Speaker 1: Well, whiskey, come and take my pain, the honeys, my ry.
Speaker 2: Oh whiskey.
Speaker 3: Don't why think alone when you can drink it all
Speaker 3: in with Ricochet's Three Whiskey Happy Hour, Join your bartenders,
Speaker 3: Steve Hayward, John You, and the international Woman of Mystery, Lucretia.
Speaker 1: Where they lapped it up it David, Ain't you easy
Speaker 1: on the should chaps gotta give me?
Speaker 4: Welcome everyone to this really super special edition of the
Speaker 4: Three Whiskey Happy Hour, because we are on at least
Speaker 4: two different continents. Steve is in an undisclosed location in Palermo.
Speaker 4: John is cursing United Airlines because his flight to Naples
Speaker 4: yesterday was canceled and they won't get him out for
Speaker 4: another month or so or something like that.
Speaker 5: Right, John, this is the worst travel disruption I've ever
Speaker 5: had where I was on a tarmac for eleven hours,
Speaker 5: eleven hours and then they canceled the flight and I
Speaker 5: couldn't get another flight out for two more days. The
Speaker 5: writers people should write in have you ever had a
Speaker 5: worse travel disruption? Eleven hours and then they canceled the
Speaker 5: flight and you can't get out for two days later?
Speaker 1: I thought the regulations now they couldn't hold you on
Speaker 1: a plane longer than five hours or something.
Speaker 5: You know what, They brought us back after five hours
Speaker 5: and then send us back out again.
Speaker 2: Oh god, unbelievable.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so the regulatory state wins again.
Speaker 4: Oh man, that's just awful.
Speaker 5: But anyway, that meant, that meant I got the pleasure
Speaker 5: of being in Newark train station at five am. You
Speaker 5: meet the most culture people in the New York New
Speaker 5: York train station at five am, and made it to
Speaker 5: my mom's house in Philadelphia. And I've got to spend
Speaker 5: two more days with my mom.
Speaker 4: So that's nice to tell your mother that we said.
Speaker 5: Hello, she's your big fan, is you know? In the
Speaker 5: amongst the eighty year old set, Lucretia has the biggest
Speaker 5: fan base.
Speaker 2: Oh, they go over.
Speaker 5: They discussed what Lucretia's wearing, how she comes up with
Speaker 5: her beau malls. They love Lucretia here at my mom's
Speaker 5: retirement home.
Speaker 4: I do, I do think I have to bring back
Speaker 4: this was a proud moment of my life when you
Speaker 4: I believe it was your mom who said that she
Speaker 4: expected to me me to be some haggardly looking old
Speaker 4: woman or something like that, and was surprised to find
Speaker 4: out that I wasn't exactly that. I remember something that
Speaker 4: was very sweet of.
Speaker 5: Her, because you hit the standards of beauty of the
Speaker 5: nineteen fifties.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm not even going to take that as
Speaker 4: an insult, John, because when I look around at the
Speaker 4: way some young people, well, i'll just leave that one alone.
Speaker 4: No Lukism today, Well we're probably gonna have Latonism. I
Speaker 4: hate to say it, but we're going to get started.
Speaker 4: Because because Steve's got jet lag and a scratchy voice,
Speaker 4: I decided that what I wanted to talk about today
Speaker 4: was a sort of big picture or what does Steve
Speaker 4: called it, a field view or something like that, of
Speaker 4: the current state of our political parties. And the current
Speaker 4: state of our political parties is, oh, it's all messed up,
Speaker 4: because for how long has it been now that the
Speaker 4: Democrats have been in lockstep about everything? You know, and
Speaker 4: even when something that doesn't make any sense, like moving
Speaker 4: from you know, radical feminism to this idea that men
Speaker 4: should be able to compete in women sports and you know,
Speaker 4: a woman. I'm not a biologist. I can't tell you
Speaker 4: what a woman is, and all of that nonsense they'll
Speaker 4: they'll embrace it because the leftist moves like one of
Speaker 4: those bee swarms that you know, moves from place to
Speaker 4: place altogether. Except now, the Democrats, and I'm going to
Speaker 4: get you guys' thoughts on this and the with the
Speaker 4: d MC autopsy are are splitting apart. They're they're you know,
Speaker 4: they're blaming each other. They're pointing fingers at each other.
Speaker 4: There's the far left, it doesn't know what to do
Speaker 4: with the middle, that doesn't know what to do with
Speaker 4: the right, the far left, the center left, and they
Speaker 4: will compare that to what's going on in the Republican Party.
Speaker 4: But first, which one of you fellows would like to
Speaker 4: talk about the d n C autopsy.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll start first, as see if my voice holds
Speaker 1: out here for an opening comment.
Speaker 2: First of all, it reads.
Speaker 1: Like a rejected script for a money python sketch. The
Speaker 1: voters have said, you have sold us a dead parrot,
Speaker 1: and the DNC is saying, no, no, it's just resting.
Speaker 2: There's no problem here.
Speaker 1: The parent's alive, right, I mean, the substance of it
Speaker 1: is so weak, and you can go down the list
Speaker 1: of things, and we really can.
Speaker 2: But my favorite aspect of it was. It's rejection.
Speaker 1: Remember they release the report because they thought under pressure,
Speaker 1: so will put it out. But the DNC chairman, what's
Speaker 1: his name, Ken Martin, Rod Martin, whatever, his name is,
Speaker 1: Ken Martin, he he rejected the findings because he said
Speaker 1: they couldn't be verified, like there's no data for it.
Speaker 2: This reminds me, in other words, the problems.
Speaker 1: Of academic political science, and you know, like the political
Speaker 1: science John at Berkeley who say you can't study what
Speaker 1: you can't measure. They don't even use survey numbers showing
Speaker 1: if they did take what data you could bring the
Speaker 1: bear on this, which would be surveys of American people
Speaker 1: saying that, oh yeah, we don't want men and women's sports.
Speaker 1: It's so called eighty twenty issues of Democrats are on
Speaker 1: the wrong side of There would be some data, but
Speaker 1: the author completely avoids it. But finally, I think these
Speaker 1: autopsies by parties when they lose an election that they
Speaker 1: thought they.
Speaker 2: Were going to win are stupid.
Speaker 1: You remember the RNC had their autopsy in twenty thirteen
Speaker 1: after Romney lost and they called.
Speaker 2: It the autopsy.
Speaker 1: Then I think it's just the media calling this new
Speaker 1: report in autopsy because that's now the way we talk
Speaker 1: about these postal reports. But the autopsy in twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: you remember, said, well, gosh, Republicans are just too mean
Speaker 1: to Hispanics, and you know, we need to have comprehensive
Speaker 1: immigration reform to make a country more welcoming.
Speaker 2: And that was blown up two.
Speaker 1: Years later by guess who, right, who discovered that it
Speaker 1: was popular to enforce immigration law, and whose mean comments
Speaker 1: about Hispanics seemed not to have a backlatch except with
Speaker 1: wealthy white liberals. Turned out, a lot of Hispanics who
Speaker 1: lived here for a long time thought it was just fine,
Speaker 1: and they kind of agreed with it. So anyway, I'm
Speaker 1: just sitting back, popping popcorn and enjoying watching the Democrats
Speaker 1: cut each other up with what's in this report which
Speaker 1: avoids all the key? Oh, it's just one candidate. Harris
Speaker 1: didn't attack Trump enough?
Speaker 2: Really, I mean, what are they going to do? I
Speaker 2: mean they're gonna call him super duper hitler.
Speaker 1: I mean what they did everything somebody said except call
Speaker 1: out the the legate to drop nuclear weapons on.
Speaker 4: Him, And Harris wasn't Kamalamadingong wasn't supported enough except for
Speaker 4: the two point two eight billion they spent getting or elected. John,
Speaker 4: do you have thoughts on this?
Speaker 5: I didn't. First of all, I want to make clear
Speaker 5: that this is being taped with all three of us simultaneously,
Speaker 5: and Steve's not going to record something later to respond
Speaker 5: to all my insults him that he couldn't respond to
Speaker 5: last week that was dirty pool. That was dirty pool,
Speaker 5: on my dirty pool, that was dirty pool square. I
Speaker 5: hope that I insulted you was because you couldn't respond.
Speaker 5: So I had two thoughts. One is I haven't read
Speaker 5: the report, but I take it it barely discussed Biden.
Speaker 5: And you would have thought one major factor in the
Speaker 5: loss was a terrible performance under Joe Biden, who promised
Speaker 5: to a return to normalcy and conventional politics after Trump
Speaker 5: and then weaponized the legal system against Trump. And you know,
Speaker 5: you look at how did when did Trump start making
Speaker 5: a recovery and winning, you know, your recovery towards winning
Speaker 5: the primary. It's when the mar A Lago searched occurred,
Speaker 5: and when the Biden Justice Department started persecuting Trump for
Speaker 5: the first time in American history any form or president's
Speaker 5: been prosecuted, not to mention searched. So that's one. But
Speaker 5: the second one I want to ask you guys what
Speaker 5: you think about this idea, which is it also seemed
Speaker 5: to underscore to me why the Democrypocratic Party is failing,
Speaker 5: because the whole report still sounds to me like an
Speaker 5: affirmation and certainly not a rejection of identity politics and
Speaker 5: right if it just sounds like, oh, I mean, they
Speaker 5: they And the problem with identity politics is if you
Speaker 5: base everything identity, then you don't really have a political theory.
Speaker 5: You don't really have positions that make sense from issue
Speaker 5: to issue. And so that the leads me to thinking
Speaker 5: that's why the Democrat Party is still held in lower
Speaker 5: regard now than the Republican Party, even though the Publican
Speaker 5: parties have got all these problems. The polling shows people
Speaker 5: to think little of the Democratic part because it doesn't
Speaker 5: stand for any values. It just stands for appearance, you know,
Speaker 5: racial appearance, gender appearance. But that's not a political theory,
Speaker 5: that's right, that's that's actually just the lowest form of politics,
Speaker 5: just like vote for me because I look like you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a nice way to put it, I think, John,
Speaker 4: Actually it's I think it's much more. I think it's
Speaker 4: I think it's much more insidious than that that they
Speaker 4: First of all, it is all anti Trump, and it
Speaker 4: wouldn't matter. You said it last week, whether it's Steve
Speaker 4: cut it or not, I don't remember, but you.
Speaker 5: Said, of course he got it, he sliced and diced
Speaker 5: that last episode. I couldn't believe it. I was listening
Speaker 5: to it. I was like, what was I on this episode?
Speaker 5: I don't even remember that. I don't remember taping this.
Speaker 4: You said that Trump. I think you said Trump could
Speaker 4: cure cancer, Trump could do just about anything good, and
Speaker 4: the Democrats would oppose. I mean that comes out absolutely
Speaker 4: clearly in the autopsy. That's all we're going to be about.
Speaker 4: We didn't do it enough last time. Whatever we do
Speaker 4: this time, it's going to be anti Trump. And they're
Speaker 4: counting on I think. I think they're absolutely counting on
Speaker 4: the fact that that gas prices are going to remain high,
Speaker 4: still lower, still lower than they were during the Biden administration.
Speaker 4: Let's get that absolutely clear. But you know, the Democrats
Speaker 4: are harping on it. You even have people on the
Speaker 4: right harping on it. Oh, you know, we're we're the
Speaker 4: economy's going to improve just as soon as we surrender
Speaker 4: in the Iranian war. There are two or three articles
Speaker 4: like that this morning that I saw. So so the
Speaker 4: Democrats have nothing, as you put it, they have nothing
Speaker 4: other than what is a woman? I don't know. I'm
Speaker 4: not a biologist. Women need to be accepting of men
Speaker 4: and men's sports and men, by the way, you men
Speaker 4: need to stop refusing to date transgenders.
Speaker 5: By the way, did you I don't know if for
Speaker 5: showing the video this podcast, but Steve's truly and Palermo
Speaker 5: because he just has pretty women walking back and forth
Speaker 5: and back.
Speaker 4: Of this podcast.
Speaker 2: Did you see I did?
Speaker 5: Did you see?
Speaker 4: Did Steve?
Speaker 2: Steve?
Speaker 5: What happens in Italy when you're there? That's only happened
Speaker 5: when you were in Vegas?
Speaker 4: Look just tell her what John just said? Really you here? Okay?
Speaker 5: I mean I know that runs is safe for children,
Speaker 5: but is it safe for Steve?
Speaker 4: Were you all outnumbered when they discussed that or something?
Speaker 2: John ed this episode again?
Speaker 4: Okay? Back wait, so back to because Steve has dinner
Speaker 4: reservations at a swanky restaurant, so we have to keep
Speaker 4: this short. And I promised in my would, which means
Speaker 4: I don't have to stop for ad right, Steve. But
Speaker 4: at the same time I do want to discuss the
Speaker 4: juxtaposition of the Democrats disarray can't even sort of seem
Speaker 4: to the affordability seems to be something that would appeal
Speaker 4: the voters, but they can't even sort of coal uce
Speaker 4: around that. On the other hand, despite what John said,
Speaker 4: is true that the Republicans are in a bit of
Speaker 4: a bit of disarray, and you know, everybody says they're
Speaker 4: likely to lose the House, maybe even the Senate, although
Speaker 4: you keep hearing these little things pop up, maybe not,
Speaker 4: maybe not between the redistricting and so on. Anyway, Trump
Speaker 4: had had a good week the last week maybe two.
Speaker 4: He you know, we saw Kennedy go not John Kennedy,
Speaker 4: thank god. What's the other Kennedy Cassidy. That's right, Bill Cassidy, Yeah,
Speaker 4: the doctor Bill Cassidy. We saw Thomas Massey go down
Speaker 4: because and and primarily because his voters are pro Trump voters,
Speaker 4: and Massey just made it, for whatever reason, his his
Speaker 4: goal in life to oppose Trump every way he could.
Speaker 4: And then of course the Indiana legislature legislators who wouldn't redistrict,
Speaker 4: you know, so Trump has got this iron grip hold
Speaker 4: on the Republican Party drives It drives everyone crazy. You know,
Speaker 4: they can't stand the fact that he's winning. But is
Speaker 4: the Republican Party united under Trump?
Speaker 5: Let me say something, Steve. I'm sure will not will
Speaker 5: not agree with this, but I worry that Trump is
Speaker 5: driving the party too far to the right to do
Speaker 5: well in the general elections. And it's because of an
Speaker 5: example you didn't mention, which was his endorsement of Ken
Speaker 5: Paxton over John Cornyan, which I think is could be
Speaker 5: a political disaster. You know, we've all spent a lot
Speaker 5: of time in Austin this last semester, and it seemed
Speaker 5: to me Cornyan would easily have won the and he
Speaker 5: votes with Trump, I think over ninety five percent of
Speaker 5: the time. And instead Trump endorsed a guy who was
Speaker 5: about to be indicted for insider trading by the Justice
Speaker 5: Department and was impeached by the Texas House and came
Speaker 5: within a few votes of the Senate from being removed
Speaker 5: from office as Attorney General because of his various uh
Speaker 5: what is it? What did he call the biblical shenanigans?
Speaker 5: I don't know what the right thing? What the phrase
Speaker 5: he used? It is divorced papers I mean, this is
Speaker 5: a deeply flawed Kennedy. What is the point of right,
Speaker 5: I mean, I get that it's like a more pro
Speaker 5: mega endorsement, but Paxton is not a good candidate to win.
Speaker 5: The Republican is going to have to spend one hundred
Speaker 5: million dollars to keep that seat in Texas, which you
Speaker 5: could have used instead beat the Nazi in Maine or
Speaker 5: a lot of or win the seat in against the
Speaker 5: young unqualified guy in Georgia. Ausof There's so many seats
Speaker 5: that are in play where that amount of money could
Speaker 5: make a big difference, and now we're going to have
Speaker 5: to spend it defending a seat in time. So I
Speaker 5: get that Trump is trying to control the party more,
Speaker 5: but it's I don't think it was necessary, and it
Speaker 5: might be harming the long term prospects of the party
Speaker 5: for the midterms and for the general elections and the midterms.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: So, first of all, Paxton's problems are not ideological, they're ethical.
Speaker 2: I think that's true, And yeah, I think it's possibly
Speaker 2: might live.
Speaker 1: But I do think that the thing to do here
Speaker 1: is to take a long term view, right. I think
Speaker 1: it's a mistake just to judge the conditions of things,
Speaker 1: by the prospects of this election, which which may well
Speaker 1: be tough for Republicans. But I think something very significance
Speaker 1: happened here in the last couple of weeks. Trump has
Speaker 1: succeeded where Franklin Roosevelt failed. You remember, Roosevelt in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty eight tried to purge the Democratic Party very directly,
Speaker 1: very openly, of all the conservative Democrats opposed a new deal,
Speaker 1: and he got his head added to him. All the
Speaker 1: candidates he opposed with one exception, and he never.
Speaker 2: Did that again.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing to keep in mind is
Speaker 1: something that Michael Barrown pointed out years ago, which was,
Speaker 1: you know, everyone always likes to say, gosh, what comes
Speaker 1: after Trump?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: You know, people who have tried to run like Trump
Speaker 1: have a mixed record at best. And I think that's
Speaker 1: the wrong way of thinking about it, because the same
Speaker 1: thing was said about Franklin Roosevelt was God, you know,
Speaker 1: Harry Truman is no great successor to him, and there's
Speaker 1: no more Roosevelt than a round. But Michael Barron points
Speaker 1: out that Roosevelt did, in the long run, succeed in
Speaker 1: changing the Democratic Party into a fully liberal party. And
Speaker 1: that's why Barne says the high tide of the New
Speaker 1: Deal coalition was in the late nineteen fifties, and he's
Speaker 1: got all the usual Michael Barone type evidence for that.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what you're seeing here by ousting
Speaker 1: all those stors the state senators in Indiana, by defeating Massey, who,
Speaker 1: by the way, I mean, he does seem to, among
Speaker 1: other problems, have that that libertarian tendency to become increasingly
Speaker 1: vocally anti Israel and anti Semitic, and that's one reason
Speaker 1: I'm glad he lost. In any case, I actually think
Speaker 1: that Trump is transforming to Republican Party in ways that
Speaker 1: will outlast him.
Speaker 2: And so I think, oh.
Speaker 1: And then last point, this election may go badly, but
Speaker 1: I think you guys have seen the numbers. When the
Speaker 1: next census is done, you're going to have something like
Speaker 1: ten or twelve House seats, an electoral vote shift from
Speaker 1: blue states to red states. It's going to mean it's
Speaker 1: that much harder for Democrats to win the presidency even
Speaker 1: with these close elections we've been having, and almost impossible
Speaker 1: to win the House of Representatives. So the long term
Speaker 1: prospects for the party are actually really good, and so
Speaker 1: this is just going to be a tough year. And
Speaker 1: I think you take your lumps when.
Speaker 2: You have to take them.
Speaker 4: Can I offer quickly an alternative view back to Paxton
Speaker 4: for a moment. I am not as convinced as you
Speaker 4: guys that Paxton will lose. Remember I said it before
Speaker 4: on this podcast that Cornyn Cornyn had to spend a
Speaker 4: fortune a fortune in order to beat him by what
Speaker 4: a percentage point? I forget it was very, very close
Speaker 4: between Cornyn and Paxston number one. And I'm not as
Speaker 4: convinced as you guys that it's going to be that
Speaker 4: bad of a year. I do think a lot of
Speaker 4: it's going to depend upon whether Trump can get some
Speaker 4: kind of resolution to the Iran war, get the economy
Speaker 4: back on track. We've got some time to go, and
Speaker 4: if he has all of these better in his view
Speaker 4: or probably my view as well, Republican candidates. You know,
Speaker 4: you're the only John out of the famous Johns that
Speaker 4: I actually like. I told you guys, John Thune, John Burrazzo,
Speaker 4: John John Cornyan. Ugh, I hate them all, but anyway,
Speaker 4: but I'm trying not to let my personal feelings obscure
Speaker 4: the analysis. I'm coming Acro. I think I think Paxton
Speaker 4: has a very good chance of winning. If you've got
Speaker 4: a choice between voting for the guy who thinks that
Speaker 4: there are six genders and that God is binary non binary,
Speaker 4: and is a vegetarian in Texas or a vegan in texts.
Speaker 4: Come on, there's no way in Austin. I promise to you.
Speaker 4: Tallerico will win Austin. But there are other parts of Texas.
Speaker 4: That being said, back to what you were saying about
Speaker 4: his ethical problems, which brings me to what my next
Speaker 4: discussion was going to be. We've got some some crazy
Speaker 4: things going on in elections. Let's start with Mayine because
Speaker 4: you mentioned Maine. So this guy, Graham Platner, Nazi excuse me, sorry,
Speaker 4: family show, masturbates and porta potties because the smell it
Speaker 4: excites him.
Speaker 2: I think has missed this news.
Speaker 4: I hope.
Speaker 5: So I'm sorry. I don't mean you want to know
Speaker 5: what you're talking about. I know it's too I don't
Speaker 5: want to hear it. I don't want to know.
Speaker 4: The guy's just a pig, there's no way around it.
Speaker 4: He's just I mean, all of his Instagram postings, you know,
Speaker 4: it's all been erased, but the Internet's forever. He's just
Speaker 4: a vile human being. And there was an article, a
Speaker 4: puff piece about him in Time magazine this morning. I
Speaker 4: have to talk about this because I've owned three labs
Speaker 4: in my life. So she tries to make it sound
Speaker 4: like he's such a tough guy because his black labrador
Speaker 4: tries to take a wrapped breakfast sandwich off the table,
Speaker 4: and supposedly Platner sticks his hand in the dog's mouth
Speaker 4: to take it out, so you can't have that, you know,
Speaker 4: lots of profanity. You can't have that. It's it's not
Speaker 4: great for you. And then supposedly Platner keeps talking all
Speaker 4: the time while his hand is bleeding. There is no
Speaker 4: way on earth that there is any truth to that story.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, no either, that the guy is such a
Speaker 4: horrible person that he's turned his black labs into something
Speaker 4: like Biden's German shepherds, because I could stick my hand
Speaker 4: in the mouth of my German shepherd if he had
Speaker 4: something in his mouth he shouldn't have, and I would
Speaker 4: not even get so much as a scratch. And you
Speaker 4: a lab no way anyway, sir. Sorry, that just made
Speaker 4: me so angry when I read it. It got me
Speaker 4: off on the wrong foot to start this morning. Back
Speaker 4: to Platner, though he's a terrible candidate, but he pushed
Speaker 4: Janet Mills, who is, in fact, you know, the sort
Speaker 4: of quintessential establishment democrat, out of the race. I know,
Speaker 4: Vermont's a crazy place and they're all whatever, same difference,
Speaker 4: same difference, But that's what I meant. So there's that.
Speaker 4: So the ethical problems of Ken Paxton compared to the
Speaker 4: genuine personality problems and character problems of Platiner don't even
Speaker 4: come close if you ask me number one. Then we
Speaker 4: move over to the other disruptor in uh in American
Speaker 4: politics right now, and that's Spencer Spencer Pratt. So but
Speaker 4: my point is back to tie that back to Ken Paxton,
Speaker 4: is that it does, in fact seem that somebody who
Speaker 4: sort of out Trump's Trump being a complete disruptor, complete
Speaker 4: refusal to play politics by the usual rules, that those
Speaker 4: people are actually gaining some sort of small part of
Speaker 4: winning elections. I don't know exactly how to say it.
Speaker 2: What do you guys think, Well, Alens is going to
Speaker 2: win that race in Maine.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, it's just I'm enjoining a hypocrisy
Speaker 1: of Democrats in the media saying the okay sign is
Speaker 1: a Nazi symbol and you know what I.
Speaker 2: Must is a Nazi because he did. You know, he
Speaker 2: suck us on our strength And now Platner's.
Speaker 1: Got the actual tattoo and Okay, enough of that nonsense.
Speaker 2: The Spencer pract thing is fun. My favorite part of
Speaker 2: this is.
Speaker 1: The fact that a lot of these viral ads you've
Speaker 1: been seeing are not being produced by his campaign, being
Speaker 1: produced independently. This is going to drive the political regulators
Speaker 1: out of their freaking mind right because they're gonna, wait,
Speaker 1: We've got to regulate this. They gotta you know, what
Speaker 1: are people spending? And uh and and I don't know
Speaker 1: how they're gonna deal with all that. I'm gonna ask
Speaker 1: my election lawyer.
Speaker 4: I was gonna say, why don't you get Allison on
Speaker 4: to tell us how you might actually stop those those
Speaker 4: AI gurus that are making those amazing films, those AI films,
Speaker 4: how they can be regulated if and they don't cost
Speaker 4: very much money. You've seen, you guys have seen a
Speaker 4: couple of AI generated historical films I've made for my students,
Speaker 4: and they cost me nothing. You know, if you've got
Speaker 4: the if you've got the software. So that's that, in
Speaker 4: and of its elf, is going to have a huge
Speaker 4: impact because people I was thinking about the whole what's
Speaker 4: his name? The guy who just had his last show
Speaker 4: of Staying There And I've never seen that show. Why
Speaker 4: I don't have regular television, I haven't in twenty years,
Speaker 4: and I do have the Internet, and I do see
Speaker 4: things on the Internet, and I'm old. Imagine what it's
Speaker 4: like for anybody younger than me. Uh there, you know,
Speaker 4: So they're gonna see Prince Spencer Pratt and they're not
Speaker 4: going to see five million of the same commercials that
Speaker 4: come on every two minutes on a on a television
Speaker 4: show anymore. So it's not going to work. And it's
Speaker 4: much cheaper.
Speaker 1: Okay, sorry, Well see I thought that two or three
Speaker 1: weeks ago. I thought Pratt was unlikely to win, and
Speaker 1: I've changed my mind.
Speaker 2: I think he is going to win.
Speaker 1: Partly it is because Mayor Bass is so dreadful and
Speaker 1: the progressive alternative turns out to be pretty lame as well.
Speaker 1: But also this has the vibe in my mind of
Speaker 1: the night eighteen ninety eight Minnesota governor's race when Jesse
Speaker 1: Ventura ran as.
Speaker 2: An independent and everyone thought it was a joke.
Speaker 1: And you had the two major party candidates sniping at
Speaker 1: each other, and the voters of Minnesota just said the
Speaker 1: heck with these guys.
Speaker 2: I'm tired of them, or for.
Speaker 1: Jesse Ventura, and he and Jesse Ventura didn't have social media.
Speaker 1: That was before it all started, right, Well, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: and he was allowsy governor, but still this has that
Speaker 1: vibe to me, I think, and you know, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of I don't know Rick Caruso, but there was always
Speaker 1: talk that he was either going to run for governor
Speaker 1: or run for Merrigan, and they did neither one, and
Speaker 1: he kind of froze the field for both both races,
Speaker 1: I think, and I think that was unfortunate, but you know,
Speaker 1: opportunity for Pratt and I.
Speaker 2: Think he's going to win.
Speaker 5: I don't know if Pratt's going to win, but it
Speaker 5: made me think about the state of California politics, because
Speaker 5: it's incredible that Bass is still in first.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: Part of the city burnt down, Yeah, in part due
Speaker 5: to the lack of spending on uh the d right.
Speaker 5: They're spending a lot more attension on DEI programs in
Speaker 5: the LA fire Department than on fire prevention. We know
Speaker 5: all the stories with the lack of water and the
Speaker 5: reservoirs and the mayor being off at some wedding in Africa,
Speaker 5: and on and on, and yet she's still in first.
Speaker 5: That's an incredible thing and so to me, But what maybe,
Speaker 5: And so I was wondering, what does it take for
Speaker 5: a Republican candidate to break through? And maybe the secret
Speaker 5: is to just lampoon them, right, lampoon the establishment, lampoon Democrats,
Speaker 5: because when we do, when we make when we run
Speaker 5: campaigns with serious candidates on serious platforms, it doesn't make
Speaker 5: a dent. Right then we're probably going to one state
Speaker 5: wide office in so long. Maybe the way to reach
Speaker 5: younger voters is to ridicule the Democratic establishment and to
Speaker 5: mock how they've destroyed the state. And maybe that's maybe
Speaker 5: that's what practice shows, is that you can't win in
Speaker 5: California in this one party state with What it reminds
Speaker 5: me about is like the way the the dissidents in
Speaker 5: Eastern Europe and communism right would had to conduct themselves
Speaker 5: because of the oppressiveness of the political system. But I'm
Speaker 5: not sure Pratt's going to win. But even if he
Speaker 5: comes in a good second, that's going to make a difference,
Speaker 5: I think in turning the state around, if it's possible
Speaker 5: to turn it around.
Speaker 2: Well, no, I don't think. I don't think Bass is
Speaker 2: really in the lead.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know there's some polls showing that, but
Speaker 1: mayor's races, especially in California, are very hard to pull,
Speaker 1: and this race in particular because one problem with La
Speaker 1: but also Philadelphia, your hometown, is that recent mayors races
Speaker 1: have had really low turnout. I think Philadelphia the last
Speaker 1: couple of races of an under twenty percent turnout of
Speaker 1: eligible voters, and I think this is going to see
Speaker 1: much higher turnout. I think the posters are now having
Speaker 1: a hard time figuring out what's the electric going to be?
Speaker 2: And I think the electric is going to be bigger.
Speaker 2: And oh, there's your neighbor.
Speaker 5: Showed up another Lucretia Fann interruption.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 5: Wait, you know he said he loved he loves the show.
Speaker 4: That's nice. Uh So, I yeah, I don't know if
Speaker 4: he's gonna win either. What Steve says makes a lot
Speaker 4: of sense. But I read an article the other day, John,
Speaker 4: I wish I could remember it was a good article.
Speaker 4: I wish I remember who wrote it said very much
Speaker 4: the same thing that that, you know, voters in California
Speaker 4: know how corrupt and incompetent and ideologically driven the Democratic
Speaker 4: Party is, from the governor on down. They know that
Speaker 4: they're that. You know, think about when Gavin Newsoen won
Speaker 4: re election after after the whole uh scandal with the
Speaker 4: party at the famous restaurant, and you know when everybody else, yes,
Speaker 4: the French laundry, everybody else was. I was in California
Speaker 4: a couple of times then to visit my daughter, and
Speaker 4: it was so locked down and ridiculous. It was, I mean,
Speaker 4: it was unbelievable the things that he was imposing on people,
Speaker 4: and on and on and on. And he's still won.
Speaker 4: Why because voters in California go and, oh, yeah, I
Speaker 4: know this guy is incompetent. I know this guy's an
Speaker 4: ideological hack. I know that it's gonna just get worse.
Speaker 4: I know he's gonna richest friends, but they vote for
Speaker 4: him anyway because there's no option. And what you said, John,
Speaker 4: is that the brilliance of Spencer Pratt is that he's
Speaker 4: not just going with the same old, tired this is
Speaker 4: what's wrong with Karen Bass. This is what's wrong with
Speaker 4: He's he's mocking them. He's mocking them in a way
Speaker 4: that most of it's true, first of all, but it's
Speaker 4: all hilarious and funny, and you know, like you say,
Speaker 4: they look like East East European communists who are just
Speaker 4: you know, the whole thing with Gavin Newsome and you know,
Speaker 4: eating cake and frosting all over his cake at face
Speaker 4: and it was brilliant. And again, millions and millions and
Speaker 4: millions of you it's not we don't know how many
Speaker 4: of those are by Los Angeleans, but millions and millions
Speaker 4: of views of those AI generated videos. Some of them
Speaker 4: have to be making their way back to people who
Speaker 4: live in la I would think who might go out
Speaker 4: and vote and hadn't in the past for mayor, you know, Steve,
Speaker 4: maybe you're right about that. I don't, you know, it's
Speaker 4: hard to say so anyway, politics are crazy. If if
Speaker 4: it turns out that Spencer Pratt's new way of doing
Speaker 4: politics becomes the norm, all of Allison's former colleagues are
Speaker 4: going to be out of business because it won't take
Speaker 4: that much money, and all those political consultants that get
Speaker 4: paid so much money to help Kamala ding Dong lose,
Speaker 4: they'll be out of business too, right.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I mean I think there's just a new
Speaker 1: generation of what has worked in the past. So I
Speaker 1: think the three I mentioned Jesse e Van Turna. But
Speaker 1: in terms of having a funny attack on people, three
Speaker 1: great models of this I think were Believe.
Speaker 2: It or not.
Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell in nineteen eighty four had a TV ad
Speaker 1: series A Blank of the State with and it was
Speaker 1: a bloodhound trying to find the Democratic incumbent d Huddleston
Speaker 1: Where is he?
Speaker 2: Right? They couldn't find him because he was kind of
Speaker 2: old and doddering.
Speaker 1: The other one was actually Paul Wellstone in Minnesota, a
Speaker 1: college professor, very very liberal, right, and I forget.
Speaker 2: His ad campaign, but it was him started running around.
Speaker 1: People laughed at it and it gave him a big
Speaker 1: name ID and the vibe caught on, right.
Speaker 2: And it's a third example, but now I'm blanking on it.
Speaker 4: But yeah, but it's more than just funny. It's funny's good.
Speaker 1: And mocking his lands, right it Yeah, it made but
Speaker 1: it's also that A third one. It was Malcolm Wallap
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy four whenever it was and in Wyoming, right,
Speaker 1: which remember the Mountain West states still elected Democrats.
Speaker 2: Often in those years into the seventies. And his was
Speaker 2: just a shot of the.
Speaker 1: Open plane in Wyoming and eastern Wyoming, and the voice
Speaker 1: over comes on and says new Osha regulations say all
Speaker 1: workers have to have a toilet within you know, twenty
Speaker 1: feet of their workplace or something like that.
Speaker 2: The next thing you see.
Speaker 1: Is a cowboy going across the screen with a toilet
Speaker 1: stapp of the side of his dog, of his horse.
Speaker 2: And that brought roll about him nowhere any one.
Speaker 1: And of course he was very solid guy, so that
Speaker 1: was another legendary one.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Again, I think humor is always a good thing, but
Speaker 4: this is a little bit different, and it's it's, you know,
Speaker 4: it's sort of in your face. That the kind of
Speaker 4: thing that reaches the younger generation who don't necessarily pay
Speaker 4: attention to the things you're talking about in traditional ways.
Speaker 4: That's my thought. Anyway, John has some breaking news for us,
Speaker 4: and we apologize we don't know very much about it,
Speaker 4: but he's never far away from his Wall Street Journal feed.
Speaker 4: So breaking news, John tell us what it is.
Speaker 5: Harvey Mansfield's retiring. Oh no, wrong breaking.
Speaker 2: News, wrong breaking news. That was a while ago.
Speaker 5: I know, I'm just kidding, because we were originally going
Speaker 5: to talk about Harvey Mansfield and his book and his
Speaker 5: article he posted a new Criterion. But the Wall Street
Speaker 5: Journal during our podcast came across with an alert that
Speaker 5: Tulsi Gabbard is going to be resigning, and it says
Speaker 5: it's for personal reasons. It says her husband has cancer.
Speaker 5: But I do think it also reflects a major shift
Speaker 5: in the administration away from the isolationist wing. That not
Speaker 5: that it came in with, but that some of the
Speaker 5: personnel that Trump came with who held this view slowly departing,
Speaker 5: and Tulsi might have been the most highly placed person
Speaker 5: who held that view. She clearly was not, I think,
Speaker 5: not in sync with the President about his foreign policy.
Speaker 5: I think famously, she was on vacation posting pictures of
Speaker 5: herself at the beach I think in Hawaii, while the
Speaker 5: Venezuela right snatch and grab operation was a curing which
Speaker 5: you would think heavily involved intelligence, and we've barely seen
Speaker 5: a peep of her during the Iran War, again, another
Speaker 5: area where intelligence would be extremely important, and instead we
Speaker 5: see I think more of John Ratcliffe's CIA director rather
Speaker 5: than his boss had their Director of National Intelligence, Tulcy Gabbert.
Speaker 5: So maybe this means that again I don't mean to provoke,
Speaker 5: but I do mean to I mean, but I do
Speaker 5: mean to throw this out there that Donald Trump is
Speaker 5: the greatest new conservative president of the twenty first century.
Speaker 5: That's gone after the great enemy of new Conservativism, which
Speaker 5: was Iran. That's something even Bush and Cheney were unwilling
Speaker 5: to do. And look who's gone and done it, Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: I actually thought you disagree with him or gone to
Speaker 5: the wayside.
Speaker 4: I actually thought what you were going to say is
Speaker 4: that from the very beginning you have been a huge
Speaker 4: fan of John Ratcliffe and not a very big fan
Speaker 4: of Tulsa Gabbert. So who do you think will take
Speaker 4: over as D And I.
Speaker 5: Well, I actually wish that they would correct this over
Speaker 5: bureaucritization of intelligence and just combined the jobs again in
Speaker 5: the CIA director. The short Bercrack history was the CIA
Speaker 5: director was considered the head of the whole intelligence community.
Speaker 5: After nine to eleven, I thought this was one of
Speaker 5: the reforms that this actually didn't come back because of
Speaker 5: nine to eleven. This came about because of the failure
Speaker 5: defined WND in Iraq. And actually my old boss, Larry
Speaker 5: Silberman was chaired this thing called the Soberman rob Commission,
Speaker 5: and they proposed having someone do this function of coordinating
Speaker 5: all the intelligence agencies because the CIA director was basically
Speaker 5: they thought loyal to the CIA, and the CIA's intelligence
Speaker 5: failures had led to the failure in Iraq. I have
Speaker 5: to say I disagree with my old mentor about this,
Speaker 5: especially now that he's died. I can disagree, yeah, but
Speaker 5: at the time I disagreed, like this is just a
Speaker 5: classic example where the there's a failure and the answer
Speaker 5: they establish it creates is to create another layer of
Speaker 5: government and a new agency. I thought that was a
Speaker 5: mistake and rather so maybe Trump could well, Now, what
Speaker 5: Trump's going to want to do is to give the
Speaker 5: job to Mark Rubio because he does all the jobs.
Speaker 5: But I think the better thing to do would be
Speaker 5: to recombine it with the SAI director and make John
Speaker 5: Ratcliffe the National Intelligence Director two. I think that would
Speaker 5: start to cure this over And let me also say
Speaker 5: one last thing about this is maybe this has something
Speaker 5: to do with the abuse of intelligence against President Trump
Speaker 5: and the Russia hoax. Because you have so many layers
Speaker 5: of bureaucracy and the intelligence communee, so many players, this
Speaker 5: just creates another one. It's possible, with all that chaos
Speaker 5: for people to get away with abusing the powers of
Speaker 5: intelligence and using it for political purposes, not controlling it better.
Speaker 4: So I do have a question about that, and I'm
Speaker 4: not this is a devil's advocate question more than anything.
Speaker 4: Part of the reason for creating the DNI to be
Speaker 4: overall eighteen civilian and military agencies, that's the issue and
Speaker 4: why they believed they needed to create yet a one
Speaker 4: hire who would not be either civilian or military, who
Speaker 4: could actually have the respect whatever it would be the
Speaker 4: august nature to be able to force military intelligence agencies
Speaker 4: to work with the civilian agencies. And then one last
Speaker 4: thing about that, again, I'm sort of just throwing this
Speaker 4: out there. It's not necessarily what I believe or don't
Speaker 4: believe that the CIA is technically by law forbidden from
Speaker 4: engaging in any kind of domestic spying domestic activities, and
Speaker 4: so to put all of those other agencies, including you know,
Speaker 4: launch enforcement, domestic law enforcement agencies like the FBI and
Speaker 4: so forth under the CIA does not create a problem
Speaker 4: in your opinion.
Speaker 5: I don't know Steve has thoughts on this, but this
Speaker 5: is a deep problem. I hate to bring this a
Speaker 5: question of administrative law about whether to have single agencies
Speaker 5: in charge of the whole subject or to have multiple
Speaker 5: small agencies. I like the latter because it reminds me
Speaker 5: of competition in the market. So I like having eighteen
Speaker 5: intelligence agencies, none better than the other, all competing with
Speaker 5: their own sources. And I'm not sure it was a
Speaker 5: good idea to create the Defense Department and fold in,
Speaker 5: you know, the army and the neighbor Right, that's the
Speaker 5: original if you go back historically, there's a lot of
Speaker 5: work on this. Now. That was the original consolidation was
Speaker 5: creating the Department of Defense and merging the Department of
Speaker 5: Wars right in the Nationalnational Security Act.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: And then it went even far. They were the creation
Speaker 5: of the Joint Chiefs, Lucretia's favorite institution right, which again
Speaker 5: also tried to right force centralization on the military services
Speaker 5: rather than letting them compete with each other. To persuade
Speaker 5: the president about the right policy. I've always favored the
Speaker 5: idea of having more competition, less powerful, but more more
Speaker 5: and then you know, think about that's actually what happens
Speaker 5: with law enforcement, which I think runs pretty well. We
Speaker 5: have atf and we have the FBI, and we have
Speaker 5: the Secret Service. I'd rather have them all fighting each
Speaker 5: other because from that you get liberty, I think, rather
Speaker 5: than one giant central law enforcement power. That kind of
Speaker 5: worries me. And I think it's true of intelligence too well.
Speaker 4: Don't you also get the silo effect and all those
Speaker 4: other things where they don't share information. That was the
Speaker 4: whole point of the DNI, right that we would now share.
Speaker 4: We would not have these agencies sharing information, you wouldn't
Speaker 4: have another nine to eleven.
Speaker 5: You uttered to share the information amongst the competitors rather
Speaker 5: than to force it from the top down. So the
Speaker 5: problem really was after nine to eleven was not the
Speaker 5: failure to collect the intelligence. It was a failure of analysis, right,
Speaker 5: And that's always a problem with these surprises, is that
Speaker 5: you actually turn out you find that you did have
Speaker 5: the intelligence in the system, but you didn't have enough
Speaker 5: people thought outside the box really to pick up the patterns.
Speaker 5: That's also a classic neo con analysis about the pearl
Speaker 5: Harbor attack.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: This was the Missus Wolfstutter's famous book, not mister Wolster,
Speaker 5: but Missus Wollstetter's famous book about why Pearl Harbor succeeded
Speaker 5: was that you didn't have enough, you know, outside the
Speaker 5: back animal analysts looking at the intelligence we already had
Speaker 5: about what the Japanese were up to. So I'm not
Speaker 5: sure imposing it from the top down is the way
Speaker 5: to defeat this problem of silos. You know, back of
Speaker 5: nine to eleven, we immediately discovered we had intelligence about
Speaker 5: four of the hot jackers being in the country, but
Speaker 5: the CIA and the FBI were not sharing intelligence at
Speaker 5: the ground level. I think if you'd had a D
Speaker 5: and I think you weren't. Yeah, that's so if you
Speaker 5: D and I, I don't know that would have made
Speaker 5: a difference back then. I don't know if having a
Speaker 5: D and I at the time of the Iraq invasion
Speaker 5: would have caused us to make the right you know,
Speaker 5: to make the right decisions about the intelligence about W
Speaker 5: and D. Then either it might have just slowed every
Speaker 5: it made anything, might have made things worse. It seems
Speaker 5: to me since then I.
Speaker 1: Always thought that, uh, the CIA has got lots of
Speaker 1: problems and lots of rot in it. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: I like the competition too, and I I remain well
Speaker 1: of the view that uh, Trump's appointment of Gavard was
Speaker 1: actually a shrewd move because it it would recreate some
Speaker 1: competition and disagreement on faction the administration in the same
Speaker 1: way the Reagan deliberately did that, right, you know, he
Speaker 1: had Bill Casey and who Bobby.
Speaker 2: Ray Inman but wasn't Inman running the NSA.
Speaker 1: Inman and Casey hated each other, right, and Reagan always
Speaker 1: liked those biberlies, you know, Chelton of Weinberg, are always
Speaker 1: at each other's throats. And Rage said, no, I don't
Speaker 1: want them to agree, I want them to disagree. And
Speaker 1: so I thought that Trump, you know, it says Trump
Speaker 1: values loyalty above all else, and that's probably true in
Speaker 1: the ordinary sense, but I thought that was true to
Speaker 1: having uh, you know, Rubio, who's I you know, obviously
Speaker 1: got some Neocon sympathies at least in his past. Uh
Speaker 1: And Ratcliffe, I don't, I don't have a I don't
Speaker 1: really have a view of that guy. But Dulster's Gabbard's
Speaker 1: a known person. I think the thing to watch is
Speaker 1: is some of the senior staff under her now going
Speaker 1: to be shown the door or they be leaving with her?
Speaker 1: Because I do know that some of the most fervent
Speaker 1: isolationists are working for her in the White House approved
Speaker 1: their appointments right here. There's some of the Pentagon also,
Speaker 1: but it seems less so to meet. I think people
Speaker 1: attack Elbridge Colby, and I don't think that that attack
Speaker 1: is cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. I know people who say that, I
Speaker 2: just want to.
Speaker 1: True, but but it is true if some of the
Speaker 1: people gathered high high and I know.
Speaker 5: Remember there's that guy Krabs who resigned at the start
Speaker 5: of the Iranian War saying that, I mean basically repeating
Speaker 5: the most far left attacks on Trump about the Iranian War.
Speaker 5: That was her deputy.
Speaker 4: So that while you're on that point, Steve, that does
Speaker 4: Trump then need to be concerned about the fact that
Speaker 4: if if Gabbard leaves and all of those people leave
Speaker 4: with him, that he will further alienate that part of
Speaker 4: his base that is somewhat isolationist. I mean, is that
Speaker 4: a danger if he doesn't put somebody in who's who
Speaker 4: continues to speak the Joe Kent line. Shall we say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I don't. I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I mean, the polls show that Trump's got overwhelming support
Speaker 1: from Republicans on the Iran war. I don't think this
Speaker 1: has hurting very much of his base at all. I
Speaker 1: think I think what hurts him is the economic fallout
Speaker 1: from it. That I think we'll have to see how
Speaker 1: it all goes. But no, so I don't think it
Speaker 1: needs to find another person like that to be as
Speaker 1: a constituency at all.
Speaker 4: So if let me one last question on this, and
Speaker 4: then we've got to get start getting out of here.
Speaker 4: You said that you don't necessarily trust the CIA. John
Speaker 4: hinted at that as well. Why would you then want
Speaker 4: to put the CIA director John as the over the
Speaker 4: sort of overarching person over these military excuse me, these
Speaker 4: intelligence agencies, over the intelligence community as we intelligence community
Speaker 4: will speak of it.
Speaker 5: Oh, you you know, you fancy people like Lucretian You
Speaker 5: actually just call the IC. That's when you know you're
Speaker 5: really in the tent, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, the.
Speaker 5: Listeners will want to discuss heavily in the comments how
Speaker 5: long Lucretia has been in the CIA, and why would
Speaker 5: you point an agent who is so high profile and
Speaker 5: so obviously a CIA agent. But that's a double trick,
Speaker 5: isn't it. Actually I have to say one thing about
Speaker 5: CIA agents i've met, you know, people in the Directorate
Speaker 5: of Operations, you know, the actual field people, is that
Speaker 5: they are supposed to be uh, you know, just so
Speaker 5: bland and boring. You wouldn't be able to remember them
Speaker 5: and describe them after right, And it's been true. The
Speaker 5: ones I've met are sort of bland and boring and
Speaker 5: would just sort of fit so, Lucretie, you really couldn't
Speaker 5: be a CIA agent unless you're trying to infiltrate the
Speaker 5: very highest levels of the Straussian order, where your very
Speaker 5: distinctiveness and brightness would make you one of the best
Speaker 5: Trousian ideas of a leader. I still have to say
Speaker 5: a lot of minute, John, you knew I was going
Speaker 5: to throw in an attack on Straussian's by the end
Speaker 5: of the show. Come on.
Speaker 1: What I want to pick up on, John is when
Speaker 1: when you say the field agents are supposed to be
Speaker 1: boring and you know, playing Vanilla.
Speaker 2: Didn't you ever be Little Mark correct? Yeah with that description?
Speaker 4: Right, and so so that was true up until the
Speaker 4: Biden administration. And one of the things that the Biden
Speaker 4: administration did this is this is interesting? Is they just
Speaker 4: the and this was under the d n I what's
Speaker 4: her name, Avril Haynes. They very much wanted diversity, uh
Speaker 4: in the in the intelligence community. But you're I've talked
Speaker 4: about this before a long time ago. The c I
Speaker 4: A ran a series of ads with this woman, Stephanie
Speaker 4: something or other. Uh I met, Yeah, and she was uh,
Speaker 4: Hispanic immigrant, uh, mentally unstable self admittedly mentally unstable, took
Speaker 4: a single mom, took medications for anxiety and other kinds
Speaker 4: of and she was in fact the perfect c I
Speaker 4: A CIA agent for the Biden administration.
Speaker 5: Pardon really, this was an actual CIA recruiting Yeah, the
Speaker 5: CIA shouldn't be running pr ads campaigns and recruiting publicly
Speaker 5: in the first place. But this was their model age
Speaker 5: a model.
Speaker 4: And she she would go out and do she would
Speaker 4: go to these different things at universities and do recruiting
Speaker 4: events and prove that because she was, you know, not smart,
Speaker 4: not all these other things, but she was in fact,
Speaker 4: mentally what did they call it, divergent, mentally divergent, You're divergent,
Speaker 4: that's it. That she was the perfect CIA agent sorry,
Speaker 4: go ahead, Steve.
Speaker 5: I used to use for crazy, right.
Speaker 2: I want to bait John again.
Speaker 1: I think the CIA it's been all downhill since they
Speaker 1: cash here James Jesus Angleton back in the seventies, I
Speaker 1: knew that would horrify you.
Speaker 2: John.
Speaker 5: Oh, come on, I knew, I knew.
Speaker 2: I get that reaction.
Speaker 5: Very good. That's had some great successes, but we have
Speaker 5: to have a CIA. Really, Okay, you're not like that
Speaker 5: guy who said gentlemen don't open each other's mail, are you, Stimpson?
Speaker 5: Let me get back to unfortunately.
Speaker 1: Let me get back to the opening question, which is,
Speaker 1: why would you trust uh Ratcliffe.
Speaker 2: Only if he's trustworthy?
Speaker 1: I mean again, my model here was Bill Casey under Reagan,
Speaker 1: and Reagan.
Speaker 2: Loved him, trusted him. But what about Casey? Now he
Speaker 2: knew what was wrong with the CIA.
Speaker 1: And there's a very famous story I think Michael Ledeen
Speaker 1: told me because by the way, you know Casey, he
Speaker 1: moved the whole separate office down into Rossland to be
Speaker 1: closer to the White House, but also out of Langley
Speaker 1: so he could have you know, he brought trusted people there,
Speaker 1: a whole separate CIA within a CIA, and I think
Speaker 1: Michael Ledeen was in talking to him one day and
Speaker 1: had some idea that somebody had for one of the
Speaker 1: other foreign intelligence services, and Casey.
Speaker 2: Said, that's a great idea.
Speaker 6: Don't let the CIA hear about it. So if Blacklip
Speaker 6: is that kind of guy, it doesn't actually matter how
Speaker 6: the organizational chart works. If Trump has confidence in him,
Speaker 6: that's what you want.
Speaker 5: He's a good guy. I think you, Yeah, you want
Speaker 5: someone who doesn't. I think that the way I think
Speaker 5: of it as a difference between Powell and Rumsfeld. Powell
Speaker 5: thought his job was to represent the bureaucracy, and if
Speaker 5: you had someone like that as head directors, say, that
Speaker 5: would be a disaster. Ramsfeld treated the bureaucracy as an adversary.
Speaker 5: It's something to be beaten in the forum, right, which
Speaker 5: then with someone if that's Ratcliffe, which I get the
Speaker 5: sense of that's more his character, then that's the person
Speaker 5: you do want in charge of the.
Speaker 4: Quiet and behind the scenes. Yes, all of those I
Speaker 4: agree with you about that, but that that does worry
Speaker 4: me in the future. Okay, Steve's you know what can
Speaker 4: I say? Steve is good has I don't want to
Speaker 4: make him late for a swanky thing, but I do have.
Speaker 4: I'm not going to call it a new feature. But
Speaker 4: before I move directly into the Babylon Bees, I'm going
Speaker 4: to just mention something. First of all, Steve managed his
Speaker 4: three historical analogies, so we're okay there. He has not
Speaker 4: mentioned Sidney Sweeney and I won't. Oh, I just did.
Speaker 4: But we also are supposed to be committed to some
Speaker 4: discussion of the Declaration of Independence, which we were going
Speaker 4: to do, but because we had to have a slightly
Speaker 4: shorter format today, we didn't get to because our discussion
Speaker 4: of Harvey Mansfield's peace on the Declaration was We're going
Speaker 4: to do that. But I got a short one on
Speaker 4: MSNBC the other day. Katie Tour asked, is that how
Speaker 4: you say your name? Kat I have never seen it,
Speaker 4: He's asked with sincerity. She says, what about this passage
Speaker 4: from Mike Johnson declaring that our rights do not derive
Speaker 4: from government, they come from our creator? Is this putting him?
Speaker 4: Is this him putting God above the Declaration of Independence?
Speaker 1: It's MS now whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever, Okay, Sorry, bab
Speaker 1: I hope you guys are ready.
Speaker 4: Babylon Be's I'm gonna follow on Abigail Adams starting to
Speaker 4: believe husband made up this whole Continental Congress thing as
Speaker 4: an excuse just to hang out with the boys.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I thought that was Nathan. Nathan Nation looks forward to
Speaker 4: not watching Stephen Colbert one last time. That's me. I've
Speaker 4: never once seen that show. But goodbye. Don't let the
Speaker 4: door hit your and way out. Hunter Biden's reputation in ruins.
Speaker 4: After talking to Candice Owens, that's funny. Come on, okay
Speaker 4: for your California guys couple, Zillow adds new feature for
Speaker 4: California homes showing whether they are currently on fire.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's I.
Speaker 4: Know, it's not funny. White smoke rises from Los Angeles,
Speaker 4: signaling Karen bass is still mayor. You had to put
Speaker 4: those two together, and then finally it's a picture of
Speaker 4: Karen Boughs and the Spencer. Pratt said. New polls show
Speaker 4: dead heat between make Everything Worse candidate and Fix Everything candidate. Yeah,
Speaker 4: Massy defeats a. Massy blames defeat on Jews of rural Kentucky.
Speaker 4: I finally didn't talk about it, but you'll get you'll
Speaker 4: get the reference. UK authorities issue stern warning to British
Speaker 4: people to stop being stabbed by Muslims.
Speaker 1: But by the way, there actually is a thriving Jewish
Speaker 1: community in Louisville, Kentucky, so that you know.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure the Bee knows that, right. It's not
Speaker 2: funny where you find but.
Speaker 4: It probably is not a majority.
Speaker 2: Well it's not in his district, so which is somewhere else?
Speaker 4: But yeah, okay, I'm finished.
Speaker 5: John, Okay, always drink your whiskey, knee, buy more books,
Speaker 5: and Steve are sign off tonight.
Speaker 1: We're going to bed the previous sign off, which is
Speaker 1: I will see you both next week in Italy and
Speaker 1: listeners will see us then too.
Speaker 2: Ricochet join the conversation.