.800
before we do, because we don't
want to go on and on, we

763
00:57:15.960 --> 00:57:20.360
could lots to talk about this.
Love. The sounds of our own voices.

764
00:57:20.400 --> 00:57:23.159
You can't shut us up, but
we should probably leave by noting that

765
00:57:23.280 --> 00:57:27.840
we had a D Day anniversary,
and I wondered if you guys had any

766
00:57:27.880 --> 00:57:31.599
thoughts anything that My contribution to this, which of course should be minimal because

767
00:57:31.599 --> 00:57:35.280
I had nothing to do with it
except for living in the wonderful world that

768
00:57:35.400 --> 00:57:38.519
was granted and gifted to us by
these men, was to explain why in

769
00:57:38.960 --> 00:57:43.280
World War Two movies and cartoons and
in the movie The Longest Day, you

770
00:57:43.400 --> 00:57:46.000
hear this note bump bum bump bum, you hear this motif bump bump bump

771
00:57:46.000 --> 00:57:49.960
bum. What does it mean?
How is that tied to the culture at

772
00:57:50.000 --> 00:57:52.800
the time, and when are we
going to forget it? Because people are

773
00:57:52.800 --> 00:57:55.880
going to watch that movie twenty thirty
years from now and will not immediately grasp

774
00:57:57.599 --> 00:58:00.760
why that rhythm bump bump bum appears
in the movie. Anyway, I'll have

775
00:58:00.800 --> 00:58:04.880
to listen to my dinner podcast coming
on Saturday to Sunday in order to figure

776
00:58:04.920 --> 00:58:07.400
that out. If you don't already
know what, you would probably do so

777
00:58:07.480 --> 00:58:10.360
briefly, I don't thoughts, you
don't know, well, I'm not going

778
00:58:10.440 --> 00:58:13.559
to say here, you'll have to
listen to That was a great tease.

779
00:58:14.239 --> 00:58:17.440
Yeah, Yeah, that's me as
I So question is will we ever forget

780
00:58:17.519 --> 00:58:21.920
it? Will we ever forget what
it means? No, you're gonna have

781
00:58:21.920 --> 00:58:23.800
to have somebody completely. You'll have
to have somebody to explain it. It's

782
00:58:24.000 --> 00:58:28.239
it's you know, there are these
things that the culture that everybody knows,

783
00:58:28.320 --> 00:58:32.559
and then everybody who knew them knows
them eyes And I've been trying to research.

784
00:58:32.599 --> 00:58:36.280
For example, there's a radio show
that was in the in the US

785
00:58:36.400 --> 00:58:42.239
and the forties late or late stages
of the war called Victory FOB, and

786
00:58:42.800 --> 00:58:47.480
the ads seem to assume that everybody
knew what FOB stood for. I don't.

787
00:58:47.559 --> 00:58:51.440
I had to research, and I
had to figure out by thinking backwards,

788
00:58:51.480 --> 00:58:53.599
it's some sort of nautical shipping term
that everybody got at the time.

789
00:58:54.159 --> 00:58:57.480
And all of these, you know, the words, the phrases, the

790
00:58:57.559 --> 00:59:01.079
references, the acronyms, the little
little yeah deals of history, all of

791
00:59:01.159 --> 00:59:06.039
that I've said over and over.
I would give anything, not to find

792
00:59:06.079 --> 00:59:08.480
a lost manuscript from the twenties,
thirties and forties, not to find a

793
00:59:08.559 --> 00:59:13.239
lost Therber story, you know,
or something like that. I would just

794
00:59:13.599 --> 00:59:17.159
like to know kind of what all
the gum tasted like what the theaters smelled

795
00:59:17.199 --> 00:59:21.000
like when you walked into them,
what an automat smelled like, actually,

796
00:59:21.039 --> 00:59:23.119
when you did with the street.
You know, the sound of the streets

797
00:59:23.159 --> 00:59:27.599
in the nineteen twenties, the particular
timber of the car horns. We don't

798
00:59:27.679 --> 00:59:30.159
know the sound of a gramophone spilling
out of a window in radio, all

799
00:59:30.199 --> 00:59:34.920
of that stuff. Unless somebody writes
it down and nails it down. It's

800
00:59:34.960 --> 00:59:39.000
very hard to rebuild history from that. So we're left with the bones.

801
00:59:39.039 --> 00:59:44.480
We're always left with the bones,
and there's out History is full everyday life

802
00:59:44.559 --> 00:59:46.840
is full of like the little tiny
fishbones you were always afraid of catching in

803
00:59:46.960 --> 00:59:50.320
your throat when you were a kid. That made up the body. The

804
00:59:50.400 --> 00:59:53.039
corpus of the times. We don't
know them, so you have to remember,

805
00:59:53.079 --> 00:59:55.079
and you have to research, and
you have to keep reminding people.

806
00:59:55.679 --> 00:59:59.599
Anyway. Yeah, I also think
the physicality of it too, just the

807
00:59:59.679 --> 01:00:01.800
idea that you had to take all
these people, You had to land them

808
01:00:01.840 --> 01:00:06.639
on a beach in a boat.
You had to invent and then then and

809
01:00:06.639 --> 01:00:07.880
they had to feed them. You
had to make sure that they could be

810
01:00:07.960 --> 01:00:10.880
taken care of a place to sleep. That night. You had to make

811
01:00:10.960 --> 01:00:15.800
sure that we had confused the enemy
enough so they weren't entirely sure where we

812
01:00:15.880 --> 01:00:17.000
were going to land. They knew
we were going to land. There's nowhere

813
01:00:17.320 --> 01:00:24.880
right the constellation of efforts and sheer
brain power that had to go into it

814
01:00:25.039 --> 01:00:30.639
before the Brown power before then,
it all came down to the individual acts

815
01:00:30.679 --> 01:00:36.559
of bravery by individual young men who
were, most of them born thousands of

816
01:00:36.840 --> 01:00:40.039
miles away. It's just kind of
astonishing, it is to think of what

817
01:00:40.480 --> 01:00:45.639
what we're capable of doing when we
believe that there's nothing else, that there's

818
01:00:45.679 --> 01:00:50.159
nothing else to be done, right, Logistics Logistics is is yeah, right?

819
01:00:50.599 --> 01:00:52.880
Imagine if you were the guys who
were tasked with working on the dummy

820
01:00:53.000 --> 01:00:55.639
army that they were setting up so
that they thought that they were coming over

821
01:00:55.679 --> 01:01:00.559
at KLA, how would you feel
about that? How would you feel having

822
01:01:00.800 --> 01:01:04.519
been there done your part. Somebody
pointed out yesterday, you know, had

823
01:01:04.599 --> 01:01:07.840
tip to the guys who knocked over
Rome twenty four hours before D Day.

824
01:01:07.880 --> 01:01:12.960
You know, he had a day
in the sun of getting into Rome before

825
01:01:13.039 --> 01:01:15.360
the attention shift. And again,
I was looking at a newspaper a few

826
01:01:15.440 --> 01:01:20.679
days after the after D day,
because it was a touch and go fraught

827
01:01:20.760 --> 01:01:22.719
thing. I mean it was in
retrospect we think, well, they landed

828
01:01:22.760 --> 01:01:27.679
and they won. Now they had
to fight. And there were newsreels that

829
01:01:27.760 --> 01:01:30.800
were playing twenty four to seven downtown
that the guy could walk out of his

830
01:01:30.880 --> 01:01:34.159
flophouse at three o'clock in the morning
with a snoot full and find himself sprawled

831
01:01:34.199 --> 01:01:37.199
in a theater in the middle of
the you know, the of a June

832
01:01:37.320 --> 01:01:40.800
day watching the war on the big
screen days after it had happened. Yeah,

833
01:01:42.000 --> 01:01:44.440
it just a fast time. I
knew we got a run back.

834
01:01:44.440 --> 01:01:47.599
Can I just so recovering because had
one interesting story. A Lionel chet one

835
01:01:47.679 --> 01:01:52.559
great great writer and director, did
a great movie called Hanoi. Hilton,

836
01:01:52.840 --> 01:01:55.639
wonderful guy. He tells a really
funny story. He was pitching a World

837
01:01:55.639 --> 01:02:00.519
War two movie once to a room
full of studio execs, and it's about

838
01:02:00.519 --> 01:02:05.159
a Canadian regiment on D Day and
they had to evade the heavily fortified German

839
01:02:06.920 --> 01:02:12.000
some German fort on the coast and
it was all a diversion to Nazi forces

840
01:02:12.000 --> 01:02:15.360
away from the actual invasion at Omaha
Beach. So it was a suicide mission.

841
01:02:15.800 --> 01:02:19.360
But it was a crucial suicide mission, and everyone on that boat knew

842
01:02:19.400 --> 01:02:24.239
it. They knew that this mission
was designed to result in catastrophic actual and

843
01:02:24.400 --> 01:02:29.079
that they were not going to probably
be able to take that fort, and

844
01:02:29.119 --> 01:02:32.760
they were not expected to, and
they still did it. And I've heard

845
01:02:32.800 --> 01:02:36.400
him give this pitch. The pitch
is insane. I mean, you're leaning

846
01:02:36.480 --> 01:02:38.920
forward. It is. If you're
not in tears at the end of this,

847
01:02:39.239 --> 01:02:43.800
I'm telling you, maybe fifteen sixteen
seventy minute pitch, you're not alive.

848
01:02:43.920 --> 01:02:46.280
It's amazing. It's a crazy story. So he pitches this thing and

849
01:02:46.400 --> 01:02:50.960
he winds it up, and the
executives are like, oh, we love

850
01:02:51.039 --> 01:02:55.679
this, we love this. But
one question, who's the enemy here?

851
01:02:59.079 --> 01:03:05.400
And chat On's like, well,
you know it's Hitler, right, Like,

852
01:03:05.440 --> 01:03:07.320
oh yeah, obviously Hitler, Yes, yes, yes, But who's

853
01:03:07.360 --> 01:03:10.880
the real enemy, because what they
wanted was him to say, well,

854
01:03:10.920 --> 01:03:15.000
it's obviously the bloodthirsty American General Dwight
Eisenhower who was sending these poor Canadians to

855
01:03:15.119 --> 01:03:20.400
die. But like, but it's
it's Hitler, that's all. It's just

856
01:03:20.440 --> 01:03:23.320
the Hitler is not That's it.
It's really simple. They're they're the enemy,

857
01:03:23.320 --> 01:03:25.800
and we try to kill them,
and it's more complicated than you think,

858
01:03:27.079 --> 01:03:29.960
and there's this ex act of bravery
that's and they didn't get it.

859
01:03:30.039 --> 01:03:32.920
They couldn't accept the fact that there
wasn't a real enemy. So you know,

860
01:03:34.039 --> 01:03:36.800
we started we started out the podcast
talking about Disney movies. Charles,

861
01:03:36.880 --> 01:03:39.400
did you watch Boys in the Boat? Yes, I've had the feeling.

862
01:03:39.440 --> 01:03:43.800
We've talked about this. I think
we did. Dejah. Oh. I

863
01:03:43.880 --> 01:03:45.599
love the fact that it's such it's
such a simple throwback of a movie that

864
01:03:45.880 --> 01:03:50.119
Hitler is in it, and they
make it feel mad in the way,

865
01:03:50.199 --> 01:03:52.000
in the way the movies of the
forties and the cartoons used to do.

866
01:03:52.079 --> 01:03:55.039
I just loved it, and people
in the theater loved it too. It's

867
01:03:55.079 --> 01:03:58.039
like, yeah, we hate that
guy and we're making them out where,

868
01:03:58.079 --> 01:04:00.760
we're pissing them off because we're yank
and we're good at this, which reminds

869
01:04:00.840 --> 01:04:08.000
me. Will end with this,
Charles. The United States beat Pakistan at

870
01:04:08.920 --> 01:04:14.440
cricket. Yes, And from what
I understand, our team isn't even professional

871
01:04:14.880 --> 01:04:17.840
cricketers now. They're all Silicon Valley, the guys who like who like to

872
01:04:17.880 --> 01:04:21.159
think. And I've watched cricket.
I've sat down with the cricket you know,

873
01:04:21.360 --> 01:04:25.400
enthusiast, and who's who's guided me
through all of these things in these

874
01:04:25.480 --> 01:04:30.239
tickets that'll last for six weeks.
So I'm I'm really happy that the Yanks

875
01:04:30.559 --> 01:04:32.599
that that we did it, and
you must be happy as well, this

876
01:04:32.760 --> 01:04:38.559
being your adopted in beloved country.
Absolutely, I do love cricket. I

877
01:04:39.000 --> 01:04:42.079
love baseball as well. I watch
a lot more baseball. I've watched the

878
01:04:42.119 --> 01:04:45.559
Yankees beat up on the Minnesota Twins. Incidentally, James, in the last

879
01:04:45.599 --> 01:04:48.960
few days, well, we've enjoyed
talking to you that podcast number six hundred

880
01:04:48.960 --> 01:04:54.280
and ninety five in Minneapolis, home
of the Twins. My spirit having drained

881
01:04:54.320 --> 01:04:58.320
now completely from my existence and my
enthusiasm gone for the podcast. I must

882
01:04:58.719 --> 01:05:00.960
yes, Charles, I know,
I know, I know you're right,

883
01:05:00.079 --> 01:05:02.679
go on, go on, but
you would lie. I do love cricket.

884
01:05:02.719 --> 01:05:06.320
I mean, this is a remarkable
thing is that cricket is a Victorian

885
01:05:06.400 --> 01:05:09.760
game, which is one reason it's
so slow. As you say, test

886
01:05:09.800 --> 01:05:13.320
cricket can take twenty five days of
playing and still be a tie, which

887
01:05:13.400 --> 01:05:17.000
is one reason it didn't take in
America. But it's not just a Victorian

888
01:05:17.000 --> 01:05:19.920
game. It's an imperial game.
And so if you look through the list,

889
01:05:20.320 --> 01:05:27.000
it's Pakistan, India, the west
is Australia, New Zealand, England.

890
01:05:28.079 --> 01:05:30.800
You know, it is a Victorian
British empire. And so it's very

891
01:05:30.960 --> 01:05:35.760
jarring to see on a piece of
paper the United States beat Pakistan at cricket.

892
01:05:35.840 --> 01:05:39.880
No, this is crossing the streets. This is wrong, this is

893
01:05:40.239 --> 01:05:44.480
mad libs. But it did happen, which is really great in America,

894
01:05:44.559 --> 01:05:48.360
but I think it must be intensely
embarrassing in Pakistan, because the Americans are

895
01:05:48.360 --> 01:05:51.480
all celebrating ironically, they're all saying, ah, We're the great Americans.

896
01:05:51.519 --> 01:05:56.079
Whatever we do, we win.
But in Pakistan, where this is an

897
01:05:56.440 --> 01:06:01.039
enormously popular sport, it must be
to be driving people a dispat the tender

898
01:06:01.079 --> 01:06:04.320
feelings of the people of that nation
are not exactly prime concerns for me.

899
01:06:04.400 --> 01:06:09.559
At this point. I'm going to
live in our cultural imperialism here and our

900
01:06:09.639 --> 01:06:12.920
willingness to just take this on as
a lark and beat them. That's great.

901
01:06:12.920 --> 01:06:15.840
Who cares? Yay go usp All
right? As I said, this

902
01:06:15.920 --> 01:06:17.280
was Podcast six to ninety five.
We thank you very much for listening.

903
01:06:17.320 --> 01:06:20.840
We thank Anny McCarthy. We thank
Luman for sponsoring this. Support them and

904
01:06:20.960 --> 01:06:25.440
you support us. We advise everybody
to go to ricochet dot com and take

905
01:06:25.480 --> 01:06:28.400
a look and join so you can
get to the member feed. What's that

906
01:06:28.599 --> 01:06:30.920
you say, We don't know until
you get there, and believe me,

907
01:06:30.000 --> 01:06:33.400
it's the community been looking for all
your days on the web, the same

908
01:06:33.679 --> 01:06:36.800
center, right place where we talk
about absolutely everything. Better than Facebook,

909
01:06:36.840 --> 01:06:41.559
better than Twitter, people you know, friends you meet. I love it.

910
01:06:41.679 --> 01:06:45.880
I'm handing there this afternoon. I'll
be there tomorrow on Saturday to discuss

911
01:06:45.239 --> 01:06:47.880
old time radio and songs of the
weekend and the rest of the things.

912
01:06:47.920 --> 01:06:51.440
Because it's not all politics. Life
isn't all politics as a matter of that's

913
01:06:51.559 --> 01:06:57.199
for sure. Most of life is
not. And you were all the happier

914
01:06:57.280 --> 01:07:00.119
for it. Thanks everybody, Thank
you Rob, thank you Charlie. And

915
01:07:00.280 --> 01:07:03.440
we'll see everybody in the comments,
said Ricochet four point zero. Next week,

916
01:07:03.480 --> 01:07:12.119
Fellas Ricochet join the conversation.