Speaker 1: Well, whiskey, come and take my pain, the money, the rain,
Speaker 1: Oh whiskey. Don't why think alone when you can drink
Speaker 1: it all in.
Speaker 2: With Ricochet's three Whiskey Happy Hour, join your bartenders, Steve Hayward,
Speaker 2: John You, and the international woman of Mystery, Lucretia.
Speaker 1: Where this lap slapping? David? Ain't you easy? On the show?
Speaker 1: Taps gott a.
Speaker 3: Giving Welcome everybody to the three Whiskey Happy Hour. It's
Speaker 3: a somewhat somber occasion for us tonight because we are
Speaker 3: without one co host. Our good friend John You is
Speaker 3: feeling a bit under the weather and didn't feel quite
Speaker 3: up to a beating down by Lucretia tonight, so he
Speaker 3: begged off. We miss him terribly though. I mean, what
Speaker 3: am I gonna do? I'm just gonna have to double
Speaker 3: up on Steve again like in the old days.
Speaker 2: Well this was this is the dilemma here is Is
Speaker 2: this going to mean that we both beat up on
Speaker 2: John or they're going to doubly beat down on me?
Speaker 1: Now we know the answer, So I'm afraid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I have a Oh you're.
Speaker 1: The hostess, so you have to be at least to
Speaker 1: pretend to be neutral.
Speaker 3: For at least seconds. No, no, no, no. I listened to
Speaker 3: our podcast last week when I was working out, and
Speaker 3: by the way, you guys interrupt me way more than
Speaker 3: I interrupt you. Number one and number two, you talked
Speaker 3: more as host and made more points as hosts than
Speaker 3: I ever had the opportunity to do. Just want to
Speaker 3: get that out there. I know all of your fans
Speaker 3: believe that I talk too much and I interrupt too much,
Speaker 3: but I paid attention. It's not true anyway. The other
Speaker 3: part of it is, even when you're not on and
Speaker 3: John and I do it together, there's only so much
Speaker 3: beating up we'll do with you without a chance to
Speaker 3: defend yourself. So I'm going to apply the same standards
Speaker 3: for John.
Speaker 1: I think that is so much. I'm just going to
Speaker 1: say that that is all fake news and leave it
Speaker 1: at that.
Speaker 3: But it's not fake news. You would know nothing about
Speaker 3: fake news. Oh, by the way, Steve, I'm drinking. I
Speaker 3: am drinking this amazing bottle Jake and I picked out
Speaker 3: actually at Costco today because we were looking for a
Speaker 3: bottle of whiskey to give to our accountant, who actually
Speaker 3: you know, his aren't done yet, but the family ones
Speaker 3: are and this wasn't for the accountant because it is
Speaker 3: a orphaned barrel. And I had mentioned this before, but
Speaker 3: it wasn't as nice of a Scotch. This is where
Speaker 3: a distillery in Scotland that goes and finds rare casks
Speaker 3: of whiskey and turns them into very very limited numbers
Speaker 3: of eighteen year old. It's called Woven Honor. And I
Speaker 3: have to read because we haven't done this in a
Speaker 3: long time. You said you wanted to do a little bit,
Speaker 3: a little bit of an old fashioned kind of showed
Speaker 3: like we used to do without John, which used to
Speaker 3: include whiskey reviews. This one, it says, is a has
Speaker 3: a grassy and floral note, a fruity medley of green
Speaker 3: apple and lemon zest and alongside vanilla and honeycomb. Doesn't
Speaker 3: that sound lovely.
Speaker 1: Actually except the grassy part.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's what I don't like about sauvignon blancs
Speaker 2: and a grassy You know.
Speaker 3: I don't detect the grassy. The apple. You can smell
Speaker 3: the green apple, you can smell the lemon, and the
Speaker 3: honeycomb very much so. And of course vanilla. You know,
Speaker 3: most good Scotch if it's not that nasty ashtray stuff
Speaker 3: actually has the hints of vanilla, which I like. So
Speaker 3: anyway's quite wonderful, orphan barrel woven honor, so I imagine, because
Speaker 3: you are, as usual, hobnobbing with the rich and famous
Speaker 3: and important, not drinking anything anymore.
Speaker 2: Well, no, I had a March teeny and then red
Speaker 2: and white wine with dinner with with some Yes, I'm
Speaker 2: impressive people.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna all right, I will blow after names.
Speaker 1: I was at dinner with Steve Forbes. You're yeah, I
Speaker 1: just did well.
Speaker 2: I'm tired, that's the problem, and worn down from four
Speaker 2: weeks on the road with one more.
Speaker 1: Week to go. Uh. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I see their dinner with Steve Forbes and Charles Kessler
Speaker 2: and most importantly of all, Gordon Chang, who I've never
Speaker 2: met before, but I've been reading him for years, and
Speaker 2: boy does he have some sobriety to bring to the
Speaker 2: party about China. And also in a room full of
Speaker 2: free marketeers, including you know, like Steve Forbes, he's very
Speaker 2: pro tariff uh and he's all on the side of Trump,
Speaker 2: especially if Trump sticks to his guns with regard to
Speaker 2: tariffs towards China.
Speaker 1: Which may be the grand scheme. Maybe we can come
Speaker 1: to all that.
Speaker 2: I just like to say, there's a new tariff in town.
Speaker 2: That's that's I'm sorry, I couldn't help it.
Speaker 3: Oh god, I actually I was going to ask you
Speaker 3: what his view of views on tariffs were. And it
Speaker 3: doesn't surprise me, but I do want I want to
Speaker 3: see that kind of for last, because they told you
Speaker 3: I was going to ambush you on that with my
Speaker 3: with my uh absolutely rock solid rationale about why Trump
Speaker 3: is right, and you're.
Speaker 1: Okay, well your your tear?
Speaker 3: What what are you? What would you call it? Terriphobic?
Speaker 1: I mean, well, I'll give you my views on that.
Speaker 2: I will say, though you have already falsified one prediction
Speaker 2: I made to a listener who email mean saying, now,
Speaker 2: this is sarcastic.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can do his voice. Oh.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to hear what Lucretia has to say
Speaker 1: about the tariffs. This is a guy who's.
Speaker 2: Against them, right, I said, well, economics, this is true,
Speaker 2: isn't that, Lucrecia, Economics usually bores you, and so I.
Speaker 1: Didn't think you'd have much of an opinion at all.
Speaker 1: But if you do this will come as a surprise.
Speaker 3: And uh okay, and and by the way, this is
Speaker 3: one of those things that pulls together all of your
Speaker 3: failing Steve, I.
Speaker 1: Can't wait, wait so perfect ten no.
Speaker 3: No, But but you know you you're you're his historical
Speaker 3: analogies and your reliance on economics. History is a perfectly
Speaker 3: good topic for study. You know, we all should be
Speaker 3: studying history, the right kind of history, of course. And
Speaker 3: what we make of that that I'll leave that for
Speaker 3: another day. But you and I both know that economics
Speaker 3: is a fake science. It was in fact invented by
Speaker 3: the damn progressives to pretend like they could do uh,
Speaker 3: they could steer the economy, the national economy, and you
Speaker 3: know in the directions that they wanted to. And every
Speaker 3: subsequent economists economist has been pretty much a snake oil salesman,
Speaker 3: wrong all the time, or almost all the time.
Speaker 1: So no, I have to tell me that's not true.
Speaker 3: The latter part you can disagree with, But the first
Speaker 3: part I'm right.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, that that's what I disagree with.
Speaker 2: That I mean, I think the first great breakthrough in
Speaker 2: economics was by a moral scientist, Adam Smith.
Speaker 1: Right, there's that people before him.
Speaker 3: But he doesn't write like an economist. And he doesn't
Speaker 3: he doesn't you know, he's not an economist in the
Speaker 3: economist discipline.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's more to the pities of modern economists.
Speaker 3: Right was Aristotle, my friend?
Speaker 2: So they're not Xenophon this, uh wait, who are the
Speaker 2: econo economic Wait it wasn't Xenophon who wrote the on
Speaker 2: household management, which was oh, never mind, we're getting way
Speaker 2: off track, way off track.
Speaker 3: Okay, back back back to where we were.
Speaker 2: So well, I'll say that the progressive is perverted economics
Speaker 2: in the same way they perverted political science.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, they fair enough. They turned it into an
Speaker 3: academic discipline in which someone could become an expert based
Speaker 3: upon whatever stupid theories were being bandied about at the
Speaker 3: time of somebody wrote a PhD dissertation and you know
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff. And I would say the same thing.
Speaker 3: By the way, for international relations, which I think was
Speaker 3: in fact the worst of the perfectly legitimate studies, turned
Speaker 3: into something god awful by academics. I mean, the first
Speaker 3: class in international relations I took. Oh my god, this
Speaker 3: is stupid. People actually study this stuff and believe this
Speaker 3: stuff anyway, all they're dumb theories, and so anyway, enough
Speaker 3: for academic disciplines. Today, the theme, Steve is, and you're
Speaker 3: the one who made me think of it, is we're
Speaker 3: going to talk. I know it's going to surprise everyone
Speaker 3: about democrats, but my theme is that Democrats are wailing
Speaker 3: about a whole lot of stuff everything. They're wailing about
Speaker 3: the tariffs, they're wailing about Trump sending MS thirteen and
Speaker 3: Trendie Agrea gang bangers into El Salvador back to their
Speaker 3: countries of origin. They're wailing about his Justice Department, as FBI,
Speaker 3: his border patrol going in. Oh, this woman's been here
Speaker 3: forty years and here's a tearful goodbye with her children.
Speaker 3: You know, she's been here forty years and didn't bother
Speaker 3: to become a citizen. You know, on and on and
Speaker 3: on they're whiling. I can't think of anything they're not
Speaker 3: whiling about, to be honest with you, But my theory
Speaker 3: is you're.
Speaker 1: Leaving out the gnashing of teeth along with the whaling.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, whaling, nashing of teeth. I was trying to
Speaker 3: keep it sort of, but that's impossible. And one of
Speaker 3: the things I mentioned to Steve is that whaling actually
Speaker 3: includes a good number of rhinos. I know that surprises
Speaker 3: everyone that I think that. But anyway, that's certainly when
Speaker 3: it comes to tariffs, which of course also means that,
Speaker 3: you know, I saw on Twitter today that Jim Jim
Speaker 3: Cramer's in favor of tariffs. Proof that I'm right, Steve.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, that's true. You got me on that one.
Speaker 4: If everyone knows that trip anyway, So we're going to
Speaker 4: talk about a few of those things, and I'm actually
Speaker 4: gonna ask Steve to kind of give us his thoughts
Speaker 4: on all of these expose as these books that are.
Speaker 3: Coming out where everyone's confessing or at least talking to
Speaker 3: people who are now confessing that Yeah, as a matter
Speaker 3: of fact, you know, wrong claim. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 3: it's kind of shocked at what a brain dead vegetable
Speaker 3: he was. I don't think those are exact words, but
Speaker 3: they're close.
Speaker 1: Steve. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I mean, I I mean, we talked about a
Speaker 2: lot of this while it was in front of us
Speaker 2: in real time.
Speaker 1: I mean, all you needed was a subscription.
Speaker 2: The c Span to understand that Biden was a doddering
Speaker 2: fool who couldn't.
Speaker 1: Do the job.
Speaker 2: And yet anyone in the media. We talked about the
Speaker 2: six months ago when the Wall Street Journal in late
Speaker 2: May early June last year put out a front page
Speaker 2: feature story about.
Speaker 1: Biden's inability to do the job.
Speaker 2: And the story, by the way, made clear that the
Speaker 2: Biden White House and Capitol Hill Democrats were working furiously
Speaker 2: while they were reporting the story to try and blunt it.
Speaker 1: And once it was published, which I thought this, we read.
Speaker 2: That story carefully. It was astonishing and how bracing it was.
Speaker 2: And that's the news page. Just remember that's not the
Speaker 2: editorial page. Right, you can't say they're in the bag
Speaker 2: for Republicans. And what happened was they got savaged by
Speaker 2: the other media, right, And so now they're saying, oh gosh,
Speaker 2: you know, now people are telling us all this, and
Speaker 2: so the media is trying to cover their rear end.
Speaker 2: But I think there's a deeper subtext to this. So
Speaker 2: the media, first of all, they did Democrats no favors
Speaker 2: by not exposing a cover up. I mean, I thought
Speaker 2: that was the highest pinnacle of media rectitude, was exposing
Speaker 2: cover ups.
Speaker 1: Well here they covered up the cover up.
Speaker 2: But now I think the media is doing the Democrats
Speaker 2: another disservice because what's going on here is they're going
Speaker 2: to say, oh, we lost the election because Biden shouldn't
Speaker 2: have run again. He was selfish, he was narcissistic. Oh
Speaker 2: that's true, and Harris was a terrible candidate. And then
Speaker 2: there's a period and the unspoken next sentences. Therefore, we
Speaker 2: Democrats don't have to change our mind about anything. We
Speaker 2: don't have to read think our policies, we don't have
Speaker 2: to think about what we've been doing wrong to alienate
Speaker 2: the American people and all the minority voters that have
Speaker 2: moved toward Republicans. So I think that they're doubling down
Speaker 2: on misleading Democrats. And I mentioned to you before we
Speaker 2: went on, and I'll beat this quick, is the other
Speaker 2: thing that has hurt Democrats is California. And this only
Speaker 2: occurred to me this morning when I'm talking to Steve
Speaker 2: Hilton on the Ricochet podcast, and it just sort of
Speaker 2: flashed into my mind. You know, for the last ten, fifteen,
Speaker 2: twenty years, Democrats looked at how they flipped California.
Speaker 1: From red to blue.
Speaker 2: And what they thought was what flipped it was all
Speaker 2: the illegal immigrants who came into California and voted whether
Speaker 2: legally or not, who knows.
Speaker 1: But the point is they thought, oh, we should do
Speaker 1: that from whole country.
Speaker 2: We want to have more immigration from Latin America and elsewhere,
Speaker 2: will flip Texas. They've been saying this for years, and
Speaker 2: it turns out that they're not only wrong about how
Speaker 2: the country would react to that, they turned out to
Speaker 2: be wrong about a lot of minority voters, including even
Speaker 2: a lot of people apparently who were recent illegals, say no,
Speaker 2: we don't want more people flooding across the border.
Speaker 1: It's bad for us, bad for everybody. So, you know,
Speaker 1: California was their model has turned out to.
Speaker 2: Be also a disaster for Republicans. I'm sorry for Democrats,
Speaker 2: and so.
Speaker 1: I'm watching all this thinking, boy, they're in much more
Speaker 1: trouble than they think. And you know, we'll talk about
Speaker 1: tariffs later. And you know, if the tariff business, if
Speaker 1: the tariff business goes wrong, that's going to give them
Speaker 1: one more reason to say, we don't need to rethink anything.
Speaker 1: We're just fine, right.
Speaker 3: I don't think it will, but let me leave that
Speaker 3: for later. I do want to relate to something I
Speaker 3: saw on Twitter. Somebody made the comment that Colorado is
Speaker 3: now going to prosecute parents that don't allow their questioning
Speaker 3: children to get gender reassignment surgery something along those lines.
Speaker 3: And it's like, what the hell happened to Colorado? And
Speaker 3: somebody responded, California went to Colorado and then they all
Speaker 3: smoked weed.
Speaker 1: Well, well, now this is this is actually a good point.
Speaker 2: Is conservatives left California moved to Idaho and Texas and
Speaker 2: maybe other places. Liberals who left California went to Colorado.
Speaker 2: I think there's a lot of truth to that. And
Speaker 2: you know the numbers. I mean, you can't trace out
Speaker 2: the party registrate. Well you probably could if you had
Speaker 2: unlimited time and money to chase people's registrations, but a
Speaker 2: lot of reasons I think that's quite true.
Speaker 3: Well, I think those could do it, but they've got
Speaker 3: other things to worry about it. I do want to
Speaker 3: go back to something you said earlier and tie it
Speaker 3: to my earlier point, which is when you said that
Speaker 3: you thought that, you know, exposing corruption, getting to the
Speaker 3: heart of a really juicy story, etc.
Speaker 1: Etc.
Speaker 3: It was what journalists did. What I would argue is
Speaker 3: journalism was ruined when it became a discipline A lot
Speaker 3: in the colleges because of course they just all became
Speaker 3: not just propagandized, but the things that really mattered, never
Speaker 3: mind the ideological bent, the things that really mattered were
Speaker 3: no longer taught. I mean, you're not. You never went
Speaker 3: to journalism school, Steve, and you wrote brilliant pieces. I don't.
Speaker 3: The more of this stuff I read, the more I
Speaker 3: realized that not that they can't write, I can't think.
Speaker 3: It's just they can't make a persuasive argument. It's just
Speaker 3: trope after trope after trope. So, along with economics, political science,
Speaker 3: international relations, to a great degree, history, now journalism academia
Speaker 3: has ruined all of it.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I could go on a long time about this,
Speaker 2: but I won't. But journalism isn't an ism, right, what's
Speaker 2: the old Churchill line?
Speaker 1: All the old isms? There wasn's Now.
Speaker 2: Look, I learned this very valuable point that you make
Speaker 2: right out of college again with my mentor in Stanton Evans,
Speaker 2: who was, let us remember, the youngest editor of a
Speaker 2: major metropolitan daily, the Indianapolis and Evening News, at the
Speaker 2: age of twenty six.
Speaker 1: And it's like a phive bay to Kapa from Yale.
Speaker 2: Right, a very accomplished guy did some graduate study with
Speaker 2: Ludwig von Meiss at NYU. Okay, he could have been
Speaker 2: a brilliant scholar if he'd gone the traditional academic route.
Speaker 2: But he wrote news and great columns. And you know,
Speaker 2: he said to us early on, wait a minute, journalism
Speaker 2: is not a profession like accounting or law or something
Speaker 2: where you have to matter master a body of specialized knowledge. No,
Speaker 2: he used to call it reporting, and it was a
Speaker 2: working class occupation, like by the way, the beat cop
Speaker 2: and and most people they may have been ideological, maybe not,
Speaker 2: but they always liked a good story and they loved
Speaker 2: corruption at city hall. And now journalism is this elite profession.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Steve Hayes, I know, you know, we're all critics of
Speaker 2: Steve Hayes. He's gone over to the dark side. But
Speaker 2: he went to Columbia Journalism School because he wanted to
Speaker 2: be a reporter. And he used to tell me about
Speaker 2: how awful it was and how idiological it was, and
Speaker 2: what a waste of time it is. And you know,
Speaker 2: the credential didn't do him that much good. You know,
Speaker 2: he doesn't regret he did it. But I had to say,
Speaker 2: I look out at the world, and you know, I
Speaker 2: knew David broke a little bit at the Washington Post.
Speaker 2: Now he wrote mostly an editorial page, but he mostly
Speaker 2: wrote sort of political analysis that was straight up. He
Speaker 2: really couldn't tell what his bias was. He did a
Speaker 2: lot of serious reporting. He didn't just opine. And I
Speaker 2: miss guys like that. I mean, that used to be
Speaker 2: the model of journalism. I don't think he went to
Speaker 2: a journalism school. He was an old school guy.
Speaker 1: In fact, I know this. He rose up to the
Speaker 1: ranks of local reporting. I think in Illinois.
Speaker 2: Some of his earliest stories in the fifties were covering
Speaker 2: this Hollywood actor named Ronald Reagan who came to town to
Speaker 2: speak for ge and and you know, I remember hearing him,
Speaker 2: you know, at lunch with him one time. He got
Speaker 2: to tell the Reagan stories. And I couldn't tell what
Speaker 2: he liked the guy, didn't like the guy.
Speaker 1: Or what right?
Speaker 2: And that's what we don't have anymore, And that is
Speaker 2: you know, there, you're absolutely right about how academia has
Speaker 2: ruined it.
Speaker 1: And in addition to destroying all.
Speaker 2: The education schools, we should get rid of all the
Speaker 2: journalism schools, and then probably we'll move on to half
Speaker 2: the law schools.
Speaker 3: At least half the law schools political. We could go
Speaker 3: on and on, but along those same lines, I want
Speaker 3: to bring back your your I think you should probably
Speaker 3: patent this statement, or you know, whatever the right thing
Speaker 3: is to do the media democratic nexus when I don't
Speaker 3: think you can entirely blame journalism schools. You know, to
Speaker 3: be fair, Steve Hayes managed to get out of it,
Speaker 3: at least for a while without coming to this conclusion,
Speaker 3: and that is that somehow journalism was not an attempt
Speaker 3: to be an objective reporter of things that mattered, but
Speaker 3: instead it was a player in an ideological political initiative,
Speaker 3: in other words, defeat Trump at all costs. And it
Speaker 3: mattered not it mattered, not one whit whether what they
Speaker 3: wrote about was true or even more important, as you
Speaker 3: pointed out, that they failed to write about and report
Speaker 3: on things that were really manifestly important, like and the
Speaker 3: reason I brought it up. I know it's been beat
Speaker 3: to death, but Hunter's laptop. I guess a congressional committee
Speaker 3: released a whole bunch of FBI communications about Hunter's laptop,
Speaker 3: and it's just despicable. It was all done with the
Speaker 3: absolute purpose of making sure that nobody nobody leaked the
Speaker 3: tiniest bit of information that might give some credence to
Speaker 3: the Nerik posts reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop. And
Speaker 3: of course we know how all of that went down.
Speaker 4: But you know that.
Speaker 3: Old saying that a conspiracy if it goes beyond one person,
Speaker 3: is very difficult to keep. But I don't think that,
Speaker 3: you know, a secret is difficult to keep it if
Speaker 3: it goes beyond more than one person, right right, In
Speaker 3: this case, they were able to rely upon, first and
Speaker 3: foremost an ideological viewpoint or perspective, but also inside the FBI,
Speaker 3: you had people questioning it, but you know, put the
Speaker 3: hammer down on them.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm I'm almost afraid to You've had a
Speaker 2: busy week. I know, I'm almost afraid to ask if
Speaker 2: you saw any highlights of the hearing that featured the
Speaker 2: NPR president that wonderful bottle blonde Catherine Mayer.
Speaker 3: I mean, hey, give us bottle blonde a break. I
Speaker 3: used to be completely toehead when I was younger.
Speaker 1: No, well, but that's no. A bottle blonde is a
Speaker 1: fake blonde. That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: I kind of am, but because my hair is a
Speaker 3: lot darker than it was when I was little.
Speaker 1: But anyway, okay, well that's okay, and you know she
Speaker 1: sort of well she confessed.
Speaker 3: Everything and said she changed her mind.
Speaker 1: He said she.
Speaker 2: Changed her mind, Well, she got caught. I think there's
Speaker 2: several ways of playing that. One is she's just lying.
Speaker 2: She's clearly a deep leftist.
Speaker 1: But second, you could say or try.
Speaker 2: To halfway excuse her by saying, she's a perfect example
Speaker 2: of a leftist who lives in a bubble and they
Speaker 2: don't ever think that what they say is going to
Speaker 2: be remembered, that it matters, or that someone would challenge it,
Speaker 2: or what would they say if they are challenged. And
Speaker 2: I mean the highlight was my favorite one was her saying, oh,
Speaker 2: by the way, there's an example of Republicans who came
Speaker 2: to the hearing prepared, which sometimes they don't do. And
Speaker 2: I said, well, are you for reparations? No, no, I'm
Speaker 2: not for reparations. Well you tweeted that you're for reparations.
Speaker 1: Here's this tweet says, you know you endorsed this book.
Speaker 1: And she said, well, I never read the book. What
Speaker 1: was unbelievable?
Speaker 3: It's not that surprising, I know, on us on a
Speaker 3: much smaller scale, Steve, here's my here's my anecdote about that.
Speaker 3: I'm having a training something something with my faculty at
Speaker 3: one point and somebody brought up We were discussing plagiarism
Speaker 3: something like that, I don't know, and somebody said Wikipedia.
Speaker 3: I said, I'll fail a student. I put in my
Speaker 3: slip as you are not allowed to use Wikipedia. And
Speaker 3: a couple of the faculty, including one of the English professor,
Speaker 3: why would you say that? This is this is the
Speaker 3: twenty first century. Wikipedia is a perfectly legitimate source of resource.
Speaker 3: And I said, you're kidding, right, You're not that stupid.
Speaker 3: And of course, you know, I got called on the
Speaker 3: carpet for saying that to another faculty member. But they
Speaker 3: in the same way that the hack who created the
Speaker 3: propaganda that was Wikipedia, this leftist had no idea that
Speaker 3: there might be an alternative and that there would be
Speaker 3: something wrong with even you know, never mind, the left
Speaker 3: is bent. The whole concept of it is just ludicrous.
Speaker 1: You know. Well, No, I have a tiny partial descent
Speaker 1: on Wikipedia. Not that I mean agree generally. No, Wikipedia
Speaker 1: cannot be a source.
Speaker 2: You cannot footnote Wikipedia in a claim they make, but
Speaker 2: their footnotes can sometimes be useful, and you can cross
Speaker 2: reference and cross check some of the footnotes they use.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm not.
Speaker 3: Saying you can't look at it, you should just never
Speaker 3: quote it.
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, that's fine, I agree with that. Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: But look, they're gonna look at Wikipedia. And now what
Speaker 2: I tell students is check the footnotes and chase those down.
Speaker 1: And usually if you google.
Speaker 2: A particular story, you'll see other stories that may agree
Speaker 2: with it or dissent from it, and now you're on
Speaker 2: a fruitful chain.
Speaker 1: But okay, that's I.
Speaker 3: Just thought it was funny that, you know, what she
Speaker 3: what she considered Wikipedia to be was a tool for propaganda. Ah, yes,
Speaker 3: what was her line about truth? Truth can get in
Speaker 3: the way of truth.
Speaker 2: Can get in the way of doing all these good
Speaker 2: things with something like that that we want.
Speaker 3: To do, we need to have done. So the last
Speaker 3: part about that I want to talk about for just
Speaker 3: a little bit. We could go on about all the
Speaker 3: things that left us wide about and covered up COVID
Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera. But the other thing that came
Speaker 3: out that really annoyed the heck out of me. And
Speaker 3: maybe I'm in a tiny minority on this was how
Speaker 3: the brilliant Obama, the political genius of the last millennium
Speaker 3: that you know that they just they don't make anybody
Speaker 3: smarter than Barack Obama? Yet, how did he let this
Speaker 3: disaster happen? Does anybody really think that Obama has more
Speaker 3: than three rebrains in his head? I never heard him
Speaker 3: say anything I thought was intelligent. Now, I do think
Speaker 3: he did have a little bit of political savvy. I
Speaker 3: think he was handled by a lot of people with
Speaker 3: a lot more political savvy. But what has he done
Speaker 3: that's been clever?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 3: Since he wasn't being since he left office? And what
Speaker 3: what did he do that was clever? In a office?
Speaker 3: He managed to trade in on his unique status as
Speaker 3: the first half black American president and get everybody to
Speaker 3: back off and refuse to criticize him for his asinine
Speaker 3: decisions and asinine policies and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3: And when he said things like there's never been a
Speaker 3: scandal in my administration, idiots believed him. You know, I
Speaker 3: just thought he was despicable, dumb, and his wife is
Speaker 3: but ugly. Sorry, that's been a big thing lately.
Speaker 1: Well, I've stayed away from all those speculations.
Speaker 3: Put it that way, right, what, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Here's the paradox of all from my point of view,
Speaker 2: which is one, well, first of all, premise he's a
Speaker 2: deep leftist at heart, but second part of the minor premise,
Speaker 2: he's always been about advancing his own career and status,
Speaker 2: which meant he would sublimate all that.
Speaker 1: But now the next two.
Speaker 2: Parts then flow from that, which is one he in
Speaker 2: a good honest book from a smart liberal would I think,
Speaker 2: argue about what a great disappointment he was to the left,
Speaker 2: and I can go through reasons why. But then the
Speaker 2: second part of that is he was actually quite insidious
Speaker 2: in some of the things he did set in motion
Speaker 2: in subtle ways. Some of that I'm sure he was
Speaker 2: aware of, and maybe it was the people he appointed
Speaker 2: around him. But I mean, I think I've said this before.
Speaker 2: I think some of the stuff's doge is turning up
Speaker 2: these you know, amazing grants to NGOs that's been going
Speaker 2: on for a long time, but I think we'll find
Speaker 2: that that really accelerated under Biden when the budget was exploding.
Speaker 1: I met that first big eight.
Speaker 2: Hundred billion dollar stimulus bill in two thousand and eight
Speaker 2: had a lot of that in there and other stuff.
Speaker 2: And I think they actually weaponized I don't I think
Speaker 2: that weaponized is overused, but I think they really did
Speaker 2: weaponize the federal grant making process to bolster left wing groups,
Speaker 2: to lobby on behalf of the Democratic Party and their agenda,
Speaker 2: and and bolster the bureaucracy. And then it accelerated even
Speaker 2: more under Biden with all the COVID blowout spending.
Speaker 1: And so that begins under and then not to mention things.
Speaker 2: Like the way a lot of the racial division was
Speaker 2: stoked by Obama once or twice, very overtly, but other
Speaker 2: times more subtly, you know Title nine and some of
Speaker 2: the other things they did, and you know the way
Speaker 2: they'd lean.
Speaker 1: On universal.
Speaker 2: All those kinds of things, right, And you know, he
Speaker 2: blew it when he talked about the police and Henry
Speaker 2: Lewis Gates at Harvard that whole being in the first term.
Speaker 1: But for the most part he was very subtle about
Speaker 1: all that.
Speaker 2: How much of that is deliberate in deep calculation or
Speaker 2: just his self interested cautiousness to want to advance the
Speaker 2: radical agenda with non radical language, I don't know, but
Speaker 2: I think there's a great book to be written about that,
Speaker 2: both as to the fact that could be unearthed about
Speaker 2: legal and spending changes, and then a careful analysis of
Speaker 2: the you know, the way he talked, the rhetoric he used,
Speaker 2: certain decisions that were made, certain people he empowered to
Speaker 2: push forward all this, and that would make for a
Speaker 2: fascinating story.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh, yeah, that would make for a fastening story. Also,
Speaker 1: ask a.
Speaker 3: Couple of weeks ago we talked about that that whole insidious,
Speaker 3: ugly development whereby you start You started the discussion by
Speaker 3: talking about the collusive lawsuits, right, but then you explained
Speaker 3: how they so aclusive lawsuit For what somebody doesn't know
Speaker 3: is where a say, a lobbying group or a public
Speaker 3: special interest group sues, say the EPA, where both of
Speaker 3: them have exactly the same goal in mind. It happened
Speaker 3: during the twenty twenty elections as well, but I'll stick
Speaker 3: to this example. And then the EPA agrees to a
Speaker 3: settlement which probably includes huge amounts for lawyer's fees and
Speaker 3: so on. And that was what started to fuel these
Speaker 3: these special interest lobbyists special interest groups who then turn
Speaker 3: around take that money and lobby the government to get
Speaker 3: even more of what it is they're wanting. And then
Speaker 3: you also, either you or John pointed out that that
Speaker 3: became an even bigger deal as more and more of
Speaker 3: these loose appropriations ended up benefiting all of these NGOs
Speaker 3: and so on. And I think it was John who
Speaker 3: mentioned way back in the ninety four or at least
Speaker 3: after the ging Rich Revolution, there was an attempt to say,
Speaker 3: you know, no more, no more giving federal money in
Speaker 3: any way, shape or form to lobbyists and NGOs who
Speaker 3: turn around and lobby the government for what they want.
Speaker 3: But it was met with dead silence, right, And I
Speaker 3: just kind of I'm lost over it, And I thought
Speaker 3: it was a really interesting point.
Speaker 2: Well, there was one thing that Gingrich congresses in the
Speaker 2: late nineties did that I don't think I've been revived
Speaker 2: and kept up, which was when you and a couple
Speaker 2: of times I testified, I had to fill out the
Speaker 2: form and the checkboxes. When you testify before a congressional committee,
Speaker 2: you had to disclose whether your organization was a recipient
Speaker 2: of federal funds.
Speaker 1: Just you know, sunshine, right.
Speaker 2: Don't I think the Democrats got rid of that, and
Speaker 2: I don't think the subsequent Republican Congresses have brought it back,
Speaker 2: which I think is a shame.
Speaker 1: They should. It's a simple, easy thing to do.
Speaker 3: So we don't have John here to take the slightly
Speaker 3: rhino view on this. Let me ask you, I love you, John,
Speaker 3: you know it. Let me ask you, Steve that whether
Speaker 3: you think this is one of those areas where Republicans
Speaker 3: should play hardball what I call the Morris syntactic, the
Speaker 3: Morrison versus All syntactic. If say, the Heritage Foundation sue
Speaker 3: the federal government because they weren't moving fast enough on
Speaker 3: eliminating de and the and the Trump administration agreed to
Speaker 3: a settlement and gave a Heritage Foundation two hundred million
Speaker 3: dollars in a settlement, how long do you think it
Speaker 3: would be before the Democrats started to do something about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like that idea. I think the difficulty is
Speaker 1: the collusive.
Speaker 2: Lawsuits, especially on the environmental stuff, tilts and favor of
Speaker 2: environmentalists in ways that could not be exploited by say,
Speaker 2: the Heritage Foundation or you know, a public interest to
Speaker 2: conservative law group. And that's because you know, the statutes
Speaker 2: actually grant standing the citizens to challenge environmental laws. It
Speaker 2: was copied in not rights, but not taxes and not
Speaker 2: other things.
Speaker 1: Right, So the DEI stuff, I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you can make it.
Speaker 2: A civil rights complaint, you might have some legs there
Speaker 2: and that would be fun. Yeah, I mean the way
Speaker 2: it works is, of course, you know, oh, you're suing us,
Speaker 2: So what can we do to settle?
Speaker 1: They say, what we want you to tighten? This regulation? Done?
Speaker 1: You know? Oh and by the way, here are your
Speaker 1: legal feasts. I mean, this has been going on for
Speaker 1: a year. This is not new. This is at least
Speaker 1: forty years old or longer.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I mean they've but again, well this makes
Speaker 2: the general point. Republicans have taken some runs at this
Speaker 2: over the years. I can't name for you what initiatives
Speaker 2: they've actually tried to do beyond just the public disclosure
Speaker 2: thing I mentioned. None of it's worked very well. I
Speaker 2: mean maybe at the margins they've chipped away at it.
Speaker 2: And this is why I like what Trump is doing,
Speaker 2: which is he's going in and delivering hammer blows. And
Speaker 2: I'm at the point but I'm so disgusted with how
Speaker 2: feeble Republicans have been for years that I don't care
Speaker 2: if they hit the wrong person. I don't care if
Speaker 2: they're you know, I mean, I feel bad for somebody
Speaker 2: who is actually innocent, maybe a good public employee who's
Speaker 2: dedicated and serious. But you know what, it's their darn
Speaker 2: fault and the fault of the whole bureaucracy for not
Speaker 2: policing themselves like universities. Right, And I think you know
Speaker 2: if they all I mean, I said this the other day,
Speaker 2: Robert F.
Speaker 1: Kennedy has fired a bunch of people from the CDC.
Speaker 2: And I'm saying, after the way they lied to about COVID,
Speaker 2: after they said racism is a public health emergency in
Speaker 2: the middle of COVID, so protests are okay, after they
Speaker 2: say guns are a public health problem, on and on
Speaker 2: and on barbecuing. Right, you know, if if Kennedy had
Speaker 2: fired everybody and burned a place of the ground, I
Speaker 2: wouldn't have been unhappy about it, right, because.
Speaker 3: They worse off.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they do some good stuff, but the problem
Speaker 1: is they've tolerated so much bad stuff that they don't
Speaker 1: deserve the benefit of the doubt by any citizens today.
Speaker 3: Forgive me for this little bit of a tangent anecdote here,
Speaker 3: but I have to tell you. I was actually trying
Speaker 3: to do some research this morning on a on a
Speaker 3: medical condition, okay, and trying to get to the bottom
Speaker 3: of what was actually going on. So I google a
Speaker 3: couple of different things, and every single article that comes
Speaker 3: up on this particular medical condition, regardless of it's from
Speaker 3: the CDC, if it's from Mayo, if you know, no, no, no, no no,
Speaker 3: and it probably looked at forty of them, they all
Speaker 3: said exactly the same thing, and they were all based
Speaker 3: around the CDs. It was actually I was looking up
Speaker 3: persistent samonilla infection. Everything came back and said that I
Speaker 3: couldn't find information about that anywhere in the American news media,
Speaker 3: American medical journals, anything. The only place I found anything
Speaker 3: about it was foreign. But back to my original point,
Speaker 3: every single article said exactly the same thing, and including
Speaker 3: lawyers who said, maybe if you were poisoned by X
Speaker 3: y Z, I can help you recover, and they said
Speaker 3: the exact same thing the CDC said, and it's not true,
Speaker 3: but not one American article even deviated by three words
Speaker 3: from the CDC's it was. It was really quite eye opening.
Speaker 3: I know that, you know, I get it. Cyber me,
Speaker 3: excuse me, COVID is the same way. I didn't mean
Speaker 3: to go off into my to a tangent, but yeah,
Speaker 3: I think we could do without the CDC and their
Speaker 3: control over the American medical institutions. You know what, I
Speaker 3: used to think that mail was the place you went
Speaker 3: for answers.
Speaker 2: But yeah, well, I mean part of the problem there
Speaker 2: is again it's you know, follow the money, I think,
Speaker 2: without getting without knowing more about exactly what you're looking
Speaker 2: for and where. I think a lot of journals, a
Speaker 2: lot of medical associations are very afraid of dissenting from
Speaker 2: the party line of the government.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you that. The aspect of this I knew to.
Speaker 2: Know something about is drug regulation. So you know, we
Speaker 2: are the toughest druck regulators in the world. We're much
Speaker 2: behind the Europeans and approving new drugs and also allowing
Speaker 2: off label uses, so.
Speaker 1: Doctors can prescribe to you a drug for an off
Speaker 1: label use to you and mean that you know, if
Speaker 1: I'm your doctor or or my doctor, we can do that,
Speaker 1: but the drug companies are not allowed to advertise it
Speaker 1: or talk about it, including when the drug reps are
Speaker 1: out at same medical conventions. And I've talked of your
Speaker 1: drug reps.
Speaker 2: And I used to hear this from actually Scott Gottlieb
Speaker 2: when he was going into be FDAD director, and Trump
Speaker 2: won says, you know, drug reps will tell you an
Speaker 2: amazing story. When they go to Canada or go to
Speaker 2: Europe for a doctor's convention, they have extra literature that
Speaker 2: they can pass out at the conventions there to doctors saying,
Speaker 2: here are other uses for this particular drug that are
Speaker 2: perfectly safe, and we know they're safe.
Speaker 1: But we're not allowed to even mention.
Speaker 2: It to doctors in America because of the FDA rules
Speaker 2: and CDC and all the rest of that. So what
Speaker 2: do you think is going to happen when you look
Speaker 2: for a cause of a disease in the medical journals?
Speaker 1: You think they're going to be bold? Right right?
Speaker 3: I just thought it was interesting. Just happened to me today.
Speaker 3: I'll add to that, how more incredibly successful the CDC
Speaker 3: was at stopping information about in the accessibility of ivermectin
Speaker 3: over what they've been able to do about fentanyl. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, if they could be as successful as stopping
Speaker 3: fentanyl as they were at ivermectin. Yeah, respect from anyway,
Speaker 3: that was a terrible tenet. I'm sorry. I want to
Speaker 3: mention really well.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, if only we could put
Speaker 2: it in some tariffs against fentanyl and all this bad stuff,
Speaker 2: but you know, I think.
Speaker 3: We tried that with marijuana and it's not working out
Speaker 3: also terribly well, right, since tariff equals tax, if you
Speaker 3: ask anybody that is against tariffs, right, I want to
Speaker 3: mention that, out of all of those things we just
Speaker 3: talked about, it seems that not one person has been
Speaker 3: held accountable. Can you give me an example in the
Speaker 3: laptop incident, the COVID incident, the Biden's brain dead vegetable
Speaker 3: a cover up. Who has been held in any way
Speaker 3: really accountable for any of that?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean I think they've fired a few people
Speaker 1: from the Department of Justice who were involved in, you know,
Speaker 1: some of the Trump persecutions and whatnot. I mean that's
Speaker 1: all I know.
Speaker 3: Have you ever been fired, Steve, No.
Speaker 1: No, only myself. I usually fire myself by yourself.
Speaker 3: I got fired once when I was really young.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But I mean people get fired all the time, and
Speaker 3: not necessarily, you know, so I don't know that I
Speaker 3: necessarily consider firing a punishment for something, as you know,
Speaker 3: we were almost in World War three with Ukraine. I mean,
Speaker 3: the idea that that brain dead was and that everybody
Speaker 3: covered for them, they all should be taken out and
Speaker 3: shot as traders. But anyway, that's not gonna happen. I
Speaker 3: know that, But I want to I want to counter
Speaker 3: that with the story that came out. I think it
Speaker 3: was yesterday that at the behest of a Republican and
Speaker 3: a Democratic senator I don't remember their stupid names, the
Speaker 3: IG is going to investigate Pete Haigesath for the use
Speaker 3: of signal Again, why what happened bad there? I mean,
Speaker 3: what was the negative consequence of anything that happened? And
Speaker 3: that whole signals made up scandal?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I smelled the rat from beginning on this. I
Speaker 1: mean I don't know about it. I mean, you know
Speaker 1: more about than I would.
Speaker 2: But also I thought they were going to investigate him
Speaker 2: for bringing his wife to a meeting without a security
Speaker 2: clearance or something. Right, But look, this is an old
Speaker 2: fashioned tactic that really bit some people in Trump won
Speaker 2: In particular, it was what's his name, Representative Price, who
Speaker 2: was HHS secretary, and they told him, oh, you know,
Speaker 2: you got to go to something you should take the
Speaker 2: private plane that we have, you should take your wife
Speaker 2: with you.
Speaker 1: And then of course they leak it to the press.
Speaker 1: I mean, and and by the way, Trump too, They've
Speaker 1: had briefings for senior appointees about all these tricks they
Speaker 1: will use to try and embarrass you with the press
Speaker 1: to get you out.
Speaker 2: And they you know, so they learned from that. And
Speaker 2: you know, Haig Seth, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's crazy.
Speaker 2: But the signal, I don't know enough about it. But
Speaker 2: they could have said, oh, you know, we use signal
Speaker 2: in the Biden national security account, so you can use signal.
Speaker 1: It's fine. And maybe it is, I don't know. But
Speaker 1: the point is.
Speaker 3: That this use for everything that classified information.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, okay, well, the point is that
Speaker 2: this looks like another put up job, right, No, it is.
Speaker 3: It is. I guess what I'm trying to get you to.
Speaker 3: This is your your theme, Steve, But how do we
Speaker 3: actually hold it? How do we actually stop this nonsense
Speaker 3: about if the Democrats didn't have double standards, they wouldn't
Speaker 3: have any standards at all. How do we stop what
Speaker 3: just is the frustrating reality that the Democrats get away
Speaker 3: with literal murder on a regular basis, Seth Ridge, whatever
Speaker 3: you want to say, but awful, awful stuff. And Republicans
Speaker 3: they look for every tiny thing they can and usually
Speaker 3: get away with persecuting them, prosecuting them, investigating them. I mean,
Speaker 3: at some point there has to be some balance, doesn't there.
Speaker 3: Doesn't the universe have to sort of sort itself out here?
Speaker 1: Well, you would think.
Speaker 2: So what I would do if I were the Trump
Speaker 2: people is if it is true the signal was used
Speaker 2: by the Biden administration or Bila whoever, I would somehow
Speaker 2: see if I could get some copies of signal chats.
Speaker 2: I guess they disappear though I don't know, But if
Speaker 2: I could get a hold of some signal.
Speaker 1: Chats that happened, I would declassify.
Speaker 2: Them and reasten to the media and then say, you
Speaker 2: know what, I'll bet they did similar sorts of things.
Speaker 2: I'll bet you know or you know, I mean, hello
Speaker 2: Hillary's server, right, Okay, I know.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I just want to say I feel like I'm Alice
Speaker 3: in Wonderland. Yeah sometimes, Okay. I do want to mention,
Speaker 3: speaking of all of that, that the NSA director who's
Speaker 3: also the director of US Cybercom was fired today. Oh
Speaker 3: my god, clutch my pearls. I actually have pearls on Steve,
Speaker 3: clutch my pearls. The country's sounds safe. I saw so
Speaker 3: many people say that the guy was a political hack,
Speaker 3: a swamp creature. But here's the real point.
Speaker 1: I figured you might know about him. I was going
Speaker 1: to ask if you didn't bring it up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was a fighter pilot. Okay, fine, good, you know,
Speaker 3: perfectly legitimate patriotic thing to do. Fighter pilots know nothing
Speaker 3: about cyber They're not trained in anything about national security.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a little bit like putting. Who could
Speaker 3: I say. I don't want to say you, because I
Speaker 3: think you know more about national security than that guy does.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to think of someone. Really. Okay, you were
Speaker 3: in the military. But he was such a kiss ass,
Speaker 3: such a political hack, and such a swamp creature that
Speaker 3: from being a fighter pilot he rises up to four
Speaker 3: star general and becomes head of Nessance and US Cybercom.
Speaker 3: He was, in fact a horrible political hack, and he
Speaker 3: was responsible when a lot of those leaks that were
Speaker 3: coming out in twenty three and twenty four. How long
Speaker 3: ever long he had been there, he didn't do anything
Speaker 3: to stop the persecution, prosecution of Trump. I mean, just
Speaker 3: I could go on and on, and I don't want
Speaker 3: to because we've already spent too much time on those
Speaker 3: sick peapeople. But don't worry. We're not going to be
Speaker 3: you know, the world won't be destroyed because that guy
Speaker 3: is no longer headed a director of the NSA or
Speaker 3: US cybercom. Just don't worry, Steve, It'll be, ok I wasn't.
Speaker 2: I was not worried, actually, and I figured you might
Speaker 2: have some direct knowledge of the subject.
Speaker 1: I'll just say that.
Speaker 3: Again. Nothing against fighter pilots. We really need fighter pilots,
Speaker 3: but we don't turn them into anyway. You get the point, Okay,
Speaker 3: let's talk about terriffs. Tell me why Trump's terrafts are bad, Steve.
Speaker 1: Well, look, free trade is better than managed trade and
Speaker 1: protected trade full stop.
Speaker 2: Except there I can now go into a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of exceptions. I think the problem here is it was chaotic.
Speaker 2: It seemed to be haphazard and almost amateurish in.
Speaker 1: The way it was presented. I mean, they actually listed
Speaker 1: this island off off of Australia that's only inhabited by penguins.
Speaker 1: What was that? I mean, I don't know what that is,
Speaker 1: but it gives an easy.
Speaker 3: Last week you said that the chaos was part of
Speaker 3: the plan.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Well something else.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm still open to this idea that I mean
Speaker 2: the fact that China retaliated here Friday with raising its tariffs.
Speaker 1: Look, they have the most to.
Speaker 2: Lose because we're their biggest and most important market. And
Speaker 2: you know Trump, what is that? Trump said, as Lensky,
Speaker 2: you don't have you don't have hold any cards here,
Speaker 2: something like that. Trump holds the high cards in this.
Speaker 2: I could This is a speculation on my part, but
Speaker 2: I could see us waking up in a week or
Speaker 2: two weeks and finding out that Trump is smooth. Themesed
Speaker 2: over with most of our training partners, and we've reached
Speaker 2: an equilibri and we can live with except China. And
Speaker 2: he then see, if you just took on China alone,
Speaker 2: it looks like, well the US and China and.
Speaker 1: Are having a big spat.
Speaker 2: But Trump would be able to say, hey, you know what,
Speaker 2: We've smoothed this out with the country. You know how
Speaker 2: good Trump is a claiming victory, whether whatever degree of
Speaker 2: accuracy that is, but he could get up here in
Speaker 2: two or three weeks and he's smooth things over with everybody.
Speaker 1: Some other countries have dropped their tariffs. A couple have
Speaker 1: already said they will, like Vietnam.
Speaker 2: And say, you know what, most of the world has
Speaker 2: gotten on board, and we're doing great, we're making progress,
Speaker 2: and China's the problem. And now he's isolated them and
Speaker 2: polarized them and made them the bad guy.
Speaker 3: If that's some countries are actually agreeing to stronger stances
Speaker 3: against China as well.
Speaker 2: Right right, yeah, well exactly if you can get other
Speaker 2: people helping you on this, because I think a lot
Speaker 2: of the other countries they'll trade with China, they're afraid
Speaker 2: of China. They want to deal with China, but we
Speaker 2: might give them cover or reason to be tougher too.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. I mean, you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: part of the Trump plays three dimensional.
Speaker 2: Chess business, but I could see by the way, I mean,
Speaker 2: the parallel here is the ways handled Ukraine. I mean,
Speaker 2: everybody freaked out, always mean, does Zelenski He's not attacking Putin?
Speaker 2: And where do we stand right now? I actually thought
Speaker 2: this is the way it might unfold, which is he's
Speaker 2: gonna beat up Zelenski and then it's going to shift
Speaker 2: to Putin and is Putin going to agree to.
Speaker 1: Negotiate in good faith?
Speaker 2: And right now the answer appears to be no, and
Speaker 2: reports our Trump is mad at him. And I think,
Speaker 2: whatever you think about Zelenski, he may have deliberately or
Speaker 2: inadvertently played this just right and now.
Speaker 1: So now we'll see.
Speaker 2: And my money is still on Trump getting a deal.
Speaker 2: People will complain about it, and but I think the
Speaker 2: order he did that there maybe be quite shrewd, and
Speaker 2: so I don't know. I think that we could see
Speaker 2: the same thing with the trade and tariffs, but it's
Speaker 2: very risky. I mean, I think he's betting a lot
Speaker 2: on this working. And what do we know about Trump?
Speaker 2: He is willing to take big risks and willing to.
Speaker 1: Step out there.
Speaker 3: I really don't want to ambush you, but I want
Speaker 3: to bring in a totally different perspective on this, which is.
Speaker 1: That you do want to ambush me. It's one of
Speaker 1: your favorite things to do. You know, you're being serious? Okay.
Speaker 3: The number one, you know, the stock markets down what
Speaker 3: in the last two days, thirteen percent of the dows whatever. Actually,
Speaker 3: if you compare that to the worst times of the
Speaker 3: Biden administration. It's not even close, of course, But this
Speaker 3: is probably the elites who have continued to become wealthy
Speaker 3: based upon fake stock market money, while the middle class
Speaker 3: has suffered. The middle class has suffered very egregiously because
Speaker 3: of sending manufacturing jobs to China. I was listening to
Speaker 3: this guy, I think it was on Fox, who's a shrimper,
Speaker 3: you know, and he talked about the fact that they
Speaker 3: can't make a living anymore because cheap, toxic, genetically modified
Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera. As shrimp, and you know, farmed
Speaker 3: shrimp has just absolutely taken over the market. It comes
Speaker 3: from China, comes from other places like that, and it's
Speaker 3: just horrible. And you know, that's a silly example, but
Speaker 3: it happened over and over and over again. The car manufacturers,
Speaker 3: the auto manufacturers recognize that maybe this is a good
Speaker 3: thing for them, not all of them, but some of them,
Speaker 3: and certainly the Union does. But my point is that
Speaker 3: for the last X number of years, free trade has
Speaker 3: not been free trade. Free trade has been the thing
Speaker 3: that has made the elites rich and devastated the middle class.
Speaker 3: Devastated the middle class. In many areas, small businesses tend
Speaker 3: to do okay, but devastated the middle class. That's why
Speaker 3: Maga world is cheering on Trump. They don't give a
Speaker 3: damn about I know it's gonna probably affect some of
Speaker 3: their furrow and k's or their Probably it's affecting mine,
Speaker 3: of course it is.
Speaker 1: But.
Speaker 3: A some of them are willing to say it's okay,
Speaker 3: it's okay. And I do think that this stock market
Speaker 3: nonsense is nonsense. It's elites wanting to punish Trump. They
Speaker 3: don't want his destroy the global economy. Outlook, I do
Speaker 3: have to laugh by the way little shod and Freud.
Speaker 3: I think it's appropriate. Here Clouds Swab right right, turns
Speaker 3: out he's a sexist, racist pig.
Speaker 1: Duh.
Speaker 3: As if we couldn't tell that just by looking at.
Speaker 1: Aren't you gonna say he's ugly too? I thought you're
Speaker 1: in the.
Speaker 3: He's ugly, okay, And you know how, there's nothing worse
Speaker 3: than like being harassed by a Klauds Schwab or a
Speaker 3: Harvey Weinstein. Oh, I mean, you know, I'm of the
Speaker 3: Tom Brady harassment type anyway. Anyway, my point is that
Speaker 3: I'm surprised at how much support Trump has a lot
Speaker 3: of people they don't know excuse me anything, They don't
Speaker 3: know anything about tarifts or economic policy. But the other
Speaker 3: thing I want to do, mister analogy man, is say,
Speaker 3: I don't think history proves that tariffs are all that
Speaker 3: bad of a thing. They're used.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I went and did a little bit of research
Speaker 2: on the smooth Holly business, which was by the way,
Speaker 2: that tariff was passed by Congress, not imposed by President Hoover.
Speaker 2: There's a whole question about executive power. That's uh, that's
Speaker 2: separate front. The tarriffs are wise or not. Uh look, no,
Speaker 2: I I I.
Speaker 3: Well, wait, wait, I want to keep you on that
Speaker 3: point for a second. Do you remember the famous debate
Speaker 3: between al Gore and Ross Perot? Right? Yeah, and what
Speaker 3: did Ross What did Ross Parrot say? And was he
Speaker 3: right or was he right?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: Well, okay, uh, he was part right, Uh, but he
Speaker 2: was part wrong. That take a while to unpack. Remember
Speaker 2: that Milton Friedman opposed the NAFTA treaty. Why he said,
Speaker 2: a real free trade treaty should be three pages long.
Speaker 1: NAFTA is over a thousand pages long. This is not
Speaker 1: free trade. And by the way, without even looking.
Speaker 2: And it turned out that one of the reasons that
Speaker 2: pro is half right is we had lots of asymmetries
Speaker 2: with Mexico.
Speaker 1: They could take a lot.
Speaker 2: Of our jobs, but we limited some of what they
Speaker 2: could send back to US, and.
Speaker 1: Or the other way around.
Speaker 2: I forget, but it was all kinds of things that
Speaker 2: were not very well thought through. China was the real
Speaker 2: predator here, wasn't really Mexico or Canada. I think it's
Speaker 2: actually Mexico's had some factories moved there, but most of
Speaker 2: the stuff has moved over to Asia. But look, here's
Speaker 2: the real problem is, and this came out with the
Speaker 2: smooth Holly tariff, is there's a parallel with this. The
Speaker 2: real reason that Michigan and Ohio and you know, the
Speaker 2: upper Midwest rust belt has lost so many manufacturing jobs
Speaker 2: is partly free trade. Partly it's their labor unions and
Speaker 2: union shops. The American auto industry as a whole is thriving.
Speaker 2: The real competition for Michigan and Ohio is not China.
Speaker 2: It's South Carolina, and tariffs don't.
Speaker 1: Really change that very much at all. I don't think.
Speaker 2: I mean, it might actually increase production at those plants,
Speaker 2: but it's not bring back Michigan and.
Speaker 1: Ohio, and that's left out of the calculation here.
Speaker 2: I don't think tariffs are a great weapon to try
Speaker 2: and restore the old industrial base.
Speaker 1: But the water point I like the other.
Speaker 2: Point you make, which is and I wrote about that
Speaker 2: on Substack on Friday, is by the way, I'm just
Speaker 2: going to brag here, I was still up on the
Speaker 2: year even at the end of the day Thursday this
Speaker 2: last week.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until Friday that I went negative on my own.
Speaker 1: That's because I know what the hell I'm doing.
Speaker 2: Unlike John Hughes says his four oh one k is ailing,
Speaker 2: I'm by the way, I'm licking my chops right now.
Speaker 2: I salivate over markets like this, but that's because I'm
Speaker 2: weird and contrariant.
Speaker 3: My bonds are way up, Steve, Oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have a bunch of those, and yeah they're
Speaker 1: doing great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got some to the ten years below four percent,
Speaker 2: which my way, by the way, be part of the
Speaker 2: purpose of doing these tariffs. If so, it's worked like
Speaker 2: a charm and that's going to pay some dividends literally.
Speaker 3: Well, and not only that, but try to tell me
Speaker 3: that the stock market isn't greatly overvalued by an.
Speaker 1: Interest, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, on I don't think it's well it's easy
Speaker 2: money and some stuff like that, but yeah, it's it's
Speaker 2: mostly overvalued, although if you took out the big seven
Speaker 2: that have dominated the market, then it's only a little
Speaker 2: under overvalued, not hugely, so somewhat.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have my measures.
Speaker 2: I could go through this, but I don't want to.
Speaker 2: I would bore everybody, including myself. I had two quotes
Speaker 2: in my sub stack on Friday. One was Reagan in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty one when the stock market started going down
Speaker 2: after his tax cut past. That's because the stock market
Speaker 2: could see that we were going to go into a recession,
Speaker 2: which was a holdover from Carter policy, and some snotty
Speaker 2: reporter says to Reagan, well, gosh, it looks like Wall
Speaker 2: Street doesn't like your policy very much.
Speaker 1: And Reagan said, I've never found Wall Street to.
Speaker 2: Be a very good source of economic advice, which was great, right.
Speaker 2: But then if you go back further, I got to
Speaker 2: thinking about how again historical analogies, but there are some
Speaker 2: parallels here. It's when Churchill decided to break to bring
Speaker 2: Britain back on the gold standard, and that's a long
Speaker 2: tangled store. But the bankers wanted it and industry didn't
Speaker 2: for a bunch of reasons. And Churchill hesitated, and his
Speaker 2: quote was, I would rather see finance less proud and
Speaker 2: industry more content.
Speaker 1: That is a Meganomics line. And Churchill later regretted.
Speaker 2: Giving in to the Bank of England and said he
Speaker 2: if he had it, if he could, he would hang
Speaker 2: the chairman of the Bank of England for talking him
Speaker 2: into doing the gold standard at the valuation and timing
Speaker 2: that he did. But there I think that comment I
Speaker 2: would rather see finance less proud and industry more content.
Speaker 1: That is very much a Trumpian sentiment.
Speaker 2: And so you know what you're saying is I think
Speaker 2: has some good historical precedent.
Speaker 3: No, I think so too, And you're absolutely right to
Speaker 3: point out that that it's much more complicated just than
Speaker 3: the fact that we're the world's piggy bank and you know,
Speaker 3: we pay their tariffs and their shock that we would
Speaker 3: ask them to pay ours. You know, that whole thing
Speaker 3: is just stupid if you ask me. But it is
Speaker 3: more complicated. We have, you know, on the other side
Speaker 3: of it. Let's point out let me tell you a
Speaker 3: funny story. I wanted to buy T shirts for all
Speaker 3: my staff so that they could be identified at convocation
Speaker 3: the people working, you know that sort of thing. I
Speaker 3: wanted to buy them, so I had to go through
Speaker 3: the university's branding. I had to order it from only
Speaker 3: only those companies that had been approved by the university.
Speaker 3: Blah blah blah blah blah. So I picks about, got
Speaker 3: a great deal. Everything was good. Send in my stuff
Speaker 3: for the you know, the broadery stuff, whatever it's called.
Speaker 3: And right before they were supposed to do them and
Speaker 3: send them, they say, oh, I'm sorry, the shirts that
Speaker 3: you ordered are not on the list. There's some sort
Speaker 3: of industry certification that they weren't being you know, that
Speaker 3: the shirts weren't being made by you know, child labor
Speaker 3: in in Indonesia or something like that. And all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, when I needed them desperately, I had to
Speaker 3: find something else at three times the price that was
Speaker 3: on the list. But you know who was on the list. Nike?
Speaker 1: Hmmm, yes, yeah, because.
Speaker 3: Nike is known for only having their products made in
Speaker 3: America anyway, So that was too much of a that
Speaker 3: was way too much of a but anyway, I worry
Speaker 3: about the middle class a whole lot more than I
Speaker 3: do about our global partners.
Speaker 4: I am.
Speaker 3: I'm becoming more and more America first, like Lindberg style.
Speaker 3: These days, I'm sick to death of other countries. Think
Speaker 3: you were, They're piggy bank.
Speaker 2: Have you not to take it up now, especially since
Speaker 2: John's not here? Have you been following any of our
Speaker 2: back and forth debate with John on foreign policy?
Speaker 1: On substack, I mean more to be played out there.
Speaker 1: It's kind of hard to do but in that format.
Speaker 1: But we're still having fun.
Speaker 3: You'll notice I'm not weighing in thought about that.
Speaker 1: That's all right. Well, well, I think he wants to
Speaker 1: talk about it with us.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I have to say, since I know we're running
Speaker 2: close to the end here.
Speaker 1: That so far, so far, I shouldn't jinx it myself.
Speaker 1: So far, I feel pretty unscathed from you tonight, and
Speaker 1: so is John. We've gotten off easy. You want to
Speaker 1: have a happy week, Oh.
Speaker 3: I had anything but a happy week. I guess maybe
Speaker 3: I'm happy to be with a friend for a that's
Speaker 3: probably it. Okay, So that means you're gonna make me
Speaker 3: do You're gonna make me do a Babylon Bee. So
Speaker 3: on that happy note, I would need to you need
Speaker 3: to let me share, and I want you to see
Speaker 3: my favorite Babylon Bee, which I'm expecting you to post.
Speaker 1: Oh shoot, well I can post it on substack. I
Speaker 1: still do that some too.
Speaker 3: I'm starting I'm gonna have to shut it in the
Speaker 3: chat because again.
Speaker 1: I turned on sharing for you, so I don't.
Speaker 3: It's not you.
Speaker 1: It's I'm a sharing that's always been true.
Speaker 3: But I know you are that kind of guy. Can't
Speaker 3: I can't even get chat at the show.
Speaker 1: Well, you can send it to me the text if
Speaker 1: you want to.
Speaker 3: No, I think I could do this anyway. So my
Speaker 3: first one is, uh, hold on, I'm pulling it up.
Speaker 3: My first one is my personal favorite. I was, gosh,
Speaker 3: why is it being so difficult. So take a look
Speaker 3: at this one, Steve if it will work, and then
Speaker 3: I'll read it, and then you have to post it
Speaker 3: while you're looking for it.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Oh you know what.
Speaker 2: I will try and post this with the with the
Speaker 2: podcast the show notes.
Speaker 3: I'll send it to you by text too.
Speaker 1: It says what you've done? Did you make that? You must?
Speaker 3: I did? I did? I saw it yesterday. So the
Speaker 3: is theologiends confirmed. We are all made in the image
Speaker 3: of God, even Steve.
Speaker 2: And then someone's smiling round face has been photoshopped into
Speaker 2: the picture.
Speaker 1: Listeners, so you get the picture, so to speak.
Speaker 3: I did a decent enough job for not knowing what
Speaker 3: I'm doing.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's pretty good.
Speaker 3: Tariff's Dodgers bankrupted as Trump places twenty five percent tariff
Speaker 3: on Japanese players. I don't get that. Steve explained to
Speaker 3: me how that works.
Speaker 1: Oh well, the Dodgers have been buying up some of
Speaker 1: the most expensive players who are Japanese. And it's you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this one, you know, just in case Nation's men
Speaker 3: honor Val Kilmer by quoting Tombstone all day like usuals.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's good, Yeah, genius. Trump tricks Democrats into hating taxes.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's correct. Yeah good.
Speaker 3: I can't remember if I read this one last week
Speaker 3: because it's from before, but maybe not awkward. Pete Buddhajeedge
Speaker 3: returns the White House from maternity leading. Yeah that one
Speaker 3: is pretty good. British man arrested for silently praying for
Speaker 3: the person stabbing him.
Speaker 2: Ah, yeah, that's too cuts, too close.
Speaker 1: To home, so to speak.
Speaker 3: Sometimes they're just not funny. JD. Vancy. I never actually
Speaker 3: heard anything come out of the whole visit by JD.
Speaker 3: Vance to Greenland.
Speaker 1: Did you not much?
Speaker 3: But here's JD. Van sweetens the deal by offering statue
Speaker 3: of liberty to greet. I know they're getting better, They're
Speaker 3: getting better. Wait, I'll end it with this one because
Speaker 3: you'll appreciate it. Breaking Corey Booker's filibuster record broken by
Speaker 3: your wife.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that was a that was fun right, Well,
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm gonna do both.
Speaker 2: Ends here of the ending since John's not here, so
Speaker 2: it's always drinking whiskey meat and this week.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to milk the hard tariff dividend. Yay, okay, everybody.
Speaker 1: We'll have John back next week, I expect. And uh right, so.
Speaker 3: I'll be mean to him just so you don't feel bad.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, I'm all get here the day
Speaker 1: I got off, easy night. Okay, I'll let you go.
Speaker 1: Ricochet joined the conversation.
Speaker 3: M