Speaker 1: Well whiskey, come and take my pain the money. Why
Speaker 1: think alone when you can drink it all In with.
Speaker 2: Ricochet's three Whiskey Happy Hour, join your bartenders Steve Hayward,
Speaker 2: John You, and the International Woman of Mystery Lucretia.
Speaker 3: Where they slapped it up and David ain't too busy
Speaker 3: on the show Tap.
Speaker 1: Got a giving.
Speaker 4: Welcome everybody to a new episode of the Traveling Road
Speaker 4: Show known as a three Whiskey Happy Hour because everybody
Speaker 4: has been on the road. Steve, you just got in
Speaker 4: from the road. Where are you coming from?
Speaker 2: I've been in all four time zones of the country
Speaker 2: in the last week, and wow, and and the problem
Speaker 2: is I had to make up for all the drinking
Speaker 2: I didn't do on the road. So I'm I'm totally
Speaker 2: bombed tonight. I mean, this really is the three whiskey
Speaker 2: Happy Hour, and I'm trying to see if I can
Speaker 2: live up the reputation of the late great Richard John Newhouse,
Speaker 2: who was legendary for his capacity to drink liquor to
Speaker 2: like three in the morning and become more lucid the
Speaker 2: more he drank. So I'm gonna try for that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was gonna say I mean, this is gonna
Speaker 4: be Steve's greatest performance podcast in history, So.
Speaker 1: I doubt it.
Speaker 4: I can see him. He's barely able to sit up
Speaker 4: straight in his.
Speaker 5: Chair, crucifying John.
Speaker 2: I can I just ask one one one quick story
Speaker 2: about this is I once had a fairly eminent person.
Speaker 1: John, you've seen me, actually, Lucretia, you have to.
Speaker 2: You know, I've done my master ceremonies for the pri
Speaker 2: I Annual dinners. You came to Charles Crowdhammer and and
Speaker 2: the Lucretia you came with me and Peter Thial, And
Speaker 2: I had an eminent person tell me once, do not
Speaker 2: have anything to drink before you speak at an after
Speaker 2: dinner meal. And the person who told me that, the
Speaker 2: person who told me that was PJ O'Rourke.
Speaker 1: I mean, I got legendary for his substance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, really well, And he said, look, as I've listened
Speaker 2: to tapes, I can tell you not well. So this
Speaker 2: is out the window tonight because I had you know,
Speaker 2: I got home long story why but I you know,
Speaker 2: I had martinis and then I grilled some lamb chops
Speaker 2: with my spouse and had some bottle of red wine.
Speaker 2: And after you haven't drunk for a week its yard. Okay, well, just.
Speaker 4: Where are you? Where are you trying?
Speaker 5: A lovely beach area still a nice beach area of
Speaker 5: California called Marina del Rey, and I had a lovely
Speaker 5: dinner overlooking the ocean at a place called you Will
Speaker 5: Love It Whiskey Reds, And so I had my share earlier,
Speaker 5: and now I'm drinking something that I have in the
Speaker 5: hotel room, which I believe is some kind of Italian
Speaker 5: red wine. Go figure, because I had plenty of this
Speaker 5: ski earlier. And now it's it's late. These guys, you know,
Speaker 5: our schedules are crazy, and so here it is late, late,
Speaker 5: late at night and past my bedtime. So I'm just
Speaker 5: slowing down a little on the whiskey and drinking wine.
Speaker 2: I should we should take an episode at Whiskey Reds
Speaker 2: someday something.
Speaker 5: It would be awesome. It was quiet, it wasn't crowded,
Speaker 5: it was amazing.
Speaker 4: We should also tape one and the rare occasion Lucretia
Speaker 4: is not bombed, and along with Steve, we do that
Speaker 4: in the morning.
Speaker 5: I've never fallen in the mornings.
Speaker 6: John, So you say, okay, be a fun show, and
Speaker 6: I'm in Kansas City, Missouri, where I'm supposed to speak
Speaker 6: at the meeting of the judges of the Eighth Circuit,
Speaker 6: which goes all the way up to the north of
Speaker 6: the country, all the way down the middle, including Iowa.
Speaker 4: Then all the way down here to Missouri, Missouri.
Speaker 5: Exactly I want to know, is everyone they're unhappy about.
Speaker 4: Email Bove No, not at all. I think people here
Speaker 4: are judges are generally a happy bunch. Even though the
Speaker 4: President of the United States seems to hate them all.
Speaker 5: I don't think he hates them all. I don't have
Speaker 5: there been any universal injunctions from the UH.
Speaker 4: No, the Eighth Circuit would not be the circuit that
Speaker 4: the the A C, l U and the ACP would
Speaker 4: be choosing. Right, They're choosing Massachusetts, Maryland, Washington, San Francisco, California.
Speaker 4: You're not picking Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas.
Speaker 5: Places like good smart people from those places.
Speaker 4: And I just came back from a great dinner with
Speaker 4: a member of the national media who will go unmentioned.
Speaker 4: But I'm just reinforcing Lucretia's terrible stereotypes of me as
Speaker 4: a bourbon swilling pal of the mainstream media. Yes you will,
Speaker 4: I confess that's all true. Do they know you, John?
Speaker 5: I mean, are there any of them?
Speaker 4: I was just I was just one. I was just
Speaker 4: on NPR and PBS this week and too great. Yes
Speaker 4: I was.
Speaker 5: I was not only on there for free, and.
Speaker 4: I was on a frontline documentary on Trump and the
Speaker 4: rule of law this week. And I had a whole
Speaker 4: segment of All Things Considered this morning.
Speaker 1: All thanks behind.
Speaker 2: Well wait a minute, so, but I think I think
Speaker 2: NPR I have a hunch about this. I think they're
Speaker 2: working very hard now to try and present some balanced
Speaker 2: guests because I was invited on NPR a week ago
Speaker 2: and I didn't even answer their emails because I hate
Speaker 2: them so much.
Speaker 1: I just said, no, I'm not going on. I don't care.
Speaker 2: I've had bad experiences at NPR a long time ago,
Speaker 2: and quit quit accepting their invitations. I will just say
Speaker 2: for listeners, because it's fun and you and I John
Speaker 2: texted that I know of whom you dined with, and
Speaker 2: it's a lady and I had a massive crush on
Speaker 2: her twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: I'll just say that. And Steve yew anchors.
Speaker 4: For Steve to have a major crush on you, all
Speaker 4: you have to do is have long hair and a
Speaker 4: slight southern accent, then you look a little.
Speaker 5: Bit like Sydney sweety.
Speaker 4: Well, that actually brings us to the first topic, which
Speaker 4: is to talk about the three Whiskey Happy Hours two
Speaker 4: favorite women, Sydney Sweeney and Kamala Harris.
Speaker 2: Thought.
Speaker 4: I didn't know I was going to do it? Did you?
Speaker 4: You didn't know how I was going to do it?
Speaker 5: Thought was my favorite.
Speaker 4: About Steve's favorite cultural icon of the last week. Sidney
Speaker 4: I did not know of. I did not know of
Speaker 4: her until this controversy. I still have don't think I've
Speaker 4: ever seen her in any show. But Steve, tell us
Speaker 4: about why instead of our former anchor on TV, you
Speaker 4: now have the hots for a jeans saleswoman. Tell us
Speaker 4: what's going on?
Speaker 2: Well, so, first of all, John, you don't even pay
Speaker 2: attention to our own podcast because several weeks ago, maybe
Speaker 2: more than that, it might be three four months ago.
Speaker 2: I tried to bring up Sydney swingeing. I couldn't remember
Speaker 2: her name, and I said Sydney Powell.
Speaker 4: Well, except that's that's somebody that Lucretia has the hots for.
Speaker 4: So Sydney, Sydney is all you need to get.
Speaker 5: The John, don't even start with me.
Speaker 2: Confusion came up is that she starred in a movie
Speaker 2: with an actor named Glenn Powell.
Speaker 1: That's how it happened. I got that confused in my head.
Speaker 2: I saw some of that movie on an airplane and
Speaker 2: I thought, yeah, she's really pretty, and you know she
Speaker 2: has shall we say she has all the she has attributes,
Speaker 2: but she's not a very good actress.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't matter. But here's I here is the.
Speaker 2: Moral political significance of it. First of all, you go
Speaker 2: back just four or five years ago and you had well,
Speaker 2: first of all, just think of she's the anti Dylan
Speaker 2: mulvaney ad campaign.
Speaker 4: More than that, and Dylan mulvaney was the trans the
Speaker 4: cross dressing right, cross dressing sales uh, salesperson for.
Speaker 1: That killed like a week.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, And if you go back four, five, six,
Speaker 2: seven years ago, you know all of the you had
Speaker 2: always I'll put it this way, delicately plus size ads lucrease.
Speaker 1: You will probably put it more bluntly than me.
Speaker 5: Right, And the point is haired Obe's purple hair. Right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Sorry, Well you know I remember.
Speaker 4: Now you're getting me excited. Oh stop, John, Well you
Speaker 4: got to be excited over Sidney Powell, and he's excited
Speaker 4: about Sidney Sweeney, So go ahead, sorry, and he.
Speaker 5: Went Tigley Puff was that her name?
Speaker 1: That was a different thing, that was right? That was
Speaker 1: she was?
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, that was the very point. Yes, it
Speaker 3: was getting all if you go back to sort of
Speaker 3: me too. Uh, moral panic people called it, and then
Speaker 3: uh is an adjunct of the whole George Floyd Racial Awakening.
Speaker 3: A lot of the ad agencies got populated by recent
Speaker 3: grads from colleges were very woke and they wanted woke advertising.
Speaker 3: That's how you got the Dylan mulvaney ad for bud Light.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: You know their marketing director at uh it was in
Speaker 2: bev was a company they said, oh yeah, we want
Speaker 2: the beer to be less fratty and so forth.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: And I remember at the time, actually, Lucretia, you were there.
Speaker 2: It was when we went to the dinner in Newport
Speaker 2: Beach with Ron de Santis, that Claremont hild And you know,
Speaker 2: I wandered off and I got talking to a guy,
Speaker 2: young guy I know who's a Hollywood young guy trying
Speaker 2: to break into Hollywood screenwriting. And he said, everybody's terrified
Speaker 2: of the young, woke people that they've hired for the
Speaker 2: AD Agency used to the studios. Everybody wants to go
Speaker 2: back to making movies with pretty women in short skirts
Speaker 2: and the men rescuing them. I mean, you know, you
Speaker 2: go forward two or three years and what's the huge
Speaker 2: monster movie?
Speaker 1: It was Top Gun two.
Speaker 2: It was old fashioned Americans are going to crush some
Speaker 2: American to crush iron I mean David, but right, and
Speaker 2: everybody wants to do that, and all the old studio
Speaker 2: heads are terrified of this. And my collateral point is
Speaker 2: all the Ad Agency people were terrified of it too.
Speaker 1: Suddenly this comes along.
Speaker 2: That's not You're gonna put Sidney Sweeney out there, who
Speaker 2: I'll just say apparently has her original equipment.
Speaker 5: He just froze, So I'm gonna take oh you know what.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so the yes zoom Steve's comments is inappropriate content.
Speaker 4: I suppose, yeah, they Steve you brows for the last
Speaker 4: fifteen seconds as you tell us that you were getting
Speaker 4: sweaty under the brow.
Speaker 5: But colorha can okay, now let me take over for her.
Speaker 5: He's gone on too long. So it's not just that
Speaker 5: it's the whole idea that they were trying to enforce
Speaker 5: on all of society the idea that males, but especially
Speaker 5: white males, are stupid, they're incompetent, they're this and that.
Speaker 5: So if you ever actually saw a white male in
Speaker 5: an advertisement, for instance, they were always idiots. The black
Speaker 5: wife was always the smart one. Every single ad had
Speaker 5: a multi racial couple, had a you know, and and
Speaker 5: then the the most fringey I don't know the right
Speaker 5: word for couture, I guess designers would use these, you know,
Speaker 5: very androgynous kinds of models. You couldn't tell if they
Speaker 5: were boys or girls or they would you know. There
Speaker 5: was a really classic meme showing back in the days
Speaker 5: that she's and let anything get between her and her
Speaker 5: Calvin's and it's Kate Moss and somebody, some guy, and
Speaker 5: they're in kind of underwear and they both have these
Speaker 5: absolutely perfect bodies. And then the new one is these
Speaker 5: you know, overweight, lumpy dumpy wearing opposite like the girl's
Speaker 5: wearing boys underwear and the boys wearing girls underwear. And
Speaker 5: so that's that was the practical effect of what Steve
Speaker 5: was talking about. And so Kate Moss, sorry, sorry, Sydney
Speaker 5: Sweeney comes out and she goes back to just being
Speaker 5: kind of sexy and a little bit teasing and making
Speaker 5: some jokes and showing off her ample attributes and makes
Speaker 5: a comment I guess that good jeans mine or blue
Speaker 5: something like that, And of course this is a Nazi
Speaker 5: dog whistle, you know, just on and on and on.
Speaker 5: But the most interesting thing is is that the reason
Speaker 5: there is so much outcry not just because it's become
Speaker 5: a self fulfilling thing, but because the Left is realizing
Speaker 5: they're losing this battle. It's over now with Sydney Sweeney.
Speaker 5: It's over. After American Eagle made two hundred million dollars
Speaker 5: in like three days. You know, they.
Speaker 4: Really make a lot of money.
Speaker 2: Their stock is way up, their stores are their stores
Speaker 2: are sold out.
Speaker 1: I've got to think.
Speaker 2: I've got to think their ad agency people are partying
Speaker 2: at night, just doing all the cocaine possible because they
Speaker 2: have just done the biggest advertising in fifty years, and
Speaker 2: the one.
Speaker 1: You do it right?
Speaker 5: Do you guys remember the carls Junior ads? Jump on
Speaker 5: that one?
Speaker 1: Think yeah, I do right, Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 5: Mean there hasn't been anything like that on TV for
Speaker 5: how long. I don't know. I'll watch ads on TV.
Speaker 5: But but when I do, I think that they're just
Speaker 5: right go. So, yeah, it's a wonderful thing. Woke is over, guys, yep,
Speaker 5: And the rest of society is just going to follow
Speaker 5: along pretty soon, because when ads advertisers stop putting overweight
Speaker 5: transgender couples on TV for their ads, it's over. You know,
Speaker 5: we're not going to be celebrating that anymore. And they're
Speaker 5: going to figure out that most of America doesn't want
Speaker 5: that nonsense. And that was the nicest way I could
Speaker 5: put it.
Speaker 4: Very good, Very good. Now we're going to move on
Speaker 4: to Lucretia's next favorite woman, Kamala Harris.
Speaker 5: And they say.
Speaker 4: Today as we were preparing for the podcast, that Kamala
Speaker 4: Harris has decided not to run for governor, but is
Speaker 4: instead going to bless us with a new memoir of
Speaker 4: her one hundred and seven day long campaigns.
Speaker 5: Sortist presidential campaign ever.
Speaker 4: And I say, sorta, Krisha, like President Trump, who was
Speaker 4: asked about this today, is already decided to buy the book.
Speaker 4: What are your thoughts?
Speaker 5: I have none. She is just such a non entity.
Speaker 5: I get that. I guess in most polls she's the
Speaker 5: front runner for twenty twenty eight. Let me remind you
Speaker 5: wearing twenty twenty five. Things might change a bit in
Speaker 5: the meantime, but the Democrats don't have anybody better. That's
Speaker 5: the amazing part. They don't have anybody better. Who are
Speaker 5: you gonna give me AOC? Jasmine Crockett, Gavin Newsom, let's see, man,
Speaker 5: what the hell is the change body? Judge? Yeah, booty Judge.
Speaker 5: The guy from Chicago, what's his name? Obama's guy who's
Speaker 5: getting made fun of because he's trying to rama Manuel
Speaker 5: Rama Manuel. I mean, they have nobody. They're all losers,
Speaker 5: and all the polls say that, Okay, we don't really
Speaker 5: like everything Trump's doing, but when it comes down to it,
Speaker 5: we trust Republican way more than we trust Democrats. In fact,
Speaker 5: sixty two Americans have a disfavorable view of Democrats, so
Speaker 5: they have nothing. If they're going to put Kamala Harris
Speaker 5: for more power to them, I get to reenact at
Speaker 5: kam Lama ding Dong show.
Speaker 4: Well, look, Steve, have you seen these cringe worthy TikTok
Speaker 4: videos that Kamala has caught on is posting on Twitter
Speaker 4: and on TV. I all thought they're painful to watch.
Speaker 4: Not only is she addressing the camera, but then she
Speaker 4: is a TikTok thing which looks like she's in a library,
Speaker 4: whispering to some partty off stage about that she's not
Speaker 4: really been sitting on the beach drinking margaritas the last
Speaker 4: few months.
Speaker 1: Oh I heard I didn't see that.
Speaker 2: I heard it on satellite radio driving in my car,
Speaker 2: and I thought, this can't be real, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: Tutree thoughts one is.
Speaker 1: She if she ran for governor, she was going to lose.
Speaker 1: And I think the really you think she was lose?
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 2: I think the historical announcer here was Nixon in sixty two.
Speaker 2: People realize that Nixon did. His heart wasn't in it.
Speaker 2: He was just using it as a stepping stone. I
Speaker 2: think somebody told her, you know what, that's if you
Speaker 2: want to be president, don't run for governor. You should
Speaker 2: keep your powder dry to run for president. And by
Speaker 2: the way, she should run for president, you know, three
Speaker 2: years from now and not six years from now like
Speaker 2: Nixon was thinking. Okay, But I also wonder two things.
Speaker 2: One is connects to Lucretia's point, but the other one
Speaker 2: is the word around California in the last several months
Speaker 2: is to she was putting out word of the California establishment,
Speaker 2: please don't get behind anybody for governor.
Speaker 1: All the money people wait till I make up my mind.
Speaker 2: And I wonder if some of the money people in
Speaker 2: California and elsewhere said, you know what, We're not giving
Speaker 2: you money to run for governor.
Speaker 1: It's a bad idea.
Speaker 2: And part of the reason she is not running is
Speaker 2: because important people on the inside told her not to run.
Speaker 2: Someone behind that might be Gavin new by the way,
Speaker 2: although that's sort of tricky Lucretia. Last week we talked
Speaker 2: about how AOC is raising all the money and and
Speaker 2: Jasmine Crockett and Jasmine Crockett right, but AOC is running,
Speaker 2: is going to use that money to run for president?
Speaker 2: Crockett who knows what? But uh, and so this is
Speaker 2: kind of interesting. I think Cammel is thinking about running
Speaker 2: for president again in three years. And look, her lead
Speaker 2: in the polls is just name recognition. I got to
Speaker 2: think if a campaign starts, AOC is going to have
Speaker 2: all the energy of the base and not Kamela.
Speaker 5: I think she's Sti't tease, don't tease.
Speaker 1: No, don't to Okay, Well, I'm done.
Speaker 5: I mean, come on, okay, analogy man, who just really quickly,
Speaker 5: if this is Nixon in nineteen sixty two, who is
Speaker 5: going to run for California governor and win?
Speaker 2: Well, it's going to be a whole bunch of you know,
Speaker 2: Democrats now running, and this will be good. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's you know, apparently Rick Caruso is not going to
Speaker 2: run for governor. Apparently I heard lately he was going
Speaker 2: to run for mayor of l A. Again, I'm disappointed
Speaker 2: at that. I think he'd be a good candidate for governor.
Speaker 5: Ye a whole somebody needs to fix it.
Speaker 2: But go ahead, Well, all right, you know the candidate
Speaker 2: for US is a Steve Hilton, you know, the Fox
Speaker 2: News hosts in America.
Speaker 1: Yes, he's running.
Speaker 2: Seriously, if you have a bunch of I don't know
Speaker 2: if there's but there's a Republican sheriff and riverside running,
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's gonna work.
Speaker 1: But I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's going to be Hilton, I think, and some you know,
Speaker 2: no name Democrat.
Speaker 5: So okay, all right, well that's that's just great. In
Speaker 5: the meantime, it doesn't matter. Kamala Harris, AOC the Democrats
Speaker 5: are losers. Uh, you know, sorry, there's yeah, it's it's
Speaker 5: it doesn't matter. Now things could change, but the things
Speaker 5: that could change, for instance, you know, the economy could
Speaker 5: tank because of Trump's terrorists.
Speaker 4: So they're still they're just about to That was the
Speaker 4: next story that Trump terriffs because today or this week,
Speaker 4: Trump announced deals with the European Union and South Korea, and.
Speaker 5: They took it in the in the shorts. By the way,
Speaker 5: the European Union did go ahead.
Speaker 4: Well, they both agreed to fifteen percent tariffs, and then
Speaker 4: he announced today higher tariffs on all the countries who
Speaker 4: could not make a deal, like India, South Africa, major Training.
Speaker 4: He's paused the tariffs on Mexico, Brazil, I think Switzerland,
Speaker 4: but basically every country that didn't reach a deal is
Speaker 4: being hit with twenty five percent tariffs are more, which
Speaker 4: is a huge increase. I think tariffs before all this
Speaker 4: started were about two to three percent.
Speaker 5: Before you go on, John, I do want to mention
Speaker 5: that his uh tariffs on India were not exclusively because
Speaker 5: they wouldn't make a deal. They were punishments for selling.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's true part of it.
Speaker 5: And the reason I brought that up wasn't to point
Speaker 5: out that you glossed over it. It was it's actually,
Speaker 5: I think an important point that when in the past
Speaker 5: has has any president just made a concerted effort to
Speaker 5: use tariffs as a foreign policy tool. No, you probably
Speaker 5: know this better than me. This is not my area
Speaker 5: of expertise. It never interested me before. It doesn't really
Speaker 5: interesting me now all that much. Except I'm It's turned
Speaker 5: out I was right and you guys were wrong. It
Speaker 5: hasn't destroyed our economy. The economy grew more than expected
Speaker 5: it to. You said, you said, you actually said the opposite.
Speaker 5: You said that the short term, the short term pain
Speaker 5: would be great, but if we could hold out, maybe
Speaker 5: it would work. But instead, the short term page is
Speaker 5: going to start.
Speaker 4: But it hasn't started yet. Until now ever, you got
Speaker 4: haven't gone into a sect.
Speaker 5: Change the goalposts all you like. You know, I'm right, But.
Speaker 2: Anyway, that's it's that's not quite right, John. I mean,
Speaker 2: I was startled to see what tariff revenues, how much
Speaker 2: they've increased from I mean, it's been up and down,
Speaker 2: it's been a radic and all the rest of that.
Speaker 2: The here's a couple of ways to put by the
Speaker 2: way I mean I I you know, I wrote the
Speaker 2: piece for our Friends of Civitas two three months ago
Speaker 2: about how Reagan imposed some pretty tough tariffs, but it
Speaker 2: was usually very narrowly targeted specific industries, even specific countries
Speaker 2: or specific companies.
Speaker 1: Reagan threatened, I think in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2: A two tariff on Spain because Spain had all kinds
Speaker 2: of bogus trade barriers against American agricultural exports, and they
Speaker 2: backed down real fast. I think that the point to
Speaker 2: be made here is two or threefold. One is, you know,
Speaker 2: Trump has been most consistent about this for forty years,
Speaker 2: which is we're being taken as chumps. We've been saying
Speaker 2: to the World Trade Organization and you know what was
Speaker 2: it called before wt O.
Speaker 1: It was GAT.
Speaker 2: General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, which was my version,
Speaker 2: is GAT really meant General Agreement to talk and talk.
Speaker 2: We've been saying for fifty years, pretty please with lawyer
Speaker 2: trade barriers on American goods, and maybe we'd hear there,
Speaker 2: we get a little nick down and and Trump has said,
Speaker 2: screw all that, I'm going to do this the way
Speaker 2: I do my real estate deals, and you know, to
Speaker 2: my surprise, I will confess this. It looks like it
Speaker 2: is working. And in addition to getting by the way,
Speaker 2: what I love the most about the European Deal was
Speaker 2: how much he humiliated What's Arsen LeVander Laterjosen, the head
Speaker 2: of the as I collected, as I call it now,
Speaker 2: the EU s SR is what I like to call
Speaker 2: those guys, right, so and so, by the way, by
Speaker 2: having a fifteen percent tariff, I'm i'm you know, in
Speaker 2: the abstract, I'm for zero percent free trade reciprocal. On
Speaker 2: the other hand, this looks like it's a serious revenue
Speaker 2: measure for the American budget deficit. I didn't see this coming.
Speaker 2: So here's the mystery to me. And I'm sorry, Lucreatia,
Speaker 2: I'm going on too long.
Speaker 5: But Trump said it was gonna happen. You didn't believe it,
Speaker 5: and I said that was right because I didn't know better.
Speaker 1: Well, this was the thing I was wondering about.
Speaker 2: Okay, I got to you know, my my historical analogies
Speaker 2: are a little soggy tonight from a cocktail of or.
Speaker 2: But I think, yes, soggy are the usual. I didn't
Speaker 2: write this Saturday on our sub stack when I was
Speaker 2: sober and I said, you know, this reminds me a
Speaker 2: bit of Reagan and the Strategic Defense initiative. People thought
Speaker 2: it was a bargaining chip, and in fact, Reagan really
Speaker 2: believed in it. And what's been not clear about Trump
Speaker 2: is he has said tariff It is a beautiful word.
Speaker 2: I love tariff's But he's also said over the years,
Speaker 2: I'm for free trade, but we've been Patsy's and so
Speaker 2: someone has to make a tougher deal.
Speaker 1: So which is it.
Speaker 2: Well, it turns out maybe both, and that's not a
Speaker 2: bad thing. I mean, I will concede and celebrate that.
Speaker 2: He looks like kind of a genius about all this,
Speaker 2: and I think we do hold the high cards, right.
Speaker 2: We are the big export economy. I don't quite understand
Speaker 2: world trade. I mean, in the abstract, I'm a free trader.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I listened to Milton Friedman talk
Speaker 2: about it, but I do think in the modern, complicated
Speaker 2: world of international trade, it's not as simple as just
Speaker 2: free trade. By the way, the person who made that
Speaker 2: point and won the Nobel Prize for it was Paul Krugman,
Speaker 2: who forty years ago worked in the Reagan Treasury Department.
Speaker 2: And I think maybe he might have been onto something there.
Speaker 2: I hate to that Krugman could be right about anything,
Speaker 2: but he might have been the.
Speaker 5: Same podcast you're going to praise Paul Krugman for having
Speaker 5: been somehow prescient and lucreatia. That's just sick.
Speaker 4: I don't show you how little Steve understands trade, but
Speaker 4: I don't understand why this, why this is con that
Speaker 4: are while you guys are saying Trump one so right,
Speaker 4: the other countries agree to reduce their tariffs on American
Speaker 4: goods to zero percent directly, Yeah, but we put tariffs
Speaker 4: on them of fifteen to twenty five percent, which means
Speaker 4: somehow we win by paying more taxes on stuff that
Speaker 4: we're importing. And I mean this is that's to win.
Speaker 4: That's a loss, that's going to drive inflation higher. That's
Speaker 4: not even more for foreign goods we are How are
Speaker 4: we not going to pay more for foreign goods?
Speaker 5: How it doesn't make far from.
Speaker 4: Japan not going to go up fifteen percent.
Speaker 5: They're not going up fifteen percent as a matter or not,
Speaker 5: because somehow, somehow, some way corporations are eating these costs
Speaker 5: right now, Because the whole point of tariffs isn't just
Speaker 5: the revenue. It's the leverage that you get in the market.
Speaker 5: And they know that if they try to overprice their
Speaker 5: Japanese cars, they'll lose market share. And guess who'll pick
Speaker 5: that up is American car manufacturers. I know that all
Speaker 5: of those things are kind of meaningless concepts in some
Speaker 5: ways because American car manufacturers make Japanese cars, who make
Speaker 5: American car parts, who make Japanese car parts, you know,
Speaker 5: on and on and on. So to talk about just
Speaker 5: simply speaking American, South Korean Japanese doesn't really make a
Speaker 5: whole lot of sense. But what has happened, and this
Speaker 5: is well documented, is that corporations have to a very
Speaker 5: great extent, how should you say, eaten into their profit
Speaker 5: margin to keep their prices relatively the same. Now, whether
Speaker 5: that can continue again, I don't understand it. But the
Speaker 5: whole idea back, No, no.
Speaker 1: No, this is all part of the studies.
Speaker 4: The economic studies show that tax increases and tariffigures get
Speaker 4: passed on to the consumers.
Speaker 5: Not happening.
Speaker 1: That what I'm telling yet.
Speaker 2: And there's two things to be said about it, John,
Speaker 2: And then I think because none of us are you know,
Speaker 2: you tchied us sometimes about going beyond our knowledge of
Speaker 2: the law and your right to here were all of
Speaker 2: us beyond our knowledge of economics. So one point is
Speaker 2: there's the old problem here of the difference between the
Speaker 2: incidents of taxation and the burden of taxation.
Speaker 1: I'll leave that aside.
Speaker 2: The second point is I was having a conversation yesterday
Speaker 2: at the Reagan Library with one of the really smartest
Speaker 2: supply side economists I know, is Brian Demtrovitch, who works
Speaker 2: with Art Laugher.
Speaker 1: And how's that we were going.
Speaker 2: I had a long conversation about the One Big Beautiful
Speaker 2: Bill and the tariffs, and he made a couple of points.
Speaker 1: He pointed out to me some aspects.
Speaker 2: Of the One Big Beautiful Bill that I sort of
Speaker 2: knew about it, but I hadn't thought about about how
Speaker 2: immensely pro growth they are. But then second he said, tariffs. Look,
Speaker 2: you call it a tax, except it's not really. Taxes
Speaker 2: is sort of discretionary. You only pay it if you're
Speaker 2: importing something. And second, and if you go back to
Speaker 2: one of the US government one hundred and fifteen years
Speaker 2: ago and longer and further back, financed the whole government
Speaker 2: by tariffs alone, our growth rates were like five six
Speaker 2: percent a year, and he says, all the distortions the
Speaker 2: tariff might cause a fifteen percent it's going to disappear
Speaker 2: as minor noise if we get the boom I think
Speaker 2: we're going to get. And I think Brian's a very
Speaker 2: solid guy. I've been reading him from Kay.
Speaker 5: I'll tell you who I think is even more solid,
Speaker 5: and that is Michael Barone, who knows everything there is
Speaker 5: to know about politics in at least in the United States.
Speaker 5: He is. He is truly a walking almon aft and
Speaker 5: very very perceptive. He's not just you know, a fact listard.
Speaker 5: This is what he says. Meanwhile, today, meanwhile, the economic
Speaker 5: numbers are coming in more positively than those who predicted doom,
Speaker 5: like you two in April from Trumst's tariffs. And then
Speaker 5: Michael admits in parentheses I called them lunatic, and then
Speaker 5: goes on to say that, of course it's turned out
Speaker 5: that that everybody, all of the orthodox economists, were wrong
Speaker 5: about tariffs and Trump was right. So there you go.
Speaker 5: We'll see what happened.
Speaker 4: You guys. It's only been a few weeks so far,
Speaker 4: and I think the effects will.
Speaker 5: Long Since Liberation Day I don't think they actually started
Speaker 5: collecting the tariffs in the amounts you guys think until
Speaker 5: very recently, if at.
Speaker 2: All, they've collected a lot.
Speaker 1: I was startled with.
Speaker 5: This day.
Speaker 4: Let's keep this for a future. Whether prices go up,
Speaker 4: inflation goes up, interest rates are going to have to
Speaker 4: go up, that's gonna rates.
Speaker 5: Are going to go down. The Fed is crumbling on
Speaker 5: the issue.
Speaker 4: Not a good thing to want, but okay, that's what
Speaker 4: that's what pen for now, John, Okay, okay, So let's
Speaker 4: move on to our next issue, which is the news
Speaker 4: out of I will admit that Trump is winning on
Speaker 4: this one, which is his campaign against higher education. Columbia
Speaker 4: University agreed to pay a fine of two hundred million
Speaker 4: dollars two hundred million dollars and agreed, I think, even
Speaker 4: more seriously than the fine, is agreed to stop its
Speaker 4: diversity equity inclusion programs, to stop using any use of
Speaker 4: race and admissions and hiring and promotion a faculty and agreed.
Speaker 4: This is the incredible part that I actually have a
Speaker 4: hard time believing. They agree to an external monitor who
Speaker 4: is going to observe Columbia's compliance with the agreement, and
Speaker 4: if he finds or she finds that Columbia is not
Speaker 4: living up to these commitments, the United States is going
Speaker 4: to be able to resume its investigation and lawsuits against Columbia.
Speaker 4: This has now apparently become a model for other universities.
Speaker 4: There's rumors that have been reported in The New York
Speaker 4: Times that Harvard is considering paying a five hundred million
Speaker 4: dollar fine and agreeing to many of the same conditions,
Speaker 4: although allegedly, according to the reports, Harvard is reluctant to
Speaker 4: agree to an external monitor. Brown just paid a fine which,
Speaker 4: consistent with the lesser value of a Brown education, is
Speaker 4: only about twenty million dollars, and there are other reports.
Speaker 4: I am I'm going to lead this. I still don't
Speaker 4: understand how Brown made into the Ivy leagues and then
Speaker 4: on a separate track, UCLA. I just agreed to a
Speaker 4: multimillion dollar settlement not with the Trump administration, but with
Speaker 4: Jewish students arising out of the terrible riots we saw
Speaker 4: on campus there after the Hamas attacks. So, guys, looks
Speaker 4: like higher education is on the back, That's what But
Speaker 4: I would put this to you. Let me ask you, guys,
Speaker 4: this start with Steve this time, are we focusing too
Speaker 4: much on the fines. If we do, are we going
Speaker 4: to miss the more important thing, which I think is
Speaker 4: making sure that universities changed the way they actually do business.
Speaker 4: If you're at Harvard or maybe you're you know, these
Speaker 4: are places with multi billion dollar endowments. They get to
Speaker 4: have their federal funding back, they pay them one off fine,
Speaker 4: and then they keep discriminating on race and pursuing their
Speaker 4: woke agendas. Anyway, so why not do it? From their perspective,
Speaker 4: they don't have to really change how they do anything
Speaker 4: in the future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I kind of feel in some ways
Speaker 2: like they're getting off cheaply. On the other hand, maybe
Speaker 2: the money is not the important part. Maybe the important
Speaker 2: part is the outside monitor. This really is the equivalent
Speaker 2: of a consent decree, isn't.
Speaker 1: It, John.
Speaker 4: It's very much like a corporate consent decree.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And if that becomes a template, that's a great thing,
Speaker 2: assuming that the outside monitor is going to be tough
Speaker 2: minded and look at things.
Speaker 1: And you can't always assume that.
Speaker 2: If this is a template, and I've been saying this
Speaker 2: for a while, the Trump administration I think is being
Speaker 2: very smart. Let's go after the most elite universities that
Speaker 2: are going to generate the most publicity. And then we
Speaker 2: go on down the food chain and hit everybody. The
Speaker 2: University of Toledo, right, you know, the University of Akron. Right,
Speaker 2: you go get everybody and put them all into receivership
Speaker 2: and you know, beat the hell out of them. The
Speaker 2: Harvard thing, I mean, here's I think about Harvard is
Speaker 2: is and John. Do you know John Manning who's the provost.
Speaker 1: He used to be the Harvard law dean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so, I mean, I mean, maybe he's not
Speaker 2: as conservative as me like might like him to be,
Speaker 2: but he's not a lefty. The fact is, poor Harvard.
Speaker 2: I have a tiny bit of sympathy for them. Well,
Speaker 2: I knew you were going to say that. I said tiny.
Speaker 2: I qualified to try and.
Speaker 1: Avoid your scorn. You know, they kick I know, they unsuccessful.
Speaker 1: They tossed out.
Speaker 2: Clotting Gay rightly and other people. They brought in a
Speaker 2: bunch of white guys who six or seven years ago
Speaker 2: would never have been considered to be president and provost
Speaker 2: of Harvard.
Speaker 5: And I think those guyss.
Speaker 1: No, No, it was before the election.
Speaker 2: They brought in Garber last year, before Trump went They
Speaker 2: brought in Manning last year, and now it was sort
Speaker 2: of hard on the election all the rest of that.
Speaker 2: But the point is is, I think even Harvard's trustees
Speaker 2: and elsewhere, look, they're confused people, they're dumb, they lack courage,
Speaker 2: and go on down the list that you want to
Speaker 2: check off the creche. But somebody has said, you know,
Speaker 2: let's bring back some white guys who know what they're doing,
Speaker 2: and you know, people like John Manning and so forth,
Speaker 2: And so suddenly Trump was after him, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: you know, you guys are too little and too late, right,
Speaker 2: and so anyway, I wanted to keep going on all
Speaker 2: this and I'll bet, by the way, privately, Yale, all
Speaker 2: these other schools, I bet they're furious with Columbia for
Speaker 2: making this deal because now they're going to be under
Speaker 2: pressure to have to take the same thing.
Speaker 5: So let me ask you guys, let me especially let
Speaker 5: me ask John. We keep we we keep getting a
Speaker 5: little hints here and there from listeners about something called
Speaker 5: a queen tam Is that how I say it? Lawsuit?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, so you talked about you talked John about
Speaker 5: the external evaluate, external monitor whatever it might be. But
Speaker 5: isn't the more important check on their ability to get
Speaker 5: around these things and to you know, turn the the diversity,
Speaker 5: equity and inclusion provost into the belonging and community support provosts,
Speaker 5: like they've done at my damn university. Uh, that that
Speaker 5: the the person who can because what we had to do.
Speaker 5: I don't know if you guys are aware of this,
Speaker 5: but what we had to do as a result of
Speaker 5: the Trump policies in order to continue to get federal
Speaker 5: dollars in a variety of different ways, was we had
Speaker 5: to swear off on the fact that we had eliminated
Speaker 5: all of our dei everything, you know, our positions, our everything,
Speaker 5: but what could be legitimately covered under academic freedom. So
Speaker 5: I could probably make a fortune if I were willing
Speaker 5: to bring a qui tam lawsuit against my university for
Speaker 5: the ways in which they have just manipulated. As you
Speaker 5: were pointing out earlier, it's kind of what your question was, John.
Speaker 5: Our university is just going to continue to try to
Speaker 5: get away with what they've been doing all along. And
Speaker 5: my question to you is, I believe ken this is
Speaker 5: so far from my legal knowledge and it's not even funny.
Speaker 5: I'm so blonde that qui tam lawsuits could be a
Speaker 5: mechanism whereby universities, our corporations even are forced to either
Speaker 5: to actually delete their completely get rid of their DEI
Speaker 5: initiatives people and so forth, or face huge lawsuits that
Speaker 5: would benefit the person bringing the quetam lawsuit. The private
Speaker 5: individual am I wrong.
Speaker 4: So one thing is if you look at the consent
Speaker 4: decree as it were, Columbia carefully says that it doesn't
Speaker 4: admit to any wrongdoing, because if it did admit to wrongdoing,
Speaker 4: then it would open itself up to these kinds of
Speaker 4: lawsuits which can really destroy the bottom line of a
Speaker 4: normal company. Because key TOOM refers to a kind of
Speaker 4: litigation under what's called the False Claims Act and also
Speaker 4: refirst to some Medicare Medicaid reimbursement statutes. But basically it
Speaker 4: comes from the Civil War and since the federal garment
Speaker 4: was a big enough back then to bring cases itself
Speaker 4: for fraud, waste and abuse of federal funds. The False
Speaker 4: Alams Act says that if a private person sues and
Speaker 4: finds abuse and waste of federal funds, you get triple damages.
Speaker 4: Triple damages, So this is a huge It can be
Speaker 4: a huge hit if you can prove it to a
Speaker 4: university against the university or against the company. So the
Speaker 4: key would be to show that Harvard or Columbia, we're
Speaker 4: violating the fourteenth Amendment or Title nine, something like that.
Speaker 4: So the one of Trump President Trump's executive orders about
Speaker 4: getting rid of DEI and ending affirmative at race based
Speaker 4: affirmataction mentions this possibility because if the United States government
Speaker 4: comes in with you on one of these false Claims
Speaker 4: Act cases, your chances of winning go way way up.
Speaker 4: So that's what you're referring to. The consent decrees don't
Speaker 4: address it, because you're right. The consent decrees say Columbia
Speaker 4: doesn't take any you know, doesn't amid any wrongdoing, and
Speaker 4: so the Trump administration agrees to that. So they say
Speaker 4: they're not finding any doing.
Speaker 5: What about in the future if they say they have
Speaker 5: ended all of their DEI activities and someone says, but no,
Speaker 5: they have not, And then they say that and in
Speaker 5: you know, they promise that that is the case, they
Speaker 5: certify that that's the case in order to continue to
Speaker 5: get the federal money that is contingent upon them doing that.
Speaker 5: But instead they are in a subterfuge still continuing to
Speaker 5: do it, and you can prove that that's the case.
Speaker 5: Is that not a subject for a call it? Is it? Keytam?
Speaker 5: I'm sorry?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, the Key Tom really has to only do
Speaker 4: with you're receiving federal funds and you're wasting it or
Speaker 4: stealing it or abusing it. I don't think that violating
Speaker 4: this kind of agreement by itself would be grounds for
Speaker 4: Key Tom action.
Speaker 1: You're poite right.
Speaker 4: Regardless of whether this agreement exists or not, you can
Speaker 4: still sue Columbia like you and I could suit Columbia
Speaker 4: and say we think Columbia is still using race in
Speaker 4: the way it administers federal grants and they're still vulnerable.
Speaker 4: This consent decree, as Steve called, it doesn't really help
Speaker 4: or hurt those kinds of lawsuits. And so yeah, I agree.
Speaker 4: I would be worried if I was a lawyer for
Speaker 4: Columbia or Harvard that they're going to be hit with
Speaker 4: these lawsuits and they could lose.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean not just them, I mean a lot
Speaker 2: of people. So as talking, there was a good article
Speaker 2: on the Wall Street Journal today by Colin Wright, who
Speaker 2: I don't know, the guy I'm not sure if he's
Speaker 2: a sociologist or social psychologist or whatever he is, but
Speaker 2: the interesting guy is worth following on Twitter. And he
Speaker 2: is suing Cornell because documents have come out that in
Speaker 2: their screening for faculty hires.
Speaker 1: They prioritize race over everything else.
Speaker 2: And he said, okay, I'm going to sue you for
Speaker 2: that because I was excluded because of my race. Oh
Speaker 2: my goodness, how many lawsuits can be because of this?
Speaker 2: Could be hundreds and hundreds of hundreds. And let's go
Speaker 2: out again. Let's open the floodgates for everybody who has
Speaker 2: done this, and it's going to be lots and lots
Speaker 2: of universities, lots and lots of departments for at least
Speaker 2: ten years or longer.
Speaker 1: And let's have fun, right. Yeah.
Speaker 4: A lot of these losses potentially don't just involve universities.
Speaker 4: Think of defense contractors. The defense contractors had DEI programs
Speaker 4: or they were, you know, promoting minorities and not whites
Speaker 4: or Asians because of their race. They would be open
Speaker 4: to these kinds of lawsuits too, because you know, they
Speaker 4: take on a lot of federal money and these probably
Speaker 4: occurred some federal funded programs or research, then they're liable
Speaker 4: to get as triple damages. That's the worst that the
Speaker 4: legal system can do. Wow.
Speaker 5: Lot, so just I don't want to beat this together
Speaker 5: and almost I brought it up, but I think the
Speaker 5: listeners will find it interesting. One last question about that,
Speaker 5: isn't the amount of damages upon which the triple is based,
Speaker 5: whatever funds they have continued to receive after after making
Speaker 5: the promise that we are no longer engaging in unconstitutional
Speaker 5: dei activities, the amount of money they could receive is
Speaker 5: up to the amount of federal dollars that continued to
Speaker 5: flow in after that promise certification.
Speaker 4: I know it would have to be I think it
Speaker 4: would have to be the federal funds that are actually
Speaker 4: supporting the program that you're claiming they're using. Okay, that's
Speaker 4: pretty cool, but it could be a lot of money.
Speaker 5: And the only reason I mentioned that is just because,
Speaker 5: remember the Trump administration made the continuation of federal funding
Speaker 5: contingent upon getting rid of your dei because DEI had
Speaker 5: been declared at least in universities by the Supreme Court
Speaker 5: to be essentially unconstitutional. DEI in the sense of affirmative
Speaker 5: action and so on, That's why I brought it up.
Speaker 5: But I don't want to beat this horse any longer.
Speaker 5: The poor thing is really dead.
Speaker 4: Well, Lucretia has proven once again that she should go
Speaker 4: to law school and become a plaintiff's lawyer.
Speaker 5: Into all to go to law school now, John, I
Speaker 5: would have, but it's too late. I just have to
Speaker 5: learn from you now.
Speaker 4: So we have one more last issue we have teed
Speaker 4: up to talk about tonight, which is the ongoing fight
Speaker 4: over nationwide injunctions. Lucretia identified that there have been a
Speaker 4: bunch of rulings this week by lower court judges who
Speaker 4: seem intent on defying the Supreme Court and maintaining nationwide
Speaker 4: injunctions against for example, President Trump's order on birthright citizenship,
Speaker 4: or another one about the change and refugee and asylum policies.
Speaker 4: Mostly all these have to do with immigration, but not
Speaker 4: all of them, and so Lucretia wanted to know what's
Speaker 4: going on. How can these district judges continue to do this?
Speaker 5: I have to interrupt and say John is too modest
Speaker 5: to point out that he actually got a compliment from Lucretia.
Speaker 5: An attacked saying that John actually predicted that this sort
Speaker 5: of thing would happen. Now, go on and say what
Speaker 5: it is is happening that you predicted?
Speaker 4: John, Oh, I didn't get that text. I guess my
Speaker 4: AI must, you know, filter out these fake emails that
Speaker 4: they're pretty plausible, like Lucretia saying I said something good, not.
Speaker 5: Just good, but predictive.
Speaker 4: Now, so you remember in the Kosta case where the
Speaker 4: Court said no more nationwide injunctions, they did have two exceptions,
Speaker 4: and one was for class actions. The other one is
Speaker 4: for lawsuits under the Administrative Procedure Act that pretty much
Speaker 4: brought in Washington. And you know, yeah, my prediction was
Speaker 4: there are going to be these court judges which are
Speaker 4: going to try to say, now everything's a class action,
Speaker 4: or now everything is in ad ministry price drag claim.
Speaker 4: And that's what some of these trial judges are doing.
Speaker 4: It's almost as if the Supreme Court hadn't decided the
Speaker 4: cost of case, and some have maintained their nationwide injunctions.
Speaker 4: So just one point is I find it hard to
Speaker 4: believe these judges in good faith are able to turn
Speaker 4: around and just in a few days decide there's a
Speaker 4: class action. Sometimes the decision on whether a class action
Speaker 4: exists can take months, if not years. So if a
Speaker 4: judge just turned by the way, I'm very works. I
Speaker 4: see Lucretius swigging directly from a bottle. Now I hope
Speaker 4: it's water. I hope it's water. But she dranks so
Speaker 4: fast and deeply I can tell what it was.
Speaker 5: Oh, I'm still drinking, but I'm not swigging from that one.
Speaker 5: It's it's tellegrino. It's okay.
Speaker 4: All I see is that it's a colorless liquid. So
Speaker 4: the a class action is very complicated. It depends on
Speaker 4: whether what we call there's commonalities a law in fact.
Speaker 4: But when a judge just turns around just a few
Speaker 4: days after the Supreme Court strikes down his or her
Speaker 4: decision and says there's a class action, that makes me
Speaker 4: very suspicious. If that's not a good faith. And if
Speaker 4: you're the plaintiffs, you're.
Speaker 5: So suspicious it's not in good faith.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so good.
Speaker 4: This is also you know, gonna if you if you
Speaker 4: and also for example, you want to challenge birthright citizenship.
Speaker 4: Remember I don't think that Trump's going to win in
Speaker 4: the end. What you want is for these cases to
Speaker 4: get to the Supreme Court as fast as possible on
Speaker 4: the merits. Now you've just introduced a whole nother procedural
Speaker 4: issue that Trump will probably win on and will probably
Speaker 4: delay the Supreme Court for reaching this issue again for
Speaker 4: another six months to a year.
Speaker 5: So but in the meantime, in the meantime, those they're
Speaker 5: actually the stays, the injunctions, whatever you want, you want
Speaker 5: a column, appear to be working, right, I mean, right now,
Speaker 5: the situation across you United States is that there is
Speaker 5: a class.
Speaker 2: Action of.
Speaker 5: Unborn children who consented to a class action to stop
Speaker 5: birthright citizenship.
Speaker 4: And so until the Appeals Court, you know, lifts those
Speaker 4: injunctions like they did the first round with the costs
Speaker 4: of case. Yeah, but you're right, and even if they
Speaker 4: lift the injunction, this is what I don't where I
Speaker 4: think it's also kind of productive, is at least in
Speaker 4: those states where these decisions are occurring. Those states have blocked,
Speaker 4: you know, the states when those states of Trump administration
Speaker 4: is blocked from following that executive order, they just not
Speaker 4: blocked nationwide.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So you notice here John or Steve that that
Speaker 5: John is very rational and reasonable about these things. He
Speaker 5: expects everybody to be equally rational and reasonable. About them,
Speaker 5: and he can't quite understand why they're not, because that's
Speaker 5: just how he is. Am I wrong Evenven, I'm still
Speaker 5: on our podcast.
Speaker 1: What I'm right here, Steve.
Speaker 4: I can see in the reflection in his glasses that
Speaker 4: he's been looking up more ads about Sydney Sween.
Speaker 5: No, it's just that I'm on my iPad being on
Speaker 5: travels and only the speaker shows up the way I've
Speaker 5: got it set up on my iPad and I'm afraid
Speaker 5: to mess with it or it might mess things up.
Speaker 5: So when you don't talk, Steve, I don't see you.
Speaker 4: Well, okay, oh see, now you're just encouraging him to
Speaker 4: talk more. Steve.
Speaker 1: It's hard.
Speaker 2: It's I don't have any thoughts there. It's hard to hear.
Speaker 2: Lucretia's like the Great Lakers broadcaster Chick Herns. She has
Speaker 2: a high streshold of interruptibility because I keep talking and
Speaker 2: don't stop.
Speaker 1: Right, something like that.
Speaker 4: Okay, well, I think that brings us close to the
Speaker 4: end of the podcast. I think Steve had one more
Speaker 4: comment about eating contests. You've been engaging with some readers
Speaker 4: or calmness about whether we should have a three whiskey
Speaker 4: our eating contest. Well, I would totally demolish you in
Speaker 4: the seventy two ounce steak eating challenge, which you didn't
Speaker 4: even take. Tell the renos how you whipped out from
Speaker 4: this challenge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I wanted to go to this place and
Speaker 2: see it. Not do this, well, maybe thirty years ago
Speaker 2: do it? The Big Texan Steakhouse in Amarillo, Texas, just
Speaker 2: off the I forty. It's legendary for having the seventy
Speaker 2: two ounce steak challenge, which is free if you can
Speaker 2: eat it in an hour, plus the side dishes which
Speaker 2: includes bread I think, baked potato, and a shrimp cocktail
Speaker 2: for some reason, and ninety thousand people have tried it
Speaker 2: since it was started in the nineteen sixties, and ten
Speaker 2: thousand people have succeeded in doing it.
Speaker 1: The record.
Speaker 2: This is really shocking because I think it's it's worrisome.
Speaker 2: The record is four and a half minutes, which means
Speaker 2: someone seventy two ounces is four and a half pounds,
Speaker 2: so a pound a minute is by a one hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty five pound.
Speaker 1: Woman who's a competitive eve And Joey.
Speaker 4: Chester, when you did Lucretia show up in this town?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know I don't even want to
Speaker 2: watch the videos, but there are two people trying.
Speaker 1: Oh, by the way, this place is.
Speaker 4: But Steve, you didn't do it.
Speaker 1: You didn't do I'm too old. Why because I would die.
Speaker 2: I mean it's uh yeah, I know you said you
Speaker 2: could do it, but.
Speaker 4: Are oh yeah, easily. I've I've had these forty eight
Speaker 4: out supporterhouses and I'm still hungry when I done.
Speaker 5: God, Okay, Well there's a Steve. There's a restaurant uh
Speaker 5: not in Tucson called the Trident, and it's started by
Speaker 5: a bunch of Navy seals, and their premier menu item
Speaker 5: is I think it's called the Navy Seal and not
Speaker 5: quite I forget, but it's a one poundmburger, which you
Speaker 5: know doesn't seem like all that much one pound hamburger.
Speaker 5: Maybe it's a two pound hambiger. The point is is
Speaker 5: that then it has another eight ounces of pastrami. Blah
Speaker 5: blah blah blah blah. It's this huge, huge, huge burger
Speaker 5: with a pound of fries, and it's it's only about
Speaker 5: thirty dollars thirty maybe thirty five, I forget, But if
Speaker 5: you can eat it in fifteen minutes, it's free. Okay,
Speaker 5: and my kid has gone in there quite free, quite
Speaker 5: often and eaten the entire burger but never the fries.
Speaker 5: So yeah, he's paid every so. But yeah, seventy two ounce?
Speaker 5: What is it a rabbi or is it a what
Speaker 5: is it?
Speaker 2: I think it's a porterhouse and it's it's seventy two
Speaker 2: dollars if you can't do it in an hour, which
Speaker 2: is not.
Speaker 5: Really all that much for a seventy ounce port quarterhouse.
Speaker 2: Honestly, I just have to say this place was the
Speaker 2: most texas cy place that ever texased.
Speaker 4: If those are purps, but next time we'll go there together,
Speaker 4: I'll eat three of them so that you guys can
Speaker 4: get two free ones.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: One of our new humor columnists for this political question
Speaker 2: substact Anthony Lucido, better known to power Line commenters as
Speaker 2: Anthony and Lucretia as Anthony hates male and he is,
Speaker 2: by the way, he is the next date Berry.
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, I think he's that good. In
Speaker 1: any case.
Speaker 2: He says, come on, when are we going to go
Speaker 2: there to Texas or somewhere and have a make ribating
Speaker 2: contest with John and make him show up?
Speaker 1: And that sounds more fun.
Speaker 4: So that wouldn't even be close, because I already told
Speaker 4: you how i'd win. I would put four of them
Speaker 4: in stock them and been in two pieces of bread,
Speaker 4: and just see, I mean, wouldn't even be close. Let
Speaker 4: me come on, and then we'll move on to spam,
Speaker 4: just as a victory lap, just for fun spam eating contests.
Speaker 5: You will notice insisting that this was a news free
Speaker 5: week or low slow news week, when of course it
Speaker 5: was nothing but the Russian collusion hoax all week long.
Speaker 5: And John still insists that there's nothing new in that,
Speaker 5: And yeah, I told him, I said, all of our
Speaker 5: listeners are. I think John is a bit a bit
Speaker 5: wrong on this point, but I'm going to leave that aside.
Speaker 5: We'll pick it up next week. We can actually know
Speaker 5: the whole story a little bit too.
Speaker 4: Much, a big document which we haven't all gone, which
Speaker 4: we haven't had time.
Speaker 5: So we're in the interest of appearing intelligence for a change,
Speaker 5: We're going to withhold our comments until next week. But
Speaker 5: I do want to make sure that listeners know that
Speaker 5: I'm on John on this. He's wrong. I wrong to him, eventually,
Speaker 5: but they will have to wait for another week. And
Speaker 5: so I suppose we are probably at the point Steve
Speaker 5: John excuse me, he's the host of our Babylon Bees,
Speaker 5: of which there are so many. But what made me
Speaker 5: think of it was there was a Babylon b I'm
Speaker 5: not going to go through the whole thing. It was
Speaker 5: the seven things that are that are way more expensive
Speaker 5: or hard to get because of Trump's tariffs. And number
Speaker 5: six was all the mcribs are gone. Somebody has eaten
Speaker 5: them all. And so I had to ask if that somebody,
Speaker 5: of course was John, Oh yeah, but he didn't answer.
Speaker 5: He totally deflected on that one. He didn't say it would.
Speaker 4: Be me, But it's there are no McRib promotions going
Speaker 4: on right now. I haven't seen a single one. Of course,
Speaker 4: I would get it if I saw it. I send
Speaker 4: you guys a picture every time I eat one.
Speaker 5: So that being said, my first Babylon Bee investigation concludes
Speaker 5: Trump is the only one who didn't collude with Russia.
Speaker 5: That's not even funny, that's just true. Okay, sorry, you
Speaker 5: guys will like this one. Women's parallel parking added to
Speaker 5: twenty twenty eight Olympics. That even round. Okay, So for
Speaker 5: the nerds out there, the nerds hopefully you'll get this one, Stuart,
Speaker 5: And it's a picture of the Stewart of Gondor from
Speaker 5: the movie Stewart of Gondor moves to officially recognize more
Speaker 5: Door as a state.
Speaker 1: Oh right, yeah, you get it, do you?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yeah.
Speaker 5: Democrats announced twenty twenty eight campaign slogan we hate capitalism,
Speaker 5: hot chicks, and the Jews.
Speaker 1: Of course that is also true, so.
Speaker 5: It's not even funny. They got to stop with the
Speaker 5: not funny. Okay, I'm done.
Speaker 4: I'll close us out with always drink your whiskey neat
Speaker 4: and order your mcribs with extra sauce. Steve made me
Speaker 4: say that I'm not sure that's going to be our
Speaker 4: permanent tage, John, I bring my own. I mean this
Speaker 4: sauce is a little sweet. Yeah, these are kind of
Speaker 4: sweet barbecue sauce. It's a little sweet, but I would
Speaker 4: like to add Korean hot sauce to it. I think
Speaker 4: this could revolutionize the product, Steve. That's something for all
Speaker 4: of us to consider to the next episode. Still weird
Speaker 4: AI generated poetry. Do you have about the three whiskey Happyhow?
Speaker 5: So?
Speaker 2: Here's one stanza from AI's Lewis Carroll style. Oh, ponder,
Speaker 2: The court cried, John, you the spry as a ravenous
Speaker 2: logic leapt into the sky to federalism. Steve did chime
Speaker 2: while quoting Burke with metric rhyme. Then Lucretia, with a
Speaker 2: chuckle in bourbon breath, declared, the Ninth Amendment fakes its
Speaker 2: own death.
Speaker 4: Really, this was made up by an AI. That's incredible.
Speaker 5: There's so many three whiskey happy hours on the internet
Speaker 5: now that they have figured out each one of us.
Speaker 7: John, I know it's all right.
Speaker 5: Bye bye everybody everyone.
Speaker 7: Next week, Ricochet.
Speaker 1: Joined the conversation.
Speaker 2: H