Speaker 1: You're the one who said that broccoli is good. I
Speaker 1: believe it.
Speaker 2: Even George H. W. Bush, I'm a real squash. Even
Speaker 2: George H. W. Bush hated bly right for the left
Speaker 2: of him.
Speaker 1: Ask not what your country can do for you, Ask
Speaker 1: what you can do for your country.
Speaker 3: Mister Gorbachoff, tear down this wall.
Speaker 1: It's the Ricochet Podcast with Charles C. W. Cook and
Speaker 1: Steven Hayward and myself James Lillas. Today we talked to
Speaker 1: our old friend Anny McCarthy about the cabinet nominations and
Speaker 1: more so, let's have ourselves a podcast.
Speaker 4: It comes to the selection of Representative Gates. I just
Speaker 4: think it's silly. I believe that the President is probably
Speaker 4: rewarding him for being such a loyal soldier to the president.
Speaker 4: But the President is smart enough and his team is
Speaker 4: smart enough to know that mister Gates will never get
Speaker 4: confirmed by the Center.
Speaker 5: We will have so much winning if I get elected
Speaker 5: that you may get bored with winning.
Speaker 3: Believe me.
Speaker 1: Welcome, It's the Ricochet Podcast, number seven hundred and seventeen.
Speaker 1: I'm James Lilacs on a beautiful crisp fall day in
Speaker 1: November in Minnesota, and I'm joined by Charles C. W.
Speaker 6: Cook.
Speaker 1: I presume in Florida, and Stephen Hayward, Lord knows where
Speaker 1: you are. Where have events taken you today?
Speaker 7: I'm in Washington, D C. At the Annual Conference of
Speaker 7: the Federal Society.
Speaker 1: Ah, you were in the thick of it. You are
Speaker 1: in the belly, yes, Brant, or you're in coreus Gant. Great, Well,
Speaker 1: we'll get to what the capital is doing and how
Speaker 1: you are. I assume you've taken a cab driver a
Speaker 1: cab and have some wisdom to impart from the cab driver,
Speaker 1: since that's every columnists cliche.
Speaker 3: But not really.
Speaker 7: You know, the cab driving population here, as I think
Speaker 7: you know, is overwhelmingly foreign.
Speaker 3: They do tend to listen to NPR a lot.
Speaker 7: I noticed when I ride around Washington with the cabs,
Speaker 7: and so I generally shy away from trying to play
Speaker 7: Tom Friedman in the cab.
Speaker 1: Right when I lived there, it was an influx of
Speaker 1: Afghan doctors for some reason. Every single cab driver I
Speaker 1: had was a neurosurgeon from cow. All right, gentlemen, here's
Speaker 1: my theory. I'm going to toss it out. Hear me out.
Speaker 1: Trump has been playing a long game, and the reason
Speaker 1: that he ran for the presidency in the first place
Speaker 1: was not because he got to pickle up his posterior
Speaker 1: when they needled him at the correspondence. Genner no as
Speaker 1: a devote of McDonald's food. This is all about using
Speaker 1: his power to bring back frying French fries in beef tallow.
Speaker 1: And that's why the RFK appointment is in there. RFK
Speaker 1: is going to say that what we've done to our
Speaker 1: food is an abomination, and at a minimum, we should
Speaker 1: go back to frying our French fries in beef tallow
Speaker 1: because they're better.
Speaker 3: So we have all these.
Speaker 1: Cabinet denominations, some of which landed a little bit better
Speaker 1: than others. Is there anyone particular that you guys find out,
Speaker 1: I mean, RFK, we want to have a talk about floridation. Okay,
Speaker 1: we can have a talk about floridation after all these years.
Speaker 1: But going back on the idea of vaccines being a
Speaker 1: useful tool to prevent disease in children and otherwise seems
Speaker 1: a conversation that we could maybe not have for a while.
Speaker 1: Take up seed oils if you want, take up high
Speaker 1: fruit toast corn syrup.
Speaker 3: If you like.
Speaker 1: But let's let's not do the vaccine thing.
Speaker 3: Or you should go first on this.
Speaker 2: One, on Rfkjunior or in general.
Speaker 1: In general, you pick a nomination, Who do you like,
Speaker 1: who do you not? I mean, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: We got Anny McCarthy coming up, and we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about Matt in a bit, so take that one
Speaker 1: off the table for a well.
Speaker 2: I think that the good nominations have been very very good,
Speaker 2: and the bad nominations have been very very bad. If
Speaker 2: I can't talk about Matt Gates, I'll talk about RFK Jr.
Speaker 6: Who's a crank.
Speaker 2: And the argument for him is based on the logical
Speaker 2: fallacy that because HHS is a disaster and the public
Speaker 2: health establishment has disgraced itself, both of which are true,
Speaker 2: we therefore should are obliged to put in someone awful
Speaker 2: into a department of the federal government, the controls I
Speaker 2: think twenty percent of the entire budget. I don't think
Speaker 2: it's a secret that I am one of URFK Junior's
Speaker 2: biggest critics. I think there is very little redeeming about him,
Speaker 2: and what is redeeming doesn't particularly intersect with HHS, that
Speaker 2: being his.
Speaker 6: Desire to make.
Speaker 2: America healthy, which is fine. Broccoli is good, root loops
Speaker 2: are bad for you. But I don't need to hand
Speaker 2: over twenty percent of the federal government to Kennedy to
Speaker 2: make those reforms. And I'll finish by saying, I think
Speaker 2: that even those people who wish to see wholesale changes
Speaker 2: in that area I'm not opposed to that would be
Speaker 2: better served by choosing somebody better. Not that he's available,
Speaker 2: but someone like a Ron DeSantis really could go in
Speaker 2: there and shake things up. I think RFK Junior, if
Speaker 2: he gets through the nomination, will not.
Speaker 1: Charles, I would have disagree with you about this because
Speaker 1: I don't think that broccoli is good. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact.
Speaker 3: I think it's yeah, and I think loops are awesome.
Speaker 3: But that's me, Stephen.
Speaker 1: What do you like and what are you not?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 7: I think well, I agree with Charles that RFK is
Speaker 7: a dubious appointment at best. If he were, you know,
Speaker 7: supposedly he was on the list of possible EPA directors
Speaker 7: under Obama back in two thousand and nine, and if
Speaker 7: he or Biden Obama Biden had put RFK in the cabinet,
Speaker 7: I think our team would be appalled, opposed, up in arms,
Speaker 7: and this is partly tribal politics. On the other hand,
Speaker 7: you know, I think why this is happening, Why Matt Gates,
Speaker 7: why Pete Hegseth, And I don't lump all three of
Speaker 7: them together, by the way, I think hegscith is. I
Speaker 7: think I agree with Charlie and this is a worthy
Speaker 7: of appointment.
Speaker 3: They there's two things.
Speaker 7: Trump wants loyalty, and he's appointed people who he thinks
Speaker 7: will be much more loyal to him than this first term.
Speaker 7: I'm doubtful about RFK by the way. He could easily
Speaker 7: go off the reservation very fast, depending on a variety
Speaker 7: of things. And he wants disruptors, and in you know, Gates,
Speaker 7: I think hakesa two and certainly a RFK. You see
Speaker 7: people who want to go in and you know, smash
Speaker 7: up the joint, disrupt the places that might create chaos.
Speaker 7: I have to say, I get a warm, fuzzy feeling
Speaker 7: when I read, as I did in the paper this
Speaker 7: morning that something like forty percent of the staff of
Speaker 7: the Centers for Disease Control say they'll quit if RFK
Speaker 7: has made a Secretary of Health and Human Services. It
Speaker 7: was like Boster making Elon Musk job of reducts reducing
Speaker 7: federal employees. Easy.
Speaker 1: We hear about this, we hear about this, Justice, we
Speaker 1: hear about this at FBI. Everyone's heading for the exits,
Speaker 1: and you get the picture almost of a silent movie
Speaker 1: comedy skit where you have, you know, a variety of
Speaker 1: corpulent people attempting to fit the door at the same time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's it's the government. It's downsizing version
Speaker 1: of self deportation. Yes. One of the ones that I
Speaker 1: found interesting because I had no idea who he was
Speaker 1: was John Jay Ray, which I like, you know, a
Speaker 1: comedian from the you can call me John j Ray.
Speaker 3: The third who.
Speaker 1: Is being floated for Secretary of Education, And I thought
Speaker 1: that was interesting because we've had the statement that the
Speaker 1: Department of Education should be eliminated, which causes hair to
Speaker 1: erupt spontaneously all over in certain quarters, because how can
Speaker 1: you say that with the appalling educational results that we
Speaker 1: already have in the country. How can you because they
Speaker 1: don't have any students. Because the very idea of dismantling
Speaker 1: this top down apparatus and taking the money and giving
Speaker 1: the responsibility back to the states seems like a capital
Speaker 1: idea because It's not as if we've had an efflorescence
Speaker 1: of brilliance in our public school system. Since the Department
Speaker 1: of Education was established, We've had a series of mandates
Speaker 1: and ideas and acronyms and the rest of it, all
Speaker 1: of which have distorted and contorted and led to appalling results.
Speaker 1: The only chart that you have to show people, really
Speaker 1: is the chart that shows the amount of money that
Speaker 1: I'm going to students and the amount of money that's
Speaker 1: been going to administrators.
Speaker 3: That's all you need to do.
Speaker 1: And if you say that you know we're going to
Speaker 1: take that money, we're going to give it back to
Speaker 1: the states along with control and have people will have
Speaker 1: the well again, they're terrified of that because they think
Speaker 1: then that the people who show up and complain at
Speaker 1: the school board meetings about books in the schools are
Speaker 1: going to be the ones who dominate the local politics.
Speaker 1: It's just not a necessary department. Ray I knew nothing
Speaker 1: about him, was the guy who was put in charge
Speaker 1: of FTX, the crypto Buddy after it fell apart. And
Speaker 1: the reason that I trust him if he takes his
Speaker 1: job because according to the Wikipedia page, he's paid a
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand dollars annual retreat retainer and makes one
Speaker 1: three hundred dollars an hour as the CEO of FTX
Speaker 1: by his appointment. So if he's willing to give up
Speaker 1: that kind of capital in order to do this, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking he might be coming in to dismantle and help
Speaker 1: take apart the Department of Education or are we all
Speaker 1: just hoffened the paint fumes and it is never going
Speaker 1: to happen, because when is an never win? Is a
Speaker 1: cabinet position ever gone away?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it looks like an odd appointment.
Speaker 7: I mean, usually you want someone who has some background
Speaker 7: in education and you know, from our point of view,
Speaker 7: a sensible reformer like you know, William Bennett in the
Speaker 7: eighties or Betsy Davos and Trump's first term.
Speaker 3: And yeah, this guy looks like someone who is not a.
Speaker 7: Special a specialist in receiverships and bankruptcies.
Speaker 3: But that's kind of what he's looking at here.
Speaker 7: He wants to go through and dismantle the assets of
Speaker 7: the Department of Education. Some functions I think you have
Speaker 7: to keep that predated the department when Jimmy Carter created it. Uh,
Speaker 7: you know, I made a suggestion online, but two three
Speaker 7: weeks ago that one of the things that Trump Education
Speaker 7: Department should do on day one is copy what the
Speaker 7: Obama and Biden administrations did, namely, send a Dear Colleague
Speaker 7: letter like they did with Title nine, to every university
Speaker 7: and say it is the legal opinion of the Trump
Speaker 7: administration that every de ie office of the university is
Speaker 7: a presumptive violation of Title six of the Civil Rights Act.
Speaker 7: And unless you abolish them, not rename them, not shuffle
Speaker 7: deck chairs, but abolish them and dismiss their employees and
Speaker 7: get rid of all the rules and guidelines, we are
Speaker 7: cutting off your federal funding today.
Speaker 3: And Trump this morning said something very close to that.
Speaker 7: He said my first week in office, I'm going to
Speaker 7: tell universities through the Department of Education, if they don't
Speaker 7: and their tolerance of anti Semitism on campus, We're going
Speaker 7: to review their accreditation and cut off their federal funding.
Speaker 7: You know, if the Department of Education and this secretary
Speaker 7: does things like that, then Democrats will want to abolish
Speaker 7: the department. So again, I like a very aggressive strategy
Speaker 7: possibly that we're seeing shape up so far.
Speaker 1: Charles, how do you think that's going to play out?
Speaker 1: Because people are also saying in addition to the dear
Speaker 1: colleague letter to the universities telling them to knock it
Speaker 1: off with tolerating the anti semitism, there's been floated, as
Speaker 1: ever again, the idea of taxing the endowments, taxing the
Speaker 1: endowments and using the money to fund a free online
Speaker 1: university which would be accredited that people could use that
Speaker 1: people who do not have access to the IVS, shall
Speaker 1: we say, would be able to use?
Speaker 3: What do you think of that idea?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 6: I just want to text them anyway.
Speaker 2: Yes, you know why because President Biden illegally and willfully
Speaker 2: spent I think the most recent number is one hundred
Speaker 2: and forty billion dollars. The aim was to spend five
Speaker 2: hundred billion dollars on transferring the liability for student loans
Speaker 2: from the people who took them out, spent them, and
Speaker 2: benefited from them to people who didn't. That money is
Speaker 2: going to come from somewhere taxes or debt, which eventually
Speaker 2: becomes taxes, and I would like to see that money
Speaker 2: paid back so that no funds are taken away from
Speaker 2: the people who did not benefit from those college educations.
Speaker 2: There are a bunch of things raised that I would
Speaker 2: just say on the Department of Education, I'm entirely in
Speaker 2: favor of its abolition. It shouldn't exist. There's no federal
Speaker 2: role for education. It shouldn't be. The likelihood of Congress
Speaker 2: using its political capital to do this, given the hyperbole
Speaker 2: and demagoguery that that would yield.
Speaker 6: From the left, I think is relatively small.
Speaker 2: Perhaps you might get something in reconciliation to reduce its budget,
Speaker 2: although I won't hold my breath. The problem with and
Speaker 2: I know he was half joking, The problem with expecting
Speaker 2: Stephen's excellent idea of the Dear Colleague letter to sell
Speaker 2: Democrats on the case for getting rid of the Department
Speaker 2: of Education is what you are doing with that, and
Speaker 2: what Trump should do with that is reaffirming its power.
Speaker 2: And Democrats are just going to want to take it
Speaker 2: over again and do the opposite. We're just going to
Speaker 2: see cesawing back and forth letters on due process, on
Speaker 2: college campuses, on DII.
Speaker 6: And so forth.
Speaker 2: But I'm one hundred percent with you on the details.
Speaker 2: I think that the best thing and I know a
Speaker 2: lot of people on the right were squishy about this,
Speaker 2: I wasn't The best thing Trump did in this area
Speaker 2: was right toward the end of his first administration where
Speaker 2: he sent a letter to was it Princeton after Princeton
Speaker 2: announced that it was racist in that glorious Summer of
Speaker 2: Nonsense twenty twenty, Princeton said, we are a racist institution.
Speaker 6: Could have been yeah, I can't remember, but one of.
Speaker 2: These big ivs said we are a racist institution. And
Speaker 2: Trump's doj I think, said oh, well, if you're a
Speaker 2: racist institution, then we're obliged under the law to investigate you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's absolutely, quite seriously, that is absolutely what the federal
Speaker 2: government should be doing. The DEI push is obviously in
Speaker 2: violation of the Civil Rights Act, and if you believe
Speaker 2: that the Affirmative Action decision was correct, arguably of the
Speaker 2: Fourteenth Amendment acid has been construed by the Supreme Court
Speaker 2: as well. And while conservatives are in charge of these organizations,
Speaker 2: if they're not going to abolish them, which they should,
Speaker 2: they should be directing them precisely this way.
Speaker 6: I'm with you on that.
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Speaker 1: pick his brain on a variety of I'm kidding it's
Speaker 1: one of our faves. Andy McCarthy Anna McCarthy, Senior Fellow
Speaker 1: with the National Review Institute and our contributing editor and
Speaker 1: the author of Ball of Collusion, the plot to rig
Speaker 1: an election and destroy a presidency. Well, that presidency is back,
Speaker 1: and so is Andy. How are you doing today.
Speaker 5: I'm doing great, guys. How are you good?
Speaker 3: Capital All right?
Speaker 1: You know we've been talking Trump appointments. We wanted to
Speaker 1: save one for you, so we know you probably have
Speaker 1: some thoughts about it. So if you could just tell
Speaker 1: us where do you stand on Telsea Gambert?
Speaker 3: No, I'm kidding.
Speaker 1: You know who I'm talking about.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Look, Gates is an appalling appointment. But it's funny
Speaker 5: that you mentioned gab because I think there's a logic
Speaker 5: to those two appointments together. I think Trump believes, and
Speaker 5: he's got colorable reasons for this, that the main insiders
Speaker 5: in the government that went after him were in the
Speaker 5: Justice Department and the intelligence community. And I think if
Speaker 5: you think of Gabbard and Gates as being sent into
Speaker 5: those agencies to kind of clean house and either get
Speaker 5: rid of or marginalize the people that Trump believes not
Speaker 5: only gun for him, but in general politicize their authority,
Speaker 5: which is a big problem in the government and in
Speaker 5: particular in the law enforcement and intelligence apparatus. Then those
Speaker 5: appointments make sense. I don't have to like them, but
Speaker 5: I think that that's the logic of the appointments.
Speaker 7: It's Steve Hayward in Washington. I'm actually at the annual
Speaker 7: Federal Society Conference, where I know you've been president in
Speaker 7: the years past.
Speaker 3: And no one has taken a poll.
Speaker 7: But everyone you talk to is similarly appalled at the
Speaker 7: Gates nomination and think there is zero chance he will
Speaker 7: be confirmed. I mean, I have my theories about this
Speaker 7: that are congruent with yours. Trump wants disruptors, he wants
Speaker 7: people who he thinks will be loyal to him when
Speaker 7: he thinks he couldn't count on I think incorrectly he
Speaker 7: couldn't count on his first attorney generals from Trump one.
Speaker 7: But boy, I don't know. I'm sort of a loss
Speaker 7: to say, how could you have thought this is a
Speaker 7: good idea. I mean, I get the other people, even
Speaker 7: RFK Junior, I get to a certain extent, even though
Speaker 7: I think that's a dubious idea. I kind of get
Speaker 7: that one, but this one's a real head scratcher.
Speaker 5: Well, during the I've kind of made a resolution, Steve,
Speaker 5: that I'm not going to get myself old whipped up
Speaker 5: about the second Trump administration, because I was actually talking
Speaker 5: a Rich Lowry before on our podcast about this. If
Speaker 5: you look like month to month in the last Trump administration,
Speaker 5: there would be NonStop drama. I used to call the
Speaker 5: Twitter feed all in, all the time, right, right. And
Speaker 5: then there were the people who provided guardrails for him,
Speaker 5: the Bill Boarrs and Mike Pompeo's and those guys of
Speaker 5: the world. Right. So if you rode this thing like
Speaker 5: a daily rollercoaster, it would drive you nuts. But if
Speaker 5: you looked at where the country was on the first
Speaker 5: of the month and the thirtieth of the month, it
Speaker 5: was pretty much the same place. And it was there
Speaker 5: was a lot of There was a lot of good
Speaker 5: I think more good than bad certainly during those four years.
Speaker 5: So I'm going to try not to get whipped up
Speaker 5: about the ups and downs. I think this is an
Speaker 5: extraordinary one because the Framers put the Senate vetting of
Speaker 5: high government officials into the Constitution precisely to protect liberty
Speaker 5: and because they didn't want too much power to be
Speaker 5: accumulated in any one person's hands. So the president gets
Speaker 5: to fire anyone that he wants in the Justice Department.
Speaker 5: But you can't appoint somebody who can't get past the Senate,
Speaker 5: which is supposed to be looking for whether they have
Speaker 5: the characters, the scruples, and the capabilities to do the
Speaker 5: job on some sort of minimally acceptable level. And I
Speaker 5: have to say, if you don't have a filibuster on confirmations,
Speaker 5: and you got a fifty three forty seven Republican majority
Speaker 5: in the Senate, and you think you have to do
Speaker 5: a Kakamami recess appointment scheme to get somebody appointed, then
Speaker 5: that should say, even to Trump, this is someone who
Speaker 5: you should not appoint. And I just with respect to
Speaker 5: Trump on the all in, all the time sort of theory,
Speaker 5: I don't buy into four dimensional chess theories of Trump.
Speaker 5: I am totally even though I would find this hard
Speaker 5: to believe in other circumstances. I'm totally open to the
Speaker 5: idea that you know, Susie Wiles left the room and
Speaker 5: left him together with Boris Epstein and Gates for five minutes,
Speaker 5: and then the next thing that you know, Gates was
Speaker 5: the attorney general.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: I totally believe that. I don't think that there's a
Speaker 5: great scheme behind this. But the fact that you, the
Speaker 5: fact that you would have to do a scheme to
Speaker 5: get him confirmed because he's unconfirmable, should say to anybody sensible,
Speaker 5: don't do this.
Speaker 7: Well, I've been tempted to try and advance the joke
Speaker 7: that Susie has left her wiles at the door sometimes, right,
Speaker 7: you know, we'll see about this, because I'm inclined to
Speaker 7: think well over from what I've heard, I've never met her,
Speaker 7: don't know that much.
Speaker 3: But well, that's the related question.
Speaker 7: Was the recess appointment business, and of course that preceded
Speaker 7: the Gates appointment. He's Trump talked about that starting sometime
Speaker 7: last week, and you know, he's being very demanding and
Speaker 7: and I think Charlie.
Speaker 3: And I may have a slight difference.
Speaker 7: I think Charlie, I think you were harshly critical of
Speaker 7: Trump's pushing the recess appointment to a loophole, so to speak.
Speaker 7: I you know, I kind of think Trump is using
Speaker 7: his old real estate business tactics in politics, which people
Speaker 7: I think still haven't quite figured out. Right, you asked
Speaker 7: for the moon and the stars, and maybe you get
Speaker 7: something what you want, and so Andy, I know you're
Speaker 7: familiar with the problem that now goes back to the
Speaker 7: Watergate era.
Speaker 3: You know, after Watergate we have the new.
Speaker 7: Ethics Acts, the FBI background checks where everybody takes so long,
Speaker 7: more delays and hearings and getting not just cabinets usually
Speaker 7: get those through fairly quickly. But you know, the Trump
Speaker 7: administration went two three, almost through all four years with
Speaker 7: certain senior sub cabinet offices not confirmed because of controversies
Speaker 7: and delays and background checks.
Speaker 3: And people have talked for twenty thirty years.
Speaker 7: Now that this is a problem that has gotten out
Speaker 7: of hand, and you know, all the good reform talk
Speaker 7: is just not going to change that. So here comes Trump,
Speaker 7: blustering as usual, saying, you give me resource appointments and
Speaker 7: all appoint five.
Speaker 3: Hundred people and get things up and running.
Speaker 7: And it is an offense to the constitutional principle of
Speaker 7: advice and consent to the Senate. On the other hand,
Speaker 7: maybe this is going to shake things up and make
Speaker 7: the Senate and the FBI and all the other processes
Speaker 7: maybe behave themselves with a little more dispatch. Is that
Speaker 7: plausible or hope is the reason to think that might
Speaker 7: be an outcome from this.
Speaker 5: I think that Trump doesn't have the same presumption of
Speaker 5: illegitimacy in some quarters this time than he had the
Speaker 5: last time. There have been reforms of the process. I
Speaker 5: don't remember, Steve, if it's like what year they did it,
Speaker 5: but they lowered Charlie may remember exactly when this was,
Speaker 5: but they lowered the number of hours that the Senate
Speaker 5: can hold up any one nominee from like thirty down
Speaker 5: to two.
Speaker 2: I was in twenty nineteen, and it was the brainchild
Speaker 2: and stewarded by that rhino squish Mitch McConnell, who were
Speaker 2: all supposed to hate but was one of the most
Speaker 2: effective conservative figures in the last half century and once
Speaker 2: again has improved things here.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So I think the other thing Steve is is
Speaker 5: he's naming these people early in the hope of getting
Speaker 5: the benefit that I think Obama got. You know, no
Speaker 5: one complains that these hurdles that you just described had
Speaker 5: any impact on Obama. Right. He started to name people
Speaker 5: within days after being elected, and by the time he
Speaker 5: got in they rat tet tet confirmed his guys. In fact,
Speaker 5: I remember this very well because I was ballistic over
Speaker 5: the Holder nomination. I had a personal reason to be
Speaker 5: ballistic over it. I was in the Southern District of
Speaker 5: New York as a prosecutor not only during the Mark
Speaker 5: Rich debacle, but Susan Rosenberg, the former Weather underground terrorist,
Speaker 5: was my defendant. I spent about a year and a
Speaker 5: half in a litigation to stop the trial judge in
Speaker 5: that case from releasing her from her was it sixty
Speaker 5: year prison sentence. This was my one of my favorite
Speaker 5: litigations ever because she was represented by Williams and Connolly,
Speaker 5: which is like the sort of quasi white shoe criminal
Speaker 5: firm in Washington who representing Clinton, and their defense was
Speaker 5: that Susan wasn't a terrorist, and the explanation for that
Speaker 5: was that their firm didn't represent terrorists and they were
Speaker 5: representing her airgo she wasn't a terrorist. So it took
Speaker 5: me a year and a half, but I did manage
Speaker 5: to talk the judge added that one. But as as
Speaker 5: soon as we finally got them to rule in our favor,
Speaker 5: Clinton pardoned her on his way at the door and
Speaker 5: used he used the same offline pardon system that that
Speaker 5: holder had designed for Mark Rich, so that that didn't
Speaker 5: go through the pardon office, and in a real schevy way,
Speaker 5: they got that out the door. So anyway, I was
Speaker 5: ballistic over that, but the Mark Rich thing ended up
Speaker 5: not mattering. I think Holder got like he was confirmed
Speaker 5: something like eighty seven to thirteen or something along those lines.
Speaker 5: So you know, I expect that most of Trump's nominees
Speaker 5: are going to get that treatment, and I don't think
Speaker 5: he needs I just don't believe that he picked Gates
Speaker 5: because like he's obviously not going to make it, but
Speaker 5: that'll make it easier for you know, for Todd Blanche
Speaker 5: or whoever else oh right behind him. I do think
Speaker 5: Todd Blanche is likely to end up being the AG,
Speaker 5: but I don't think it's I don't think it was
Speaker 5: a scheme that Gates would implode and that would make
Speaker 5: it easier for the next I think Trump actually wants Gates,
Speaker 5: and we'll probably fight for them a little bit.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I know, I thought there's maybe a game through angle.
Speaker 7: But I want to back up a step because you
Speaker 7: prompted a big point of mind that maybe I'm a
Speaker 7: little out there on the edge, but you pot that
Speaker 7: you said that Obama managed to get a lot of
Speaker 7: people through FARREI quickly, here's the thing about appointments in
Speaker 7: the federal bureaucracy is that there's an asymmetry between the
Speaker 7: two parties. By that, I mean, and here's where I'm
Speaker 7: very direct and blunt. The federal bureaucracy is the partisan
Speaker 7: instrument of the Democratic Party, yep. And that's been their
Speaker 7: intention for years, and I'm always frustrated that Republican candidates
Speaker 7: don't ever say that directly. We talked about the deep
Speaker 7: state and the swamp and all the rest of that,
Speaker 7: and you kind of know what they mean. But the
Speaker 7: point is obvious here, which is the permanent bureaucracy. They
Speaker 7: don't actually need a Democratic appointees to know what they
Speaker 7: want to do. They'll just keep doing it, right. I mean,
Speaker 7: I actually think it's almost literally true. Credit president wouldn't
Speaker 7: need to appoint anybody for the bureaucracy to do what
Speaker 7: Democrats want the bureaucracy to do. So, but for Republican administrations,
Speaker 7: it's crucial to have your appoint easy and if you're
Speaker 7: going to have any point of wrestling on the bureaucracy
Speaker 7: and changing policy. And that's why you know, this delay
Speaker 7: in appointments is I think so crucial and as I say,
Speaker 7: has an asymmetric effect on Republican mystery. That's my point,
Speaker 7: and that's just the response, and healed your point.
Speaker 5: Look, I I you know, from another angle of looking
Speaker 5: at exactly the same thing. You know, I felt like
Speaker 5: I had to rationalize why I decided to vote for
Speaker 5: Trump after saying that I think you should have been impeached, removed,
Speaker 5: and disqualified, which is something of a you know, a conundrum,
Speaker 5: and I'm you know, the the answer, the short answer
Speaker 5: is I think, well, I think it's a binary choice.
Speaker 5: I respect people who don't think that, but like I
Speaker 5: come from a background where you know, we put twelve
Speaker 5: people in the box and sometimes the government's case is
Speaker 5: really crappy, but the defendant is a really bad guy,
Speaker 5: and we make the jury decide. You know, there's no choice. See,
Speaker 5: it's guilty or not guilty. So I didn't. I don't
Speaker 5: feel comfortable, not like making the choice that's in front
Speaker 5: of us. But this was like the worst choice in
Speaker 5: the history of choices. But my best argument for it,
Speaker 5: and it may not be an argument that carries the day,
Speaker 5: but it carried the day for me, is that I
Speaker 5: think the system, and in particular the system that you
Speaker 5: just described, keeps Republican presidents on the straight and narrow.
Speaker 5: That is, those guardrails are real when a Republican is
Speaker 5: in power, whereas they're not when a Democrat is in power.
Speaker 5: And for that reason I was a lot more worried
Speaker 5: about a Harris administration, which would be you know, basically
Speaker 5: the administrative state would not keep them within the guardrails.
Speaker 5: In fact, they think it's like rock and roll. When
Speaker 5: those guys are in right, they can push through every
Speaker 5: single policy piety they want to push through. Whereas I
Speaker 5: think one of Republicans in the deep state does its
Speaker 5: job in a very aggressive way. So do the courts
Speaker 5: tend to congress certainly does the media, business leaders, the
Speaker 5: whole array of what we think of when we talk about,
Speaker 5: you know, the deep state, which is not a term
Speaker 5: I love, but I think it's we all at least
Speaker 5: know what we're talking about when we refer to it.
Speaker 2: So Andy my question, I want to jump off what
Speaker 2: Steve said. I agree with your characterization of the federal bureaucracy.
Speaker 6: Steve.
Speaker 2: I agree with your description of what is different when
Speaker 2: a Republican is in power than when a Democrat is
Speaker 2: in power, which is why I think Matt Gates is
Speaker 2: a disastrous choice.
Speaker 6: In my way of looking at.
Speaker 2: This, this has the potential to be bad for Republicans
Speaker 2: and in particular Trump, on both ends. And this is
Speaker 2: why I want Andy's feedback on this, because you know
Speaker 2: so much more about this than I do. If you
Speaker 2: take Kavanagh for example, I thought the way he was
Speaker 2: treated was disgraceful, dishonest. I was vehemently in favor of
Speaker 2: his nomination and fought back against all of the lies.
Speaker 2: But I also understood that for certain Republican senators it
Speaker 2: was a difficult vote. But that difficult vote was created
Speaker 2: purely because the nomination process had been turned into a
Speaker 2: circus and allegations had been made that had to be
Speaker 2: dispensed with. Once Kavanagh was on, unless you're Susan Collins
Speaker 2: and you made a show of being pro choice. He
Speaker 2: was basically all upside for the Republican Party because they
Speaker 2: could go back to their constituents and say, look, we
Speaker 2: got an originalist adjacent judge on.
Speaker 6: The court with Gates.
Speaker 2: I see both sides of this process being potentially deleterious
Speaker 2: for the Right in that he is going to have,
Speaker 2: whether they're all true or not, all manner of personal
Speaker 2: Peccadillos brought up during his hearings sleeping with seventeen year olds, partying,
Speaker 2: taking drugs, all of the boasting about having sex and
Speaker 2: using drugs while he was doing it and filming it
Speaker 2: and showing it to people in Congress and.
Speaker 6: So forth, that's all going to come up.
Speaker 2: So if you are a Republican senator, you have to
Speaker 2: get past that if you want to get to yes.
Speaker 2: But also he's then Attorney general. This is the bit
Speaker 2: that I think is irritating me. And I will ask
Speaker 2: my question in a second, but I keep being told, well,
Speaker 2: are you more in favor of the deep state than
Speaker 2: of Matt Gates. No, it's because I am bothered by
Speaker 2: the bureaucracy that I'm bothered by Matt Gates. And another
Speaker 2: one is that look at the last guy, look at
Speaker 2: Merrick Island and everything he did. I agree, but let's
Speaker 2: not do it again. So Andy, my question.
Speaker 6: Is, isn't there.
Speaker 2: A huge risk here? And maybe I'm just wrong, but
Speaker 2: isn't there a huge risk here that Matt Gates being
Speaker 2: Attorney General as he was self aggrandizing and ill discipline.
Speaker 6: Frankly, not that.
Speaker 2: Experience or good is going to by being Attorney general
Speaker 2: caused Trump problems for two years while he's president, and
Speaker 2: he really only has two years until the Democrats are
Speaker 2: likely to take back the House. Much more than someone
Speaker 2: who was really good at that job wanted to take
Speaker 2: on the bureaucracy and wasn't Matt Gates would.
Speaker 5: Be Yeah, I think surely the perfect comparison is the
Speaker 5: last attorney general that Trump actually had, Bill Barr and Gates.
Speaker 5: Barr could see the curveballs coming when they got out
Speaker 5: of the pitcher's hand before they exploded. Right, Gates is
Speaker 5: not that guy. Gates practiced law for about five minutes
Speaker 5: and then he dove into electoral politics in Florida. He's
Speaker 5: been running for either state legislature or Congress since twenty ten.
Speaker 5: There's no reason to believe he knows anything about the
Speaker 5: Justice Department. He knows some stuff about, like, for example,
Speaker 5: the Trump investigations, because he was on committees that looked
Speaker 5: at those, but he doesn't know the structure of the
Speaker 5: Justice Department. And look, here's a guy. There's a guy
Speaker 5: who was in the law for his whole career, Alberto Gonzalez.
Speaker 5: The Justice Department ate him alive when he got in there.
Speaker 5: And Alberto Gonzalez was about ten times more prepared for
Speaker 5: what the Justice Department bureaucracy can do to somebody who's
Speaker 5: a novice and who doesn't know where all the levers
Speaker 5: are compared to Matt Gates, And what do we know
Speaker 5: about Matt Gates's legal acumen. The two most notorious positions
Speaker 5: he's ever taken were he joined the Kakamami brief in
Speaker 5: the Texas case, where the state of Texas was taking
Speaker 5: the position that other states state certified electoral votes shouldn't
Speaker 5: be counted, which was such an absurd argum amid that
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court virtually didn't even entertain it. And that's
Speaker 5: with three judges on the bench whom Trump had put
Speaker 5: on the Supreme Court. And then he took the position
Speaker 5: that Vice President Pence had the authority to invalidate or
Speaker 5: at least remand state certified electoral votes, which if he
Speaker 5: was correct about that, Kamala Harris could stop Trump from
Speaker 5: taking office on January sixth. So we have a guy
Speaker 5: who's never practiced law, who doesn't know anything that we
Speaker 5: can detect about how the Justice Department in the FBI
Speaker 5: is structured, who doesn't to my knowledge have a vision
Speaker 5: of what reform or to happen at the Justice Department
Speaker 5: in the FBI, which is important because those two agencies.
Speaker 5: I think Charlie and I on his podcast have done
Speaker 5: at least two long discussions about the reform things that
Speaker 5: need to be done in connection with those two institutions.
Speaker 5: What's Gates's vision of that and how would you accomplish that.
Speaker 5: There's no reason to think he knows that. And the
Speaker 5: Justice Department, and I say, this is somebody who was
Speaker 5: in it for a very long time. It's a very
Speaker 5: arrogant institution, but it has its ways and its history,
Speaker 5: and it has its ways of destroying people who come
Speaker 5: in and try to upset the apple cart. And that's
Speaker 5: just a fact. You need someone like I think that
Speaker 5: it badly needs reform, but you need someone like Barr
Speaker 5: who knows where all the bodies are buried and where
Speaker 5: all the buttons are and knows how they're going to
Speaker 5: come at him and how to undermine them. Gates is
Speaker 5: going to be in there, and he's going to go into,
Speaker 5: for example, the Civil Rights Division, which is the thing
Speaker 5: that most badly needs reform in the Justice Department, and
Speaker 5: he's going to face, like lawyers who've been at the
Speaker 5: Justice Department for between ten and twenty years and have
Speaker 5: done nothing but civil rights law, which we have no
Speaker 5: reason to think Gates even knows anything about. And he's
Speaker 5: going to have to go toe to toe with those people.
Speaker 5: And there's about a million ways they can undermine on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this is to me is just a perfect
Speaker 2: example of how many people in Trump's orbit they mistake
Speaker 2: drama for resolve. You want someone with resolve who doesn't
Speaker 2: cause drama, because the press will cause drama. They're going
Speaker 2: to go after anyone who tries to reform the bureaucracy.
Speaker 2: You want somebody who is able to ignore that, somebody
Speaker 2: who is more like Rondes Santis in the way that
Speaker 2: they operate, where they attract all the heat, but they
Speaker 2: put ice on it. So my follow up question is,
Speaker 2: leave aside who you think would be or you know
Speaker 2: would be good, Bill Barb being an example of it.
Speaker 2: Who who would you appoint if you were president of
Speaker 2: the United States to lead this project?
Speaker 6: I mean, if you had carte blanche, and who would
Speaker 6: you pick?
Speaker 5: Well, I would want a Mukzy or a bar I
Speaker 5: don't know if they would at this point in their
Speaker 5: lives disposed to do something like that with respect to
Speaker 5: the people who were on the table now, you know,
Speaker 5: for example, I think our own from National Review ed
Speaker 5: Whalen would be an excellent person at the Justice Department.
Speaker 5: Another guy who knows the Justice Department through and through
Speaker 5: and would have very developed ideas about things that were wrong,
Speaker 5: things that could be reformed, and people who could come
Speaker 5: in and help him to do that. I think George
Speaker 5: to Williger would be a perfect attorney general. Of the
Speaker 5: people who were on the table now, I don't put
Speaker 5: anybody in that category who I've heard Trump at least considered.
Speaker 5: I think Todd Blanche will be much better than Gates
Speaker 5: obviously would have been. Todd was a federal prosecutor for
Speaker 5: about ten years before he became a defense lawyer, and
Speaker 5: I think he's a solid criminal practitioner. I don't think
Speaker 5: he's necessarily a a star in like the bar or
Speaker 5: Mukzy league, but he'll be He'd be fine. He's I
Speaker 5: thought watching the New York trial that he took a
Speaker 5: couple of dumb positions in the defense, which only can
Speaker 5: be explained by the fact that he did what Trump
Speaker 5: wanted rather than what was good for the defense. So
Speaker 5: you'll have to deal with that dynamic. You know, he's
Speaker 5: obviously going to serve the master. But I think he'd
Speaker 5: be fine. Let's remember, like ninety nine points something percent
Speaker 5: of what the Attorney general does is not stuff that
Speaker 5: he needs day to day input from the President about.
Speaker 5: You know, there's a lot of a lot of stuff
Speaker 5: that I don't think Trump would have any interfering any
Speaker 5: interest in interfering in, and some of the things I
Speaker 5: think Trump would want to interfere in would be helpful,
Speaker 5: like you know, for example, to the extent that he
Speaker 5: wants to leverage federal prosecutorial authority in blue blue states,
Speaker 5: especially the big cities where these progressive prosecutors aren't enforcing
Speaker 5: the law. I think Rudy's career in New York shows
Speaker 5: that that actually can be very helpful and can make
Speaker 5: a big difference in law enforcement. That's the kind of
Speaker 5: thing I expect that Trump would want the Justice Department
Speaker 5: to do, and it would be beneficial if it were done.
Speaker 5: I think Matt Whittaker would probably be fine. Truly. Of
Speaker 5: all the people that I've heard mentioned in Trump's orbit,
Speaker 5: I think Whittaker is a former US attorney. He was
Speaker 5: a chief of staff to an attorney general. He knows
Speaker 5: how federal prosecution works, he knows how the Justice Department works.
Speaker 5: And I think he'd be fine. And I also think
Speaker 5: he'd sail to confirmation. So I'm kind of puzzled other
Speaker 5: than other than knowing Trump as we know Trump, why
Speaker 5: you wouldn't you know that would be a layup of
Speaker 5: a confirmation.
Speaker 7: Right, Andy, let me introduce so one last topic that
Speaker 7: and involved Trump directly.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 7: Start with a news item a few days ago that
Speaker 7: a CIA operative was arrested for having leaked Israeli battle
Speaker 7: plans overseas. There's been other examples of whether there's that
Speaker 7: guy the State Department they suspended whose name escapes me
Speaker 7: right now, but evidence of Iranian penetration inside our government.
Speaker 7: We know the Chinese spylight crazy at our universities and elsewhere.
Speaker 7: I think we should bring back the House and Senate
Speaker 7: committees on internal security that we abolished in the seventies
Speaker 7: and our fit of guilt and in the post Watergate period.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And of course the left.
Speaker 7: Will scream and the media will scream McCarthyism, and I'll
Speaker 7: tell them no, no, Andy, McCarthyism.
Speaker 3: I like McCarthy.
Speaker 1: Anyway, if they're going to if they're going to scream,
Speaker 1: let's just call them the House Committee on American Activities.
Speaker 3: Away, right, I agree, yes, right right?
Speaker 7: Any what do you think, Andy, I think we got
Speaker 7: to do something here, and I don't I don't trust
Speaker 7: the standing committees or the CIA to investigate themselves.
Speaker 5: See I think Steve that when you had Gallagher in
Speaker 5: the House and Barr at the Justice Department, you effectively
Speaker 5: had that without it being called that because remember, Barr
Speaker 5: had a China initiative. Actually I think it predated Barr.
Speaker 5: I think it started with Sessions, but but Barr took
Speaker 5: it on. You know, when Barr started his career in
Speaker 5: the government, he was a CIA guy in China was
Speaker 5: his concentration. So that's one of those things that he
Speaker 5: is rivetted to. But I think between what Gallagher's committee
Speaker 5: was doing, which was like the only committee on Capitol
Speaker 5: Hill that was actually efficient and seemed to work in
Speaker 5: the way it's supposed to work, we had something like that,
Speaker 5: And I don't care so much how they label it
Speaker 5: is that as that they do it, but I think
Speaker 5: it needs to be done. I also think with the
Speaker 5: respect of that CIA case, I'm really concerned. I mean,
Speaker 5: I'm sure they have the goods on this guy, that's
Speaker 5: why they charged him. I worry that that guy's escapegoat
Speaker 5: in the sense that I think the Biden Harris administration
Speaker 5: beginning with I think you're talking about Mali the envoy
Speaker 5: and his protege to bat to Buy, who even though
Speaker 5: she was involved in this Iran initiative, those scholars who
Speaker 5: wrote apologetic pieces for the Iranian regime, somehow she not
Speaker 5: only is in the government, but she has like the
Speaker 5: highest security clearance that you could have, and she was
Speaker 5: the chief of staff to the Undersecretariat the Defense Department
Speaker 5: who handles special operations, which is counter terrorism. So to
Speaker 5: have her in a job like that, I just think
Speaker 5: it underscores that these guys, they're running rampant, you know,
Speaker 5: these Iranian maybe calling the mass sets over states it,
Speaker 5: but sympathizers. They thread Obama and Biden's administration to the
Speaker 5: point that one of the co authors of Tibat to
Speaker 5: Buy in the things that she wrote on behalf of
Speaker 5: the Iranian regime, was this guy Phil Gordon is lesson,
Speaker 5: but he was Kamala Harris's National Security Advisor, and it
Speaker 5: was predicted that if she got in, he would have
Speaker 5: a major position there. So I'm glad they got the
Speaker 5: CIA guy, if they got him, but I mean, he's
Speaker 5: only the He's like the tip of the iceberg of
Speaker 5: what we're dealing with.
Speaker 1: It has to get it has to get better. It
Speaker 1: really does, because I mean we've been seeing things like
Speaker 1: Iranian penetration confirmed as this particular State Department employee has
Speaker 1: been giving details to the government and then the response
Speaker 1: seems to be, yeah, that's bad, but nothing we can
Speaker 1: do about that.
Speaker 3: There's plenty of we can.
Speaker 1: Do about that, and I'm going to see it in
Speaker 1: the next couple of years. Any we know, you got
Speaker 1: to go. You're looking I mean, you're looking good. You're
Speaker 1: looking spiffy, and I've been informed that that's because you're
Speaker 1: going on Fox soon. But to us know, you're this
Speaker 1: is how you always look, with a good tie and
Speaker 1: the good shirt and the good you clean up well, So.
Speaker 3: Have fun thoughts.
Speaker 5: I wish it, Andrew, I wish it was going to
Speaker 5: be fun. Apparently they're they're covering this awful Lake and
Speaker 5: Riley case, which I just had to read up on
Speaker 5: in order to know what the hell I was talking about.
Speaker 5: It's like awful.
Speaker 1: Just tell them, Okay, well there's a there's a day writener.
Speaker 1: May may it get better for you, and may you
Speaker 1: have a fine weekend, and we'll talk to you again, and.
Speaker 5: Guys, thank you.
Speaker 1: Before we go, and we've got some time. I want
Speaker 1: to do one thing here, and that.
Speaker 3: Is mentioned because you're wondering, Gosh.
Speaker 1: I love Ricochet, I love reading it, love reading all
Speaker 1: the comments, but it's only there was a way to
Speaker 1: meet these people in person. Now, if you're expecting Rob
Speaker 1: Long to appear all of a sudden and do a
Speaker 1: meet up announcement, no, he's probably in a in a
Speaker 1: cell somewhere in a robe where it is nodded with
Speaker 1: a rough rope, doing what he's doing. So I will
Speaker 1: do what Robbie has to do and tell you what
Speaker 1: the meetups to come.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: The thing is about Ricoget. It's not just people typing
Speaker 1: anonymously behind a keyboard. There are people who get together
Speaker 1: in real life, and if you would like to meet them,
Speaker 1: for heaven's sakes, we'll just join ricoget and then put
Speaker 1: up a Rickchet meet up in your town and people
Speaker 1: will flock to you now, those of you who have
Speaker 1: social anxiety, of course, it sounds like an absolute nightmare
Speaker 1: those of you who maybe of an extroverted sort and
Speaker 1: wish in these cold months to get together and hoist
Speaker 1: a few and talk about things. Because that's the great
Speaker 1: thing about Rickaget is how little when we get together
Speaker 1: in person we talk about politics, culture, society, all the
Speaker 1: rest of it. The member feed come.
Speaker 6: To the life.
Speaker 1: But it's not boring people who have no life and
Speaker 1: can do only things but talk about politics anyway. Dave Carter,
Speaker 1: our old friend, is hosting a meet up in Panama City.
Speaker 1: That's in Florida. Of course, Yes, there's an airport nearby.
Speaker 1: Then can you can get there from anywhere? December sixth
Speaker 1: to the eighth, twenty twenty four. I assume when he
Speaker 1: says from the December sixth to the eighth, that there
Speaker 1: are moments where you can step aside and you know,
Speaker 1: use the restroom perhaps, or call home or something like that.
Speaker 1: Otherwise it sounds like a forty eight hour convocation, which.
Speaker 6: Could be fun.
Speaker 1: And Randy, our old friend, Randy's having a meetup in
Speaker 1: Chook chattanoogu j Chattanooga Chattanooga, chatt and ugu uh, that's
Speaker 1: probably a Chattanooga somewhere else in the country in Tennessee, Chattanooga, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: January nineteenth, twenty twenty five. So check Ricochet, check the
Speaker 1: meet up pain, start your own meet people. It's always
Speaker 1: fun or a great bunch. I wish there was one
Speaker 1: closer to me at a date that I could go to,
Speaker 1: But if there is, I'll be there now. Gentlemen, one
Speaker 1: of the things that I love most about the administration
Speaker 1: that's going to unfold before us is the fact that
Speaker 1: what once was a meme of a sheba u looking
Speaker 1: quizzically at the camera now is the acronym for a
Speaker 1: government agency that supposed our initiative that is going to
Speaker 1: reduce waste, fraud, waste and all the rest of those things.
Speaker 3: Doge, You loved.
Speaker 1: It as a coin, You love it as a meme,
Speaker 1: and now, well, are you going to love it as
Speaker 1: a as a enterprise? Do you think it will do anything?
Speaker 1: Or is this going to be more like Proxmiers Golden Fleece.
Speaker 1: You know proxmid always come up with something, you know,
Speaker 1: like ridiculous amount of money we're spending on having shrimp
Speaker 1: run on treadmills underwater.
Speaker 6: There's hours.
Speaker 1: Somebody would come out later, you know, come six months
Speaker 1: later and say, well, actually that study led to the
Speaker 1: creation of a vaccine that reduced death by right by
Speaker 1: by spotted elephant fever by six hundred percent. You know,
Speaker 1: there's so many things that we can get rid of.
Speaker 3: But you know, you figure, you cut the you cut.
Speaker 1: The spending for this, You're not doing anything but the
Speaker 1: organization that that that commissioned the spending in the first place.
Speaker 1: And that seems to be maybe what what musk at
Speaker 1: all are after? Or is this just going to be
Speaker 1: another initiative at the end of which we are faced
Speaker 1: with a government as big as it was before.
Speaker 6: I'm just pretty skeptical.
Speaker 2: It's not that I have a problem with the program,
Speaker 2: which is a couple of smart guys looking through spending reports.
Speaker 6: It's just that the issue.
Speaker 2: Here is a total lack of desire on the part
Speaker 2: of the American people or Congress to do anything about
Speaker 2: what's actually driving our deficits and therefore our death. Is
Speaker 2: a very funny Australian TV commercial for I Think Castle
Speaker 2: Maine FORX beer from the eighties where this guy shows
Speaker 2: up in the outback with a pickup truck and they
Speaker 2: load one crate of Castle main FORX after another until
Speaker 2: they're comically stacked. And eventually the guy comes out of
Speaker 2: the store and he says, you want to sherry for
Speaker 2: the missus, And he puts up to sherry and he
Speaker 2: puts the sherry on top these, you know, seven thousand beers,
Speaker 2: and the pickup truck collapses and he says, I guess
Speaker 2: it was the sherry that did it. And I love
Speaker 2: this as a kid, but this, to me is what
Speaker 2: we're doing here with the federal budget. I would love
Speaker 2: to get rid of all of those stupid spending initiatives
Speaker 2: that you hear about, but the problem is entitlements. And
Speaker 2: on top of that, it's big organizations that would take
Speaker 2: political capital to abolish the Department of Education agricultural subsidies.
Speaker 2: If there were the will to use the power that
Speaker 2: the Republicans have been given to make substantive changes to
Speaker 2: the federal budget, then we wouldn't need this doage organization.
Speaker 3: We might want to have it anyway, but we wouldn't.
Speaker 2: Need it as part of some effort to streamline and
Speaker 2: fix our fiscal problem. We know where our fiscal problems. Lie,
Speaker 2: I understand the political imperatives here. I understand that the
Speaker 2: public is not interesting did in making a change here,
Speaker 2: and that therefore it's somewhat futile for Republicans to lose
Speaker 2: elections by promising to make changes the public doesn't want.
Speaker 6: But we know what the issue is. It's not like
Speaker 6: this is a secret.
Speaker 2: And the last thing I'll say before I shut up is,
Speaker 2: I think I'm right in saying that, you know, ninety
Speaker 2: percent of the waste that was identified in this initial
Speaker 2: report is.
Speaker 6: Interest on the debt.
Speaker 2: Now, that's fine to point out that we're paying huge
Speaker 2: amounts of interest on the debt, but you can't stop
Speaker 2: paying that because your default. If you want to stop
Speaker 2: interest on the debt being the big problem that it is,
Speaker 2: you have to stop the spending that has caused the
Speaker 2: borrowing that has caused the interest on the debt. So
Speaker 2: after a point, we're really just looking at things that
Speaker 2: are marginal instead of having an honest conversation about the
Speaker 2: core issue.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: So I share a lot of Charlie's cynicism about this,
Speaker 7: And yeah, although I do think that I think the
Speaker 7: figure you might have reported this, Charlie is that over
Speaker 7: one hundred billion dollars a year now and fraudulent or
Speaker 7: improper pay.
Speaker 3: See that starts to look like real money.
Speaker 7: But how you get at that, I don't know if
Speaker 7: it's enforcement or changing the rules, because that whole business
Speaker 7: is very opaque. My mind runs back to a previous
Speaker 7: effort to do this in the eighties, and I'm sure
Speaker 7: you'll remember, James, it was the Grace Commission under Reagan,
Speaker 7: which identified three hundred billion dollars in inefficiencies and savings.
Speaker 7: And of course that was real money back in the
Speaker 7: nineteen eighties, and almost none of that came about in
Speaker 7: part because and here I guess maybe the best guide
Speaker 7: is the old Yes Minister series with bureaucracy will bamboozle
Speaker 7: you That the one famous episode of a hospital with
Speaker 7: four hundred administrators and no doctors and no patients, right,
Speaker 7: you know that was You know that show was written
Speaker 7: by real economists who understood public choice theory. But you know,
Speaker 7: one of the things that Musk and this team will
Speaker 7: find is that some of the things you think are
Speaker 7: waste that actually I agree is a trivial amount, as
Speaker 7: Charlie says, but he went back in the eighties and
Speaker 7: some people who looked hard at the Grace Commission pointed out,
Speaker 7: and actually this was a liberal man, there really weren't
Speaker 7: any six hundred dollars hammers at the Pentagon or two
Speaker 7: thousand dollars coffee pots.
Speaker 3: That was a.
Speaker 7: Function of the peculiar accounting methods of the government. So
Speaker 7: vastly simplify this. You order a hammer from one contract
Speaker 7: a defense contractor, and you order a jet plane from them,
Speaker 7: they'll a portion overhead and equal.
Speaker 3: Amounts to both units.
Speaker 7: So you know, what's a trivial amount of overhead for
Speaker 7: a fighter plane ends up being, you know, five hundred
Speaker 7: and ninety dollars of overhead assigned to the cost of
Speaker 7: a ten dollars hammer. So there aren't been any real
Speaker 7: savings there if you just change the accounting around.
Speaker 1: Right before, they had to devise a particular kind of
Speaker 1: hammer for a particular kind of job, and that refuge
Speaker 1: that you know, the R and D costs were built
Speaker 1: into that cod But on the other hand, so you
Speaker 1: may not have many six thousand dollars hammers, but what
Speaker 1: we do have and everybody's familiar with, is a forty
Speaker 1: seven dollars aspirin. Because the government got into the business
Speaker 1: of healthcare and all of a sudden and accountability was removed,
Speaker 1: so that we don't pay out of our own pocket,
Speaker 1: but we pay to somebody who pays to somebody who
Speaker 1: pays to somebody depending on what the code is. Right,
Speaker 1: that is something that we'd like to take a look
Speaker 1: at too.
Speaker 3: But you're right.
Speaker 1: When the Grace Commission came out, I remember we were
Speaker 1: all talking about waste, fraud and abuse for years and
Speaker 1: until the last two words became one German term to me,
Speaker 1: fraud and abuse waste proud abuse. So when I when
Speaker 1: I hear it, I reach for my well, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: I'll wait to see what they come up with. But
Speaker 1: Johnny's right, it's entitlements. And as somebody who owns agricultural land,
Speaker 1: of course, I'm I don't believe that you should change
Speaker 1: the subsidies for that at all. And retirement age, I
Speaker 1: you know, you'd better keep your hands off my social security.
Speaker 1: But as somebody who cares much about the country, I
Speaker 1: would love to see them do something about social security
Speaker 1: that keeps it there for the people who are going
Speaker 1: to need it and phases it out for the people
Speaker 1: who won't. And that may be some kind of privatization.
Speaker 1: That may be some sort of four oh one k
Speaker 1: thing where the government does a little investive.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm open to anything, but right now, the idea of
Speaker 1: twenty somethings thirty somethings don't think they're going to get
Speaker 1: anything out of it, and to make them pay for
Speaker 1: the people who are getting something out of it is
Speaker 1: a generational transfer that seems to be not right, not moral.
Speaker 1: So we got to figure out a way about that,
Speaker 1: or it is going to consume us and the doges
Speaker 1: are you know, will go the way of the nation
Speaker 1: ones and that's them. Hey guys, let's get out of here,
Speaker 1: let's go have some lunch. Thank you for joining, Thank
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Speaker 1: get your podcasts with that matter, and giving us high rankings,
Speaker 1: high votes, high positive comments. Because then people say, hey,
Speaker 1: what is this thing. I've heard about the Ricochet podcast
Speaker 1: for seven hundred and sixteen episodes, but this is the
Speaker 1: one that finally makes me go. Check could be join.
Speaker 1: It's cheap and you'll have access to the Center Civil Right,
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights Center, the Center Civil right in Chattanooga
Speaker 1: community that you've been looking for on the internet all
Speaker 1: of your days. Gentlemen, it's been a pleasure. Stephen Charlie.
Speaker 1: We'll see everybody in the comment, said Ricochet. For Point
Speaker 1: Oh next.
Speaker 3: Week, Ricochet join the conversation.