Speaker 1: And now what I'm asking for is a piece of ice,
cold and poorly located that can play a vital role
in world peace and world protection.
Speaker 2: It's a very small ask compared to what we have
given them for many, many decades.
Speaker 3: It's the Rigorshete Podcast. I'm James Lillix. We have Charles
see Could Cook and Steven Hayward and we're going to
talk about Trump term two year one. So let's so
that's a podcast.
Speaker 4: So again, I'm not popular with you now because I'm
defending Donald Trump, but I really believe you can be
happy that he is there because he has forced us
in Europe to step up to face the consequences that
we have to take care more of our own defense.
I'm absolutely convinced without Donald Trump, we would not have
taken those decisions, and they are crucial.
Speaker 3: Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, Episode number seven, one
hundred and seventy three. You can join us at ricochet
dot com. Everybody can. You can be part of the
most stimulating conversation in community on the web. But we'll
tell you a little bit more about that later. If
you don't already know, I'm James lonnox In Minneapolis, where
the temperature has climbed to seven degrees to minus fourteen
after a certain point. It's just moot. It was just cold,
That's all there is to it. Some we're up in
the northern part of the state. They were getting windshills
of fifty below, which is you know, some folks will
never lose a toe, But then again, some folks will.
If you go outside improperly dressed, you're going to suffer
the loss of some digits. But in warmer places, friendlier places,
better climbs. We have Charles C. W. Cook in Florida.
I presume it Stephen Hayward, who the globetrotter that he is,
is probably ensconced in the utopia of California. Am I correct,
a gentleman.
Speaker 2: Except for the utopia of California Park.
Speaker 5: Yes, I am in California, but it's no utopia anymore.
Speaker 3: Well, what a week? What a week? What a week? Okay, Greenland,
that's overdone, settled. Now Cuba, let's get rid of the
communist government bout twenty twenty six. Wait a minute, what
about Venezuela. No, no, comed He's out of Cuba. Cuba
by twenty twenty six, it's baffling, but you know, it's
it's it's been a year like that. It's been one
year of this administration, and on Ricochet people were banning
about the various ways in which it has succeeded or failed,
as that falls along the usual lines, as you might think.
The people who believe that he's been a rhino disaster,
that's he's actually, you know, enforced a whole bunch of
leftist ideas about government intervention, that he's contravened Congress, that
he's behaving like a Caesar, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. If you
look at the Daily Beast today, the Daily Beast says
that Donald Trump last night went on a late night
truth social rant following his European humiliation. And what they
mean by that, of course, is that he was humiliated
in Europe. I took a look at what was said
and saw a lot of cold truths that needed to
be slapped on the table, and Davis was just a
place for it. So it's hard to know where to
start when you look at the last year. I guess
the best thing to do is look at yesterday. What
do we have yesterday? But let's cast our eyes back
three hundred and sixty five. Gentlemen, your assessment, if you will,
on the first year of the second term.
Speaker 5: Well, as I've been saying for a while, if you're
on the left, you measure the Trump administration Trump two
in dog years, right, I mean, because every day he
does so.
Speaker 2: Darn many things.
Speaker 5: They talk about energy and executive in Hamilton's famous phrase.
And so what I've been taunting my leftist friends is.
Speaker 2: Cheer up. You only have twelve more years to.
Speaker 5: Go of the second Trump term, right, because it's gonna
seem forever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can go down a scorecard and do a
lot of stuff.
Speaker 5: I think of it in general terms that the disposition
of this administration has been so much more aggressive, even
than Trump's first term, which was pretty aggressive itself. And
there's a lot of swings and missus of course, and
there's you know, he'll claim that he has cured teenage
acne and everything else and every other speech, whether the
facts back it up or not. And that's just his style.
But look the dabosing everyone thinks that.
Speaker 2: I say everyone. People keep thinking, oh, this Greenland thing.
Speaker 5: I was not sure if there's really a deal or
if it's just him wish casting, but it's another art
of the deal attempted by Trump, and there's probably something
to that. I think people are missing the bigger story,
which is he squashed Davos. I mean, what's Doavos supposed
to be about. It's supposed to be about climate change
and Gaza and inequality and anything but Trump And so instead,
by doing his temper tantrum over Greenland and threatening war
and all kinds of other ridiculous stuff and tariffs, he
dominated the whole darn thing. So that my favorite little
cherry on top of the whole story, James, is that
al Gore was there. I don't know why I talk
about it has been, but his has been status is
ratified by the fact that he had some little meeting
he called to talk about climate change, and I think
something like twenty people showed up, So you know, you know,
Trump absolutely took over the thing and killed it, which
in it so much deserves killing, doesn't it.
Speaker 6: Girls Ah, then, Steve, I think we disagree on this.
I think if the question is has Trump done a
lot of good things in the last year, the answer
is obviously yes.
Speaker 7: Reneed the tax cuts.
Speaker 6: Closed the border, got rid of a lot of racist
policies that the federal government had been executing for decades.
I don't know to what extent it's attributable to Trump.
I'm not saying it's not. I just don't know. But
crime is apparently at its lowest rate in the United
States since nineteen hundred, especially the murder rate.
Speaker 7: So there is a lot to like, there's a lot
to dislike.
Speaker 6: Tariffs I think are illegal and counterproductive. But I don't
think the last week has been good. In fact, I
think he has embarrassed himself in the country and got
very little for it. I'm open to the idea that
we would buy or take more control of not via
an invasion Greenland, but he has emboldened.
Speaker 7: The left in Europe.
Speaker 6: He's upset some of our closest allies with unnecessary comments.
He said, for example, that the British didn't fight on
the front lines in Afghanistan. When they did. Four hundred
and eighty seven of them died in Afghanistan on the
front lines. Some of them were my friends, as it happens.
So I think the last week has been the bad
side of Trump. I think it's been the liability that
isn't to say it wipes out all of the good.
I think he has had a relatively successful first year,
but I don't like how he behaved in Davos.
Speaker 3: Well, let's take a look at that then a little
bit more. When it comes to the whole Greenland situation,
if I understand this, a ridiculous assertion was made at
the beginning, backed up with the threat of extraordinary action,
and then at the end of it a deal was
struck that made the position struck in the end look moderate.
Have we seen this before from this fellow. I think
we have, And it's just amazing to me that everybody
nobody gets it yet that that's how it always goes.
It starts we're going to have a nine tariff on China,
and everybody freaks out in the market's crash, and then
you end up with a you know, a four percent
tariff on spatulis from the plastic spatula factory. I mean,
we've seen this before. So if the end result is
actually getting something, is getting more mineral rights, more security,
more in this and that out of Greenland. Okay, fine,
we've had interested in Greenland for a long time. You're right,
of course about the optics and You're right about the
tone of voice and the rest of it. But I
think what a lot of people are liking is the
fact that we don't have the same old consensus, technocratic
go along cow towing at DeVos that you might have
gotten from definitely from a Democrat and probably from you know,
a Rhino wants to fit into the the ethos of Davos,
if you will, and then hard truths need to be
told to them, just simply to lay Doun a marker.
Nobody has said yet to them. Well, maybe Trump has,
and others have noted it on Twitter that there are
problems facing Europe that are going to lead to its
inevitable and total decline. And if that emboldens leftists, that
just shows that they have a culture that is unable
to save itself and pull itself out of the morass
in which it is you want to disagree with.
Speaker 6: It, I just don't recognize that as a description of
what has happened this week. I have historically been sympathetic
to Trump's approach, which is to throw his weight around
and do things differently than others. I also am sympathetic,
and I've written as much to his lecturing Europe alongside
j D. Vance on questions such as freedom of speech,
how much they contribute to their own defense, they're hurtling
towards socialism and so forth. But this isn't that they
got nothing. They got nothing of any consequence, and they
have cost American interests for it. I think this is
a bad deal. This is not me saying I don't
like mean tweets. It's not some form of Trump derangement syndrome.
I think that the cost of Trump's behavior in the
last week massively outweighs the benefits. The temper tantrum that
he had a few months ago over Canada, where inexplicably
he started saying that Canada had to be absorbed into
the United States meant that we now have for the
next four or five years a Canadian government that is
hostile to American interest rather than one that is friendly
toward American interest.
Speaker 7: That was not a good deal.
Speaker 6: Very often with Trump, it is a good deal, and
I don't care about the niceties.
Speaker 7: I want the good deal. But there is no good deal.
We didn't get anything for this.
Speaker 6: We now have a whole bunch of pissed off people
and countries that are historically sympathetic toward US, and the
parties in countries such as Denmark and Scandinavia more generally
have been emboldened not on the right where we can
make better deals with him in the future, but on
the left. And I don't think we got much for that.
So I think this was stupid. I don't think this
was normal chump deal making. I think it was stupid,
and I think it's an example of the downside of
him rather than of his upside.
Speaker 2: Steve, Yeah, you know, I tend to. I mean, I
agree with a lot of what Charlie says.
Speaker 5: And by the way, James, when you say Europe needs
to have some truth told of them here, I am
with Charlie.
Speaker 2: They do need to be true.
Speaker 5: Some of the things he's saying, many of them were,
and some of them weren't, as Charlie has mentioned rightly.
Speaker 2: Look, here's how I look at it differently.
Speaker 5: In part because I'm right now, literally this weekend, watching
the spot market for natural gas electricity price, which you're
going to be very vuluable because of the weather system,
and I think of Trump in the same way. If
you think of Trump as the volatility measured in the
spot market for Trump's latest eruption.
Speaker 2: This set a new high, There's no doubt about that,
but I.
Speaker 5: Do think it tends to regress to the mean. Now
the mean is mean tweets. Okay, I did be to
make that pun, But I think this will be forgotten,
as so many Trump things are. I mean, is anybody
still talking about his really ridiculous true social about Rob
Reiner from six eight weeks ago?
Speaker 2: No, No, that's sort of forgotten now.
Speaker 5: And this is more important than that, of course, But
I do think this will blow over. I think that
the liberal governments in Europe that get overconferenent from this
are they may enjoy a temporary spike in popularity.
Speaker 2: And one of the criticisms.
Speaker 5: That people make, and I think Charlie hint of this,
is that some of the populist parties that like Trump
and that Trump likes are being set back by this
last week. And I think that's true in the short run,
but I think that won't be true in the long run.
Speaker 2: So I don't know. Maybe I'm optimistic about it.
Speaker 5: I just think that Trump is generally right when he's
setting the Europeans. The Canadians have put aside for some
reasons Charlie mentions, but I think it's good putting the
Europeans on their back foot. And Trump's basic understanding is
always be on offense, always be setting the agenda.
Speaker 2: Now, the difficulty with that is, to use the.
Speaker 5: Great analogy of Churchill about the offensives in World War One,
it's like throwing a bucket of water on the floor,
and to keep it going you have to throw more
and more buckets. And so there's one problem is Trump
faces the problem of diminishing returns and we are only
one year into it, and where's it going to be
a year from now? I do think that does call
for more caution and sort of measured approach on his part.
Speaker 3: And good luck with that, Charles. When we talk about
setting back the right wing elements in Europe, are we
talking about the sort of moderate center consensus, there's that
word again, technocratic, there's that word again, institution right in Europe?
Or are we talking about the AFP, Are we talking
about Lapan? Are we talking about the organizations that get
shut out because they are outside of the guardrails of
proper European thought?
Speaker 7: I mean, who.
Speaker 3: Exactly in the right is losing influence here? When the
institutions around them are seemingly devoted to keep them from
having any influence at all in the government.
Speaker 6: I think we're talking about both. Also, we need europerson
ally and we need to cajole Europe into being a
better ally, and I don't think we did that. If
you use Canada as the example.
Speaker 7: I am much.
Speaker 6: More conservative than Pierre Polief, but he was a good
antidote to the Canadian government that has run that country
for nearly a decade. He is far preferable to Mark Karney,
who's a bloodless type. He's obviously far preferable to feed
Orchestro's so I mean Trudeau, and the same is true
in Europe. And if that message is going to be
heard in Europe, where it will go down very hard,
then it's going to have to be delivered in a
way that doesn't put up the backs of the public
and make them do what the Canadians did and say,
despite all of the things we're angry about, including immigration,
free speech and so forth, we're just going to pick
the bloodless left. I watched this closely in England, where
anti Americanism is an interesting phenomenon that ebbs and flows.
Trump made it worse there this week, and if there
was something that he had got from that, I think
that would be worth it, but there wasn't. Now I
will say where I do agree with Steve, I don't
want to give off the wrong and prayer.
Speaker 7: I don't think this is the end of the world.
Speaker 6: I've read some articles in the European newspapers this week
that are just profoundly ridiculous. They say, this is the
end of NATO, this is the end of the Transatlantic Alliance,
this is the end of the special relationship with Britain.
The stock market will ever recover, bonds are going to
skyrocket forever. The housing market in the United States as
a result, will stay unobtainable. The Europeans are going to
exit American treasuries. The Americans are going to retaliate by
kicking the Europeans out of the cloud. That's all nonsense.
This is already blown over in the most part. I'm
just saying that where Trump is at his best is
where he does weird and unusual things that other politicians
don't and then get stuff for it. The border is
a perfect example of this. Trump says some things on
the border and immigration that make me feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 7: But look at what he's done. He shut that thing down.
Speaker 6: Now we have net outflows of migration for the first
time in a long time, and illegal immigrants of being
deported on math.
Speaker 7: That's good, that's great. Good for him.
Speaker 6: I don't care about the the ugliness of it.
Speaker 7: But here he didn't get anything.
Speaker 5: Well, there is one thing, Charles, that you ought to
be celebrating that's not connected to this last week except
only the coincidence of the calendar, and that is that
Trump is now imposing I guess he's pulled the trigger
on imposing these five hundred percent tariffs on countries that
trade and illicit Russian goods and maybe other right, right, great?
That of course, that was a congressionally past statute, which
again conforms to the Charlie Cook principle that Congress ought
to be involved in teriffs, which I agree with. And uh,
I mean, it's early yet, but I've seen some news
reports that the Chinese banks in India and others are saying, yeah,
I guess we're going to have to go along with this,
and so suddenly they're really finally turning the serious economic
screws on Russia. Everyone's thought that you know, Trump is
soft on Russia and whatever, but this is a serious
measure and maybe it helps. I don't know if the
last week helps or hurts the European cooperation in that,
although I note another news item out this morning is
the French Navy has intercepted and boarded one of the
Russian Black Fleet oil tankers. So it's not just us
in the Caribbean, it's some of the Europeans are getting
in on the action too.
Speaker 3: Yes, I saw a headline this morning that said the
attempt to build a united EU front against Trump hampered
by Franco German tensions, and I thought that just feels
so nineteenth century to see Franco German tensions in the
news again. I just it pleased me. No, the tariffs
and the Chinese reaction to it, and exactly how much
of their wonderful unlimited relationship military wise they're going to
do puts Russia in another spot. Of course, we've been
all waiting for three years for the imminent collapse of
the Russian economy. It's one of those things that very
very strangely refuses to lie down and die. But it
might be actually happening now. But I'm not going to
say that because nothing ever happens or might it. We
can get to Ukraine in a secondary But I want
to circle back just for one thing and what Charlie said,
And he can, of course again slap me with a
wet mackerel if he's first. When when a population is insulted,
as the Canadians or some Europeans were, and I understand that,
I get that, and I'm you know, I'm a northa
Kotein for Effan's sakes, I'm a Minnesotan. I'm a practically
Canadian and temperament when it comes to go to getting
along and being nice, I don't like it. I don't
like smash Mault politics. That's just not my thing. But
if you, if they do feel insulted, the notion that
will all show you I'm going to vote against my
own interests and the interests of my country just a
just a show where I am about this, Well, then
let them live with the consequences. And I'm not prettying.
I mean that fine. If you're going to have a
petulant fit about a petulant fit and elect in the
worst government you can that won't do anything about your problems,
that's on you, that's not on Trump.
Speaker 6: Except my interest is not in them, it's in us.
My objection here is that it hurts American interest. I
don't care if silly countries want to elect silly people
who do things that are against their interests. I care
about the United States, and my point is that we
hurt ourselves in Canada. I have no objection to the Canadians.
I like the Canadians. I think they are a good
ally and a good and neighbor to have given the alternatives.
But if they want to do silly things in Canada,
that's their look at.
Speaker 7: But we would have been better.
Speaker 6: Off with five years of Pierre Polief than we will
be with Mark Carney on the world stage domestically as well,
and I think the same is true in Europe.
Speaker 7: So I agree with you.
Speaker 6: Of course it's ridiculous, but that is what seems to happen,
and I don't think it helps America, which is my concern.
Speaker 3: I agreed, as it is questionable what Beer could have done.
It would have been great if he'd, you know, all
of a sudden, showed up like a frozen Argentinian and
started doing the things that needed to be done.
Speaker 6: I probably wouldn't have started overtures to China, for one thing,
And he wouldn't have made anti American speeches in Europe,
and he wouldn't have called for a new world order
that excludes the United States. So I do think it matters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know, sometimes I just feel like the
Canada in your in my head is just already gone,
you know, with with with the mounties and the square
jaw and the hats and the frozen wilderness and the
beautiful European accented architecture built in the middle of nowhere
by hardy people. Somehow, I just feel as if that
national temperament is as gone as the Australians. The Australians,
for Heaven's safety, you'd like to think of, you know,
your Paul Hogan type A knife A knife.
Speaker 7: See you've played knife before.
Speaker 3: Right, pretty I have grilling and the barbie. You Sometimes
you listen to their correspondence, ask questions of the American
tennis players and say, how do you feel about representing
that flag, that horrible flag of oppression, death, Nazism, fascism
and the rest of it, and you realize, yes, really
has gone too well anyway, So let's go to Ukraine.
It's still going on. We were told that he was
going to get a piece seel really quickly. I don't
think you should have said that because or whatever he
said about it. But here we are, and on go
the negotiations, on goes, the war, on goes, the attacks
on the oil facilities, and then none of that for
a while, and then a barbon billy in Kiev goes.
It's incessant, it's interminable, it's horrible, it's deadly, it's massive.
It can't go on forever. But yet it seems that
it will if the tariffs do indeed cut off the
spigott and if indeed there is a Russian contraction of
the economy. And I mean, right now, they just raised
their vat, they just raised more attacks in the middle class.
You know their feels. At some point, don't they have
to correct and come to the table. You'd think all
the Russian dead end, all the Russian dead enders right
now we're laughing at that.
Speaker 5: Well, the dead enders. I mean, I guess there's a
lot to rulers and regimes like Putins, which is you
have to go on to the bitterer.
Speaker 2: End, or you lose everything.
Speaker 5: I've never been quite sure if that was true, but
it certainly seemed to be true of you know, the
Nazis in World War two and so forth. And I
guess that logic is right because look the deal. I
think the outline of deal is in.
Speaker 2: Front of us.
Speaker 5: Russia gets to keep most of the territory they've conquered.
They want some more concessions, which maybe you're worth doing
just to end it along with apparently you know, we're
part of tendedly at least a security guarantee, and you
know it's we gave them a security guarantee once before,
and look how that worked out for them. So you know,
if I'm the Ukrainians, I'm like, well, if we have
to swallow that bitter medicine, we might be willing to.
Speaker 2: But that deal is out there.
Speaker 5: I think maybe there's something we don't know, but I
think it's the stubbornness of Putin. I think he knows
he can't win, but he's afraid of a negotiated deal might.
Speaker 2: Be entered in the loss. Call him in Russian politics.
Speaker 3: I think the negotiat a deal at this point, if
they got to keep what they have, would be trouted.
It would be touted as a win, the absorption of
the portion of a little Russia back into a mother
Russia objective, and who is going to say otherwise. Everybody's
going to get back to business. Everybody's going to be
happy when all of a sudden they get absorbed back
in the West because the war is over and the
rest everybody's going to make money. The oligarchs will be happy.
People will stop falling out of windows, you know, or
dropping their tea with a sudden stricken look in their face,
and you know, and Putin goes on the idea that
if he somehow stopped now didn't control the whole country,
kept the dambas, and everyone around him is going to
say that's that's the regime is weak. Now we strike
and and he's deposed. I don't think that would happen.
I think he declared victory, go home and continue to
roll around until he dies in bed.
Speaker 5: More turns his attention to the old Baltic states. I mean,
that's what you keep hearing about as a possibility. You know,
what's the old Churchill line that Russia is the riddle
wrapped in inside a mystery, inside of an enigma.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, my go to.
Speaker 5: Person on these matters is Gary Salt Morrison at Northwestern University.
He's maybe the finest professor of Russian literature in America.
Speaker 2: I know him a little bit. He's written some great.
Speaker 5: Articles where he says, look, Russian imperialism is part of
their sort of cultural and national DNA going back centuries.
It wasn't just a Soviet thing or a Communist thing.
And so he thinks what's going on is a regression
to the mean there, which is, you know, they do
have these ambitions of empire they've always had.
Speaker 2: I was always struck when.
Speaker 5: I visited the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg that what Catherine
the Great and all the others they collected, all this
wonderful Western European art, and I went through room after
room of that giant place, and where's the Russian art?
That there is an inferiority complex I think the Russians
have always had. And so if you know, if they're
not part they were never part of the great overseas
empire game of the Europeans in the nineteenth century and whatnot.
So I don't know if all those things are right,
but I'm going to follow Professor Morrison and thinking that
this is what they're like, and we have to recognize
the enemy of it and not think they can be
bought off by just by commerce alone.
Speaker 3: So they may have an inferiority complex, because except for
certain areas of literature and music, they're absolutely mediocre.
Speaker 6: Any which, Aska says a funny meme that I saw,
and it says literature in different countries, and in the
first pane all as a Frenchman, and underneath it says
I will die for love. And then in the second
one there's an American, and the American says I will
die for liberty, and then the Russian one it just
says I will die.
Speaker 3: Right exactly, exactly precisely. Well, Charles, do you agree with
my assessment about the business as usual getting on to it?
If they just take what they've already got and declare
victory and go home.
Speaker 7: Unfortunately, I.
Speaker 6: Resent that that is the most likely and at this
stage perhaps the best outcome, given the number of people
who are.
Speaker 7: Dying every day.
Speaker 6: Still somehow it's almost three years since this started. Just
reminds you that whenever anyone says it'll be over by Christmas,
you should slap them with a wet mackerel, because it
never is. This has been a war of attrition in
the way.
Speaker 7: The First World War was.
Speaker 6: But I do agree with you that that's the outcome
and that there will be a lot of people on
both sides who will.
Speaker 7: Be happy with it. But it isn't good.
Speaker 6: I think we should be able to be grown ups
and say that's what's going to happen without having to
convince ourselves that it is good.
Speaker 3: We've also learned about the new age of warfare. Drones
have made a difference in this war like I can't
imagine anywhere else in my lifetime, a new invention, a
new rapid development. War is great for teching. You know,
war is the health of the state, but it's also
pretty marvelous for R and D and a lot of
assumptions you would like to think in the Pentagon have
been upended by seeing what we have seen there. And
I think, who did we have on? Was it McMasters
we had on? We were talking about whether or not
the United States it is intellectually adapting to this, because
all of a sudden, you think we've got these great,
incredible aircraft carriers and these battle groups and the rest
of it, and oh, we just lost one because of
because two million Chinese drones just appeared over the horizon,
you know, and dropped on them, and he just couldn't
take them out. Worry about that. I worry about us
not getting the right lessons. But yes, so you say
they'll then turn their attention to the Balkans. Have they
learned anything? Do you think has the Russian leadership or
Putin learned anything from the last three years?
Speaker 5: You know, I draw a blank. I can't answer that question.
I have no idea what lessons they may be thinking
they're learning.
Speaker 6: I was going to ask you that Tim was slightly
differently phrased, which is, do you think regrets having gone in?
Which is a separate question from whether he can back off.
Speaker 3: I think he would regret it. If it meant that
he is deposed and dies in cold room, then I
think he would, as long as he maintains his personal
level of comfort and authority. I don't think that he does, really.
Speaker 7: I mean, suggests he's not a good person.
Speaker 3: I don't think he is. Right. Yeah, well, I looked
into his soul and I didn't see him as being
particularly good either all right, well that's that, and we
would like to think that the presence of Russian activity
the Baltics would concentrate the mind wonderfully and all of
a sudden the United States will seem like an awful
great guy to have around two. So we hope now.
Ross Dufatt, I think over at the Times was arguing
something that again we were talking about on Ricochet ricochet
dot com. Go there Sina talking about how Reagan's second
term has quote ended the conservative era and he's talking
about a post Trump GOP. And I was thinking about
that the other day when somebody in the comments was
talking about that Trump is a rhino and that you know,
but unlike other previous rhinos like Mett Romney and John
McCain and the rest of it. And I thought, those
turn that term doesn't mean anything anymore. We It pains
me as a an old Reagan eighties kind of guy.
But that's that's gone, that's that's that's dead. I remember
before the Trump election. I think it was an American
It was one of those interest American interests. It was
where the flight ninety three piece ran that somebody was saying, basically, well,
we're going to have a Caesar. We're going to have
a Caesar, so it might as well be our Caesar.
And there's a lot of that thought here. We're going
to use the instruments of the state to accomplish the
good things because they need to be done and they're
not being done by other means, and if we don't
do them, then the country and the Republic is gone.
I'm not sure I agree with that, but I understand
the appeal, and I understand argument, or am I wrong
think wrote The new Nationalist era and again I'm a
nationalist is still defined primarily negatively in terms of the
things that probably won't return to Republican politics anytime soon.
The nation building efforts of George W. Bush. Yeah, Okay,
done with that. The immigration amnesty of the Reagan era, Yeah,
done with that. The sweeping changes to entitlements pushed by
Paul Ryan, the button up moralism Pence. In terms of
a positive agenda, douthor rights, there are a lot of
very different ways that the Republican Party of twenty twenty
eight or twenty thirty two could be nationalist, and many
the fiercest battles inside the Trump Coalition, especially the Great
influencer war that broke out after Charlie Kirk's assassination recommend
fundamental divisions over what exactly a nationalist right should want.
So I'll ask you, guys, Charles, what should a nationalist right,
which sounds terrifying to some people, what should they want?
Speaker 6: This is very hard to answer because I think they
should want what I want.
Speaker 7: Yes, and I'll start here. I don't think that we
have a caesar.
Speaker 6: I know others have argued otherwise, I don't think we
have a caesar. I stort't think for the record that
Trump has done anything in his excesses that comes close
to Joe Biden trying to spend half a trillion dollars
without Congress.
Speaker 3: That's not to tweeting a constitutional amendment.
Speaker 6: Yes, now, that's not to defend Trump. I've been critical
when I think he's wrong, and I think he is
wrong quite often, and I think in general the balance
between the executive and Congress is off, and that Trump
exemplifies that as much as anyone else. But I don't
think we have a caesar, and if we do, then
we had one last time around as well. I don't
agree with doubtat entirely. I think a couple things. One
is that trump Ism is hard to imagine. Absent Trump,
he can change opinion on the right with one tweet,
But then if he changes his mind back, so do
the people who had their minds changed. So I need
to see evidence of a profound shift in thinking that
is divorced from Trump before I believe that conservatism, which
I think is a natural instinct in.
Speaker 7: Polities, is dead.
Speaker 6: The second thing I would say is that there has
always been a balance on the right between the ideas
that were perhaps crystallized by Ronald Reagan and the ideas
that doubt that thinks have taken over. Pap Buchanan challenged
George H. W. Bush for the presidency, probably cost him
a second term. The conservatism of many in the twenties
and the fifties at Taft, for example, Senator Taft debt
is were different on tariffs and foreign pope. There has
always been this debate on the right, and I don't
think that it is currently a sign that one side
has lost forever that another side is ascendant.
Speaker 7: So I think sometimes there is this.
Speaker 6: Binary conception of conservatism where there's Reaganism and I'm a
reaganide and then there is everything else, and if everything
else gets to take the floor for a while, then
the Reaganism must be debt. One caveat before I shut up.
There obviously have been a couple of genuine shifts. One,
as you say, an end to foreign adventurism that incidentally
was a Bush era approach, not a Reagan era approach.
Reagan was not a foreign adventurist. And there's been a
shift on immigration, which I think is salutary because the
Bush era Republican Party was way out of kilter with
the base. It was the biggest problem that George W.
Bush had he over and over again, and then the
Republicans in Congress in twenty ten, twelve fourteen echoed this,
tried to push an immigration policy that Republican voters absolutely hated.
But I'm not convinced outside of that that we have
yet seen this big shift. And I'd recommend Rome Entrepreneur's
piece in the Washington Post that responds to Rostathat on
this point.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So I'm I'm I was actually almost done with a
long article for our friends at the Civitas Institute on
what I'm calling the different phases of the New Right.
I'm so old James like you that I can remember
several iterations of the New Right being announced by the
media and by various leaders in the world, and by
my calculation, we are today living in the era of
New Right four point five. I won't go through all
the different ones why I gave him those numbers or
started sounding like a Ricochet rebranding's that's Charles's department, but Ricche.
But New Right four point five is Trump's nationalism with
all the changes that have already been mentioned, and hostility
to trade and certain other u turns of what was
traditionally conservative consensus. I think, except for Charles's right to
point back to the whole Taft era, which is when
all the new rights started showing up after World War Two.
Speaker 2: And the point.
Speaker 5: Five is is whether the so called young disaffected gropers
as they're called, or groperism, if it's actually a thing,
is really something to be reckoned with endurable or is
it just a generational revolt like the new left against
established liberalism in the nineteen sixties that remains to be seen.
Speaker 2: Leave that aside for now.
Speaker 5: So Ross's peace, I thought started off strong saying, you know,
trump Ism is really trump and he's holding together with
the force of his personality a lot of discordant elements
and they won't be sorted out until he's gone. I
think that's absolutely right. But then you can almost hear
the air going out of the balloon of the piece
the further along you got, because then he starts saying, well,
it could be this, it could be that.
Speaker 2: I'd kind of like something. How did he put it?
Speaker 5: He said, I'd like, uh, you know, national solidarity and
technological dynamism and economics, you know, a multi racial, religiously
informed idea of what it means to be an American
and so forth.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: And that's all fine. I guess it's too general for
my taste.
Speaker 5: There are two things missing right now, I think from
the people speculating about what New Right five point zero
will be. They'll sound familiar to you and me, James,
but missing in Rossi's peaks. One is individual liberty. You know,
the old idea of your freedom, and it's dropped out
of the trumpest vocabulary, in the nationalist vocabulary. And in fact,
you see some people like Pat Denine, who he had
on the show here a couple of years ago, is
actually hostile to the classical liberal tradition. I'm still an
unreconstructed follower of Hayek and the classical liberal tradition and
think we're gonna need it again, perhaps soon. And then
the other thing that's related to that is free markets.
Speaker 3: Pause right there, Pause right there, because it is possible
that in an era of identity politics, the idea of
focusing on the individual seems like a waste of time
and a wasted effort, because what matters is group solidarity.
That's what I hate about this era. It's what I
really hate about this era. And it's a natural outgrowth
of everything that came out of the sixties and seventies.
But if we're going to group together people by if
people say, well, okay, if I'm going to be as
an individual seen as being deficient morally, philosophically, spiritually, historically,
and all these things because of some of the attributes
that I cannot change, then I can either, you know,
accept your definition, or I can get with the rest
of the prison gang that's on my side and form
a block to oppose you. And so that's why it's
going to be difficult I too. I mean, one of
my favorite books is clockworkornge because it's about the individual
versus the state. That is the fundamental building block of
a free society as individual liberty. So I agree, but
unfortunately we've been moved into blocks for the spoils. Anyway.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I'll just add a code of to what
you just said, which is it's entirely understandable, and I
think there's some extent legitimate for white males who have
been on the brunt of you know, cultural and legal
discrimination for quite a while now to say we as
a block want to stand up for I mean, the
phrase I don't like is you know, ethno nationalism. Now,
as I say, I totally understand it. It's a predictable
and in some ways just reaction to what has been
going on. But it's also a mistake for the long term,
and I hope that a New Right five point zero
does not make that a front and center principle of
what should come next.
Speaker 2: By the point was, you know, free markets, right, it
goes along with individual liberty.
Speaker 5: You know, an awful lot of the nat cons some
of them anyway, they're all for well some of them
say they like the new Deal.
Speaker 2: And here's here's a shout out for National Review.
Speaker 5: From this beginning, you know, new Right one point zero
was some names now forgotten like Peter Vierek and Clinton
Rossiter and even Walter Littman is some extent. And what
were they saying in nineteen fifty They said conservatism should
support the New Deal and we should accept coexistence with communism.
And then you go to National reviews of founding statements,
and by the way, National Review, I think you can
say starts new Right two point zero and it was
called the New Right by the media in nineteen fifty five.
And you know, Buckley says in that famous Mission statement
that you know, no, we're not making peace with the
New Deal, and anybody who does is not a conservative.
He was directly attacking Rossiter and Viereck and people like
that and so and then of course, you know, coexistence
with communism is unacceptable philosophically, he would say, as a
practical matter of course, they have nuclear weapons, but we
cannot accept ideologically that they're legitimate.
Speaker 2: Okay, that history is well known.
Speaker 5: But now the nat coons are bringing back some of
the old neo statist ideas of you know, Peter Vierek
and all those SOEU de Son Conservatives of nineteen fifty
and you know, I tend to resist these cycles of
history theory, but it does seem sometimes like we're cotton one.
Speaker 3: Charlie.
Speaker 7: I agree.
Speaker 6: I think that despite the preference of many nap cons
for throwing tomatoes at National Review, if you read National
Reviews statement from nineteen fifty five, which is brilliant piece
of writing by William F. Buckley Junior and others, you
find that we essentially believe the same things as we
did then, and individual liberty is core and free markets
are core. And even if you don't like those two things,
I think as a practical matter, they are the cause
of everything else that is good about America. That doesn't
mean that there are no trade offs, please don't misunderstand me.
It also doesn't mean there are no downsides to those things.
Speaker 7: There are.
Speaker 6: But the reason that America is militarily pre eminent, the
reason that America outlived the Soviet Union, the reason that
America is technologically advanced, is because of individual liberty and
free markets.
Speaker 7: I think there is a tendency.
Speaker 6: Certainly this is true on the left, and it does
exist to a smaller extent on the right to believe
that this is the natural order of things, that there's
something intrinsic to America in the soil or the sky
that has led to it being wealthy and powerful.
Speaker 7: And I don't think that's true. I think that the.
Speaker 6: Power and the wealth are the product of assumptions that
are baked in right back to the Declaration, and that
if we lose those or substitute them and become sort
of mediocre, fluffy European social democracy type country.
Speaker 7: Will lose the rest of it.
Speaker 6: So I don't just think that it is a good
in and of itself, although I am an individualist, free marketer,
I think that it undergods everything else that we like
on the right about the United States.
Speaker 3: Yes, Charles, Well, that's just you down there in your
nice house living in America's wang for the rest of
the country suffer. You're absolutely right. I agree with everything
you said. But the counter argument is, why should we
believe in these things because they have brought this country
to the state in which it is. You have an
overall optimistic impression of the country. You like it, you
see good in it, you see strengths. There are people
who do not see good in it, who do not
see strength and the rise of anti Americanism on the
right is that mirrors the anti America of the left
is one of those curious things and one of those
bothersome things. And it has to do with people who say, well,
look where we are. All the factories are gone, pointless,
wars in other countries, sold everything to China, the white
men can't get jobs, miserable, awful wine box when in
a running h R. Why should we have any investment
in this? And we've come to this because of what
you've described of individual liberty, instead of thinking of deep
consciousness and of free markets, instead of saying the government
is going to control and make things right for the
right people. I don't agree with any of that, but
I think that's what they're thinking, and that's the problem
that we have to address.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 5: I think all three of us have said we're all Reaganites,
and you know, someone who has written so much about Reagan,
I get. I take it personally when I hear the
young and up and rising people talk about how we
don't want any zombie Reaganism or the more general form
of that is what is conservatism inc As they like
to say, ever done for us? What is that Conserve.
It really does remind me of Monty pythons. What are
the Romans ever done for us? We go through roles
in schools of water. I can take off a lot
of things. And some of this is just simple ignorance.
I mean a lot of people who trash Reagan, just
to take that central example, truly haven't boughted to study
them at all. They really literally don't know what they're
talking about. They don't stand as I wrote an article
about this also recently for Civitas, about how the Trump administration,
especially in its comprehensive attack on what we call the
administrative state, learn from the experience and some of the
failures of the Reagan years and the Reagan people. I
think they learned by the end of two terms that
the problem of our administrative state was much more serious
and fundamental than they thought. They thought some simple reforms
would make great progress. They made only limited progress. But
without that experience and that perception, I think we wouldn't
be seeing the fight going.
Speaker 2: On today, especially in the courts and elsewhere. And for
that they.
Speaker 5: Owe a debt of gratitude to the Reagan years and
that conservative movement that really National Review has such a
large part of the story.
Speaker 2: And so I don't know.
Speaker 5: I'll just add this, James, because some of the things
you ticked off is a discussion I often bring up
with students, is is the American Constitution pro capitalists? Because
remember Wadam Smith's Wilson Nations was also published in seventeen
seventy six. Maybe not entirely a coincidence, I don't know,
And I can point to a number of clauses I
won't do it now that differ significantly from Oh, I
don't know any European constitution, and they're implicitly pro open markets,
pro competition. Implicit in our constitution is an embrace of
competition between states. That's part of federalism, but it also
means economic competition, and we seem to be losing sight
of that. And so what I hear last point, sorry,
what I hear from a lot of the younger disaffected
people is well, our founding was really defective. Why because
it proved insufficiently robust to stop the century long progressive assault.
Now that's a decent criticism, But is the answer then
to say the founding was defective or we need to
fight our way back through? What's been going wrong for
one hundred years, and you know, that's a serious fight
going on these days, and I think they ought to
join the right side of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of people who want to return
with a v It's not just they're not content with
going back to basic American foundational ideas and strengthening those.
What they want is this sort of efflorescence of a
lost European culture that they romanticize to the cathedrals and
the whole disposing with modernity in its various ugly forms.
And I understand that, and I'm slightly sympathetic to it.
But the other day in one of these forums on Twitter,
somebody was somebody posted one of those return videos that
has this is the vision vouchsafe to you of what
we could be if only we did these, you know,
these sort of ethno nationalism things. And I slowed it
down and I noted with interest a frame from a
Jack Benny movie that had some celestial stairs, which I
thought it was curious. And then I noticed something else
that thought was weird, And these shots appeared, but a
duration of a quarter to half a second in this montage,
this millange of all the wonderful things that were build
built by the White race. And it was a very
large domed building that I recognized as having never been
built in Berlin. It was spears, big monumental, ugly piece
of garbage, over scaled nightmare, you know whatever. The house
of the German people were supposed to be various approving
angles of it. And I say, oh, okay, I got you.
I know where you're coming from. Charles. I want to
ask you this before we begin to wrap it up here.
When Steve was talking about the administrative state, the stranglehold
that it may have on the it does have on
the economy, we have learned now of the extraordinary level
of fraud that we have in this country, in the state.
Might I add in this country we've been hearing for
years about fraudened abuse. I always see that as one
German word. I'm going to cut the budget by tackling
frauden abuse. And now we have it. And now some
people are saying that ten percent of the government, ten
percent of the economy is fraud. I think that maybe
understating the issue. We have a bunch of people who
are today leaving work in order to go to the
protests about ice and the local the Democratic Socialist Party
is telling them, hey, use that new Minnesota time off
family lead law. It just never ends. It never ends.
Did we see? Do you think to us enough to
extend to penetrate the general American consciousness? Between DOGE being
or between USAID being a massive money washing scheme that
sloshed it from the government to a Soros institution to
someplace else in Peru, and the combination of fraud that
we have. Do you think that we have enough rage
to tackle an attempt to do something about the administrative state,
the reparation's retribution redistribution state, or is the swamp just
too deep and de fetted?
Speaker 6: I don't know, But let me answer that by noting
something that I found interesting in Steve State, California, there
are those who is to impose a so called billionaires tax,
and I think maybe for the first time in a
long time, they've pushed it too far because Californians will
put up with a lot to live in California, and
quite rightly, because California is incredible, wonderful weather, geography, food, culture.
Speaker 7: Atmosphere, and so forth.
Speaker 6: One of the things that I keep hearing the billionaires
or the startup mavens who aren't billionaires but are nervous
that this law will destroy their businesses say that they
haven't said before, is you know what you guys don't
need more money.
Speaker 7: You need to use it properly.
Speaker 6: You need to stop the waste, you need to allocate
it efficiently.
Speaker 7: And then they'll point to other states.
Speaker 6: They'll say Texas managers, Florida managers, and they spend a
hell of a lot less than you do. I haven't
heard those people say this until this year. Often they're
incredibly defensive, and they essentially say, take whatever you need.
Speaker 7: I need to keep making money.
Speaker 6: Or they'll mutter about taxes hurting economic growth, which is
true in the more classical sense. But for the first
time they've started saying, actually, your problem is not more money.
That's not what you need. What you need is different
spending choices. And I think that might sit on a shift.
Whether that is going to penetrate the general electoral consciousness,
I don't know.
Speaker 5: Okay, Can I just add a little footnote about that
the Billionaire's Tax there's a feature in it that's not
widely understood or known yet. There's a feature note that says,
maybe you own on paper three percent of a privately
held startup or maybe it's gone public.
Speaker 2: I think it doesn't actually matter.
Speaker 5: But if they are Class A voting shares and you control,
say twenty or thirty percent, they're saying your share of
the company is actually twenty or thirty percent, and therefore
that's the amount of money we're going to ask from
you in taxes, not your three percent share of the
net worth of company on the market or privately assessed,
but you know, your voting share amount. That is a
dagger intended to kill the entire venture capital industry in
California and drive every startup out of the state.
Speaker 2: And I kind of wonder if that's on purpose. I
actually think.
Speaker 5: That, you know, they're the people like Robert Reich who's
behind this, so hate capitalism and venture capitalists that they
don't care that most of them are liberal Democrats.
Speaker 3: That's an unstanding feature. I think they just believe that
these people will go out to the shed and get
another golden goose and cut it and open it up
and the coins will tumble out. I've been looking at
what the list of proposed bills in Virginia, and the
new legislation is just an absolute eye opener. And we
actually should probably do a whole show about this because
I mean, again, these things won't be passed. But now
that everybody's licking their lips and saying, okay, what can
we do to Virginia, it is nothing but taxes, taxes, taxes, taxes, taxes,
new tourism tax raised at the hotel to tax seven
points seven five percent tax and incomes over a million,
creates new tax brackets and points a three point eight
investment tax on top of stadium come. Allows every locality
to raise the sales tax by one percent, raises rounds
up the state and local taxes to the nearest five
cent increment, allows localities to outlaw gas powered leaf blowers,
and then taxes the electric the versions that they have
to the electronic versions they have to buy. It is
exactly what they do because they believe that not enough
fair share is being paid, that there's just so much
money out there, and if they got their hands on it,
then justice would somehow follow. Not enough justice. We got
to keep taking it. We got to find out more
places to take it from. But justice will finally be done. Hey,
I got to tell you this, folks. If you would
like to meet light minded people like you're listening to
this podcast and saying, my gosh, these men just they're brilliant.
That's not We're not average James. That would just average
Ricochet folks. And you know the women are good looking
as well, and smart and just as just as mouthy.
We have meetups in person, that's right. You don't find
that in other sites because we actually trust to show that,
to show up and not start getting stabby. Got a
group coming up in Detroit, Michigan. We've got another one
in early February to Florida Space Coast. Go to ricochet
dot com, look for the meetup page and see what's there.
It's ricochet dot com slash events and hey, if you
want to meet Ricochet people where you meet and live,
announce it on the page and see who shows up.
You'll make new friends. And the fun part about it
is you'll probably not spend any time talking about politics.
That's what I always found every other direction the conversation goes.
That is probably it for us today. And I should
tell you maybe to give us that five star review
and Apple podcasts, but I think I'm going to let
that go this week. I should tell you that if
you go to ricochet dot com, it's not all free.
I mean, yeah, a lots of fun stuff there is free,
but the real communities form on the member site and
it's you know, it's a couple of centavos, liray, whatever
you want to say. It does cost a little bit,
not much, and what you get is the right to comment,
and that's what keeps it sane and civil and center
right and moderated and just good place to make friends.
Trust me. So, Stephen, it's been great, Charles again, I've
enjoyed every single essence jot phoneme of a conversation. I
hope the other people have as well. And I trust
we will convene here next week.
Speaker 2: Only only if you stay warm, James.
Speaker 3: I'll stay warm. Even if I don't stay warm, I'll
be here. And Charles, we are now at what version
of Ricochet four point or do you just want to
just wave your hands and say you don't know and
it doesn't matter.
Speaker 6: I want to wave my hands and point people toward
some of the new podcasts that.
Speaker 3: We have, Oh tell them about it.
Speaker 7: Well I did.
Speaker 6: We had Henry Elson's new podcast, Conservative Crossroads, and there
is another one in the work, so I can't announce
it yet, but I will on a future episode off
this show.
Speaker 3: And the Nighter is back and every Saturday as well.
And yeah, it it's not just the post, not just
the member feed, it's all the podcast as well. What
a media empire we are and we'll certainly surely soon become. Anyway,
it's been fun. We'll see you in the comments at Ricochet. Guys,
Bye bye.
Speaker 2: Ricochet.
Speaker 3: Join the conversation.