Speaker 1: It's being converted on the fly, So every moment that
it's in use, it's being converted. It's like nineteen eighty four.
It's a relentless totalitarian conversion that never stops. You want
to imagine the future, Imagine a USB two cable into
a USB three cable, stamping on a human face forever.
Speaker 2: Ask not what your country can do for you, Ask
what you can do for your country.
Speaker 3: Mister gorbucha, Tear down this wall.
Speaker 4: It's the Ricochet Podcast with Steven Hayward and Charles C. W.
Cook James Lillax. Today we talked to Jerry Baker, editor
at large of the Wall Street Journal. So let's podcast.
Speaker 5: Mister Greed, take your seat. Take your seat, sir, take
your seat. Finding that members continue to engage in wilful
and concert a disruption or proper decorum, the chair now
directs is startant at arms to restore order. We'll move
this gentleman from the table.
Speaker 4: Well become everybody. This is the Rickchhepe Podcast, number seven
hundred and thirty one in James lilloxs in Minneapolis. Beautiful
crisp day. We got about ten inches of snow. Yeah,
we can take it. It's March. I'm joined by Stephen
Hayward and Charles C. W. Cook. Who are I believe
in respective poles of the country, Florida and California. And
where to start with this week? Every day it seems
to be something, and then we forget that we did.
We annext Greenland last week? I don't know what a
swirling constellation of stars around your head like somebody in
a cartoon who's been whacked on the nug and with
a frying pan. So what to begin? What do you, guys,
what stands out at the end of this contentious week
as the most important issue to you or the one
perhaps that flew under the radar, That will that will
be something we're talking about in a little bit now.
Could it be the Supreme Court decision that appeared to
slam the knuckles of Doge Stephen Charlie.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not quite sure it did that. It's a
little bit it's a little bit obscure and maybe technical
and narrow. I think actually the biggest story of the
week is still unfolding today Friday, as we're talking. First
two days ago we had the news that Gavin Newsom
is now a podcaster by the way. I predict he's
going to do as well at podcasting as Mario Cuomo
did a talk radio thirty years ago, and I thought
he'd be the ride, he'd be the rival for Rush,
and he was just boring as good beat. But what
the news was that a newsom suddenly sounded like a
Republican's interest. I'm against boys and women's sports, I don't
want to use l tinks, and defunding the police was idiotic.
So this is clearly someone gearing up to run for president.
But then it's followed up by the news that after
Senate Democrats voted unanimously to block the Republican bill to
ban trans women from women's sports, suddenly they're changing your tune.
And now they're out with a new proposal. Well, let's
let the states decide, you know, sort of the their
equivalent of the Dobbs decision on abortion, I suppose you
might say, and I think you're seeing the weakening here
on some of these cultural issues on the left because
it realizes they're getting killed on this and so anyway,
I think that's the sleeper story that's going to grow,
and it's going to cause great divisions inside a democratic
coalition interesting.
Speaker 4: Well, yes, watching new some molt and shed his skin
is interesting. But then there are some people who say, well,
I'm looking at this bill here they're talking about boys
and women's sports. I don't like it. But on the
other hand, I looked at my IRA the other day too,
and I really don't like that. Ah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it seems to be getting worse. If you
look at the stock market right now, it's worse than
it was this morning, and that in turn is worse
than it was yesterday. It was okay twelve days ago.
It seems to me, James, and I don't know if
you think this is maybe a conspiracy theory or me
putting pieces together that doesn't belong. But do you think
this might have to do with the tariffs? I think
it might, yeah.
Speaker 4: And you know, as somebody who is on the cusp
of retirement, and you know, I generally don't check those things.
They go up, they go down, you know whatever. We
you know, I don't like it, and I especially don't
like it because it seems to be what we call
an unforced error own goal. I was not in the mood,
particularly for a trade war with Canada. And while Canada
may indeed have an onerous terrace on American milk. It's
just it's not it's not really up there. Now. I
understand the long term reasoning is to do this to
bring back, you know, manufacturing in the country, and we
have to go through short term pain and then in
five years it'll all be better because we'll have more
industries than businesses. Here. One of the major car companies
announced that they're going to start building some stuff in America. Again,
I get that, I get that, But I hate tariffs.
I just do. I just I just do. And maybe
it's because I associate them, you know, with a smooth
end or holly and think that didn't work, and maybe
this doesn't work now. So yeah, the Mexican tariffs have
been abated for a month, though, have they not they
not decide to step away from those for a while.
Speaker 1: Well, they're showing as tariffs you see, they're introduced well
because they both exist and don't exist, and they're both
good and bad because when they're introduced, there's all these
reasons that we need them. We need to be more
like America in the eighteen nineties when we were apparently rich.
We need to be like William McKinley. We need to
protect industry and create jobs and potentially even get rid
of the income tax.
Speaker 4: And that's just terrific.
Speaker 1: And that's why tariffs are so good and the most
beautiful word in the English language.
Speaker 4: And we all love them.
Speaker 1: Also, they're so horrible that if you threaten people with them,
then you get things that you want. So we don't
really want tariffs. What we want is to threaten tarifs
and then not do them, because obviously we wouldn't do tariffs.
Trump actually did this yesterday, James. He actually said yesterday
when he was announcing that he might give some tariff
relief that he was going to rescind some of the
tariffs to protect American industries from them. But you put
them on, so he's both the provider and the taker.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think the embarrassing irony hearers that
if you go back to twenty sixteen, Trump was most
prominently talking about tariffs to save American auto industry jobs
and save auto factories in America, and those are the
first tariffs are that sector that he relaxed within hours
of imposing them because I think someone pointed out to
him that the supply chain for automobile manufacturing in parts
is more complicated, and it's not so simple. I still
wonder if, well, an old word comes back to me, James.
You'll remember from the seventies we were going to fight
inflation by jaw boning, remember jaw boning, and that meant
we'll talk about it a lot. And what shame people
in the lowering the price of eggs? I don't know,
but I do wonder sometimes, and Charlie put his finger
on it right here, just now, how much Trump really
believes in tariffs and how much this is Trump's typical supercharged,
exaggerated rhetoric in service of trying to be jaw boning
on steroids. And you know, look all presidents of going back.
You know, Reagan put up with some tariffs under politically
circumstances that were difficult.
Speaker 4: He kind of had to.
Speaker 2: But you know, a Bush put on tariffs to protect steel,
so did Biden. Well, there are aluminum tariffs. We've had
tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber on and off over the years.
I don't keep up with it, but so I don't know.
I'd like to think that, in my optimistic moments, that
Trump has got a serious game here, and he's playing
it the way he does everything else, and maybe it
will get some results. But at some point paper are
going to figure this out, as we have suggested before.
Speaker 4: Well, those were individual tariffs. I mean, there are targeted,
specific cares. We've been doing that stuff, this sort of
broad brush stuff. If it was just talk, there'd be
one thing. But he did them, so that's another. And
if he backs off from this, because I'm wondering what
would make him back off of it, if anything, because
everything the wins that you've had, all of the rhetorical, philosophical,
symbolic wins that Doze has been racking up by saying, look, America,
you there, you guy, you who paid five thousand dollars
in taxes last year. Actually what we did is that
your entire tax payment for the last twenty years has
been going to one L pack of farmer in Peru.
I mean, and again, we no longer need to make
up absurd examples of spending like this, because that's where
it was. I think it was ninety thousand dollars for
an L pack of farming in Peru. So somebody looks
at that and says, well, exactly, how is that supposed
to work for me. Then I am driving around on
roads that are pothold, there's miscreants and lolling about in
my park that isn't clear, et cetera. I mean, we
know these are all complex state, local issues, but people
just basically get the idea, I'm paying a lot of
money for taxes, and if we lived in an absolute, utopian,
clean paradise like Tomorrowland in the movie, yeah, throw a
couple of nickels at the guy in Peru. But we don't.
And why so that's a win because I think that
then as nonpartisan, I think people actually the middle get that.
But when all of a sudden you have shuddering economic
contraction because of something that was put on that nobody
really really really was voting for. I wonder at what
point Trump looks at this and says, I'm going to
cut bait and cut my losses and back off of this.
I don't know if he has it in him or
if he's just gonna be bullheaded about it and keep
going forward.
Speaker 1: Charles, I think he definitely has it in him, because
he keeps rescinding them when the stock market goes down. Look,
this is a real risk. So let's look at this
both from the perspective of somebody who might hate Trump
and from the perspective of somebody who really likes Trump.
I think the argument against this course of action is
applicable from both sides. If you hate Trump, you look
at this and you say, well, he's doing tariffs. Theyre stupid.
He's a stupid person and he's being stupid, and.
Speaker 4: I hate him.
Speaker 1: Okay, fine, If you like him, you don't want this problem,
and it's become a problem to overshadow all of the
other things that you want him to do, because the
maxim that it's the economy stupid is still true. It's
the primary reason that he won the election. He won
the election because Joe Biden and his party made inflation
a great deal worse in twenty twenty one by pumping
a whole bunch of money into the economy that the
economy did not need and creating the worst inflationary environment
in forty years, and then saying it's not happening, and
then saying it's transitory, and then saying, well, maybe it
is happening, but it's not too bad, and then this
is the worst part of all, passing a bill called
the Inflation Reduction Act that had literally nothing to do
with inflation. Well, look at Trump's policies right now, many
of which I like. But look at what he wants
to do in the next six months. He wants to
expand the tax cuts from twenty seventeen, including no tips
on taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime, no taxes
on social security benefits. Best sent. The Treasury Secretary said
two days ago that their aim is to bring interest
rates down, and he's imposed tariffs supposedly twenty five percent
on everything from Canada and Mexico. At least that's the aim.
All of those things are inflationary, and inflation hasn't gone.
People won't put up with it. Most people aren't ideological
like we are. Most people don't follow politics like we do.
They're gonna say, ah, wait, everything's expensive. I don't want
things to be expensive. And when that happens, you don't
get to do all of the rest of the stuff
that I like, all the reform of the executive branch
and the destruction of DEI and some of the foreign policy,
not all of it. But I think this is a
real risk for him that he is taking and not
just again from the perspective of people who don't like him,
who are going to say that anyway, but for the
people who do like him.
Speaker 4: Agreed. Although we can have this argument about taxing social
security another day perhaps, but I agree with you. And
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Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast. Gerard
Baker the editor at large at the Wall Street Journal,
and you'll also find his weekly Free Expressions column every Tuesday. There.
He hosts podcasts but the same name, along with the
interview series w SJ at Large with Jerry Baker on
Fox Business.
Speaker 6: Welcome, Thank you very much indeed for having me. It
might be my first time. What's my first time for
a while anyway, I think I think we've done this before,
but back in the back in the ancient days of
the Puts, the Biden administration.
Speaker 4: That would be a long time. You know, we've been
doing this forever. This is podcast number seven thousand, seven
and forty two, so you know, we may have had
you back in the two thousands or something like that.
So here we are. You know, we're halfway through the
hundred days and you get a little tired of the
one hundred days thing. But it's hard to shake. I
guess it's inevitable. Trump has packed more into the first
half of the hundred days, I think than I can
imagine a lot. And it's this baffling welter. It's like
standing in for behind a jet engine into which somebody
has fed feathers and tacks and it's just it's really, so,
what's your impression so far?
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's the uh, the everything everywhere, all at once
to approach to governing. And by the way, there's obviously
there's there's method in that, right, there's I mean that
that that's done very deliberately. I remember reading an interview
with Steve Bannon years go, I think in the early
days the first Trump administration, where he said, you know,
part of part of the purpose of this is a
obviously to give a to project an image of activity
and momentum and all of that, but also frankly, just
to sort of overwhelm the media and political opponents. I mean,
you know, you you at one minute, you're talking about
Matt Gates being nominated for something, and everybody's, oh, throwing
their arms up about that and so and then the
next thing, we're talking about Telsea Gabbitt, and so we've
forgotten about maca you know. So you know, there's no
question it's a you know, and again everything from executive
orders on everything from you know, immigration to you know,
the administrative state to tariffs, and goodness knows what else.
Speaker 4: I mean.
Speaker 6: So you don't have time, the media don't have time
to digest and interpret and critique and all of those
things that you would normally do. So so part of
it is so and that's you know, you can't you
can only stand back and look at that and say, wow,
that's kind of impressive management as well as impressive sort
of energy. Look, I think I do think maybe this
was the week in which, you know, maybe maybe maybe
the we saw some of the kind of downsides of
the frenetic pace the I mean, first of all, the tariffs, right,
I mean, are just a disaster. Let's be completely honest
about it. They're not only a disaster in themselves intrinsically,
I'm a believer tariffs generally do nothing but harm. But
but but the the back and forth, and you know,
the desultry way in which Trump is you know, yes,
they're on one day, they're not the next, and you
can see the reaction of the financial markets. Nobody likes
that and and so that's you know that that that's uh,
maybe a sign of the you know, this this extraordinary,
this this train hitting the buffers. You've had the you know,
I think more worrying signs about the economy with jobs
numbers weren't too bad today, but I think that's also
going to kind of punch some holes in this, uh,
in this performance. And and of course, you know, losing
the case at the Supreme Court, or at least sort
of temporarily as I understand it, losing the case of
the Supreme Court on the on again in another administrative
state case. So it feels a little bit as though.
And then and then, by the way, you know, the
European what this I mean Europe at the moment, in
this extraordinary revolutionary kind of temper that there is in us,
you know, European relations, I think that is also perhaps
a sign that things are not going quite quite as
smoothly as planned. So look, I think there's you know,
it's it's been a it's been a highly productive, incredibly
productive start from the executive side. We've got to see
obviously where any of the legislative process goes. That that's
you know, there's especially the big the big beautiful bill
and other stuff. But I just think we're starting to
see for the first time this week. I wouldn't say
go as far as to say the wheels coming off,
but the you know this, when you do, when you
start out with this kind of blizzard, then stuff is
going to start to stuff is going to start to,
you know, to fall fall by the wayside. And I
think we're starting to see that.
Speaker 2: Jerry, it's Steve Hayward out in California. And so, by
the way, you know, my Tuesday morning starts reading your
column in the Journal. Actually, my mornings start with reading
all the daily columnists. And I wish you could get
Dan Henninger to unretire and come back on Thursdays. But anyway, look,
ask you about the European scene. Since you're over there.
I've been planning out the theme lately with people that
just as Trump is attempting to overthrow the Wilsonian legacy
Woodrow Wilson's legacy of the administrative state at home, he
is also trying to undo the Wilsonian legacy in foreign policy.
In other words, the Wilsonian internationalism that has been the
consensus of you with both parties at least since the
end of World War two, if out in certain ways
before all that, And I think I'm sympathetic to that
project in some ways. That would take a long time
to go through, But I don't think there's any way
that that could be accomplished without some kind of big bang,
without something that would be wrenching. I mean, I thought
I was writing actually when Obama was president, that he
had the opportunity if he wanted to reset sort of
American European relations and the NATO strategy and so forth,
but he really had no interest in that. And so
of course Trump's going to be bumbling, But I think
there is potentially an upside here. Am I too optimistic?
What am I missing? Are Europeans so thoroughly alarmed and
panicky that this was an ill advised idea?
Speaker 6: Yeah, So I'm here in Europe wading through the waiting,
through the through the broken eggs of the of the
the president Trump is in the process of making. I
don't disagree with you that, Jim, I think. I mean,
I think I think, you know, fundamentally, one of the
things that I found really interesting this week, and it
got a lot of attention to got a lot of
negative attention when Trump gave I think he was in
the Oval Office and he was talking, you know, in
doing that strange thing that he does where he kind
of holds a kind of a rolling in comptue press
conference while he's signing those executive orders. He was talking
and a topic he got onto the subject of Japan
and the Japan Security Pact that the US has with Japan,
and he said, you know, it's kind of ridiculous. We
have a pact with Japan whereby we promised to protect
them if they get if they get attacked, But what
do they do for us? Absolutely nothing, then anything for us.
Who who the hell came up with that idea? The
answer is Douglas MacArthur. And it was an essential part
of the of the of the post war settlement that
actually the pacification of Japan was considered back then to
be a rather important national security priority for the United States.
But it did strike me then just and this is
your point, but you know, back to your point about
Europe and the Wilsonian framework. It's from me then that
you know, he of course he has a point. I mean, yeah,
because exact because the answer, as I just said to
who came up with that crazy idea was you know,
Douglas MacArthur and then Truman and then ultimately eyes now
and they and it was a good idea at the time, right,
but that was that time was seventy plus years ago.
Speaker 3: It probably doesn't make anything.
Speaker 6: We don't we don't view Germany and Japan today in
the way that we did in you know, nineteen forty
five and ninety forty six. So of course we need
a new a new order. And I think more broadly, yeah,
the kind of you know views that we've call it Wilsonian,
but the sort of you know that the post Cold
War liberal order that was you know, very much the
thing for a long time. I also agree with that that,
you know, the US has different strategic interests, the world
poses a different set of challenges, and I think there's
absolutely things a lot to be said that. The only
thing I'll say though, is, I mean, I think Trump
has incredibly good instincts, and sometimes his instincts put him,
you know, a really really good political and even geopolitical instincts,
and they put him in a place where, you know,
perhaps almost inadvertently, he discovers this is exactly the right
strategic approach should we should be taking. But then he
does also all frankly, and you know, this is also
the question at the back of everybody's mind. Is he
really kind of unconsciously undoing the Wilsonian order and consciously
undoing the global liberal order or does he just have
a bit of a.
Speaker 3: Thing for Vladimir Putin?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 6: And I you know, and I'm sorry, I can't I'm
not being too flippant about that, and I certainly don't
buy the you know, Putin's got something on him, compromat
kind of thing. But it just does seem in his
case he just really has a thing for the man
and never says a bad word about of mind conscious
that he you know, just actually has called the post
sanctions something. So so you know what, that's all I'm saying,
is we do all we do this with Trump all
the time, like he's this incredible. Charles wrote a terrific
piece recently about the you know, I'm picking the absurd
observation claim that Trump plays four D chess. You know,
everything he does is like, oh, you know, I think
I can't remember it was a tallyron set of metinic
or the other way around when they died.
Speaker 3: You know, I wonder what he meant by that, and
that's what we said to do that with Trump.
Speaker 6: We do that with Trump, right, and it's like, you know,
he just he just you know, he just you know,
sent out a text tweet saying, Kaffifi that's regulably a
sophisticated observation on the state of the world. No, I
just that's the problem with him. I mean, you know,
you know, his instincts are good. Often sometimes it's not.
They're terrible. But is it instinct or is it you know,
grand strategy.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, right, I mean that's a good question. There
is a headline, a news headline in your paper today.
I haven't read a story, but the headline goes something
like Germany considers acquiring nuclear weapons and I wonder, is
this for real or is this the Germans learning how
to play Trump's game.
Speaker 6: I have a very dear, very dear friend, a Jewish
journalist friend and colleague who you know, when we were
having these arguments years back about burden sharing and whether
the Germans should be doing more on that, the Germans
were you know, useless militarily, and he would say, and
we'd have this argument, he'd say to me j S.
Speaker 3: Jerry said, we are having an.
Speaker 6: Argument about how bad it is about whether or not
about the fact that the Germans aren't we know, militaristic
in it. That is a good thing, you know, That
is that you know that, that is that that that
is something anybody in the last two hundred years would
be celebrating. Why on earth are we kind of you know,
worrying about it. So when you see a headline saying
the Germans want to get nuclear weapons, you know, on
one level you might think, uh oh. But one of
the things I wrote quite recently, I read a column
sort of just looking at kind of the implications of
this new world order, and nuclipliferation is absolutely one of them.
I mean, that's you know, if I am Germany for
that matter, and you know, Freedom Nurse that soon to
be chancellors said this. But if I'm poland, if I'm
the Baltics, and if I don't think that, if I
don't think if I think NATO is in effect a
dead letter, which I think, frankly it almost. If it
isn't now, it will be soon. The first thing I
want is to get my hands on a nuclear weapon.
Because I want to be able to say to Vladimir
Putin or whoever his successes are, you know, you you know,
you come and come after our cities. We're going to
you know, we're going to We're going to annihilate Moscow.
So I I you know, so yeah, this is the reality.
But I think I do think the larger point here
is that I do think NATO, even if it's not
formally dead, and you know, I think Trump will probably
come back and say some nice things about it, would
be persuaded to say some nice things. I saw Pete
Haig Sith yesterday say some very nice things to the
British Defense Minister. But I think in practical to him,
does any I mean, do you think, for example, that
Donald Trump would take America to war to defend Estonia
if Vladimir Putin invades tomorrow?
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 6: I mean, maybe I'm I just don't.
Speaker 4: Hi.
Speaker 1: Jared's Charles Cook here on the question of four, five,
six or maybe seventy chess.
Speaker 4: What is your take.
Speaker 1: On Trump's attitude towards Tariff's because it's certainly been a
feature of his rhetoric for years since the eighties, but
it is totally incoherent, and he does seem to impose
them and then back off. You can't reconcile the way
he talks about tariffs. It's been the greatest thing that
ever existed with his condoc and his incorporation of them
into this art of the deal myth. So what do
you think he's doing because it is inscrutable to me.
Speaker 3: It looks chaotic.
Speaker 6: It does look chaoto, and I agree I think he so.
I first of all, I think he has a very
dare I say, simplistic, but sort of simple view of
international economic relations. Not even mechantalyst, it's a it's just
a very simplistic, arithmetical view, which is that if one
country has a trade surplus or current account surplus with
the United States, then it's cheating. You know, it's just
it's it's it's just cheating. We're being ripped off. I mean,
he keeps using phrases like subsidized. He said, you know,
when when he talks about the US having a trade
deficit with Canada, he says Americans are subsidizing Canada, which
it is economically nonsense. It's not a subsidy, it's an
economic transaction. But you know, we get that. You know,
we we get oil and the Canadians get us, and
they're very happy on both sides. Used to be very
happy with that arrangement. So but I think he genuine
I think he thinks that's how he thinks of the
international economic system, that it is a kind of zero
sum game, and you know, just probably get it just
as he you know, when this is when he was
a real estate guy. If if he was winning, if
he if he got it, if he got to if
he beat somebody to a deal, that was that meant
he was winning and the other guy was was losing.
And so I think so, I think so, I think
it stems from that, that that basic view that the
world is unfair, and that that what you need to
do then to redress that unfairness, to to to redress
that injustice is tariff's tariffs are you know, are obviously
an obvious way to do it. They you know, they
hurt us, but they hurt the other side more because
they will have the effects other things being equal, of
of of reducing their the other side exports. So I really,
I think it really, I think it's that simple. And
then I think he's built on top of that this
idea that tariffs will generate huge amounts of revenue. He
keeps talking about, you know, William McKinley, and how you
know tariff's generated the asked bulk of federal income back
then and asked that that's when the that's when the
federal federal government represented about two percent of GDP.
Speaker 3: But but you know, so I think he's so.
Speaker 6: I think from that basic sort of economic equation, kind
of kind of false economic if you like economic equation,
that that trade that if that if you're trading, if
your trading partner has a surplus, then they're cheating and
they need to be and they need to be hauled in.
He then builds on these other ideas like taris will
produce great revenue and all. But he's not wrong about
the you know that tariffs ultimately will produce will induce
and incentivize American or need any company to come and
you know, build in the United States. So but I
do think it I think it really stems from that.
He looked, and I think Charles and I remember, you know,
looking where. I remember I lived in New York in
the nineteen eighty late eighties, and I remember him taking
out those ads in the New York Times when he
would say, you know, when the trade deficit with with
Japan and they would have an enormous trade definite, he say, look,
this is wrong. They're cheating. This is absolutely and I think,
I really do think it comes from them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's rhetoric. It's the same used to say politicians
in America effectless and they're allowing Japan to cheat. It's
pretty much a through line from there. My second question
is about the budget. Republicans historically have talked about the
deficits we run every year. They've talked about the debt
that those deficits create. They've talked about the issues that
we have with entitlements, and Trump doesn't. Now you can
make the argument that this is politically smart, because it is.
People don't want to hear it. The public is not
their Republicans who talk in that way lose. But the
math remains the same. Do you expect Congress to just
blow open the deficit this summer when they pass their
spending and tax bills or do you think any saner
voices will prevail.
Speaker 6: No, I think they'll I think they'll go for broke,
and I think with one caveat which one comes to look.
I think the I think, if the economy is slowing,
as it really does seem to be doing, I think,
you know, we're getting these sort of the usual kind
of hail of not necessarily consistent data, but but but
it usually points broadly in one direction. Even today's jobs
numbers were you know, on the softer side, and we've
seen two months of relatively soft employment growth. The the
you know, the there's certainly the markets think the economy
is slowing very sharply. That's why, you know, market interest,
treasury yields have fallen. And I think there's a pretty
good chance that we get to the middle of the
year or as this as this legislate, as this as
a as as this budget and tax cut goes through Congress,
I think I think the nervousness about the economy will grow,
and I suspect that will you know, that will be
enough to silence the what whatever remaining deficit hawks there
may be, because the argument is going to be we
really need a stimulus, of course, but the caveat I
was going to say is, at the same time, inflation
is not is certainly not going away.
Speaker 3: It's getting worse.
Speaker 6: I don't think as it happens for you know, reasons
we don't need to go into I don't think tariffs
are inherently inflationary. I think they lead to a one
time increase in the price level, and they're not necessarily recurring,
which would only be inflationary. But they will raise if
they ever get into if we ever actually impose these tariffs.
We keep going through this sort of you know, hide
and seek with tariffs that we've been doing for the
last couple of months. But if we ever get the tariff,
then they will push up prices, and you know, by
the way, and then and a big fiscal blowout, even
though it might be advantageous for demand in the economy
of demand is really weakening. Could also you know, will
will will certainly make the inflation picture worse too, so
you could you know, this is this is the stagflation scenario.
Speaker 3: Obviously.
Speaker 6: The other caveat or conditional is if we you know,
if the market really we if we have a market
event where it looks like the market suddenly takes fright,
bond yield spike, you know, and people think this is
not sustainable. At one hundred and twenty five percent of
GDP debt level, and that causes, you know, a real rethink.
But I think that's low probability outcome. I would say,
you know, I'd say they push it through.
Speaker 2: Jerry. It's Steve Hayward again. I want to ask you
a question about your column this week about the consequences
of collapsing public trust in the media. And what I
want to do for listeners is just quote two sentences
from it to get the flavor of it, and then
I'll give you my question about it. Here's what you write.
What happened is that news organizations were transformed in character
and purpose. They went from being quasi legal institutions to
quasi religious ones. They are more like prayer books for
a believing congregation. Their purpose is to strengthen believer's faith
by offering reassurance and imparting moral guidance. And you have
men more harsh things to say after that.
Speaker 4: I agree with all that.
Speaker 2: I do wonder if the problem of the collapsing public
trust in the media goes deeper and shares something in
common with a parallel collapse in public trust with the
universities and education. And I'll put this proposition to you
I think it was a great turning point or mistake
that decades ago journalism went from being a working class
profession like being a policeman or something like that, to
a skilled profession with people getting journalism degrees from Columbia
and so forth, and.
Speaker 4: So beyond the.
Speaker 2: Beyond the problem of having people who are very progressive
of going to newsrooms, and you point out out in
a sequl paragraph people I think who are actually not
that well educated. And here's my bold proposition. I think
you go back seven or eighty years ago to a
daily newspaper reporter who had only a high school education
probably had a better grasp of history, history and American
civics than a lot of our professionally trained journalists do today.
And I think that's as much a part of the
problem as ideology is.
Speaker 4: Is that completely outrageous to say.
Speaker 6: No, it's one hundred percent correct. And in fact, there's
a chapter in my book, Steve, which I will encourage
your listeners to the American breakdown We Trust's Lives the
whole chefro in my book, which I absolutely go through
the kind of demography of the news business. You're absolutely right. Now,
let me tell you just one one fun story which
I think I refer to in the book. Actually, but
when I was editor of the journal, a a friend
at a at another at a magazine, actually a news magazine,
a conservative leaning magazine, recommended a bright, young reporter to me,
and he said, you'll love him. You said, he's looking
for a job and he wants to work for you'd
love to work for the journal. And you know, he
talked to me and he said, I'll give you this.
This is an example of why you'll like him. He said,
he's only three or four years out of some ivy
league college, very bright, but a very good reporter, very
very thoughtful, very fair, very analytical and scrupulous. But they
sat him down and when he said he wanted to
be a reporter at the Wall Street Journal somewhere else,
they said, well, you know what, you know, why why
do you know you're you know, you're bright, you're smart,
You've got great prospects.
Speaker 3: You're working for a magazine.
Speaker 6: You could be a you know, you could be a
you could be a commentator, a columnist, you know, you know,
opinion writer. And this kit, this young man apparently said,
I'm twenty six years old.
Speaker 3: I've been out of college for four years, who gives
a shit what I think about?
Speaker 6: And it's just not as absolutely, absolutely absolutely the kind
of reporters we need. And that is exactly it. I mean,
there's you know, they you're absolutely right, Steve. You know,
they come out of university and they've been you know,
expensively educated, and they have imbibed all that you know,
nonsense unfortunately that's taught at most of these universities, and
they come out with a you know what was where
they come up with that sort of Marxian apro What
did Carl Marx say that philosophers sought to interpret the
world the point is to change it, and that sort
of I think that's you know, that's that's that's how
I view journalists. You know, journalists used to just go
out and report the world exactly as you stay say,
because they didn't have sort of high falutin ideas about,
you know, the way the world should run. They just
wanted to go out and find out what was going on.
And instead they've been replaced by this cost you know
of of sort of self revering intellectuals who want to
tell people how to think. And I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 4: The average newspaper of say the nineteen forties, nineteen fifties
or so, would have probably twenty thirty stories on a page.
Now it might be car accidents or the fact that
a toddler had slipped on a roller skate in his head,
but you got this great, big panoply of life in
these papers. And now, of course you'll find maybe one
or two stories on the paper, if the paper even
exists anymore, and it will be something of a deep
social importance, or something that is happening around town that
is seen through a particular prism that oftentimes is just
not available. The people who are holding that prism in
their heads don't know that they have that prison. They
still think they're being objected. But I want to ask
you this, but.
Speaker 6: Sorry, Josh me interrupted quickly. It would be toddlers slips
on ice, white supremacy, to blame right right, colonialism, to
blaye right right.
Speaker 4: Because one of the things that has been I mean,
I'm sitting in a newspaper office right now. I've been
a newspaper since nineteen seventy eight, and as an opinion writer,
because what the hell do I know? And one of
the things that's bothered me the most of the last
few years is this shift away from even paying obecient
lip service to objectivity, because objectivity means giving credence to evil.
Is what a new generation of journalists say when you
when you pull them in, these jay skulls, which ought
not to exist in the first place, I tell you, well,
you know, there's no other hand when it comes to Hitler,
there's no other hand when it comes to climate change.
So let's go to the Washington Post and look at
that paper in the competition Bezos is trying to do
apparently he lockstep with gearing and garables and the rest
of it. He's demanding, perhaps requesting that the editorial page
come out for free, you know, free economy and personal liberty,
who which again fascist of fashion adjacent issues right there,
And the reaction of the staff seems to tell me
that that probably is indicative of their own blinders and
their own ideology, which will continue to do in the
news industry as we know it today.
Speaker 6: Right exactly, I mean, I mean the idea that again
you absolutely you know, identify the ideological issue, but just
the kind of larger to me, and this is such
an so typical of sort of entitled view that we
have to deal with with so many you know, the
idea that someone pays, you know, essentially pays someone's salary
and loses hundreds of millions of dollars over a fifteen
year period to keep this thing afloat and keep these
people employed. The idea how that it's absolutely outrageous to
that that that person, that owner should then actually decide
he you know, he thinks he would like the paper's
opinions to broadly align with his own. No, it's you know,
it's it is that is that this is the problem
we have that Abo bunts one of the reasons again
I said, sorry to revert to my own column, but
you know why people don't trust why people don't trust
them anymore, it's they've they've lost all credibility and not
any credibility, but also they've lost any kind of the
lost any sensibility too, you know what I mean. I think,
I think they move in such rarefied circles. They all
believe that, you know, Donald Trump is the second coming
of Hitler, and you know, again all that stuff that
they've been taught about about colonialism and all that kind
of thing. I don't meet anybody who who even disagrees
with that. I mean, I always remember the story of
someone telling me, you know, some time ago, they're out
for you know, dinner with a bunch of journalists back
in the twenty sixteen campaign, and you know, somebody said, well,
how many people around the table voted for Trump? Or
just after the campaign was in? And not a single
hand went up? And then the more interesting question was,
how many of you know anyone who voted for Trump?
And still not a single hand went up? And that's
you know, I look, I don't want to be too harsh.
There there's a lot of still terrific journalists out there
doing honest work, good work. But it has you know,
it's as a as a hesitated with profession because I
don't think it is a profession, but as a as
an occupation, and as a as a useful function for
a you know, for for for society, it's it has
just it's lost its way incredibly badly. And I you know,
I don't think it's over. I think there are ways
in which it can be recovered, but it's in a
very very very bad place.
Speaker 4: I regret it too. I love it because I love
this industry. When I go to England, I stay with
a telegraphic family, and there's just something about opening up
that big paper. So I love the telegraph. That reminds
me of what the medium can be. But when Stephen
was talking before about the lack of faith in journalism
and the lack of faith in the institutions of education,
doesn't it It's it's part and parcel of a broad
spectrum lack of faith in the institution. There's been a
there's been a suicide of institutions institutional credibility in the
last four or five years. That seems to be nearly
every single one of them that you can think of,
possibly with the exception of the American military, which again,
you know, always doing things like well we got to
do you know, we have we have to pay for
the surgeries of transgender soldiers, or we simply won't be
the effective fighting for us we want to be. Which
institutions have survived the last five years or so and
actually gained credibility with the people or is it just
pretty much everything that we look at seems to have
revealed itself is made of fallible human clay, and and
and you know, bent Timber.
Speaker 6: I mean I apologize profusely because I did not come
on this show, which I love this show, I think,
I think it's terrific and I love I'm honored to
do it. But I did not come on the show
to promote my book. But this again is which I
actually go through this in the book. And actually, if
you look at the data the institutions that there are
a few institutions that have in in whom trust in
which trust can can you know, continue to be relatively high.
The military you mentioned, although as you say, there's been
some damage to that over the last few years. But
the really interesting ones are small businesses. Actually, people still
really have a very very high level of trust in
small business. Oddly enough, they also have a high level
mustionis ealdly enough, that's unfair, but certainly counter to the
kind of broader trends. They have got a high level
of trust in local government too. They you know, again,
when local government works for them. I mean, you know,
if the DMV is efficient, you know which in many
places it is actually signed in New York City and
to my intense surprise, New York City government is a
disaster on every front. The only two things the New
York City government does remotely efficiently is the DMV for
some reason, and of course tax collection, it's brilliant, it's
incredibly efficient to both of those. But but you know,
so people do so if you know, if the if
their streets are cleaned and there they can get their
driver's license, and they can you know, and they the
police are pretty good, and the fire the you know,
the people that they like the fire house. So people
have high levels of trust. And I think the larger
point here, and I did draw this conclusion in the book,
is that the closer people are part of the problem.
I think it's only a part of it. I wouldn't
way claim that it's hugely important, but I think part
of the problem has been that institutions have become larger
and more remote, and we become more remote. And this
is a function again inevitably of the digital age that
you know, we just do spend so much, you know,
we can do so much, you know, without stepping outside
of our front door. That I think that that has
created a kind of you know, forgive me for using
sort of an alienation and a kind of isolation which
breeds mistrust. But so when people actually encounter and have
interactions with institutions, direct institutions, small businesses where they go
into the mum and pop store, or they go into
the you know, into the local restaurant, whatever, they get
a good meal, they like them, they have and again
this is reflected in data.
Speaker 4: You can look it up.
Speaker 6: They have a high level of trust in small business.
They have quite a high level of trust in you know,
very very local government. They even have quite a high
level of trust in local newspapers, which tells you something.
So so I think there's something there about the kind
of bigness. That bigness and remoteness has bred mistrust as
well as all these other things that we've talked about.
Speaker 4: So we don't want to be big lely. I get it,
And you're right, local is better. Let's just record scratch
up in the sketch, and I want to get back
to England. One of the things that people who are
very online here in America are aware of is that
there seems to be two things going wrong with England.
One of them is immigration, which is reshaping the nation
in ways that people perhaps don't like, and the other
is a crackdown on free speech in which it seems
as if you can stab somebody for setting a krona fire,
but if you have a thought in your head outside
of an abortion clinic, or if you post something critical
of a local councilman on your Facebook page, then the
police will come round in place. You want to caution
and talk and wave badge that you are we exaggerating
what's going on? There? Are there? Let's just do the
free speech thing. Is there a worrisome trend or an
old friend worrisomely exacerbated in England when it comes to
the free expression of ideas in England of our places?
Speaker 6: The answer is yes, and yes, I mean there is
some exaggeration. I mean you, you know, to read some people
over here, and indeed to listen to JD Vance when
he went to Munich and talked about this a few
weeks ago, you'd think that Britain was essentially East Germany
in you know, circa nineteen sixty seven or something. And
you know that people are being arrested all the time
for saying, you know, politically unacceptable things. It's not It's
obviously not true. You can you can still, you can
still go and go online and anybody who anybody spends
any time online and England knows that there is a
you know, just a deluge of free speech. There are
still you know, newspapers and television and in fact, there
are more television channels than there ever will. But when
Charles and I, you know, grew up there so it's
of course it's exaggerated. But but I won't I won't
diminish it that that there is the absence of a
First Amendment protection, the the the dominant the domination of
the major institutions of government, law enforcement, and by a
government I mean sort of the permanent governor alone now
and you can add to that the elected government, but
this was going on when the Conservatives were in power too.
And the dominance of the cultural institutions like universities and
the media does mean that that a you know.
Speaker 3: That there there there have been a there's.
Speaker 6: Been a high level of there's there's been a there's
been a there's been a considerable amount of an attempt
to police speech and and and and I think this
fits in with another which I find which is I
think is even more sinister, but it's it's related in
the UK, which is a there's there is there's been
for and by the way. Kirstama, the Prime Minister, is
an absolutely kind of first rate exponent of this. There's
been this attempt which we've had a little bit of
in the United States, a lot of in the United States.
I think it's going going first there in the UK
to essentially transfer out of democratic political decision making very
important issues of social and cultural matters and the political
matters and and and have them reside in the legal
in the courts, so essentially to establish rights in the
courts which are then invulnerable to any sort of political
you know, to any to any any to any attempt
by politicians democratic electing politicians to overturn them. That is something,
you know, So that's why you get some of these
cases because there are you know, it has been enshrined
in law, the hate speech things like hate speech of
interest around in law or you know, there's a big
debate going on in Britain about whether or not ultimately
it should have it won't under the Labor government, but
under the Conservative whether Britain should essentially derogate from the
European Court of Human Rights where all of these rights
have been been you know, again on issues like you know,
on on religious expression or on abortion or many many
of these big hot button social issues, as obviously happened
here by the way, of course with Roe v. Wade,
to to to make them, to make them essentially invulnerable
or sort of immune to political the political process, and
to and to and to have the courts be the
deciding authority. That is a very worrying thing. And it's
and it's and it's allied to this, you know this
not not you know, not insignificant attempts to suppress, to
suppress certain types of speech.
Speaker 4: Well, as a former BBC producer yourself, I'm sure you
know that the the deep, the deep well spring of
right wing thought at the BBC will eventually come out.
And as he's uh, he's sitting in a in an
isolated chamber somewhere in broadcasting house and they don't they
don't let him out. But yes, did you know Paul
Heiney when you were there?
Speaker 3: I did?
Speaker 4: Actually, yes, yeah, I know I know paulin Libby, Yes
I do. They live in They live in the town
in Suffolk where I go a couple of times a year,
a place called.
Speaker 6: There were a few kind of you know, dissenters from
the BBC Progressive orthodoxy. But I'm not joking yet. I
think they all left. I mean I think every single
one I knew who was, you know, vaguely kind of
who differed from the the sort of the progressive nostrums. Literally,
you know, just couldn't stand it and left.
Speaker 4: Their bones were ground for cafeteria gruel. I'm sure of that.
Speaker 2: Jerry.
Speaker 4: It's been a great pleasure as ever, and we hope
to have you back as soon as possible and talk
about all the great things that are happening at the
fantastic renaissance of America, etcetera, etcetera. But in the meantime,
advise everybody to read his books and read him in
the Wall Street Journal. And thank you very much for
being on the show today.
Speaker 6: It was really my pleasure. Thank you so much for
having me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks Jerry, Thank you Cheria.
Speaker 4: You know there is are you get this sort of
warm feeling when your guest talks about how much they
enjoy the show. And it was interesting because I was
checking his checking his biography on a Wikipedia just to
catch up on a few details, and the inset picture
of him, his picture on the Wikipedia page is identical
to the picture that we're looking at in our video
feed was it was a bit unnerving as a matter
of fact, as though, oh, that's right, I do live
in a simulation of Matrix and it's just been updated
for my own satisfaction and convenience. Here, I get it,
I get it, I get it. But he looked well
rested in both, didn't he Absolutely? So, No, we don't
live in the matrix. We are not you know, hairless
people shivering in a capsule of blue goo and having
our electricity rain, which didn't make any sense technically, but sometimes,
you know, you want to wrap yourself in something that's warm,
and I imagine that, you know, if you popped out
of the Matrix cube and we're sort of all wet
and confused, and you'd want you'd want somebody to drape
a nice blank or towel around you, wouldn't you. Now,
we're not living the matrix. We're not all a bunch
of people in little pods there, you know, living in liquid. No,
we're not. We are in the real world.
Speaker 3: But the real world can get cold, and the real world.
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before we go on, I think we should all just
for a moment, you know, have some fellow feeling and
some empathy for those who are on the ruppers, and
that would be Hunter Biden apparently is broke. From what
I read, I think he spent some He sold like
twenty four paintings in a year for fifty thousand a throw,
and now miraculously, since the beginning of this year, he
doesn't the demand for his work doesn't seem to be
as robust, and his book has only sold eleven copies
in the last six months or so. So he's broke.
Speaker 3: Why is that?
Speaker 4: Why? I trying to figure out, Because the iding quality
of art should be such that Stab should be just
jacking up the price again and again and again and
again because we haven't seen the style and a talent
like his, And what what is going on in this
world when nobody's buying Hunter Biden's book. That's what I'm
asking you.
Speaker 1: Well, it just goes to show the cruelty of the
artistic gods, doesn't it.
Speaker 4: That you appreciate the grief.
Speaker 1: Yeah, For a brief period, Hunter was touched by greatness,
and he produced twenty seven works of art, all of
which sold in a two or three year period that,
in an amazing coincidence, overlapped with his father's tenure in
the White House, and people thought, they are the lynch
pin of my collection. And in the last one year
I hear he sold just one. And I just think
that is what happens to every great artist after a while.
After a while, they just sit there with the blank
canvas and the brush stripping paint in their hand, and
they think, why has my inspiration gone? This what happened
to the beach boys.
Speaker 4: Of very droll Charles.
Speaker 1: He would sit, He would sit for hours with his
feet and sand next to the piano, and he couldn't
come up with another. God only knows, And that seems
to be Hunt's lot, so we should.
Speaker 2: This was the most predictable news story of the year.
You can see this coming, well, you can see this
coming years ago. I think the next shoe to drop
on the story will will be my suspicion from the beginning,
and said Hunter didn't do any of those paintings. He
had someone do them for him, just as his book
would have been ghost written too. Maybe someday at enterprising
journalist will get onto that, But that'll be the fine
little cherry on top of this embarrassing melting ice cream
of a crazy family.
Speaker 4: What I wish he'd done is actually go full Warhol
and paint representational art, so you'd have Brilla, you'd have
doz biz Tide draft name every one of his canvases,
asked after a laundry detergent, just just to make it
all the more blatant, exactly what is going on here
in the purchase of these things? And still nobody would
nobody in the media really would have cocked an eyebrow
with the fact that people were paying ridiculous amounts of
money for this ridiculous amount of art. Well, that'll do.
We've had a substantial and dense piece of work here,
a noble you know, two English accents in one podcast
really does bring the general intellectual tenor up I think
by at least thirty forty degrees or points or whatever.
The Dow is down six five hundred. I don't know.
You know, I've lived through a few corrections in my time,
So you buckle up, you buy in the dips, and
then you keep going on it. One last thing I
forgot to mention. Have you guys been hearing a lot
from the left about how Donald Trump is coming after
Social Security? I'm hearing this a lot. I mean, having
my friends on the left who are warning me that
I better print out PDFs of what I'm owed because
they're coming after it. I'm not exactly sure those pda
all up in court, but I researched this this morning
as far as I could tell. Since he Donald Trump
has steadfastly said that he will not cut Social Security,
but he has talked about reducing the workforce by ten percent,
which would mean then that social Security would be less
responsive and you might have trouble getting your checks. Is
that basically the bith of the gist?
Speaker 1: Yes, So two things have happened here. One is that
Democrats just cannot stop but say the Republicans are going
after social Security. They wake up in the morning and
they say this. It's a form of political turets. Even
if Donald Trump literally says I will never touch social Security.
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 1: I hug it at night on my Cozy Earth sheets.
They say, oh, my goodness, did you hear what he said?
That he's going to cut social Security. That's the first thing.
But the second thing is that a lot of news
outlets I have noticed have, either deliberately or because they're lazy,
run headlines and lead paragraphs that conflate social Security with
the Social Security Administration. Because I was a bit confused
by this too, it said Donald Trump plans big cuts
to Social Security, and then you click through and in
paragraph eight it says administration.
Speaker 4: Stop.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just not the same thing at all.
Speaker 4: No, no, it's not. No, it's not so good. Well
that's a relief. Then, so I can retire on my pittance,
and maybe my pittance won't be taxed by the institute,
by the very government that held a gun to my
head and demanded that I contribute to it. London Liberty. Anyway,
we thank you for listening. We thank Luman and Cozy
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I'm James Lelax. It's been great. Stephen Hayward, Charles. We'll
see you guys next week and we'll see everybody in
the comments at Ricochet four point zero by.
Speaker 3: Ricochet. Yeah, join the conversation.