I'll tell you the ground shakes. Yeah, pull let me know. Ask
not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for
your country. Mister Garbachoff, tear down this wall. It's a Rick j
podcast. I'm Rob Loong and New York, joined by Peter Robinson in Palo
Alto. Our co host Jamesilence is once again a wall south of the border.
Stay tuned. We got Matt Continenting a lot coming up. Let's have
ourselves a podcast. All of us felt, in some way or another,
the earthquake that hit our city around ten twenty three am. We felt the
impact of this four point seven magnitude earthquake when New Yorkers should go about their
normal day. America is a nation that can be defined in a single word.
I was gonna put him. Welcome to the Rick JE Podcast, number
six hundred and eighty six. It's insane. No no, no, just
lop off one digit one finger, six eighty six. I'm Rob Long in
New York, co founder of Ricochet, and with me as always is Peter
Robinson, my co founder. Peter in Palo Alto. How are you in
California? Well, I am suffering a kind of Bizarro moment the Californian.
The Californian is about to say to the New Yorker, how bad was the
earthquake? And I don't know, because I didn't feel it. I don't
know what I was. Actually, I was either in it, kill you
to make something up. I was either in the subway, meaning like somewhere
in the in the subway system, either on a subway train or summer.
Or I was walking on the street and I just didn't feel it. But
then, you know, I'll tell you, I live in a very old
house in very old part of town, and when a truck goes by,
the whole house rumbles, and so you know, for a second, it
probably would had I felt it, I probably thought I was just a tructed
very old. You're you're done in the village. Very old is now second
half of the nineteenth century, first half of the nineteenth century, first half.
Oh really, Oh okay, all right, all right, you're in
the village proper. I'm in the I'm in the village village proper. In
fact, so weird. I am in this fantastic house, which you know,
I just trust everybody not to, like, you know, camp out
front of my house. When I tell you where I live, I live
very close to, in fact, next door to the house that I think.
I've said this more that Obama's friends blew up Are you serious? Idea?
And you could always tell the right wingedness of the people I'm talking to,
because the right wingers when I say that, go, oh yeah,
I know that house. Yeah, and the left wingers say, what are
you talking about. Obama didn't know anybody who blew the house. Well,
he did, of course he did. In fact, one of his dear
friends, Bill Airs, was in the whole, the whole twisted story of
those The weather underground is so infuriating. Give us the date ish in the
early seventies, now the early They're going to blow up a RTC recruiting center,
armforce to recruiting center, and they were going to blow up a bank
and they were going to kill They ended up killing a comper security guard for
which they did. So it's a couple of burniting dorn Ato time and so
Bill and so did she just died. I forget her last name. It's
a weird last name. Boudin. Yeah, Chessa Boudin's mother, Chessa Boudeen
was the far left, progressive do nothing da and San francisco Is were called
and they would committed murder and they went to prison and they got out and
one of them became a tenured professor at Columbia. So in Columbia University,
if you say to somebody, if you're a professor and you say to a
student, hey, nice shirt, you will be arrested and fined and fired
for a sort of microaggression. If you miss gender somebody, that's out,
you're out. If you commit murder, you're in. You're a tenured you
get Yeah. So why did they blow up the house because they were go
ahead and tell the story. They were trying to build a bomb and they
were barring their their grandmother's house. Because you know, this now is a
very, very fancy neighborhood, but at the time it was really not,
and it had always been in New York City kind of a working class,
you know, not working lass, middle class, upper middle class neighborhood.
It was never the fancy neighborhood. But it's just fancy enough that people at
the top floor Garrett, where I lived, was where the Irish maids would
hang out and or hang out. That's a nice way of putting it.
They would live, they would suffer, they would swelter in the summer and
freeze in the winter. And so you know, over time, people's grandparents
decided they can't keep up this house, so they just left it. And
a lot of these houses were empty for a long time. And so this
grandchild, you know, hippie grandchild, so you imagine her grandmother, her
grandmother must have been, you know, born maybe in the eighteenth nineteenth century,
right, she built up. They're building the bomb. But of course
they're dumb kids, and there's stupid dilettants, stupid hippies, and they just
did it wrong, and they blew them up and they killed I think one
or two of them died. Unfortunately they all didn't, honestly considering they went
on to kill other people. And they blew the front of the building off,
and then the side the wall behind me is you can see that wall.
That's what's rebuilt in the seventies, early seventies. And you can always
tell this building, this house, because it's the one house on the street
that doesn't look at all in this sort of neo federal style or the federal
I guess the federal style. They call it. It's got the because the
facade was redone in the seventies. You couldn't do that now. If if
there the terrorists blew up their mom's grandmother's townhouse today in a historic neighborhood,
they would have to sort of rebuild it according to sort of historical standards.
But back then you could make it a seventies facade, which is what they
did. But you can still see people if you google it Grantwich Village bombing
Dustin Hoffman because dusn't Hoffan lived in the garden department. Here, apparently you
can see dusn't Hoffan. It's a very picture of dodsn't Hoffin, who was
by dad there, you know, pretty much a movie star looking at absolutely
stunned and shocked at the at the with his back to all the trouble,
and there's like fire trucks and rubble and stuff. It's pretty it's pretty interesting.
Well that was better than the earthquake. Yeah, so the better the
earthquake. In fact that I was walking home and I talked to the guy
who wants the family who lives downstairs, they owned the house. I said,
you know, he said, oh, I we got out. The
insurance people come in to check something, and we're trying to figure out time
for them to come in, And I said, what are they worried about?
This house has been through hell, including an earthquake. It's fine at
this point. You know, don't touch it, don't don't mess up,
don't don't look to don't look out of the hood. That's for sure,
because it's something. Whatever's holding it together is working so far well. Last
note on the earthquake. I have a daughter in here's beginning, her senior
spring in Hannover, New Hampshire, who did feel the earthquake. It couldn't
have been much of a rumble up there. I have a feeling she may
have been having trouble getting into getting her mind into her studies. Yes,
she's looking for a natural disaster. To think it was that an earthquake.
You can just see the saying, oh great, we have something to talk
about this morning. Yeah, we don't have to study. Well. I
mean it is true. I think if you are a Californian, I should
say, well, your kids are native California's basically that you you kind of
have this. I mean, I think you kind of have this attitude where
you wait, you hear the ground, feel the ground and shaking, and
you just kind of wait, let's see, Okay, what's happening now?
Like is this going to stop? Is going to keep going? I think
it's going to come falling down. I mean, that's the yes. When
I was when I was in business school, there were a number of little
tremors, and I would, because I was an Easterner at coming to business
school out here at Stanford, the first thing I would do is look at
the Native Californians and see if they looked worried. And during the nineteen eighty
nine earthquake, I was in the office of an accounting professor whose course I
simply could not follow. I was stopping to buy to beg for help,
and he had lived in California for thirty years. And oddly enough, the
first thing that I recall is a kind of sound you could hear the rumble
before you could feel it. And his face went instantly white, and he
said, oh, this is a bad one, and disappeared under his desk.
Okay, where do I Where do I disappear do? I really didn't
have much of a place. There's a little table I climbed under the table,
and that whole building bucked and rolled and rocked, and the books came
off the bookshelves. That was an unambiguous earthquake back in nineteen eighty nine.
Oh God, yeah, I remember it. But I was slightly slow to
get under the table because I thought, wait a minute, I've been through
these little tremors before. When his face went white, I knew it was
different. Yeah, it's also not a terribly I mean, at least my
my in my animal reaction to it. I was just trying to remember that
I was in LA, and then I was in the LA for eighty nine
a quake, and then I was in LA for the ninety four the really
big one, really really big one that collapsed the freeways and did a lot
of damage, The Northbridge quake we'd call it. Happened at five in the
morning or four p thirty some early times, and I woke up because a
glass of water that was on my bedside table I sort of a higher shelf
above the bed. It fell over and fell on me, and I woke
up soaked like my woke up because somebody had splashed cold water in my face
and then dropped the glass on my nose, and that was but my then.
Of course, we were I think we're in production at that moment.
I'm trying to remember. And there was a massive series. It was a
big quake, so huge aftershocks. So they were telling us now that they're
going the aftershocks today too, there are apparently, yeah, and we were
in the stage and now the stage was built nineteen twenty something, Stage twenty
five at Paramount Studios, and it was originally built they shot that They shot
the original King Kong in there, and so this place had been retrofitted to
a fairly well. When they first built the sound stages, obviously they were
built not as sound stages as they were built as just silent stages. They
didn't have roots, and they would string they would like they would put a
white canopy, a white silk over the roof to kind of diffuse the sun.
And they called it, they call it silks. And then sometimes if
you're shooting outside just a side, you're shooting outside and it's and it's just
cloud cover. It's perfect, you know, right right right right, They
called God's silk. We're gonna use God's so they put us and but no
ins instance, over the time they you know, put they fixed the roof
and they do the two pipe and chain the roof so they can hang the
lights. And there's heavy lights everywhere. This is where they shot is Love
Lucy when they shot is of Lucy in the in in when they moved to
La and we were in an earthquake and everything was shaking, and I stood
there and I thought, okay, don't panic. And my assistant was standing
next to me, and I could tell he was panicking, like what do
I do? What I do? And I just grabbed his arm and I
held it. I said, it's like, look up, look up,
look up. And then it was over and we waited a minute and then
we said one about our business. But everybody else scurried to the side.
And I thought I was being very very, very very smart, and in
fact people told me later like you idiot, that was the worst I can
be able to It's just stupid, dude. Don't stop there, go to
the side. It's okay to run to the run to safety. But I
thought, oh, I don't want to panic. But in fact that was
dumb and it could have gotten me and my poor assistant horribly, horribly named
and disfigured, and I don't know how we don't have James. James is
in Mexico, so James would do a segue. At this point, I
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we thank Shopify for sponsoring the Ricochet Podcast. Next, we have an old
friend from the on the site that He wrote on the site for many years
and has gone on to be the founding editor of the Washington Free Beacon,
which has caused trouble up and down the line for since it's exception, Thank
God. He is the author of The Right, The one hundred Year War
for American Conservatism, which is a wonderful, sweeping story of the conservative movement
in America. He is the director of Domestic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise
Institute. He's an old friend, and we welcome him. Matt COTTENETI,
Matt, welcome, gentlemen, Thanks for having me. We are obviously going
to have to get an to the things the wars abroad. But why do
the wars abroad? Can we just talk a little bit about the war at
home and specifically the Internst. Sine War. For I guess the heart,
the soul, the direction of American Conservatism. I find more conservatives yelling at
each other about where there who is the real one and who is not a
real one than I have ever encountered, I think in my long life,
which is I hope could go longer. But still I don't recall that who's
right? Rob. That can't be quite true because I've been calling you a
rhino for three decades. Yeah, I've been a rhino. Was still still
on the right, all right, all right, fair, I've been working
on a little toast I have to give to Ed Fulner, one of the
co founders and longtime president of the Heritage Foundation, in a couple of weeks
and reading about Ed Fulner, listening to him, you get a sense of
an individual who really came of age knowing what it meant to be an American
conservative and what it meant to belong to the American conservative movement. And Fulner
tells a story about encountering Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind and reading about Russell Kirk's
traditionalist conservatism and the different canons of conservatism that Kirk presents in that text,
and then reading Barry Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative published in nineteen sixty, where
Goldwater really talks about what it means to be a conservative in politics in the
national life. And he said he got theory from one book and practical applications
from another. And I wonder, sometimes, is it possible for a young
person to do that today? What would be the texts that they would look
at for what it means to be a conservative. Who would they be turning
to So many people get their information and their news and opinions from social media
today. Yeah, but you know, they'd be looking at Tucker Carlson.
I hope many of them would look at Ben Shapiro, who I think does
come closest to continuing in the tradition of the American conservative movement. But there's
so many different options, and it's so easy to kind of kind of pick
the suite of political views that you like that I think it's very hard Rob
to say, oh, this is the true American conservatism in the year twenty
twenty four. Yeah, but it feels to me like that's the high note.
It's going to start to get gloomy soon. Yeah. It feels to
me like the problem is that each whoever claims to be the conservative not only
doesn't think the other people are sufficiently conservative. Right. So it's not like
just screaming at old Rob that he's a rhino squish, although that's always reward,
which is always been fair, but it's sort of like saying, well,
you're the enemy, right that the person who's who agreet with you seventy
percent of the way or sixty percent of the way needs to be purified.
So may I may ask a subset of this question, and Matt is,
the author of the right, is the perfect man to answer this. Actually,
I can't think why now, why I haven't just gotten on the phone
and called you, because this really is a question in my head. When
jd Vance attacks Ronald Reagan and says he started illegal immigration, which is nonsense.
But we have a highly intelligent, sitting United States Senator attacking Ronald Reagan,
when Ross Dow that uses the phrase, uses the phrase zombie Reaganism,
which seems to become a kind of standard phrase with Ross, again, highly
intelligent, articulate. These are the annoying bit about all this is that you
can't dismiss these people. I can see part of what might be going on,
and part of what might be going on would be I can remember back
in the eighties when I was a kid, there were Democrats around who still
talked about FDRs the great figure, and Democrats my age were sick of it.
It was purely generational. They wanted their own time. They wanted this
huge figure from the past whom they didn't even remember. They wanted it gone
that's fine, that's normal, that's perfectly human. I get that. What
I don't get, though, is zombie what exactly to the extent that there's
substance to what they're saying, to the extent that they're saying we are inventing
something new. Are they saying, ay, Reagan was mistaken, he made
one mistake after another. Or are they saying times have changed and we have
to adapt Conservatism to the new circumstances. And if that's what they're saying,
then why do they seem so angry and so insistent about it? I do
not quite get it. Well, it's a great question, and I can't
speak for either advance or doubt it, but I'll come at it this way.
At first, I think it's always important to note and you both remember
this. Reagan came under a lot of criticism from parts of the right throughout
his career, including while he was president. Various parts of the rights.
Some of my neo conservative friends thought that he was too dubbish when he started
the I and F negotiations with Gorbachev. The social conservatives felt that he was
just paying lip service to a lot of their agenda, and there was always
a suspicion among some traditional conservatives that Reagan was really at heart just a cold
warrior and interested in economic growth and cutting taxes, not so much about preserving
traditional American culture and mores. So that happened at the time of his presidency,
it's persisted ever since. What I think you're pointing to, Peter,
is that in the way that the Right talks to itself today, there is
close to zero interest in coalition building. One of the major strengths of the
conservative movement in the sixties and seventies was that figures like William F. Buckley
Junior looked around the scene and said, Okay, you know, I got
a group of kind of weird ex communists libertarian thinkers around me. We can
barely fill up a room. Our message is starting to catch the energy of
young people. But in order to actually convey my ideas into the national scene
and to have an effect on American politics in the world, I'm going to
start need I'm going to have to make friends. And so he reached out
to populous conscerservatives, to neo conservatives, to the religious right when it began
to emerge, and instead of that type of coalition building today we have almost
a efficient rather than a fuchie, where people don't want to build bridges or
connections between the various factions of Conservatism, but are much more interested in expelling
people from the movement, whether that's on the basis of ideas or whether that's
on the basis of their views on Donald Trump. Say so, Matt,
follow up on that one, to what extent? Grant entirely what you say.
And Donald Trump, although he's been leading in poll after poll after poll
for six months now, still has not broken fifty percent. He's still in
the forties. Now, maybe that'll be good enough. Bill Clinton won the
presidency with forty three percent of the vote. If Bobby Kennedy you on and
on a go. But what I'm wondering is to what extent has the nature
of the game changed because of technology. In the old days, it was
extremely difficult to know exactly how to reach your base, how to energize them,
So you were constantly trying to increase the pool because you really couldn't quite
control the pool. And today we have technology. Neighborhood by neighborhood, ward
by ward. I can remember a friend out here telling me that Barack Obama
as long ago as Barack Obama's campaign, they had developed software that they could
put in the hands of volunteers and within six the volunteers would go door to
door and read questions off their iPhones and all they needed was six questions to
know if this person was going to be voting for Romney Off, we don't
spend money on them. If they're already committed to Barack Obama, we don't
spend money on them. But if they're a swing voter, we know exactly
what. Okay. The point is, you can identify by name and address
exactly who your base is, and now you can work on them. Now
you can concentrate on getting them out. And the political consultants will say,
that's where the return on your campaign dollar is best spent, getting to the
polls, energizing the people you already know are on your side. And that's
because technology has changed. That is a pure hypothesis on my part. Well,
cell phones and social media, the iPhone, all of that makes what
you're describing ever more important. It's not just your base, it's a sliver
of your base. It's the super fans. John Ellis has written about this
phenomenon on his news items substack is it's the core of the core, the
real fanatics who are going to go out and basically you crawl through broken glass
in order to support That's who. That's who everyone is targeting right now.
And the damage done to I think conservatism and to just our politics national is
very real. I just want to say one more thing about some of the
critics of so called zombie Reaganism. What some of them are trying to do
is move American conservatism away from its belief in freedom and its traditional defense of
the American legacy of liberty. And for so much of the history of conservatism,
the conservatism that I adhere to freedom is at the core correct Your individual
freedom accompanied by personal responsibility is the core of the philosophy. And there are
some people for whom that is dangerous philosophy. They look around the world today
and they see actually too much freedom in the world, and so they're trying
to kind of cast off Reagan not just as someone who only talked about the
Soviets and tax but also as one of the great champions of freedom in American
history. And that I think is a dividing line within the movement that needs
to be fought over because American conservatism without individual freedom is not a philosophy I
would want to belong to. We just talked about nuts and bolts for a
minute, because you're I know, it's now wrote that we say things like,
well, of course, with technology and the abilities to slice up the
electorates so closely, you can pinpoint your ads, you can pinpoint your message.
We sort of assume that that's going to be successful, but oftentimes it's
not. I mean, it just it seems to I'm what I'm baffled by
is that these are very smart people running the Democratic Party in the Republican Party.
They're not dumb, and their goal seems to be to win the White
House by one vote, or if they can win by half a vote,
right, because for one reason, they think they can do it right.
They think, actually, that's doable. That's this technological precision that they can
get. But also then it frees them up from the messiness of having to
sort of appeal to that middle deciding ground at ten eleven to fifteen percent,
because but I think an elections pass that ten or fifteen percent has been what
we call undecideds. They're unaligned undecideds. The wait and see. I think
that if you look at the American electorate now, the ten or fifteen percent
in the middle hate both of the candidates with a passion, and instead of
trying to win them over what they're really the only absolution they have is to
try to make the other guys seem like a dangerous lunatic who's going to be
the end of America. So Joe Biden is saying vote for Trump, and
you're voting for the end of America by and Trump is saying exactly the same
thing. This just feels like market failure to me. It feels like Hertz
and Avis got together, Coke and PEPSI got together and decided to ruin the
business. Right, what's it all take? It started with the of course,
the rise of the attack ad. Right, politics is the only business
where you go after your competition and the nastiest, nastiest, you know,
most low down way other companies. If they were to do that other industries,
it would be the end of their industry. I don't know if there's
a solution, to be honest with you, Rob, I mean, I
think your diagnosis is actually correct. This election will be determined really by the
double haters, voters who hate both Trump and Biden, and it's just a
question of where do they fall. You know, in twenty twenty two,
a lot of those double haters ended up voting for Democrats despite their dislike of
Biden. But Biden wasn't on the ballot in twenty twenty two. He'll be
on there this time. And it is a mystery to me. That's not
really a mystery. I mean, it's in character with Trump. But you
know, every time Trump spends his rallies talking about the January sixth, quote
unquote hostages, I think that's a reminder to those double haters, do you
really want to live through another four years of Trump? And every time Biden
kind of ties himself into notts ober foreign policy, or you know, keeps
cheerleading this economy, or it seems to deny the outright deny that he issued
the trans Day of Visibility proclamation on Easter Sunday, then the double haters are
like, oh, my god, can we live through another four years of
Biden? Right? So I continue to believe that this election will look like
a toss up until pretty late in the game, and it will just be
something happening in the final weeks where enough of the voters who are those double
haters say I can't live with the other the other guy and Matt. What
do we make of Bobby Kennedy Junior. Yeah, I think he's a real
danger to Biden, to Biden. Yeah, he has swung against Biden.
Now it's unambiguous. Now he's going after Biden, isn't that? Yes?
Yeah? I think so. I mean, you know, he the messages,
the messages he's promoting are pretty progressive. His vice presidential selection, his
running mate is very progressive, more progressive than he is. And I look
at a recent poll out of Pennsylvania, actually pretty good poll for Biden if
it's just Biden v. Trump, But you add the three independent candidacies or
RFK, Cornell West, and Jill Stein in there, and then Biden's margin
narrows within the margin of error against Trump. So I do think RFK Junior
is hurting Biden more than Trump. There's a lot of celebration about the fact
that No Labels has announced it won't feel the candidate, so there won't be
a No Label's candidate. But in truth, the way that the No No
Label's movement was heading, I think no labels would have hurt Trump more than
Biden. And with them leaving the field, you have three left wing to
far left independent candidacies who, if they combine for over three percent of the
vote in states, are nationwide. I don't see how Biden can win.
And I'm struck in the last First of all, I was very struck by
Bobby Kennedy's choosing the running mate, because that made it unambiguous that he's going
after Biden. And now I'm struck in the last few days he seems to
have settled on this with real anger. Biden's denying him Secret Service protection,
and I get these kind of overtones of don't you understand my family made the
Democrat the modern Democratic Party. Don't you understand I lost my uncle, I
lost my It's personal, it really feels personal. And so now you have
not just Donald Trump saying Biden attacking Biden personally. Now you have someone who
has to his left in many ways saying this is not just an effective man
a dement but this is a bad man. That's new, and that strikes
me as a serious danger. He's to the left of Biden some ways.
He's also in a way kind of more solidaristic in his rhetoric than Biden.
Is you talk more about our national purpose and our national community than Biden.
So I think he's been underestimated throughout this process. I couldn't agree more.
I think it's remarkable the level at which he's polling consistently. His real challenge
is ballot access. Will he be able to be on all the ballots,
or especially the ballots of swing states, the seven states which will decide the
election by November. If he is on those ballots again, I find it
very hard to see Biden pulling this off all right now, from politics to
something that really matters is the state of Israel. Yeah, we have October
seventh, unbelievably brutal, vicious attacks that cost Israelis. I don't know what
the sort of settled number is, but it's around sixteen twelve hundred, twelve
hundred, I'm sorry, twelve hundred. We have hostages still in tunnels beneath
Gaza, six of whom are American citizens. And we have images day in
and day out of a kind of healthscape in Gaza. And now we have
I'll just name three items. Chuck Schumer gives a speech on the floor of
the Senate saying it's time for a change in leadership in Israel, and breathtaking
thing for a member of the United States Senate to say about a democratic ally.
Last I think early this week, we have Benny Gantz, a member
of the war Cabinet, calling for early elections, and we have a renewal
of massive protests in Israel, several tens of thousands of people protesting outside the
Kanesset at time of war, and then in the last forty eight hours or
so. It seems to me we have to distinguish between American policy and the
Biden administration's rhetoric. But at some point rhetoric becomes policy. And we have
the President having a phone call with bb Net and Yahoo in which he demands
the BB engage in a cease fire, make new concessions, offer get the
hostages out. We have Anthony Blincoln putting pressure on bb and then Kirby,
the White House spokesman, summed it up yesterday. As I recall, I
think I'm quoting him almost exactly. Unless there's a change in Israeli policy,
there will be a change in our policy. What is to be done?
Well, my takeaway from the past several weeks and especially the last twenty four
hours, Peter, is that Biden has lost the plot on the Israel hamaspital.
The most important thing in this war is to maintain one sense of moral
clarity, to be able to distinguish between Israel and Hamas. Israel and which
was at a state of peace with Hamas a tenuous piece, but a peace
nonetheless on October sixth, and Hamas, which invaded Israel on October seventh,
twenty twenty three, committed all the atrocities you describe, makes no distinction between
uniforms, soldiers and civilians, murders, indiscriminately holding the hostages, is stealing
the food into these convoys. One has to always remember that Hamas is ultimately
responsible for everything that happens in Gaza. And I think because of domestic politics,
because of a progressive inclination to believe some of the information warfare that's being
waged on Israel on the internet and in the media, the Biden administration,
the president himself has just lost that sense of moral clarity, and so it's
leading us to this place where if Biden administration policy were followed today, Hamas
would remain intact and BB Netting Yahoo would fall. So, no matter what
you think of Netting Yahoo, he's Israel's longest serving prime minister. He's an
extremely controversial figure. He is the democratically elected leader of an ally, and
yet the one consistent through line in Biden Israel policy has been hostility and opposition
to him. And so that that, I think shows you the ridiculous situation
in which America finds itself. And that's why I just urge all Americans to
follow the example of a democrat, John Fetterman, a man who you know
the label progressive because he was he's too concerned about what that label means these
days, but who is speaking a lot of sense on a lot of different
issues, no more so than on Israel, where he has said, in
response to this debacle involving the attack on the AID convoy, look, Hamas
will be the party that ends this war when Hamas surrenders or when Hamas is
defeated. And the best way to end the civilian casualties and to restore humanitarian
aid and limit the risk to AID workers is by defeating Hamas. Everything John
Fetterman says on this issue is a display of the moral clarity that we so
utterly need in Washington. By the way, we should say he seems to
have recovered entirely from the stroke. He's amazing and his depression, right,
remember it, because he entered Walter Reed just last summer and yet something happened
to him. I think he has recovered and he he under has a sense
of mission, and his mission here again is to just point out who is
the enemy and who is the heroes of this story. Yeah, I mean,
whatever he's taking, any depression or his stroke, get us out.
I mean, it's true that if ten twelve key Democrats just went on betterment
meds, they'd have a much better shot at regaining the House, the Senate,
in the White House. Uh, I guess I'm you know, the
politics aside of it. It just seems to me that the that's the brutal
truth is that if Hamas Hamas in October seventh attacked Israel, attacked unarmed civilians
in the most savage way. It was the Manson family, murders times every
household, and then they came back to Gaza and they hid behind civilians and
hostages, that if we let them get away with that, it's over right.
I mean, once you say that you can do that, because that
is the that is not hard to do, and it means you don't really
need to that many. I mean you you could have accomplished all of what
they accomplished in on October seventh with knives and machetes. They did in a
lot of ways. You don't need to go be a client of the Iranians
for advanced weapons. You don't need to do any of that. You need
to cause mayhem and then you retreat and hide behind civilians. So but I
guess what my concern is that that not so much that the Biden has lost
the plot, but that we may have lost the plot. That it is
true that what happened to the the world global kitchen workers was horrible, and
it is true what is happening in Gaza to these people, in innocent people
or whatever dozen's is horrible. It is true. All that is true.
But it seems like we need to gird ourselves for that, as that's the
inevitable price that you pay and it absolutely can't go any other way. But
I don't see anybody making that. We're looking for the solution. The ceasefire
solution is so attractive because it means that maybe it'll all go away. Yeah.
And the problem is that if you yeah, but it's which we'll think,
it leads us down a path where it's not a ceasefire, it is
in fact a capitulation to the strategy. Well, and that Hamas is done
right, So how do we get out of that? The upshot of so
many Biden policies has been more war and more violence. I mean the withdrawal
from Afghanistan's thirteen US servicemen killed Americans, drone a family in response to the
terror attack and called Kapol Airport. Isis K reconstituting itself in Afghanistan most recently
launches this attack in Russia. The policy in Ukraine, Biden's fear of providing
the Ukrainians with long range weapons platforms has extended that war. It undercut the
offensive, the counter offensive that Ukraine planned. It's now putting Ukraine in a
position where Russia's massing forces and most likely to gain ground in the coming months.
And what are we doing. We're telling the Ukrainians, Oh, don't
target Russia Russian energy supplies because we don't want the price of gasoline to go
up higher now we were in Israel and what are we doing in Israel?
Well, I think Peter's absolutely right. At some point the rhetoric becomes a
policy. And even though Biden has continued to supply Israel and to protect Israel
somewhat in international institutions, that began to dissipate when the US abstained from the
UN resolution calling for an immediate cease fire the other week. The rhetoric at
some point is going to lead to just another one of these situations where Biden's
ties himself in knots and the result is more war, more terrorism, not
less matt Israel again. Up until the sixty seven war, France supported Israel.
Until two weeks ago, Germany for good reasons, supported Israel. Israel
has lost Europe, and now Israel has lost the Democratic Party. John Fetterman,
notwithstanding, we're so astonished, and we rally to him the way we
do, precisely because he's an exception, no Europe, no Democratic Party.
Will the Trump Republican Party stand firm? Who are the good guys, Tom
Cotton, yes, JD. Josh Hawley. What is your feeling there?
Well, I think that the Republican Party still will have a sense of responsibility
and affection for Israel will continue to be pro Israel. I've been watching what
Trump has been saying about the conflict. His most recent comments to q Hewitt
just the other day was that, look, Israel's got to finish the war
quickly, and Israel's losing the pr war. Both of those statements. That's
correct, just correct. They're empirically true, right, So I'm not reading
them as a distancing from Israel in the way that some others have. So
I still think the Republican Party, for various historical reasons, for religious reasons,
will remain pro Israel. I do worry, though, Peter, about
the lack of religious faith in the United States and religious affiliation. So many
Republicans who are Christian are pro Israel because for them, Israel proves the Bible
is true. The existence of the state of Israel is a miracle that shows
the Bible is true. If Americans become less religious, less tied to the
Biblical traditions, I think there are going to be less likely to have that
sense that Israel is there for a purpose. Israel has a special place among
the nations in America as another conveinental promised Land has a special relationship with Israel.
That's a trend that I worry about. I think it's very much visible
in polls of young people turning against the state of Israel, and I do
worry eventually that secularization that's already affecting the Republican Party one day down the road,
it could also affect the GOP's view of Israel. Rob will not take
us out with tap dancing and a joke. All right, yeah, all
right, but you're surely finding that now. With sorting out what America First
means and what America's national interest means and what it doesn't mean. That does
seem to be a very serious debate that we're having in a very unseerious ways.
That's as we seem to be absolutely destined to do. I'm trying to
find something funny. Well, there was something funny in that Trump interview with
Hugh Hewitt, because right before he made those statements on Israel, he was
going on a rant about Biden. It was a pretty effective campaign rant,
but he ends up not with any of the policy disasters, but Trump ended
up by saying that you know what, that thing about Biden. He's also
a horrible golfer. And there's no way Trump said that his handicap as as
high as Biden says his handicap is. And it was just it was just
a classic Trump moment. And you know, start girding yourself. We might
have to have at least four more years of them. Yeah, if twelve
percent of Americans decide that they despise Biden and they repelled by Biden, but
they despised and are repelled by Trump, just a little bit less. It's
not really something you can put on a bumper sticker. Matthew. You have
to promise to come back, because we didn't even touch your wonderful work on
the realignment that's taking place. Why are Hispanics moving to This is fascinating material.
But our producer told us that on your side, you made him swear
that we'd only keep you for half an hour. And I see you're in
a jacket and tie, which must mean that you're headed to the green room
at Fox. You've got to run, so I'm afraid we'll have to release
you, but I want you to promise on the record for listeners that you'll
return. I'll be here, Peter, Thank you, matt thanks, Matt,
thank you. Yeah, it does seem. There was a we had
a little little discussion group on Thursday nights, and when somebody asked like,
well, what consolations do you tell yourself? What do you tell yourself so
that you can look at the front page of the newspaper every day, meaning
it's filled with bad news. What how do you what's the consolation for your
bad news? And I would just say I think I said this last week,
but I really do mean it. I'm obsessed with the pilot of the
containership in Baltimore who went thirty seconds, yes, saved lives and did it
and nobody, you know, unsung hero, local guy works the works the
port of Baltimore and probably not the only pilot there, not the only,
but certainly there's the every every port has many of them, and they're all
real. They all have to be really good. We only notice things when
they go wrong. And in case things do go wrong, I don't know
what yet. You know, I could tell you something. I'll give you
something to cheer you. And that is the new Dick Wolf documentary series Homicide
New York. Oh great, it's it's it's Dick Wolf. So he's a
total professional, and of course they're beautifully produced and paste and takes old murder
cases in the eighties and the nineties and what you get, and it goes
back and talks to the cops and the detectives who work the case, and
you see in every single one of these you get this notion of good human
beings who are just working hard and never expect to get their names in the
press, and are doing it to raise family. They can't afford to live
in Manhattan, even though they take the train into Manhattan to investigate all these
crimes. But they've got to get when the when the phone rings, he's
coaching his kids softball team out in Queen's and you just you're just reminded.
For me, it's especially effective because I think of New York as just this
overwhelming and of course, in fact, what it comes down to is New
York is a town of neighborhoods and overwhelmingly good hard working people. It's the
same sort of thing as we know that Pilot, if there's ever a documentary,
you know that we know that Pilot is just going to be a good,
hard working guy. Right Yeah, Okay, so the country is still
filled with people like that. I think it's very true. I think it's
very true. They're just just nothing. We're running for office. You and
I are one. You and I are not among them, of course,
right Well, it's always nice talking about Continetti. He's incredibly smart and has
writes is. His columns are terrific and I recommend that you follow him and
listeners of course the commentary magazine podcast every day. He's co host of that,
which is not an easy job. I guarantee you. And if you're
listening to this podcast, it means you're listening to a Ricochet production. And
Ricochet is a website. You can find it on the web ricochet dot com.
It's a conversation site. We also do podcasts, all sorts of podcasts,
but we also do one other weird thing. Our members every now and
then get together. Last year Ricochet members got together at the on the National
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that'd be a great thing to do. Uh, there's a meet up
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join Ricochet. Go to Ricochet, figure that out and enjoying anyway, because
these things are happening all the time, and of course we need or support.
I have a question for you for for a couple of last minute banter,
for a close showing banter. You are still at work on a documentary,
I believe a radio yes, an audio documentary, yes, on a
couple of weeks. Okay, So tell us tell us that how has that
changed your thinking? What have you learned give us the topic. The topic
is really you're well into right now. I don't know how you yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, So the topic is really First, what I
wanted to do was do a very deep dive TikTok into COVID, right seen
through the eyes of our friend doctor j Batichari. And then I realized that
the story really is that pretty much everything we needed to know about COVID we
knew, we knew in March of twenty twenty, and we just chose not
to pay attention to it. And so now it's a question of what do
we do to the guy who was saying, hey, wait a minute.
And Jay's position has been some character time like hey, lay wait a minute,
let it rip, Hey wait a minute, just let it go.
And in fact it's much more nuanced than that, much more smart than that.
He wasn't asking us to do nothing. He was asking us to do
something very specific. And just the way and the pattern at which we as
a culture and a political culture and a bureaucratic culture and a media culture just
went bananas is kind of interesting, and it's sort of now is the time
take a deep breath four years later and figure out what happens, so they
can never happen again. But the problem is is that it's gonna happen again
because we are going to have just the way the world works, it's going
to be another contagion of some kind. And the great thing that I don't
see us recovering from. I mean, I'm just investigating my own heart.
Here is the legitimate lingering skepticism. I mean, that's, to put it
nicely, of our bureaucratic public health officials and their political bosses and then their
accolytes in the media. So that little, that tripod of power, it's
really kind of has really lost the confidence of most Americans, and that is
not a good place to be. And so it's it's highly possible that there's
gonna be a contagion that in which you do have to stay at home and
we should close the schools for a little That's possible that this don't It wasn't
as if that never happens. That just hasn't happened yet, And it didn't
and it wasn't necessary for COVID. But when when that happens, When and
if that happens, who are you gonna believe? I'm gonna call it Jay
right, right, But because I feel like Jay is sort of willing to
look at the at the number and then come up with an answer that may
not. You know, I saw a great debate. We have some audio
of that debate, and one of the arguments he kept kept saying was like
he was a focused protection. He was for something called focus protection. I
know, I we don't go over this too much. And the focused protection
idea was, you know, you pick the people who are most vulnerable and
then you protect them, and you don't shut down businesses and schools and things.
We let other people go in with their lives, but you focus on
the people you can help. And because you've limited it and you focused your
protection, you're much more effective at it. So if only the people who
need to wear masks, really the most vulnerable, are wearing the right mask,
the N ninety five mask warned the correct way, and you focus on
that, you actually can affect some kind of protection, not a lot,
but some. But if you just say everywhere a mask, then everybody kind
of wears a mask, and you at you get as a D minus kind
of protection. But the argument against that was, well, how are you
going to do that? Well, how would you even do how would you
even protect old people? Just can't be any harder than shutting down the whole
country for good. Well, well, that's the problem is that actually turns
out that, yeah, shutting down the country's easy. Now, the economy,
the country, schools, they all have an off switch. They just
still have an on switch. And that's the problem that we have. Without
an on switch, you can't turn it off. So it just was the
easy solution, and it also seemed to blanket the country. And you know,
in my view, not Jay's view. Jay's very scrupulous. He does
not endorse my crackpot vision. In my view, the reason why nobody wanted
to hear what his you know, the whole story for me is the Santa
Clair County study that Jay did in March, right, in which he discovered
that there was an enormous that we had underestimated the number of people who've been
infected by a by COVID by some giant factor, which proved that it was
much less deadly than we thought. Exactly, the denomin is already too late,
and that it was already out there. The denominator was much larger than
we thought. But the numerator was the same, same number of people were
the many non people effected. That is actually great news, that's the news
you want. And nobody wanted to hear it. And I think they didn't
want to hear it because they kind of knew that this was something special,
this virus, and that this virus was going to be mysterious in some ways,
and they knew that because they paid for it. Now Jay doesn't say
that, but you know, I'm put on my Hercule Piro hat and you're
like, well, why somebody's giving you good news and you're not listening to
it. Why aren't you listening to it? And then and at the Santa
Clara study, I mean I make fun of it with him, and he
Jay is such a nice guy. He's like kind of takes it like you're
saying, you're el cheapo. You know grade z bucket shop study that you
did in Santa Claric because it didn't didn't cost that much. Nobody did another
one. It's not like the CDC and FAUCI and the collective bureaucrats when they
attacked his study or they criticized it. They did some unfair criticism, but
they just a fair Christmas, which is like, you know, you didn't
spend enough money and a sample. You didn't do this, you did that.
Oh that's true. They could have done and read one that study I
couldn't agree with anytime. That's almost the point and the whole story at which
I myself just lose it. The CDC has a has a budget of ten
limits of billions a year, and in a crisis like that, it was
just unlimited, absolutely unlimited, and they should have had a thousand studies underway.
Oh thanks, you're done. One a week exactly a million dollars a
week, two million dollars a week. What do we care? That's what
That's good money to spend, right, And they didn't do it. They
didn't do it. Why didn't they do it because they didn't want to know
the answer because the answer they pretty much figured was going to be the answer
that j came up with, which meant that it's going to be without a
giant. You know, look, if you it's the old I mean,
this is completely unfair what I'm about to say, but it's the same kind
of idea, and I've written it. I don't think I'm gonna I don't
know what I'm gonna say I'll say it here. The best way to commit
a murder is to kill somebody and then burn the house down, right,
true. The best way to cover up a lab leak that was I don't
think it was I don't think it was evil. I think it was just
incompetent, because that's what happens is create a giant crisis. So it's not
about the lab leak. It's not about where it came from, Peter.
It's about, you know, protecting the young people in schools, which you
can do what you can only do once because eventually people learn the truth and
then they never believe you again. And that's not where you want to be
with doctors. And when will when can we expect to hear this? When
will we start to do? You know, I will I'll do some seak
previews. Oh, I'll do some sneak previews for Rickechet podcast listeners. Maybe,
but we're going to release them because we're doing it. You know,
we're doing our new initiative, which is the Ricky Step Productions, which would
be long form, multi episode podcast on a topic. And we've got a
bunch of them in the you know, in Developer We've got one which I'm
absolutely can I'm super excited. Boy. We have one which Charlie Cook is
doing on the Second Amendment. We have one about called war stories, which
is going to be dynamite. I just have to like convince a bunch of
people to tell me stories that may or may not get them arrested for revealing
national secrets. But I'm close. We were working on one about school school
or form school choice from the parents perspective. Parent, these are not these
are not issue. We're not talking about issues here. Talk about stories,
American stories. That's how we're telling our That's how we're telling stuff. So
I want to make sure that when we release these things, it's like released
like you know. We We've got another one ready to go, right,
so we promoth the previous are coming. It's It's been super fun, uh
and I'm excited about the stuff. That's stuff that we're we're guiding but I'm
not doing. But I think it's going to be great. You know,
Charlie Cook is doing Second Amendment. And it's the funniest thing you ever heard
is this english Man talking about guns and in Florida buying a gun. And
we've we've found in our budget enough. I hope we may not. It
depends on how much these are. I was with a Rickchet. We had
a Rickchet meet up not that long ago in New Orleans and it was loads
of fun, and Charlie came. We all had a good time, and
then we're having dinner and we're sitting around and then we start talking generally,
so it's like there's a lot of people there. We have a general conversation.
And because Charlie knows a lot about the Second Amendments, somebody says to
him, what's the deal with the Second Amendment and what do you think about?
And Biden said, you know, something somehow came up that Biden recently
said, Hey, some of these gun nuts think you should be all up.
You should be able to go out and buy a cannon, right,
And Charlie was like, he's like, head exploded. But that just makes
me so mad. He's sputtering raguous, because of course you can already do
that. You always could do that. A cannon is not a firearm.
A cannon is ordnance, and that has been legal forever. It is not
illegal to buy a cannon. It's perfectly legal to buy a cannon. You
can go out buy a cannon today, And so we found some money in
the budget for Charlie Cooked by a Cannon, and that's kind of what we
want. That's the title of the series, that Charlie buys a cannon.
And as you would imagine, the people selling cannons are mostly in Florida,
so it's gonna be geographically convenient for Charlie go by a cannon. So that's
okay. I'll leave you with that, and he will start firing it at
sunset every day. Yeah, exactly right, exactly right after he passes his
five day whatever, the five day background checked by you. Okay. Now,
of course you don't have to have because you're allowed to buy a cannon
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