Well Whiskey coming pain Money from Powerline blog dot com and produced by Ricochet dot
Com. This is the three Whiskey Happy Hour with your bartenders Steve Hayward,
John You and power Lines International Woman of Mystery Lucretia Gotta giving where you're being
in loud down Loon. Welcome everybody to a special episode of the Three Whiskey
Happy Hour where we are going to talk about presidents and judges and political philosophy.
Unlike all our other episodes, right something new, Let's have a quiet
week where we've got one president and rising one president declining a new vice presidential
candidate. Immunity for everybody who knew that the end of the end of July
was going to be so crazy. So I'm here joined by my two co
hosts, Steve Hayward say Hi to everybody, Steve Hi everybody, and the
mysterious International Woman of Mystery Lucretia Hi Ning John. I have to say I'm
currently at a conference put on by the First Liberty Organization, one of the
outstanding groups that's been litigating religious freedom cases all the way to the Supreme Court,
and I have to say I got to the Cocktail Hour thanks to Microsoft.
I came three and a half hours late. Well I'm going to ask
about that. I'm to keep going. I was stuck in airport and I
got to the cocktail party. I missed Mike Pompeo's speech and Bill Barr speak,
But everybody knew about the Three Whiskey Happy Hour, and many, many
people demanded I must reveal the identity of Lucretia. And I was like,
well, you're not listening closely enough, because Steve works out her name all
the time. Well wait, no, you do, no no. Whereupon
I was corrected and others blamed me for blurting out Lucrecia's name all the time.
These those others are correct. I think I've done it a few times
myself by accident. Guys, Okaya, we have quite the fan base in
the legal community in the moost, and I have to say. One of
them was an Article three federal judge. I will protect his identity, but
he liked the mine. The one like the one in Denver confessed that he
was a secret fan of the Three Whiskey Happy Hour and can't understand why Steve
and I constantly disagree with Lucretia. Uh, because you know we're stubborn,
right, isn't that If that's the attitude on the article three courts, I
can get behind court packing. Now yeah, well you know, we we
do have to acknowledge just otherwise Lucreatian will be mad at us that she was
right on the JD Eve chants pick. She called that one a week ago
or whatever it was, and also I reposted the segment of it on a
regular post on power Line and a year ago, almost exactly a year ago.
She said, you know, secret Service is good, but they're not
that good, and somebody's going to take a shot at Trump because that's the
logic of the way things are going. And so there we go. Yeah,
it's amasy. Just the point was is that they'll do They don't want
to have to take Trump out because that makes him a martyr, but they
will if that's what's necessary. And I actually didn't, let's be fair,
Steve, I didn't anticipate a failed assassination attempt, which is the worst of
both worlds if you really think about it, because not only did they not
take out Trump, but they also made him into a martyr. They made
him into a hero. I guess is a better way to put it,
they made him into probably the most important hero that we've had in politics since
I don't know, Steve, give me the analogy. Well, I mean
Reagan in nineteen eighty one. I mean there are similar effects to that.
You know in nineteen eighty one. What most people don't remember very well is
that one of the many effects that had is it caused all of the wavering
Republicans to fall in line behind Reagan. You know, on that day in
late March, two things were about to happen. One is, the Democrats
are about to take the gloves off and say Reagan's honeymoon is over and we
have to go into attack mode, and they had speeches prepared. Jim Wright,
the majority of leader at the time, was about to give a speech
I think that night, which, of course he tore up. And Reagan's
honeymoon period extended for another several months and he ran the table. But more
important was all the Republicans who were wavering on Trump's plan fell in line because
you know, Bob Dole and especially Pete your Reagan's plan. What did I
say, Who's oh sorry? Well, well, as similar things happening now,
as the Pete Domenicci, the chair the Republicans chair of the Senate Finance
Committee, was opposed openly and actually torpedo Reagan's plan in the Senate. They
all fell in the line behind it. And now you see everybody's falling in
the line behind Trump, even people who have reservations about him. And we'll
talk more about that when we get to his speech, I think. And
so that's one effect that's happening now is it really ended what it was diminishing,
But it is ended the lingering intra party dislike of Trump, at least
through the election and probably beyond. Can I just go ahead, I'm just
going to say, there you go again. But it's kicked out. It's
what it's done is it's made irrelevant the the most vociferous faction against Trump,
you know, the Mitt Romney's and the Liz Cheney's and the Adam kinsingers.
It's made them irrelevant. They're no longer even I mean, I know the
Bushes weren't there, you know, Romney wasn't there. But now they're irrelevant.
And I think that's a really interesting observation about the future of the Republican
Party. They'll have no influence for a while. They can't there's no place
for them to have influence they don't have. They can't hold out money anymore.
I mean, new sources of funding for the campaign are coming in as
we know. And anyway, sorry I interrupted you, John, go ahead.
I just want to make that we're going to get to all these issues.
That's been such a crazy I mean, we hosted our last episode right
before the assassination times. We have a lot to catch up on. I
thought I would go in most recent events first. And since Lucretia, as
Steve's pointed out, has displayed Cassandra like Cassandra like powers of prediction, and
we all know, since we love Roman and Greek studonyms, what happened to
Cassandra. But since she's been so opprescient, what do you think about whether
Joe Biden's going to step down? And if he were to step down,
who was going to be the replacement? What are the Democrats going to do?
It's so nice for once to watch the Democrats an internal disarray instead of
I the I think he's going to have to step down because there's so many
people now coming out publicly and not not even to mention all of the people
all the Democrats behind the scenes who are pushing for Biden to get out the
way they're pushing Calm I left forward. I don't think there's a way not
to have Kamala. I think that the people that you need that stupid pull
that came out yesterday that actually said people like Mark Kelly, the troll of
all trolls, would be a possible presidential candidate who could beat Trump or at
least pulled better against Trump. Oh my god, that guy's the most I'll
stop. I just I'm from Arizona, you know, I have enough activity
with what goes on in politics and community things that I've been at events with
him on more than one occasion. And the most despicable thing he does,
by the way, is he drags out poor Gabby Giffords, who who's really
still quite mentally savvy and it is actually really very sad, but she's physically
from physically nonverbal, almost physically unable even to sit in a chair for any
length of time, and he trots her out everywhere for the sympathy vote.
She really is. It's not a good thing to see her go sit and
fall off a chair in the midst of you know, some kind of speech.
But he does that I in the meantime, he cheats on her all
the time. He's just a despicable excuse for a human being. So sorry,
got off on a tangent on that, but I just wanted to get
that out there for all my Arizona friends who I know i'd agree with me
on that one. I think I think Biden's going to go. I think
it's going to be Kamala. And I don't know who Kamala is gonna pick.
She does have to pick a vice presidential candidate. She may not have
to pick, as you guys informed me last time that I'd never thought of,
she wouldn't have to pick a vice president were she to ascend to the
presidency. But she does have to pick a candidate, or somebody has to
pick a candidate for her. I don't know who that would be. That's
I think a more interesting question, Steve, Steve, who do you think
Biden's going to go? And who replaces him? Yeah? I mean I
go back and forth in this every half hour. I mean as of Biden.
Well, right, well, wellcome to how Trump's speech was in part
a Jedi mind trick to keep Biden in the race. It seems to have
worked. So look, it looks like he's digging in his heels, and
I can go through the reasons why, but let's assume that he has to
go that the strategy. By the way that Mark Halpern reports, I start
following him again. I think he's a good reporter. I tangled with him
once, I don't know, twelve years back on a panel. But he
says that the strategy is to gradually increase the pain on Biden, to force
him out, but try to allow him to get out with some dignity on
his own terms. And he's refusing right now, and ultimately, I think
the only threat that would actually force him down is the twenty fifth Amendment that
would involve Kamela's involvement. But now, the interesting thing that no one seems
to be shining a light on is that it's being well reported here Friday night
Saturday morning, the Nancy Pelosi and other California Democrats the news story say favor
this open convention or mini compressed primary to pick a new nominee. Why are
California Democrats saying that instead of falling in the line behind California's premier Vice president.
That's because they all know that she's a knit wit and is likely to
lose and be just as bad as Biden, and they're hoping for a better
candidate. I think that's the use the old phrase the dog not barking in
what's going on in the last forty eight seventy two hours. The longer they
wait seems to me, the more likely it is they have to settle for
Kamela So. And then finally this is leaked out a little bit into some
press reports. But I can only imagine the infighting going on right now,
the circular firing squads inside the White House staff, not only within Biden's own
staff, but especially between the two staffs, between Harris and Biden. And
as I say, a few details have leaked out about, you know,
shouting matches and bad blood meetwhile Biden's hiding out in his home up in Delaware,
and so I think, well, you know, I mean that by
the way, that was you know, he could come out and say I
have long COVID and that's why I can't be a candidate. I can't campaign,
but I can remain president. I don't know, uh, you know,
I'll change my mind half an hour from now. And you know,
every few hours brings new a new story about it and a new person saying
he needs to go. Now it's shared around. The senator from Ohio,
who's in a tough race, said Biden has to go, and so all
by himself. Yeah, I just thought the most interesting story that came out
yesterday was that the Biden family were actually considering options about Biden getting out gracefully.
And you know what that would take a promise to m Hunter, sorry
money, you know, all of these make sure that he goes out as
a hero, all of these kinds of things. And then the White House
denied any of that was true and came out with that, Oh, let's
just remember who it was that brought us Trump in the first place, because
these people pushed Hillry over Joe Biden, and Joe Biden was the one who'd
defeated Trump. So let's just remember who we need to defeat Trump again.
Who knows what score settling is going on through all of this. You just
have to laugh. Oh, here's one reason why is that the voted listener
emailed me yesterday the latest real clear politics pulling, which report that if the
electric were held now Biden versus Trump, Trump would win three hundred and twenty
five electoral votes to two hundred and thirteen, including right now Wisconsin, Michigan,
Pennsylvania, Virginia. If you look at the map, all that the
Democrats would win right now would be New England and New York, Illinois and
California and maybe Minnesota. Yeah, it would be a total route. Yeah,
I mean, Nate Silver's polling work on this, just in the last
twenty four hours has shown a significant uptick for Trump, maybe a convention bounce,
maybe an actual breakout from what's been a pretty hard ceiling for him for
the last year. But let me ask you this. So both of you
seemed to think it's likely to be Kamala, But let me ask you a
different question. Who if you were a Democrat, don't have a seizure,
But if you were a Democrat, who would be your best candidate? Who
would you say? This is who they should pick if they really want to
beat Trump? Who is the best one that's going to be? Maybe the
Kentucky guy, the Kentucky guy, mean, Colonel standers, No, no,
Colonel clear the fields. And yeah, why can't I remember that?
Andy Basheer. I. You know, out of nowhere, nobody has the
name recognition of Kamala. But if you're talking about somebody who could actually govern
from somewhere near a unified position in the way Trump's going to be able to
do. Someone who can actually uh, he couldn't unite the factions of the
party, but he could appeal to the Americans who are still maybe up for
grab grabs and turning toward Trump and at the same time keep Democrats in line.
Would have to be somebody like that, were I a Democrat, were
But that assumes that any Democrat is capable of thinking about what's good for the
country and not what's just good for the fortunes of the Democratic Party in the
worst sense. You know. Doug Shoan had a piece this morning, you
know, a long time Democratic operative, and he said, look, as
a Democrat, as a lifelong Democrat, I'm not a Trump supporter, but
let's recognize what's happening here. This election's over. Not only this election's over,
because Trump has appealed to all of these different cohorts of voters who for
whatever reason, have been Democrats, you know, for decades and so on,
and the Democratic Party has nothing to offer them, the unity, the
hope for the future. No Democrat has a hope for the future, even
Republicans haven't. He just went on and on and on, and he ended
it. I know he's never been a rabid sort of leftist, that's true
enough. But he ended up with saying, you know, I'm a Democrat
not necessarily happy about this, but you know, gotta face reality. That's
my job, he says. But as an American, I'm kind of happy
to see this happening. I thought that was really interesting. Again, he's
you know, as Democratic operatives and posters go, he's certainly not the most
objectionable. He's always been a little bit more honest about things. He doesn't
grandstand or gaslight. But still for him to end his his piece after saying's
Trump's gonna win and there's nothing the Democratic Party can do about it, I
am happy about that. Well, the one thing they can do about it
is pick a newer, different, younger candidate. Look, I mean,
the problem with Harris, aside from her own baggage, which is massive,
she has to carry all of Biden's baggage too. But if you have a
new face, then you have a fighting chance, and I think it could,
depending on how it's on how it was rolled out, seriously disrupt the
Trump campaign and create some uncertainty. My two names, John, I've mentioned
them before, but let's review him again, is a governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania.
He's fifty one. There are two problems with him, though I think,
you know, I think he'd be a formidable candidate. There are two
problems there. One I've mentioned before and another problem I haven't. I've mentioned
before that he is Jewish. Obviously, that's going to upset the progressive pro
hamasqu wing of especially younger voters, the Democratic Coalition. And on the other
hand, it would bring the Jewish donors back into the fold of the Democratic
Party, who right now are I think on strike And there you know,
if you know the numbers on this is Jewish donors the Democratic Party are a
huge portion of their big dollar fundraising. But the other thing about Shapiro I
wonder about is, you know, he's set. He's for school choice.
He hasn't really lifted a finger to get it through the legislature in Pennsylvania.
But I think that's enough to make the teachers union suspicious of him. And
luke warm about him if he were made the nominee. He doesn't. You
know, they're on such a hair trigger that even expressing sympathy for school choice
and education reform is a no note for them. So that's why I think
he'd actually have a problem in the Democratic Party. Who could hold the coalition
together. I think it's a governor Polos of Colorado who's actually sort of sensible
in a few ways. You know, he made a fortune in the private
sector, so he understands economic growth. He had Art Laugher on his board
of directors for his company. That's why Laugher likes him, by the way,
which not a brand new Laugher like Jerry Brown too. And he's gay.
So you know, for all the identity politics types in the Democratic Party
who might be disappointed at passing over Kamela, you still get to check off
one of their key identity politics checkboxes. And you haven't heard that he's ambitious
for it, But his name gets mentioned a lot, and he does seem,
in the ordinary sense, an able political figure. Let's turn to the
next thing that happened just before all that. I mean, just it's incredible
all the things that happened this last week. Of course, we had the
RNC Convention, we had President Trump's acceptance speech of the nomination, we had
the selection of J D. Vance. First off, Lucretia, what did
you think about Trump's speech? I have seen it seemed that people in the
stadium itself at the time loved it. On the other hand, I've seen
a lot of press critiques, some from people very friendly to Trump who said
he missed an opportunity because the first thirty minutes of this speech were quite good,
but then then he went off script, it seemed, and turned it
into the traditional Trump rally speech. Was it a good speech? Was it
a missed opportunity? Do you think it makes sense? Not at all.
It was not at all a missed opportunity. First of all, people outside
of our ilk who live and breathe politics probably watched the first half an hour
and then shut it down and then watched the highlights of it next day,
you know, And to me, one of the highlights was was seeing his
family come up on stage. I just thought that that was incredibly moving.
And you know, whenever you've got Malania Trump on your by your side and
obviously adoringly looking at you and so on that that certainly can't hurt, despite
the fact that you know that the left hates are anyway, I thought the
speech was very good. It was ninety minutes. That's it probably went a
little bit long. I think that in addition to what Steve said about him,
you know, making sure that he tweaked Biden in ways that he didn't
even what he mentioned Biden's name once. Yeah, right, And I think
the fact that he was able to take the speech past midnight was an in
your face kind of thing to uh to Biden as well, because we know
Biden probably couldn't even stay up to watch it past midnight, much less,
you know, be a survive an assassination attempt, be tackled to the ground
by all of those Secret Service people so much so that it knocked his shoes
off. I still can't wrap my head around that one. But and then,
you know, being at the convention every day and then giving a ninety
minute speech, it wasn't high energy, which I heard some people complain about
too, but it was if people were watching it who didn't know Trump then
only heard what the media has pounded about him incessantly. They were going to
see a different Trump, and that I think makes it a success. The
last thing, I just want to throw this out there. I saw somewhere
that what we really need to understand about why it is that Trump went so
long as he had a written speech in front of him, and he doesn't
like other people's written speeches because he wants to so that what was really happening
with the written speech is he was he would have a line and it was
the written speech, and then he would, you know, add his own
sort of Trumpian embellishment to it, and then he'd go back to the written
line and then he'd do the same thing. So it was supposed to be
a forty five minute speech. It ended up being a ninety minute speech because
he had to add his Trumpian sort of own spin on everything. Anyway,
I thought it was a good speech. I thought it was a great convention.
I thought the inclusion of Dana White and Hulk Hogan talk about another old
guy who who you know, most seventy year olds out there wish all of
that was designed to say to Middle America, to the forgotten Middle America,
where we hear you were the party for you, We're not the country club
Republicans anymore. We're not the party of the elite. We're the party that
cares about what happens to you. And I thought it was I thought the
whole convention was amazingly successful. So he too, well, I'm a kid
rock man myself. No. Well, somebody pointed out that to anyone who
said that the Republican Convention was cheesy with kid rock, there's some great video
of the Democrats in nineteen ninety six doing the macarena, and that looks pretty
embarrassing. I have to say, Look, I think that the count is
I'm largely an agreement with Lucretia. I think the speech was too long.
On the other hand, I think it's very successful in a couple of ways.
First, I like to joke that Trump wanted to finish the rally from
Saturday. Yes, right, even brought up the chart, says, oh,
yeah, here's the charge. I didn't get to look at it last
time. I mean, it was masterful about that. But he added,
I think the count I've seen is nine thousand words that were not in his
text, which is a lot. But I think there you want to look
at some of the substance of it. So first, of all, neither
Trump nor Vance mentioned Ukraine, which I think is fine. I think that
means a preserved strategic flexibility for when it comes, you know, when they
take office or approach office. Secondly, on that point about the Secret Service,
if anybody has a right to complain about the Secret Service or the leadership,
it'd be Trump, and he didn't do that. Instead, he was
completely magnanimous about the agents in his own detail, although it's been pointed out
that his detail now seems to be all very tall, imposing looking men at
least for the moment, and were by the way, well, those fat
women who were there at the rally that day are not part of his regular
detail, right. The other Trump's Eric and Don Junior, also said the
same thing. They said that the people that are on their detail will be
their friends for life. They're the best of the best. I mean,
the whole Trump family was magnanimous about it all week. A sorry, yeah,
that was kind of interesting, I mean, because he could have attacked
the Biden administration directly for mismanagement and all kinds of things, and that's going
to come out, but he's letting other people do that. Right. But
now, as the substance of his I'm not sure how much was in the
speech and how much he had lived, but three other things come out at
me. One was he spent one thousand words. Someone's count this up.
Dave Blackman, an energy geek friend of mine, he spent a thousand words
on energy, you know, we got all this energy, we're going to
do it, and attacking the green fraud deal or whatever he called it.
That is about nine hundred and fifty words more than any other presidential candidate has
ever said about energy in an acceptance speech. I think he knows that that's
a big effective issue for him. Second, on immigration, I think it
was very effective for him to say, you know, we got to close
the border and all the rest of that. But then he added, we're
for legal immigration. We want people to come to this country, but we
want them to do it in an orderly legal way. I think that works
really well, including with a lot of immigrants. Right. And then Democrats
can't say that they're in a box on that. Finally, everyone is saying
that, you know jd Vance means that the you know, old Reaganism is
dead. Uh, And I thought, well, there's something to that which
I get On the other hand, Trump talked a lot about how we're gonna
have tax cuts because we need tax cuts to promote growth, because growth is
the only way we're going to be able to reduce the federal deficit and pay
down the national debt. I said, hello, that is old fashioned Reaganomics,
supply site economics. That's still there. Reaganism is not completely dead.
Well, you have nothing to say about you guys don't care about the taxes.
You know he's bored by all that. But is it a switch in
the direction of the Republican Party. You've had it is and you have you
also talk of raising pariffs, and yeah, JD. Vans in particular,
is has been she's he's been a big supporter of Lena Kahan, who wants
to be the trustbuster in the twenty first century. And there were he attacked
corporations and even right, I'm not at all wild about Leana Khan and the
terroriffs make me nervous, but we'll see how it unfolds. I did think
one he did say one thing I thought was quite important that the media missed.
He said, look, I know we have a lot of disagreement about
a number of these policy ideas, he says, but you know, the
the what is a strength for our side. I've been saying this about the
intellectual matters for years, is we will argue amongst ourselves about this, and
that's what makes us stronger. Democrats won't say that, by the way,
they really do a party line on all their policies. And by the way,
Vance said that twice if I followed him closely enough, and I thought
that was quite significant because that was an olive branch to saying, you know,
we have our ideas, but we're not closing the door to anybody,
right. But I was just going to say, in response to Steve and
the obsession about those silly things like tariffs and so on, and that we
preserve the old Reagan, the old Reagan Party's approach to that. I think
that what's interesting about both Trump and and Vance is that they understand the threat
posed by the globalists, and those globalists include a bunch of the whatever you
want to call them, elite establishment Republicans and Americans understand. It's one of
the reasons why the Republican Party gets the somewhat bad rap of being the party
of the rich, because in some ways they have been Oh, free trade,
we gotta have free trade. Who does free trade help? It doesn't
help Middle America, it doesn't help russ Belt states and so on. Anyway,
I don't necessarily want to get into that debate right now, even though
because we're Republican Steve we Can, I just wanted to point out that,
on a call it a more generic level, the whole idea of free trade,
no terrorists, you know, globalism, all those other things is it's
not a winning issue right now because, if nothing else, Trump's made it
very clear that a lot of that attitude by our elites, whether they be
you know, democracy me, Republican elites within the party, or global elites
writ large, has really been destructive in so many ways, and it's you
know, people are becoming more and more open to that. What I wanted
to just mention quick John, if you don't mind, There was an article
in Politico. Of all things, God, Politico has become awful, But
it was interesting other than the you know, the way that they have to
they have to concede certain things and make it sound like it's terrible, it
was more or less factually correct. And that was on the subject of immigration
and that Trump has in fact completely changed. Call it the narrative, call
it the whatever you want to call it about immigration. If you think,
say twenty years back, ten years back, even even when you know Trump
first ran in twenty sixteen, the entire establishment political establishment was over here on
I'm sorry you can't see me. There was so little difference on the immigration
debate because Republicans wanted it pretty much unchecked immigration as much as Democrats did,
and they wanted you know, cheap labor, and they wanted the Chamber of
Commerce nonsense. And one of the things that the political article pointed out was
that even the bipartisan immigration bill that didn't pass this last year did not include
a pathway for citizenship, the first time that a bipartisan immigration reform bill had
ever not done so. And what we see now is the polls. Not
only are people not in favor of a pathway to citizenship, they're in favor
of mass deportation. And Trump did that. Now, Trump did that,
and Biden made it so so in your face salient that Trump had a perfect
thing to run on, you know, sending all of these illegal immigrants to
destroy blue cities. You know, God, those people are idiots sometimes,
you know. But anyway, I wonder what you think about that. Well,
I have but to something view on trade. Yeah I do too.
You want to go for me? Yeah, well, I mean there are
very few you guys are social scientists. There are very few things laws of
social scientists that really laws. The law of comparative advantage is just one of
the few correct ones, I think. Now. The problem is that it
affects the country differently. So the right the economists answer is the overall the
country benefits from free trade enormously, but you have to figure out a way
to compensate parts of the population that are disrupted. But I'm going to go
get coffee. Discussed this, Oh no, you need no stick around.
Does have a static, a static economy where everybody keeps their jobs and works
in the same industry. If it wasn't so corrupt and skewed, I'd probably
go along with that. Well, so, by the way, the funny
thing here is, John, I was going to agree with you until you
open your mouth and you insulted us by calling a social scientist. But the
second let me do it this way. I'm gonna Lucasian's getting coffee, which
is a mistake because I'm going to say, what we really need is Reaganite
trade prudence. See, this is what you're leaving out, John, is
the trade Well, I'll tell you what that is. Uh. You know,
when Reagan was president, he talked up free trade of time. That
was his principle and by the way, NAFTA was his idea. Although whether
he would have approved of the final treaty that came out is less clear to
me. But leave that aside for Trader. I mean, but ah,
but you see, in practice he wasn't John. He was. He very
selectively imposed a lot of tariffs and uh, you know what the trade punishments.
I forget what they call those things on Japan, uh, and especially
Japan. And now we did that sometimes under political pressure to forestall because you
go back to the eighties there was a bipartisan consensus in Congress and favor of
protectionism and raising tariffs. They got it lost. I agree with all that.
But the point is is Reagan talk free trade and practice selective protectionism.
For Hardy Davidson and you know, certain other places libertarians still attack him for
that. And what I say is he did some policies that you and I
might think are bad, but he did it to forestall something worse happening.
Well, let's slip it around. I think today what I would hope to
see is some selective and shrewd trade measures against China for their cheating and so
forth, and I'm not sure who else, but uh, but then then
essentially practice free trade with everybody else. Yeah, free traders would recognize that
you don't have to you know, you don't have to trade with people who
are stealing your intellectual property with their weapons. Okay, because he brought it
up her political point, I think is accurate that you know, Steve and
I are in a disappearing minority. Their free trade just doesn't have majority support
in the country ANYMOE never has had. Really. Yeah, yeah, but
it's a different I I actually just the last thing I'll say about it,
it's it's a different universe we live in now. Because you know, it
used to be that other places could really they didn't have rules, they have
fair labor laws or anything like that. But the whole thing has become corrupted
more than ever by by the elites who force on us all these environmental things
here and then the unions and on and on and on and on, and
it's it's I do agree with you, John, you don't expect to have
be in an industry, have a job that your great grandfather had for the
rest of eternity. But at the same time, there's nothing fair, above
board or even free market about free trade anymore. And free trade being a
I actually think that subsidies and trade sanctions actually increase the opportunity for corruption because
then all the industries going and say, what my special deal look at?
Like remember the weird trumpsteal tariffs. So according to studies, you know,
maybe these are biased, but the studies suggest yes, okay, so we
preserve you know, X number of jobs in the steel industry, but the
things that you steal, the cost of them went way up. And so
I think the economist said, every job we preserve because of the steel Trump
costs seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars because of the increase in prices of steel
may price like washing machines. I think I would just like give each of
them two hundred and fifty thousand dollars then, and then they have But that's
not in a vacuum. That's not in a vacuum that's because of regulations,
it's because of environmental it's on and on and on and on and and that's
the problem. So it's not necessarily that I'm disagreeing with you guys. But
you know, as long as California keeps raising its minimum wage for instance,
uh, twenty dollars an hour is not good enough, even though it's destroying
jobs right and left, then then you know you're gonna have computerized kiosks.
Those The law of unintended consequences because of over regulation, et cetera, et
cetera, is going to make America not competitive in the world. I'm not
saying tariffs are the complete answer, but thinking about it in a very broad
way, how do we make America competitive again? You know, we used
to be. We produced the best stuff. We produced it at a you
know, a great at a reasonable price, you know, and we've just
allowed our elites to skew the system so badly that something has to be done
about it. That's kind of my point. Does that make sense? How
do we compete with I think it doesn't make any sense. That's the only
time I've ever said that about something. You've said you should be hired by
J d vance to be his speech writer. Shout closed, Well, I
was just thinking that maybe Lucretia, you and I or we could do one
of our power line universities on trade politics and policy. Very important, although
I think a lot of voters don't find it interesting anymore. I don't find
it interesting either. Let me ask let's move on. Then, let's really
quick one quick question. Okay, look inside your shirt. I am willing
to bet that not one piece of clothing in your in either of your closets,
says made in America. But see my hand. My suits are all
handmade in Philadelphia, so you're wrong there. But I bet fabric is have
made in the United States. Fabat's all made in little handmade I hope,
handmade mills in northern Italy. But the point is, you don't want all
the cheap clothes made in America. You want them to be made in poor
countries so Americans can make things that are more valuable, like electric cars or
computers. I think it's great that actually all the cheap clothes is made in
China. Make two last brief comments. One is you know who has declared
general support for free trade? A guy named Donald Trump. But he says
we don't really have free trade, which brings me to the last comment.
You know, I remember talking to Milton Friedman about NAFTA thirty years ago when
it was passed and he was against it. Why was he against it?
He said, you know, a free trade treaty only needs to be three
pages long. NAFTA is one thousand pages long. Because I guarantee you open
any one of those thousand pages and you'll find restrictions on trade. It's managed
trade, it's not truly free trade. And that's I think there's some wisdom
to all that, and Trump, in a certain way, has some sympathy
with that point of view. He may end up being ironically the great practical
champion of genuine free trade over the next decade. Yeah, that's my prediction.
I think in winning issue for Trump on trade, because I think Lucretia
does represent the views of the majority of the country now, is that we
should have free trade agreements with our allies, correct, like the Western European
country South America. But we don't need to have free trade with China since
they're so obviously out to get us. We don't need free trade with Russia,
probably don't need to have free trade with a lot of countries in the
Middle East. Right, that's so let's move on though. This is a
we're going to bookmark this for a future uh you know, cage match,
cage match Thunderdome style cage match with immigration point on that. Do you want
to talk about immigration? Yeah? Yeah, oh I I actually think I
favor more immigration than you and Steve. But I do think there has to
be a limit. You know, we're a nation state, we have a
border. We are allowed to set limits on immigration. Now right now,
I think our law permits about one million, uh you know, legal immigrants
were eventually going to be on the road to citizenship. I'd make it two
million or three million, even because we actually have a labor shortage in the
country. But I agree with you. You can't have just people crossing the
border whenever they feel like without you, in violation of the law. I
mean, that's a that's a violation of our sovereignty. What about deporting the
people who did? I think, yeah, the laws already called for it.
I also think it's impossible to remove them all. So I think this
massive deportation point in the platform, it's I just don't think it's practical resources
into it. But how could you whatever twenty million illegal aliens in the country.
I'm going to send I'm going to send thecretion into orbit and saying you
don't need to have a mass deportation effort. And I'm going to say,
actually, a kind word for Mitt Romney. You know, what he said
was if we enforce of citizenship or legal requirements on employers, that's what was
behind his idea of self deportation. People will leave if they cannot get jobs
illegally, they will go back home. I think there's a lot of sense
to that, So you may not need to have to have, you know,
a big force trying to round people up and so forth. I'm not
opposed to that, but I think there's something to what Romney's saying. All
of the proposals, including I have to say Trump when he was president,
did not include everify. You know, a lot of big business, the
construction trades, they don't want to everify. But I think if you're serious
about this, you want to do something like everify and crack down on hiring
illegally. So the problem is this desire to deport twenty million aliens would require
a fairly large internal police force, which as a conservative, actually frightens me,
especially this is a weird segue, maybe, but especially when the hands
of people who can't even protect the security of the president. Right. So
that would be my last point is I think there would have to be a
big change in how we enforce immigration laws, and the federal government should call
on the states to do it in states, which they can do. That's
where all the law enforcement resources are already, they already know the communities they
can help, and let the states decide how many aliens to eject or not
from their own borders, which current federal laws we've discussed is doesn't allow because
the Biden administration wants to oust you know, doesn't want to let states participate.
But Trump could. Trump could easily reverse that policy if you wanted to.
My personal preference would be to turn every IRS agent into a deportation agent,
because one of the things we know is that the IRS is very successful
at forcing people to pay their taxes. And so I mean, if the
entire legal population of the United States said we're going to refuse to pay any
more taxes until, you know, stop stop any kind of withdrawals from their
paychecks and all of that until they close the border. The IRS would figure
out how to get every single one of us, so turn IRS agents into
deportation agents. And I agree with Steve both his point, and I would
take it one step further if you actually started a process of deporting, as
the RNC platform says, the starting with the worst criminals, et cetera,
et cetera, just like what I saw happen with SB ten seventy in Arizona
back in the day when SB two Arizona passage. So you know, I
live right by the border. There's a range road behind my house that was
a thoroughfare, a thoroughfare for illegal immigration. And after SB ten seventy passed,
before it was overturned by the idiotic Supreme Court or parts of it,
it stopped. It literally stopped behind my house. And so our policies make
a difference, they really do. Our policies toward illegal immigration make a difference.
So you don't have to deport everyone. You just have to make it
clear that you're going to be they'll self select deportation. I thought you were
going to call for deporting IRS agents or have them self Deport'll give it that
too. Okay, okay, let's start speaking of guns ah because all those
irs agents are Let me get to the final big topic we had this last
week, which was the assassination on President Trump assass attempt, I might add,
Yeah, so one is what effect did it have on politics? And
then I think the second question to ask is what is this show about the
administrative state? Like is what do you think should be done about the Secret
Service? But first the political effects we talked a little bit about them.
Steve said it has unified the party and quieted potential opponents of President Trump within
the Republican Party. Lucretia, what do you think what were the political effects
in your view of the assassination attempt? Oh? I think absolutely. I
mean I said it earlier to think about a seventy year eight year old man
who gets hit by a bullet. It looks to me watching it like he
dropped to the ground on his own, yes, and then they piled on
him, and then he fights his way back up with a fist in the
air, blood pouring off of his face. Uh, and fight, fight,
fight. You can nobody can say that that was orchestrated, pre rehearsed,
or anything like that that was just, in many ways an indication of
a character that many people denied Trump ever had. And and you know,
you can be the stupid people on at MSNBC and try to pretend that this
whole thing was a setup, and but nobody believes that. Nobody of it
with any brains believes any of the stuff they left to seeing. But it
so I think from a political point of view, it has allowed people who
in the past would have been embarrassed to say that they support Trump. Zuckerberg
forgot I was going to bring that up. Yes, yeah, I mean,
so from a political bo did you miss this? Okay, I tell
I mean, I can tell a story. Zuckerberg arguably got Biden elected four
years ago. He says, I'm sitting out this election. And he added,
I have to say watching Trump get up and raise his fist and say
five fight fight, he says, that's one of the most badass things I've
ever seen. And he was saying that is praise. How impressed Zuckerberg would
fly fly lying on the ground crying and calling for his mommy. Well,
right, anyway, Yeah, and so the other thing though, that I
want to say, you know, I haven't had a tinfoil hat on for
a while. So you you follow all the stuff that keeps coming out about
the assassination attempt, about about the Secret Service, about that twit what,
oh my god, I mean two things about it. Let me start with
the least roofs, yes, slowed roofs. What we what? That the
whole god awful thing with the fat chicks pretending to be Secret Service agents that
we know. Now, that's hard to around them, isn't it. Well,
but not if you go for a headshot, which is what they did.
They were short and fat and stupid and incompetent. But what it has
done is it's pointed out in ways. It's that people can't ignore the harm
done by DEI policies, Right you guys, I know Steve knowws this.
You probably don't, John, But I made some sort of comment early on
in the week on Twitter about how all of our three letter agencies have been
just reduced to utter incompetence by this whole DEI thing, and I posted,
I posted the recruitment video the CIA put out with this stupid hispanic she is
sis gender which she with mental health issues, single mom who has been on
anxiety meds for her whole life. It's a recruitment video for the CIA,
A right for the CIA, this stupid, fat, mentally disturbed single mom
who's now the face of the CIA. I posted it and guess what happened?
Twitter blocked me. Really, what ground do they give? A ground
that it was hurtful? The CIA video was hurtful that I posted this.
I mean, I make comments, no doubt, but they weren't over the
top comments. But okay, sorry, I just that was a rant.
But what it has done between Boeing, you know, and fall their planes
falling out of the sky and know you all of these other things, it's
become absolutely clear to most thinking Americans that DEI is not only a stupid,
racist idea, but it has contributed contributed to a level of incompetence wherever it's
been done. That is appalling. And you'll notice that the only real response
to all of the criticism by the Secret Service, the only real response has
been how appalled they are at the anger about DEI. You know, they
don't care that they're shown to be incompetent. They're upset that DEI is being
challenged. So that's thing one. Thing two really quickly is that we are
now at the point of deciding whether or not what happened in Butler was the
result of extreme incompetence that's mind blowing or a conspiracy. Isn't that an amazing
place to believe? Right? Right? The more that comes out, the
more it becomes clear it was either abjecting competence or a conspiracy at the deepest
levels of our government. And the worst part is it could very well be
both. Yeah, raction or conspiracy. Yeah go with I go with in
competence. You know the old Mike humans Razor never attribute to malice or conspiracy
what can be chalked up to sheer stupidity and incompetence. And I think that's
likely what's happened here. I think not the first time the Secret Service has
been revealed to be, you know, corrupt, flabby, inattentive, lazy,
complacent. And you know, I again, I like the FBI.
I interviewed a couple of Secret Service agents who were in Reagan's detail and research
for my book, and you know that was he was kind of a secret
Service nightmare, not like the way Trump is, but uh, actually,
you know who was a real secret Service nightmare? If I can digress for
ten seconds was Gerald Ford who wanted to go skiing in the winter because you
know, yeah, he used to go to Vail to go skiing, and
while he was president, and they had to have Secret Service agents who could
ski and shoot, and that was hard to do because nowadays they would not
allow president to do it. I think I think that's the way the world
is going. You talk about Secret Service nightmare, what about watch having to
watch Joe Biden's from Well, you've noticed, all right, another ten second
aggression. You've noticed the last month or so, there's some very large person
I don't know if Secret Service or some White House staffer, but some very
large person walking very close to him up to the steps and clearly person ready
to spring in a moment's notice if he falls, and likewise following him down
the little short steps from Air Force one. It's very conspicuous and quite obvious.
Obviously. What I think the Trump people should do is I think they
should insist upon having their own private security force to supplement and liaise with the
Secret Service so that they can say, wait a minute, have you checked
out that roof in that building where your people and the Secret Service would resist
they'd complain, but I think that's what he ought to insist upon. And
we see there's a lot of you know, this is again, Aslen Reynolds
likes to say, after every school shooting, early reports or you wrong or
inaccurate. I'm amazed at all the news we get these days. It's based
on a single source or someone rushing with a story that turns out to be
not right, if not completely wrong later on. And so I'm waiting for,
you know, when I hear one of the things about the couple.
I don't think most of them have been the slowed roof. They admitted to
themselves that there was a drone. I mean, I've seen a couple,
but not many. We'll may give you one example. One is there's,
you know, a very tall ladder up to this building, and said,
oh, how would shooter get that ladder there? Well, it's it's been
I don't know what the truth of it is. But asould the other report
saying no, no, that was the ladder that the local police brought to
get up on the roof. I don't know what the truth is, but
don't run off with every factory guy. I don't. I don't agree with
the idea of it's a conspiracy. But I think the only way to you
know, settle it for people who have obvious concerns is there's got to be
some kind of independent commission, correct And I wouldn't put the Chief Justice in
charge of it like Lyndon Johnson's. We don't need to have another warrant commission.
But you know, something like the nine to eleven commission was. I
bet the nine eleven commission actually did a good job. I think the one
on a Rock WMD did a good job. Something you know could be put
together by Congress. In fact, doesn't that I don't. I mean Biden
is this is the other little story about this. Biden is completely absent.
It's just another demonstration of how he's become a passive president. Any normal president
would have just fired the head of the Secret Service by now and announced right
a bipartisan commission to investigate, with hearings and everything, but he hasn't.
So I think this is actually something the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson,
could do that. But we need to do that to reassure people.
We want to find out the facts and do it in a way that people
who think it might be conspiracy. Will believe the credibility of the investigation,
and so it can't be done by the FBI or by the Secret Services.
Correct. Two things about that, John. The first one is so okay,
I'm with you guys, that the possibility of a conspirac you know,
the more people who are in on it, the more it becomes, you
know, impossible to keep those secrets. All right, Well, I believe
all of that. I believe the incompetence. I believe never underestimate the power,
stupidity, all of that. However, what we do know, without
a shadow of a doubt is that requests by RFK to have secret service were
denied, Requests by Trump to have more secret service were denied. That Jill
Biden put together a hastily, hastily organized small dinner to some Italian something something
there in Pennsylvania, which diverted already supposedly at least Trump's own detail, diverted
a bunch of those agents to Jill Biden. Those things I don't think are
up for grabs. They've been admitted to by the Secret Service, other than
the fact that they've denied requests. But we know that they have denied those
requests. Do those things end up as incompetence or do they end up as
partisanship that is so rabid that it will allow them to use the Secret Service,
maybe not as a conspiracy to actually assassinate Trump, but to use or
to deny Secret Service competence because they'd rather see their opponents taken out, or
they'd certainly rather not give any credence to their opponents by considering them important enough
to get Secret Service protection at the level they should get it. Does that
make sense? Well? Can I add one detail to that that bolters your
point? It's been reported and maybe it's true, like to say that the
Iranians have been seriously wanting to kill Trump, but also several people associated with
killing so Lamani there back in twenty twenty whatever that was, including Mike Pompeo,
Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense. Then was I forget and
Robert O'Brien the national security Bolton, that's it, And well, Robert O'Brien,
I think was a national security advisor. I think they want to kill
Bolton on general principle because he's been so No. I think Robert O'Brien was
the national security advisor when that attack happened. And I've had a couple of
small dinners with O'Brien in La two three years ago, and he had a
big security detail provided by the federal government because he said, oh yeah,
I'm you know, I'm considered under active threat by Iranians for assassination. The
Biden administration has pulled his security detail and will not give him another one.
They won't give him a State Department one because their alternatives doesn't have to be
Secret Service. It could be federal marshals, it could be there's a protective
detail that the State Department has, and they refuse to do that. And
so if O'Brien is killed, it's going to look pretty bad, I think.
And by the way, I think you and from Lucretia that the Wide
administration relented on giving RFK junior Secret Service protection hours after Trump called for it,
which I said, oh, Trump, the Trump administration is beginning early.
Well, that's it. And this shows you how Iranians don't understand our
politics. Because if there was if they wanted to guarantee a way for US
to launch a strike on all their nuclear sites, the best way to do
it would be to try to assassinate in high level American official. But anyway,
let's we'll just be intimidation. But yeah, okay, well we come
to the end of the show. There's still so many issues to talk about.
We're gonna have to defer them the next week. But let me start
off our traditional wrap up by asking Lucretia for her favorite Babylon B headlines.
So can I start with one that's actually not a Babylon B but probably should
be. I laughed so hard when I heard this. Breaking Vin Ben announces
that according to persons familiar with the transcripts of the call, there was a
very dangerous quid pro quo in which Trump promised to provide Zelenski an unlimited supply
of green T shirts with pockets on the sleeves in return for his endorsement.
I actually thought that was just really funny. Sorry. Man. The Babylon
B Service says it is working tirelessly to investigate anyone criticizing their inconfidence. Inside
sources say Biden is definitely either going to step down or stay in the race,
but for sure. One of the two viewer advisory added to Fiddler on
the Roof due to intense pitched roof scene that takes secret service taps former MLB
ref angel Hernandez to head up Trump detail. Hell you know what, guys,
I could probably go on forever. I'm just gonna turn it over.
Yeah, with this last one, just because we didn't talk about her.
Hillary Clinton announces she will seek re election of president of the United States.
Okay, go ahead, all right, Jomas, always drink your whiskey meat,
let's go, Brandon and Steve Well. Listeners, you've wasted another perfectly
good hour with a three whiskey happy hour, unburdened by what has been.
Bye bye, everybody, see you next week. Ricochet Join the conversation.