Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna leave you now. I'm gonna make
Speaker 1: a bunch of and or references, so I know that
Speaker 1: would be so totally over your head. I don't want
Speaker 1: to embarrass you.
Speaker 2: So yeah, well look I'm cool. Yep, not green.
Speaker 3: Make him go away.
Speaker 1: Guys, ask not what your country can do for you,
Speaker 1: ask what you can do for your country. Mister garbach off,
Speaker 1: tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Stephen Heyward,
Speaker 1: Charles W. Cook the last but I'm James Lonax with
Speaker 1: you and we're going to talk to Henry Olson about
Speaker 1: the events in Europe and elsewhere. Gilette's Episode's a podcast.
Speaker 4: Now we're in a diverse nation like ours, and I
Speaker 4: celebrate that these rules become even more important. Without them,
Speaker 4: we were becoming an island of strangers. So yes, I
Speaker 4: believe in this. I believe we need to reduce immigration significantly.
Speaker 1: Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number seven hundred and
Speaker 1: forty two. I'm James Lllloxs in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I'm joined
Speaker 1: by not Charles E. W. Cook. A. Last last we
Speaker 1: heard of him his roof was leaking, so for all
Speaker 1: we know, he is standing in a flooded house bailing,
Speaker 1: or he's just off having lunch somewhere in sunny Florida.
Speaker 1: Stephen Hayward in California. I presume, step and how are you?
Speaker 3: I'm good, but busy week. It's hard to keep up
Speaker 3: with everything.
Speaker 1: So much stuff to do. Well, we could go with
Speaker 1: something that actually happened minutes ago, I think, well three
Speaker 1: hours ago, a little tweet from Harvard here and says,
Speaker 1: without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard. And that
Speaker 1: struck me at first as the University of Minnesota saying
Speaker 1: without our students from Wisconsin, the University of Minnesota is
Speaker 1: not the University of Minnesota. I think it possibly could be.
Speaker 1: But the idea of the international students somehow having an
Speaker 1: automatic cachet because they simply are not American, and when
Speaker 1: you are not American, you bring an ineffable quality to
Speaker 1: things about to find out how that plays. What do
Speaker 1: you think is even of this idea that the administration
Speaker 1: has said, well you know what, Nope, sorry, no more
Speaker 1: international students, none of that wonderful full tuition that they pay. Sorry,
Speaker 1: Is this just another negotiating tactic like what I believe
Speaker 1: is a fairly significant tax on endowments to get them
Speaker 1: to do what exactly as you see.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So first of all, I think, James, you mispronounced
Speaker 3: the word cash. You said cachet cash. You're right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, this is, of course, the business model for
Speaker 3: many universities is to have foreign students come who pay
Speaker 3: full freight. Some students have, some colleges have high numbers
Speaker 3: of Chinese students who will pay, you know, the full
Speaker 3: freight for universities, and it is a I've had college
Speaker 3: administrators confess to me that it is a primary revenue
Speaker 3: model for them. But second of all, Harvard is not
Speaker 3: Harvard without it's apparently seven thousand foreign students is their
Speaker 3: average number that they role was the number I've seen reported,
Speaker 3: And Harvard wouldn't be Harvard without their fore students. And
Speaker 3: I thought, oh, maybe they're starting to get the point
Speaker 3: here that Harvard isn't Harvard. That's the point. That's that's
Speaker 3: the object of the Trump administration. And you know, I'm
Speaker 3: all for them. I mean, I you know, I know
Speaker 3: some Harvard faculty that are good, and I feel bad
Speaker 3: for them, except most of them privately say we richly
Speaker 3: deserve it. So anyway, I think this is just one
Speaker 3: more turn to the screw by the Trump people. And
Speaker 3: Harvard has i think late yesterday or maybe this morning,
Speaker 3: filed suit saying this is an illegal move. But you know,
Speaker 3: the Harvard can afford a lot of lawyers, but the
Speaker 3: Trump administration has an unlimited number of lawyers in time
Speaker 3: to pursue this.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure the fund of judgeho believes and agrees
Speaker 1: with them. You see this back and forth all the time,
Speaker 1: the judge who says, no, you actually can't fire those
Speaker 1: people because that impeedes their ability to do the work
Speaker 1: of the agency, and such and side it which you know,
Speaker 1: it has got to come to some sort of point
Speaker 1: where these judges simply are not are are restrained show
Speaker 1: we say, from over reaching their bonds because we're reaching
Speaker 1: a point where there's a legitimacy of competency and confidence
Speaker 1: in the courts, which is not a good thing. Where
Speaker 1: people may say, good good, there are a bunch of
Speaker 1: rogue activists. Get them out of here. Let's just spend
Speaker 1: that you don't want that you really don't want that
Speaker 1: post court post rule or law world. You mentioned you
Speaker 1: know some Harvard educators who believe that they richly deserve it.
Speaker 3: Why Well, because the administration has coddled the left for
Speaker 3: so long and you know, allowed all these you know,
Speaker 3: firm intive action programs, quote the DEI stuff, ideological hiring also,
Speaker 3: you know, refusing to hire. I mean I'm familiar with
Speaker 3: a few hiring cases where they had a strong conservative
Speaker 3: candidate and the person who ought to have been hired
Speaker 3: was rejected. This is going back twenty years now. I
Speaker 3: mean there's been systematic bias, not just at Harvard, but
Speaker 3: a lot of universities against hiring well qualified conservative professors.
Speaker 3: And so I think the Harvard faculty is the most upsided.
Speaker 3: I think it's ninety eight percent registered Democrats.
Speaker 1: That's what I figured. But so you're speaking to the
Speaker 1: two percent who are not the people who are suppose
Speaker 1: you with the you know, with a cone of silence
Speaker 1: over there. You were going to mention something else about this.
Speaker 3: Well, I thought you mentioned, you know, judges and injunctions.
Speaker 3: I thought maybe you had in mind this case that
Speaker 3: came out on Thursday, Trump H. Wilcox. It's one of
Speaker 3: those shadow Dockett rocket docket cases. It's not a complete case,
Speaker 3: but by a six to three vote, the court said,
Speaker 3: you know what, Trump can fire members of some of
Speaker 3: these boards and commissions, because you know they've been saying, oh,
Speaker 3: these are independent agencies. The president can't do that. And
Speaker 3: so anyway, this augurs well for this when the full
Speaker 3: case comes before the court, or turn the old Humphreys
Speaker 3: executor's case that said a president couldn't fire the head
Speaker 3: of the Federal Tray Commission. There is one sentence in
Speaker 3: Justice Kagan's descent that really jumps out at me. That's
Speaker 3: very short. She said that the principal and a president
Speaker 3: can't fire somebody. Here's a quote Undergirdz. A significant feature
Speaker 3: of American governance bi partisan administrative bodies carrying out expertise
Speaker 3: based functions with a measure of independence from presidential control.
Speaker 3: That is the most perfect one sentence encapsulation of the
Speaker 3: progressive idea of expert government unaccountable to political bodies, letther
Speaker 3: Congress or the president. But it's also got the history wrong.
Speaker 3: And so you know in thirty seconds, the reason we
Speaker 3: set up the commission model, going all the way back
Speaker 3: to the eighteen eighties with you five members, two from
Speaker 3: the minority party and three from the president's party, was
Speaker 3: to replicate the partisan divisions that exist between the two
Speaker 3: parties and their views of how policies should be made
Speaker 3: and what its goal should be. Congress figured out one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty years ago that you couldn't escape the
Speaker 3: essential disagreements of American politics, and therefore let's copy it.
Speaker 3: So there's by saying bi partisan administrative bodies, as Justice
Speaker 3: Kagan said, No, there's a look. Everybody who pays attention
Speaker 3: knows that the Securities Exchange Commission, Federal Communications Commission, they
Speaker 3: are partisan fights in those commissions every year, every week,
Speaker 3: and that's on purpose. And so you're trying to pull
Speaker 3: the wool over our eyes saying, oh, it's nothing here
Speaker 3: about us bipartisan expert people unaffected by politics, and it's
Speaker 3: about time for that whole game to end.
Speaker 1: The belief seems to be that the civil service is
Speaker 1: this non partisan sort of cadre of experts that floats
Speaker 1: over things and makes decisions according to the best data,
Speaker 1: unswayed by personal beliefs, which is nice to believe, but
Speaker 1: unfortunately it doesn't work out that way. And the people
Speaker 1: who seem to believe that it do also believe that
Speaker 1: the technocratic expertise will be slightly left coded, if not
Speaker 1: explicitly so, because that's just simply the right, correct and
Speaker 1: smart thing to do. So while it would be nice
Speaker 1: to believe in that sort of civil service, we're being
Speaker 1: disabused of a whole lot of notions of our institutions.
Speaker 1: Which brings to something else is that if you can't
Speaker 1: get the courts to do exactly what you want to say,
Speaker 1: or the courts are thwarting you, well then just figure
Speaker 1: out a novel way to go around them. Who's reading
Speaker 1: a story this week that what ICE is doing with
Speaker 1: the Homeland Security is doing as dropping charges on some
Speaker 1: guys so they you know, we need our day in court?
Speaker 1: All right, Well you know what, we're dropping the charges,
Speaker 1: but we're arresting you right now. Yeah, which does focus
Speaker 1: the mind. Yes, uh so DC shooting, Jew shooting in DC.
Speaker 1: I don't know how else to put it. It has
Speaker 1: had the immediate effects, as I wrote on Ricochet was
Speaker 1: one You're not gonna hear an awful lot about stochastic
Speaker 1: terrorism this week, where people talk about how bad, how
Speaker 1: rhetoric that seems to be inflaming people has his story
Speaker 1: of voltage that leads to actual terrorism, speeches, violence, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Not gonna hear a lot about that this week. And secondly,
Speaker 1: Luigi Mangioni, the previous darling of a certain set of
Speaker 1: the progressive left, has now been replaced by somebody else
Speaker 1: who has had the courage of his convictions. Hasn't burnt himself,
Speaker 1: but he's done something brave, he's struck a blow, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And a surprising number of people are self identifying as
Speaker 1: fans of alludism of a murderous lunatic by saying, yes,
Speaker 1: this is the inevitable result. It is a necessary result.
Speaker 1: It is what happens when you have a genocidal government,
Speaker 1: its emissaries are free to walk them among the planet.
Speaker 1: Even though these people weren't emissaries of the government at all.
Speaker 1: They actually were, from what I understand, interested in outreach
Speaker 1: to the ballast Indian community and finding some way to
Speaker 1: foster peace. But it didn't matter because it comes down
Speaker 1: to it, they're Jews. So yeah, so where does this
Speaker 1: go exactly?
Speaker 3: I'm afraid it's heading in some very dark directions. You know,
Speaker 3: I have been reflecting the last several years that as
Speaker 3: bad as things are, you know, black lives matter, riots
Speaker 3: and especially things going on on campus. At least, it's
Speaker 3: not yet as bad as it was in the late
Speaker 3: sixties and early seventies when we were averaging what one
Speaker 3: bombing every three days. I mean, there's something like a
Speaker 3: thousand bombings, including on college campuses that killed some people
Speaker 3: at the University Wisconsin. I thought, at least, we're not
Speaker 3: bombing college campuses yet, We're not having political assassinations yet.
Speaker 3: Now I said this before they took shots at Trump
Speaker 3: a few months ago, and I'm worried that we are
Speaker 3: very quickly edging our way back to that. The Left
Speaker 3: is clearly going to legitimize violence. We're going to get
Speaker 3: more of it. And this takes us back to the
Speaker 3: university story once again. I mean, where did this kid
Speaker 3: learn this stuff? He was an English major at the
Speaker 3: University of Illinois, Chicago, and I couldn't find out much
Speaker 3: about it. But I bet their English department is just
Speaker 3: as bad as every other one these days. But they
Speaker 3: teach this stuff in the universities or even earlier. I mean,
Speaker 3: one problem is is this guy. I suspect this Rodriguez
Speaker 3: kid probably arrived at university fully Howard zinified already in
Speaker 3: high school, and so the problem goes all the way down.
Speaker 3: By the way, interesting news tidbit this morning. This guy's
Speaker 3: father was a guest of a Democratic congressman from Illinois
Speaker 3: at Trump's speech to Congress two three months back. Now,
Speaker 3: you don't blame parents for the sins of the children,
Speaker 3: I understand. On the other hand, that's going to be
Speaker 3: difficult to explain, and we'll have to see where that
Speaker 3: story goes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the grenade doesn't fall far from the tree. Now,
Speaker 1: English major, you're probably right that the curriculum that he
Speaker 1: into which he was steeped and marinated was probably not
Speaker 1: the same as mine. When I was an English major.
Speaker 1: I don't remember, you know, spending a lot of time
Speaker 1: on Canterbury Tales and you know Kate Chopin's The Awakening
Speaker 1: and deciding that I should go out and shoot somebody.
Speaker 1: But maybe when you talk about politic I mean, we
Speaker 1: can have the whole conversation about how political violence has
Speaker 1: been normalized by the left and has been exalted as
Speaker 1: the voice of the people, the unsung, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: We're told, of course that the biggest threat in the
Speaker 1: country is political violence from the right. But yet we
Speaker 1: keep seeing these things happen. But I don't think you're
Speaker 1: going to have a summer of riots over Gaza. I
Speaker 1: think you need some approximate cause here in the United
Speaker 1: States that gets that gin's up, the particular excuse. And
Speaker 1: right now it seems to me the well on the
Speaker 1: left has a great deal of grievances about Trump. They're
Speaker 1: sort of indistinct, free floating, confusing. It's a miasma of gnats.
Speaker 1: That's just they can't really do any wave their hands
Speaker 1: to try to dispel them. There's no focus point yet,
Speaker 1: but there might be who knows everything changes and moves swiftly,
Speaker 1: such as your host moving from our general discussion to
Speaker 1: one of a particular nature, with Henry Olsen, Senior fellow
Speaker 1: with the Ethics and Public Policy Center, author of The
Speaker 1: Working Class Republican, Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue
Speaker 1: Collar Conservatism, and the host of Beyond the Polls, which
Speaker 1: is an election podcast. You can find it right here
Speaker 1: on Ricochet. Henry, welcome, Well, thanks for having me. Well
Speaker 1: we get to Europe, because yes it matters, and they
Speaker 1: had elections and they are significant. But we want to
Speaker 1: bring up a piece he wrote last month for unheard.
Speaker 1: It was called Trump's dirty hairy theory of justice. And
Speaker 1: you explain, with the voters today are unusually ammenable to
Speaker 1: the president's methods. I was just talking with somebody about
Speaker 1: this yesterday. It's like, you know, if you guys don't
Speaker 1: do anything, then and you don't do anything, and you
Speaker 1: import more of the problem and you gaslight the people
Speaker 1: who say that there is a problem. Eventually somebody comes
Speaker 1: along to try to solve the problems and the excesses
Speaker 1: that the margins are not going to bother the people
Speaker 1: who are concerned about these things because fine, something's finally
Speaker 1: being done. Is that what you're talking about?
Speaker 2: Pretty much? You know what Dirty Harry was For people
Speaker 2: who may not have seen the nineteen seventy one movie
Speaker 2: made Clint Eastwood's career in a sense, as he played
Speaker 2: a cop who was consistently frustrated by Warren Court era
Speaker 2: rulings that basically put procedure over justice and let criminals
Speaker 2: go free and employed extra legal methods to pursue justice.
Speaker 2: And I think that's what's going on here is it's
Speaker 2: quite obvious that there are millions of people here who
Speaker 2: were let in in violation of law. Many of them
Speaker 2: are not committing crimes, but way too many of them are.
Speaker 2: And even if they aren't, they're not supposed to be here,
Speaker 2: you know, violating the law. And so Trump is pursued
Speaker 2: doing that and sometimes looking a little askance or looking
Speaker 2: the other way when procedure gets in the way. And
Speaker 2: I think for his voters, as long as he's dealing
Speaker 2: with the problem, he's pursuing justice and not letting law
Speaker 2: get in the way, and they're justifying with that.
Speaker 1: I was talking to somebody yesterday about the proposed Medicare
Speaker 1: cuts and they were saying, this is going to be
Speaker 1: very bad for hospitals. It's going to be it's going
Speaker 1: to be dreadful, and I said, well, and again in
Speaker 1: this conversation, I was not defending. I was just simply
Speaker 1: explaining what the logic was. Well, that there will be
Speaker 1: significant cuts because the hospital is no longer have to
Speaker 1: because Medicare will medicate whatever we're talking We'll never have
Speaker 1: to give money again to illegals, to which the person responded, oh, well,
Speaker 1: then grade fine, they'll just go to the emergency rooms.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, no, actually, the idea is that
Speaker 1: they won't be here, and that seems that seems to
Speaker 1: be like a stunning revelations like that we have no
Speaker 1: choice but to fund these people because they're the option
Speaker 1: of just saying no, I'm sorry, you don't belong here,
Speaker 1: you're not a citizen, and here you came, and you
Speaker 1: slipped through, you ignored all your court dates, you are
Speaker 1: going to be deported. Seems to be off the table
Speaker 1: for an awful lot of people. But it's it's pretty
Speaker 1: much everything on the table for a lot of others,
Speaker 1: isn't it.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean, look, going back to COVID, nobody
Speaker 2: could get together outdoors until you were protesting something approved
Speaker 2: by the progressive a lead, and then nobody can get
Speaker 2: COVID if you're protesting racism, right right. So the thing
Speaker 2: is that what they're shocked about is that somebody is
Speaker 2: pursuing matters of culture and matters of law, of economics,
Speaker 2: but predominantly matters of culture using all the same techniques
Speaker 2: and the same sort of intensity that the left is
Speaker 2: pursued for fifty or sixty years, and they're shocked, shocked
Speaker 2: to discover there's gambling going on in this new federal
Speaker 2: government state. Now, hello, McFly, you built it. You are
Speaker 2: now have to deal with that. And the fact is
Speaker 2: that these Medicaid cuts are not cuts. You know what
Speaker 2: they are is, well, if you serve through state funds
Speaker 2: illegal aliens, people who shouldn't be here anyway that you
Speaker 2: recognize in your state law, we're going to not reimburse
Speaker 2: your Medicaid program at the same rate. So the states
Speaker 2: get to make a choice. You know, nobody is boarched
Speaker 2: off the rolls, and you know they're the other thing.
Speaker 2: It's that the biggest so called cuts are saying, well,
Speaker 2: you have if you're able bodied and you don't have
Speaker 2: dependent children, and you're not pregnant, and you're under the
Speaker 2: age of sixty five, you have to at least try
Speaker 2: to work or go to school or provide community service
Speaker 2: twenty hours a week. And the CBO says, well, that
Speaker 2: means millions of people will lose their healthcare, to which
Speaker 2: most Trump voters would say, damn straight. If you can't
Speaker 2: help yourself, you don't deserve our help. So these aren't cuts.
Speaker 2: And this is the sort of thing that the left
Speaker 2: is used to having a monopoly over the language, and
Speaker 2: we can't let them do that. And I think what
Speaker 2: they're finding is increasingly the right is not letting them
Speaker 2: do that again. They're they're shocked to discover that the
Speaker 2: right is not simply the Washington generals paid different for
Speaker 2: the hard.
Speaker 1: Should should note to everybody that we did, indeed catch
Speaker 1: the fact that you made both the Casablanca and a
Speaker 1: Back to the Future reference. I think in the span
Speaker 1: of about seven seconds.
Speaker 3: That's and Dirty Harry too, right now.
Speaker 2: No, hey, look, I am just a rolling culture machine
Speaker 2: for anything made before the year nineteen ninety four. Well, James,
Speaker 2: I can do I can call fiction too, and that
Speaker 2: was nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 3: So I don't know, James, if you've caught the news
Speaker 3: out of California where Coveror Newsom has not only announced
Speaker 3: no further enrollments of illegal aliens in Medicaid, but existing
Speaker 3: illegal alien enrollees have to start making a copey, maybe
Speaker 3: Henry should talk about Newsom's obvious crab march to the
Speaker 3: right to try to run for president. But by the way,
Speaker 3: you mentioned Dirty Harry. I can't resist this. I think
Speaker 3: it was Richard Granier who pointed out that that was
Speaker 3: the first mainstream Hollywood movie that talked back to liberalism, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, you laid out theme about the war in court.
Speaker 3: But my favorite scene you may remember it, James, is
Speaker 3: when dirty Harry Callahan gets his new partner, a young
Speaker 3: Hispanic guy named Chico. Nothing subtle about that, and he
Speaker 3: looks at him skeptically. He says, what's your background? He says,
Speaker 3: degree in sociology from San Jose State Hallahead looks at
Speaker 3: him and says, oh, you'll go far. That just perfect, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, fifty years ahead of the whole DEI world
Speaker 3: we see these days, right, But I was especially interested
Speaker 3: in catching up with you on the scene in Europe,
Speaker 3: which is of a piece with ours in a lot
Speaker 3: of ways. And you know, you know, things down to
Speaker 3: the precinct level, which is scary because I don't, I mean,
Speaker 3: there's something wrong with you, Henry. I've been saying this
Speaker 3: for forty years. But let's start with the United Kingdom.
Speaker 3: You know, I woke up here two weeks ago and
Speaker 3: saw a tweet from Prime Minister Kirs Starmer saying, you know,
Speaker 3: immigration to Britain is not a right, it's a privilege
Speaker 3: that has to be earned, and I thought, well, this
Speaker 3: is new for those guys are even more open border
Speaker 3: than Joe Biden was and then I picked up the
Speaker 3: news that Nigel Faraja's Reform Party swept the municipal elections.
Speaker 3: That was hardly reported in the US press. I had
Speaker 3: to go to the British press to see the full
Speaker 3: dimensions of it. It was staggering. And they're now polling
Speaker 3: number one, and I think the Tories have fallen in
Speaker 3: number three. So first of all, the two part question
Speaker 3: is Farage for real? I mean, is Reform now going
Speaker 3: to replace the Tories? Are the Tories in such deep
Speaker 3: trouble that will they come back? I mean, give us
Speaker 3: your thumbnail assessment of what the turmoil that's going on
Speaker 3: in the UK.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Parage is for real, Reform is for real, and
Speaker 2: the Tories are in an existential crisis. There's a book
Speaker 2: written many years ago about how the Liberal Party went
Speaker 2: from running Britain. Oh yeah, right, the Strange Death of
Speaker 2: Liberal England. There's a better than fifty percent chance that
Speaker 2: we are in the middle of the strange death of
Speaker 2: Conservative England that the Tory Party. And the basic question
Speaker 2: is simple is that throughout the Western world, conservative voters
Speaker 2: are increasingly pushing back against a liberal elite, and liberal
Speaker 2: includes many Conservatives because I mean the liberal with a
Speaker 2: small continental l that doesn't care about nationalism and doesn't
Speaker 2: care about citizenship, and you see it in immigration and
Speaker 2: you see it in trade. They just don't care. It's
Speaker 2: open borders all the way. And conservative voters say, no, actually,
Speaker 2: we don't think that's right. We think that UoS a
Speaker 2: duty as citizens and that means protecting our way of
Speaker 2: life and our standard of living, to which most elites
Speaker 2: in the conservative movements say, sorry, I can't hear you.
Speaker 2: You say you want more freedom, more liberty, and that's
Speaker 2: not what they're saying. So what's happened is is that
Speaker 2: the right in Britain has finally given up. In the
Speaker 2: Conservative Party well ram things for fourteen years and didn't
Speaker 2: keep any of their promises. And the most stunning thing
Speaker 2: was in twenty nineteen when they basically have a Trumpian
Speaker 2: victory where they win votes that they've never gotten before
Speaker 2: from blue collar, former labor voters, and then they proceed
Speaker 2: to govern and ignore all of their promises. And what
Speaker 2: Reform is doing is getting the right of the Tory
Speaker 2: Party and the former labor working class voter in the
Speaker 2: same party. And that's a plurality in British poety.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well with a dirty Hall Harry that you know,
Speaker 5: where people are constrained by what they believe they're allowed
Speaker 5: to say and to think, and there's an inevitable reaction
Speaker 5: that exceeds what people.
Speaker 1: Thought it would be. Is this not going all the
Speaker 1: way back to Enoch Powell? Is this not going back
Speaker 1: to the idea of some sort of British identity that
Speaker 1: deserves to be maintained. It's an idea that's been delegitimized
Speaker 1: in the upper British culture time. You know.
Speaker 2: The thing is that Enoch Powell spoke in a language
Speaker 2: that Nigel Farajen never uses, you know, right, Nigel Farage
Speaker 2: never talks about rivers of blood is of blood. There
Speaker 2: are plenty of non white British citizens who are part
Speaker 2: of Reform, which is one of the things that always
Speaker 2: shocks people is why is it that, you know, the
Speaker 2: chairman of Reform is somebody from either Pakistan or India.
Speaker 2: I forget where's the a us off is from? But
Speaker 2: you know, and the fact is that there are plenty
Speaker 2: of people who are British even though they are not
Speaker 2: of white heritage. And that's not something I think that
Speaker 2: Powell could ever have admitted, and then you've got the
Speaker 2: non conventional economic Well.
Speaker 3: Just look at the leader, sorry interrupt, just look at
Speaker 3: the leader of the Tory Party right now, Kemmy Badanock, right,
Speaker 3: born of Kenyan parents. Yeah, okay, sorry.
Speaker 2: And succeeding Rishish Shunoch, you know, Adu of Indian parentage,
Speaker 2: who is British, born in and raised in Britain. But
Speaker 2: that's the Conservative Party. And the fact is the Conservative Party,
Speaker 2: like all conservative parties built in the post war era,
Speaker 2: is coming apart. It's coming apart because the Liberal and
Speaker 2: as John Howard of Australia said that the Liberal Party
Speaker 2: of Australia, which is the Conservative party down there, big
Speaker 2: l like classical right, could contain liberal and conservative elements,
Speaker 2: you know, which is say people who are concerned first
Speaker 2: about freedom, that people concerned first about tradition can find
Speaker 2: their homes are. What happens is people who are concerned,
Speaker 2: who are upper income and educated now don't care about
Speaker 2: conservative culture the left, and there's no longer a chance
Speaker 2: to combine them in opposition to something when the center,
Speaker 2: when the left has in fact embraced some form of capitalism.
Speaker 2: So all of these Western parties are finding there nineteen
Speaker 2: forty five to nineteen ninety nine era coalitions going away,
Speaker 2: and the Tory Party remains split between people who would
Speaker 2: actually rather be the right wing of the left than
Speaker 2: those who would rather be the establishment wing of the right.
Speaker 2: And I don't think they'll solve that problem before the
Speaker 2: next election. And I think they will be I think
Speaker 2: there's a better than fifty percent chance that they'll have
Speaker 2: fewer than fifty seats in the next parliament.
Speaker 3: Wow. Well, the one more question about the Tory Party.
Speaker 3: You know, in America we still talk about our rhinos,
Speaker 3: right Republicans in name only, who they aren't endangered species
Speaker 3: like African rhinos, And you know, the Republican Party became
Speaker 3: more self identified conservative party, which we are going to see
Speaker 3: that now. What I hear from our friends like Andrew
Speaker 3: Roberts and others is that that never happened to the
Speaker 3: Tory Party in Britain, even with the strong influence of
Speaker 3: Margaret Thatcher. After she left, it snapped back and you
Speaker 3: have a lot of I guess we'd call them Tino's
Speaker 3: Tories in name only, right right, And I mean Andrews says,
Speaker 3: you know, half the members of the Tory Party in Parliament,
Speaker 3: and this was true under Boris Johnson. Are actually not
Speaker 3: very ideological. They're Tory Party members out of convenience and
Speaker 3: ambition because that's the way there are constituency rules. And
Speaker 3: I think you can see that the party really lost
Speaker 3: its way, and I don't know is there a chance
Speaker 3: that they can Well you just said your prediction is
Speaker 3: they're going to get wiped out, but I don't have
Speaker 3: to solve that problem if they're ever going to come back.
Speaker 2: I think those of us who are small Sea Conservative
Speaker 2: or not ought not to be wedded to the big
Speaker 2: C Conservative. Yeah, okay, I would have voted reform if
Speaker 2: I were in Britain in four I am enthusiastically for reform,
Speaker 2: not that I agree with everything Forage says and so forth,
Speaker 2: because I think the Tory Party in Britain is essentially
Speaker 2: now an expression of class preference.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. The people I know who in Britain who
Speaker 1: are voting reform were not Tories before. So there's this
Speaker 1: there's a spectrum of legitimacy, it seems. In Europe, right,
Speaker 1: there's reform, then maybe a f D and then down
Speaker 1: below that the French, because the French are always castigating
Speaker 1: their own right, but respectability seems to be coming up somewhat.
Speaker 1: Are Let's look at AfD first, which I believe was
Speaker 1: you know, investigated and found to be beyond the pale.
Speaker 1: But they're not going away.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the thing that you in a democracy, you
Speaker 2: can't abolish voters. And the elites have this sense that well,
Speaker 2: if we can whole control the narrative, or we control
Speaker 2: the leadership, you know, we can put this thing to bread.
Speaker 2: But in a democracy, public opinion is everything. To quote
Speaker 2: somebody who once had a beard and ended the Civil war,
Speaker 2: you know, is that so they could aband AfD tomorrow
Speaker 2: and it wouldn't matter. It wouldn't matter because a quarter
Speaker 2: of Germans want the policies that AfD have. So somebody
Speaker 2: would come and create a new party called DFA and
Speaker 2: you know, and yeah, this happened in Belgium, is that
Speaker 2: they had a right wing party, a populist anti immigrant party,
Speaker 2: and they actually moved to abolish Vlam's Block, and Vlam's
Speaker 2: Block dissolved itself ahead of the court hearing and reconstituted
Speaker 2: itself as Vloms Belong.
Speaker 1: And guess what they're still gidding bo AfD, though for
Speaker 1: those people who don't know describe what they are. Two
Speaker 1: main things would be there are two primary issues that
Speaker 1: are gaining them popularity.
Speaker 2: Well, the two primary issues that would be gaining them popularity,
Speaker 2: first of all overwhelmingly as immigration, and the second is
Speaker 2: i would say, German culture. It's where does AfD do best.
Speaker 2: It does best in places that are not doing well economically,
Speaker 2: and they also do well in places that historically have
Speaker 2: been very supportive of particularly Catholic identity. You see where
Speaker 2: they're take a look at the same regions on the
Speaker 2: Czech Bavarian border that backed the Bavarian People's Party and
Speaker 2: the Weimar Republic and gave huge majorities to the Christian
Speaker 2: and Social Union in the post World War two environment
Speaker 2: are still voting for the CSU, but they're giving the
Speaker 2: AfD their strongest level of support in the West, and
Speaker 2: that's not depressed industrial territory, that's Catholic ritory. So mainly
Speaker 2: those two things that are gaining them gaining them supporting, but.
Speaker 1: They are tightly bound together, the immigration and the idea
Speaker 1: of German cost.
Speaker 2: They are tightly bound together, but they're also several, you know,
Speaker 2: and this is the thing is that if suddenly the
Speaker 2: government tomorrow decided well, actually we're just going to steal
Speaker 2: AfD's immigration policies, which is what the Social Democrats did
Speaker 2: in Denmark, it wouldn't mean the AfD would go away
Speaker 2: any more than the populist right went away in Denmark.
Speaker 2: You know, populist right in Denmark still gets about twenty
Speaker 2: percent of the vote, split a number of different parties
Speaker 2: because there are other things that are pushing it. It's
Speaker 2: not a one issue thing. And that's one of the
Speaker 2: things that people tend not to understand. They tend to think, well,
Speaker 2: this is just a protest party, and you move the
Speaker 2: source of the protests and the party will go away. No,
Speaker 2: this is an identity thing. This is a worldview that
Speaker 2: has its expression and its saliens from immigration, but it
Speaker 2: extends well beyond that and is simply uncoalitionable with a
Speaker 2: move a political element that is dominated by a progressive
Speaker 2: left that sees not know. Basically, the progressive lefts argument
Speaker 2: worldwide now is if you backed a system of government
Speaker 2: and a series of laws that were normal throughout the
Speaker 2: West when we defeated Nazism, you are now a fascist.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, And so these people still believe that, you know,
Speaker 2: the system of laws that we had as recently as
Speaker 2: like nineteen eighty are you know that society was actually
Speaker 2: pretty good? And why can't we have something like that today,
Speaker 2: you know, not turning back the clock, but preserve and
Speaker 2: conserving if you will, those values, and that is simply
Speaker 2: uncoalitionable with the modern left.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's let's head east a little bit. I mean, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, we know that, Uh they're doing law fair
Speaker 3: in France against marine Lapan and in Germany against a
Speaker 3: f D, and let's have to see how that plays out.
Speaker 3: But in Eastern Europe you're seeing other weird things that
Speaker 3: hard for Americans understand because of those peculiar parliamentary systems.
Speaker 3: And by the way, sometimes when you post the europolls, Henry,
Speaker 3: I can't tell. Is the color coding also red for
Speaker 3: conservative and blue for liberal and everywhere else.
Speaker 2: In the world blue is conservative?
Speaker 3: Is that okay? Because and then you also have eight
Speaker 3: parties to cope with and it's just a nuisance. But
Speaker 3: but you know, so you Poland and.
Speaker 2: Romania in the Netherlands.
Speaker 3: But right, yeah, the smaller the country, the more parties.
Speaker 3: You know, I want a party for my own block, right,
Speaker 3: it's for Prince and groct andance. I don't know. Uh
Speaker 3: So Romania invalidated an election. I knew. I knew that
Speaker 3: was a mistake for me to bring that up. Uh So,
Speaker 3: Romania they invalidated action here recently because of suppose Russian
Speaker 3: I don't want say suppose. I'm sure there was Russian interference.
Speaker 3: That is not new. I'm well schooled on the way
Speaker 3: Russia has mucked around in Bulgaria's politics for at least
Speaker 3: the last twenty five years, and we don't seem to
Speaker 3: be bothered by that, but or invalidate their elections. But
Speaker 3: they invalidated and then the establishment candidate managed to speak
Speaker 3: by here in the last few days, I guess. And
Speaker 3: then I'm confused in Poland too, where I think there's
Speaker 3: similar lawfare, and Shenanigan's going on break those two down
Speaker 3: for us briefly, if you will.
Speaker 2: What happened in Romania is that the thing to remember
Speaker 2: is that in what gave Trump his victory was over
Speaker 2: the span of a decade, he has transformed a minority
Speaker 2: movement into a tenuous majority coalition, and he's done that
Speaker 2: by gaining the support of people who actually don't like
Speaker 2: a lot of his policies, but they prefer him to
Speaker 2: the left, and that's kind of like the nikky Haley
Speaker 2: wing of the Republican And by adding opula and working
Speaker 2: class voters across the spectrum from Democrats who have just
Speaker 2: thrown up their hands at a modern party that doesn't
Speaker 2: seem to care about them anymore, that's how he gets
Speaker 2: to a majority. The Europeans haven't gotten to the majority
Speaker 2: status yet, Okay. That's basically what happened in Romania is
Speaker 2: that this party that didn't exist seven years ago has
Speaker 2: suddenly come and gotten forty five I think they ended
Speaker 2: up with about forty six percent of the vote. And
Speaker 2: what held them back finally was that it's just too new,
Speaker 2: it's too radical. So the sort of people who say, well,
Speaker 2: I prefer Trump to Clinton said, well, actually I prefer
Speaker 2: this nik Kashur Dan to George Simeon. So the center right,
Speaker 2: the Hailey voter of Romania backed the establishment in four years,
Speaker 2: that may not be the case. Yeah, And then you've
Speaker 2: got inter ethnic things, you know, like sur five to
Speaker 2: eight percent of the population is Hungarian and this guy
Speaker 2: is an ultra Romanian nationalist. So the Hungarian Vogue turned
Speaker 2: off on mass to oppose him, and that was another
Speaker 2: reason why he lost in Poland. Yes, the establishment is
Speaker 2: going on law fair against law and justice, which is
Speaker 2: the populist conservative party there. But guess what, you can't
Speaker 2: engage in law fair against twenty million Poles. And well
Speaker 2: you can, but that's called Putin's Russia. And even the
Speaker 2: establishment in Europe isn't willing to actually have phony rigged
Speaker 2: elections and put people in jail and have people fall
Speaker 2: out of fourth floor windows consistently. So what's happened is
Speaker 2: is that you've got the mayor of Poland, the mayor
Speaker 2: of Warsaw, who is a cultural liberal and an economic conservative,
Speaker 2: perfectly at home as a Nicky Haley Republic who is
Speaker 2: the running for president. He has called for abortion in
Speaker 2: a country that's the most religious in Europe. He has
Speaker 2: called for the ban. As mayor of Varce's imposed a
Speaker 2: ban on the wearing of religious symbols even at your desk,
Speaker 2: so you can't have like a crucifix on your private
Speaker 2: desk if you're a Warsaw person. He supports LGBTQ rights issues,
Speaker 2: again in a country where people have traditional views about
Speaker 2: homosexuality and same sex marriage, and his coalition that got
Speaker 2: him into parliament included socially conservative, rural voters who didn't
Speaker 2: like law and justice. So guess what's happened now You
Speaker 2: look and they say, well, if we support this guy,
Speaker 2: then we're basically endorsing social liberalism, and a lot of
Speaker 2: these voters refuse to do that, and that gives Law
Speaker 2: and Justice a chance to win the runoff is that
Speaker 2: their candidate finished second. The three anti abortion candidates got
Speaker 2: a majority of the vote in a very high turnout
Speaker 2: first round where the turnout was highest in the cities
Speaker 2: where the liberals, the a Republicans and people to their
Speaker 2: right and to do well. So if you look at
Speaker 2: this and you say, in a democracy, public opinion is everything.
Speaker 2: The center left and the establishment allies on the right
Speaker 2: continually thumbed their nose at public opinion, considering them troglegite
Speaker 2: or fascist. And guess what it's, you know, a revenge
Speaker 2: of the Jedi. Ah. My point is that Poland is
Speaker 2: divided like we are, and it matters. And if you're
Speaker 2: going to be an elite that basically says public opinion
Speaker 2: doesn't matter because we're right and you're wrong. You should
Speaker 2: expect to have a come up and sit the balance
Speaker 2: box at some point, and I think Europe is maybe
Speaker 2: five to eight to ten years behind US and a
Speaker 2: strong minority becoming a tentative majority.
Speaker 3: Well. Now, one of the interesting things about Poland right
Speaker 3: now is that I was not aware of this, but
Speaker 3: their economy has been booming, and I think like they
Speaker 3: already have passed Japan in per capita income, which is
Speaker 3: an amazing thing to think about. And that suggests to
Speaker 3: me that the election really is going to be decided
Speaker 3: not on the old mix of economy and culture, but
Speaker 3: it's going to be culture over economy. Maybe I don't know,
Speaker 3: it sounds like it might happen that way. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: well now let me let me ask you. Let's turn
Speaker 3: to hungry for a moment. We're less than a year
Speaker 3: out from another national election. I hear polls showing Orbon
Speaker 3: and his Fidees party is in running behind, is in
Speaker 3: some trouble, but they've always been very clever and hardy campaigners.
Speaker 3: What maybe it's a little earlier for you to make
Speaker 3: a call, But what are you expecting? What are you
Speaker 3: looking for there?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 2: Which we call an election, not a tenant, I know,
Speaker 2: I know, but what I.
Speaker 3: Have they have they outlaid, they're welcomes. It's just they're
Speaker 3: tired of having this one party in for fifteen years,
Speaker 3: or there's something else happening.
Speaker 2: What I argued years ago is that again this is
Speaker 2: you know, let's be let's be honest. Orbon has engaged
Speaker 2: in some what would be considered thugish techniques, you know,
Speaker 2: which isn't He doesn't put his opponents in prison and
Speaker 2: so forth. But they do have some sort of consolidation
Speaker 2: overall lot of mass market media through interlocking ownerships and
Speaker 2: so forth, that tends not to report about the opposition,
Speaker 2: you know, not just attacking like what they do here.
Speaker 2: And you know, it's not like they at least mentioned
Speaker 2: Trump's name and you know, give him a chance to
Speaker 2: say something before they have ninety seconds of telling you
Speaker 2: how terrible he is, you know. Orbon doesn't even do
Speaker 2: that with some of the media, cantill they don't even
Speaker 2: mention the opposition. But again, public opinion is everything unless
Speaker 2: you're going to abolish the voters. Orbon is kind of
Speaker 2: facing the same problem that the elites and Brussels are facing.
Speaker 2: So Their argument I made years ago is why should
Speaker 2: you be surprised that Orbon wins? Is that he's combined
Speaker 2: economic capitalism with social support and Hungarian nationalism. And oh,
Speaker 2: by the way, if you look at every single election
Speaker 2: going back to nineteen ninety, which are the first free
Speaker 2: elections after the fall of the Berlin Wall, that coalition
Speaker 2: gets a majority. It used to be split between four
Speaker 2: parties and now it's in one party. Why should you
Speaker 2: be surprised that a guy who I don't know represents
Speaker 2: public opinion of Hungarians wins an election in Hungary?
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, what's happened.
Speaker 2: The economy is in the toilet. They've got high inflation,
Speaker 2: they're cutting back on subsidies and so forth, and they're desperate.
Speaker 2: They're engaging in price controls. They're desperate to restore economic
Speaker 2: growth and low inflation. Before the election, and they're running
Speaker 2: It used to be they were running against representatives of
Speaker 2: the Brussels e League. And you know, it's kind of
Speaker 2: like if you were if you were the mayor of
Speaker 2: New York and Ghostbusters, here's here we go, and you
Speaker 2: had a choice.
Speaker 1: That's the fourth between.
Speaker 2: Doctor Vankman and people who say there's ghosts or the
Speaker 2: guy and the beard from the EPA department, right, and
Speaker 2: and what is it that Bill Murray says. He says,
Speaker 2: you know that if you believe us, you know you'll
Speaker 2: you know, you know, you know, we basically we represent
Speaker 2: the people you care about, millions of registered voters, and
Speaker 2: that's when they get the okay to go checkout goes
Speaker 2: on the side. Yeah, they used to run against elites
Speaker 2: who are Social Democrats who were based in Budapest. Now
Speaker 2: they're running against a former PETESH person who is basically saying,
Speaker 2: you can have what you like about Orbon with me
Speaker 2: Hungarian nationalism. And so it's he's kind of like Orbon plus.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, he's running ahead in the polls. I
Speaker 2: have looked at all all the constituencies. I know exactly
Speaker 2: where the election is going to turn, somewhere around Lake Balaton,
Speaker 2: and I might be there too.
Speaker 1: I like to ask one of my trademark vague, interminable
Speaker 1: and ignorantly sourced questions. Here we're seeing the rise of nationalism, obviously,
Speaker 1: and I just remember all my life being told this
Speaker 1: is very bad thing by the left. Nationalism is bad.
Speaker 1: Nationalism gave us World War One. One World War Two.
Speaker 1: Nationalism is good when Woodrow Wilson is trying to give
Speaker 1: everybody there in a little country. But nationalism is bad.
Speaker 1: Nationalism now is good for Gaza and the Palestinians, and
Speaker 1: on some parts of the left, nationalism good for Ukraine.
Speaker 1: It's nice to see them standing up for that. But
Speaker 1: in general, no, it's a bad idea. But what we
Speaker 1: had there eventually in the post war Europe was a
Speaker 1: movement towards a unified Europe, the Common Market, the EU,
Speaker 1: et cetera, that would respect national identities but at the
Speaker 1: same time subsume them into a general transnational project. And
Speaker 1: my question to you is might that have worked, because
Speaker 1: I think that it would have. I think it would
Speaker 1: have been cape. It would have been possible to create
Speaker 1: a regulatory, legal, economic structure that spanned all of Europe,
Speaker 1: but at the same time was keenly interested and invested
Speaker 1: in maintaining national identity. But I think that it fell
Speaker 1: apart because of the overweening desires of the people in
Speaker 1: Brussels to absolutely control every elemental atom in the various
Speaker 1: constituent states. I think Brexit happened when people woke up
Speaker 1: one day and looked at a a story on the
Speaker 1: front page of the Telegraph and the Mirror in every
Speaker 1: other paper that said the EU was about to regulate
Speaker 1: kettles and how fast they boiled in order to stave
Speaker 1: off climate change. And I think that's when people said,
Speaker 1: that's it. I'm not going to be part of this anymore.
Speaker 1: So did they just was it overreach that doomed the
Speaker 1: project or were the seeds of its downfall there in
Speaker 1: the construction of it in the first place.
Speaker 2: I think it a little bit of both. You know.
Speaker 2: Is that let's take a look at the United States
Speaker 2: of America. The United States of America started as thirteen
Speaker 2: separate colonies, and they became a country through a shared struggle,
Speaker 2: the War for Independence, and then it took many years
Speaker 2: afterwards to finally settle on the way in which you
Speaker 2: could maintain diversity and unity. And that was the Constitution.
Speaker 2: What the fundamental thing about the Constitution was that it
Speaker 2: was not intended to have a government in Washington that
Speaker 2: would regulate the things that most people would deal with
Speaker 2: on a daily basis. They would be one with respect
Speaker 2: to the shared project, which is foreign and removing the
Speaker 2: seeds for discord among the states. Hence why there was
Speaker 2: effectively established a free trade zone among the thirteen states
Speaker 2: and everything else was left to the states. And first
Speaker 2: of all, the European Union was not born out of
Speaker 2: a shared struggle. It was born out of a shared
Speaker 2: failure the feet of World War Two. So you didn't
Speaker 2: have that sort of buy in. You know. Initially, what
Speaker 2: you had was a buy in from the six original members,
Speaker 2: which were basically the countries who had been conquered by
Speaker 2: one or another of them, you know, the Germans conquering
Speaker 2: the other five and then being conquered in turn by
Speaker 2: the Allies, who basically said we're going to bind ourselves
Speaker 2: together in an economic not a political union, so that
Speaker 2: we never go to war again. Okay, that could have worked.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well right, I mean right, remember, I mean it
Speaker 3: began as the European Coal and Steel a union. Right
Speaker 3: now now we OUTSOEUS steel to China and we've outlawed coal.
Speaker 2: So what's left, well, well, what's left is the Eurovision
Speaker 2: Song contest, so it's not going out of a struggle.
Speaker 2: And then what you have not done is real is
Speaker 2: create that clear division of responsibilities. In a weird sense,
Speaker 2: they've inverted the American Constitution they try and regulate directly
Speaker 2: or indirectly everything that's economic, and they have no common
Speaker 2: foreign policy, and so you know, I would say the
Speaker 2: invasion of Ukraine gives them an opportunity to actually create
Speaker 2: a shared struggle, which is the preservation of freedom throughout
Speaker 2: the European subcontinent or the European continent outside of you know,
Speaker 2: the parts that Russia controls, by creating a unified common
Speaker 2: defense and reverting almost everything except for free trade and
Speaker 2: a common currency and a central bank to the nations. Now,
Speaker 2: of course, that would mean there's no such thing as
Speaker 2: a green New Deal. That would mean there's no such
Speaker 2: things as a European Court of Human Rights. In other words,
Speaker 2: the left can't go along with that. But that I
Speaker 2: think is what the populace right would be accepted, would
Speaker 2: find acceptable. But you know, absent that, then this can
Speaker 2: continue to be a project that is neither fish nor foul,
Speaker 2: and as a sense, just flounder.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, Henry, let's go out today with one question.
Speaker 3: It's a big one about a scene here at home.
Speaker 3: So you know you have been acute an early perceptor.
Speaker 3: I guess i'd say of Trump's abilities, his appeal the
Speaker 3: coalition he's put together. You mentioned earlier that it's a
Speaker 3: somewhat fragile one. So this is a big subject. So
Speaker 3: I'm going to limit you to giving us briefly the
Speaker 3: top two vulnerabilities or hazards that Trump and his supporters
Speaker 3: should be on guardigans right now.
Speaker 2: The number one thing is failing to recognize the breath
Speaker 2: of your coalition. That typically what's happened in the last
Speaker 2: thirty years is that people campaign to create a new
Speaker 2: coalition and then they abandon the new elements of it
Speaker 2: when they take power, give power to the base. And
Speaker 2: you see elements of that in the Trump thing, you know,
Speaker 2: which is there's no real desire for a ban abolishing
Speaker 2: the Department of Education. It may not be something that
Speaker 2: is particularly of salience to people who voted for Biden
Speaker 2: and Clinton and Obama, but those aren't. That's why Trump
Speaker 2: has got a majority is because of those voters. So
Speaker 2: by giving into the temptation to satisfy the base across
Speaker 2: the board and ignore the swing voter, that's the first thing.
Speaker 1: You have to worry about.
Speaker 2: And then just from an issue standpoint, you can't have
Speaker 2: You have to again deal with public opinionublic opinion wants
Speaker 2: is an economy that doesn't go into recession and where
Speaker 2: inflation is under control, but that the gains to the
Speaker 2: economy crew more to the workers on the margin than
Speaker 2: to the owners of capital. Trump has been very uneven
Speaker 2: about pursuing this. And you know, the fixation on tariffs
Speaker 2: on tariffs, off tariffs, hot, tariffs coal. People don't want
Speaker 2: that is that is, they'd be happy and would be
Speaker 2: willing to give a chance to a new economic policy
Speaker 2: that promises to over the long run, long run being
Speaker 2: a political four years change, you know, put us on
Speaker 2: a new trajectory. But hot, cold, up down, Yes, No,
Speaker 2: is not something that they want. Is that Trump's job
Speaker 2: approval ratings started to go south on or around Liberation Day,
Speaker 2: it stopped going south on or around uh, the deal
Speaker 2: with China. Yeah, and it started going back up. You
Speaker 2: start going back to the up down up, you know,
Speaker 2: hot as cold, you know blue is red sort of
Speaker 2: what's going on then? And I guarantee you that by
Speaker 2: July fourth, Trump's job approval rating will be down again.
Speaker 1: We will consider your fourth pop culture reference to be
Speaker 1: tariff on tariff off as a reference to karate Kid.
Speaker 1: And for that we salute you, and for any other reasons.
Speaker 1: Andrew's book The Working Class Republican Ronald Reagan in the
Speaker 1: Return of the Blue Collar Conservatism, And of course he's
Speaker 1: the host of Beyond the Polls, which you can find
Speaker 1: right here on the Ricochet Audio Network. Henry, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for joining us today. It's been fun. We'll get
Speaker 1: into another forty five minutes, but the store next time
Speaker 1: we're going to talk to you, we expect a sprinkling
Speaker 1: of pop culture references from the late nineties or even
Speaker 1: the early aughts, so so stretch your horizons and your
Speaker 1: things in your cultural cupboard. Thanks are here before we go.
Speaker 1: There was a book, it's called Original Sin, just lighting
Speaker 1: up Washington. Everyone's a buzz about it. I'm sure I
Speaker 1: see the authors everywhere being asked a series of just
Speaker 1: absolutely tough questions, just every one of them being skewered,
Speaker 1: hoisted batards the whole business or not. Stephen, what do
Speaker 1: you make of this? I mean, it's the couple of
Speaker 1: things that amused me this week is well, we shouldn't
Speaker 1: be talking about any of this because Joe Biden is sick,
Speaker 1: and that why did the president release the her tapes?
Speaker 1: Now when he's just trying to take attention away from
Speaker 1: his own failures and the rest of it. Chuck Schumer
Speaker 1: is saying, we want to move on. We're focused on
Speaker 1: the future, which is what they always think that people
Speaker 1: want to believe. But I think there is a general,
Speaker 1: growing national question about who exactly was the president anyway,
Speaker 1: And when you have revelations about the role of Hunter Biden,
Speaker 1: I don't think a lot of people actually bought in
Speaker 1: to that guy having a role of any significance whatsoever.
Speaker 1: The Hunter businesses, the stuff that that that makes my
Speaker 1: eyebrows go up the most, That on the auto pen,
Speaker 1: that on the inability to do anything best at eleven
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning. Do you think there's going to
Speaker 1: be an accounting because I don't.
Speaker 3: Well, there should be, And apparently the House Oversight Committee
Speaker 3: says they're going to resume hearings, and they had not
Speaker 3: yet subpoenaed the senior White House staff under Biden, but
Speaker 3: they should, and the resistance of poena, then I think
Speaker 3: that there are actual prosecutions of this. I mean, one
Speaker 3: of the problems with this book is that it hints
Speaker 3: at who was running the White House, but seems incurious
Speaker 3: about what the process was and asking about any particular
Speaker 3: or specific decisions, like really, how did Joe Biden review
Speaker 3: twenty four hundred pardons all on one day in January?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: I mean, this is absurd. It's a whitewash for the media.
Speaker 3: By the way, Jane, you're gonna love this, James. Here
Speaker 3: are two headlines from the last week. The Washington Post
Speaker 3: editorial board headline was Biden too frail for the job?
Speaker 3: Voters should have been informed? And the USA Today Biden's
Speaker 3: cancer diagnosis raises the question was he ever in good
Speaker 3: enough health?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 3: You know that, God, somebody could have told us. Who
Speaker 3: might have been that? Right? I mean, you know, it's
Speaker 3: just a mystery, it is now. I you know here,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I'm going to be very harsh and rude,
Speaker 3: and people think I'm a moral monster. But I think
Speaker 3: that there's a fitting irony of Biden's diagnosis of cancer,
Speaker 3: an advanced case of it, apparently, because he has been
Speaker 3: a malignant force in American politics in his entire career.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think you can put an awful lot
Speaker 3: of the blame for the toxic character of American politics
Speaker 3: on his behavior in the Bork nomination thirty five years ago.
Speaker 3: You know, there's a great quote I have in one
Speaker 3: of my books where Biden said in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 3: right before he became chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee,
Speaker 3: he said, if President Reagan sends up Robert Borke, I'd
Speaker 3: probably have to vote for him. He's qualified. That presidents
Speaker 3: should get their appointees of they're qualified. And if the
Speaker 3: groups tear me apart, I'll just have to live with it.
Speaker 3: I'm not Ted Kennedy exact quote. I'm memorized. And of course,
Speaker 3: within thirty seconds of the Bork nomination, Biden capitulated to
Speaker 3: the groups, who also we now ran his White House,
Speaker 3: the groups and Ted Kennedy right, and he totally distorted
Speaker 3: the U digital politics ever since. And I think that's
Speaker 3: spread across the board in politics. And I think that
Speaker 3: and they tried to run that drill over again, right.
Speaker 3: Just ask Brett Kavanaugh, Just asked Clarence Thomas. Just ask
Speaker 3: any number of nominees and other figures that we now
Speaker 3: decide that personal attacks are legitimate and is now main
Speaker 3: part of the Democratic playbook. He was the author of that.
Speaker 3: So it's always been a myth that he was, oh,
Speaker 3: good old moderate Joe from Scranton. He nevererly stood for
Speaker 3: anything except himself. And I think that's now fully revealed everybody.
Speaker 3: And my last word is all those people who work
Speaker 3: for him Donalan, Jake Sullivan, Steve Schetty, all the rest,
Speaker 3: and they should never have a job again, ever anywhere
Speaker 3: in politics, and certainly not in government.
Speaker 1: I was having a conversation last year with somebody in
Speaker 1: England who was a member of the who wrote columns
Speaker 1: for a very influential paper, who was just who was
Speaker 1: saying that Joe Biden instructor as a kindly grandpa figure.
Speaker 1: And I said, no, No, that may be because he's dim,
Speaker 1: and he's in the marbles, have all rolled down a
Speaker 1: hole in his spine and clattered out somewhere on the floor.
Speaker 1: But let me tell you, this man is a prevaricating
Speaker 1: intellectual nullity of boundless self regard. He's an awful man,
Speaker 1: and anybody's been watching him all these times knows that
Speaker 1: he is an awful man. And the way his positionship
Speaker 1: shifted from this to that with equal conviction. I mean,
Speaker 1: just because he got soft as putting in his dotage
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that he hasn't been a nasty fellow before.
Speaker 1: And again the self regard, the inflation of the resume,
Speaker 1: made the plagiarism, the constant need to I mean, it's
Speaker 1: okay to be a guy from Scranton who makes it
Speaker 1: into the Senate. That's accomplishment enough. But he's always going
Speaker 1: back and finding apples from his past and polishing them
Speaker 1: a little bit more. I just I cannot stand them
Speaker 1: in regardless of politics, regardless of them because there were
Speaker 1: times when I, you know, when I agreed with some
Speaker 1: of the positions that he had, but there was just
Speaker 1: a sneer and pointedness to him that I just that,
Speaker 1: coupled with the with the egotism, just made him, I thought,
Speaker 1: an incredibly unattractive figure. But they got old, and then
Speaker 1: he got Then then he was the gravitas plug that
Speaker 1: was dropped into the Obama administration to bring it weight
Speaker 1: because we were so concerned about the inexperience of the occupant.
Speaker 1: Oh good times, good times, as the kids saying before
Speaker 1: we go out, one last little thing that we do
Speaker 1: that bores everybody because they don't care. But I'll ask you, Steven,
Speaker 1: what are you watching on television?
Speaker 3: Nothing?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Now I'm so far behind on so many projects, and
Speaker 3: I'm about to go traveling for a month overseas, although
Speaker 3: I'll still show up for our weekly conversation. So I
Speaker 3: haven't been watching any thing, not even the news.
Speaker 1: But you don't load up your iPad or your iPhone
Speaker 1: with content before you go on a trip so you
Speaker 1: can watch something. And one of those guys who sits
Speaker 1: there on the plane and just looks up.
Speaker 3: Right, No, I probably will do that, but that's ahead
Speaker 3: of me, not behind me.
Speaker 1: Well, on my upcoming flight, I plan to take as
Speaker 1: usual to Perry Mason's, because there's nothing better sitting down
Speaker 1: for your little airplane meal than with a Perry Mason.
Speaker 1: You are guaranteed a story, You're guaranteed a mystery, you
Speaker 1: are guaranteed a resolution, and then it's done, unlike most
Speaker 1: of modern television, which will go on and on and
Speaker 1: on for twelve fifteen episodes and drag you to the
Speaker 1: last episode where there's a cliffhanger, and then you got
Speaker 1: to wait for another two years before they gather everybody
Speaker 1: together and do it up again. I am, however, happy
Speaker 1: to say that of the many shows that I have cued,
Speaker 1: I blasted through one end to end two nights sometimes.
Speaker 1: But the first season of and Or as a man
Speaker 1: who is utterly completely disgusted with Star Wars and tired
Speaker 1: of it and found it to be the children's show
Speaker 1: that it actually revealed itself to be. I was stunned
Speaker 1: to find that they actually made a grown up version
Speaker 1: of it. That an extraordinary piece of storytelling. So now
Speaker 1: I got to start season two tonight and then maybe
Speaker 1: find on the plane. I'll watch the last episode, stand
Speaker 1: up a cheer at three o'clock in the morning as
Speaker 1: the plane is arcing its way through the dark. Knight, folks,
Speaker 1: you got to go to Ricochet, is what you have
Speaker 1: to do. If this is your seven hundred and forty
Speaker 1: first podcast and you've never gotten there, I don't know
Speaker 1: what's the matter with you. It's unlikely, but it's statistically possible.
Speaker 1: If you go there, you will find in the member feed.
Speaker 1: Oh sorry, you can't because you don't belong, but we'd
Speaker 1: love you to belong. Everybody can read the main page.
Speaker 1: You're going to listen to the podcast, But the member
Speaker 1: feed was just the other day we were talking something
Speaker 1: about politics, something about Judaism, something about music, because one
Speaker 1: of the members had attended the madel A Great Long
Speaker 1: Malarian love Fest in Europe. I mean, it's everything. It
Speaker 1: is the sane, civil center right conversation you've been looking
Speaker 1: for on the internet. You won't find it on Twitter X,
Speaker 1: you won't find it in Facebook. You'll find it at Ricochet.
Speaker 1: And yeah, you got to pay a couple of shekels
Speaker 1: for it. And that's fine because that keeps everybody with
Speaker 1: as Rob Long used to say, Brother Rob, it keeps us,
Speaker 1: keeps you with skin in the game. I'm James, Lilyox
Speaker 1: here in Minneapolis, Stephen in California, You and a listener
Speaker 1: are wherever you are. We thank you for dropping by,
Speaker 1: and we hope to see you in the next episode
Speaker 1: of the podcast. In the meantime, we'll see everybody in
Speaker 1: the comments at Rigoget four point h Bye bye next week, James,