So let's roll it. Shall we shall we do it? Let's do it
all right? Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what
you can do for your country. Mister Garbitschaw, tear down this wall.
It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lilax and
today we talk to Jim Garrity about what's going on and what will happen in
Iowa. Let's have ourselves a podcast. We are just days away from the
Iowa Caucasus and dangerously cold temperatures could affect turnout on Monday night. But you
have to ask islanes, do they really want to head out that night when
the windshill will be twenty below zero? Sounds cornty not a joke, think
about it. We all these truths to be self evidence. Oh man and
women created by go you know the thing. Welcome everybody. This is the
Ricochet Podcast and this is episode number six seventy four. I am James Lylax.
And also so I am emphasizing words for some reason. I have no
idea why. But here is Rob Long and there is Peter Robinson. Gentlemen,
welcome, Thank you. James, I am here. Good nice to
hear that that was the very pointed. Somebody pointed out that guys in the
NFL when they're giving their college affiliation for some reason. Now now we're saying
the University of Minnesota, somebody started it, and it's it's spread to all
of them. Speaking of spreading, here we are with the latest iteration of
our interminable war with Iran, which will not end until they light off a
nuke and then the Israel converts them to smoking glass and is castigated for doing
so at the International Criminal Justice Court. We have hit the hoofies enough sufficient,
too late. Well, it's early here in California, so I haven't
read the accounts in detail. But as I went to bed last night,
the news was that they had attacked us. They they're Iranian practic proxies,
but they had attacked bases in which American soldiers were based. They had attacked
America. They had attacked bases that Americans are using, or have used,
or plan to use throughout the Middle East, Iraq, Syria and shipping over
one hundred and thirty times, and we had scarcely answered. So the idea
that we have replied strikes me as obviously necessary. Whether we did it well,
I don't have. First of all, I'm not a military mastermind,
but I haven't even read the papers this morning to form it to begin forming
a judgment on that. But we had to hit back. We had to.
Well, it's the whole point of the US military. I mean,
the ultimate beginning of the US military was to protect trade routes. Right,
That's why them we have marines. Correct, the hallsitary winner though has to
be you know, once again Mohammed bin Salmon, the leader of Saudi Arabia,
right, because they've been they were fighting the hoodies for who thies,
not the huties, the Hutus, right, the Hutus are in pro Miranda
seas or one who does the season and then who this are somewhere else,
but not that far. Actually, they were fighting them for years. We
told them to stop because they were they were doing it too brutally, I
guess, and then we said, oh, well we'll do it. It
could have been, you know, the Houthis could have been already occupied by
a war with Saudi Arabia, which we didn't want them to have. So
so far twenty twenty four is doing is going very well for Mohammed Ben Solomon.
That's all I can say. He's getting what he wants. He he
is earning, I think, earning some kind of credit for the fact that
the potentially incendiary war, wider incendiary war in the Middle East, in Israel
and Gaza, is not actually spreading. I mean, there's always like the
threat of it, but it's been ninety days now and hasn't done it yet.
It could, of course, with my luck, it'll happen this afternoon.
But you know, it does it. It does show you that the
foreign policy is really, really hard, and that the Biden administration is really
really bad at it mostly, and that the world is a really dangerous place,
and it equation to have some smart people back I think, or even
just to have the people who are already there in place. I mean,
the questions this raises about the chain of command. We have a president who
is to put it lightly, a little on the aged side. We have
a vice president who how do we put this? I leave that one to
you. Rob will circle back to you to put it politely. And as
we have a secretary of Defense, thank you, James. Then we have
a secretary of Defense who checked him into the himself into the hospital. We
now note that it was to treat complications arising from prostate surgery. Prostate surgery
is not life threatening but can be mighty unpleasant, and it does involve surgery
deep inside the body. And he was out for four days, and nobody
seems to have been exactly aware of where he was or what he was doing.
And his deputy Assistant Secretary Secretary of Defense was in Puerto Rico on a
vacation, which she did not interrupt when she became acting secretary of all of
this matters, because of course the commanders in theater have wide discretion. But
as I say, the Huthis had been attacking US and international shipping for weeks
now, and the commanders must have had battle plans. They must have drawn
up the plans. Clearly there had to be something going down the chain of
command. And the old saying that a chain is only as strong as its
weakest length. There we have right at the top, Commander in Chief,
Secretary of Defense. The links aren't even in place. It just astonishing to
me. Yeah, I mean that that is the first order of business for
the United States military is to secure the trade routes in the world. Right,
That's what else is kind of you know, it's got other things it's
doing. It's also not doing, but that is one of its central missions.
The idea that this was the idea that you would you would not anticipate
all these different possibilities and plan for them, right, is kind of weird
to me. And it's not as if, well, you know, world's
kind of quiet these days. You know, they're getting in around ten,
leaving her at five point fifteen, take it on an hour lunch. No,
it's the world is actually more inflamed now that it's been in twenty years.
I'll tell you here's a little anecdote about the way these things go.
This goes goes all the way back to the first couple of years of the
Reagan administration and Wimar Kardaffi and Libya had been acting up. As you know,
he had bombed a disco, killing many American soldiers in Germany. We
knew it was Kadafi, all right. Our military drew up plans to retaliate
to I can't remember exactly what it was now at this stage, but I
think we were going to embargo, we were going to interrupt shipping to his
support and we expected trouble from the Libyan Air Force. They had it all
planned out, they had it all figured out. But and Edmee was present
in the Oval office. He's the one who told me this story. The
military wanted to make sure that the commander in chief understood what they were about
to do and approved the rules of engagement. So a map gets rolled out
across the President's desk. They show, here's the med, here's a Libyan
airspace. And the question was, mister President, do we have your permission
if they attack us? Do we have your permission to pursue them back into
Libyan airspace? And Ronald Reagan said, you have my permission to pursue them
back into their damn hangars. All right. They needed to hear that from
the commander in chief. I just can't imagine how how these conversations are taking
place in this administration where the Secretary of Defense is checked himself into the hospital
without telling anybody, and the president is slow. It's a strange time.
It's very strange time. I mean, I think, I think, I
mean my sort of over actually you know, metaphor here or the theory I'm
working on is that we we we have been uh, we have treated all
of us. I mean both sides and both positions have treated kind of the
the role of government and what it can do and what it can't do,
and what we should be doing kind of frivolously. It's this is a product
of incredible wealth and decades, which is good. These are good things.
You're a high class problem to have, but we need to get serious.
One of the problems with the Biden administration is that it is the and I'm
getting in trouble for you, but we didn't like dan Quayle. But it
is the the epitome of a frivolous, pointless, meretricious vice president meretriciously arrived
at vice presidential choice. The goal of the vice president is a stupid job.
The idea is to be a competent person who provides no political competition for
his boss, but is nevertheless qualified to be president at a moment's notice.
And for the past many, many cycles it has been treated by clever pundits
who think they know things and by candidates who think they know things. It's
like, well, this is how I'm going to appeal to my bay.
I'm going to do this and that I'm going to get. These are the
people which of course never happens, never ever happens an election day, and
instead what they end up with is a person that most people are nervous will
become president of the United States. And that is unacceptable on any level,
but especially when the president's nine hundred and seventy five years old, or alternatively
is four hundred and seventy five pounds and looks terrible right that, It's just
not how it's supposed to go. I mean, Mike, I mean to
Trump's defense Mike Pence, who is far more conservative than I am, and
who I would love to have been president of the United States so I could
oppose his policies, was ready to be president, I think I would say.
I mean, does anybody want to see a picture of Kamala Harris in
the situation room, like looking at that monitor, you know, like that
famous photograph of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton Secretary Hill Cleek watching the the osam
Bin laden Assas killing in real time? Anybody want to see Kamala Harris there?
I mean, I don't think Democrats don't want to see you there.
It doesn't not a partisan thing. It's just that she's not qualified to president.
The president's nine hundred years old, and that when everything's great and doing
good and everybody's happy, I guess you can get by right, like we
all do sometimes when times are good. But it's dangerous. Now. These
are real jobs. It's serious. It depends really what you think the job
of the president is. And a lot of the people on the other side
of the aisle, I believe, think that the job is destroyed. Manfully
down White House Corridor is spouting Aaron Sorkin dialogue. You know, they just
have this, you know, that's basically it about doing the right thing and
act like Martin Sheen and that everything somehow takes care of itself because the government
is staffed with government people who are good at what they do and smart at
what they do and have the right instincts and all the rest of it.
But Rob's right, I mean, you have a tremendous amount of wealth and
a bacchanalia of job seekers who just sort of inhabit their space without doing much
of anything. Now, the good part about this, I would like to
think, I would hope to think, is that you don't have the Secretary
of Defense doing the map spreading and saying, here's what I want you guys
to do. You have the people who who design and execute these things put
it up the chain until here's what we would like to do, and then
it's approved and so forth. So the fact that we didn't have the sec
death right there in the office monitoring this doesn't really bother me that much.
I tend to think that there's enough competence in place to be able to run
this. You know, they get a thumbs up and they go, But
who gives the thumbs up? Who gives the thumbs up? If the secretarity
defense is non secretary presidents out to lunch, well that's that's my point.
Thumbs up. I think you're right, and they will get a thumbs up
from the president or the person who's handling his calls, or whoever is in
charge of putting something in front of him that that day for you know,
to wipe the pudding off the corners of his mouth and get a you know,
an okay to do this. But what I worry about more than any
of the stuff that you were talking about before is the lack of that Reagan
esque will to go to follow them back to the hangers because you know,
we're all about sending a message. We're all about showing them that we're serious,
and don't you do this again or this is We're going to come over
and we're going to spank you lightly across the botocks one more time. We
spanked you harder the left one last time. We're going to spank you a
little bit harder in the right the next time. Follow them back to the
hangers is something that we haven't done for a very long time. And the
hangers aren't where they are. The hangers are in Tehran, correct, and
nobody is. But nobody is ever going to say, well, you know,
we've got to take this back to this. Nobody will so again that
that concerns me. The lack of hanger following concerns me more than the lack
of hanger following right now. Is is A is A is a function of
the American people. I mean the American people do not want another work,
They do not want to go to war where they ram, they do not
want this. Well they will they will when something else happens here. And
it goes back to the late too late, I mean maybe not. I
mean, I who knows we invaded a raq no reason the far and away
leader for the Republican nomination is I mean, and I agree with him.
He's an articulate spokesman against American military intervention abroad and an inarticulate spokesman too,
both of those kinds of spokes He's both those kinds. So the I mean
I am a I mean, the answer is two ways. I'm also kind
of a you know, corny traditionalist. I think I like the idea that
the president of the United States is sort of a citizen's job in general,
and the citizen is a commander in chief, and that the Secretary of Defense
and the Secretary of War whatever it was was back of the day, was
confirmed by the Senate, so it was confirmed by a democratic process. And
I like the idea that two people who are accountable directly to representatives and voters
make these decisions. I think that's a good thing. And when it's sort
of outsourced to sort of well, the sect deaf. The guy who was
confirmed by the Senate, he was he was under prop the fal he was
anesthetized at the time, and the president is sort of a who knows where
he is at any point, So it was like the under Secretary of something
or the whatever, the guy running Sentcom who kind of agreed that this seems
like a bad move for everybody involved. That if I was at Sencom,
I would say, who WHOA, We'll wake the Secretary of Defense up.
I'm not doing this until I get exactly exactly I mean, if you put
yourself in the position of the captain of the gerald Ford the or the admiral
who's in charge of the fleet there in the Eastern Mediterranean. We have two
carrier groups in the Eastern Mediterranean. The situation is dangerous. It's really dangerous.
The Biden administration lifted the sanctions against Iran. That means that Iran has
for some three years now been selling billions and billions of dollars worth of oil
there. Their treasury is full to overflowing. We also know that Iran has
the most developed drone program on the planet. They've been selling military drones to
the Russians that the Russians have been using to counter the drones in Ukraine.
We know that the Huthis and has Belah in the north of Lebanon, the
Huthis down south of Saudi Arabia, and we've got the Hamas fighting back Israel.
We're tied down in Ukraine. The Chinese are making our violating Taiwan's airspace
every single day. Now you're a commander, you know that you're Our bases
and international shipping have been attacked one hundred and thirty times in recent weeks,
and you think to yourself, will if we're here, we'd better defend ourselves.
But if we defend ourselves, this may happen. That may happen,
and the other may happen, and things may start. Now I want to
know whether the commander in chief is aware of all this before I push the
It just seems to me that those guys who are in the theater making decisions
saying we could do this, and we could do this, and we can
do this right, but do you know what might happen? Do you understand
how dangerous this is? And there's no answer. There's no answer coming back
to that question. I would think it's also kind of a general muddle about
the way the American military is supposed to work. I mean, correct,
they fired on US ships, so they have to So there's really there can't
be much debate that needs to be an incredibly vigorous, incredibly, incredibly effective
response, right because there's a direct American interests. But I feel like we
have this kind of muddle right now in the administration, maybe in the country
in general, about what the American interests are. And I suspect that if
you ask, you know, you pick a random person and you don't even
need to know what their party affiliation is. But most Americans think if they
had a list things they would say that the America buility is supposed to do.
Is the one protect the borders of the tree, and two protect American
interests abroad narrowly defined as sort of commercial interests rights, our ships. And
then you know, we get a debate about the three numbers three through one
hundred, but the numbers one and two are pretty much there's a consensus there.
There's even a constitutional consensus there. And it doesn't seem like the Biden
administration's aware of certainly not aware of the poor problem. And there's particular confusion
in the Democratic Party because there were many Democrats. Okay, whatever her name,
Alexandra the Squad, I never have been able to pronounce her name,
and I keep hoping that she'll disappear, so I won't have to learn it.
But the squad would say, wait a minute, we're only getting fired
at because we're there, and we're only there because we're there to support Israel,
and we think Israel is in the wrong, not in the right.
So instead of attacking Iran, let's bring the navy home. That that is
a very strong position in the Democratic Party, that the Democratic Party isn't just
muddled split. That's that complicates things for these I was seeing it on the
right as well. I was seeing people say, you no, you know,
we've got no we have none of the goods that are good, that
are that are going through that area are headed to the US. So it's
not our deal, which is blinkered and short sighted. You look at all
the things that are having to go around the Horn, a lot of China
that's going to be a lot more expensive by the time they get over here.
Before we go any farther, I want to leap back a few minutes
here and ask and point out Rob just said that we invaded Iraq for no
reason. I don't agree with that. Now you can disagree with the reasons,
but we had a lot of them. I mean, the world had
changed significantly in a blink of an eye, all of a sudden, we
had been you know, we've been dealing with a lot of Islamic terrorism for
fifteen twenty years. We'd seen them try to blow up the World Trade Center
before by you know, truck bombs in the basement, and all of a
sudden, there was just a rotten branch approach just that we're done with these
guys. This is I'm sorry, you're over. We're going to take them
out of Afghanistan, and then we're going to take out Iraq because Iraq had
chemical weapons, which everybody had known for fifteen twenty years. Could they've been
using them? Because Sadam Hussein was a bad actor, because he was in
an open ended conflict with the United States that involved constantly firing on our planes
in the no fly zone and plotting to kill presidents. You know, he's
a bad guy. Finished that off and then have a base there with Iran
encircled was the idea. That was the second I mean, Iraq was the
second campaign of this new war. So I wouldn't say that we didn't have
a reason. I don't think it was some spasmodic reaction that had nothing to
do with reality. I think there was a strategic decision there that would encircle
Iran and help facilitate a turn over there. I mean, so, am
I wrong? Oh No, I think that's probably a fair assessment of their
justifications for it. I think those justifications were ultimately foolish, because the truth
is that you foolish or just plain mistake, simply mistake. Well. I
mean I think that they they they had an idea about the world is that
it's a game of risk in which the pat you move the pieces around instead
of was sort of messy and noisy and horrible. Now I say this,
I mean, I am a very good friend of mine is an Iraqi,
very smart guy, runs a wonderful organization. Uh, And he argues really
passionately and kind of convincingly that Iraq is much much better off now that it
was before. That may be true. I'm not sure that it was worth
the treasure and the American blood to do to go in there and and to
do that, I think you wanted it more than I don't think we made
the world safer necessarily. I'm not. I'm not, I'm I'm I'm decoupling
Iraq and Afghanistan I'm not sure we had a choice with Afghanistan, but I
think Iraq we had a choice, And I think the downside of that is
that you end up when something kind of ends up in a muddle and not
a w but a question mark. You end up with a nation of both
both Republicans and democrats on both sides who are queasy and unwilling to make them
stands when they should. So what, you know, you can't fight everywhere.
It wasn't perhaps that we had to go. I mean, yes,
we had to go into Afghanistan. What was a choice was attempting the nation
build and in the aftermath, yes, the attempt to take this big mess
of a place and tie it together with freeways and air conditioning units and conducting
fried chicken and call them a nation. As with Iraq, I remember when
we had rumsfeld on and asked him more than a debatification was a mistake,
and if you remember, he said that it's a very good question, and
he didn't really have an answer for it. In both cases, if we'd
gone in toppled, installed our kind of strong man instead of trying to remake
them into Western style democracies, he might have had more success. That's a
bit condescending to say that a rock can't be you know, like the rest
of the countries. But hey, that's you know, you might have you
might have had success. But I guess what I would say about that is
that while that may be true, it has never occurred in human history,
so it would be the first time that that ever happened. Maybe it could
whatever happened, I'm not following exactly. You invade a country, install a
leader of your choice, and that leader runs the country for a while successfully.
It just doesn't seem like that's a very good plan. Well, South
Korea, Japan, West Germany, and West Germany. Yeah, there's a
couple of different from from invading a country like Iraq and then installing a leader.
That wasn't really what we did. They had. We pretty much installed
the South Korean guys. South Korea wasn't a democracy until a dozen fifteen nine.
Korea and Germany are our geopolitical, cultural ethnic entities. Iraq is yes,
I mean, now you're drawing distinctions, right, right, Iraq is
a conjured country. Is one of those conjured countries with arbitrary orders and the
rest of it. But Rob is right, We are still dealing with an
aftermath that makes Americans queezy about that sort of actions. And from that,
you know what, if you are you know, like my age, and
you go out on the town and you have a good time, you know
you can be the aftermath can be less than salutory. Frankly, you don't
bounce back the next day like you used to when you were twenty years old
and hard charging and out there and having fun on the weekends. So you
know, I got to make a choice sometimes, I really do. Can
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zbiotics responsoring this the Ricochet podcast. Now it's see done, James, well
to thank you. I understand the I understand the difficulty there. No,
it's absolutely no difficult whatsoever. Whithouse do it as a as a cheery evening,
Yes, I will use that. I will use that in the future.
And now we bring back to the podcast the man that j Hewet himself
calls Garretty the indispensable Still is that still the case with you, Jim?
Are you still absolutely indispensable to the Hue Hue Show? It is okay good
And every time he does that it invites the old legend of you know,
the graveyards are full of Jim, of course is National what is that indispensable
life goes on? Jim is National Reviews senior political correspondent and a Washington Post
contributing columnist, author and co host of the Three Martini Lunch podcast, and
author of many Final Areas non fiction works as well. And of course I
lost saw you at the National Review party where we all we all participated in
the Twelve Days of Christmas set to uh Anti Biden Japery and I think we
were all singing in about forty seven different keys. But it was a great
merry time, and it was it was good to see you. But here
you are now and you have flown to Iowa. Well, I assume you
flew fly. Did you drive? Did you do that thing where you meet
with Americans and you drive on the freeways and you stop at the small town
diners and see what they're saying. Or did you just like parachute in?
No, I lived down to the Beltway beltway stereotype of parachuting in and one
of the reasons I'm able to join you. I know, if you can
see how much snow is outside behind me, we had getting apparently what's being
called the Blizzard of the decade. I arrived here Monday, apparently one hour
before the previous blizzard of the decade, which put about a foot of snow
onto to most of the state. So my reporting has pretty much been the
Des Moines area. I have not gotten out of the immediate city and suburbs
too much. Covered the debate on CNN Wednesday night. But I was supposed
to be heading back today and the airline said, Nope, not happening.
So I'm hoping for tomorrow. Jim, were you heading back, because you
know, stick of fork and it's done. There's nothing to happen here.
Are there's still some surprises left? That's a reasonable interpretation. It's good to
see you, by the way that basically I have been here all week.
I have another speaking gig down in Atlanta next week and if I don't spend
some time on the home front, I'm going to be in serious trouble.
But yeah, like, look, Trump has been around fifty percent in just
about all these polls. Looking at the caucuses. I've heard Republicans out here
say that, look, DeSantis has a good turnout operation, all that door
knocking, he should beat his final poll numbers, which is good. But
his poll numbers right now mostly they've been around twenty. Some of them have
in the teens, and the most recent one that came out from Suffolk has
Hiven third place behind Haley. Now we'll see, there's one more card to
drop. The Des Moines Register is going to have a poll out apparently this
weekend. That will probably be our last look before people actually show up on
Monday. So, Jim, I know Peter wants to jump in, Can
I ask you one question before he jumps out? Are you getting that thing
that they do that the campaigns do you know, certainly in the early primaries
where they say, hey, listen, if my guy breaks ten, that's
a big win for us. Hey my guy gets five people in that that
school gymnasium on Tuesday, that's a huge Are they doing that expectation thing,
so that hey, we came in a we're a solid fourth. That that
you know we didn't get smoked. Are they doing that or is it rob
I have yet to hear the if we have just one person show up,
we've done better than Dean Phillips at his event in the Hutchinson right. Oh
yeah, Like look everybody, look, if DeSantis isn't in second place,
it's really bad news. I don't know if it means he's automatically got to
get out, but like, this is the state where he's been endorsed by
the governor. This is the state where he's visited all ninety nine counties.
He's spent a ton of money. I think he's had good debate perform He's
done all the things you should be doing if you want to win Iowa,
and it just hasn't been working. Now again, maybe he'll surprise us on
Monday. I think it's ideally for him. You definitely want Trump below fifty,
and you definitely want to be the closest guy, and you probably want
to put some distance between yourself and Haley because New Hampshire is Haley State.
You know, the Zanna's campaign is open they're not really competing in New Hampshire
that much. But he's got to get some momentum out of this because if
he doesn't, where does he win, right, you know, it's South
Carolina doesn't look good. He's trailing Trump by quite a bit in Florida,
like where this is supposed to be his good state. And if it doesn't
look good, I don't think Spin's going to do that much. It could
be all that effective. Jim Peter, Peter here a question about always Yeah,
good to see. By the way, our listeners are listening, so
they can't see you, but you're extremely well dressed, beautifully beautiful, tie
cinched all the way up. It looks as though you're about to go downstairs
to speaking engagement in the lobby of that very hotel. What's what I'd love
to Actually, I just did Fox News this morning. Oh okay, you
go, yes, Rob and I or James of course, always looks flawless
to Rob and I are unshaven and bleary eyed and so forth. All right,
listen, I know a couple of people from Iowa, and here's what
they told me about caucuses. There's a reason they're unpredictable, particularly on the
Republican side, people change their minds. They're Iowans, they're neighborly about it.
They discuss their reasoning. It is particularly again my friend's stress on the
Republican side. It is a neighborly get together. They bring cookies to share
with each other, and they talk about whether a vote for Dessandis might be
wasted because Haley's the only one in. They talk of this way and that
being the case, and it being the case that the weather is really cold,
predicted to be really cold even by Iowa standard, so you might think
certain Iowans, particularly the older folks, might choose to stay. So it
seems to me that although we're of course grasping for poles to get some feel
for what's going on, that this one really really is going to be unpredictable.
We're very likely to learn something. But you're so, the question is
is that right? Or do we actually know what's going on? It is
you know, I don't doubt past caucuses have worked out that way, got
and so yeah, So yes, the thing on I pointed, you know,
if if the polls are right, it's not like DeSantis has to gain
a little bit, you know, it's like Trump right around fifty DeSantis maybe
at twenty in some of these like you you need a big you know,
scoop scoop there the two of act. Again you mentioned weather and like you
know, besides you, it's a shame this is only audio because like I
could behind you at the window. Yeah, yes, yeah, it's you
know, it's it's coming down. It's not quite white out conditions, it's
it's yeah, but there's a lot I you know, again, I went
back and I checked in twenty sixteen or I got twenty six twenty seven percent
of the caucus goers on the Republican side where aged sixty five or older.
I would not want my parents driving in whether like this. The roads might
be icy. And remember this is all in your your local high school,
your local community center, so people have to go to participate. Uh,
what are the last two other last factors? And what I pointed out,
this is the first Iowa caucus that will occur during an NFL playoff game.
They're having a game on Monday night. I don't think there are a lot
of Tampa Bay Buccaneer and Philadelphia Eagle fans here in Iowa. But if you
are if it's cold and it feels like Trump's gonna win anyway, maybe it's
like, you know, I'll stay home and watch the game. But the
other factor is the Democrats do not have a caucus here. They're they're caucusing,
but they're only doing party business. They're doing a non counting vote by
mail system will the results will be announced on Super Tuesday. Iowa Democrats do
not get to go first here. So if you're an Iowa Democrat, I
could see a scenario where you're like, well, Biden's going to be the
nominee. I don't really care about what's going on with that. Maybe they
support Haley. Maybe they see Trumps the easiest to beat, and they decide
to show up and go for Trump. This would mean, though, like
you could it's technically the caucuses are Republicans only, but you can change your
party registration up until that night. Wow. Oh, so there's no control
over the say yeah, I'm a Republican and then boom. You know,
I don't know how much paperwork has it been involved. I can't imagine there's
that much to say, you know, change party registration. And so theoretically
Democrats could come in and say let's let's all go out for Asa Hutchinson,
you know, or or whoever they think is the most the one they like.
They just want to stop Trump. Let's get back in. But before
he does so, there's one more question. Sure you said a moment ago
that DeSantis has done everything. He's spent all ninety nine counties. He spent
a ton of money. He might as well be governor of Iowa. I'm
sure he's getting guff back in Florida of that very kind. Why hasn't it
worked? It just hasn't worked. Why? Yeah, I'm sure there are
some people whould say charisma. I don't think he's that bad, but I
think you can say that he's not. People don't want to go and watch
him like it's a show, the way it is for Trump. I do
wonder if the we're now entering year eight or nine Trump being the central figure
in our politics and that kind of has conditioned Republicans to expect a you know,
snazzy personality where you just never know what he's going to say and all
that stuff. The other thing is also I think the party has changed,
and for a long time, the person who won the Iowa Coxes was the
one who were their Christianity on their sleeve, Rick Santorum, Mike Hackabee,
even you could argue Ted Cruz last time around. And I think it's a
you know, it sounds I was talking to some other reporters, it sounds
like evangelicals are not unified behind anyone. Some of them are Trump, some
of them are DeSantis. I think it's a slightly smaller group for Haley.
It's very much splitting along kind of class lines, the more professional, white
collar class evangelicals being more dysantis, the blue collar and even like people who
self identify as evangelicals but who don't necessarily go to church every week, they're
you know, kind of leaning Trump in that direction. So look, I
think, look, part of the problem is for Dessanta's I think he had
an applausible sounding but erroneous argument of how you win, which was to be,
hey, I'm kind of like Trump, I just don't have all the
scandals in the baggage, right, And I think Trump folks are like,
no, I want Trump Trump, I don't want Diet Trump. I don't
want Trump zero or or whatever, you know. And to everybody else who
is not who are repellent repelled by Trump, they kind of ended up drifting
towards Nikka Aeli that that that de Santis wasn't think enough from the things they
didn't like about Trump. I guess that was kind of all to my question
is there has has there been a political collapse of a far and away front
runner seemed to capture not just you know this. You know, Desantas was
not an establishment Republican. He was a firebrand. He was a you know,
he was a Reagan figure. I mean, very different from Reagan,
but in the sense of like from one of those slightly baddy states where they
vote for the real conservative and the guy's pugnacious, and he's in this in
the in the fight, and he does this credible step during COVID and we
all think, I think, well, this is going to be he should
just walk to let's just give it to him now. And not only is
he happy to fight for it, but he's happy to fight for second or
third. It's just has there ever been a story like this? We were
talking to nor about, like, you know, presidential campaigns that have crashed
and burned, and you could point to rue Giuliani in two thousand and eight,
some people nominated Scott Walker, who'd left very early in the twenty cycle.
But I think that, like, you know, look, coming off
that huge win in twenty twenty two, when in the midterms over that whirling
dervish of raw charisma Charlie crist Like by the way, the fact that,
like, you know, the fact that this antis has not taken on the
world by storm Man, How bad is Charlie crist Right, you know,
to get you can thanks like that, But so you just kind of think,
also, like what didn't go right? He decided to stay in Florida
in the early months of twenty twenty three to get his last agenda items through
the state legislature. Trump went on the attack. Trump did his part to
define him. I think that didn't I think you've had to do that over
you probably don't want to start your beer campaign on a Twitter thing that doesn't
work and where no one could hear you. That's probably less than ideal he
did. And like we've had all the kind of different resets and all that
stuff. Like you look at the amount of money he has spent on TV
advertising. It doesn't appear to have moved the needle at all. And so
I don't know. And some of this is like, you know, how
much could you coordinate with the super Pack And the super Pac was independently spending
its own money, and so they had their ideas of what messages would work
best. Look, I think from the beginning, like if you had to
do it all over again, I think DeSantis had to take on Trump much
more directly and had to say to Trump voters almost like staging an intervention for
a friend. I know you think this guy's great, but he really did
deliver for you. And Desandas has intermittently hit these notes and kind of gone
with this message. I don't think you could tell I don't. I know
it's not that his heart's not into it, but I think he doesn't.
He wanted He's just gonna naturally win over some of these Trump supporters and it
just was never gonna happen that this was uh, you were never going to
be Hey, I'm kind of like Trump that that was not what these folks
wanting. I think it really needs to be much more. Look, Trump
is a big talker who doesn't get stuff done right, and it turns out
to be nicky Haley who makes that she's making that argument better. Yeah,
I'm like, I think he wanted to be a little little column a a
little column. Yeah. He ended up in this inverse sweet spot where he
was too trumpy for the non Trump, for the Trump opponents, and not
trumpy enough for the Trump And it's a very bad place to be. I
wrote a little, stupid little book a few years ago called like, set
some of Trump's speeches to verse. It's called Big Lee, right. It
was kind of whatever was somebody asked me to do it. I thought it
was a funny idea. The Trump fans, I thought I was making fun
of him, and you're not allowed to make fun of Donald Trump. Trump
fans do not like that. He is, without a doubt, the great
Messiah. And the people who hate Trump thought, what are you? You're
just making fun of him. You can't make fun of him. He's like
New York democracy, is it dies in dark night? Oh? By the
way, Florida Democrats canceled the primary. But so sometimes you can kill it
right out there in the olden It dies in darkness, right. Washington Post,
by the way, is ultimately is awesome. Everyone should subscribe to it.
I really like my columns and Jeff Bezos's money and everything was great there.
So you know, well, the New Yorker said that I was guilty
of jocular sanctioning. That's what I said, you basically your procretary, right,
but I mean jocular exactly. But how much how much runway do these
guys have? Like? Okay, so Trump is far way ahead? Uh?
Is it just a bunch of like very very rich funders thinking, oh
not again, not know Trump again. We'll keep you alive. We're gonna
we will pay for your oxygen and tell the you know, the the convention
begins, is that what's going to happen here? It's okay, So how
much runway do they have? Yeah, an aircraft carrier is worth not a
lot, but enough because by by sense for this and this is kind of
the case in both the Early States and nationally, roughly half the party is
yep, we want Trump again, ride or die. This is our you
know, which means that if you want to if your name isn't Donald Trump
and you want to be the nominee, you got to get that other half,
and you got to hope that it's a bigger than fifty percent, and
you got to have a fight all the way to the convention, and it's
going to be really, really hard, but it could be doable. But
to do it, you got to unify that other fifty percent. And some
of those people were Ted Cruz voters back in twenty sixteen. Some of those
people were John Kaysik voters in twenty sixteen. It's not there's a big ideological
divide, big different ideas of who. You know, there's a big gap
between like Liz Cheney and Brian camp right, you know, for how they
see things. So it was always gonna be tough. And a couple of
weeks ago I promote I said, like, you know, looking at the
way things are and how not much is changing in these polling numbers, you
know, DeSantis and Haley should think about a unity ticket. Say you know,
whether you want DeSantis Haley or Haley DeSantis, put them together. That's
the one way to make sure you get all these in the same pile.
And uh, everyone hated it. Every there's enormous real the Zantas people see
Nicky Haley as Lilith. That's not just okay, I didn't realize it,
but that's a good cheers reference for you. Rob And then you know,
the uh and they just say, you know, and say, Haley fans
see desantisys bill ails above that he's every bit is And so even if they
wanted to do that, it sounds like both of their basis of support have
come to really dislike the other. And I think, based on what we
saw on that debate stage Wednesday night, I think they really don't like each
other anymore. I think they really have cotton. You know, like there
was a it was like two hours of my opponent sucks and you know,
not enough folks on there's this sky thirty points ahead of them that you'd think
they'd you know, intermittently remember to criticize. Dana Bash and Jake Tapper had
to keep reminding them, say is there anything you like to say about Donald
Trump that you know? So, yeah, we haven't even mentioned way just
not a factor. We haven't even mentioned. Okay, uh, yeah,
he'll probably be in single digits, not particularly high single digits. You also
see people clustering towards the towards the front runners towards the end. I will
say I watched Vivic at a rally at the state capitol. It's against these
carbon pipelines. Basically, they want to run from the ethanol plants which generate
carbon dioxide. They want to take the carbon dioxide, liquefy it, run
it through pipes lines to other states where they'll dump it into caverns, and
the under the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration will just say, here's
a giant pile of money for you for doing this. So the ethanol industry
loves it. The whole bunch of farmers who have their would have the pipelines
go over don't like it, and they sure as hell don't want eminent domain
used. So I watched Vivek in person, and he said all kinds of
I am not around a swanny fan. I'm the opposite of it. And
I find all kinds of nasty, stupid, false things he said in the
debates. But when you agree with them, as in this case of like
no, we don't want eminent domain to use to help ethanol companies, he
becomes a lot more persuasive. And as somebody put it to me, you
just wish you would use his powers for good instead of evil, because he's
good, he's got like he's got natural charisma and retail politics. He dealt
with a Heckler, just so, and I wrote about this in the morning's
old newsletter. Women starts shouting environmental activists and it's basically like, how can
you oppose these pipelines and still support oil and gas pipelines? And he says,
you know what, I'm going to give you the microphone for a minute,
and as long as you agree not to insult people here, I will
give it to you and you get a chance to make your case. Do
you agree to that? She said, sure, puts a microphone in her
hand. She says who she's from, and within thirty seconds that this man
is lying to you. This man thinks you're stupid. And she you know,
she probably is like twenty seven years old, you know, your classic
green environmental activist type. Unsurprisingly, the crowd was not persuaded. She did,
after a minute give the microphone back, and Ramaswami looked magnanimous and he
said, look, we're in the state capitol. We believe in freedom of
speech. We just we believe in free of expression, and so you know,
I disagree with your opinion, but I'm glad you're able to and he
just handled and he looked like and then he goes off and he talks about
why he doesn't know why he's he thinks the climate change agenda is nonsense.
And it was just like she came across as a angry, incoherent, you
know, lefty, and she he came across as the guy who actually had
done his homework and knew about the issue. And I looked at it.
I was like, that was just handled really well. And he just does
can you look at this? You're like man in Silicon Valley, those ventures
Aapolis must have been like listened to him and say, take my money.
This is you know, he's not a gift. And I just again,
I like this guy who's holding I wis I wish he used his powers for
a better philosophy rather than the agenda's got And why is he still in You're
a billionaire, you can do what every ll you want. Yeah, okay,
okay, New Hampshire. So I think Nicki Haley's path got easier with
Chris Christy out of the race. I think the you know, both CNN
polling and Christy had alluded to his own internal discussion numbers of internal polling on
Hugh Hewitt's program, indicating that most of his supporters will probably go to Nicky
Haley. As I said, DeSantis is not really playing in that state.
So yeah, if there's supposed to be a debate in New Hampshire next week
on CNN. To qualify, you had to have ten percent in national polls
and in New Hampshire polls. DeSantis has not hit ten percent in a New
Hampshire poll since mid December. Wow, thetom has dropped out for him now.
But if you finish third or above, you still get to qualify,
So he stood, should still qualify for this debate. If I'm Nicki Haley,
though, do I want to do another one on one debate with DeSantis
one week later? You know what? What's the upside for her? So?
What is it? What is it about DeSantis that the people of New
Hampshire, the Republican voters don't like his positions, his track record, what
what doesn't do it? It's just that they regard him as a sack of
wet tinder and they can't get behind somebody. They don't regard it as particularly
charismatic, as opposed to the fiery loveliness and you know, warm embrace that
we all get from Nicki Haley. What what don't they like about DeSantis?
Here's a guy with the right record, with the right COVID, the behavior
with who fights as they say, okay, everybody are saying, I'll fight
for you, we'll fight. Well, he's fought successfully a lot of the
bugaboos that were supposedly concerned about what don't they like, what's not to like?
Well, well, one thing to note is that DeSantis early on looked
at these early states. You basically you either pick Iowa or you pick New
Hampshire, right, and so he put his money into his advertising, his
money, all that stuff into ne Hampshire, got endorsed by Governor Kim Reynolds,
and so as a result, you're kind of like, you know,
you pick one. New Hampshire's already. Oh he's one of those, Ohio,
one of those Iowa guys. Also, let's point out that like New
Hampshire, as I mentioned, you could change your party registration up until that,
but independence can vote in the Republican presidential primary up in New Hampshire.
And so let's point out this is a good venue to talk about this.
So you know, every year this John Weaver candidate, right, not just
like by himself, but there's a candidate named John who runs as the kind
of Republican if you're not really into the Republican party. Could be John McCain,
can be John Ksick, or it could be John Huntsman. But the
character is always named John. The candidate is always nam John, and they
almost always hired John Weaver. And it's the MSNBC loves them, The New
Report Oublick loves Usually they go on the view and they wow them. It's
kind of like I thought I hated Republicans. Say that John Anderson, there's
another one, and there you go. And so Nicky Haley is as close
as we have to that John candidate, unless you want to say Asa Hutchinson.
But like, you know, he's looking at Dean Phillips and saying,
Wow, that guy can't attract a crowd. So I think that's he's just,
you know, his brand doesn't match the state. The state wants somebody
who's flinty and independent. And you know, Son endorsing Haley health, you
know, And I'm waiting because Rob and James both look like they have more
questions. But I'm I'm here, I'm here in Minnesota. Okay, Okay,
this is like Jeopardy. I'm going to hit the button first, Jim
question. Let's I ran into Carl Rove a couple of days ago and said,
well, you know, if Nicky Haley does well in New Hampshire,
I assumed I took it for granted. She's a former governor of South Carolina.
She ought to do well in South Carolina. And he said, that's
a very very good question. There are a lot of good old boys in
the Republican Party at senior positions in the Republican Party in South Carolina, and
she had a tense relationship with the good old boys of the Republican establishment in
South Carolina from the first moment of her governorship to the last, said Carl
Rove, who, like you, is a man who understands the grassroots in
state after state after state. So South Carolina is not a Kimney for Nikah
Hailey at all? Is that right? Oh? Definitely not. Polling there
is as bad as it is pretty much anywhere else. It's see, it's
a culturally and kind of character wized is still a very trumpy state. And
the assessment is right. She apparently she had a falling out with Mark Sanford,
but she was seen as like a Sanford, you know, Acco life,
you know, somebody who actually wanted to complain. My parents lived down
in South Carolina, so I feel reasonably comfortable talking about the dynamics of this
state for a long time. It might be changing, but like for a
long time, South Carolina had Republicans who governed at the state level, not
all that different from Democrats. They loved their bringing money back to their district.
They love their highway projects, they love their you know, they were
not fiscally conservative by by as most people would think, and you you know,
Hailey clashed with them. She was not the favorite in that primary.
She really was helped by Sarah Palin And obviously, if you win the Republican
primary in South Carolina, you got a really good shot at winning the general
election. And she was running in twenty ten, it's heat part of a
year, so the dynamics, you know, worked well. But she came
in there as this reformer and she was not part of the good old boys
network, and so yeah, there was tension there. I think she is
like still like liked and respected, But I keep emphasizing this for all kinds
of people who you know, for every senator who looks in the mirror and
sees the president's steering back. Like the goal was not to be liked.
The goal is to be somebody's first choice for president because they really get one.
You know, it's being just you know, maybe it caucuses if your
person gets knocked out in the first round or or you know that, okay,
then we'll vote for him. But like you really have to be there
for you and you're going up against an incumbent president who won, you know,
who won South Carolina twice by a wide market. So I yo,
now here's the thing. If she wins in north in New Hampshire, it's
like three hundred the God King bleeds, you know, zeruses you are?
Are? You know you are? You are vulnerable now? And you know,
maybe the the honestly questions does everybody who doesn't want Trump coalesce behind Hailey,
because that's like a prequisite you need, you know, And then does
you know, does Trump start to look a little more vulnerable? But somebody
point out to me this morning, there's like a month between New Hampshire and
South Carolina and you probably you know, you guys, remember George w versus
versus John McCain in two thousand. This is a state where it gets next.
It really does. When when Haley was running for governor that Schmoe said,
yeah, he confessed to having an affair Nicky Haley. She denied it.
It was never proven. And let's point out, but you know,
by the standards of by the standards of politicians, Nicky Haley is a very
attractive woman. So if you're a guy and it says, yes, I
confess I had an extra marital affair with that smoking hot gubernatorial candidate, and
I am ashamed for the many many times, you know, like there were
good reasons to be skeptical of that assessment. So yeah, like she would
have a shot at South Carolina. What's interesting? Do you think maybe she
regrets taking those shots at Tim Scott during the primary debates. Maybe his endorsement
would be helpful right around now? Okay, so Jim, I got a
larger political question. I know you got to run because anywhere take off your
tire relax, has anybody ever won playing it's safe? I mean, I
guess what I'm saying is like I'm looking at the Santas campaign and I'm thinking,
Okay, well that you know I there was a highly controlled, highly
disciplined campaign for most of it, and they did this thing where they split
the campaign up into this monsterly overfunded superpack that was run by the brain,
big brains, and then the campaign which is run by you know, kind
of like your local cronies, your your kitchen cabinet, but also big brains.
Nobody's doumb here. And they just thought it was, you know,
here's here's how you do it, and they just that's And it just seems
to me that the the political graveyard, at least recently past twenty five might
say three four five cycles has just littered with people who sat in rooms said
look, look here's let me tell you how it's done. Is that you
go from Iowa, then you go here, you go there. And I
has anybody recently who's who's the biggest winner that you can think of right now?
Who played it safe? Would you count Trump by not doing debates and
stuff? Is that kind of a well, because I think he's such a
renegade. He he sort of like jumped in. I mean, look,
you had you had you told Trump to whether he was going to jump in
or not before he jumped in twenty six you would have said, don't do
it. There's no way you can win. People say there's no know where
you can win. On that Tuesday morning election day, he Trump didn't think
he was gonna win Tuesday morning election day. Remember in twenty sixteen, there
was this idea of lanes, right, there was this establishment lane, probably
somebody with a Christian conservative lane, you know. And I think one of
the hard lessons for everybody else not named Donald Trump in that primary was Donald
Trump wasn't in any lane. He was in every lane. He you know,
could be very conservative at times, he could sound very moderate. At
times. He would sound you know, like sometimes in the same speech and
he could sound very hawkish, We're going to bomb the s out of at
a ice, right and think where you end the Forever Wars, And he
would do it in the same paragraph and nobody sensed any blatant contradiction there.
So I think there was this the idea of like, well, like you're
not like ideally you're running to be president of the United States, you're not
just running to be president of the Republicans, and you're not running to be
president of the Christian concern. This is my big beef with the sa Taurum
and Huckabee style campaigns. It's like, I am the president of a faction.
That's great. The point is to be president of the country and you
have this like great, you appealed to the demographic that is most inclined to
like you. That's the lowest bar to clear, you know. The aim
is to get you to appeal to all kinds of different people, all different
walks of life, all kinds of different you know, so they're there,
You're right. I think that there may have been like nobody's going to look
at the Santas campaign and say, yes, this is how you do it,
this is how you run, you know. Like I think the idea
of like the super Pack, like there's nobody would say, oh, well
that worked well, you know. Jeff Road to parting a couple of weeks
ago. I had people insisting it's no big deal, and I'm like,
nobody leaves the super Pack like with a month to go because things are going
so great and so well, you know, like you know, so I
think that there's that I think the let's keep in mind, you know,
my kids will periodically repeat Mike can get it done, because Mike Bloomberg ads
were all over their video games back in twenties twenty, right, So you
can spend a bazillion dollars and if you people think, yeah, you're this
little, you know, little weirdo guy from New York City, they're not
going to be interested. So in the end, like you could make the
look it was always going to be hard running against a qui effectively an in
common president. Right, Trump space was extremely like we may look at this
and say, what DIDs santists do wrong? And somebody might say nothing that
this was never a race to anybody, but Donald you can make us.
Yeah, it was always a very steep climb. Right, everybody agreed,
and yeah he brought in what's Oh the other thing is that like we don't
worry about COVID anymore, and that was his big, you know, big
success. Periodically, people still talk about Fauci and stuff like that, but
it's just not front and center on people. But he wasn't. I don't
think that was a given. I think he made that that was a problem.
It's choice that he I mean, I guess my point is that that
they seem to make it to come up with a very complicated mouse trap,
when in fact, if you're a sitting governor of a big state, you
say, look at all the good stuff I did in the state. Look
at all the good stuff I did in the state, and you don't talk
about a lot of the extraneous stuff. You know, you just do not
attempt to grow a brain. I think is always a very very good piece
of advice for people in politics. Stop thinking so hard, you know,
just run on your record and keep saying that over and over again, and
we might do it better in New Hampton. Yeah, I so okay.
So back in twenty sixteen, I was the president of the Bobby Jingle Fan
Club. We did, indeed hold our meetings in a phone booth. It
was see kids, a phone booth. With these places they to have us
strength. And so like they had found on his campaign went nowhere and they
said, like in the country, the Republicans were in a very bad mood
in fall twenty fifteen, heading it to twenty sixteen, and they would like
do focus groups and they talk about all the good things he'd done in Louisiana,
and they found that people just didn't believe it. They found that like
like they were to move like, oh you know, the country's going to
hell, you know, like they don't outing your record now. Again,
like the fights in Florida were national news, particularly over the COVID stuff.
So like on the one hand, you know, you you would have thought
that would have done him more good. But you know, maybe the downside
of being a governor is that maybe the average Republican isn't as impressed with what
your record is done. Let's also point out, you know, best observation
of that debate. You look at the gubernatoiler record of Nikki Haley and the
gubernatorial record of Ron DeSantis. Haley was a pre Trump Republican, That's true,
and he keeps hitting her on you know, uh, the Chinese factories
opening in uh uh opening in South Carolina. Every governor had Chinese factories.
Every governor was was welcoming Chinese investment back then. So the I and if
you want to, oh, you think you know she's soft on China,
well look at her at the u N Right, I think we could say
that she's not a secret Chinese spy or secretly soft on Bay or anything like
like like this is kind of a you don't want to nominate or find this
is kind of a dumb argument. Flipside looking at Ron DeSantis. You know,
when he was in the House, he voted to raise the debt ceiling.
Yes, so did one hundred and sixty six other House Republicans. Like
you know, do you want to know how? Or she's like, yeah,
well you know he didn't manage the finances of his campaign. Well okay,
but we have this other record of how he manages finances called the state
of Florida, and things look pretty good there. They had like a two
point two billion surplus there. So like they spent the night doing dumb attacks
on each other the whole time. And so if that's the first thing is
I don't think, you know, any of those tax attacks will get any
traction against either one of either one of each other. But yeah, you
look forward talk about you're gonna do. I guess I think there was for
a couple of these debates it was like, Okay, we've heard about you
did in Florida and things are great, but you know, you're what are
you gonna do for the other forty United States? All right, Jim,
listen, if you can't get a flight out, hop your car and come
up to Minneapolis. I gotta I got. So the weather's nice crash upon,
yet it is actually the struggle and balm us down there. James has
a beautiful house and he's a wonderful host. You should do that. Actually,
I've been there. We will fight for fighting that. Yeah. Back.
The second second point is after the show, after we let you go,
we'll bring you back. You can make a series of predictions about how
you think I was going to go, and then we'll run the correct one
next week. So you know that's like that really just like like, yeah,
I'll do this here. Yeah, I'm like Trump's gonna win. Yeah,
because people are telling me that DeSantis is get out the vote operation will
help, and because it's going to be miserable weather. Uh, you know,
he'll be let's say, or low twenty percent, you know, twenty
twenty to twenty five, somewhere in that range, which will be okay but
not great. Haley will probably be impressive for a state where she wasn't,
but you know, probably like seventeen or something like that, you know,
and everybody else will be single digits. That'll be great. Well, you
know, Donald Trump has spent the last four years broadening his base, so
this coasting the victory I can see already. Thank you for joining us.
Him, It's been a pleasure as ever, and we hope to talk to
you as much as possible in the year to come. Oh always always enjoyed,
guys. And this is the perfect day because I got nowhere else to
go. Stay insides right, We're going to try to take that as a
compliment him. Oh, it's great, yes, indeed, oh man,
just traveling around, you know, it would be great though, if you've
managed to get out and get out to the to the diners and whatnot,
because one of the things that you wanted an Iowa diner, they've got these
these great hot turkey sandwiches. You got the hot turkey, you got the
mashed potatoes, you got the gravy. They're absolutely delicious. And if you
got you know, if you save it and you take it home next day,
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Ricochet Podcast. Well, gentlemen, we're running a little late here, so
we kind of get out of here. But nights anything come to mind.
The Hunter Biden story is it is what it is? You know, I
just tired of the whole bunch of them. I think the most interesting thing
this last week. And if we could spend maybe one or two minutes on
it, Rob, you're there, New York. I wrote about this this
week in my sight New York said, you know what storm's coming in.
We're going to take the migrants. We'll put them in a school. Kids
got to go home remote learning. It was one of those examples of here
are these guys who are not citizens that we apparently are more obliged to accommodate
than the actual children of the citizens of the country. And when you come
with the couple of other governors or governors but may are saying, you know
what, we had to put these pople up in private homes as well,
you began to wonder exactly what the endgame of this is here, Rob,
you've got that quartering. Yeah, look, these are these are these are
the consequences of a policy. The policy two policies right. One policy is
don't enforce the border, and the second policy is have passed lots of like
uh, nice sounding notions in cities that aren't touched by illegal immigration. We're
a sanctuary city. Where are this where that pass all sorts of rules because
you you're absolutely convinced that you'll never be held accountable for them, And now
they are. And it is unfortunate that these leaders didn't have the foresight to
think about what would happen if, if if the migrant problem in the southern
border somehow made its way up north to New York City. But it has
now so I suspect that there's going to be a whole lot of people trying
to figure out a way to use a what is essentially a Trump era immigration
platform, and we use the word here and there so they can say it's
their own and run as run as Democrats, run as liberals. You're gonna
be seeing massive amounts of liberals trying to figure out how to be for border
security without being border security. It's gonna be kind of fun in a way.
You will. But what this means, I think looking at this in
a couple of other things, and it means j basically perpetual Democrat rule,
because you will have the smart ones realizing that there is another lane here.
As Garrity was just talking about, it's like Fetterman all of a sudden getting
strange new respect for making statement. It's like the people around Pennsylvania saying,
no, you're not going to take down the statue of William penn and the
Democrats saying this. So when they say that and they get outside of the
prog narratives and realize that there's actually a lot of middle of the road Democrats
who say, yeah, I like that. I don't like the whole progu
thing where you tear down the statues, where you quarter to the people,
where you do that then you have the rise of that faction, which you
know, we'll get more votes than than than your Trump faction period. And
look, I think that's I think that's a general good. I think it's
good when people are forced to realize that their bizarre extreme positions have ei their
negative consequences or are foolish, and that I mean, it's good the party
that the Democratic Republican Party that wakes up to realize that it's a fifty one
fifty two percent nation and you need the people who don't like you now you
need to vote for you. You can't you can't just sit there and scream.
Those are the people who understand how the system works. They're going to
get the most done. They're not gonna get everything done, but they're going
to get the most done, and they're going to get the most done under
the system that we have. We we we now are governed by and was
created by the founders for this express purpose, which was to force people to
somehow make common cause and to accept the C plus version of what it is
they want. And that is the way it works. So you can either
change the way it works, but you can't bang your spoon in your height
here. The awakening from me wokening will be there. Salvation and how we
respond to that on the other side of the political aisle is something that we
will see and we will be here to talk about it with you, Rob
and Peter who had to scamper off. I want to remind you the podcast
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matters is that, Join Ricochet and keep it going because we want to be
here for you throughout this entire election and the administration to come. Rob,
it's been a pleasure and we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet. Still
four point zero next week, next week,