Speaker 1: You had to ask.
Speaker 2: Of course I had to ask. I mean, that's obvious, right, I.
Speaker 1: Didn't know you were a big tricky Oh god, yes, oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah. Ask not what your country can do
Speaker 2: for you, ask what you can do for your country.
Speaker 1: It's the Ricochet Podcast. I'm James Lileox, Charles C. W.
Speaker 1: Cook is here, Stephen Hayward is here, and we talked
Speaker 1: to former Attorney General Bill Barr about just about everything.
Speaker 1: So let's have ourselves a podcast.
Speaker 3: Let me say once again to Donald Trump and Christy
Speaker 3: no end this occupation. Let's be very very clear. This
Speaker 3: long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. Instead,
Speaker 3: it's a campaign of organized brutality against the people of
Speaker 3: Minnesota by our own federal government.
Speaker 4: This domestic act of terrorism to use your vehicle to
Speaker 4: try to kill law enforcement officers is going to stop,
Speaker 4: and I'm asking the Department of Justice to prosecute it
Speaker 4: as domestic terrorism.
Speaker 1: Welcome everybody, It's the Ricochet Podcast, number seven hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy two. Why don't you join us at ricochet dot com.
Speaker 1: Why don't you you could be part of the most
Speaker 1: stimulating conversations and community on the web. I'm James Lelax
Speaker 1: in Minneapolis, peaceful saying, oh so ordinary, Mayberry RFD, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Speaker 1: And I'm joined, of course by Charles C. W. Cook
Speaker 1: and Stephen Hayward, and we're going to go right to
Speaker 1: our guest. Bill Barr an American attorney, author of one
Speaker 1: damn thing after another. He served as the United States
Speaker 1: Attorney General twice, once under George HW. Bush and again
Speaker 1: under Donald Trump for the president's first term. Before heading
Speaker 1: to the DOJ, Barr worked in the Office of Legal Counsel,
Speaker 1: where he penned an opinion that is said to have
Speaker 1: formed the legal justification for arresting Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega
Speaker 1: and thirty six years later the same treatment for Nicholas Maduro.
Speaker 4: Welcome, thank you, great to be here.
Speaker 1: Well, extraordinary rendition. That's the that's the term that's on
Speaker 1: everybody's everybody's lips these days. The special Forces operation that
Speaker 1: brings it to fruition. I guess the question remains. I
Speaker 1: guess some would say, looking at this, hey, what gives
Speaker 1: us the right to decide that this is the thing
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 4: Well both our national security and our law enforcement system.
Speaker 4: The opinions you discussed really grew out of a situation
Speaker 4: that had emerged at the end of the Cold War.
Speaker 4: When I was in the Department of Justice under President
Speaker 4: George H. W. Bush, a lot of conflict had moved
Speaker 4: to what we call the gray zone. It involved things
Speaker 4: like transnational criminal organizations, drug organizations, cartels, and terrorist organizations emerging.
Speaker 4: And the question is, how could we deal with these,
Speaker 4: especially when they were getting safe haven in countries or
Speaker 4: either no man's land, and although they were technically we
Speaker 4: didn't sovereign territory of a country, no one was doing
Speaker 4: anything about it. It was sort of no man's land
Speaker 4: or countries that were absolutely complicit in the activity they
Speaker 4: themselves were criminal organizations or terrorists, favored the terrorists in
Speaker 4: supporting them. And how does the United States defend themselves
Speaker 4: in that kind of situation and deal with it? And
Speaker 4: one of the things I'm just going to give you
Speaker 4: the genesis of that opinion. One of the things we
Speaker 4: dealt with was that under the Jimmy Carter administration, they
Speaker 4: had issued an opinion saying that if something violates customary
Speaker 4: international law, then it's not even legal under US law,
Speaker 4: and the United States doesn't have the power to depart
Speaker 4: from it, and that was simply wrong as a matter
Speaker 4: of constitutional law and international law, which is customary a
Speaker 4: norm that countries follow or don't follow. And so wrote
Speaker 4: opinion that said that under customary international law, if you
Speaker 4: go in and carry out your law enforcement activities within
Speaker 4: another country without their permission, that violates customary international law.
Speaker 4: But it's not a violation of US law, and the
Speaker 4: US can do that. The US can do that and
Speaker 4: can bring the person back for trial. So that question
Speaker 4: was can we do it? Is it lawful under US law?
Speaker 4: There's another question, which is, okay, does it violate customary
Speaker 4: international law? And the answer is normally, normally yes, it
Speaker 4: does violate customary international law. But in a situation. There's
Speaker 4: sort of two responses to that. One is that in
Speaker 4: a situation, it's called the enabling, not able or unwilling doctrine,
Speaker 4: which is, if a sovereign country allows its territory to
Speaker 4: be used for anti American activity, things that are imposing
Speaker 4: not just anti American politically, but predatory action directed against
Speaker 4: the United States, hurting the American people, hurting our vital interests,
Speaker 4: then they have to stop it. Sovereignty is not a
Speaker 4: shield for that kind of activity. They have the corollary
Speaker 4: responsibility to stop it, and if they don't stop it,
Speaker 4: the country that's being preyed upon can go in and
Speaker 4: stop it. And we reasserted that, and under international law
Speaker 4: that does give us the right to go in and
Speaker 4: deal with terrorist organizations or drug trafficking cartels if another
Speaker 4: country is part of the problem. So the other aspect
Speaker 4: of it is that something that like that raises our
Speaker 4: defense powers, and you know, we can go in and
Speaker 4: use our defense powers to protect the vital interests of
Speaker 4: the United States. And remember norms. Norms vary and change
Speaker 4: over time because countries either follow them or don't follow them,
Speaker 4: and under certain circumstances they say, you know, this norm
Speaker 4: is not working and we're going to change it. That's
Speaker 4: how the twenty mile limit changed, or the three mile
Speaker 4: limit changed, and then it became two hundred miles. And
Speaker 4: that happened because some states said we're not going to
Speaker 4: follow three miles because it doesn't adequately address the circumstance.
Speaker 4: So countries do have the freedom to respond to changing
Speaker 4: circumstances and say this is the practice that we think
Speaker 4: is necessary to protect our vital interests. I know that's
Speaker 4: a long winded answer, but it's actually sort of a
Speaker 4: complicated legal issue, and I wanted to lay out its
Speaker 4: different facets.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot there. And before it toss this
Speaker 1: to the other smart guys, just one quick question. When
Speaker 1: you talk about international law, a lot of people say, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: how many divisions does Brussel have? What specifically are we
Speaker 1: talking about when we say international law? What complex that
Speaker 1: we sign up for it? And what does the enforcement
Speaker 1: mechanism be for them? What are the penalties for violating them?
Speaker 1: Other than shrugging the shoulders and saying, well, I guess
Speaker 1: the norms they be a shift in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that is a super question, and it hits right
Speaker 4: at the weakness of all these critiques based on international law.
Speaker 4: There are two kinds of international law, roughly speaking, really three,
Speaker 4: but let me one is customary there's no agreement between
Speaker 4: the countries. A second is agreement that don't become part
Speaker 4: of US law. They're not so called executed into US law.
Speaker 4: Usually that requires a passing a statute that then has
Speaker 4: binding effect. Indiana, like, if we're going to this is
Speaker 4: gonna be our fishing zone, this is going to be
Speaker 4: your fishing zone. You pass a Statute and say American
Speaker 4: fishermen have to stay on this side of the line,
Speaker 4: then it's part of US law. If it doesn't become
Speaker 4: part of US law, it's not executed into the US law,
Speaker 4: then it's an agreement. And uh, it's not something that
Speaker 4: that has binding legal effect within the United States. It's
Speaker 4: something addressed to the sovereign of the United States and
Speaker 4: essentially the conscience and prudent judgment. It's like saying, Okay,
Speaker 4: I'm not going to follow it. I understand their costs.
Speaker 4: I'll bear the cost, live with it, Okay. Now. The
Speaker 4: other kind are treaties that you know that are agreed
Speaker 4: to the true and and that that are executed, and
Speaker 4: then there's those that are not going to execute it.
Speaker 4: The treaty in question that everyone's sites is the UN Charter,
Speaker 4: and the un Charter has two parts to it. Roughly,
Speaker 4: one is to set up an enforcement mechanism, which was
Speaker 4: supposed to be the Security Council, and then the other
Speaker 4: is to say, because we have the Security Council that's
Speaker 4: going to come in and make things right wherever there's
Speaker 4: something wrong, you shouldn't use force. And then there's language
Speaker 4: and it's saying the only you know that this does
Speaker 4: not preclude the use of force against another sovereign state
Speaker 4: if you're under attack, armed attack. And the basic debate
Speaker 4: that goes on in international laws, does that mean that
Speaker 4: the only time you can use force is literally when
Speaker 4: someone has you know, guns and is landing on your beach.
Speaker 4: And there are restrictionists, Needless to say, most of the
Speaker 4: professoria that says yes, that's the only time US doesn't
Speaker 4: follow that. We say we can use force to protect
Speaker 4: our vital interests, to defend ourselves. It doesn't have to
Speaker 4: be you know, if someone conducting cyber attacks, if they're
Speaker 4: launching poison into the United States, they're drugs, that's an
Speaker 4: attack on US sovereignty. We can use force to defend it. So,
Speaker 4: you know, that is the international law issue. But what
Speaker 4: makes a lot of it crazy is the premise of
Speaker 4: restrictions on the use of force were based on that
Speaker 4: there was some authority out there that would come in
Speaker 4: and protect you and there that has not happened. It
Speaker 4: doesn't work. So it's a little bit like saying, hey,
Speaker 4: we're going to establish a police force and you can
Speaker 4: give up your guns. In fact, not just give them
Speaker 4: up we're going to take your guns because you don't
Speaker 4: need them anymore because we have a police force. And
Speaker 4: then you never set up a police force. That's the
Speaker 4: world we're in and so called international law.
Speaker 5: Hi, the child's cook kit.
Speaker 1: I wonder.
Speaker 5: Why, in your view is the president allowed to take
Speaker 5: this step without congress. Obviously, if another country came in
Speaker 5: took away our president, we would regard that as an
Speaker 5: active war. We wouldn't say it was kinetic action or
Speaker 5: another euphemism. Why then, does the Congress not have to
Speaker 5: at least pass an authorization for the use of military
Speaker 5: force to justify this action that was just taken.
Speaker 4: Well, because the framers, you know, we were right at
Speaker 4: the time they wrote the Constitution in the eighteenth century,
Speaker 4: the idea of declaring war had a very special meaning.
Speaker 4: It was a juridical concept, and when a formal state
Speaker 4: of war was declared, it had it had all kinds
Speaker 4: of consequences. For example, under in those days, that obliged
Speaker 4: every citizen of your country that has declared war to
Speaker 4: actually treat members of the other society as enemies, and
Speaker 4: you were free to go and you know, seize their
Speaker 4: property and so forth. So it had it was a
Speaker 4: formal state in the eighteenth century. Now, the Framers quite
Speaker 4: realized that wars can be fought, that is, military conflicts,
Speaker 4: armed conflicts can take place that are not declared wars,
Speaker 4: and that frequently nations find themselves embroiled in that. So
Speaker 4: we fought the quasi war with France. We sent a
Speaker 4: squadron of frigates to actually overthrow the government of the
Speaker 4: Barbary Pirates and substitute another pasha. That was what they
Speaker 4: were trying to do there when they storm, you know,
Speaker 4: when they were on the shores of Tripoli. And so
Speaker 4: ever since the founding of the Republic, there have been
Speaker 4: many instances where we have had military conflict without direct
Speaker 4: declarations of war, and military conflict without Congress ever approving
Speaker 4: scores of them. And I think what has happened historically
Speaker 4: is that the executive has running room, and I think
Speaker 4: the Framers would have agreed has running room to respond
Speaker 4: to particular threats without going to Congress first and getting
Speaker 4: permission to do that. It's largely a political question uh
Speaker 4: to be ironed out between the you know, the butting
Speaker 4: of heads between the branches of government as to where
Speaker 4: that line is. And I think that that's a dynamic
Speaker 4: political process that the Framers, the Framers conceived of, and
Speaker 4: that Congress holds a lot of cards, they hold the money.
Speaker 4: Uh and and so uh, I think in practice what
Speaker 4: it has boiled down to is that if it is
Speaker 4: reacting to a particular threat that does not involve, you know,
Speaker 4: exploding into a major war, Uh, then the executive has
Speaker 4: as much latitude as as he can without going to
Speaker 4: Congress and getting them you know, they could they have
Speaker 4: levers to pull if they don't like it.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: Whereas you know, starting in cold blood with a you know,
Speaker 4: major attack that could result in a serious military conflict
Speaker 4: that embroilers in a serious military conflict. Uh, you know
Speaker 4: in terms of its magnitude that uh, you know, that's
Speaker 4: the kind the thing that they would expect Congress to
Speaker 4: do ahead of time. So, you know, an interesting area
Speaker 4: that sort of was on the border here, some would think,
Speaker 4: was the Gulf War, where we had Congress had allowed
Speaker 4: us to build up six hundred thousand troops right along
Speaker 4: the border there, and the question was do we need
Speaker 4: congressional permission to actually cross the border and liberate Kuwait
Speaker 4: from the Iraqi army? And I actually didn't think we did,
Speaker 4: even though that was a major military conflict with Iraq.
Speaker 4: But we decided, you know, it was again a political judgment,
Speaker 4: which is, we think we can get the permission, let's
Speaker 4: go up and get the permission, because that's a better
Speaker 4: way to take, you know, to move forward with the country.
Speaker 4: And that's how we did it there.
Speaker 2: So General Barr at Steve Hayward out in California, I
Speaker 2: want to go back to one follow up question about
Speaker 2: the Panama business from thirty seven years ago. Now, Wow,
Speaker 2: I'm getting old now. I don't remember now that. I mean,
Speaker 2: I know there was the usual fuss from the radical
Speaker 2: left complaining about American intervention in Latin American imperialism and
Speaker 2: all the rest of that. I don't remember there being
Speaker 2: a significant fuss from the opposition party in Congress on
Speaker 2: Capitol Hill. And maybe I just don't remember and I
Speaker 2: missed it, whereas today there's a lot of fuss. And
Speaker 2: I'm wondering, is that just because Trump is such a
Speaker 2: polarizing figure and there's this reflex to oppose anything Trump does,
Speaker 2: or you don't have the politics of this changed since then,
Speaker 2: or or is there some important difference between them and
Speaker 2: now I don't see one.
Speaker 4: I think the defining characteristic of the last three to
Speaker 4: four decades, the thing that is driving much of what
Speaker 4: happens in the United States and our politics, and in fact,
Speaker 4: in my view, ultimately the reason there is Trump today
Speaker 4: is the radical move of the Democratic Party to the
Speaker 4: left and from a party that that was sort of
Speaker 4: traditional liberals and still you know, shared a lot of
Speaker 4: the values with their political opponents, and above all loved
Speaker 4: America and put America, try America first, and had some
Speaker 4: different ideas, but still there was a deep love for
Speaker 4: this country and trying to do what's right for America.
Speaker 4: And that's not where progressives are. Yeah, and so I
Speaker 4: think that is the basic difference. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm going to take up with James separately later about
Speaker 2: how different Minnesota might look today if Hubert Humphrey and
Speaker 2: Walter Mondale were still with us since changing there. Right,
Speaker 2: that's a serious question. Let me shift gears to Greenland.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you have an opinion about Greenland.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's mostly thought of as a foreign policy
Speaker 2: defense question, I suppose, But do you have either a
Speaker 2: a general opinion or a specific legal opinion about what
Speaker 2: is going on with Trump's ambitions to acquire Greenland.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I am actually I do not think
Speaker 4: we should invade Greenland and start an internal conflict within NATO.
Speaker 4: I believe he's right in wanting to. I mean, I
Speaker 4: think it would actually be a good idea to have
Speaker 4: America control Greenland and control it a sovereign territory, preferably.
Speaker 4: And I do believe it's important to the defense of
Speaker 4: the West, not just you know, naval things in submarines,
Speaker 4: but space and so forth, And it's critical, and we
Speaker 4: know that Chinese and Russians are very focused on that,
Speaker 4: and so I am sympathetic with it. I think I
Speaker 4: hope it can be worked out without a military conflict,
Speaker 4: and I expect it will be. I think the important
Speaker 4: thing is that the United States has essentially plenary authority
Speaker 4: to do what it needs to do to defend Greenland
Speaker 4: and the West. And second, I think it's important that
Speaker 4: the United States be able to control where those where
Speaker 4: the minerals and the important resources of Greenland go, that
Speaker 4: they go to the of our allies in the West,
Speaker 4: not to our enemies.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, opposing an invasion places you with ninety five percent
Speaker 2: of Americans according to polls and including ninety two percent
Speaker 2: of Republicans, So not exactly a bold or outrageous place
Speaker 2: to be. Let me ask you a question about Trump
Speaker 2: Two's I'm calling this non consecutive second term. And you
Speaker 2: know your book was called one damn Thing after another.
Speaker 2: I have to confess I haven't read it. And wondering
Speaker 2: if you got that from the old Edna Saint Vincent
Speaker 2: Malay line that history is not one damn thing. No,
Speaker 2: it's not one damn thing after another. It's the same
Speaker 2: damn thing over and over again.
Speaker 4: She said, yeah, where I got it from is when
Speaker 4: Reagan won he asked William Smith to be his attorney general.
Speaker 4: And William French Smith wanted to do his homework, and
Speaker 4: he went to visit Ed Levy, who had been Attorney
Speaker 4: General under Gerald Ford. And as you know, Levy was
Speaker 4: an academician. He had been the head of the University
Speaker 4: of Chicago Law School and then president of the university.
Speaker 4: He wore tweety, you know, the epitome of a professor. Professor,
Speaker 4: and William French Smith said, you know, hey, could you
Speaker 4: could you tell me about the the position of attorney general,
Speaker 4: what it is to serve the Attorney General. He was
Speaker 4: expecting a discourse about the rule of law and all
Speaker 4: the constitution and so forth. And Levy puffed on his
Speaker 4: pipe and looked at him and said, it's one damn
Speaker 4: thing after another.
Speaker 2: I say, right, right, yeah, right right, I see.
Speaker 4: Yeah, William Prince Smith lived.
Speaker 2: General Smith lived down the street from my parents where
Speaker 2: I was growing up.
Speaker 4: But so I didn't know him.
Speaker 2: But well, the reason I bring this up, and you know,
Speaker 2: you may, you know, not wish to answer it too fully,
Speaker 2: but so Trump one, I'll put it this way. You know,
Speaker 2: you suit it up again. You had a number of
Speaker 2: people appointed to cabinet position who I mean, there were
Speaker 2: a few of the so that we say, idiosyncratic people
Speaker 2: around Trump in the first administration, but you also had
Speaker 2: conventional Republicans you might expect in any Republican administration. You know,
Speaker 2: what's his name from Exxon for Secretary of State and
Speaker 2: so forth. This administration, Well, put it this way. Just
Speaker 2: give you one example. The contrast between alex Asar a
Speaker 2: good friend of mine, and RFK Junior and Health and
Speaker 2: Human Services is about as night and day as you
Speaker 2: can possibly get. There don't seem to be any conventional
Speaker 2: Republicans in the cabinet, with one or two exceptions like
Speaker 2: Secretary of State Rubio. And you know, it's a lot
Speaker 2: more a loyalist, which I understand a reason for that,
Speaker 2: but also non conventional, non belt way or is the
Speaker 2: mag of people will put it, non swampy people, right?
Speaker 2: What do you make of all that? Is this deliberate
Speaker 2: conscious wise? How do you evaluate this difference between Trump
Speaker 2: one and Trump two?
Speaker 4: Well, I would say, you know, it's Trump making an
Speaker 4: adjustment based on what he felt with the dynamics of
Speaker 4: the first administration, starting with Russia Gate. You know, I
Speaker 4: think history would have been a lot different had the
Speaker 4: Democrats not not I won't say democrats, I would say,
Speaker 4: you know, those involved in that and the progressive way
Speaker 4: of the Democratic Party and the media plate especially tried
Speaker 4: to orchestrate was effectively a coup. And I think history
Speaker 4: would have been different had he not met that as
Speaker 4: soon as he walked into the Oval office. And I
Speaker 4: think the other thing is I felt I think he
Speaker 4: felt that, you know, one of the problems was the
Speaker 4: entrenched deep state and the perfidy of the many in
Speaker 4: the who worked in the senior ranks of the career people.
Speaker 4: He felt that sabotaged his administration, and I think he
Speaker 4: felt that, and I think he believed that you have
Speaker 4: to fight fire with fire, and that the only way
Speaker 4: to break out of this trajectory the country was on
Speaker 4: was the fight fire with fire and really take on
Speaker 4: the progressives, you know, much more aggressively than our normal
Speaker 4: political punk Kilio would permit. And so he's off on
Speaker 4: that course, and he may prove to be right as
Speaker 4: a great disruptor and someone who achieves things. My own
Speaker 4: concern which I don't like fighting fire with fire, I
Speaker 4: think obviously he's right at the other side has played
Speaker 4: dirty and Republicans tend to play by the Marcus of
Speaker 4: Queensberry's rules. But I'm not sure the answer to that
Speaker 4: is to descend to their level. I'm concerned about that
Speaker 4: and what it does to our institutions over time. And
Speaker 4: the other thing is that I'm you know, I do
Speaker 4: get worried that that that style may lead to unnecessary
Speaker 4: blowback and backlash that makes it harder to achieve our
Speaker 4: harder than necessarily achieve our agenda. But I do understand
Speaker 4: his frustration, and I think he is accomplishing things that
Speaker 4: require bold leadership and aggressive leadership, and so I still
Speaker 4: feel that I am much or happy that he's in
Speaker 4: charge of things. Alternative.
Speaker 5: I have a question about the Insurrection Act. I think
Speaker 5: Trump may not end up needing it, as he's indicated,
Speaker 5: because he can send troops in to defend federal assets
Speaker 5: without the Insurrection Act. Obviously, there are various parts of
Speaker 5: the Insurrection Act, some of them seem easier to meet
Speaker 5: than others. What I want to know is what would
Speaker 5: constitute as an insurrection, not as a blocking of federal
Speaker 5: law making it difficult for the federal government to execute
Speaker 5: the law, which is part of it, but what would
Speaker 5: constitute an actual insurrection as imagined by those who wrote
Speaker 5: that law in eighteen oh seven.
Speaker 4: So I handled the last the last times it was
Speaker 4: ever used, you know, I it was involved in sort
Speaker 4: of orchestrating it. One was I was at the under
Speaker 4: Bush and it was the breakdown of law and order
Speaker 4: in Saint Croix, and then after that ninety two in
Speaker 4: La Those are the last times it was actually invoked.
Speaker 4: I actually don't have in front of me, don't remember
Speaker 4: the exact language. But insurrection really isn't the test. There's
Speaker 4: you know, best specific language about about uh you know
Speaker 4: uh uh interfering with the federal function and provoking you know,
Speaker 4: rioting and stuff like breakdown of law and order that
Speaker 4: you know, those are usually the things you look for.
Speaker 4: It doesn't have to you know, overthrowing the government is
Speaker 4: a specie of it, but it doesn't You don't need
Speaker 4: over an intent to overthrow the government, uh, in order
Speaker 4: to establish an insurrection. It's basically a breakdown of law
Speaker 4: and order that the that's not being carried out. You know,
Speaker 4: where the state is is not you know, sufficient to
Speaker 4: to enforce law in order, and and the and the
Speaker 4: federal government force is needed. That's essentially what it is.
Speaker 4: And what's happening now is you know the Bolshevik and
Speaker 4: Leninist idea of make them feeling the whip of the cossack.
Speaker 4: That is the way you radicalize the population is by
Speaker 4: provoking the government authority to use force. Uh. And that's
Speaker 4: and that's making him feel the whip of the cossack.
Speaker 4: And then you say, these people are fascists and you know,
Speaker 4: look at them, there's a pressing liberty and so forth.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: That's the tactic that's being used. And I and I
Speaker 4: you know, there's another thing going on here, which is
Speaker 4: a subtle legal point, but people have to understand, you know,
Speaker 4: the law. Justice Scalia wrote an opinion called the Print's
Speaker 4: Opinion where he basically said that the federal government can't
Speaker 4: force the state too to carry out federal law. That
Speaker 4: law involved gun control, and the law required the state
Speaker 4: officers to do things and affirmatively do things to carry
Speaker 4: out the federal scheme, and Skilly said, you can't commandeer
Speaker 4: the state to do that stuff. Unfortunately, that's been taken
Speaker 4: to the point where the state feels that it's able
Speaker 4: to just not do anything to help or to respond
Speaker 4: to information requests or any kind of help to the
Speaker 4: federal government. And what we're seeing now, to me, is intolerable.
Speaker 4: The police force would protect any other group that was
Speaker 4: going about its lawful business and was being interfered with
Speaker 4: by mobs. They would keep the peace on the street
Speaker 4: and keep the mob from interfering with the lawful activities
Speaker 4: of a convention or whatever is going on here. They
Speaker 4: are abdicating their responsibilities and leaving the mobs to directly
Speaker 4: attack federal officers and create a variance indiary situation that
Speaker 4: comes pretty close if it doesn't cross the line into insurrection.
Speaker 4: They are they have they are promoting the rule of
Speaker 4: the mob, directing directed against the federal government, where they
Speaker 4: wouldn't permit that for any other group, and that, to
Speaker 4: me is unacceptable and something has to be done about it.
Speaker 1: But what here in Minneapolis? The mayor has said that
Speaker 1: he wants the police to fight the ICE agents, and
Speaker 1: the chief of police was standing next to him as
Speaker 1: he said this and raised an eyebrow sort of spock
Speaker 1: like as that was being said.
Speaker 4: What is it that is insurrection?
Speaker 1: But that's what it seems like to me? I mean,
Speaker 1: what is to be done? As as the man said,
Speaker 1: sure of the Insurrection Act? What can we do? Because
Speaker 1: I mean, we have in this city where I live,
Speaker 1: and no, I haven't seen it. It happens elsewhere. I
Speaker 1: did have a woman drive by my house honking and
Speaker 1: pointing at a black suv and blowing a whistle and
Speaker 1: mouthing the word ICE, but I think it was actually
Speaker 1: a tree trimmer guy who was making the neighbor. So
Speaker 1: that's as close as I've gotten to it. But what
Speaker 1: what can we do? Because I mean, every day ends
Speaker 1: with the culmination of shots of somebody taking of the
Speaker 1: guys walking out with the pepper bullets and you know,
Speaker 1: hitting them, the knogging and off they go. But we
Speaker 1: see cars ripped open, we see documents taken, we see
Speaker 1: all manner of things that that that border on pe
Speaker 1: civic disorder that looks like it's going to What should
Speaker 1: we do short of the Insurrection Act to get my
Speaker 1: town a little bit more sane, safe and stable. And
Speaker 1: of course people will say, well, just pull out ICE,
Speaker 1: just disband ICE, that's all you got to do.
Speaker 4: I think, you know, you have to. You have to
Speaker 4: be smart about which cases to use and what circumstances
Speaker 4: to push the principle. But for example, if if someone
Speaker 4: gets up and makes a speech or does something to
Speaker 4: promote interference in federal law enforcement, they should be arrested
Speaker 4: and charged. That's not insurrection. That's obstruction or a conspiracy
Speaker 4: to obstruct or what have you. You don't need an insurrection.
Speaker 4: You know, these people stand up in meetings and say,
Speaker 4: you know, if an ICE person comes into this school,
Speaker 4: we're going to have our police officers blah blah blah h.
Speaker 4: That is interference with the federal function. Could it be insurrection?
Speaker 4: You could call it insurrection because you don't have to
Speaker 4: call it insurrection. I think you go for those kinds
Speaker 4: of examples and you start and you start prosecuting people
Speaker 4: for that kind of interference. I do think you also
Speaker 4: have to consider bringing suits and going after the politicians
Speaker 4: who have created this situation and are doing it. You know,
Speaker 4: they're basically withdrawing police protection from the federal government. No
Speaker 4: one's asking for the local police to go in and
Speaker 4: make the arrests, but we're asking for the normal protection
Speaker 4: that every other entity in the United States would get.
Speaker 4: And by withdrawing it, you know, I think there's a
Speaker 4: violation of the law going on, and I think that
Speaker 4: they should be held accountable for it. But you know,
Speaker 4: this is why the left is so city is because
Speaker 4: this is exactly what they want to trigger. They're very
Speaker 4: good at playing in the gray zone, going so far
Speaker 4: and then creating a reaction and then demonizing. Of course,
Speaker 4: the media plays that game. So it's a difficult situation.
Speaker 4: The administration is handling the best they can. I would
Speaker 4: just say it takes good judgment to know exactly you know,
Speaker 4: where to where to harass, where to take your stand,
Speaker 4: and so forth.
Speaker 1: Well, the optics around here are lousy. But that's what's
Speaker 1: going to happen when you have the clash of the
Speaker 1: people who are carrying out their constitutional federal duties and
Speaker 1: the people who are obliged to oppose them because they
Speaker 1: don't believe that there's anything wrong with being legal immigrant
Speaker 1: in the first place. Just if you know, as the
Speaker 1: man said today, that this is stolen land, an ergo
Speaker 1: or there's no legal, philosophical, moral precept to arrest somebody
Speaker 1: for being here. When you mentioned fighting fire with fire,
Speaker 1: I mean it's been the administration has been using a
Speaker 1: flamethrower versus a birthday camble. They have not backed off.
Speaker 1: They have gone full force at this. Do you see
Speaker 1: in that a sort of resolution that seems a contrary
Speaker 1: with the way that Republican administrations have worked before, because
Speaker 1: usually something bad happens, they back off and say, forgive us,
Speaker 1: will be nice.
Speaker 4: Now that's you know, no, I think that's the that's
Speaker 4: the thing that is is good. You know, there are
Speaker 4: many things. Is Trump is taking the bull by the
Speaker 4: horns and tackling difficult issues that everyone else has just
Speaker 4: kicked the can down the road. And I give him
Speaker 4: a lot of respect and and applause for for that,
Speaker 4: and this is an example of that.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: You know, we at the end of the day, we
Speaker 4: need to control our borders. That requires not accepting the
Speaker 4: fact that millions came in illegally under Biden and now
Speaker 4: they have to be they have to be deported and
Speaker 4: we have this insists on the rule of law, and
Speaker 4: that's a difficult process to carry out, and I think
Speaker 4: he's right in making sure it's carried out. So you're right.
Speaker 4: I mean, one of the reasons things have gotten as
Speaker 4: bad as they have is because Republicans, you know, frequently
Speaker 4: in the past have been in the situation of because
Speaker 4: largely because of the pressure of the media and the
Speaker 4: and the monolithic media we have in this country at
Speaker 4: in the country, you know, would pull back and not
Speaker 4: take the heat for doing what had to be done.
Speaker 4: That's why I support what he's talking about on the cartels.
Speaker 4: You know, it is ridiculous that we have these narco
Speaker 4: terrorist states right south of us carrying out these predations
Speaker 4: where the casualties are higher than they were at the
Speaker 4: peak of World War Two in the United States were
Speaker 4: killed in action, And what are we supposed to do
Speaker 4: about it? You know, it's not a problem of locking up,
Speaker 4: you know, all the the pushers on the corners in
Speaker 4: our inner cities. That's not going to stop it. It's
Speaker 4: going to the root of the problem, the head of
Speaker 4: the snake. And when we've done that, we've made great progress.
Speaker 4: We wiped out the Cali and the Mediane cartel. Clinton
Speaker 4: comes in, pulls back from engagement over there in South America,
Speaker 4: they get re entrenched, and we have to go down
Speaker 4: there and take these organizations on. We can crush them.
Speaker 4: And you know what venefit I've been saying all along.
Speaker 4: You know, the war is not the way it used
Speaker 4: to be. Where a carpet bomb city. Okay, we can
Speaker 4: be very precise. You know, Siria showed that where we
Speaker 4: destroyed isis very small group of American special forces. We
Speaker 4: know where these people are, We know exactly where they are,
Speaker 4: and we can take care of the problem and those countries.
Speaker 4: Even if even if you think Mexico government is not complicit,
Speaker 4: even if you thought that and you thought they really
Speaker 4: wanted to deal with it, they couldn't do it. The
Speaker 4: only way we'll get done is the United States going
Speaker 4: down there. And so Trump is right, he's taking the
Speaker 4: bull by the horns. And when we discussed this in
Speaker 4: the first term he said that, he said, you know
Speaker 4: it's this is tough, but you know I came into
Speaker 4: office to deal with the tough problems, not kick the
Speaker 4: can down the road.
Speaker 1: Who's going to do it?
Speaker 4: How are we going to deal with this? And so
Speaker 4: I support him taking on some of these tough issues,
Speaker 4: the immigration issue, the drug issue and so forth, and
Speaker 4: delivering you know, the hard, the hard medicine that it requires,
Speaker 4: and not chickening out. That's what's good.
Speaker 1: That's what's good. Bill Barr. We thank you for being
Speaker 1: back to the show. It's been a delight to have
Speaker 1: you and to hear your opinions again. The last book
Speaker 1: is one damn thing after another. Go buy it and
Speaker 1: wait for the next one. And we look forward to
Speaker 1: the next time we speak. Thank you, thank you, yep
Speaker 1: bye bye, hie. The he is when it comes to
Speaker 1: the cartels, I was I thinking as he was speaking
Speaker 1: about that, that we could indeed, you know, use Oh,
Speaker 1: now we know what it is that we had the
Speaker 1: object lesson of the Special Forces versus the Cuban soldiers.
Speaker 1: There was a film today that I saw on Twitter,
Speaker 1: and I think it actually may have been Charles who
Speaker 1: responded to it. They were bringing the bodies home from
Speaker 1: Venezuela to Cuba. And was it you Charles who actually
Speaker 1: asked the question, why are they in shoe boxes?
Speaker 5: It wasn't, but I did want to oay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because there were the very small coffins and
Speaker 1: they had it's all that they could probably get up
Speaker 1: with a spatuel on a tweezer. Oh so, yes, there
Speaker 1: are things that can be done. Question is, gentlemen, now
Speaker 1: is let's quickly whips saw around the world and put
Speaker 1: on our other hats of expertise that we do not
Speaker 1: deserve to wear. Did we flinch with Iran or did
Speaker 1: we tens in such a way that revealed all the
Speaker 1: things that they were planning to do? In response, That's
Speaker 1: been one of the theories that I've been There's a
Speaker 1: couple of people that have been following who are quite
Speaker 1: quite interesting. I'm not saying they're right, but they're quite
Speaker 1: interesting in putting together what this means, what that means,
Speaker 1: what this mobilization means, what that mobilization means. And they
Speaker 1: made the point that a when we seem to be
Speaker 1: on the verge of a blow we got a pretty
Speaker 1: good idea of what lit up. And secondly, at this
Speaker 1: very moment, the pizza tracker is hitting record numbers. So
Speaker 1: who knows. So I'll shut up and let you guys
Speaker 1: tell me what you think.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, what problem is is we're really only speculating
Speaker 2: by what we can get out of the news media,
Speaker 2: which may not even be close to accurate or penetrating
Speaker 2: to what really is going on behind the scenes. A
Speaker 2: couple of things I think we do know or can conclude.
Speaker 2: One is, apparently the scale of the massacre in Iran
Speaker 2: is massive, and maybe even more than it's been reported.
Speaker 2: But now i'd heard a week ago, by the way,
Speaker 2: when the so called official figure, whatever the heck that is,
Speaker 2: was a few hundred and I was hearing then from
Speaker 2: somebody in Washington. No, no, it's many thousands are being
Speaker 2: killed now, And three or four days later, that's what
Speaker 2: started to get out into the reporting. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: you did hear that Iran paused at least planned executions
Speaker 2: of several hundred people. Now is that a concession they got,
Speaker 2: a concession they gave to get Trump off their back.
Speaker 2: I don't know. It could just be a pause. I
Speaker 2: wouldn't for a moment take that to the bank and say, ah,
Speaker 2: we've made real progress here. The third question is this
Speaker 2: may be a case of where we did not have
Speaker 2: and this has been reported, we did not have sufficient
Speaker 2: military assets to make an effective strike. Apparently our one
Speaker 2: carrier is not yet in Persian Gulf.
Speaker 4: The Lincoln was over.
Speaker 2: Somewhere near Asia, I guess, and is steaming at top
Speaker 2: speed to get there. And then I Ron a huge country,
Speaker 2: densely populated in places, and so how do you do
Speaker 2: strikes that are going to actually erode the regime? It's
Speaker 2: one thing to take out their nuclear facilities and so forth.
Speaker 2: So you can see that there are some difficulties, practical difficulties. Well,
Speaker 2: all right, what are we going to do? And I
Speaker 2: have no idea what might be done. It's also reported
Speaker 2: again who knows accurately or not, but the Jerusalem Post
Speaker 2: has usually got good sources that Prime Minister net Yahoo
Speaker 2: asks President Trump to hold off for now. Who knows
Speaker 2: what the Israelis are doing inside the borders of Iran.
Speaker 2: We tend to ascribe magical powers to the masade in Iran,
Speaker 2: and they have done some amazing things in the past.
Speaker 2: But bringing down this whole regime is a tough thing
Speaker 2: to do. The last thought. Sorry I'm rambling here, but
Speaker 2: I do worry that we now look like we did
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty six when we encourage the Hungarians to
Speaker 2: revolt and then did not lift a finger to help
Speaker 2: them when they did. I think it would be shameful.
Speaker 2: The outcome of this is the runnine regime survives, and
Speaker 2: Trump essentially said, well, never mind any other fears, Charles,
Speaker 2: or are.
Speaker 1: We just going to leave it at that? Well I
Speaker 1: don't like spiders, Well there we go, rachnophobia. We can
Speaker 1: add to your other phobias and the things that are
Speaker 1: are bad. So we'll see. Yeah, we will. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's over, but I have been up and I
Speaker 1: can't tell you how many times I've seen, you know,
Speaker 1: the street rise up and then nothing happens. There's an
Speaker 1: inexhaustible supply of thugs that they can get from other
Speaker 1: countries to come and shoot and be we'll see you.
Speaker 5: One of the reasons this one's so depressing, other than
Speaker 5: that it's been promised on so many occasions and our
Speaker 5: hopes have been dashed, is that this is one of
Speaker 5: the few examples of a country that needs and would
Speaker 5: do well out of a revolution. I'm a conservative, I'm
Speaker 5: not reflexively in favor of revolution or chaos or the
Speaker 5: overthrow of the existing order. And as I've said many
Speaker 5: many times when discussing the American Revolution, the American Revolution
Speaker 5: was a strange one relative to say, the French Revolution
Speaker 5: or the Russian Revolution, in that it was small, c conservative,
Speaker 5: it was restorative. It was full of people saying, we
Speaker 5: want to be more like the country that we thought
Speaker 5: we were, rather than we wish to get rid of them.
Speaker 5: There was no reconstituting the clocks or forcing people to
Speaker 5: call each other comrade or any of that. All the
Speaker 5: letters to the king in seventeen seventy four said please
Speaker 5: give us our birthright. Usually that's not.
Speaker 1: The case, but in Iran it's sort of.
Speaker 5: Ease because the transformation that that country underwent. It wasn't perfect,
Speaker 5: of course, nor was the Shah, but the transformation that
Speaker 5: that country underwent from nineteen forty to nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 5: was remarkable. There was massive increases in literacy. It was
Speaker 5: an educated populous. It was secular, by which I don't
Speaker 5: mean it was irreligious, but that it was not subordinate
Speaker 5: to a politicized form of Islam, and a revolution would
Speaker 5: presumably give an awful lot of that back.
Speaker 1: In other words, it would.
Speaker 5: Remove the crazies, it would remove the totalitarians. And this
Speaker 5: is why it's just so depressing watching it not happen,
Speaker 5: because it's an undoing of a wrong and I keep thinking, oh, finally,
Speaker 5: you know that thing that happened is going to be fixed,
Speaker 5: and it just doesn't seem to. But it's an odd
Speaker 5: sentiment to feel as a Bourkian.
Speaker 1: Well, yes, but no, as much as it's obvious that
Speaker 1: the country suffered went backwards as endure hideous mismanagement. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a post on a ricochet ricochet dot com, by
Speaker 1: the way, the side that you all should go to
Speaker 1: and join and sign up for and comment at a well,
Speaker 1: why people weren't marching for the protesters when they were
Speaker 1: marching for Gaza And it's one of those it's not
Speaker 1: a real head scratcher. Nobody posts something like that because
Speaker 1: they really can't figure out the answer. What do you
Speaker 1: guys think? I mean, obviously, so it's the fact that
Speaker 1: it's anti American, it's the fact that it's anti Israel.
Speaker 1: It's the fact that it is. As many have pointed out,
Speaker 1: you know, Islam has been conflated now and redefined into
Speaker 1: being a race. So if somebody is protesting against Islam,
Speaker 1: then they are giving aid and comfort to all the
Speaker 1: mega hat racists in you know, VFW club somewhere. No,
Speaker 1: they've seen what it is. But the other thing is
Speaker 1: that perhaps it is a command economy in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. Now it's a very corrupt economy, it's incredibly
Speaker 1: but it is a command economy in many ways stifles
Speaker 1: that you know, Persian bizarre instincts. And some people are
Speaker 1: saying that, you know, we don't want to give them
Speaker 1: too much, the protesters too much credit because they you know,
Speaker 1: the ideas well. Yes, Iran has handled it badly, but real,
Speaker 1: real theocratic socialism hasn't been tried. Which I'm quoting. I'm
Speaker 1: quoting myself there and sounds something I came up with spontaneously.
Speaker 1: So there's lots of reasons for people not getting behind this,
Speaker 1: and it'll be interesting. I also think that if there
Speaker 1: is a successful coup and the SHAW does come back,
Speaker 1: or the SHAW is integrated into whatever they come up
Speaker 1: with afterwards, that it's going to irritate all those people
Speaker 1: who are who are bringing up the coup of the
Speaker 1: early fifties over and over and over again. Is one
Speaker 1: of the dominating original sins of the Middle East. You know,
Speaker 1: how could you expect anything to go well in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six when we topple you know, when we toppled
Speaker 1: most of the day the Kami in nineteen fifty one
Speaker 1: or fifty three or whenever it was. They'd have to
Speaker 1: stop talking about that then.
Speaker 5: Have a national security interest in making sure that all
Speaker 5: those beautiful Persian women don't have to avail.
Speaker 1: Yep, that's a big part of it. It's a big
Speaker 1: part of it. And you were just so pretty. And
Speaker 1: they're all behind these pieces of claw, I know, but
Speaker 1: they've taken them off now and they're lighting cigarettes with
Speaker 1: pictures of comedy. Come Inny and I love that. It's
Speaker 1: a gorgeous still hot, I know.
Speaker 5: And did you pack into one picture some beautiful Persian
Speaker 5: women lighting a cigarette she's going after a theocraft.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. It's just beautiful. And you'd think that
Speaker 1: she would be out there as a as a you know,
Speaker 1: knocking Gruta Thunberg of the off the pedestal the most preferred,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately she's pretty, so we can't have that.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: The Bill Barr talked, we were talking before about Greenland,
Speaker 1: which I regarded right now is just sort of an
Speaker 1: interesting and amusing diversion. And I Stephen wanted to say,
Speaker 1: ninety two percent of people don't want don't want to.
Speaker 1: I want who are the eight percent of people who are?
Speaker 1: Who are? Who are?
Speaker 4: It's only one right?
Speaker 1: The seven said yeah, you're packing their kit bag and
Speaker 1: saying over there. I mean no, I have not, in
Speaker 1: my entire life, given more than an hour's worth of
Speaker 1: thought to Greenland other than well, it looks big, but
Speaker 1: I think that's a distortion of the mercader perspective. It's
Speaker 1: probably not that big. And why is it called green
Speaker 1: when actually it's full of ice? And why is called
Speaker 1: ice when it's actually quite an eye? Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1: But you know, what's what's there that we need other
Speaker 1: than the fact that it's where it is?
Speaker 2: Oh well, first of all, I'll be really brief because
Speaker 2: I want to toss to Charlie on this because he
Speaker 2: wrote a terrific piece about how we can't afford this. Uh,
Speaker 2: And I think I mean I entirely agree with that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think the main point is right, it's
Speaker 2: a lot of money that we don't have right now. However,
Speaker 2: I guess it's mineral rich. I mean oil gas precious
Speaker 2: uh uh, you know, the rare earths and stuff that
Speaker 2: we'd like to develop a supply independent of China. That
Speaker 2: all makes some sense and strategic important, That all makes
Speaker 2: sense too. One worry that I have is that if
Speaker 2: we do acquire Greenland, then it's going to be federal property,
Speaker 2: and that means it's subject to the political control like
Speaker 2: all other federal property that has been a plague on
Speaker 2: us for mining and oil and gas production for decades now, right,
Speaker 2: I mean the energy boom in this country has almost
Speaker 2: entirely occurred on privately owned land and state owned land
Speaker 2: out west where the federal government had minimal tools.
Speaker 1: To obstruct it.
Speaker 2: And so if you have all of Greenland is federal property,
Speaker 2: well guess what The environmentalists under a democratic administration are
Speaker 2: going to declare it a national wildlife refuge for you know,
Speaker 2: ice bacteria or something, and good luck extracting the value
Speaker 2: from it, because I could see, you know, admortizing the
Speaker 2: price of acquiring Greenland if Denmark would sell it from
Speaker 2: the economic potential of the place. But no one's ever
Speaker 2: talked about that. And I think the idea that you
Speaker 2: privatize it right away, which is what you ought to do,
Speaker 2: who would buy it right I mean, there's all kinds
Speaker 2: of problems with the idea that Charlie just just barely
Speaker 2: begins to get in this piece.
Speaker 1: Charlie, No, that's all fair.
Speaker 5: And that was a really good counter argument to my
Speaker 5: piece by John Perry at National Review in which he
Speaker 5: made some of these points. My argument really was just
Speaker 5: that I accept that we are broke, and indeed not
Speaker 5: just accept it, but talk about it all the time.
Speaker 5: We have thirty eight trillion dollars of debt. We're spending
Speaker 5: more than it would cost to buy Greenland on servicing
Speaker 5: the debt every year nine hundred billion to trillion dollars.
Speaker 5: At the moment, Medicare is more expensive than that, Medicaid
Speaker 5: is about the same price. You know, Congress is not
Speaker 5: going to do this because it would require cuts. But
Speaker 5: leaving aside that it is unlikely that we're going to
Speaker 5: buy it, and I hope unthinkable that we would invade it.
Speaker 5: Seven hundred billion dollars for Greenland is a steel. It
Speaker 5: is enormous. It would increase the size of the United
Speaker 5: States by twenty two percent. It has so much oil
Speaker 5: and natural gas that have all of the world's production
Speaker 5: everywhere other than Greenland ceased. It could feed the need
Speaker 5: for oil and natural gas globally for three years. It
Speaker 5: has an enormous number of rare minerals that we need,
Speaker 5: and it's militarily useful. Now you're absolutely right, Steve. The
Speaker 5: United States has been really suicidal when it comes to
Speaker 5: the use of public lands.
Speaker 1: I don't think the US would be worse than.
Speaker 5: Denmark, which has treated it like a zoo and declined
Speaker 5: to permit any extraction. But if you were going to
Speaker 5: do it, then you would have to buy it, homestead
Speaker 5: it quite quickly, and set in place a set of
Speaker 5: rules that permitted private enterprise to go and get the
Speaker 5: stuff that is under the ground and under the snow,
Speaker 5: which would be more expensive than it is in say Oklahoma. Granted,
Speaker 5: if we did that, I think seven hundred billion dollars
Speaker 5: is a pretty good price. And the last point that
Speaker 5: I made is that an awful lot of America's land,
Speaker 5: about forty percent of it was bored in the Alaska purchase.
Speaker 5: The Louisiana purchase, we bought much of the Southwest. It
Speaker 5: wasn't bought so much, but Florida was in the eighteen
Speaker 5: twenties added to the United States. We took on their debts.
Speaker 1: And every time we've done.
Speaker 2: This, it's worked out pretty well.
Speaker 5: And every time we've done this there have been people
Speaker 5: who thought that it was really stupid. Thomas Jefferson was
Speaker 5: mocked for the Louisiana purchase. Seward in eighteen sixty seven
Speaker 5: was mocked for wanting to buy Alaska. It was nicknamed
Speaker 5: Stewart's folly. It didn't become popular until eighteen ninety when
Speaker 5: we discovered gold everywhere in Alaska.
Speaker 1: It's worth saying as well.
Speaker 5: Seward was the guy who originally wanted to buy Greenland.
Speaker 5: That was part of his plan. He only got Alaska,
Speaker 5: but he wanted Greenland. Harry Truman tried to buy Greenland
Speaker 5: in nineteen forty six. This is not something that Trump
Speaker 5: streamed up. So I don't think we're going to do it.
Speaker 5: I don't think we're going to afford it. I don't
Speaker 5: think we would make the necessary sacrifices. And I agree
Speaker 5: with you. There might be problems going forward with the
Speaker 5: rules that Congress would set or a democratic president would impose,
Speaker 5: But in the abstract the idea is treated as if
Speaker 5: it's lunacy. Donald Trump's crazy idea.
Speaker 1: It's not crazy.
Speaker 5: It's actually very sensible if you look at it as
Speaker 5: a purely commercial transaction.
Speaker 1: It's entirely possible that at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: what we will get are some mining concessions, and we'll
Speaker 1: be able to go in and extract some things to
Speaker 1: further decouple from China, in which case one might say
Speaker 1: that the whole thing about invasion and the rest of
Speaker 1: it was just setting up an absurd point that actually
Speaker 1: got everybody's attention, and this was sort of, I don't know,
Speaker 1: clever deal making. We'll see. I do know that when
Speaker 1: you mentioned Seward's folly, that it's been a long time
Speaker 1: since anything has been called a folly, and I always
Speaker 1: enjoy those because they always point to the most successful
Speaker 1: things that ever happened in the human history. Somebody was
Speaker 1: calling it, you know, we're going to they're going to
Speaker 1: be saying, you know, Elon's folly is the rocket that
Speaker 1: that begins colonization of Mars. For example, there will be
Speaker 1: a I'm always curious how many of those were they Well,
Speaker 1: I know they do, so I don't know how many
Speaker 1: of these, whether or not being called a folly by
Speaker 1: some drunken wagon the press is actually, you know, it's
Speaker 1: actually a guaranteur of success.
Speaker 2: Well, now, James, speaking of folly and rockets to places,
Speaker 2: I have an important cultural question for you, all right,
Speaker 2: have you had the misfortune of seeing the new.
Speaker 1: Not even not going there? No, no, nope, for the
Speaker 1: first time you how for that it is for the
Speaker 1: first time in my life, For the first time in
Speaker 1: my life, I have refused to even begin to watch
Speaker 1: a Star Trek show. And I cannot tell you how
Speaker 1: painful this is. I've been there for every single one
Speaker 1: of these bleapity beliefs, including Discovery, for which I had
Speaker 1: a certain amount of hope at the beginning, until that
Speaker 1: rapidly just ebbed away within the first fifteen to twenty
Speaker 1: minutes of that thing. No, I am not going to
Speaker 1: watch it. One of the things that I saw, I
Speaker 1: mean everything that I see. First of all, to me,
Speaker 1: the idea that a thousand years hence that the Federation
Speaker 1: stills is like that in a speaking English and the
Speaker 1: set design is basically the same as ridiculous. And I
Speaker 1: don't want to go there. I don't want to look
Speaker 1: at a gem hadar klingon high Bred. I don't even
Speaker 1: want to think how that happens. I don't like the
Speaker 1: look where she looks like she's from hr and she's
Speaker 1: come to say something about a joke that you heard.
Speaker 1: I told I don't like her. I don't like the
Speaker 1: pictures of Holly Hunter all catlike crawled up. You know
Speaker 1: it's all cozily crawled up at the captain's chair, reading
Speaker 1: a book and with her glasses in three thoy twenty
Speaker 1: a d instead of somebody who's striding to the chair,
Speaker 1: sitting down, gripping the arms and firing fate. I don't
Speaker 1: want to look. They have somebody there in the crowd
Speaker 1: scene who, honest to God, has got half of her
Speaker 1: face painted white and half of her face painted black.
Speaker 1: Now we all know what that means. We all know
Speaker 1: it's Frank Gorshan and his You know that, shall I say,
Speaker 1: delicate racial analogy that they made and let that be
Speaker 1: your last battlefield. I supposedly that rates is extinct, but
Speaker 1: I guess somebody brought it back in blow Decks or
Speaker 1: Prodigy or something like that. I don't care. They killed
Speaker 1: it for me. They gave me and I send off
Speaker 1: at the end of the Card three. They got the
Speaker 1: gang back together, they got the ship back together. They
Speaker 1: kicked ass, and they sat down and they played poker.
Speaker 1: It worked and that was the end, and that was good.
Speaker 1: And now it's on.
Speaker 2: I knew that would set you off on epic Ram.
Speaker 2: What listeners should know, I mean, I watched the form
Speaker 2: in a trailer, and if that's the best they can do,
Speaker 2: it's got to be awful. All listeners need to know
Speaker 2: is that the lead king On character is named Jayden Cayden,
Speaker 2: I know, I mean, what next the governor of California
Speaker 2: named Gavin. It's almost that side job.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, I know, I know, I know,
Speaker 1: And I like Strange New Worlds, even though I think
Speaker 1: the third season just got lost in its off and
Speaker 1: I'm looking for them to conclude it with a fourth.
Speaker 1: It's been good, but no, I mean I used to
Speaker 1: just sit down and wait, how they going to start this?
Speaker 1: What's the theme gonna be, what's the reveal of the
Speaker 1: ship gonna be able?
Speaker 2: Look?
Speaker 1: Look, look, at that look at the voyage you're coming
Speaker 1: out of those gaseous clouds with that Oh I'm here,
Speaker 1: I'm there already. I know. The first season sucks, as
Speaker 1: it always does, but you stay there and you seven
Speaker 1: seasons on it concludes and you feel like you've actually
Speaker 1: it's been a contribution to the Lord that you remember
Speaker 1: you were there eight years old your grandfather's television color
Speaker 1: television in horror with North Dakota watching the very first
Speaker 1: episode in color terrified because it was really scary stuff,
Speaker 1: and you've been there ever since. And then you finally
Speaker 1: hit a point where you say, no, it's not that
Speaker 1: it's not for me, Oh, this is for the kids.
Speaker 1: It's no, no, no, no, it's because it's bad. It's
Speaker 1: because it's run by people who just do not get it.
Speaker 1: There was a if you look at all the sci
Speaker 1: fi of the fifties and sixties, there's still a military
Speaker 1: ethos there with their navymen. There's command structures, you know,
Speaker 1: there's icer, there's you know, oh god, there's all that stuff,
Speaker 1: and all of that has just washed away into this
Speaker 1: sort of gallivanting about space and these nice little ships
Speaker 1: with these enormous, pointless bridges, so that we can give
Speaker 1: somebody a lecture on what they ought to do and
Speaker 1: feel good about ourselves for watching it. I say, it's
Speaker 1: spinach into hell with it.
Speaker 2: Well, my theory is, oh sorry, My theory is that
Speaker 2: behind the scenes, the executive producer is a pseudonym for
Speaker 2: Kathleen Kennedy, who's trying to kill two franchises.
Speaker 1: So that's been entirely possible. Well, all I have gone.
Speaker 5: I've never been in a particular treki orthough. I did
Speaker 5: like the movies, but the one that I watched when
Speaker 5: I was a kid had Captain Picard.
Speaker 4: Is that good?
Speaker 5: Do you like that?
Speaker 1: No? It is good. It found its foot It found
Speaker 1: its feeding footing after about a year or so. It
Speaker 1: started out odd and tried to the tone wasn't right
Speaker 1: thing that everybody inhabited their characters by the second and
Speaker 1: third and then I got really good and has the
Speaker 1: best cliffhanger in television history. Fire. It was good, but
Speaker 1: it was very nineties because the Cold War was over
Speaker 1: and now an international group of people were cruising around
Speaker 1: in the Hilton solving disputes and luxury. Right, it was
Speaker 1: basically in the nineties and then deep Spaces nine comes along,
Speaker 1: and that's the post Soviet you know, the Empire's fallen
Speaker 1: there on the borderlands and the rest of it. And
Speaker 1: then you know, I mean, you can find these analogies
Speaker 1: that I'm not the first to say it, you can
Speaker 1: find analogies to the time in every one of these.
Speaker 1: But yes, Picard was good. It also gave us marvelous
Speaker 1: technobabble that we could you know, that we could repeat
Speaker 1: to ourselves. And you know, it was like it was
Speaker 1: like a vision. It was like a documentary of the future.
Speaker 1: It felt like this was a possible thing that we
Speaker 1: were going to have at the time. And then they didn't. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's that's it. That's it. You did it to me,
Speaker 1: you made me do it. What I'm not going to
Speaker 1: make you do, however, is go to give us a
Speaker 1: five star review. Because I'm not going to ask you
Speaker 1: for that yet. I am going to ask you to
Speaker 1: go to Ricochet and check to see if there's any
Speaker 1: meetups in your area, because that's what Ricochet people do.
Speaker 1: It's not just a website where you get together and
Speaker 1: blather and plath. You collabor and throw bricks at each other. Now, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: early February couple of meetups, one group in Detroit, another
Speaker 1: the Florida Space Coast Canaveral. Probably I love that, and
Speaker 1: if you'd like to learn more or have your own,
Speaker 1: go to ricochet dot com and go to the meetupage
Speaker 1: at ricochet dot com slash events. Now, I'm going to
Speaker 1: ask you for that five star review, because if you
Speaker 1: do well, well, more people see the podcast, more people listen,
Speaker 1: more people go to Ricochet, and that ensures that we
Speaker 1: go on oh, not just past version five point zero,
Speaker 1: but to six point oh and beyond and beyond, as
Speaker 1: Buzz would say. So I have to ask you, Charlie.
Speaker 1: We're not at five point oh yet, but we are
Speaker 1: at last it was four point nine point one point
Speaker 1: four point one point four something like that.
Speaker 5: Yes, it's something like that. We've been doing small, little updates,
Speaker 5: but you know, more exciting than that is. We have
Speaker 5: some new podcasts well, which yes, with our friend Henry Olsen,
Speaker 5: Conservative Crossroads with Henry Olsen, in which he hosts a
Speaker 5: debate each episode between conservatives of different factions, different views.
Speaker 1: And right down to the studs as well.
Speaker 5: This isn't superficial, Henry says, right, what about Ukraine and
Speaker 5: then he lets them argue it out. So that's a
Speaker 5: really good news show at Ricochet.
Speaker 1: Ah, I hope you've enjoyed the show, folks. We have
Speaker 1: enjoyed making it and bringing it to you. I'm James
Speaker 1: Lillack's Minneapolis, Stephen in California, and Charles in Florida. It's
Speaker 1: been a pleasure as well. We'll see everybody in the
Speaker 1: comments at Ricochet four point whatever. We'll see you there.
Speaker 1: Bye bye, Ricochet.
Speaker 2: Join the conversation.