Guests. We don't need no steaking guests. Ask not what your country can
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This is the Ricoche Podcast, number six hundred and forty three. That's a
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been looking for for years, A saying center right civil conversation, the likes
of which is nowhere else, and we're proud of it. I'm joined by
well who I am, James Lyles. I am joined by Robin Long in
New York and Peter Robinson in California, and rob the New York aspect comes
to me to mind today because we had a rumble at our high school last
night. Really, what does it mean? That's a story, it does,
and it made me think of West Side. So we had a bet,
you know, about fifty kids, fifty sixty kids or so, and
in a melee, in a fracas, there was a stabbing. There was
gunfire, wow, serious, there was There was a glock recovered with a
fifty bullet magazine, the likes of which I'm never I'm imagining some some you
know, pepper pot gun that a guy had. And it made me think
of West Side story exactly for the rumble, just that. But it made
me also turn into Milton Glazier, you know, the old man who ran
the pathetic little drug store, who, at one point, just in absolute
despairer asks I think Riff or Tony or one of them, is what is
the matter with you kids? Why do you have to do that? You
know? And if you go back and look at West Side story. From
the very start, they had every single liberal piety nailed in that Officer Krupsky
song. They really did, probably proclaiming, Hey, I'm deprived on account
of I'm depraved, or I'm the prave, not acond of I'm deprived.
And fifty sixty years and nothing appears have changed, because I'm looking at all
the sudden the local subredits, as people discussed this today, and it's generally
society's fault, it's the gun's fault, it's we've failed these children at home
and all the rest of these I think you have that you wants to have
your facts wrong, though, James, because if they recovered it, I
don't think they possibly could have recover were to glock because those there would be
illegal for those children to have you, So wouldn't you write right in Violet?
And I tend to think that perhaps the sign the signs that proclaimed the
school to be a gun free zone may have been um uh, not in
a proper type, not big enough. If they've been twenty four points,
they might have worked, but they were probably twelve or fourteen. Now,
so, um, what do you think that elapsed time is between something like
that happening. Something's like that happening in New York a lot. And then
and then someone else saying, sort of in the press or sort of like,
well, actually, you know, crime is down. Yes, we
do get that. It's always your evidence of your eyes and ears of no,
really, you shouldn't pay attention to your eyes and ears. Crime is
down? Which is I mean, as an aggregate, I guess it's true
actually in New York City in some ways, some things, but it's really
just how you you know, you you throw in the scoff laws and the
you know, the meter cheats, and also of crime. It does seem
like it's down. But if you just just just concentrate on people shooting at
each other and hitting each other with heavy objects, I think it's not down
at all. Or pushing each other in front of trains. Here's something to
consider. I knew somebody, I know somebody who was braced by some youths
last night after the event who were looking for a confederate of theirs and who
would would apparently one of the miscreants involved in who'd escaped the attention of the
police. And when this person declined to assist them any further, they moved
close. One of them moved closer as if to relieve this person of her
property or phone, who whatever it was, and apparently the dog interceded vocificate
dogs, whereupon the person's hand went to their waistband. Now, if this
person had indeed produced a firearm and then backed off when the dog did something
and then ran away, the question is do you report this? Do you
report it because there's no point in reporting it because they're not going to find
the and if they find the person, nothing is going to happen to the
person. So this isn't reported, and therefore there's no statistic that says that
crime is actually going up. How many people just refuse to participate in this
because they know there is no point and you know, it breaks down as
you can expect on the neighborhood, the neighborhood group on next door, which
is Twitter for old people. Everybody's appalled. But you wait, you look
at all of them and say, look, nothing is going to change.
You know, look around here. Look at all the sign the multicolored signs
and everybody's long. Look at the way that everybody around here votes. Look
at the last election that we had, Look at the legislature that we have
and what their concerns are. Nothing is going to change. You realize that,
don't you. James. I wanted to about a two or three question
interview of you because I don't understand it's been a long time now, but
what ten twelve years ago I was fortunate enough to visit your house. You're
talking about a neighborhood high school. I gather you live in a beautiful neighborhood
of large homes. I'm going to guess your home. This neighborhood was built
in the twenties, perhaps nineteen fifteen. Who was one of the outliers,
fifty built by a candy manufacturer, built by a man who was part of
the booming Minneapolis candy industry who made the walnetto in addition to the in addition
to the Scotch loaf, which I don't think is a So so we go
from my memory of you, of your just beautiful, leafy Midwestern never been
invited, So I wouldn't turn to the last century neighborhood to this image now
of a melee that was serious enough that somebody got stabbed. That meant that
means there were knives present, the cups retrieve a glock with fifty rounds nearby?
Is this gang activity? Is this how did it come about? Is
this pre planned? We were joe about West Side story. Did the cops
have to get called to break what happened? Happened in that beautiful neighborhood.
Well, I'll tell you that the cops showed up all mass There was everybody.
There was park police, there was highway patrol, there was sheriffs.
There was everybody here. They all came running facts. They got there quickly.
They got there quickly, And apparently it was rival factions at a community
event that have been held at the high school. It was not necessarily specifically
high schoolers themselves. Some of them may have been no, but yes,
So this leafy, beautiful neighborhood of mine, which I had absolutely adore and
feel lucky to live in. I'm looking at video online. There was not
related to the stabbing or the shooting, but just simply a couple of people
pummeling and kicking somebody who was on the sidewalk. Now, that sidewalk,
that space is where I watched my daughter walk into high school for the first
day and for the last. That space is where I pass every day over
that house there, that's the one in the corner of my street. And
in addition to the person being pummeled, there's the usual techno savages who are
milling about their phones to make sure that every single little incident, moment of
the kick and the push and the shove and the stealing, is captured and
uploaded to social Vietna social media. So it is one of those things that
sticks with you and gives you a sense of burning, burning impotence, because,
as I said, unless there is some seismic shift in what people have
come to expect about the civic order, nothing will be done. Okay,
two more questions, if I may, well, I mean just trying to
understand this. And again, obviously for you it's personal because it happened to
your high school. But for me, I've been there all right. Are
the cops neighborhood cops? Is there going to be the kind of thing where
the neighbors can talk to the police and there's some neighborly small scale maybe doesn't
arise to the level of getting debated on the floor of the Minneapolis of the
State House. Over in Saint Paul. You said, should you report gun
and My answer is, if you know the cops, if there's a genuine
sense of neighborliness, you'd report it and just say, officers, I want
you to know, you've got guys out on patrol. We live here.
There's a kid with a gun in the neighborhood. Right. Well, if
if, if, if somebody, if there had been a police car,
to whom one would have been able to speak. Yes, I'm sure,
I mean there were just there were cops everywhere and you could approach them and
you could ask them what was going on in the light. But we don't
have officers Krupkey or Clancy walking the beach, swinging swinging a club and you
know, checking keying a little box on a pole and checking in. So
we don't know. Okay, So the last question is did what kind of
reporting took place? Is there a strip woulden cover a neighborhood event like this?
I guess is there a local newspaper or is it? So just tell
me what was the press? Well, the press was one stabbing shooting at
this high school and it was it was Wow, it's right there in the
front page of our paper today. So yeah, it was a big thing
because it's anomalous and um uh, you know they can. They're not going
to be able to not cover it. It's a big deal. It doesn't
happen around here, but it did, and so yes it did get covered.
Um but again, you know, part of the problem on social media
is that the wrong accounts on Twitter are covering it. There's one that is
quite quite peppery when it comes to local crime, and people are accusing them
of all sorts of built in biases and the rest of it. So you
can't trust them. So I hate to link to these people. I don't
want to do. We have a fair source that we can use. It's
it's it's fraught with so many angles that it is just difficult for people to
sometimes confronted anyway. So that I do not not to be labor everybody with
the details of of my little corner of the world. But it's indicative of
sort of a larger social crackling fracturing that we see in every single large American
city. The sense is that it is getting worse and that there is no
not that there's no will to do anything about it, but there's just there's
there's just well maybe that there is no will nobody really really talks about what's
necessary. And if you if you start talking about stern penalties for juveniles of
actually putting carjackers the first time into jail, you will get everybody come in
another woodwork and saying, well, you can't do that. That just hardens
them. It doesn't teach them anything. Um well, it may dissuade them.
The knowledge of six months, you know, picking up trash on these
I might might turn a mind or two against this sort of thing if they
knew it would be swift and certain. But we can't have that discussion,
I guess. So that's where I am. So the other thing, of
course, and people say Minneapolis is not that they say Target, because that's
the big head gruss. I can almost see it from here and we'll get
to De Santis and Trump had just a minute here. But it really is
fascinating to me to see exactly how corporations are behaving and reacting to this.
Now, you guys, I'm just ask you, what's your take on the
whole target controversy in the latest and like it won't go broke thing, I
can tell you we're talking about personal things. Target matters to me. I
never shove a Target, but my daughters love it. Why is this because
there's stylish stuff and I'm not just talking about clothing here, but stylish stuff
if you've got to. I have a son who's moving from San Francisco to
Austin, Texas, and Target is one of the places you think of for
curtains and maybe some desk furniture office furniture, because it's stylish and inexpensive,
and it's extremely as far as I can tell, it's extremely well run.
The people there are trained, you can they know their inventory. It's a
well run operation. And then we hear that Target is well, you'll have
to explain the immediate controversy. I mean Target, there's a there's a woke
transgender element to the story. The story that has my attention because of where
I live, is that I think it's the Target CEO who announced in the
most recent earnings call that inventory shrinkage, that is to say, theft is
now costing Target half a billion dollars a year. And similar related story,
the enormous Nordstrom in downtown San Francisco announced that it's closing and they put it
in an official statement. They didn't say anything about crime. They didn't use
that word, but conditions have changed and they can no longer do business in
San Francisco when they're customers and employees no longer feel safe. Oh my,
these are two major well run retailers. Of of course, Target headquartered in
Minneapolis. And there's a second strand to the Target story that I'm not up
on, but there's some sort of transgender or woke element as well. Fill
me in on that one, James. Well, at first as Nordstrom is
citing changing dynamics, which you just yes and yes, and they're leaving and
organized shoplifting rings, you know, point zero zero one percent of the people
doing ninety percent of the work is probably part of it. But I'll ask
you, Rob, I know you have Target in Manhattan. I think there
has to be a few. Yeah, there's one in Manhattan. And there's
one which is some I would describe as hell on Earth in Brooklyn, which
I once was forced to go to and regretted every minute of it because that's
it's it's just bedlam. It's just it's impossible to make your way through it.
It's not it's not the clean, beautiful Target that we all remember in
love. So what is your impression of the embroider the Bruhaha, they're kurf
Fluffel that they're currently undergoing. Well, I mean, I don't you know,
I don't know. I think it's a mistake for corporations to sort of
try to go past what they need to do, which is to sell good
products and you know, clean space and that kind of thing. Um.
I think it's a disconnect between the people sort of in HQ and the people
who are running the stores. I mean, the analogy I would use is
that they used to be in Burger King. I know when the Burger King
camp account was that Jay Walter Thompson. This is million years, billion,
billion years ago. The Burger King company, the corporation, the suits would
always want to come up with some of the clever, creative, edgy kind
of ad campaign. But you know it's the these these these franchise businesses are
a little like you know, medieval fiefdoms, right, there's a you could
be the king or the lord, but you don't have that much power.
The barons have a lot of power too. And the barons in this case
where the store owners, the franchise owners would own a string of burglings around
the country and they would always come for the big convention and see the fancy
new creative, very edgy campaign, and they would just say, no,
no, no, no, Show the burger. Show a hot burger,
juicee burger. That's what people want to see. People come into our restaurants
because they're hungry. They want to eat the food. So show the food.
The fries are crispin thing and salt, and the burger and the cold
ice cool. Just do that. Just do not attempt to grow a brain.
And that is probably the problem. You see. I think you saw
bud Light, I think you see the Target. Yes, that the woke
thing is the way it's expressed. But the tendency of people in media and
in the corporate HQ to attempt to make a simple thing more complicated or to
do additional things in addition to trying to get you into Target to buy stuff,
to do something else, to seem hip and cool with it is almost
always a disaster. Always a disaster. Yeah, I think it's right.
I mean Target has been having pride material for I don't know how many years,
and it really hasn't been much for a nation. Nobody cares. I
think what changed this year is all of a sudden people got the impression and
correctly so that all of a sudden there was this trans element that had been
amplified in the problem. So and then that's who's it four? Right?
I mean the question is just just shure numbers. Who's it four? I
mean, if if we all took a pill tonight and got rid of whatever
our transphobia or whatever it is, that with the decome we all got rid
of tomorrow, how many trans people were talking about I mean, let's we're
talking about a very small number of people. The idea that you want to
like to devote your part of your store for this kind of merchandise is like,
well, that seems kind of eccentric, especially in places where I mean,
look most of the you know, eventually the look I understand the pride
I mean the target in Manhattan or Brooklyn or big cities that happing in pride
sections that might make sense. Actually they were they're smart to do that.
Um, but this obsession with like the idea that this this thing, so
that the numbers just aren't there, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
I mean, you can say virtue signaling in the rest of it, wad
I think what I think this is my This is my impression that it's a
result of the ideological loadstar moving that. Whereas before when you had pride was
LGP, you know T will attack that on whatever it's statistically insignificant. Now
you have, as Andrew Sullivan wrote in a pretty good substack, I think
last week, you have what used to be the old gay rights movement being
supplanted by queer theory. People would say, well, isn't that the same?
Don't think you want to be called queers? Well, it is complicated
because queer theory is much more cultural. Marxism is much more Michael Folk.
It's much more deconstructing gender. It's it's much more blowing up a whole bunch
of ideas and replacing them. Well, there's infinitely malleable set of thought about
human beings and sexuality that is different from the old you know you're a gay
man, you're a lesbian, you know, you like both whatever. It's
much different. So when you say queer now you can actually mean somebody who
is probably heterosexual but has adopted some peculiar little derivation that they found on Tumblr
to make themselves feel special, so they are now part of this because it's
cool to be that. Right. You don't really have to change what you
do or you're interested in. But you've got your own little particular flag and
your own little gender and your own little side, and you're own little pronouns,
so you're queer. So the intellectual loadstar of the whole gay rights movement
moved seamlessly without anybody really noticing it into queer to queer theory, just the
way that equality moved somehow into equity without anybody absolutely noticing. And in both
of these cases it is a structural shift of language and thought. The guys
the target aren't that's smart to probably note this. They just note that while
we got more queer people now, so let's go all in on that.
That means going all more on the trans bit because that's cool. And you
know, the governor lieutenant governor of Minnesota sported this t shirt the other day
said protect trans kids. It's got a big knife on it, and I
think she can stab somebody who who is opposed to mastectomies for sixteen year olds.
That's what you're talking about. And since the whole forces of hate are
supposedly assembling to keep children from transitioning medically physically in the rest of it,
then we must be opposed to those forces of me. So there's a virtue
in coming and opposing the people who are opposing this new good thing. And
there's also this sort of go along get along borne by the cultural wind things,
where people fall into this and say, well, obviously this is this
is new, and this is important and trans is important, and all the
pass just blown up. What they don't get, I think is that a
lot of people who are perfectly content to I don't care. If you are
an adult and you think this that whatever, I just I don't care.
They're not interested in having biological mails compete in women's sports. They're not interested
in biological mails who have not done any sort of physical transition and whats're mending
full access to women's spaces and calling them So they don't buy it. They
just they don't buy it. And whereas before that they would be content to
just ignore it, now they are being compelled to believe it and having compelled
speech in which they are required to say these things that that is a woman.
You can't say otherwise, are your folk or you are, as our
political constituents in the newspapers that a bigot who's knuckles are literally dragging on the
ground. So that's what I think it is. It's an ideological capture.
It it's people not paying attention to this. And you think, well,
the other part of it is that Satanism got attached to this. Isn't that
fun that one of the artists with whom Target was partnering is a Satanist and
has all this Satanist cool pasteli stuff in his website. Well, it's a
different kind of Satan than we're thinking about. It's the sort of there is
no Satan really, but we're just being individualistic and you are your own God,
etc. But still, it's like, you don't have to actually probably
antagonize your Middle America base by going with guys who are putting out a little
Satanist pins about how we need to put up guillotines for homophobes. I've been
clicking around during this conversation because now I'll shut up. Now I've dominated those
whole damn thing. I'll shut up. I've been clicking around during this conversation,
and here's what I found. Target hasn't just put for sale a few
sweatshirts with the Pride rainbow on them. They've got according to what I found,
they put up Take Pride, a sort of displays in store after store
after store with hashtag take Pride, which leads you to we at Target,
we have a simple but powerful manifesto. We're not born with pride, We
take pride. We're making our message loud and clear. Targets proudly stands with
the LGBT COM. That's politics, that's not retail. Target has waded into
an ideological battle that nobody invited, unless, of course, so if you're
you spoke to the Middle American, even though I live in California, I
would view myself as a Middle American. I would find that offensive. I
do find a defensive. They didn't need to wade in, They didn't need
to take sides. They perfectly find selling this or that piece of retail.
But they took sides. They waded into an ideological struggle, and they shouldn't
be surprised if there's pushback. We're going to be people who disagree. I
think Target has a little explaining to do to its shareholders into its customers.
Honestly, I had thought they just found themselves in the middle of something.
Nope, they waded into it. Rob. Do you think it's an ideological
position or is it? Is it simply? I mean I I you know,
yes, I feel I'm torn because part of me feels that, yes,
this, you know, the sort of wokeism is a problem. But
another part of me finds myself in um unexpected for me and um vociferous agreement
with Peter Teel, who, in a recent interview with Barry Weiss identified about
ten or fifteen things he was more worried about for America than wokeism. And
I think sometimes people on the right it's we's when we go to this kind
of outrage. And I'm not sure. I I'm not sure. I really
I really feel that I think Target's going to pay a price in the marketplaces
they should. I mean, I put it this way. Had had Target
convened a giant zoom meeting of Target store managers across the country and said,
hey, what do you think of this? You're the ones that you're the
closest to your customer, what do you think of this? I think those
results would be very interesting and probably very revealing for Target. I'm interested in
Peter Deal's fifteen things that are more important than I mean. I understand that
people get spun up about particular examples and the rest of it. And yeah,
and that, yes, there are economic, political, demographic things to
be concerned about. I think we can be concerned about all of them.
We can walk and chew gum. But there is an ideological deconstruction taking place
in American culture that woke and would not even a term I like anymore.
I wish we had a better one is cumulatively injury. And when it when
it happens to nearly every single institution at the same time, it's it's it's
termites that know how big and grand your house may look, it's being eaten
away from the inside, which is the intention, the expressed intention critical race
theory. Yeah, Rob, I hear you. Hear being really bored with
me talking about this, Yam. I might be honest with you. I
understand it's a difficult issue, but it's just it's to me, it's so
boring. It's what everyone talks about all the time. And when I watch
you know, when you watch cable news, they're talking about it. When
you read a conservative press, they're talking about everyone's talking about all the time.
I agree it's crucial, but it's I'm just so I can't. I'm
just being honest. I am so bored with it. There's nothing new about
it, there's nothing new. It's just it's just a one more outrage machine,
which I get, I understand, but I just I'm just being honest.
I'm just I just can't gin up at on Friday at twelve thirty two
pm, I just can't gin up any enthusiasm for once again going through all
the terrible, woke things that are happening. I just don't care right now
about them. I mean, I know I've probably I will the future,
but there's nothing for me to be, not only for me to do about
it right now. I don't got to Target anyway except say, oh,
you know Target's gonna pay a price. Well, here's the thing. I
mean, I got to go there soon to get stuff for my daughter when
she gets a new apartment because she's got a job, which is great,
and she's she's incredibly we're gonna have to outfit a new place for her.
And Target's got some great sheets, but there's no way I'm gonna buy them
at Target. No, certain, No, I don't think you should buy
your sheets a target. You know where I think you should buy you Where
would that be? Well, boll And Branch. They're the best sheets you
can buy exactly why And the reason is well, I mean where she is
probably not gonna have air conditioning because she's still at that stage in her life.
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we thank boldon Branch responsing this the Ricochet Podcast. All right, gentlemen,
Um, Tim Scott, Ronda Santists, they're in Rian. What do you
think? So? Um? I just loved Tim Scott. I just loved
him. Now I have a kind of background question that touches everything I'm about
to say. I want to go on and on, but the background question
is this, Am I just nostalgic for something that at least half the population
now doesn't even remember? And that's the That's Ronald Reagan. That's politicians who
understood optimism and a lightness of touch and who could connect with their audiences as
ordinary human beings in a neighborly American way. Tim Scott has all of that.
He has a I found it and just an immensely moving personal story getting
into trouble as a kid, being raised by this saintly single mother who worked
and worked and did her best to keep him out of trouble, turning himself
around becoming a Christian, understanding the importance of hard work, the gifts of
being an American. He talks about his faith. I'm not just tossing that
in there. It's all just tremendously moving details to follow. There's not a
lot of policy that comes out of all of this, and he barely touches
on foreign policy. So you take one look and say, this is not
a fully baked campaign yet. But oh my goodness, in the current climate,
I just found him so refreshing. And then De Santist is almost exactly
the reverse for me, in that there's a record as governor, there's a
fundraising operation, there are plans to put people on the ground in Iowa and
New Hampshire. Deeply organized, he's highly intelligent. He's thought his policies through.
You've got everything there that you want to put in that half dozen thick
binders that go on the on the bookshelf in every campaign headquarters, so you
can look up where your candidate stands on any issue. And gee, and
I really want de Santists to succeed. That's where I started. But there's
a kind of, I don't know, a kind of flatness to the affect
I just feel as though he's just even when he's doing that. The campaign
video, the announcement video, now you have to expect that to be pretty
good because they've got as much time in the world as they want to shoot
that. That's him in a camera and they can do take after take after
take. So I'm going to guess that this is the top of his form
and he's It's not that it's just not that good. There's no warmth,
there's no connection with it. I'm just so this is why I'm interested,
especially what Rob has to say, because of course Rob would be all over
the professionalism or likely So you've got these strange candidates, yin and yang versions
of each other. I personally, I'll just go ahead and say it right
now, not that I think listeners would be in any doubt about it.
I hope either one of them can overtake Donald Trump, but each has these
enormous strengths but also glaring weaknesses. That's what I think. And again I
sort of wonder if I say, the Wall Street Journal said it and it's
editorial on Rond de Santis said he could benefit from even a little bit of
Ronald Reagan's self deprecating humor. Tim Scott understands humor and lightness of touch in
De Santis has none of it. But I might just am I saying things
that nobody relates to anymore. Does everybody want anger? No? No,
I think I mean, I think you're that's the situation think about. I
don't think you have to remember how Ronald Reagan ran to know that he he
ran very successfully. Like it's it's a people or people don't really change.
They do like optimistic future. You know, someone their leader facing the future
and talking about the future optimistically, which is what Ronald Reagan did. He
talk about the future a lot for an old man, talked about the future.
And I think that is actually what not only Republican primary voters want,
but what the general voters want somebody talking about the future. And luckily for
the Republicans, they have like the world's oldest relic from the past to run
against, so really talking about the future right and unfortunately, the front runner
for the Republicans right now, just right now, I don't think that's going
to last. But for right now is somebody who's also obsessed with the past,
not the future. I think it's really right about Ron to Sanders.
I have an old friend who does a lot of campaigns, and he said
that a campaign error is when you don't take advantage of an opportunity to be
a human being. Because the way you win the presidency really is to you
have to act more normal for about ten more seconds than your opponent. You
don't have to be normal. I mean, Donald Trump's not a normal person.
He's very abnormal in many many ways. He lives in and lived in
a giant golden tower and has had a golden toilet. Right, but he's
still, even to this day, seems more normal than his opponent in twenty
sixteen, Hilary clown who seems so weird. Right, So so Ron Sanders.
Guess the Twitter thing had a lot of these glitches and was this and
that and people, oh my god, I mean, this is an opportunity
for him to say, yeah, boy, a lot of it was a
lot of fun to do. I find Eon a fascinating guy. I wish
there weren't those glitches. But we've all been on that zoom call, right,
We've all had that problem, right, and most of working Americans will
not and say, yeah, you know, I know. Sometimes the thing
just doesn't work, right, Okay, that's fine. Then you're then then
it's a it's not a one day story where you're trying to mitigate damage.
It's a story in which you are moving your identity and your personality forward.
And that is what happens to him. The next week is going to be.
I mean, look, I think he's um. I think he's running
a classic gubernatorial campaign. We talked to Simscott a minute. You know,
this is these are not done people. These are smart people. They looked
at the past. Right The last Republican city Republican governor to get into the
White House was a quarter of a century ago, George W. Bush.
He ran against you know, Orn Hatch, Gary Bauer, Steve Forbes,
Alan Keys. He only really won contender, and that was John McCain.
That's right, that's fairy. This is not This is not that campaign.
And so I I think what I'm interested in, I mean, I'm trying
to you know, not I don't necessarily have a favorite right now. But
what I'm interested in is just watching how how how much relish Ronda Santis has
to take a part Donald Trump, because that's the only way for him to
win the nominations, the only way from getting the White House and where where
he's planning to take apart Donald Trump, And he just said something very shrewd
yesterday which he said he kept it on COVID. Donald Trump did great stuff
in the first three years, so totally supported him, which is true.
And then he turned over his presidency to Anthony Fauci, right, And that
is a very stark difference between the two of them. And it doesn't require
him to say, oh, you know the January sixth, this not doesn't
require to get in any of those. Letting get any of those just just
clear eye to the Republican primary voter. When it push came to shove,
he blew it. And when push came the video what I had the same
what the Santis video. Yeah, there's nothing but Trump saying we shut it
down, we shut it down, and we were right. We shut it
down. Right, it's like a minute and a half Trum saying shut very
very shrewd um. But on the other hand, he doesn't seem like he
seems kind of like a jerk a little bit like I meant, I mean
DeSantis. People I know who've met him say he's not. But I know,
it's like, he just seems kind of jerky. So he's gonna have
to I think when you're when you're your your chief opponent is everybody knows is
kind of a lovable jerk. I mean, in a way if you like
Trump, nobody says he's not a jerk. He's a jerk. So you're
gonna have to come up with a contrast. So I was what I like
was but Tim Scott is that Tim Scott seems to be running the way old
timey Republicans run, you know, and I kind of like that. So
um, but I think we're gonna see some more people jumped in, and
I think it's I mean, the only the secret weapon that I think that
Drawn de Santis has is that the press thinks he's worse than Donald Trump.
Yeah, how can that be? That really does feel like the tenor of
the coverage. They hate him more than they hate Trump because he might win.
Because he might win. That's it. Yeah, that's it exactly.
Also because he's like he's he's affective. Right, So if you, if
you, if you, if you, if you're looking for these political fights,
you're this is a governor who's been effective. He's been effective at like
I mean, you know, I just said I was bored of wokeism,
But you know, Rod De Santis has been effective at like combating that.
I I you know, I feel like, you know, I'm the governors
like De Santis and Brian Kemp who were smart about COVID, I think are
would be much better in the White House then the former president who wasn't try
you. I mean, we say to the press, why do you guys
hate De Santas? He's Trump but without the Trump, And they reply,
that's why we hate him, right, That's why. I mean, all
this talking about how he's a Nazi, all that stuff, like the plant,
all that stuff that that I think is gonna play well for him in
the Republican primary. He'll wear it like a badge. Republican primary voters are
hip to the character assassination that happens in the mainstream press. They already,
they've discounted that already. When Donald Trump is indicted and loses a lawsuit,
his popularity among Republicans goes up. And it's not because Republicans are somehow degenerate.
It's because they understand that this guy has been treated unfairly, whether you
like him or you don't like him. I don't like him, but I
do think he was treated unfairly. So you know, DeSantis should be wearing
this as a badge all you. You know, he should be a liberal
media left and right and tell Tumps. You know that it tell Tums comes
time to actually run a general, right, which is what what every Republican
candidate does. You win the nominate, you run right and win the nomination,
and then you run to the center to win the general. So Rob,
could you as a professional in media? And you too, I mean,
James, You're I think of you more as a broadcaster, but that's
probably because your voice is so beautiful. In any event, the question is
this. I had one encounter with Rhonda Sanders in person. It was when
he was a congressman and we were both at a conference and we both got
bored at the same time. So we went off to the coffee shop and
each of us had a cup of coffee and a croissants. He was heavier
than than he is now. He was he was he was just he was
a perfectly lovely guy. We just chatted, we talked politics, and I
see the Rhonda Santis in the campaign video of the announcement video, and it
looks to me. Tell me if I'm wrong, is the question at the
end of this. But it looks to me like a guy who thinks that
the moment the camera is on, he has to be somebody else. Yeah,
and that is a rookie's mistake. Yeah, what do you think?
No, I totally agree. Yeah, I do kind of get that feel.
But I'm just thinking of Newsom coming in and hip hip checking Biden off
the stage, and the country having the opportunity to literally vote between the California
and the fact that would be great for the country. That would be great,
That would be a clean debate. Here's a choice too, totally different
ways of looking at America. But I think it would come down to I
mean, I think we I mean maybe this is I'm obsessed with it.
Maybe maybe I'm obsessed with this and I shouldn't be. I should be obsessed
with wokism. Who knows, But I am obsessed with the test of COVID.
And if you're gonna put Florida against California, Florida wins. Um And
we know that Florida wins because you can look on the www. Whitehouse dot
gov website to see the states in action in their excess deaths, and there
are more excess deaths in California than there are in Florida. Um, but
you cannot you cannot separate wokeism. Again, we got to come up with
a better word from the COVID response because both are theition on the imposition of
restriction on human activity and thought by the state. Okay, so I accept
that. I guess what I mean is that the left and the media want
to say that row On de Santis, and again I have no dog in
this fight, but just because they're talking about Rhn de Santis, that Ronda
Santis is his entire governorship and leadership and ninety nine point nine percent, you
know, smashing victory when you ran for real ectum was because he's a reactionary
and he is like to put it in a six week abortion ban, which
is probably a mistake. But whatever anti trans policies, his like quixotic fight
against Disney, all that stuff, right when I really think it's because he
was right about lockdowns and school closures. Gavin Newsom, Donald Trump, Anthony
Fauci were wrong, and the New York Times also wrong about them. So
they are trying to memory hole this incredibly incredibly, incredibly tragic, long lasting,
decades long ill effect mistake they all made and celebrated and squashed all squashed
all the dissent for and they try to pretend that didn't happen. So there
now they're they're they're they're looking for trivial things to jump on. But I
think that the more the more Descantis says, at the most, the most
monumental event of the past worldwide event of the past decade, maybe the past
two decades. The only time the world has been talking about the same thing
before the COVID was World War Two. Right wherever you went in the world.
In World War Two, they were talking about World War Two. Wherever
you went in the world during COVID, they were talking about In that moment,
we had a frivolous president who could not concentrate or learn, and we
had a very very strong, powerful governor in Florida, and we had a
frivolous president and frivolous governor in California, and we had a couple really strong
Republican governor as you made the right call, that to me is like he
should be saying that over and over and over again. Could you touched on
this notion that they're trying to memory hole at all? Yeah? I okay,
So this has been puzzling me, and I've come up with this kind
of cockamami analogy in my mind, and you'll agree that it's cockamamie. I
don't know whether you'll agree with the analogy, but let me try it out
and see what you both do with it. It's like, it's this and
I have just been this weird thing that for two years the country was shut
down, the state assumed dictatorial powers, unlike this cockamami. Public health official
in the county where I live in California, who twenty four hours before with
the lockdown nobody had ever heard of, suddenly told us we had to stay
in our homes, shut down our businesses, wear masks if we want to.
It was unbelieved, and now it's as if it never happened. We
don't talk about it now. Part of that is understandable, in that we
don't want to talk about it. But I have this. Here's my analogy,
or my cockamami theory, is that this is all like a childhood trauma.
We're pressing something but it still explains. We won't talk about it,
therefore we won't understand the way this is true. But in some weird way,
what we all just went through and our pretending never happened, still explains
eighty percent of what's happening in the country, including the rumble at your high
school. In some way those are connected, I think, Well, maybe
so in that the kids were deprived of a year or two of actual school
exactly, they forgot how to socialize. They've got out of right. It's
entirely possible. But you know, we don't talk about it because why Well,
because a lot of the people who went along with the lockdowns were people
in the media who were neurotic and who were we're part of the modern thought
that replaced that that elevated health to above all else, not your spiritual well
being or your emotional or your intellectual apparatum. No, it was just you
know, the church, the cult of health. If you eat the right
things, you'll you'll be a turnal. And so to them this was very
important, and they were very good at playing all the rules, and they
were very good at enforcing the rules, and they had the total societal endorsement
behind them. Of being the good little people who followed the good little rules,
so they participated in this and the fact that it may have been overblown
or that it lasted too, they're not going to give that up. They
would rather just move along rather than have a full accounting of it, because
in their hearts they really think that they were always right and the mat was
the yahoo's in the Red States who were doing what they were supposed to do,
and that's the reason that everybody died. I mean, if you go
to the coronavirus sub credit, you will find to the the dead enders who
every day gathered by the thousands and talk about how the rest of us are
fools for not wearing masks on on airplanes for example, to still there and
they're all and they're all, they're all they're sifting through the guts of every
single little story about long COVID because they're all convinced that they have it and
explains everything else for them. So yeah, we're not going to get the
accounting because the people who would be doing that don't want to admit anything they're
wrong because they don't think that they were. And go back to the last
time we had something like this, Peter, and I think it would probably
be in the last few years of the teens underwood Row Wilson, when we
had things happened that today we completely forget. The amount of government censorship,
the mandatory Rara Palmer raids, the Palmer, the nationalization of the rails.
Right, there's all kinds of things that happened that change the culture in a
lot of ways. And if you look through the newspapers, it's fascinating to
see everybody flip and switch on a dime and march right along with what the
government was now telling them. And that was forgotten in the Devil May Care
twenties that followed. You know, just it just people just moved along.
We're not moving along right now because there are all kinds of injuries that were
made that were deep than we thought. And the you know, does Randy
Weingarten want to apologize, No, she's double she's red conning and rewriting history
to make herself to the person who was to her. She's you know,
if he was the one who was trying to rip the chains from the schoolhouse
door to let the kids pour in. Do any of the people who believe
that it was probably not a good idea to send everybody home for work permanently,
that it destroyed the office basis tax. No, they won't because all
of a sudden the work at home, you know, people don't want to
mingle too much or so no, we're not going to have that. Say
two things about the three things about politics, right. The first thing is
that I feel like that Peter, You're absolutely right, and I don't think
we're sure yet how long these ripple effects will go or how they'll work themselves
out. I mean, I think that what happened in twenty sixteen and sort
of the Trump administer Trump campaign and certainly his administration kind of collected this frustration
that people had from the two thousand and eight financial collapse, where it seemed
to people and I don't think they were wrong that the very powerful financiers who
made huge mistakes um didn't really pay a price and bailed out bailed out.
But but I hear I actually would different view that it's not that they didn't
went to jail, because the truth is they didn't. Most of them didn't
do anything illegal, anything wrong. They just should have gone broke, because
that's what happens in capitalism and I remember talking to a friend of mine who
is a very big financier, and I was saying, you know, we're
good, what we had to protect the financial system. What do you want
people selling apples on the street. And I was like, well, I
kind of I kind of want the chairman of AIG selling apples on the street.
I kind of want those people to lose their net worth. I really
do um at least as a down payment on the bailout. I'm not saying
that we shouldn't bail them out, but I think that the first payment should
have been checks from the liquidated network of the people running banks that failed,
and there seemed to be and then within a year everybody who's back to making
bank again. And I just didn't feel right. I don't think it feels
right to people that that now in America where it used to be that if
you were going to get seriously rich, I mean, you're gonna get a
family office rich. You were going to get like your grandchildren weren't going to
have to work and be they're gonna be screwed up rich. That kind of
rich. You're gonna build a museum rich that you had to build something you
had to make something, you had to invent something, and now you can
get you can be you can have almost a billion dollars, you can have
seven hundred million dollars getting stock options for being the CEO of a publicly health
company. I mean, you can make all you can get. You can
have generational wealth from being an executive in a company. And that I think
also disquiets people. And I think that is part of kind of where we
see the tuitional kind of things breaking down because Republicans have traditionally been allied with
that kind of stuff. Um, and I suspect that there are a lot
of Republicans who think that's something that needs to be addressed. Rob, just
one more thing about politics, because you had by politics, is that the
strength that um, the strength that that that that people like n governors like
Ronda Santists. But I would I know he's not running, but Brian Camp
I'd just say because it isn't like Ronda Santis is a standing on top of
a pyramid all by himself. That they're not just giving you bad news.
That's what makes the campaign, that makes this campaign strut so important. They're
telling you I made the right decision. I brought good news to my state.
It's not just I wouldn't make a mistake like those guys are jerks and
and they're terrible. It's I was right. I made the right decision.
If you vote for me, you're not You don't have to just vote a
negative. You could vote a positive. And I think that's a very power
full psychological state for a voter, whether you're a Republican, a primary voter,
or you're a general in the general elect I think to have somebody who
you're like, oh, this guy made the right decision, I think is
it powerful? You know, whether he can capitalize one or not. A
certain rains to be seen, but it's a powerful campaign strut for sure.
Get him through the primaries. Rob. I happen to know that you're working
on a big project, and this is one reason that you are able to
speak with particular insight and passion about COVID. And I just want to start
teasing this project because it's fascinating to hear you talk about it. You and
I talk. I hear this, So let me ask you this question.
What's the project? And why is Jay Bodicharia? Really briefly, and why
is Jay Bodicharia to pick up on where you just on the statement you just
made. Why is Jay Bodicharia in a position to give a testimony as he
did the other day for a few minutes he died in He was part of
Ron de Sanders's announcement on Twitter. Why is your friends? So, what's
the project? And why? What the heck does Jay have to do with?
Confirming that? To sand explain that, Well, we know, we
know Jaj's a friend of the podcast. Jay's a friend of the Ricochet,
He's a friend of ours. He's you know, and he's a we've ever
met him. He is the most He's the sort of the kindest, gentlest
person. Like you kind of meet him, you think, like man,
you know, Actually, I think Jay would do better if ten percent of
the nasty things people said about him are true. Actually, I think he'd
probably be a little bit like happier in his life. Um uh So the
story we're telling a long form stories now in the Ricoche network. We're sort
of preparing them. We got a bunch more we're doing, um and we've
raised some money to do that. And what are the ones we're doing is
a story really kind of a to ten episode serialized thing. It's part of
our large master plan for ricochet um of the story of COVID. But I'm
i'm you know, you can't tell the whole STIs as too many things.
But essentially I'm telling a story in three parts. The first part is everything
we knew about viruses and everything we knew about COVID resist up to like March
of twenty twenty. The second part is all the mistakes that we made.
And then the third part is what we did to the person and the people,
not just Jay, but people who were right. And we're giving us
the right science and the right research and the right conclusions. And so my
general theory is that Americans decided, not Americans. This is the big distinction,
Not Americans, but American and public health officials and politicians a panic attack,
and the media too, the media panic attack, and they behave like
people who have panic attacks. They shut down all external information. They decided
very early on on the course they were going to take in February of March,
shut down everything, shut down schools, nobody leader have spray your lettuce
and were I'm asked it to bed And they never ever change course, ever,
even though, people like Jay Jay Brandon's study in at Santa Clara County
in April twenty twenty, where he revealed some pretty good news we should have
been celebrating, which is that, hey, tons of people have much so
many more people have COVID than we thought they are. They they've had COVID.
They either tested positive for this, they're Sarah positive for COVID. Right,
because this is I'm going to get the weeds here April twenty twenty.
They didn't have the nasal swab. They just had to take your food.
He said, isn't that great? Look how big the denominator is. Like
everyone's got COVID, but only the same number of people are saying this is
good news what you wants? Right? And instead of saying, oh,
well then now that we know this, we can do X y Z,
people said, shut up, you're a liar. The test was corrupt every
step of the way. He and Jay will admit this. He was not
He was not exactly right about everything, but he was directionally correct about everything
right. And and then a couple of governors called him for advice. Right,
one of them was drawn to Santas and Jay said this, said this
to us years. I mean such as wasn't same day as he talked to
him, Yeah, and said, wow, that guy did the reading.
That guy did extra remember them. Yeah, and uh, you know when
you you know, I talked to Jay now all the time to do this
project, and like, you know, you will not be shocked to know
that I don't always do the reading. Like I'm kind of like I'm sad.
It's really hard, Like it's I don't under I don't I'm not I
don't have that brain, right. Um. And he's very very Jay is
very gentle with me. When I say something stupid, He'll say like,
well, you know, yeah, in a way, you're you correct.
You know, he's very right. But that's what he said about Um,
he said that rond to Santa's now. The only other person I've heard talking
about a candidate who's not a Candonnymore is Mike Pompeo's a friend of mine said
was one of the smartest people she'd ever met. Um. But oh that
so so that that that's that's framing my argument. But I but and though
I'm sort of the deep head deep underwater with COVID, I actually do think
it's you're looking for those crucible moments where you can say we all knew,
we all had the same set of information. I just chose to read past
the first page. I didn't take Anthony Fauci's advice, and I was right,
and Anthony Faucci detacted him attack Jay, you know, personally after Great
Barrington in November Great and I still say that they should have held that conference
and made the declaration from someplace else, because it makes it sound as if,
well, there's you know, we could give you a Barrington declaration,
but we're going to the And when you talk about being attacked by Faucci,
well that's a badge of honor for some, but for others who told them
exactly what to think. I still remember going to the local boutique shop where
you get the nice little gift for the wine mom because it's her birthday,
and they had candles and mug they had, you know, voted candle with
folchi ug I mean, like St. Anthony Faucci, that sort of thing,
right, unbelievable, and a and a mug that said wwf D what
would Fauci do? So he had replaced Jesus in the popular consciousness, one
of the things you're gonna have to talk about, Rob And I am not
kidding here. I think this matters is that when everybody went home and sat
in front of Netflix, there were two options that they had. One was
Tiger King, which told them all they need to know about the South,
of course, and the other was a movie called Outbreak, which had come
out a few years before and was banging around one on streaming and people could
watch it and it presented for them a blueprint of what they believed was to
come. And at Kate Winslet, being very very concerned about these things.
As a matter of fact, going to Minnesota. It took place in Minnesota
because it was written by a guy named Scott Burns who was from Minnesota,
who actually worked for the Minnesota Daily. I remember him. I remember beating
him out for attacking the attentions of some reporter gal. But that's another story.
And so his construction of that, and it's it's a good construction of
the story, was this template that people were just imposing on their current events.
And when we saw that strange video from China, people dropping in the
streets, and right, we didn't right, we didn't know, And that
was was a hammer blow that resonated for weeks, but it stopped ringing in
most of our in my ears after very shortly, but it didn't for others.
I remember when I was the only guy coming to the office in April
or in March or so. There was an addition to the to the washroom.
In the washroom, you leave one door, and then there's a short
little tunnel because the construction of the office, and then you get to another
door. They had placed a waste paper basket in that tunnel because you were
supposed to use a towel to open the door and then to scard it on
your way out, and then you and then you would use another towel,
and then there was a waste paper basket that had been outside. Because this
was the new contain this is the new idea that everything was teaming with foam
artes, that the whole world itself needed to be strayed down with lysol and
napalm and all the rest of it at all times. Well, we got
away from that pretty quickly, but that but but it didn't for most.
For for a lot of the people, it seems, who still regarded the
world as just contaminated in a way that. Well, let me ask you
this. Do you think it's sort of affirmed what they'd always really wanted to
think about the world, or it just made neurotics out of people who had
never thought about these things before, big broad ended question. We're getting to
the end here together. I think all those things you're true. I think
I think that yes, I would say yes to all of it. I
mean, it was, you know, these things aren't aren't separate. And
I think that you can see now that sort of collected you know, the
collected response to this has been that, you know, like you know,
I had germaphobe friends who are like, see, I was right all along,
you know, for carrying around purel everywhere. You know. Okay,
maybe you're right, right. I have a friend who I have ranged like,
you come into her house, you do not sit on something. She
puts something down. If you come in you were on the subway. You
got to sit on like a sheet or something, and she's nuts, right,
But okay, well, let you vindicated. They're people who believe that
vaccines give you autism, which of course has been disproved. But like,
I don't know, like this they've they've sold this vaccine and they said it
was gonna do a lot of things, and it's kind of like it's not
better by any by it's worse by a factor than actually getting COVID and having
natural immunity or having acquired immunity. So I don't know, I mean all
those this is a big basket of things. I think Peter's right, that's
it's they're going to work themselves out and um. But I think what we
need to remember is that the the research and science mistakes, like I would
say, akin to the technical glitches in the Rhonda Santists launch, are not
the great crimes. Like it's it's okay, like they made a mistake,
that's fine. Like I don't think that. I don't think the American people
have this idea. If they do, they should be disabused of it.
That these people are always going to be right. That's the reasearch is always
going to point to the right thing. You're gonna make mistakes, You're gonna
the zoom calls not gonna work, The Twitter spaces thing is gonna break down,
right right. It's not the word not the end of the world.
The end of the world is when you triple quadruple Quinn, tuple down on
your mistakes. You refuse to admit them, you refuse to change course.
It's like teacher once said to me, like, look, the point is
everyone makes mistakes. You're allowed to make mistakes, just don't keep making the
same mistake. Right, And every day, every week, every month that
COVID unfolded, they kept making the same mistake. And then as as as
the panic attack got more and more paranoid, right, because that's what happens
when people have a panic attack. Really it's a cortisol event, like it's
it actually has a hormonal effect on your brain. They get more and more
aggressive, so they get more and more angry at people like Jay Badachario,
Like maybe he shouldn't be at stands ord, maybe he should be fired.
Maybe these people should be silence. Maybe Twitter should like just not post their
posts. Maybe we should block people or shadow band people on all these things.
Maybe we shouldn't have them on CNN to say they're to say that masks
aren't effective and that herd immunity is the best way to go, and that
a lot of closing schools is going to have more do more damage, cost
more lives than it saves. And then at that point that's when we that's
that those are those are things we need to remember, not that people make
mistakes, but that some people, when they make mistakes, higher have the
armed forces and the entire bureaucracy that are correct behind them, and that we
can't have the only way to repair, to rebuild trust in our institutions is
for our institutions to admit that they did not deserve it. Yeah, you
know, every everyone that we looked at failed under pressure, and the refusal
of them to admit that is the thing that keeps us from trusting them again.
And that's the FBI and Carress secrecy. That's all. The great thing
now is that we do get together in person from time to time because we're
not afraid. We live life three facers and Rob, I think you could
tell people that we have some upcoming meetups that we do. I'm so exhausted
now from this this. We didn't have any guests either, Like, this
is crazy. So if you if you if you we're happy not having a
guest, um, well then you kind of recreated a ricochet meet up,
which is the guests are you? So we like talking on the on the
on the podcast We also like being on the site. We like talking to
our members, but we also like needing them in person and meet. Ricochet
meetups are the most fun and joyful way to be part of the Rickeche community.
Um so uh. And also look if you if you want to talk
about woke is them and make jokes about it, which I do, actually
making jokes about it, I do. This is the place to go.
By the way, you'll be surrounded by people who will give you the latest
I to have. I got one from somebody who's at the New Orleans meetup.
That's fantastic and I will not post it, but it's really funny.
Um well, maybe able to do in the member feed, but it's just
a funny little little cartoons. So face to face IRL meetings the way to
go. We have some solicitations, so we have some people who are trying
to put one together. We have I'll do the first we have. The
schedule. Meetups are Winston Salem in mid July, Matt Ballser's annual German Fest
meet up in Milwaukee that's happening the last weekend in July. Stuff's happening July.
And Randy um just posted info about a Labor Day. We can meet
up in Cookeville, Tennessee, which actually sounds like a lot of fun.
Um. But we have some members who put up solicitations for Columbus, Ohio
late late June, so late next month, Portland, the Portland, Oregon
area. Whe that'll be fun. That's in mid July. I want pictures
of that, and then Mammoth. I want to go to that so I
can say I'm for Minneapolis, which is sixteen percent better than you guys right
now. If you if it's still sixteen by then m Mammoth Cave National Park
in Kentucky in August. So there's lots going on. If you one of
those sounds interesting to you, join Ricochet and show up. If one of
those sounds interesting but you can't make it for whatever reason, join Ricochet and
post your own meet up suggestion and Ricochet members will show up because that is
what we do. That and talk and our down talk and write. And
the thing about writing. If you go to ricochet dot com, you will
see some of the best writers you may never have heard of. Some people
that I absolutely love to read write a lot true, and sometimes you can
only find them on the member feed because that's where we talk amongst ourselves.
And so you got to join Ricochet, and you have to pay actual money.
I mean, it's just a little bit, but it gets you access
to a community that really, you know, the folks that I've met in
real life, the people that I've met online. Now a day goes by
that I don't hit it four or five six times and comment as much as
I feel like I should. And it's just a great home on the Internet.
And you guys are the ones who founded in for which I am eternally
grateful, and brought me into it, for which I'm also eternally grateful.
So yeah, we don't even know guests. We can sit here and argue.
I can ramble on about things that Peter Roger is tired about and Rob's
tired about. But I guarantee you between talking about queer theory and wokeism and
youth violence and the COVID era and the rest of it, we may get
a few comments that go here hither and yawn. Let's just say this,
It's Memorial Day and we haven't spoken word about that, and I feel remiss
in doing so. But there would be many tributes to the veterans to the
people who sacrificed to the American wars of the past. There will be a
remarkable, diverse, respectful, fascinating, deep historical dive into the holiday all
over Ricochet, written by people who are doing it for the love of the
correct and exchanging ideas. And so that's why I had to go there.
I know I've pitched it a lot, but I don't enough. Sometimes I
will say that this has been fun. Rob, Peter, have a great
weekend, and we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet four point zero Next
week, Boys, next week. Follas Ricochet joined the conversation