Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, I missed it. You know. It's one thing
Speaker 1: I do keep up with closely, Charlie is your Twitter game,
Speaker 1: which is one of the top five percent in the world.
Speaker 1: But I think, ask not what your country can do
Speaker 1: for you, ask what you can do for your country.
Speaker 1: Mister Garbachoff, Tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast
Speaker 1: with Steve Hayward along with Charles C. W. Cook breaking
Speaker 1: it all down with our special guests Scott Jennings, author
Speaker 1: of a Revolution of common Sense, So Let's have ourselves
Speaker 1: a podcast in which she's quoted as referring to you
Speaker 1: as excuse me and again not my words, sir, but
Speaker 1: a conspiracy theorist of a decade.
Speaker 2: As like I'll trust I'll trust what you said. I
Speaker 2: haven't looked at the article. I of course have heard
Speaker 2: about it, but conspiracy theorists sometimes I am a conspiracy theorist,
Speaker 2: but I only believe in the conspiracy theories that are true.
Speaker 1: Welcome everybody to the Ricochet Podcast, number seven hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty nine. I'm Steve Hayward out in California along with
Speaker 1: Charles C. W. Cook in Florida. James is indisposed overseas
Speaker 1: a lot to get to this week as always, but Charles,
Speaker 1: since I have the host parrogative this week, I've been
Speaker 1: curious for a long time, and I'm sure some listeners
Speaker 1: are too. What does c W stand for in the
Speaker 1: middle of your name?
Speaker 2: It's Christopher William Charles, not real concealed weapon.
Speaker 1: Oh, I think that's what we're spreading around though. That's
Speaker 1: a good one, right, right, I mean it's I think,
Speaker 1: as you know, it's slightly unusual for Americans to have
Speaker 1: two middle names.
Speaker 2: Although my way i've been you know why I write
Speaker 2: with it? Maybe I've told you because I had repeated yes,
Speaker 2: because of Charlie Kirk the post. Yeah right, it's getting
Speaker 2: my hate mouth, so I thought it was only fair
Speaker 2: to distinguish myself from the right.
Speaker 1: And Yeah, although the names are the same, you're pretty
Speaker 1: different people, both in appearance bearing views what you write it.
Speaker 1: But you know you can see how it happens. There
Speaker 1: is actually a Canadian born novelist named Stephen Hayward, exact
Speaker 1: same spelling as mine. I don't think he's very political.
Speaker 1: I haven't read any of his novels, but he happened
Speaker 1: to be down at I think he's still teaching at
Speaker 1: Colorado College in Colorado Springs, and he was there. It
Speaker 1: was that year that I came to the University of
Speaker 1: Colorado at Boulder, and we would get confused once in
Speaker 1: a while, which I thought was the poor man, because
Speaker 1: I was the controversial one and he's just teaching English literature. Yes,
Speaker 1: when I used to write a lot of cover stories
Speaker 1: for the Weekly Standard, I would get fan mail saying,
Speaker 1: what of a great article? And my wife loves you
Speaker 1: because she says you're the cute one on Fox News.
Speaker 1: And then we have gotten each other's email a couple
Speaker 1: of times when people have both of them, and including
Speaker 1: one day my wife missus twenty years ago when our
Speaker 1: kids were small and we were both working in downtown Washington,
Speaker 1: and my wife sends out an email saying, Hey, can
Speaker 1: you pick up the kids from preschool? But she sent
Speaker 1: it to Steve Hayes.
Speaker 2: Did he do it?
Speaker 1: No? He wrote back and said, happy to, but you
Speaker 1: want to check with your husband first. So we've had
Speaker 1: fun with that over the years. Yeah, that does happen.
Speaker 1: So all right, gosh, it's on that happy note, which
Speaker 1: I wish we could continue. What a what a horrible week?
Speaker 1: I mean, this shooting in Australia, this Brown University shooting
Speaker 1: which apparently involves also apparently it's now i think confirmed,
Speaker 1: the same person shot the scientist at MIT, making this
Speaker 1: quite different from your normal campus mass shooting event. So
Speaker 1: it was still a lot to learn about that, and
Speaker 1: then the terrible Rob Ryer story. But I think let's
Speaker 1: maybe spend a minute or two on Australia. You know,
Speaker 1: the Muslim angle, of course is well known and well
Speaker 1: talked about. But Charlie, especially with you being the Second
Speaker 1: Amendment advocate, liberals are being notably silent on the fact that,
Speaker 1: as they've been telling us for twenty years, there are
Speaker 1: no guns in Australia. How could this possibly happen?
Speaker 2: Take it away, Well, there are guns in Australia. There
Speaker 2: are four million or so guns, and there are more
Speaker 2: guns now than there were twenty five years ago when
Speaker 2: the last vestiges of the reforms of nineteen ninety six
Speaker 2: went into force. What Australia did in the nineteen nineties
Speaker 2: after the Port Arthur massacre was past. All of the
Speaker 2: gun control provisions that American gun controllers would like here,
Speaker 2: including confiscation and the melting down of guns and bands
Speaker 2: on most modern weapons, but there are still guns in Australia.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I'm of the view that thenineteen ninety six law didn't
Speaker 2: do a great deal. I think it may have very
Speaker 2: slightly reduced the suicide rate. Suicide rates are tricky and
Speaker 2: nevertheless interesting, because you will find nations where there are
Speaker 2: no guns really at all. South Korea and Japan have
Speaker 2: much higher suicide rates than say the United States, because
Speaker 2: we get substitution effects. But I think in Australia it
Speaker 2: may be fair to say that their suicide rate was
Speaker 2: slightly diminished out last thing on that I don't think,
Speaker 2: and this is the American in me. I don't think
Speaker 2: that you should pass gun control laws to protect people
Speaker 2: from themselves. Maybe that makes me a libertarian, but I
Speaker 2: think the case is much stronger, although I'm against it,
Speaker 2: when you're arguing that you should protect people against others. Anyhow,
Speaker 2: Australia did that in nineteen ninety six. I don't think
Speaker 2: it did very much. What did did not do, clearly
Speaker 2: was make it impossible to stage a massacre because you
Speaker 2: can't stop this. You can't stop it with guns, in
Speaker 2: my view, but really you can't stop it at all.
Speaker 2: And if you look around the world, when people who
Speaker 2: wish to harm large numbers of innocent people cannot get
Speaker 2: hold of guns, which they usually can. There are mass
Speaker 2: shootings in Sweden and Germany and France and the Netherlands
Speaker 2: and so forth. But when they can't get hold of firearms,
Speaker 2: they get hold of cars or trucks or knives or bombs.
Speaker 2: And I'm something of a fatalist on this, and so
Speaker 2: I don't turn this answer into a two hour disquisition.
Speaker 2: Let me put it like this. My view, basically, Steve,
Speaker 2: is that it is possible, with good policing and a
Speaker 2: lot of thought and effort and sometimes money, to reduce
Speaker 2: daily crime. I think we've learned this around the country
Speaker 2: over the years. If you know where the crime is committed,
Speaker 2: if you know who's committing it and why, then you
Speaker 2: can reduce it. I don't think it is easy to
Speaker 2: reduce mass killings mass shootings. Once the guns are in
Speaker 2: a country, somebody who wants to do a lot of
Speaker 2: harm at a random point that could never be predicted
Speaker 2: is most likely going to be able to do it.
Speaker 2: And as such, the fact that Australia has responded to
Speaker 2: this by saying, well, now will gun control even harder
Speaker 2: is to me ridiculous and an application of responsibility. And
Speaker 2: if you look at the one big thing that they're
Speaker 2: trying to do, which many gun controllers in America would
Speaker 2: like to do as well, it's reduced the number of
Speaker 2: guns each person or household is allowed to own. But
Speaker 2: what's that going to do? I only have two hands, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not being facetious. If you are not
Speaker 2: of my view, if you don't have the Second Amendment,
Speaker 2: if you don't have an American conception of individual rights,
Speaker 2: what's that supposed to do. These guys needed one gun each.
Speaker 2: They did have more, but I think they had a couple.
Speaker 2: They wouldn't have cared about that law, and they wanted
Speaker 2: to kill Jewish people on Hanika. That the idea that
Speaker 2: you're going to stop this by slightly tweaking and already
Speaker 2: draconian set of laws is preposterous. So I think this
Speaker 2: is a great example of the limitations of gun control
Speaker 2: and the magical thinking that always goes into the claim
Speaker 2: that if we just tweaked it a little bit more,
Speaker 2: then we could stop this, or that you can't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the fact that normally you would have expected
Speaker 1: this kind of shooting to have been at a mosque
Speaker 1: or some Jewish community center or something. The fact that
Speaker 1: it was done out of Bondi Beach, which I've visited
Speaker 1: many decades ago, is I think, you know, unexpected, you're
Speaker 1: not going to police everywhere. The other thing, just briefly
Speaker 1: about suicide rates. That long story while I'll skip over it,
Speaker 1: but maybe fifteen twenty years ago, I was trying to
Speaker 1: do a deep dive into American suicide rates by method
Speaker 1: and so forth, and what I discovered was, are the
Speaker 1: quality of our suicide statistics are very poor For a
Speaker 1: simple reason. A lot of times suicide invalidates certain life
Speaker 1: insurance contracts, so you want to not have that be
Speaker 1: listed as the cause of death on a death certificate
Speaker 1: or a corner's report. Other times there's families who want
Speaker 1: to not have an acknowledge that somebody has overdosed deliberately.
Speaker 1: And whereas a gun suicide that you can't I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe you could call it accidental, but I think when
Speaker 1: the police and corner investigate, they can't fudge that too far.
Speaker 1: And so our statistics are skewed and incomplete. And but
Speaker 1: in the case of where like Australia. Our gun suicides
Speaker 1: are harder, going to be harder to disguise or classify
Speaker 1: something else than maybe the statistical difference is significant and measurable.
Speaker 1: I don't know the other. Uh. I don't want to
Speaker 1: make a shooting comparison. But Susie Wiles shot herself on
Speaker 1: the foot this week, or so we're told with her
Speaker 1: Vanity Fair interview where she made all these comments about
Speaker 1: Trump has a alcoholic personality. Russ VOIGHTDT is a right
Speaker 1: wing zealot Dvance believe in conspiracy theories and so forth,
Speaker 1: and they're all saying it's taken out of context. I
Speaker 1: have some theories about how this happened. Actually it's not
Speaker 1: a theory. I'm surprised that someone as shrewd and effective
Speaker 1: as Susie Wiles would have thought she would be treated
Speaker 1: fairly by Vanity Fair. And I mean I've been around
Speaker 1: long enough to know and to study this also that
Speaker 1: what I call ventriloquist journalism runs rampant right and it's
Speaker 1: the social skill. I mean, these elite media reporters Eric
Speaker 1: Wemple in this case, But sixty minutes is the best
Speaker 1: example I know. A couple of people have been on
Speaker 1: sixty minutes, and Mike Wallace took him to the cleaners.
Speaker 1: And they say, the way he does it is you
Speaker 1: get relaxed with him. He makes you think he's your
Speaker 1: best buddy, and then you start saying things you shouldn't say.
Speaker 1: And there have been so many examples us over the years,
Speaker 1: going back to in my recollection David Stockman in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one to The Atlantic, to a very left wing
Speaker 1: reporter named William Grider, who took things out of context,
Speaker 1: got Stockman to drop his guard and say embarrassing things
Speaker 1: about Reaganomics, and why else appears to have done the
Speaker 1: same thing. And I'm just astounded that an administration who,
Speaker 1: more than any other is self conscious that the major
Speaker 1: media is their enemy, would have fallen under this trap.
Speaker 2: That's exactly my takeaway. I do think some of the
Speaker 2: things she said are impossible to imagine in context being
Speaker 2: any better than they were out of context. And for example,
Speaker 2: saying that Elon Muskus a ketamine addict, unless she said
Speaker 2: and that's a good thing at the end, then you
Speaker 2: do wonder. But I can see some of it. What
Speaker 2: shocks me, like you, is that she thought that the
Speaker 2: inflammatory parts of what she was saying, We're not going
Speaker 2: to be lifted out and either printed in isolation or
Speaker 2: at least emblazoned on the front cover. And I say
Speaker 2: that because Susie was is actually a fixture of where
Speaker 2: I live, Jacksonville. She moved to Jacksonville in the eighties
Speaker 2: and she's run a bunch of businesses here. Some of
Speaker 2: them were PR firms. One of them she ran with
Speaker 2: Tony Biselli, who was Jacksonville Jaguars Hall of Famer, played
Speaker 2: in the NFL for eight or nine seasons. So I
Speaker 2: am aware how solid her reputation is and how many
Speaker 2: times she's been around the block. She's not twenty five.
Speaker 2: So when I saw this and then the inevitable tweet
Speaker 2: that said, well this is outrageous media bias and I
Speaker 2: was taken out of context, I wanted the same, How
Speaker 2: could this possibly have happened? I will say that I
Speaker 2: think she might get away with it because I think
Speaker 2: Trump will recognize the instinct. The only thing she said
Speaker 2: about Trump was that he has the personality of an alcoholic,
Speaker 2: which is something that Trump has set himself on stage
Speaker 2: over and over again. And he has a very funny
Speaker 2: line about this where he says, can you imagine what
Speaker 2: I'd be like if I drank so because he didn't
Speaker 2: go after him, sorry, because she didn't go after him,
Speaker 2: and because she behaved in the way he does, which
Speaker 2: is just to let it all out. I wonder if
Speaker 2: he will actually recognize the mode and say, all right,
Speaker 2: it's fine.
Speaker 1: Well I think he did. I mean I caught secondhand
Speaker 1: or a little clip of him saying, oh, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: an accurate description. And then Jade Vance. I thought it
Speaker 1: was also very clever he said, well, I believe conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories that are true. That he rattled off three or
Speaker 1: four and so sort of. And the calmness of the
Speaker 1: White House reaction I think is kind of curious. I'm
Speaker 1: reluctant to go as far as the saying I wonder
Speaker 1: not that this is on purpose, but they knew it
Speaker 1: was coming. He decided reacting calmly was better than going
Speaker 1: off with a tantrum. The other thing I wonder, though,
Speaker 1: is I mean, I don't know how much intrigued there is.
Speaker 1: Unlike Trump one, nobody has been dismissed yet or fired
Speaker 1: or moved around. And I think Trump has screened more
Speaker 1: carefully for loyalty that's a plus the minus, of course.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, I don't know if you caught this.
Speaker 1: Maybe three weeks ago, there was a very our story
Speaker 1: about Cash Patel in the New York Post by Carol Markowitz,
Speaker 1: who's otherwise a very pro Trump columnist and knowing nothing
Speaker 1: and not having any inside information. I did wonder, I
Speaker 1: wonder if that's a planted story. You know, you're hearing
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff, a lot of criticism of Patel
Speaker 1: from other Republicans and people in Washington, and Dan Bongino
Speaker 1: this week announced that he's leaving as the number two
Speaker 1: person at the FBI. I wonder if the Markowitz story
Speaker 1: was planted, and whether some of what Susie Wilds was
Speaker 1: saying to the reporter is also playing the Washington game
Speaker 1: of getting some damaging stories circulating in the press to
Speaker 1: ease some people out. I don't know if that's just
Speaker 1: pure speculation on my part, but that's interesting.
Speaker 2: I mean, if one assumes that Trump is unhappy with
Speaker 2: Pam Bondy, which probably should be, that was the yeah,
Speaker 2: guess criticism that she could have leveled. She essentially said, look,
Speaker 2: she blew this big task. There's no getting around that. Again,
Speaker 2: that's not taking out of context. That's an attack. So
Speaker 2: perhaps you're right either way. I think there was some
Speaker 2: damage done there. I don't think the whole thing was
Speaker 2: a setup. I don't think this is all seventy two
Speaker 2: d chests. So I'm surprised that it happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it seemed surprised me. That's right, because she seems,
Speaker 1: for one thing, she doesn't do interviews, she doesn't go
Speaker 1: onto Sunday talk shows like most chiefs of staff do,
Speaker 1: and seems to run a pretty tight ship there except
Speaker 1: for here's an exit question. We'll get out quickly here.
Speaker 1: But so you know, Trump had that really appalling tweet
Speaker 1: about Rob Reiner. One thing I've noticed about Trump's tweets. Oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, you know, the deal has been as
Speaker 1: we've heard, I'm happy with mean tweets if I get
Speaker 1: three dollars gallon gasoline, okay, But this ABU is the privilege.
Speaker 1: But one thing about his tweets so far in Trump
Speaker 1: two is that there's still very much in character as
Speaker 1: we know in but they seem to be proof read.
Speaker 1: I'll put it that way right now.
Speaker 3: He dictates is that it okay seeing the video of him,
Speaker 3: I think it was from election night where he sits
Speaker 3: and there's a young lady in this video and he
Speaker 3: dictates it and then he says, read it back to me,
Speaker 3: and then he says.
Speaker 1: Send, I didn't know that. Actually, Well that explains a lot,
Speaker 1: but they seem a little different than Trump one, where
Speaker 1: you know, we haven't had kofifi yet, which my favorite. Right, Okay,
Speaker 1: well we'll leave that for now, and let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break for some sponsor messages, and then we will
Speaker 1: come back with our special guests. And now we welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. Scott Jennings the senior political correspondent for CNN,
Speaker 1: America's favorite pundit, as a lot of people say of him.
Speaker 1: He's been a long time political consultant, a lecture at
Speaker 1: Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and just announced the week
Speaker 1: the replacement on Salem Radio on weekdays for Charlie Kirk's
Speaker 1: old radio spot. He's also the author and the book
Speaker 1: We Want to Talk About Today, A Revolution of Common Sense,
Speaker 1: How Donald Trump stormed Washington and fought for Western civilization.
Speaker 4: Scott, welcome. It's a real pleasure to have you join us.
Speaker 4: Thank you, and good to be with you all. Honored
Speaker 4: by the invitation. I'm a regular listener, longtime listener, first
Speaker 4: time caller.
Speaker 1: As they so, revolution of common sense, and you know,
Speaker 1: I've read enough to know and listened to you enough
Speaker 1: to know that you point out that Trump differs from
Speaker 1: the usual even conservative politician in Washington. He doesn't use
Speaker 1: the normal Beltway vocabulary. He's the major figure at The
Speaker 1: other person who's like this to some extent was Ronald Reagan,
Speaker 1: but Trump even more so. So you know, he won't
Speaker 1: call them undocumented immigrants or undocumented aliens, right, which is
Speaker 1: the politically correct term. They've been forced down on float
Speaker 1: for thirty years, and it's not accurate, right. You know,
Speaker 1: he ridicules paper straws, you know, a man in women's bathrooms,
Speaker 1: a so forth and so. Anyway, So when did you
Speaker 1: first pick up on that? I know that you've confessed
Speaker 1: to being sort of a late convert to Trump, or
Speaker 1: maybe medium convert to Trump, But when did you first
Speaker 1: pick up on the fact that that common sense turned
Speaker 1: out to be Trump's superpower?
Speaker 4: Well, I was thinking about writing a book after the election.
Speaker 5: I'd never written one before.
Speaker 4: But I was sitting on the set at CNN on
Speaker 4: inauguration day and Trump uses this phrase a revolution of
Speaker 4: common sense and his inaugural address, and I turned to
Speaker 4: Van Jones and I said, that'll make a great book title.
Speaker 4: And a couple of weeks went by and I thought about,
Speaker 4: how would I do this, and I went to pitch
Speaker 4: him on it in the Oval office in early February.
Speaker 4: But it really all started with hearing him phrase his
Speaker 4: own political branding that way. Later in the book, I
Speaker 4: go to Michigan with him on his one hundredth day
Speaker 4: in office, and he says to the crowd in Warren, Michigan,
Speaker 4: whether you're right or your left, or whatever the hell
Speaker 4: you are.
Speaker 5: It's just common sense.
Speaker 4: And so my interactions with him, my observations with him,
Speaker 4: is that that's how he thinks of himself. I asked
Speaker 4: him once, actually, do you consider yourself more of a
Speaker 4: conservative or more of a common sense person? And he said, well,
Speaker 4: most of the time conservative is common sense. But he
Speaker 4: left himself a little wiggle room, you know, But that's
Speaker 4: how he portrays it. I told him, I thought one
Speaker 4: hundred of the usual suspects would come along and write
Speaker 4: books crapping on him for the first one hundred days.
Speaker 4: What he intended to do, and then somebody who has
Speaker 4: voted for you three times, likes you and wants you
Speaker 4: to succeed, ought to get a crack at it, and
Speaker 4: he eventually agreed.
Speaker 1: And here's the book. Yeah, so you're from western Kentucky.
Speaker 1: I think that's interesting because while all the political commentators
Speaker 1: have tended to look at how Trump broke the blue
Speaker 1: Wall states in twenty sixteen and again in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: you know, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and so forth, but a
Speaker 1: few astute people I know said, you know, the really
Speaker 1: interesting state to look at for Trump is Kentucky. Not
Speaker 1: because it was a state that flipped, but maybe you
Speaker 1: know Elliott County, which I think is out in eastern Kentucky.
Speaker 1: It is so Elliott County is a sign a political scientist,
Speaker 1: so I know these weird things. Elliott County has been
Speaker 1: deep Democrat forever. It did not even vote for Ronald
Speaker 1: Reagan in the nineteen eighty four landslide election. Year it
Speaker 1: went heavily for Barack Obama twice, and then in twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen it went heavily for Donald Trump. That tells you
Speaker 1: something about Trump Democrats. We used to talk about Reagan Democrats,
Speaker 1: but the Trump Democrats story in places like Elliott County, Kentucky,
Speaker 1: and I think elsewhere you mentioned your own father is
Speaker 1: an old Clinton loving Democrat who came around to Trump.
Speaker 1: So I mean, isn't your state your home state, in
Speaker 1: some ways the most emblematic state for what Trump did.
Speaker 4: Yes, I mean we had been trending somewhat read since
Speaker 4: the Obama years, but Trump put it on blast. In fact,
Speaker 4: Kentucky was the last state that had a Democrat at
Speaker 4: state legislature in the South until twenty sixteen, the night
Speaker 4: Trump was elected, we finally flipped the state House in Kentucky.
Speaker 4: We'd had the Senate for a number of years, and
Speaker 4: so it had been somewhat resistant to the movement towards
Speaker 4: the Republican Party in the way that the rest of
Speaker 4: the South had moved, particularly at the local level. And
Speaker 4: we still have a Democratic governor today, although I think
Speaker 4: that's going to change in twenty twenty seven. But yes,
Speaker 4: there are a lot of people in Kentucky, in east
Speaker 4: and West who had been a career and lifelong Democrats.
Speaker 4: Their parents and grandparents were Democrats who referenced my father,
Speaker 4: Jeff Jennings from Dawson Springs, Kentucky.
Speaker 5: Where I grew up.
Speaker 4: I mean, these are the biggest Clinton people I knew
Speaker 4: when I was growing up. They were in unions, they
Speaker 4: loved Bill Clinton. They were Democrats. My grandfather was a
Speaker 4: New Deal Democrat. I was a recial Republican from the
Speaker 4: time I was eighteen. I came of age during the
Speaker 4: gingrich Republican Revolution of the nineties, and so I felt
Speaker 4: kindly towards that and it always appealed to me. But
Speaker 4: you know, I grew up around all these Democrats. But
Speaker 4: my dad was the first guy to tell me Donald
Speaker 4: Trump was going to be the next president. And I,
Speaker 4: of course, as a trained political operative, told him he
Speaker 4: was full of crap. But it was not the first
Speaker 4: time in my life that my father was right and
Speaker 4: I was wrong. It sure it won't be the last,
Speaker 4: but you know, eventually, throughout the course of writing the book,
Speaker 4: the President gave me his hat and signed it for
Speaker 4: my dad, acknowledging that he, in fact, was the first
Speaker 4: Trump supporter in western Kentucky.
Speaker 1: So I want to ask you one more question before
Speaker 1: I turned you over to Charlie Cook, and it's how
Speaker 1: you do your show prep for CNN. And but the
Speaker 1: reason I ask it that way is every time I
Speaker 1: see you or see the clips that get circulated on
Speaker 1: social media, you're landing a knockout blow. I mean, if
Speaker 1: this surprise fight, you be landing a knockout blow in
Speaker 1: every single round. And so I'm wondering, first two part question,
Speaker 1: what show prep do you do to be so good
Speaker 1: at it? Maybe you're just a natural like Rocky Balboa.
Speaker 1: But also at the same time, how do you keep
Speaker 1: your equanimity? You're bearing, you never lose your temper, you
Speaker 1: never lose your cool. You're always calm, and I think
Speaker 1: that adds forced to when you lay a knockout blow
Speaker 1: on somebody. I mean, do you do breathing exercises? Are
Speaker 1: you taking some kind of experimental zen drugs? Tell me
Speaker 1: how you go about your role on CNN? Sure?
Speaker 5: Well thanks.
Speaker 4: First of all, I think the debating show has been
Speaker 4: a great thing for CNN. They used to have debates
Speaker 4: and then they went away from it, and now it's
Speaker 4: like the only show like it on TV. I think
Speaker 4: the country is hungry for debates. I think they want debates.
Speaker 4: Everywhere I go, I hear two things. I love you
Speaker 4: and I love the debates. I don't care for you,
Speaker 4: but I love the debates. The commonality is the debate,
Speaker 4: so it's a good thing. I ingest a huge amount
Speaker 4: of information all day every day. I'm reading virtually every
Speaker 4: mainstream source. I'm reading a lot of conservative sources. I'm
Speaker 4: reading a lot of independent sources. I'm watching things happening
Speaker 4: in real time. I spend a huge amount of time
Speaker 4: on the phone with policymakers. If I don't understand something,
Speaker 4: I'll pick up the phone and call the people involved
Speaker 4: and have them walk me through it. I'm also ingesting
Speaker 4: a lot of things on the left to try to
Speaker 4: predict what vectors they're going to take in the evening.
Speaker 4: Thing I've learned about the left is that they're very
Speaker 4: authoritarian in their communications. Once the argument vectors go out,
Speaker 4: once the debating points go out, they all tend to
Speaker 4: adhere to it. So if I can learn what that
Speaker 4: is during the day, I'm pretty sure I'm going to
Speaker 4: hear it at night. And what you see out there
Speaker 4: is really authentic. I don't have a script. There's nothing
Speaker 4: on the teleprompter for me. I don't know what Abby
Speaker 4: is going to say. I don't know what clips she's
Speaker 4: going to play. So what you're getting is my ingesting
Speaker 4: and analyzing the news all day and an authentic reaction
Speaker 4: to what I'm hearing. You know, sometimes I hear crazy things.
Speaker 4: A lot of nights I hear crazy things. But what
Speaker 4: you're getting my authentic reaction and I and just to
Speaker 4: address the issue of how do you stay calm, Preparation
Speaker 4: breeds confidence, And if I've learned anything from Ronald Reagan,
Speaker 4: it is that we will win more arguments by being
Speaker 4: happy warriors than by being angry. And virtually everyone I'm
Speaker 4: debating against is in a constant state of being in rage,
Speaker 4: which I still don't understand why they're so enraged about
Speaker 4: being America, but they are and I'm not, and I'm
Speaker 4: happy to be here.
Speaker 2: Hi, Scott Charles Cook care. So the book is about
Speaker 2: Trump fighting for Western civilization as much as common sense.
Speaker 2: What does that mean? And why did it take him?
Speaker 2: What was happening before?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 4: I put that in the title because over the course
Speaker 4: of the election and over the course of writing the book,
Speaker 4: it sort of really hit home for me that we're
Speaker 4: not fighting about day to day politics anymore. We're not
Speaker 4: arguing about you know, marginal tax rates and this and that,
Speaker 4: and we are, but there's something bigger going on, the
Speaker 4: cultural attacks on our Judeo Christian heritage, the mass migration
Speaker 4: crisis that's going on that has overrun Europe and threatens
Speaker 4: to overrun the United States.
Speaker 5: And so I just I started to see.
Speaker 4: Politics through a much larger lens than just Okay, we'll
Speaker 4: be in and then they'll be in, and we'll be
Speaker 4: in and they'll be in.
Speaker 5: There's something bigger going on in the world.
Speaker 4: And when I interviewed Elon Musk about this for the book,
Speaker 4: he he laid out his views. That's why he got
Speaker 4: involved in politics. For Trump, he thought something larger was
Speaker 4: at play. He thinks our fiscal situation, the devaluation of
Speaker 4: our currency, the mass migration crisis, the low birth rate crisis,
Speaker 4: and he thinks all of this is conspiring to threaten
Speaker 4: America but threaten the future of the West. And so
Speaker 4: for Trump, I don't know whether he knew he was
Speaker 4: signing up for it or not, but whether he likes
Speaker 4: it or not, he is on the wall of defending
Speaker 4: the West against a lot of crazy things, and whether
Speaker 4: it's very real things like October the seventh, which I
Speaker 4: think has been the Central front, military front and the
Speaker 4: fight for the West over the last couple of years,
Speaker 4: or cultural things like the transgender ideology or the climate
Speaker 4: people or whatever. There's a lot of things out there
Speaker 4: converging in a very aggressive way, and he is kind
Speaker 4: of standing up to all of them at the same time.
Speaker 4: And it's sort of the person who's willing to say
Speaker 4: what we're all thinking. But a lot of people have
Speaker 4: been afraid say when Democrats are in power, because they'll
Speaker 4: come after you.
Speaker 5: And so for a lot of reasons, we had to
Speaker 5: have him back.
Speaker 4: If Kamala Harrison won the election, all of these fights
Speaker 4: would be lost, all of the wrong.
Speaker 5: People would be encouraged.
Speaker 4: We wouldn't be able to tell the difference between right
Speaker 4: and wrong, and civilization and barbarism. And I think Trump
Speaker 4: for right now is our best bet in the fight
Speaker 4: for the West. We'll have another election in twenty eight
Speaker 4: and hopefully the next people that come along and see
Speaker 4: it the way he does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I want to ask you about that. I
Speaker 2: want to ask you what you think happens next. Obviously,
Speaker 2: there's been a great deal of debate on the right
Speaker 2: in conservatism, in the Republican Party about Trump. I am
Speaker 2: critical of him in many ways. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: things he does and thinks that I don't like, although
Speaker 2: he also does a lot of things that I do like,
Speaker 2: and I think much of his legacy will be positive.
Speaker 2: When we talk about this at National Reviewer on the
Speaker 2: Ricochet podcast, we often bring it into broader ideological fights
Speaker 2: have obtained for years. But Trump also is Suey Gennaris.
Speaker 2: Trump is a rock star. He has been for years.
Speaker 2: It's one of the reasons he won the nomination. He's
Speaker 2: extremely charismatic, he's quite funny. He's larger than life. Even
Speaker 2: when he's being awful. He's interesting. I wonder how much
Speaker 2: of the Trump phenomenon do you think is Trump and
Speaker 2: how much is it a reflection of real changes in
Speaker 2: the way that Republican voters and Americans generally started to
Speaker 2: think ten years ago.
Speaker 4: Great question, and I should have said in my answer
Speaker 4: about Shoprev. One of the first things I do every
Speaker 4: day is see what Charles is saying about any particular issue,
Speaker 4: because you and I don't always track, but like ninety
Speaker 4: eight percent of the time I'm tracking, and so your
Speaker 4: your takes and your insights on things are actually quite invaluable.
Speaker 4: Thank you, although we've never met in person, and I
Speaker 4: was wanted to do this because you're You're my hero,
Speaker 4: I am, so I asked him about this once. I
Speaker 4: asked Trump, who who is best prepared to carry on
Speaker 4: your political coalition or your political movement? And he answered
Speaker 4: me for about five minutes and didn't name a single
Speaker 4: name because I think he knows that he's singular and
Speaker 4: his personality, his charisma, the way he does it, his humor,
Speaker 4: he's singular. Now, this is true of a lot of
Speaker 4: two term presidents, and who replaced Obama? Nobody really who
Speaker 4: replaced Bill Clinton? Nobody who replaced Reagan Bush wins the election,
Speaker 4: but then as a one term president. So you know,
Speaker 4: I don't think anybody can replace him in the way
Speaker 4: he does it. So replicating it is impossible. But can
Speaker 4: someone hold it together, add to it, build their own coalition,
Speaker 4: bring new people in. Absolutely the biggest challenge for that
Speaker 4: person is going to be how do you get people
Speaker 4: who have only ever voted for Trump to vote for you?
Speaker 4: When we haven't really fixed this in the Republican Party.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of people who leave the ballot blank.
Speaker 4: I mean, we left like four Senate races on the
Speaker 4: table last year because they vote Trump and then they
Speaker 4: leave the rest of it. That'll be true for any
Speaker 4: other Republican that comes next, who I suspect will be jd.
Speaker 1: Vance.
Speaker 4: I don't have any reason to believe he won't be
Speaker 4: the nominee, and he has pretty good ratings right now,
Speaker 4: and if he and Marco.
Speaker 5: Rubio team up, that would be quite a formidable thing.
Speaker 5: But it still doesn't quite.
Speaker 4: Solve the issue of these people who love Trump, who
Speaker 4: only participate in politics for Trump. You know where do
Speaker 4: they go? Do they come back at all? I mean,
Speaker 4: let's be honest. They vote for Trump because they view
Speaker 4: him as not a politician. He's an outsider, and they
Speaker 4: elected him to smash political institutions and to smash the
Speaker 4: politicians that they hate, to smash the media that they hate.
Speaker 4: In order to keep them in. You would have to
Speaker 4: portray that same kind of attitude. I don't know if
Speaker 4: anybody else can do it. Because of the time that
Speaker 4: Trump came along, he came along against the Clintons. I mean,
Speaker 4: it may be too unique to ever expect anybody to
Speaker 4: do it again.
Speaker 1: Can I put in here, Charlie with a sequel to
Speaker 1: your last question, and it's I mean, that's always the
Speaker 1: succession question is always crucial. You mentioned, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: a student Reagan and you know up with him, and
Speaker 1: never mind how Bush squandered Reagan's legacy. But one of
Speaker 1: the marks of a transformative president is not so much
Speaker 1: what they do to their own party and whether they
Speaker 1: have a succession, but how they transform the other party.
Speaker 1: So even Democrats and took them having to get beaten
Speaker 1: by landslides three times to return to the middle. And
Speaker 1: you may be familiar with this. There's a whole school
Speaker 1: thought among progressives that Bill Clinton sold out to Reaganism.
Speaker 1: And there's a certain way in which is that is true.
Speaker 1: And so as you're watching Democrats right now, you can
Speaker 1: see some smartmans like ruy to Cher who've had on
Speaker 1: this podcast and others saying, boy, Democrats got to dump
Speaker 1: all this identitarianism stuff. They need to embrace the abundance
Speaker 1: agenda and be pro growth like John F. Kennedy. In
Speaker 1: other words, Democrats have to get rid of a lot
Speaker 1: of what cost him the election. Are you seeing any
Speaker 1: signs of that? Instead? It's Trump arrangement syndrome all the
Speaker 1: way down. With maybe the possible exception of your home
Speaker 1: state's governor. So two part question, tell us if you
Speaker 1: want about Kentucky's governor, if you think he is a
Speaker 1: plausible threat to a Trump succession. And then more broadly,
Speaker 1: do you see any signs or what should we watch
Speaker 1: for to see how Trump was going to transform the
Speaker 1: other party?
Speaker 4: The shifting coalitions of the two parties under Trump is fascinating.
Speaker 4: I mean, all the Clinton Democrats from the nineties are
Speaker 4: now Republicans. I mean, like my dad, I mean, and
Speaker 4: we've adopted some of the economic theories is I know,
Speaker 4: you know, And so they've come into the Republican party,
Speaker 4: these working class democrats who liked protectionism, who thought the
Speaker 4: state should be doing more. So they come in for
Speaker 4: economic reasons and for cultural reason. They're not into the
Speaker 4: transgender stuff. You know, they're not into DEI. And so
Speaker 4: they just totally rejected the modern cultural and economic liberalism
Speaker 4: and the attitude of.
Speaker 5: Liberals today because it's not what they grew up with.
Speaker 5: I don't like it.
Speaker 4: And Trump was able to appeal to them and absorb
Speaker 4: some of what they wanted to do.
Speaker 5: Will they ever go back? I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't think they will, because my view is, answer
Speaker 4: your question, the Democrats haven't learned anything. I mean, I
Speaker 4: think they're doubling down on the lurch to the left,
Speaker 4: particularly culturally. That cost them all these people in the
Speaker 4: first place. And look where the energy is. Look who
Speaker 4: they nominated for this house race in Tennessee the other day.
Speaker 4: They found the craziest person they could find videos of
Speaker 4: her on the internet, like running into the Texas Tennessee
Speaker 4: Governor's office, screaming, being dragged out. This sort of performance,
Speaker 4: radical liberalism, that's what they want. They had a guy
Speaker 4: in Texas lined up to run for the Senate. Now
Speaker 4: Jasmine Crockett's going to run him. I bet she wins.
Speaker 4: They have Mondani in New York.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's.
Speaker 4: Pretty apparent that the energy in their party is with
Speaker 4: the radicals, with the liberals, with the anti America crowd,
Speaker 4: with the people who don't believe in Western civilization, frankly,
Speaker 4: and that's.
Speaker 5: Who they're going to continue to nominate.
Speaker 4: It. Maybe what saves the Republicans in the midterms is
Speaker 4: Democrats just can't bring themselves to nominate regular, normal, everyday
Speaker 4: people like where they're headed. To answer your question about
Speaker 4: Andy Basher. I've known him since I was sixteen, were
Speaker 4: the exact same age, and I think.
Speaker 5: He's quite liberal.
Speaker 4: He's more liberal, certainly than he has led on to
Speaker 4: the people of Kentucky. He has saved from his own
Speaker 4: liberalism by the Republican legislature there. We have super majorities
Speaker 4: in both chambers. They don't permit him to do anything crazy.
Speaker 4: But deep down he's quite liberal. Does he have the
Speaker 4: performative piece of it down?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 4: And I think that's where he probably will fall short
Speaker 4: in this Democratic primary. If the party wants you to
Speaker 4: be more performance based, more radically performative, Basher will have
Speaker 4: a hard time replicating them.
Speaker 2: So if you advising the Democrats, who would you tell
Speaker 2: them to pick and what two things would you tell
Speaker 2: them to cut out to have a shot?
Speaker 4: Well, their most popular governor is probably Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's what the polling currently says, and he
Speaker 4: tends to attract some moderate and even Republican support in Pennsylvan,
Speaker 4: a state you have to win with a population that
Speaker 4: if you can win over people there, you can see
Speaker 4: the appeal of it in other swing states. He'll have
Speaker 4: quite a problem because He's Jewish, and the Democratic Party
Speaker 4: has decided that they hate Israel, and by and large
Speaker 4: they're skeptical of the Jewish population in the United States.
Speaker 4: So he's going to have a hard time. But somebody
Speaker 4: like that is probably.
Speaker 1: Their best bet.
Speaker 4: The other way to go is do what the Republicans
Speaker 4: did and just go totally to the outside. I mean,
Speaker 4: after the twenty twelve election, which I worked in, the
Speaker 4: party was so depressed and demoralized. It decided that there
Speaker 4: isn't a single electric Republican in the country that we trust.
Speaker 4: We're going to go find somebody else. And that would
Speaker 4: be the other way for the Democrats to do. It
Speaker 4: find a charismatic outsider who's a little bit ideologically flexible
Speaker 4: and gives them that gives them the flexibility to keep.
Speaker 5: Some things throw things out.
Speaker 4: I'm not a politician, you know, I don't have to
Speaker 4: adhere to these ideological guardrails. That might be the other
Speaker 4: way to go. And they have plenty of celebrities to
Speaker 4: choose from. If any of them are willing to get
Speaker 4: in to it. I suspect they might have some room
Speaker 4: to run in their primary. What would I get rid
Speaker 4: of I would immediately get rid of the wrong side
Speaker 4: of all these eighty twenty issues. Jettison the transgender stuff,
Speaker 4: jettison the DEI stuff, jettison the condescending attitude towards men.
Speaker 4: In the Quinnipiac poll this week, they have a fifteen
Speaker 4: percent approval rating among men, fifteen They are down to friends, family,
Speaker 4: health insurance executives, illegal aliens, and maybe some transgenders. And
Speaker 4: that's what they're down to right now, eighteen percent overall,
Speaker 4: fifteen percent among men. You can't win that way, and
Speaker 4: I wouldn't advise them to keep going down this path.
Speaker 5: I mean, that's what they're doing now. But it's a
Speaker 5: terrible dead end.
Speaker 2: And what about on the right, not who would we choose?
Speaker 2: We've covered that, but do Republicans or does Trump himself
Speaker 2: do things that you think should be walked back or
Speaker 2: cut out completely lest it damage him ahead of the
Speaker 2: midterms and the party in twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 4: Well, his communications attitude sometimes interrupts better stories that he'd
Speaker 4: rather be telling. I mean, the Reiner comment this week
Speaker 4: is a case in point. I don't think he should
Speaker 4: have done that, and it took focus off of other
Speaker 4: things he wanted to be talking about. For twenty four hours.
Speaker 4: This happens over time. You're never going to get him
Speaker 4: to stop. And that's who he is. And you know, look,
Speaker 4: I voted for him three times. I've learned to accept
Speaker 4: it for what it is and for who he is,
Speaker 4: and it's part of his ethos. It's unnecessary I think
Speaker 4: for winning in the future. From a policy perspective, the
Speaker 4: next person, if it's Jade Vance, is going to have
Speaker 4: to He'll be in an interesting position because he'll be
Speaker 4: defending the Trump legacy and.
Speaker 5: All the good and whatever the voters think is good
Speaker 5: or whatever they think is bad.
Speaker 4: But he'll also be trying to portray his own platform,
Speaker 4: which I actually think is somewhat different than Trump. I
Speaker 4: think he's got different views on foreign policy. I think
Speaker 4: he's got different views in some ways on economics. And
Speaker 4: so while defending one legacy and promoting your own agenda,
Speaker 4: it's a tricky thing. But you know, my general view
Speaker 4: is is that the next person should not try to
Speaker 4: replicate Trump's attitude that sometimes interrupts, you know, what he
Speaker 4: wants to be the message of the day. You shouldn't
Speaker 4: think that you have to do that because it won't
Speaker 4: be authentic to you and no one will think that
Speaker 4: it is.
Speaker 5: And it'll get you off track.
Speaker 4: And so I think it's fine to let Trump do
Speaker 4: it because that's who Trump is. But to try to
Speaker 4: replicate that, or to think that you have to replicate.
Speaker 1: That in the future, would be a mistake.
Speaker 2: Steve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I'm gonna go back to the question that
Speaker 1: Charles asked you about, and it's in your title. One
Speaker 1: of the things I find so unique about your book
Speaker 1: is in contrast to all the other books, let me
Speaker 1: put it that way. There's so many books out there,
Speaker 1: a lot of them very good about how Trump has
Speaker 1: captured the populace turn recognizing things that many Republicans didn't
Speaker 1: recognize going on in the country, and lots of good
Speaker 1: date about that and all the rest. But you've connected
Speaker 1: it to common sense. But then the other side of
Speaker 1: it is, I'm really glad you connected the question of
Speaker 1: the survival of Western civilization. And here's the part I
Speaker 1: still have a hard time trying to understand or convey
Speaker 1: to people. I think you're absolutely right about that. I
Speaker 1: think he is the champion of Western civilization, and the
Speaker 1: fact that he's so popular overseas with other populist parties
Speaker 1: other people in Europe. I was in Dublin, Ireland last
Speaker 1: June when there was a massive protests from the populace
Speaker 1: there against what's the Irish government governing miserably, especially on
Speaker 1: the immigration question. And I took lots of pictures of
Speaker 1: all people carrying God blessed Donald Trump signs in Dublin, Ireland, right,
Speaker 1: And we know that in the continent too. But here's
Speaker 1: what sort of odd is when I think of the
Speaker 1: and maybe it's because I have a PhD. And that's
Speaker 1: my handicap, but I think of the champions of Western
Speaker 1: civilization that we love in the modern era. And of course,
Speaker 1: you know Churchill comes to mind, Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy,
Speaker 1: Pat moynihan, for example, and you know they all spoke
Speaker 1: in their elegant, highly grounded rhetoric with you know, classical
Speaker 1: references and all the rest. And Trump is not like
Speaker 1: that rhetorically at all, except once in a while. I know,
Speaker 1: as speechwriters are very good either friends of mine, some
Speaker 1: of them, and they write very good speeches. And he'll
Speaker 1: sometimes will strike those notes in the text. Great, that's wonderful,
Speaker 1: but it's not his natural not his natural rhetorical style,
Speaker 1: and yet there he is and is that instinct. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you talked to him about that in
Speaker 1: more detail than just the headline in your book. That's
Speaker 1: sort of a rambling question. But this, to me is
Speaker 1: the most interesting aspect of Trump.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't think he thinks of it the way
Speaker 4: that I do, or maybe the way that you all do,
Speaker 4: because he's very.
Speaker 1: In the moment.
Speaker 5: He's a counterpuncher.
Speaker 1: He's dealing with as.
Speaker 5: They him in the moment.
Speaker 4: I tend to think of this over time, and if
Speaker 4: we make mistakes today, over time, what will those mistakes
Speaker 4: due to us? But I tend to find that when
Speaker 4: it comes to these issues, he almost always makes the
Speaker 4: right decision. Even though he has people in his coalition
Speaker 4: or that claim to be in his coalition that have
Speaker 4: constantly tried to ascribe positions to him that he does
Speaker 4: not have but they want him to have, he tends
Speaker 4: to shake it off and resist it, particularly on foreign affairs.
Speaker 4: I mean, there's all sorts of isolationists out there that
Speaker 4: have forever wanted him to be one of them.
Speaker 5: He's not.
Speaker 4: He's always supported American engagement when it was smart. He's
Speaker 4: not an adventurist, but he has not shied away from
Speaker 4: an American engagement. And look what's happened. You know, we
Speaker 4: took out Solomoni in Iran in his first term. We
Speaker 4: fired cruise missiles into Syria. We got the living hostages
Speaker 4: home from Gaza. He has solved some of these conflicts
Speaker 4: around the world. We've got the Venezuela surrounded by the
Speaker 4: US Navy. I mean, he's obviously for American engagement, even
Speaker 4: though a lot of people have been hanging on him
Speaker 4: to change his views on that or or to fall
Speaker 4: in line with their views. I think those things are
Speaker 4: ultimately good for protection of the West. It's certainly good
Speaker 4: for the protection of the Western hemisphere. But you know,
Speaker 4: an engaged America, a strong American president has most of
Speaker 4: the time been pretty good for the world. And I
Speaker 4: think Trump has shown us that. I do think next
Speaker 4: time round there's going to be another attempt by the
Speaker 4: isolationists who believe that American engagement in the world is
Speaker 4: bad or somehow bad for us as Americans. I think
Speaker 4: they're going to push to make that a central part
Speaker 4: of the Republican platform, and I think we ought to
Speaker 4: reject that. I think we ought to follow Donald Trump's lead.
Speaker 4: You don't have to rhetorically be into this all the time,
Speaker 4: but as a matter of action, if you make the
Speaker 4: right decision about smart American engagement, you can make a
Speaker 4: very positive difference. I mean, I think a big debate
Speaker 4: in twenty eight is what is the Trump legacy on
Speaker 4: foreign affairs.
Speaker 5: It's going to look pretty darn good.
Speaker 4: And I don't really want to have a campaign in
Speaker 4: twenty eight where people where both parties are arguing that
Speaker 4: somehow Trump way of doing it over two terms was incorrect.
Speaker 4: I think it's far superior to what the famously indecisive
Speaker 4: and wee Joe Biden was doing, far superior to what
Speaker 4: Obama did, And I'd rather do it the Trump way
Speaker 4: than the way that they did it. I just I
Speaker 4: don't want to see this lurch to the isolationist take
Speaker 4: hold of the republic platform.
Speaker 1: So I have one last question for you before we
Speaker 1: let you begin your show prep for today. It's a
Speaker 1: bit of a delicate one and it concerns your friend
Speaker 1: and I think at one time former employer Mitch McConnell
Speaker 1: from your home state. And first of all, I am
Speaker 1: not one of the naysayers of Mitch McConnell. I think
Speaker 1: he's been the greatest Senate majority leader since Lyndon Johnson
Speaker 1: in the fifties. So I don't talk smack about him
Speaker 1: like a lot of people do. That said, I don't
Speaker 1: think it's a secret that he hasn't been on the
Speaker 1: best of terms or had the best regard for Trump.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you can. Maybe it's personal,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to have you trying disclose confidences,
Speaker 1: but I wonder if you might say something about that,
Speaker 1: and whether partly it's it's an institutional thing, I mean,
Speaker 1: among other of McConnell's virtues as a respector of the
Speaker 1: separation of powers and the prerogatives of the Senate, which Trump,
Speaker 1: so to say, is not always so a cognizant of right.
Speaker 1: So I don't say a little bit about that obviously
Speaker 1: difficult relationship.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're not golfing buddies, that's right, and that's and look,
Speaker 4: by the way, that's fine. I don't need all my
Speaker 4: Republicans and all my Conservatives to be hanging out every weekend.
Speaker 4: What I need them to do is to do things
Speaker 4: that we want them to do, like cut my taxes,
Speaker 4: which they did, and then they made that permanent. I
Speaker 4: need them to make the Supreme Court conservative, which.
Speaker 5: They did together.
Speaker 4: I mean, these two guys, whether they like it or not,
Speaker 4: are going to be linked in history by saving the
Speaker 4: Supreme Court from the liberals and changing it for a generation.
Speaker 4: That's a great thing. They've worked together on other issues.
Speaker 4: Sometimes they're at odds with each other. I suspect McConnell
Speaker 4: doesn't agree with Trump, for instance.
Speaker 1: About the filibuster.
Speaker 4: In fact, I know he doesn't. But on the big
Speaker 4: ticket issues of our day, let our taxes go down?
Speaker 4: Did we appoint conservatives to the judiciary? Did we save
Speaker 4: the Supreme Court? Absolutely? And so I got Look, I've
Speaker 4: happily voted for both of them every.
Speaker 5: Time they've been on the ballot in my adult life, and.
Speaker 4: So have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of other Kentuckians.
Speaker 4: And so you know, I don't need them to be
Speaker 4: best friends. They're never going to be best friends.
Speaker 5: And that's okay if you look at Kentucky as a whole.
Speaker 4: Interestingly, a lot of people thought McConnell in the second
Speaker 4: term was going to be a thorn and Trump's side.
Speaker 4: That has not turned out to be the case at all.
Speaker 4: It's been Paul and Massy. Yeah, I've been more vexing
Speaker 4: to Trump than Mitch McConnell. So I think history will
Speaker 4: probably remember a little bit about their personal differences, somewhat
Speaker 4: stemming from January the sixth, But it's at a macro
Speaker 4: level going to remember these two guys cut taxes and
Speaker 4: save the Supreme Court, and that's a record that any
Speaker 4: conservative ought to be proud of.
Speaker 1: I'm going to let your hero Charlie Cook have the
Speaker 1: last question comment for you.
Speaker 2: So I have a final question, and I don't know
Speaker 2: if you can answer. But you said that people come
Speaker 2: up to you and they say that they love the debate.
Speaker 2: And then you said you think you're on the only
Speaker 2: show where that debate happens. And I think that's probably true.
Speaker 2: I would know there's only one of you. They don't
Speaker 2: have three or four of you on You're always up
Speaker 2: against eight people. But I wonder why you think it
Speaker 2: is that we have fewer shows then the public would
Speaker 2: obviously want, because I hear this too. I get told this,
Speaker 2: whether it's podcasts that I'm on or my own show.
Speaker 2: People love the debates. They love it when you have
Speaker 2: someone on and you're not rude to each other, but
Speaker 2: you argue about politics, and yet it seems to happen
Speaker 2: less and less. Why do you think that.
Speaker 4: Is because I think during the Trump years it became
Speaker 4: unfashionable in mainstream media to platform any voice from the right,
Speaker 4: anybody who was a Republican, anybody who voted for Trump.
Speaker 4: So I've been with seeing n for eight and a
Speaker 4: half years and no one's ever censored me or told
Speaker 4: me what to say.
Speaker 5: But look, in mainstream media as a.
Speaker 4: Whole, it just there was a lot of pressure to
Speaker 4: not allow equal footing to the Trump side of the
Speaker 4: argument or the Republican side of the argument, which is
Speaker 4: a shame because they deserve it. Half the country believes
Speaker 4: in Donald Trump and voted for Donald Trump. It's been
Speaker 4: true for three straight elections, and so I think it
Speaker 4: was a mistake that they made. But I just you know,
Speaker 4: one of the number one comments I hear on my
Speaker 4: own social media, why does CNN allows Scott Jittings to
Speaker 4: talk so illiberalism that has taken hold in quarters of
Speaker 4: American politics. I mean, I think it had an impact
Speaker 4: on the thinking of people who run our media. I
Speaker 4: think CNN was genius in bringing it back. Our CEO
Speaker 4: is Mark Thompson, British guy, American citizen like you, but
Speaker 4: random BC Rand the New York Times. He believes in debates,
Speaker 4: and I'm kind of shocked more people haven't followed his
Speaker 4: lead because I think the content is desired, and I
Speaker 4: think it's good for half the country to be able
Speaker 4: to turn on the TV and say, oh, there's somebody
Speaker 4: for me to watch two. But the the debating content,
Speaker 4: the way people are consuming it in these little segments online,
Speaker 4: I think it's good for our politics, and I wish
Speaker 4: more people would produce it. I suspect in the future
Speaker 4: you're going to see more of it, even.
Speaker 5: If folks are slow to do it.
Speaker 1: Scott, congratulations on a revolution of common sense, and we
Speaker 1: are all thrilled that we'll be able to take you in.
Speaker 1: More of you on the radio starting the new year,
Speaker 1: and so best of luck to you, Mery Christmas in
Speaker 1: a happy new Year.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Steve Charles.
Speaker 4: Good to meet you finally, and I'll keep listening to
Speaker 4: really appreciate the time today guys, Thank you all.
Speaker 1: Well. Charlie. I think the other story of the week
Speaker 1: that really grabbed me as an old Cold War baby
Speaker 1: boomer was the passing of Norman pot Horns, who I
Speaker 1: never knew him. I only met him once in person,
Speaker 1: you know. I started reading him and commentary in the
Speaker 1: late seventies when I was in college. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: been lots of encomiums to him the last few days.
Speaker 1: I do think there are some essays of his from
Speaker 1: the eighties in particular, maybe he was at his peak
Speaker 1: of influence that has stood a test of time. I
Speaker 1: could talk about those a little bit. Maybe I will
Speaker 1: in a moment, But I don't know if you had
Speaker 1: a chance to medium or if the sort of commentary
Speaker 1: National Review alliance is still as robust as it was
Speaker 1: back in the days when Buckley and pot Hearts were
Speaker 1: in the chair. But shares your thoughts.
Speaker 2: Well, I never met him. I never met William I. F.
Speaker 2: Barkley Junior either, so I didn't meet either side of
Speaker 2: the braid. I think was how John Petoritz, his son,
Speaker 2: described it in the most recent National Review, the seventeenth
Speaker 2: anniversary edition. Here's what I find most compelling about Norman Petorrets.
Speaker 2: I was on a podcast earlier this week and we
Speaker 2: were talking about Trump's takeover of the party, which I
Speaker 2: I'm not thrilled about, as you know, and the failures
Speaker 2: of the establishment, which I think are real. And one
Speaker 2: of the things that I noted was that we had
Speaker 2: a movement reached a point at which a lot of
Speaker 2: our leading lights, be they writers or activists or thinkers
Speaker 2: or politicians, were just saying words by wrote without much
Speaker 2: thought behind them, and that was a problem. We've been
Speaker 2: very successful. Reagan had come in, he'd won a lot
Speaker 2: of the arguments with the help of a lot of
Speaker 2: other people. And then in the nineteen nineties, although Bill
Speaker 2: Clinton won twice, the center of gravity was to the right,
Speaker 2: and we atrophied, and you met people who would just
Speaker 2: stand up and they would say, we must do this,
Speaker 2: we mist do that, we miss stand for this, we
Speaker 2: miss stand for that. But when you asked them as
Speaker 2: a follow up question, they had absolutely no idea what
Speaker 2: they were talking about. And what's so interesting and impressive
Speaker 2: about Norman Praetoris, in part because he shifted in his politics,
Speaker 2: he was bonded to two things and then he created
Speaker 2: this new philosophy, was that he always knew exactly what
Speaker 2: he thought and why he never wrote a single sentence
Speaker 2: in this entire life that was just going through the motions.
Speaker 2: He didn't inherit any of his views, and so he
Speaker 2: was formidable because he could present them from first principles,
Speaker 2: from the ground up. You could ask him not just
Speaker 2: a follow up question, but eighty follow up questions, and
Speaker 2: he would say, oh, well, of course this is what
Speaker 2: And that is a remarkable thing to offer the world.
Speaker 2: Is a philosophy for which you are not solely but
Speaker 2: maybe primarily responsible, that you thought through and that you
Speaker 2: arrived at through experience and interrogation. And I cannot think
Speaker 2: of a better legacy to have than that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I dust at all have his memoir from
Speaker 1: the late seventies called Breaking Ranks, which detailed his movement
Speaker 1: from the left to the right, which took place mostly
Speaker 1: in the sixties. Certainly it was complete by the time
Speaker 1: a Governor arrived in nineteen seventy two. One of the
Speaker 1: parts of it that fascinated me was how in the
Speaker 1: early sixties, when the student New Left first started forming,
Speaker 1: and he was intrigued by them for a little bit.
Speaker 1: He almost printed an excerpt from the port Heuron statement
Speaker 1: from nineteen sixty two the Tom Hayden Roade, but then
Speaker 1: had second thoughts when he realized, I'm not sure this
Speaker 1: is altogether there. And by the end of the sixties
Speaker 1: one of the things that disgusted him was all the
Speaker 1: prominent liberals he knew friends of his who had completely
Speaker 1: capitulated to the new Left, even though pod Hartz said,
Speaker 1: they all knew that these were ruinous, reckless, ideologically unsound
Speaker 1: people doing great damage to the Democratic Party and the country.
Speaker 1: And now you fast forward to, you know, the era
Speaker 1: of wokeery from say, you know, the election of Obama
Speaker 1: until really the tide hasn't turned until this last election.
Speaker 1: I think that maybe a couple other things you can
Speaker 1: point out, but and so you see again, one of
Speaker 1: things that happens during the you know, the runaway wokery
Speaker 1: in the last decade, was so many people, even some conservatives,
Speaker 1: who but especially people the establishing in universities and corporations,
Speaker 1: who utterly surrendered all the cliches of the left about
Speaker 1: diversity and so forth. You think also of it was
Speaker 1: the late seventies, at the most inopportune time, pot Hartch
Speaker 1: wrote the book called Why We Were in Vietnam, And
Speaker 1: there's almost no defenders left in Vietnam except of course.
Speaker 1: The other one who was was Ronald Reagan, who caught
Speaker 1: hell for saying in nineteen eighty that it was a
Speaker 1: noble cause.
Speaker 2: Even though Jimmy stewartt I think was the right, yes,
Speaker 2: defender of Vietnam.
Speaker 1: There you go, and you know, okay, we'll go back
Speaker 1: and revisited that now. But he had the courage to say,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, let's stop all this Vietnam demonization, which
Speaker 1: was the theme of every Hollywood movie in those days,
Speaker 1: right the demonology school, Every book was about, you know,
Speaker 1: Vietnam demonology is I used to put it. There are
Speaker 1: two essays in particular from the mid eighties that I
Speaker 1: think stand the test of time. Now they may both
Speaker 1: sound well. The second one will sound right. The first
Speaker 1: one was one called the Why the God That Failed Failed?
Speaker 1: And this is a little obscure. It's about the once
Speaker 1: famous book from nineteen forty nine called The God That Failed.
Speaker 1: It was six prominent communists and why they broke with communism.
Speaker 1: Arthur Kester was the most famous, but the novelist Ignausio Salone,
Speaker 1: Andre gud and France Richard Wright in America big figures
Speaker 1: then less so now, But what part Haras caught was
Speaker 1: they all said there against the Soviet Union and Marxist communism,
Speaker 1: but they all remained kind of on the left and
Speaker 1: pro socialists, so they really didn't break with what was
Speaker 1: wrong with that sort of spectrum of philosophy. And I
Speaker 1: think that's still true today for people on the left
Speaker 1: are so called progressives, even the ones who say they're
Speaker 1: against wokery and so forth. The second essay, also the
Speaker 1: mid eighties, was if or well, we're alive today? And
Speaker 1: again this will seem like old news for a lot
Speaker 1: of listeners perhaps, but I remember vividly in nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: when you know, the year that the book talked about
Speaker 1: arrived and you had all kinds of people on the left,
Speaker 1: like Walter Cronkite distorting the book, saying it's really about
Speaker 1: us and the capitalist West too, And but Harts was saying, no,
Speaker 1: if or we're alive, I know where he'd land to be,
Speaker 1: right next door to me. He put it more elegantly
Speaker 1: than that. Well, lo and behold. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've heard about this, Charlie, but there's this movie about
Speaker 1: an animated versus an animal house coming out, and all
Speaker 1: the early indications from animal Farm. Sorry, yeah, absolutely. All
Speaker 1: the early indications are they have turned story inside out
Speaker 1: and it's going to be a grotesque perversion. And so
Speaker 1: you know, we need to channel the spirit of Norman
Speaker 1: pot hearts about or Well his application for today in
Speaker 1: this and so many other areas.
Speaker 2: So that is a hobby horse of mine, Steeve. I've
Speaker 2: written about it over and over. George Orwell was a socialist.
Speaker 2: He was not a conservative. He was a socialist. He
Speaker 2: believed in democratic socialism.
Speaker 1: I do not.
Speaker 2: But he was horrified by communism. And this is the
Speaker 2: key point. Not only was he horrified by communism, he
Speaker 2: was deeply worried that even democratic socialism might lead inexorably to totalitarianism.
Speaker 2: That book is not about capitalism. It's about that. It
Speaker 2: is insane to me that they're doing this, and it's
Speaker 2: insane that so many people believe it. So this is
Speaker 2: obviously me going on a long time. I didn't know
Speaker 2: that it happened in nineteen eighty four, hadn't been born yet.
Speaker 2: I did know in twenty twelve, when Barack Obama was
Speaker 2: running against Mitt Romney, that people started saying, oh, this
Speaker 2: is exactly the message of Animal Farm, which is when
Speaker 2: I started writing about it, Mitt Romney apparently, is this
Speaker 2: the topic of Animal Farm? No, he's not.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
Speaker 2: And in fact, you know that book was not published
Speaker 2: originally for a couple of years because we were allies
Speaker 2: with the Soviets in World War Two and no one
Speaker 2: wanted to publish a book that was such an obvious
Speaker 2: and transparent attack on the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a little quick footnote for you, and I can
Speaker 1: make a copy and sent it to you if you like.
Speaker 1: But I came across a review of nineteen eighty four
Speaker 1: by C. S. Lewis, of all not of all people.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can see why he'd be interested in it,
Speaker 1: And what he really said was, I think Animal Farm
Speaker 1: is a much better book than nineteen eighty four, and
Speaker 1: his argument is coaching. But I got to thinking, I
Speaker 1: think Lewis thinks that because Lewis wrote so many books
Speaker 1: that had talking animals. Right, I liked I think you
Speaker 1: liked the vibe of it. Yeah. But anyway, it was
Speaker 1: an odd little discovery. But we have come to the
Speaker 1: end of our hour for this week. This podcast brought
Speaker 1: to you, as always by Ricochet dot Com. Please support
Speaker 1: this show by becoming a member. We'll see you, all
Speaker 1: of you in the comments and until next week. We
Speaker 1: may be off next week for Christmas. I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: but oh I will say this, it is scheduled. I
Speaker 1: think it will happen. I am going to do a
Speaker 1: special episode of Me in Conversation with Rob Long. Who
Speaker 1: better to talk about the Christmas season than Ricochet's own seminary,
Speaker 1: and so look forward to that sometime in the next
Speaker 1: ten days or so. So with that, go to see
Speaker 1: you Charles, We miss you, James, see everybody in the
Speaker 1: comments at Ricochet four point d.
Speaker 2: Whatever it is perfect