Speaker 1: Bye bye bye, bye bye bye.
Speaker 2: We hadn't agreed what key we were in, and James
didn't give us any indication a tool.
Speaker 3: Like usual, you always leave me stranded.
Speaker 4: James, ask not what your country can do for you,
ask what you can do for your country.
Speaker 5: Mister grbach Off, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochete
Podcast with Charles C. W. Cook and Stephen Hayward. I'm
James Lylyx, the David town depend dolink who sat down
with Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: And he's gonna tell you what he said.
Speaker 5: So let's ellis as a podcast.
Speaker 1: So you're familiar with this because you watch the game.
There's big this whole debate about the meat slay that
they run. Tush push.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't ban it, but what I would ban is
this horrible kickoff rule of this new kickoff rule that
is so bad. It is so terrible. You know when
in football when the bullbars, you're supposed to be loving
this ball.
Speaker 5: Is up in the air and Troll said, it is
so horrible. Welcome everybody, the ricochet poncast number seven hundred
and forty and James Lelax in a beautiful, gorgeous may
day here in Minneapolis.
Speaker 1: Charles W.
Speaker 5: Cook at the moment is dealing with a water emergency,
as he put it, which is not a British euphemism
for anything. Apparently he's got some water where it ought
not to be in his house. He's probably right now
putting it on bounty towels, soaking it up and strewing
sawdust so he can get to us as soon as possible,
because of course this takes priority. Stephen Hayward is with
us as well. See when are you in California?
Speaker 4: I am It's a beautiful sunny day here after several
days of heavy fog along the coast, so I am
welcoming my chance to replenish my vitamin D levels.
Speaker 1: Good.
Speaker 5: I understand the gas is going to hit something like
eight bucks in California. I read that they're taking a
couple of refineries offline, because why would you need refineries?
And then consequently they expect gasoline prices to spike to.
Speaker 1: An absurd look.
Speaker 5: Gasoline will be one of those prices that you see
on a sign in a dystopian post apocalyptic movie, you know,
when they cast deep into the troubled future and gases
nine dollars? Is this true? Do you drive a lot.
Does something like that affect anything the way that people
live or do they just growl and pump and snarl
and go on their way as usual.
Speaker 4: Well, California is testing the limits to how much pain
you can exact from people. I mean, Californias have gotten
used to gasoline being much higher than the national average
for quite a while. But now as that's saying goes,
the calls are coming from inside the house because it's
some of the you know, I forget it's the state
auditor or whoever, but it's official estimates from California State
Agency saying, hey, wait a minute, if we keep doing
some of these crazy things, we're looking at the realistic
possibility of eight dollars gasoline within say, twelve months from now.
I think that would be a tipping point to use
that dumb old cliche, right, And even Newsome apparently has
put out the word as regulators, we need to back off.
I should back up for listeners who won't know what
the approximate costs. This is California has its own special gasoline.
You cannot sell it anywhere else in the country, and
no one else can make it for us. Well, what
happens is if you have a maintenance problem or a
fire at a refinery, suddenly the supply gets hit, the
price goes up. And so what was the answer, Well,
price controls, of course, and reserve requirements and all kinds
of other stupid interventions that aren't working. And you've had
a couple of refiners. Valero's one conical Phillips another is saying,
you know what, we're just going to close a couple
of our refineries. They're not very profitable and so forth.
So suddenly in a real crisis of gasoline supply in
the state for our boutique gasoline that, by the way,
we don't need any more. But that's a technical subject
for another day. So even Newsom is now putting out
the word, we need to back off on this because
this is going to kill my chances to be president.
Well he doesn't say the last part, but that's clearly
what is on his mind.
Speaker 5: Eight dollar gas, eight dollar gas. It's just extraordinary. And
of course your refinery schedules affects the rest of us too,
because everybody has to shut down or reformulate. I mean,
it's great that we don't have that. Nobody else can
make it for you. But the rationale behind this is
because of the special ecological needs of California, and that
what does this go back to nineteen seventy three, they
were concerned about too much lead and sulfur being belched
out the back of the pipe, so they said you
got to do this, this and this.
Speaker 1: And none of those things apply anymore.
Speaker 5: But like most of these things, it staggers on and
on and on, a zombie regulation that can't be killed.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, I mean most people think if you ask
people how many kinds of gasoline do we have in
this country, they'll say three, you know, eighty seven octane,
eighty nine and ninety one. The answer is more like
seventy five. In fact, actually in your neck of the woods, James,
there's a special blends for the Minneapolis Saint Paul area.
I'm pretty sure I've seen the color coded map for this.
And what it goes back to is you're close to
being on it. It was really the Clean Air Act
of nineteen ninety that said, you know, we got to
have a lower The technical term is you want to
have lower read vapor pressure in the summer, so gasoline
isn't evaporating in the old days, that meant out of
cars with carburetors. But ever since we got catalytic converters
and fuel injected engines, the cars are much less of
a source of air pollution. And so now it's just
evaporation out of gas pumps. But it is so minor.
Now that these regulations are obsolete, we can go back to, well,
you could just have sort of a lower volatility gasoline
in the summer, but there's no reason not to have
a nationwide blend for it. And finally, I can geek
out on this all day, and I don't want to
board listeners. But you know, after Hurricane Katrina and then
was it Hugo was the second one in two thousand
and five. So ten years ago now, President Bush waived
the gasoline blending requirements because you know, half of our
refiners were shut down in the Gulf and there was
no increase in air pollution. The Environmental group said, oh,
we understand it's necessary, but this is terrible. Well that
showed you that twenty years ago these regulations for gasoline
were obsolete and we're still stuck with them because like
other environmental rules, they're almost impossible to get rid of.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the evaporation thing. There's that seal on the pump,
and there's the new gas caps that at least in
the car that I have, which form a tight seal
with the hose and the nozzle and all the rest
of it. It's not as though you come up to
a gas station you are beset by an ice stinging
miasma of the evaporated gasoline. As a matter of fact,
I don't even smell gas when I'm at the pump anymore.
But of course we don't have the pipes that we
had in the battle days of the sixties, where black
smoke would come out of the back. Now speaking of
black smoke, white smoke, We've got a pope, and this
is Pope Leo the fourteenth, and I have been not surprised,
I guess, but I've been really sort of dismayed by
the quantity of memes that this has spawned, and none
of them are very good. There seems to be an
intersection between Catholicism, Pope renewed, Pope's Leo Chicago that just
didn't catch fire this time. That, of course, is the
most important issue of the day. But no, I'm not Catholic,
so I have no canem in this fight. But Stephen,
you're probably more theologically astute than myself. What are we
looking at here? Are we looking at more of a
return to what some people want in terms of traditional Catholicism.
I think if that had been the case, they would
have got somebody from Africa or somebody who's going to
sort of continue along the path of his predecessor, or
be like Lee of the thirteenth and you know, be
in the office forever. I think he was the fourth
longest serving pope.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well.
Speaker 1: Right now.
Speaker 4: My first guess is he's going to be halfway between Francis,
who was pretty progressive in a lot of ways and
equivocal and confusing, and Benedict the sixteenth. And two things
give me hope about him at least. One is that
on traditional Catholic moral questions he looks pretty solid. He's
made some strong statements against the sort of gender identity madness.
He's pro life, he's co condemned, as he put it,
the homosexual lifestyle and same sex marriage. So far, so good.
He has retweeted a lot of progressive stuff on climate
change and immigration. But I know it's two things about him.
He's not unlike Pope Francis, who used to traffic in
the old days in Argentina with a lot of those
liberation theologians who I liberation theology in short, is just
Marxism with salsa what.
Speaker 1: It was back then.
Speaker 4: But Bob, Pope Bob, I'm still calling Leo. He is
Augustinian by background, which I think is very interesting. Second,
he was a math major as an undergraduate at Villanova,
and one of his scholarly publications after he went through
you know, theology school and whatnot, was Bayesian statistics applied
to theology. In other words, he's as far away from
sort of Marxism and goofy phenomenology as you can possibly get.
I think I take those as somewhat hopeful signs that
he's a more grounded guy.
Speaker 1: Good.
Speaker 5: Well, in that case, if he's Augustinian by training, it'll
be great to have somebody come out in thunder against Manicheism,
the Pelagian heresy, and all of these things which remained
to this day actually relevant topics if you want to
drill down into it and consider that human nature doesn't
change and these issues continue to be devil us. But
so there's that, Well, we'll see how it goes. Another
thing that might might be of interest to people that
have been chewing over the stats and figures and shape
of the world is the fact that Charles is now
with us. And I say that in the most commanding
voice possible.
Speaker 3: Charles has entered the chat.
Speaker 5: And Charles has entered the chat.
Speaker 1: Are you are you? Are you in dampened? Well?
Speaker 2: You did worrying me a bit when you started talking
about pipes and evaporation. I thought this was a microaggression.
Speaker 5: No, we don't do microaggressions with we do macroaggression.
Speaker 3: Just straight up aggressions.
Speaker 5: We were casting our eyes or about to Europe, where
an interesting thing has happened in Germany. We're being told
again with the parameters of possible political discussion should be
The German intelligence agency said that this party over there
extremist right wing organization, and they're going to watch them.
Speaker 2: I love any sentence that begins an interesting thing has
happened in Germany, and I love I love reading Germans
excusing their authoritarianism. I love it because obviously, and for
good reason, historically, they don't want to say yes, we
are authoritarians. So what they do is they say yes,
we did it, but then explain why. So recently, when JD.
Vance criticized them, they didn't say, no, no, we don't arrest.
Speaker 3: People for speaking on the internet.
Speaker 2: They said, oh, no, you have to understand, we are
not We're not censoring you if you're just making sure
your opinions are as good as they can be according
to our guidelines. And with this one it was even better. No,
it's not an attack on democracy, you're not. We're not
attacking democracy. If you have just enabled the secret services
to look into you, and if you do not like you,
then you cannot run for office. And VI will not
tell you if we found things on you that you
might dispute, because that would just feed into your extremism.
You see, It's amazing. They just they just they just
they go yeah, yeah, yeah, we did that. We did that,
but we did it for your own good. They are incorrigible, James,
they are unsalvagable.
Speaker 3: The Germans, it, if I.
Speaker 4: Can jump in, it's an amazing thing to me that
the Alternative for Germany Party AfD, they got twenty one
percent of the vote in the last election, so they
came in a close second. They're now polling at twenty
six percent in the latest round of polls, the number
one party. I think because more and more Germans are saying,
wait a minute, we keep wanting change and we don't
get it. And the question I have to ask is, oh,
they say AfD is a neo Nazi party. Is there
anybody who really thinks that twenty five percent of the
German population are want to be neo Nazis?
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 4: You no, Come on.
Speaker 1: The last thing.
Speaker 4: The last final thing is the German Intelligence Service. Our
producer points out to us, is called them German. I
can't pronounce it right, but the.
Speaker 1: For fashiong Schultz.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, my favorite German technical term is veltwer Schlechter,
which means world worsener, and that ought to be the
title of their intelligence service.
Speaker 5: If you ask me, well, does it seem to you, gentlemen,
is if they are what they are doing?
Speaker 4: Is?
Speaker 1: I mean? I don't, I am not there. I don't
know whether.
Speaker 5: I'm sure that there are some people in the organization
who have appalling views about this, that and the other.
But it seems to me that what has set them
apart is their criticism of demographic shifts in Germany and
that they are expressing an idea held by a not
insignificant number of Germans that the general you're in project
to reorder, rejigger the demographics of Europe is not beloved
by people who would prefer their country stay as it
was before that. And I don't know does energy feed
into it as well, because it'll be interesting to find
out whether or not advocating for nuclear power and and
and and casting an eye as scance at windmills is
now a signifier for Nazis. We we all know, I mean,
if you look at the right, but.
Speaker 2: We all know, how's the last four ending new clear?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And now you want to bring that back to the world.
Speaker 5: I mean, because if you're against the transgender agenda, you
are regularly called a Nazis. So the word is appended
to anybody nowadays who doesn't follow the parameters of the
standard progressive beliefs. And but is this is this what
is this part of it? I don't know what I'm asking.
Is energy that much of a component of the a
f D or are they basically just seen as the
guys who will probaly probably do something maybe down the
road about reducing the increase in the rate of migration
into Germany.
Speaker 2: Look, we're joking about this. English people cannot help but
joke about the Germans. But I really do think that
this is ultimately a sign of very low self confidence.
And I've been making this argument in different context for years.
When I was at Oxford, we had all manner of
people come and speak, and in two thousand and eight,
the year after I left for the first time, I
think maybe in the history of the Oxford Union, which
was set up as a free speech debating society in
the Victorian era, the invitation to someone who was truly
aw for was canceled. We're supposed to have a debate
with a guy called Nick Griffin who was the leader
of the British National Party fascist and David Irving, who
really had gone crazy in his later years, and they
rescinded the invitation. And I remember saying at the time
that this was actually not a sign of civilization or
self confidence, but the opposite. That is to say, did
you really think that four hundred and fifty Oxford students
were going to go to this debate with this too
silly people and goose step out? And I think the
Germans do suffer from the same thing, which is they
do wonder at the back of their minds whether if
the wrong political party is allowed to speak, or the
wrong internet influencer is left unmolested on Twitter, whether they
will go back into it. I'm not here doing my
stick anti German thing, which I know I do as
a running joke. I do think they have that fear
somewhere in the psychic.
Speaker 5: Much a running joke as a goose stepping one. Gentlemen,
it's time for our guest. Ben Donick, editor in charge
of Editor in Lawrench at Charge, who Knows Spectator World,
a Fox News contributor and the host of the just
released podcast insert sound effect from London here, The Big
Ben Show. Ben Welcome, Hey, It's great to be with you.
You know, Big Ben was also it was also a
name of a product by West Clocks, and it was
one of their most famous and enduring domestic clocks that
they sold absolutely millions of them. So you're going for
that ubiquitous in the house of every good American or
the symbol of something loud, sonorous and historic in another country.
Speaker 1: I was thinking a little bit more of that, and
frankly a nod to the fact that as enter at
large for The Spectator, the oldest English language magazine in
the world. As Charles Cook is currently nodding, it was
designed to make a nod to the fact that I
have to put up with a lot of Brits.
Speaker 5: Well I will. I will only know it as a
Minneapolis chauvinist that the Minneapolis City Hall, where I'm a
block away from, has clock fases on its tower that
are actually larger than Big Ben. So if you want
to extend your reach, you might want to call yourself
the Minneapolis City Hall Ben Show. Well, but it's not
as euphony.
Speaker 1: I will take that under advisement that I believe, as
Charles will probably know, it's actually the bell, it's not
the clock. Yes, yes, of course, yes, you're right.
Speaker 2: You're absolutely English people's favorite panantic point to make, and
they do it with Paris I.
Speaker 1: Know, and it has been made to me on several occasions.
Speaker 5: And there are so many of them from which to choose,
by all the people.
Speaker 1: All the people who I thank for bringing me dun
Hills at the end of the year when they go
back home for a holiday.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm you know, I'm heading off to blighting myself.
I can bring you back some players, some triple fives.
Speaker 1: What do you want? Fantastic all of the above.
Speaker 5: I'll just broad to bring you twenty Rathlins.
Speaker 1: All right, So here we.
Speaker 5: Are quick sketch Trump so far, I guess as a
world start, we're a third of the way end of
the year already for twelve and how's it looking?
Speaker 1: Well? I think you know you have to give it
an I mean with this is always you know, sort
of a random point. Everyone has their columns tied to
you know, how you assess things. But it's incomplete in
so many ways. The degree to which that he's moved
fast has been eye opening for me, and I really
do believe, especially after and I hope that you had
the time to read and consume the interview that I
did with him in the Oval Office, which was first
magazine interview yet. Oh thank you so much. Steve always
be selling. See Steve holds up the actual physical copy. Yes,
I only have a few left, so I need to
make sure that I hold on to one. He You know,
different politicians take different lessons from near death experiences. My
friendship Roy, who I worked with back when I was
a speechwriter for John Cornyn, had a you know, the
stunning thing of being diagnosed before he was forty years
old of lymphoma and beat it and is now obviously
a member of Congress, a fire breathing member of Congress.
And he went from being sort of a vaguely centrist
Texan Republican to being what he is today. I think
in part because of that experience, it sort of shortens
your time frame. It says life is short. I have
to fight as hard as I can for the things
that I need to do. I think that the President
has taken a similar lesson here and applied it via
the people that he's named. The only problem that I
think that comes with that, though, is that you've named
a bunch of people to these jobs who are front
facing public faces. They are used to doing TV, they
are used to doing podcasts, they are used to being
out front. That's not necessarily the skill set that it
takes to run bureaucracies. And especially you know, as I
look at you know another former boss of Mind, Jim O'Neil,
who's up for the secondary that basically the second in
command position at AHHS and hearings this week. Getting him
in at HHS is critical because he actually knows the place.
He knows the way that bureaucracy works, knows the way
to get things done. You know, the problem when you
have someone like Pete Hegseth who goes into the Pentagon,
is that, as much as you might like him as
a spokesperson, my brother, who's an army major, said, it's
so unreal to have a Secretary of Defense who can
actually go on TV and be cogent. The problem is
he also brought with him a lot of his advisors
who were clearly at odds with each other and feuding
over different things. You had essentially a slew of firings
in the wake of Signal Gate that really had nothing
necessarily to do with signal Gate, and that, to me
is an indication that when you hire these front facing people,
they don't necessarily bring people with them who have the
cognizance of how to steer the ship of state, and
I think that that's been the real challenge for them
in this early going. I also think tariffs are silly,
and that the fact that we are having the kind
of reaction from Capitol Hill of just not knowing on
a daily basis of what's going to happen to major
industries in states across the country is not a position
that Republicans want to be in going into the midterms.
So that has to be sorted out in short order,
because essentially the midterms start in September, you know, realistically.
And also just one last point, living in Virginia, the unfortunate,
I think Virginia is going to be the Candida of
this election. Michael in November, I had to say, because
win some sears, wonderful woman, great candidate, you know, think
that she would in a normal year, I think that
she would be able to best a Democrat, especially one
as completely in the swamp as that they are on
pace nominate. But in this situation, the backlash from the
bureaucracy toward the Trump administration is probably going to lead
to a Republican bloodmath in the fall here in Virginia,
which is of course a bell weather election that people
take their cues from, and it's going to have I
think Capitol Hill Republicans quite scared going into this next
year about the midterms and the White House itself, and
I've had numerous people within the White House tell me this.
They view this as being an existential threat, meaning that
if Democrats take the House the way that they did
the first time around. For Trump, it essentially puts the
stops to their entire agenda, and that's something I think
that they have to be concerned about at this point.
Speaker 5: I want to get back to tariffs. When you said before,
I too, am not a fan of them. I grew up,
you know, with the specter of smooth Hawlly hovering over
my brain having been told that it was passed, and
the next day the stock market crashed and stockbrokers jumped
out of windows. Don't like them, though, But here's the thing.
If we are to have a more equitable trade position
with China and do something about their ip thievery and
general commercial skullduggery, is there something in the toolbox behind
a whim digious one hundred and forty five percent tariff
to get their attention and force them to the table.
Or would you have preferred that we just concentrate on
China while not doing the whole blanket thing around to
the world as somebody who has an unequal trade balance
with us and talk about Britain as well, Well, there
you go, You've got you've got ninety seconds go.
Speaker 1: Well, what I think is there's there's a difference between
understanding something as being strategic ambiguity, you know, an actual
choice that you've made, versus the lack of a strategy.
And I think that that's really the question going on here,
which is that you know is strategic ambiguity, which sort
of says, I'm going to throw these things out there
just to get people to the table talking about various things.
I actually that I did a rant on my podcast
the other day on these Hollywood tariffs, which I'm sure
you probably have opinions about too. The thing that is
actually true about them is that Hollywood is losing a
ton of business overseas. You know, a Maria has lost
Star Wars, America has lost the next two big Marvel movies.
You know, America is losing all this stuff to Canada
and to overwhelmingly to Great Britain because they have a
support for filmmaking that is to the tune of a
forty percent rebate, and competing with that is very difficult,
even if you're competing with it from Atlanta, which is
where most of the Marvel stuff has been made recently,
including Thunderbolts. The thing that is interesting though about this
is that you sparked a conversation about what would it
take to bring this type of movie making back to Hollywood,
And to be honest, the answer to that is have
Gavin Newsome undo every single thing that he's done. And
that's the actual answer. Unfortunately, Instead, what he wants to
do is charge us for the stupidity of his policy,
so to the tune of a multi billion dollar package
of rebates to make up for all of these stupid
union rules in California regulations. Personally, I think tariffs only
work as something that can force a conversation that the
other side doesn't want to happen. You never want them
as a long term solution because they are attacks on
your own people and they are wrongheaded. But I do
think that there is a lot of wiggle room in
this space. And just because the President thinks of things
in terms of tariffs, is that that's his go to.
You know. John Voight, by the way, who was behind
apparently this policy, when he was interviewed about this, said
I wanted something that was a tariff paired with a rebate,
And it seems clear that the President just loves the
tariff part of that, you know, and so he just
goes in that direction. We'll see how it plays out.
But one thing I do think is clear. He has
responded to the pressure that he's had from a number
of other Republicans who say, look, you know, you can
go after China all you want. That's fine with us.
We don't like going after nations that we view as
our allies and punishing them in situations that do not
benefit the people. And that's what he's going to continue
to hear, I think, including from members who are very safe,
you know, from Katie Britt in Alabama, you know, that
kind of thing. And that's something that I think he
does listen to, and just like every other decision that
he makes, he throws it out the table. He sees
the people debate, he listens to what they say, and
then he picks a side or picks a person and says,
you know, they won this argument. I'm going to stick
with them.
Speaker 2: Well, I want to ask about that, because I agree
that they need to get rid of the tariffs pretty quickly.
But also I agree that Trump really likes tariffs. That's
what he focuses in on, and I just wonder is
this one different, because this is something he has believed
for forty years. Yeah, a lot of political topics. He's
something of a chameleon on not because he's necessarily on principle,
because he doesn't care. Is this something he can fix
quickly or is this one going to be his undoing.
Speaker 1: I think that more than anything, he responds to pressure
in this moment that connects to his popularity and to
his understanding of what the people who love him love.
And so from my perspective, the big thing that's kind
of the open question on this, and Charles you're probably
aware of this, you know, one of the biggest aspects
of going in a terraf regime like this is how
much it hurts American working families. And I think people
underestimate the fact that we're not talking about dolls. We're
not talking about two dolls and thirty dollars. You know.
What we're actually talking about are things that you are
required as a parent to buy, such as even in
New York City, you are required to when you take
your baby and leave the hospital, first prove that you
can put them into a car seat. Even if you
don't have a car, you have to have a car seat.
Car seats. Ninety seven percent of them in America come
from China, and that's because China has produced these car
seats in a way that lines up with America's overwhelming
regulatory state. They even have offices there. There's one county
in China, by the way that does this. They have
offices there to assess, you know, what they do and
make sure it lines up. And by the way, you know,
if you are not a recent parent, you know, car
seats have expiration dates. Now you can't gift there's no like, no,
you can't work it. They're perfectly good. Yeah, So it's
not like a crib or something like that where you
can you know, donate it. It's it's you know, ridiculous.
And then that same county, by the way, also produces
an overwhelming number of American bicycles and of you know,
for for youngsters and of strollers, the most popular like
mid tier stroller. Band Up a Baby announced that their
most popular model was going to go up and cost
by three hundred dollars about four weeks ago, which means
that they now took that into an area where middle
class families will be paying one thousand dollars for a stroller.
That's ridiculous, Like I mean, we should not be in
a position where that. But that's the thing. That's not
like a decision about whether I get the doll for
the kid or not. It's like I need a stroller.
I have to have one, you know. And so I
think the problem for the president is that if those
impacts are felt at the middle class level, everyone's going
to be looking around and saying, this is not what
I voted for. And that's where I think the rubber
meets the road and you actually have to have a pullback.
But that hasn't happened yet, and until it does, I
think this is still kind of in that uncertainty space.
Every poll that I've seen, and I'm sure you all
get you know, sort of leaked stuff behind the scenes
as well, but every poll that I have seen from
people who have sent them to me in terms of
the breakdown, basically show Trump supporters as being cautiously optimistic
but nervous, essentially saying I trust the president, not sure
this is going to work.
Speaker 4: So, Ben, I want to draw you back to your
terrific interview with Trump and the Spectator. I love the headline,
by the way, clear and present Donald. I think that
works both for his fans and his enemies. Look, I
mean there's a lot of news in this. I mean
some stuff that's familiar and fun, like him saying let's
get rid of the NFL's horrible kickoff rule. I'd love
that one building the ballroom at the White House, like Marloco.
Some of this has been out in the press, But
what really struck me about it was what you drew
out of him, which I've been wondering about for a
while now, about the difference between his first term and
his second term, and did you explicitly ask what he'd
learned from that experience, because you get into it here
and culminating, by the way, those very interesting comments about
Nixon that I gather you did ask him directly about.
And so here's my hypothesis, which was what came through
in your article, and either confirm or clarify this, is
that is it really right to say that in the
first term he really underestimated how vicious the attacks on
him are going to be once he won the election
and took office. That came through at one point where
it I mean, this is this guy's been around New
York real estate and all the rest of that that's
a pretty rough and tumble world. But even with all
that experience and what happened in the campaign, it sounds
like he was admitting that he underestimated how insane and
off the chart vicious it was going to be.
Speaker 1: He totally did. And one thing I would say is
the interview, and we do have the audio version that
people can go and find at the Spectator dot com
of our conversation, which is consistent with our transcript. But
I will say the audio version is about an hour long.
He talked to me for more than nine minutes, so
it's long. I actually think it's the longest interview that
he's given other than like Joe Rogan or something like that.
And you know, he just goes off the record all
the time, which is I mean, it's fine, but it's
kind of funny because usually it's it's like he goes
off the record and it's because he wants to insult
somebody's wife or something like that.
Speaker 4: Oh his good qualities, right right, yeah, exactly, she was
a mess, you know, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So so he actually told me a phenomenal anecdote about
Bob McDonald's wife that that I you know, couldn't put
in because it was it was off the record, but
it was just very, very funny. But the thing that
is he also says serious things, and in fact, I
would say I emerge from that interview believing that he
understands Mexico a lot better than I I thought necessarily
going into it that he did. And I think that
this whole idea of his administration being kind of a
Western hemisphere foreign policy, you know, polk influenced admin is
definitely something that comes from the top and is not
just being you know, something that's being said by Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, there's a rare moment of circumspection that you quote
Hims about Mexico saying, you know, I'd rather not tell
you what might have to be done. I think you
everyone knows, but.
Speaker 1: He says, I'd rather not tell you, but but you
know it has to be done, and then he went
off for about another fifteen minutes off the records. Anyway,
unfortunately the best thing you know, but you can't say it.
But the thing that is really interesting about him, I
think on the second term versus first term thing is
I don't think he anticipated being surrounded by haters the
way that he was the first time around, I think
he thought of this as being I'm going to walk
in there and to be able to do business with
Chuck Schumer and do business with Paul Ryan, you know,
and basically, you know, adjudicate that, and there was sort
of a glimmer of a moment. I mean, Charles probably
remembers this because I think you may have written a
piece responding to it about that Ezra Kleine take that
like it was like a Democrat should work with Trump
to fix Obamacare like that that was his take about
two weeks before inauguration. That all went out the window
when you had the Women's March and when you had
the Russia Gates stuff and everything else that came after that.
And I think this time around he has a clear
eyed view of it. But he also feels vindicated. He
feels like they threw everything that they could at me.
They threw the kitchen sink at me. I fought through
it all and I came back. They tried to you know,
someone tried to kill me, you know, and multiple people
in fact, and you know, and because of that, I
think he just has this this sort of the difference
between I interviewed him before in twenty when he was
about to start his re election campaign. You know, same
kind of thing. You know, in the oval, I got
less time than I think it was an hour, but
at that point he was kind of surrounded and he
was leaning forward on his desk, you know, he was
he was just like, you know, he was just really
in it and kind of you know, angry and frustrated,
and you got that vibe. This time around, he's sitting
back in his chair. Yeah, very relaxed. When I got
the when I got kind of got the high sign
that like we needed to, you know, bring things to
a close. I asked him a question about the I
asked him about the tush push because I had been
that was. You know, whenever you go into an interview,
you have kind of or at least this is the
way that I approach interviewing. When I approach interviewing the President,
because I've done it now three times. The thing is one,
you interrupt him if he starts repeating himself or going
in a chain that you kind of know where he's going,
which he does respect. The second thing is ask him
some quest questions about celebrities, because he always has opinions
about celebrities. The one question that I forgot to ask.
I'm kicking myself for this is I was going to
ask him if Stephen A. Smith would be a good
kar right, I only forgot to do that. And then
the third thing is I always go in with like,
what's your last question? You know, like, because because you
never want to end on a like sour note, you
always don't want to have something that's a little interesting.
And so I because it was currently during the NFL meetings,
I asked him about his perspective on the touch push
and then we talked another half an hour about sport.
Speaker 4: And I mean it come it comes through in your
ride up that he is more relaxed. I think he's funnier.
This is my observation from Afar is that it's a
different person in some ways. In other ways, he's the
same Trump as always, but a different person from the
first term, more confident, more purposeful.
Speaker 1: Well, but he also I would just say one more thing,
which is that he has a much much savvier team
in terms of his like especially in terms of his
media team around him than he did before. They're much
more cognizant of all the different elements going on there,
and that's not a slight against you know, those past people,
but it's detectable in terms of their awareness and situational
sort of perspective on things.
Speaker 4: There is one topic missing from your ride, more than one,
but one particular one that's missing. Now maybe it's in
the complete interview that you say is online, but I
didn't see any discussion or about what is the centerpiece
of his legislative agenda or ought to be, which is
the tax cut bill.
Speaker 1: And you know, in the.
Speaker 4: First term, he essentially farmed out to Paul Ryan, and
that's basically fine, and I get the feeling he may
be doing the same thing this term. What is your
Did you talk about it at all, and what's your
sense of how engaged he is in the tax package
other than just wanting something past.
Speaker 1: We talked about it very briefly, and it wasn't all
that interesting. It was not that different. It was the
only the reason it's not in the article is because
he basically said the same things that he's been saying publicly,
and so it was not something that I included for
that reason. But the thing that is, you know, interesting
about this moment for the Republican Party is you know,
they've made all these promises about, you know, the kind
of party that they're going to be. But I feel like,
you know, and feel free to disagree with me, you know,
Steve or Charles or James. You know, I don't know
that they have a consistent perspective on tax policy that
is a through line, because everybody seems to be just
gnawing at their own personal priorities, especially these moderates currently
who for whatever reason, you know, salt is more important
to them than almost anything else. And I mean, I
don't know about you, but I personally think it's a
bad thing to take Medicaid dollars and give them to
someone like me versus someone who is disabled or a
mom or a kid, you know, and and basically send
that money to a hospital at a higher you know,
percentage coverage rate. You know, that was something that was
always messed up about Obamacare and the fact that suddenly
Republicans are like, no, no, no, we have to defend
that because otherwise we'll be seen as as horrible people.
I think, if you're an able body American, you know,
you should be you should have to work for that.
And that's you know, been a Republican priority essentially until yesterday.
Speaker 2: So what else did you get the sense that he
really cares about if he doesn't care about this and
it wasn't a great part of the interview and he
said what he said in public and so on. I mean,
are there topics this might not come across on a
transcript so much as on a tape or in a video.
Are the topics where he lights up and you can
just tell, yeah, this is why he's there.
Speaker 1: He lights up when he is talking about building anything.
You know, it's it's like a it is just in
his core. I mean, he was so interested in like
hearing my opinions about the new Redskins I mean Redskins
Washington Stadium thing, and he was just like, it's so
beautiful when you come in and the road splits and
it's you know, it's a fandom. Like he was like
he had strong he has strong opinions about that. And
then I think he also he's his own political consultant,
you know, in the way that like there are certain
members of Congress as you know, who self staff, like
they read their own stuff and then they come up
with their own ideas, which is often frustrating the staff
for Trump. One of the things that he kind of
it's clear about him is that he thinks that he
understands Americans, I think, more than his own consultants and
staff do. So when he says things like, do you
think the the election was about inflation? You know, do
you think it was about that? Well, you know, he thinks,
you know, he thinks it was about the border. He
thinks that the border was a bigger issue for people
than the polls or than the consultants necessarily understood. I
have to think he's probably right about that, just in
terms of the determining demographics. But you know, it's he
thinks that he has a better gauge on where people are.
And then he also he thinks Democrats are crazy, but
he likes that they're crazy, Like he doesn't he sort
of doesn't want to say, you know, it doesn't work.
It's like he wants to be able to point at
them on a daily basis and say, look at these lunatics,
you know, and but he kind of, uh, I think
he kind of respects the crazy because he thinks they're
making like a play for a certain you know, demographic
of their own party, which is kind of forward looking.
Uh and so I wouldn't you know, uh, we to
the degree that I would say he sort of is
is aware of this. It's almost like he doesn't want
Republicans to actually past policies that change some of the
craziest transgender stuff because he likes being able to play
off of it. He he brought up the main governor
who he had had an interaction with about two weeks
before the interview, and uh, and you know, just oh insane,
insane stuff that they're doing him there. And but I
think he actually enjoys that they're doing it, because he
thinks it's like an admission on their part of of
how crazy they are. Uh. The the Maryland Dad stuff
hadn't happened when I interviewed him, but I imagine that he
that that would fall in the same category like he
would he his reaction would be, I love that they're
going to hell. Go to hell, so we make this
here whole thing.
Speaker 5: I would love to tug building with Trump frankly, not
football stadiums, but like as him about the JP Morgan
building in New York, which I think is just a dark,
glowering obscenity.
Speaker 1: In the sky ops about that stuff. And I know
it's it's like he's I imagine if he was a
little bit younger, he would be like a sim City obsessor.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, I mean, ask him, ask him about Trump,
about the comed the Trump Hotel and the Commodore location
next to Grand Central Station. Why didn't you choose that
kind of window? Do you like that kind of window?
Missed that kind of glass? And what's the problem with it?
Why haven't they started the Commodore tower yet?
Speaker 1: Stuff like?
Speaker 5: I mean, I would love to I don't think that
necessarily his opinions would be all that. I'm not interested
in his static opinions because I don't think it's the
set extent is all that sharp. But when it comes
to just the app the sheer.
Speaker 1: The last line and the last line of the piece
is about you know, nothing shines like gold.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yes, you know, he says, yeah, okay, well all right,
it's a big gim cracking, I know.
Speaker 1: And you know, and when they when they did.
Speaker 5: The Plaza hotel, everything God gilded, got it, got it,
got it. But so let's look at something else, though.
Speaker 1: We'll leave you with this.
Speaker 5: So let's say the worst happens for Trump and that
you lose the control of the House, and the agenda
is stymy that gives them at a narrow window here
in which to do an awful lot of things, and
some of these things in order to be I mean,
it's not like somebody coming into office and cutting the
budget of something for fifty percent and then the Democrats
waltz back in and increase it by one hundred and twenty.
If you eliminate things, if you get rid of things,
if you pass laws that say, you know what, you
can't have any more petroleum based dyes in your food,
it's the party that comes after you is required then
to rebuild, not just not just wake up, but to
reconstitute the things that were taken away. If the Department
of Education is zeroed out, I mean food, you know,
what do they do. They got to make the argument
that we have to restart this whole thing USA. They
have to make the argument is necessary for us to
establish a procedure to get money to peruve and l
pack of farmers for diversity and general awareness. I mean,
they got They're going to have to make that point.
So energy is good speed, all these things, breaking things,
all this disruption. Do you think at the end of
two years of drump that a little four, but at
the end of two he will have significantly reshaped a
great deal of how the government actually spends, operates, et cetera.
Speaker 1: I do, but a large part of that is, I
think because the decrepit nature of the current bureaucracy is
one that lends itself to significant change. Meaning that you know,
a lot of the things that they've been doing in
terms of these doage situations, and I know several people
who've taken the buyout here just living in the in
the Washington, DC area, that that's something that I think
lends itself to to catering to these reform based projects.
When when it comes to education, certainly I'm optimistic about it,
but I don't know. I don't know how far they'll
be able to get in that timeframe because there's a
lot of things that need to happen. Our next issue
at the Spectator is actually about reviving the American mind.
It has an interview with me with Chris Rufo. It
has a piece from Amy Wax, has a couple of
other things as well, and certainly the Higher ED is
under their target lens and you've seen the clash that
they've had with Harvard as being something that they're choosing
to have, I think at this juncture because they believe
that the wind is in their sails on it. One
thing though, that I think is going to be a
real problem for them is that as long as they're
doing these things through executive actions, emergency based actions, etc.
They are also things that can be undone. And you know,
the one of the things I do think that they
are smart about this time is that they have teed
up so many of these questions early on in his
first one hundred days that are going up through the
legal processes. We will have some resolution on some of
these questions before the end of the year. It won't
be something that is just a lagging issue that comes
in the tail end of his term, and that I
think was a smart move. I think that Stephen Miller
did this within the immigration space on purpose because he
believes that he has the better of the argument. I
disagree with him on certain points, especially the birthright citizenship point,
because I think that the court will reject their opinion,
but it is also something that hasn't been resolved, and
so they want resolution on a lot of these questions
earlier rather than later, so that they can try to
do what they want to do and then you know,
operate around it. So look, I do think that this
is already a significant presidency in terms of the policies
that they put in place, the shift on foreign policy
in particular, we see, you know, he's on his first
trip other than the Vatican trip obviously, which was unanticipated
to Saudi as he did the first time around, and
you're going to see those interactions there play out around
so many different issues, Israel, Iran, the Hooties, the everything
that's related to energy policy in the world. And I
think that, you know, this is a dramatic, dramatic shift.
I'm not sure that you know, we are going to
be able to fully grasp it until we've had some
remove But one thing I do think is without having
the legislative policy that is necessary to put these things
in place permanently, Republicans run the risk of celebrating too
much about wins that are temporary and that can be
swept away by you know, whoever you think you know
is quite on. I think it's Gretchen Whitmer right now,
you know, like she's the one who's playing this moment
the best, but like if she ends up you know
in there after this, uh you know, or you know,
pick your poison. Uh the what was the line from
Jasmine Krockett today, the safest white boy they can find.
You're gonna be one of the favorite members of Congress.
Speaker 5: Yes, if you're gonna be one of those old style
people who think that we ought to pass laws and
debate boring.
Speaker 1: No, we're gonna we're gonna move that's terrible. Yeah, we're
gonna do eos.
Speaker 5: We're gonna concentrate power in the executive because it'll never
come back to bite us in any possible way. The
Big Ben Show is what you want to listen to,
and it can be heard on all of your favorite
platforms and podcast streaming places. And Ben, we thank you
for joining us today. It's been a great pleasure with
It's always great to talk to all of you. And
I just have to say Steve Hayward again, the writer
of one of the greatest lines about any presentident ever.
Jimmy Carter got elected promising an executive as good as
the people, only to discover that the people were no good.
Thanks Ben, All right, Ben, Thanks, we'll talk to you later. Gentlemen,
before we go here, we have a few little minutes. Oh,
we could talk about what could we talk about? We
could always delve into popular culture and do a brief
one minute roundup of anything that you think that other
people should be watching on their streaming services. Not an
in depth review, but you simply give them a little
heads up or thumbs down. I'll start with you, Steven.
Speaker 4: Oh, you know, I don't watch much TV or streaming,
although I did, at the recommendation of John O'Sullivan take
in this show out of Britain that Charles probably knows
about that was made way back in twenty nineteen about
the Brexit referendum. Has Benedict Cumberbatch as right. It's called
Brexit the Movie or something like that. It's on Amazon
streaming and it is very well done. And I've enjoyed
that because you know, it's a great political drama, very
well cast. The person who plays boris Johnson. I don't
know who the actor is, but he's a dead rigger
for Johnson. He's absolutely fabulous. I imagine you've seen that.
Charles will probably have your own opinions about it.
Speaker 2: I have.
Speaker 3: I watched it on a plane. I know it was terrific.
Speaker 1: Charles, what are you watching?
Speaker 2: Well, I just finished a show that it is not
New Justified, not the but the older one from twenty
ten to.
Speaker 1: Fifteen Timothy Oliphant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I started watching this in I think twenty eleven
and I just never finished it. I think I had babies,
and you know, but well, I know we had babies.
I think that's why. But I loved this show. I
was just really well written. The performances are good. It's
light enough that you can watch it after a long day,
but it's not mindless.
Speaker 3: I just loved it.
Speaker 1: I'm finishing up this weekend. Land man.
Speaker 5: I'm not a big tailor shirtan guy, although I've always
enjoyed everything of his. I've watched, primarily watched Billy Bob
Thornton smoking off a lot and and say cruel things
about renewable energy.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 5: But I've also been watching a Paramount Plus show called
mob Land, which was it's basically your mob drama, except
it's set in England where the people live in munch
tonier houses.
Speaker 1: But it's fantastic.
Speaker 5: Pierce Brosnan is Helen Mirren plays one of those Livia
style moms and mothers who's absolutely horrid and vicious and
it's just great fun, possibly because of you know, the accent.
And then somebody also it was Hugh Hewett told me
that I should watch The Agency, which is based on
the Bureau. Perhaps it's The Bureau which is based on
the Agency.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 5: It's a French show about intelligence services and it's set
in the UK. It's the CIA. Richard Gear, isn't it?
And that's sometimes sometimes that's the only pleasure you get
out of a streaming service show is an actor that
you remember from the nineteen eighties popping up and still
alive and able to speak and doing a credible job.
Speaker 4: You know, if I can jump into that's an important
point that I mean, Richard Gear is not completely over
the hill. But the reason, the reason you don't see
him cast is that he's been an outspoken supporter of
Tibetan independence and I think maybe the Felon gone the
Hut and the Chinese will not allow any movie that
has Richard Gear in it to be screened in China,
and we put up with this. That's why you don't
see him very often.
Speaker 3: Do you know?
Speaker 2: I sat next to Richard Gay on an airplane about
five years ago.
Speaker 5: Did you did you start a conversation with him?
Speaker 1: Leave him alone?
Speaker 2: I did make conversation with him, but I never acknowledged
that I know who he was. And this is my Yeah,
that's how I always do it. If I find myself
sitting next to someone who's extremely famous, I never say,
my goodness, I just said, and I swear that we've
been having and maybe they bring it up, but they
never actually do. And then I go on and it's
it's just between us that I knew, because I assume
they know that I know.
Speaker 1: I know I do too.
Speaker 5: I never tell them, you know, I just I let
them eventually, you know, all say yes, I am James
Ladox and then I get a glassy bovine stare.
Speaker 2: James, I have to something you said twenty Rothmans in
the conversation about cigarettes.
Speaker 3: Why did you say that?
Speaker 5: Because of a money pin sketches?
Speaker 4: Oh my goodness, that's.
Speaker 5: What Bret, Yes run down of the store gave me off.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that's why.
Speaker 3: And there's a but in the book.
Speaker 2: In the Monty Python and Papa book, the story about
the the medieval woman who has betrays to the guy
kills the dragon read this.
Speaker 5: Well, that's the one where he's he's always playing this
m dummy.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right, Okay, okay, that good, the same thing.
I just thought, Wow, that's so random.
Speaker 3: He must have seen it.
Speaker 5: Well, you can also get them in smaller packs of ten,
which I've learned later at the time, and hence the question,
and hence requesting twenty Rothmans.
Speaker 1: Was a specific size and product.
Speaker 5: Otherwise you just say, give me a pack of Rothmans,
butter say twenty.
Speaker 1: Was to indicate that. Yeah.
Speaker 5: So, and also last before we go, we don't do
enough pitching.
Speaker 1: Of our own stuff. Here.
Speaker 5: We pitch ricochet, we pitch all kinds of other people's works.
By Heaven's sakes, we should offend. We should pitch our own. No,
I understand, Charles, you are spreading the Gospel of Ai
in a recent piece, and you hear out Ross Daufit
on matters of faith. Where can people find these pieces?
Speaker 2: Yes, so I spoke to Ross Daft about his new book,
which is about why everyone should be religious. And I
asked him about the book, and I asked him some
metaphysical questions, and then I asked him to tell me
why I should be religious. It was a very interesting
conversation which you can find on the Charles C. W
Cook podcast, which you can google or find on Apple
or Spotify or what you will. And then I had
a piece about AI helping me fix a grill, which
really was heartfelt in that I am incredibly impressed with
the strides AI has taken. The ability to identify problems
with machines based just on a photograph is something else.
Speaker 5: I was using AI the other day for some self soothing.
I was asking some questions about websites, hoping sort of
coily that it would get around to mine, and it
did because I'm asking you questions about match book, match
book collections and the rest of the Eventually it came
up with my site, and when I asked it to
say more about it, it was just fulsome and complimentary
and I felt great and I felt so good about it,
and I kept asking you more questions, and it was
praising me and saying all these things people said. When
I asked it the next day, I didn't know me
at all. It was it was just remarkable, as if
your childhood best friend had been taken on piths in
the back of the neck, Steven, you've been talking. Well,
I'm sure you have any pieces you talk about Damon
Linker's hit piece against the Straussians that we know is
a box office.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, well yeah, well well, I've started my own substack.
You can find it Steve Hayward dot substack dot com.
It's partly me, but I've also recruited a few other contributors,
and I'm using it for longer form things that are
somewhat more academic. It's not for everybody, but I try
to make the writing lively. I carry on these interminable
debates with John yu about all kinds of things that
are fun, so we snipe at each other. I've got
a Max Cossack, which is the non the plume of
a novelist, writes every Thursday on music and movies and
popular culture, and he's turned out to be a big
hit with readers. So I'm doing that. I'm writing a
fair bit for the Civitas Institute people down in Austin
at the University of Texas, where I may be taking
a larger and larger role as that whole thing unfolds.
They were just given another one hundred million dollars by
the Texas legislature yesterday, So follow that story.
Speaker 1: It's going to be fine as that unfolds. Well, I
suppose I should pimp my own stuff on.
Speaker 5: You can find it at two places at James Lilacs
dot substack dot com. We're Monday through Friday. There's something
for the paid crowd. Monday always a free Callumn Tuesday
there's always a little bit of Joe Ohio, a fictional story,
long running story, short story collection about a man who
who actually is a match book designer in Cleveland in
nineteen fifty. Wednesday a lot of outtakes where I riff
on the things that I take out of my columns
and explain why. Thursday the gallery Regretable Food. Friday another column.
So all that is there at lilax dot com. You
can find Monday through Friday the Bleat, which will update
and has an extraordinary amount of content that I have
been putting out for years, and I am seriously considering
that after twenty twenty six I might cut it back
a little bit, because between the Substack and the Bleat
there's ten pieces, ten fifteen, shall we say, pieces that
I put out a week, and that's a lot. National
Review of course, I've got a piece coming up in Discourse,
the discourse dot com, which.
Speaker 1: Is a great website.
Speaker 5: I've got a piece there about the ghost American habit
of asking where are you're from and what do you do,
which I think are perfectly sensible questions.
Speaker 1: What else are you going to talk about?
Speaker 5: And other things, And of course then there's that's my
interesting writing. Then there's the stuff I do for the
newspaper here that ought to do it, that ought to
cover it. For this podcast number seven hundred and forty,
James Lilex, I'm thanking you for listening. IM thanking Charles CW. Cook,
who can now get back to bailing out the living room,
and Steven Hayward and gentlemen, it's been great. We'll do
it all again next week. We'll see everybody in the
comments at Ricochet for Bye Bye