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Speaker 1: No, I just wants to hang out with me all

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day out of my fucking shot. I know this that

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nobody in history has solved eight wars in a period

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of nine months.

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Speaker 2: It's the Ricochet Podcast with Steve Hayward and Charles C. W.

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Cook today with special guest Noah Rothman of National Review

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on the Middle East Peace Agreement. So let's have ourselves

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a podcast. Well to those voters, Okay, so you I

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don't want to keep doing this, I'm gonna call it.

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Speaker 3: Thank you.

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Speaker 4: You're not gonna do the interview with them?

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Speaker 1: Nope, not like this.

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Speaker 2: I'm not not with seven follow ups to every single

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question you.

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Speaker 3: Ask every other candidate has I don't care.

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Speaker 1: I don't care, and we're just going to circle a

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RYD and I ever had to do this before.

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Speaker 2: Ever. Welcome everybody to the Ricochet Podcast, number seven hundred

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and sixty one. It's Steve Hayward sitting in the host

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chair today for the vacationing James Lilacs, joined as usual

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by Charles C. Will you Cook, who I'm assuming is

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maybe in a good mood this week, because Charlie, your

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jaguars won a game in rather spectacular fashion. I must say.

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Speaker 1: And against the Chiefs. So a few stats for you.

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The Jaguars hadn't beaten the Chiefs since two thousand and nine. Wow,

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And they did so on Monday Night Football in front

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of the sixth largest audience that Monday Night Football had

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gone it in twenty years.

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Speaker 2: Wow.

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Speaker 1: What a way to do it.

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Speaker 2: Well, what a way for listeners who didn't see it

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or didn't read about it. Did you stayed on the end, Charlie,

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You didn't bail.

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Speaker 1: Also, I stayed at the I was there. I've rarely

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been in that stadium when it was that loud and jubilant,

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even when it looked in the last minute and a

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half as if we were going to lose. The only

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comparison point that I can find is with the comeback

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against the Chargers in the playoffs three years ago, when

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the Jags were down twenty seven points and we eventually

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won thirty one to thirty. That was a raucous evening.

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This was almost more so. And then with that bizarre

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what are they calling it slip six trip six that

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Trevor Lawrence managed at the end, the full range of

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emotions was felt in the space of about seven seconds.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, do you want to describe that for

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listeners who didn't see it, or do you want me to,

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I mean, you were there, so I was there.

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Speaker 1: I think the best way of describing it is that

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Lawrence fell over twice, or rather was tripped by his

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own offensive line and looked like horses or deer. Look

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when they're first born, they come flying out and they

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have no idea how to stand up or walk, and

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then they suddenly know. And Lawrence got up after falling twice,

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realized that there was a lane. The offensive linement Ezra

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Cleveland just flattered and everyone in his way, and he

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somehow made it into the end zone. For the way,

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it was just you couldn't write it. It was astonishing.

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On the Monday night football broadcast with Eli Manning and

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Peyton Manning the Manning cast, Eli Manning asked, I think

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earnestly at first, was that planned? You couldn't plan this.

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There's no way you could plan this?

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Speaker 2: Right, Well, there is that. You can see the highlight

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clip of Eli mann no sorry, Peyton Manning doing a

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quarterback bootleg because he's not the fastest guy. Football fans

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may know this clip, and he did this fake the

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hand off and did a bootleg around the left and

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nobody saw him, and so even as slow as he is,

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he managed to pull it off. Or if you're really

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an old timer, and this goes back to I think

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nineteen seventy one, as when Joe Capp was the quarterback

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of the Minnesota Vikings and was a really slow guy

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but managed to ramble in. He didn't fall down like

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Trevor Lawrence did, but he managed to rumble in from

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five yards out and knock the Rams out of the playoffs.

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And for old La Rams fans like me, that was

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a low moment that sticks in our break anyway. That

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was fun to watch, and I thought of you as

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I sure hope Charlie's stuck it out to the end

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for this extraordinary finish. Well, right, We've got a lot

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of serious things to talk about today and not enough

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time to get to all of them. But here we are,

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government shut down. I guess we're up to day eleven,

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and it doesn't look like there's been much movement. I

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don't know if that's a good or bad thing. I'll

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give you one thought I have is I don't know

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Republican incompetence here. What democrats want are endless, huge subsidies

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for Obamacare, and it seems to me that this ought

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to be a moment for Republicans to say, although the

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Republican record is mixed, they had the chance to repeal

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Obamacare under Trump won and didn't do it, But now

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is the time to say this is completely failed. We

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should a polish it now and start over again and

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do some serious kind of healthcare reform. And there doesn't

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seem to be any thinking about that or any talking

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about that, And maybe this isn't the time to do it,

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but I'm very frustrated that Republicans look, if anything, like

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they're weakn and may give in at some point.

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Speaker 1: They certainly shouldn't be weakening, although I agree they look

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as if they are, I don't know of now is

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the time to do that when there's no agreement within

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the party on how Where I am a bit disappointed

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with the Republican messaging is that they have the upper

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hand here. The Democrats are trying to have it both ways.

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We discussed this last time. They're simultaneously saying the Republicans

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shut down the government and that they are fighting for

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the middle class. But those two things can't both be true.

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You can't be fighting for the middle class if you

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had nothing to do with the shutdown. Republicans should just

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be saying over and over again in every interview, with

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perfect message discipline, we continued the existing government funding. We

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can have these arguments once the government reopens, because it's true.

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They put forward a clean continuing resolution. Even the New

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York Times has admitted this. They run a whole piece

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on it, saying this isn't even a trick, this is

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actually a clean in continuing resolution. It's the Democrats who

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are asking for changes. And I think to the average

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person who is not invested in the ideological or political

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fight here, I'm not downplaying the importance of that fight,

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but to the average person who's watching from the sidelines,

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the moment you establish yourself as the ones who say

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we are trying to maintain the status quo, the others

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shut down the government to force change from the minority,

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you look more reasonable. So I've been a bit disappointed

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with the republicans inability to do that. I think this

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is probably the product of neither side being within its

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comfort zone. The Democrats are the party of government. They

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don't want to shut down that government, and they don't

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want to say they shut down that government, and they

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don't know how to say they shut down that government.

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Republicans are usually the ones who are pushing for changes,

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have no real issue with shutting down the government, and

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they don't know how to play the elder statesman and

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say we can deal with the argument when we've reopened

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the government. So neither one is playing to its strength.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so, you know, I've been racking my brain, but

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have that time to research. But how many times to

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have over the years Republicans instigated a government shutdown. It's

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got to be at least eight or ten, and I

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don't think they've ever won a single one of them. Now.

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Supposedly in nineteen ninety six that was a very long

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shutdown under Gingrich. It was later reported by some people

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doing Clinton biographies that Clinton was about to give in

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and Republicans blinked first, and so we didn't have to.

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But it seems to me the track record is Republicans

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lose these things, and in general, I think I generalized

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it further and say the president usually wins, the president's

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party usually wins. And I've got to think privately, Schumer

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didn't really want to do this, he didn't do it

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in March, and oh it is significant. I think you

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go back to that the famous Clinton shutdown in ninety five,

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ninety six, that gay birth, to the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

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As we know, Bob Dole was the Senate Republican leader

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and was against the shutdown, but he got steamrolled by

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Nuke Gingrich and the House Republicans. And then again in

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twenty thirteen when Ted Cruz wanted to shut down the

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government to try and roll back Obamacare, Mitch McConnell was

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not only against it, but was wishing afterwards, is there

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some way hed get Cruz on the Supreme Court to

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get him out of the Senate. Right. There was no

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love loss there. So I've got to think Schumer, who's

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a very smart Paul, must have been against this but

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had no choice but to go along with it, Which

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is another reason Republicans should hold firm because at some

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point I would think Schumer would say, we need to

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cut our losses.

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Speaker 1: Well, I think Schumer is in a difficult position because

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not only does he have to reflect their anger and

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frustration of the base, and that's what this is really about. Yeah,

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he has to protect his flank. I think he believes

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that he's going to be primary, perhaps by Alexandria Acazio Cortez,

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and so there's a self interest at play here as well.

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Even if he understands that this isn't a great move,

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he will now be able to say, look, I led

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the party in shutting down the government to fight Trump's

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insert whatever the cause is here, or to fight for

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healthcare reform. I don't think that's going to help him.

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I think that if he's going to be primaried from

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the left in New York, he's going to be primaried

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from the left in New York. I don't think there

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is anyone who is considering doing that who's going to say, well,

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we got what we wanted. He shut down the government.

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But I think he thinks that that will help him.

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So this has been part of his calculation.

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Speaker 2: Well, speaking of shutdowns, let me use that to shift gears.

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I think that my culinary vocabulary has just changed, and

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so the phrase juicy porterhouse steak will never have the

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same meaning from here forward. When contemplating the magnificent spectacle

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of Katie Porter out here in my home state of California,

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So I assume most of our listeners have heard about this.

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A Katie Porter, who's it was well known as an

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awful human being out here in California, and I think

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also in Washington, d C. Has now made it clear

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to the nation as a whole what an awful human

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being she is. The way she snapped at a reporter

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and trotting to walk off the stage, and other things

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have tumbled out anyway, this I mean, first of all,

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if you want to comment on Katie Porter further, please do.

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But I do want to spend a couple of minutes

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to say, why is it so many liberals turn out

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to be such awful people? I mean, Kambla Harris has

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a bad reputation, Amy Klobashar, you know legendary stories about

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the way she treats staff, and I can itemize several others.

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And that's before you even get to Jay Jones in Virginia,

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which we should talk about too. But I don't know, Charlie,

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what are you as a fascinated with a Katie Porter

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meltdown as I am?

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Speaker 1: I am? I want to know why and how she

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has a political career. I can't find a single thing

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about her that is redeeming. She's not charming, she's not eloquent,

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she doesn't have a nice voice. She's not much to

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look at in nor does she try. She seems to

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be horrible to her staff. She's not bipartisan or well

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respected within the legislature. Why does she exist? I find

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it astonishing that she might be the governor of California. Now,

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obviously there are many people who have been governor of

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California or who are currently governor of California. I don't

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like a great deal, but I can see why they

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got there. Gavin Newsom is oleagnis, but he's a good

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looking man, he presents well, and he's quite good at

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pretending to be bipartisan. On his podcast, the benefits of

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Jerry Brown were clear. Again, not my kind of politician,

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but he was an intelligent man. He'd been in politics

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a long time, he had experience. And then you have

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Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had celebrity, and you go all the

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way back to Reagan, who had pretty much the whole package.

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But why is she a contender. She's the least likable

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politician in the United States. She makes all of the

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other unlikable politicians look talented. She makes Elizabeth Warren and

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Masi her owno look ugly and warn I just don't

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get this person. The most interesting thing in that clip,

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which if our listeners haven't seen it, they should rectify that.

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Just go and find this three minutes of Katie Porter

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melting down on YouTube. The most interesting thing about that

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I thought was that it illustrated the downside to media bias.

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And we talk a lot about media bias, and we're

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quite rightly upset about it, and it does distort our politics.

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But Katie Porter clearly has never been in a position

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in which the media we're asking follow up questions. And

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you don't have to take my word for it, she

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says us much. She complains that there are follow up

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questions every time she makes a statement, and she can't

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say that she wasn't aware of the situation she was in,

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because before she starts getting all het up about there

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being a camera, before she starts getting het up about

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the supposedly unhappy experience that she's having, she turns around

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to the camera and mugs at it and all but

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points at the interviewer and says, can you get a

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load of this woman? And then all of a sudden

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she's saying, Oh, well, I don't want to have an

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unappy experience. I don't want this to be contentious. I

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don't want that camera on.

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Speaker 2: Come on.

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Speaker 1: She thought that the moment was for her to do

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pr and when she realized that it wasn't, she wanted

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no part of it. And you could only be in

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that position if you've been coddled by the press for

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your entire career, because no Republican would dream of going

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into that interview under that false impression.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's right. I mean, I have a philosophical

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theory about all this that maybe I pushed too far,

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but it's, you know, that's my backgrounds in political philosophy,

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and it's that, you know, the presumption of progressivism is

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that they're on the side of history. That's the phrase

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they can't stop using, right and and so the media

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is supposed to be on their side and usually are

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as you point out, and so they're not used to

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being challenged. And I think this explains not only the

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presumptuousness of someone like Porter and a lot of liberal politicians,

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but it also explains, for example, the ferocious reaction to

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Charlie Kirk. I mean, this guy's going to show up

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on campus and want to argue with you, and people

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went out in her mind, including one person who killed

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him for right. And then you saw on social media.

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I don't know if it's possible to count these things up,

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but an astonishingly high number of people on the left

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celebrating his killing. Now what does that tell you? I mean,

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I mean, to my mind, it says that there's something.

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Maybe there's some psychological aspects of that that we can

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talk about. But you know, people often make the point

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that boy, there haven't been any Charlie Kirk riots right

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right there does seem to be that asymmetry also comes along.

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And then here's this Jay Jones guy openly saying, gosh,

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you know, we got to have some more police killed.

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I want my opponent killed and their children to suffer.

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And then you know, the hardy any democrat can be

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bothered to say this is not acceptable.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I think once you believe that you are on

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the side of history, that is to say that you

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are moving with the tide, then you have given yourself

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permission to do all manner of undemocratic or unpluralist things,

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irrespective of how you think the mechanism works. What I

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mean there is, if you are inevitable, then what happens

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was always going to happen. If you are supposed to

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make these sweeping changes but are being prevented, then you're

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justified in doing anything to make sure that the prophecy

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comes to fruition so you can't lose. And that does

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explain why progressives are obsessed with these supposedly shadowy, nefarious

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forces that are preventing them from winning, because that's the

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only way you can reconcile reality with your methods, the

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methods being that you are the chosen one. If the

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chosen one doesn't make it to the top of the mountain,

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someone has to have stopped him. And I think she

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did exhibit some of that. But she's also just for

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a progressive, a bad candidate. I mean, there are progressives

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who are good candidates. There are progressives who are good

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communicators and who understand what they need to say. She

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got tripped up on the most basic question anyone who's

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ever asked in all of politics, which is, in effect,

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will you be a good governor for the people who

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didn't vote for you. She took the question literally. She's asked, well,

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can you win without Trump voters? Now she can in California,

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But you don't say, yeah, obviously, why would I need them? Yeah,

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it's just something almost charmingly literal about it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I have another theory to explain her, which

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is I bet she doesn't sleep very well, And she

317
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doesn't sleep very well because I'll bet she doesn't use

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cozy earth sheets. So, you know, so much of what

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happens in the world, you know, isn't up to us,

320
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So follow us here. Winter is not far behind, and

321
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it's going to get cold whether we like it or not.

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But at home we make decisions about all kinds of matters,

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especially the ones concerning comfort. So when life gets hectic

324
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and finding comfort and calm is essential, and when we

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need time for relaxation, recharging and soaking in a sense

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of peace, we do it with cozy earth. Cozy earth

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never ceases to amaze us or remind us of the

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virtues of cozy earth sheets.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you know, I don't just have cozy earth sheets. Now,

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I have a snuggle blanket, which I got from my

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wife from Cozy Earth, and I think she hasn't taken

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it off in about a week. In fact, she walks

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around the house in it and looks like a character

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from Game of Thrones because it's so big and bulky,

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But it is one of the softest items I've ever seen.

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So the cook household is expanding in its Cozy Earth paraphernalia.

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That's cozyearth dot com code Ricochet, And if you get

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go home with Cozy Earth, and we thank Cozyearth. Responsoring

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00:19:34,200 --> 00:19:38,400
the Ricochet podcast, and Noah Rothman joins us now from

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National Review, where he is senior editor and one of

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my go to persons on all things Middle East and

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all things culture and so forth. How are you no,

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Good to see you again?

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Speaker 4: Doing very good? Thank you for having me. Good to

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see you too.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So well, wait, we want to primarily get your

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take here on the peace deal in the Middle East.

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I've got three opening questions, and then I want to

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get a Rothman's Realism scale score from you. It's a

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special scale, it made up just for you. So the

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first one is I keep reading news accounts that say

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that part of the key of the deal was Trump

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leaning very hard on net Yahoo, who may have been

365
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reluctant about certain aspects of this. So is that true?

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So we'll start there. I have two more after this.

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But what do you hear? What was the key to

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the deal? Is that really an accurate reporting or what

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do you hear?

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Speaker 3: I don't think it's inaccurate reporting. I think the emphasis

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is wrong. I think it's being played up by those

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in the press and on the left end of the

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spectrum generally, who want to create the impression that the

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obstacle to piece was Netanyahu. I think if you, I think,

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if you objectively look at how the administration has handled

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bilateral relations with Jerusalem.

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Speaker 4: It has been air tight.

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Speaker 3: There has been very little save a couple of anecdotes

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of the President distancing himself from Benjamin Netanyahu and some

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theater to that effect, this phone call between Netanyahu and

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the Katari government in the Oval Office being one of

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the primary examples of it. But no, I don't think

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there is very much evidence to suggest that the obstacle

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to piece here was Netanyahu, or that the end of

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this war reflects anything other than a general alignment in

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strategic and tactical approaches to this conflict between Washington and Jerusalem.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, the other thing that is being said by

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a lot of people is that the is really strike

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on Qatar. What a month ago now it was a

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sobering moment to really change the game. Is that? Do

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you think that's true.

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Speaker 3: I don't think it's wrong. I just don't have the

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information to be able to gauge it. I'm just not

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in the loop in ways that I would have to be,

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and those who are not talking so I would. I

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think it's pretty safe to say that you can't rule

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out the prospect that such an expansion of the rules

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of engagement unforeseen In ways that I think probably impose

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some sobriety on the region and actors in the capitalism

400
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in those regions. But I don't I don't know the

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degree to which it contributed to this piece deal, but

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there is reporting that I trust that indicates that it was, yes,

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a sobering moment and one that shaped the thinking of

404
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Hamas's interlocutors in the region, primarily Doha, but also Anchora

405
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and the Turkish government.

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Speaker 2: Right, Okay, now, we're still working out details I gather,

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and so As i As, I've often said that you're

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my favorite cranky person, which I mean always is a compliment.

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I like your take. Yeah, we're good because I mean

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it that way, and I always enjoy when you're being

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very sober and I think appropriately negative, even when I

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sometimes disagree or think maybe you turn out to be wrong.

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But so that is a prep Well, that's a preface

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to on the Rothman realism scale, with ten one to

415
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ten ten being best meaning good. Where do you put

416
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the prospects of this deal right now? Well, let me

417
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be very Rothman realism scale.

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Speaker 3: You've got to be so super cranky, Steve, and I'm

419
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going to say the notion that we're equating realism with good.

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Here is something I fundamentally reject.

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Speaker 2: Oh good, that's good.

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Speaker 1: So I reject the.

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Speaker 3: Very premise of the question insofar as we define realism

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as a school of foreign policy thought that believes nations

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behave nations react to material conditions, to hard power conditions,

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to observable tangible conditions, where ideology plays no role, which

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is not something I believe very many actually do subscribe to,

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and those who do subscribe to it are wrong to

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do so. So I would differ with the realism thing. Nevertheless,

430
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if we're talking about strategic victories, is this good for Israels?

431
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Speaker 4: Is good for the United States?

432
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Speaker 3: I'm going to put it on like an eight and

433
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a half right now, even if we don't progress much beyond.

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We're not even at stage one at this point. And

435
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let's just ignore Donald Trump's twenty one point plan because

436
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if you really parse it gets pretty weird. And the

437
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first two steps are essentially the last two steps. The

438
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first two steps are Gaza will be terror free and redeveloped.

439
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Speaker 1: That's the end of the.

440
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Speaker 3: Process, in the beginning of the process, so we're really

441
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at stage three four, and by that we're not even

442
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at that stage, because then Israel has to give back

443
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the hostages what have you. Nevertheless, if this falls apart tomorrow,

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we still have a document that the regional stakeholders have

445
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signed their names to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Indonesia,

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like a lot of Muslim dominated governments, have said three things. One,

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Hamas cannot be the government of the Gaza Strip. It

448
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cannot be the military and political power in the strip. Two,

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the Palestinian authority will have to commit to some unspecified

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reforms before it can assume leadership in the Gaza Strip.

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And three that the IDF has a legitimate presence inside

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Gaza that will be there in perpetuity, acknowledging the permanent

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strategic interests of Israel in the Gaza Strip. All of

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these are foundational assumptions that will guide the evolution of

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this region moving forward. They cannot be taken back.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I mean a lot of race about this.

457
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I'm not really going to be optimistic until I actually

458
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see the twenty hostages out and safe, because I mean

459
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again again, you hear stories about you know, Homaso. We're

460
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not sure where they are because they've been farmed out

461
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to some of these you know, minor league humas teams

462
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and stuff, and I don't know. I wouldn't surprise me

463
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at all if some of them are missing or worse.

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Speaker 3: But I believe, I believe they know where the twenty

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living hostages are. I would be surprised if they have

466
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a bead on where the remains some of the dead

467
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hostages are. But there's a point information sharing mechanism to

468
00:25:32,400 --> 00:25:34,440
try to figure that out, So you know.

469
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Speaker 2: It's interesting. Yeah, the Indonesia angle is interesting. I don't

470
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think has Indonesia ever been in the mix before in

471
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any of these Middle East processes.

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Speaker 3: I don't know. That's a good question and I don't

473
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have the answer to it. It's one of the world's

474
00:25:46,680 --> 00:25:50,400
largest Muslim populations, and the Prime Minister during the General

475
00:25:50,480 --> 00:25:53,119
Assembly week in the United Nations in New York City

476
00:25:54,279 --> 00:25:59,799
was did not share Western Europe and Canada's hostility towards Jerusalem.

477
00:26:00,079 --> 00:26:03,400
Really when we see, you know, there's the fiction in

478
00:26:03,440 --> 00:26:06,839
Western Europe and in Canada in particular, that you know,

479
00:26:06,960 --> 00:26:09,440
there's a two state solution that's on the table and

480
00:26:09,559 --> 00:26:12,640
Israel's conducting a genocide and these views are just not

481
00:26:12,759 --> 00:26:15,839
reflected in the Muslim world, where you would expect they

482
00:26:15,839 --> 00:26:19,400
would have a receptive audience. I mean at the street level, sure,

483
00:26:19,920 --> 00:26:24,119
But in these in governments in Riad and Cairo and Aman,

484
00:26:24,599 --> 00:26:27,359
the two state solution is a dead letter. So you know,

485
00:26:27,680 --> 00:26:29,279
they're just operating on two trucks.

486
00:26:29,559 --> 00:26:31,319
Speaker 2: Yeah, Charlie, you want to come in here.

487
00:26:32,640 --> 00:26:36,519
Speaker 1: I as you know, no, am of the view that

488
00:26:36,680 --> 00:26:43,559
this deal is the product of Trump being a widow

489
00:26:43,839 --> 00:26:49,000
and outside of our normal political structures and often norms,

490
00:26:49,160 --> 00:26:53,880
and of his having Jared Kushner at his disposal for

491
00:26:53,920 --> 00:26:56,839
some reason, seems to have a talent for this. How

492
00:26:56,880 --> 00:27:00,279
true is that? Would this have happened under Baraco bomb

493
00:27:00,359 --> 00:27:05,319
Rote George W. Bush? Or did this require Trump's endless

494
00:27:05,359 --> 00:27:07,000
willingness to think outside the box?

495
00:27:07,559 --> 00:27:09,599
Speaker 3: I think there's something to that. Now, let's go back

496
00:27:09,640 --> 00:27:13,960
to the Abraham Accords. It's not as though those sprang

497
00:27:14,119 --> 00:27:18,119
from Donald Trump's forehead Exnelio or Jared Kushner's for that matter.

498
00:27:18,400 --> 00:27:21,759
There was an intellectual lattice work, a framework that had

499
00:27:21,759 --> 00:27:26,279
been established at the think tank level by conservative thinkers

500
00:27:26,279 --> 00:27:29,119
of this region, but it was not one that the

501
00:27:29,119 --> 00:27:33,519
foreign policy establishment was prepared to accept. The presupposition that

502
00:27:33,640 --> 00:27:37,480
the blob, as it were, the foreign policy establishment believed

503
00:27:37,799 --> 00:27:40,599
was that you had to solve the Palestinian conflict first

504
00:27:41,119 --> 00:27:44,640
and only then could you unlock peace agreements in the

505
00:27:44,680 --> 00:27:49,359
Middle East, and the Abraham Accords formula reversed that said

506
00:27:49,359 --> 00:27:52,480
if you do that last, and it took significant advantage

507
00:27:52,519 --> 00:27:56,000
of some of the Obama administration's machinations in the region

508
00:27:56,039 --> 00:27:59,640
where they elevated, for example, Iranian proxies in Iraq and

509
00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:04,599
to supplement the Iraqi security forces when they bugged out

510
00:28:04,599 --> 00:28:07,799
in twenty ten, and that spooked all the regions sunny powers.

511
00:28:07,880 --> 00:28:10,960
So the Abraham of course formula was twofold. It was one,

512
00:28:11,440 --> 00:28:13,359
let's put the Palestinian.

513
00:28:12,759 --> 00:28:14,559
Speaker 4: Issue on the back burner. We'll do with that later.

514
00:28:14,759 --> 00:28:17,599
Speaker 3: First things first, and that's the threat by Iran, and

515
00:28:17,640 --> 00:28:21,559
that focused the minds of the region's sunny powers and

516
00:28:21,759 --> 00:28:26,079
it began to unlock security agreements first sort of covert

517
00:28:26,519 --> 00:28:30,839
soda voce and then overt and that was you know,

518
00:28:30,880 --> 00:28:32,279
that was the formula that worked, and it was the

519
00:28:32,319 --> 00:28:33,799
sort of thing that you could only do if you

520
00:28:33,839 --> 00:28:36,559
had a proper contempt for the foreign policy establishment that

521
00:28:36,680 --> 00:28:38,680
was having this conversation with our colleagues today on our

522
00:28:38,799 --> 00:28:41,880
editorial call Charlie that you know, there's this I forget

523
00:28:41,880 --> 00:28:43,839
what it's called the phenomenon where you read something in

524
00:28:43,880 --> 00:28:45,880
the newspaper that you know about and it's all wrong,

525
00:28:46,400 --> 00:28:48,559
you say, and then you keep going and you reget, well,

526
00:28:48,640 --> 00:28:50,240
you know that must be true, even though you just

527
00:28:50,319 --> 00:28:53,160
identified the thing that was wrong. So when it comes

528
00:28:53,200 --> 00:28:55,720
to the State Department, for example, whenever there's a purge

529
00:28:55,720 --> 00:28:58,119
of State Department personnel, I'm one of those guys like, yeah,

530
00:28:58,240 --> 00:29:02,200
let's go, because for all of my adult life, the

531
00:29:02,200 --> 00:29:06,480
State Department functionaries have been obstructing Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice.

532
00:29:06,559 --> 00:29:09,240
Whenever there's a Republican in charge of the place, they

533
00:29:09,279 --> 00:29:11,039
find that everything they want to do just becomes that

534
00:29:11,160 --> 00:29:14,200
much harder and really frustratingly difficult, and there's a lot

535
00:29:14,240 --> 00:29:16,240
of obstacles in the way that shouldn't be there. But

536
00:29:16,279 --> 00:29:19,119
then the Trump Trump goes around and conducts a purgea

537
00:29:19,119 --> 00:29:20,960
of the Justice Department, and I say, who whoa, whoa,

538
00:29:21,119 --> 00:29:25,319
because maybe I don't know enough. Perhaps perhaps, But when

539
00:29:25,359 --> 00:29:27,680
it comes to the conduct of American foreign policy, it

540
00:29:27,720 --> 00:29:31,440
has been held hostage by individuals who are behold into

541
00:29:31,440 --> 00:29:35,079
a lot of shibbylists that are resonant in the academy

542
00:29:35,319 --> 00:29:38,880
and in elite think tanks, and you know, the feat

543
00:29:39,039 --> 00:29:42,799
world of high level diplomacy and which does need a

544
00:29:42,799 --> 00:29:46,960
little bit of disruption and the objective success that the

545
00:29:47,000 --> 00:29:50,440
Trump administration has had in approaching these things in a

546
00:29:50,480 --> 00:29:52,519
novel way, ohs.

547
00:29:52,319 --> 00:29:53,200
Speaker 4: Is owed a lot to that.

548
00:29:53,279 --> 00:29:56,920
Speaker 3: But it's also that this president has a unique capacity

549
00:29:56,960 --> 00:30:01,440
to understand Middle Eastern politics at a very high level,

550
00:30:01,480 --> 00:30:05,799
again not the Arab street, but at the level of

551
00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:09,559
governments in Riod and Cairom, what have you. Because he's transactional,

552
00:30:09,960 --> 00:30:13,240
because he's not ideological, because he wants to get things

553
00:30:13,279 --> 00:30:15,519
done and doesn't care how things are. How do you

554
00:30:15,559 --> 00:30:18,599
get to X y Z. The process is not the point.

555
00:30:18,759 --> 00:30:21,960
He's not hostage to the process. He's looking for outcomes.

556
00:30:22,680 --> 00:30:24,960
And that is something that speaks very much to how

557
00:30:25,799 --> 00:30:29,440
the Arab world, politics at a high level in the

558
00:30:29,480 --> 00:30:31,640
Arab world is conducted, to say nothing of the fact

559
00:30:31,640 --> 00:30:35,519
that they are very materially interested in the trappings of

560
00:30:35,599 --> 00:30:38,480
material wealth and excess. And that also speaks to something

561
00:30:38,480 --> 00:30:41,079
that the president holds quite dear. So he's uniquely positioned

562
00:30:41,079 --> 00:30:43,200
to navigate the Middle East and it shows in the

563
00:30:43,240 --> 00:30:45,519
Middle East in ways that it does not in a

564
00:30:45,559 --> 00:30:47,200
lot of the rest of the world, in Europe, in

565
00:30:47,680 --> 00:30:50,519
East Asia, in Latin America. You can't point to the

566
00:30:50,559 --> 00:30:53,440
kind of concess successes that he's enjoyed in the Middle East.

567
00:30:54,720 --> 00:30:57,559
Speaker 1: Will he be rewarded for them or will people pretend

568
00:30:57,559 --> 00:30:58,440
that it was going to happen.

569
00:30:58,480 --> 00:31:02,519
Speaker 3: Anyway, they'll pretend that it was going to happen, and

570
00:31:02,559 --> 00:31:08,359
they roughly are. You've already seen erroneously the notion that

571
00:31:08,400 --> 00:31:11,039
this deal, this particular deal that we're talking about now,

572
00:31:11,119 --> 00:31:13,119
was on the table a year ago. Joe Biden offered

573
00:31:13,160 --> 00:31:16,880
it something similar was on the table under Witkow. Anybody

574
00:31:16,880 --> 00:31:18,599
could have pulled the trigger on this when they wanted to.

575
00:31:18,680 --> 00:31:21,759
All it took was, you know, giving Net and Yahoo's

576
00:31:21,759 --> 00:31:24,480
sufficient elbowing in the ribs for him to come to

577
00:31:24,519 --> 00:31:26,880
the table and acquiesce. And I just it doesn't make

578
00:31:26,920 --> 00:31:29,960
any sense. It discounts the fact that they were just

579
00:31:30,599 --> 00:31:35,119
rending garments about two weeks ago over the president's nonchalance.

580
00:31:36,000 --> 00:31:41,039
The with a idef offensive into Gaza City to really

581
00:31:41,160 --> 00:31:43,440
roll up the underground city there, which I think contributed

582
00:31:43,480 --> 00:31:46,240
a lot to the pressure that Hamas was under. Hamas

583
00:31:46,279 --> 00:31:48,920
didn't give up these hostages, the last of it hasn't yet,

584
00:31:49,000 --> 00:31:51,480
but will give up the last of these hostages. It's

585
00:31:51,559 --> 00:31:54,920
only negotiating position because it wanted to, because it was

586
00:31:54,960 --> 00:31:57,759
just feeling good about itself. It ran out of material

587
00:31:57,960 --> 00:32:01,640
to conduct this war. It's just out of options, and

588
00:32:02,160 --> 00:32:05,559
the individual the nations that serve as conduits to the

589
00:32:05,559 --> 00:32:08,160
rest of the world, nations like Gatar and Turkey, came

590
00:32:08,200 --> 00:32:09,480
in and said the jag is up. I don't think

591
00:32:09,519 --> 00:32:12,240
that would have happened absent the kind of military pressure

592
00:32:12,240 --> 00:32:14,599
that the idea of was putting on Hamas and Gaza City.

593
00:32:18,519 --> 00:32:22,200
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, first of all, a couple of things you said.

594
00:32:22,759 --> 00:32:26,400
One is that, well, I'll put it this way. I

595
00:32:26,440 --> 00:32:29,640
think that the phrase PLO reform is one of the

596
00:32:29,640 --> 00:32:32,119
great oxymorons of the world. Mean, I can't really see

597
00:32:32,119 --> 00:32:35,079
any reason to suppose that the Palestinian authority is ever

598
00:32:35,119 --> 00:32:39,279
going to reform itself in any serious way, do you.

599
00:32:38,279 --> 00:32:39,759
Speaker 1: No, I don't.

600
00:32:40,319 --> 00:32:43,160
Speaker 3: It would be oh, it would be wrong with me

601
00:32:43,240 --> 00:32:45,240
to say that I have my finger on the pulse

602
00:32:45,279 --> 00:32:49,960
of Palestinian politics in Ramala or anywhere else. But yes,

603
00:32:50,000 --> 00:32:52,839
I find it hard to believe the Fatah would reform

604
00:32:52,880 --> 00:32:55,799
itself seriously with a boss at the head of it.

605
00:32:56,079 --> 00:32:59,440
The guy is, you know, a decrepit in his mid

606
00:32:59,440 --> 00:33:02,480
eighties at this point figure, which is one of the

607
00:33:02,519 --> 00:33:07,400
reasons why Israel will not release more one Barguti, despite

608
00:33:07,440 --> 00:33:10,839
Hamas's desire to see him released, as well as all

609
00:33:10,839 --> 00:33:14,200
the Hamasniks in the information space that we're all intimately

610
00:33:14,200 --> 00:33:17,039
acquainted with by now, in part because he was one

611
00:33:17,079 --> 00:33:18,759
of the architects of the second into Fada, has a

612
00:33:18,799 --> 00:33:20,319
lot of blood on his hands, but the other part

613
00:33:20,359 --> 00:33:27,200
being he's the likely successor to Mahmoudabas and would focus

614
00:33:27,400 --> 00:33:31,599
the energies of those who want to see terrorist attacks

615
00:33:32,000 --> 00:33:35,119
on Israeli civilians continue, mostly in the Western world, but

616
00:33:35,160 --> 00:33:39,599
also the inside the Middle East. And that's a cultural problem.

617
00:33:39,640 --> 00:33:42,119
Inside the Strip and inside the West Bank. There is

618
00:33:42,359 --> 00:33:46,599
a culture of death in these places that celebrates the

619
00:33:46,720 --> 00:33:50,400
murder of civilians. It has not changed, and until it changes,

620
00:33:50,440 --> 00:33:53,920
there will not be a permanent peace. But until then

621
00:33:54,160 --> 00:33:58,079
the Israeli military will continue to play probably a mo

622
00:33:58,200 --> 00:34:02,240
the lawn strategy, not desirous of some sort of big

623
00:34:02,279 --> 00:34:04,200
military campaign like they just went through. This is the

624
00:34:04,240 --> 00:34:06,200
longest war in Israel's hill history. They're not going to

625
00:34:06,240 --> 00:34:09,039
want to go back to it again, but there could

626
00:34:09,079 --> 00:34:10,960
be the prospect that this thing falls apart. If it

627
00:34:10,960 --> 00:34:13,000
falls apart in a spectacular way, they will have to.

628
00:34:13,039 --> 00:34:15,920
But I was having this argument with Hugh Hewitt yesterday

629
00:34:15,920 --> 00:34:18,599
that I don't think if there is a single Katushka rocket,

630
00:34:18,599 --> 00:34:21,000
that we're going to see the resumption of a ground

631
00:34:21,000 --> 00:34:22,000
offensive into Gaza.

632
00:34:22,119 --> 00:34:23,800
Speaker 4: I just don't think that's going to happen.

633
00:34:24,239 --> 00:34:28,840
Speaker 3: And it will be calibrated approaches to provocations from Gaza

634
00:34:28,880 --> 00:34:30,960
and from the West Bank, and there will continue, but

635
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:33,039
I think we're going to see calibrated responses to them.

636
00:34:33,519 --> 00:34:38,039
Speaker 2: You said one other thing a moment ago that sparks

637
00:34:38,079 --> 00:34:44,239
this observation. I'll rephrase it this way. You said something about, well,

638
00:34:44,239 --> 00:34:46,000
you know, the Arab street doesn't seem as worked up

639
00:34:46,039 --> 00:34:49,039
about this as a lot of people in Western capitals.

640
00:34:49,639 --> 00:34:52,840
My reformulation of that is that the American and European

641
00:34:52,960 --> 00:34:57,039
left is more anti Semitic and more anti Israel than

642
00:34:57,239 --> 00:34:59,199
many people in the Arab countries with the you know,

643
00:34:59,199 --> 00:35:01,840
Hamas accept that obviously, but I don't know if that's

644
00:35:01,840 --> 00:35:04,239
true or not. But the thing that worries me is

645
00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:06,440
this pole reported a couple of days ago by Harry

646
00:35:06,519 --> 00:35:09,079
Enton on CNN, and I didn't look at it closely,

647
00:35:09,079 --> 00:35:10,760
and I don't know who did it, but it found

648
00:35:11,199 --> 00:35:14,639
rising number of people thinking that a Israel is conducting

649
00:35:14,679 --> 00:35:18,519
a genocide in Gaza, and be that number included a

650
00:35:18,519 --> 00:35:22,519
across tab included a high proportion of American Jews who

651
00:35:22,559 --> 00:35:25,800
are very critical, like forty percent saying, you know, agreeing

652
00:35:25,880 --> 00:35:28,239
with the Polster question that this is a genocide. Who

653
00:35:28,239 --> 00:35:30,960
knows how intensely that has really felt. The point is

654
00:35:31,000 --> 00:35:35,360
that obviously there's been an intense propaganda campaign whose roots

655
00:35:35,400 --> 00:35:38,360
go back decades as we know, and it does look

656
00:35:38,400 --> 00:35:41,360
to me like it is unfortunately succeeding.

657
00:35:42,239 --> 00:35:45,119
Speaker 3: It is at a certain point you do have to

658
00:35:45,159 --> 00:35:48,559
think that rationality will intrude. First, I should say that

659
00:35:48,599 --> 00:35:51,000
I don't believe that there is that Western Europe is

660
00:35:51,760 --> 00:35:55,400
more anti Semitic than the average Arab street. You know.

661
00:35:55,800 --> 00:35:58,599
The second that there is a provocation that these Arab

662
00:35:58,639 --> 00:36:02,679
capitals want to exploit, they do, and the Arab street

663
00:36:02,719 --> 00:36:05,800
is alive with anti Israeli violence happens pretty regularly.

664
00:36:06,239 --> 00:36:06,960
Speaker 4: It's merely that.

665
00:36:06,960 --> 00:36:11,159
Speaker 3: These the capitals. The political establishments, particularly in the Sunni

666
00:36:11,199 --> 00:36:14,519
Arab world, have a different relationship with Israel now. It's

667
00:36:14,559 --> 00:36:18,960
it's it's much more instrumental and utilitarian. And yeah, occasionally

668
00:36:18,960 --> 00:36:20,880
it's good for them to whip up some anti Israel

669
00:36:20,920 --> 00:36:23,159
frenzy in the streets, but not always, and so you

670
00:36:23,199 --> 00:36:25,599
see less of it just because they're not engaged in

671
00:36:25,599 --> 00:36:30,800
those kind of provocations anymore. I'm sorry, I lost myself.

672
00:36:30,800 --> 00:36:33,079
What was the second part of your question. Remind me, Oh, well,

673
00:36:33,079 --> 00:36:36,679
it's Probalyana campaign campaign. Yeah, so rationality, you would think

674
00:36:36,679 --> 00:36:38,920
would intrude at some point, because what we've seen over

675
00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:43,440
the course of this two year war is spectacular tactical

676
00:36:43,480 --> 00:36:48,280
acumen from the IDF, just really impressive operations from the

677
00:36:48,280 --> 00:36:51,760
beeper Pager operation, the communications operation, the decapitation strike on

678
00:36:51,800 --> 00:36:54,519
has beloved, the decapitation strike on the houthis the sort

679
00:36:54,519 --> 00:36:56,199
of stuff that you can only glink glean from, like

680
00:36:56,320 --> 00:36:59,960
really good information and really sound military tactics. And yeah,

681
00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:02,760
but they are terrible at conducting a genocide.

682
00:37:03,119 --> 00:37:06,400
Speaker 2: They just just hang out and do it and I shouldn't.

683
00:37:06,400 --> 00:37:11,000
Speaker 3: Managed to not even disrupt really the population of the strip.

684
00:37:11,840 --> 00:37:14,960
I mean, there's nowhere for them to go. So why

685
00:37:15,039 --> 00:37:16,800
is the population relatively stable?

686
00:37:17,239 --> 00:37:17,400
Speaker 1: Dan?

687
00:37:18,039 --> 00:37:20,000
Speaker 3: Why are all these celebrations in the streets. You can

688
00:37:20,000 --> 00:37:23,079
go check out the videos yourself of all these Palestinians

689
00:37:23,079 --> 00:37:26,679
with very full bellies and gold watches and clean clothes.

690
00:37:27,039 --> 00:37:30,960
What happened to this spectacular misery that was being meted out.

691
00:37:31,119 --> 00:37:34,039
We're talking about an open air warsaw ghetto, and yet,

692
00:37:34,280 --> 00:37:36,960
and yet where is it all? You would think that

693
00:37:37,119 --> 00:37:40,480
a couple of years from now, once emotions have cooled,

694
00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:44,079
passions have cooled, and the political imperative to mouth these

695
00:37:44,079 --> 00:37:47,159
shibboleths is no longer there, that some of the fury

696
00:37:47,159 --> 00:37:48,960
that we're seeing here will decline.

697
00:37:49,400 --> 00:37:51,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, I always draw historical parallels.

698
00:37:51,880 --> 00:37:53,840
And you mentioned the people saying, well, we could have

699
00:37:53,840 --> 00:37:56,239
had this deal months ago or a year ago. Reminds

700
00:37:56,280 --> 00:37:58,519
me of what the left said for years about how

701
00:37:58,599 --> 00:38:01,559
Nixon could have had Vietnam's solved in February of nineteen

702
00:38:01,559 --> 00:38:04,519
sixty nine, and then the famous Christmas bombing in nineteen

703
00:38:04,559 --> 00:38:07,280
seventy two. We were conducting a genocide, And of course

704
00:38:07,320 --> 00:38:09,840
the statistics on that that came out later is it's

705
00:38:09,880 --> 00:38:12,599
one of the lowest civilian casualty rates of any bombing

706
00:38:12,679 --> 00:38:14,239
campaign in human history.

707
00:38:14,320 --> 00:38:18,400
Speaker 3: Right, So right, it was ineffective. That was the problem

708
00:38:18,440 --> 00:38:21,679
with these saturation bombing right right.

709
00:38:21,760 --> 00:38:25,039
Speaker 2: So anyway, you know this, we know this is unseious.

710
00:38:25,039 --> 00:38:29,679
So last question for me speculation that there's now going

711
00:38:29,719 --> 00:38:33,159
to be if the steal goes through in some reasonable form,

712
00:38:33,400 --> 00:38:35,400
there's going to need to be or should be an

713
00:38:35,400 --> 00:38:38,559
election in Israel. Do you think there's going to be one?

714
00:38:38,639 --> 00:38:41,639
Should net Yahoo call for one? What do you think,

715
00:38:41,719 --> 00:38:43,400
Kathenik that might play out?

716
00:38:43,800 --> 00:38:44,079
Speaker 1: Well?

717
00:38:44,199 --> 00:38:46,559
Speaker 3: The only thing I'm confident I have even less grasp

718
00:38:46,679 --> 00:38:48,199
on than Palestinian politics.

719
00:38:48,199 --> 00:38:50,000
Speaker 4: This is politics, right.

720
00:38:50,280 --> 00:38:54,599
Speaker 3: That is an inscrutable even Israeli's struggle to understand where

721
00:38:54,639 --> 00:38:56,880
the factions are and who's moving where and who's aligned

722
00:38:56,880 --> 00:39:00,840
with whom is it is tough to force. There will

723
00:39:00,840 --> 00:39:03,920
obviously be elections in Israel. Israel's a democratic country. I

724
00:39:03,920 --> 00:39:07,199
don't know what Benjamin netnia Whose future is, or what

725
00:39:07,280 --> 00:39:09,599
he foresees for himself. You know, some have said that

726
00:39:09,679 --> 00:39:13,159
he perceived himself to be on a mission to neutralize

727
00:39:13,199 --> 00:39:15,440
the Iranian nuclear threat. I don't think it's neutralized, but

728
00:39:15,480 --> 00:39:18,719
it's certainly pushed back so he could declare victory and retreat,

729
00:39:18,760 --> 00:39:22,119
but he's also got the judiciary hanging over his head,

730
00:39:22,719 --> 00:39:29,559
and scandals involving a prosecutorial abuses of his power and

731
00:39:29,559 --> 00:39:32,559
embezzling funds and all of these things. There is dispute

732
00:39:32,559 --> 00:39:34,760
over the legitimacy of these charges, but they continue to

733
00:39:34,800 --> 00:39:37,079
hang over him. So he may feel like he have

734
00:39:37,199 --> 00:39:38,960
to hang on in very much in a sort of

735
00:39:38,960 --> 00:39:42,280
Trumpian way, in order to indemnify himself. If not, if

736
00:39:42,320 --> 00:39:46,679
not intimidate his prosecutors and secure his own legacy, then

737
00:39:46,800 --> 00:39:51,639
just remain immune from prosecution. So who knows there, But

738
00:39:51,840 --> 00:39:54,880
the political dynamic in Israel will not change. In one

739
00:39:54,960 --> 00:39:59,039
regard is that the Israeli left is an attenuated force

740
00:39:59,079 --> 00:40:02,519
to a degree that it is almost ignorable. There are

741
00:40:02,599 --> 00:40:06,440
various flavors of right. You could say the Blue White Coalitions,

742
00:40:06,519 --> 00:40:11,079
somewhat left, which was this coalition of somewhat less Licudian parties,

743
00:40:11,519 --> 00:40:15,719
but labor, the traditional left in Israel has been discredited

744
00:40:15,880 --> 00:40:18,400
and will remain discredited for the better part of a generation.

745
00:40:18,639 --> 00:40:21,719
So whatever replaces net Nyahuu, it won't be the kind

746
00:40:21,719 --> 00:40:26,480
of progressive left wing ideal that was dominant when Israel

747
00:40:26,559 --> 00:40:29,719
was just an archipelago of kibusin being recognized by the

748
00:40:29,719 --> 00:40:33,000
Soviet Union. Like, that's what they remember of Israel, That's

749
00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:34,719
what they liked about it. This is the Bernie Sanders

750
00:40:34,800 --> 00:40:37,599
version of Israel, and that Israel is gone and the

751
00:40:37,639 --> 00:40:40,119
left in America and then your Western europe will never

752
00:40:40,159 --> 00:40:41,079
forgive them.

753
00:40:41,559 --> 00:40:46,159
Speaker 1: Now, is Donald Trump going to win the Nobel Peace Prize?

754
00:40:47,039 --> 00:40:49,559
Speaker 3: So we argued about this a little bit on the editors,

755
00:40:49,599 --> 00:40:52,239
and I would not rule it out. I don't think

756
00:40:52,320 --> 00:40:55,559
that's an impossible idea. I also think that you could

757
00:40:55,599 --> 00:41:00,679
have a package of recipients including Donald try Rump, his team,

758
00:41:00,719 --> 00:41:04,239
Steve Woodkoff, Jared Kushner. They certainly deserve it. There could

759
00:41:04,320 --> 00:41:06,639
be other parties in there to soften the blow for

760
00:41:06,719 --> 00:41:12,159
Western Europeans. It could be you know, Saudi's or Jordanians,

761
00:41:12,320 --> 00:41:16,119
or god knows, even Palestinians. Certainly, I believe the Yahoo

762
00:41:16,119 --> 00:41:19,639
government deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. They'll never receive one,

763
00:41:19,679 --> 00:41:23,039
but Ron Dhermer and Benjaminiahu and his team deserve one

764
00:41:23,079 --> 00:41:26,119
in part for negotiating contributing to the negotiations of the

765
00:41:26,119 --> 00:41:30,000
Abraham Accords, which represent a sea change in the dynamic

766
00:41:30,039 --> 00:41:32,280
in the region, and a positive one if your goal

767
00:41:32,360 --> 00:41:36,000
is actually peace. But second, because through force of arms,

768
00:41:36,039 --> 00:41:38,800
he has managed to denude the threat of an Iranian

769
00:41:38,880 --> 00:41:42,039
nuclear weapon, to say nothing of the ring of fire

770
00:41:42,519 --> 00:41:46,159
around Israel. Hamast Hesbala, the Shieate, militias in Syria and

771
00:41:46,199 --> 00:41:48,400
Iraq to a lesser extent than Huthis, all of these

772
00:41:48,400 --> 00:41:51,159
were a threat to the civilized world, and through Israeli action,

773
00:41:51,360 --> 00:41:54,679
we are less threatened today. And that's if the Peace

774
00:41:54,719 --> 00:41:58,599
Prize is worth anything, then it should be worth that.

775
00:41:58,880 --> 00:41:59,440
Speaker 2: Wouldn't that.

776
00:41:59,440 --> 00:42:02,159
Speaker 3: I you know, I think that the Nobel Committee should

777
00:42:02,159 --> 00:42:05,480
probably conclude the Peace Prize by just awarding it to itself. Say,

778
00:42:05,480 --> 00:42:09,159
the Nobel Peace Prize has been has been such a

779
00:42:09,239 --> 00:42:11,800
boon to peace in the world that we can fold

780
00:42:11,880 --> 00:42:16,280
up shop and say we've our mission is complete, you know, uh,

781
00:42:16,559 --> 00:42:19,239
finally compensate for the legacy of dynamite and get that

782
00:42:19,320 --> 00:42:22,440
off out for right right.

783
00:42:22,519 --> 00:42:25,039
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I remember Pat and moynihan used to

784
00:42:25,079 --> 00:42:28,519
say of the Soviet Union's Lenin Prize that anyone who

785
00:42:28,599 --> 00:42:32,400
wins the Lenin Prize deserves it. You know, I've always

786
00:42:32,440 --> 00:42:34,440
thought the Nobel Prize has been awarded as so many

787
00:42:34,519 --> 00:42:37,400
stupid and frivolous and evil people that I'm not sure

788
00:42:37,440 --> 00:42:39,119
you want to win it. It's almost a badge of

789
00:42:39,159 --> 00:42:39,920
dishonor right.

790
00:42:40,280 --> 00:42:42,280
Speaker 3: You need it, you need a deal to get to

791
00:42:42,320 --> 00:42:44,239
get the Nobel Peace Prize. But they're not above giving

792
00:42:44,280 --> 00:42:46,280
it to people who engage in force of arms, or

793
00:42:46,800 --> 00:42:49,000
or a orchestrated force of arms. I said, Monock and

794
00:42:49,039 --> 00:42:54,039
began yeah onmar sat Henry Kissinger like, it's not it's

795
00:42:54,039 --> 00:42:55,840
not outside the realm of conceivability.

796
00:42:55,920 --> 00:42:58,159
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know that's I exaggerated a little bit, but

797
00:42:58,280 --> 00:42:59,039
only a little bit.

798
00:42:59,159 --> 00:42:59,280
Speaker 4: Now.

799
00:42:59,320 --> 00:43:01,599
Speaker 2: Of course, this years prize was already awarded yesterday to

800
00:43:01,639 --> 00:43:04,719
a Venezuelan opposition leader. It's a woman whose name I forget.

801
00:43:04,880 --> 00:43:07,800
I thought that's an interesting pick, possibly worthy, I don't know.

802
00:43:07,840 --> 00:43:10,440
I don't follow it closely, but it seems like kind

803
00:43:10,480 --> 00:43:13,719
of a bank shot, given that Trump is pressuring Venezuela.

804
00:43:13,800 --> 00:43:15,880
But in any case, no, we're gonna have to leave

805
00:43:15,920 --> 00:43:18,840
that for another day. You have to move on. We

806
00:43:18,880 --> 00:43:21,480
will look forward to seeing you again soon, and I'll

807
00:43:21,480 --> 00:43:22,519
just say carry on.

808
00:43:23,079 --> 00:43:24,320
Speaker 4: Thank you, sir. Good to see you guys.

809
00:43:26,840 --> 00:43:30,199
Speaker 2: Well, Charlie, Noah, makes a good case that Trump and

810
00:43:30,239 --> 00:43:33,039
an ensemble of people probably do deserve the Nobel Prize,

811
00:43:33,079 --> 00:43:36,440
as was a Nobel Peace Prize as it was originally intended.

812
00:43:36,960 --> 00:43:39,280
But this year's has already been given out, as I mentioned.

813
00:43:40,079 --> 00:43:42,400
But another set of prizes came out this week. It's

814
00:43:42,400 --> 00:43:45,599
one that I always follow for amusement value. It was

815
00:43:45,639 --> 00:43:50,000
the so called MacArthur Genius Awards, and I don't know

816
00:43:50,000 --> 00:43:51,760
if you follow this or not. This year it's eight

817
00:43:51,840 --> 00:43:55,280
hundred thousand dollars, no strings attached to the people they

818
00:43:55,320 --> 00:43:57,840
select through an anonymous process about which I want to

819
00:43:57,840 --> 00:44:01,199
come back to in a moment. It's a mix of

820
00:44:01,400 --> 00:44:04,599
usually scientists and researchers who do what looks to be respectable,

821
00:44:04,639 --> 00:44:06,880
serious work. But then when you get off of the

822
00:44:06,880 --> 00:44:10,440
social sciences and humanities and art, it's always left wing wackos.

823
00:44:10,480 --> 00:44:15,000
I mean, Abram Candy got one right. My favorite one

824
00:44:15,119 --> 00:44:17,440
this year is let's see if I can find this

825
00:44:17,480 --> 00:44:23,360
description of the guy. Yes, an artist in Maine who

826
00:44:23,719 --> 00:44:27,519
is a master of Wabanaki basket weaving, which is an

827
00:44:27,519 --> 00:44:31,800
obscure technique of basket weaving from an obscure Native American

828
00:44:31,840 --> 00:44:34,119
tribe in Maine. You know, when I was in college

829
00:44:34,440 --> 00:44:36,599
a million years ago, we used to joke about an

830
00:44:36,639 --> 00:44:39,880
easy class would be underwater basket weaving, And now it

831
00:44:39,920 --> 00:44:41,840
gets you a MacArthur Genius Award.

832
00:44:43,840 --> 00:44:51,559
Speaker 1: This is a great example of the progressive dilemma in

833
00:44:51,840 --> 00:44:56,719
the contemporary era, which is perhaps one reason why they've

834
00:44:56,760 --> 00:45:00,159
started to lose, and that is that they took go

835
00:45:00,159 --> 00:45:05,280
over all the institutions, and they relied upon this latent

836
00:45:05,440 --> 00:45:10,960
sense of those institutions worth and then they ruin them.

837
00:45:11,480 --> 00:45:16,320
And it worked for a while. You could use the

838
00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:19,920
impromateur of an institution, even when you were behaving in

839
00:45:19,960 --> 00:45:23,519
a crazy manner, and get away with it. But that's stopped.

840
00:45:23,599 --> 00:45:26,239
I think probably COVID is what did it more than anything.

841
00:45:26,760 --> 00:45:31,360
But that's stopped a few years ago. And now people

842
00:45:31,639 --> 00:45:34,519
look at this sort of thing and they say, well, yes,

843
00:45:34,599 --> 00:45:38,440
I understand that it's called a genius grant, or I

844
00:45:38,559 --> 00:45:41,199
understand that this has come out of an institution or

845
00:45:41,199 --> 00:45:43,719
a university or a government department that was in the

846
00:45:43,800 --> 00:45:47,960
nineteen fifties well regarded. But you're being crazy. So we

847
00:45:48,079 --> 00:45:53,320
no longer have to maintain the respect that we once

848
00:45:53,400 --> 00:45:56,400
had for that institution. And the reason it's a dilemma

849
00:45:56,719 --> 00:46:00,760
is because the progressive movement needs those institutions to survive.

850
00:46:00,840 --> 00:46:03,400
That's how progressives wield a lot of their power. But

851
00:46:03,519 --> 00:46:07,840
they are not prepared to be sane, even to the

852
00:46:07,960 --> 00:46:11,800
minimum degree that would be necessary to keep those institutions

853
00:46:12,159 --> 00:46:16,119
popular with the general public. So they've essentially killed their

854
00:46:16,119 --> 00:46:18,960
own distribution mechanism.

855
00:46:19,440 --> 00:46:22,559
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, I mean the I think there's only one

856
00:46:22,639 --> 00:46:25,440
conservative has ever gotten a Macarthury Ward, and it was

857
00:46:25,559 --> 00:46:26,159
Robert Woodson.

858
00:46:26,400 --> 00:46:29,639
Speaker 1: And it will go, right, we will. We will see

859
00:46:29,760 --> 00:46:35,239
that institution go if this continues for too long, because

860
00:46:35,280 --> 00:46:37,920
eventually someone is going to say, as it did with NPR,

861
00:46:38,400 --> 00:46:40,440
and it's the FBI just did with the Southern Poverty

862
00:46:40,480 --> 00:46:45,039
lawsner which they're no longer interested in consulting. Okay, done.

863
00:46:45,400 --> 00:46:48,079
You know. Another good example would be the American Bar Association,

864
00:46:48,199 --> 00:46:53,599
which for years used its position to advance the interests

865
00:46:53,639 --> 00:46:58,239
of left wing judges and pretend that qualified and progressive

866
00:46:58,440 --> 00:47:03,639
were the same word, which then and eventually the Trump

867
00:47:03,679 --> 00:47:06,000
administration said, we just don't care anymore what you think.

868
00:47:06,039 --> 00:47:09,760
We're not privileging you within the nomination process. Go away. Now,

869
00:47:09,800 --> 00:47:11,880
the MacArthur system is a little bit different than that

870
00:47:11,960 --> 00:47:15,119
but it won't survive ad nauseam if it's really just

871
00:47:15,159 --> 00:47:17,800
a mechanism for funneling eight hundred thousand dollars to people

872
00:47:17,800 --> 00:47:19,000
who have wacky politics.

873
00:47:19,559 --> 00:47:22,159
Speaker 2: Right, well, I do have a fun story for listeners

874
00:47:22,159 --> 00:47:27,000
and for you. It's apparently they recruit people to nominate

875
00:47:27,199 --> 00:47:30,239
possible prize winners. And about twenty years ago, now lo

876
00:47:30,360 --> 00:47:33,280
and behold, had to have been some dreadful mistake at

877
00:47:33,400 --> 00:47:36,440
MacArthur office. I was sent a letter asking me to

878
00:47:36,480 --> 00:47:40,039
nominate candidates for their prize. I thought, well, this is amusing,

879
00:47:40,199 --> 00:47:43,880
so I sent a letter back, nominating Victor Davis Hansen

880
00:47:44,800 --> 00:47:47,280
for his work on the classics, A Christina hoff Summers

881
00:47:47,280 --> 00:47:51,039
for challenging the orthodoxy of radical feminism, and Clinton Bollock

882
00:47:51,119 --> 00:47:53,320
for his work on school choice. Clint is nowadays on

883
00:47:53,360 --> 00:47:56,679
the Arizona State Supreme Court. And I never heard another

884
00:47:56,760 --> 00:48:00,800
word from the Foundation, not even to thank you for

885
00:48:00,840 --> 00:48:04,400
your nominations. Right, And but it's supposed to be confidential,

886
00:48:04,880 --> 00:48:06,599
and I'm not supposed to talk about this. But A

887
00:48:06,719 --> 00:48:08,320
it's twenty years ago, and B what are they going

888
00:48:08,360 --> 00:48:09,800
to do to me? Not invite me again?

889
00:48:10,239 --> 00:48:11,000
Speaker 1: Yeah? Exactly.

890
00:48:11,679 --> 00:48:13,800
Speaker 2: I thought that was kind of amusing and never heard

891
00:48:13,800 --> 00:48:16,559
a word. I'm sure somebody in the office got punished

892
00:48:16,559 --> 00:48:19,239
for getting my name on a list of possible nominators.

893
00:48:19,960 --> 00:48:21,880
But speaking of nominations, and I think we'll make this

894
00:48:21,960 --> 00:48:25,719
our last item. Is President Trump, in an entirely unsurprising

895
00:48:25,800 --> 00:48:29,320
move to sign a declaration this week or whatever whatever

896
00:48:29,360 --> 00:48:33,920
the document is, to observe to Columbus Day next week.

897
00:48:34,119 --> 00:48:37,480
You know, Columbus has been you know, on the radar

898
00:48:37,519 --> 00:48:39,440
screen and the hit list of the left for decades

899
00:48:39,480 --> 00:48:41,960
now as the original fascist or something like that. Right,

900
00:48:42,559 --> 00:48:44,400
so this is a nice poke in the eye of

901
00:48:44,440 --> 00:48:48,320
the you know, normality reasserting itself in America. And I

902
00:48:48,320 --> 00:48:50,280
am glad to call it Columbus Day once again.

903
00:48:51,039 --> 00:48:55,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he said we're back Italians when he signed it.

904
00:48:55,880 --> 00:49:04,360
It's just declaration, that's right. I am a conservative, I'm

905
00:49:04,360 --> 00:49:09,960
a small sea conservative, and I don't like fads and

906
00:49:10,000 --> 00:49:14,119
the replacement of Columbus Stay with Indigenous People's Stay or

907
00:49:14,119 --> 00:49:19,519
whatever is faddy. Now, there were many problems with Columbus

908
00:49:19,719 --> 00:49:23,599
he lived five hundred plus years ago, but what was

909
00:49:23,679 --> 00:49:27,320
impressive about him was that he got across the ocean

910
00:49:28,320 --> 00:49:31,280
on a boat that we wouldn't even look at now,

911
00:49:32,639 --> 00:49:35,719
and I think that that matters because there's been an

912
00:49:35,719 --> 00:49:41,960
attempt in recent years to cancel people who had unpleasant

913
00:49:42,000 --> 00:49:44,519
views or did unpleasant things that were ancillary to the

914
00:49:44,559 --> 00:49:47,639
reason that we look up to them in the first place.

915
00:49:47,760 --> 00:49:52,639
It's fine, in my view, to cancel the Confederacy Alexander

916
00:49:52,639 --> 00:49:56,239
Stevens for the Cornerstone speech. That's why he is known.

917
00:49:56,639 --> 00:50:01,239
His one contribution to American life was the proposition that

918
00:50:01,760 --> 00:50:07,400
African Americans are inferior and ought to be enslaved. Cancel

919
00:50:07,519 --> 00:50:12,840
that guy. But Nelson in England. Nelson is not known

920
00:50:13,199 --> 00:50:17,119
for having been in favor of slavery, which he was,

921
00:50:17,119 --> 00:50:20,039
although he wasn't zealous about it. Nelson's known for having

922
00:50:20,079 --> 00:50:26,480
been an extraordinary naval commander and saving the British from Napoleon.

923
00:50:27,599 --> 00:50:30,480
So what do you do with someone like that. I

924
00:50:30,519 --> 00:50:32,639
think you celebrate them for what they were known for

925
00:50:32,800 --> 00:50:35,400
and kind of ignore the rest. And that's my view

926
00:50:35,440 --> 00:50:38,400
of Columbus as well. That yeah, I'm totally happy to

927
00:50:38,440 --> 00:50:40,800
say that Columbus did bad things, but we don't celebrate

928
00:50:40,880 --> 00:50:42,880
him for the bad things. We celebrated for getting across

929
00:50:42,880 --> 00:50:45,039
the ocean, which was an extraordinary feat.

930
00:50:45,599 --> 00:50:48,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean I always like to bring up

931
00:50:48,679 --> 00:50:50,599
an aspect of this that seldom thought of, and that's

932
00:50:50,599 --> 00:50:54,880
a counterfactual. I asked the anthropologist Charles Mann this once,

933
00:50:55,159 --> 00:50:57,519
Charles were a great book twenty five years ago, now

934
00:50:57,559 --> 00:51:00,000
called fourteen ninety one. It was, you know, this Hemisphere

935
00:51:00,039 --> 00:51:03,840
year before Columbus and European settlement came. And you know,

936
00:51:03,920 --> 00:51:05,960
he is a very good book about you know what

937
00:51:06,000 --> 00:51:09,599
the Inca and Aztec civilizations and North American Indian tribes

938
00:51:09,960 --> 00:51:13,760
were like, and especially in Central America, quite sophisticated cities,

939
00:51:13,800 --> 00:51:16,360
as we know. And they did build some boats. They

940
00:51:16,400 --> 00:51:20,079
never became deep ocean going seafaring peoples. But I asked

941
00:51:20,159 --> 00:51:22,760
him what would have happened if, say, the Aztecs or

942
00:51:22,760 --> 00:51:25,920
the Incas or somebody had sailed to Europe. And they said, oh,

943
00:51:26,159 --> 00:51:28,280
the same thing would have happened as what did happen.

944
00:51:28,440 --> 00:51:31,960
They would have had no immunity to European diseases, offshoots

945
00:51:31,960 --> 00:51:34,280
of the plague, and they would have died really fast

946
00:51:34,760 --> 00:51:37,440
if they tried to come and settle Europe. And it's

947
00:51:37,480 --> 00:51:40,400
just that's not something that was going to happen sometime

948
00:51:40,480 --> 00:51:43,239
in history, right either. It was fourteen ninety two or

949
00:51:43,280 --> 00:51:45,480
fifteen ninety two, that was going to happen. It's a

950
00:51:45,480 --> 00:51:48,000
tragedy of human history. It would have happened if the

951
00:51:48,800 --> 00:51:51,119
flow of ships and exploration had been the other direction

952
00:51:52,239 --> 00:51:55,320
and had that It comes of the you know, it

953
00:51:55,360 --> 00:51:59,079
was biological warfare, you know, which is we didn't even

954
00:51:59,119 --> 00:52:02,000
have gym there, right, exactly right.

955
00:52:02,400 --> 00:52:04,880
Speaker 1: I think I'm right in saying we didn't have a comprehensible,

956
00:52:05,239 --> 00:52:09,639
certainly not a widely understood gem theory until about eighteen eighty, right,

957
00:52:10,199 --> 00:52:13,280
So the idea that this was some tool in the

958
00:52:13,400 --> 00:52:16,679
arsenal that was wheeled by evil colonists for years is

959
00:52:16,840 --> 00:52:17,880
really quite silly.

960
00:52:18,400 --> 00:52:21,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's sort of typical of liberal ignorance of

961
00:52:21,920 --> 00:52:23,920
history that goes to a lot of things, as we

962
00:52:23,920 --> 00:52:27,440
were saying before. But with that, it is time for

963
00:52:27,519 --> 00:52:29,639
us to draw to a close for this week. This

964
00:52:29,719 --> 00:52:32,519
podcast was brought to you by Cozy Earth. Please support

965
00:52:32,599 --> 00:52:35,039
us by coming part of the best place for civil

966
00:52:35,079 --> 00:52:38,599
center right conversation. Please take a minute, as James likes

967
00:52:38,639 --> 00:52:40,760
to say, to leave us a five star review on

968
00:52:40,800 --> 00:52:44,639
Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever else you source your

969
00:52:44,639 --> 00:52:48,840
podcast material. Your reviews help us attract new listeners and

970
00:52:48,880 --> 00:52:52,639
that keeps the show going. So so long for now, Charlie,

971
00:52:52,679 --> 00:52:54,800
see you next week. We'll see you everybody in the

972
00:52:54,840 --> 00:52:57,760
comments at Ricochet four point dot dot dot.

973
00:52:58,000 --> 00:53:01,480
Speaker 1: Yes, twelve point twelve points something or fourteen point fourteen

974
00:53:01,519 --> 00:53:03,519
point something. The point is go there and comment and

975
00:53:03,559 --> 00:53:06,079
have fun. Don't look at the bottom, right right.

976
00:53:06,519 --> 00:53:07,800
Speaker 2: Thanks Charlie, See you next week.