Well, whiskey coming take my pain, Oh whiskey don't. 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. Have you gotta giving? Let that whiskey flow where you're being
in love down in Low All right, John, I'm going to open with
you today quite abruptly and say that if the Pigamic Farm was not inducement enough
for you to come to Budapest, then the Good Spirit Whiskey Bar, which
I've finally tried out the other day, is the reason for both of you
guys to come. Because I went to finally the Good Spirit Whiskey Bar,
which has the most awesome selection of whiskey in the world that I've seen on
their menu, and because this is the three Whiskey Happy Hour. I tried
three whiskeys. I actually tried six, but I didn't write down the second
three. Wow. Right, So no, it's a fantastic What did you
What did you have? Yeah, so I had, you know, I
told the barkeeps that, you know, I liked stuff that were pead,
but also, you know, do Highland spaceI and other stuff. It didn't
have to be Lefreud like. And I was trying to think of something for
Lucretia. So I had things, and I also want to try things I
never heard of before, So I had something called Rued Moore, which is
probably the wrong pronunciation that it's made by the Glenn Turrett people. Now,
people who hang on every word of this podcast may recall that last summer when
I podcasted from Scotland, I talked about discovering Glenn Turret and really liking it
and this stuff was terrific. And then something called Karen Moore, aged twenty
thirteen, agent a sherry cask, and then kil Kuran, agent of Bourbon
casts, and they were all fabulous. Oh my goodness, they were fabulous.
And then I'm going to have to find out if somebody took notes on
the second three that we tried. It was a bunch of us. So
I completely shut down once you decided to use podcast as a verb. Well,
okay, tough anyway, So there you go, John, You got
to come for the whiskey and the pig mcfarm. I'm ready farm. What
they need is a whiskey mcpig. It was just just rub rub the McRib
and some kind of whiskey based rub. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome whistling
mcpig. Right, And I will mention one of my last events with my
friends at the Dandub Institute was a panel whose topic was why it is important
for Ukraine to win its war with Russia, which you know is not necessarily
the thesis that the Hungarians adhere to. But uh and as Lucretian, mister
chance to weigh in on that, although I try, i'd represent her point
of view to some extent, I'll just say that so that was probably a
disaster. Yeah yeah, but boy, this is I'm I'm not sure if
it's right or appropriate to say. This is a week to take the strong
drink with, you know, the business in the Middle East, which was
only starting to become a parent when the three of us got together last week
to record, and of course now we know the full dimensions of it.
And I mean everyone's talking about what's going to happen, you know, what
these radiers are going to do and so forth. But I think it are
worth our time to spend a little bit on the way this is playing out
on campus, which is getting a lot of attention, but there's one aspect
of it that is not getting sufficient attention. And I don't know if you
guys have picked up on it, but there are people who are saying and
some of them are idiot libertarian friends who are saying that, Well, you
know, if you shut down or censor student groups who are pro Hamas,
isn't that the same as the cancel culture you complained about from the left.
And I've even seen, you know, a couple of I will name names,
but you know, name brand libertarians who say, play my magazine tossing
out a porn star who was tweeting out pro Hamas talking points. Well,
that's cancel culture, isn't it. And you know this is more. This
is idiocy, but it is the kind of idiocy that I think conservatives have
invited by simply becoming champions of free speech without any qualification over the last twenty
years. And I have lots of thoughts on that. But do either one
of you want to jump in on that and add to the scene before we
proceed, John, I do, I'll go, and then you can you
can tell me why I'm wrong. John, I don't see that as being
the major issue. I don't pay any attention to libertarians when they say things
like that. I'm actually slightly pleased that what you see is a lot of
pushback on the left, not so much censoring them, but the whole idea
of what I forget the guy's name, the CEO who said, look,
ill on a list of those people from Harvard who signed off on this,
because it shows that they have a truly horrible character. That whether they're stupid
ignorant college students, which is, you know, whether idiot Larry Summers.
Oh oh, you know, I've been against this whole Hamas invasion from the
beginning, but we should really think about these poor, stupid, ignorant Harvard
students who really didn't know what they were signing. That's bs. But I
am actually really pleased to see the reaction across a lot of universities and they're
not you know, they're universities for God's sake. That because of that,
that says, Okay, maybe we shouldn't just allow these idiot pro Palestinian left
wing students, the ones who are triggered by the word master bedroom calling for
viol against fellow Jewish students. You know, I mean, people are starting
to see the real dichotomy there, that the inconsistency, the hypocrisy, you
know, the safe spaces that we needed to have for these lefties who somebody
misgendered them. And now, of course it's perfectly okay for them to take
off and beat a Columbia a Jewish student with a stick, you know.
I mean, it's just what you're seeing. I think is a little bit
of change in perception about things. That's what I think. I don't know,
John, what do you think you're at Berkeley? Go ahead? So
here's one interesting tidbit I don't know if you saw in the law is that
a law firm from Chicago, Winston and Strawn, had given a job offer
to an NYU law student who praised the attack. Well let me see what
she wrote. She president law n YU Law School Student Bar Association, whatever
that is. And this will only verify Lucretia's thoughts. Who identifies as non
binary and uses they then pronouns. So maybe it was Winston s Dawn's fault
already for hiring them. She sent the tweet saying she declared quote unwavering and
absolute solidarity with Palestinians in their resistance against oppression towards liberation and self determination,
which badly written sentenced though it was. When they found out about this one
Sinon Strong withdrew the offer, So good for them, Yes, yeah,
go ahead. Well, I don't think there's any problem with private actors taking
actions like that. I don't think there's anything wrong with people criticizing supporters of
Hamas or Palestinians or trying to get there. You know, members of Congress
who have a moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel voted out of office. I
don't think that conservatives should be in favor of preventing the right to speak,
but I don't think there are any It's more like Lucretia's as. We're fighting
back on the merits of what they say and criticizing them. I'm actually glad
they have a forum to speak so people can really see the morality of these
people. Well, okay, by the way, I shouldn't have simply narrowed
the origin of this thought that is canceled culture from the right to libertarians.
I think it's going to come from the left eventually, And this is amazing.
I'm actually more gloomy and about this than lucretia, which is turnabout.
This is a rare day. I'm going to celebrate it and we get through
subsequent topics. Look, we've seen with a couple of rare exceptions, Ben
Sass being one of them. By the way, we've seen college presidents put
forward these mealy mouthed statements that are sharply different from the moral certitude you saw
about their statements on George Floyd January sixth, whatever. And they're clearly afraid
of their faculty and students. And my question is, yeah, by the
way, employers saying I'd like a list of these Harvard students so we know
not to hire them, that's all great. But here's my question is,
is are any of these Middle Eastern studies professors or any of these students in
comparative literature. I saw one university oh UCLA a teach in to tell the
Hamas point of view by a professor of comparative literature and a professor of gender
studies, real experts in the Middle East, in other words, And my
point is, are any of these people going to be denied tenure in advancement
by the administrations here? Six months from now, a year from now,
of course not. You know Larry Summers saying I've never been more alienated from
Harvard. He was the president of the darn place. Did he ever do
anything to slow down this runaway train of institutionalized anti semitism in higher education?
And the answer, I'm sure the answer is no, none of them did.
They were all cowards, They're all hypocrites. And I predict that while
the next few weeks there may actually cre size in our medium mouthed way,
it's going to go back to business as usual and you're going to get more
of these people. And anyway, that's why I'm crumpy these days, and
that's why I think that actually we ought to make an argument that there is
a way to make intelligible distinctions, not that there's right wing or left wing
hate speech, but that in fact, the basis of free speech gets back
to the fundamental understanding of individual rights, and that you are perfectly justified in
firing a faculty member whose doctrine, if put in practice, will deny other
people of the rights to free speech, not only in this case, the
rights to life right. You understand the argument of making lucretia. We got
it from yeah, yeah, you're just too far afield. I think with
this whole thing, actually we got to be a little more immediate about what's
really happening here and what's going to happen. I do want to mention really
quickly two things. One is that I sent an email yesterday picked one of
the stories about Black Lives Matter and their vial obnoxious tweet showing the paratrooper coming
in and we stand with Palestine. And I sent that to all of the
people who were highly critical in calling me a racist back in twenty twenty because
I refused to put out a public statement in favor of Black Lives Matter,
And I said, you know, Black Lives Matter has always been this group.
The fact that the rest of you were too blinded by being trendy and
current to see it. I hope that you realize how much egg you have
on your face. Now we'll see how that goes. No responses yet,
No a little personal thing. So you know, I as I always praise
and talk about how blessed I am to belong to the particular Paraschi'm in.
However, every Christmas time we have this big fundraiser for scholarships for Bethlehem universities
primarily a nursing school, a few other things, and it's the only Catholic
university in Bethlehem. I think it might be the only How the university and
the Holy Land go figure, But they sent a letter that was then forwarded
to people like me on the parish council and so on, and I just
want to read you one statement from the letter. As you are aware,
it is a very unpredictable time here at present, with the actions of the
extreme right wing government in Israel and the stated priority of the expansion of settlements
in the West Bank, the pressure on Palestinians has been enormous. There have
been more Palestinians killed by the military and settlers this year than any year since
two thousand and six. And then they go on and talk about how horrible
it is that the power has been shut off and the gas has been you
know, and I you know, this is going to be a rough one
for me, because I mean, you know, the next time they talk
about giving money to Bethlehem University, I'm going to stand up and say I'm
not giving it to those races. I'm not doing it right. You're still
seeing go ahead, John, so I said two other points. One was,
I think you're both there totally right. Once the university started making moral
declarations about black lives matter and this and that, then how could they not
do so on this? I think it just be better if universities just shut
up as institutions and not take positions on anything. Why is it that they
feel it's their business to have to comment on the matters of the world.
It's our job to study, and you know, study those events. But
I don't see why Berkeley or Stanford or Harvard needs to have a position at
all on anything. And then the second thing is just on the you've already
seen. I think what the left is doing is they aren't they know that
the Israeli invasion of Gaza is inevitable, and you see this reflected in the
Bide administration's comments too, where they say, but we expect Israel to affect
civilian life when they go into Gaza. You can already see this machine ginning
up accusations at Israel is going to commit all kinds of war crimes when they
go into Gaza, even though it's a mass that violates the rules by Khaki
civilians, and these massacres in Israel and then as long being there pactic to
hide amongst civilians, you know, to hide their operations in mosques and schools
and hospitals and try to blend in with civilians. They want their own civilians
to be attacked because they think it will Israel look bad. So I just
another point, is I hope that Israel, though I think Israel goes bends
over backwards compared to other countries to try to protect civilians when they know when
they engage in military operations, I hope they don't cow feel cowed or restrain
themselves, overly restrained themselves because of this are preemptive criticism of them from the
less from the bid've heard on the way in the bring both points together,
you know, Israel has the IDF has issued an announcement to tell civilians to
get the hell out of one point two million is to get the hell out
of Gaza because you know, the invasion, the ground war is imminent.
And guess who's telling them to stay Amas Yeah, yeah, I think.
Sorry, I was just going to say, and of course you know part
of the reason that that that even that Israel is being criticized for that,
where are they going to go. How about Egypt? All about that right?
Yeah? Well to me, well that's an important point to be a
little more precise. They've they've told a million plus residents of northern Gaza to
leave that area. That's what they're going to start. Egypt will not open
its border. They don't want anything to do with these the population in Gaza,
and have it for a very long time. Everybody, no one wants
to take them. Everyone knows the score there and I do think John,
and you know, I don't know. I've been saying that. My guess
is the Israelis have thirty days at most before you see the same old drill.
All this is a disproportionate response. Gosh, we're going to stop all
this. And you know I wouldn't. I wouldn't put it past the Biden
administration with all the forces were amassing, with two carrier groups in the Eastern
Mediterranean to get in the way. Perhaps now, the one thing that might
save them, and it's really too horrible to contemplate is Hamas itself. If
AMAS follows through on their threat to live stream execution of hostages, then all
bets are off and even there's no way you can charge Israel with having a
disproportionate response if that happens, so we'll see this time may be different.
Yeah, I would just follow on that point by saying, one of the
things that you're seeing, and it's really hard to tell, I'll be honest
with you, in these days of Ai and so on, is that you're
seeing a lot of pushback, especially from the far left and far the despicable
far right. Oh there's no you know, well Biden said he saw the
pictures of babies being headed. No he didn't. And you know, what
they're trying to do is confuse that issue, because of course it was the
release of the information about what barbarian, savage, subhuman beings those hamas are
that actually I think turned the tide a little bit in favor of Israel.
But if they can convince people that maybe all that didn't really happen, and
you know, they've managed to convince people that the Holocaust didn't happen, so
it wouldn't surprise me, then I think your month, your month deadline actually
is might even be less because that's everywhere I look at as how should I
say it is the number one propaganda campaign to try to undermine that the images
of the barbaric actions of Hamas really aren't true and they're all ai generated by
Israel, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, all right, let's do
an exit question for you, John, since I think you've been teaching,
of course on strategy this semester. This semester you're doing last semester. It
was just last semester. Okay, Well, Steal, I don't know who
knows what's going to happen, whether the war will widen to against Hesbola and
Lebanon and maybe even Iran. But I don't know what do you have any
particular things you are watching or in particular hypotheses about the grand strategy of this
whole scene. I mean, the reason I think that is it's hard to
believe that Hamas didn't have, i't necessarily a follow on plan, but didn't
want to provoke a massive response from Israel, didn't want to blow up the
region. I mean, we know they wanted to disrupt the Saudi Israel normalization
of relations, but it does seem to me that I mean, I'm not
quite sure. I'm very suspicious of where this is all going and what the
intent was. Well, I think if you look at the region, it's
really Iran that's the major problem. If you look at from that perspective,
this is great where they spend some money to funnel and materials which they funnel
to these two gorilla groups, you know, Hasbela and Hamas, which continually
harass Israel. And this is probably not only harmed Israel militarily, but it's
also sort of set back this effort for Israel and Saudi Arabia to enter some
kind of normalization or even you know, some kind of treaty, but that
would that would settle Israel's position in the region and organize this alliance, not
formal alliance, but this alliance against Iran. So that's I think this is
one where I don't know what Lucretia thinks, but I do think this is
one where Trump actually did much better than Biden. You remember, of course,
that Trump ordered the killing of wondering Lucretia things on that question, John,
I just wanted to see if she was listening Trump. You know,
I ordered the killing of General Solamani, which actually I think set back the
Iranians quite a bit. He actually remember the Iranians bombed Saudi oil facilities,
and President Trump thought about a retaliatory strike. I looking at things now,
I think actually Trump should have gone farther and launched that retaliatory strike. I
think the Iranians really only do respond to strength. But I think the larger
strategic thing is that this is this really helps Russia and China. And I
think they're, you know, the ones who are giving support to Iran in
the back of everything. And of course the Iranians are, you know,
producing munitions for Russia in it's war in Ukraine. I think those two are
connected to So I think that this is if you're Russia and China are on
you're very happy with the way things are going. You might even have approved
it, as some people suspect Ron did with this. But I wouldn't be
surprised if Russia and China have given support to all this behind the scenes too,
And that's our bigger strategic strategic I don't know that I can speak to
Russia. That one's a little more complicated, but I'm not sure that China
has an interest in if nothing else, the loss of fuel coming that's not
the word. What do we use natural gas? Well, yes, yeah,
right, coming out of the Middle East and so on. I mean,
their economy is so shaky right now that to lose that pipeline in the
larger sense, I think is probably not something that they're necessarily in favor of.
I'm sure that they love the fact that the West World is in a
crisis at the moment. But you know, I wouldn't be surprised to find
Russia behind some of this stuff happening with Hamas, but I'd be surprised to
have think it was China, or that China is doing anything with a round
right now. I could be wrong. I'm not an expert in this area.
I'm just thinking of the grander strategic goals, all right. Well,
speaking of standoffs like Ukraine and Russia, China and the United States, we
have this standoff in Washington, d C. Continuing in the House House Republican
Caucus. We can't see the pick. A speaker looked like it was going
to be scale and then there are enough votes that he can't He can't do
it. Maybe it'll be Jim Jordan, but I suspect we'll be votes against
him. We have a specter of a House of Representatives. It's closed down
for who knows how long. And so here's my odd ball sense of the
thing, which is, it may be that if we get thirty days from
now and we don't get a budget, there's a government shut down, and
it's Democrats, remember who were responsible really for kicking McCarthy out of office.
They might actually break and say, you know, we made a mistake.
Since McCarthy's got two hundred and ten Republican votes, you might get ten Democrats
say you know, maybe we should have McCarthy back as speakers so it can
be up and running again. That's my sort of odd ball, you know,
ten percent prediction of what might happen. And I mostly just did that
because knew it would annoy Lucretia. I'm not annoyed by it. I'm thinking
back to the conversation we had last week about how much the American people will
be paying attention to it now. I don't think it's going to go on
until the government shuts down. I guess I could be wrong, but I
don't think that's what's going to happen. I think though, that the only
thing that Americans will remember about Congress. You know, I sort of got
nasty with people, Oh're okay, awesome, not having Congress. This is
going on in Israel, nobody. I mean, that has nothing to do.
If Congress were even led by Jim Jordan right now, what difference would
it possibly make about what's going on. I mean, that's just so inane
and trivial and stupid. But what they might remember is that one congressman who
got on and went over and rescued Americans. You know, there's something probably
in the last however many years Congress actually somebody in Congress did that actually made
a difference. Otherwise Congress is useless. Wow, sorry, Lucatia. What's
I mean, I've been traveling. What story is this? I don't know
that they find his name because I'm oh, gosh, you guys, you
talk and I'll find his name. Well, okay, John, you have
a daughter. I think this is a great chance here for Donald Trump to
intervene. I don't know if you saw there is a you know this I
think silly movement to get Trump to agree to be speaker. But I don't
know if he saw this. Their calls for Trump to intervene, address all
the Republican congressmen and congressman and settle all this. So I can't believe Trump's
not taking advantage of the publicity. I mean, he sat through this trial
for a week where he couldn't say anything in court. It just was abuse
heaped upon him. And then he would come out for just a few minutes
of crazy press conference talk. Here's his big chance. He could come in
and the art of the deal, right make yeah, the different courts,
and there's some I saw one congressman say, we need the leader of the
party to show up and settle this for us. That would be terrific politics
for Trump to get in and you know, show it on TV, address
the members of Congress and then settle and then hand pick the speaker and get
the caucus to agree to it. Hmm, I wonder, yeah, go
ahead, and sorry Corey Mills. And he just got back from Israel so
that he can be part of the vote after getting seventy seven stranded Americans out
of the country. Ah yeah, you know, I know that. You
know Hungary. I was talking to you know, cab drivers and other people
around Budapest saying, you know, Hungary suspended flights for a couple of days
and there were you know, people stuck there. And it is true of
a lot of places, a lot of people, I guess, because you
know, the airport's been under intermitt and rocket fire from the north I think.
Anyway, so I did not know that story. So it said that
he read a report that Americans who had gone, you know, church groups
that had gone to the Holy Land, which is what you know church groups
do, and they couldn't get out, and so he said, I just
immediately decided, within an hour's notice, that there was nothing more I could
do here in Washington. And he he, I don't know that they've given
all the details about it, which they probably shouldn't have, but he said,
and he said, I couldn't care less what district they're from, whether
they can vote for me, whether they're Democrat or Republican. These are Americans
who wanted to get home. And he said, but I have to get
back now because they got to vote on the speaker. Okay, right,
right, But but it worries me that you guys didn't hear that story.
Yeah, well I have an excuse, but sort of I don't. They
don't put it in The New York. Well, John, those other rats
you read in the Times, in the Post, the New York, The
New York post. That's the one you're supposed to read. That's the real
I do look at it what you've been in it now, So thanks thanks.
Well. The other, you know, the other bit of political news
that did reach me overseas was that RFK Junior is going to run as an
independent. And I mean, I have two thoughts about this, well at
least two. One is he has a huge but I think this news is
getting drowned out by of course the events in them at least, but he
has a huge opportunity if he will take it on a number of fronts.
But one of them was to say, you know, my father was murdered
by a Palestinian radical leftist. Yeah, and I can replay that vote.
The problem is, as you may know, he thinks that well, Sir
hanster Hand did in fact pull the trigger. He thinks there was a second
gun men. There's a conspiracy, you know, and he's kind of dug
in on that. So I don't know if he can say it that directly
and straightforwardly, but I think there's a great opportunity for him there. But
the bigger point is, you guys think it is not clear to me that
he takes more votes from Democrats than he might from Trump. I can see
him drawing from both several articles out there with saying that or yeah, I
mean, well what I mean you, Lucretia, you and I know people
who you know, people on the right who are much smitten with RFK.
They like him, they think he's and you know, you bring up some
of his past positions, and he has trimmed a lot of them in I
think impressive ways. That showed me that he's serious about trying to acquire votes
and really run for real, and it's not just a vanity campaign. But
I think that's some of these you just simply can't live down. And and
he said he would ban fracking, for example. That was an idiot thing
to say. You're not going to win Pennsylvania if you say that. No,
But he has moved away from I mean, he actually was a climate
change nut job for the longest time, but he's moved away from it,
and he's recognizing that what all of that really is about is destroying capitalism,
and that capitalism is the thing that to the extent that pollution and other concerns
of climate change, I can't take the rest of them seriously. The global
warming stuff seriously, But the rest of it, the capitalism and Western civilization
has been have been the most powerful forces for good in combating those things,
right, you know, capitalism and so forth. With pollution. Look at
the difference between US and say China or third world countries. And he's made
some comments about that, And I think people are entitled to change their mind.
After the whole debacle with being lied to, being censored, being forced
to take vaccines which may turn out to have incredibly long term ill effects on
the health of our population, may look more and more evidence seems to indicate
that somebody who was critical of those vaccines from the beginning, as opposed to
say Trump, who did Operation Warp Speed to get it out there as soon
as possible. I'm not making a judgment here, I'm just commenting. I
can see where he pulls votes from Trump, and I can see where he
pulls votes from Trump who for people who don't want buy no matter what,
but they don't want to vote for Trump. They would have, but now
there's another option. They're not going to go for Cornell West, but others
might. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I just think it's a
wild card. And you know, more unpredictability in our future. I just
don't see why he's doing it himself, though, I mean, I mean
he's I find it. I don't understand his incentives for why he's doing this.
Apparently the stories his parent, his family apparently really opposes him doing this,
And I don't know. I mean, if I were one of the
I am not, but if I was one of these many people who revere
the Kennedy family name and image, is this embarrassing? I think? I
think so think it's really not different from his father and his uncle. It's
the Democratic Party and the lesser Kennedy since then who have sort of moved over
to to be left wing nut jobs. He's you know, is he really
that different in what he's saying from his from his uncle or his father,
at least from his uncle. Maybe. Well, I mean, I think
you have a different view than you, John. I think he's the last
of the old Kennedy. Not mystique, that's not the right word. But
the this impulse to public service that's not the right one either. There's some
of them who have it in their chromosomes, going back to their you know
Joe Kennedy, right, it's a and yeah, no, blessed be and
but and there have been several of them. Uh, you know Patrick Kennedy,
Joseph Kennedy the third or whatever he was. They got into Congress,
they didn't do very well. They had substance abuse problems, they flamed out,
did other things. And there was a Bobby Kennedy Junior biding his time
doing all this environmental activism and other things, and you know, having his
own family problems of his own two or three marriages and whatnot. Uh.
And what impressed me is that when I said this wasn't a vanity campaign,
is again they haveser to go back and study the stage craft of John F.
Kennedy, Bobby in sixty eight and Ted Kennedy even in nineteen eighty in
his lead terrible campaign. But there was a certain consistency in their stagecraft of
how they announced, the way they announced, the crowds, they had,
the tableaus, the pr effort. They're all very well thought through. And
Bobby did that Bobby Junior that we're talking about now. And I thought,
oh, for a certain baby boomer population, this is really nostalgia and a
throwback. And I think that he really means I think he's the last of
the Kennedy line. I mean, there's a million of them out there now,
because they're right, not a million, but there's a lot. There's
a couple hundred of them at least, and he's the last one that seems
to have the political bug. This is their last throw. And that's kind
of why I take it seriously. In all there's no chance, absolutely no
chance of winning. So he's not an above ten percent That's what I mean.
That's why I find embarrassing is that it's like a vanity I maybe he's
not a vanity project, but he has that. So you know, I
mean, all the other Kennedys that you mentioned had a chance of winning.
One of them win, did win. One of them might have won if
you have been assassinated and Ted came, you know, relatively close he had.
Just so you say it has no chance of winning, and of course
I agree with you. But what if you're in the race, you're pulling
more, better and better all the time, and something catastrophic happened, something
this, something that, and all of a sudden, you know, you
you're catapulted, for a bunch of weird reasons to the front I mean,
Trump's cut his supporters that nobody's going to take away from him. There's that,
Okay, that's not the entire group of people that are currently in favor
of Trump in the in the Republican nomination. There are people who who look
at it and say, Okay, I'll go Trump. But it's not necessarily
the case that RFK will pull from Trump where it matters. And when I
say not necessarily the case, I actually want to ask you guys what you
think about that he'll pull a lot of people from Trump, probably in California.
He'll pull people in places like Massachusetts, I would think, But will
he in places like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Arizona and Georgia. You know,
I'm not really sure. But that's where it's going to end up mattering.
And it's not going to matter in California. No matter how many votes he
pulls from Trump, Trump wouldn't win anyway. So I'm just trying to play
the electoral college game here for a moment, rather than the popular vote game.
Well, let me give you one other seemingly crazy scenario, except I
don't think it's completely crazy, John, And that would be what if Joe
Biden is the nominee and takes a catastrophic stumble down the stairs of Air Force
one in early October of next year, and it's too late to replace him
on the ballot, and voting has already occurred in half the state's private Well,
okay, there's that problem, but let's leave that aside for the moment
another day. But you know, I could see an awful lot of voters
saying, you know, I can't possibly vote for Trump. Biden's clearly incapable.
I don't want Harris whatever. I could see Bobby Kennedy running a very
strong CA. I mean, you have is like the votes with thirty thirty,
thirty or thirty, you know, whatever it is, And who the
heck knows how that would unfold. And boy, I don't know. Stranger
things have happened in his life. That seems wrong, I know, But
just imagine the different sort of the things that could happen that actually might change
the equation. John, That's all I'm saying. You're right. Of course,
I'm not disagreeing with you, But if i'm if I got nothing to
lose, which he doesn't other than possibly being assassinated, because what's his name
will get him Secret Security Service service protection. Why not? Why not?
And you know what, the reason I cheer him on, I'm not really
It's too hard for me to actually pick which side he helps or hurts.
But he is bringing out issues, many, many issues that a lot of
people care about. You know, he's against the deep state, and you
know, so I'm okay with people that elevate the conversation beyond the kind of
stupid stuff that ends up being part of presidential campaigns most of the time.
That would be my only reason for not looking at him and dismissing him,
because I do like what he's talking about. Probably won't vote for him.
I've never voted for a Democrat in my life and it's probably not going to
happen now. But I like that he's in the race. Yeah, yeah,
all right, let me get a little early this week. I've got
the soft, warm breezes of an Indian summer night in Vienna blowing through my
window and coaxing me out into the evening, which I don't want to get
to. Always always a good, always the environment for them to start a
war of some kind. Yeah, but you move into this, uh,
I don't know if you guys caught it. I wrote about both of these
stories and on power Line, on the site that there have been two major
stories about Kamala Harris this week, one at the New York Times and one
at The Atlantic Monthly. They're the same story. They're both about gosh,
she's really bad. Why is she so bad a stuff? Why can't she
figure it out? And they try to be positive and helpful but they can't.
They can't, they can't help this. I keep wondering that was that
on purpose? Were they? Is this really a clever thing to try and
force her up? I mean, there's all this gossip about getting rid of
brought the ticket, but I'm about to say I you know, Turtle turtled
out loud with laughter reading these stories and had a lot of fun with them
because, you know, one of the articles was in search of Kamala Harris.
That's like she's wears Waldo. They can't find her, just predictable.
Well, that actually went to my kammalism, which is, you guys probably
don't know this, but Kamala Harris is in the middle of a what is
it called now, it's something like the Freedom Tour on college campuses, believe
this or not. She's been spending months. You just didn't know this.
She's been spending months touring college campuses as part of something that she calls some
kind of freedom tour. And so at the last the one she stopped at
this week, which was a college of Charleston, she was speaking, of
course, the point of her this campaign, if you wouldn't even call it
that, is to attack actually the Supreme Court for Roe versus Wade, say
there's less freedom there. Meanwhile, at the same time, she also goes
on about the need to restrict Second Amendment rights and for gun control. I
don't know how she reconciles that with the purpose of tour. But here's the
quote. Here's a quote. She encouraged people to not listen to older people
who tell them they're too young to make a difference. Quote I eat no
for breakfast, Harris said, as audience responded to with laughter. Quote I
encourage you to have an ambition. I encourage you to see what is possible
and what can be unburdened by what has been. It's just still doing that.
Oh God, John, did you look at what I just sent you?
I meant to send it last night. I fell asleep. It's a
picture. It says if Kamala Harris were a sign, and the sign says
notice the patio is currently not open because it is closed. Okay, I
saw that one, right, Yeah, what's this week, Lucrecia, it's
been quite a lot. Well, Palestinian flag outside Rashida Talib's office seen throwing
Friede flag off the roof. That's the other one they had, which was
Harvard students take time out of microaggression seminar to participate and kill the Jews rally.
Okay, sorry, it's all right. I'll forgive you. Go fund
me to send the squad to Gaza raises five million. I like that one
too, a little bit reaching back into history, docters wonder if they should
have spent more time training for playoffs unless time honoring Satanic drag nuns. I
love that one. Since the Phillies wrapped it up last night in a great
game. I figured you'd like that one. Hey, Actually this is a
Lucretia versus me in baseball, because a Phillies are going to be playing the
what are they the razorbacks that they make up for themselves because they're just such
a you and they had to come up with a PC mascot. Diamondbacks isn't
a Satanic worshiping naming yourself as a snake after a snake, we do have,
you know, these things here called Diamondback rattlesnakes. I told you one
tried to crawl in my front door the other day. But you know what,
I'll be honest with you, John, I'm probably more likely to cheer
for your Phillies than I am the the Diamondbacks. I've now had three times
had tickets to a Diamondbacks game in Phoenix. It's about about a three hour
drive, and all three times it was like, eh, no love,
just somebody else. So so yeah, I'll be rooting for your Phillies just
because of you. I just want you to know that. And they are
non PC team that you know. When these guys come out to play,
they they look like, you know, like the dwarfs from the Hobbit.
They've got all their hairs really long. There's this guy, this one guy
looked like you should have been playing for a Zzy top. His beard goes
all the way down to his waist. But they're there. They definitely the
non PC baseball team and all this, well, John, that's a tester
sports knowledge. Here my two favorite Phillies of all time. Well, the
first one was John Kruk, do you remember, I mean what was he?
Was he a specimen of? And then of course Lenny Dykstra, who
followed me on Twitter for a while and then he dropped me. I don't
know, but I think Dykester became a kind of uh stocks like a stock
booster kind of guy. I guess you would call him an influencer now,
but he was away ahead of his time. And kruck is a baseball analyst.
Whenever you see him on ESPN talking about baseball, I always looked to
see if they were able to wipe the food off the front of his clothes
before he went on That's a you can imagine eating a piece of Kentucky fried
chicken right before he went on stage. Yeah, you always expect him to
pull a Hogy out of his back pocket between pitches when he was at bat.
I mean, he was quite the thing. Yeah, Okay, okay,
go ahead, right, John, Because you don't read the comments,
you remember last week I was incensed, incensed about Biden being an evil harmas
equivalent because he beats and kicks his dogs, and Steve put the picture of
my dogs. You know what, the biggest of the largest number of comments
on the podcast were people upset that I let my dogs on the furniture.
That so actually the reason, I know the reason I took the picture of
the dogs. They don't usually get on my bed, but they were so
cute I couldn't help it, so I took a picture of them. Yeah,
people are upset I let dogs on my furniture. But I do a
couple of real quick final ones to get a little bit more current news in
here. NFL camera cuts the crew cuts away from touchdown pass to show I
can't even say this, let me start over. NFL camera crew cuts away
from touchdown pass to show slow Moe replay of Taylor Swift eating nacho and I'm
assuming you get what that's about. Oh yeah, oh yes, that's that's
that's rejuvenated the NFL. Right is that Taylor Swift is is she actually going
out with the Well, this is another Philly thing. The so Kelsey.
You know that Kelsey is a tight end for the Chiefs, whose brother,
the greater Kelsey is alignment for the Eagles. Well, I saw a conspiracy
theory story. I don't buy into it them. I don't need a hat
for this one, but it was kind of funny. Who actually claims that
the reason she's dating a jet is because you know, she's such a twit
and a hypocrite about global warming and she owns two, not one, but
two private jets, and you know, John's all over the world in these
private jets, so that when you it used to be that when you googled
Taylor Swift and jet, you would get all these stories about what a hypocrite
she was. And now when you google Taylor Swift and jet, you get
stories about her and her supposed NFL Yeah, blame. There's one detail wrong
about that. The guy she's dating as a Kansas City chief but she went
to the Jets game. Yes, oh okay, basic conspiracies, right of
course. Not you're not you know, it's a you're not a sports lady.
But I'm waiting John from when Travis Kelcey has a bad game and drops
several passes and you're all gonna blame on Taylor Swift and rightly. So this
is awesome. Okay, So wrapping back up with the theme of our story,
Hama's terrorist added to panel of the view. They don't have one,
don't they, Okay, white House claims, and they have a picture of
the mop head. White House claims six billion dollars to Ran absolutely not related
to the exactly six billion worth of rockets being fired into Israel. And lastly,
to go back to what Steve was saying with his month long prediction,
Emperor Hirohido calls for ceasefire after bombing of Pearl Harbor. Yeah. Yeah,
it's hard to joke about these things, but those guys know how to do
it. They do in such a way that it doesn't it's not cringey.
The only one that was really cringey was I got Steve to cringe on the
one I think this is. That was the week you were gone John,
when it said that, when it made a very cringey statement about oh,
the former mayor of Lori Lightfoot and a picture of her where she looks exactly
like Gollum and Lord of the Rings. Steve cringed at that one, but
I did, all right, Thanks guys. It's great to see you come
back sometimes, Steve. Yes, Steve, when are you coming home?
By another week? You'll see me Oh yeah, I'll see. I'm going
to be up on campus right after I get home. And the lucretia is
coming too, right, aren't you. Yeah yeah, I got a little
problem with my schedule. I got to work out. That's why I have
an answer to you. But okay, all right, we'll figure it out,
all right, John sent us out. Always drink your whiskey, meat,
let's go, Brandon and Steve God save the queen man. Start down,
you patty child, and take the phone off the hook can disappear for
a while. It's all right. You can't afford to lose a day.
Oh wait, will you really be in a way? It's for you and
you know they win. The truth is told the truth and can't what you
want. Or you can just get old. You're gonna sing out, pepall
you leaving game, Ricochet Join the conversation. M h.