Well Whiskey coming fame by Paine's Brain Don't You Let Me? From Powerline blog
dot com and produced by Ricochet dot Com. This is the Three Whiskey Happy
Hour with your bartenders Steve Hayward, John You and Powerlines International Woman of Mystery
Lucretia. You gotta give in and let that wis blow where you're being in
love down and lowe. All right, well, hi everybody, and welcome
to a really unusual episode of the Three Whiskey Happy Hour because we are for
the first time taping in front of a live audience. Right, but but
not just any live audience. This is commentary on to the brain child of
Ammo Girl, and I have to say I may write about this separately if
you will give me permission, Ammo Girl, and describe how unusual and unique
it is only the genius of Susan Vass. I can give away your real
name, can't I Vas? Okay? Sorry? Yeah. Now, normally,
those of you who listen, we usually have John You with us.
We added him last summer. He is in class this afternoon at Berkeley Law.
It's a last week of class. He couldn't be with us. We
couldn't even bring him in by zoom, which was one possibility, but he
did send this message this afternoon, regretting his absence, saying I wish I
was there, but on the advice of counsel, I've been warned against showing
up anywhere where people calling themselves Ammo Girl and Lucretia are in attendance. Steve
Hayward not so much typical John. When we told John that we were going
to be doing this, because Steve was supposed to invite him in, of
course didn't forgot, but he said, what do you mean, Ammo Girl?
I thought you were Ammo Girl, he said to me. I said,
I don't even come close. I'm a piker. But this is also
an anniversary of sorts. Lucretian, I've been arguing for forty years now.
In fact, our memories are not quite in accordance. That wouldn't be a
surprise. But my recollection is we got seated together at a dinner in graduate
school almost exactly forty years ago, and we went from zero to arguing in
sixty seconds. And don't forget to tell them that you have since conceded that
I was right about everything. That particular argument is true. So we like
to say that this is a podcast dedicated to on the surface whiskey and metaphysics.
The subtext is this is where we have fun. Is It's how two
people can agree on a question or an issue and the disagree completely on how
to get there and the reasons why. I say, we've been doing that
for forty years. Uh. You know, William F. Buckley once said
extra about a mutual teacher of ours, and I paraphrase it this way.
If you think it's hard to argue with Lucretia, just try agreeing with her.
It's nearly impossible. She studies the fine print of every agreement like it
was an arms controlled treaty with the Soviet Union. You know, I get
I get comments all the time, emails from people saying, why do you
put up with Steve and your squishiness. I guess we need to swap emails
because I get emails. That's never mind. No, I get those two,
Boie, I just I feel sorry for Steve those I get those two.
I really love you, Lucretia, but I kind of feel sorry sorry
for Steve. Uh. And we both love single malt whiskey. But the
agreement ends there. Uh. I like those peaty smoky I lay malts.
He likes those sweets. So it's it's Pete versus sweet. It's you know,
I lay malts. He likes the Highland sweets. So Steve says,
it's an anniversary. We stayed in touch for a long time, and then,
as these things do, we sort of lost contact with each other and
found each other again. Thank God for the Internet, right, and so
we were sort of conversing back and forth, and then Steve sent me this
video of him at the house that I remembered visiting many many years before writing
one of his books. And there's a bottle of La Froig sitting next to
his stuff he's working on on the desk, and I said, oh my
god, you drink that stuff. And you know something, that's what I
drank the whole time I was writing the book. I said, it reminds
me of Girl Scout Camp. And he says, wow, you must have
had a lot of fun at girl Scout Camp. But the point was is
that it tastes like a camp fire, Like you're looking at a camp fire
that's been put out with soapy water. There you go. So I have
to spring this on you. I just did come across a book called Whiskey
and Philosophy, a small batch of spirited ideas that sounded like a book for
us, right, and it's something of a disappointment. But one passage reads
as follows. Quote here, men and women both describe whiskey drinking women as
sexy, tough and independent and women who are and women are conscious of this
image. And here's a quote from someone. Have you noticed that men are
very into lefroid. It's like a code word to use on them, says
one Bostonian writer who preferred not to be named. Men like whiskey drinking women
for the same reason they like Angelina Jolie. She writes motorcycles, she flies
planes, and could tear you to shreds if she wanted to, but lucky
for you, she doesn't want to. I'm not sure that last. Oh,
but part of our argument is sort of style versus substance. I think
I'm more of a literary and more of a poet, and she's a pure
philosopher. I actually like Edmund Burke. She thinks he's a dork. I
just think he's boring. Okay, well, there you go, and now
what's on? So so wait, one last thing. What I've been calling
Steve since practically the first day we met is that he is a pretentious intellectual
and he's very proud of that. Although I should say in my own defense
that there's an element of accuracy because when we met in graduate school my second
year year, first year, I think I was still getting over my teenage
existentialist phase. So you know, she would mock me for reading Kuter Guard
and William Barrett. And although I, okay, I did finally get over
all that, although I still liked him some uh T s Elliot, right,
I still liked T. S Elliot. What a wasteland well walked into
that one, didn't I? Well? Right. So here we are on
a Monday afternoon of this week. We hadn't really planned to take up news
of the day necessarily, but there really obviously is a big story. We've
talked about this a lot. Lucretia is going to want to follow up on
something you said just last week in the last episode, and that's this Fox
News developments of the ousting apparently of Tucker Carlson. I've seen all kinds of
rumors all day long about what really happened, and what's really going down,
So we don't know yet, but it does look to me like the beginning
of the end of Fox not to say about this the end of Fox News.
My hunch, and it's only a hunch, is that one or more
of Rupert Murdock's kids, who've long been unhappy with the place, are behind
this decision order, making Tucker the scapegoat for the dominion lawsuit that they should
not have settled, or both, or both or and you have other ideas,
I think, No, I actually don't have other ideas. I have
complimentary ideas. I did. What we talked about on the podcast last week
was my belief that Paul Ryan is behind much of this attempt to turn Fox
News away from a conservative news channel to an establishment republican news channel. And
they John and Steve No, no, no, he's not that important.
He doesn't have that much to do with anything. And he doesn't you know,
Paul O'Brien's a good guys. No, he's not. He's a horrible
guy. But but yeah, all right, can I just say Mitch McConnell
is happy to have the week off. Didn't get there yet, he didn't
have the week off, but he's not on the board of directors for Fox
News and Paul Ryan is, and so he was interviewed on CNN of all
places, and they asked him, why didn't you resign when all of this
happened with you know, the emails that came out in the deposition and so
forth, And he said, well, because what I really want to do
is stay on and turn Fox News into the kind of news organization that I
think it should be. No more of this radical right wing conservative stuff,
no more of this questioning a like election integrity. Yeah, okay, so
what do you think about that, Steve? I have this problem about the
years I lived on the East Coast, as I know everybody. I don't
know Ryan well, but I know him some and I've always liked him,
and we've got I've talked to him a long number of times. Dana Puno
used to call me up from the White House once you wanted to talk to
a friendly voice. That doesn't go down. Well, I have a darker
theory. This is very rare that I have a darker theory about what's happened
than you do. And you haven't heard this yet. Maybe this doesn't have
anything to do with the dominion case at all. I wonder I think back
to at three, four or five weeks ago. I forget how long it
is, but Tucker Carlson started rolling out. You may recall the footage from
January sixth, and mister Buffalo Man ended up being released from prison six months
early when it became evident that this was really way overdone at the very eight
minimum, and we thought we were going to get more. Instead we only
got another, you know, fifteen minutes more the next night. And I
am wondering if there wasn't internally at or around Fox, some resistance to what
Tucker was doing. And there's a broader That's just one example, maybe the
biggest one. But you know, I've been thinking back a lot recently,
even before this too, the way the Communists used to operate in Eastern Europe
when you know, the Soviet Union was still around, and they always made
a point of having what they called an internal doctrine controlled opposition. Yeah,
and I wonder if I wonder if our establishment has learned from that. So
it's one thing to have without going to detail and doing critical opinions one way
or another about other Fox hosts. But you know, Sean Hannity, he's
pretty predictable. He's sort of in normal conservative lanes. Same with a lot
of the other hosts you can think of on Fox. But Tucker you never
quite knew what he was going to do. And let's remember that, you
know, Roger Ailes when he was still around, did get rid of Glenn
Beck because they thought he was being too unpredictable and extreme, even though he
got huge ratings. Right, So I wonder if that's what's really going on,
is that it's wanting to have a conservative news network. It's another thing,
though, if you believe in the model of controlled opposition, to have
someone that you can't control and therefore has to be stopped, that's my darker
theory. No, I think that you're absolutely right. I mean, mark
this day down everybody. This happens, you know, like every other blue
moon, and well, but it's especially true if you think about the sort
of underlying issues that push this along, like January six, like election integrity,
all of that what they can't tolerate and what the controlled opposition absolutely can't
tolerate because there's such cowards they can't face the possibility that there was, in
fact anything wrong with the twenty twenty or the twenty twenty two elections, because
what would that mean? What would that mean that the government we have is
illegitimate that they'd have to do something about it? And of course, you
know that's that's just too scary, and so that rather than do that,
they'll go along with whatever it is that the regime wants them to do,
and they'll, you know, they'll speak up now and then and this the
little bit here, a little bit there, but they're never going to fight
back against what is really clearly destroying our republic. And I think that's the
real sadness about Tucker Carlson. He was the only one speaking truth. And
I'm not even going to use that awful term that the left likes to use,
but he he didn't care who he came out against. And you know,
all the all the stuff when the emails came out that Tucker Carlson said
he just hoped that Trump wouldn't win election. And then what does Tucker do.
He turns around and he does two days of interviews with Trump. You
know, he was, as Steve said, completely unpredictable, and I didn't
always agree with him. I couldn't care less about his carrying on about aliens,
but you know, really, okay, it's probably important, but I
don't care. But you would always get a fresh perspective from Tucker, And
I think that's why I agree with you, Steve. I think you're absolutely
right. He's not the controlled opposition. He's a wild card, and he's
a wild card with access to a lot of what's going on behind the scenes,
and that had to be over with. So what he supposed happens to
the tapes if he's really out the good question, I don't know. I
thought there was some talk of making them generally available, but I'm not sure
where that stands. There was and there's Actually the news organizations are pushing back
because they're not getting those tapes from the FBI, even they're not getting the
Capital surveillance tapes. And so when I read a story about it just the
other day, we'll see speaking of this just occurred to mean.'m when
you get to some of our general questions, they teet up. The other
thing we're not getting is the Nashville Manifesto Too Dangerous? Yeah, John hander
Rocker beat me too that on power And I've been wanting to about this for
weeks saying why aren't they releasing this? What's in it? I'm betting my
hunch on this is there's something deeply embarrassing or damaging to the identity politics cause
in it. And if we get something that's going to be heavily redacted and
we'll have to see I have to say, see what you think. My
own opinion is, I've always been a two minds about school shootings and other
things like this for this reason. There are actually some pretty good social science
evidence that there's a copycat effect. So every time you have one of these,
it makes it more likely there'll be another one. If you go back
to the nineteen nineties, you remember the phrase going postal because this is wave
not a way, but there were a number of instances of some postal worker
got fired. How do you get fired from the post office, by the
way, anyway, It's really hard, but you know, so and then
it, you know, became school shootings. What's that now? Yeah,
that's probably right, And so you know, I've always thought, you know,
maybe it wouldn't be a bad practice. The media would never go along
with it, of not giving the person's name, not giving publicity of manifesto,
On the other hand, if we applied that I can't resist the story,
we would have censored al Gore's Earth and the Balance, which I believe
a copy of which was found in the Unibomber's cabin in Montana in nineteen ninety
six. And in fact, if you compare Earth in the Balance with the
Unibomber's manifesto, guess what, they're the same thing. And Okay, So
today President Biden invited the three Tennessee legislators who organized were part of the gun
control protest. And somebody asked the mop head if she knew if if Biden
was going to you all know who I mean, right, if she was
going to if Biden was going to invite any of the victims or the victims
families from the Christian school where the person killed what six of them? Six?
She said, I have no information on those. I have nothing.
Well, if he's invited, and she was just you know, she's just
stonewalled, as she's very good at doing. It seems to me that it
would be difficult for there to be information though in there so so dangerous that
it could be more dangerous than than inviting those awful people to the White house
and ignoring the six little children or five little children that were killed. I
mean, it's it's it's a weird world we live in now, Steve,
where you try to make sense of things and it doesn't quite. But still
if it was, you know, clearly sort of an identity politics manifesto that
gave some credence to people like the woman in this state. You all remember
that Katie Hobbs, press secretary who posted the meme of Gina Rowlands with two
six shooters I think in her hands something and the caption was us when we
see transphobes. Yeah, you know, imagine I mean it gets old to
say, imagine if we turn that around and you know the other, but
it gets very old. But it's still probably as we're saying. I give
Steve a hard time about it all the time, but when you say,
imagine if the Republicans did that, imagine you know this or that. But
but it's true, you know, just because we're so used to it,
it does it does bear repeating. Anyway, I don't know what to make
of that, Steve. I mean, what could be more dangerous than those
sorts of things? Yeah, well, we'll see. Keep your eye on
this and keep writing letters to the editor or something saying when are we going
to see Okay, when are we going to see this? So what we
thought we'd do because we weren't sure what might be in the news, and
also with this episode will be posted probably Wednesday. I'm thinking now a few
general questions just to prompt some conversation, and then we'll also move pretty quickly
to audience questions and comments. I wanted to ask because I've never never thought
to ask this question of you, Lucretia. It's the classic desert island question,
what one book would you take to a desert island and why? And
I just wanted you to ask me what food i'd take to a desert island,
which would be hot fudge brownie Sundays. But no, it's hard,
of course, but just you know, I'm really asked. I know,
I know this is going to freak you out, but I'd probably take the
Bible before I took Jaffa. But Jaffa would be nice. That doesn't freak
me out at all if I had to choose just one, but I'd never
want to choose just one, So right I was, I was guessing she
might say the really classic book from our mutual professor, Harry Jaffa's Crisis of
the House Divided. If I had a choice, I'd take Birth of a
New Birth of Freedom before. It's a harder book, so you had to
read it more times. That's true. Actually, since we're in Arizona,
do you want to tell the Goldwater speech story? Or should I go ahead?
So a long story about Harry Jaffa. He's the guy actually that Buckley
said. If you think it's hard to argue and try agreeing with him.
She was a better student of him than me in a lot of ways.
Come back every week for more of this. He was the principal author a
Barry Goldwater's famous acceptance speech in nineteen sixty four, including at the Republican National
Convention. He had written a phrase and a memo to Goldwater. The Goldwater
loved it, says, make that the heart of my speech. And you
know the phrase. It was extremism and defense of liberty is no vice,
moderation and the defense of justice is no virtue. Goldwater loved it, and
I say jaff ended up rewriting speech along with Karl Hess and jaff used to
say in later years that he would tell would be presidential candidates. He promised
not to write them anymore speeches if they would take his advice privately. I
think it was Wilmore Candless said there's nothing wrong with that phrase on one hundred
thousand and Well shows words couldn't explain, which was pretty you know, a
great friend of jaff But anyway, that was our principal teacher. And his
two books about Lincoln and the Meaning of America are real classics. I think.
Um, I always say a gentleman held of one of my books,
I always give a no nonsense answer, which is my one Desert Island book
would be Hawkins's Complete Guide to ship Building. But actually I'm pretty close to
Lacretia. One of the things that Professor Jaffa would say to us, and
then you would cheat. He would say, really, it's only possible for
human being to know, like really no three books, and his three books
were The Bible, Aristotle's Nico McKey, and Ethics, and then his third
book was Shakespeare, which is kind of cheating, right, although so you
know my I'd say either the Bible or the Riverside Shakespeare, so you could
puzzle over all the plays for you know I actually have a single volume of
Shakespeare. Yeah I do. I mean it's but yeah, you could do
it. You call that one book. Then that's how I'll cheat and do
it. And right, yeah, this one's a little more fun. And
by the way, if anybody in the audience during question time wants to throw
in nominations for this question, feel free to what three people? If you
had power of an emperor king for a day, what free people would you
arrest in jail? Or if you had the power of my first choice Garland?
Well right, sure, so Steve Steve, Steve suggested three. It
was for me just as a suggestion so I could be thinking about it.
It was Garland, yes, Fauci yes. And what's your name? Mop
Head, Carine m Jean Pierre, John Paul Starch or whatever name is.
And I wouldn't say her because she's so worthless, um, I mean,
she she's a mouthpiece, that's all she is. I probably would pick swab
As as my number three. Yeah, as you can tell, I don't
even have to give an explanation for it. So that's awesome. Right,
yeah, so I have I couldn't quite settle on him. I've got one
that may seem oddball, but I'll explain why. And it's Aaron Sorkin and
the reason. You know, he's the guy behind the West Wing and the
American President, and you know all these movies, lots of snappy dialogue,
and so in the ordinary sense of Hollywood terms, he's really good at those
kinds of movies and TV shows. On the other hand, I blame him
for increasing or exaggerating the already romantic sense of contemporary liberal America about how politics
works and how the world works. I mean, your people love the West
I never I always found the West Wing boring because you know, I'd known
people who worked in them, and it's nothing like that. And but a
lot of people, oh, that's how the West Wing works, it must
be, and why can't why can't our real presidents off break this way?
So the point is is that we already have a problem of romanticism, and
Paul takes and he makes it worse. Uh these days you jail him for
that, certainly, Muslim, but take his cocaine supply away. Yes,
right, He's been busted for that several times. Um. Right now,
I'm tempted to say, Alec Baldwin, I mean, you know, it's
just because on my mind right now, how does you know this guy get
his okay? And then I don't know, this is a little hard.
I might have a have to cheat a little and say I think Abrahm Kendy
and Robin DeAngelo done immense damage of the country with their unbelievably a demogogic lightweight.
Uh take on race in America and they'll get, you know, forty
thousand dollars to be on zoom on college campuses because our college campuses are idiots.
By the way, you have to see I did put this up on
Powerline and by the way, the whole comment thread thing, which okay,
um uh. We have an exception that is, if there's profanity of news
value you, we will post it. Like you know, I put up
Bill Maher's commentary sometimes and he can't speak ten seconds without an F bomb.
But I posted up Glenn Lowry of Brown University a couple or three weeks ago,
and he went off on Kennedy on Kennedy with an F bomb laden tirade
that had John mcwardor the other I think courageous, an interesting black intellectual our
time laughing hysterically and anyway, it's just fantastic, and that's the right I
add to to have about things. I just want to mention for some of
you out there that I have also been um censored on powerline comments. So
I go and I can't really say that on the comments when people say that,
but I wanted you guys to know Scott m about that anyway. I
had to. I had to write a very contrite apology to Scott to get
back on once. I've got form letters for this now i'll pass them out
later. But but you okay, go on, No, I go ahead.
I actually forgot. I just thought of somebody that I wanted to add,
since you gave more than three. Sure, but I forgot already because
I started thinking about not being able to comment without profanity or almost profanity,
and right I forgot. So I'll think of it later. Okay, maybe
we'll come back to you. What else should we I mean, I don't
I think we should have for just a moment and shout it out and I'll
repeated it. Okay, give me, okay, give us, give us
a couple nominations for people to arrest. Sorry, he's on his list.
He just didn't get to yeah, he is like ninety two years old,
and I'm thinking he'll be a self correcting problem for his son. His son,
that could be. Yeah, his son is awful. I am.
It's a long strange story. I won't go through. But I did meet
him once. I got invited to meet with him and the board of his
foundation, which is all the worst leftists in the world. This is more
than ten years ago. And even then he had his headphones on for hearing
it because he couldn't hear from just across a table, and he seemed pretty
decrepit in And that's, like I say, more than a decade ago.
That conversation didn't go well. I'll just put it that way. The fact
that you got invited in the first place makes me suspect, and makes you
very suspect. It's yeah, it was a weird set of circumstances. What
do you say, add my name, rest myself. Yeah, it could
be. It's a long strange story. Would never happen again. It was
amazed to happen the first time. But how could you resist the chance to,
you know, go see look at the sky in the face and anyway,
Hunter Biden, hopefully Hunter Biden, Hunter Biden. Someone said, hopefully
he is on his way. That I mean this is you know, I'm
old enough to remember all of the crimes petty and otherwise involved in Watergate,
and this is way off the chart compared to all of that. And I
want to bring back a term. This is an old English term, peculation.
Nobody in America uses that term, but that meants, you know,
self dealing, lining your own pockets, the kind of corruption of diverting defense
contracts and stuff like that. That's a great word. I love that word,
peculation. I want to bring back peculation as a term and apply it
to the Biden crime family. And I want to have all fifty one intelligence
experts arrested. And I think they deserve it, right, I see a
hand way in the back. Jane Fonda. Yeah, I hate to say
it like this, but only a crowd of this relative age bracket can appreciate
that, I'm afraid. Yeah, I like to say being Jane Fonda is
her own punishment. But although I do have a little story about that.
Oh gosh, I was just gonna say when Susan mentioned it, Susan,
I actually did those awful videos too. The Jane fondaobics videos remember to Breathe.
Yeah, I got invited once to tour Ted Turners two hundred thousand acre
buffalo ranch in Montana. Just kind of interesting for an environmental management point of
view. Although if you watch Yellowstone, the cattle ranchers Montana hate him,
not just for the buffalo, but he bought this land, bought all the
cattle on and then sold the cattle off, which crashed the prices for all
the other ranchers around. Okay, it was a while ago, now it's
fifteen years ago. And he turned out to be there, and there a
little group of us, and one person said, you know, in your
long career in business, you've done you know, the Goodwill Games and CNN,
the Atlanta Braves and Cable TV and all the rest of that. What's
the most innovative thing you've done? And he starts just repeating, I'd like
the Goodwill Games. And he said, marrying Jane Fonda that was real innovative.
And that's all I probably better say about that. He was actually a
person, very funny guy, but it's hopeless. So okay, one more,
yeah, yeah, I mean yeah, okay, Hillary Clinton kind of
Yesterday's news but I mean, I don't know, but at some point,
you can't keep letting people get away with it. Yeah, that's what it
comes down to. You just you can't because that's why they continue to do
it. That's why I mean, I don't care about Hunter, who cares,
But but you can't. You can't have that dual system of justice.
And because we all know that they'll come for us in a heartbeat and and
pretty soon. You know, Lincoln warns us if you if you have no
respect for the law, it may not be the mob, but respect for
the law is the thing that makes us a civilized society. And if only
one side gets arrested, if only one side has the book thrown at them,
pretty soon US law abiding citizens aren't going to put up with it anymore.
And there's not going to be any choice. Yeah, so theyre all
right, Oh, you can't even stand that, can you? One last
question for you, and then we're going to turn to audience question. Susan,
what are you reading right now? You're reading anything good? I'm so.
I'm still making my way through Beverly Gauge's biography. Yeah, I only
get to like half a chapter, and night is the problem. By the
time my day is Beverly Gauges. What is the actual tire title. It's
a June or less? Is it g Man Hoover's biography, But it's it's
a little bit like Steve's biographies of Reagan, which is not really a biography.
Um. It's a context, a historical context and why this person was
important in those historical happenings. Um. And it's actually been very fascinating and
it's a really great insight into the rise of the administrative state, and so
that part has been very interesting to me. It's got a lot of good
stuff. You know, you learn a lot of details about say, the
Rosenberg's execution. By the way, in case you don't remember, June nineteenth
is a day to celebrate because that's to day that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were
executed. Well, I always, I always celebrate August sixth, but that's
just me nine. You know, Juneteenth it's now a holiday. It's it's
a it's a mandatory, you can't even get out of bed holiday. August
six is smotium a day. That's why it's Okay, what am I reading?
I'm reading a whole bunch of things somebody mentioned Angelo Quotavilla earlier today,
who was I knew pretty well, and I'm actually supposed to be writing a
paper about him. So I'm reading his rereading his really great book from the
late early nineties called The Character of Nations. Most of us books were about
foreign policy, defense intelligence. Those are still very much worth reading for their
style and insight of how to do analysis of these things, even if the
examples are dated. But the Character of Nations is exactly that, what are
countries like? It's very classical in a certain sense, you know. The
Plato's republic is what kind of citizens will different forms of cities produce? What
kind of citizens do do countries produce? And then reinforce the nature of the
regimes they're in. So it's a wonderful book. And so I'm writing a
long paper on the domestic vision of Angelo Quodavia, which will then be published
in a book ten years from now or something. I don't know. But
with that, I think Susan will now take questions or comments from the audience
about anything. Do if you're willing to share your comment or handle if you
have one, or your name or not, whatever, so we'll get you
first. And stand. There's been requests from people in the back that people
stand. Great hair guy. And my question, as you were talking about
missing things, what about the Durham report and crossfire or hurricane, Well we
ever see anything about Yeah, I'm not quite sure what to say about the
Durham investigation and prosecution. You know, he lost a couple of cases he
brought before DC juries, and I don't this this is something Lucretia has been
talking about at some length. Our DC juries are pro Washington, pro Democratic
Party juries, and I thought at least one of those cases was pretty solid
and he still couldn't get a conviction. So maybe that's the best he can
do. I don't know. I'm not quite sure why we haven't gotten a
report. I think he's part of the controlled opposition. Well that's just like
Bill Barr, who, by the way, talking about Mike Morrell and the
fifty you know, the stupid letter, the Russian disinformation letter um that really
did have probably a decisive effect on the outcome of the twenty twenty election.
John Radcliffe went to Bill Barr and said this is a problem, and Bill
Bard refused to do anything about it. And you know, we all had
such great hopes for about five minutes for Bill Barr and you know that so
so yes, I think that that more than anything, they're the conscious of
conscious conscious of the controlled opposition pretends to want to do the right thing,
but they're not willing to do what's necessary. And I actually think that's true
about Durham too, because even thinking about the cases that he brought, they
weren't serious problems considering all the serious problems there were with us whole awful situation,
and he's, you know, to do this as sort of a simple
criminal kind of activity. It's not. It's a political problem more than it
is a criminal problem. I mean, those people, of course need to
go to jail and they should all be punished. But when you're just sort
of presenting these tedious criminal trials to a Washington DC jury, you kind of
need to expect that it's not going to get any coverage and it's not going
to go anywhere. I know that that's really a negative, depressing way to
look at it, but I think that's been my opinion about it for some
time. Well, I mean, this is congrub what you say, which
is his investigation looks like a classic mob investigation where you died and convict the
low level guys for little things and hope they'll roll uphill against the big guys.
Maybe that would have happened if he'd gotten convictions, but he didn't,
so it looks like it's a dead end. Maybe that's on you know,
we don't necessarily say it was on purpose, But the broader point is it
did lack a certain boldness that you need a time like this. So,
by the way you mentioned Hillary, I've lately been reading, for strange reasons,
rereading some of the old material about the Hiss Chambers case from nineteen forty
eight, and so there, you know, the statue of limitations for espionage
had passed, but perjury before a congressional committee it was still a valid charge.
And that's what his was convicted of, was perjury. We don't charge
anybody with perjury before a congressional committee anymore, even though there's lots of current
examples of all that. You had a firsts other example. We went off
on Durham and you had two didn't you crossfire, crossfire, Hurricane. I've
almost forgotten what that is. That was the do you remember Odammy? This
is god good point right, it's all disappeared someone else. There's a whole
bunch over there, Susan. Yeah, too far to walk. After she
asked her question, walked back to the corner. He had a whole bunch
of hands. Right, l I can walk it on back. WHOA,
this thing really works? So my handle is Lucy. No, not that
one, and right, Yes, My question is you often hear people on
our side of the political I I'll talk about the regime and the narrative and
how these things get perpetuate, perpetuated, and everybody says, well, who
are they because they were there before Trump, they were there after Trump?
Who who is this so called regime? Do you have a theory about that?
Yeah? You know, I was going to ask you a question I
forgot, which is, what do you think is the biggest general problem plaguing
the country? What explains a lot of things we object to? I was
hoping you'd say historicism, but you're just asked the question in a more precise
form. Do you want me to go first or go ahead? So,
first of all, when we yeah, we have we should apologize for being
academic political scientists. When we say regime, we don't mean it. The
way it was meant back in the eighties or you know, you usually when
you say regime, you think tyranny, authoritarian regime. What we meant is
the way the classics meant it, like Aristotle and Plato, which is what
is the nature of the like what Angelo Codabi's book, what's the character of
the country? Now that way, I don't, I mean, I mean
it awful well contexts. Yeah, actually, it is true that we're now
using it, say our side, roughly speaking, we're now using it in
that fashion on purpose. Now, the narrative question, that's a fun one.
What I say about it is for the left, especially the postmodern left.
And I don't know how much you want to be bored with explanations of
that, but they believe the narrative is everything, you know, the storyline.
And a couple of people have mentioned here during the course of the day,
people don't study history anymore, or they don't know history, or they
get it wrong, and so the narrative is replaced history or even reason and
rational deliberation. Now, who does this. There's not a cent committee for
it. I mean, academia serves as one and the media serves as an
amplifier. Of it. But I've always liked the metaphor that Joe Sobern and
Tom Bethel came up with forty years ago. By the way, Joe Sobern's
the guy who said, if you want to trace the client of American education,
we've gone in a century from teaching Greek and Latin and high school to
teaching remedial English in college. There you go. But they both came up
with an idea that the left operates like a beehive. You don't need to
have a meeting. An issue comes up. James Burnham wrote this in Suicide
of the West in the sixties two. An issue comes up, and the
left snaps into gear. They all know what the party line is, they
all know what the narrative is. It's kind of automatic with the left,
it's the pattern of their thinking. There is less of that on the right,
I think. And so that's some of the elements of it. A
very quick overview of it. You want to add any thing to that or
fill in mine is much more basic. M No. And I don't mean
that as an insult. I just I see the election of twenty sixteen as
a kind of watershed moment. All the things that you talked about are true
and have been true for some time. But what happened when the deep state,
whatever you want to call it, went all in for Hillary, broke
every law that they could imagine, concocted every good story they could think of,
the you know, the dossier and all of that, and then Hillary
still lost, which meant that everything that they had done was likely to come
to light, right and and much of it did we know that. We
saw what happened with the you know, the lovers and Lisa Page and whatever
his name was, and you know, McCabe, and we saw how incredibly
corrupt and dishonest and law breaking those people were, but nothing happened to any
of them. One guy lost is La la license for a day and a
half or something, you know, And I mean, it's really horrendous.
But they circled like why because they had gotten so used to operating in that
corrupt manner, they expected Hillary to come along and you know, just continue
on as usual. And the problem with Trump, whatever you think about in
pro or con, he really did come to upset the cookie jar, the
candy, the whatever it is, the apple cart, whatever the appropriate metaphor
is here, And the fact that he was as successful as he was.
I'm still convinced that that everything that happened with COVID, not necessarily the release
of it, but but everything that happened subsequently was in fact primarily an attempt
globally to keep Trump from being reelected. But that Calucy's question, who are
these people? Were? Well, there anybody in a position of power and
authority in Washington, DC who doesn't want to give up that power and authority.
And they're not necessarily just Democrats. They're aided and embedded every single day
by many, many Republicans and positions of power. And if you've ever listened
to the three Whiskey Happy Hour, you can you you heard me say with
with Republicans like that, who needs democrats? But but so it really it
goes back to Steve at the said at the beginning, controlled opposition is all
they'll tolerate. And it's a subterfuge, it's performative, whatever word you want
to use. So we can pretend like there's actually two different parties and an
opposition that is standing up against what's happening in Washington. We know that's not
true. Think about how many Republicans voted for the infrastructure bill. I mean,
what happened to what Republican on the planet would have even thought about voting
for that? What about voting for I'm not against it, but why would
you vote as a Republican for a federal law legalizing same sex marriage? I
mean? So Republicans are worthless, and they make me matter than Democrats because
at least they're sort of true to their principles most of the time, which
are of course corrupt and lawless, but still their principles. Don't don't hold
back. You tell us what you really think. You know, so telling
me I'm wrong? We know at once? One? And so, what
will happen to Mike Morrell? What will happen to Anthony B. Lincoln?
Who who was behind all this? What will happen to Garland when that whistleblower
comes up and says Garland lied before Congress? You said it yourself, that's
a crime. You want to have a bet about whether Garland will end up
in jail like uh, like his No, I know how that bet will
turn out. One of the one of the crash accusations is probably too strong
word. He says, I'm too much of an optimist I'm too cheerful about
things. But so my way of putting it is a little more lighthearted.
Again again from my first mentor, Stan Evans, who's who said us been
the Nixon year. He says, too many people go to Washington conservatives.
He means thinking they're going to drain a swamp. He used that phrase fifty
years ago only to discover that Washington is a hot tub. That explains a
lot. I think that's true. The other variation is a little sharper,
which is and this has happened in all Republican administrations. So why is it
whenever one of us gets in a position of power to do some good,
he's no longer one of us. That's the phenomenon of going native. But
that's a really big problem. Trump had it. He appointed a lot of
people who, you know, you mentioned a few who turned out to be
more about something else than serving the designs and intentions of the president. And
that's a really big problem. So Jeff had the nice talk about the military,
and there's obviously a lot of retired military folks here and people who appreciate
retired military folks. I thought that when Trump appointed Maddess, when he appointed
Kelly. When he appointed all of those generals to positions of power, I
thought the same. I think Trump thought these got to be good, patriotic
people, and they turned out to be disasters. And then I have a
position, a volunteer appointed position that affords me the status the protocol of a
three star general. So I get a certain amount of what shall we say,
a traction with the military. And I am just appalled. I am
just appalled at the state of our military today. And I tell Steve,
part of it is that we require our officers to go to universities. And
if you think that the service academies are any better, they're not. They're
even worse in many ways. And so our military is so corrupt now and
ten years ago I could have never thought that, And so that's one of
another reason why I'm not very optimistic anymore about this. I know who it
was I was going to add to my list, Mark Millie, or thoroughly
Modern Millie, as I elect to call him. After the Broadway Blake and
Susan, they have another question from somebody we went on a while here.
Don't strain yourself, Susan Anthony hates Mayo. You know, I do too,
right, Well, there you go, all the enlightened people do.
That's so this actually is piggybacks well to what you just said. And i'd
be interested in each of your comments on this. And I preface this by
saying I'm a two time Trump voter. I think that Trump's policies were excellent.
I care very little that he's a thick fingered orange vulgarian. However,
one of the things that I've noticed, and I think this manifests itself even
in the comment threads recently a power line is that there appears to be a
growing what i'll call circular firing squad between what I'll characterizes the only Trump people
who basically say, if it's not Trump, essentially I'm staying. And by
the way, you'd be hard to get to the right of me on pretty
much any issue. As John Kerry would say, I'm to the right of
Jingis Khan. But i'd be interested in your reaction to this dynamic as we're
heading into twenty twenty four, where I see a lot of sniping. And
by the way, I'm sure there's a broad spectrum here on a continuum of
sort of viewpoints. I agree absolutely that most of the Republican establishment are feckless,
hypocrites, feather betting disgusting. However, my viewpoint remains, setting aside
the fact that I don't know whether we can overcome our entirely corrupt election system,
but assuming that that can happen, if we have a large segment of
a Republican base whose attitude is essentially if it's not Trump, I'm staying home.
My perspective is we're seating the field now to a party and an ideology
that has become, in my view, an existential threat to what this country
stands for. And I'm interested your reaction, both as a tactical matter,
but also as a larger Is this a purging that needs to happen, because
I think the people that believe that the Mitch McConnell's and the Mittens and the
Murkowskis of the world just have to go. My view is that I'd use
this analogy before to me the Democrats and Republicans. The differences. If you're
in a bar fight, the Republicans are your wingman who's going to let you
get beaten up. The Democrats are actively hitting you in the face with a
pool queue and we can't risk that by standing on some sort of purity test
for what a true conservative is. That was that was magnificently put. That's
because he needs mayonnaise. By the way, I do have to tell a
joke about the two party system, supposedly a true story. Some Russian comes
over after the Soviet Union ends, says, please explain the American two party
system, and Republican aide says, and the Senate says to him, well,
we have two parties, the evil party and the stupid party. Being
a republic I'm in an evil party. Sometimes the evil Party and the stupid
party get together and do something really evil and stupid, and that's called bipartisanship.
The boy, isn't that true? If that we call the uni party?
Right? I said, that was really magnificently put. Um. I'm
I'm in very large agreement about By the way, I sometimes say, and
I actually more than half mean it, your Trump's crudeness. That was some
of the stuff I like the best, you know, I mean, the
way he could outrage the media. It's people. You've heard his metaphors.
It's like somebody with a laser point or to a cat on the wall.
Right. It was wonderful to watch. It was better than Nixon could ever
do, or even Reagan, because Reagan was more artful about it, and
Trump's you know, if I call him pig headed, I mean that as
a compliment. You know, he was just determined and was not going to
be swayed by what the New York Times thought. He would just insult them
back, whether it was factual or it was great. And most of his
instincts are I kind of wish he had more policy depth and things like that,
but you can't be perfect. He's got the right. He knows who
the enemy is. You know, he fights you. Hear all these cliches
before you go on. Do you think he always knew who the enemy was?
Ah, Now there's an interesting question. I have a hypothesis about that,
which was Trump had been all over the map for most of his life
politically, he'd been in both parties, had been pro abortion, he'd been
something else, with two exceptions. He was always going back to the eighties.
It was always very skeptical of free trade and thought it would lead to
the consequences that it did for the America's heartland. And he thought our allies
in Europe are getting were free riders on American defense, which is certainly true.
For that he's been very consistent, and those two things are loan are
pretty big. But I also think this is a guy who's used to having
a number one show on TV, gets civil rights awards from Jesse Jackson and
Al Sharpton. I mean, people thought he was a blowhard, but he
was somebody he always wanted around. He Bill and Hillary Clinton came to his
wedding to Millennia. Very brief digression. There's a famous picture you can see
of a foursome in golf and it's Giuliani, Clinton, Trump, and Michael
Bloomberg. And I didn't once ask yes, that's right. I did once
ask Giuliani. I got to Meetium and spend some time with him once and
said what was that like? He went on for twenty minutes with hilarious stories
about what that foursome was like, specifically that Clinton cheated on every whole.
But oh we know that, okay. So I mean, here's the practical
problem is I think it is true that Trump just turns off a lot of
swing voters, and with things so finally balanced, Canny win again. He
might be the best candidate. I wouldn't rule it out. I think he
can beat Biden depending on what circumstances are next year, which well I can.
You can throw out your own scenarios what next year might be like with
even before getting to Biden's incapacity to talk or do anything, which is increasingly
evident every day. So so there's the problem. I've been trying to encourage
people to just keep a cool head about it. Right, Let's not this
is you know that I'll be sort of sentimental and Lincolnian. Let's you know,
charity for all I did, I guess I will say this. I
did disagree with my colleague John Hender Rocker's post the other day that's time for
Trump to go. I think Trump is making mistakes and being very foolish the
way attacks to Santis. But that's Trump, and I think we shouldn't be
saying let's let it play out and see what happens. And right now Trump
looks like the odds on favorite to win, but we'll see what happens here.
So if you were going to ask Lucretia what the ideal if I could
be king for a day or even something greater, I think that what I
would like to see is Trump fully back to Santis and bring everything he has
to bear, not because I first of all, Trump only has one more
term and they won't stop. I'm not sure they won't stop against DeSantis either,
but DeSantis might be able to appeal to those stupid soccer moms in the
suburbs. I don't know. But would am I going to vote for Trump?
I betcha, you know, there's no question about that. And what
I see though is when I asked Steve the question, did Trump know who
his enemies were before he became president? What I'm afraid I'm seeing Trump do
now is a little bit of the same thing, which is he's sometimes pushing
back on things he should know better, just because he wants to be against
Asantas or against this or that. And there are things that he's a little
bit too contrary about things, because I do think his understanding is just instinctual
and it doesn't really go deeper than that. And so he can, you
know, criticize, he can take sides with Disney against a Santis. That's
stupid any way you look at it. And again, I'd vote for Trump
and a heartbeat. But if I'm looking to the future and I have no
control over anything, nor do I even understand the tactics involved. I'd like
to see Trump and to Santis in a united front in some way that would
work for both of them. I mean, Trump could say I put my
blessing onto Santis and help him win and and and gain back some of what
he believes that he was cheated out of in twenty twenty was he could do
that. It's just probably not very trump like, but that would be my
perfect answer to your question. If that helps, Anthony, I'll vote for
Trump no matter what, no matter what. Doesn't seem like it. It
doesn't seem like it. You have to take this as your Churchill said this,
You have to take the rough with the smooth, and that an hrombastic
part of Trump is that one word, it's his good side. Well,
well I'm putting good, you know, charitably, that side of him goes
along with the tough side of him that's good in office, and so you
really can't disentangle them, right. Yeah, it's tough, Yeah, but
it is a uss Grant situation. He's willing to fight, Yeah, he
just doesn't always fight against the right people. That's that's I think the issue.
Yeah, okay, yeah, I think we have time for two more
because it's four fifteen and we have a four to thirty sound check and we
have an hour before the cocktail and then the big banquet and then me for
God's sake, So all right, let's see who other hunts up over here?
Oh yeah, okay, thank you. J R. Austin, that's
actually my real name. What do you think the Democrats are going to do
with Bobby Kennedy's candidacy? Oh so, yeah, who know, as we're
speaking today Monday, supposedly Biden is going to announce tomorrow that he's running for
reelection. There's this whole flurry of stories in the mainstream media the last few
days of you know, like a leak that the Justice depart or some unit
law enforcement will wanted to bring four charges against hunter Biden and it has been
blocked and so, and then in the polls that they've been releasing on the
Democrats, who are Biden to run again? The fact that Robert F.
Kennedy Junior, who I've always thought was a nut, is polling at twelve
percent with just one little event. He's got a famous name. I don't
know if that's going to work or not, but this is all kind of
interesting. I don't think he can possibly make it. I mean, he
already can't have a press conference. I don't know if he saw the Wall
Street Journal editorial last Saturday, but it was very long, and you know
the journal, there are serious people that editorial page. So when they write
editorial like that, they've thought about it a lot. They've got some good
reporting behind it, and they didn't publish that lightly saying this can't possibly happen
because he really is getting senile and incapable and he can't do it. No,
no, no, no, sorry, well he's a he's a little
okay, we'll see about that. He can't possibly carry this off. I
think, by the way, I've been tracking for months all the bad articles
about Kamela Harris, and I think if Biden's not behind it, someone close
to him is. Because I think they know she was a huge blunder,
and as a anchor on the ticket, they'd like to get rid of her.
I think her office is planting some of these stories back about Biden,
all these stories. I mean, I've been a media critic forever. All
these stories are based on anonymous sources close to the White House. That's a
telltare mark of a planted story. And what's the news value of this?
There's no news peg like you know, the inflation number today or something.
These are all manufactured stories. So I'm watching this drama saying this is,
you know, interesting to see how this plays out. Um, Biden didn't
spend fifty years of his life panting after the White House like Gallum after the
race to give it up after one term, even at age one hundred and
twelve or whatever the heck he is. I don't think Biden has anything to
do with it. Well, I don't know, I really don't. I
mean, I probably doctor Jill and others. I mean, Biden's not I
think he's probably been convinced that he's now a radical left wing nut job by
by the people around him. But he's not making decisions about these things.
They are exploiting and leveraging his lust for power to keep him doing these things.
I heard Kaylee mckin any today say if she could talk to Biden,
she'd ask him one question, why why would you do this? Why do
you want to run for president? The trappings of power? Are not that
great. Go go to your house in Delaware, your beach house, and
stay there, spend time with your grandchildren. You're not fit to be president.
Why do you want to do this? And of course the real question
is to the people around Biden, whom I consider to be guilty of elderly
abuse, including his wife. Yeah it's I mean, maybe Biden's responsible for
some of it, but the people around him should be saying absolutely not.
But you know, they're they're they're holding those levers of power and they're not
wanting to give it up. Again about double standards, hypocrisy, we now
have a president that the media in the eighties said we had Ronald Reagan but
wasn't true, right, an old guy who napped all the time. We
do have that now, and nobody's harding. Anybody's pointing this out once in
a while. A story, One last question real quick, and then we'll
wrap. Yeah. Then we'll have Ken speaking for one minute and go,
thank you. Hi. Two a Buddha here, and I just want to
briefly ask what do you think of the eventuality and possible consequences of an Israeli
attack on Iran? Oh? Hoping it happens, so I will. I'm
even on the record here, but I'm gonna do it anyway. I think
Joe Biden is very hostile to Israel's that you're on the saying that, Wow,
more so than well, what I'm holding back from saying is I actually
thinking may be a closet and anti Semite. And I can go through reasons
why I think that, but we're almost out of time. But and we
know the Obama people were actually even the Bush administration, You've got to go
back twenty years now, they were all holding back Israel from making an attack.
And we know that. I mean, I think this is beyond contest.
We know that the Biden administration, like the Obama administration, try to
interfere with the Israeli elections because they hate Net and Yahoo as much as they
hate Trump. They're behind some of these protests about judicial reform. No,
it just it really stinks. And wouldn't surprise me to see a Bid administration
if Israel launches an attack, not co op right, lean on our Arab
allies and Israel's Arab allies wink winks. The Saudis, I think have given
them permission for flyover if they want to attack Iran, at least they did
under Trump. Fortunately those people no longer listen to the Biden administration, so
we go back to worry about Yeah, I mean some of the what Saudis
have been doing with you know, a deal with China and all this stuff.
That's a middle finger to Biden directly, and he deserves it. So
anyway, sorry, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a Biden administration
vote in the United Nations to condemn Israel if they make an attack. It's
um And then yeah, I'm not quite sure how the plays out. But
this is not an answer to your question. But I read a story this
morning that Bush, George Bush, Barack Obama, no, no, no,
who's the other president Bill Clinton? Bill Clinton? I know, I
couldn't remember. The three of them are headlining a charitable organization that is flying
illegal aliens in from Mexico into different parts of the country. I think that
went through. I think that went through. And yeah, I know that
it's it's not doesn't appear on the surface to be related to um the question
about Israel. But are other than Trump, quite frankly, our foreign policy
towards Israel has been a disaster under every president for the last what probably twenty
twenty. Yeah, and so there's a reason to vote for Trump. What
DeSantis would do, I don't actually know. Well, we didn't talk about
foreign policy at all, which isn't a strong suit. Well it shouldn't be
for a governor. But anyway, it is time for us to go.
You want to send us out to do it. First of all, I
want to say thank you everyone. It's been delightful. I wish we could
do this every time. It's been especially lovely, putting names faces to names.
I have to say. Some of you I've I've had. Oh,
thank you. At least you sometimes see the picture. I never see pictures
of you guys, because I don't think anybody has their picture in their avatar
that I can think of. Maybe a couple, but it's so tiny I
can't see it at my age. So so thank you, and it's thank
you for coming, thank you for being here to support Susan. I think
we should all thank Susan really quickly in public. And Joe, so if
you drink whiskey, always drink your whiskey. Neat, don't forget to milk
the soft serve power, dividend Jim and let's go. Brandon. Thanks everybody.
I'm gonna tell you how it's gonna be. Are you gonna give your
love to me? I love you night and day. You know my love
and not beay. You know my love and not be away. My love
a bigger than the call after I show. You're driving me back. You
loving me got to be real if you didn't know it, just how I
feel a love for you, not bet Ay Ricochet joined the conversation