Speaker 1: This is the first big batch of UFO disclosure ordered
Speaker 1: by President Trump. Some of the clips and videos on
Speaker 1: there have popped up different places before, some of them
Speaker 1: have not. And we have been going through this all
Speaker 1: morning and overnight to try to put together some of
Speaker 1: the best video so we can all look at this together.
Speaker 2: This is a world exclusive right here.
Speaker 3: It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson. I''s right, I said,
Speaker 3: Peter Robinson and Stephen Hayward and Cherls C. W Acrook.
Speaker 3: I'm James Lylynx, and today we're going to be talking
Speaker 3: to Mollie Haming a way about our new book about Alito.
Speaker 4: So let's episode a podcast.
Speaker 5: Supreme Court of Virginia got it exactly right. The governor's
Speaker 5: jerry mandering scheme fail. The current share congressional maps will
Speaker 5: stay in place for the twenty twenty six elections. You
Speaker 5: don't change the Constitution in the middle of an election.
Speaker 3: Welcome everybody. It's the Ricachet Podcast, number seven hundred and
Speaker 3: eighty eight. I'm James Lylynx in Idyna, Minnesota, and I'm
Speaker 3: joined by General C. W. Cook and Florida Stephen Heyward.
Speaker 3: Somewhere I believe in California, and if you can believe it,
Speaker 3: he's joined by Peter Robinson, one of the founders. Gentlemen,
Speaker 3: welcome in, especially Peter, welcome back. Thank you, James. It's
Speaker 3: a delight to be back. And I'm seated right next
Speaker 3: to Steve as well. You are somewhere in California, as
Speaker 3: you put it, and behind you, even though the podcast,
Speaker 3: of course is an audio medium, there's a poster. It
Speaker 3: appears to be CCCP and Ronald Reagan in a football
Speaker 3: uniform defeating the demons of Marxism. Do I have that correct?
Speaker 3: Because you're at the Reagan Library and one would expect
Speaker 3: such a wonderful tableaus.
Speaker 6: Actually, we're at the Reagan Ranch Center in Santa Barbara,
Speaker 6: which is separate from the library. We're in their glorious
Speaker 6: boardroom looking out it's foggy this morning, but looking out
Speaker 6: over the Pacific Ocean and departing to visit Reagan's wonderful
Speaker 6: Mountaintop Ranch directly after we finished this episode.
Speaker 3: Well, I imagine that the Reagan Library does not have the
Speaker 3: sort of appearance of Obama's Library, which appears to be
Speaker 3: something that the Eloys would construct to keep the Morlocks
Speaker 3: in line. It is an absolutely dreadful name. And The
Speaker 3: New York Times, in discussing the art of the building
Speaker 3: this week, had a piece, of course called the audacity
Speaker 3: of Art, and everything inside was as predictable as you
Speaker 3: can possibly imagine. There's nothing audacious about it. Audacious would
Speaker 3: be some good Soviet realism or some representational art, but
Speaker 3: that's another podcast. Here today, we are to discuss all
Speaker 3: the things that have bubbled up in the last week,
Speaker 3: and we've got smart minds to take a look. So
Speaker 3: who wants to have a crack at what appears to
Speaker 3: be breaking new? Is Virginia Supreme Court rules the redistricting
Speaker 3: referendum unconstitutional four to three procedural grounds. The challengers successfully
Speaker 3: argued apparently, I'm reading here obviously that lawmakers failed to
Speaker 3: pass the proposal across two legislative sessions separated by a
Speaker 3: general election. Details, details, details, All right, gentlemen, somebody take this?
Speaker 3: What does it mean? And should the rest of the
Speaker 3: country care?
Speaker 7: Charlie, being in Florida, has been awake for three hours
Speaker 7: longer than Steve and I, and I presume that Charlie
Speaker 7: being Charlie has also read I have the decision itself.
Speaker 7: Perhaps so I want to hear about it from Charlie myself.
Speaker 2: Well, it is hilarious, isn't it.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 2: I do because Senator Luise Lucas, who pushed this whole thing,
Speaker 2: was full of it. She was swearing on Twitter, she
Speaker 2: was calling people who disagree with her cucks. And now
Speaker 2: she's been arrested and her initiative went down. So it
Speaker 2: was procedural grounds. The court made it very clear that
Speaker 2: some might ask why it hadn't done this prior to
Speaker 2: the referendum, and it said, but the Commonwealth of Virginia
Speaker 2: is not allowed to ask that question given that it
Speaker 2: insisted that it couldn't because President in Virginia holds that
Speaker 2: they have to wait until there is a referendum to
Speaker 2: strike down. They can't do it proactively. And they point
Speaker 2: out quite rightly that if you take the position that
Speaker 2: it shouldn't get involved before a referendum, and that after
Speaker 2: a referendum is violating one of the people, then you
Speaker 2: essentially bolished the court. So Twitter is full this morning
Speaker 2: of people saying it's crazy they allowed the state to
Speaker 2: waste seventy million dollars. But that's not really true. The
Speaker 2: state told the court correctly given precedent that it wasn't
Speaker 2: allowed to get involved. What happened here was very simple,
Speaker 2: James said it. The rules in Virginia are pretty clear.
Speaker 2: You can't do this sort of thing while an election
Speaker 2: is on. And Virginia has very long early voting periods.
Speaker 2: They're already in one, and so the three descents say
Speaker 2: that's not the election. They say, the election's only election day.
Speaker 2: Early voting isn't the election. And the majority says that's nonsense.
Speaker 2: And there's this great little passage in there where the
Speaker 2: majority says that if you stopped somebody who was early
Speaker 2: voting at the polling place and said to him, what
Speaker 2: are you doing here, he would say, I'm voting in
Speaker 2: the election. And if you said to him, no, that's
Speaker 2: not the election, he would be mightly confused, yes, which
Speaker 2: is true. So yeah, they pushed it too far. They
Speaker 2: knew what they were doing was unconstitutional. And the last
Speaker 2: thing is Jason Mayiraz was the former Attorney general of Virginia.
Speaker 2: It's taking a bit of a victory lap today, which
Speaker 2: is deserved because last year his office put out an
Speaker 2: opinion in which he said exactly what the court said
Speaker 2: in its majority opinion, and he had offered the Democrats
Speaker 2: in Virginia the chance to go through it with him,
Speaker 2: and they declined and called him names. Well, he won.
Speaker 4: So is this appealable now anywhere?
Speaker 7: It's a matter of state constitutional law, and the Supreme
Speaker 7: Court of Virginia, which has just ruled, is the ultimate
Speaker 7: and final authority. There's no appeal to the Supreme Court
Speaker 7: of the United State or any other court of any kind.
Speaker 4: Is that correct?
Speaker 2: I believe that's correct, because I don't think there's a
Speaker 2: federal constitutional issue at state. I think it's purely a
Speaker 2: matter of state law. And the Speaker of the House
Speaker 2: of Delegates in Virginia said today they will respect the
Speaker 2: court's opinion. Now I don't know if that means they
Speaker 2: won't appeal, because that's not up to him. That's up
Speaker 2: to our best friend, the Attorney General of Virginia, J. Jones,
Speaker 2: who's famous for wanting to kill other people's children. But
Speaker 2: I don't think it looks like they're going to appeal this.
Speaker 4: But whom would they appeal it to.
Speaker 2: Well, they could appeal it to the court if there
Speaker 2: was some procedural problem, I suppose, But yeah, at which.
Speaker 4: Court they'd ask this federal court, I think no.
Speaker 2: I think in theory you could appeal it in the
Speaker 2: Virginia Supreme Court if something changed, right, if there was
Speaker 2: a substantial shift in the fact, But what could they be.
Speaker 6: There are some parallel instances of these kind of state
Speaker 6: Supreme court rulings about ballot initiatives. Oregon some decades ago,
Speaker 6: well twenty thirty years ago, they had a whole series
Speaker 6: of conservative ballot measures that passed, and the Oregon Supreme
Speaker 6: Court state Supreme Court, which was very radical at the time,
Speaker 6: struck down almost all of them on usually very technical
Speaker 6: grounds of violating the so called single subject rule. It
Speaker 6: was usually nonsense, and there was almost a recall campaign
Speaker 6: mounted against a couple of the Supreme Court justices there
Speaker 6: who became nationally famous for standing.
Speaker 4: Up to the conservatives. But that was always the end
Speaker 4: of it.
Speaker 6: There was no appeal of any of those rulings to
Speaker 6: federal court that succeeded. So I don't see why Virginia
Speaker 6: would be any more optimistic that they could overturn us
Speaker 6: at the federal level.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's going to happen. The timing is
Speaker 2: the problem.
Speaker 3: We have a new map in Florida, and there was
Speaker 3: some bruhahaigh electoral wise in Indiana people to say the
Speaker 3: administration could be looking at ten additional seats by twenty
Speaker 3: twenty eight. Interesting when everybody's been talking about a blot,
Speaker 3: of course, because of gases at four forty nine, then
Speaker 3: they lose. If gases at three eighty nine they win.
Speaker 3: Interesting how this will all turn out Another subject that
Speaker 3: I think you gentlemen would like to talk about because
Speaker 3: it fascinates me. It's keen Germane to where I live,
Speaker 3: and it turns out that it's Germane too everywhere, and
Speaker 3: that's medicaid fraud where oh in Ohio this time? So
Speaker 3: the Daily Wire sent a guy to Ohio and he
Speaker 3: did what all of these independent journalists do that Apparently
Speaker 3: state agencies and mainstream media is don't really seem to
Speaker 3: wonder why a windowless building on the edge of town
Speaker 3: has one hundred and fifty eight hospice centers crammed into
Speaker 3: one post office box and when they go there, every
Speaker 3: time you look at it, you find a billion dollars
Speaker 3: has been spent on people who have been vetted not
Speaker 3: a bit, who are often politically connected, who have no
Speaker 3: medical background, and it's just an empty office with a
Speaker 3: sign on with a piece of paper with something scrawled,
Speaker 3: little sharpe to indicate that there's a business there. We're
Speaker 3: losing huge amounts of money to this, and you wonder
Speaker 3: if there will be some sort of of tectonic shift
Speaker 3: because of it, because if nothing else, this shows that
Speaker 3: the largest of the state, far from starving people and saying,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, we're not spending enough money on the
Speaker 3: welfare of our citizens, that huge amounts of money are
Speaker 3: being pitchforked out every day to criminals who are wasting it,
Speaker 3: sending it back home living high in the hog and
Speaker 3: that essentially nobody knows how much of the extraordinary amount
Speaker 3: of money that we spend on these things. Is absolute criminality,
Speaker 3: is absolute fraud. So what do you guys think, Peter,
Speaker 3: you're in California. I believe that there's been some They
Speaker 3: found what two hundred and ninety seven centers for dying
Speaker 3: people crammed into a shoe box that was taped to
Speaker 3: the side of an office building somewhere.
Speaker 7: To me, the heartening part about all this is that
Speaker 7: investigative journalism is being reinvented. We have had a collapse
Speaker 7: here in California of the La Times, which used to
Speaker 7: be of course, it was always left of center in
Speaker 7: its good days and became more left and now it's
Speaker 7: just irrelevant. And Chris Rufo's organization, I don't know if
Speaker 7: I can't remember what the aegis. Under what aegis Chris
Speaker 7: couldn't have been the Manhattan Institute where Chris is a fellow.
Speaker 7: But Chris Rufo's organization has discovered fraud here. They're actually
Speaker 7: onto a story. They've got names and dates and amounts
Speaker 7: of money.
Speaker 4: What's broken? In Ohio?
Speaker 7: Another organization, Peter Schweitzer, has an operation in Tallahassee which
Speaker 7: is doing a real investigative journalism. It's moving out. It's
Speaker 7: no longer being performed by newspapers at all, do you,
Speaker 7: Steve am I right about this? But investigative journalism is
Speaker 7: being reasserted, reinvented by good guys on our side.
Speaker 4: Isn't that roughly correct? Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 6: And don't leave out the California Post, which is the
Speaker 6: brand new New York Posts West Coast edition, and they're
Speaker 6: going to be after some of this. They're still gearing up.
Speaker 6: But Christ's operation is actually through City Journal, which is
Speaker 6: going to revive a California edition here at some point,
Speaker 6: which is the the publication of the Manhattan Rights Toute.
Speaker 6: So okay, right, what wonderful trains sound were by the
Speaker 6: tract train State. By the way, I can add to
Speaker 6: that since we do have a train whistle. It may
Speaker 6: not seem related to the welfare fraud, but we did
Speaker 6: just get news in California this week that are high
Speaker 6: speed rail that was initially promised to cost only thirty
Speaker 6: three billion dollars is now projected to cost two hundred
Speaker 6: and thirty billion dollars before they finish it, and they're
Speaker 6: never going to finish it, so that they're not to.
Speaker 2: Finish it the point wants to finish.
Speaker 3: They know the point is to shovel money to unions,
Speaker 3: which is extraordinary when everybody says we can't do anything
Speaker 3: in this country anymore. We can't build dams, we're taking
Speaker 3: them apart. We can't build rail the rest of it. No,
Speaker 3: we can. It's just that we lack of a political class
Speaker 3: that has the will to do it or the desire
Speaker 3: to do it and finish it. It's obvious when you
Speaker 3: look at Elon Musk and space X and Tesla and
Speaker 3: other companies that, of course America still can do these
Speaker 3: things if unfettered from and not connected to the lugubrious,
Speaker 3: massive government that sits upon us. Well, yes, you're right,
Speaker 3: it's great that a new class of journalists are doing it,
Speaker 3: but you always have to wonder. The response of the
Speaker 3: mainstream media is often to sniff and to discount it
Speaker 3: because who are these rank amateurs? They didn't go to
Speaker 3: journalism school, which means nothing. By the way, never trust
Speaker 3: anybody who went to journalism school. I was in the
Speaker 3: newspapers in college for a long time, longer than I
Speaker 3: should have, and it was always astonishing to me that
Speaker 3: we sat underneath an actual journalism school and we were
Speaker 3: producing an actual daily newspaper of sixty papers and sixty
Speaker 3: pages a day with a sixty thousand circulation. And the
Speaker 3: people from the Jay school upstairs never came down to
Speaker 3: work there. They just got their degrees and they took
Speaker 3: their classes and then went out to do their work.
Speaker 3: For those of us actually doing journalism, well, so, I
Speaker 3: think part of it is that there's a real uncomfortable
Speaker 3: feeling in the mainstream media with who they're finding out
Speaker 3: is doing the crime.
Speaker 6: Oh well, you know, Peter and I were here doing
Speaker 6: all good and Reagan reminiscing for two days, and we
Speaker 6: were reflecting on how Reagan was assailed for attacking welfare queens.
Speaker 6: He never actually used that phrase, by the way, That
Speaker 6: was the media spin to attack him, And so the
Speaker 6: media very seldom followed up on any of the stories
Speaker 6: that he referenced. There was the Chicago Tribune and actually
Speaker 6: did find the woman in Chicago who was registered with
Speaker 6: fifty accounts and all that. But the point was is that,
Speaker 6: you know, Reagan, as they used to say, went over
Speaker 6: the heads of the media to the American people.
Speaker 4: We need to have that happen now.
Speaker 6: And so, by the way, I have a field theory
Speaker 6: on this that I can lay out real quickly that
Speaker 6: all this is deliberate.
Speaker 4: I mean, the.
Speaker 6: Media and the Democratic Party. This is actually on purpose.
Speaker 6: And I actually think it began here in California. It
Speaker 6: just came this week after the Northridge earthquake in nineteen
Speaker 6: ninety four.
Speaker 4: It was a very serious earthquake.
Speaker 6: My parents were living there then, and FEMA showed up
Speaker 6: and there were huge complaints that FEMA's too slow getting
Speaker 6: checks to people who are desperate, and you know, their
Speaker 6: apartments have fallen down and their businesses have been destroyed,
Speaker 6: and write the damn checks. And so work came down
Speaker 6: from the Clinton administration. Quit doing all this due diligence.
Speaker 6: Just write the checks and hand them out the people
Speaker 6: who show up with like no excuses, you know, no
Speaker 6: questions asked. And then and I think this spread to medicaid, oh, COVID,
Speaker 6: same way. Shove the money out the door.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 6: And I actually think this is airsats redistributionism for the left.
Speaker 6: It's inefficient. But you know, given that radical or punitive
Speaker 6: egalitarianism is now a core principle of the left, they
Speaker 6: don't recognize this fraud. This is overdue reparations. It used
Speaker 6: any of the buzzwords you want. And I think that's
Speaker 6: why it's happened, and why Tim Waltz and others are
Speaker 6: against investigating any of this, because they're for.
Speaker 3: It reparations and the rest. You're right, you know, two
Speaker 3: calleries of this one. There was a recent scandal because
Speaker 3: it turns out that a lot of the money that
Speaker 3: people donated for the Pacific Palisades fire it didn't go
Speaker 3: there all. And the relevant organizations are saying we never
Speaker 3: said we were going to give the money with people's
Speaker 3: houses burn down, we you know, is going to podcasters
Speaker 3: and art installations and other affected communities and the rest
Speaker 3: of it, which just shows what a big slashing pile
Speaker 3: of money that it is that they do with as
Speaker 3: they wish. And when the NGO spout dries up because
Speaker 3: of Doge, well then you just piggyback off of fire.
Speaker 3: But the second thing, Charles, I don't want to leave
Speaker 3: you out of the loop on this unless I'm mistake.
Speaker 3: In Florida was successful in actually building a train, a
Speaker 3: fast train, quickly, were they not?
Speaker 2: Yes, although that company looks as if it might be
Speaker 2: in trouble. Why because it's running out of money. It's
Speaker 2: expanded quite.
Speaker 7: Quickly usually how it happens, right to explain where the
Speaker 7: train goes. It's also fairly expensive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Bright Line. It doesn't come up to me
Speaker 2: in Jacksonville. It runs from Orlando and then across to
Speaker 2: the East Coast and then down to Fort Lauderdale and Miami.
Speaker 2: It was supposed to be a bit bigger. It was
Speaker 2: supposed to go to Disney World as well, and there
Speaker 2: was talk of it coming up to Jacksonville, but that
Speaker 2: didn't happen anyway. They are completely private, they took no
Speaker 2: government money, and if they go out of business, it's
Speaker 2: ready none of my business. But I think they expanded
Speaker 2: a little bit too quickly. The one thing they do
Speaker 2: have going for them is they bought an awful lot
Speaker 2: of land, and people have described them as a real
Speaker 2: estate company pretending to be a railroad. So they may
Speaker 2: be all right, but I did notice last week there's
Speaker 2: a lot of stories about their future. Anyway, they got
Speaker 2: it built, just as whether people want to take trains,
Speaker 2: which is my big criticism. I'm a big train hater.
Speaker 2: I hate trains. I would use the air Force to
Speaker 2: bomb all the trains, not for cargo, but just for passengers.
Speaker 2: We'll get the passengers out first, but trains as communist
Speaker 2: and should be replaced by airplanes where possible.
Speaker 3: Well, we could just cheerfully blather on here, or we
Speaker 3: could talk to our guest, who we love to talk
Speaker 3: to whenever possible. That's Baliamiway, editor in chief of the
Speaker 3: Federalist Journalism, fellow with Hillsdale College, and a Fox News contributor.
Speaker 3: She's the author of four books. As of April twenty
Speaker 3: first and the latest is Alito, the Justice who reshaped
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court and restored the Constitution. Bali, welcome back.
Speaker 8: It is wonderful to be here with you all.
Speaker 3: And it has been some time. Well. First things first,
Speaker 3: here explained the title of your book, The Justice who
Speaker 3: Reshaped the Court? How did you do that?
Speaker 8: A few years ago I co authored a book with
Speaker 8: Carrie Severino on the Kavanaugh confirmation, and we interviewed a
Speaker 8: bunch of people, including Supreme Court justices, and some of
Speaker 8: them wondered why nobody ever talks about Alito, because they
Speaker 8: consider him to be this giant on the Court who
Speaker 8: shapes so much of the Court's jurisprudence and has had
Speaker 8: a leading role in returning to Congress or returning to
Speaker 8: the executive branch their proper constitutional authorities after decades of
Speaker 8: the Court just trying to act as this super legislature.
Speaker 8: And it was from them that I got the idea
Speaker 8: that he needed to be profiled and people did need
Speaker 8: to know more about him, and also why they think
Speaker 8: he's so important, which is his constitutional emphasis, his important
Speaker 8: role on the Court, even if nobody really talks about
Speaker 8: him or knows about him as much as they should.
Speaker 7: Molly Peter Robinson here. The reason I'm putting this word
Speaker 7: to you. You could correct me if I'm wrong. The
Speaker 7: reason we tend to overlook Justice Alito is that people
Speaker 7: are still people who follow the Court still have a
Speaker 7: very vivid memory of Justice Scalia, who was so much
Speaker 7: louder and more vivid as a personality. And Justice Alito
Speaker 7: is a quiet man, a modest man, very sweet tempered.
Speaker 7: He would never call attention to himself. He's a kind
Speaker 7: of pure intellect, and he's easy to miss for that reason.
Speaker 4: Is that right?
Speaker 8: I think that's a major part of it. He is
Speaker 8: so unlike almost everyone who inhabits Washington, d C. And
Speaker 8: you really get the sense that he doesn't like Washington
Speaker 8: DC very much. He doesn't want to be the center
Speaker 8: of attention. He gets uncomfortable when people are talking about him.
Speaker 8: But there's another thing too, which I think relates to
Speaker 8: to his jurisprudence. When you think about how enjoyable it
Speaker 8: is to read Escalia, I mean, he's hilarious. He's so biting, vicious,
Speaker 8: but in a totally delightful way. And he also has
Speaker 8: these you know, he has these big rules. He likes
Speaker 8: big concepts. Justice Thomas, who's another fan favorite, very big
Speaker 8: conceptual thinker. Alito is more focused on, Okay, so we've
Speaker 8: made this ruling, how are the lower courts going to
Speaker 8: implement it? How is a US attorney going to know
Speaker 8: what to do with this? And so he's very specific
Speaker 8: in a way that doesn't lend itself to those colorful aphorisms.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 7: So, Ascalia, the late Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas to
Speaker 7: this day are justices for law schools. They're justices to
Speaker 7: be read. They're justices who are trying to change the
Speaker 7: way people look at the Constitution for decades to come.
Speaker 7: And Justice Alito is a judge's judge. Is that one
Speaker 7: way of putting it.
Speaker 8: I think that's a very good way to put it.
Speaker 8: I also think, though, that because Scalia and Thomas were
Speaker 8: and are more philosophers, more big picture philosophers, and they're
Speaker 8: so pure in their thinking, and by the way, I
Speaker 8: love that. I love that about them, But they tend
Speaker 8: to be more liberty focused, whereas I think Justice Alito
Speaker 8: is also just in his core and in his jurisprudence,
Speaker 8: very conservative, and there has been this bias towards more
Speaker 8: libertarian minded justices. I myself understand that, but Alito is
Speaker 8: really the conservative on the court.
Speaker 6: So Molly, it's Steve Hey. We're sitting next to Peter
Speaker 6: out here in California. I haven't had a chance to
Speaker 6: get into the book yet, and I'm wondering if you've
Speaker 6: got some real scoops here. But I'm wondering if you
Speaker 6: got into any of the what i'll call gossip. Although
Speaker 6: I have some sources for this proposition, which is, as
Speaker 6: we know, Alito was President Bush's second choice. He tried
Speaker 6: to install his White House counsel, Harriet Myers's old friend,
Speaker 6: and there was revolt against that, and so.
Speaker 4: Aledo was picked.
Speaker 6: And I've heard from multiple sources that Bush resented the
Speaker 6: fact that he was pressured into, as one person put
Speaker 6: it to me firsthand, from Bush appointing this hack from
Speaker 6: New Jersey, and he turns out to be one of
Speaker 6: our best justices.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 6: I don't know if you've heard anything about that story.
Speaker 6: If you try to delve into it, maybe that's old
Speaker 6: business that you don't care about. But I've heard comment
Speaker 6: on if you want. But I've also heard Alito described
Speaker 6: as a Burkian, whereas both Thomas and Scalia were Thomists
Speaker 6: as well as maybe Locke in. But I think I
Speaker 6: like that description of Alito as a Burkian.
Speaker 8: Well, he also likes that description of himself as a Burkian.
Speaker 8: I think that is how he conceives of himself. But
Speaker 8: I have to say that does not match my reporting
Speaker 8: what you just said about President Bush. I almost feel
Speaker 8: there would be no market for it. But I almost
Speaker 8: feel like you could write a whole book about that
Speaker 8: summer of nominations and what it meant for the conservative movement.
Speaker 4: I would read that makes two.
Speaker 2: You've got two readers, but three James, Oh yeah, I'm okay.
Speaker 8: Well sold well. One of the things I learned about
Speaker 8: that process was that Harriet Myers herself had always wanted
Speaker 8: Alito to be the number one pick, so they had
Speaker 8: a shortlist. They thought there was going to be a
Speaker 8: chief justice opening first, because Rahnquist was so sick and
Speaker 8: it seemed like only natural that he would be retiring.
Speaker 8: They were kind of shocked when it was Sandrade O'Connor
Speaker 8: who retires instead, and they decided to just kind of
Speaker 8: keep with what they'd been thinking for the chief Justice slot,
Speaker 8: and they end up giving that to Roberts, but there
Speaker 8: were you know, five people on the short list, and
Speaker 8: Alito was one of them. He was the number one
Speaker 8: pick for a bunch of people, including the Attorney General,
Speaker 8: but also Harriet Myers, who was the White House counsel.
Speaker 8: She thought that maybe Roberts didn't well he said it
Speaker 8: himself in his confirmation hearings. He didn't have a judicial philosophy,
Speaker 8: and that concerned her. People give her a very hard time.
Speaker 8: But I think it's interesting that she sort of understood
Speaker 8: that might be an issue with Roberts. She wanted a lido.
Speaker 8: The pressure that I think Bush might not have loved
Speaker 8: was the identity politics pressure. And even his own wife
Speaker 8: is on a foreign trip to South Africa and she's like, well,
Speaker 8: I sure hope. Oh sorry, what did she say? I
Speaker 8: think this is before Roberts's pick. She's like, I sure
Speaker 8: hope he picks a lady to replace Sandra day O'Connor.
Speaker 8: And they ask President Bush about it, and he says,
Speaker 8: I look forward to receiving her counsel when she gets
Speaker 8: home from her foreign trip, Like, why don't we keep
Speaker 8: this in the home, Laura, you know? And it was
Speaker 8: kind of funny, but once, once, the chief dies and
Speaker 8: they decide to put Roberts up for that pick. They
Speaker 8: think they have to pick a woman, but many of
Speaker 8: the women were too conservative for some members of the
Speaker 8: Bush White House, and Harriet Myers did not in any
Speaker 8: way want to be the nominee. She just basically was
Speaker 8: told she had to be, and she does it for
Speaker 8: the team. She'd been a loyal Bush person, and it
Speaker 8: just makes you look at it a little differently when
Speaker 8: you think about what she went through in the mockery
Speaker 8: and as soon as she steps down, Alito's the one.
Speaker 8: And I mean it's kind of like everyone agreed.
Speaker 6: I mean, I always heard from people whose were views
Speaker 6: I really respect that Harriet Myers was a very solid person.
Speaker 4: She was just unknown.
Speaker 6: And you know, after the previous Bush gave us David Suitor,
Speaker 6: the word was, no more suitors. We don't want any
Speaker 6: unknown people. We only want known people. And so poor
Speaker 6: Harriet Myers, I think maybe it was unfair to her
Speaker 6: and Peter Molly.
Speaker 7: I have to ask a couple of questions about Dobbs.
Speaker 7: If I made it feels to me, I've got about three.
Speaker 7: Let me just lay this out and then you take it.
Speaker 7: It feels to me as though Justice Alito is going
Speaker 7: to be remembered for Dobbs, which overruled Roe versus Wade.
Speaker 4: That's his decision.
Speaker 7: So questions in your reporting on this, do you have
Speaker 7: any leads on who leaked it? That's sort of a
Speaker 7: mandatory question. I'm sure you've been asked already. And then
Speaker 7: the next question, though, is not mandatory, but it's mandatory
Speaker 7: to me. In the couple of years, what almost three
Speaker 7: years now, since Dobbs came out, I've been watching it
Speaker 7: was attacked vitriolically over and over in place after place
Speaker 7: after place, and yet as far as I can tell,
Speaker 7: there has been no legal attack on Dobbs. That is
Speaker 7: to say, his historical analysis, his legal reasoning, all of
Speaker 7: that stands by the way I considered it a beautifully
Speaker 7: written within this legal It's not flashy, it's not filled
Speaker 7: with memorable phrases of the kind that you get with Scalia.
Speaker 7: But boy, is that a calm, thorough legal document that
Speaker 7: has stood up now without any serious legal attack. Nobody's
Speaker 7: saying no, he made an error in legal reasoning here.
Speaker 7: All kinds of arguments abortion is a right. How could
Speaker 7: the of the results based arguments, But no serious le
Speaker 7: no fst. I can tell no legal attack on the
Speaker 7: decision in the three years since, so any reporting on
Speaker 7: who leaked it, And am I right that that that
Speaker 7: that decision is really standing up.
Speaker 8: There's so much of interest about the Dobbs decision, including
Speaker 8: what you just said. Peter. Reminds me that one of
Speaker 8: the things I learned in my reporting from people on
Speaker 8: the court was that when Alito issues his draft, the
Speaker 8: one that's eventually leaked, yes, and it's nearly one hundred pages,
Speaker 8: the chambers of the liberal justices were just shocked at
Speaker 8: how thorough and eviscerating it was. There was like, no,
Speaker 8: there was.
Speaker 4: Nothing of Row left after that.
Speaker 8: Yes, And the thing is, in some ways, overturning Row
Speaker 8: was kind of easy, right, even at the time liberal
Speaker 8: legal scholars said, this is a joke of a decision.
Speaker 8: They might love abortion or.
Speaker 4: Mistake.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 8: Yes, So on the one hand, it should have been easy,
Speaker 8: but it took such courage there had been so many
Speaker 8: attempts previously, and then also to do it in a
Speaker 8: way that doesn't give the opposition you know, for lack
Speaker 8: of a better term, an easy way to attack it.
Speaker 8: At the time that it's leaked, and then when it's
Speaker 8: handed down the media are hysterical about it. But it
Speaker 8: was actually very restrained. I mean, many pro lifers would
Speaker 8: like something much more dramatic, a fourteenth Amendment protection of
Speaker 8: life for the unborn or something like that. It simply said,
Speaker 8: we all know that it's not in the Constitution, it's
Speaker 8: not in the fourteenth Amendments, not hidden between the words,
Speaker 8: and as such we have to return it to the
Speaker 8: people through their legislatures. It's like very modest, and you're
Speaker 8: right that there. I've actually not seen any substantive legal
Speaker 8: attacks on it. I did talk to a lot of
Speaker 8: people about the leak as well, and so I know
Speaker 8: who most who many people think leaked it, but there
Speaker 8: are but there's no one, you know, there's not There
Speaker 8: might be one that's the who most people say, but
Speaker 8: that doesn't mean there's just one person. But mostly what
Speaker 8: I got into was how absolutely awful the investigation was.
Speaker 8: They didn't begin it for weeks, they didn't ask decent questions,
Speaker 8: Like some of the high level people at the court said,
Speaker 8: if you want to find out who leaked it, find
Speaker 8: out who's in communication with the reporters who published it.
Speaker 8: Don't just say did you leak it? Which is what
Speaker 8: they did. They asked everybody if you leaked it, and
Speaker 8: everybody said no, Well, instead say do you know this reporter?
Speaker 8: Does your spouse know this reporter? Were you ever in
Speaker 8: a situation where someone would have had access to your
Speaker 8: draft that you had on your home computer. You know,
Speaker 8: you can ask questions that would like a real investigator
Speaker 8: would Molly.
Speaker 2: Is he going to retire? This is the big question
Speaker 2: at the moment. People have said he's unhappy. Is he
Speaker 2: unhappy on the court? People have said his wife doesn't
Speaker 2: like him having the job anymore because they went after
Speaker 2: her because she flew a flack outside the beach house.
Speaker 2: Or is he comfortable where he is?
Speaker 8: So people call him unhappy, and I think there's a
Speaker 8: I think it's that he's he's certainly not a happy warrior,
Speaker 8: but that doesn't mean he's unhappy. He's just more motivated
Speaker 8: by duty than personal feelings. So he in my view,
Speaker 8: I don't technically know for sure. I have not thought
Speaker 8: he was going to retire, even before his chambers got
Speaker 8: worried out that he's not retiring, But I think he
Speaker 8: feels there's still work to be done, that he needs
Speaker 8: to do. Would he be happy? Would he and his
Speaker 8: wife be happy once he leaves? Yes, But he doesn't
Speaker 8: do things for happiness. He does things out of duty,
Speaker 8: out of sense of duty.
Speaker 2: And he calls himself a practical original list and Scalia
Speaker 2: quote himself an originalist, and Clarence Thomas calls himself a
Speaker 2: bloodthirsty originalist. I've seen recently a lot of praise for
Speaker 2: Alita in his ability to keep together coalition if you will.
Speaker 2: Is that what that means? I've never quite show what
Speaker 2: practical originalist means.
Speaker 8: So there are many different ways that you see him
Speaker 8: being more practical than some of his colleagues. Part of
Speaker 8: it is what we just talked about with thinking about
Speaker 8: how a decision will be implemented by lower court judges
Speaker 8: or other people involved in the administration of rule of law.
Speaker 8: But another thing is he's more willing to look at
Speaker 8: the facts of a particular case than some of his colleagues.
Speaker 8: They'll just say they'll just kind of see something. You'll say,
Speaker 8: this is a First Amendment issue, so we're just going
Speaker 8: to do a broad First Amendment type ruling, Whereas he
Speaker 8: might look and say, I think it's a little more
Speaker 8: complicated than that he might ultimately side with them in
Speaker 8: their big broad brush approach, but he's comfortable looking at
Speaker 8: the facts of the case. He famously dissented in that
Speaker 8: Westboro Baptist case, and it was because of the facts
Speaker 8: of the case. They said, well, really, what they're doing,
Speaker 8: this so called church, they're protesting the government, so they're
Speaker 8: allowed to do it. And he went through the trial
Speaker 8: record and saw that they weren't. They were protesting this man,
Speaker 8: his faith, his family, his marital history, and that he
Speaker 8: thought TOWRTS law could cover this in a way that
Speaker 8: it was less applicable as a First Amendment case. And
Speaker 8: then he also does I think he's just less autistic
Speaker 8: in the I don't mean that's like in the originalism.
Speaker 8: He just he's kind of thinking, the whole purpose of
Speaker 8: what we're doing is to help a people and their
Speaker 8: country and their government, so we should think about how
Speaker 8: this is going to affect that dynamic.
Speaker 6: Mollie, it's Steve again. One of your scoops in the book,
Speaker 6: to which there is I think a sequel episode in
Speaker 6: the last two weeks, is the fact that how did
Speaker 6: you put it, Kagan was having a shouting match with
Speaker 6: was with Bryer about delaying the Dobbs decision and hopes
Speaker 6: what some Supreme Court justice would retire or die or
Speaker 6: something even worse than that, in hopes of overturning it.
Speaker 6: And then everyone I think has seen and you can
Speaker 6: see it now in the opinions, great frustration, including from
Speaker 6: two of the liberal justices about Justice Jackson, who talks
Speaker 6: more than the other justices combined much of the time,
Speaker 6: and whose descents have drawn some rebukes, even from Justice
Speaker 6: Kagan in one case. And then this last week it
Speaker 6: was a sort of supplemental decision, a ruling related to
Speaker 6: this recent case on the Voting Rights Act, where Justice
Speaker 6: Alito I think wrote a rebuttal saying this is nonsense,
Speaker 6: and I think he said this is even insulting. And
Speaker 6: then he has an asterisk where he says, I remind
Speaker 6: the Justice that this case was conferenced six months ago. Now,
Speaker 6: for listeners, what that means is is when you hear
Speaker 6: the Supreme Court case on Monday or Tuesday, the justices
Speaker 6: meet typically at the end of the week on Friday
Speaker 6: to vote on who wins and who loses, and that's
Speaker 6: after that.
Speaker 4: The whole business.
Speaker 6: About doing the opinion is done, and that can take,
Speaker 6: as we know, months for the two sides to work
Speaker 6: out their opinions and the cents, and that's become a
Speaker 6: game where everyone.
Speaker 4: Wants to get in the last word. But I think
Speaker 4: you're really onto something.
Speaker 6: And the fricken's in the court, and especially the role
Speaker 6: of Justice Jackson and Justice Kagan and all this, and
Speaker 6: there's a leado having to put up with it.
Speaker 8: All well, I think this is really explosive too. The
Speaker 8: liberal justices are frustrated at their lack of power. The
Speaker 8: Supreme Court is an institution that the left used to
Speaker 8: completely control untilp quite recently, so the first time you've
Speaker 8: seen an originalist majority. Even if they have their differences
Speaker 8: at times, they're all rooted deeply in the original meaning
Speaker 8: of the Constitution in that majority, and so they don't
Speaker 8: have power. They're frustrated. And I reported how they slow
Speaker 8: walked the descent in Dobbs even after their colleagues asked them,
Speaker 8: please hurry it up, because our lives are being threatened.
Speaker 8: And that was not hyperbole. They were daily threats on
Speaker 8: their lives, including an actual assassin on the street of
Speaker 8: the Kavanaugh home trying to take out him, and others.
Speaker 8: So after my book comes out, or actually right before
Speaker 8: my book comes out, there was reporting that they were
Speaker 8: slow walking the Collide decision. Kalay, I don't know how
Speaker 8: to pronounce that, sorry, And it was just interesting that
Speaker 8: you're like, oh, is this part of a pattern? And
Speaker 8: then I think we've all but had that proven with
Speaker 8: that footnote from Alito. Katanji Brown Jackson, I think is
Speaker 8: less politically smart than her liberal colleagues, who know, like
Speaker 8: they might have been slow walking it, but they knew
Speaker 8: not to put it in writing basically, or give Alito
Speaker 8: the opportunity to point out that they were slow walking.
Speaker 8: Anyone who read that footnote understood what was being said. Yes,
Speaker 8: not only was it conferenced in October, that was the
Speaker 8: second time they'd heard the case. Remember they first heard
Speaker 8: it in March of last year, so everyone knew where
Speaker 8: they stood, everyone knew what the arguments were. It really
Speaker 8: shouldn't taken that long unless you were delaying for political
Speaker 8: reasons to help your political party of choice.
Speaker 7: Molly Peter here, once again, as you worked on the book,
Speaker 7: how did you find yourself a couple of quotess how
Speaker 7: did you find yourself feeling about justice? Alido, You would
Speaker 7: never have written this unless you had a fundamental admiration
Speaker 7: for him and his work. Did you find him as
Speaker 7: you interviewed other people, as you read the materials, you
Speaker 7: read his decisions, as you interviewed him, as you spoke
Speaker 7: to missus Alito? Did you find yourself enjoying him? Was
Speaker 7: he good company to keep for all these months as
Speaker 7: you worked on the project? And then I wonder did
Speaker 7: you find yourself admiring more or less the court as
Speaker 7: an institution?
Speaker 8: Huh? I definitely was intrigued by him at the beginning,
Speaker 8: and I would have to say that I also came
Speaker 8: to admire. I tend toward more of that big picture
Speaker 8: thinking myself and his pragmatism. I found the I saw
Speaker 8: the wisdom in that. He's also you know, I think
Speaker 8: anyone who's met him or studies him knows he's a
Speaker 8: delightful person. He's very funny in private in a way
Speaker 8: that you don't see publicly so much. I mean, occasionally
Speaker 8: you pick it up in the speeches. Also, the admiration
Speaker 8: his colleagues have for him, it's hard not to be
Speaker 8: touched by that as well. I was not sure when
Speaker 8: I began the project how I would explain Martha Ann
Speaker 8: Alito because she is so fun. She's oh exactly, And
Speaker 8: I always joked that my dad was a pastor and
Speaker 8: my mom, I always joked she was the world's worst
Speaker 8: pastor's wife. And I meant that with like unending praise.
Speaker 8: But that's what I would kind of say about Martha Anne, Like,
Speaker 8: I don't know how she ended up being in this
Speaker 8: life where she's a Supreme Court justice's wife. She is
Speaker 8: very much her own person, very vivacious, uh just fun
Speaker 8: luve a fun person, and you're it's interesting to see
Speaker 8: them being together. I think one of the things I
Speaker 8: admire about the Court more than anything is that they
Speaker 8: have weathered some of these difficult times and they have
Speaker 8: come out with regard for each other still and even
Speaker 8: seeing the way they handled the recent situation with Justice
Speaker 8: Soda Mayor attacking Kavanaugh, I'm pretty confident that Kavanaugh was
Speaker 8: the least offended by what Sodamor did. The other justices
Speaker 8: really didn't like that, and Justice so to my just a.
Speaker 4: Moment to explain for listeners what happened.
Speaker 8: She was, she was giving a speech, and she attacked
Speaker 8: what everyone clearly saw was Kavanaugh based on the specifics
Speaker 8: of the speech as someone who had never met anyone
Speaker 8: who worked in hourly wage. It is so unfair. I mean,
Speaker 8: they're all they're all elite by virtue of being on
Speaker 8: this Supreme Court. But Justice Kavanaugh, his mother was highly
Speaker 8: respected Jog. Yes, he did have a nicer upbringing than
Speaker 8: an alite Toe or a Thomas, but it's just an
Speaker 8: ad hominem that was completely unnecessary, and she did apologize
Speaker 8: for that, which I think is great and speaks to
Speaker 8: how they do work at collegiality. These people disagree with
Speaker 8: each other strongly. Or even the anecdote that I tell
Speaker 8: in the book about Kagan screaming at Briar, she was
Speaker 8: screaming at him because Briar, as liberal as he is,
Speaker 8: he cared about his colleagues and he didn't want their
Speaker 8: lives threatened. And he's trying to accommodate them because he
Speaker 8: understands they're in a very bad situation with the leak
Speaker 8: of the Dobbs decision. So you come out with respect
Speaker 8: for how much they try, even if they fail. At
Speaker 8: the camaraderie at times lolls and.
Speaker 7: Like, oh, oh, I'm sorry, Peter, you had no and
Speaker 7: the project of the originalists, this new I mean, who
Speaker 7: knows what the presidential politics will be like, who knows
Speaker 7: who's going to capture this, who knows whether it will last.
Speaker 7: But the notion that right now there are six more
Speaker 7: or less originalists, more or less conservative justices, and only
Speaker 7: three liberals. Did you feel that the how to put well,
Speaker 7: you're a big thinker, you said this yourself a moment ago.
Speaker 7: Did you feel that they're taking advantage of this, that
Speaker 7: the conservatives are taking advantage of the moment.
Speaker 8: I think that's actually one of the big divisions among
Speaker 8: the conservative justices or the originalist justices is the issue
Speaker 8: of timing. Justice Thomas and Justice Alito have been on
Speaker 8: the court for a long time when it was not
Speaker 8: under originalist control. The three newer originalists, they're thinking, I
Speaker 8: could be here for many decades. We have time to
Speaker 8: get this all done. The older guys, I think they're thinking, well,
Speaker 8: we might not have time. And also, if there's a
Speaker 8: wrong that needs to be corrected, let's correct it now,
Speaker 8: right now. And so I think that is a big division.
Speaker 8: But I also think it reminds me of how after
Speaker 8: winning the Cold War, you saw the conservative movement kind
Speaker 8: of be confused about where it was and where it
Speaker 8: was going.
Speaker 4: Hayward and I were still confused.
Speaker 8: Well, originalism has had so many successes on the Second
Speaker 8: Amendment thanks to Justice Thomas. On First Amendment issues, the
Speaker 8: court is fantastic. The religious freedom issue is better now
Speaker 8: than it has been ever. Probably, you have affirmative action. Roberts,
Speaker 8: who doesn't identify as an Originalist, hast done human's work
Speaker 8: on overturning all of the bad racism racist issues. You
Speaker 8: have Dobbs taking care of Roe, a fifty year project
Speaker 8: of the movement. Well, with all those successes, you're also
Speaker 8: starting to see people kind of sour on originalism. And
Speaker 8: I think that the Justice Alito model is a really
Speaker 8: good one going forward. He's very principled. He's also focused
Speaker 8: on culture and community and what the purpose of rule
Speaker 8: of law, and I think it's a way to blend
Speaker 8: these warring factions. You know, right now in the movement
Speaker 8: you have people who is like, all that matters is
Speaker 8: the principles we hold, and I don't really like that's
Speaker 8: the thing that matters. Then you have other people who say,
Speaker 8: I'm so sick of principles. I just want to win
Speaker 8: Well in Alito, you see that in fact, these things
Speaker 8: having prudence and thought and strategy and principles, that they
Speaker 8: work best together. They're not in conflict. We are both
Speaker 8: principled and pragmatic people ideally right as Americans. So that
Speaker 8: was the That was the main thing I myself learned
Speaker 8: from studying him and his jurisprudence, and I hope that
Speaker 8: the conservative movement and really Americans in general also pick
Speaker 8: up that as well.
Speaker 4: That is fast Wally.
Speaker 3: Last question is Peter Robinson used to say, probably still does.
Speaker 3: Besides all the marquee decisions, there's a there's a chance
Speaker 3: here to do with FMDJ deep cuts sort of thing,
Speaker 3: or you go to the B side you find the
Speaker 3: third song that is really better than the other. Do
Speaker 3: you have a favorite deep cut Alito opinion? Something under
Speaker 3: the radar that demonstrated his wit and his incisiveness. And
Speaker 3: it's one of the things you just kind of like
Speaker 3: to bring up when the conversation turns Alito wise.
Speaker 8: I will say that, Well, Randy Barnett always says that
Speaker 8: Alito's First Amendment jurisprudence, where he's the loan dissenter, is
Speaker 8: the one thing that sometimes makes him wonder if he's
Speaker 8: wrong about these issues, So it's kind of fun to
Speaker 8: study those. But for me, the deep cut is oral argument.
Speaker 8: It's not a case, it's how Alito conducts himself in
Speaker 8: oral argument. Kagan's very good at this. Justice Kagan and
Speaker 8: Justice Alito, they understand that the best you can get
Speaker 8: out of oral argument is to sort of shape your colleagues.
Speaker 8: Your fellow justice is thinking about what the issue should
Speaker 8: what the issue you're going to decide the case should
Speaker 8: be on, what issue that should be. And they are
Speaker 8: very good at guiding the advocate that they agree with
Speaker 8: to stronger ground and then totally devastating their opponent. And
Speaker 8: Alito has had some really fun ones with this. There
Speaker 8: was a Minnesota case that said you couldn't wear tea
Speaker 8: party gear at the election at a voting booth, and
Speaker 8: he led the solicit the advocate down the path to
Speaker 8: admitting that you couldn't wear a shirt that said the
Speaker 8: First Amendment on it at the voting booth. Or he
Speaker 8: got the Colorado advocate who was trying to violate Jack
Speaker 8: Phillips's rights to create cakes according to his conscience, he
Speaker 8: got him to admit that the entire basis of his
Speaker 8: case was wrong. He said. He said, okay, So like
Speaker 8: if someone wants to have a cake that says November
Speaker 8: ninth the best date in history and it's about that
Speaker 8: person's anniversary, he would have to make that cake, right,
Speaker 8: And he says yes. So what if he came in
Speaker 8: and says, I wanted to say November ninth best date
Speaker 8: in history, but it's for Crystal not would he have
Speaker 8: to do that? And the solicitor says no, that he
Speaker 8: definitely wouldn't have to do it. Well, that was the
Speaker 8: entire case. It was the entire case, and he got
Speaker 8: the He got the guy who was trying to argue
Speaker 8: the opposite to it to concede the whole thing and
Speaker 8: it ends up being a big victory for Jack Phillips
Speaker 8: and a loss for Colorado. So oral argument is where
Speaker 8: you should pay attention to him.
Speaker 3: Got All this and more is contained within the covers
Speaker 3: of Alito, the Justice who reshaped the Supreme Court and
Speaker 3: restored the Constitution. No Small Feet. That's a book by
Speaker 3: Molly Hamingway. She's been her guest, And Molly will see
Speaker 3: you on Fox and we'll see you on Twitter. Of course,
Speaker 3: from time to time, and thanks for joining us on
Speaker 3: the show today. Write another book fast so we can.
Speaker 7: Have you back as quickly as possible, and give me
Speaker 7: our best, give Mark our best.
Speaker 8: Yep, we'll do great talking to you.
Speaker 3: Bye bye, guys, Hey bye bye. Well, so many things
Speaker 3: left to talk about the best tweet of the week,
Speaker 3: I think with somebody so that said that Ted Turnles
Speaker 3: Ted Turner's funeral arts at seven o five.
Speaker 4: Do you know what that means?
Speaker 2: Gentlemen?
Speaker 6: It wasn't that the game time for the Atlanta Braves
Speaker 6: when he started Turner Broadcasting.
Speaker 3: No, no dead Turner when he started, when he started
Speaker 3: TNT and all the rest of them started the shows
Speaker 3: at seven o five, which ensured that in TV Guide
Speaker 3: that they would break out that they wouldn't be seven
Speaker 3: o'clock with a whole bunch of other things, would be
Speaker 3: a separate entry whom. Oh my goodness, I like. I
Speaker 3: worked there for a year, so I quite remember that.
Speaker 6: I got to meet Turner once at his gigantic buffalo
Speaker 6: ranch in Montana outside Bozeman, and I have to say
Speaker 6: he's hilarious in person, maybe, I guess otherwise. I never
Speaker 6: paid too close attention to win, but Heyward.
Speaker 4: What Steve, Steve what what? Just what were you.
Speaker 7: Doing at a buffalo ranch outside Bozeman, Montana.
Speaker 6: It's an environmental thing because you know, he wanted to
Speaker 6: bring back the pre Columbian conditions for the buffalo and
Speaker 6: it was very controversial because over two hundred thousand acres
Speaker 6: he sold off all the cattle that were on this ranch,
Speaker 6: which crashed the prices of beef in Montana that year.
Speaker 6: That really annoyed all the other cattle ranchers. And it's
Speaker 6: kind of a you know, you can see elements of
Speaker 6: it in the Yellowstone series.
Speaker 7: Did he succeed on his ranch in bringing back something
Speaker 7: some original conditions?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 6: Yeah, no he I did a tour of the ranch
Speaker 6: in a jeep with one of his wildlife biologists explaining
Speaker 6: how they were restoring the streams to their original condition
Speaker 6: and getting out non native vegetation. And I mean it's ridiculous,
Speaker 6: I don't say ridiculous project, but it couldn't possibly last
Speaker 6: because invasive species are really not invasive in my own opinion.
Speaker 6: But the punchline was sitting around talking to him. He's
Speaker 6: a very gracious. How it's a small group of us,
Speaker 6: you know, the free market, environmental crowd around perk, you know,
Speaker 6: friends of ours, and that is a small group. Someone said,
Speaker 6: you know you've done all these things, you know, TNT
Speaker 6: America's Cup, the Goodwill Games with the Soviet Union, which
Speaker 6: was one of his dumb Cold War stunts. What do
Speaker 6: you consider your most innovative thing you've ever done in
Speaker 6: that long career of years? And he pauses from it,
Speaker 6: and he said, marrying Jane Fonda, that was really the vative.
Speaker 6: I don't think I'll say any more about that, though at.
Speaker 3: Least he didn't see colorizing Casablanca. Somebody looks at Charles
Speaker 3: and somebody who lives in the in the South, would
Speaker 3: you'd like to explain cud zu to the guy who
Speaker 3: just said that invasive species aren't cud zuo?
Speaker 2: Isn't that the sort of Spanish mosqu type stuff? That's all?
Speaker 3: Yah? I think you have it a lot in Florida,
Speaker 3: but it was brought over and it's an invasive species
Speaker 3: and it's hardy to get rid of, as is the
Speaker 3: Asian carbon invasive species that we have up here. What
Speaker 3: do you mean an invasive species aren't?
Speaker 6: Well, maybe I shouldn't have said that, because that's a
Speaker 6: longer subject, but it's become another biological diverse.
Speaker 3: Biological diversity is our strength is that's no, well.
Speaker 4: Look a look, AT's a longer subject. I probably shouldn't
Speaker 4: have said that because I baited you. But the point, the.
Speaker 6: Point is this invasive species has become another extremist tote
Speaker 6: of environmentalism. So I'm just pushing back against their abuse
Speaker 6: of it. Oh no, they're very disruptive to ecosystems. I
Speaker 6: totally can see that.
Speaker 2: But do you know I saw a debate about a
Speaker 2: year ago as to what is the south? Obviously people
Speaker 2: pile in, they have many different answers, but the best
Speaker 2: answer I saw was where kudzu grows. I think they're right.
Speaker 2: I think they're right. No, no, I just have to
Speaker 2: say this. We have a guy at National View called
Speaker 2: Andrew Stutterford. He used to be British. Yeah, he's now
Speaker 2: American like me. How do you used to be British? Well,
Speaker 2: because if you became an American citizen like me, American? Yeah,
Speaker 2: I did not know. We really need to tighten up
Speaker 2: the require pretty sure. But anyway, Andrew is the only
Speaker 2: person I have met until Steve Hayward who just has
Speaker 2: this abundance of stories that start with things like well,
Speaker 2: of course it was nineteen sixty seven and I was
Speaker 2: in an open top car in Paris with.
Speaker 5: You.
Speaker 2: Sorry you were what And Steve, I've noticed, Steve, you
Speaker 2: do this, you do start He's like, wow, I was
Speaker 2: in a treehouse in Okinawa, and.
Speaker 3: When you started to tell that story, for some reason,
Speaker 3: I'm seeing you as Sam O'Neill in Jurassic Park about
Speaker 3: to see an enormous buffalo that genetically engineer. Speaking speaking
Speaker 3: of genetic engineering and strange things in science fiction, I
Speaker 3: love to hear exactly how you three guys are going
Speaker 3: to take this. Peter, calm down and.
Speaker 4: In too long. James, all right, all right, sorry.
Speaker 3: The government has begun what I believe is this modified hangout,
Speaker 3: slow rollout of saying there's aliens. Then they're here, and
Speaker 3: they're under the ocean, and they're they're on the moon.
Speaker 3: But we can't just come out and destroy everybody's conception
Speaker 3: of the universe in our special place in it and
Speaker 3: possibly a threat in the metaphysical basis that people use
Speaker 3: to live their lives. So we're going to drip, drip trip.
Speaker 3: We're going to just give you little stuff, and then
Speaker 3: thirty days and then we're going to give you something
Speaker 3: more so today. Official government site, Official Pentagon photographs, Official
Speaker 3: pentagrap renderings of FBI encounters. It's it's remarkable, really, and
Speaker 3: you know, when you combine it with what's been said
Speaker 3: and what's been shown and revealed for the last few years,
Speaker 3: it really does seem as if they're sort of massage
Speaker 3: us all to get used to this very important realization.
Speaker 3: Walter Kern, who is something of an interesting crank, I
Speaker 3: love him. I said that the probe will go in
Speaker 3: slowly and get the way a great way to describe it. Now, Peter,
Speaker 3: we know from previous podcasts, is utterly indifferent to space
Speaker 3: whatsoever when it comes to mankind going out there.
Speaker 4: We know that, Peter James dog Gunnet. I keep trying.
Speaker 7: The Cold War is over, we won taxpayers should not
Speaker 7: be taxed to if Elon Musks wants to fill the
Speaker 7: space with satellites, if he wants to go to Mars
Speaker 7: on his and his investors'.
Speaker 4: Money, I'm all for it. I just don't think we
Speaker 4: should NASA is now.
Speaker 2: I agree with you, although it's literally the only thing
Speaker 2: besides the military that I'm happy for my tax doll
Speaker 2: is to be spent on basically every other thing I hate.
Speaker 2: And I watched MS two and I thought, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: I don't mind paying for this. I do agree with you.
Speaker 2: Ten years ago, I got to go to Cape Canaveral,
Speaker 2: hang out there for a day, access all areas, watch
Speaker 2: a launch, and they were selling me on private space
Speaker 2: travel because they said that's the future. Look at all
Speaker 2: these amazing companies, space exploragy and all of this. I'm
Speaker 2: totally with you that said. When I do see taxpayer
Speaker 2: funded space exploration, it's one of the only times that
Speaker 2: I don't go give me my money back. I'm just
Speaker 2: sort of happy.
Speaker 5: All right.
Speaker 3: Well, the question gentlemen was about UFOs. What do you
Speaker 3: think the government is doing and do you believe them?
Speaker 6: Well, I've already told my one story for this episode,
Speaker 6: so I won't tell the story about my father and
Speaker 6: I when I was a young teenager doing UFO pranks
Speaker 6: at outdoor UFO conventions in the California desert.
Speaker 4: See actually to say some years in a row.
Speaker 3: That doesn't answer the questions do you believe that the
Speaker 3: government is rolling this stuff out in order to prepare
Speaker 3: us for greater revelations to come that are you going
Speaker 3: to answer the question?
Speaker 4: No, over to you, Peter.
Speaker 7: That presupposes far too much much competence on the part
Speaker 7: of the federal government. They couldn't plant. No, I don't
Speaker 7: believe that there's some kind of coordinated plan on the
Speaker 7: federal government slowly to massage because the federal government isn't
Speaker 7: that smart or that good at doing anything.
Speaker 3: Especially true in other words, than we had the whole
Speaker 3: six weeks to slow the spread, and then it's going
Speaker 3: to be another six and then it's going to be
Speaker 3: another six that we know.
Speaker 4: They didn't know what they were doing. They were making
Speaker 4: it up as they went along.
Speaker 6: Well, y, I've always had the iron law of conspiracies,
Speaker 6: which is what it's There's an inverse relationship between the
Speaker 6: plausibility of a conspiracy and the number of people who
Speaker 6: would have to be involved to carry it off. Where's
Speaker 6: JFK's assassination and so forth. I got to think something
Speaker 6: would have leaked out at some point over the years,
Speaker 6: and and then there are few people say, look, I've
Speaker 6: been but I never know whether to believe these witnesses
Speaker 6: that come forward to congressional hearings.
Speaker 3: You you never know.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 3: I was at a studio Studio fifty seven, yeah, area
Speaker 3: fifty one, and I you know, I saw the gray
Speaker 3: on the table being dissected. I don't know, right, I
Speaker 3: tend not to believe it. But on the other hand,
Speaker 3: when NAS says, by the way, here's a photograph we
Speaker 3: never released before from Apollo seventeen that shows these three
Speaker 3: lights hovering over them as they're doing their business. That
Speaker 3: you know, it wasn't a leaked before because it was
Speaker 3: held deep, deep, deep in a vault for reasons. So
Speaker 3: you know, Yes, anybody who watches the IS International Space
Speaker 3: Station feed knows that sometimes it just cuts out and
Speaker 3: people look at what it was doing before it cuts out,
Speaker 3: and they'll find something in the court. Yes, it's the
Speaker 3: whole space is polluted by grifters and people with bizarre
Speaker 3: ideas who want to believe that comment that just went
Speaker 3: around the sun. I mean, if you're hanging on the
Speaker 3: subreddit's about people discussing what that was, you know that
Speaker 3: there are just absolute lunatics out there. But at the
Speaker 3: same time, just because there are lunatics who believe it,
Speaker 3: does not believe there's not a core of truth at
Speaker 3: the essence of it. Okay, all right, coming back down
Speaker 3: to earth La, Spencer Pratt, We're all looking at saying,
Speaker 3: why isn't this guy gonna win? He makes these audacious
Speaker 3: commercials where he says things like, yes, in the future,
Speaker 3: we will arrest criminals and they'll even be put in handcuffs,
Speaker 3: we will take the needles off the street, and we
Speaker 3: will arrest the people who are selling the drugs and
Speaker 3: plane the parts of the homeless people. And everybody rears
Speaker 3: back in horror when.
Speaker 4: Actually what he's doing is saying doing.
Speaker 3: He's talking about the absolute base level, what ought to
Speaker 3: be a mayoral competence, what ought to be the responsibilities
Speaker 3: of government. But yet people in alsay La say, yeah,
Speaker 3: non of sucks. But I don't know.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna go with the Marxist. I don't get it.
Speaker 4: I don't get it.
Speaker 7: So we're going to Steve and I are going to
Speaker 7: have to defer to Charlie and you to talk about
Speaker 7: California because for Steve and me, and we've discussed this
Speaker 7: over at the last day and a half now, it's
Speaker 7: too painful. We love this state too much. Steve Hilton
Speaker 7: is now leading in the polls Steve Hilton, the Republican,
Speaker 7: is now leading in the polls. In the gubernatorial race.
Speaker 7: Pratt seems to be breaking through and the mayoral race.
Speaker 7: And Steve and I have had our hearts broken by
Speaker 7: this gorgeous As we sit here, we can raise our
Speaker 7: heads and look out the window, and we see the
Speaker 7: Santa Barbara Pier and the cloud, the fog beginning to
Speaker 7: dissolve in the morning sun, and the glistening of the Pacific.
Speaker 7: We're about to go up to Ronald Reagan's ranch in
Speaker 7: a moment or two, a few minutes, and if the
Speaker 7: fog lifts up there, we'll be able to turn in
Speaker 7: one direction and see the Channel Islands glistening in the Pacific,
Speaker 7: and turn in the other direction and see the Santa
Speaker 7: Inez Valley, which is one of the most beautiful places
Speaker 7: on the planet. Don't torture us, chains we cannot permit
Speaker 7: ourselves to get our hopes up again.
Speaker 3: Miel I understand, I absolutely understand completely. It's how I
Speaker 3: feel about Minnesota. I mean, I live in a Dina now,
Speaker 3: which is a nice, little wealthy suburb. They said, we've
Speaker 3: had two murders in three weeks now. As they say,
Speaker 3: don't worry. It weren't stranger murders there. People knew each other, like, oh, okay.
Speaker 2: Great, James. I had that as I live in a
Speaker 2: Dina now and I thought that was really appropriate given
Speaker 2: your podcast.
Speaker 3: And yes it was an anagram of sorts. But but
Speaker 3: I am strongly considering decamping to a small, little rivertown
Speaker 3: where I can live out sort of a Twin Peaks, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, a little small town main street experience.
Speaker 7: Because okay, so this fantasy somewhere between fantasy and plan
Speaker 7: of yours. You want to stay in Minneapolis or are
Speaker 7: you tempted to go back home to the Dakota's No,
Speaker 7: I'm not. I mean stay in Minnesota or go back
Speaker 7: home to Minnesota. Down on the Mississippi. There are some
Speaker 7: wonderful little towns down in the Mississippi where you can
Speaker 7: live a perfectly decent life. And and that's where I
Speaker 7: think I'm going to spend the last act.
Speaker 3: So I get it. I absolutely get it completely. We
Speaker 3: are run by lunatics.
Speaker 4: Theirs.
Speaker 3: When you turn around, when you look at them and
Speaker 3: you say, where's the seed corn for next for you know,
Speaker 3: the next planting season, they look at you and they said, oh,
Speaker 3: we microwaved the last of that last night, and you know,
Speaker 3: there was a movie on it.
Speaker 4: We needed some popcorn.
Speaker 3: They just destroyed it, consumed the social capital of this
Speaker 3: place that wants me to work. I would, and in
Speaker 3: the same sense that it's duplicated in every other place
Speaker 3: where people build a decent society. And then you know,
Speaker 3: hard Man, strong Man, week Men, bad Man, that whole cycle,
Speaker 3: and we're the worst part of it, and so is California.
Speaker 3: And I just don't want to think that years to
Speaker 3: come from now, they'll look back on it and say
Speaker 3: that they absolutely squandered the future of the Golden State
Speaker 3: for ridiculous, obscene, Marxist little smelly orthodoxies and plans is
Speaker 3: or Well called them.
Speaker 7: Charlie's trying to suppress. I hope he's trying to suppress
Speaker 7: the earth. To gloat now, the only man on this
Speaker 7: podcast who lives in a state that.
Speaker 2: Works, I'm not. I'm genuinely not. I've only been to
Speaker 2: Minnesota once and it was brief, so I don't know
Speaker 2: much about Minnesota. But as you know, Peter, I adore California.
Speaker 2: I've spent lots of time in California ever since I
Speaker 2: was a little kid, and I think it's a great
Speaker 2: tragedy what's happening to California. So I'm not one of
Speaker 2: those servatives it says in California. I love California. I
Speaker 2: just think it's an absolute disgrace how it's been run.
Speaker 2: So I'm not I'm not going to I will. I'll
Speaker 2: invite you all to come join me in North Florida,
Speaker 2: but I'm certainly not going to close.
Speaker 7: We will join the only militia where middle initials are
Speaker 7: permitted to Charles CW. Cook militia exactly.
Speaker 3: Yes, Charles, could you say something so we can get
Speaker 3: you up full screen here? I know again, as I said,
Speaker 3: podcast is a medium, so Charles say.
Speaker 2: Something, say something. Hello, I'm Charles Cook and I am
Speaker 2: in a militia in North Florida.
Speaker 3: I want to get a screen grab of this, because
Speaker 3: even though I said the podcast is a visual is
Speaker 3: an audio medium. Some people will watch this, I assume,
Speaker 3: And we want to put this in the comments at Ricochet.
Speaker 3: What is Ricochet? Well, if you haven't figured out after
Speaker 3: seven hundred and eighty eight podcasts, it's the place founded
Speaker 3: in part by Peter Robinson. Again, well, please to have
Speaker 3: with us and rob long and for all these years
Speaker 3: it has been your home for saying civil center, right conversation.
Speaker 3: There's a code of conduct you got to behave. That's
Speaker 3: why the comment sections are as fun as they are,
Speaker 3: and the community has arisen over the years. That's the
Speaker 3: sort of thing you've been looking for all your days
Speaker 3: on the internet. You can go to the main page
Speaker 3: and read, you can listen to the podcast, but for
Speaker 3: a very few, very few, small, little little emilient you
Speaker 3: can join the member side, which is where you'll find
Speaker 3: a community that discusses absolutely everything you want to and
Speaker 3: if they're not discussing what you want to, start a conversation,
Speaker 3: if you want to come to your house, well they'll
Speaker 3: come to your town and meet up. So it's just
Speaker 3: it's a great place and we love it and Charles
Speaker 3: will soon be rolling out all sorts of innovations in Ricochet.
Speaker 3: I believe five point zero. But now it's the pop
Speaker 3: culture speed Round for Peter Robinson and Stephen Hayward and
Speaker 3: it's going to be this. Charles has reconfigured his room.
Speaker 3: I've noticed there is a bench that used to be
Speaker 3: in the back that isn't there anymore. There's a desk
Speaker 3: in the corner, but he has prominently displayed four album
Speaker 3: covers which he believes what he wants us to see
Speaker 3: because they indicate his taste. Steven name those four album
Speaker 3: covers right to left.
Speaker 4: Go. I can't see them closely enough my screen, I
Speaker 4: can see.
Speaker 3: I can see them right here. I've got a little,
Speaker 3: fine little screen, Charles. I say something, so we can
Speaker 3: so we can see them again, see it. We can
Speaker 3: cut this out if you want here we can maybe
Speaker 3: we can. Can you zoom in on them? I can
Speaker 3: tell them from here, and you're a thumbnail. For Heaven's sakes.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know if I can zoom
Speaker 2: in on them.
Speaker 4: Stephen, Do you see them?
Speaker 3: Can you?
Speaker 5: I can't.
Speaker 4: I can't make them out, James.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Charlie being Charlie. One of them is a Beatles album.
Speaker 7: At the other the one one of the right is
Speaker 7: Endless Summers by the Beach Boys. The next one, Oh
Speaker 7: Beach Boys. It's a lineup, and then next one is
Speaker 7: Level of Gold by Dire Straits. The other one is
Speaker 7: You Wish You Were Here by by Pink Floyd, which
Speaker 7: has the fireman who's the guy who's exped you know,
Speaker 7: bursting into fires a stuntman or died a little while ago.
Speaker 3: And then and then on its end, a little bit
Speaker 3: more difficult to see because it's stilted away from us.
Speaker 3: Is the butt of Bruce Springsteen in Born in the Usa. Mission, Charles,
Speaker 3: should you decide to accept it is to put up
Speaker 3: four different albums.
Speaker 2: This is so funny that you say this, because I
Speaker 2: just completely redid my office, and I know I have
Speaker 2: a camera here, so my my screen is moving around.
Speaker 2: But I'll change that. But but and I said to
Speaker 2: my wife, I'm going to change the album covers in
Speaker 2: the background. Every time I said this, I would do
Speaker 2: this just to entertain people. And you have gone for it.
Speaker 2: So this is clearly a good ideas.
Speaker 4: James.
Speaker 6: Yes, quick question James for elaboration later. Are you keeping
Speaker 6: up with a new trend in microtonal punk out of Canada?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 4: Note I did not make that.
Speaker 3: Are you talking about the guys who were the word
Speaker 3: stripe costumes? Yeah? Growing up the internet, they're awesome. They're
Speaker 3: absolutely showing up in my I hadn't I forgot the
Speaker 3: fact that they were micro tonal, but yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: they're they're quite unique. I'm waiting for a reveal where
Speaker 3: it turns out to be Ringo and Clapton or something
Speaker 3: like that do what they always wanted to do, but
Speaker 3: the man was holding them back. The man is not
Speaker 3: holding me back from doing what I'm doing now, which
Speaker 3: is ending the show. Thanking Peter, thanking Stephen, thanking Charles,
Speaker 3: Thanking you the listener, advising you to join ricochet dot com,
Speaker 3: patronize all of the sponsors who are peppered throughout the podcast,
Speaker 3: and join us in the conversation if you will, please,
Speaker 3: We'll see you all in the comments. Guys at Ricochet
Speaker 3: four point whatever. Bye bye, bye, bye bye