Speaker 1: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask
Speaker 1: what you can do for your country.
Speaker 2: Mister Gerba Schaw, tear down this wall.
Speaker 1: It's the Rickachet Podcast with Beltieven Hayward and myself James Lylyax.
Speaker 1: Today I from down to Eli Lake about national and
Speaker 1: Downmouth for democracy going away, and about Gaza, What's next
Speaker 1: and Eli's next new project.
Speaker 3: So let's have ourselves a podcast in Washington. There is
Speaker 3: a new sheriff in town and under Donald Trump's leadership,
Speaker 3: we may disagree with your views, but we will fight
Speaker 3: to defend your right to offer it in the public square.
Speaker 3: Agree or disagree, and trust me. I say this with
Speaker 3: all humor. If American a democracy can survive ten years
Speaker 3: of Thunberg scolding, you guys can survive a few months
Speaker 3: of Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: Welcome everybody. This is the Ricochet Podcast, number seven and
Speaker 1: twenty eight. If you keeping score, don't know why you would,
Speaker 1: but if you are, then you know. This has been
Speaker 1: a long, long, long series of podcasts that has spanned
Speaker 1: human history as we've known it for the last decade
Speaker 1: or so. And now we find ourselves at a peculiar
Speaker 1: place where how do I put this? Well? We're missing
Speaker 1: Charles CW. Cook. I know, I know, but don't despair.
Speaker 1: He'll be back. He's just unavailable at the moment. But
Speaker 1: you have Stephen Hayward and you have me James Lilacs
Speaker 1: and Minneapolis, where we're due for some snow and apparently
Speaker 1: the temperatures are going to go down into the negative
Speaker 1: region again. We'll be waking up to eighteen below and
Speaker 1: wondering why why why do we not sit in human
Speaker 1: comfort where Stephen is today. Although I'm sure you're going
Speaker 1: to tell me that it's a it's a bit rainy
Speaker 1: or overcast or something like other California paradise version.
Speaker 4: No, I think what you need to know is that
Speaker 4: fire season is finally over at month's slide season has
Speaker 4: begun in Earnest and this week, so that that's our
Speaker 4: two seasons.
Speaker 1: Ernest can in Ernest, California. That's up by Island Park,
Speaker 1: isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Right, Well, enjoy your mind slip knot slide nod. Here
Speaker 1: we are facing another Well, you know, I think you
Speaker 1: described it when we were chatting before as a barn
Speaker 1: burner of a speech I'm imagining. JD. Vance wrote that
Speaker 1: himself and I'm also imagining Kamala Harris writing as a
Speaker 1: vice president, writing a speech that she would give to
Speaker 1: European leaders, in which she would, of course advise them
Speaker 1: to be unburdened what had gone before, except of course,
Speaker 1: for the legacy of colonialism and slavery. You burdened that
Speaker 1: you be curid eternally. And it would be full of
Speaker 1: platitudes about working together in the shared mission and the
Speaker 1: rest of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the same blobby
Speaker 1: EU trends national talk that we've been hearing for a
Speaker 1: long time. This Stephen was different.
Speaker 4: Yes, Well, I'm having flashbacks. Well, I'm thinking of the reaction.
Speaker 4: I'm having flashbacks to the way Spiro agnew so angered
Speaker 4: the media and the left. But I repeat myself. The
Speaker 4: speech was to the annual Munich Security Conference, which is
Speaker 4: a big deal for the international defense and foreign policy elite.
Speaker 4: It generally goes unnoticed in America, but we take it
Speaker 4: very seriously. I kept seeing excerpts of the speech on
Speaker 4: Twitter this morning, and each one of them I kept saying, Wow,
Speaker 4: he said what so he called out Germany for de industrializing,
Speaker 4: and how.
Speaker 2: Foolish that was.
Speaker 1: He praised Flis stop right there, what has Germany done exactly?
Speaker 1: Germany previously regarded as the economic powerhouse of Europe. They
Speaker 1: have great industrial capacity in the rest of it. When
Speaker 1: you say de industrializing, what does that mean?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well so well, look, I mean the simple answer
Speaker 4: is they embraced, starting fifteen years ago or more, this
Speaker 4: net zero climate change decarbonization madness. And they've spent over
Speaker 4: a trillion euros, well trillion dollars on this and really
Speaker 4: haven't achieved all that much. In fact, our emissions have
Speaker 4: gone back up and they've started burning coal again to
Speaker 4: keep the lights on. But their electricity prices have soared
Speaker 4: so high that a lot of German manufacturing has cut back,
Speaker 4: starting to move out of the country, are simply shut down,
Speaker 4: and manufacturing employment has plummeted in Germany in the last
Speaker 4: few years. And it's not just Germany. Britain has done
Speaker 4: the same thing. Britain at zero policy has runous electrical
Speaker 4: prices and speaking to my friends in Great Britain, they
Speaker 4: have meters that tell them exactly what their bill is
Speaker 4: right and the way that concentrates the mind on an
Speaker 4: individual residential level.
Speaker 1: And people should say, well, that's good. They shouldn't be
Speaker 1: They shouldn't be using energy. They should be wearing sweaters
Speaker 1: and sitting inside and you know, using the extra tallow
Speaker 1: for candles. No, that's that's not twenty first century civilization
Speaker 1: as we as we envisioned it. So they have to
Speaker 1: cut back and they don't, and so this means, of
Speaker 1: course a loss of jobs, and this means less economic
Speaker 1: ability to fund the generous welfare state. And then you
Speaker 1: combine that with other social presures such as immigration and
Speaker 1: the rest of it, and you have a recipe for
Speaker 1: a country that is casting its eye right word it
Speaker 1: shall we say, much to the horror of the people
Speaker 1: who believe that it would be another rote installation of
Speaker 1: a left wing center left wing government.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, now there's three or four other amazing highlights of
Speaker 4: the speech. He singled out Poland as our best ally
Speaker 4: in Europe on defense because they spend the most of
Speaker 4: any European nation on their defense. That was his way
Speaker 4: of shaming all the countries that aren't living up to
Speaker 4: their obligations. He attacked Europe for censorship and for being
Speaker 4: election de nihilists. In particularly, he mentioned, you know, they
Speaker 4: canceled an election in Romania because the wrong party won
Speaker 4: and then my favorite part of it was I forget
Speaker 4: the context now, but the clip I saw on YouTube
Speaker 4: and I'm trying to find it in the text is
Speaker 4: when he said, I say this with all humor, but
Speaker 4: if we Americans had to put up with ten years
Speaker 4: of scolding from Greta Thunberg, you can put up with
Speaker 4: a few months of Elon Musk. And he paused for
Speaker 4: a moment, waiting for some even just the murmur of laughter,
Speaker 4: dead stone signs from the audience. They did not want
Speaker 4: to hear this, and so had some other things in there.
Speaker 4: And I mean he may have written it himself. He's
Speaker 4: perfectly capable of it. I think I know who might
Speaker 4: have written a large part of the speech, but it's
Speaker 4: just speculation on my part. But there's a new day
Speaker 4: in town. And by the way, second big speech of
Speaker 4: the week where Vance said of the Europeans, well, he
Speaker 4: give a speech on artificial intelligence in Paris a few
Speaker 4: days ago, and essentially his message was borrowing from Khrushchev
Speaker 4: in nineteen fifty nine. Essentially he said, when it comes
Speaker 4: to AI, we in America are going to bury you.
Speaker 2: So that was fun.
Speaker 1: Did he did he pound his loafer on the table,
Speaker 1: no Gold do that.
Speaker 4: But back I did wonder though James, I thought, at
Speaker 4: any minute now he's going to tear off his suit
Speaker 4: and reveal his Captain America Superman crossover costume underneath.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, given how the latest Captain America movie
Speaker 1: is doing, perhaps that's not a wise idea. But if
Speaker 1: he did, you know, if you did morphit with Superman,
Speaker 1: you would have a you would have a nice archetype.
Speaker 1: Going back to Greta Sunburg, we hear he You know,
Speaker 1: nobody wanted to hear that, and they all probably felt
Speaker 1: a little bit of a personal sting because they've all
Speaker 1: at some point had to genuflect towards the goal of
Speaker 1: carbon zero net zero, and Greta Sundberg has been the
Speaker 1: joan of hoisting that banner as she walks around Europe,
Speaker 1: flies bikes, I don't know, scowling at every scowling at
Speaker 1: everybody and shaming them, shaming them. The thing is is
Speaker 1: the reaction that they have is that somehow, and we
Speaker 1: hate to psycho analyze people rooted in shame because you know,
Speaker 1: while I think that there may have been a few
Speaker 1: true believers, I think a lot of people sort of
Speaker 1: made themselves believe that this was necessary to do. It
Speaker 1: was a high minded thing to do, It was a
Speaker 1: saving humanity thing to do. And the fact that it
Speaker 1: intersected with the opportunities for more government power and state control,
Speaker 1: well that was just a happy little frosting on the cake.
Speaker 1: And in their heart of hearts they knew that this
Speaker 1: enterprise was a fool errand as long as China and
Speaker 1: India pump out. But they thought, well, I'm doing a
Speaker 1: virtuous thing. I will be regarded in the future as
Speaker 1: a virtuous person. And so on we go, and with
Speaker 1: less and less and less, I'll be able to fly
Speaker 1: to Davos. But you guys probably are gonna have to
Speaker 1: have some carbon credits at the end of it if
Speaker 1: you want to take you know, you know, some cheap
Speaker 1: jet down to Betha. Is that it? I mean, you
Speaker 1: can't say. But shaming them from following this children's crusade
Speaker 1: seems to me to be overdue.
Speaker 4: Oh well, absolutely. I mean I have three or four
Speaker 4: field theories about this. One is I think the combination
Speaker 4: of European guilt that goes back decades, not just German guilt,
Speaker 4: The whole European continent has lost their confidence there. They
Speaker 4: feel guilty about their past, right the culture repudiation is
Speaker 4: Roger Scrutin used to call it, and they're sort of
Speaker 4: weak minded. But then on the energy question, they're simply
Speaker 4: illiterate about how energy works and they're unedggable.
Speaker 2: It seems.
Speaker 4: You can point out some basic facts about what's going
Speaker 4: on and not going on and how it works, and
Speaker 4: they're just impervious to common sense. They're not unique. That
Speaker 4: describes the governor of California as well.
Speaker 1: You need to sit them all down and make them
Speaker 1: watch a Billy Bob Thornton Landsman monologue is what you
Speaker 1: need there. You don't need to send Jdvans over there,
Speaker 1: send Tyler Sheridan over there to right.
Speaker 4: I guess it does tell you something about what's wrong
Speaker 4: with I know, although that's an interesting cultural marker that
Speaker 4: you see a Landsman come on like it has. I
Speaker 4: do think that you know, it's this isn't really new,
Speaker 4: but the Thunberg episode was really a you know, blow
Speaker 4: the lid off. Time magazine, remember made her person of
Speaker 4: the Year for five years back, and you know there's
Speaker 4: a meme that goes around. It pops up regularly on
Speaker 4: social media and elsewhere, and it shows Greta Thunberg about
Speaker 4: how she's this world celebrity. And that shows Judith Curry
Speaker 4: of Georgia Tech, a well renowned climate scientist, lots of publications,
Speaker 4: ran the Department of Climate Science at Georgia Tech for
Speaker 4: many years, but descents from the party line. She never
Speaker 4: gets any publicity because of course she dissents from the
Speaker 4: party line. And that shows you what's wrong with the
Speaker 4: world that someone who really knows stuff gets ignored and
Speaker 4: somebody who knows nothing has made a global celebrity.
Speaker 1: You know. Part of that we mentioned before, the civilizational
Speaker 1: self loathing has played Europe. So they never got over
Speaker 1: World War One because that completely deal legitimized the idea
Speaker 1: of nationalism, and ever since then, and of course with
Speaker 1: the unfortunate events that happened in the thirties and the forties,
Speaker 1: that compounded the matter. So we have to dissolve all
Speaker 1: of our cultural identities into this transnational entity we call
Speaker 1: the EU, the Common Market, et cetera, et cetera. I
Speaker 1: get that, I get that, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: it's been one hundred and eleven years and it's kind
Speaker 1: of like having a thirty something in your basement, moping
Speaker 1: about the girl he broke up with in his first
Speaker 1: year of college. We've been hearing this civilizational despair and
Speaker 1: lack of self confidence for an awful long time. There's
Speaker 1: a great deal for Europe to be proud of, and
Speaker 1: there's a great deal of its culture from which you
Speaker 1: can draw for hundreds of years in order to forge
Speaker 1: an identity that they ought to be proud of. But
Speaker 1: of course, the minute that you start to say that,
Speaker 1: then people get very nervous, because then you're talking about
Speaker 1: national identities and national identities or the whole problem. When
Speaker 1: he singles up Poland, Poland and Hungary, which some people
Speaker 1: may say is a less savory example, are privict examples
Speaker 1: of European countries that are proud of what they are
Speaker 1: and their folk ways and their language and their culture
Speaker 1: and their food and whatever version of you know, meat
Speaker 1: sausages they have. So yes, some spine would be nice,
Speaker 1: Some spine would be nice. AI, how are we going
Speaker 1: to bury them? What are they doing to cause them
Speaker 1: to slide behind? On that one again?
Speaker 4: Well, I think the Europeans want to control it and
Speaker 4: regulate it and censor it, and you know, they're worried
Speaker 4: about you all kinds of things, and essentially Advance said
Speaker 4: is we're for this industry. We're going to be the
Speaker 4: tech leaders, and you know, if you want to be
Speaker 4: left behind, that's up to you. So it wasn't it
Speaker 4: wasn't quite the cruiseev we will bear you. I just
Speaker 4: stylized it that way because I think they were shocked.
Speaker 4: I mean, I know some European conservatives were worried about
Speaker 4: AI and think there needs to be some kind of
Speaker 4: regulatory regime, and I don't you know.
Speaker 1: What does that look like? Though? What does a regulatory
Speaker 1: regime on AI look like?
Speaker 4: Well, it's some kind of censorship, I'm afraid, but censoring
Speaker 4: what exactly.
Speaker 1: That's where this gets so vague. I understand when they
Speaker 1: say that there you can have censorship regimes from the
Speaker 1: government that control information on social media and the like,
Speaker 1: and everybody loves that because we can't have people saying
Speaker 1: anything on the internet. My god, people would believe it.
Speaker 1: You know, if we've got to go out there and
Speaker 1: send the little bots to crawl around to make sure
Speaker 1: that nobody is talking about COVID is possibly coming from
Speaker 1: a laboratory, came from a sick panglin in a wet market,
Speaker 1: and if you say otherwise, then you've been banished to
Speaker 1: the to the to the dead zone.
Speaker 4: Well, I think there are two things that you can
Speaker 4: have legitimate worry about. One is that AI use as
Speaker 4: you know, fancy algorithms to invade people's privacy. That's going
Speaker 4: to happen anyway, because it's it's not just the things
Speaker 4: for the Internet. The other one is, and I've worried
Speaker 4: about this, is there might be some regulation of deep fakes.
Speaker 2: Right. I actually thought.
Speaker 4: On this last campaign there would be some deep fake
Speaker 4: videos that would come out of you know, Triumph or
Speaker 4: hair or whoever, and we might believe it for a day,
Speaker 4: and that could be quite disruptive and we're going have
Speaker 4: to figure out how to deal with that. But I
Speaker 4: think censoring preemptively the use of artificial intelligence to create
Speaker 4: visual content is very problematic for all the reasons that
Speaker 4: I think you understand.
Speaker 1: That's true. But on the other hand, am I a
Speaker 1: deep fake? Because if my cells replace themselves every signal,
Speaker 1: you know, every couple of years or so, like that
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Speaker 1: we welcome back Eli Lake, columnist for the Free Press,
Speaker 1: contributing editor to commentary in the host of a brand
Speaker 1: new podcast we're going to be talking about called Breaking History.
Speaker 1: We'll find out whether or not that means that history
Speaker 1: is sort of dtd D newsflash, or whether or not
Speaker 1: he's being iconoclastic and smashing the old concepts. ELI welcome,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. Well, we continue
Speaker 1: to move at a great pace in Washington, DC. Breaking, smashing, disrupting,
Speaker 1: I think is what somebody might call it. And the
Speaker 1: judges are striking back and refusing to let things happen,
Speaker 1: barreling towards a constitutional crisis. We're told, let's focus on
Speaker 1: one recent thing. Checking my watch here to see if
Speaker 1: they've abolished the Department of Educate. Nope, not yet. National
Speaker 1: in domand for Democracy. Yeah, that's how I who would
Speaker 1: be opposed to cutting the National Endowment for Democracy? You
Speaker 1: got a piece up with the Free Press and you
Speaker 1: argue the signals quite change in American foreign policy. So
Speaker 1: refresh us, tell us what's going on. Well.
Speaker 5: The National Dominant for Democracy was created in nineteen eighty
Speaker 5: three by President Reagan and allies in both parties in Congress,
Speaker 5: and it's ours. It's an independent kind of foundation that
Speaker 5: is not part of the executive branch. It makes small,
Speaker 5: bespoke grants. In the nineteen eighties it helped let Well
Speaker 5: Less of Solidarity and other Eastern European freedom fighters, and
Speaker 5: today it helps all kinds of people in Iran and China.
Speaker 5: There have been like all institutions and bad grants that
Speaker 5: were made. It was one that was made to a
Speaker 5: group called the Global Disinformation Index, which is you know,
Speaker 5: I mean the entire anti disinformation industry we can all
Speaker 5: say as a racket. And that got involved a really
Speaker 5: dangerous thing with the state departments. I think it's called
Speaker 5: the Global Information Center or something like that, and that
Speaker 5: was really bad. But when you know, the president of
Speaker 5: the NED who I interviewed, found out about the grant.
Speaker 5: As soon as he found out about it, he ordered
Speaker 5: a review, he severed ties with the organization, and he
Speaker 5: has worked pretty diligently to make sure that the National
Speaker 5: damage for Democracy does not not you know, funding these
Speaker 5: kind of flim flam organizations that fight counter you know,
Speaker 5: that fight disinformation or you know kind of this spoke
Speaker 5: causes like environmental justice under the banner of democracy, which
Speaker 5: I agree there is a kind of bloat in the
Speaker 5: n GA NGO industrial complex. I think a lot of
Speaker 5: that stuff is wasteful and stupid. But what any D
Speaker 5: does is like they don't recruit people, they the people
Speaker 5: come to us. It's basically like these are our real
Speaker 5: allies into talitarian regimes and you don't have to be
Speaker 5: like a full you know, you know, five star neo
Speaker 5: conservative to you know, just say I think it's a
Speaker 5: good idea for some US money to support the green
Speaker 5: shoots of freedom in these places where there is no
Speaker 5: political freedom. That used to be non controversial, but apparently
Speaker 5: now we are hearing that it's you know, you know,
Speaker 5: it's an interesting kind of contradiction or paradox of an
Speaker 5: argument because Elon Musk is argument, they don't do anything,
Speaker 5: they waste a lot of money, so it's too wasteful.
Speaker 5: But then there's a kind of ideological momentum coming from
Speaker 5: the magaverse that says that they're too effective. They're responsible
Speaker 5: for color revolutions and regime change. I support the color revolutions,
Speaker 5: by the way, that's a wonderful thing. But training you know,
Speaker 5: nascent political parties an election law, or supporting kind of
Speaker 5: independent media is not the same as orchestrating these kinds
Speaker 5: of things. This is an expression of the desires of
Speaker 5: the you know, people in these country where there were
Speaker 5: these color revolutions.
Speaker 1: Okay, couple of points. One, there seems there's this idea
Speaker 1: that if an organization was set up for a good
Speaker 1: purpose under Reagan, that it is therefore destined to be
Speaker 1: with us forever. That you can't get rid of it.
Speaker 1: You just simply have to keep giving it the.
Speaker 2: Same I don't agree with that. I see we're saying, okay.
Speaker 1: And the second point is is that even though it's
Speaker 1: funded with you could say it's funded to help like
Speaker 1: well Lesson, we all loved him and we all supported solidarity.
Speaker 1: And the rest of it is that inevitably any of
Speaker 1: these organizations will drift left in time and expands its
Speaker 1: mission so that you will find the money going to
Speaker 1: you know, to environmental or gender based advocacy or the
Speaker 1: rest of it.
Speaker 2: That's possible, It's certainly possible, but that's not ned right.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that that under a democratic administration that
Speaker 1: it's more likely. The third thing would be is that
Speaker 1: surely before nineteen eighty three we had means, and we
Speaker 1: had we had means institutions subterfuge with the rest of it,
Speaker 1: in which we could get resources to people in places
Speaker 1: if we need, if we thought there was some good
Speaker 1: skull dougre that needed to be done well.
Speaker 5: The CIA used to support political parties in post war
Speaker 5: Europe right to make sure the Communists didn't take over,
Speaker 5: and does that mean then that But that's not what
Speaker 5: the NED does. It's like, this is there was one
Speaker 5: quote that they keep taking out of context of somebody say, well,
Speaker 5: the CIA used to do this, and now we do it,
Speaker 5: and so that's just we're doing the CIA thing out
Speaker 5: in the open or something. And I'm like, well, you know,
Speaker 5: the CIA did a lot of things in that period,
Speaker 5: very different than the National Endowment for Democracies. The National
Speaker 5: Endowment for Democracies is a transparent organization that makes grants
Speaker 5: to organizations that request funding. The CIA kind of would,
Speaker 5: you know, by its nature, recruit people. That's a big difference.
Speaker 5: Another big difference is that they have a grant making process.
Speaker 5: They don't hand out bags of cash like you know,
Speaker 5: Bill Colby in early nineteen fifties Italy. I mean, it's
Speaker 5: not the same thing. More importantly, there isn't a wing
Speaker 5: of the NED that all, so you know occasionally you know,
Speaker 5: tries to assassinate foreign leaders or you know, is stealing
Speaker 5: state secrets. It's like, the whole point is that this
Speaker 5: is something that is non controversial in American support. It
Speaker 5: is part of our political DNA. Going back to Thomas Paine,
Speaker 5: who you know, went over to France to support the
Speaker 5: French Revolution, the idea that we believe our founding principles
Speaker 5: are universal and that other people, you know, deserve freedom
Speaker 5: as well, is like, yeah, of course, but I have
Speaker 5: to I want to challenge something that you said earlier,
Speaker 5: because I'm not sure that if the same people that
Speaker 5: are making these arguments today would have supported like Willessa,
Speaker 5: I think they would have said, we're trying to do
Speaker 5: regime change in communist Poland and it's going to lead
Speaker 5: to World War three. That's the argument that I'm getting
Speaker 5: because these people, and unfortunately there have been people involved
Speaker 5: with the Heritage Foundations who have sort of made an
Speaker 5: argument that the National Endowment for Democracy is to quote
Speaker 5: blame interesting choice of words for the Orange Revolution and
Speaker 5: the Maydaon Revolution in Ukraine as if a those are
Speaker 5: a bad thing, which and b if it's true, which
Speaker 5: is not true. The credit goes to the Ukrainian people,
Speaker 5: and it completely just whitewashes it, airbrushes away the idea
Speaker 5: that the Ukrainians might have a problem living under the
Speaker 5: thumb of a pro Russian autocrat and I just want to.
Speaker 5: I mean, like, and these people want to kick me
Speaker 5: out of the conservative movement. I'm sorry, you're kicking yourselves
Speaker 5: out of the conservative movement if you can't get your
Speaker 5: head around the fact that we believe in certain things.
Speaker 5: That that doesn't mean I want to, you know, I
Speaker 5: want to hot war with Russia.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 5: But it's like the idea that Russia had no choice
Speaker 5: because of the National Endowment of Democracy to launch a
Speaker 5: brutal regime change war of conquest. That's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: No, that that's nonsense, and I want to put But
Speaker 1: people are saying this nonsense I know, and they're welcome
Speaker 1: to do so, and I can call it nonsense. I
Speaker 1: am in I was in favor of like VELLSSA. I
Speaker 1: was in favor of the revolution absolutely lately. Whether or
Speaker 1: not would have you know, would have happened without us
Speaker 1: is something we did debate. I'm not saying this because
Speaker 1: I have a great dog in this fight, and I'm
Speaker 1: I'm giving what I what I intuit people to say,
Speaker 1: and I may or may not be correct about it.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't would I be particularly bothered if the any
Speaker 1: Day continued as an institution and was funded as it was,
Speaker 1: and we went on and gave money to people who
Speaker 1: came to us. I don't think it's the biggest problem
Speaker 1: facing US today, but you are indicating that it represents
Speaker 1: sort of a change in American foreign policy in the
Speaker 1: way that we want the world to think of us,
Speaker 1: not as somebody to whom you can come for assistance,
Speaker 1: but an example you can get around following if you
Speaker 1: can figure out on your own. And Steve means.
Speaker 5: I don't think that it should be kind of stark either,
Speaker 5: or if you think in retrospect the war in Iraq
Speaker 5: was a horrible blunder. That does not necessarily mean that
Speaker 5: we should stop the ie we should stop supporting people
Speaker 5: who want a free press in Iran. I mean you
Speaker 5: can those are apples and oranges, those are mac trucks,
Speaker 5: and you know raisins. It's not the same thing. Supporting
Speaker 5: such groups is something that ay, the people who accept
Speaker 5: the money are taking the risk. This is what they want.
Speaker 5: Why wouldn't we want a foundation to necessarily support them? Now,
Speaker 5: when you get into the sort of private foundations are
Speaker 5: sort of related groups like the Surus's Open Society Institute,
Speaker 5: that is an organization that started you could argue, you know,
Speaker 5: did a lot of admirable things in the aftermath of
Speaker 5: the Cold War in the nineteen nineties and has turned
Speaker 5: into you know, a kind of giant, you know foundation
Speaker 5: to support a bunch of really you know, pernicious progressive
Speaker 5: causes like media matters and disinformation and censorship and all
Speaker 5: kinds of things I don't like and you don't like,
Speaker 5: and I don't think people listen to this like but
Speaker 5: that's not the National Damage for Democracy. The National Dowind
Speaker 5: for Democracy has a number of people on its board
Speaker 5: that are Trump allies like Elis Sephonic or people involved
Speaker 5: with their sister organizations like the International Republican Institute. Tom Cotton,
Speaker 5: Marco Rubio was on the board. These are people who
Speaker 5: basically are you know, Trump supporters and part of the
Speaker 5: Trump movement. So the idea that they're you know, the
Speaker 5: whole thing is bad because Victoria Newland is now on
Speaker 5: the boarder an applebomb okay, fine, by the way, and
Speaker 5: applebom was no longer on the board, and you know,
Speaker 5: it's a conspiracy theory in a lot of ways, and
Speaker 5: it's really unfortunate because I do think that it's important
Speaker 5: even if it's relatively compared to the rest of the budget.
Speaker 5: It's a small amount of money, but I do think
Speaker 5: that it's valuable to support these and it's also valuable
Speaker 5: for us in Washington because oftentimes I've found as a
Speaker 5: journalist who wants to cover something in one of these countries,
Speaker 5: the National En Dowad for Democracy usually has access to
Speaker 5: the people who really know what's going on on the ground.
Speaker 5: And I know that as a journalists that benefits me.
Speaker 5: But I also know that people of the State Department,
Speaker 5: you cannot get the same perspective of what's happening in
Speaker 5: a country just by relying on the people whose staff
Speaker 5: and embassy, who deal largely with other government officials. So
Speaker 5: there is a benefit to this. And once you start
Speaker 5: making the argument that this is part of a kind
Speaker 5: of stealth regime change and that we are interfering in
Speaker 5: the affairs of countries, that is where I just draw
Speaker 5: the line. I think supporting people who don't want to
Speaker 5: live under desk spots is a good thing, and I
Speaker 5: just you know, I can't get my head around the
Speaker 5: fact that there appears to be a lot of momentum
Speaker 5: behind an element of the right that thinks that that is,
Speaker 5: you know, part of the New World Order or something
Speaker 5: like that.
Speaker 4: So Eli, it's Steve Hayward out in Burning, California. Which
Speaker 4: we'll come back to what we talk about your podcast too.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 4: I want to text our listeners to just go one
Speaker 4: more round with you about the NED. Okay, and then
Speaker 4: also I want I want to bring you in on
Speaker 4: the latest on the Middle East, because you know way
Speaker 4: more about that than I do. Look, a general observation,
Speaker 4: then a couple points about NED and reformsgestion. The general
Speaker 4: point is I think we have to understand that with
Speaker 4: the shakunaw tactics of the Trump administration, they're going to
Speaker 4: be indiscriminate about some of the things they cut and attack,
Speaker 4: and they're going to make some mistakes. Okay, that said,
Speaker 4: I remember you, by the way, I actually wrote about
Speaker 4: this in my own book about Reagan. You know, the
Speaker 4: NAD started with that one of his greatest speeches, the
Speaker 4: Westminster Address in nineteen eighty two. And you also mentioned
Speaker 4: something briefly a minute ago that's in your article that
Speaker 4: there is two sub organizations, the Republican Institute and a
Speaker 4: Democratic Institute.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I actually did some work.
Speaker 4: For the Republican Institute back in the eighties when it
Speaker 4: was all getting started, and.
Speaker 2: I was a huge fan of the whole effort.
Speaker 4: On the other hand, I've always been inclined to go
Speaker 4: along with John O'Sullivan and Robert Conquest that all organizations
Speaker 4: are not explicitly right wing will become left wing over time.
Speaker 4: I think that's what's part of what's went wrong with USAID,
Speaker 4: which serves you right, okay, generally correct? Yes, yeah, okay.
Speaker 4: So here's my reform suggestion. I'll accept all of your
Speaker 4: defenses of what NED has done, but my reform suggestion
Speaker 4: would be this, why do we have the Republican adjunct
Speaker 4: and the Democratic adjunct? I think that represented the partisan
Speaker 4: splits on foreign policy between the two parties. You know,
Speaker 4: the Democrats in the eighties were very nervous about this
Speaker 4: kind of thing for opposite reasons of the people on
Speaker 4: the right who are opposed to it.
Speaker 5: The Democrats of the nineteen eighties sound a lot like
Speaker 5: any magotypes today, not all megotypes, I should say, I was,
Speaker 5: you know, the ones I'm arguing with on social media, right.
Speaker 2: Yep, understood that completely.
Speaker 4: My thought is maybe what we ought to do is
Speaker 4: reconstitute the National Dowmage for democracies and simply let the
Speaker 4: two parties go their own ways.
Speaker 2: I can see defense. So if the.
Speaker 4: Democrats want to support gender education in Pakistan, let them
Speaker 4: and be transparent about it. And Republicans want to.
Speaker 2: Support like two gender only education, let's support that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, or you know, I mean, of course there's
Speaker 4: the argument you raise, which you will skip over now
Speaker 4: about you know, what kind of democratic efforts do you
Speaker 4: want to support overseas? And I know there's people say none,
Speaker 4: and okay, anyway, that's my reform suggestion is why don't
Speaker 4: we just be more honest and direct about this.
Speaker 5: I'm open to that, and I agree like the broader
Speaker 5: international NGO space is rife with nonsense and corruption.
Speaker 2: One that's a real problem, by the way, but it's
Speaker 2: not also with the USAID.
Speaker 5: I remember when I was stationed in Egypt in two
Speaker 5: thousand and five. In two thousand and six, I did
Speaker 5: a piece about a kind of editor of an Egyptian
Speaker 5: newspaper who had written a column about, you know, endorsing
Speaker 5: this Kakamami David Irving view that the Holocaust was at
Speaker 5: over state and everything like that. It was a kind
Speaker 5: of typical fair. And what stood out to me is that,
Speaker 5: you know, earlier in his career, this is two thousand
Speaker 5: and five, so like in the early eighties, he'd gotten
Speaker 5: a USAID grant to like learn journalism in America, and
Speaker 5: I was thinking, like, oh, wow, you guys really know
Speaker 5: how to pick them. So, you know, yeah, I yeah,
Speaker 5: there's a lot of problems right now, and you know,
Speaker 5: some of the things that we're learning about what USAID
Speaker 5: supported is you know, shut it down. As far as
Speaker 5: I'm concerned, I agree, although I'm sure there's plenty of
Speaker 5: good things with USAID as well, and it can be
Speaker 5: an important tool of US foreign policy.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like we're gonna have to we got to deal
Speaker 5: with that O. Sullivan conquest problem, that's certainly true, and
Speaker 5: we have to deal with a hyper radicalized Democratic Party
Speaker 5: today that went had just got out of power, and
Speaker 5: their fingerprints and tentacles are all over government and you
Speaker 5: got to root it out.
Speaker 2: Agreed.
Speaker 5: I just think any D is the wrong target and
Speaker 5: it is being and it is a target in part
Speaker 5: because of a lot of just kind of you know,
Speaker 5: I ill thought out conspiracy theories that have gained enormous
Speaker 5: traction a lot of this is supported, by the way,
Speaker 5: by people who would never you would never consider to
Speaker 5: be conservative. It was like, this is a big hobby
Speaker 5: horse for something known as the Gray Zone, which is
Speaker 5: Max Blumenthal's site, which is basically is like the you know,
Speaker 5: it's it's, it's it's the it's like a propaganda arm
Speaker 5: of every anti American tyranny and terrorist group. So that's
Speaker 5: what we're dealing with. And my point is like, is
Speaker 5: that is that now going to be part of the
Speaker 5: coalition Because I'm like largely see myself as somebody who
Speaker 5: I have a lot of criticisms of Trump, but I
Speaker 5: think he's much better than the alternative of a party
Speaker 5: that weaponized the Justice Department against their political opponents, that
Speaker 5: propped up a senile, incompetent old man and claimed he
Speaker 5: was you know, sharp as attack.
Speaker 2: I mean, we can go through the list, so.
Speaker 5: Like you know, I'm I'm now like really hoping that
Speaker 5: he gets it right. But I don't want to share
Speaker 5: a Vauxhall with the Gray Zone or people who are
Speaker 5: these kind of lunatic conspiracy theorists who you know, think
Speaker 5: Apak is running everything. There's people shouldn't be in a
Speaker 5: in a decent political coalition.
Speaker 1: But people in the center who who would agree with
Speaker 1: you that the NED serves a function and ought to
Speaker 1: be paired down and focused on that function are probably
Speaker 1: at the end of the day. And I hate that phrase.
Speaker 1: I'm very sorry going to say, well, let it go,
Speaker 1: because to fight for it is to then get on
Speaker 1: the other side of the barricades and say no, this
Speaker 1: one actually has to stay, because I mean, right now,
Speaker 1: the left, the progressives, the center left are at the
Speaker 1: point where they have to defend USAID, and they have
Speaker 1: to defend the waste in the treasury, and they have
Speaker 1: defend all these things because they if they give up,
Speaker 1: then they seed to the other side the idea that
Speaker 1: there's lots of waste and stuff that they can pair
Speaker 1: a waste. So they have to fight that. You have
Speaker 1: to say, you can't cut USAID because it is because
Speaker 1: there's an old woman in Thailand who is dependent upon
Speaker 1: it for her oxygen and she will die. Oh she's
Speaker 1: died already, I mean, so they got to fight that.
Speaker 1: And if guys on the right say.
Speaker 6: As good as the NED is and has done some
Speaker 6: good things, I'm not gonna that's not the foxhole in
Speaker 6: which I'm going to expire because we need rotten branch
Speaker 6: and if this is one of the good roots, will
Speaker 6: then so be it.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's what I think is gonna That's fine.
Speaker 5: I'm a journalist. My fidelity is to calling it like
Speaker 5: I see it. So I understand if that's your view,
Speaker 5: and you're a member of Congress and you want to
Speaker 5: save your powder and keep your powder dry for the
Speaker 5: fight that you think is going to be mattering more fine, okay,
Speaker 5: I mean, okay, but at a certain point, I just
Speaker 5: think you need to I wanted to put out because
Speaker 5: I just see there is so much like wrong information
Speaker 5: about the NED. They're fighting a kind of phantom and
Speaker 5: I worry that if people like that have the ear
Speaker 5: of Elon Musk and Donald Trump, then you know, what
Speaker 5: else are they going to say? I mean, I'm kind
Speaker 5: of you know, I'm not going to try it. I'm
Speaker 5: trying not to freak out of things. But why would
Speaker 5: we kind of before negotiations with Russia even begin, concede
Speaker 5: everything that Russia would want, Like, I mean, just to
Speaker 5: kind of give an example of what we saw this
Speaker 5: week in Europe with with Defense Secretary hexath.
Speaker 4: So Eli, let's switch scars to the Middle East. And
Speaker 4: you know, a minute ago, I use the imagery of
Speaker 4: shock and awe that we've been using for thirty years
Speaker 4: now since the First Gulf War when I look at
Speaker 4: Trump in so many areas, but especially on the Middle East. Instead,
Speaker 4: I want to shift to the big bang. I mean,
Speaker 4: who would have ever thought that anybody, let alone a
Speaker 4: president of the United States would say, you know, we
Speaker 4: just ought to move everybody out to Gaza, to other
Speaker 4: Arab countries and rebuild the place into something else. I mean,
Speaker 4: and you know, utterly heedless of the predictable response that
Speaker 4: he's calling for ethnic cleansing and other nonsense. But still
Speaker 4: I can't imagine any other responsible politician ever suggesting such
Speaker 4: a thing. What do you make of all that? And
Speaker 4: I mean, is this a shaking up of things and
Speaker 4: challenging the foundations of fifty years of settled attitudes? Is
Speaker 4: this a good or a bad thing or somewhere in
Speaker 4: the middle. How does Eli Lake size it up?
Speaker 5: I think it's a good thing to move the overturn
Speaker 5: window on this. I don't think it's a I don't
Speaker 5: think that it's necessarily I don't know that it'll happen.
Speaker 5: But I think it's the the idea that before Trump
Speaker 5: comes into office, the big plan was they'll be Saudi
Speaker 5: Israeli normalization, but you're gonna have to make peace. And yeah,
Speaker 5: it looks like God is going to have to be
Speaker 5: still run by Hamas. Is totally unacceptable, and I really
Speaker 5: do think at a certain point the message to the
Speaker 5: Palestinian people has.
Speaker 2: To be this.
Speaker 5: Unless you start turning on these thugs and making it
Speaker 5: clear that this is not how you want to live.
Speaker 5: And some of this is they they rule buy fear,
Speaker 5: and they rule buy you know, they will buy coercion.
Speaker 5: So it's it's harder than said and done. But like,
Speaker 5: you can't have the leadership of the Palestinian cause cannot
Speaker 5: be people who aspire to genocide the state of Israel
Speaker 5: full stop. And you know, obviously shame on on the
Speaker 5: on the the rubs and moral idiots on campus who
Speaker 5: consider Hamas to be a kind of freedom fighter or
Speaker 5: resistance organization. But you can't. But you can't have like
Speaker 5: just well, we'll work around it. And you know, the
Speaker 5: leadership of the Palestinians is terrible right now, and it's
Speaker 5: nonsense to think that there can be a state if
Speaker 5: that leadership continues in perpetuity, and by suggesting maybe people leave,
Speaker 5: which is what usually happens when there is a horrible
Speaker 5: war that, by the way, was started by the Palestinian side.
Speaker 2: Of course, we know.
Speaker 5: That lots of popular there's five million, five million Ukrainians
Speaker 5: are living in Europe right now. How many refugees came
Speaker 5: from the Syria war. So the idea that there are
Speaker 5: going to be refugees from a war because the place
Speaker 5: is uninhabitable is not terribly controversial. Trump did say eventually
Speaker 5: you can move back, but it's going to take a
Speaker 5: long time to try to rebuild it. That to me
Speaker 5: is like non controversial. And you know, I understand, I
Speaker 5: know the history of this conflict very well. But remember
Speaker 5: in two thousand and five Israel left Gaza and what
Speaker 5: they got in exchange was Hamas. So the idea that
Speaker 5: Israel really deeply wants to reoccupy Gaza, some Israelis probably do,
Speaker 5: and they say that, but I don't think that that's
Speaker 5: really that the game plan of the state is at
Speaker 5: this point. I think it's just that you need to
Speaker 5: have a strategy for you cannot have hamas in charge,
Speaker 5: and that the propaganda play that we saw that prompted
Speaker 5: these initial outrage from Trump and when he said, you know,
Speaker 5: we're not going to take this much anymore from nearly
Speaker 5: a week ago kind of proves the point those people
Speaker 5: cannot remain full stop. I mean, I think the offer
Speaker 5: should be bullet in the head or elba for hamas
Speaker 5: I'm talking about.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm a hawk on this matter.
Speaker 4: And as we are talking, we are twenty four hours
Speaker 4: away from supposedly another round of hostage releases. It's not
Speaker 4: clear how many, but I don't know. My opinion is,
Speaker 4: and I'll just stake this and get your reaction. My
Speaker 4: opinion is Israel needs to finish them off. The war
Speaker 4: needs to resume.
Speaker 5: Well, Israel eventually does have to finish them off. But
Speaker 5: if there is a way by floating this idea of like, well,
Speaker 5: you're gonna have to take hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, Egypt, Jordan,
Speaker 5: other places like that, or you know, if that's if
Speaker 5: that becomes part of the conversation, even if it's a
Speaker 5: threat lurking in the background, then maybe you begin to
Speaker 5: open up space. Because the main thing that has to
Speaker 5: happen here is that the Kataris need to be told
Speaker 5: that you've got to make a decision here and you
Speaker 5: know you need to use your influence to get the
Speaker 5: remaining hostages back and and to take care of the
Speaker 5: leadership of AMAS. Yeah, and if you don't, we'll move
Speaker 5: our base and you know what, we'll leave you well,
Speaker 5: you know, we'll let the Iranians take care of you.
Speaker 4: Because that's really yeah, I'm sorry, I'm really glad you
Speaker 4: said that. I mean, all the talk is always while
Speaker 4: they're on you know, they're behind all this, that's all true.
Speaker 4: But I've been saying exactly what you've said. We need
Speaker 4: to lean hard on the Kataris, to step up their
Speaker 4: game and be hat ourselves and threaten them.
Speaker 2: By the way, I thought the same thing you did.
Speaker 4: I thought maybe I was being crazy saying we threatened,
Speaker 4: we pull out our military installations and other things and
Speaker 4: punish them.
Speaker 2: And I'm all for that. Yeah, no, no, no, no, yeah,
Speaker 2: threat threat, threat, And do.
Speaker 1: You think that do you think there's any consequence in
Speaker 1: the long run to the world realizing that the countries
Speaker 1: around the Palestinians don't want them. He just I mean, really,
Speaker 1: I mean Jordan, who can can you know, look both
Speaker 1: ways and say, you know, technically, you know, we're kind
Speaker 1: of Palestinians. You know, we don't have room for anymore
Speaker 1: in Egypt. No, we don't want them because they goes trouble.
Speaker 1: I think the world would look at that and blink
Speaker 1: a couple of times and then move right along to
Speaker 1: blaming Israel for the continued existence of everything that befalls
Speaker 1: the people in Gaza.
Speaker 5: Well, the only thing I would just say to the
Speaker 5: counter that is that we saw into the first Trump
Speaker 5: administration the expansion of the Abraham the Abraham Accords. So
Speaker 5: at a moment when you know the elite opinions of
Speaker 5: Europe and on our campuses and so forth, you know,
Speaker 5: sounds an awful lot like what we might hear from
Speaker 5: Black September. There is also this sort of realization in
Speaker 5: the region itself that you know, this nearly century old
Speaker 5: struggle to either prevent the birth of a Jewish date
Speaker 5: or to destroy it has failed and we have to
Speaker 5: move on. That I think has sort of sunk in
Speaker 5: at least at the leadership level in the region. And
Speaker 5: that's a good thing. So, I mean, I don't know
Speaker 5: what to do about. But then then again, it's like,
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, getting back to an earlier thing.
Speaker 5: And this is a problem also of the corruption of
Speaker 5: the international NGO complex, the United Nations and all these
Speaker 5: sorts of things that they just are kind of committed
Speaker 5: to this idea of propping up these these you know,
Speaker 5: two bit genesider terrorists and amas.
Speaker 2: Screw them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, Eli, last subject for today, I want to
Speaker 4: talk about your podcast a bit Breaking His Thank you.
Speaker 4: By the way, your two latest episodes are really timely
Speaker 4: for me. I'm teaching the presidency this semester, so your
Speaker 4: episode and Andrew Jackson will be of great interest. And
Speaker 4: of course I live in Burning, California. So so first
Speaker 4: of all, I guess do this for listeners to get
Speaker 4: a general flavor sort of what's your theory, what's your approach?
Speaker 4: What does the breaking part of breaking history mean? Is
Speaker 4: that the right question for too?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I think I wrote an AI song called We've All
Speaker 5: Been here Before, simply led mix eighties music fans will
Speaker 5: get the reference, and that song chorus is I know
Speaker 5: it seems we have no hope, we can't can't take
Speaker 5: it anymore. But if you know our history, We've all
Speaker 5: been here before. And the next versus America has been
Speaker 5: on the brink of going straight to hell, the Civil
Speaker 5: War and Watergate, the War of eighteen twelve.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that's the song.
Speaker 1: But that you rhymed Hell and twelve, I did you rhymed?
Speaker 1: I'm going to write an AI version of cole Porter
Speaker 1: to to to Find You. And this is why Europe,
Speaker 1: there artistic Sensibilities, wants to censor and control AI because
Speaker 1: because people will create songs anyway. Okay, I'm kidding you.
Speaker 5: A song it's good, I will hear, I'll But but
Speaker 5: the point, the point I make is that usually we
Speaker 5: are kind of, you know, captured to something historians called presentism,
Speaker 5: which is we just think we are living through the
Speaker 5: worst thing in the world and it's kind of remarkable.
Speaker 5: And I've always been I love reading history, and I
Speaker 5: approach history as a journalist. So I love not having
Speaker 5: the obligation of being an historian because I know I'm not,
Speaker 5: and I have great respect and admiration for people who
Speaker 5: are trained historians. I don't claim to be one, but
Speaker 5: I do claim that as somebody who reads a lot
Speaker 5: of history and loves history, loves literature, and I approach
Speaker 5: it as a journalist and I love to find new things.
Speaker 5: So you know what I did with the sort of
Speaker 5: episode on California Burning is I asked the question of like, well,
Speaker 5: you know, it kind of reveals just how utterly incompetent
Speaker 5: and desiccated the ruling you know, Mono Party of California,
Speaker 5: the Democrats have been.
Speaker 2: Where did this start?
Speaker 5: And what I tell is the story of the nineteen
Speaker 5: seventy five mayoral election in San Francisco, which proved that
Speaker 5: you could have a coalition, as I say, you know,
Speaker 5: learn to stop fighting the freaks and invited them into
Speaker 5: city hall. And that's what happened because part of that
Speaker 5: coalition included the Reverend Jim Jones of the People's Temple
Speaker 5: and one of the worst sociopaths in the twentieth century.
Speaker 5: And this is and because I don't want to give
Speaker 5: too much away, but anyway, because of events, they never
Speaker 5: really had a reckoning for this sort of radical tolerance.
Speaker 5: And we see the and the people who survived that
Speaker 5: era went on to become the powerbrokers of the state politics.
Speaker 2: In many ways.
Speaker 5: Diane Feinstein, Willie Brown, you know, and you know, San
Speaker 5: Francisco is still in my view is that is the
Speaker 5: big city that kind of really runs the state. In
Speaker 5: a lot of ways, we see Gavin Newsom was the
Speaker 5: mayor of San Francisco, Kamala Harris was mentored by Willie Brown.
Speaker 5: So that's the That's the story that I tell and
Speaker 5: I kind of, you know, I try to I don't.
Speaker 2: Tell it ideologically.
Speaker 5: I tell it more as a kind of this is
Speaker 5: I try to give credit to like, you know, I
Speaker 5: don't think that we should go back to an era
Speaker 5: when the police could you know, arrest you know, two
Speaker 5: gay men for holding hands or something like that. But
Speaker 5: at the same time, there was a sense that I mean,
Speaker 5: I see a real similarity, for example, in the police
Speaker 5: chief that George Mosconi brings in who effectively kind of
Speaker 5: legalizes prostitution by saying we're not going to enforce it anymore.
Speaker 5: He did it with a district attorney that also won.
Speaker 5: That reminds me very much of like the decisions of
Speaker 5: gascoone in Los Angeles and Chessubodina say we're not going
Speaker 5: to prosecute shoplifting, so you have a shoplifting epidemic, and
Speaker 5: it's all I see it as a very California thing,
Speaker 5: which is that the road to ruin is paved with
Speaker 5: the most noble intentions, like we're trying to save an
Speaker 5: indigenous milk veg weed, so we can't you know, clear
Speaker 5: the forest road to build steel instead of wooden poles
Speaker 5: for the electric lines. You know, we want to help
Speaker 5: the homeless, and they're human beings too, and these unhoused
Speaker 5: citizens have rights. Wonderful, but like, as you're doing all
Speaker 5: of that, you're either allowing tense cities, which is what happened,
Speaker 5: or you're spending gobs of money to hire caseworkers that
Speaker 5: work for NGOs for the city, you know, at like
Speaker 5: fifty sixty thousand dollars a year, where you can try
Speaker 5: to give like motel rooms and set people up and
Speaker 5: be life coaches for homeless people and vagrants. And what
Speaker 5: I'm saying is that this is like an example of
Speaker 5: a kind of very California mentality.
Speaker 4: Like well, right, well, you put your finger on something
Speaker 4: that's bothered me for a long time as a native Californian.
Speaker 4: It used to be that southern California LA dominated, or
Speaker 4: at least competed with the Bay Area to dominate California politics.
Speaker 4: But that's because you know, LA forty fifty years ago
Speaker 4: you had Hollywood Aerospace and a lot of manufacturing.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 4: Now it only has Hollywood and Silicon Valley came. And now,
Speaker 4: as you say, San Francisco dominates the state even though
Speaker 4: the LA and Southern California population is bigger. And this
Speaker 4: is an interesting, really interesting phenomenon.
Speaker 5: So my daughter, I'm watching my daughter. I'm single parenting. Everybody,
Speaker 5: say hi to.
Speaker 1: Norah before we let you go, lean back a little
Speaker 1: bit so I can see your your daughter absolutely on
Speaker 1: what your T shirt is because you always have a
Speaker 1: rock band T shirt. Here.
Speaker 2: This is not a rock bando. He is a rock
Speaker 2: star theater.
Speaker 1: Oh right, oh there we go. Okay, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, give him a heavy metal makeover or
Speaker 1: something like that Jean Simmons co piece and h vidego.
Speaker 1: Give him a heavy metal klezmer Ai version of the
Speaker 1: song and uh and we will love to see it.
Speaker 2: Assignment assignment taking, good sir.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you understand the assignments you use. The cliche
Speaker 1: that everybody is now using that I cannot wait for
Speaker 1: it to die. Now. What we do want to live forever, however,
Speaker 1: is your podcast and everybody.
Speaker 5: Well, let me just tell you. Can I can I
Speaker 5: tell the listeners? Oh yes, Uh, next episode drops on Wednesday.
Speaker 5: Who Shot John? The story of JFK conspiracy theorist. I'm
Speaker 5: not a conspiracy theorist on this, but okay, so like
Speaker 5: somebody is. But uh, but it's a it's a it's
Speaker 5: a it's a great it's a great episode that looks
Speaker 5: at sort of the evolution of the various conspiracy theories
Speaker 5: into JFK, the fact that Trump is going to declassify
Speaker 5: the final State secrets regarding JFK and everything else, and
Speaker 5: you know, the role particularly played by a nineteen ninety
Speaker 5: one film by Oliver Stone called JFK.
Speaker 1: Don't Get Me Started. I saw that at a Washington
Speaker 1: premiere actually with Oliver Stone and Sam Donaldson. And afterwards
Speaker 1: I'm in I'm in the men's room with Sam Donaldson
Speaker 1: and Oliver Stone, you know, two alpha dogs in the
Speaker 1: small kennel and wow. Yeah. And I couldn't say anything
Speaker 1: to Stone because I thought it was all stalking nonsense,
Speaker 1: but interestingly shot. And so we talked about the way
Speaker 1: that the opening sequence goes from the four point three
Speaker 1: aspect ratio of television and then there's the gun shot
Speaker 1: and it opens up to wide screen sixteen to nine,
Speaker 1: and how that is a nice transition, you know, a
Speaker 1: nice little conversation. But I didn't want to say, Jim Garrison,
Speaker 1: are you fret? So anyway, what I'm saying is.
Speaker 5: We play some great clips from Jim Garrison and we
Speaker 5: get into his linacy.
Speaker 1: Yes, with all of the things that have been written
Speaker 1: and said, including of course you know Posner and and
Speaker 1: all the books that have exhaustively come down on.
Speaker 2: One side of Poser. We interviewed Poser.
Speaker 1: By the way, Posner is great and and vincent and
Speaker 1: you know all that. So what I'm telling the audience is,
Speaker 1: if Eli is giving you this take on one of
Speaker 1: the most told stories of the twentieth century, you know,
Speaker 1: he's got some interesting little thing that you haven't heard before,
Speaker 1: or a way of putting it that you hadn't thought
Speaker 1: about before. So listen breaking the strail of the podcast.
Speaker 1: And people can find it on what particular network.
Speaker 5: Oh, it's well, it's a free press podcast, but you
Speaker 5: can get it on Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 5: We got it everywhere. It's a it's really great. I'm
Speaker 5: very proud of the work and and thank you for
Speaker 5: asking me about it.
Speaker 1: That's great. And we also appreciate the money that you
Speaker 1: paid us to push the podcast. I just and I
Speaker 1: will note that I cashed it immediately because it was
Speaker 1: from the NED and I figured he they may not
Speaker 1: be able to honor this anytime soon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, funny.
Speaker 1: All right, thanks for joining us. We look forward to
Speaker 1: talking to you again bybe all right.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the thing is we're talking before about how
Speaker 1: somebody's got to do something something about the hamas leadership
Speaker 1: and gutter and then the rest of it. Anyway, the
Speaker 1: point that I trying to make was to segue into
Speaker 1: a commercial, and this was like an opportunity long gone. Frankly,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to tell you this HR right. You know,
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Speaker 2: What do we do?
Speaker 1: Well? I'm sure that they're having to scramble because they
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Speaker 1: a few more minutes here, Yes you.
Speaker 4: Can, can I I mean, before you move on, can
Speaker 4: I just say something about something nice about Sam Donald's
Speaker 4: I mean, I can understand the order of being stuck
Speaker 4: next to the Yearninal between him and Oliver Stone. And
Speaker 4: I always used to rage at Sam Donaldson and I
Speaker 4: watched him in the eighties on TV. But I may
Speaker 4: have a worse circumstance.
Speaker 1: By the way.
Speaker 4: I was once stuck sitting next to Lannye Davis on
Speaker 4: a coast to coast plane flight. He was, you know,
Speaker 4: Clinton's White House Council. It was in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 4: and he wouldn't shut up about how Obama was terrible
Speaker 4: and Hillary Clinton was going to save the country. I
Speaker 4: felt like that guy an airplane who commits suppuku having
Speaker 4: to listen to Ted Striker go on and on. Right,
Speaker 4: Here's the thing, Sam Donaldson, I got to meet a
Speaker 4: few times privately and off the screen, and he turns
Speaker 4: out to be a really nice guy. As partly was
Speaker 4: an act, I mean, the sharp elbows of the press
Speaker 4: corps in Washington. But and what enjeered me to him
Speaker 4: finally was he brought up to me something that's always
Speaker 4: been on my mind.
Speaker 2: One of Reagan's greatest moments.
Speaker 4: It was Donaldson in nineteen eighty two, with its full pomposity, saying,
Speaker 4: mister President, you've blamed the deficits on the mistakes of
Speaker 4: the past. You take any of the blame yourself. And Reagan,
Speaker 4: in his usual way, said, well, yes, Sam, because after all,
Speaker 4: for a long time I was a Democrat. And the
Speaker 4: press from me erupted and you can find us on YouTube,
Speaker 4: the press roomy erupts and laughter. And Donaldson said, Reagan
Speaker 4: humiliated me many times, but that was his greatest humiliation.
Speaker 4: And I thought, good for Sam anyway, Yeah, it's nice,
Speaker 4: and I.
Speaker 1: Think he Yeah, I'm not sure we have his type anymore,
Speaker 1: because you could disagree with what you took to be
Speaker 1: a partisan shading the way he was saying things. But
Speaker 1: there was something more to the man, you know, There
Speaker 1: was there was life beyond politics, and you get the
Speaker 1: feeling with a lot of today's resistance core in the
Speaker 1: press that there is nothing beyond politics because nothing matters
Speaker 1: more than saving the country from the existential threat to
Speaker 1: our democracy that constitutes the current government. So yeah, there's that.
Speaker 1: So there's a couple of things we could talk about
Speaker 1: before we go out, and one of them, I suppose
Speaker 1: is the penny. Trump says he's going to be We're
Speaker 1: done with a penny. And I'm of two minds of this.
Speaker 1: You know, you get rid of the penny, and immediately
Speaker 1: everything is rounded up to a nickel or a dime.
Speaker 1: And we all know that. And there is still something
Speaker 1: in me that likes the fact that they're still trying
Speaker 1: to fool me that an item that is two dollars
Speaker 1: and forty nine cents is somehow cheaper than something it's
Speaker 1: two fifty, which it is. But that little psychological nine
Speaker 1: is such a part of twentieth century marketing technology, especially.
Speaker 1: I don't know what they're gonna do with gasoline. Gasoline
Speaker 1: is constantly moving by increments of pennies. What exactly do
Speaker 1: you do about that round up? Round there? If you
Speaker 1: round it up, does that mean that they get the money,
Speaker 1: and they're obliged to get you know, all of the
Speaker 1: individual gas stations are obliged to take that extra rounded
Speaker 1: up money too. Something philanthropic with it. If they're supposed
Speaker 1: to round down, are they supposed to take the hit?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I kind of like the penny for
Speaker 1: that reason, but I can't remember the last time that
Speaker 1: I actually had one, because everything everything is is the
Speaker 1: wave of the wave of the phone, the wave of
Speaker 1: the wash, the wave of the card, and it's rare
Speaker 1: that I come away with coins.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I'm well, I'm for keeping the penny,
Speaker 4: I think for a bunch of reasons, but one of
Speaker 4: them is it's the different color from the other coins.
Speaker 4: I think getting rid of the penny would be an
Speaker 4: implicit concession that we're going to have more inflation, right,
Speaker 4: So the penny's kind of a nuisance for the reasons
Speaker 4: you mentioned. I do know that maybe you probably know
Speaker 4: this because your culture may have been that in World
Speaker 4: War Two, when we were so short of copper, I
Speaker 4: think it was nineteen forty three, we minted pennies out
Speaker 4: of aluminum because we had lots of that, and maybe
Speaker 4: what we ought to do because a penny apparently costs
Speaker 4: more than one cent to make because of copper, and
Speaker 4: is expensive, and we.
Speaker 2: Need it for all of our green energy.
Speaker 4: Forget that for the moment, but maybe we ought to
Speaker 4: just reformulate the pennies so that it's made out of
Speaker 4: an alloy, the same way we got rid of silver
Speaker 4: quarters in nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 1: Right the poor, for they were zinc pennies. I remember
Speaker 1: the first time I saw one of those, I thought
Speaker 1: I'd seen something from an alternate dimension that had leaked
Speaker 1: into mind. It was amazing those things, and I have
Speaker 1: a few of them. The fact that we are now
Speaker 1: in a coinless era, or an era that no longer
Speaker 1: really has one choose for them, I think is sad.
Speaker 1: While I don't want to sound like an old fart saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: your kids today, your watches, there is something comforting about
Speaker 1: a pocket full of change. When I was in my twenties,
Speaker 1: if you had a pocket full of quarters, you were
Speaker 1: assured of many things. A couple of them and a
Speaker 1: dime and a nickel would buy a pack of cigarettes.
Speaker 1: One of them would get you an hour on a
Speaker 1: parking meter. One of them would get you three games.
Speaker 1: If you were good in a pinball machine. You could
Speaker 1: save them up, and you could use them in the wandermant.
Speaker 1: The pennies were exceptionally useful, and when you had a half,
Speaker 1: half dollars would occasionally swim into view, but by then
Speaker 1: they were working their way out of the system. Along
Speaker 1: with a dollar. You didn't see a dollar. And the
Speaker 1: quarter had a heartiness to it, and it had an
Speaker 1: abiding quality because it had never changed. The way it looked.
Speaker 1: Now you would have a dime, and sometimes you'd find
Speaker 1: a liberty head dime, and that would be amazing. It'd
Speaker 1: be worn down like a buffalo nickel, also worn down,
Speaker 1: and you could almost sense the weight and the passage
Speaker 1: and the length of history by looking at this thing
Speaker 1: and wondering how many pockets and hands and drawers that
Speaker 1: it clattered through. But that said, you know, nowadays our currency,
Speaker 1: the quarter, is simply this vehicle for endless tinkering and revision.
Speaker 1: Let's make all fifty states and people will collect them
Speaker 1: and never spend them. Let's slap somebody on who hasn't
Speaker 1: had a coin. Let's make it gold. Let's do this,
Speaker 1: and it just has no place in the modern imagination
Speaker 1: as it did before, except when it's clattering out of
Speaker 1: a Vegas machine into a bucket. So and even then
Speaker 1: people are using cards and slapping in cards and slapping
Speaker 1: in cards and slapping I hate to be, you know,
Speaker 1: an old coot about these things, but I'm I guess
Speaker 1: if I have to all defend the quarter against all
Speaker 1: critics and comers, and if that means I have to
Speaker 1: make common cause with the penny advocates, then I will
Speaker 1: do just that. Well, that brings us to the top
Speaker 1: of the hour, and that brings us to the end
Speaker 1: of the show. Because, unlike some people who just have
Speaker 1: absolutely no care as to how long they ramble and bladder.
Speaker 1: Even though Steven, I know that we could go another
Speaker 1: fifteen twenty minutes, an hour is a good time to
Speaker 1: say we are done, like we were a network, like
Speaker 1: we were the Ed Sullivan Show, you know, or you
Speaker 1: know some network program. You hear the sound in the
Speaker 1: back of your head, the toll at the top, hit
Speaker 1: the post, get out, Let people get on with their lives.
Speaker 1: Of course, I've just made it an hour and a
Speaker 1: minute by going through all that. We thank our sponsors
Speaker 1: Quality of SANDIELYTX and hr Bamboo, support them and you
Speaker 1: support us, We hope you give us a good review
Speaker 1: wherever you happen to give good podcast reviews. And we
Speaker 1: want you to go, of course, to ricochet dot com,
Speaker 1: where the member feed is available for a very small
Speaker 1: amount of quarters, and it will introduce you to a sane,
Speaker 1: center right, civil world that you've been looking for on
Speaker 1: the internet ever since you plug the damn thing in Stephen.
Speaker 1: It's great. I'm James Linax. This has been the Ricochet
Speaker 1: Podcast seven hundred and twenty eight and we'll see everybody
Speaker 1: in the comments at Ricochet four point zero. Ricochet, Yeah,
Speaker 1: join the conversation.