Steve sent me a text message saying that I had to behave because you were
going to ask, not what your country can do for you, ask what
you can do for your country. Mister Gorbuschoff, tear down this wall.
Read my lips. It's the Ricochet Podcast. I'm James Lylac's usually with Robin
Peter, but they are out. But don't worry. We've got Lucretia and
Stephen from Powerline and John you. So let's have ourselves a podcast. It
is now the duty of my office to prove these charges in the indictment beyond
a reasonable doubt at trial. It's a witch hunt. It's just a continuation
of a witch hunt. They want to silence in you. They want to
silence you. I mean, this is a little sort of thing that happens
in the country. Who's Who's Powerball? Jack Pott is three hundred and eighty
seven, Chickens on the goat. Welcome everybody, It's the Ricochet Podcast.
Six hundred and fifty five, six five five. You'll like it as an
area code, you'll trust it as a podcast time James Lilacs. And you
might ask where's rob Long, where is Peter Robinson? Well the founder.
You know, our lineup here is rapidly becoming like a late stalln era photograph
where people just drop out, airbrushed and never to appear again. It's just
me. I know, I'm getting robbed back. Peter will be back and
the waiting days of summer they are off on some peregrination, but we'll hear
all about it when they return. In the meantime, we've got something that's
going to make you say, who are those are the guys? Why don't
we even need them? Rob Woo Peter who We've got Powerline people and Rob
and John Rob John, Rob John You. If I can get my mouth
to work, we'll have an even better podcast. Linda from from power Line
and Stephen from Powerline. Gentlemen, ladies, welcome, good morning. Great
to be here. We feel like we feel like the Triple A team has
made it to the show. Yeah, everybody just jump in it once here,
that'll be great. I'm just gonna sit back and let you cat fight
for the microphone. I feel like the Ukrainian Special Forces guy behind the enemy
lines. Yeah, look for the mines. I'm looking for the minds Peter
and Rob have left for us. Well, not to worry. You're You're
welcome to go ahead, right ahead, John, and hobble back as you
please. But for the moment before we get to all the fun stuff,
the contentious things that I'm sure will polarize the audience right down the middle.
There's what we learn about the Hawaiian fires is getting more and more interesting.
And of course people say that it's climate change. It's obviously climate change.
Anytime anything burns, it's climate change, as if the Sun had just focused
its energy beams down and devastated Hawaiian But it turns out there might actually be
man made reasons for that don't have to do with eating meat and driving cars.
Now, what people will say is, well, even if it is
related to the electrical system, people should not have electricity in the first place
to use their air conditioning because they will then do things like put wires where
they shouldn't. What this is is just the usual example again of an energy
company deferring basic maintenance on the things at work in order to pursue this new
dream of sustainability, which which ain't going to do it, which just ain't
gonna do it. So there are two things to this one. What we're
learning now about the crisis, and you guys can discuss that. And two.
John had a piece this week in the Washington Examiner about how they're using
the courts to push more and more extreme reactions to global warming. The Montana
judge who essentially ruled that the children's future was being that one of the kids
his artistic endeavors were being threatened because atmospheric particular or something triggered as asthma,
so he couldn't perform, and therefore, I don't know what we have to
ban the internal combustion engine. So those are the two things what we learned
about Hawaii, and then John's aspect on the law. So go, I'm
gonna lean back. I'm gonna pretend this is lie. I'm an am DJ
and I just put I just put the record the Edmund Fitzgerald on, you
know, or I can hit the head, I can go get some coffee,
or I can just let it play. And so there you go have
it. James, you might want to stay for this because both John and
Steve promised me a long time ago that they were going to get me my
own designer tinfoil hat, and they've never done so. So I can't put
it on right now, and I'm really not all that serious about this.
But what you didn't mention is all the stuff that's come out on the last
day or two, some of it on actual, you know, almost legitimate
media sources. This morning, there was a picture of an aerial picture of
the fire and it was very interesting. Fired went from house to house and
didn't catch the trees in between, and it didn't get the big, beautiful
coastal houses. And there's a conspiracy theory going around that it's actually some sort
of what's it called the energy blast of some kind, that this was purposeful,
not just a lack of a lack of maintenance on the power lines because
they're putting all of their resources into green energy, but purposeful because so much
of Hawaii is the zoning rules keep these properties in the family, and what
they've done is made it impossible for the families that have this inheritance to live
there forever to stay there because the insurance companies have canceled their insurance. I
don't know if I believe any of it, but I figured, you know,
it's time to throw something out there and wait, couple up. Well,
yeah, I'm not inclined to believe in Jewish space lasers doing this in
order to change the ownership thing. It's it's you know, Ockham's Razor would
have you look at just things like sparking wires on the ground on abandoned dry,
tinder filled or agricultural fields, and why it skips from house to house.
I saw that video too, but I don't know what to make of
it. Well, I mean, you Lucretia, Southern California girl, very
high winds, the flames tend to be low to the ground. I think
that's actually not that surprising. And skipping houses. I mean, in the
big California wildfires, you'll often see a whole neighborhood leveled and then there's one
house left standing, and that usually can be explained by they actually have better
event grades and other reasons. Right, So it's weird that way. I
think you made mention of it. Oh about the land tenure in Hawaii,
I mean, there's the famous Supreme Court case about that back in the eighties.
I won't revisit, but it's there's the United States and then there's Hawaii
when it comes to land law, and it does have some really weird features.
That really clogs up the real estate market there, all right, I
think the big story is you've made reference to a James. I have from
time to time talked about the climate change fantics as the climate cult and the
Wall Street Journal story this week, and now they are more coming out or
absolutely devastating about how all the political forces were for green energy and Hawaiian Electric
despite being warned repeatedly and themselves saying we have some fire hazard problems in need,
attending to spend virtually nothing on in the last five years. It's all
about green energy. And so that's why I have thrown down and said this
is largely this is going to turn out to be the largest math mass death
event caused by a cult since Jonestown. And I can give lots of other
examples, by the way, and I can even cite one of the premier
mainstream quote unquote climate scientists eight or nine years ago, James Hansen, who's
started off all this business in the eighties. He did one of those typically
dense regression analysis papers in one of the scientific journals, and what he said
was is the closure of nuclear power plants. He's very pro nuclear, by
the way. That's the one place he departs from climate orthodoxy, but he
calculated that the closure of nuclear power plants prematurely here and around the world increase
the death toll from particulars and other air pollution by fifty thousand people a year.
And I say, those desks can be laid at the feet of the
ridiculously anti nuclear environmental movement. So I'll just stop there because I can rant
on a long time about this, because there's other examples of where this green
energy mania has actually increasing risk for people, increasing prices, and leading to
disasters like this one. John, Let's go to your Washington examine our article
and talk about how the legalization, the illegalization of everything is going to be
a really bad idea when it comes to climate. I think a lot of
people saw the story out of Montana where these kids, as you mentioned,
sued against for global warming against fossil fuel companies. The surprising thing is that
they're late to the game, Like everybody in Montana, they wanted to see
how it turned out for the rest of the country first. So there's a
bunch of lawsuits by city and countess. In fact, Hawaii, Honolulu is
one of these plaintiff cities. Oakland, San Francisco, Denver, Boulder,
you can imagine New York City, you can imagine which cities are in on
these lawsuits. And they claimed that global warming is what we call a public
nuisance in the law. And this is a complete distortion of what people usually
use these lawsuits for. This is what you usually use. For example,
if say, in James's beautiful suburb of Minneapolis, suburb suburb, well,
if I'm a city boy, thank you very much. It was a suburb.
It was a suburb when they laid it out in eighteen ninety. But
it's it's firmly city now. Well I thought that's why I say. I
thought the entire city was supposed to be a suburb. That's what it looked
like when I was there last. And then so suppose James's perfectly leafy residential
area in the downtown of Minneapolis, while he's showing us his background, there's
a lot of towers behind there is and somebody opened up, you know,
a leather tannery right in the middle that started polluting, ruining the environment all
around a residential neighborhood. Then you can kind of say, oh, this
guy is causing a public nuisance. In our neighborhood, but no one has
ever said, oh, you should turn this around and use it for global
problems. And if you look at it in a situation where even if you
could get these fossil fuel companies to stop doing business in Montana, which they
might consider now, or even the United States, who would barely make a
dent because most of the global warming now is not being caused by carbon emissions
in the US or even Europe. It's coming from China and India. So
I think these lawsuits are eventually going to get thrown out of court. The
problem is it's going to take years and years to get from these triald judges
all the way to the Supreme Court, which I'm confident will put an end
to them, and then kids in Montana will go back to, you know,
their climate friendly policies like shooting animals and speed hearing them at arrows and
bows and going around burning things at big pit fires, that stuff people do
in Montana for fun normally, Well it should be I think, added John.
What this is based on is a clause in the Montana Constitution which was
rewritten I think in nineteen seventy two, so it's recent as a modern constitution
has a clause that says something like all Montana citizens are entitled to a clean
and healthy environment, which means, what's in politics? I mean, we
really the judge going to give an injunction against the weather? I mean,
how is this actually going to work? That would have been at the very
least a political question once upon a time and a clear slam dunk. But
now old fashioned liberal judicial activism lives on and they grab hold of that vague
clause and say it means we can do anything. We won't. Oh,
oh, Lucretia is gonna love this. Lucresi is gonna love this. This
is a demonstration of the failure of the progressive vision of rights, because the
eighteenth century American vision is at rights are negative. It's just says government leave
me alone right within the now. Some states, I don't know why Montana
of all states would copy a European constitution, but they have positive rights that
say you have the right to an education, you have the right some European
constitutions say you have a right to a job, and of course they say
you have a right to a good, healthy environment. Of course, none
of these governments can deliver on it, and they don't take the law seriously
in these European countries, but we do in America. You stick something in
the constitution in America and people want it to become the real law. Before
we get to the recreation's response, and then we'll drift away from Montana.
I just want to say, I just struck me that perhaps the problem is
not that we are listening to children in Montana. It's that we're not sacrificing
enough of them on altars I mean the Aztecs and the mind. Yes,
well, not to the climate gods, but to specific geological manifestations. I
mean, because of the you know, the old Messo American civilizations believe that
unless they rip the heart out of children and held it up to this guy
God, the sun wouldn't come up with the rain wouldn't come with the rest
of them. Now, you know, at some point that just became ritualistic.
But it makes me wonder whether that we're kind of missing an opportunity here
because studies have shown suggested that we may have global warming increased four years because
of a very large volcano, an underground volcano, the Hunga tongue or something
like that that that put trillions, trillions of gallons of water vapor into the
air, which in a stroke shows you that the Earth is perfectly capable of
doing all kinds of stuff to its own environment and its own regulatory system,
which you will eventually balance out, etc. But I mean, if we
had, if these children who are so concerned about these things had willingly put
themselves on altars to forestall the result of the eruption of that volcano, it
would show that they're dedicated to the cause. But I think the fact that
they aren't willing to do that, there, aren't willing to clamber up there
and hand the obsidian knife to the priest, leads me to believe they may
not be a serious that they think. Now the little creature you were talking
about, I don't even there's so much. But what I probably would say
is that the only place where you're slightly wrong about that is the what we
know about young people today who been frightened to death by their idiotic teachers,
etc. Etc. About the existential threat that climate change poses to them,
they are deciding not to have children, which that's a good sign because they're
obviously idiots, and you know, it's the whole Darwinian principle at work here.
But I mean, is that good enough for you, or do you
think we really need to require child sacrifice. I think actually that the number
of people who decide not to have children because of climate change, it's probably
the same as the people who refuse to have children during the eighties because of
nuclear winter and Ronald Reagan and all the rest of it. There's always a
group of people who are so pessimistic about the future, and somehow they're concerned
for the future dovetails nicely with their dislike of children in general and specifically.
So I'm not worried about that so much as I am the fact that in
general people we have generations of people here now who find it difficult to define
the mate, who find it difficult to set down and find it onerisks to
have children, because even if they do find somebody's going to theirselves, it's
going to interfere with their ability to run out somewhere with a dog and the
rest of it. I mean, I heard of them at a meeting the
other day when we were talking about coming back to the office, and somebody
was complaining about the fact that you know, they have pet care demands that
they I think dogs and cats pretty much did, okay up until twenty twenty
when people had to go to work. Anyway, I'm straying far so,
gentlemen, John H. Stephen. The subject of negative rights, positive rights,
and the rest of it is that a lost cause. Has the West
completely just at you know, adopted the notion that that's what the government is
there for, to gret to bestow these things, to declare them rights.
And there's no coming back from that. There's no there's no nobody's going to
change that, or the society eventually realized it's expensive and unworkable and works its
way back to under the solution. But you want me to go first,
John, because actually John is secretly unsound on Actually he's not secretly unsound on
this issue. He's totally unsound on this issue. John is a grubby positivist.
And by the way, I'm grumpy John, because I'm still smarting from
you calling me a monarchist on Tuesday lunch. Okay, yeah, I mean
that train left if the crown fits wear it anyway. Okay, Look,
Steve, you should be happy. This is one of the most pro monarchist
podcasts in America. You should have heard them weeping and crying when Queen Elizabeth
passed away. Oh I do remember that. Yeah, that's right. Yeah,
Rob Peter cried all over. Peter cried all over his ascot and is
tied up sweater. That's right. Not so much for her as for the
institution and for the tradition, and also for her as having provided a cultural
continuity for generation for a long time and really adding to the cohesion of the
British Empire and the Aisles and the rest of it. I see the hazard
of your question, James, is that John and I actually team teach a
class that goes into this for at great length, and we don't want to
do that in the podcast. I'll just one hint though the problem. I
think a key turning point came right after World War Two when the UN gave
us the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And some of it was very conventional
and familiar sounding. Right to free speech, several other traditional American angle American
style individual negative rights. But then I think it's Article twenty two or twenty
four. A fundamental human right is a right to paid vacations. Now,
I think they put that in there at the behest of labor unions for bargaining
purposes. But I'm thinking, you know, a lot of parts of the
world, since this is meant for the whole world be nice if people had
a job at all. You think of some poor developing country where people live
on a dollar a day, and the idea of a paid who's going to
pay for this paid vacation? It's ludicrous, but it's an example of now
the government exists, as you put it, to bestow benefits from people,
and everything becomes a human right. And this is why it should that kids
coming up today, eight conservatives, it's because of you and exactly what you
just said, because what they hear is that you should not have a paid
vacation. When you say, when you say, actually you don't. You
don't have the right to an everhard number two pencil delivered to your house by
a stork every morning, you don't have that right, to which they respond,
well, it would be really great if it happened. It's like,
yes, agreed, but you do not have the right for it to happen.
And so when you say, you know, you know, you don't
have the right to a two week pay vacation, they hear you should be
chained to your desk or the factory three hundred sixty five. And that's what's
maddening about it, because put it, rights becomes good things. That's it.
It just it's a synonym for great things. So my son was get
reading something to me last night, some exchange, and it was I have
a right to healthcare. And the answer was, well, I have a
right to under the Second Amendment telling weapons. Well, you get to enjoy
that right, but I want the right to have the government pay for my
guns. Well that's not a right, that's just something you want, exactly.
And so I think we just have to push back on that and every
single day and say no, of course, there's no right to have some
lovely sort of guarantee of beautiful weather, a clean skies, clean water.
Those things are really nice. Yeah, I mean it. Well, the
one sentence Razor people can use is if the right claimed requires taking resources from
one group of people to supply this good thing to another group of people,
it's no longer a fundamental right. Right. Well, you're describing you're describing
socialism there, and of course America is I mean Americans love socialism is defended
is pointed out by the fact they love social security. Therefore, gotcha,
I mean, I mean, yes, you go. The problem, maybe
at the heart of it is the deformation of language, the substitution of things
for things that makes them sound better. If there are two things that I
could change, one would be rights and the other would be phobe, because
you can attack anybody as being a blank phobe, which indicates what that they
have an irrational fear that the very existence of the whatever you're phobic about makes
you cruel in a corner with a racing heartbeat, palpitations and sweaty pump.
No, phobia is being used to describe disagreeing, which is again just practically
Soviet in describing how an inability to mouth or agree with this set of statements
is proof of mental illness. If only the mentally ill could believe such a
things. If you're a phobia, so I those are the two words.
Do you have any words you would like to change permanently in the American political
landscape? Yes, I got one diversity. Diversity, And so I was
going to say, I'm not as pessimistic as Stephen Lucretia. I think actually,
as you suggested, James this whole positive rights move and claims on everyone
to fund my pet cause of starting to die. I think we've just maybe
past peak wokeism, peace positive, just peak positive rights. We're just a
little past it. And if I were going to trace it to some event,
it would be the Harvard Supreme Court case this summer. Think about it.
One would be a classic example of what you're talking about is university's desire
to manage all speech, to racially engineer all the classes, to decide what
people should learn or not based on diversity rationales, and the Supreme Court said
no. At some point it runs into our negative right against the government,
that we all be treated equally without regard to our race. So I'd like
to think that, and the Harvard case is popular. The majority of American
people don't want that's true. Where the worst there's any place this stuff goes
on, it's our our three places of employment universities, except in floor where
the new school is making some changes and of course being excoriated for all of
them. I don't know if you've been following that Lucretia. First of all,
I wanted to ask what word you would get rid of, what word
you would show. Do you ever talk to a young person and every when
they mean to say I think, I believe it occurred to me that it's
always I feel like I feel like they can't. And so when I grade
papers from students, the first thing I tell them is I am not a
psychology professor, and I couldn't give a damn about your feelings. And if
you use the word feel in your paper to me, I feel like this
I will fail you. And you should just see there because it's one of
those things. It's like you just pointed out, it's not just that it's
a misuse of the word. It's so subjective that the only thing that matters
is your feelings. And yeah, it's not an accidental conflation, it's intentional
because I mean, the whole project from the Boomers on and really we would
have we've been a much better state of the country if the if the greatest
generation had just beaten their children more. I swear to it. So I'm
not I'm I'm now on record for for more physical discipline and the and the
of course, you know, uh, sacrificing of children. So that's coming
in. You're still never going to be as tough as a nation mother change.
But that's true. But the idea that you that everyone must be validated,
everybody must be made whole, and that your feelings have to be nurtured
and cared for and no bruising can ever occur is nonsense. And that's not
how the world works. And so the idea that if you feel something,
it is authentic, and authenticity is to be rewarded over correctness, over morality,
over virtue or anything like that. The whole project of the boomers has
been authenticity. I love my true self. I have to be who I
gotta be. I gotta be me, and that results in a society of
spoiled little narcissists running around with no historical or communal sense. Anyway, I
agree with you, I agree feel not a Stevens. We need to get
rid of one more word. Yeah, I have a long list, but
I'll just give you one. It's holistic. You know, the liberals loved
us. We need a holistic approach this problem. What that means in practices,
we really have no idea what to do about it and want to change
the subject and spend more money. That's what holistic means. When you hear
that phrase you know, somebody just has no idea. What's going on?
My choice? If we had to go for like two word phrases, I
would ban I think I would ban last call. Actually that's not true because
I haven't. I haven't been I haven't been drinking. I haven't not drinking
for a long It's like, why do you hate the American bar? What's
wrong? I'm kidding As a man of my age, I do my drinking
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right, we'll shoot if you must, this old grayhead. But so we've
gone through the words, We've gone through Hawaii, we've gone through negative rights.
We've covered more ground, frankly than any of these podcasts usually does in
an hour, which is great. Which leads us to the press conference which
was canceled. Now Donald Trump put out a truth Social meeting which and I
have no idea why he engages an arbitrary capitalization like he's Samuel Johnson or something.
I don't get the nineteen eighteenth century capitalization thing, but there you go.
So we put out the tweet on truths social and canceled his press conference,
which had the irrefutable evidence assembled by somebody, and he said, on
advice of his lawyers, he wasn't going to release it, which means he's
actually listening to his lawyer. Remarkable. So between that and the not debating,
tell us where you think the election the campaign starts right now, Lucretia,
you're next. I know. I'm putting you up there. Tell us
what you think, what's you think? And you will be hell. You
will be You will be hell to account for this in a year from now
too, we will take all of you, all of you guys statements and
put them up and you won't be able to deny a word of them,
don't. I don't know where to start. I think that it was the
right thing to do to cancel the press conference. I think he should debate
because he's good at it, and he will in fact lose some of that
free media coverage that he gets even from the media, most of whom hate
him. Of course, if he doesn't decide to debate, and that will
be the only thing about him, I think he should go and debate.
On the other hand, you know, I guess I'm probably hate to say
it, one of those what is it sixty two percent of people who are
persuadable for another Republican candidate. If Trump is the nominee, I of course
will vote for him. But gosh, it's I don't know. I'm torn,
Honestly, I don't have an answer for you, James, because on
the one hand, I want to see Trump just triumph, just to put
down once and for all this nonsense that's happening to him. What is it
ninety nine counts spend three hundred years in jail if he was convicted on all
of them, and you know, I want to see this over with.
I don't even want to take it seriously. I don't want to look at
the indictments and say there's somehow, some legitimacy to any of them. And
but at the same time, why is that, Why why don't you want
to study them? I mean, it isn't that I do. I just
don't want to because there's three different levels here. The first one is the
biased prosecution things. Trump being indicted for things that nobody else would be I
saw this morning even some liberals say, well, if George is going to
indict Trump on this, when are they going to indict Stacy Abrams? But
she paid a fine? I mean she did? She not? She did?
She have fine to find for denying that she won. Uh, the
denying that she lost the election. That's what Trump is being indicted for denying
that he lost the Ellie. Not for not for denying it, but for
assembling a process to overturn it and to subverted and to lie about what actually
happened. I mean, you can lie about anything that that doesn't mean you
go to jail for it. There's the whole record. Well I shouldn't.
I should leave this to John who's who's of course a lawyer and better at
it. But he's not being he's not being charged with lying. If that
was the case, every politician would be in medical is he is by Weiss.
He's being charged with lying by Weiss, and that the result of his
lie are not Smith. You mean I get them, sorry, thank you,
but it is the same. Okay, But you know The problem is
is that what he's being indicted for, the supposed at least the part about
it that has to do with them changing the slate of electors is it's all
above board. It may have been dumb, but he had some reason to
believe, not very much reason to believe that he might have been successful in
that Georgia suit. And if he had been successful and did not have a
slate of electors, there would have been nothing he could do about it.
The whole thing, if you actually look at the facts, is ludicrous.
It's absolutely ludicrous across the board. You don't have to like Trump to say
that this is the politics politicization. It's a tough one up every time of
our criminal justice process in ugly, ugly ways, regardless of what you think
about Trump. That's I'm a hand to John. Why would flip it around?
And I would say, actually, it's the criminalization of politics that's the
problem. And one way to understand that is to say, look, we're
using a law RICO here, Georgia's version of RICO Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act,
which is designed to be used against the mafia, designed to be used
against drug cartels, or terrorist groups, even against an organization whose fundamental purpose
is free speech, a political campaign, and so a lot of the things
that and maybe we were wrong about this when we adopted these laws in the
late sixties early seventies. Maybe we supercharge the lass too much to be able
to get mafia groups. And so here's one little way to explain. Remember
that scene in Godfather Too, when they've got the congressional hearings, and you
know, the kind of greasy looking majority Council of the Congressions is questioning Frankie
Pantangially I think is his name, and they go, they go, hey,
do you ever did you know when someone pushed a button on somebody,
did Michael Corleone order it? Did he do it? He goes, nah,
they got what you call it buffas? Yeah, they got buffas and
people and between right, he goes buffas. And so we created this law
to be able to get the Michael Corleoni's of the world, who never committed
any crime, who never did anything illegal. They just always told people to
do things for them as part of organizations where you could say, more than
half or maybe more than half, of all the discreet things that organization did
were probably innocent, but they're part of a group that does kill people,
that does extort money, does does steal things. And so but if you
turn that around and apply it to an innocent group, an innocent organization,
then you have, Oh, if one or two bad apples in your organization
committed crime, does that mean everybody is guilty the whole organization is criminal.
That's essentially what we've done here. We said. Okay, So when I
looked at the indictment, okay, I see one or two things that are
obvious crimes, like trying to physically harass a Georgia election worker, like trying
to steal I was like, I love the idea of crack a woman throwing
a voting machine on our back and running out of a county commission office with
one. But like stealing a voting machine, Okay, I could see that
being a crime. But to say, because of those kinds of actions,
everyone who worked on the Trump re election campaign and thought the election wasn't over
is now part of a vast criminal conspiracy that is criminalizing free speech. And
I think that's that's the real problem with the indictment, and in terms of
how it affects the election. You know, Trump himself said, oh,
all I need to do is get in didted one more time, and I've
got the nomination wrapped up. And it sure looks like that. On the
other had, I don't understand how you defend yourself in court and do a
campaign at the same time, because every time he says something in public is
going to be used against him in the courtroom. And the courtroom strategy would
be if I was Trump's lawyer, thank god I'm not, but I would
charge him five times the going rate, although he never pays his bills.
It was to say, shut up, don't say anything, stop talking,
right, But Christian just put up with screenstock saying millions indicted in Georgia for
voting for Trump. But I guess that's the problem. That's the problem is
those two things, running for reelection and defending yourself in court are going to
create incompatible strategies, and he's going to get screwed in one or the other
before we get to Stephen. I have an irrelevancy. And that was when
somebody was going through the indictment. They were pointing out that one of the
things that Trump was being charged for was telling people to watch oh An and
watch a particular story, and people were responding to that saying, you mean
it's now it's now indictable to tell people to watch something on television. And
the response was, well, no, it's not, it's just proving it's
part of the setting it all up. It's probably that that just simply was
an indication of him, how he was pushing the fraud narrative, etc.
Etc. But I thought, that's true. I get that, but you
can't tell me that we're not that every single one of these isn't the slippery
little slope and the fact that you tell somebody to watch something on Newsmax or
a YouTube thing that is actually that turns out to be demonstrably false. Later
he's not going to be held against you, because it will if it's convenient
for them to do so. And it noticed that the criminal conspiracy starts,
according to the indictment, on election day. She claims the whole thing started
when Trump gave a speech saying I think I still won before there were any
final voter talies to actually show that. Biden it one and then yeah,
a lot of these acts of the criminal enterprise unquota. Trump left message on
Georgia State Representatives machine. That's how is out of criminal you know, criminal,
they're not. It just leads up to the thing that was the reek
was the thing. Now we got Roger Stone, however, on video before
the election and sitting there at his desk saying, well, what you do
is you come up with another slight of electrics is what you do? And
you're talking about the whole process, and they got somebody videotaping the whole thing.
I would think that videotaping your own stupidity is something limited to the younger
generation, but apparently not, Steven, you're joining your See once again,
John is thinking too much like a lawyer and not like a political scientist.
To shay John, the shame, the shame. Look, I mean I
think the trial John is another Trump opportunity. Look, this is going to
be like if it ever goes to trial, which I can't imagine it really
will, it'd be the oj trial times ten eighteen defendants, with the battery
of lawyers, with all these different counts. It would go on forever,
and every day Trump gets to come out and say about what was wrong in
the courtroom that day, and the judge might try to gag him. But
how do you stop Trump? And that makes me back to James's question,
how's this going to play out? I mean, I have no idea,
but I'm struck by a couple of things, first a broad theme and then
a couple of specifics. The broad theme is I'm gonna do this to annoy
Lucretia. Trump is this world historical figure right out of the page is of
hegel. I mean, he's Napoleon, which maybe not be the best comparison,
but I mean he's an unstoppable force in world politics, a full stop.
And the thing that strikes me is, yeah, I mean, I
think it's he's like a figure of destiny. I can't believe I'm using these
terms because I usually evaluate politicians the last four years have been exile before he
comes out. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean, I know
that sounds randy ose and preposterous, but in a larger sense, I think
it's kind of true. And here's the numbers behind it. Even this week,
but now with the fourth indictment coming down, you have several polls from
you know, reppidable organizations showing Biden with a one point lead. You know,
Biden led by three four points consistently in twenty twenty, and there's been
a few polls the last few months that had Trump up by five six points.
A couple of them shocked the heck out of Democrats, which is why
they're panicking about Biden and Harrison so forth. I mean, the staying power
of this guy is just unbelievable. And so you can point to lots of
surveys that show the people really he don't like Trump. That is true,
but I think people really don't like Biden either, and it's going to depend
on the circumstances. But by the way, finally, James, I'm certain
Trump is going to show up for the debate next week. You don't have
to wait for a year on that prediction. I think the will hear,
won'ty thing is part of the whole Trump magic. You know, if he
says now he's coming, well, then you know he's coming. You know,
standard storyline. If he shows up at the last minute, makes a
grand inference, it's just gonna blow everything up. The media is going to
be all abuzz. Oh Trump showed up, after all, He'll have some
great opening line about well, I thought it was going to be indicted again
today. But since I'm not, I thought i'd come here and vanquished all
these pip squeaks on the stage with me. So I'm sure he's going to
show up unless there's some other very good reason not to. Well, good
luck with the vanquishing, because I mean, debate wise, debate wise,
he's entertaining. Debate wise. He's been stuff and says things, but he
has grasp of the particular, and his ability to intellectually inhabit an argument is
diminished. It was never great, and it's diminishing now. And he also
takes personal attacks on his ability and his knowledge far too much to heart and
responds poorly to them and starts lashing out and has no respect for anybody.
So it would be interesting to see him there. It would be interesting to
see him get his clock cleaned on particulars as opposed to just gusting and venting
and doing the rest of it. I mean a lot of people like the
all cap style of leadership. I get that, but I kind of like
a little bit more involvement. I am waiting for the first debate where somebody
calls somebody else a pos as we like to say, except not using the
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sponsoring this the Ricochet Podcast. Last topic, Hunter Biden. Something was dismissed
the other day, some tax charges and the rest of it, and some
people were freaking out and saying, what he's not going to serve any time
for anything. What what what's going on here, Lucretia, Uh, what
I said earlier, this is Ah, how did you put it? You
said it was the criminalization of politics. I said it was the politicization of
criminal law. It was John Drew said it and much better than me,
because I would have stumbled on politicisation. But yes, but here's the point.
Uh, what every American who's not a partisan, a rabid partisan hack,
can see is that there are definitely two justice systems in this country.
And the vaunted Department of Justice that was once rightly or wrongly considered, you
know, the most professional law enforcement agency in the world, is now shown
themselves also to be rabid ideological hacks in the service of a corrupt and senile
president executive. And you know, the whole getting into the whole hunter thing.
In the appointment of David Weise's special counsel. Nobody can even concentrate on
what's actually going on there because there's so many ins and outs, a little
bit like a ninety nine indictments. I think that what the problem is is,
we know, now as long as you're a lefty, as long as
you're a part of the Democratic Party, as long as you're protesting George Floyd
and not writing preborn Black Lives Matter, as long as you're not ever complaining
about who might have won the twenty twenty election, if you're never questioning it,
one thing happens to one group of people and one thing happens to another,
and America is not supposed to work that way. I know there were
problems, you know, in the post Civil War period with segregation, and
that it wasn't always fair prosecutions against people of color. I get all of
that, but I think the idea that we have now turned it into political
persecution by using the criminal justice system on the one side, and then using
the criminal justice system the ins and outs of it, the prosecutorial deals behind
the scenes to save the president's son and possibly the president himself. I mean,
it's going to destroy this country. That's my belief. It's going to
destroy this country. Before we get to John, I just want to applaud
briefly the little note that you made about preborn Black Lives matter. It's a
reference to the case in DC where during the riots of twenty twenty. Of
course, there were a lot of things scrawled, a lot of things scrawled
and sprayed and stuff written on streets, and there was nothing done about it
because well, the times they had it changed and that was encouraged because it
was a inclusive thing to do. Recently, there was a case of a
couple of pro life activists who chopped outside of an abortion provider I believe reborn
Black lives matter, and they were arrested. They were arrested for that quite
promptly as a matter of fact, and lucretia, what was the outcome of
the case. It was that they would finally when it went to they what
happened. They were exonerated, I guess you could say, but for First
Amendment issues, not for anything like And John has a lot to say about
this is his commentary on It's very interesting the whole idea of biased prosecutorial actions.
I'll let him say that. But in this case, it wasn't because
of any bias on the part of the district police in terms of prosecute you
know, who they liked and who they didn't. It was a viewpoint problem
under the First Amendment, that that whatever else the law enforcement can or cannot
do, they cannot prosecute people for viewpoints and proof that all of those Black
Lives matters and ANTIFA protesters were never even so much as arrested for doing the
things they did. When those abortion protesters, uh, pro life protesters were
actually arrested, you know, charged, convicted of drawing the chalk, it
was proof that this was a viewpoint discrimination. Again, to me, there's
a deeper issue, which is of course, the the biased prosecution, because
what if it's not a viewpoint matter. But anyway, I'll let you know.
John's got a much more interesting commentary on how we handle politicize, do
you, John, do you come on? Prove it, Let's see it,
let's hear it, come on, bring it on. Well, I'm
not sure how interesting it is, but it does solve the problem, which
is you're not allowed actually to second guests. In the legal system, the
decisions of prosecutors. Prosecutors have what's called prosecutorial discretion, and they are the
ones who decide which cases to bring, and it's based on the idea we
don't we can't prosecute every crime that occurs every moment of every day, so
prosecutors have to choose which ones make the most sense in terms of the public
interest. That's fundamentally political decision. I think it involves things that I think
elected politicians really know best. So that's why we elect a president, and
the president is the one who takes care the laws are faithfully executed, and
that president, for good or ill, under this administration, sets the priorities
of what are going to be prosecuted or not. Now, because it's a
political choice, though, that's how we influence it. So I quite agree
with Lucretian Steve when they were beating the drama about this two tiered system of
justice. I agreed that Hunter Biden seemed to be getting a free pass while
Donald Trump and his associates are under a microscope. So I thought the right
answer is what the Justice Department did, which is to appoint a special counsel.
The answer is not to lift the scrutiny on Trump. The answer is
to increase the investigation and the Hunter. So that's of equal importance. Special
counsels of really the first step of that. Now, I would not have
chosen the same guy who's been investigating Hunter and gave him this sweetheart plead.
It's really bizarre plead deal. So instead, I think the next step and
the reason why special counsel was pickby was really because of the political pressure being
brought by the House all these revelations we've been hearing about Joe Biden's involvement in
the Hunter Biden influenced Pealing scandal. So I think the next step is for
those guys in the House to keep pushing hard politically and to get a new
special council appointed. People forget, I mean I was around for this stuff.
People forget. Ken Starr was not the first Special Council of Independent Council
to investigate Clinton. There was another guy before him, and he was doing
such a bad job that everyone decided he had to go, and ken Starr
was appointed instead. And I think that's what we got to do here with
the guy down in Wilmington, Delaware. Weiss bring in someone. I say,
let's bring in our version of Robert Muller and get to the bottom of
this. I think the most interesting story late in the week is well explain
maybe by the old management book from the seventies, the Peter Principal. You
remember that one James the Peter Principal said, all right, I was the
big hot book in the seventies for management circles that the Peter principal was,
and help me if I get this badly wrong. That everyone sooner or later
rises to their level of in competence. YEP. That certainly explains Kamela Harris,
but it also explains Biden, who for some reason had apparently an anonymous
email account by which he participated in his son's scheming, and his chosen alias
was Peters. There's something poetic about that, I think, and I'm not
sure. I don't know what was it Richard Peter? It was it Richard
Peter. Peters might have been Yeah, I forget the first name, but
I just think that was. It's Dick Peters. He is what he's going
on. I know you guys did in Cursive, Minnesota. Come on,
you guys are seven. I've said nothing, nothing that would violate FCC standards.
Go on. That was always gonna say. I don't know yet what
the content of those emails are, but it sounds like that as the next
avenue of probably very damaging revelations of what was going on. You know,
and we all know what that's about, don't we. I mean the idea
that Hillary Clinton was running the secret little email thing out of our server in
the closet, and it was only doing so was to keep yoga appointments and
winning details private. Every Body with a brain knows that that was set up
to avoid freedom of information requests, right to keep the things out of the
archives, right to maybe say, okay, a little money in the Clinton
Foundation, we'll see what we can do about this bill that your ambassador says
he would like to maybe see down the road. I mean, the idea
that that doesn't happen or didn't happen, is absurd. If you can make
the argument that it probably didn't because the Clintons were so simon pure and and
built of such stern ethical timber that they would never do some things. But
let's just say it's within the realm of possibility, just like it's within the
realm of possibility that Joe Biden or somebody set up for him an alternate email
account where he could keep things of Rosa. It's within the realm of possibility.
So I'm waiting for that one to come out, because when you lay
that at people's feet and say, well, the president, here's the special
email account he has people eventually, if they're on the Biden side or not,
the Biden side so much as just on the left or liberal don't care.
You don't care. They don't care because the basic end result of these
guys, their guys being in power are the good things, and the good
things are unlimited abortion, welfare, state, moving towards green energy and all
the rest of it. Diversity, don't forget diversity and diversity to which they'll
add it on to an elite power elite. Well, not noisy here,
you're both wrong. Yes, diversity, but diversity in by the most superficial
aspects of ibe, shape and skin color, not of character, idol ideology
or anything like that. And a rule by elites is not rule by elites
in their mind. It is a careful steering and a wise manipulation of society
by the people who know best. And you would think that that concept had
been abraided significantly in the last three years, when it's evident that we that
that we haven't been and the old notions I mean, I mentioned this before.
Sci fi movies in the fifties, when they find the giant ant in
the deserts or the huge cricket climbing up the skyscraper, somebody phones the authorities.
They found it was not Manthra. No, I'm talking about a movie
with Peter Graves called The End. I think the beginning of the End is
what I'm talking about, Not Manthra, not that Japanese ridiculous stuff with men
and suits throwing each other around at a Tojo Stoti studio. No, they
would call the authorities, and the authorities would, as one respond into action.
Garages would open and out would stream the men on the motorcycles, and
the army would come with their jeeps and the rest of it, and the
police would fan out and there would be cars. It would go through the
neighborhoods and tell everybody to leave for the hills, and everybody would leave for
the hills. It was all very orderly because the authorities were in charge and
there was a basic trust that there is some of that still. We go
back to the movies that we saw even ten years ago, and you will
find in your basic action film that to consult the military will inevitably end in
some ramrod guy with a buzz cut, straight neck and the rest of it,
who is all business, probably chopping a cigar like Jackie Ripper and has
it together. Now we come to realize that likely the higher you go up,
the more you're going to find somebody who's been in the military bureaucracy all
their day is and it is more interested in producing adeis thing or or a
trans friendly dance act that they're going to use for recruitment. All of the
authorities and elites that we that we believed in grudgingly or in or enthusiastically turns
out to have been a misplace of our trust. So they while they still
believe that in the idea of that though they still believe in the same old
things to come nineteen thirties H. G. Wells idea of a white robe
technocracy that can they can use science, which they believe in to solve all
of our ills, and the rest of us are more content to devolve things
down to the lowest possible political atomic level whatsoever, which is why we'll probably
go out with this. You have those the countries now split firmly into two
camps, those who like the guy with the ginger beard singing that song and
those who don't. Those who don't don't like it because whatever, it's inauthentic,
it's it's ridicul it's crying, it's weeping, or as one guy,
I think a National review said that you should be more grateful, and the
people on the right like it because it is an authentic statement of outrage and
lamentum from an unheard, unsung, unheralded minority. That's where I will take
it to Lucretia first, James really quickly on that. The problem that I
have with the positive way you spin that is that the difference now, maybe
between now the authorities and the authorities in the past, is that we used
to believe that those authorities had to be subject to the same laws, rules
and regulations as the rest of us. And what we see now and we
saw very clearly of course, and things like COVID and so on, is
that they're not that there's one set of rules for them and different set of
rules for us, and they lorded over us. And I think that mister
Gingerbeard really tapped into the resentment about that more than anything else. The money
that you know, it's it's not that things are so tough and we should
or they're not that tough when we should be grateful. It's that why do
you get to do this and tell us we can't You can't go to the
grocery store, but we can go to the French laundry with our masks off.
John noted expert on Appalachian folk music. What say you? I gotta
say that I probably wouldn't like Appalachia or folk music, so that's probably not
good for me to be associate with that. But this is the thing I
think conservatives have a hard time with, is your basic question? James and
me and Lucretia, I think we often disagree about this on our three Whiskey
Happy Hour podcast coming soon to a station near you. How how should conservatives,
I mean, we're like the borg we're taking over their resistance as feta.
How should conservatives think about institutions? Because yes, we have a lot
of problem with the way institutions have been run these many years. The universities
are only the you know, the beginning of the problem. Your time about
law enforcement, now, corporations, Hollywood, media and so on. Military.
Yeah, But on the other hand, uh, you know, institutions
are you know, what maintains social stability and order and are really what's preventing
us from uh you know, Hobbes's war of all against all? And so
I do I do accept your diagnoses of the problems with institutions. What worries
me when I hear conservatives. I'm here right now teaching in Newport Beach,
IF for the Claremont Institute, and we're studying a lot of what is going
on in the conservative movement thesis, and there's a strong wing of people who
want to burn everything down. And it really disturbs me because what's you burn
everything down and you destroy all the institutions, because yes, many of them
have been taken over by this sort of liberal blob. But what are you
going to replace it with? I mean, what's going to work? That's
what really works. I don't really hear good, good explanations for that from
our friends on the right, which is, what are you going to do
when you burn all the institutions down? What I mean might be worry It
could very well get much worse than it is now. Some cases, you
build parallel institutions. I think with colleges, as they're showing in Florida,
you can come up with an alternative model and see how that works. With
movies, and everybody points to the you know, the big hit this year
and say it's proof that we can do this. On our own, etcetera.
No Barbian, Barbie and Oppenheimer, The Child, the sex Trafficking Movie.
And yeah, there's always going to be those those one offs, those
indie films that do great. But I would rather inhabit and occupy and change
the institutions that exist now because you have a certain I mean, yes,
it's hard to do because they're immovable. They're like, it's not like just
turning the Tachanic around. It's like the Titanic, the Oceanic and the Britannic
all all riveted together, and try to get them to do, you know,
one eighty turn while they're going forty. Here's here's where I think Lucresia,
me and Steve disagree. I think Lucretia would like to end the FBI.
I think Steve would like to have the FBI moved to Wichita, Kansas.
I think you'd just change a few people and policies, but you keep
the FBI pretty much the way it is now. Because if you got rid
of the FBI, then we're really screwed. I think, like, who's
going to protect this from terrorists and drug dealers and organized crime? Correctis despite
all its faults, despite the mistakes that make getting into politics and conducting this
investigation into Trump from the headquarters. Still, the FBI is mostly very good,
patriotic people, and we do need it. I agree to move to
Wichita, that would be fantastic. And I think the way you do that
is that you have a general declaration of esthetic atrocities and at the HAG and
you have the World Court decide that the FBI building in Washington, DC is
the greatest affront of civic architecture ever built in the twentieth century. And then
you tear it down. But you don't necessarily give them new place in town
yet, even though there's a lot of office space not being used in DC.
You just say, in Whichita we got we got a really nice new
place here, So why don't you just hang out here until we build your
new building. I think you just don't build a new one. That's what
I would do, if I can sum it all up. More sacrificial children
boomers should have beat their young, and we should detonate large structures in DC
and not tell anybody about it. And it's that kind of a reasonable thing
that makes me the host that I am. I'm I'm going to leave now
you mentioned it's the Three Whiskey podcast, which indeed it is. And if
you're that sort of person that kind of likes that idea, that's why zbionics
is here for you. I should tell you maybe that there are some meetups
coming to as well, but you know what, that's a Rob long thing.
And when Rob comes back, he can he can, he can do
that. You can go to ricochet dot com anyway and take a look at
the list and the side panel and see where we hook up. And that
by hookup I mean meet up. I don't mean that other stuff. Maybe
I do. I don't know. It's been a while since I've been to
one. And so go to Ricochet if you would and check it out.
If you've never been there, this is the first time you're stumbling upon us
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Take a minute to leave him a five star review on Apple Podcasts if you
wouldn't mind, so last time I remember are going to say this, I've
said at six hundred and twenty one times before, and if you haven't gotten
to the point, I don't know what I gotta do there it is.
Any case, it's been great, guys, It's been lots of fun having
you and we traveled a lot and learned a lot. And this is a
great, great advertisement for the Three Whiskey podcasts, which can be found where
ricochet dot com starting when tomorrow morning. There you go enjoy, have a
great weekend, guys, and I'll be gone next week, pulling up Peter
and Rob because I'm gonna be at the State Fair. And we can we
do this again? Can we just get rid of the three of you and
just take over completely? It's good. Back. Will be back next week
only when you learn how to do those segues, and I'll just leave it
at that. There we have it. I fade away as the parasitical organism
now completely inhabits the host and flat makes it flash on and off. Great,
Okay, I'm gone, I'm gone, I'm out of here. James
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