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I'd like to talk a little bit
about toilet seats. Ask not what your

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country can do for you, what
you can do for your country. Read

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my lips. Today, I am
directing our House Committee to open a formal

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impeachment inquirers to President Joe By.
Welcome to the Rick Shaye Podcast over six

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hundred and fifty eight. I'm Rob
Long, joined by Peter Robinson. Our

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guest today is the great Andy McCarthy. I agree, let's have ourselves podcast

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you'll never get bored with when we
never get born. Hello, and welcome

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to the Rickshay Podcast. This is
episode number six hundred fifty eight, which

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unbelieving, unbelievable. You're just making
that up. You are cheating, making

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it up. I don't know if
I'm making it up, but I'm certainly

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reading it. I am Rob Long, coming to New York City and with

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me as pretty much as usual,
but for at least five hundred consistent consistent

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of eight is Peter Robinson in Palo
Out to Peter, how are you.

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I'm fine. I'm fine. I
was a little better until I heard the

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number six hundred and fifty eight,
eight one per week. Yeah, that

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implies that we've been at this for
a while. Yeah, you'd think that

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we'd be rich, but no such
luck. We are usually joined by James

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Lilacs, who sort of just runs
the show here. He's off this week,

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which means, unfortunately, I am
gonna do that stuff. I'm already

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sure that I'm going to be bad
at him. And we have a guest

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today, an old friend, one
of you know, Look, can we

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just get this out now so we
don't have to get out when he's here?

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Sure? Really one of the great
American writers, Andy McCarthy. Wait,

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I'm sorry, I just had a
a I just had kind of a

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brain aneurysm. Yes you did.
You're confusing Andy McCarthy Andy Ferguson exactly because

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I kept thinking Andy Ferguson, who
is a great writer. I mean,

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Andy McCarthy's a great writer too.
But I was just for summer. I

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don't know why I did that.
That's that's not a good sign. I

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don't know I can I could probably
mentally deteriorate even more and still be more

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mentally alert than the This is current
and perhaps next president United States. This

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is Joe Biden's America after all,
right, right, Actually, come to

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think of it, come to think
of it, I hope he gets re

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elected because you know, the benefit
of Joe Biden for you and me,

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Rob, he gives us cover.
That's true. That's what Jeff Bush said

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that on a podcast we had him
on just a while ago. He said,

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like, she's like, I'm sixty
seven years old. I go to

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Washing DC, and I'm like,
I'm like a young guy exactly like that.

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All right, So, so Andy
McCarthy, we have a lot to

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talk about because apparently there's been some
indictments in the news. But meanwhile,

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before we get going, and of
course we want to thank our sponsors today

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Zibiotics and Shop if I will get
to those later. You have a topic

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you want to talk. Yes,
I do have a topic I want to

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discuss, and I want to discuss
a raise. I should say, yeah,

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I would like to except nicely put
nicely put. You know where this

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is going. There are some who
stick up for the defenseless. I stick

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up for the unmentionable. I rise, mister Chairman, to speak to speak

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in praise of toilet seats. And
here is why we had to replace one.

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Here. I live in an older
house and the toilet seat cracked and

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we went to the hardware store and
bought a replacement, cheap replacement, just

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a typical toilet seat. And do
you know what has happened? Do you

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know what the latest marvel of free
markets? It is now standard, even

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on a cheap, cheap toilet seat, that they lower themselves slowly somehow or

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other some engineers somewhere, they don't
slam down anymore. And so I've sort

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of been noticing this in restrooms across
America. This is capitalism, as Milton

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Friedman used to teach us, is
the benefit of living in a free market

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society is the hundreds and thousands and
the compounding of small improvements that make our

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lives just a little bit better.
And I raised five children, three of

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the males, and the slamming of
toilet seats used to be one of the

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banes of my existence. Now the
kids are older, they're but they'll be

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back for Christmas, and this time
there will be no slamming. And so,

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mister Chairman, in honor of Milton
Friedman of two hundred years, is

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a mostly free market, I bring
to your attention toilet seats. I'm done,

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that's right, Although I have to
say it took him a while,

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right, I mean that as as
I don't really mean that as a kind

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of crism of capitalism, but it
does seem to me that every now and

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then, I mean, we all
notice this every now and then. I

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mean there's an old joke, right, two economists were walking down the street

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and one of them looks down and
says, hey, look, there's a

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twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk,
and the other doesn't even look down and

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says, can't be someone would have
picked it up by now, right,

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right, And so sometimes you're like
thinking, like, you know, I

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bet you they were like fifty people, maybe a hundred people. I'm just

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being conservative estimate here. Who before
the guy invented the toilet seat that doesn't

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slam, But you know what,
we need me a toilet he doesn't slam.

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That's what I should do. I
should do that. Well. But

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you know what, if there was
any someone's got to have tried it already.

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And I think it's not just capitalism, but it's a certain kind of

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entrepreneurial risk taker that says, I
even if they did it, they did

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it wrong, and I can do
it better. You know, Sometimes,

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like you notice that there's a business
somewhere you didn't even know there was a

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business there. I mean, you
know, you look at Starbucks, right,

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there's no reason why. At no
point did anybody really say, you

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know, I just I drink this
stuff, but I don't like it.

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There should be a coffee shop on
every corner in the America. Nobody ever

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said that. No one ever said
that, And yet he just made a

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better cup of coffee and charged you
more for it, right, I mean,

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like I'm so old. I remember
when the best cup of coffee you

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could get on the road was that
McDonald's right, Right. I would go

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into the office in the morning at
my first job, and I would have

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a I would have gone through the
drive through to get a big, big

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thing in McDonald's coffee. People with
the oh Man McDonald's coffee. I love

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that coffee. And that was before
Starbucks supposed so anyway. The other example

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Paul Romer, the economist Paul Romer, whom I knew, We were friends

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when he was here at Stanford.
He's gone off to I think he was

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the chief economist at the World Bank. He's a big time economist. And

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the insight that made him famous was
that there was all was I'm putting it

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very crudely. He put it mathematically
as best I understood it. What it

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came down to was this, there
was always room for innovation. All was

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room for innovation. And the great
example of that. This isn't Paul's example,

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but this is my example. Wheels
have existed for what five thousand years,

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and suitcases have existed since at least
the middle of the nineteenth century.

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Sure, but it wasn't until sometimes
I'm in the nineteen eighties when somebody said,

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wait, wheels, suitcases, wheels
suitcases. I know, I'll put

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wheels on suitcases any day. Everybody's
life better all all of a sudden.

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Okay, that's a very good point, because it did, I think.

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But then you had but then someone
now you're going to find the dark cloud

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in the silver inside. But even
that was half done. Somebody put wheels,

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two wheels, two sets of wheels
on one side of the suitcase so

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you can kind of lean it and
drag it with the wheels. And then

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someone else said, wait a minute, we're gonna put two on, we

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might as well put four on.
And that made airports so much more pleasant,

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yes, for everyone. So so
I don't know what. I guess

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What I mean is that there's like
what I guess what that's what urban developers

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or urban theorists call in fill.
Right, There's there's always this idea that

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you're gonna you gotta go out and
find something on the edge, right,

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move out of the city to the
suburbs, and move out of the suburbs

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with the excerbs, keep moving out. And then there's people say, wall,

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wait a minute, you could do
infill by making the city itself nicer.

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There's opportunities where we don't look for
opportunities. So I guess that what

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I that's what I would say about
that your your your ode to capitalism.

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I would say I would add to
it, only you have to have it

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also an ode to a society that
rewards and encourages risk. Yes, you

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used to be an all statistic.
I know we have to get run here,

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but I used to be a statistic
about the when when Forbes is a

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real magazine? The Forbes four hundred
four was four hundred right was? I

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think it was fo Yeah, so
the four hundred richious people in America,

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and I think it's Malcolm Forbes Junior, who I once heard say that the

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best thing about that list to him
was that thirty percent every year of the

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names were new turned over exactly,
and that thirty percent weren't there anymore.

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And he said, that's how you
can She said, you will know that

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we'll have a really healthy system when
it's eighty twenty. Right, Well,

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it's been a nuffler wonderful podcasts.
Boy, we really do need James to

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keep it moving, so we do. We have Andy McCarthy coming meanwhile,

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before we go, before we jump
to him, a couple of non Andy

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McCarthy ish topics. Mitt Romney retiring, and there's a whole lot of speculation

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about that. I'm like, well, he could do this, that and

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the other. But I mean,
I take him at his word. He

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is seventy six, he is rich, he's clearly out of step with a

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Republican Party. He doesn't really want
to run again and then be as senator

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when he's eighty two. I think
every single seventy six year old in government

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should follow Mitt Romney into a splendid
and peaceful retirement. I will also say

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this, I look like bitt Romney
at seventy six when I'm seventy six.

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I mean I mean, I don't
know. I mean, I'm sitting here

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drinking a cup of coffee and I'm
going to have a couple of glasses of

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wine tonight, and I'm thinking,
like, Bam, maybe maybe maybe the

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Mormon's got something. The Mormons have
a lot, I think. Okay,

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Now, am I allowed to sound
peevish about Mitt Romney? Sure? Because

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I read the profile in The Atlantic, which apparently is the sort of was

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his teaser article about a biography of
him that's going to be coming out next

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year, written by McKay Coppins.
McKay coppins make Kay Coppins, I'm not

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sure how he pronounces his first name. Beautifully written, and he said that

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he and Mitt Romney have been spending
time together for two years. And here's

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what emerges. Mitt Romney has spent
two years telling McKay Coppins how he Mitt

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Romney is a far better human being
than the ninety nine other members of the

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United States Senate. It is so
sanctimonious that it just sort of took my

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breath away when you recall, as
Michael Brendan Doherty recalled on National Review the

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other day, that Mitt Romney,
for reasons of pure opportunism, became pro

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choice when he ran for governor of
Massachusetts, and then became pro life when

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he ran for president of the United
States. What I recall, because this

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irked me in particular given my early
jobs in my life in the White House,

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was that when he ran for Senator, he lost that election, But

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before he ran for governor, he
ran for the Senate in Massachusetts, and

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he couldn't say enough bad things about
Reagan and Bush. I'm not Reagan and

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I'm not Bush, he said in
a debate with Teddy Kennedy. And then,

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of course when he was running for
president, he couldn't say enough good

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things about Ronald Reagan and George Bush. None of this makes Mitt Romney a

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bad man. He has a wonderful
family who was a huge success in business.

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What it makes him is a working
politician and the idea that he somehow

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achieved some kind of purity. Of
course, I can understand his position on

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Trump, but the way in this
one, this one profile, he dissed

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his fellow members of the Senate working
politicians, including Mitch McConnell. You could

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put Mitch McConnell's accomplishments in the Senate
again, Mitt Romney partly, I think

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because he adopted this stance of such
sanctimoniousness. Mitt Romney has accomplished nothing in

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the United States Senate, and Mitch
McConnell has accomplishment after accomplishment after accomplishment,

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including the current composition of the Supreme
Court. So I it was time for

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that good and remarkable man to go
home some time ago in my humble opinion.

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Now, I don't like sounding peevish, but real good, thank you.

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I don't disagree with any of that. I will only say this that

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you don't. I thought, well, no, no, I mean I

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defend toilet seats. I thought you
would defend Romney. I think that the

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general decline in I think that often
people accurately diagnose a problem or deignos a

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disease that they themselves have. His
argument about the Republican Party now that it

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doesn't really stand for much and doesn't
really do anything, and it's kind of

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fake and a lot of you know, kabuky kind of outrage, I think

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it's absolutely true. I mean,
to me, the the symbol of the

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Republican Party today is Josh Holly m
shaking his fist in solidarity with the protesters

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on January sixth, on his way
into the Senate and then running like a

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terrified, terrified cat. Uh you
know an hour later. That to me

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is emblematic of the Republican Party.
A lot of talk, a lot of

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talk, and no action or no
no conviction. Put it that way.

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So I think he's right. I'm
not. I'm not comparing them and contrasting

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them negatively to the Democratic Party,
which is sort of uh specialized in this

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kind of behavior. For slugs.
I've been alive. I'm just everything seems

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to be reverting to the to the
really the lowest common denominator. But that

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said, the one product that Mitt
Romney doesn't need that I need and enjoy

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is zebiotics, because, let's face
it, after a night when you had

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a couple glasses of wine, is
it's Friday night. I'm gonna a couple

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glasses of wine. I don't bounce
back the next day like I used to.

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I apparently even have memory trouble.
I have to make a choice.

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Are you can have a great night
or a great next day? That is

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until I found zbiotics. Zbiotics pre
alcohol probiotic is the world's first genetically engineered

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probiotic It was invented by PhD scientists
to tackle rough mornings after drinking. And

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here's how it works. When you
drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic

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We thank zebiotics for sponsoring the Ricochet
podcast and for reminding me when I'm

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00:17:36,079 --> 00:17:40,759
gonna have to do at six o'clock
tonight. I should especially be so proud

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00:17:40,759 --> 00:17:45,680
of that bad but I am our
next guests, our only guest today.

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Thank god, Andy McCarthy. We've
known Andy long time. He's an old

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00:17:48,920 --> 00:17:52,559
friend of this podcast. He's a
senior fellow at the National Review Institute NRI,

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00:17:52,960 --> 00:17:57,319
contributing editor there as well as Fox
News. He is here to explain

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00:17:57,839 --> 00:18:03,759
all the latest stuff going on in
uh in politics and criminal law, which,

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00:18:03,799 --> 00:18:11,319
by the way, are now the
same thing. Andy, welcome,

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00:18:11,039 --> 00:18:14,720
Where are you wait? You're downstairs
in your own house, aren't you.

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I am, And I am in
Bucolic New Jersey. That's right. And

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you've got but you're doing a kind
of Oprah Winfrey stand up Mike there.

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Oh yeah. I can never make
this work, and I keep like knocking

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00:18:26,400 --> 00:18:30,200
it over whenever I try to put
it someplace because I'm just I'm a mess.

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Sorry, guys, I need the
zbiotic. That's other two. That's

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clearly the problem here. Okay,
so we gotta bunch of things to talk

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about, but let's first talk about
impeachment. So when when when Democrats impeach

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President Trump? Everybody said, Nancy
Pelosi said, did it? Everybody said,

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you didn't even have a vote.
You didn't even have a vote.

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You just open the inquiry, didn't
have a vote. She said, I

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don't need a vote. And then
when Kevin McCarthy opened impeachment inquiry, some

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people said, you didn't even have
a vote. Why don't you have a

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vote, and he said, I
don't need a vote. Who's right,

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the Speaker of the House, either
one or the people complaining either one.

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Well, it really depends up on
what they want to accomplish. If you

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want to actually have an impeachment committee
where you not only designated under the House

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rules, but importantly you establish the
jurisdiction for the committee and the scope of

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what it's allowed to investigate and what
a conserved subpoena is on, then you

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need a vote. And in point
of fact, when Nancy Pelosi did not

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have a vote in twenty nineteen,
the Trump administrator, the people like Kevin

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McCarthy not only went nuts over that
the Trump Justice Department, under a turn,

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General Barr ended up issuing Office of
Legal Counsel guidance to say that the

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probe, as long as it wasn't
supported by a vote in Congress, was

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illegitimate and therefore the administration didn't need
to comply with its subpoenas. Now,

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you know, you have to remember, I think always with impeachment that it's

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a political process, not a legal
one. So for example, the OLC

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in the Trump Justice Department could take
that position, but when the Democrat controlled

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House impeach Trump, the second article
of impeachment was for failure to comply with

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the subpoenas. The complication there is
that about six or seven weeks after Pelosi

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unilaterally authorized the inquiry without a vote, they took a vote. So eventually

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they did take a vote. But
I do think that it was that this

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move to have an impeachment inquiry or
to actually change the name on the door,

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because it's basically the same inquiry it
was the day before, but now

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they're going to call it an impeachment
inquiry. I really think it's an unforced

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error because you know, a week
ago, if Chairman Jamie Comber and the

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Oversight Committee issued a subpoena to some
component of the Biden administration and they didn't

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comply with the subpoena. That would
have been a lawful Oversight Committee subpoena,

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and the defiance of it could be
an article of impeachment down the road.

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Now, by having this this exercise
where you call it an impeachment inquiry but

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you don't vote for it, they're
giving the Biden administration the out to claim

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that the that the investigation is not
legitimate and just given the reason not to

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comply. Kim Strassell has it exactly
backwards in Today's Wall Street Journal. Kim

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said, an effect would have been
better to have a vote yes, but

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the Speaker doesn't have the votes.
He only has a majority of four,

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and they're going to be more than
four Republicans who get queasy about this.

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But still designating this an impeachment inquiry
gives Comber greater legal I beg your pardon.

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I can't quote her, but the
idea was that it gives Comber's subpoenas

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greater weight, and that's just wrong. I think it gives them greater political

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weight, Peter. It doesn't give
them greater legal weight. Now, now

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let's just put aside the trappings of
an impeachment inquiry. Today, just like

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last week, the Oversight Committee still
the Oversight Committee. Same with Ways and

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Means, same with the Justice Department. They have the same legal jurisdiction to

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issue subpoena as they did. You
know, they do now that they did

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before there was a designated labeled impeachment
inquiry. So I wouldn't want to suggest

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that this is a big deal because
they have sweeping jurisdiction in those committees.

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Yeah, and I think what Kim
is. The point that Kim is making,

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I think is the same point I
heard. Well, I've heard a

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number of people say that we you
know, now we have some up in

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our subpoenas. It's what they're saying
is publicly, you look worse if you

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defy something that's called an impeachment inquiry
subpoena. Maybe that's true. On the

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other hand, I was I was
on a program sometime today right before or

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right after Nancy Mace, who's on
the Overside Committee, and she said,

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you know, now that we're now
that we're an impeachment committee, our subpoenas

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have broader jurisdiction and we can really
go after this stuff. And I don't

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see that at all. I just
don't think that's true. By the way,

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let the record show I start talking
this way whenever you're on, Andy,

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let the records show that although it's
not quite twelve thirty back east in

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New Jersey, this very day,
Counselor McCarthy has already appeared on so many

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shows that you can't remember quite when, or quite what, or who the

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host was, or who the other
guests were. It's all a jumble already.

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And the man hasn't even had lunch
yet. Hey, so, Andy,

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what further on impeachment? Then we
have to get to Trump, because

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we just have to. I'm afraid
it's sort of mandatory. We are of

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an age, the three of us, and I remember being taught when I

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was a kid about the impeachment of
Andrew Johnson just after the Civil War.

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I don't remember whether any teacher ever
used these words, but I remember having

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00:24:48,799 --> 00:24:52,160
the feeling that that would never happen
again, that it was part of the

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upheaval of the Civil War. It
was an extraordinary and singular moment in the

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life of the nation. Impeachment proceedings
began against Richard Nixon. And this again

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I don't remember, I remember watching
it, and but what I remember,

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what stands out in my mind is
how shocked my parents were that a president

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of the United States was being impeached. It was just in our little home

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in Vestal, New York, upstate
New York, ordinary Middle America. It

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00:25:26,119 --> 00:25:33,960
was a shocking event. And now
we've had Bill Clinton, Donald Trump twice,

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Joe Biden. Is it seems to
me, I mean, I just

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00:25:41,920 --> 00:25:47,359
want to hear is the whole procedure? Clearly this overuses the procedure? But

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is it also debasing the Constitution?
Is it debasing the country itself? Something

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00:25:52,359 --> 00:25:57,039
just feels badly, badly wrong,
doesn't it. Yeah, I mean it's

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00:25:57,160 --> 00:26:02,680
debasing something that we're not be in
the Constitution. If it weren't very important,

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00:26:02,720 --> 00:26:08,640
the Madison thought that the impeachment clause
was indispensable in terms of the ability

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of Congress to respond to potential ruinous
abuse of power by this very powerful executive

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branch that they were creating. And
look, I have the same memory that

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you do. I remember, you
know, running home from someplace I'd probably

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00:26:26,039 --> 00:26:30,039
school. I don't maybe it was
the summertime. But I remember running home

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to watch Alexander Butterfield testify and shocked
the country by saying that Nixon had these

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00:26:34,759 --> 00:26:41,160
tapes. So but but I actually
think you guys, both of you,

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00:26:41,319 --> 00:26:48,640
in your coming at this your own
way, are suited to no no from

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00:26:48,640 --> 00:26:52,720
your own experience. I mean,
but I think you're better suited to address

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00:26:52,759 --> 00:26:56,960
this than I am, because my
belief, for what it's worth, is

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that this media age that we are
in has changed a lot of things,

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00:27:03,759 --> 00:27:07,240
and impeachment is just one of them. Like, for example, Peter,

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00:27:07,680 --> 00:27:17,359
I'm sure that speeches get written differently
today than they used to, and Rob,

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00:27:17,480 --> 00:27:23,920
just like the messaging that goes into
conveying a political campaign or initiative or

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00:27:23,960 --> 00:27:29,279
whatever is vastly different today than it
used to. And what I'm afraid of

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00:27:29,720 --> 00:27:34,519
is that impeachment, having been now
cheapened into something kind of like censure,

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00:27:36,880 --> 00:27:41,160
is just another arsenal in our political
theater. I mean, everybody knows that

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00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:45,720
Biden is never ever going to be
impeached, and in point of fact,

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00:27:45,960 --> 00:27:48,599
the Republicans don't want to impeach them
because that we get President Harris. So

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00:27:48,839 --> 00:27:53,000
you know, even if they even
if they could they wouldn't. But this

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00:27:53,119 --> 00:28:02,279
just seems to be a media strategy
driven by mainly the pro Trump Republicans in

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00:28:02,319 --> 00:28:07,759
the House because they and Trump would
like to have a parallel political trial proceeding

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00:28:07,839 --> 00:28:15,599
going on the Capitol Hill while Trump
is undergoing all these other, you know,

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00:28:15,759 --> 00:28:19,240
criminal trials in the justice system.
I get all, but come in

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00:28:19,359 --> 00:28:22,200
robbed Well, no, I don't
want to invite him to come in because

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00:28:22,200 --> 00:28:26,960
he always disagrees with me. But
oh no, the politics of that I

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00:28:26,079 --> 00:28:30,880
get, and I and it's it's
sort of cheap and trod to me,

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00:28:30,960 --> 00:28:33,480
but it does. Yeah, that
seems to be what the moment demands.

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00:28:33,519 --> 00:28:38,680
And maybe okay, but within this
there is I think I'm putting this to

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00:28:38,680 --> 00:28:45,279
you as a question something substantive and
important taking place. And I who thought

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00:28:45,599 --> 00:28:51,200
watching him on Fox News that James
Comer, the chairman of the committee that's

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00:28:51,240 --> 00:28:57,839
conducting these investigations. I thought at
first he was a pure showman. But

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00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:08,160
that committee has uncovered important and real
information about Hunter Biden, his father's participating

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00:29:08,200 --> 00:29:15,079
in telephone calls, that the barisma
that Joe Biden had tried to the White

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00:29:15,079 --> 00:29:19,519
House had tried to portray Joe Biden's
participant as Vice President, his participation in

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00:29:19,559 --> 00:29:25,359
the effort to get the prosecutor in
Ukraine removed. They were saying all the

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00:29:25,400 --> 00:29:30,599
Europeans wanted that because the prosecutor himself
was back crooked. Turns out that's just

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00:29:30,759 --> 00:29:33,400
not so. The other the Europeans
didn't, they weren't involved, all right,

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00:29:34,279 --> 00:29:40,440
All of this has come out of
sort of old fashioned, almost Peter

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00:29:40,640 --> 00:29:48,400
Rodinho style, good staff work,
tough chairman, a certain relent relentlessness.

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00:29:48,440 --> 00:29:53,599
So there is something honorable and important
taking place? Or or is it?

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00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:57,640
Am I wrong about that? No? I think you're not only right,

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00:29:59,200 --> 00:30:02,759
I think it's all so the only
game in town. Uh, you know,

359
00:30:02,880 --> 00:30:06,720
too much of what we now want
in the way of political accountability has

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00:30:06,799 --> 00:30:12,279
been uh, basically delegated to the
prosecutors at this point. And I think

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00:30:12,319 --> 00:30:18,319
the Framers would have thought it was
laughable that prosecutors, who are executive branch

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00:30:18,400 --> 00:30:25,400
subordinate officials could could possibly keep the
executive branch in check, and the president

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00:30:25,559 --> 00:30:34,400
in particular. So in this particular
instance, we have a prosecutor for the

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00:30:34,400 --> 00:30:40,960
Biden Justice Department because they wouldn't get
a real special counsel, a real independent

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00:30:41,039 --> 00:30:44,640
person, and he dawdled for the
five years that he's had this case,

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00:30:47,319 --> 00:30:52,200
not only Hunter, but the but
the broader family corruption investigation and all of

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00:30:52,200 --> 00:30:56,119
the a lot of the stuff that
you just alluded to, Peter, that

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00:30:56,240 --> 00:31:00,480
happened in twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, in twenty sixteen, those are the

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00:31:00,519 --> 00:31:04,759
most important years because those were the
years that Joe Biden was vice president and

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00:31:04,839 --> 00:31:10,559
when they were trading on his influence
as a criminal justice batter. All that

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00:31:10,640 --> 00:31:17,480
stuff is gone now because he waited. Weiss waited until the statute of limitations

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00:31:17,519 --> 00:31:19,960
has run, and so far as
we saw yesterday, the only thing he's

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00:31:21,000 --> 00:31:26,200
brought is the one thing he could
bring that Joe Biden is not implicated in

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00:31:26,279 --> 00:31:32,079
Hunter's bad behavior. So that's the
gun charge. Yeah, but I think

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00:31:32,160 --> 00:31:34,839
that his job. He's called a
prosecutor. But basically his job here is

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00:31:34,880 --> 00:31:40,359
to disappear the case against the president. And if you don't, if Comber

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00:31:40,440 --> 00:31:42,359
doesn't make the case, then no
one's making it. This is one of

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00:31:42,400 --> 00:31:47,359
those I have a question that's an
anti question. And here's why it's an

379
00:31:47,359 --> 00:31:52,920
anti question. You grew up in
New Jersey. You know something about politics

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00:31:52,960 --> 00:31:57,000
where elbows get thrown. I keep
trying to talk you into running for governor,

381
00:31:57,039 --> 00:32:00,880
and I still think it's not too
late. But that's a never matter.

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00:32:00,559 --> 00:32:08,119
You know, politics in the raw. You were the United States Attorney

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00:32:08,160 --> 00:32:14,519
in New York, in Manhattan.
You tried terrorists, You tried people who

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00:32:14,519 --> 00:32:19,440
wanted to blow us, blow up
Americans and kill SI. You have seen

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00:32:19,920 --> 00:32:29,279
life, politics and the legal system
in the raw. Does what has taken

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00:32:29,319 --> 00:32:32,119
place in the Dubiden Justice Department?
Excuse me? The other piece I want

387
00:32:32,160 --> 00:32:38,039
to give background two is that a
number of points over the years, I

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00:32:38,079 --> 00:32:44,960
have seen even Andy McCarthy, not
a cynic but a realist. I have

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00:32:45,039 --> 00:32:51,559
seen even Andy McCarthy shocked. You
knew or I don't know that you knew

390
00:32:51,599 --> 00:32:54,000
him deeply personally, but you knew
Jim Comey, for example. And there

391
00:32:54,079 --> 00:32:58,720
was a moment when Jim Comey was
first coming to our attention. What is

392
00:32:58,759 --> 00:33:00,519
that six or seven years ago now
when you said, no, no,

393
00:33:00,640 --> 00:33:06,079
I think he's a good guy,
He's an honorable guy. And Jim Comey

394
00:33:06,240 --> 00:33:10,559
shocked you. The behavior of the
FBI shocked you. Is what's happening in

395
00:33:10,599 --> 00:33:16,880
the Biden Department of Justice or what
has happened shocking even to Andy McCarthy or

396
00:33:16,880 --> 00:33:20,119
do you look at that and say, nah, that's the way it happens.

397
00:33:21,680 --> 00:33:23,680
Well, it is the way it
happens, but it's atrocious. I

398
00:33:24,119 --> 00:33:28,400
the only reason I fight on the
word shock, Peter, is I'm beyond

399
00:33:28,440 --> 00:33:32,400
shocking now for some of the reasons
that you've described. And I you know,

400
00:33:32,480 --> 00:33:37,440
look, I've been one hundred and
eighty degrees wrong about some of this

401
00:33:37,519 --> 00:33:43,160
stuff. I mean, I you
know, I when people first suggested to

402
00:33:43,200 --> 00:33:54,319
me that the FBI might have taken
uncorroborated opposition research and basically thrown a caption

403
00:33:54,400 --> 00:33:59,640
on it and brought it to the
FISA Court to get surveillance warrants, I

404
00:33:59,680 --> 00:34:01,519
said, you know, you're gonna
you guys are gonna end up looking like

405
00:34:01,559 --> 00:34:06,359
the tinfoil hat crowd at the end
of this, because what we're going to

406
00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:10,039
learn is that the FBI did what
the FBI always does, which is it

407
00:34:10,079 --> 00:34:14,920
may have taken some opposition research,
but it scrubbed it for the three or

408
00:34:14,920 --> 00:34:17,880
four things it needed to make probable
cause. It would have done its own

409
00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:21,960
investigation on it, and by the
time it got to the FISA court,

410
00:34:22,239 --> 00:34:24,880
it would no longer be a docier. It would be FBI evidence that they

411
00:34:24,920 --> 00:34:30,960
had run down, and it turned
out that they did exactly what I said

412
00:34:30,079 --> 00:34:34,199
could never ever happen. And the
reason I said it could never ever happen

413
00:34:34,320 --> 00:34:38,719
is this came out of an argument
that we had during the Clinton Justice Department

414
00:34:39,079 --> 00:34:44,119
about the thing that became known as
the Wall, where you know, they

415
00:34:44,199 --> 00:34:49,920
put in these procedures where the law
enforcement side couldn't cooperate with the intelligence side,

416
00:34:50,760 --> 00:34:55,559
and I made the argument in house
at the time that that was an

417
00:34:55,599 --> 00:35:02,519
irresponsibly dangerous policy to have. Bec
was if you had a criminal who was

418
00:35:02,599 --> 00:35:07,800
a rational actor, it would be
much easier, or a rogue agent who

419
00:35:07,880 --> 00:35:13,079
was a rational actor, would be
much easier to make up evidence to sustain

420
00:35:13,119 --> 00:35:17,400
a criminal case than to make up
a national security angle and go buy FISA

421
00:35:17,599 --> 00:35:22,920
because there was so many rungs of
you know, supervision and sign off on

422
00:35:23,039 --> 00:35:25,599
PISA that it would it'd be too
easy to get caught. No one would

423
00:35:25,679 --> 00:35:30,719
abuse Fieser that way. And what
happened. They ended up doing precisely what

424
00:35:30,760 --> 00:35:35,400
I said would never ever happen.
So, yeah, I've been you know,

425
00:35:35,400 --> 00:35:37,320
there's a lot of things that have
happened in the last ten years that

426
00:35:37,360 --> 00:35:43,880
are not the Justice Department that I
remember, and I'm not trying to be

427
00:35:44,480 --> 00:35:47,519
so idealistic about it that nothing bad
ever happened in the Justice Apartment. Yeah,

428
00:35:47,679 --> 00:35:51,880
bad things happen. You know,
it's a it's a human institution.

429
00:35:52,400 --> 00:35:59,400
But the politicization of it and the
blatancy of the politicization of it. I

430
00:35:59,400 --> 00:36:05,199
mean, when you when you have
democratic prosecutors indicting Trump four times, and

431
00:36:05,239 --> 00:36:07,800
I'm not here to carry a brief
for Trump. I actually think the moral

432
00:36:07,880 --> 00:36:12,880
Lago case is a pretty strong case
and he should get convicted on it.

433
00:36:13,400 --> 00:36:19,800
But you know, these especially,
this is the Biden Justice Department bringing these

434
00:36:19,840 --> 00:36:27,559
cases, and it's elected progressives who
happen to hold district attorney's offices in states

435
00:36:27,599 --> 00:36:34,039
throughout the country, who are now
incentivized to use their prosecutorial power against their

436
00:36:34,079 --> 00:36:37,320
political enemies. I don't really think
they even care how the cases come out.

437
00:36:37,840 --> 00:36:44,159
I think situate they don't. They're
not using their power to actually it

438
00:36:44,280 --> 00:36:46,320
forced criminal law. I mean,
they got a lot of free time.

439
00:36:46,400 --> 00:36:53,119
These DA's not putting, you know, shoplifters behind ours, right, what

440
00:36:53,119 --> 00:36:57,920
are you gonna do? All the
office supplies, computers and stuff you have

441
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:01,639
to do you have to prosecute somebody? Is civilization distegrates? You really want

442
00:37:01,639 --> 00:37:05,599
to be with Rob Long, He'll
find a way to get a laugh out

443
00:37:05,599 --> 00:37:10,480
of every catastrophe. I got a
question, though, a two questions.

444
00:37:10,480 --> 00:37:19,920
Really. One is just a just
a strategy question. Is it possible that

445
00:37:20,000 --> 00:37:22,119
a few months from now, maybe
six months, maybe a year from now,

446
00:37:22,119 --> 00:37:24,079
that you will be saying, you
know, the best thing that happened

447
00:37:24,119 --> 00:37:31,840
to Joe Biden is that Hunter Biden
was indicted and maybe convicted on that gun

448
00:37:31,920 --> 00:37:40,480
charge. Yeah. So here's here's
my problem by I guess you guess,

449
00:37:40,639 --> 00:37:45,639
well, but it's being that you're
skeptical of my theory. Well, but

450
00:37:45,719 --> 00:37:49,679
I'm skeptical, not as as a
as a political analyst or a lawyer,

451
00:37:49,800 --> 00:37:55,800
no as a human being. What
I try to wrestle with is if this

452
00:37:55,840 --> 00:38:00,920
warm one of one of my sons, that this would never happen, I

453
00:38:00,960 --> 00:38:07,400
would use if I had the power
of pardon, I would never allow one

454
00:38:07,440 --> 00:38:10,719
of my sons to be put through
this ringer. Now. It would be

455
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:15,320
a gross abuse of power, and
the only honorable thing after doing that would

456
00:38:15,360 --> 00:38:22,400
be to resign and step aside.
But I just you know what the best

457
00:38:22,440 --> 00:38:29,199
thing for Joe Biden politically, I
don't you know the fact that he's allowing

458
00:38:29,239 --> 00:38:34,159
his son, at least to this
point to be indicted so that they can

459
00:38:34,199 --> 00:38:37,199
run around and beat their chests and
say, see, we prosecuted the president's

460
00:38:37,199 --> 00:38:40,920
son without fear or favor. I
don't think they can actually make that argument

461
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:50,320
credibly because the stuff that really matters, which is the foreign corruption stuff,

462
00:38:50,360 --> 00:38:54,960
the millions of dollars that came into
the family coffers that has gone unaddressed,

463
00:38:55,000 --> 00:39:00,320
and the prosecutor they assigned to it, to my mind, willfully sabbage todge

464
00:39:00,360 --> 00:39:01,800
the case. So I don't think
they're going to be able to make a

465
00:39:01,880 --> 00:39:07,800
very convincing argument that Biden, you
know, let the Justice Department run independently

466
00:39:07,880 --> 00:39:13,480
and they just prosecuted his son like
he was every like any other defendant,

467
00:39:13,480 --> 00:39:15,519
because it's obviously not true. Yeah, But I guess what I mean is

468
00:39:15,559 --> 00:39:21,760
that here's my theory that he's going
to get indicted for something, right,

469
00:39:21,880 --> 00:39:27,840
and so stonewalling and having Hunter Biden
walked free is is just a bad look,

470
00:39:28,159 --> 00:39:32,000
right, because there's just so much
stuff on him. In the same

471
00:39:32,039 --> 00:39:36,920
way that I kind of think I
could be wrong that the impeaching. Impeaching

472
00:39:37,000 --> 00:39:39,280
Joe Biden kind of helps him in
a way, right, because the whole

473
00:39:39,400 --> 00:39:45,400
argument is you're singling out one family
and one guy, and you're making it

474
00:39:45,519 --> 00:39:51,039
trying to like all these liberals are
attacking Trump and now the conservatives are attacking

475
00:39:51,239 --> 00:39:55,440
Biden. It feels to me like
the bigger mess helps the incumbent. Is

476
00:39:55,480 --> 00:40:00,920
that, Yeah, Well, I
think I think you're you're right on You're

477
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:06,320
right to this extent. When Peter
before was alluding to the Nixon impeachment and

478
00:40:06,440 --> 00:40:10,239
how shocking it was at that point
in time, it was shocking, right,

479
00:40:12,719 --> 00:40:16,760
and therefore the fact that Nixon was
in the crosshairs was very bad for

480
00:40:16,840 --> 00:40:22,320
him, right, if we flash
forward, I think the thing we can

481
00:40:22,360 --> 00:40:25,840
say about the impeachments we've seen,
I want to put the January sixth impeachment

482
00:40:25,840 --> 00:40:30,239
in a different category because it's so
sue generous coming up, you know,

483
00:40:30,239 --> 00:40:35,599
when Trump was virtually out of office, so it's hard to make an assessment

484
00:40:35,599 --> 00:40:38,039
of how that helped or hurt him. I think ultimately we'll be able to

485
00:40:38,079 --> 00:40:42,480
make that assessment is going to hurt
him, But we'll see how that plays

486
00:40:42,480 --> 00:40:46,159
out. But I think it helped
Clinton to be impeached, and it didn't

487
00:40:46,199 --> 00:40:51,039
hurt Trump at all to be impeached
over Ukraine. In fact, the Ukraine

488
00:40:51,599 --> 00:40:55,800
was such a nothing burger that the
Democrats didn't even run on it in twenty

489
00:40:55,920 --> 00:41:00,480
twenty. They barely mentioned it.
So I think there's a lot. There's

490
00:41:00,519 --> 00:41:07,280
a lot to be said for the
idea that there's a certain sympathy factor that

491
00:41:07,280 --> 00:41:10,719
that well maybe it's tribal, I
don't know, but but there's a certain

492
00:41:10,840 --> 00:41:16,920
rally around our guy effect that that
happens here regardless of emeritus. Didn't give

493
00:41:16,920 --> 00:41:22,119
an answer though, Hey, mister
President, how come your son and the

494
00:41:22,239 --> 00:41:24,519
laptop and all of your son seems
to getting away scot free? And then

495
00:41:24,599 --> 00:41:30,000
Mr President says, you're kidding me. He's on trial right now for a

496
00:41:30,039 --> 00:41:32,760
gun charge that could put him in
prison for you know, ten years,

497
00:41:32,760 --> 00:41:36,800
whatever is thirty years some some giant
number. I don't think he's getting on

498
00:41:36,840 --> 00:41:39,440
scott free. Okay, let's you
know, Hey, how come the you

499
00:41:39,480 --> 00:41:43,280
know, you went after Trump for
all this stuff and nobody went after Biden.

500
00:41:43,320 --> 00:41:45,039
Are you kidding me? There's a
house in quiry right, impeachment and

501
00:41:45,079 --> 00:41:50,599
quarry open right now. I mean
in a way, this is kind of

502
00:41:50,599 --> 00:41:53,639
the cesspool that we're in right where
we don't ever we don't talk about things

503
00:41:53,679 --> 00:42:00,559
like trade with you know, Asia
and American defense or the border. We

504
00:42:00,880 --> 00:42:05,280
talk about is I'm going to hire
a guide to put you behind bars,

505
00:42:05,960 --> 00:42:09,000
just like Olivia. I think that's
all right. And he's got the media

506
00:42:09,079 --> 00:42:14,280
at his the wind that is back, which a Republican wouldn't. So those

507
00:42:14,880 --> 00:42:19,639
as you laid them out. Because
I've been watching this stuff closely for a

508
00:42:19,679 --> 00:42:22,599
few years, I wasn't impressed by
the arguments, but I think most people

509
00:42:22,639 --> 00:42:24,360
will be. You know, most
people are not going to be as informed

510
00:42:24,360 --> 00:42:29,719
about this stuff as we are.
They're not going to know all the things

511
00:42:29,760 --> 00:42:35,360
that haven't been prosecuted and have been
left on the table. So the counter

512
00:42:35,480 --> 00:42:39,000
argument seems to me, I'm just
going to mention this, and I may

513
00:42:39,039 --> 00:42:43,800
be wrong, and you can.
Then I'd like to ask a bigger question

514
00:42:43,840 --> 00:42:46,440
of Andy, and I know Rob
is going to push back on the bigger

515
00:42:46,519 --> 00:42:52,440
question anyway. The counter argument me
seems to be that for an ordinary voter,

516
00:42:52,159 --> 00:42:58,840
say, well, Trump's a crook
and Biden used to be able to

517
00:42:59,079 --> 00:43:01,840
I like Biden because at least he
seemed like a decent person. Now he's

518
00:43:01,880 --> 00:43:07,559
a crook too. Yeah. In
other words, it removes one of the

519
00:43:07,599 --> 00:43:12,639
Biden's one of the strongest points in
Biden's favor, which was that he was

520
00:43:12,840 --> 00:43:19,039
he was at least a decent person, and Biden will Biden risks. Biden

521
00:43:19,199 --> 00:43:22,679
not risks. He's going to lose
that anyway. I may be wrong about

522
00:43:22,719 --> 00:43:24,079
that, but that seems to me
that if you've got two dirty candidates,

523
00:43:24,079 --> 00:43:31,159
what's the choice. So here's the
larger question, the case for Trump,

524
00:43:34,119 --> 00:43:40,599
for supporting Trump, and I want
to note that first time around, when

525
00:43:40,599 --> 00:43:46,840
seventeen candidates were running in six years
ago, I guess it was now six

526
00:43:46,880 --> 00:43:51,840
and a half years ago, Donald
Trump was my seventeenth choice. I have

527
00:43:51,960 --> 00:43:54,960
hoped and hoped and hoped that Ron
De Santis would catch fire and replace Trump.

528
00:43:55,079 --> 00:43:59,559
In other words, I'm still a
Republican, I'm still a conservative,

529
00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:05,320
and I'm still casting about for alternatives
to Trump. However, the case for

530
00:44:05,400 --> 00:44:10,480
Trump is coming into focus, and
the case runs as follows. He is

531
00:44:10,519 --> 00:44:17,079
a loudmouth and a braggart. He
showed very bad judgment and worse on January

532
00:44:17,119 --> 00:44:29,079
sixth, But he even he at
his worst engaged in no assault on our

533
00:44:29,119 --> 00:44:37,639
institutions that even begins to equal the
corruption that is taking that the Democrats are

534
00:44:37,679 --> 00:44:45,880
affecting now, when the United States
Department of Justice is obviously corrupt, When

535
00:44:45,880 --> 00:44:52,000
a prosecutor two bit prosecutor in New
York with his case in Atlanta, every

536
00:44:52,000 --> 00:44:59,079
case except the Mara Lego case are
obviously political, how dare they? They

537
00:44:59,079 --> 00:45:06,880
are moving us in this great country
into Banana Republic territory. Now the press,

538
00:45:06,920 --> 00:45:10,400
the press has been totally corrupted.
The press is saying there's no evidence

539
00:45:10,440 --> 00:45:15,559
that Biden. There's better evidence against
Joe Biden today than there ever was in

540
00:45:15,599 --> 00:45:22,559
the Russian Dosier case, the corruption
of the all of this corruption, and

541
00:45:22,840 --> 00:45:28,000
I as an ordinary, and in
the Marilago case, they've got him.

542
00:45:28,119 --> 00:45:32,800
Okay, he broke the law by
sticking a pile of documents in his bathtub.

543
00:45:34,800 --> 00:45:40,199
But here's what Hillary Clinton did.
She put classified material on a private

544
00:45:40,280 --> 00:45:46,599
server. Every person I've talked to
who knows anything about intelligence takes it for

545
00:45:47,199 --> 00:45:54,280
granted that the Chinese, the Russians, and probably the Israelis all broke into

546
00:45:54,400 --> 00:45:59,880
all hacked that server, and all
that information went to foreign intelligence. Don

547
00:46:00,079 --> 00:46:05,440
Trump stuck stuff in a bathtub.
There's no evidence at all that any intel

548
00:46:05,519 --> 00:46:10,440
that he misused ended up in foreign
hands. And furthermore, the Justice Department

549
00:46:10,480 --> 00:46:15,159
didn't need to the raid. They
didn't need to do that. I grant

550
00:46:15,239 --> 00:46:20,400
that it was illegal. They've got
a case, but as a small board

551
00:46:20,440 --> 00:46:24,239
case by comparison with the corruption that
has been taking place in the Democratic side,

552
00:46:25,280 --> 00:46:31,000
and in particular by comparison with Hillary
Clinton. So as an ordinary voter,

553
00:46:32,840 --> 00:46:37,039
what can I do to push to
say this is outrageous? I'd like

554
00:46:37,199 --> 00:46:39,880
to, I'd like to be able
to support Ron de Santis, but it's

555
00:46:39,880 --> 00:46:43,559
not doesn't seem to be working.
I still have hopes for Nicky Halley,

556
00:46:43,599 --> 00:46:50,159
but it may come down to Donald
Trump, and he is as much as

557
00:46:50,159 --> 00:46:53,400
he has sinned, he is still
more sinned against than sinning. That's the

558
00:46:53,440 --> 00:47:00,239
case, Andy Well, I mean, it's the case he'll make, and

559
00:47:00,280 --> 00:47:08,840
it's it's the best case for him. It doesn't resonate with me, just

560
00:47:08,920 --> 00:47:13,840
because I've already made up my mind
that you know, I thought he should

561
00:47:13,880 --> 00:47:22,400
have been convicted in the impeachment trial
and disqualified the second impeachment trial. Right,

562
00:47:22,559 --> 00:47:24,519
Yeah, But I don't know how
you support somebody who you say should

563
00:47:24,559 --> 00:47:30,519
have been disqualified from ever running for
president again. And I guess, just

564
00:47:30,639 --> 00:47:35,960
to be hardheaded about this, Peter
Ye, I've taken the position Trump can't

565
00:47:35,960 --> 00:47:42,840
win, and I even though I
see what Biden's problems are, I think

566
00:47:42,880 --> 00:47:47,559
this is a dynamic situation where they're
actually the Democrats are getting exactly what they

567
00:47:47,599 --> 00:47:57,679
want, which is he looks like
he could win now they've done. That's

568
00:47:57,679 --> 00:48:00,760
true. Just to be clear,
Mitt Romney was of Obama. True.

569
00:48:01,320 --> 00:48:07,360
True. And the plan here for
the Democrats has always been use the indictments

570
00:48:07,400 --> 00:48:14,199
to rile up the base so that
they cling to Trump. And then when

571
00:48:14,199 --> 00:48:20,119
the audience during the election is not
the Republican primary electorate but the general electorate,

572
00:48:20,679 --> 00:48:23,159
that's when you have the trials and
the hearings and all the really bad

573
00:48:23,199 --> 00:48:30,159
stuff comes out and they dump stuff
on him like no one's ever seen before.

574
00:48:30,760 --> 00:48:36,039
And the backdrop for that is he
won by a miracle in twenty sixteen

575
00:48:36,400 --> 00:48:39,159
in a two person race with forty
six percent of the vote. He's never

576
00:48:39,239 --> 00:48:45,320
gonna sniff forty six again as the
incumbent. He couldn't get forty seven in

577
00:48:45,559 --> 00:48:52,719
twenty twenty. I'd be stunned if
he gets forty four. I think was

578
00:48:52,760 --> 00:48:57,400
elected three. Well, but they
had to be. They had to be

579
00:48:57,639 --> 00:49:00,400
Pero, I mean they had You're
right, if you if you get a

580
00:49:00,480 --> 00:49:06,079
third incredible third party threat, you're
right, all bets are off. But

581
00:49:06,079 --> 00:49:09,119
if it's if it's a Trump Biden
election, which is what you're hypothetical,

582
00:49:09,239 --> 00:49:12,840
is, yes, that's just don't
see how we can win. I don't

583
00:49:12,880 --> 00:49:15,880
see how we can win. Yeah, I don't think the Republicans are making

584
00:49:15,880 --> 00:49:21,559
an effective case that he can't win
because they're tiptoeing around it. The only

585
00:49:21,599 --> 00:49:24,519
one who's not tiptoeing around it is
Christie, and Christie can't win. So

586
00:49:24,800 --> 00:49:30,360
I don't want to say about that, you know. So how do we

587
00:49:30,400 --> 00:49:37,159
conduct our lives as we watch this? I mean I remember, I remember

588
00:49:37,199 --> 00:49:44,679
the Dole campaign and it was just
this slow motion catastrophe. It was it

589
00:49:44,719 --> 00:49:49,880
felt to me like watching a redwood
fall and slow motion. Everybody knew this.

590
00:49:50,400 --> 00:49:53,199
So how do we conduct our lives
as journalists, as citizens in this

591
00:49:53,199 --> 00:50:00,480
this this weird Biden's going to be
their nominee. Trump It's going to be

592
00:50:00,480 --> 00:50:06,800
our nominee. It looks unavoidable.
Nobody wants this to happen. How do

593
00:50:06,880 --> 00:50:12,039
we conduct our lives as journalists and
human beings and Americans in this weird circumstance.

594
00:50:12,920 --> 00:50:17,440
You know, Judge Bork used to
tell this story about I wonder if

595
00:50:17,440 --> 00:50:24,559
he's in a faculty lounge but watching
the watching the the Clarence Thomas Anita Hill

596
00:50:25,000 --> 00:50:34,039
hearings, and Irving Crystal is there
and is about to hand him a martini,

597
00:50:34,599 --> 00:50:37,800
and he says, how's it going, And Bork says to him,

598
00:50:37,960 --> 00:50:43,679
it's the end of civilization, And
Crystal hands on the martini and says,

599
00:50:43,960 --> 00:50:46,559
well, it'll take a long time
and it's still possible to live. Well,

600
00:50:50,039 --> 00:50:54,400
I think I think that's the answer. Unfortunately, you know, I

601
00:50:54,440 --> 00:50:59,840
think there's a lot of ruin in
the system. Here's on a serious note,

602
00:51:00,119 --> 00:51:04,840
what has always bothered me about the
January sixth commentary, particularly from Democrats,

603
00:51:05,320 --> 00:51:07,880
and this whole narrative about how our
constitution was hanged by a thread and

604
00:51:07,920 --> 00:51:14,280
our democracy was almost the thing.
The hero of the day on January sixth

605
00:51:14,800 --> 00:51:17,599
is the Constitution. It was never
in any doubt, it was never in

606
00:51:17,639 --> 00:51:22,679
any danger. There was never any
doubt that Biden was going to be Yeah,

607
00:51:22,800 --> 00:51:25,480
that's I agree, and That's what
always one of my problems with the

608
00:51:25,559 --> 00:51:30,360
January sixth. You know, the
overreaction is, you know, we have

609
00:51:30,440 --> 00:51:32,000
a constitution. It's not captured the
flag. It's not like, well,

610
00:51:32,000 --> 00:51:35,760
if you can get to that gabble, then that person gets in the president.

611
00:51:37,639 --> 00:51:40,639
I what I found dismaying about January
six actually really wasn't Trump. I

612
00:51:40,639 --> 00:51:45,679
mean, I've always I felt that
Trump was emotionally and mentally unstable and therefore

613
00:51:45,760 --> 00:51:50,159
unfit to be president. I thought
this in twenty sixteen, and I think

614
00:51:50,199 --> 00:51:53,639
I am right in that. What
was surprising to me is that ordinary traditional

615
00:51:53,719 --> 00:52:00,559
conservative intellectuals came up with some utterly, utterly the idiotic scheme by which the

616
00:52:00,639 --> 00:52:07,280
vice president United States could do something
that day. Where if Vice President Al

617
00:52:07,400 --> 00:52:10,920
Gore had done that in two thousand
and one, or if Kamala Harris does

618
00:52:10,960 --> 00:52:15,159
it in two twenty twenty five,
they will their heads will explode. Right.

619
00:52:15,239 --> 00:52:21,480
So, you know, if if
Vice President Kamala Harris decides that she

620
00:52:21,639 --> 00:52:24,800
kind of on in retrospect after reading
the Claremont Review, she kind of agrees

621
00:52:24,880 --> 00:52:30,159
with their position about what the vice
president can do, what are they going

622
00:52:30,199 --> 00:52:32,679
to do now? So a lot
of this is just just everybody took a

623
00:52:32,719 --> 00:52:37,920
stupid pill at some point. I
date that to the stupid pill to be

624
00:52:37,039 --> 00:52:43,880
right around two thousand and four,
when the wheels came off the bus and

625
00:52:43,920 --> 00:52:50,320
people decided that George W. Bush, though wrong about the Iraq invasion,

626
00:52:50,719 --> 00:52:58,360
utterly wrong, was somehow evil and
destroying, you know, concentrating the Constitution,

627
00:52:58,639 --> 00:53:01,559
and almost anything we did about him
to him was justified. I mean,

628
00:53:01,599 --> 00:53:06,440
they get it that with Reagan too, So you know, there was

629
00:53:06,480 --> 00:53:08,400
only one side of the bust.
The wheels came off, and then now

630
00:53:08,400 --> 00:53:12,320
the wheels come off on the other
side to the Republicans of the same thing.

631
00:53:12,440 --> 00:53:15,320
I guess here's my sort of larger
I mean, I don't want to

632
00:53:15,360 --> 00:53:21,760
be existential about it, because I
is it possible that these things go in

633
00:53:21,840 --> 00:53:27,320
waves? And if you look in
American history, you see lots of lots

634
00:53:27,320 --> 00:53:30,639
of dirt and dirty politics and name
calling, and you see a lot of

635
00:53:30,719 --> 00:53:37,119
chaos. Right, it wasn't the
stately progression of bearded gentleman who had been

636
00:53:37,639 --> 00:53:42,599
educated in the Judaea Christian Western tradition
and then all of a sudden it,

637
00:53:42,719 --> 00:53:47,320
you know, it all went nuts
around whatever. Isn't it possible that people,

638
00:53:47,719 --> 00:53:51,480
if the people decide they don't want
to take this anymore and they don't

639
00:53:51,519 --> 00:53:58,519
want the the critonization of American society
and politics to go forward, or isn't

640
00:53:58,559 --> 00:54:01,840
it possible that just people will get
tired of this, or the people involved

641
00:54:01,840 --> 00:54:05,719
will get tired of this, or
am I just fantasizing. Well, I

642
00:54:06,119 --> 00:54:13,239
think it's possible. But I do
think that making it a new routine or

643
00:54:13,280 --> 00:54:20,239
a new norm that the incumbent side
uses the criminal justice system against the other

644
00:54:20,280 --> 00:54:27,000
side changes the dynamic. It's a
it's a it's an evolution or a devolution

645
00:54:27,119 --> 00:54:30,679
of the process that you've been talking
about. And I don't if that becomes

646
00:54:30,679 --> 00:54:34,599
a norm, I don't know what's
left of the country. And I don't

647
00:54:34,639 --> 00:54:37,960
I don't need to. I don't
want to sound hysterical, but I really

648
00:54:37,000 --> 00:54:44,639
think that if you don't have a
perception based on a reality that the laws

649
00:54:44,639 --> 00:54:49,880
are even handedly enforced, and I
fear for what happens to us, Well,

650
00:54:49,920 --> 00:54:52,559
I guess I guess what I'm asking
to use this? Should we just

651
00:54:52,760 --> 00:54:59,480
say, you know what we're going
to bring back dueling? I'm almost half

652
00:54:59,480 --> 00:55:04,159
serious, right, because that is
house. You know, we're almost exactly

653
00:55:04,159 --> 00:55:07,800
two hundred years ago, that seemed
to be how I mean, how many

654
00:55:07,960 --> 00:55:15,559
presidents were involved directly in a duel. I mean Andrew Jackson bullet in his

655
00:55:15,639 --> 00:55:17,719
body all his life from a duel. Yeah, he killed me. He

656
00:55:19,000 --> 00:55:21,880
waited for the other man to fire, took the bullet, and then killed

657
00:55:21,920 --> 00:55:29,039
him. Right, that's on.
But that was also considered kind of ungentlemanly

658
00:55:29,239 --> 00:55:31,320
at that. Yes, yeah,
but I don't know who would win at

659
00:55:31,320 --> 00:55:35,679
the duel. I mean, I
would love to see the duel. Well,

660
00:55:35,840 --> 00:55:37,599
while Andy, while Andy is thinking
about the duel, I have a

661
00:55:38,000 --> 00:55:43,199
slightly subversive but on on the other
hand, kind of a and here's what's

662
00:55:43,239 --> 00:55:46,320
happening here. I see kids at
stand for the Bright Kids take a look

663
00:55:46,360 --> 00:55:51,480
at politics and say I want nothing
to do with that. I'm going into

664
00:55:51,519 --> 00:55:55,280
business. This could be good for
the economy. Rob Well, yes,

665
00:55:55,360 --> 00:55:58,920
I mean it could be. I
mean there, I mean it is also

666
00:55:58,960 --> 00:56:04,159
possible that we we we took the
certainly the chief executive in this country,

667
00:56:04,440 --> 00:56:08,519
and we haven't made it an imperial
position. Over time where they play Hill

668
00:56:08,599 --> 00:56:12,480
to the chi forever. He walks, you know, down the street,

669
00:56:12,639 --> 00:56:19,320
and there's a motorcade and and people
in government do seem to be grandees the

670
00:56:19,360 --> 00:56:22,639
way they wouldn't have been before.
I don't know this for a fact,

671
00:56:22,800 --> 00:56:25,639
because I couldn't get a glimpse of
her. But I walked out of my

672
00:56:25,719 --> 00:56:31,519
house Monday, and suddenly there was
a There were like black SUVs on the

673
00:56:31,559 --> 00:56:36,679
street, and there were little flashing
lights and they closed the street off.

674
00:56:37,079 --> 00:56:38,800
And then there's somebody at one of
the houses there, and he stood up.

675
00:56:38,840 --> 00:56:43,920
He stood out and as some old
lady who looked like Nancy Pelosi.

676
00:56:43,960 --> 00:56:47,000
I don't know if it's Nancy Pelosi, but it could have been. And

677
00:56:47,039 --> 00:56:50,400
she goes up and she greets this
person, and it's a kind of a

678
00:56:50,440 --> 00:56:52,599
president of the new schools across the
street. So I don't know who's I

679
00:56:52,599 --> 00:56:54,519
don't know. This is the kind
of fancy neighborhood peopleho in these houses,

680
00:56:54,599 --> 00:56:59,280
right, And it looked and I
thought, of course, the former Speaker

681
00:56:59,320 --> 00:57:04,360
of the House gets a motorcade.
Maybe it's time for everybody to be taking

682
00:57:04,360 --> 00:57:06,119
down a pig andy, what do
you think, I know, you gotta

683
00:57:06,199 --> 00:57:17,800
run. I think I'm just too
I'm too worried about the point of the

684
00:57:17,840 --> 00:57:22,000
exploitation of law enforcement. And maybe
it's because I'm too close to it.

685
00:57:22,199 --> 00:57:32,280
I just I if you don't have
a system where people think that, you

686
00:57:32,320 --> 00:57:36,199
know, you get a fair shake
out of the justice system, and where

687
00:57:36,199 --> 00:57:40,639
it becomes a regular thing where the
attorney general is expected to exploit the power,

688
00:57:42,880 --> 00:57:50,159
you know, the administrations expected to
use the law enforcement and intelligence apparatus

689
00:57:50,199 --> 00:57:55,840
against the other side. We're done. We're just ruined. On that happy

690
00:57:55,880 --> 00:58:00,920
note. Well, Andy, thank
you for joining us. Please can you

691
00:58:00,920 --> 00:58:04,440
come back later and give us some
good news. Got to work on that,

692
00:58:05,119 --> 00:58:09,880
work on your work on my dueling
skills, shring back dueling. That's

693
00:58:09,920 --> 00:58:13,519
what I say. All right,
guys, thanks Andy, Andy, take

694
00:58:13,559 --> 00:58:15,920
care. I know we got We're
gonna we have plenty to talk about,

695
00:58:15,920 --> 00:58:19,079
Peter, But before we do,
I want to talk a little bit about

696
00:58:19,079 --> 00:58:23,599
Shopify. Shopify's already taking the cash
register online, helping millions sell billions around

697
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the world. But did you know, Peter, that Shopify can do the

698
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716
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one of those things that has made
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717
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So there's it's your job to bring
us out on it. I know,

718
01:00:00,960 --> 01:00:04,599
on a happy note, I don't. I don't have that happy except except

719
01:00:04,639 --> 01:00:07,119
I think that I'm right. I
think these things tend to burn themselves out.

720
01:00:07,480 --> 01:00:08,480
I think that we go through a
little crazy every down. Then it's

721
01:00:08,519 --> 01:00:13,639
Americans to say American style, and
that we people decide, they turn.

722
01:00:13,880 --> 01:00:19,360
And the great thing about the public
turning is it turns faster than anybody at

723
01:00:19,400 --> 01:00:25,199
the top can predict. Before you
know it, you're shouting to empty theaters.

724
01:00:27,239 --> 01:00:30,320
You remember, in American history it
was a lot of talk about Father

725
01:00:30,480 --> 01:00:34,559
Coughlin. Father Coughlin, Yes,
yes, yes, the firebrand priest on

726
01:00:34,599 --> 01:00:37,920
the radio was considered an early kind
of demagogue and very dangerous Peter. He's

727
01:00:38,039 --> 01:00:45,119
very dangerous radio personality, and he
was very conservative. I note that his

728
01:00:45,920 --> 01:00:54,480
most biggest years, I think most
popular years coincided with the New Deal and

729
01:00:54,519 --> 01:01:00,400
the socialization of a huge portion of
American economy. I'm not sure Father offline

730
01:01:00,679 --> 01:01:05,639
had any of the power people ascribed
to him. That's a contrarian view that

731
01:01:05,719 --> 01:01:07,599
you can take issue with at a
later date, because we got a wrap.

732
01:01:08,559 --> 01:01:12,920
If you're if you've enjoyed this podcast, it comes to you from ricochet

733
01:01:13,000 --> 01:01:15,599
dot com. Not only do we
offer you terrific discounts on all of our

734
01:01:15,639 --> 01:01:20,719
great advertisers, we also have a
terrific site. Please go ricochet dot com.

735
01:01:20,719 --> 01:01:22,440
Please join. The reason we want
you to join and pay a little

736
01:01:22,440 --> 01:01:25,760
bit of money and be honest with
you is because if people need to have

737
01:01:25,760 --> 01:01:30,039
skin in the game to keep the
conversation polite, civil and interesting. We

738
01:01:30,079 --> 01:01:34,480
also meet up regularly in person.
There's a chattanook A, Tennessee meet up

739
01:01:34,519 --> 01:01:37,559
on January fourteen, twenty twenty four, and of course we're letting you know

740
01:01:37,639 --> 01:01:40,320
early on April eight in Texas.
Somewhere in Texas. I know that doesn't

741
01:01:40,360 --> 01:01:45,280
really narrow it down, but somewhere
in Texas in twenty twenty four, the

742
01:01:45,360 --> 01:01:50,519
American Eclipse is going to be viewed
by Ricochet members and that's going to be

743
01:01:50,599 --> 01:01:53,519
a fun thing. More meetups are
going to be scheduled, More meetups will

744
01:01:53,519 --> 01:01:57,199
be done. If you want to
go to a meetup and one of these

745
01:01:57,199 --> 01:02:00,039
doesn't work for you, join Ricochet. Just put up a note saying how

746
01:02:00,079 --> 01:02:06,159
about meet up here and here and
when, and people will show up because

747
01:02:06,199 --> 01:02:12,760
Ricochet members show up. This podcast
is brought to you by Shopify and zbiotics.

748
01:02:13,039 --> 01:02:15,119
Support them, and that will support
us. And take a minute to

749
01:02:15,159 --> 01:02:19,239
leave a review on Apple podcast.
I know it's everyone always says this,

750
01:02:19,280 --> 01:02:22,840
it actually really does matter. So
if you do it, it helps us

751
01:02:22,880 --> 01:02:25,440
bump up and then every important algorithm. Peter, this has been a lot

752
01:02:25,440 --> 01:02:30,760
of fun. It has been fun. I don't quite know why because here

753
01:02:30,840 --> 01:02:36,079
we are watching everything slide south,
so just sleep, but it has been

754
01:02:36,079 --> 01:02:39,239
fun. I feel watching one of
those YouTube videos of some title waves sweeping

755
01:02:39,239 --> 01:02:44,039
over some island in the Pacific.
But still right still, as long as

756
01:02:44,039 --> 01:02:49,599
we're watching from a distance and swirling
olives and our martinis. What could be?

757
01:02:49,679 --> 01:02:52,280
But why why wouldn't it be fun? Things have a way of working

758
01:02:52,280 --> 01:02:59,840
out. That's my that's my lame
optimism. Everything kind of get sorted out.

759
01:03:00,039 --> 01:03:04,599
And the benefit of the of a
Yale education. Next week, Rob

760
01:03:04,760 --> 01:03:10,519
next week, take care Ricochet Join
the conversation.