1
00:00:00,360 --> 00:00:05,360
You tell that birdie to keep its
trap shut for now. Ask not what

2
00:00:05,559 --> 00:00:10,400
your country can do for you,
and what you can do for your country.

3
00:00:12,199 --> 00:00:16,839
Either you were with us or you
were with the terrorists. All of

4
00:00:16,879 --> 00:00:19,960
it began the first time. Some
of you, who know better and are

5
00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:24,359
old enough to know better, let
young people think that they had their righting

6
00:00:24,839 --> 00:00:27,679
to choose the laws they would obey
as long as they were doing it in

7
00:00:27,679 --> 00:00:34,240
the name of social protest. It's
the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Stephen

8
00:00:34,240 --> 00:00:36,880
Ham. We're sitting in for rob
Long. I'm James Lilyx. Today we

9
00:00:36,920 --> 00:00:41,359
talked to h R McMaster about the
world and the war. So let's ever

10
00:00:41,399 --> 00:00:49,600
so it's a podcast. Welcome everybody. It's the Rickashy Podcast, number six

11
00:00:49,759 --> 00:00:55,399
hundred and ninety ten to go until
seven hundred, which point nothing happens except

12
00:00:55,399 --> 00:00:59,439
the usual conversation you've come to expect
here. You can join us at ricochet

13
00:00:59,520 --> 00:01:02,719
dot com. Why don't you no
good reason not to be part of the

14
00:01:02,719 --> 00:01:06,680
most stimulating conversations in community on the
web. I'm James Leadlex. Here in

15
00:01:07,000 --> 00:01:12,040
sunny, beautiful spring Minneapolis couldn't be
lovelier. Roblong is peregrind adying somewhere,

16
00:01:12,200 --> 00:01:17,120
don't know. Stephen Hayward is in
for rob and Peter Robinson in California.

17
00:01:17,200 --> 00:01:21,560
Gentlemen, welcome. Last week we
discussed what was going on in the campuses.

18
00:01:21,760 --> 00:01:25,040
It seems to be winding down in
some places and flaring up in others.

19
00:01:25,760 --> 00:01:29,159
And what I'm curious about is what
you guys think is going to be

20
00:01:29,400 --> 00:01:34,599
the lasting, if any impact on
the twenty twenty four election. Are you

21
00:01:34,680 --> 00:01:38,599
going to have the old silent majority
types that might have gone over to Biden

22
00:01:38,640 --> 00:01:44,920
because they're sort of instinctively dispositionally kind
of old liberals looking at this and saying,

23
00:01:44,920 --> 00:01:48,879
oh my god, it's a replay
of these of these smelly hippies of

24
00:01:48,920 --> 00:01:51,680
sixty eight again. And no,
Siah, I don't like it. What

25
00:01:51,719 --> 00:01:53,159
do you think? What do you
think it's going to play out to be?

26
00:01:53,799 --> 00:01:57,120
Well? I look at the protesters, the pro Palestinian protesters, the

27
00:01:57,280 --> 00:02:04,159
encampments, and even more, the
irony strikes me as even richer when faculty

28
00:02:04,519 --> 00:02:09,159
at these institutions back them up.
Because here's what. I look at that

29
00:02:09,280 --> 00:02:15,120
picture of the faculty linking arms in
Columbia and I think to myself, congratulations

30
00:02:16,159 --> 00:02:24,000
you are aiding the campaign for reelection
of Donald J. Trump. You are

31
00:02:24,560 --> 00:02:30,319
providing unpaid what is it called the
unpaid advertising for in a pre media,

32
00:02:30,639 --> 00:02:36,000
pre media, free media for Donald
Trump. Think they could not assist his

33
00:02:36,120 --> 00:02:39,479
campaign more directly if they'd written checks
to him. Steven, you've probably seen

34
00:02:39,520 --> 00:02:44,080
the famous picture, now famous,
a statue of George Washington on the left

35
00:02:44,120 --> 00:02:46,240
end and on the right add of
the statue, the same statue after the

36
00:02:46,479 --> 00:02:51,639
encampment had had their way with it, and it's covered with Palestinian stickers and

37
00:02:51,719 --> 00:02:53,960
they are a headdress and the rest
of it his face is covered. It's

38
00:02:53,960 --> 00:02:59,919
turned into a symbol of Islamisist resistance. Which somebody said, there's Trump's to

39
00:03:00,240 --> 00:03:06,039
twenty four ad right there. Yeah. I mean there are two notable more

40
00:03:06,080 --> 00:03:09,319
than two, but two notable infuriating
ironies of this whole scene. I think

41
00:03:09,360 --> 00:03:12,919
you guys mentioned last week. I
you know, we really have to do

42
00:03:12,960 --> 00:03:15,680
this again. You spent all last
week's episode covetching about this and convetchings.

43
00:03:15,680 --> 00:03:21,360
Guy was not covetching, was It
was full throated denunciation. Yeah, Ok,

44
00:03:21,400 --> 00:03:23,479
that's right, covetching, he says, covelling. Maybe maybe I was

45
00:03:23,639 --> 00:03:28,240
am I covelling I could have been
developing, was covetching? Well? Things

46
00:03:28,280 --> 00:03:30,560
things have gotten worse in the last
week. You just when you you know,

47
00:03:30,560 --> 00:03:31,919
I've been saying for a while or
asking for a while, are things

48
00:03:31,960 --> 00:03:36,199
going to get worse before they get
worse? And the campuses seem determined to

49
00:03:36,319 --> 00:03:39,840
prove the answer is yes. I
think you guys mentioned or somebody has mentioned

50
00:03:39,840 --> 00:03:44,159
a lot recently that it was not
but six seven years ago that uh,

51
00:03:44,400 --> 00:03:49,000
you know, one hundred or one
hundred and fifty tiki torch bearing young deluded

52
00:03:49,000 --> 00:03:55,199
white kids caused an international crisis at
Charlottesville, and Trump was miss taking out

53
00:03:55,199 --> 00:04:00,000
of context about find people on both
sides that was about the statue contravery,

54
00:04:00,000 --> 00:04:03,879
and just to you know, again
correct the record. Briefly, Trump said,

55
00:04:03,919 --> 00:04:06,560
don't think this is going to stop
with taking down the statue to robbery

56
00:04:06,639 --> 00:04:11,479
Lee. They're going to come after
Jefferson and Washington next. And reporters were

57
00:04:11,520 --> 00:04:14,319
incredulous of this, so how can
you say that? And Trump said they

58
00:04:14,319 --> 00:04:16,680
were slaveholders. That's why the left
is going to come after those statues.

59
00:04:17,160 --> 00:04:23,319
Queed, the scene you just saw
or just described James at Columbia with people

60
00:04:23,360 --> 00:04:27,079
trying to be many Christo's I guess, than wrapping the George Washington statue,

61
00:04:27,079 --> 00:04:30,360
but without the imagination behind it.
Right. The other one is and I

62
00:04:30,360 --> 00:04:33,199
don't think anyone has commented on this, but we've been hearing for decades now

63
00:04:33,240 --> 00:04:38,079
that oh, if the United States
or Israel does anything tough in the Middle

64
00:04:38,120 --> 00:04:43,000
East, the Arab street will explode
the street. Yes, I don't.

65
00:04:43,040 --> 00:04:46,399
I'm not aware of any Arab streets
exploding in the Middle East or anywhere else

66
00:04:46,399 --> 00:04:48,959
in the world. The streets that
are exploding are on American college campuses,

67
00:04:49,360 --> 00:04:53,839
and that, I'll tell you something
about how deranged we are that that is

68
00:04:53,879 --> 00:04:58,959
where you're seeing the unrest about all
this. Finally, Peter your point about

69
00:04:59,079 --> 00:05:02,720
the faculty. What an amazing scene
that in the last two or three weeks,

70
00:05:02,759 --> 00:05:06,839
Google, of all places, managed
to fire forty or fifty employees who

71
00:05:06,839 --> 00:05:10,959
had protested on their grounds. And
yet no one is going to get this

72
00:05:11,040 --> 00:05:15,680
mys from a university for canceling classes, for impeding students getting into classes,

73
00:05:15,079 --> 00:05:18,040
and for all the disruption. I
think those ought to be fireable offenses.

74
00:05:18,120 --> 00:05:24,279
It is absolutely right it is possible
to cancel tenure of professors, but nobody

75
00:05:24,319 --> 00:05:27,000
has the guts to do it anywhere, it seems, and so I think

76
00:05:27,040 --> 00:05:30,600
it was going to fester for a
while. And if the war widens to

77
00:05:30,680 --> 00:05:33,160
in the northern front with Hesbela,
then I think we have a whole nother

78
00:05:33,240 --> 00:05:38,399
round starting in the fall. So
this takes me back to a little bit

79
00:05:38,439 --> 00:05:40,879
to the themes we discussed last week. But I'm going to do it anyway

80
00:05:40,920 --> 00:05:46,439
because this feels good. God bless
America. And here's why. The institutions

81
00:05:46,480 --> 00:05:51,439
that have seized up over Gaza,
we know, we name them and at

82
00:05:51,480 --> 00:05:56,439
the Columbia above all at the moment, and they dominate the news. But

83
00:05:56,519 --> 00:06:01,879
there are two wonderful aspects about the
United States of America. One is federalism.

84
00:06:02,079 --> 00:06:08,439
Ben Sas is not putting up with
a moment of this nonsense. Ben

85
00:06:08,560 --> 00:06:13,360
Sas, former Senator from Nebraska,
now the president of the University of Florida,

86
00:06:13,759 --> 00:06:16,319
Florida, is not putting up with
this. And down at the University

87
00:06:16,319 --> 00:06:20,879
of Texas they brought in I think
it was the Texas Rangers. They brought

88
00:06:20,920 --> 00:06:26,839
in some force and just move the
encampment out. There are places in the

89
00:06:26,879 --> 00:06:30,879
country where we were used to this
notion of the red and the blue model.

90
00:06:30,360 --> 00:06:33,399
But it goes deeper, I believe
than we may even have supposed.

91
00:06:33,439 --> 00:06:36,600
We tend to think of it as
tax policy. Now we're thinking of it

92
00:06:36,639 --> 00:06:41,920
as states trying to sort out abortion
policy. That's true. Now Texas is

93
00:06:42,000 --> 00:06:46,319
enforcing the border even if the Feds
don't want them to, and California isn't.

94
00:06:46,759 --> 00:06:51,079
And now we see that they are
even different approaches to higher education.

95
00:06:51,519 --> 00:06:58,079
That is a glorious thing because when
bits of America aren't working, you can

96
00:06:58,120 --> 00:07:00,240
be pretty sure there are bits of
America that are going to work. And

97
00:07:00,279 --> 00:07:02,600
then, of course, the other
bit, the other piece of this is

98
00:07:03,360 --> 00:07:09,600
what do Americans do when institutions fail? They start new ones. They start

99
00:07:09,680 --> 00:07:12,000
new ones. The one that seems
to be getting a lot of news right

100
00:07:12,000 --> 00:07:15,600
now is the University of Austin and
Texas, close to my heart because full

101
00:07:15,639 --> 00:07:19,600
disclosure, my oldest son works there. They'll be accepting their first incoming class,

102
00:07:19,600 --> 00:07:24,040
their first students this fall. But
there are a lot of little Catholic

103
00:07:24,079 --> 00:07:28,920
schools that have been founded in recent
decades. There are between four and five

104
00:07:29,040 --> 00:07:32,920
thousand universities and colleges in this country, and maybe twenty of them have been

105
00:07:32,920 --> 00:07:39,800
dominating the news. There are opportunities
all over the educational landscape for these,

106
00:07:39,959 --> 00:07:46,199
for institutions in the Midwest, for
smaller institutions, for trustees and creative trustees

107
00:07:46,240 --> 00:07:50,560
and presidents to make moves here,
and some of them will, I think,

108
00:07:51,439 --> 00:07:55,279
we hope. So trying to cheer
you up boys, No no,

109
00:07:55,279 --> 00:08:00,160
no, that's good, that's good. What I like is for people to

110
00:08:00,160 --> 00:08:03,800
self reveal, for the revelatory aspects
of these things to be chewed upon and

111
00:08:03,839 --> 00:08:09,040
digested by everyone. And I think
a lot of people have seen obviously that

112
00:08:09,319 --> 00:08:13,120
the left in this country valorizes protest, but only a certain kind. They

113
00:08:13,319 --> 00:08:18,959
may talk about how they admire the
protest tradition, then that's what it's really

114
00:08:18,959 --> 00:08:22,360
about, free expression and the rest
of it. But everybody knows that if

115
00:08:22,360 --> 00:08:26,920
this had been a group of ruer
right wing people who had done any of

116
00:08:26,920 --> 00:08:31,040
these things, that the whole country
would be up in the media would be

117
00:08:31,120 --> 00:08:35,840
absolutely a twitter and inflame with horror
over this imminent fascist takeover America. Without

118
00:08:35,840 --> 00:08:39,120
a doubt, somebody taken down the
American flag and put up a thin blue

119
00:08:39,159 --> 00:08:46,000
line flag, this would be a
sign that the fascist boot of the police

120
00:08:46,159 --> 00:08:48,759
state was about to smash down on
the poor phases of the people, and

121
00:08:48,799 --> 00:08:52,759
college people would be irrevocably shaking at
the sight of the thing if you had

122
00:08:52,360 --> 00:09:00,000
genial you know, kids in maga
hats who occupied a college office and didn't

123
00:09:00,159 --> 00:09:03,639
trash it, didn't spray paint the
walls, didn't put demands all over everything

124
00:09:03,639 --> 00:09:07,759
of things that they wanted to be
done. Now, because they're basically toddlers,

125
00:09:07,600 --> 00:09:11,360
that itself would be again tied directly
back to the Brownshirts and the way

126
00:09:11,399 --> 00:09:18,159
that Hitler disrupted civiliits. Everybody knows
it. So the reason that these things

127
00:09:18,159 --> 00:09:22,960
are being encouraged and winked upon and
given the blessing is because they adhere to

128
00:09:22,039 --> 00:09:30,120
a specific set of ideas, and
those ideas are manifestly outside of the general

129
00:09:30,120 --> 00:09:33,039
conversation that we have about the future
of America. They are not about whether

130
00:09:33,120 --> 00:09:35,039
or not we should be pushing more
towards liberal policy or conservative policy. They're

131
00:09:35,039 --> 00:09:39,279
about whether or not we should end
the systems and institutions that define this country

132
00:09:39,320 --> 00:09:45,399
and replace them with some sort of
transnational communist nonsense. And I mean,

133
00:09:45,559 --> 00:09:48,919
when you see the hammer and sickles, take them at their word. When

134
00:09:48,960 --> 00:09:52,960
you see everybody get up there and
talk about the necessity of dismantling capitalism with

135
00:09:52,000 --> 00:09:56,320
the worldwide into faughta and shouting with
glee over these things. Take them at

136
00:09:56,360 --> 00:10:01,679
their word. So between the anti
semitism and the ant to capitalism, which

137
00:10:01,720 --> 00:10:03,919
okay, fine, they're under thirty, they can do it, and the

138
00:10:05,120 --> 00:10:13,720
inflation of these academic no nothings to
avatars of the generation speaking diet were deathless

139
00:10:13,759 --> 00:10:20,440
truths. Everybody see, they've revealed
themselves to be anti American, and uh

140
00:10:20,720 --> 00:10:22,840
maybe that's maybe it's okay to call
them that because they are, and they

141
00:10:22,960 --> 00:10:26,759
revealed themselves to be profoundly ignorant of
history and economics and the rest of it.

142
00:10:26,879 --> 00:10:31,240
So so yeah, I'll shut up
with this. The one thing I

143
00:10:31,279 --> 00:10:35,840
always notice is that at they're done
occupying a place that it's trashed. It's

144
00:10:35,879 --> 00:10:39,039
filthy, strewn with a lot of
plastic. For some reason, they love

145
00:10:39,080 --> 00:10:43,919
their plastic. There was a building
I think at UCLA, this beautiful landmark

146
00:10:43,360 --> 00:10:48,320
in a sort of Roman and late
Romanesque style, and they'd spray painted it,

147
00:10:48,399 --> 00:10:52,159
of course, with the necessary things. Because if you don't deface a

148
00:10:52,200 --> 00:10:56,200
carving with the words free Gaza,
you have failed to do your part for

149
00:10:56,240 --> 00:11:01,559
the revolution. And there it was. It was. It was piled with

150
00:11:01,679 --> 00:11:05,039
garbage and tarps and chairs and the
rest of it, and this sort of

151
00:11:07,399 --> 00:11:11,879
animalistic gleat It's no, it's not
animalistic. Animals don't know beauty. The

152
00:11:11,960 --> 00:11:18,639
sort of anti human joy in defacing
beauty is one of the most telltale things

153
00:11:18,679 --> 00:11:24,000
about these people. I'll shut up
now, I okay. I asked a

154
00:11:24,039 --> 00:11:28,200
question of the two of you.
No, you may not, because the

155
00:11:28,200 --> 00:11:30,679
thing of it is, Peter,
is that you may ask that question if

156
00:11:30,720 --> 00:11:33,039
you pay me a dollar. You
want to pay me a dollar for that?

157
00:11:33,240 --> 00:11:33,960
And you're saying, James, we're
on the air, how can I

158
00:11:35,000 --> 00:11:37,679
possibly pay you a dollar? And
the answer is simple, there's an electronic

159
00:11:37,799 --> 00:11:41,159
way to do it. There is
a way to do commerce better than anybody

160
00:11:41,159 --> 00:11:43,320
else, and Shopify is going to
help you do it. Shopify it is

161
00:11:43,360 --> 00:11:48,039
the commerce platform that is revolutionism in
business worldwide. I have already taken the

162
00:11:48,080 --> 00:11:50,799
cash register online. You know that, because how many times would you used

163
00:11:50,840 --> 00:11:54,840
it? Right? They helped millions
sell billions around the world. But did

164
00:11:54,879 --> 00:11:58,759
you know that Shopify can do the
same thing at your retail store, give

165
00:11:58,799 --> 00:12:03,120
your point of sales some a serious
upgrade with Shopify. Shopify pos is your

166
00:12:03,120 --> 00:12:07,879
command center for your retail store,
from accepting payments to managing your inventory.

167
00:12:07,879 --> 00:12:13,159
Shopify as everything you need to sell
in person. So I mean you got

168
00:12:13,159 --> 00:12:18,240
a powerhouse selling partner that effortlessly unites
your in person and your online sales into

169
00:12:18,240 --> 00:12:22,600
one source of truth. And by
that we mean track every sale across your

170
00:12:22,639 --> 00:12:24,480
business, every sale in one place, and know exactly what you got in

171
00:12:24,559 --> 00:12:30,600
stock. You can connect with customers
inline and online because Shopify helps you drive

172
00:12:30,639 --> 00:12:35,039
store traffic with plug and plate tools
built from marketing campaigns from well TikTok to

173
00:12:35,120 --> 00:12:39,159
Instagram and beyond. So get hardware
that fits your business. Take payments by

174
00:12:39,320 --> 00:12:43,720
smartphone, transform your tablet into a
POS system, or use Shopify's pos go

175
00:12:43,840 --> 00:12:48,639
mobile device for a battle tested solution. Plus their award winning twenty four to

176
00:12:48,679 --> 00:12:52,919
seven help is there to support your
success every step of the way. Do

177
00:12:52,080 --> 00:12:56,519
retail right with Shopify. Sign up
for a one dollar per month trial period

178
00:12:56,559 --> 00:13:01,559
at shopify dot com. Slash ricochet. That's all lowercase. Go to shopify

179
00:13:01,600 --> 00:13:05,159
dot com slash ricochet all overcase.
You take your retail business to the next

180
00:13:05,240 --> 00:13:11,240
level today Shopify dot com slash Ricochet, and we do think Shopify responsoring this

181
00:13:11,639 --> 00:13:16,440
the Ricochet podcast. Boys, I
wasn't in Rome when Michelangelo was painting the

182
00:13:16,519 --> 00:13:20,360
Sistine ceiling. I never got to
know Leonardo, but I have lived to

183
00:13:20,399 --> 00:13:24,720
see James Lilacs performed segues. Yeah, and it is enough, It is

184
00:13:24,879 --> 00:13:28,600
enough. I have to leave a
little early to complete your nomination for the

185
00:13:28,639 --> 00:13:33,720
Nobel Prize for segues. Yes,
right, well I'll take it for Rance

186
00:13:33,799 --> 00:13:37,240
perorations Philippics. And also you know, well, but only one prize a

187
00:13:37,320 --> 00:13:41,600
year. I think I think they
limit them. All right, and now

188
00:13:41,639 --> 00:13:46,159
we welcome to the podcast. Hr
McMaster, retired United States Army Lieutenant general,

189
00:13:46,279 --> 00:13:50,360
served as the twenty fifth United States
National Security Advisor. He's a senior

190
00:13:50,399 --> 00:13:54,799
fellow with the Hoover Institution and the
author of Dereliction of Duty and more recently

191
00:13:56,120 --> 00:14:01,879
Battlegrounds. The fight to defend the
Free World, and then there's the fight

192
00:14:01,039 --> 00:14:05,159
to defund the free world, as
we're seeing. Welcome to the podcast.

193
00:14:05,240 --> 00:14:09,799
Let's go right to Israel. We
all know that Joe Biden is quite proud

194
00:14:09,879 --> 00:14:16,279
of telling the Israeli government that they
should not invade Haifa. But we have

195
00:14:16,360 --> 00:14:20,320
the situation. We have this situation
where we're looking at Rafa and wondering exactly

196
00:14:20,440 --> 00:14:26,679
what the delay is. Can you
give us your take on the machinations,

197
00:14:26,320 --> 00:14:30,759
the negotiations, who stands to lose? Where do you think this is going

198
00:14:30,799 --> 00:14:33,960
to shake out? Well, the
Israeli Defense Force is going to go into

199
00:14:35,000 --> 00:14:37,279
Rafa, There's no doubt about it. And I think what's happening now is

200
00:14:37,639 --> 00:14:46,480
that Israel's dealing with the administration's calls
are exhorting them to not go into to

201
00:14:46,639 --> 00:14:50,279
Rafa, which of course makes no
sense. If you're going to destroy Hamas,

202
00:14:50,320 --> 00:14:54,720
you have to destroy the entire organization. The Israeli Defense forces have destroyed

203
00:14:54,759 --> 00:15:03,519
about eighteen of twenty four battalions of
and for their own population after the heineous

204
00:15:03,519 --> 00:15:05,559
attacks of October seventh. How do
they say, well, we just thought

205
00:15:05,600 --> 00:15:09,080
that was enough and we're gonna call
it a day and not really destroy the

206
00:15:09,480 --> 00:15:13,799
organization. Also, you have these
negotiations that are ongoing about the release of

207
00:15:13,840 --> 00:15:18,440
hostages and so forth. So I
think that the Israeli government is just letting

208
00:15:18,480 --> 00:15:22,320
that play out. But certainly there's
going to be a military operation against Rafa,

209
00:15:22,360 --> 00:15:26,960
And what I hope is there'll be
an opportunity to evacuate civilians and screen

210
00:15:28,000 --> 00:15:33,159
them in advance of that operation,
and then they can go after what remains

211
00:15:33,200 --> 00:15:37,519
of Hamas, including the leadership,
in a less constrained manner in terms of

212
00:15:37,519 --> 00:15:43,200
the use of firepower. Let's for
the people who don't have their head around

213
00:15:43,240 --> 00:15:46,879
this yet, let's define what battalion
strength means for Hamas. How many fighters

214
00:15:46,919 --> 00:15:50,480
that mean they've eliminated, and how
much of a force is the idea face?

215
00:15:50,679 --> 00:15:56,519
Now, yeah, it varies,
right because these terroisted organizations they organize

216
00:15:56,519 --> 00:16:00,399
along the line the lines of Battalia's
catabs in Arabic, But they really depend

217
00:16:00,440 --> 00:16:03,200
on what the purpose of that battalion
is. So you have to remember that

218
00:16:03,240 --> 00:16:07,720
there are two purposes for Hamas battalions. Purpose Number one, UH is to

219
00:16:07,919 --> 00:16:12,159
is to make good on their pledge
to try to destroy Israel and kill all

220
00:16:12,200 --> 00:16:15,519
the Jews. I mean, that's
what they're determined to do. So those

221
00:16:15,519 --> 00:16:18,720
people who lament you know that you
know that that you know Israel may not

222
00:16:18,759 --> 00:16:22,679
be fully committed to a two state
solution. How does that sound about Hamas's

223
00:16:22,679 --> 00:16:26,279
point of view in connection with the
tuestate solution. But the other purpose for

224
00:16:26,399 --> 00:16:33,639
these for these Hamas battalions is to
intimidate the population, the Palestindian population,

225
00:16:33,759 --> 00:16:40,519
to maintain the Hamas's iron grip on
power in Gaza, which they use obviously

226
00:16:41,200 --> 00:16:48,159
to divert international assistance, economic aid, economic activity, to enrich themselves the

227
00:16:48,159 --> 00:16:53,840
Hamas leadership UH, and to build
up terrorist capabilities and infrastructure to attack Israel.

228
00:16:55,279 --> 00:17:00,679
So those who are concerned about the
welfare of the of the Palestinian people

229
00:17:00,720 --> 00:17:07,160
in Gaza have to recognize that the
principal cause of the grievances of that population,

230
00:17:07,480 --> 00:17:12,160
the destitution in Gaza, is Hamas
itself. And so UH, these

231
00:17:12,279 --> 00:17:18,640
organizations use their their monopoly on power
UH to course and intimidate the population,

232
00:17:19,079 --> 00:17:26,160
to brainwash the youth UH and and
to to mobilize the entire population toward the

233
00:17:26,200 --> 00:17:30,160
destruction of Israel and the killing of
all the Jews. I mean, that's

234
00:17:30,200 --> 00:17:34,799
really that's that's really their mission.
And so it's important. I mean,

235
00:17:36,160 --> 00:17:40,720
so the battalions vary based on their
overall purpose. But what you have now

236
00:17:40,839 --> 00:17:45,079
is you have the remaining combat power
from Hamas, whatever that is. You

237
00:17:45,200 --> 00:17:52,039
have them with their leadership cowering,
cowering in the in the tunnels while they

238
00:17:52,160 --> 00:17:57,079
leave the population exposed. I think
it's important to point out that none of

239
00:17:57,119 --> 00:18:02,160
Hamas's tunnels have been used for the
purpose of civil defense. And the reason

240
00:18:02,240 --> 00:18:07,359
is, you know what if Hamas's
tactics is to get as many people from

241
00:18:07,400 --> 00:18:12,359
their own population killed as possible.
You know, most military organizations, all

242
00:18:12,440 --> 00:18:18,079
that you know that are I think
legitimate, exist to protect their populations.

243
00:18:18,640 --> 00:18:26,160
Hamas acts in ways to deliberately cause
casualties so they can use them on the

244
00:18:26,200 --> 00:18:33,480
world stage and tap in to this
kind of stream of self loathing youth that

245
00:18:33,519 --> 00:18:37,920
we have in the West. Who
who then can champion the cause of a

246
00:18:37,920 --> 00:18:45,440
heinous criminal organization like Hamas General.
It's Steve Hayward out in California. And

247
00:18:45,799 --> 00:18:48,079
you know, I don't think I've
ever had the honor to meet you,

248
00:18:48,279 --> 00:18:52,119
and I've long wanted to say that. Almost thirty years ago now, I

249
00:18:52,160 --> 00:18:56,559
did a very deep dive in the
Vietnam literature, and I tell everybody still

250
00:18:56,599 --> 00:19:00,400
here twenty five years later that Your
Dereliction of Duty is one of the four

251
00:19:00,480 --> 00:19:04,680
most significant books for anyone who wants
to understand the whole Vietnam scene. And

252
00:19:04,720 --> 00:19:08,240
I won't list the other three now
unless Peter ask me, okay, Steve,

253
00:19:08,359 --> 00:19:14,880
we get one. Are the other
three? Well, I will,

254
00:19:15,000 --> 00:19:18,480
I'm sorry that was bad in me. I think Gunter Louis book American Vietnam,

255
00:19:18,519 --> 00:19:19,759
which was a fairly early book,
is one of the best. But

256
00:19:19,920 --> 00:19:23,519
Louis Soreley is actually more than one
book from Louis Soorley, I think understands

257
00:19:23,519 --> 00:19:27,319
the endgame best of all. Absolutely, this is a better war. Is

258
00:19:27,359 --> 00:19:30,359
where that war right exactly? And
then and you know what, Louis Sorely

259
00:19:30,799 --> 00:19:36,319
is just a fantastic human being.
By the way, he's one of is

260
00:19:36,359 --> 00:19:38,440
a dear friend of mine, and
he's one of these people that you really

261
00:19:38,440 --> 00:19:41,519
want is your friend because he's one
of these people who if you ever need

262
00:19:41,559 --> 00:19:45,039
anything, ops everything to help you. He's a wonderful person. Really.

263
00:19:45,119 --> 00:19:49,200
Yeah, that's what my ex marine
Vietnam VET mac Owens always tells me about

264
00:19:49,240 --> 00:19:52,480
him. And you know what,
mac Owens is a phenomenal human being too.

265
00:19:52,480 --> 00:19:57,000
Oh, yes, that guy I
think maybe the most underrated scholar of

266
00:19:57,039 --> 00:20:02,240
his era. If you go back
to essay he wrote in nineteen ninety nine

267
00:20:02,839 --> 00:20:07,720
an Orbis Magazine journal, he predicted
everything we're seeing today in terms of the

268
00:20:07,759 --> 00:20:14,759
return of geostrategic competition. Now he's
a phenomenal phenomenal. And the last book

269
00:20:14,759 --> 00:20:18,200
has real contemporary relevance. It's Peter
Brestrom's book called The Big Story about the

270
00:20:18,319 --> 00:20:22,359
misreporting of the Tet Offensive. So
it not only tells the media malpractice,

271
00:20:22,400 --> 00:20:26,319
but also it tells the story of
what really happened on the ground in Tet.

272
00:20:26,720 --> 00:20:29,680
And you know what an important revisionist
work. And you read those four

273
00:20:29,720 --> 00:20:32,599
books, those three other authors in
you and you will understand what you need

274
00:20:32,599 --> 00:20:36,319
to know well. And I would
add, now since those works Mark Moreyr's

275
00:20:36,680 --> 00:20:42,400
right as well, great revisionist of
the revisionists. Wait a minute, Wait

276
00:20:42,400 --> 00:20:47,200
a minute, boys, what about
Michael Lynn The Necessary War? Michael Lynn's

277
00:20:47,200 --> 00:20:49,440
an odd character, but that book, I think that book is indispensable.

278
00:20:49,519 --> 00:20:52,359
No, well, look, there
are a lot of other books that are

279
00:20:52,400 --> 00:20:56,160
very good. I can name four
or five brothers. You started at Hayward,

280
00:20:56,480 --> 00:20:57,799
I know, I know, I
didn't well, I actually didn't want

281
00:20:57,799 --> 00:21:03,119
to extend the derelution of duty question
to a contemporary version of it, which

282
00:21:03,160 --> 00:21:07,440
is I mean a couple of forms
of this. The general form is,

283
00:21:07,559 --> 00:21:11,319
have our joint chiefs of staff learned
not really from your book and reflection on

284
00:21:11,880 --> 00:21:15,920
what they did wrong in the sixties
and so forth, and the more specific

285
00:21:17,119 --> 00:21:19,319
form of the question, and what
makes me raise it is we know that

286
00:21:19,400 --> 00:21:23,440
President Biden ignored the advice of the
Joint Chiefs and a lot of senior military

287
00:21:23,440 --> 00:21:29,079
people about what should be done about
Afghanistan, how we should get out.

288
00:21:29,279 --> 00:21:32,680
And I don't know what do you
make about that. The chiefs still have

289
00:21:32,680 --> 00:21:34,839
a ways to go, Our military
leadership have a way to go in civil

290
00:21:34,880 --> 00:21:41,000
military relations advising the president. Well, you know, a president can get

291
00:21:41,039 --> 00:21:45,480
the military advice he wants, but
by virtue of the way he structures those

292
00:21:45,559 --> 00:21:49,319
those relationships, what his expectations are, and he can just ignore it.

293
00:21:49,400 --> 00:21:52,720
You know what, in the case
of President Biden, President Biden didn't want

294
00:21:52,720 --> 00:21:56,720
to hear it. Remember when he
was vice president, he said that the

295
00:21:56,799 --> 00:22:00,599
advice he got from the military,
the President Bob was getting from military was

296
00:22:00,599 --> 00:22:06,720
was painting President Obama into a corner. Well, what he meant was he

297
00:22:06,799 --> 00:22:10,319
wasn't getting the military advice he wanted. He was getting uh you uh,

298
00:22:10,960 --> 00:22:15,839
honest military advice and didn't want that
from his senior military leadership. And so

299
00:22:15,440 --> 00:22:19,119
I think your President Biden when he
heard, Hey, you know, it's

300
00:22:19,160 --> 00:22:25,880
a bad idea to evacuate the military
before you evacuate civilians. Hey, uh,

301
00:22:26,000 --> 00:22:30,799
it's important to keep Bagram open if
we're gonna have any any uh any

302
00:22:30,839 --> 00:22:36,039
hope of of of of supporting Afghanist
who are still in the fight. You

303
00:22:36,079 --> 00:22:40,759
know, Hey, it's it's important
for us to not adhere to this timeline

304
00:22:41,359 --> 00:22:45,920
that uh uh that that that actually
the Trump administration agreed to. When when

305
00:22:45,960 --> 00:22:51,240
actually the Trump administration signed a surrender
document uh to to to to the Taliban?

306
00:22:51,400 --> 00:22:53,640
I mean, which is which is
terrible? And whoa whoa hr you

307
00:22:53,720 --> 00:22:59,160
want to hold on? You just
said the Trump administration, in which you

308
00:22:59,279 --> 00:23:02,759
served, not at the time you
served, but in which you served,

309
00:23:03,519 --> 00:23:07,880
signed a surrender document to the Taliban. Do you want to stand on that

310
00:23:07,960 --> 00:23:11,519
statement? Oh? Absolutely, this
is this is an in February of twenty

311
00:23:11,559 --> 00:23:15,480
twenty when Zal Khalilzad signed the document
in the presence of the Secretary of State,

312
00:23:17,079 --> 00:23:22,200
and essentially, you know what happened
is the Trump administration replicated the policy

313
00:23:22,240 --> 00:23:27,519
of the Obama administration in the latter
years. President Trump made a I think

314
00:23:27,599 --> 00:23:34,240
a courageous, important decision in August
of twenty seventeen to fundamentally change our approach

315
00:23:34,279 --> 00:23:41,640
to Afghanistan. He put into place
the first reasoned, sustainable approach to that

316
00:23:41,720 --> 00:23:48,839
war that prioritized US interests and incentivized
by the way he explained himself to the

317
00:23:48,880 --> 00:23:52,920
American people in a detailed speech on
the matter. Correct, it was the

318
00:23:52,920 --> 00:23:57,200
best speech on Afghanistan in the long
history of that war. And I would

319
00:23:57,200 --> 00:24:00,759
I would encourage you know, your
view listeners, Hey, dig it out

320
00:24:02,319 --> 00:24:06,480
that Afghanistan speach in twenty seventeen.
But then, you know, he abandoned

321
00:24:06,720 --> 00:24:10,319
that whole approach. You know,
he listened to the mantra of end the

322
00:24:10,400 --> 00:24:12,839
endless wars, you know, and
the Taliban, you know, they're really

323
00:24:12,880 --> 00:24:17,279
different from the way they were,
you know before two thousand and one.

324
00:24:17,440 --> 00:24:19,680
Now they're going to respect women's rights. They're really separate, you know,

325
00:24:19,759 --> 00:24:26,200
from all these other terrorist organizations.
Utter bullshit is what that was. And

326
00:24:26,240 --> 00:24:29,559
self delusion, you know, And
and then you kept hearing, well,

327
00:24:29,599 --> 00:24:33,680
you know, there's no military solution
in Afghanistan. Hey guess what. The

328
00:24:33,720 --> 00:24:36,720
Taliban came up with one, didn't
they. And so you know, I

329
00:24:36,759 --> 00:24:38,240
think, you know, I think
that what he did, is he just

330
00:24:38,279 --> 00:24:41,680
bought into that nonsense. Now,
the Biden administration continued that policy. You

331
00:24:41,720 --> 00:24:48,839
remember, you know when the disaster
happens in August of twenty twenty one,

332
00:24:48,119 --> 00:24:52,279
the buyers just said, oh well, we couldn't, we couldn't change that

333
00:24:52,319 --> 00:24:56,200
policy. Really, you changed every
other Trump policy you stopped. You stopped

334
00:24:56,279 --> 00:25:00,200
us securing our borders, you know
with Mexico. I mean, you could

335
00:25:00,359 --> 00:25:04,160
go back on that policy in Afghanistan. So what I'm saying is, you

336
00:25:04,200 --> 00:25:11,880
know, this is a disaster,
a catastrophe, a stain on America for

337
00:25:11,920 --> 00:25:17,440
the responsibility for which is shared by
both those administrations. Hr you finished,

338
00:25:17,480 --> 00:25:19,160
I understand. I ran into your
assistant the other day, and I understand

339
00:25:19,200 --> 00:25:22,640
you have finished the manuscript. In
fact, I think you have it in

340
00:25:22,640 --> 00:25:26,200
galley form of your new book,
At War with Ourselves. I want to

341
00:25:26,240 --> 00:25:30,279
advertise the book and the show that
we are going to do. We're going

342
00:25:30,319 --> 00:25:33,359
to do an uncommon knowledge together on
that book. So the book is on

343
00:25:34,000 --> 00:25:37,319
your service in the Trump administration.
Correct, it is all right? So

344
00:25:37,720 --> 00:25:44,200
everybody who loves hr McMaster, which
should be everybody, The book is at

345
00:25:44,279 --> 00:25:47,039
War with Ourselves. It will be
out in August. Hr, could I

346
00:25:47,079 --> 00:25:49,440
ask I would like to return to
the Middle East to the extent of one

347
00:25:49,519 --> 00:25:52,559
or two questions and then ask sort
of step back and ask a question about

348
00:25:53,279 --> 00:25:57,599
this country, the politics of the
current moment in this country, not the

349
00:25:57,640 --> 00:26:02,000
part is in politics, but the
overall mood of the country. But first

350
00:26:02,000 --> 00:26:08,119
to Israel and Gaza. What would
victory look like if you were advising bb

351
00:26:08,240 --> 00:26:15,039
Net and Yahoo and even more miraculous
he were listening to you. In other

352
00:26:15,079 --> 00:26:21,200
words, one of the things that
I find just perpetually exasperating about this conflict

353
00:26:21,279 --> 00:26:25,480
is that this goes on to another
topic, which is the corruption or at

354
00:26:25,599 --> 00:26:29,599
least the degeneration of the American press. There's really very good, very little

355
00:26:29,640 --> 00:26:36,039
good military reporting, so that the
Hamas fighters do they simply fade away into

356
00:26:36,039 --> 00:26:41,160
the civilian population the way the Viet
Kong did. How do they surround the

357
00:26:41,200 --> 00:26:42,559
bad guys? How do they know
who the bad guys are? Do they

358
00:26:42,559 --> 00:26:49,359
fill in the tone? What is
the end state in Gaza that represents a

359
00:26:49,519 --> 00:26:53,960
victory for Israel. Well, the
victory is first of all to destroy Hamas,

360
00:26:55,359 --> 00:26:57,640
to kill or capture every single one
of those fighters they can get their

361
00:26:57,640 --> 00:27:02,240
hands on or get in the sight
of guns. That is immensely important.

362
00:27:02,480 --> 00:27:04,599
And then they can identify those fighters. They have the intel to know who

363
00:27:04,640 --> 00:27:07,680
they are, where they are.
Absolutely they can, oh they do,

364
00:27:07,799 --> 00:27:12,440
Okay, Yeah, Now what will
happen is Humas will come back in right,

365
00:27:12,440 --> 00:27:15,640
They'll blend back into the civilian population. Maybe in the areas of the

366
00:27:15,680 --> 00:27:21,559
north. You've already seen, you
know, some instances where where they've coalesced

367
00:27:21,599 --> 00:27:26,599
back into small groups and attacked Israeli
forces. But if Israel is in control

368
00:27:26,640 --> 00:27:34,200
of that territory, they can identify
and those fighters and use their asymmetrical advantages

369
00:27:34,400 --> 00:27:38,920
in terms of their vast military capabilities
against them. But to your question about

370
00:27:40,000 --> 00:27:44,279
like what is enduring defeat of hump
Amus, how does that happen? Well,

371
00:27:44,319 --> 00:27:48,200
it's particularly difficult for Israel to do
that because they don't have a great

372
00:27:48,240 --> 00:27:52,920
deal of credibility legitimacy among the Palestinian
population for a number of reasons. I

373
00:27:52,920 --> 00:27:56,319
mean, some of which go back
to nineteen forty eight, but some of

374
00:27:56,359 --> 00:28:02,000
which are attributable to the brainwashing to
which the Palestinian population has been subjected since

375
00:28:02,000 --> 00:28:06,319
Mamas took power by force in two
thousand and five. And this is the

376
00:28:06,359 --> 00:28:12,160
systematic foamenning of hatred among the youth
in Gaza, and to use that hatred

377
00:28:12,599 --> 00:28:18,160
to justify in the minds of these
people who are sort of brainwashed, subjected

378
00:28:18,920 --> 00:28:22,160
to this propaganda, the heinous crimes
that you saw on October seventh of last

379
00:28:22,240 --> 00:28:26,359
year. So how do you break
that? How do you break the cycle?

380
00:28:26,400 --> 00:28:30,319
There's really a cycle, you know, like of ignorance, which and

381
00:28:30,400 --> 00:28:34,720
using ignorance to foement hatred and hatred
to justify violence. And the only way

382
00:28:34,799 --> 00:28:38,960
that that's going to be able to
happen, I think in Gaza is with

383
00:28:40,039 --> 00:28:45,960
a multinational security force that is a
peace enforcement force that when Hamas shows its

384
00:28:45,000 --> 00:28:49,359
head, which it will, that
they just they crush them. And that's

385
00:28:49,400 --> 00:28:52,880
not the UN and that'll that's not
the UN. Look at UNIFIL in southern

386
00:28:52,960 --> 00:28:57,759
Lebanon, it's a disaster. So
it has to be a multinational force with

387
00:28:57,920 --> 00:29:02,880
that mandate. Could it be Egyptian
led, Well, the Egyptians haven't been

388
00:29:03,240 --> 00:29:07,759
very cooperative. They didn't they didn't
they didn't let Palestinians evacuate, which I

389
00:29:07,799 --> 00:29:11,839
think we should have put more pressure
on them to do that. Maybe it's

390
00:29:11,839 --> 00:29:15,359
a it's a conglomerate of nations.
I mean, heck, maybe it's Kenyans,

391
00:29:15,359 --> 00:29:19,359
who knows, But bring a multinational
force together, probably with American support

392
00:29:19,400 --> 00:29:25,720
and some degree of American logistical and
communications and intelligence backbone, to lift the

393
00:29:25,839 --> 00:29:32,480
pall of fear off the population.
There cannot be a restoration of some form

394
00:29:32,480 --> 00:29:38,839
of governments in Gaza without a strong
security arm that can prevent Hamas from intimidating

395
00:29:38,839 --> 00:29:44,480
the population and regaining control like they
did in two thousand and five. And

396
00:29:44,519 --> 00:29:48,519
then what can happen. Well,
Hey, those tens of billions of dollars

397
00:29:48,880 --> 00:29:52,839
that is that have flowed in to
Gaza since two thousand and five, you

398
00:29:52,880 --> 00:29:55,759
know, maybe they can actually go
to the welfare of the Palestinian people.

399
00:29:56,359 --> 00:30:00,039
Maybe Gaza can become a viable economic
entity where people want to live, you

400
00:30:00,079 --> 00:30:06,880
know, instead of the and fresh
water and streets. Right, all that

401
00:30:06,920 --> 00:30:11,839
aid has been diverted into a rich
Himas and and and to build their terrorist

402
00:30:11,880 --> 00:30:17,920
infrastructure and capabilities. I wish it
so if I were advising your question about

403
00:30:18,200 --> 00:30:22,279
advising Promiser ne Nial, I would
say you've got to do more to begin

404
00:30:22,640 --> 00:30:29,240
to at least be a contender on
the battleground of perception internationally. And with

405
00:30:29,359 --> 00:30:33,119
the Palestinians. Why wasn't there the
equivalent of a lifestyle the rich and famous

406
00:30:33,400 --> 00:30:38,000
documentary of all the all the other
Hamas leaders you know, and their and

407
00:30:38,039 --> 00:30:42,279
their villas, you know on the
Mediterranean and then quick cut you know,

408
00:30:42,359 --> 00:30:48,000
into to the the destitution of the
of the Palestinian people in Kaza. So,

409
00:30:48,079 --> 00:30:53,079
I mean, why isn't there a
better effort to trace, you know,

410
00:30:53,599 --> 00:30:56,599
to trace this back to its source, which is Tehran and the ir

411
00:30:56,640 --> 00:31:00,759
audience, right, I mean,
you know, if you, if you're

412
00:31:00,799 --> 00:31:07,200
Propoustinian, you should be protesting against
AMASU and against Iran because Iran's Iran strategy,

413
00:31:07,680 --> 00:31:14,039
cynical, horrible strategy, is to
expend every Arab life you know in

414
00:31:14,279 --> 00:31:18,079
the in their pursuit of extending their
hegemonic influence across the region, destroying Israel

415
00:31:18,119 --> 00:31:22,160
and killing all the Jews. Hr
one one more, one more military question.

416
00:31:23,039 --> 00:31:29,519
How many degrees of freedom so to
speak? Does BB have to act

417
00:31:29,680 --> 00:31:34,759
on his own even in defiance of
Anthony Blincoln and the Biden administration, Meaning

418
00:31:37,200 --> 00:31:41,039
can as far as I can tell, they need I think we have two

419
00:31:41,079 --> 00:31:45,920
carrier groups in the eastern med right
now. They need money from us.

420
00:31:45,279 --> 00:31:49,759
They need weapons and materiel. They
need our carrier groups holding down Hesbala in

421
00:31:49,799 --> 00:31:53,039
the north so that they can continue
to take care of business in Gaza.

422
00:31:53,640 --> 00:31:59,920
But now we have the Biden administration
all wrapped up in domestic American presidential politics,

423
00:32:00,599 --> 00:32:04,640
terrified in particular as far as I
can tell of losing Michigan, where

424
00:32:04,640 --> 00:32:08,079
there's a Muslim population of about two
hundred and fifty thousand people centered on Dearborn.

425
00:32:08,920 --> 00:32:14,160
And so the Biden administration is saying, don't go into Rafa. We're

426
00:32:14,160 --> 00:32:17,960
going to keep pretending that there's a
real negotiation going on with a mass so

427
00:32:19,000 --> 00:32:21,359
that you don't go into Rafa.
Don't go in, don't go in,

428
00:32:21,400 --> 00:32:23,559
don't go can be be going without
us or not see. I think that's

429
00:32:23,640 --> 00:32:27,680
part of the dynamic. But also
I think it's going to backfire on them.

430
00:32:27,839 --> 00:32:30,319
You know, a lot of the
Muslim population in the United States or

431
00:32:30,519 --> 00:32:37,839
in Michigan, they've they've been the
victims of Jahadist organizations like Habas. I

432
00:32:37,880 --> 00:32:40,160
mean, that is not a monolithic
population. I mean a lot of those

433
00:32:40,200 --> 00:32:45,359
people understand completely what Israel has to
do, you know. And and the

434
00:32:45,880 --> 00:32:49,799
other factor though, besides obviously wanting
to keep the United States on side,

435
00:32:49,799 --> 00:32:53,039
are not completely alien eight. I
think you're right about that. Is the

436
00:32:53,160 --> 00:33:00,440
is the tension of trying to maintain
the strong relationship that they have with Golf

437
00:33:00,480 --> 00:33:07,839
states UH and golf state leaders who
have a real problem because even though they

438
00:33:07,319 --> 00:33:12,880
understand what Israel has to do,
even though they know that their interests are

439
00:33:12,920 --> 00:33:15,960
aligned. These are the golf state
leadership, mainly the Arab monarchies and you

440
00:33:15,960 --> 00:33:20,960
know, in the in the UAE
and and then Saudi Arabia and and you

441
00:33:20,960 --> 00:33:24,720
know, and Bahrain and and UH
and so forth. They they know that

442
00:33:24,759 --> 00:33:30,119
their their interests aligned with Israel on
on the threat from Iran, but hey,

443
00:33:30,160 --> 00:33:32,720
their population is not with him,
you know, and on this and

444
00:33:32,799 --> 00:33:37,559
so there are real checks, I
think on what Israel can do. And

445
00:33:37,599 --> 00:33:43,160
I think it's smart, right.
I mean, if the Rafa operation happens

446
00:33:43,319 --> 00:33:45,119
two weeks later, doesn't really make
a difference. I don't think it makes

447
00:33:45,160 --> 00:33:50,119
a difference. What the only difference
it might make is in preparation for the

448
00:33:50,160 --> 00:33:53,119
next operation, which is going to
be probably the Southern Lebanon. And I

449
00:33:53,119 --> 00:33:58,720
think what Israel has already concluded is
that they will conduct an offensive operation against

450
00:33:58,720 --> 00:34:02,519
Hezbolah and so on before the beginning
of the school year. And the reason

451
00:34:02,640 --> 00:34:07,920
is there are seventy thousand Israelis displaced
from northern Israel. We want to get

452
00:34:07,920 --> 00:34:09,079
their kids back into school. Well
wait a minute, wait a minute,

453
00:34:09,119 --> 00:34:13,119
this is here. Are you saying
they want to clean out hasbalt or just

454
00:34:13,159 --> 00:34:15,000
push them back, brush them back. We're going to push them back X

455
00:34:15,079 --> 00:34:22,440
number of kilometers, fifteen twenty kilometers, and I could see a scenario in

456
00:34:22,519 --> 00:34:28,360
which in which they stay there,
you know, right, hr, So

457
00:34:28,440 --> 00:34:31,280
let me ask you this question about
American politics, because we've got here's the

458
00:34:31,320 --> 00:34:35,360
way it looks to me. On
the democratic side, we've got the Biden

459
00:34:35,360 --> 00:34:42,480
administration tying itself into the shape of
a pretzel to try to keep one constituency,

460
00:34:42,519 --> 00:34:49,360
which is Jewish Americans who are largely
democratic, overwhelmingly democratic, honestly pleased

461
00:34:49,400 --> 00:34:52,639
with the support the administration is offering
to Israel, but at the same time

462
00:34:52,800 --> 00:34:58,960
just desperate for the youth vote,
which Biden will need in November. And

463
00:34:59,039 --> 00:35:06,119
all the statistics show that the youth
are the most pro Palestine of any demographic

464
00:35:06,159 --> 00:35:09,519
in the country. And so there
what seems to be the case right now,

465
00:35:09,559 --> 00:35:14,400
is that the policy is to help
Israel, but the rhetoric is to

466
00:35:14,440 --> 00:35:19,119
slow Israel down. But this is
complicated. On the Republican side, we've

467
00:35:19,119 --> 00:35:22,239
got a man, you know,
for complicated and it's feckless. Actually,

468
00:35:22,519 --> 00:35:25,000
okay, it's more than complicated.
It's idiotic. It will not work.

469
00:35:25,639 --> 00:35:30,559
Secklas is a nice way to put
it. You're good with words. Hr

470
00:35:30,599 --> 00:35:34,159
you know you ought to consider writing
sometime. And then we've got and then

471
00:35:34,199 --> 00:35:38,559
we've got the Republican side. You
know President Trump, you worked with him

472
00:35:38,599 --> 00:35:45,639
to sort out a strategy for Afghanistan
that made sense and I don't know how

473
00:35:45,639 --> 00:35:47,320
to put it. He lost patience, he listened to the he was persuaded

474
00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:51,639
by the endless war argument. We
just got to bring him home. And

475
00:35:51,679 --> 00:35:58,119
now you've got very intelligent people.
JD. Vance In the Senate, Senator

476
00:35:58,119 --> 00:36:00,880
from Ohio, Josh Hawley, Senator
from Missouri. By the way, I

477
00:36:00,880 --> 00:36:04,360
can tell you firsthand that he's smart
because I knew him and it was an

478
00:36:04,440 --> 00:36:09,159
undergraduate here at Stanford. We've got
Tom Cotton of Arkansas, and they are

479
00:36:09,239 --> 00:36:15,719
broadly signing onto the argument. Know
to Ukraine, we have we have limited

480
00:36:15,760 --> 00:36:19,400
I would I would not put Tom
Cotton in that camp, you would not,

481
00:36:19,599 --> 00:36:22,760
Okay, okay, so then correct
me to the extent that you want

482
00:36:22,800 --> 00:36:24,119
to correct me. But the general
point, I'd say, what do you

483
00:36:24,119 --> 00:36:27,079
want to take your point there?
Do you want to say to Americans?

484
00:36:27,079 --> 00:36:29,719
What do you want to say to
Americans? And in particular, what would

485
00:36:29,760 --> 00:36:32,039
you say to Donald Trump right now? Well, first of all, I

486
00:36:32,079 --> 00:36:37,280
think you have to try to understand
what is motivating those who are maybe fall

487
00:36:37,320 --> 00:36:40,960
into this, I don't know,
neo isolationist camp, or maybe that might

488
00:36:42,000 --> 00:36:45,440
be too harsh. Maybe they're not
really isolation as much as they are skeptical,

489
00:36:45,519 --> 00:36:50,360
right, skeptical about sustained US commitments
abroad, especially military commitments are broad

490
00:36:50,800 --> 00:36:52,880
and so so I always I believe
in and you know, I make the

491
00:36:53,000 --> 00:36:58,360
argument for strategic empathy in the book
Battlegrounds. You know that bar the great

492
00:36:58,440 --> 00:37:01,159
historian who's a These are not stupid
people, they're not patriotic, they're good

493
00:37:01,199 --> 00:37:05,559
people. No, but think about
what they're what they're what they're tapping into,

494
00:37:05,719 --> 00:37:09,440
and what they're drawing this perspective from. Is it's really the big transitions

495
00:37:09,440 --> 00:37:14,199
in the global economy that occurred in
the two thousands, the loss of manufacturing

496
00:37:14,280 --> 00:37:16,880
jobs. The numbers of Americans were
left behind by the transition of the global

497
00:37:16,880 --> 00:37:22,199
economy. Hey toss in a financial
crisis. How about about an opioid epidemic?

498
00:37:22,400 --> 00:37:25,559
How about the unexpected uh unarticipated length
and difficulty and cost of the wars

499
00:37:25,559 --> 00:37:29,800
in Iraq and Afghanistan and the borders. Get look at our look at our

500
00:37:29,880 --> 00:37:34,559
national debt, you know, look
at look at uh the degree to which

501
00:37:34,920 --> 00:37:38,000
you know we we see that we
have problems here at home, even with

502
00:37:38,159 --> 00:37:45,000
those who you know, who who
have lost faith in our country and and

503
00:37:45,039 --> 00:37:49,960
are part of the self loathing movement
among our youth. And so they're saying,

504
00:37:50,320 --> 00:37:53,639
hey, we got problems here,
you know, Like, hey,

505
00:37:53,119 --> 00:37:57,920
you know, let the Middle East
solve their own problems. Dammit. Well,

506
00:37:58,159 --> 00:38:00,400
I mean the counter argument, I
think is that, you know,

507
00:38:00,760 --> 00:38:06,239
challenges to our security that develop abroad
can only be dealt with at an exorbitant

508
00:38:06,239 --> 00:38:09,440
cost once they reach our shores.
And you know much better than I do,

509
00:38:09,559 --> 00:38:15,679
because you work for him. I
think Ronald Reagan's Peace through Strength is

510
00:38:15,719 --> 00:38:19,519
more relevant today than at other times
since the end of the Cold War.

511
00:38:20,039 --> 00:38:24,360
And so there is this dissonance among
many of those, especially in the Republican

512
00:38:24,400 --> 00:38:30,840
Party who make the argument for our
disengagement from complex challenges abroad because they too

513
00:38:30,880 --> 00:38:35,519
believe in peace through strength, But
it is actually communicates weakness if we don't

514
00:38:35,559 --> 00:38:38,239
have the ability to sustain a commitment
in Afghanistan for example. I mean,

515
00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:43,800
hey, even the Obama administration when
they're when they left Iraq, they didn't

516
00:38:43,800 --> 00:38:46,760
negotiate with al Qaeda when they left
Iraq. I mean, the Trump administration

517
00:38:46,800 --> 00:38:50,840
negotiated with the Talibot. Don't we've
at data Istan. If you're going to

518
00:38:50,960 --> 00:38:53,639
leave, just freaking leave, you
know. So you know, I think

519
00:38:53,679 --> 00:38:59,519
that you know that that this argument
is either it's like often in all or

520
00:38:59,559 --> 00:39:01,000
nothing. We're going to solve all
the problems in the least, so we

521
00:39:01,079 --> 00:39:04,480
need to get the hell out.
Well, you know what, Actually,

522
00:39:04,599 --> 00:39:08,280
the problems in the least don't get
better when we disengage, When we demonstrate

523
00:39:08,400 --> 00:39:15,599
our irresolution, when we demonstrate weakness, that emboldens Iotolahaminae. That's what it

524
00:39:15,679 --> 00:39:20,400
oldened. Putin Look what the Bide
Admistration did. They withdrew our naval vessels

525
00:39:20,400 --> 00:39:23,760
out of the Black Sea. They
suspended lethal assistance to the Ukraine, your

526
00:39:23,760 --> 00:39:27,960
own forces. President Biden, went
over, you know, to meet with

527
00:39:28,039 --> 00:39:30,679
Putin in Geneva and said, hey, you know, here's all the things

528
00:39:30,719 --> 00:39:34,599
I won't do to support Ukraine.
Here's our red lines. You know.

529
00:39:34,960 --> 00:39:38,400
Then they evacuated all of our advisors, they evacuated our embassy, and they

530
00:39:38,519 --> 00:39:44,360
scuttled our embassy right and and so
you know, it's like they green lighted

531
00:39:44,400 --> 00:39:47,199
the invasion of your But they threatened, they threatened sanctions, and man,

532
00:39:47,440 --> 00:39:52,079
they had some stern, tough words, you know, and the United Nations

533
00:39:52,320 --> 00:39:54,159
for Vadimir Putin, what the hell
good did that? Do? You know?

534
00:39:54,280 --> 00:39:58,880
You know what matters, you know
what matters, hard power matters,

535
00:39:59,239 --> 00:40:02,960
you know. And and so I
think that there is a certain dissonance among

536
00:40:04,039 --> 00:40:09,440
those who call for our disengagement because
many of these same people also recognize that

537
00:40:10,880 --> 00:40:15,360
it peeced through strength is the right
approach. Right general, I know you

538
00:40:15,400 --> 00:40:17,800
need to go. So let me
give you an exit lightning round question that

539
00:40:17,880 --> 00:40:24,559
draws back from the Gaza theater and
whatnot. It's a general geostrategic one.

540
00:40:24,599 --> 00:40:28,039
You know, all the discourse right
now is about war in the Middle East,

541
00:40:28,079 --> 00:40:32,679
and Gaza, Iran, China and
Taiwan, possibly Russia, Ukraine are

542
00:40:32,719 --> 00:40:37,519
there any other sleepers out there.
Are there any potential conflicts we're not paying

543
00:40:37,519 --> 00:40:40,880
attention to one in particular that makes
me think of this question. About two

544
00:40:40,880 --> 00:40:45,079
months ago, you know, the
news was about how Guyana had a major

545
00:40:45,119 --> 00:40:47,760
oil discovery, one of the largest
in the world, and Venezuela said,

546
00:40:47,760 --> 00:40:52,800
well, actually that belongs to us, and Venezuela it was reported was massing

547
00:40:52,840 --> 00:40:55,559
troops. And now I've heard nothing. I mean, are there any sort

548
00:40:55,599 --> 00:41:00,119
of spots that the public and our
leaders are ignoring that you think could be

549
00:41:00,159 --> 00:41:04,480
a surprise, maybe even in our
own hemisphere. Absolutely, and I think

550
00:41:04,519 --> 00:41:08,840
it's it's really important to point out
our inattention to our own hemisphere. UH.

551
00:41:09,039 --> 00:41:15,960
Just yesterday or a couple of days
ago, Colombia UH ended a diplomatic

552
00:41:15,000 --> 00:41:21,519
relations with Israel with a far left
government. You have Lula da Silva who

553
00:41:21,599 --> 00:41:23,519
stood next. Was that Columbia the
nation was the Columbia of the university.

554
00:41:23,559 --> 00:41:29,880
I'm not right now, they're both
they both got it now, but you

555
00:41:29,880 --> 00:41:31,800
know, Columbia was our staunches to
ally, you know, in the in

556
00:41:31,840 --> 00:41:36,320
the region. We partnered with Columbia
when when everybody thought that was going to

557
00:41:36,360 --> 00:41:39,559
be a totally failed state, you
know, and and President Reba showed strong

558
00:41:39,639 --> 00:41:45,079
character and so did so many others
who sacrifice to rest control of that country

559
00:41:45,320 --> 00:41:47,599
away from the drug cartels. And
we've had a strong partnership with them,

560
00:41:47,599 --> 00:41:52,360
and they've become they've become part of
the pink wave in the Western hemisphere.

561
00:41:52,639 --> 00:41:58,000
Now Melee and at Artentina, he's
bucking that, right. There's a pendulum.

562
00:41:58,000 --> 00:42:01,519
This one's back and forth. Chile
is resisting the peak wave. But

563
00:42:01,880 --> 00:42:08,119
Lula de Silva in Brazil and his
relationship with Russia and China, his supplication

564
00:42:08,280 --> 00:42:13,199
to them. Look at what's happened
in South Africa. There is I think

565
00:42:13,519 --> 00:42:20,159
a movement happening in the world into
these blocks, blocks of free and open

566
00:42:20,199 --> 00:42:24,679
democratic societies who have confidence in our
democratic principals institutions and confidence in our free

567
00:42:24,679 --> 00:42:30,639
market economic system, and those who
who are are leaned towards the statist,

568
00:42:30,719 --> 00:42:37,360
mercantilist, socialist model. And I
think that's what we're not paying enough attention

569
00:42:37,440 --> 00:42:40,920
to, is that competition that's going
on in other theaters. There are a

570
00:42:40,920 --> 00:42:44,159
lot of people and this, Peter, this is goes back to your point

571
00:42:44,199 --> 00:42:47,239
about disengagement from certain areas. There
are some who think we should play little

572
00:42:47,320 --> 00:42:52,000
kids soccer because the Inner Pacific's really
important and we should just all run to

573
00:42:52,079 --> 00:42:54,559
the Taiwan straight and stand there.
You know, China would love that,

574
00:42:55,039 --> 00:42:59,519
because China they could kick our ass
everywhere else in the world, you know,

575
00:42:59,599 --> 00:43:02,400
And so it's important for us to
recognize that there's a there's a competition

576
00:43:02,440 --> 00:43:07,320
going on across the world, and
that we have to work together with our

577
00:43:07,480 --> 00:43:12,119
like minded partners to advance advance freedom. You know, the mission of the

578
00:43:12,199 --> 00:43:19,920
Hoover Institution promote promote our free societies. Well, you know, we ignore

579
00:43:20,000 --> 00:43:23,280
Brazil because according to the left,
it doesn't matter because the guy cannot be

580
00:43:23,360 --> 00:43:28,639
described as Trumpian as Bolscenaro could,
so they just if he's not truggling,

581
00:43:28,639 --> 00:43:31,199
they can ignore him. And the
Argentina thing will be interesting because you have

582
00:43:31,239 --> 00:43:35,920
people in the right rallying to this
gentleman as an example of how much you

583
00:43:35,960 --> 00:43:39,000
can change a country quickly while having
a bad haircut. I mean, people

584
00:43:39,000 --> 00:43:43,519
are really impressed with him, and
so I'm waiting for him to throw down

585
00:43:43,559 --> 00:43:46,400
the other card and say that the
Falklands now belong to Argentina and watch that

586
00:43:46,519 --> 00:43:51,360
whole thing play again. But that's
for another podcast, and we hope to

587
00:43:51,360 --> 00:43:53,880
have you on it, h R
McMaster. The upcoming book is At War

588
00:43:54,039 --> 00:43:58,440
with Ourselves, My Tour of Duty
in the Trump White House, scheduled for

589
00:43:58,639 --> 00:44:01,440
release in late August. Can wait, and I hope to have you back

590
00:44:01,480 --> 00:44:06,199
on then or probably with Peter or
both oncomon Knowledge to talk about it.

591
00:44:06,199 --> 00:44:08,880
It's been a pleasure, sir,
always, always in an instructive interval.

592
00:44:09,159 --> 00:44:14,599
He's so great to be with you. Thank you. Take care. Well,

593
00:44:14,639 --> 00:44:17,800
that was fun. Now it's just
us lads here. Let's see Peter,

594
00:44:19,039 --> 00:44:21,480
you had something you wanted to bring
up. Yeah, so we touched

595
00:44:21,480 --> 00:44:24,400
on the politics of all this a
little bit in our conversation with HR.

596
00:44:24,480 --> 00:44:28,440
That was the politics of foreign policy. Let me just go to the politics

597
00:44:28,480 --> 00:44:36,480
of politics. I this, this
strikes me as so strange that I'm mentioning

598
00:44:36,480 --> 00:44:42,760
it to the two of you to
check my own sanity. Four almost four

599
00:44:42,840 --> 00:44:51,199
years ago, four years ago,
Joe Biden ran on normality and he said,

600
00:44:51,320 --> 00:44:57,800
in effect, Donald Trump is too
chaotic. He has brought us Trump

601
00:44:57,880 --> 00:45:00,320
didn't bring it to us, but
Biden claimed, you did. Trump has

602
00:45:00,360 --> 00:45:09,199
brought us COVID demonstrations in the streets, cities burning across America. Vote for

603
00:45:09,320 --> 00:45:16,000
me and it will end. And
now four years later, Donald Trump is

604
00:45:16,039 --> 00:45:22,440
emerging a couple of times a week
from a trial in Manhattan to say,

605
00:45:22,199 --> 00:45:28,360
folks, things are so bad that
now I'm the normal one. Yeah.

606
00:45:28,519 --> 00:45:32,760
The border, we're being invaded on
the southern border. The campuses are erupting,

607
00:45:34,039 --> 00:45:38,320
the world is on fire. Vote
for me. I'll take us back

608
00:45:38,400 --> 00:45:43,800
to normal. Is am I losing
my mind? Or is that what's happening?

609
00:45:44,320 --> 00:45:46,679
No, I think it's actually even
deeper than you put it. Peter.

610
00:45:49,280 --> 00:45:51,400
First of all, I think Trump
right now, what I think is

611
00:45:51,400 --> 00:45:53,119
Trump's going to win, and I
think he might win big. And you

612
00:45:53,199 --> 00:45:55,800
know, we see these new pole
numbers showing him opening up a lead,

613
00:45:55,880 --> 00:46:00,000
and it's fun to speculate that maybe
they should keep him in court more often

614
00:46:00,159 --> 00:46:02,599
because it's yes, yes, his
speeches are more disciplined, I think,

615
00:46:02,760 --> 00:46:06,519
right well, you know when he
does speak now, I mean, he's

616
00:46:06,559 --> 00:46:07,960
getting his game on. He's really
getting back in the top form, I

617
00:46:07,960 --> 00:46:10,760
think. But there's two things here
that the plan into this. So you

618
00:46:10,760 --> 00:46:15,159
know, in twenty sixteen and actually
going back to nineteen eighty, big question

619
00:46:15,199 --> 00:46:17,360
marks about Ronald Reagan, right,
is he too extreme? And all the

620
00:46:17,360 --> 00:46:22,000
rest of that, and he ends
up winning the landslide as people decide that

621
00:46:22,159 --> 00:46:23,840
we can take a chance on him. Trump in twenty sixteen, Oh my

622
00:46:23,920 --> 00:46:28,239
goodness, right, all the crazy
things he said, and okay, I

623
00:46:28,239 --> 00:46:32,559
don't need to recite that litany.
But he's been president now, and as

624
00:46:32,599 --> 00:46:37,760
the polls show that a majority of
Americans now look back fondly on the Trump

625
00:46:37,760 --> 00:46:40,039
presidency, at least the results for
the first three years. And yeah,

626
00:46:40,039 --> 00:46:45,000
maybe he's chaotic, and maybe his
personality is repellent, but they certainly like

627
00:46:45,079 --> 00:46:47,599
the way the country was covered.
And this is the fact that he's been

628
00:46:47,719 --> 00:46:52,320
president, which means he's less of
a chance for undecided voters. Is something

629
00:46:52,320 --> 00:46:54,239
that I don't see any of the
pun that's your polster's talking about. You're

630
00:46:54,280 --> 00:46:57,159
right about that, right, But
then the other thing you said about,

631
00:46:57,159 --> 00:47:01,320
you know, Biden's Biden's own chaos
and craziness. In political science, as

632
00:47:01,360 --> 00:47:06,000
you probably know, they have the
famous median voter theory, which is,

633
00:47:06,039 --> 00:47:08,760
you know, there's an advantage of
the person who's clustered around the issues that

634
00:47:08,800 --> 00:47:14,840
attract the median voter. That person
in this election is Donald Trump. Trump's

635
00:47:14,920 --> 00:47:19,159
opinions on the issues and Republicans generally
are much closer to the median voter.

636
00:47:19,639 --> 00:47:22,119
That's another reason to think that he
has an edge in this election why he

637
00:47:22,199 --> 00:47:25,400
is likely to win. And so
the only question mark is are there going

638
00:47:25,440 --> 00:47:30,079
to be some surprises? Is he
going to be thrown in jail? Is

639
00:47:30,119 --> 00:47:32,639
he going to make some crazy mistake? Is Iran going to launch a missile

640
00:47:32,639 --> 00:47:36,119
at us? And people rally around
Biden? I don't know, but as

641
00:47:36,159 --> 00:47:37,519
of right now, the shape of
the race I think is fixed, and

642
00:47:37,559 --> 00:47:42,079
I think it favors a solid Trump
win. And could I you mentioned that

643
00:47:42,159 --> 00:47:45,320
something was even deeper than it seemed
or it seemed to me. I've also

644
00:47:45,440 --> 00:47:49,079
again, this is a sanity check
for me, because I have these thoughts

645
00:47:49,119 --> 00:47:51,480
in my head, but I don't
have very many people to check them against.

646
00:47:51,519 --> 00:47:55,360
My wife doesn't want to hear it, but you two. So here's

647
00:47:55,400 --> 00:48:00,199
something that I have. The feeling
is deeper than is assumed or supposed.

648
00:48:00,960 --> 00:48:07,559
This notion of Biden's age. Everybody
can see that man. He walks stiffly,

649
00:48:07,599 --> 00:48:12,559
He loses his place in speeches A
and B. He has failed before

650
00:48:12,599 --> 00:48:15,559
our very eyes. You can see
it happening in real time. You go

651
00:48:15,639 --> 00:48:19,199
to a clip of him even two
years ago, and he was in better

652
00:48:19,239 --> 00:48:22,880
shape, all right. So people
see that, and the press presents it

653
00:48:22,920 --> 00:48:27,880
as Americans have reservations about whether he's
too old to do the job, and

654
00:48:27,920 --> 00:48:31,360
that's true. But the deeper bit
I feel, I don't know it,

655
00:48:31,400 --> 00:48:38,440
but I feel it. The deeper
bit is that Americans are sick of being

656
00:48:38,880 --> 00:48:45,239
lied to, and the press and
the administration is saying no, no,

657
00:48:45,239 --> 00:48:49,960
no, he's fine, he's up
to it, he's absolutely fine. And

658
00:48:50,119 --> 00:48:53,480
I believe that there are lots of
people people on who may be otherwise swing

659
00:48:53,559 --> 00:48:58,639
voters, who just in some way
this represents the way they feel that the

660
00:48:58,719 --> 00:49:05,599
press and the liberal establishment has been
lying to them all along, and they're

661
00:49:05,599 --> 00:49:10,000
saying, no, damn it,
don't tell me to disregard the evidence of

662
00:49:10,039 --> 00:49:14,559
my eyes. We assume there's going
to be a lot of lying. We

663
00:49:14,599 --> 00:49:16,000
assume we're going to be lied to, and we factor a lot of that

664
00:49:16,119 --> 00:49:20,159
in. We never would think that
the administration would say, you know what,

665
00:49:20,800 --> 00:49:22,920
we screwed the push getting out of
Afghanistan. That was we scuttled out

666
00:49:22,960 --> 00:49:25,719
without honor, and that's not going
to happen again. We're taking a good

667
00:49:25,760 --> 00:49:30,079
hard look at it. If they
say, if they continue to insist that

668
00:49:30,119 --> 00:49:30,920
it was by the numbers and it
was a great thing to do in a

669
00:49:30,960 --> 00:49:34,079
complete success, let them. I
mean, we know that they're going to

670
00:49:34,159 --> 00:49:37,039
lie about stuff like that. But
when it comes to lying about Biden's obvious

671
00:49:37,199 --> 00:49:45,440
descent into Joel Joe Gillism, his
his his inability to craft a wake up

672
00:49:45,440 --> 00:49:49,480
persona who knows what kind of be
twelve cocktail, they'll shoot his butt before

673
00:49:49,480 --> 00:49:51,800
he talked, before he debates Trump. But everybody knows it, and that's

674
00:49:51,840 --> 00:49:53,599
baked in and you're right there,
Peter, But there's another lie. And

675
00:49:53,639 --> 00:49:57,880
the other lie is that the economy
is great and we're not paying thirty seven

676
00:49:58,239 --> 00:50:01,000
more for groceries every but he knows
that. Now, whether or not an

677
00:50:00,920 --> 00:50:05,199
administration will have the guts to get
out there and say, look, we

678
00:50:05,280 --> 00:50:10,079
absolutely know what you're paying at the
grocery and it's ridiculous. Here's why your

679
00:50:10,119 --> 00:50:14,440
eggs went up, It's because you
know, and tell us why that.

680
00:50:14,679 --> 00:50:17,400
Here's why your cereal went up,
Here's why meat is so expensive. We

681
00:50:17,440 --> 00:50:21,880
know there's only so many things we
can do, but we are well aware.

682
00:50:22,440 --> 00:50:25,960
Instead of that, they tell us, wait a minute, what are

683
00:50:25,960 --> 00:50:30,440
you talking about. I mean,
yes, the price of hamburger did go

684
00:50:30,679 --> 00:50:35,320
up a bit, but your wages
went up fourteen percent, don't you realize

685
00:50:35,440 --> 00:50:38,719
that? And nobody's looking around and
looking at their paycheck and looking at their

686
00:50:38,760 --> 00:50:42,679
groceries and saying, boy, I
feel rich or I feel richer, and

687
00:50:42,840 --> 00:50:46,559
nobody is doing that. People are
seeing that, they're seeing changes, like

688
00:50:46,599 --> 00:50:51,920
when they go to the the to
McDonald's or to Wendy's to find out that

689
00:50:52,000 --> 00:50:54,280
McDonald's now costs as much as some
of the premium burger places like five Guys

690
00:50:54,320 --> 00:51:00,199
and the rest of it. It's
stunningly expensive to get a hamburger at McDonald's,

691
00:51:00,199 --> 00:51:02,320
which used to be the thing you
got for a buck on your way

692
00:51:02,360 --> 00:51:07,159
home, just just a plug a
hole in your stuff. Everybody knows it,

693
00:51:07,679 --> 00:51:13,960
and everybody you know, whether or
not they have a complete and encyclopedic

694
00:51:14,039 --> 00:51:17,159
and economic knowledge of why we have
this inflation and why spinning is to blame

695
00:51:17,199 --> 00:51:20,519
it? Who did the spinning over
the last few years, They know it,

696
00:51:20,599 --> 00:51:22,840
and they're being all I do about
whether or not it matters, And

697
00:51:22,960 --> 00:51:25,599
even if they don't, they're gonna
say, was I paying this much for

698
00:51:25,679 --> 00:51:31,400
a burger under Trump? I was
not? Ergo, that's the guy.

699
00:51:32,000 --> 00:51:35,320
And you know, that's what it
comes down to for an awful lot of

700
00:51:35,360 --> 00:51:38,000
people, And it's not a stupid
decision to make because they can't afford to

701
00:51:38,039 --> 00:51:44,400
take the kids to McDonald's anymore.
Matters more perhaps than leaving Afghanistan. Anyway.

702
00:51:45,519 --> 00:51:47,679
One of my favorite pictures of Trump
of all time was the when he

703
00:51:47,760 --> 00:51:52,599
had the athletes in and he had
a huge spread of all the past Foodenburgers.

704
00:51:52,800 --> 00:51:53,840
I think that should meet camp.
You know, you want a corner

705
00:51:53,880 --> 00:51:57,599
copy of this back and at the
price you can afford, then you know

706
00:51:57,679 --> 00:52:00,400
what to do. I that was
great. The Prince, Well, the

707
00:52:00,480 --> 00:52:05,039
principal argument, sorry this is I'll
let Steve comment and I will fall silent

708
00:52:05,159 --> 00:52:08,480
after this. But the main argument, in some ways, the only argument

709
00:52:08,559 --> 00:52:14,559
that Biden has is Trump is crazy. You can't vote for him because Trump

710
00:52:14,639 --> 00:52:17,960
is crazy. But you know,
here's why that argument is now losing its

711
00:52:19,199 --> 00:52:27,639
effect, its purchase on the American
psyche because lots of voters are admitting it

712
00:52:28,639 --> 00:52:30,960
and saying, yeah, Trump is
crazy, but you know what, there

713
00:52:31,000 --> 00:52:37,960
are things that would be worse and
another four years off you buster is starting

714
00:52:37,000 --> 00:52:40,559
to look just like that, or
another one of three in Kamala Harris or

715
00:52:40,840 --> 00:52:45,280
exactly. You know, Peter,
this is something that it's often said that

716
00:52:45,360 --> 00:52:47,800
people in the White House are in
a bubble, or parties in a bubble.

717
00:52:47,960 --> 00:52:51,239
That's of course true. You know. One of the things I showed

718
00:52:51,280 --> 00:52:53,039
to students often on the first day
of class, depending on the class,

719
00:52:53,159 --> 00:52:57,840
is the great time series from Gallup
and other posters going back to the fifties

720
00:52:58,280 --> 00:53:01,800
of trust in the federal series.
Steve've seen that, right, it's all

721
00:53:01,880 --> 00:53:08,239
downhill with the significant backtrackor in the
Reagan years, that's the only significant restoration

722
00:53:08,360 --> 00:53:12,360
of confidence in the federal government in
the last sixty years. So I went

723
00:53:12,440 --> 00:53:15,519
from seventy eight percent people saying they
think Washington's got the doing a good job.

724
00:53:15,960 --> 00:53:22,239
Now it's in the mid teens.
And so don't people in Washington and

725
00:53:22,360 --> 00:53:25,559
sort of the rest of the establishment, for lack of a better term,

726
00:53:25,920 --> 00:53:31,280
don't they understand that confidence in our
institutions is so low that calling someone a

727
00:53:31,360 --> 00:53:36,199
chaos agent will bring smiles to the
faces of a lot of ordinary citizens,

728
00:53:36,320 --> 00:53:38,719
right, ye, And that's what
I want. The line and trust goes

729
00:53:38,800 --> 00:53:44,079
down as the line of government involvement
in our lives goes up, and from

730
00:53:44,159 --> 00:53:50,079
that they learn nothing about our attitudes
towards their competence and their occasional intrusiveness.

731
00:53:50,440 --> 00:53:54,079
Right, sounds like great, he's
an agreement. No. No. The

732
00:53:54,159 --> 00:53:58,000
other thing is, so this is
Steve, Steve, Steve. This is

733
00:53:58,079 --> 00:54:00,679
a Steve would actually and on this, I think both of you. But

734
00:54:00,760 --> 00:54:05,760
Steve has written books, whole books
about Ronald Reagan and Reagan and Churchill,

735
00:54:06,119 --> 00:54:09,039
and I draw this distinction, although
part of it is I have to admit

736
00:54:09,159 --> 00:54:19,199
his supposition speculation. Biden is an
old man and he's surrounded by young technocrats,

737
00:54:20,559 --> 00:54:29,400
and their loyalty to him is going
to be limited one way or the

738
00:54:29,480 --> 00:54:32,760
other. He's about ready to retire, either into four years at the White

739
00:54:32,800 --> 00:54:37,800
House or back home in Delaware.
But these people have careers to consider.

740
00:54:38,280 --> 00:54:45,159
And whereas I believe Steve would confirm
this and maybe elaborate on it, Winston

741
00:54:45,239 --> 00:54:50,239
Churchill by the time he became prime
minister. Of course, he became prime

742
00:54:50,239 --> 00:54:52,360
minister in time of war, but
even apart from that, by that point

743
00:54:53,679 --> 00:55:01,239
he had close advisors and supporters who
would do any thing for him and Ronald

744
00:55:01,320 --> 00:55:07,440
Reagan, by the time he took
office in nineteen eighty had ed Mese and

745
00:55:07,039 --> 00:55:14,000
he was surrounded by people who would
do anything for him because because they loved

746
00:55:14,039 --> 00:55:17,079
him, because they believed he was
the way forward for the country. There

747
00:55:17,199 --> 00:55:22,599
are no such people around Joe Biden, with a possible exception of doctor Jill,

748
00:55:22,000 --> 00:55:25,079
I think, yeah, no,
I've been saying for you, can

749
00:55:25,159 --> 00:55:29,960
you please define for me a Biden
Democrat. We knew what Clinton Democrats were,

750
00:55:29,960 --> 00:55:30,840
and it was a little fuzzy,
but it was sort of that new

751
00:55:31,119 --> 00:55:37,000
Democrat vibe and and you know Obama
was a cult of personality. But yeah,

752
00:55:37,039 --> 00:55:39,800
Biden, look, I mean this
is not an original thought with me.

753
00:55:39,920 --> 00:55:42,960
I think I got it first from
Henry Olsen, who you guys have

754
00:55:43,039 --> 00:55:45,679
had on a couple of times.
We all steal from Henry all the time,

755
00:55:45,239 --> 00:55:47,400
right, No, no, no
need to credit him. Yeah.

756
00:55:47,440 --> 00:55:51,159
Well, but the point is is, you know, Biden's political ability was

757
00:55:51,199 --> 00:55:53,000
always to find the center of the
Democratic Party, figure out where it was

758
00:55:53,039 --> 00:55:54,760
going, and then get in front
of it. You know, he saw

759
00:55:54,800 --> 00:55:57,960
Paray going down the street and he
gets in front of it and thinks he's

760
00:55:58,000 --> 00:56:00,599
leading it. The problem is he
is hell Bliss when the party is divided

761
00:56:00,639 --> 00:56:05,800
between these factions as a wreck.
No, he is no core principles of

762
00:56:05,880 --> 00:56:07,719
his own. Did you know Peter, that not only did Biden vote for

763
00:56:07,840 --> 00:56:12,400
all of the tax cuts starting with
the Capitol Games tax cut in seventy eight,

764
00:56:12,719 --> 00:56:16,000
all of Reagan's tax cuts, he
was endorsed for re election in nineteen

765
00:56:16,039 --> 00:56:21,920
seventy eight by Howard Jarvis. Wow, because he know he was known as

766
00:56:21,920 --> 00:56:23,360
a conservative Democrat. I mean,
it's all on the record. You know,

767
00:56:23,480 --> 00:56:27,440
you can quote Biden against himself now
from the Biden of the seventies in

768
00:56:27,480 --> 00:56:30,199
the eighties, there's no core principle
to the guy. He's always and that's

769
00:56:30,239 --> 00:56:35,159
what made him attractive. I think
in this last election cycle when the party

770
00:56:35,239 --> 00:56:39,800
panicked that Bernie or Elizabeth Warren were
going to win the nomination, and that's

771
00:56:39,840 --> 00:56:43,679
why they grabbed onto him. And
he's very pliable and I think, as

772
00:56:43,719 --> 00:56:45,960
you say, see now, by
the way, did you notice this week

773
00:56:45,159 --> 00:56:49,599
not only did he let fly with
impromptu remarks about how the Japanese and the

774
00:56:49,679 --> 00:56:53,519
Indians are zeophobe, but then there's
now a feelanx of people around him who

775
00:56:53,559 --> 00:56:58,400
surround him when he walks out to
the helicopter on the south lawn because they

776
00:56:58,440 --> 00:57:01,440
don't want it visible that he can't
walk like a normal human being. I

777
00:57:01,679 --> 00:57:05,400
don't know why don't they just put
him in this sedan chair and bear him

778
00:57:05,400 --> 00:57:09,000
out on that goodness? Have him
tossed, have him tossed, sasteries out

779
00:57:09,280 --> 00:57:14,639
as asses. Yes, indeed,
both sides well, and there isn't there.

780
00:57:15,320 --> 00:57:19,039
It's it's it's you're right the division. I mean, Joe Biden would

781
00:57:19,079 --> 00:57:22,679
probably see a nuclear missile that we
had paid for coming out of Iran heading

782
00:57:22,719 --> 00:57:27,440
towards Israel, and there's the iron
dome system knocking it down, which we

783
00:57:27,519 --> 00:57:30,360
have helped them to develop, and
think, well, you know, my

784
00:57:30,480 --> 00:57:37,440
work here is done. Uh,
it's it's extraordinary. But time moves on,

785
00:57:37,000 --> 00:57:40,400
and next week, who knows what
we're talking about. I almost hope

786
00:57:40,400 --> 00:57:44,679
we're talking about the same things,
because it's fascinating. All of this stuff

787
00:57:44,840 --> 00:57:50,400
is tremendously important to where this country
is now. I am this is not

788
00:57:50,519 --> 00:57:52,199
just the usual politics stuff, and
I always say it's the most important election

789
00:57:52,280 --> 00:57:54,920
in my life ever. But you
know, this one does seem to have

790
00:57:55,039 --> 00:58:00,440
more hefton weight and meaning than the
rest. It feels like a cal climination

791
00:58:00,559 --> 00:58:02,639
in a lot of ways. And
it's hard to say that, you know,

792
00:58:02,719 --> 00:58:06,800
it's culminating with two old guys,
but here we go again. Anyway,

793
00:58:06,800 --> 00:58:07,800
we'd like to thank you for listening
to the show. Of course,

794
00:58:07,840 --> 00:58:12,280
go to Apple podcast give us four
stars. Did I say four stars?

795
00:58:12,320 --> 00:58:14,400
I meant to say five stars.
I wanted to see if you were listening.

796
00:58:14,519 --> 00:58:16,280
You were, weren't you? And
of course go to ricochet dot com.

797
00:58:16,400 --> 00:58:20,880
Join up and you'll find the member
feed, which is where the Internet

798
00:58:20,880 --> 00:58:22,960
that you've been looking for all of
your life is waiting for you. We'll

799
00:58:23,000 --> 00:58:27,039
see you there. Thank you,
Steve, thank you Peter, Thanks guys,

800
00:58:27,119 --> 00:58:30,239
and we'll see everybody in the comment, said Ricochet four point zero.

801
00:58:30,800 --> 00:58:37,760
Next week, Ricochet Join the Conversation.