Speaker 1: I want to scope out sites for the Trump Hotel
Speaker 1: for after we buy Greenland from Denmark. Right, ask not
Speaker 1: what your country can do for you, ask what you
Speaker 1: can do for your country.
Speaker 2: Mister grbachaw tear down this wall.
Speaker 3: It's the Ricorshy Podcast with Stephen Hayward, myself, James Lylyx
Speaker 3: and who's back from Peru.
Speaker 4: Why that'd be Rob b Loog. So let's have ourselves
Speaker 4: a podcast.
Speaker 5: It doesn't help matters when Primetime TV as Murphy Brown,
Speaker 5: a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid compression
Speaker 5: and mocking the importance of Bob's are baron child and
Speaker 5: calling just another lifestyle choice.
Speaker 3: Welcome everybody. This is the Ricorsy Podcast number seven hundred
Speaker 3: and five. I'm James Lylyx in an overcast Minnesota, Minneapolis.
Speaker 3: Although we still of course have great bursting pride having
Speaker 3: made our point down the matt national stage with our
Speaker 3: governor being the VEEP and the speech, and here to
Speaker 3: discuss the rest of the convention perhaps and more interestingly
Speaker 3: what the rest of the campaign might bring is Stephen
Speaker 3: Hayward in California and Rob Long back from pilgrimage to
Speaker 3: Machu Pico or Picho or.
Speaker 4: The Amazon.
Speaker 3: Actually the Amazon he went to the mountains. Well, hold
Speaker 3: on a second, I thought you went to Peru. You're
Speaker 3: telling me there's Amazon in Peru.
Speaker 6: There's an Amazon everywhere, James. Amazon is a very long river.
Speaker 6: That's all I can tell you.
Speaker 3: Well, at the end of the podcast will tell what
Speaker 3: Rob learned and in addition to the various tropical diseases,
Speaker 3: that he picked up Teddy Roosevelt's style. But for now,
Speaker 3: let's get to the meat, at the gist of the pith,
Speaker 3: the marrow of the matter. You guys watched or didn't
Speaker 3: or read the commentary or saw the snippets takeaways.
Speaker 2: Stephen, I actually watched an awful lot of the convention.
Speaker 2: I usually whew, you would, Yeah, I find kind of
Speaker 2: tedious and wrote and all the rest of that.
Speaker 1: I thought, again, just sort of analytically, they had a
Speaker 1: pretty good convention.
Speaker 2: I thought Knights two and three.
Speaker 1: Were better than the last night. They had more energy
Speaker 1: to them and laid out more ideas. I thought, Harrison,
Speaker 1: her speech was not bad. I mean, how do we
Speaker 1: judge her. We judge her on whether she's going to
Speaker 1: start cackling or go off script and say something crazy,
Speaker 1: but she delivered it well, and I thought there were
Speaker 1: three interesting takeaways from it.
Speaker 2: One is she after doing a lot of biography, which.
Speaker 1: Kind of bored me, but I understand that's now the
Speaker 1: mode for these people. She did say three things that
Speaker 1: were interesting. One is she built up to a crescendo
Speaker 1: where on abortion. Now she mischaracterized Trump and Republicans, but
Speaker 1: that's par for the course. But she said they have
Speaker 1: lost their minds. And she said that loudly and forcefully,
Speaker 1: and the audience went nuts, And I thought that sort
Speaker 1: of landed a blow, even though it's a low blow.
Speaker 1: She said Trump is an unseerious person, but it'd be
Speaker 1: serious to put him back in the White House. I
Speaker 1: thought that was a good line, again from you know
Speaker 1: what works in partisan red, because actually think Trump comes
Speaker 1: across as unserrious. I mean, for all the reasons that
Speaker 1: Rob and other critics have talked about forever, but I
Speaker 1: think he is actually a pretty serious person in ways
Speaker 1: that deeply threatened the you know, the establishment.
Speaker 3: But if I can, if I can start right there,
Speaker 3: how can he be simultaneously unseerious and a an authoritarian
Speaker 3: threat that will demolish democracy?
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly, Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4: The third point.
Speaker 1: The third point is she took on the Israel question,
Speaker 1: which I thought she'd simply avoid.
Speaker 2: She said, Israel is a right to exist.
Speaker 1: Uh. And she said that in the active voice and
Speaker 1: will support them in other words.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: Nobody mentioned Israel in the whole convention up to that point,
Speaker 1: with the partial exception of the hostage family that appeared
Speaker 1: on the third night to saying we want our hostage
Speaker 1: family members out. And I think the fear was that
Speaker 1: there was going to be a demonstration or booing from
Speaker 1: the floor of the convention.
Speaker 2: Uh. And instead they weren't going to boo Kamala Harris.
Speaker 1: But and then, but then she said we want to
Speaker 1: have a cease fire and get the hostage out of Gaza.
Speaker 1: And so she tried to give a bone to the
Speaker 1: pro Homaqus democrats.
Speaker 2: But I was surprised she went there at all.
Speaker 1: And I supposed to say we should say good for her.
Speaker 4: Rob Yeah. I mean, I think a couple of things
Speaker 4: are happening.
Speaker 6: One, I think that there's the I'm here's just a
Speaker 6: secular view of this convention, right, This this convention shows
Speaker 6: a new way of doing these conventions, right, So we
Speaker 6: had a twenty two and we had no conventions basically,
Speaker 6: and they're all weird and they're kind of crazy. Like
Speaker 6: those conventions were bananas, like I remember Biden in the
Speaker 6: cars or I don't know who's a Don Junior's new
Speaker 6: wife screaming whatever her name.
Speaker 4: Was, like just crazy stuff.
Speaker 2: This one.
Speaker 6: These two conventions were traditional, but I think that the
Speaker 6: Democrats have reinvented it in a way that's really interesting.
Speaker 6: For one thing, everyone was in the news was talking
Speaker 6: about how all these things went on long, too long,
Speaker 6: They went on too long, they wanted too long, but
Speaker 6: they didn't really because twenty million people watched it last night.
Speaker 6: But those are twenty million people except for Steve, who
Speaker 6: you know, were this is fan service. You know, they
Speaker 6: want to see there, they want to see their guys speak.
Speaker 6: The rest of it's going to be split up and
Speaker 6: chopped up and sent out in sound bites and video
Speaker 6: bytes across social media for the next month.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 6: Basically, this is a content farm for them in a
Speaker 6: way that no convention before now has really been. So
Speaker 6: that's sort of interesting, and I think that's going to
Speaker 6: be probably the way these things are going to go
Speaker 6: from now on, even if she's unsuccessful, if she shouln't win.
Speaker 6: It felt like, okay, this is a new way with
Speaker 6: these these events. Even things like the role call, right,
Speaker 6: the DNC role call, which people loved or hated or
Speaker 6: whatever they thought. The point of the role call is
Speaker 6: that that little role call snippet which used to be
Speaker 6: I mean, it's one of my favorite parts of all
Speaker 6: these conventions.
Speaker 4: You know, the guy in the funny hats, Idaho of
Speaker 4: the Potato State, all that stuff.
Speaker 6: Now it's going to be split up and it can
Speaker 6: be targeted Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, however you want to target
Speaker 6: it two people.
Speaker 4: Who live in that area.
Speaker 6: It's a boost, it's a local booster pride thing. And
Speaker 6: I guarantee you in twenty twenty eight we're going to
Speaker 6: see both these parties do this, if both these parties
Speaker 6: exist in twenty twenty eight, which I hope they don't,
Speaker 6: but if they, if they do, whoever's having a convention,
Speaker 6: this will be the convention. So I think that's like
Speaker 6: the secular thing is like, okay, we say, seeing some
Speaker 6: new stuff. The second thing that I think is new
Speaker 6: here is that for better, for worse, there was no
Speaker 6: primary Democratic primary effectively, And.
Speaker 4: If you were.
Speaker 6: A donor to these things, or you're a strategist to
Speaker 6: these things, you're wondering why we spend hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 6: of millions of dollars running primaries that start. You know,
Speaker 6: the twenty twenty eight primary presidential primary is going to
Speaker 6: start in January of twenty twenty five, basically, right, anyse
Speaker 6: things start so soon, why do we may not need
Speaker 6: to do that. This was a pretty good convention. It
Speaker 6: didn't look like they threw it together. It didn't look
Speaker 6: like they put it all together the last minute. It
Speaker 6: looked like this thing had been playing. There was a
Speaker 6: plan behind it, which I mean, I don't know that
Speaker 6: would be surprising for the Democratic Party right if to
Speaker 6: have an actual organized adventure. But so, I mean, so
Speaker 6: those are my secular takeaways that I think that we're
Speaker 6: looking at a new way of doing these things. And
Speaker 6: then my more political pundit takeaway is that is essentially
Speaker 6: the message that in a crazy way, Kamala Harris is
Speaker 6: getting away with change versus more of the same, and
Speaker 6: change versus more of the same is a winning American
Speaker 6: political argument.
Speaker 2: Mostly except she's on two sides of that argument, she's
Speaker 2: like to be right by the way of it, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, you mentioned Rob that Gusha just looks like
Speaker 1: it was planned. One little detail that I found amusing
Speaker 1: is that the Democratic platform in several places referred to
Speaker 1: Joe Biden's second term. They didn't go back and edit
Speaker 1: that right to reflect on the updated news. One other
Speaker 1: detail that I'm sure James noticed. They made a big
Speaker 1: deal about having mobile clinics outside the convention hall to
Speaker 1: provide abortions and maas sectomies, and they're apparently fully booked.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering how soon maybe the next convention four years
Speaker 1: from now, Democrats will also offer and I'm not entirely
Speaker 1: joking here, assistant suicide vans. I seem to me that's
Speaker 1: the next logical step, and the sort of Democrats ethos
Speaker 1: about these things.
Speaker 3: Only if you are able to cast your vote before
Speaker 3: you write, you know, yeah, so they can extend the voting.
Speaker 4: Period where you can get that in.
Speaker 6: I mean, I think that they'll have those outside the
Speaker 6: Republican convention, right.
Speaker 3: Well, I was looking at what Barack Obama was saying,
Speaker 3: looking at it, not listening to it.
Speaker 4: You know, he's a good speaker.
Speaker 3: And everybody loves him and has a great swelling of the.
Speaker 4: Breast when he speaks.
Speaker 3: But it was very it's it's the rhetoric is not surprising,
Speaker 3: it's normal. But one of our commentators contributors at Ricochet,
Speaker 3: doctor Bastiat, was noting that a quoting actually is Johnson,
Speaker 3: so this.
Speaker 4: Is going back like three different levels.
Speaker 3: He said that Barack Obama said, we have a broader
Speaker 3: idea of freedom than the right. So we're casting the
Speaker 3: Democrats now as the party of freedom liberation. We believe
Speaker 3: in the freedom to provide for your family if you're
Speaker 3: willing to work hard, okay, and the right does not, apparently,
Speaker 3: So since he's making the distinction the freedom to breathe
Speaker 3: clean air and drink clean water, well well well, well, well,
Speaker 3: I mean, if you want to be one of those guys,
Speaker 3: you can say, actually, these are not rights. They're not rights,
Speaker 3: you know, because it's not in the Constitution. It's not
Speaker 3: a right. It's a good thing. But the left often
Speaker 3: conflates good things with rights. If something is good, then
Speaker 3: it ought to be a right. But the way these
Speaker 3: things are phrased is typical, and they get away with
Speaker 3: it all the time. And I suppose the right does
Speaker 3: in its own way too. But to say that, well,
Speaker 3: we believe in the freedom to drink clean water and
Speaker 3: breathe clean air, when actually, sometimes how this manifests itself
Speaker 3: in the last twenty thirty years is saying we're going
Speaker 3: to make an incremental dim unition and the amount of
Speaker 3: particulates in the air here, and you will have virtually
Speaker 3: no impact whatsoever on public health, but it will cost
Speaker 3: billions of dollars in compliance. But we're going to do
Speaker 3: it because we're the EPA, and we've solved all the
Speaker 3: big things. Now we're just cleaning up the little ones.
Speaker 3: And since we're pre Chevron, we can do what we want, Nana,
Speaker 3: n And if you object it to any of those things,
Speaker 3: you are objecting to the very notion of clean air
Speaker 3: and clean water. And you want to pitch this country
Speaker 3: back to a place when arsenic is pumped into the rivers,
Speaker 3: we're set on fire and great smokestacks belch out as
Speaker 3: best as to blanket the country.
Speaker 4: And that's just, I mean, it's just it's banal, is
Speaker 4: what it is. It's absolutely banal.
Speaker 3: We believe in the true freedom in how we worship,
Speaker 3: what our family looks like how many kids we have? Yeah,
Speaker 3: the other side is really going hammer and tongs about
Speaker 3: your inability to worship.
Speaker 4: It all comes down to what we're also saying.
Speaker 3: Walt's pounding the table and saying in Minnesota we say
Speaker 3: mind your own damn business. This is when it comes
Speaker 3: to shape correct thought in the twenty first century. Which
Speaker 3: party actually is more interested in invasive techniques to get
Speaker 3: you to believe a certain set of ideas or be
Speaker 3: cast out of polite society.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I don't know what to rep hold of
Speaker 1: their jeams.
Speaker 2: There was a whole lot. It was a cornucopy of.
Speaker 1: Uhh up for two all right, and well two quick
Speaker 1: comments and then a question for Rob.
Speaker 2: I think we've got him back. He's been having some
Speaker 2: technical the.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was talking and he just figured I can
Speaker 3: skip this.
Speaker 1: But it heart so I always say that the ep
Speaker 1: and there's data for this, but the one sentence summary
Speaker 1: is the EPA specializes in billion dollar solutions to million
Speaker 1: dollar problems. That's been that way at the beginning. But
Speaker 1: then the question of rights. I mean, this is something
Speaker 1: that I spend hours and even weeks with students trying
Speaker 1: to make them understand and I mean, there's a lot
Speaker 1: to go through. But one razor, like I say, Haybridge razor,
Speaker 1: if you want to use it, is something is a
Speaker 1: right if it requires nothing from the government. You know,
Speaker 1: don't infringe on your free speech, don't infringe on your
Speaker 1: right to own a gun.
Speaker 2: They process.
Speaker 1: If a right requires the government to transfer resources from
Speaker 1: you and me to a third party, that's not a right.
Speaker 1: We're confusing ends and means protecting our rights or the
Speaker 1: ends of government things like healthcare, education. Those are good things,
Speaker 1: but those are means to an end. But that confusion
Speaker 1: is delivered as you point out, what question for you?
Speaker 2: Rob.
Speaker 1: One last thing on the convention, we kept hearing all
Speaker 1: night that Beyonce was going to show up. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: she didn't. I'm wondering if this was a bait and
Speaker 1: switch by the Democrats to keep people watching. But I
Speaker 1: thought when I heard that she might come, I thought,
Speaker 1: that's a terrible idea because she's such a megastar. Then,
Speaker 1: no matter how good Kamela was, Beyonce's appearance would be
Speaker 1: the headline and would overshadow Kamla. So I never thought
Speaker 1: she was going to show up, isn't it. I mean
Speaker 1: I'm asking you as a show business person. Wasn't the
Speaker 1: Beyonce idea really a bad idea for.
Speaker 6: A terrible idea? If she showed up, my god, they'd
Speaker 6: be the worst. But also, I mean, I think it'd
Speaker 6: be bad for Beyonce. I always say of the same thing. Look,
Speaker 6: I mean, at best, Kamala Harris just everything. You know,
Speaker 6: she seems pretty lucky. She's on her roll, So let's
Speaker 6: just give her the give her the luck of the
Speaker 6: dice here, and she's got eight years of you know,
Speaker 6: the White House eight So we're talking about twenty thirty two,
Speaker 6: twenty thirty three when she leaves.
Speaker 4: I know that seems like a long long way away,
Speaker 4: but it's really.
Speaker 6: Not right Beyonce. Beyonce is here for a long time.
Speaker 6: Beyonce's got a much longer span that she can be
Speaker 6: part of for a while. So why would she get
Speaker 6: that close to a candidate like that? That's always the mistake.
Speaker 6: I mean, I think that's partly the conundrum that Fox
Speaker 6: News finds itself in, as they got very close to
Speaker 6: a specific candidate, and you know, even at the best,
Speaker 6: this candidate had eight years at most of relevancy that
Speaker 6: this guy managed to make twelve years maybe at best,
Speaker 6: but you know you don't want to do that. You're
Speaker 6: even for the long term. So you know, I understand
Speaker 6: why they may want a appearance with Beyonce, and they
Speaker 6: may want the Taylor Swift Beyonce endorsement, and they may
Speaker 6: get it, but I don't think.
Speaker 4: I don't think it's it's a.
Speaker 6: Good idea, and especially when everyone is whoever's watching it,
Speaker 6: you know, they're twenty million people watching it last night,
Speaker 6: and their real question was can I it is a
Speaker 6: casting issue, right, I'm going to cast this person as
Speaker 6: the president? Do I want to hear this noise for
Speaker 6: four years? And you don't want any other noise there?
Speaker 6: You want to you want to be a really clear,
Speaker 6: clear argument. And also like if you'r Beyonce's like, I
Speaker 6: don't know, like it's you. It's the Dolly parton questions
Speaker 6: like I got millions and millions and millions of fans.
Speaker 6: Some of them are going to vote for Trump, some
Speaker 6: of them vote for Kamla, Like why would I want
Speaker 6: to make them make a choice.
Speaker 2: Well, that was Michael Jordan's famous line.
Speaker 1: I was he said, I want to sell shoes to
Speaker 1: Republicans too, when Democrats would try and get him.
Speaker 2: Off the sidelines, right, yeah, right.
Speaker 6: I know.
Speaker 4: That's what I thought was interesting, was that.
Speaker 6: And maybe you guys talked about this when I was
Speaker 6: trying to reconnect, But there was there a period there
Speaker 6: where I had to remind myself that Donald Trump is
Speaker 6: not the current president of the United States. Like there
Speaker 6: was a lot of time where I thought, wait a minute,
Speaker 6: Like I think they even slipped up and said, you know,
Speaker 6: the past four years something like that, they're running against
Speaker 6: Trump in a way that I mean, maybe it'll work.
Speaker 6: But I did have to remind I mean, even I
Speaker 6: was watching things, Oh oh yeah, wait, wait, Biden's president.
Speaker 6: Biden is the great ghost. He's disappeared. It's almost as
Speaker 6: if the past four years you're not voting on the
Speaker 6: past four years, that is, if they get away with it.
Speaker 4: Really smart, they're asking for the past four years I've
Speaker 4: been great, right, Yeah, they're asking.
Speaker 2: For a mull again. Is what's really happening right now?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we are promising continuity, the best kind of continuity,
Speaker 3: the kind that comes with an absolute clean break. I
Speaker 3: mean right, so so yes, so nothing so, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 3: she's in a difficult position. I mean, she can talk
Speaker 3: about the parallel stage that the country is in and
Speaker 3: how she's going to fix it, but you can't really
Speaker 3: do that because you look at who's been there, so
Speaker 3: you point to the boogeyman who's going to come and
Speaker 3: destroy the precious freedom. And the experiment that we have
Speaker 3: is I can't remember the particular words of the poet
Speaker 3: laureate who came out and had a word sellid about that,
Speaker 3: but as usual, everything is on the line, and it's
Speaker 3: the most consequential election of our lifetime, et cetera.
Speaker 4: Et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3: When you start to get into some of the policy
Speaker 3: details that she has signed on to, though, A, they're
Speaker 3: irrelevant because this is a vibe election, hot brat summer
Speaker 3: and all that joy I know.
Speaker 4: That sens basically it.
Speaker 3: People want to go into the booth dancing and come
Speaker 3: out thinking they've performed a historical event. You find things
Speaker 3: like what I loved was the and Stephen, perhaps you
Speaker 3: know the particulars on this better than I do.
Speaker 4: The tax on unrealized capital gains.
Speaker 3: Now, if you want to make somebody's eyes glaze over,
Speaker 3: talk about that. And if you want to make somebody
Speaker 3: angry on the left, you mention, you defend the person
Speaker 3: with an awful lot of money from having to pay
Speaker 3: unrealized capital gains. Somebody once said that the problem with
Speaker 3: Americans is that the vote as though one day they're
Speaker 3: going to be rich. And I don't think that's a
Speaker 3: good way to character characterize it. I think it's twofold.
Speaker 3: It's one, there's an essential sense, there's or three there's fairness.
Speaker 4: Is this a fair Is this a fair thing to
Speaker 4: do to somebody simply because they make more money than me.
Speaker 3: Everybody believes in progressive income tax, you know, would say yes,
Speaker 3: because they believe in laws that affect people differently based
Speaker 3: on how much property you have, which is another issue. Two,
Speaker 3: you have the idea that just because it starts out
Speaker 3: with a billionaires up there, experience has told us that,
Speaker 3: you know, some of these things, some of these powers
Speaker 3: the government grant itself, they do tend to trickle down,
Speaker 3: shall we say, until eventually everybody is under the same yoke.
Speaker 3: And then the third point about these things would be
Speaker 3: that I forget what it was having said the first
Speaker 3: two points. So maybe if you could grapple with those, oh,
Speaker 3: just the economic consequences of what this means. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's absolutely ludicrous to say to somebody, we're going to
Speaker 3: tax you on money that does not exist, that hasn't
Speaker 3: been made, that's just floating out there theoretically.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it just goes to show.
Speaker 3: That, you know, we had here in the city of Minneapolis,
Speaker 3: they're proposing an eight percent property tax increase and a
Speaker 3: lot of people are looking around and saying, Okay.
Speaker 4: Well, I guess I'll do my share. But what do
Speaker 4: you guys cut from the budget? Then you didn't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, nothing, There wasn't a single thing you could touch.
Speaker 3: The idea that we are all just self healing pinatas
Speaker 3: that every year we heal and fill ourselves with candy again,
Speaker 3: so they can take a bigger bat and a bigger chunk. Anyway,
Speaker 3: So do you think that, I mean, I don't think
Speaker 3: this is a campaign is issue at all. It's illustrative
Speaker 3: to me, it's revelatory, but it's not going to mean anything.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I've remain convinced that there isn't a
Speaker 1: mass appetite for a majority of voters for class warfare
Speaker 1: the way the progressive left has plated for generations now
Speaker 1: in other words, I think people are for fairness, but
Speaker 1: I think most people are for fairness the way you
Speaker 1: and I understand it. Consistent treatment, you know, not special favoritism,
Speaker 1: and not equity, which is the enforced equal outcomes.
Speaker 2: So if you go back to you know, if you
Speaker 2: go all the way back.
Speaker 1: To nineteen seventy two, and you remember George McGovern was
Speaker 1: running on not only his demogrant thousand dollars person handout,
Speaker 1: but he also ran explicitly on ninety nine percent inheritance
Speaker 1: tax rate he wanted. He called it confiscatory taxation. He
Speaker 1: actually used that phrase. He got to the California primary,
Speaker 1: and rob will know what's coming here. McGovern did best
Speaker 1: in the Democratic primary in Beverly Hills and bel Air,
Speaker 1: and he got crushed by Hubert Humphrey. You news kind
Speaker 1: of reactionary. He got crushed in Long Beach and Lejabra
Speaker 1: and the working class parts of the place. Real play
Speaker 1: because all those people. You said, the phrase jasus of James,
Speaker 1: is that a lot of voters they may not be rich,
Speaker 1: but they like to think that someday they will be well.
Speaker 2: At the very least, they want to be able to
Speaker 2: pass along their house to their kids.
Speaker 1: That's a bit and no one I mean, so the
Speaker 1: left says, last point, the left says, or Harris says, well,
Speaker 1: this will only be on the most the richest people,
Speaker 1: people who are billionaires or all the rest. No one
Speaker 1: trusts them about this. I mean, I think we understand
Speaker 1: that this is always a foot in the door, and
Speaker 1: the voracious greed of the left for your money will
Speaker 1: always make them extend the reach of those taxes down
Speaker 1: to everybody, because that's how it works.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, look, that's that's that's where the money is.
Speaker 6: I mean, the the what's strange to me, of course,
Speaker 6: is that there's like there there there is so much
Speaker 6: bizarre economic theory running around in the campaigns in general
Speaker 6: that no one's focusing on. As Steve said, this would
Speaker 6: have been a big this should be a big issue.
Speaker 6: But I also feel like ten percent tariffs across the
Speaker 6: board should be a big issue. A lot of these
Speaker 6: things should be big issues. That it makes me uncomfortable
Speaker 6: as an economic conservative that there's no economic conservative or
Speaker 6: the closest one is arguing for a trade war.
Speaker 4: I mean, these are.
Speaker 6: These are things that have to be worked out, and
Speaker 6: it'd be nice if well, you know, look, I'm might
Speaker 6: be nice if if Milton Friedman was around him to
Speaker 6: maybe maybe do some teaching, yes, because look, I mean,
Speaker 6: I you know, I shouldn't say this because this is
Speaker 6: such a weird year and everything, all predicts are weird,
Speaker 6: But it does feel to me like, whoever wins in November,
Speaker 6: this isn't pretty close to an issue free yeah campaign,
Speaker 6: And I think that was that, you know, that was
Speaker 6: a I think that's a mistake of the the Trump campaign.
Speaker 6: And so I was talking to some friends last night
Speaker 6: there's that moment I think, and I say this again,
Speaker 6: I've said I probably said it too much, so you
Speaker 6: can just tell me to shut up. But I think
Speaker 6: we're miss his team. And I think his supporters misread
Speaker 6: the the disastrous debate with Biden as a debate about
Speaker 6: how bad Biden was, which is true, but I don't
Speaker 6: think they really fully grasped how good Trump was in
Speaker 6: that debate. He was so good in that debate that
Speaker 6: if you were watching and I said that time, I said,
Speaker 6: I watched it with a bunch of like left wing
Speaker 6: public radio people and they were kept turning to me
Speaker 6: saying that was a good answer, right, That was a
Speaker 6: good answer, and a couple of said, you know, that
Speaker 6: was a really good answer on abortion he gave and
Speaker 6: it was a good answer on abortion.
Speaker 4: It was a good answer.
Speaker 6: And then he was passionate about crime that whoever that
Speaker 6: person is has gone probably will not come back. It
Speaker 6: was you know maybe, I mean, I mean that what
Speaker 6: I'm saying is that what they really thought was, this
Speaker 6: is not going to be this is going to be
Speaker 6: an easy issue campaign, because it's going to be one
Speaker 6: is two issues, maybe three if you need to, But
Speaker 6: one is Biden's old can't handle it, crime and immigration,
Speaker 6: and I think crime and integration for them were like, yeah,
Speaker 6: well if we have to get to it, we can
Speaker 6: get to it. But really it's going to be all
Speaker 6: about how this old man can't make it, and unfortunately
Speaker 6: for them, there's no more old man. So they're scrambling
Speaker 6: for a bunch of things, which and I don't understand
Speaker 6: why a week before Labor Day that's still doing it.
Speaker 6: I mean, these are actually, you know, this is not
Speaker 6: amateur hour for the Trump campaign. These are not They're
Speaker 6: not this is a not the twenty sixteen team. These
Speaker 6: are people who've got some road on them and know
Speaker 6: what they're doing and it doesn't feel like a winning
Speaker 6: campaign to me.
Speaker 4: Well, well, you know, we'll see.
Speaker 3: We have another debate coming up, and it's going to
Speaker 3: be interesting because Harris has postulated he has posed herself
Speaker 3: now as being somebody who's going to be tough on
Speaker 3: immigration and tough on crime, and that brings up this question.
Speaker 3: I'm going to let each of you think of this
Speaker 3: for a second. Okay, let's say that the Democratic Party
Speaker 3: has realized that this is where the national mood is shifting.
Speaker 3: We're not about floating the cities with endless number of fakes,
Speaker 3: itlum seekers, and that even though you know the crime
Speaker 3: rates committed by a you know recent oh he'll just say,
Speaker 3: you know, people who are here illegally. That the crime
Speaker 3: rates may be the same as everybody else. But yeah,
Speaker 3: there's these low, high profile cases and they're really bad
Speaker 3: and makes everything look best. So we gotta do this
Speaker 3: thing about that, and we do have to get a
Speaker 3: handle on crime in the cities. We've got to drop
Speaker 3: the whole ACA B stuff that's twenty twenty never happened.
Speaker 3: We're going to retool because that's a path to electoral
Speaker 3: success and keeping power placating people by these issues. If
Speaker 3: indeed they are serious about this, is it is it
Speaker 3: worth to vote for them in favor of the guy
Speaker 3: who probably will have no power and influence when he
Speaker 3: gets in, or not as much as somebody who sweeps
Speaker 3: in with the wind inner sales like Hairlet's think about
Speaker 3: that for a second. When I say wind in your sales,
Speaker 3: I mean, of course, the breath of the sky.
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Speaker 3: to my question then, guys, if they're serious about it,
Speaker 3: is it worth voting for? Is it worth Or to
Speaker 3: put it another way, is it okay to just kind
Speaker 3: of relax about a Harris presidency.
Speaker 4: Because it might not be that bad. Maybe they might
Speaker 4: do these things.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean the case for that, James, is this
Speaker 2: is an election.
Speaker 1: Where you win by losing. And again a quick historical analogy.
Speaker 1: You know, Bill Clinton winning in ninety two turned out
Speaker 1: to be good for Republicans, Way Bush and sort of
Speaker 1: the staleness and led to the Republican takes cover of
Speaker 1: Congress that then was kind of enduring, right, and you've
Speaker 1: got to balance budget, and of course Clint to the center.
Speaker 2: Oh and by the way, I think that even if.
Speaker 1: Trump loses, it's likely in my mind where Republicans will
Speaker 1: take the Senate, perhaps narrowly, but I think they're going
Speaker 1: to take the Senate, and then we have gridlock. And
Speaker 1: as I always like to say, goodlock gridlock. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: gridlock is the next best thing to have in constitutional government.
Speaker 1: And you know they can block easy judge and all
Speaker 1: the rest of that.
Speaker 2: That's a totally coj in view.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of Trump's skeptic friends who think
Speaker 1: that I disagree. I think winning is always better than losing.
Speaker 1: And even though you can take off all the defects
Speaker 1: of Trump personally and the fact he'd be laying duck
Speaker 1: right away, I still think it's important that he's there
Speaker 1: to steady our foreign policy, where I think he's much
Speaker 1: stronger than Harrison. The Democrats appoint good judges. Boy, the
Speaker 1: Biden judges are really awful, and Harris's will be just
Speaker 1: as bad. And Republicans could block some of course, but
Speaker 1: still that's important business.
Speaker 2: Uh And and I mean this isn't entirely a joke.
Speaker 1: But we've got that wonderful Project twenty twenty five sitting
Speaker 1: there on the set.
Speaker 2: Ready to rock and roll with.
Speaker 3: Right, I've never heard of that. I have no idea
Speaker 3: what you're talking about. Seven pages of how to build
Speaker 3: camps with the people are going to put away?
Speaker 4: Right? All right? Rob, I know that you think that
Speaker 4: winning by losing is preposterous. But Stephen makes a good point.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, look, it's always hard people construct these
Speaker 6: incredibly complicated houses of cards. Yeah, from well, then you'll
Speaker 6: get this, and then that will happen, and this will happen.
Speaker 4: Who knows?
Speaker 6: I mean, I think if there's a lesson in the
Speaker 6: last eight years, it's really who knows this. The electorate
Speaker 6: has entered, I think eight years ago a period of
Speaker 6: extreme volatility, and so a lot of the old things
Speaker 6: that we think are just natural aren't.
Speaker 4: I don't really know. I don't, I don't. I think
Speaker 4: you have to.
Speaker 6: This is one of the things you have to sort
Speaker 6: of balance what you what you think she's can really
Speaker 6: legitimately accomplish, what he can really legitimately accomplish, and decide
Speaker 6: whether you know the ven diagram or those things, and
Speaker 6: I know she loves ven diagram where that points you,
Speaker 6: I don't, I don't really know. It does seem to
Speaker 6: me that I just I've said this for a while
Speaker 6: that the parties themselves, even after this pretty good solid DNC,
Speaker 6: which they did a good job, but they seem out
Speaker 6: of gas to me, and they seem like they're looking
Speaker 6: for a direction. And the irony is is that, you know,
Speaker 6: the direction for the Democrats is so obvious to win
Speaker 6: because in American politics, a conservative Democrat, especially a conservative
Speaker 6: Southern Democrat, is unstoppable. That is, Americans just general idea
Speaker 6: who the president should be, and they seem absolutely unable
Speaker 6: to do that because of course it's conservatives of the
Speaker 6: Democrat has a lot of like really really really really
Speaker 6: awful and objectable ideas like low taxes and probably pro
Speaker 6: life and a lot of other things you can't have.
Speaker 4: Gonna say.
Speaker 6: So someone's gonna have to sort it out, right, and
Speaker 6: someone's gonna have to, like, you know, break this log jam.
Speaker 4: I mean, here here's a horrible.
Speaker 6: Analogy that I I I I'm sorry if you're eating,
Speaker 6: stop eating, because here's my analogy that there was a
Speaker 6: peer period before you know, when when it was Trouphy Biden,
Speaker 6: there was this horrible kind of sense of like, I
Speaker 6: don't know, like that something isn't working, you know, And
Speaker 6: everybody said the same thing, really, every polster said the
Speaker 6: same thing, was like, really, if one of these parties
Speaker 6: replaced the top, that the name on the top with
Speaker 6: anybody else, almost anybody else, there would be an enormous
Speaker 6: unleashing of energy behind the New Canada. And you know,
Speaker 6: Democrats somehow kind of kind of did and kind of
Speaker 6: didn't do. They did a half assed job, as they
Speaker 6: usually do with these things. But it really does feel
Speaker 6: I think in terms of the political energy this.
Speaker 4: Kind of.
Speaker 6: Like the country political the politics of the country took
Speaker 6: a laxative and got rid of some stuff and kind
Speaker 6: of unblocked itself.
Speaker 4: I mean, I know, I'm sorry.
Speaker 6: I apologize for that, but I actually think it's the
Speaker 6: right context for these two candidates in this year, by
Speaker 6: the way, but it does feel like there's some it
Speaker 6: does feel like a different thing. So I suspect that
Speaker 6: if look, if she is capable of convincing two hundred
Speaker 6: and seventy whatever electoral votes, that she's a moderate Democrat,
Speaker 6: a moderate law and order Democrat.
Speaker 4: Who's going to secure the border.
Speaker 6: It is one of the great political feats in American politics.
Speaker 3: I think the name, the name for the episode of
Speaker 3: this podcast is going to be gentle Overnight Action.
Speaker 4: I'm in that general.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, James that the prospect of
Speaker 1: camel as president is more like an anima election than lacks.
Speaker 4: Of the election.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, Rob, No, it's fine, that's fine. Remember it's
Speaker 6: a different time. I just want to say for the viewers,
Speaker 6: for the listeners at home. When I me I started
Speaker 6: describing that analogy, the look on Steve's face, well, I.
Speaker 2: Was very afraid, Rob. I know, you're great.
Speaker 1: Look just to pick one part there. Yes, they're playing
Speaker 1: up that she was a prosecutor. But of course this
Speaker 1: isn't a backdrop of where there's this backlash going on
Speaker 1: against the sort of Sorow's progressive prosecutors San Francisco throughout
Speaker 1: chesa boudin the LA voters are going to throw out
Speaker 1: George Gascone. And you know, it'll be a neat trick
Speaker 1: if she can disassociate herself from that kind of prosecutor
Speaker 1: that I think a lot of people have figured out.
Speaker 1: I mean, we'll see, maybe she'll pull it off, but
Speaker 1: it's going to be a neat trick if she does.
Speaker 1: And I think you're counting on the shortness of the calendar.
Speaker 1: I don't think you could sustain this if this was
Speaker 1: say February and she was the front runner and had
Speaker 1: to go all the way through the primaries and the
Speaker 1: summer into the fall. So it may, but it shouldn't
Speaker 1: on metaphysical grounds at least.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And also I think in the past, the the that
Speaker 6: profile of a Democrat, their task was when they were
Speaker 6: scooping up the primary votes was to act like they
Speaker 6: weren't that person. You know, you're think about Bill Clinton,
Speaker 6: even Barack Obama. You know, he had to be very liberal,
Speaker 6: and then when he ran, he ran, people voted for him.
Speaker 6: He got fifty three percent of popular vote because he
Speaker 6: seemed reasonable, right, Nobody expected Chae Wivara in the White
Speaker 6: House like we got by the way, and that was
Speaker 6: a pretty good trick. But I think for her it's
Speaker 6: going to be I can't imagine there's no bigger trick.
Speaker 6: That's going to be the biggest trick.
Speaker 4: I can't.
Speaker 6: I can't think of a can if she succeeds, I
Speaker 6: think I can't think of a candidate that lucky.
Speaker 3: It's extraordinary, it really is, especially when you consider that
Speaker 3: for the last four years she's been regarded as a
Speaker 3: sort of intellectual melody. And the spontaneous speeches of this, this,
Speaker 3: these strange statements of the obvious, compounded by a rephrasing
Speaker 3: of the statement of the obvious, indicates somebody who is
Speaker 3: just not exactly I mean, not imbued with that, with
Speaker 3: that that firing brain that is that is eager to
Speaker 3: get out there and and talk spontaneous.
Speaker 4: About these issues. There's that doesn't seem to be a
Speaker 4: lot of wonkery there.
Speaker 3: But I am curious, since we're casting about fictional things,
Speaker 3: I think she would have done if DeSantis was the
Speaker 3: p I mean, everybody was saying, question, no, we need
Speaker 3: to revitalize our campa, the GOP side by getting DeSantis
Speaker 3: in there. How do you think it would look if
Speaker 3: it was Harris versus Desantus I'm sorry, yeah, my wife's
Speaker 3: name instead of the heaven or of Florida.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think it would be completely different because
Speaker 1: he is really good at boring in on the issues
Speaker 1: and going on the attack, and in ways that Trump
Speaker 1: is a little weak and inconsistent, right, and I think
Speaker 1: he would make it impossible for her to repair behind
Speaker 1: her generalities and joy and all.
Speaker 4: The rest of that.
Speaker 3: That would also be seen as very unfair because this
Speaker 3: isn't supposed to be these things.
Speaker 4: This is supposed to be about changing joy is in
Speaker 4: a historic change.
Speaker 6: But looking, yeah, God, but I'm saying, if you, if
Speaker 6: you had any other can I mean, the problem isn't
Speaker 6: I mean, I'm not speaking.
Speaker 4: It's not Trump specific.
Speaker 6: So the Trump is an old name, he's an old man,
Speaker 6: He's an old name, old news, new hope, and change works.
Speaker 6: That's what Reagan ran on, and it actually works. You
Speaker 6: just the change can be from the right as well
Speaker 6: as the left and desantists Nikki Haley I think would
Speaker 6: be way ahead, just because she's new and different and
Speaker 6: people seem to want they didn't they don't like the
Speaker 6: choices they were given. And the Democrats kind of reheated
Speaker 6: some leftovers and are now calling a Turkey tech razini.
Speaker 6: Well you know what it is. And they're kind of like, oh, okay,
Speaker 6: this is new and new and changy, new and changy,
Speaker 6: and people seem to be you know, right now, the
Speaker 6: momentum is they seem to be responding to that. And
Speaker 6: what I think the Trump campaign has to hope is
Speaker 6: that that that they take a big, deep look at
Speaker 6: all of this and then at the end of September
Speaker 6: recalibration which usually happens, although I don't know what usually happens,
Speaker 6: is not really a phrase you want to use in
Speaker 6: twenty twenty four that they're going to get there, They're
Speaker 6: going to get the momentum back. That could happen, but
Speaker 6: in American politics, it change versus more of the same
Speaker 6: is a very winning argument. The idea that the sitting
Speaker 6: vice president is making that is kind of crazy. But listen,
Speaker 6: Terry Branstead, the governor of Iowa, right in Iowa, that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 6: when he ran his sweeping statewide and won it handily
Speaker 6: on change, change, and when he ran his reelect this
Speaker 6: is true. His motto was re elect change, so it
Speaker 6: can't happen.
Speaker 3: I remember in ninety two when Bill cli was at
Speaker 3: the convention then and there were one of the buttons
Speaker 3: that was being handed out showed a frazzled looking abstract
Speaker 3: woman for the cat, probably in a box of wine,
Speaker 3: and the phrase the button said worried about everything.
Speaker 4: Vote Democrat, which and there were interviews you always had.
Speaker 4: The word change.
Speaker 3: Mantra would appear in every single man in the Street
Speaker 3: interview that you had, and of course the man in
Speaker 3: the street interview, since you know, the convention was being
Speaker 3: held at Madison Square Garden.
Speaker 4: It's the people who were pouring out of the subways.
Speaker 3: Below in the streets, and they'd always say the same thing, Well,
Speaker 3: you don't change. I now think back, gentlemen, to nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety two. I know you were both there, which apparently
Speaker 3: was a dystopian hellscape the likes of which America had
Speaker 3: never experienced before. We were the worst economy since the
Speaker 3: Great Depression. Nothing worked anymore. I remember our newspaper where
Speaker 3: I worked at the time, the Bureau and the New
Speaker 3: House Bureau in Washington, d C.
Speaker 4: Commissioned a series on finding out what.
Speaker 3: Exactly in America does still work? Things that sound very
Speaker 3: common today, But in nineteen ninety two, when we cast
Speaker 3: our eyes back in two, we do not think it
Speaker 3: was that bad.
Speaker 6: It really was, but they came a pause in the
Speaker 6: greatest increase in wealth and prosperity.
Speaker 4: In human history. I know it.
Speaker 6: It breath catching it was of like, well, okay, now
Speaker 6: we got we gotta we gotta put all that stuff in.
Speaker 6: And people acted like, oh my god. The recession of
Speaker 6: ninety ninety one. That was just devastating. People are living
Speaker 6: selling apples on the street.
Speaker 4: It's like, give me a break.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you mean there was a you'll remember this, James.
Speaker 1: I think maybe Bob. There was a huge best seller
Speaker 1: around that time. It was the bar Let and Steel
Speaker 1: book America What Went Wrong? And it was Bill Clinton
Speaker 1: would hold that book up. That book was terrible. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was superficial, wrong, inaccurate, but it was a huge
Speaker 1: best seller. And you know, part of the failure there
Speaker 1: was the Bush campaign never had its own narrative to
Speaker 1: fight back on it. They kept crossing their fingers and
Speaker 1: hoping for better news and time and it didn't come.
Speaker 2: But look, I will give you this prediction about where
Speaker 2: we're going from here. We can do counterfaction for the past.
Speaker 1: But I think, regardless of who wins, Joe Biden's reputation
Speaker 1: is going to circle the drain and go down the
Speaker 1: drain over the next three four years.
Speaker 2: First of all, I mean, if Trump wins, they're good.
Speaker 1: Democrats are going to be mad that Biden didn't step
Speaker 1: aside a year and a half ago and let him
Speaker 1: have a campaign to nominate a stronger person who.
Speaker 2: Would have won.
Speaker 1: And if Harris wins, I think she'll be poorly. But
Speaker 1: I think even if Harris wins and runs in lots
Speaker 1: of trouble, as I expect will happen, everyone's going to
Speaker 1: be mad at Biden for not dropping out, Democrats for
Speaker 1: sticking them with somebody who's really not a very good president,
Speaker 1: Republicans who might have nominated a younger candidate if it
Speaker 1: was an open Democratic field, so you might have had
Speaker 1: the Santas versus I don't know Jos Shapiro, but you
Speaker 1: can name a number of people and we would have
Speaker 1: had that race that Rob has talked about with younger,
Speaker 1: different people, and you still have all the basic polarized
Speaker 1: politics we have, but it would be different than what
Speaker 1: we have now, which is partly personality driven.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's probably true. I also feel like.
Speaker 6: If she wins, you know, it seems like, you know,
Speaker 6: maybe it's fifty one, fifty two to forty eight percent
Speaker 6: that she's going to and just say she wins, Like,
Speaker 6: what do you do when you're the president. You every
Speaker 6: problem you have you blame on your predecessor. It's going
Speaker 6: to be NonStop from that administration. Boy, you guys have
Speaker 6: no idea. How crow horrible? Well I'm here, I have
Speaker 6: all this mess to clean up. The biggest trash mouth
Speaker 6: you're going to get about the Biden administration is going
Speaker 6: to be from the Harris administration. And you know, I
Speaker 6: mean all those people running around before saying listen, I
Speaker 6: love Joe Biden, I love Joe Biden. They Hey, nobody
Speaker 6: loved Joe Biden. Right, they love Joe Biden. He would
Speaker 6: have been If they love Joe Biden, he would have
Speaker 6: run for president in twenty sixteen and one they love
Speaker 6: Joe Biden, he would have been the nominee.
Speaker 4: Before nobody loved him. He was a true no.
Speaker 3: His transmutation into the gentle wise hero for those of
Speaker 3: us who've been seeing him back in the days when
Speaker 3: he had fewer follicles, is amusing. Well, you're right, tell
Speaker 3: all books are going to be great, and they're going
Speaker 3: to be written by the same people who are writing
Speaker 3: stories about how Republicans are being mean, saying that Joe
Speaker 3: Biden is not at his mental peak.
Speaker 4: It'll be an instant flip and the advances will be good,
Speaker 4: and they'll all be interviewed by the same Can.
Speaker 6: I tell quick campaign story about how sometimes you can
Speaker 6: you get in the weeds in a campaign and you
Speaker 6: kind of forget that it's these these are title.
Speaker 4: Issues sometimes that really the small things.
Speaker 6: And I tell the story in the most recent issue,
Speaker 6: the new issue of Commentary. But I don't think i've
Speaker 6: told it on the story y nineteen ninety two. If
Speaker 6: you're ancient, if you're you don't even have to be
Speaker 6: as ancient and as old as Steve. But if you're
Speaker 6: just simply you know, still spry like me, but you
Speaker 6: have a memory. One of the biggest shows on TV
Speaker 6: then was Murphy Brown and Murphy Brown, the character played
Speaker 6: by Cannisberg and had in the show, had a baby
Speaker 6: out of wedlock. She was sort of her first kid.
Speaker 6: She was older. It was all a lot of things whatever.
Speaker 6: And Dan Quayle was giving a speech. Dan Quayle was
Speaker 6: the Vice President United States, just so remember who that was.
Speaker 6: And he was given a speech which now if you
Speaker 6: read it now, seems the most anna dyne, kind of
Speaker 6: milk toasty speech.
Speaker 4: Ever, it's like it's like if you took.
Speaker 6: All of the you painted everything, jad Vance says in
Speaker 6: past deels.
Speaker 4: But he was right.
Speaker 6: He said, the problem in America, our cultural problem, is
Speaker 6: kids growing up without thought, and it's the breakup of
Speaker 6: the family.
Speaker 4: He was right then. Daniel moynihan was right twenty years
Speaker 4: before when he said it.
Speaker 6: It's still right. It's still exactly. It's the one thing
Speaker 6: we need to fix and the one thing we can't
Speaker 6: fix because the liberal progressive control over all of our dialogue.
Speaker 4: He was right, he said, and he referenced. He referends
Speaker 4: Murphy Brown.
Speaker 6: He's like, well Y's TV show, Murphy Brown, this character
Speaker 6: is having a child out of wedlock. It's mocking the
Speaker 6: importance of bathers, right, pandemonium. The Murphy Brown people were
Speaker 6: all pro Democrat, all liberal, and they said, okay, this
Speaker 6: had this happened in you know, he gave the speech
Speaker 6: in May so that Murphy Brown was on hiatus. They
Speaker 6: were preparing for the fall season, which was going to
Speaker 6: be the election ball ninety two, and they were preparing
Speaker 6: Murphy Brown's response. So it's this weird thing where the
Speaker 6: a sitcom character was going to respond to the sitting
Speaker 6: Vice president in real time basically, and they they did
Speaker 6: the episode and the script was under wraps.
Speaker 4: It was like no one read it.
Speaker 6: They had they you had to sign an nda Is
Speaker 6: to watch the show, and they burned all the scripts
Speaker 6: like nobody was under nobody knew what she was going
Speaker 6: to say until they aired it.
Speaker 4: Except somehow.
Speaker 6: One day someone gave me a copy of this embargod
Speaker 6: script because like, you can't keep a secret in Hollywood, right,
Speaker 6: And I'm like, what am I I do with this? Well,
Speaker 6: it turns out I had a lot of friends in
Speaker 6: the Bush campaign, so I just fed Exit to them.
Speaker 6: I said, here, just a little preview. And then I
Speaker 6: said to my assistant, who was on the right at
Speaker 6: the time, a very staunch Republican, I said, you know what,
Speaker 6: let's send one of these to Rush.
Speaker 4: So we fed ex it to.
Speaker 6: Rush and the next day Rush gets it and he
Speaker 6: starts the show and he says, I got this thing.
Speaker 6: I know it's a trap. I know it's not real.
Speaker 6: I don't know who this I sent it to me.
Speaker 6: I've never heard of this guy. I know this is
Speaker 6: not real. It's the Murphy Brown thing. And a friend
Speaker 6: of mine, who is in fact I'm staying I'm a
Speaker 6: house guest of theirs right now. She knows Rush.
Speaker 4: She calls him up on the air.
Speaker 6: When he's on the air, she says, look, I don't
Speaker 6: know who's sending to you, but if it's this guy,
Speaker 6: it's real. And he starts reading the script, and I thought,
Speaker 6: I have just re elected the president of the United States.
Speaker 6: I have just done this incredible, sneaky political and I'm like,
Speaker 6: I couldn't believe how great I am. And it had
Speaker 6: zero effect on the outcome of that election.
Speaker 3: A I you know, I don't know what the original
Speaker 3: script was, but I think they missed an opportunity for
Speaker 3: Candice Bergen to give birth to Charlie McCarthy, which I
Speaker 3: think splinters.
Speaker 2: I have two footnotes that story, which you may have heard. Rob.
Speaker 1: One is apparently I heard it from Bill Crystal, who
Speaker 1: remember it was Quayle's chief of staff.
Speaker 2: They said they're on the plane.
Speaker 1: Flying out to LA to give the speech, and Quayle
Speaker 1: points to that line and says, you know, maybe I
Speaker 1: should take out this line about Murphy Brown, and Crystal
Speaker 1: says he told him, no, no, I'm sure no one will
Speaker 1: pay any attention to it.
Speaker 2: So see, but then.
Speaker 1: More significantly than I mean, she your broader point. I
Speaker 1: think it was two or three years later The Atlantic
Speaker 1: Monthly did a cover story called dan Quayle was right,
Speaker 1: and I said, what would you just said? Is actually
Speaker 1: I don't remember it was Nick Layman or you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of center liberal establishment figure said, actually Quail
Speaker 1: was right. Of course he was out of office by then,
Speaker 1: so it was costless. But still that was you know,
Speaker 1: he was vindicated about it totally.
Speaker 4: We're always right down the road.
Speaker 3: It turns out the communists in the government, and it
Speaker 3: turns out that dan Quayle was right. It turns out
Speaker 3: it was morning in America. But they'll admit that that
Speaker 3: was the case.
Speaker 4: Then now is.
Speaker 3: Completely different, and that's why we have to upend the
Speaker 3: yetch you sketch, give it a good shake, and start
Speaker 3: with year zero. All right, guys, a couple more things
Speaker 3: before we go here. One of them is, I know, Stephen,
Speaker 3: you wanted to say something about RFK. One of the
Speaker 3: more could have been, if he'd gotten a little bit
Speaker 3: more oxygen, one of the more unique and peculiar political
Speaker 3: candidates of this very much a twenty twenty four guy.
Speaker 3: You know, you don't have things like leaving a bear
Speaker 3: in the park on the list of things that you
Speaker 3: expect Kennedy progeny to say, or.
Speaker 2: Maybe you do.
Speaker 3: I don't know is he going to vote for is
Speaker 3: he gonna elect or he's going to throw his hat
Speaker 3: in the Trump campaign or what?
Speaker 2: Well, it sounds like it.
Speaker 1: I had someone in the Kennedy campaign who I don't
Speaker 1: know but is legit reach out to me here yesterday.
Speaker 1: So that's a reader, it turns out, and he's one
Speaker 1: of these conservatives who doesn't like Trump, and so he's
Speaker 1: spreading with Kennedy. Anyway, between the time we're now recording
Speaker 1: and when listeners hear this today or tonight, Kennedy is
Speaker 1: going to drop out. It's supposed to be two o'clock Eastern.
Speaker 1: And the person I talked to doesn't have intimate knowledge
Speaker 1: on whether there's a firm deal to have a cabinet
Speaker 1: post or something like that.
Speaker 2: But that's the speculation. I'll just say this much.
Speaker 1: You know, Trump has been really trying to court Kennedy,
Speaker 1: going back to when Trump called him up after the
Speaker 1: shooting in Pennsylvania, and on the polling data seems to
Speaker 1: suggest that Kennedy dropping out will help Trump. Right now,
Speaker 1: the polls are dead even, but in a lot of
Speaker 1: the battleground states, Kennedy's still put He's on the ballot,
Speaker 1: he is polling at two three percent, and Trump gets
Speaker 1: the lion's share.
Speaker 2: That at least according to the polling detail.
Speaker 1: But it's all pretty volatile. But in a fifty to
Speaker 1: fifty election, which rob is where the polls are right now,
Speaker 1: it's a coin flip. It could make the difference. So
Speaker 1: this is an interesting moment in a year which has
Speaker 1: seen so many crazy things. Right, So we'll just have
Speaker 1: to see what happens with this.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean there's like we're now at the at
Speaker 6: the uh at the small ethnic populations of the important states. Right,
Speaker 6: So the fact that there's three hundred thousand Jews in
Speaker 6: Pennsylvania matters. The fact that and that that's one of
Speaker 6: the Israel things. That's what that is real thing was about.
Speaker 6: So like you you start to start to see how
Speaker 6: you're basically you're gonna you're seeing the wires happen in
Speaker 6: a way that you know, I think Trump tweeted yesterday,
Speaker 6: so you know, I've always loved that Governor Brian Kemp.
Speaker 4: He's thanks him for his partnership.
Speaker 6: I think it's like, you know, you're starting to see
Speaker 6: it all kind of unravel with these two guys scramble
Speaker 6: for little boats here and there they go because belunking.
Speaker 4: Record, scratch, different topic. Culture.
Speaker 3: Filled on you, dead Rob, You're the television guy influential
Speaker 3: beyond uh, beyond imagining, thinking man's Jerry Springer mainstay.
Speaker 4: We never expected to go away. What what's what's the
Speaker 4: legacy of philled on to you? You know, I think
Speaker 4: you know there was a there used to be an
Speaker 4: ad in.
Speaker 6: Chicago when he know, I mean it was a Cleveland
Speaker 6: even when he started in Cleveland. He's starting Cleveland, then
Speaker 6: moved to Chicago. Daytime Guy in Cleveland, and the ad
Speaker 6: was for the show. The line was have your second
Speaker 6: cup of coffee with Phil Donahue, entirely directed.
Speaker 4: At women who were at home, and.
Speaker 6: The idea was your first cup of coffees in the
Speaker 6: morning with your husband and your kids and they go off,
Speaker 6: and then you're gonna have a time for your second
Speaker 6: cup of coffee after the house is empty, and you
Speaker 6: have it with Phil Donahue. And I think he was
Speaker 6: one of the first people in television to sort of
Speaker 6: treat that audience for real, and maybe it was postfeminism,
Speaker 6: who who knows, but he treated that audience as a
Speaker 6: as a as a gold mine.
Speaker 4: I mean, in a.
Speaker 6: The housewife at stay at home mom audience was suit
Speaker 6: of like the happy homemaker kind of thing. It was
Speaker 6: all kind of nothing in game shows and dramas, and
Speaker 6: he said, I don't know, maybe not game shows in
Speaker 6: daytime dramas for an hour, maybe salacious content or even
Speaker 6: political content or like current events content or whatever it was.
Speaker 6: I think he was the first guy to do that,
Speaker 6: and pretty amazing, actually quite an accomplishment. I mean I
Speaker 6: found him incredibly irritating and also especially near the end
Speaker 6: when he was simply pro Soviet, he was just he
Speaker 6: was one of those guys while we were winning the
Speaker 6: Cold War, while Reagan was winning the Cold War, was saying,
Speaker 6: let's not win this Cold War, you know, let's let's
Speaker 6: give up.
Speaker 3: And you know why because he had a close personal,
Speaker 3: warm relationship.
Speaker 1: With who post Vladimir Poser.
Speaker 4: That's the guy ever met, ever met Vladimir Postner.
Speaker 2: Oh I met him and.
Speaker 1: Was on TV with him once Turnout and a Half
Speaker 1: in LA in nineteen eighty eight, Arm wrestling with him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you now, eighty eight I think was when I
Speaker 3: interviewed him to what he was making one of his sweeps,
Speaker 3: his leather jacket and his merl Burgs and as Jack
Speaker 3: Daniels and the rest of them that ready, Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, but he's an interesting character.
Speaker 4: I mean, the story of Vladimir Posers is interesting, this
Speaker 4: westernized face that they that they put out to us.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, I think Phil was just enamored
Speaker 3: with the fact that that we would actually, you know,
Speaker 3: that the Soviet Union would somehow be a liberal place
Speaker 3: that abounded with Vladimir Posers. After all, they'd already had
Speaker 3: you in Tropo, who, as we know, liked to listen
Speaker 3: to Benny Goodman, and so, I mean, all we had
Speaker 3: to do is get past is reaganesque fear mongering and
Speaker 3: and show them that actually that, like Sting, we believe
Speaker 3: that the Russians love their children too, and handholding would
Speaker 3: result in the rest of it, absolute utter delusion and
Speaker 3: a sign of an unseerious, easily swayed mind. But enough
Speaker 3: of that, we're going to record Scratch again because we
Speaker 3: before we go, I would like to find out what
Speaker 3: Rob actually did in the Amazon, aside from probably get
Speaker 3: a bunch of parasites which will manifest themselves.
Speaker 4: Yeah, slowly you could see.
Speaker 6: You can't really see anymore, but I did have a
Speaker 6: bunch of splinters in this hand from everything ever. Anything
Speaker 6: in the in the Amazon that's really horrible and scary
Speaker 6: is tiny. You can barely see it. You know, in Africa,
Speaker 6: you like, you know, that's a lion that die's gonna
Speaker 6: eat me. That elephant will step on my foot, that's
Speaker 6: your raff is just gonna knock me over. The Amazon,
Speaker 6: everything's small and like a little bug and a little
Speaker 6: caterpillar and a tiny little leaf cutting ant and little
Speaker 6: stickers on a tree that you can barely see. So
Speaker 6: I was there with a bunch of people and pretty
Speaker 6: much everybody had one encounter with a biting, stinging insect
Speaker 6: or some GI tract issue that said, it was really,
Speaker 6: really fun, and I would go back in a second,
Speaker 6: and I was every every minute of it. I was
Speaker 6: sort of saying prayers of gratitude to Dow Chemical for
Speaker 6: inventing all sorts of like shut toxic cancer causing insecticides.
Speaker 4: But boy do they work. I got to try you deep,
Speaker 4: my friend yeah, I handed to do.
Speaker 3: Well, we're deep free here now, which is why we're
Speaker 3: all slapping and scratching. I heard that there was an
Speaker 3: Amazon something that lives in the water that.
Speaker 4: Is known for swimming up to you.
Speaker 3: And then deploying barbs so that it cannot be pulled out.
Speaker 3: And I'm wondering exactly how something like that evolves or
Speaker 3: is just proof of a malicious spirit inventing it on
Speaker 3: the spot, because I mean, if that's really what you
Speaker 3: need to need to do to reproduce, swim up the
Speaker 3: urethra and deploy your barbs, it seems there's limited opportunity
Speaker 3: for that, but apparently they just abound in the Amn.
Speaker 6: You don't really want to swim, Yeah, in the Amazon.
Speaker 6: There's ponas there. Some one of our party got bit
Speaker 6: by a piranha. You don't and you definitely don't want to, like, uh,
Speaker 6: relax in the Amazon in any meaningful way, because you know,
Speaker 6: you're you're feeding the fish and some of those fish
Speaker 6: they call they call that the toothpick fish, by the way,
Speaker 6: that's the nickname for the candiru. And it does exactly
Speaker 6: what you say. It opens up like an umbrella after
Speaker 6: swimming inside you, and there is no way to get
Speaker 6: it out.
Speaker 4: You need to remove the appendage. But you would you everything,
Speaker 4: everything there is trying to kill you.
Speaker 6: But yet you would go back because there's everything there
Speaker 6: could kill you.
Speaker 4: Everything there's just trying to live. That's the thing. It
Speaker 4: just it doesn't really has no it doesn't. They didn't
Speaker 4: know me.
Speaker 6: I mean they know me, maybe they maybe those bugs
Speaker 6: will be trying to kill me, but they don't really
Speaker 6: know me. There's like I'm just like, oh, I can
Speaker 6: can I eat that? I'm gonna eat that. I'm you know,
Speaker 6: the natural world, especially down there, is just all about hunger.
Speaker 6: But can I just change the subject briefly? Yes, I
Speaker 6: mean I know we're coming to the end because I
Speaker 6: do want to. I want to make one plug because
Speaker 6: I had this sort of great experience last night. I
Speaker 6: met this guy who was the former Secretary of Commerce
Speaker 6: under Trump, Will Barross.
Speaker 4: Fascinating guy.
Speaker 6: So sometimes I know we've been spending our time trashing
Speaker 6: old people like the candidates, former candidates. Candidates and former
Speaker 6: candidates are too old, too old, too old, And then
Speaker 6: you meet a guy who's old, and you think that
Speaker 6: guy could be president of United States. I would vote
Speaker 6: for that guy to be president the United States. He
Speaker 6: told these great stories, wonderful stories because he worked for Trump.
Speaker 6: But he also he had he goes back with Trump,
Speaker 6: goes back all the way because he's a bankruptcy guy,
Speaker 6: and he would He was one of the people leading
Speaker 6: the bankruptcy negotiations for Trump's casino in Atlantic City. That
Speaker 6: was his first encounter with Trump. And the story's riveting.
Speaker 6: And he's written a book. The book is called Risks
Speaker 6: and Returns. And I'm telling you if you're interested in
Speaker 6: good stories, well told by a non polemical, non partisan,
Speaker 6: smart guy, and they're good stories, and he writes really well.
Speaker 6: Wilbur Ross Risks and Returns.
Speaker 4: Tell me what.
Speaker 3: Tell me you said there's this podcast thing you know
Speaker 3: about that would be happy to have him for a guest.
Speaker 6: Tell me that, yeah, you know what I didn't because
Speaker 6: he you know, because this is why this is this guy.
Speaker 6: This is the reason why this guy is so rich
Speaker 6: and successful is because he was He said to everybody, Hey,
Speaker 6: I'm giving you a copy of this book, but make
Speaker 6: sure your friend's by four because I need he's got that.
Speaker 6: He's got a chart in his head of what he
Speaker 6: needs to be to be on the New York Times
Speaker 6: bestseller list. I mean, I think the book was released
Speaker 6: every after Labor Day so you could pre order it.
Speaker 6: That's what you need to do, pre order it. But
Speaker 6: you know, you're talking about and a guy who's been
Speaker 6: in business for a long long time and is very
Speaker 6: very smart but also really gentle and fun. And the
Speaker 6: book is like, it's really great. It's a really great
Speaker 6: memoir of He.
Speaker 3: Needs to do some publicity because otherwise people don't know
Speaker 3: about it, so let's have him on the show.
Speaker 4: You're totally right, he would be great to be like me.
Speaker 3: Not saying it's saying I got a sub stack up
Speaker 3: now with my column.
Speaker 4: Not running there, But I'm not going to tell you
Speaker 4: about it. You can find out for yourself. I mean
Speaker 4: probably probably is James Lylyx that substant substack dot com,
Speaker 4: James Lilax dot substack dot com. But I you know,
Speaker 4: maybe yes, maybe no. I do know, however, that Apple
Speaker 4: would love to hear your reviews about this podcast. Five stars,
Speaker 4: five stars, five stars.
Speaker 3: Don't be like one of those people goes four point
Speaker 3: seven because he didn't like this or didn't like that.
Speaker 4: Five stars.
Speaker 3: Just give us the whole raft there, baby, And I
Speaker 3: would also tell you that if you want to improve
Speaker 3: your metabol account, find out what you need to eat
Speaker 3: in the course of the day, and and actually have
Speaker 3: the pleasure of a really well designed scientific instruments, you
Speaker 3: would go to Lumen and you would support us. If
Speaker 3: you support them and support yourself and your metabolic health,
Speaker 3: of course, and you get ten fifteen percent off.
Speaker 4: That's great.
Speaker 3: You would also be wise to you know, just be
Speaker 3: glad that Rob is back among us, that he survived,
Speaker 3: and happy that Stephen could join us as well. And
Speaker 3: beyond that, gentlemen, Uh, it's been a great hour, it's
Speaker 3: been a pleasure to talk to all of you. The
Speaker 3: great weekend, and we'll see everybody in the comments at
Speaker 3: a Ricochet four point zero next week Labor Day.