1 00:00:00,240 --> 00:00:03,600 I mean, I'm moderately scattered the alligators that live outside my house, but 2 00:00:03,680 --> 00:00:08,599 I don't want them to be president. Ask not what your country can do 3 00:00:08,679 --> 00:00:14,039 for you, Ask what you can do for your country. Mister Gerbatschev, 4 00:00:14,960 --> 00:00:24,879 tear down this wall. Read my lips. It's the Rocochet Podcast with Peter 5 00:00:24,960 --> 00:00:27,800 Robinson and Charles C. W. Cook's sitting in for rob Long. I'm 6 00:00:27,879 --> 00:00:32,600 James Lilacs and today our guest is newt So let's have ourselves a podcast. 7 00:00:33,240 --> 00:00:35,840 But we're going to win and we're gonna help. We have plans to build 8 00:00:35,840 --> 00:00:39,159 a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean. We have 9 00:00:39,280 --> 00:00:44,479 plans to build in Angola, one of the largest solar plants in the world. 10 00:00:44,840 --> 00:00:46,920 I can go on, but I'm on. I'm going off script, 11 00:00:46,920 --> 00:00:50,320 and we're gonna get in trouble. You'll never get bored with whenny we never 12 00:00:50,359 --> 00:00:55,280 get bored. Welcome everybody hits the Roocoche Podcast, number six hundred and forty 13 00:00:55,280 --> 00:00:59,479 six. Why don't you? Yes, you join us at rookochet dot com. 14 00:00:59,479 --> 00:01:02,439 Sign up part of the most stimulating conversation at community on the web, 15 00:01:02,479 --> 00:01:07,680 and be there so you can see the last gasps, gasps. I sound 16 00:01:07,680 --> 00:01:12,200 like Sylvester the cat of Ricochet four point which will soon morph into five point 17 00:01:12,599 --> 00:01:15,799 a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, so you will be able to say I 18 00:01:15,840 --> 00:01:19,079 don't like what you've done with it, which is what happens every time we 19 00:01:19,159 --> 00:01:22,760 change it, and then everybody loves it when they realize the functionality and the 20 00:01:22,799 --> 00:01:26,359 beauty and the rest of it is just absolutely awesome. But what really keeps 21 00:01:26,359 --> 00:01:30,560 the community going are the people who go there and post and read and write, 22 00:01:30,560 --> 00:01:33,519 and it's a great place to be and I love it. I've been 23 00:01:33,560 --> 00:01:36,879 there for a decade and you should start your decade there now. I'm Javis 24 00:01:36,920 --> 00:01:40,640 lyleas in Minneapolis. In case I neglected to mention that Peter Robinson's in California. 25 00:01:40,760 --> 00:01:44,799 Rob is on an anabasis somewhere where his peregrinations have taken him this week, 26 00:01:44,840 --> 00:01:48,120 we know not we'll know next and sitting in for him as Charles C. 27 00:01:48,719 --> 00:01:53,400 Cook c not standing for conventional wisdom on gentlemen, welcome, Thank you, 28 00:01:53,519 --> 00:02:00,480 James Ana basis and peregrinations and sentence. No I gea. I could 29 00:02:00,480 --> 00:02:02,280 have added some other word with plenty of closives to it, but I didn't. 30 00:02:02,599 --> 00:02:07,840 So that gets my pretentious language out of the way. So let's go. 31 00:02:07,280 --> 00:02:13,719 Let's go to something else. Plane spoken. We could talk about we 32 00:02:13,759 --> 00:02:16,360 could talk about the indictments, but you know, there's a lot of places 33 00:02:16,400 --> 00:02:20,000 where you can talk about that. I was casting my mind around for something 34 00:02:20,039 --> 00:02:23,319 else to discuss and open the show with today, and I encountered on Twitter 35 00:02:23,439 --> 00:02:27,919 the story that just seems local and doesn't seem to matter very much what it 36 00:02:27,919 --> 00:02:30,759 does to me because it's indicative of a huge, large thing, and that 37 00:02:30,879 --> 00:02:34,719 is Seattle attempted to pass an ordinance against graffiti, and a judge struck it 38 00:02:34,719 --> 00:02:38,120 down on First Amendment grounds that you have the right to take out your spray 39 00:02:38,120 --> 00:02:43,879 can and to write a message on a federal building. Now, part of 40 00:02:43,919 --> 00:02:52,000 me says that, yes, to deal with tyranny, such things should not 41 00:02:52,039 --> 00:02:54,080 be bad. But on the other hand, it's indicative of every single little 42 00:02:54,120 --> 00:02:59,960 example of social decay and urban decay that is being encouraged by people who simply 43 00:03:00,039 --> 00:03:02,120 leaves seemed to say, there's absolutely nothing that we can do except to let 44 00:03:02,120 --> 00:03:07,680 our cities devolved into these hideous jungles of paint and miscrey. And sprawl to 45 00:03:07,719 --> 00:03:09,879 the ground. So that's something to discussed. But then again you may discuss 46 00:03:09,919 --> 00:03:15,520 who wanted to talk about the fact that we now have another story from The 47 00:03:15,599 --> 00:03:21,560 Times which says well about that lab leak theory that everybody was decrying as being 48 00:03:22,400 --> 00:03:24,080 xenophobic and racist and the rest of it in anti science, and we must 49 00:03:24,120 --> 00:03:30,199 shut down social media to keep these things from spreading. Well, it turns 50 00:03:30,199 --> 00:03:32,120 out that's probably the case, and that Patient zero was one of the guys 51 00:03:32,120 --> 00:03:37,719 who was involved in it does make much of a splash. Do you think 52 00:03:37,759 --> 00:03:43,319 this has already accepted sort of sullenly? Why aren't we using things like this 53 00:03:43,439 --> 00:03:47,000 to have some sort of accounting, that account of that accounting that we always 54 00:03:47,000 --> 00:03:52,159 wanted right at the end of this that it's obvious we're never going to get. 55 00:03:53,400 --> 00:03:55,719 Those are my two things that are bugging me today. Graffiti and Fauci 56 00:03:55,759 --> 00:03:59,719 telling us what he told us. I'll go, I'll take the first and 57 00:03:59,759 --> 00:04:02,680 tell us the second. To Charlie, Charlie prepared to discuss the lab leak. 58 00:04:03,360 --> 00:04:10,319 Here's all I have is a comment, an observation. I'm not going 59 00:04:10,360 --> 00:04:15,479 to go for any deep insight here, not for the first time, Charlie 60 00:04:15,479 --> 00:04:16,680 May went away in on this as well. Not for the first time, 61 00:04:16,720 --> 00:04:21,480 I find myself thinking, oh, thank goodness, this country is so big. 62 00:04:23,399 --> 00:04:27,399 Thank goodness, there's still room for regions to be different from each other. 63 00:04:28,000 --> 00:04:31,519 You mentioned Seattle. The story in my family runs as follows. Not 64 00:04:31,639 --> 00:04:36,040 quite two weeks ago, now ten days ago, my oldest son moved from 65 00:04:36,079 --> 00:04:44,079 San Francisco to Austin. And as he got in the car excuse me, 66 00:04:44,120 --> 00:04:48,680 as he was going out from his apartment, the movers had just emptied it. 67 00:04:50,120 --> 00:04:55,360 To get into his car, he discovered that his car window had been 68 00:04:55,399 --> 00:05:01,759 smashed and broken into on the streets of San Francisco for fourth time in this 69 00:05:01,879 --> 00:05:06,279 past year, which of course delayed his getting started on the road to Texas 70 00:05:06,319 --> 00:05:10,279 because he had to go have the window replaced. And didn't you have to 71 00:05:10,319 --> 00:05:14,399 go file a police report, because they'd be right on. Well, actually, 72 00:05:14,439 --> 00:05:16,319 well, as I say, this was the fourth time, correct, 73 00:05:16,399 --> 00:05:19,839 you're right, you're the insinuation. It's correct, James, this was the 74 00:05:19,839 --> 00:05:24,519 fourth time this year, So by now he knew not to waste his time 75 00:05:24,560 --> 00:05:29,160 with the police. They wouldn't even try, they wouldn't even make an effort 76 00:05:30,519 --> 00:05:36,279 anyway. Then he gets to Austin and within his first now, Austin is 77 00:05:36,639 --> 00:05:41,240 a liberal town. I think it's the liberal town in Texas. But what 78 00:05:41,560 --> 00:05:46,240 Sun Number one discovers very quickly is that the liberals are a kind of donut 79 00:05:46,920 --> 00:05:51,199 in the middle of Austin's. It's the biggest state capital in the country, 80 00:05:51,240 --> 00:05:58,560 and that state capital is run by Texans. And those Texans, in a 81 00:05:58,639 --> 00:06:02,639 state with no income tax, are this year in their session this year proposing 82 00:06:02,680 --> 00:06:08,519 to cut the property tax, which is the main source of state revenue. 83 00:06:08,560 --> 00:06:12,920 They are cutting the taxes they do have, and on and on. It's 84 00:06:12,920 --> 00:06:19,079 a genuinely, thoroughly intelligently conservative state that's in the middle of the donut, 85 00:06:19,079 --> 00:06:25,439 and outside the donut is a land known as Texas, and those liberals control 86 00:06:25,519 --> 00:06:30,600 that little donut of Austin, and that is just fine. So he gets 87 00:06:30,600 --> 00:06:33,959 to Texas after a three day drive, and within less than twenty four hours 88 00:06:33,959 --> 00:06:41,279 he calls and says, I am never leaving Texas again in my life. 89 00:06:41,879 --> 00:06:46,720 That is the story from this front. Thank God. It's a big Charlie. 90 00:06:46,800 --> 00:06:53,319 Yes, yes, Charlie. So I think the graffiti story that you 91 00:06:53,480 --> 00:07:00,439 just relate is an example of a historical interpretation of language that militates, for 92 00:07:00,519 --> 00:07:06,879 once, in the direction of over zealous defense of the Bill of Rights rather 93 00:07:06,920 --> 00:07:12,680 than under zealous normally. What happens is people say, but it says well 94 00:07:12,759 --> 00:07:18,240 regulated, or well, it says general welfare. Therefore, and you have 95 00:07:18,279 --> 00:07:23,439 to explain. We'll know those words didn't mean the same thing at the time. 96 00:07:23,480 --> 00:07:30,720 But in this case, what's happened is people and apparently judges as well, 97 00:07:30,560 --> 00:07:36,399 have looked only at the action part of the sentence. In this case, 98 00:07:36,439 --> 00:07:42,600 Congress will make no law with the Second Amendment shall not be infringed, 99 00:07:42,920 --> 00:07:48,240 and forgotten that those prohibitions apply only to whatever it is that we are talking 100 00:07:48,279 --> 00:07:54,920 about in the first place, and that you have to therefore determine what the 101 00:07:55,000 --> 00:08:01,639 First Amendment protects and what it doesn't. And there is just no historic understanding 102 00:08:03,560 --> 00:08:11,360 or record or even hint that it protected people who were spraying public or private 103 00:08:11,360 --> 00:08:15,839 property. That's not the First Amendment. Men, So yeah, you have 104 00:08:15,920 --> 00:08:20,920 to uphold the First Amendment. It's just that that's not what the First Amendment 105 00:08:20,519 --> 00:08:26,879 is. And I just increasingly find it frustrating that, especially on the left, 106 00:08:26,920 --> 00:08:31,120 there seems to be this this massive pool of very influential people who are 107 00:08:31,160 --> 00:08:35,720 extremely attached to the constitution that doesn't exist, and disdainful toward the one that 108 00:08:35,799 --> 00:08:41,399 does. You have people in this case saying, well, of course the 109 00:08:41,679 --> 00:08:48,080 graffiti is protected by the First Amendment, but you know what's not religion speech. 110 00:08:48,120 --> 00:08:52,919 We don't like political advocacy, lobbying, it's inferiating. I would argue 111 00:08:52,960 --> 00:08:58,879 that the founders had no idea how this would play out because they did not 112 00:08:58,000 --> 00:09:05,000 have pressurized spray cans at the time, high capacity, high capacity assault cans. 113 00:09:05,159 --> 00:09:09,159 So one of the people looking at this saying, well, perhaps the 114 00:09:09,240 --> 00:09:13,639 judge is saying that this is too broad because it includes chalking, and chalking 115 00:09:13,759 --> 00:09:16,320 is not as permanent as ink, so we have to go back and recraft 116 00:09:16,320 --> 00:09:22,559 the ordinance to permit chalking. It's the idea that we have to accede to 117 00:09:22,639 --> 00:09:28,919 all of this. So we have here in the city's these beautiful blank walls, 118 00:09:28,960 --> 00:09:31,279 which I'm sure of Paul somebody, because they should be smeared with all 119 00:09:31,360 --> 00:09:39,720 manner of tagging and the rest of it that periodically become a tagged and defaced 120 00:09:39,759 --> 00:09:43,320 by people who have no better nothing better to do, and no concept of 121 00:09:43,399 --> 00:09:48,799 civic responsibility and I call I did a piece on this. I actually wrote 122 00:09:48,799 --> 00:09:52,120 about this, and I call them the Department's transportation and asked them why this 123 00:09:52,159 --> 00:09:52,679 is a low priority. They said, well, it's just you know, 124 00:09:52,759 --> 00:09:56,480 it really is. It's a low priority and other stuff to do. I 125 00:09:56,480 --> 00:09:58,679 wrote that column and within four days all the graffiti was gone after it hit 126 00:10:00,080 --> 00:10:03,159 There's probably the most the single most important thing that I've done in the last 127 00:10:03,159 --> 00:10:11,799 five years. So if they realize how much people dislike this, perhaps something 128 00:10:11,840 --> 00:10:15,039 will be done. But to have judges step in and say no, no, 129 00:10:15,039 --> 00:10:16,720 no, you can't is to invite your cities to become I mean, 130 00:10:16,799 --> 00:10:20,519 we're always told that we should follow the model of Europe. European cities are 131 00:10:22,720 --> 00:10:26,440 dreadful when it comes to this manner of graphy. It's awful. You go 132 00:10:26,480 --> 00:10:28,799 to Rome and you see these marvelous old buildings that have been there since the 133 00:10:28,840 --> 00:10:33,840 sixteenth century, and they're completely spattered in this in this feral nonsense. I 134 00:10:33,960 --> 00:10:37,720 know, and the Latin it's grammatically incorrect, and it is You've got the 135 00:10:37,720 --> 00:10:41,279 centaur and who comes up and tugs on the year and goes to the declension 136 00:10:41,279 --> 00:10:43,519 and the rest of it life right, you know, John Cleese is stated 137 00:10:43,600 --> 00:10:46,279 by the way that that's supposed Seene, that they were going to take out 138 00:10:46,360 --> 00:10:50,159 of life of Brian because it's the transgender I want to have a baby. 139 00:10:50,159 --> 00:10:54,559 Thing doesn't fly anymore. His clisus. It's that's staying in. He'll have 140 00:10:54,600 --> 00:10:58,440 none of it taking it out, which is good, brother's hope. Not 141 00:10:58,480 --> 00:11:01,440 for the first time, I find myself wondering, what do we do? 142 00:11:03,799 --> 00:11:07,000 What do we do? This is not rhetorical. I really want to hear 143 00:11:07,039 --> 00:11:09,600 what the two of you think of this, what you make of it? 144 00:11:09,679 --> 00:11:13,919 What do we do? Without a press? It used to be not that 145 00:11:15,039 --> 00:11:20,679 long ago, within my living memory, at least, that every major town 146 00:11:20,799 --> 00:11:24,759 in this country had at least two newspapers, and one of them, if 147 00:11:24,000 --> 00:11:30,720 only to find a market, tended to be more conservative, or at least 148 00:11:30,759 --> 00:11:33,080 its editorial page tended to be more conservative. So in the old days you 149 00:11:33,120 --> 00:11:37,480 had the Boston Globe, and what was it called the Boston Harold? Was 150 00:11:37,519 --> 00:11:41,679 it the Boston Harold? And the Harold would talk back to the establishment. 151 00:11:41,679 --> 00:11:46,200 The Globe was clearly the paper the town that everybody in town read, But 152 00:11:46,399 --> 00:11:50,799 there there was still a market for the Harold. Seattle, the Post intelligencer. 153 00:11:50,720 --> 00:11:54,960 I think now has whatever is left of the market entirely to anyway, 154 00:11:56,120 --> 00:12:01,120 you get the point. Where is the columnist who immediately writes in a newspaper 155 00:12:01,240 --> 00:12:07,080 that's going to be read by thirty forty sixty thousand people in Seattle that the 156 00:12:07,159 --> 00:12:15,279 judge is a bonehead? Where are the reporters to about this muhan leak now 157 00:12:15,279 --> 00:12:18,960 that we know that the that well, one way to put it is the 158 00:12:18,039 --> 00:12:22,679 ja Bodichari was right from the get go, and Fauci was wrong, and 159 00:12:22,039 --> 00:12:26,960 Collins was wrong. And where is the press demanding and accounting. It just 160 00:12:28,000 --> 00:12:31,919 doesn't exist. I don't know. I keep waiting. The sub stacks are 161 00:12:31,919 --> 00:12:35,480 starting to appear. Charlie God bless him. If you want to know what's 162 00:12:35,519 --> 00:12:39,159 happened with the correct way to interpret the Constitution, you read Charlie Cook, 163 00:12:39,200 --> 00:12:43,320 you go to National Review. But it still feels to me this is your 164 00:12:43,360 --> 00:12:48,759 business, James. Of course, it still feels to me as though the 165 00:12:50,200 --> 00:12:56,360 local newspaper in big towns used to be the second newspaper, and big towns 166 00:12:56,440 --> 00:13:01,200 used to be really important because it would talk and talk back reliably. I 167 00:13:01,399 --> 00:13:09,120 do not know how we operate in the absence of such organs. Boys, 168 00:13:09,200 --> 00:13:11,039 well, it's more difficult. I mean, those newspapers are gone. They've 169 00:13:11,080 --> 00:13:16,799 been battered all the industries by the industry's contraction or by being taken over by 170 00:13:16,840 --> 00:13:20,399 chains and or investment groups that stripped them in their assets and manage them poorly. 171 00:13:20,639 --> 00:13:22,080 So you don't have that anymore. And then you have a generation coming 172 00:13:22,159 --> 00:13:26,960 up that isn't trained to read newspapers or regard them as important in any possible 173 00:13:26,000 --> 00:13:30,039 way. It's just not part of their life anymore. So they've lost that, 174 00:13:30,120 --> 00:13:31,399 so they've gone to the web. So you have, in a way, 175 00:13:31,519 --> 00:13:35,320 perhaps a reversion to the nineteenth century, where instead of one or two 176 00:13:35,360 --> 00:13:39,000 big solid papers as you had, you had a whole you had a score 177 00:13:39,399 --> 00:13:43,120 of smaller journals with extraordinarily small readership. You know, New York was like 178 00:13:43,200 --> 00:13:48,039 that. You look back at the welfs or number of papers that they had, 179 00:13:48,080 --> 00:13:52,440 and yes, each would stake out their own little ideological positions and would 180 00:13:52,440 --> 00:13:56,600 cater to the people who read it. Consolidation generally meant that, yes, 181 00:13:56,679 --> 00:13:58,679 you had a columnist in every paper in the town that everybody read, and 182 00:13:58,720 --> 00:14:03,559 that could move needles at person. Yes, yes, those people are don't 183 00:14:03,559 --> 00:14:07,600 exist anymore exactly. But people want that, so they go looking for it, 184 00:14:07,639 --> 00:14:11,320 and they find it. They find it in the endless stream of Twitter, 185 00:14:11,360 --> 00:14:16,120 they find it in the old folk chatter on Facebook and next door and 186 00:14:16,159 --> 00:14:20,320 the rest of it. So the prism has scattered this light in all directions, 187 00:14:20,320 --> 00:14:24,639 and the result of it is that it's hard to wrastle rope and correl 188 00:14:24,720 --> 00:14:30,759 public opinion to do something. So that's that, and I wish it weren't 189 00:14:30,879 --> 00:14:35,159 so, but that's where we are. Charles. What's the newspaper where you 190 00:14:35,200 --> 00:14:39,240 are? And do you read it? No? I don't. What is 191 00:14:39,240 --> 00:14:45,120 it? But that's in part because I want to get a break from my 192 00:14:45,240 --> 00:14:48,279 job, so I'm probably not the best person to ask. It's the same 193 00:14:48,279 --> 00:14:50,320 reason I haven't watched House of Cards. I have nothing against it per se. 194 00:14:50,320 --> 00:14:54,480 I'm sure it's very good. I just can't leave my office having done 195 00:14:54,519 --> 00:15:01,000 what I do all day, and then watch political dramas. What is it? 196 00:15:01,080 --> 00:15:07,759 The Jacksonville Times Union? I hope that's correct. My big issue with 197 00:15:09,159 --> 00:15:11,720 the coverage of the lab leak it's not that the press was wrong, but 198 00:15:11,799 --> 00:15:16,360 that it was wrong on purpose. The question was not examined as if it 199 00:15:16,399 --> 00:15:24,200 were an open matter of objective truth, and those who speculated provided evidence were 200 00:15:24,200 --> 00:15:28,919 not treated as if they were equals. Discussing one of the great issues of 201 00:15:28,919 --> 00:15:37,159 our time. The presumption from the beginning was that anybody who thought there was 202 00:15:37,200 --> 00:15:43,879 anything too the lab leak theory must have an arterior motive. There must be 203 00:15:43,960 --> 00:15:48,000 xenophobic, They must be trying to rile up the mob. And in fact, 204 00:15:48,039 --> 00:15:52,960 if you go back to the early days of COVID, you will see 205 00:15:52,039 --> 00:16:00,679 that the partisan polarization and its consequences were reversed. At first, canceling events 206 00:16:00,759 --> 00:16:07,279 because of COVID was deemed by the beyond ponsant class as being anti Chinese. 207 00:16:07,480 --> 00:16:11,879 Ncy Pelosi said as much in Chanuine February. Then it flipped. Had Donald 208 00:16:11,960 --> 00:16:19,960 Trump come out in May of twenty twenty and said, my one devout wish 209 00:16:21,320 --> 00:16:25,759 on this earth is that everyone wear a mask. The politics around masks might 210 00:16:25,799 --> 00:16:30,440 have been yes, exactly, and so we saw it here. So Tom 211 00:16:30,480 --> 00:16:33,279 Cotton was not told that he might be wrong or that he lacked sufficient evidence 212 00:16:33,320 --> 00:16:37,759 to make the suggestion when he said that this was most likely a lad league, 213 00:16:37,840 --> 00:16:41,600 and he wasn't wrong, he was right, but he was an agent 214 00:16:41,919 --> 00:16:49,480 of evil and intolerance and superstition. Why because some activist groups somewhere in Washington 215 00:16:49,679 --> 00:16:57,159 managed to convince highly impressionable politicians that to blame this on the people who most 216 00:16:57,200 --> 00:17:03,600 likely did it was damaging for international relations or national comedy or diversity or equity 217 00:17:03,679 --> 00:17:07,000 or whatever other buzzword we're using at the moment, and so everything flowed from 218 00:17:07,000 --> 00:17:08,799 that. That's what bothers me. It's not that people get things wrong. 219 00:17:08,799 --> 00:17:14,279 People get things wrong all the time. The wilfulness, well, the wilfulness, 220 00:17:14,279 --> 00:17:18,799 but also the total subordination of the truth to a pre existing set of 221 00:17:19,039 --> 00:17:22,960 narrative precepts so that it would be a bad thing. I mean, we 222 00:17:23,039 --> 00:17:27,559 do this whenever there's a massacre. Unfortunately, there is this hope. You 223 00:17:27,599 --> 00:17:33,839 can see journalists sitting around praying, I hope this is someone I don't like 224 00:17:33,480 --> 00:17:37,640 R then I can weave it in. And if it's someone who they hoped 225 00:17:37,759 --> 00:17:41,720 did it, then that instantly becomes indicative of what we all knew all along, 226 00:17:42,359 --> 00:17:48,240 rather than a fact that we have learned and that should be processed dispassionately. 227 00:17:48,279 --> 00:17:51,039 Well, the peculiar thing about it, and of course this is obvious 228 00:17:51,039 --> 00:17:52,519 and it's been said before, but it doesn't stop me from saying it again. 229 00:17:52,720 --> 00:17:56,000 Is that the idea somehow that it came from a lab was xenophobic and 230 00:17:56,200 --> 00:18:00,480 racist. But the idea that it came from a wet market where people slurping 231 00:18:00,480 --> 00:18:07,000 down pangolin ross soup while standing barefoot in blood, that wasn't the odd thing 232 00:18:07,039 --> 00:18:10,759 about it. But when you say that people were urged to downplay the LAB 233 00:18:10,880 --> 00:18:17,279 leak because they had, you know, these ideas about the wrong thing that 234 00:18:17,319 --> 00:18:22,319 it might inspire, that assumes that they were actually altruistic people concerned about the 235 00:18:22,319 --> 00:18:26,720 international order and the way we think about things. I'm more inclined to think 236 00:18:26,200 --> 00:18:30,359 that the reason that they backed up from the LAB league was because of the 237 00:18:30,480 --> 00:18:36,240 I don't want to use the word coordination. I just did the tentacular interweaving 238 00:18:36,480 --> 00:18:41,839 of US health organizations and the wuhunt of Viril Institute and their study of weaponizing 239 00:18:42,000 --> 00:18:48,000 and humanizing and advancing COVID research. I mean gain of function stuff had been 240 00:18:48,000 --> 00:18:52,519 banned here by Obama. But if I'm correct, and then what they did 241 00:18:52,680 --> 00:18:57,839 was they decided to outsource that to Chinese labs, which had obviously demonstrab poor 242 00:19:00,000 --> 00:19:03,640 health standards than we have. So they wanted to do this, not because 243 00:19:03,640 --> 00:19:07,599 they were evil people who wanted to design the perfect germ to control the world 244 00:19:07,640 --> 00:19:10,319 in some Blowfield like style. No, I believe them when they say, 245 00:19:10,319 --> 00:19:12,359 we're trying to learn about this so in case we get a bad break an 246 00:19:12,400 --> 00:19:15,440 outbreak, we can learn how to fix it. But these things become self 247 00:19:15,440 --> 00:19:18,359 perpetuating, and then you become you know, well let's just do a lot 248 00:19:18,400 --> 00:19:21,599 of this stuff. So you had eco Health and you know the others people, 249 00:19:21,839 --> 00:19:26,359 these names that were connected to it, that a forgiving society might actually, 250 00:19:26,680 --> 00:19:32,160 if told the truth, I think, have asked for some accountability and 251 00:19:32,200 --> 00:19:37,640 some resignations, but they wouldn't have asked for heads, right, But they 252 00:19:37,680 --> 00:19:41,599 wanted to protect this pipeline. They wanted to insulate themselves from criticism and blame, 253 00:19:41,680 --> 00:19:45,440 which I think they owe, which I think they know they can be 254 00:19:45,559 --> 00:19:51,160 rightly blamed. And so we all got steered away from this, and the 255 00:19:51,559 --> 00:19:55,200 press went along with it. And I'm still trying to figure that part out 256 00:19:55,240 --> 00:20:03,799 exactly, because did the medical establishment qui bono follow the money? Anthony Fauci 257 00:20:03,960 --> 00:20:10,440 and Francis Collins are implicated in one way or another in this gain of function 258 00:20:10,519 --> 00:20:15,200 research in China, having funded it indirectly, perhaps, but having funded it. 259 00:20:15,519 --> 00:20:21,839 And between those two men, they have given away over decades tens of 260 00:20:21,960 --> 00:20:27,599 billions of dollars, tens of billions of dollars to researchers across the country. 261 00:20:29,279 --> 00:20:33,440 The whole medical establishment, the whole research establishment of the United States, was 262 00:20:33,480 --> 00:20:38,440 effectively on their payroll. And one reason I actually I was just talking about 263 00:20:38,480 --> 00:20:44,119 this with Jay the other evening, Jay Bardicharia. It just happened. Jay 264 00:20:44,200 --> 00:20:48,200 realized he made no effort to stay off the Fauci payroll. It just happened 265 00:20:48,200 --> 00:20:53,960 that his research interests never led him to request a grant from NAIAD. It's 266 00:20:55,000 --> 00:20:57,799 just in any event, and good for him and good for him, and 267 00:20:57,839 --> 00:21:00,400 we hope to have him on soon to talk about this and other things. 268 00:21:00,400 --> 00:21:03,680 But in the meantime, let's go to our guest. Why not, because 269 00:21:03,839 --> 00:21:07,200 it's newt we got Gingridge served as fifty Speaker of the House, architect of 270 00:21:07,240 --> 00:21:11,559 the contract with American leader of the Republican victory in the nineteen ninety four congressional 271 00:21:11,559 --> 00:21:15,759 election. It's just published a book about it, March to the Majority, 272 00:21:15,759 --> 00:21:18,559 and you can order your copy on his website. Which is Gingrich three sixty 273 00:21:18,640 --> 00:21:23,880 dot com Gingrich three sixty dot com to order your copy. Mister gang Rich, 274 00:21:25,359 --> 00:21:27,400 welcome to the Ricochet Podcast. We're glad to have you so um. 275 00:21:29,319 --> 00:21:32,599 Tell us about the book. It's I'm sure an account of the march to 276 00:21:32,680 --> 00:21:34,920 victory then and there are lessons for the present day. Are they're not? 277 00:21:37,000 --> 00:21:41,559 Well? The real purpose of writing the book was to create a set of 278 00:21:41,640 --> 00:21:47,319 principles that we learned, frankly by hard work over a twenty year period, 279 00:21:48,039 --> 00:21:52,880 both on how do you win and then how do you turn victory into policy 280 00:21:52,960 --> 00:21:56,759 changes? And I think that it's fair to say that you worked. It 281 00:21:56,960 --> 00:22:00,680 was a much bigger mountain than we thought it would be to try to get 282 00:22:00,720 --> 00:22:04,960 to be a majority, and so we lost in eighty eighty two, eighty 283 00:22:06,000 --> 00:22:07,640 four, eighty six, eighty eight, ninety ninety two, and then we 284 00:22:07,720 --> 00:22:11,319 won in ninety four, and we won big. We had fifty four seat 285 00:22:11,319 --> 00:22:18,000 pickup, and we had a policy in the contract with America which included things 286 00:22:18,000 --> 00:22:22,559 like balancing the budget, welfare reform, and the result was that we were 287 00:22:22,640 --> 00:22:29,680 able at that point to drive the agenda in Washington in a way that very 288 00:22:29,680 --> 00:22:33,079 few Congresses have. Bill Clinton was faced with a choice. He could have 289 00:22:33,160 --> 00:22:37,240 defended liberalism, in which case he would have been defeated in ninety six, 290 00:22:37,839 --> 00:22:45,720 or he could decide to accept that the American people wanted real change and he 291 00:22:45,759 --> 00:22:48,640 would probably get reelected. And they had a big fight in the White House 292 00:22:48,640 --> 00:22:52,240 about June of ninety five, and his staff all said, you know, 293 00:22:52,279 --> 00:22:56,960 you've got to defend liberalism, and Clinton said, if I do that, 294 00:22:56,960 --> 00:23:00,960 I'll get beat And he'd lost in nineteen eighty in the youngest governor in the 295 00:23:00,000 --> 00:23:06,960 country in nineteen seventy eight, and losing was really painful, and she said, 296 00:23:07,000 --> 00:23:08,480 I'm not going to lose. I want to find a way to work. 297 00:23:08,519 --> 00:23:11,880 So he came to Congress and the say, the Union said, the 298 00:23:12,000 --> 00:23:18,319 era of big government is over astounding thing. An astounding thing. By the 299 00:23:18,319 --> 00:23:21,880 way, nude, I just to set this up a little bit. I'm 300 00:23:21,880 --> 00:23:26,799 the one man here aside from you, who served during the eighties and for 301 00:23:26,920 --> 00:23:32,119 who I just want everybody who's listening, many of whom will have no memory 302 00:23:32,119 --> 00:23:37,920 of nineteen ninety four, to recall or to understand that for four decades, 303 00:23:38,000 --> 00:23:45,160 it had been four decades since Republicans achieved a majority in the House of Representatives. 304 00:23:45,200 --> 00:23:49,920 When I went to college, it was totally standard to talk about the 305 00:23:51,000 --> 00:23:57,799 presidency as tilting toward Republicans, but as Congress as the natural home of the 306 00:23:57,839 --> 00:24:02,720 Democratic part. That was what we were taught. That was a standard political 307 00:24:02,759 --> 00:24:07,119 science through the seventies and eighties. And then along comes Newt king Rich and 308 00:24:07,279 --> 00:24:11,440 in nineteen ninety four, and it really did feel. I can remember being 309 00:24:11,440 --> 00:24:18,799 at an election election night party in nineteen ninety four and our jaws just dropped. 310 00:24:18,799 --> 00:24:21,880 And then of course by the end of the evening we were all just 311 00:24:22,119 --> 00:24:26,200 delirious and pretty nearly drunk on champagne. It was just even the optimists among 312 00:24:26,240 --> 00:24:30,200 us, We're not expecting that victory. So what you're writing about was one 313 00:24:30,200 --> 00:24:36,880 of the great moments in all of American political history. I want people to 314 00:24:36,960 --> 00:24:40,000 understand that. And I want to ask a question of you. Oh excuse 315 00:24:40,000 --> 00:24:44,039 me, No, let's get to You talked about change in Clinton, Bill 316 00:24:44,160 --> 00:24:48,400 Clinton's welfare reform, which is the way it comes down to us now, 317 00:24:48,680 --> 00:24:53,119 Bill Clinton's welfare reform. Correct me on this, but as I recall, 318 00:24:55,079 --> 00:25:00,440 you sent that reform to his desk three times before he finally signed it. 319 00:25:00,519 --> 00:25:03,839 Is that not correct. Yeah. The first two times we included medicaid and 320 00:25:03,000 --> 00:25:08,799 he wouldn't sign it. So we reformed every aspect of welfare except medicaid, 321 00:25:10,279 --> 00:25:15,200 and he signed it. He did not want to run for reelection having vetoed 322 00:25:15,240 --> 00:25:19,960 welfare reform, and I frankly thought the Democratic Party would explode when we voted 323 00:25:21,039 --> 00:25:23,920 on the House floor, even after Clinton had said publicly he would sign the 324 00:25:23,920 --> 00:25:30,960 bill. The Democrats split ninety eight in favor, ninety eight against ninety eight 325 00:25:30,960 --> 00:25:36,000 who were against, were very bitter and very angry. So I wonder, 326 00:25:36,720 --> 00:25:42,640 Peter, you just mentioned the history of Democrats controlling the House and then the 327 00:25:42,759 --> 00:25:49,880 shift that nineteen ninety four broad Since nineteen ninety four, Republicans have done pretty 328 00:25:49,920 --> 00:25:56,799 well at the congressional level. They've controlled the House for the vast majority of 329 00:25:56,920 --> 00:26:02,759 that time, they've controlled the Senate for a narrow majority of that time, 330 00:26:02,839 --> 00:26:07,119 and yet they've struggled to win the presidency, which was not the case for 331 00:26:07,200 --> 00:26:15,680 Republicans between nineteen sixty eight and nineteen ninety two. I wonder, why do 332 00:26:15,720 --> 00:26:21,440 you think that is? Why do you think that outside of a desire for 333 00:26:21,839 --> 00:26:26,759 change in nineteen ninety four, outside of the contract with America. Outside of 334 00:26:26,759 --> 00:26:30,279 a reaction to Bill Clinton's first two years, Republicans have struggled to win the 335 00:26:30,279 --> 00:26:37,759 White House but have proven pretty good at keeping Congress well. I think, 336 00:26:37,920 --> 00:26:41,119 first of all, there's a certain amount of inertia that once you win these 337 00:26:41,160 --> 00:26:45,680 seats, it's a lot easier to keep them than are worse to win them. 338 00:26:45,880 --> 00:26:52,799 I think second, generally speaking, the Republican Party is pretty popular outside 339 00:26:52,799 --> 00:27:00,039 the biggest cities and is capable of being very competitive. And the way congressional 340 00:27:00,039 --> 00:27:04,720 districts are divided up, you can you know, Wisconsin is a good example. 341 00:27:06,240 --> 00:27:14,200 Democrats carry Madison, Wisconsin Dane County by such a huge margin that that 342 00:27:14,400 --> 00:27:19,400 plus Milwaukee makes them competitive statewide. Now in a senatorial race or in a 343 00:27:19,480 --> 00:27:23,720 presidential election, that's a big deal. But that means that in the entire 344 00:27:23,880 --> 00:27:30,000 rest of the state, Democrats are the net disadvantage. So in every single 345 00:27:30,039 --> 00:27:34,480 congressional district outside of Madison, in Milwaukee, Republicans have a huge advantage, 346 00:27:34,799 --> 00:27:40,559 and in the Milwaukee suburbs, Republicans have an advantage. And that this is 347 00:27:40,599 --> 00:27:44,440 true almost everywhere in the country. Where it gets really hard is when you 348 00:27:44,480 --> 00:27:49,640 have big machines Chicago, New York, California, and the big machines have 349 00:27:49,720 --> 00:27:56,640 so much muscle, mostly labor unions but also teachers' union, public compltee teachers 350 00:27:56,759 --> 00:28:06,039 unions, and trial lawyers, the share amount of money they represent and that 351 00:28:06,160 --> 00:28:07,960 and then, of course, frankly, with the rise of the Internet, 352 00:28:08,480 --> 00:28:15,640 the fact that the Silicon Valley billionaires are all in the shadow of San Francisco 353 00:28:15,200 --> 00:28:21,000 has a huge long term impact because they are generally speaking, very liberal, 354 00:28:21,440 --> 00:28:25,440 and they're very rich, and they're quite happy to spend their wealth on power, 355 00:28:25,880 --> 00:28:29,759 and so particularly when you get up to the Senate level, it starts 356 00:28:29,759 --> 00:28:33,920 to matter. But even with all those situations, you've had twelve years of 357 00:28:33,960 --> 00:28:38,359 Republicans and twelve years of Democrats. In the first twenty four years of the 358 00:28:38,359 --> 00:28:45,359 twentieth first century you've had in the White House, you've had pretty consistent Republican 359 00:28:45,440 --> 00:28:51,640 control. And the reason the change was once Republicans had won and we kept 360 00:28:51,640 --> 00:28:55,079 them. Remember we kept the House from nineteen ninety four to two thousand and 361 00:28:55,160 --> 00:28:59,240 six. All of a sudden, even when they lost it temporarily in two 362 00:28:59,240 --> 00:29:03,480 thousand and six, their first reaction was, we can get it back, 363 00:29:03,880 --> 00:29:07,079 yes, right now. When I got elected in seventy eight, there was 364 00:29:07,119 --> 00:29:11,720 not a single Republican leader who thought we could become a majority. Well, 365 00:29:11,759 --> 00:29:17,680 the difference just like entrepreneurship, I mean, the difference in energy drive, 366 00:29:17,960 --> 00:29:22,799 fundraising, candidate recruitment between a party that thinks it can win and a party 367 00:29:22,799 --> 00:29:26,440 that thinks it's hopeless is astonishing. As you were saying, you know, 368 00:29:26,480 --> 00:29:32,519 on election day, I think there may have been five or six members of 369 00:29:32,519 --> 00:29:37,039 the House who thought we'd be a majority. Nobody really, yeah, really, 370 00:29:37,440 --> 00:29:41,559 wow, it was inconceivable. They just they couldn't imagine it. Yeah. 371 00:29:41,640 --> 00:29:45,480 Actually, I'm thinking back now. I can remember having you to come 372 00:29:45,480 --> 00:29:49,440 to lunch at the White House mess This is in nineteen eight, this is 373 00:29:49,519 --> 00:29:52,839 during Ronald Dragan, and we all looked at each other afterwards and said, 374 00:29:52,839 --> 00:30:00,720 well, you know, God bless him, but that guy's nuts, can't 375 00:30:00,480 --> 00:30:06,200 what So even in the middle of the Reagan White House after lunch with you, 376 00:30:06,279 --> 00:30:08,000 we all looked at you, at each other and thought, I don't 377 00:30:08,000 --> 00:30:15,160 know, here's a question I'm going to give sort of a big question. 378 00:30:15,240 --> 00:30:21,160 Just let you take it. Why don't we do two questions really, but 379 00:30:21,200 --> 00:30:25,079 they go if they fit together. I think, why don't Republicans do well 380 00:30:25,960 --> 00:30:30,480 in cities. Why is that in Texas? Before you came on, I 381 00:30:30,519 --> 00:30:33,319 was just singing the praises of Texas. I have a son who's moved there 382 00:30:33,319 --> 00:30:37,920 and just loves it. But Texas, even Texas, makes me a little 383 00:30:38,000 --> 00:30:41,279 nervous. You look at the six biggest cities in Texas, and only one, 384 00:30:41,720 --> 00:30:45,880 Fort Worth, I think, still has a Republican mayor. But not 385 00:30:45,960 --> 00:30:49,000 San Antonio, not Houston, not Dallas, not Austin. That's the first 386 00:30:49,079 --> 00:30:57,200 question. The second question is this, how do political cultures develop and sustain 387 00:30:57,279 --> 00:31:03,920 themselves. As recently as eighty eight, George hw Bush was able to carry 388 00:31:03,960 --> 00:31:08,720 California. California is now a one party state New York Reagan carried New York 389 00:31:08,720 --> 00:31:12,640 in eighty four. New York is now a one party Democratic state. On 390 00:31:12,680 --> 00:31:17,119 the other hand, we have Ohio moving in the Republican column. Texas, 391 00:31:17,200 --> 00:31:21,759 of course, used to be Democratic and is now Republican under Rond Santis Jeb 392 00:31:21,759 --> 00:31:25,599 Bush rohnds Santis. Florida has become for the first time just recently, we 393 00:31:25,640 --> 00:31:30,880 have Republicans out numbering Democrats in Florida. We have something that I don't think 394 00:31:30,920 --> 00:31:34,400 obtain. It didn't obtain for sure. In the eighties the whole country seemed 395 00:31:34,440 --> 00:31:38,599 competitive in those days, and right through the nineties it was beginning. How 396 00:31:38,599 --> 00:31:44,720 does this happen that states sort themselves out and you get an establishment, a 397 00:31:44,799 --> 00:31:49,960 one party establishment that's dominant in California, all of New England, really New 398 00:31:51,039 --> 00:31:56,680 Jersey, and yet the Republican Party manages to remain competitive and to persuade people 399 00:31:56,720 --> 00:32:00,079 and to build its base in Ohio, Florida, Texas. How do these 400 00:32:00,119 --> 00:32:06,079 things happen? Well, I think they're a little bit different, depends on 401 00:32:06,119 --> 00:32:13,480 what you're talking about. Tammany Hall was the model machine in New York City, 402 00:32:13,839 --> 00:32:16,839 and Tammany Hall was real And for most of New York history it's been 403 00:32:16,960 --> 00:32:22,200 upstate against the city. As the city grew, upstate didn't grow. In 404 00:32:22,240 --> 00:32:28,119 fact, upstate in many ways is closer to Mississippi and income than it is 405 00:32:28,160 --> 00:32:35,000 to the city. And the policies adopted in Albany are policies which rely on 406 00:32:35,359 --> 00:32:42,920 high cost, high unionization, big bureaucracy, and actually block upstate New York 407 00:32:42,960 --> 00:32:46,640 from the kind of growth it could have under other circumstances. So you have 408 00:32:46,680 --> 00:32:51,640 a couple, you have an alliance that's very odd. You have public employee 409 00:32:51,720 --> 00:32:57,680 unions who are basically allied with trial lawyers. They're basically allied with the academic 410 00:32:57,720 --> 00:33:05,720 world, and they together create an environment and then you have an ethnic machinery, 411 00:33:07,160 --> 00:33:10,839 at least in the Black community. It's really not evolved among Asian Americans 412 00:33:10,880 --> 00:33:16,599 or among Latinos, but in the Black community almost everywhere, the dominant political 413 00:33:16,640 --> 00:33:25,119 classes Democrats, and they have a huge investment in staying unified because it keeps 414 00:33:25,119 --> 00:33:30,680 their powerbase. So for them, it's literally a matter of life and death. 415 00:33:30,359 --> 00:33:35,640 If all of a sudden the Black community starts to be genuinely competitive, 416 00:33:36,319 --> 00:33:39,480 many of the black politicians will find themselves out of work. And so they 417 00:33:39,519 --> 00:33:45,680 have a huge vested interest in creating a mindset that says, you can't even 418 00:33:45,839 --> 00:33:51,559 think about being Republican. And when you get below about twenty or twenty five 419 00:33:51,599 --> 00:33:59,319 percent support, the social pressures are just too great to fight and find I'm 420 00:33:59,319 --> 00:34:01,720 going to be one. And this is, by the way, in terms 421 00:34:01,759 --> 00:34:07,920 of the potential for indicting Trump in DC, a real challenge because the district 422 00:34:07,960 --> 00:34:13,760 Columbia Trump got five percent of the vote. You would be taking him to 423 00:34:13,840 --> 00:34:19,880 trial in a place where the jury pool is nineteen to one opposed to him. 424 00:34:20,400 --> 00:34:25,039 I mean, hardly trial by his peers, and I think once you 425 00:34:25,119 --> 00:34:29,519 get that kind of base, it takes enormous effort to try to change it. 426 00:34:30,559 --> 00:34:35,199 We were very lucky when I came to Georgia. Georgia was overwhelmingly a 427 00:34:35,239 --> 00:34:38,639 democratic state. It was a segregated state, it was a machine state. 428 00:34:39,119 --> 00:34:44,480 They had the rules so that the rural parts of the state could dominate. 429 00:34:45,159 --> 00:34:50,079 And gradually there was a tide of history, which you mean when I was 430 00:34:50,199 --> 00:34:53,440 very young, I was aggressive of an entrepreneurial, But if the tide of 431 00:34:53,519 --> 00:34:59,320 history hadn't been with me, we still wouldn't have broken through. But you 432 00:34:59,440 --> 00:35:04,559 both had the rise of a modern republican party as people moved in from from 433 00:35:04,599 --> 00:35:08,000 the north. You had the rise of younger people who were disgusted by the 434 00:35:08,599 --> 00:35:14,280 corruption. You had the rise of people who just thought that segregation was wrong 435 00:35:14,360 --> 00:35:17,880 and they had to be changed. Then and gradually things came together. At 436 00:35:17,920 --> 00:35:23,320 the same time, you had a number of former Democrats who watched the National 437 00:35:23,360 --> 00:35:29,280 Democratic Party become more and more and more liberal, and so they peeled off 438 00:35:29,840 --> 00:35:35,000 because they couldn't stand the National Democratic Party. All those things came together and 439 00:35:35,199 --> 00:35:38,559 a younger generation which I was then was able to ride sort of a rising 440 00:35:38,599 --> 00:35:43,480 tide, if you will, there was lifting Republican boats. Well, we 441 00:35:43,599 --> 00:35:46,320 haven't figured out yet, and it's it's I agree with you. I think 442 00:35:46,320 --> 00:35:51,840 it's worth a much bigger effort because part of what happens is where we were 443 00:35:51,880 --> 00:35:54,719 when I became a freshman. If you don't think you can ever be a 444 00:35:54,760 --> 00:35:59,480 majority, you don't make any big investment and trying to become a majority. 445 00:36:00,159 --> 00:36:02,800 It's Bob Michaels and John Rhodes. You make an investment and being a nice 446 00:36:02,840 --> 00:36:07,719 guy, right, and you figure out you'll get crumbs off the Democratic table, 447 00:36:07,760 --> 00:36:14,360 so don't anger them, right, And in that context, nobody makes 448 00:36:14,400 --> 00:36:19,400 an investment to figure out in a place like Baltimore, for example, where 449 00:36:19,400 --> 00:36:22,599 the city schools are so terrible and so destructive, and one of the things 450 00:36:22,639 --> 00:36:27,760 we're trying to do right now. We have a program called the America's New 451 00:36:27,800 --> 00:36:31,199 Majority Project, which people can see at America's New Majority Project dot com. 452 00:36:31,320 --> 00:36:36,119 We've been doing polling since twenty eighteen, and I'm trying to raise the money 453 00:36:36,159 --> 00:36:43,360 now to be able to take one place Baltimore City and understand how people deal 454 00:36:43,440 --> 00:36:49,360 with the reality that there are twenty one schools in which not a single student 455 00:36:49,679 --> 00:36:54,320 can do math, not one two thousand students. But there's no rebellion, 456 00:36:55,360 --> 00:36:59,599 there's no sense of, you know, we've got to change this. And 457 00:36:59,639 --> 00:37:06,119 so I want to understand the pathology that leads people to design that the failure 458 00:37:06,199 --> 00:37:09,079 is an inevitable future, and their job is to learn to live their life 459 00:37:09,079 --> 00:37:17,800 accommodating failure. If Tim Scott, African American senator from South Carolina, and 460 00:37:19,199 --> 00:37:22,000 I've heard for years what a what a nice guy he is, how he 461 00:37:22,039 --> 00:37:27,400 connects with audiences, and now now that he's running for president, I've watched 462 00:37:27,519 --> 00:37:34,599 a couple of videos he connects. If he is on the ticket, does 463 00:37:34,639 --> 00:37:39,599 it change anything? We don't know it. Certainly the margin change is something 464 00:37:40,199 --> 00:37:46,519 we're seeing. For example, a significant number somewhere around twenty percent of African 465 00:37:46,559 --> 00:37:52,239 American males who now favored Trump. Say that again, that's I can't believe 466 00:37:52,280 --> 00:37:58,880 in years we're seeing we're seeing poles were about twenty percent of African American males 467 00:38:00,199 --> 00:38:02,119 or Trump. And is there an age dispersion? Is it the younger men? 468 00:38:04,039 --> 00:38:07,239 I don't know. I've not seen the crowd that we're trying to work 469 00:38:07,280 --> 00:38:10,559 the cross cabs now of the One of the things we're doing at America's New 470 00:38:10,599 --> 00:38:16,440 Majority is we're doing two thousand likely voter sample every two weeks now, so 471 00:38:16,480 --> 00:38:20,159 we'll have one hundred thousand in the database by the end of the year. 472 00:38:21,800 --> 00:38:27,599 But we think it's partly because they want a strong, assertive, aggressive figure 473 00:38:28,519 --> 00:38:31,280 and it's impossible to identify, for example, Joe Biden using that language. 474 00:38:31,840 --> 00:38:37,840 We think it's partially because they are against the current system, and so anybody 475 00:38:37,840 --> 00:38:43,800 who's getting attacked by the current system, they have an instinctive identity with A 476 00:38:43,840 --> 00:38:47,000 friend of mine was writing in a cab a week ago and with an older 477 00:38:47,039 --> 00:38:52,079 African American man who's a cab driver, who said to him, if they're 478 00:38:52,119 --> 00:38:57,960 attacking Trump this much, they must really be afraid of him. And if 479 00:38:58,000 --> 00:39:02,480 they're really afraid of him, I'm for him. So there are things out 480 00:39:02,480 --> 00:39:07,400 there. But I want to find out if you get a focus group together 481 00:39:07,440 --> 00:39:14,480 and you are dealing with the kind of data we have about Baltimore City, 482 00:39:15,360 --> 00:39:22,880 how how do they internally think it through under Is there some way that you 483 00:39:22,960 --> 00:39:30,400 can offer them hope so they decide it's worth replacing the machine, because part 484 00:39:30,400 --> 00:39:35,199 of the problem is in Baltimore, for example, the teachers union has I 485 00:39:35,239 --> 00:39:38,800 think the budget of the school systems of a billion, three hundred million dollars 486 00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:44,519 unbelievable. So even though they're failing, look how many people they're paying. 487 00:39:45,440 --> 00:39:49,159 How do they live with themselves? Well, I guess that's a subset of 488 00:39:49,199 --> 00:39:51,639 the questions you want to address. That's the kind of stuff I want to 489 00:39:51,679 --> 00:39:58,679 I want to understand the pathology. So I wonder why Congress seems much less 490 00:39:58,719 --> 00:40:07,440 effective than it was thirty years ago. I am a big fan of legislatures, 491 00:40:07,519 --> 00:40:15,199 and I think our executive branch has spiraled into an almost monarchical position, 492 00:40:15,360 --> 00:40:21,480 both in our constitutional order and in our culture. Obviously, in the nineties, 493 00:40:22,480 --> 00:40:29,039 Congress was running pretty well. It doesn't mean you achieved everything you wanted 494 00:40:29,079 --> 00:40:35,280 to, but the legislative function was performed by Congress, and the president had 495 00:40:35,320 --> 00:40:43,119 to respond to the change in congressional control that really did obtain, mostly through 496 00:40:43,400 --> 00:40:46,400 the George W. Bush's as well, And yet under Obama, under Trump, 497 00:40:46,440 --> 00:40:52,840 and now under Joe Biden, Congress seems weak. The people in Congress 498 00:40:52,840 --> 00:40:57,960 often send press releases or letters to the president saying please do this or that, 499 00:40:58,039 --> 00:41:00,719 which is really a congressional function, and we don't see a great deal 500 00:41:00,719 --> 00:41:08,960 of legislation coming out unless it's pushed through on party lines under reconciliation rules at 501 00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:15,199 the eleventh hour. Why do you think that is well, First of all, 502 00:41:15,239 --> 00:41:19,519 I think that Congress is always hard. I mean, the founding fathers 503 00:41:20,159 --> 00:41:24,719 were headed dilemma. They had to have a government strong enough that it could 504 00:41:24,719 --> 00:41:30,199 survive against the British and the French and the Spanish who might meddle in their 505 00:41:30,239 --> 00:41:32,960 lives. But they wanted a government that didn't threaten them here at home, 506 00:41:34,599 --> 00:41:38,920 and so they tried to write a constitution which was balancing power, and they 507 00:41:39,079 --> 00:41:45,599 very consciously created friction in the system, and they wanted the friction in the 508 00:41:45,639 --> 00:41:52,199 system. Generally speaking, you had a challenge because the presidency, I think, 509 00:41:52,280 --> 00:41:57,920 has had its power expanded by the way the media has operated over the 510 00:41:58,000 --> 00:42:05,079 last sixty or seventy years, and that a single centralized personality becomes dramatically more 511 00:42:05,119 --> 00:42:10,880 dominant. Prior to the rise of radio and television, presidents weren't nearly intimately 512 00:42:10,880 --> 00:42:15,800 a part of our lives. So you have a sort of disadvantage. But 513 00:42:15,920 --> 00:42:24,079 I would also say it takes a tremendous amount of energy to understand what the 514 00:42:24,079 --> 00:42:30,880 American people want and to then focus on getting that in a way which is 515 00:42:30,920 --> 00:42:36,159 team building and which is prepared to negotiate head to head with a president. 516 00:42:36,239 --> 00:42:42,119 I mean, it took us thirty five days working directly between Clutton and me 517 00:42:42,719 --> 00:42:46,440 to get to the only four balanced budgets in your lifetime. Well, there 518 00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:51,480 are very few people who can sustain that. I mean, it's just you 519 00:42:51,559 --> 00:42:53,159 have to have a team behind you. The team has to know what you're 520 00:42:53,199 --> 00:42:57,800 doing. It took us years to build that. That's part of the point 521 00:42:57,840 --> 00:43:00,400 of the book, March the Majority. You don't get these things overnight. 522 00:43:01,159 --> 00:43:07,760 If you really want to achieve large change. You know, Reagan proposes welfare 523 00:43:07,840 --> 00:43:14,079 reform in nineteen sixty five running for governor. We passed it in nineteen ninety 524 00:43:14,079 --> 00:43:17,800 six, thirty one years later, and so you have to really think about 525 00:43:19,559 --> 00:43:22,840 I've always told people you might as well go for a very big change, 526 00:43:22,199 --> 00:43:27,239 because a very small change takes about as much energy, takes about as much 527 00:43:27,239 --> 00:43:30,079 time. So you might as well get you get something big done. If 528 00:43:30,079 --> 00:43:35,280 you're going to spend, if you're going to spend that much time and energy, 529 00:43:36,039 --> 00:43:38,519 Newt Are you optimistic right now? I mean you must be. You're 530 00:43:38,559 --> 00:43:43,960 putting You're putting out this book on the notion that there are lessons to be 531 00:43:44,159 --> 00:43:46,760 learned. Well, hold on, let me ask this question this way. 532 00:43:47,559 --> 00:43:54,920 You and I remember the seventies a low, miserable decade. When I see 533 00:43:55,039 --> 00:44:00,239 kids or Henry Kissinger gave an interview on his hundred's birthday in the Wall Street 534 00:44:00,320 --> 00:44:04,239 Journal, and he said, there's no pride left, there's no sense of 535 00:44:04,360 --> 00:44:06,880 unity, there's no sense of purpose. I'm paraphrasing, but these are the 536 00:44:06,920 --> 00:44:09,239 words. He used, words like that, and I thought, oh my 537 00:44:09,320 --> 00:44:15,599 goodness, that's the way people talked about the country in the seventies, the 538 00:44:15,760 --> 00:44:22,920 humiliation of Watergate and the loss in Vietnam, the economics deg and the country 539 00:44:22,440 --> 00:44:31,039 turned around. Are we capable of that kind of revive? This is addressed 540 00:44:31,039 --> 00:44:34,960 Trump if you want to leave him out, if you want to The question 541 00:44:35,079 --> 00:44:39,840 is this the American people being what they are today, are institutions being what 542 00:44:39,920 --> 00:44:46,360 they are today? Are we capable of another renewal? Well, let me 543 00:44:46,360 --> 00:44:52,960 start with where you were, which is, if you read the AA Whites 544 00:44:52,119 --> 00:44:58,840 making the president of nineteen sixty eight. In nineteen seventy two, you are 545 00:44:58,960 --> 00:45:04,000 recentered on how bad it was. I mean, the police riots in Chicago, 546 00:45:05,320 --> 00:45:10,280 you know, the Democratic National Convention operating in the middle of the police 547 00:45:10,400 --> 00:45:19,440 using gas on the crowds. You have twenty five hundred bombings in the late 548 00:45:19,480 --> 00:45:23,880 sixties. You have I'd forgotten that. That's right. Whole neighborhoods in Philadelphia 549 00:45:23,880 --> 00:45:29,800 got burned down because of bombs. As I recall, you you have the 550 00:45:29,840 --> 00:45:36,239 Black Panthers openly running an assassination campaign and police, you have a million people 551 00:45:36,360 --> 00:45:39,960 surrounding the Pentagon. I mean, it's easy to forget. We were torn 552 00:45:40,039 --> 00:45:45,239 apart in the early and one of the great achievements of Nixon is to maneuver 553 00:45:45,360 --> 00:45:50,159 in such a way that he diffuses the anger. He rallies the rest of 554 00:45:50,159 --> 00:45:53,159 America against the left. And then McGovern comes along, and in the seventy 555 00:45:53,159 --> 00:46:00,840 two book, one of the most profound sentences THEO Whites Rights, George McGovern 556 00:46:00,039 --> 00:46:07,239 cannot negotiate with the left because the ideology has become a theology. Right, 557 00:46:07,840 --> 00:46:14,360 this is seventy two, and the theology went to university campuses and metastasized into 558 00:46:14,440 --> 00:46:17,079 the cancer we're now dealing with. So in that sense, this is just 559 00:46:17,119 --> 00:46:22,760 the ongoing struggle in American life. There's a great story which you'll remember, 560 00:46:22,679 --> 00:46:29,280 which explains my optimism in a way. When Reagan got elected, about ninety 561 00:46:29,320 --> 00:46:32,199 of us in the Republican side were invited down one day to have coffee and 562 00:46:32,280 --> 00:46:37,519 stand around in one of the big rooms in the White House, and Reagan 563 00:46:37,599 --> 00:46:40,119 came in. There was those yet to know you kind of moment, and 564 00:46:40,239 --> 00:46:43,760 he said, you know, he said, this, want to tell you 565 00:46:43,800 --> 00:46:52,760 a story. He said there was a parents had twins. The one twin 566 00:46:52,000 --> 00:46:58,079 was totally positive, the other twin was totally negative. And they said, 567 00:46:58,119 --> 00:47:01,280 we've got to train these two boys. You just can't have one totally optimistic 568 00:47:01,280 --> 00:47:07,119 and one totally pessimistic. So at Christmas, they arrange for the pessimist to 569 00:47:07,159 --> 00:47:13,079 get this magnificent room full of toys, and they arrange for the optimist to 570 00:47:13,119 --> 00:47:16,400 get a room that was filled with horsemen or and they wait about an hour 571 00:47:16,639 --> 00:47:21,679 and they go into the pessimist room and he's sitting in the middle of all 572 00:47:21,719 --> 00:47:24,320 of these toys crying, and they go, what, what, why are 573 00:47:24,320 --> 00:47:28,159 you crying? He said, well, this toy is going to break. 574 00:47:28,760 --> 00:47:32,320 This toy is going to get stolen, and he goes around. What's just 575 00:47:32,480 --> 00:47:37,480 miserable. They look at it a shrug. They walk next door and the 576 00:47:37,599 --> 00:47:43,239 Optimist is running around the room throwing horsemen or in the air going we and 577 00:47:43,320 --> 00:47:45,440 the parents go, what are you doing? He said, I'm looking for 578 00:47:45,480 --> 00:47:50,519 the pony. Yes, and Reagan said, as a favorite joke, it's 579 00:47:50,599 --> 00:47:52,559 right. He said, I want to warn you, I'm the guy looking 580 00:47:52,599 --> 00:47:55,480 for the pony. Well, I think that sort of captures the American spirit 581 00:47:55,519 --> 00:48:00,960 that you know, times are a little difficult. We have a president who's 582 00:48:00,960 --> 00:48:05,159 an idiot and also corrupt. We have a vice president who makes the president 583 00:48:05,199 --> 00:48:08,920 look like a genius. You know, we have a hard left which wants 584 00:48:08,960 --> 00:48:13,360 to use the power of government to course the rest of us into weird things. 585 00:48:14,280 --> 00:48:16,320 And guess what, when it's all over, we will re emerge as 586 00:48:16,360 --> 00:48:22,159 Americans. We will basically repudiate all that stuff, and we will go on 587 00:48:22,239 --> 00:48:29,599 to a new generation. When Elon Musk finally finishes improving his starships so that 588 00:48:29,679 --> 00:48:32,840 all thirty six engines work, which will probably take five or six launches, 589 00:48:34,079 --> 00:48:37,880 and they'll keep blowing up, and he'll keep trying, we will reduce the 590 00:48:37,920 --> 00:48:42,519 cost of getting into space by such a huge number that Marian children will in 591 00:48:42,599 --> 00:48:46,000 fact have an even money chance of going to the Moon or Mars or an 592 00:48:46,039 --> 00:48:52,840 asteroid. That's the future, that's America. I have every reason to believe. 593 00:48:52,039 --> 00:48:55,199 I think this is in some ways, if you combine foreign danger and 594 00:48:55,400 --> 00:49:00,719 the left at home, this is the most dangerous period since Washington crossed the 595 00:49:00,719 --> 00:49:06,239 Delaware and Christmas Eve. Because the foreign dangers are real. We could lose 596 00:49:06,320 --> 00:49:09,760 to the Chinese and we should not kill ourselves. And we could have idiots 597 00:49:09,760 --> 00:49:14,840 here at home who are totally out of touch with reality but who gained lovers 598 00:49:14,840 --> 00:49:17,480 of power and due to the whole country what they've done to Chicago or to 599 00:49:17,519 --> 00:49:22,039 San Francisco. But I don't think that will happen. I'm willing to gamble 600 00:49:22,159 --> 00:49:28,760 that the American spirit is larger than tyrannies, and it's larger than people who 601 00:49:28,760 --> 00:49:31,559 are nuts. The last question, mister Gingridge, and you've put so much 602 00:49:31,559 --> 00:49:36,119 on the table there that I want to discuss that we would love to between 603 00:49:36,239 --> 00:49:38,599 space, which is one of my absolute loves. And I agree with you. 604 00:49:38,639 --> 00:49:42,199 Thank to Musk and once he gets that thing off the pad, without 605 00:49:42,199 --> 00:49:45,039 blown it up. We're going to be great. The perils of Chinese and 606 00:49:45,039 --> 00:49:49,480 the continued ability of America to project power is crucial and critical. The state 607 00:49:49,519 --> 00:49:57,519 of our cities is perilous and needs attention. And the question is reaganesque qualities 608 00:49:57,519 --> 00:50:00,840 that you just described, that American character, that drawing a storytelling, that 609 00:50:00,840 --> 00:50:02,559 sense of easy optimism, that's in our DNA. We want to see it 610 00:50:02,559 --> 00:50:07,039 again. We want to see it in a politician. But today you wrote 611 00:50:07,119 --> 00:50:10,000 on your side Gingridge three sixty, you have a piece about how the culture 612 00:50:10,079 --> 00:50:15,519 is being attempted to be transformed by an elite top down that is teaching American 613 00:50:15,599 --> 00:50:17,760 telling them things that we do not believe, things that we do not want, 614 00:50:17,760 --> 00:50:21,960 but that they insist because it is their religion that we should have and 615 00:50:22,000 --> 00:50:23,519 that we should want. And you tie this to the indictments of Trump. 616 00:50:23,880 --> 00:50:28,480 Now, I'll let people go to the site at Ingridge three sixty and see 617 00:50:28,480 --> 00:50:30,800 exactly how you weave them together. But I want to end with this because 618 00:50:30,840 --> 00:50:35,679 it does bring us to the next election. You said that the acts, 619 00:50:35,760 --> 00:50:40,679 the indictments are an active cultural war against the man the elite minority fears most. 620 00:50:43,519 --> 00:50:51,039 Why is it because of his persuasive power or of his loud, outsized 621 00:50:51,159 --> 00:50:54,480 character, because he could win and do things which some of us are doubtful 622 00:50:54,480 --> 00:51:00,400 for. It seems that they actually want him because the having trouble the election 623 00:51:00,440 --> 00:51:04,719 pretty much guarantees a Democratic victory, and it means that it relegates all the 624 00:51:04,760 --> 00:51:09,400 Republicans to magaheads who can be dismissed by the middle So why does the elite 625 00:51:09,440 --> 00:51:13,639 minority fear him? And we'll leave it at that for our last question, 626 00:51:14,519 --> 00:51:20,039 Well, because they watched him for four years. Behave is the most I 627 00:51:20,039 --> 00:51:25,199 think, the most effective anti left politician in my lifetime, even more than 628 00:51:24,880 --> 00:51:34,239 Reagan was brilliant in defeating the Soviet Empire and relaunching the American economy and renewing 629 00:51:34,280 --> 00:51:38,760 belief in American culture. He had an enormous positive impact. But Reagan's natural 630 00:51:38,760 --> 00:51:44,199 instinct was not to tear apart the left, and the result was after he 631 00:51:44,320 --> 00:51:49,280 departed, the left reasserted itself, starting with forcing George HW. Bush to 632 00:51:49,320 --> 00:51:53,760 give up on taxes and getting worse every day. I think what you have 633 00:51:53,840 --> 00:52:00,719 with Trump is a queen's businessman who figured out that no matter how richie the 634 00:52:00,800 --> 00:52:05,599 Manhattan elites would never accept him, who understood from dealing with Paige sex and 635 00:52:06,119 --> 00:52:12,639 that the media would always savage him, and who decided that he would apply 636 00:52:12,800 --> 00:52:16,519 common sense. And the problem with the Left is if you apply common sense, 637 00:52:16,559 --> 00:52:23,559 they collapse because everything they do is based on a fantasy. I tell 638 00:52:23,599 --> 00:52:28,199 people the left is made up of people who saw The Lion King and thought 639 00:52:28,199 --> 00:52:31,599 it was a documentary, and they believe that the lions and zebras dance and 640 00:52:31,679 --> 00:52:37,159 sing together. And we try to convince them the real world lion zebras and 641 00:52:37,239 --> 00:52:38,599 they say no, no, that can't be true. And then they release 642 00:52:38,760 --> 00:52:44,519 murderers back on the street and carjackers and rapists. They deal with foreign countries 643 00:52:44,559 --> 00:52:47,360 from a position of weakness, and they refuse to require our children to learn 644 00:52:47,480 --> 00:52:52,079 enough to know anything. And so I think that Trump comes along and says 645 00:52:52,159 --> 00:52:58,199 that's all stupid. Well, that's horrifying because it actually cuts through all of 646 00:52:58,199 --> 00:53:00,400 the can It comes through everything you learn it Harvard and Princeton and Yale and 647 00:53:00,480 --> 00:53:06,239 Stanford, and it gets you back to common sense, and common sense destroys 648 00:53:06,320 --> 00:53:09,320 the Left. The book is March to the Majority. It's available now. 649 00:53:09,360 --> 00:53:13,039 You can order your copy on his website. It reduced a price today if 650 00:53:13,039 --> 00:53:15,039 you had there. Gang Ridge three sixty dot com new gang Ridge, thank 651 00:53:15,079 --> 00:53:17,199 you for joining us on the show, and they'd love to have you back 652 00:53:17,199 --> 00:53:21,480 for another six or seven hours of conversation because I think there's a few topics 653 00:53:21,480 --> 00:53:23,960 we could probably have some fun with. Take care that nude. It's a 654 00:53:23,960 --> 00:53:29,239 pleasure to have you at longer than SoundBite length. Well, it's fun. 655 00:53:29,440 --> 00:53:35,239 I enjoyed it. Take care yep, Space I forgot news to space guy, 656 00:53:35,639 --> 00:53:37,639 and that is cool because we need to get out there. And I 657 00:53:37,679 --> 00:53:42,079 know, Peter, this is not one of your things, but the idea 658 00:53:42,199 --> 00:53:45,920 of I keep telling you, James, as long as Elon is paying for 659 00:53:45,000 --> 00:53:50,639 it, I wanted in the private sector. I don't like NASA. Oh 660 00:53:50,119 --> 00:53:52,400 that's fine, you're allowed to do that. I think that's fine. That's 661 00:53:52,400 --> 00:53:59,519 great. Well, just think because of what what was it the election of 662 00:53:59,559 --> 00:54:06,840 the the Republican majority in ninety four that killed Hillory care Okay, well they 663 00:54:06,920 --> 00:54:08,519 got killed before that. That's one of the reasons that they were elected. 664 00:54:08,599 --> 00:54:12,480 Was people right, so angry at the attempt I want to you know, 665 00:54:12,559 --> 00:54:15,119 when it was saying at the beginning that you know, the election of the 666 00:54:15,159 --> 00:54:17,000 ninety four Congress meant that he had to abandon liberalism. I thought, well, 667 00:54:17,440 --> 00:54:22,760 then his second term is all on you, buddy. Thanks an awful 668 00:54:22,840 --> 00:54:27,440 lot. Just imagine what it'd be like negotiating healthcare if Hillory Care had gone 669 00:54:27,480 --> 00:54:31,800 in. Yes, health insurance is bad government, the private say it's broken. 670 00:54:31,880 --> 00:54:36,400 Is what it feels like. Premiums are increasing, deductibles are getting larger, 671 00:54:36,440 --> 00:54:39,119 and claims the niles are becoming more common. The headache of health insurance 672 00:54:39,199 --> 00:54:44,199 is exactly why crowd health was created. It's not health insurance, it's a 673 00:54:44,239 --> 00:54:49,039 better way to pay for healthcare through crowdfunding. Crowd health gives the members freedom 674 00:54:49,079 --> 00:54:52,480 to efficiently and affordably break free of the antiquated insurance system and into a healthcare 675 00:54:52,519 --> 00:54:55,960 option that fits your needs. I'm going right now with you know, some 676 00:54:57,000 --> 00:55:01,199 stuff and some bills, some AARP, all the medicare deformed, the rest 677 00:55:01,199 --> 00:55:06,800 of it. It's just it's needlessly bad. My wife is in the compliance 678 00:55:07,000 --> 00:55:10,039 end of healthcare, and the welterare of regulations and the millions of things that 679 00:55:10,039 --> 00:55:12,800 you have to deal with. It's mattening, and you think, is there's 680 00:55:12,800 --> 00:55:15,880 got to be a better way. Well, insurance companies don't give you the 681 00:55:15,920 --> 00:55:19,519 peace of mind you need do thein't, No crowd Health does. That's why 682 00:55:19,519 --> 00:55:22,719 you're fifty bucks a month. Membership includes the tools and services you need to 683 00:55:22,719 --> 00:55:27,400 get the highest quality healthcare. You get access to telemedicine visits, discount of 684 00:55:27,480 --> 00:55:30,400 prescriptions, and your own personal care advocate. And of course you'll join the 685 00:55:30,559 --> 00:55:34,920 crowd that's the group of members just like you who want to help pay for 686 00:55:34,960 --> 00:55:38,039 each other's unexpected medical events. It's time you opt out or restrictive healthcare insurance 687 00:55:38,079 --> 00:55:43,199 plans and let Crowdhealth help fit your healthcare needs. You can get started at 688 00:55:43,280 --> 00:55:46,159 just fifty dollars per month. You use the code Ricochet to get the healthcare 689 00:55:46,320 --> 00:55:51,960 you deserve. Crowdhealth is not insurance. You can learn more about it at 690 00:55:52,159 --> 00:55:58,840 joincrowdhealth dot com. That's Join crowdhealth dot com, probocode Ricochet and we think 691 00:55:58,840 --> 00:56:01,920 Crowdhealth for sponsoring Ricochet podcast. I gotta get out here in just a second 692 00:56:01,920 --> 00:56:05,480 here, but I have to tell you as rob Wood, meetups are coming 693 00:56:05,559 --> 00:56:07,119 up. That's right, meetups. That's where the people from the site get 694 00:56:07,159 --> 00:56:10,079 together in the real world. Can you believe it? What other website does 695 00:56:10,079 --> 00:56:13,000 that most of the website, you wouldn't hang around it. These people, 696 00:56:13,000 --> 00:56:15,559 you wouldn't want to even meet him, but we love to do it. 697 00:56:15,840 --> 00:56:19,400 On the docket coming up Winston Salem in Portland, Oregon in mid July. 698 00:56:19,639 --> 00:56:22,519 The annual German Fest meet up in Milwaukee will be from September twenty eight to 699 00:56:22,639 --> 00:56:25,880 thirtieth. And there's one coming up in Cookeville, Tennessee, which of course 700 00:56:27,000 --> 00:56:30,280 is named after Charles C. W. Cook. I believe they're going to 701 00:56:30,320 --> 00:56:31,360 give them the keys, you know, the key to the city and the 702 00:56:31,360 --> 00:56:34,679 whole rest of it. That's coming up for labor. They go to ricochet 703 00:56:34,800 --> 00:56:37,679 dot com. Check on the sidebar for the member of meetups, and if 704 00:56:37,719 --> 00:56:39,800 you don't see when in a neighborhood, hey joined Ricochet and starts your own 705 00:56:39,800 --> 00:56:44,320 in the members will come to you and they'll probably bring hot dish. If 706 00:56:44,320 --> 00:56:46,599 it's in Minnesota. On the way out, then, gentlemen, it's going 707 00:56:46,679 --> 00:56:53,199 to be Father's Day. Congratulations, congratulations to all and everybody here is still 708 00:56:53,239 --> 00:56:57,679 married to the mothers of their children. There's something there, isn't it. 709 00:56:58,440 --> 00:57:02,039 How do we manage to do that? Charlie's case, it's only been let's 710 00:57:02,079 --> 00:57:07,079 not let's not get carried away here. He's still in single digits, isn't 711 00:57:07,119 --> 00:57:10,800 he? Yeah? Nine nine years? Oh oh okay, Oh that's impressive. 712 00:57:12,119 --> 00:57:15,719 You've made it through the seven year itch. But it's just like she's 713 00:57:15,719 --> 00:57:21,400 made it through the seven year Exactly exactly did that concept exist or was it 714 00:57:21,559 --> 00:57:23,519 outside of the movie before we had it? Or was it popularized by it 715 00:57:23,519 --> 00:57:27,639 as such? Is that a nineteen fifties thing where people are or men are 716 00:57:27,679 --> 00:57:32,679 actually encouraged to cast their eyes about in a lecherous fashion because it's been seven 717 00:57:32,760 --> 00:57:37,760 years? Seven years is nothing, it seems Yes, it seems nothing to 718 00:57:37,800 --> 00:57:42,159 me that seven? Yeah, how old are your kids? Charlie? Five 719 00:57:42,239 --> 00:57:46,079 and seven? Seven? Would have been a real problem? Yes, wow, 720 00:57:46,679 --> 00:57:50,679 So what are you expecting for Father's Day? All? I wrote a 721 00:57:50,679 --> 00:57:53,159 column about this, and the Father's Day that I remember the most, for 722 00:57:53,239 --> 00:57:57,559 no particular reason, was absolutely banal. But it consisted of my daughter and 723 00:57:57,639 --> 00:57:59,880 I going to a movie and then going out to a restaurant. And the 724 00:58:00,840 --> 00:58:06,760 restaurant was seemingly actually kind of purgatory. It was filled with old people, 725 00:58:06,800 --> 00:58:09,719 It smelled strange, It smelled of mothballs and liniments. Nobody moved very much. 726 00:58:09,719 --> 00:58:13,920 There was no conversation. There's a chain restaurant known for its vivacious atmosphere 727 00:58:13,920 --> 00:58:15,920 and it's great bancaches, and we went to one that we hadn't known before, 728 00:58:16,039 --> 00:58:20,719 gone to before, and it was just off in every way, and 729 00:58:20,760 --> 00:58:23,159 it felt strange. This is a place where they bring the coffee pot and 730 00:58:23,199 --> 00:58:27,079 they set it down and they don't take it away except to refill it. 731 00:58:27,199 --> 00:58:30,760 Bottomless coffee, infinite coffee. But here the waitress yanked the pot away as 732 00:58:30,760 --> 00:58:34,159 soon as she poured. Something was wrong about this place. And we left. 733 00:58:34,199 --> 00:58:37,719 We slunk out when backs were turned, and went to another in this 734 00:58:37,800 --> 00:58:42,039 chain and had a happy day. And it was a ordinary day. And 735 00:58:42,199 --> 00:58:45,199 I remember it just because I loved my daughter and I love the time that 736 00:58:45,199 --> 00:58:49,639 we spent together and we'd seen it Picks our movie and cried and a long 737 00:58:49,679 --> 00:58:52,760 time ago, too long ago, but I know that if I asked her 738 00:58:52,800 --> 00:58:54,519 tomorrow in a text, do you remember that time we went to the movie 739 00:58:54,519 --> 00:58:58,960 and then we went to the Perkins that was weird? She'd say yeah, 740 00:58:59,159 --> 00:59:04,400 because she remembered too. And so things like that, the father's days where 741 00:59:05,079 --> 00:59:08,280 you can actually remember what your child remember because you know they remember too. 742 00:59:08,440 --> 00:59:13,400 So what you're saying is that we should all hope for at least one rotten 743 00:59:13,480 --> 00:59:16,119 Father's Day, because that was more memorable than the good time. It wasn't 744 00:59:16,159 --> 00:59:20,760 rotten at all. It wasn't rotten at all. I always and I don't 745 00:59:20,760 --> 00:59:24,480 know why it came to mind, except that the usual parade of ties and 746 00:59:24,880 --> 00:59:29,239 obligatory things and barbecue tools and the rest of it, and all the other 747 00:59:29,280 --> 00:59:32,760 cliches is not what fathers want. What fathers want if they're smart. I 748 00:59:32,840 --> 00:59:38,519 have already received from middle son, who's in medical school in the middle of 749 00:59:38,519 --> 00:59:45,360 the country, a pound of coffee beans that have been soaked in whiskey. 750 00:59:45,079 --> 00:59:50,840 Now, on the one hand, I'm moved because he's combining coffee and whiskey, 751 00:59:50,920 --> 00:59:53,079 which would be, I suppose, my two favorite beverages. On the 752 00:59:53,159 --> 00:59:59,280 other hand, I am slightly dreading having to drink some of this stuff and 753 00:59:59,400 --> 01:00:01,920 tell him how how wonderful it is. That's that's the way my father's day 754 01:00:01,960 --> 01:00:07,119 is shaping up. Yeah, yeah, you have said it to me. 755 01:00:07,159 --> 01:00:09,719 I'll write you a glowing review that you can you can use in five stars. 756 01:00:10,199 --> 01:00:13,920 In my stead, there shouldn't be And I hate to say this, 757 01:00:13,960 --> 01:00:15,920 but there's no such thing as whiskey flavored coffee. Coffee is a flavor in 758 01:00:15,960 --> 01:00:20,119 and of itself, so coffee should not be flavored. If you're drinking flavored 759 01:00:20,159 --> 01:00:22,639 coffee, please stop drinking coffee and wasting it for the rest of us and 760 01:00:22,239 --> 01:00:27,960 choking coffee flavored whiskey, which you know, and whiskey is a flavor that 761 01:00:28,000 --> 01:00:30,079 ought not to be adulterated, either either with cinnamon or hunting or any of 762 01:00:30,079 --> 01:00:34,039 these things. Whiskey is whiskey with an E or not. It is not 763 01:00:34,079 --> 01:00:37,400 to be It is not to be tampered or diluted or well diluted. Yes, 764 01:00:37,440 --> 01:00:39,159 with the ice that opens it up and lets it breathe. Speaking of 765 01:00:39,239 --> 01:00:44,920 letting it breathe, we're going to let this show decant while Charlie DeCamps because 766 01:00:44,960 --> 01:00:46,400 he's got to go. Peter has to go. I have to do some 767 01:00:46,400 --> 01:00:50,840 stuff. But it's been a lot of fun spending time with you folks. 768 01:00:50,960 --> 01:00:53,719 As ever. Go to Ricochet right now, Oh no, stop, no, 769 01:00:53,800 --> 01:00:58,039 what am I thinking? Go to Apple Tunes give us those five stars. 770 01:00:58,039 --> 01:01:00,119 How are we going to live without? How we would we do a 771 01:01:00,159 --> 01:01:04,280 podcast without mentioning it? And go to crowd Health as well, because supporting 772 01:01:04,280 --> 01:01:06,719 them helps us. Charles, thanks for sitting in for Rob today, Peter. 773 01:01:06,719 --> 01:01:09,000 Always a pleasure, and we'll see everybody in the comments. Add Ricochet 774 01:01:09,039 --> 01:01:15,360 four point zero. Happy Father's Day, boys, Happy Father's Day. Ricochet. 775 01:01:19,000 --> 01:01:20,000 Join the conversation