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