Speaker 1: We're just getting a couple of scratchy notes when you're
especially emphatic or loud.
Speaker 2: I promise not to be emphatic. This entire pod.
Speaker 1: Not what your country can do for you and what
you can do for your country.
Speaker 3: Mister gorbitchaw tear down this wall.
Speaker 1: It's the Ricochet Podcast, but Steve Hayward sitting in for
James Lilac, joined by Charles C. W Cook and Rob Long,
and we're going to kick around the news ahead of
Christmas week.
Speaker 3: Let's have ourselves a podcast.
Speaker 1: They're a five hundred plus pages related to healthcare policy,
which doesn't.
Speaker 4: Have anything to do with keeping the government open.
Speaker 2: There's a one hundred billion dollars of disaster relief in here,
which is desperately needed, by the way, but should be
its own standalone bill.
Speaker 4: Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 3: As you know I'm in the final weeks of my presidency.
You don't have to clap for that.
Speaker 4: You can if you want.
Speaker 1: It's the Ricochet Podcast, Episode seven one. This is Steve
Heyward substituting for the usual dulcet tones of James Lylyax,
who's not with us today.
Speaker 3: But I'm joined by Charles C.
Speaker 1: W cook and some wandering stranger named Rob Long wandering
past right, wandering mendicant, and so welcome, gentlemen.
Speaker 3: We don't have a guest today.
Speaker 1: It's just going to be us kicking around some holiday thoughts,
going over some news of the day. But I do
I think want to start by saying, Rob, you have
just finished your first semester in seminary on your way
of taking fully orders, and I'm interested in that. This
is this venture, this quest of yours in general terms.
But also I sort of remember my first semester in
graduate school a long time ago now, and how much
more intense it was than being an undergraduate.
Speaker 3: So I don't know how's it gone. Are you done yet?
Are you learning? Ara Maic? What are the highlights for us?
Speaker 2: I have learned. Here's what I've learned. I've learned it's
been a lesson of humility, right, which is good, right,
because that's the sort of the especially an advent. He's
good to remember that. And the humility comes from two things.
One the humility of stepping away from politics for a
while and then being humbled by the fact that I
had to shell out one thousand dollars from a bet
I made two years ago saying there's no way Trump's
gonna win.
Speaker 3: Was that with Anne Coulter?
Speaker 2: No, I think Ann Culter actually, I think she actually
agreed with me two years ago. And it is like
constant cycles and is like always iterating. She's like a
you know, kind of a web app. She's always getting better.
I just thought it's just not gonna happen. And also
just that I discovered that, you know, I'm I'm a
man of a certain age, and at a certain point,
your brain, the human brain, my brain anyway, cannot understand
how to memorize biblical Greek. Oh, I just can't do it.
And I'm old enough to know I can't do it,
old enough also to be mad about it, not at myself,
but the idea that I'm supposed to because I because
I can't do it. I mean, I just been a
giant disaster for me. I kind of feel like, wait
a minute, I have a book. Just give me a
class where you teach me how to look this crap up.
I'll look it up. That and Hebrew. Just give me
cocktail party Greek and cocktail party Hebrew. And I'm sad.
There's always a book I'm well enough for every When
people said to me when in math class, well, you're
not always going to have a calculator, Well, no, I
get I literally always have a calculator. There's always a
I got this. There's an app for Biblical Greek is
an app for Hebrew. I don't need to memorize anything.
I can't memorize anyway. So that that is the that
that has been very humbling. On the other hand, what
I discovered is that it's really fun that that I
recommend it to people. If you've ever had this sort
of sense that wouldn't it be great if my job
today was to read do it?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Anybody tell you you're too old, because you're not too old.
You're too old probably to memorize Greek, but you're not
too old to do a lot of other great things.
So that's money.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I am. They're still saying that youth
is wasted on the young.
Speaker 1: I've I've well, I've long ago concluded that education is
wasted on the young in many cases too are uh
and uh, you know I well, so you're I'm guessing
probably the oldest person in your graduate class.
Speaker 2: Excuse me, back off, buddy, I am one of them.
Speaker 3: Okay, but uh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that my observation as an undergraduate,
and I had a lot of you know, older Vietnam
war vets who had come back to college, they were
always that this is in the seventies. They were always
the most interesting people in class, always the best at
drawing things out of both the faculty and us fellow
students who were just right out of high school and stupid.
Uh and and and and then you know, now that
I'm a classroom teacher again myself, I observe the same thing.
The older students are always the ones who have it
together more. Just a little bit of real world experience
makes a ton of difference in educate facial venture. One
quick question then I'll see if Charlie has any theological
increase for you.
Speaker 2: I'm available Charlie to be your spiritual guide.
Speaker 1: Is there any one particular aspect of this is too broad,
I wish I could do more specific, rob But is
there any one particular thing that has caught your attention?
You weren't anticipating or that's a surprise.
Speaker 2: Studies, you're just the idea of being a student.
Speaker 3: No, in the studies such a matter.
Speaker 2: As a Christian, there's just a tendency. You know, obviously
it's a you know, come you can get, you come
to it in good faith. But there's a tendency to
read the Hebrew Bible as like a preview of coming attractions. Ah, right,
are they okay? This is a spoiler alert. It's a
giant drum roll. And anytime I'm confused or I am
reacting in a weird way to something in the Hebrew Bible,
I can say, well, you know, here's the problem. You
all need Jesus, that's the problem, and he's on his way.
And I think that's a that's a mistake. And I
you know, I luckily I have two professors in Old
Testament ex Jesus, who are you know, fairly devout Christians.
One is the fact of practicing minister. And I'm gonna
say this can sound horrible and racist in one of
those Korean churches that I just can never keep straight right,
And they've both been really great about never doing that.
And it's amazing when you never do that, and you
just that's the thing that's a tendency you always fight
how much the whole thing kind of explodes this. There's
a really there's a reason. I know, I'm going on
and on and on. Although it's ad event, there is
no reason in Western political social thought that can explain
the explain the persistence of the Hebrew Bible and the
New Testament and their persistence. There is no reason for it.
There should be no Jews in the world if we
believe in the patterns of history crushed by empires to
the Egyptian Empire and the Syrian Empire and the Babylonian Fire,
and the Persian Empire, then the Greeks and then the Romans.
And nobody's going to worship Raw or Jupiter or Zeus
or Zoraster or anybody like that. Well, yeah, very few.
And there's how come there's going to be a reason.
And I think the reason is, you know, that's why
the Hebrew Bibles so fascinating that the reasons.
Speaker 3: Well, funny story for you on that, Rob.
Speaker 1: I remember remarking some years ago now that the Florida
two thousand election was so close that any group could
claim to have been the swing vote that put Bush
over the top, Theoroastrian vote. And the young lady I
was telling us to says well, actually I'm sorrow Astrian.
Speaker 3: It turned out I met the only she was from
that part of it.
Speaker 1: Rod and themmigrants, who is now now a federal judge
by the way, appointed by President Trump.
Speaker 3: Will just add that little detail for the fun of it.
Speaker 1: Charlie, do you have any theological curiosity you want to
draw out of Rob?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got to win back the fire worshiping. Wow.
Speaker 3: If he's going to find the grayil for us or something.
Speaker 4: Well, the first thing I would say is I would
strongly advise Perry against using the pull quote from your
last there should be no Jews in the world. You
paused after you said it, and I thought, O, where's
this one go?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I get accused of two positions on religion that I
don't hold. It's a strange existence. One is I'm reflexively
accused of being an evangelical because I'm pro life. The
other is that I'm accused of hating religion or being
annoyed by it or opposed to it in some way,
which just isn't true. I just don't have it. I'm
a very literal atheist. I'm married to it about Catholic
My children are being raised Catholic. I like religion. I
wish I had it, but I don't, and I'm not
going to say I do until I do, out of
respect for myself and others. I was raised culturally Christian.
I'm pleased about that. I had a guy on my podcast,
Catholic Priest, and we talked about the existence of God
a few months ago. It was very good. And someone
said to me recently, you know there was a good
conversation because you didn't scoff, And I said, well, I
didn't feel tempted to scoff. I'd have to scoff at
my own wife. I think that'd be bizarre, and most
of my colleagues. So I don't know if I have questions,
but I'm certainly interested. And also, you can't escape, and
I don't use that word to imply that I want to.
You can't escape the poll of this time of year,
even if you don't believe in the metaphysical parts of it.
If you were raised with it, which I was, and
the schools I went to were Christian and the culture
was Christian, you just can't escape the power of it.
So I just wanted to throw that in there, because
even though I don't believe that it is Troo, at
least not yet. My friends keep telling me, Ah.
Speaker 1: The.
Speaker 4: Power of the story is extraordinary.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll just two quick observations and then we'll press
on to some of the current headlines. One is, Charlie,
you mentioned that people assume you must be a religious
fanatic because your pro life. You know someone who is
strongly pro life, although it didn't seem to come up
that often in discussions, was Christopher Hitchins. It was not
just an atheist, but very hostile to organized or even
disorganized religion.
Speaker 3: Right, he was very strongly. He's not the only one,
I believe.
Speaker 1: The late nat Hentoff was also pro life. Yeah so,
and by the way, they both said it on logical grounds.
Speaker 3: Human life has to begin.
Speaker 1: Somewhere, well the most logical places, added in your conception, okay.
And Hitchins was blunt about that whatever came up, as
he was on all things.
Speaker 3: Second, you know, I think I'm with you on you know,
organized religion.
Speaker 1: Maybe he's an oxymoron, maybe not, But I do sometimes
like to draw people's attention to something. C. S. Lewis
wrote in his book Surprised by Joe, which tells about
him becoming a Christian, and in there he really does
confess that, gosh, I really don't like organized religion. I
don't often like going to church. I find it sort
of stuffy and clunky. And so even someone as pious
and metaphysically inclined as Lewis has some of your disposition
about that.
Speaker 3: So you're not so much aboutwire. I'll just I don't know.
Speaker 2: I just can I make a pastoral note, Charlie, Sure,
I go to church because of something that I need,
not something that I have, So you don't have to
have it to go.
Speaker 4: What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2: I mean I feel like that there's something there that
I need, and I probably need it more than once
a week, and that's why I go. I don't go
as a There's a whole there's an argument now, sort
of a big debate, and I'm sure we don't have
to get into this theological debate here, because there's like
as important politics to talk about. There's a department of
the Second Day of the Interior or whatever. But the
big debate is who gets to who gets to receive
the Eucharist at a church, And the traditional word is
you have to be baptized and confirmed or baptizing coff
in some way, so you'd have to be not so
that church, but sort of very conservative. And I'm cerifically
talking about the American Episcopal Church, Anglican slice. I don't
really know any other denomination. The argument as well, okay,
well if you don't have to be if you haven't
been confirmed, maybe at least you have to have been baptized.
And they say the phrase they use is font to
table baptism, font to the altered table, to the Eucharist table.
That's the direction you're supposed to go in. And there's
a bunch of other like Lucy Goosey, progressive weirdos like me,
who think no anybody can come and receive because it's
not our feast, it's not our table, it's not our invitation.
We're just the caterers, and the invitation doesn't come from us,
and the person the invitation comes from famously had an
open door policy. So sometimes you go, and sometimes I go,
and I and I feel absolutely nothing, and I simply
sit there in the pew and I organize my week.
And sometimes I go and I think, why am I here?
I had a bunch of reading to do, and I'm hired,
I'm going to homegoing to take a nap, or I'm
hungry or whatever. I wish I had had that third
glass of wine last night. And sometimes I go and
I get close to experiencing what I'm supposed to experience
or what is what is? What is what I've been
invited there to experience, whether I've been there or not.
So you know, that's why I go. I go for something.
I don't go as an expression of faith. I go
because I need it. So that's a different way to
look at it. Just that way be my pastoral note
to you.
Speaker 4: But doesn't it you know, well, I do, and so
I go with my wife and kids. And then there
are parts of it that are not canonical, if you will,
but nevertheless powerful. For example, the music I grow up
that too, So that's partly a matter of reminiscence. The
thing that really matters to me is whether or not
I believe the claim at the heart of it, And
you mentioned C. S. Lewis. He is pretty big on that.
So I can do what you just described, although I
don't get the experience that you described unless I'm confusing
it for music sometimes I suppose. But it matters to
me that I don't believe the core claim that it's
being made in the sermon or in the texts. Does
it matter too much? Do you think? Do you think
I'm over thinking?
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people feel that way. I
think that's that's legitimate. I mean these are hard things
to believe, right, I mean it's filled with miracles and
weird events, right, so yeah, that should be very hardly.
I don't I'm not. I don't think that's a problem.
I just want to I want you to. I went
to Israel a little while ago, a couple of years ago,
before before October seventh, but I went. It was in Jerusalem,
and I spent the first few days doing this kind
of thing where I looked around and I was like, okay,
well I had a guide and the guide was like, okay,
here around here is probably where this or that happened.
And so I spent at least three of the days
that I was there just doing this kind of like
CSI Jesus, right, there any evidence? You're like, of course,
there's no evidence, right, because it's like what happened twenty
feet below whatever? You know, it happened. You know, Jerusalem
has been destroyed and rebuilt many times. And then I
stopped doing that, and I said, Okay, what if I
just didn't worry about that part? And what is the
faith that this what is this faith actually asking me
to do? And I think we are stuck sometimes in
the idea that the faith is asking us to believe
a set of principles. We have a nice in Creed,
we have apostles Creed. It's interesting with nice in Creed.
It lists the very very specific aspects of Christ's birth,
the very specific aspects of his death, the very specific
aspects of Chris Christology, which people been fighting over for years.
It doesn't really say anything about the stuff he did
or said or taught. It's like you're getting a sandwich
with just the pieces of bread and no meat inside.
And I think it's kind of easy, actually not easy,
but it's easier to believe or convince yourself, or convince others,
or believe even truly believe in all of those events.
It's much easier to do that than it is to
actually live the way he told you to live. Yeah,
which is one of the reasons why we well, we
focused on them.
Speaker 3: Well, there's a reason that's called faith.
Speaker 1: Charlie and Rob and I some other time, you and
I can argue about salvation by grace alone or other
aspects of it.
Speaker 3: And for the listeners who haven't chased away, who came to.
Speaker 2: We're just don't you know, hot.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm going to extend the metaphor divine intervention because
maybe the House Republicans could use some divine intervention right now,
having completely flobbed the continuing resolution to keep the government open.
Speaker 3: And I mean there's a whole lot to be said
about this.
Speaker 1: The usual people in the chattering classes are aghast that
Elon Musk and Twitter may have whipped up the mob
to prevent the House from passing a resolution. Other people
in the grassroots are pointing to a lot of a
technical term is crap that was in the bill.
Speaker 3: We could list some and you know, Charlie may one
list a few of these.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I make about this, Charlie, I'm
sure you're following this, probably more closely than I am.
Speaker 4: I have a big problem with the tactic that we're
now seeing, which is to wait until the end of
the year, throw everything into one bill against the deadline,
then focus in on one part of it that you
think is the most politically popular and claim that those
who don't want to pass the bill as is are
opposed to that. They do this every time, they push
it and push it and push it, and then they
come up with this behemoth of a bill, one section
of which is the Saving Kittens Act. And then you say,
I don't think we should do this because of all
of the other things that are in the bill, and
they say Representative Cook opposes the Saving Kittens Act or
is blocking the Saving Kittens Act. And now they've added
on to this blame for Elon Musk. Now it's Donald
Trump's billionaire friends are blocking the Saving Kittens Act. Well,
you know, Congress could right now, literally right now, on Thursday,
December nineteenth, take that part of the bill, bring it
to the floor, and vote on it. The argument here
is that there are portions of this continuing Resolution that
have overwhelming bipartisan support that would never be fit lebusted.
They wouldn't even need a full chamber in either part
of the legislature.
Speaker 3: So do it.
Speaker 4: If it is imperative that we have disaster Aid, which
is this year's Saving Kittens Act. I think there's a
lot of pork in there, and a lot of problems
by the way that it's been structured. But if that
is imperative right now for North Carolina, for Florida, for elsewhere,
go do it. Just pull it out, do it, and
then keep arguing about the rest of the stuff. But
of course they don't want to do it. Now. You
are going to have some degree of that in any
democratic system because people horse trade and they should. You
can't have politics without it. I would love it if
every single part of every bill were voted on separately,
so we could see who voted for what. But you're
never going to get that. You are going to get
quote pro quote, but this there has to be some
space right between every part of every bill being voted
on independently and yes or no at the end of
the year. So I really object to this tactic, and
I think it is a good thing. Irrespective of the
motivations or whether or not there's a plan. I think
it is a good thing. That's someone has finally said no,
just to make the argument against it. Even if we
end up with a bill that looks very much like
this continuing resolution and then we have to have the
same fight next year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, oh gosh.
Speaker 1: I could go on all day about the incompetence of
this whole scene.
Speaker 3: The fact that it doesn't follow the law, which.
Speaker 1: Is now almost fifty years old, about how Congress is
supposed to pass the budgets every year. And then second,
I mean, but even if you're saying, oh gosh, we've
once again fritted away an entire year and we have
to do a continuing resolution to keep the government going,
it seems to me that if you had any wit
about you, you would pass a budget resolution that reduced
spending by even a small amount.
Speaker 3: Spread the pain around. Second, I don't understand why.
Speaker 1: Somebody is an alert to all the things being snuck
into this bill so or another one.
Speaker 3: I take some hostages.
Speaker 1: What I've said was is, look, if I was a
member of the House and unhappy about things, you can.
Speaker 3: Have my vote.
Speaker 1: If you gave me five budget cuts, cut funding the
Planned parenthood, cut funding, the NPR cut the State Department
grants to leftist NGOs around the world that are essentially
subsidies for left wing activism.
Speaker 3: It wouldn't amount to much money.
Speaker 1: But you take it this time, then you go and
do it again the next time, and that would be
some progress. Oh there's also some definitional changes. Some people
have flagged this on Twitter, where the language in the
bill says, for like the appropriation for the Justice Department,
They're want to change the definition of defending.
Speaker 3: To justice involved individuals.
Speaker 2: It's always, you know, woke euphemistically involved individuals.
Speaker 3: I mean, how in the world, how do Republicans run
the House? Let this slip through. No one's reading this,
no one's paying attention.
Speaker 1: I have theories about why the capacities to do that,
even mentally have an atrophy to almost nothing.
Speaker 3: But now I'm with you, Charlie. I'm delighted they're turning
it down.
Speaker 1: And by the way, last point, government shutdown we always
hear well as we know, if you pay attention, social
Security checks still go out, Care and Medicaid still get paid.
The military is still on watch and getting paid. Oh,
by the way, is your local police department still patrolling
the streets? How about your local public schools? Is Governor
Newsom sadly still on the job. In California, we have
something like thirty thousand governmental units in this country, and
only one is partially interrupting its business for a couple
of weeks. This is Washington media theater is what's going on.
And you know, I think most people wouldn't notice. I
don't think maybe in some small ways you know the mails,
but even the mail gets delivered. So this whole government
shutdown to what's the end of the world has become
a real farce, and I can't believe we haven't figured
that out by now.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's the feature of it, right. I mean,
if I just have cut out the date of the
newspaper and just started reading articles about the eminent government
shutdown and the budget sealing debate, you would know what
year we were in. You would know you were in
twenty twenty four. I think that we were in nineteen
ninety five for that matter, because we had this conversation
nineteen ninety five. This is actually the way it gets done,
and it's the worst way possible, and we sort of
can't bestir ourselves to fix it. I mean, this is
what you do when you put everything off the last minute.
You then can't be blamed for the fact that it's
all crap, because of course it's crap. We did it
in forty eight hours before we all want for Christmas.
The downside of a government shutdown is the shutdown. The
downside is what it turned when they eventually turn it
back on. And when they turn it back on, they
pay everybody in the arrears. Everybody gets paid and they
get paid even more. It costs more to shut the
government down. That's the problem. The other problem, I think
is that we don't we don't have a real sense
of what it is we want this federal government to do.
And it was much easier when we thought, here's what
we want them to do. We want them to make
sure the Soviets know we're going to obliterate the Soviet
Union if they try to obliterate the United States. That
was the goal. And if without that then we're kind
of a drift. And so I'm always I'm always surprised
when I read the America First Crowd, which is, by
the way, a philosophy that I find very compelling a
lot of ways, but also arguing to make the military bigger.
It's like, well, wait a minute, we're not going to
have those wars, so we're not going to fight them.
We let other people fight them. We should just be
protecting our borders. We it's a much smaller we need
a much smaller military. We're going to do that. So
there's all sorts of big decisions we just don't want
to make, notwithstanding the fact that it still is about entitlements,
it's still about Medicare and social security, and it's not
it's not going to change until we have a big
I mean it may it may end up that we
all look at each other and say, you know, that
president that we didn't really like very much that got
us into a stupid war in Iraq, George W. Bush
turns out he was right about social security, and we
pass social Security reform when we had a chance, we
would be in a much different fiscal place than we
are now.
Speaker 4: So can I give you the devil's advocate on that?
Because I agree with you? So I just want to
steal man this. I I agree with you. If you
think about where we would be now if social security
had been privatized, if you look at the gains of
the stock market over the last twenty years, it would
have fixed the problem. Here's the one worry that I
have with the counterfacture two thousand and eight. We know
this now, yeah, but in two thousand and eight, when
all of the markets crashed. Bush would have gone from
approval eighteen twenty eight percent to two. The Republicans would
have been wiped out in greater numbers than they were,
and the Democrats would have renationalized Social security. I just
can't see any other outcome. They would have looked at
it and said, not only do we have all the
problems that we had in two thousand and five, which
is when they would have changed this, we're now in
the hole. The outlook for it is impossible. That's the
problem I've got. I just don't think it can sustain.
Maybe now it could because you'd have had twenty years
agains back COVID. It would have been another one you
remember that day in the stock market where it went Yeah.
Speaker 2: But I mean there's there are ways. There were solutions
to that. They may may may may have been a
danger zone in the early days of it. But the idea,
what look, if you if you could, if you can
convince the lenders, all the lenders, not just worldwide but
in markets every day, that in thirty years, in forty years,
this won't be a problem. You will feel the effects
today in the economy. Positive effects. We're talking about fifteen
thirty year notes section. So there's there are ways around it.
The problem is you just you you. Nobody really wants
to do it because everybody likes big government. Even people
who say they don't like big government, they just don't
like your big government. They like their big government. Now
you are I remember that great. I saw what once.
This is a million billion years ago. I was driving
through a town, a small town in California and Central Valley,
and it was a tea party rally. This is before
the tea parties became sort of a basically a political
grip based in Washington, when it was still a bunch
of old people marching around with signs, and one of
the signs said say no to socialism, hands off my.
Speaker 3: Medicare medicare right.
Speaker 2: Okay, well I'm not sure these are all right.
Speaker 4: I'm going to defend that too. Yeah, I'm serious.
Speaker 3: No, I get agree.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree that there is a complete paradox in
the way a lot of people think about big government.
I agree that we have big government because we want it.
I agree that nobody wants to fix it. It hasn't gone
a miss on me that the Republican who has won
the last two times has explicitly run against fixing entitlements,
so totally agree. Here's why I'll defend that sign. The
Obamacare debate was in full flow. Obamacare took money out
of Medicare, which annoyed people. The Democratic Party, since Social
Security was passed and then thirty years later Medicare was passed,
has told people erroneously and dishonestly that it is just
an insurance program. There was actually Supreme Court case about
this where Social Security was taken to the Supreme Court
and the government had to admit that it was not
in fact an insurance program, that it was a welfare program.
The reason that I have some sympathy for the person
who held up that sign that thought some of the
mockery was unfair, was that that person has been told
over and over and over and over again that they
have paid in to an insurance program for their retirement
fund and for their retirement healthcare, that it's their money
that they're not getting out anything they didn't put in,
and that it's unreasonable for people to take it away,
and they believed it. What trolled me about that incident
was that those people who have been told this at
that point for seventy eighty ninety years then turned around
to the Democrats who were trying to change this with Obamacare,
and said, hands off my Medicare. I paid into it's
an insurance program. And the Democrats started mocking them for it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: I just thought that was sort of deeply unfair. Of
course it is silly, but for the Democrats, not Europe,
for the Democrats to do what they did when they
saw that science, I just thought it was.
Speaker 1: Like, come on, well, the important thing is I think
the case you're referring to charity, if I remember, right,
is hel Ring v.
Speaker 3: Davis from a long time ago. And what it means is.
Speaker 1: You know, we talk about social security, medicare as, entitlements.
Speaker 3: That case means it's not an entitlement.
Speaker 1: Strictly speaking, it can be taken away from you by
the legislature.
Speaker 3: You don't own anything now.
Speaker 1: I think an additional difficulty is a lawful lot of people,
probably a majority of Americans, are risk averse. If you
tell them we will guarantee you, quote unquote guarantee you
two thousand dollars a month, or we can have this
private account system where you have a seventy five percent
chance of having thirty five hundred dollars a month, and
you retire a lot of people are going to opt
for the first one because it's certain and the other
one has And then add in, as Rob points out,
a couple of crashes. Now, I'm a contrarian. Every time
the market tanks like I did this week. Not so
much this week, but the supervious ones, I get greedy
and I buy like crazy, handover fists and yes, but see,
you know, if you're contrarian thinker about these things, you
do very well on markets like that you bought the day,
if you bought an October twenty, nineteen eighty seven, you
did really, really well. And you know, Okay, I'm not
going to brag about my I mean, I'm not Warren Buffett,
but I've done very well by being You got.
Speaker 2: An nice house in the you got an nice house
on the coast.
Speaker 3: I knew.
Speaker 1: I'm looking out the ocean right now out my window.
So there's that problem. And I do think that even
if you have some shock absorbers, a robort of suggest
that you could solve this problem by sort of reinsurance.
In a certain way of it, I still think the
mass psychology of a crash and the uncertainty would make
it politically fraught to try and maintain it.
Speaker 3: I would see the government would regulate it today.
Speaker 2: I would also say that probably our and I think, Charlie,
that's a very good distinction, because I think even our
language of calling them entitlements is wrong, right, Because there's
a retirement savings, old age savings, rainy day fund, which
is sort of what SO security is in general. It's
a rainy day fund for some people. It's got disability
insurance associated with it, it has early retirement, has like you know,
dependent and orphan widow stuff, and it also has retirement
fund all wrapped up. And that's a financial instrument essentially,
or more than one about three different financial insurance. And
then there's health Insurancehreich is Medicare, which is not a
financial instrument by any means, and isn't really insurance in
any meaningful way. It is simply an account with which
we as a culture and a country, fund each other's
health in some ways. And we often, and this always
bugs be when people say things that, well, you know,
Americans spend x percent of this on that I they
shouldn't spend that much, Like, well, what on earth you're
spending your money on. If you're not spending your money
on your health, actually, what are you spending it on? Well,
we don't have the same outcomes. We have worse outcomes
than they do. That's because we do more, and maybe
we do too much. Maybe people are going to the
doctor too often, or maybe they're taking antibe autist when
they shouldn't, and that may be another problem. But we
actually have a very very very aggressive and innovative and
incredibly flexible health system in this country. And if you'd
said ten years ago that I would be able to
go on my zoom and go to a doctor and
get my you know toe looked at, and get a
prescription at the and the CBS would down there around
the corner would send me a push alert telling me
that the prescriptions ready for me and within ten minutes.
That's an amazing thing. You don't have that in any
other country. And so I always think of like, well,
maybe we're not spending enough on help, Maybe we don't
need to keep the cost of health insurance down. What
we what are you going to spend it on? I
can spend it on that.
Speaker 4: One reason that we spend so much is that Americans
simply won't put up with the outcomes that you get
in say, Britain. My parents are experiencing this at the moment.
My dad had a knee operation recently before they had
a hip replacement. Get to go private because the hip
replacement would have taken three and a half years. Americans
won't accept that. And so both within the government spending
and the private spending, we don't have the rationing that
we have in other systems, which means we spend more money.
We're also a lot richer, and as you say, when
you're rich, you spend money on healthcare, because why wouldn't you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I think that's absolutely true. But I think
also just in terms of how we just the accounting
for outcomes, you don't have a bad outcome for hip replacement,
you didn't yet, and you don't have a bad outcome
for a procedure that you will get somewhere else. So
in France you don't have these bad outcomes because they don't.
You don't get it. Same thing in Britain or in Canada.
You're in line. You don't get it.
Speaker 4: When you come to America, you're really sick, Yeah, come
to America.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you get and you may and that outcome mean. Look, look,
spending more on health, health insurance or health care doesn't
mean that you're not going to die of a disease.
It just means that we're going to probably spend a
whole lot of money making sure that trying to make
sure that doesn't happen. Well, and that's gonna mean, that's
gonna that's going to mean your outcomes aren't as good.
But but I still say, like, I hate it when
people say, well, we should be spent we should not
be spending as much as we spend on healthcare, and
I don't know, well, what else are you going to
spend it on.
Speaker 1: Well, we might be able to spend it better, But
that's uh, well, I'd be two things here. At least
one is I thought Obamacare fixed all this right, and
this has been conspicuously missing, uh amst for gun control
out of this terrible episode of assassinating the head of
United Healthcare. And then the second one is you still
hear people like aoc I guess saying we ought to
have Britain's National Health service here. But Charlie, my understanding
is I mean you and I know and people are
informed know that it's dreadful service. But I understand it's
widely unpopular in Britain right now. People are mad about it.
It's a huge political issue for whatever parties in government.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, a couple of things on the health service.
First off, the British have a very odd relationship with
the National Health Service, which is that they hate it,
but also it's a national treasure.
Speaker 2: And these two things very British response. By the way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so if you're an American then you criticize it,
they will immediately get their backs up and say no,
it's the end of the world. But between themselves they
will accept that it's not good. The American left's love
for the British National Health Service is and I think
many Americans don't understand this. It is extreme even in
world terms, because the National Health Service is usual within
Europe in that it is a government organization that is
run directly by the government. Every single hospital is owned
by the government or the doctors and nurses work for
the government. It is quite literally a nationalized health care system.
Both the funding and the provision are the government. That's
not how most systems, even those with single pair work.
France does not work like that. France has a system
of private health insurance and private hospitals and doctors and
so forth that is mostly, although not all, funded by
the government. The same is true of Germany. The same
is true in most prosperous countries in the East. The
British model was contrived in nineteen forty eight, and I
will try not to go on here, but I think
this matters when the Labor Party that had won after
World War Two had a huge mandate and mistook the
public's desire for much more equality economically for a desire
for nationalization. If you look back at the election of
nineteen forty five, it is true that people wanted a
national health service. It's no point pretending otherwise. What they
mostly wanted was two million new houses built because we've
just been bombed to Smithy, inspy the Nazis. That was
the main thing that got that government elected. But the
national health service was popular. But the popular part was
the payment. People said, I don't want to go broke
if I get sick, I don't want to pay to
go to the doctor. I don't want to pay if
my children need an operation. That was the principle that
people liked. No one cared how it was done. They
didn't say I need the government to run all of this.
But because the Labor Party of nineteen forty five was
extremely left wing, was quasi Marxist patriotic. That was a
good thing about that party, patriotic, but quasi Marxist. It said,
we have a mandate to nationalize everything. And so when
Winiston Churchill comes back in nineteen fifty fifty one, the
Conservatives reprivatize quite a lot of industry. They just can't
do it with the National Health Service for a couple
of reasons. First off, the footprint of the NHS in
the fifties was actually quite small, in that it really
was covering doctor's appointments and glasses and that sort of thing. Second,
by that point you had a whole bunch of infrastructure
that had been placed into the government, that had its
own interest groups, and it was very, very difficult. But
I just wanted to point out that when AOC says this,
what I always think is, no, you want France's system,
that's what you want. You don't want Britain system where
the government literally runs everything, or at least I assume not.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean and we have we do have templates
for this. I mean, not that we want to recreate this,
but the government issues food stamps. They didn't think go
out and yea farms. They didn't go into the food
making business. I said, here, use these little stamps and
go you buy food. You can go to supermarket. They
didn't open a supermarket. There's ways to do this. And
I just kind of my general point on about healthcare,
just separated from retirement and other financial instruments, is that
what do you spend it on. I think it's great
that rich people are spending a lot of money on healthcare.
It's fantastic. This is good. The innovation trickles down, everybody
makes it cheaper. That's good. First the first adopters always
make it cheaper for everybody else. We should encourage that.
But what does it matter to us that A that
a that A that a hospital. I mean, it doesn't
matter to me at all. I mean, I think this
is something that we should be encouraging. And I don't
think the expenditure on health insurance or health care is
by defect, by definition, something that we need to stop.
Speaker 1: So you know, Charlie, I'm going to file away Rob's
argument here, which I understand, but I think it could
also be misinterpreted along with his.
Speaker 3: Remark on Jews earlier here today. Charlie, Right, but look,
this is you know.
Speaker 1: Now for the for the for the listeners that we
didn't lose with theology and now haven't lost with health care.
Speaker 2: Yes, we're hitting all the hits today.
Speaker 1: Look the other I mean this is all absurd, not
the theology part, but the other thing that happened this
week that I think a lot of people might have
missed because it went by really fast. It was Kirsten Gillibrand,
the Senator from New York, demanding that President Biden direct
the Archivist of the United States to enroll the Equal
Rights Amendment, defeated forty years ago by the States. But
for this quirky reasons, demand of the archimist enroll the
Equal Rights Amendment in the Constitution and deem it ratified.
And this is a backdoor way of trying to revive
Roe versus way without having to pass it through Congress
or a constitutional amendment. And the Archimist, to her credits
a woman now said.
Speaker 3: We can't do that. Sorry.
Speaker 1: The law, this is very clear legal opinions are very clear,
and we're not going to do that. Charlie, I know
you've been following this and related matters. Do you want
to add to that minoritive which is very brief and
whatever GLOSSI want, because I have a few of my own.
Speaker 4: But well, you say it's illegal. That's why the archivist
said no, this is yet another attempt to circumvent the Constitution.
The era is in a strange way that as well,
because if she say the aim of it is to
resuscitate Roh, it always has been, which is why Ruth
Bedagins both liked it so much. She thought that if
you could get the ra in they even though it
doesn't explicitly mention abortion, then the court could say, while
we have this equal right to memdment, men and women
have to be equal. Women can't be like men unless
they have abortions. Therefore, but this, irrespective of whether or
not that would happen, is just an attempt to circumvent
the rules. And the original rules for the ratification process
were that the ratification had to succeed by nineteen seventy
nine or nineteen eighty two, depending on which version of
the rules you pick up. But either way, I mean,
the nearest one is forty two years ago. Then it died.
If it wasn't done by then, it died. And it's
just a fact that not enough states ratified it. In fact,
since then, although others have ratified it outside of the timeframe,
other states have rescinded their ratification. The thing that I
find the most instructive about this is that no one
in nineteen eighty three said, aha, we can keep going.
It was universally understood by the advocates of the era,
by the opponents of the era, by the Senate, by
the States, by neutral observers, by everyone that this was dead.
So what this is now is law fair. But this
time the Constitution is the victim.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's another lesson to me that when the progressives
want something, they'll get it by any means necessary.
Speaker 3: But by the way, I mean, I was surprised.
Speaker 1: I didn't see people coming on as there seems a
four on their logic that the ERA would revive abortion
because we now know that men can have babies, right right,
The bi deministration now refers to birthing persons, and so
it seems to me that the ERA would be no bar
to prohibiting abortion since it applied to all fifty seven
genders equally.
Speaker 3: Okay, I mean we laugh at this, but this is
what the left also thinks at the same time.
Speaker 4: Right, So, yeah, but that went out of the window
and row was overturned. Do you remember the day before
Row is overturned, men could have babies. The day after
Row is overturn, if men could get pregnant. The day
before Row is overturn, men and women are interchangeable. Everyone
is on some fluid spectrum. The day after over you, right,
this is an attack on women which we can now
conveniently define.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Suddenly, well that's why. Yeah, I think that always
happens after these watershed political events. Suddenly suddenly everything's recalibrated,
And it sounds a lot like the argument that we
were making all along, I say saying this before that.
If you ever want to know what's really happening in America,
just read the newspaper two weeks after a Republican has
been elected, because that's when they print the news.
Speaker 4: Of that I used to write in my head. The
New York Times news reports, the Associated Press news reports
about inflation. If the president were a Republican because you
could see them in front of your eyes. Literally. You know,
Manny Hernandez is a construction worker in the Bronx. All
he wanted is to live the American dream, but inflation
has been killing his family. I can't afford conflicts, many said,
I am so angry. But they didn't run it.
Speaker 2: They didn't run it.
Speaker 4: Instead, they pretended it wasn't happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but can you imagine it? Am I jumping the
gun step? Just today in the Wall Street Journal there
is this riveting and i'm an astonishing article about everything
that you knew already, which was that Joe Biden was
an adult, out of it president, surrounded by a bunch
of sort of alice guards who kept his own cabinet
from calling him directly, who reshaped and rescheduled crucial national
security meetings during a time in which there are there's
a there's a war with half a million casualties raging
in Europe and a war with I don't know how
many thousand casualties raging in the Middle East. And some
days he is a bad day for him. Can we
reschedule to tomorrow?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And it's something that we all knew was happening, and
they and they probably knew was happening, and they just
didn't want to print it. And it seems to be
no sense of the lack of the lack of surprise
in the part of most Americans.
Speaker 3: Well, can I add rob that the I mean, the.
Speaker 1: Maybe the most startling thing of that story was the
clear implication. It's worded very softly, but the lead of
that story in the opening made clear that the problem
of Biden was a parent of the people around him
during the twenty twenty campaign. This didn't start in twenty
twenty two. And then one of the telling details was
I forget the name of the House Democrat, but it
was the chair of the Foreign Relations or Intelligence going
to me, and he said, I tried to call the president.
This is before the bug out in Afghanistan. I tried
to call to express my concerns about what they were
saying they thought was going to happen, and why I
thought there were things they weren't thinking about. He said
he could not get through to Biden. They wouldn't let
him talk to the president. And he said, I've always
was able to talk to Obama, was easy to get
a hold of him.
Speaker 3: I can talk to.
Speaker 2: The House.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now is this has ought to be a scandal
for the media.
Speaker 1: By the way, we're now being told that the Politi factory,
the lie of the year is Trump and uh uh
and Jade Vance saying dogs and cats are getting eaten
in Springfield, Ohio. Okay, that was sort of a ridiculous exaggeration,
I suppose, But it seems to me the lie of
the year is the media covering up what they had
to have known was true about Biden and the White House.
And this is my hypothesis. I want to spring on
Charlie see what he thinks. I actually think a sycophantic
media is the worst enemy of the Democratic Party. They
want to blame Biden for sticking around too.
Speaker 3: Long and not getting out of the way. But if the.
Speaker 1: Media had done its job and reported on this, Biden
would have dropped out a year sooner than he did,
and they would have been a whole, whole different circumstance.
And oh all that had one other thing. Chris Silizza,
formerly of CNN and The Washington Post. Today he posted
on x an apology just one sentence. As a journalist,
I should have pushed harder on the very real questions
about Joe Biden's physical and mental health as president.
Speaker 3: Well, I would like to.
Speaker 1: Ask you why didn't you Is it because you're a
coward or an idiolog which.
Speaker 2: Isn't, because the implicit question from that administration would have
been to any reporter who asked that question who wasn't
already aligned with a conservative outlet have been like, hey,
whose side are you on?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well it was that.
Speaker 1: It wasn't even yeah, but Charlie I pitched a question
to you and then rambled on pitched to Rob But
you know, is it the media the Democrats worst enemy?
Speaker 3: And what are they going to figure that out? Probably never?
Speaker 4: I think it is, and it isn't. There's clearly a
problem for the Democrats here in that they lost the
last election in part because of the media. As you say,
their ability to debate the Constitution as atrophied because of
the media. Conservatives got busy building the Federalist Society, and
the Democrats in the media just talked about consequences and outcomes,
and they're now absolutely outmatched where it matters. And I
think much of the failure of the Biden administration was
attributable to the media in that the press absolutely loved
that American rescue plan so called. We've spent two trillion
dollars and it led to the worst inflation in forty
years and Biden never recovered from it. Where I think
the media is not good for conservatives or not bad
for Democrats is that on the average issue, I think
it's probably responsible for three to five points to the left.
Timothy gross Close has written about this.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yeah, his work is terrific.
Speaker 2: Yes, it is very good. And Ricochet member Timothy Grok
was a contributor for a long time.
Speaker 4: Oh, it was interesting. Well, his book on this is fantastic.
I think, for example, about the first presidential debate where
Trump ended up arguing not only against Kamena Harris but
the media. Now you could say what he won, he did.
But because the press behaves like that, it makes it
quite difficult to make progress on issues in a way
that I wish were not the case. All issue debates
seem to get corrupt and waylaid by a press that
is invested in helping the Democrats or the progressive side
of it. And if the point of politics is to
advance issues and policies and not to win elections, that's
got to matter. Yes, when you put people in the
sanctity of the voting booth, they will say, screw it,
I'm voting for who I want to. But does that
happen in quite the same way at work? Does it
happen in quite the same way in social situations? If
people are constantly being told only widows, think that that's
a minority position. You're insert ist here. I worry that
the press corrupts our society in that sense. So I'm
a half yes, I suppose yeah.
Speaker 3: And I agree with all that.
Speaker 1: And I'm actually been meaning to reach out to Tim
Grows close to see if he's updated his estimates of
these matters in light of the way the media is
fragmented in the rise of social media and Twitter and.
Speaker 3: Muscle and so forth, And maybe you should do that sometime.
Speaker 1: I made okay, last subject, since we have Rob here,
a couple of things from the Hollywood world. And though
even though you may not be following it day to day,
you know you'll have obviously some insights on this one
a quick story, and then the two news items. It's
a couple or three years ago now. I was talking
to a young screenwriter. I know a closet conservative in Hollywood.
It's actually written for National Review Online a couple times
under a pseudonym, And he said, it's a little like
you hear about New York Times editors. Everybody in Hollywood,
all the suits are terrified of the young Wolkesters they've hired.
But everybody really wants to get back to writing stories
with pretty women in short skirts and boy meets girl
because that's what people want. And I know this guy
has sold it, you know, a few scripts shows here
and there. But then the news items out in the
last few days is that Disney apparently has a disaster
on its handles to the remake of Snow White, and
it have been extensive reshoots. The budget has belonged to
two hundred and fifty million dollars. And then on top
of that, I don't know if you saw this, but
Justine Bateman, you know everyone remembers from Family Ties in
the eighties, has come out as a very ferocious anti Wolkester.
I'm saying, maybe she's going to be our first woman
president elected some day. I don't know, but I don't
do you get the sense that that Hollywood, like some
other precincts are starting to shake off their torpoor and say, boy,
we really made a mistake with all the wokeism.
Speaker 3: What do you hear? What do you think? What are
your instincts on this?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: I mean there's two ways to look to some two
separate tracks for Hollywood, right There's there's their own HR problem, yeah,
and then there's the content problem and the content and
they were linked in this case. But I think the
tide is turning slightly, mostly because there are fewer people
working at these studios. They've had massive layoffs they're going
to continue to have. I mean, twenty twenty four was
actually not as bad as twenty twenty three, but twenty
twenty five I think it's going to be going to
be worse than twenty twenty three. And that is actually
a good thing. I mean, I hate to be a
total free market conservative or a libertarian, but the truth
is that Hollywood is never better than when it's broke.
When it's broke and against the wall and falling apart,
which it does to itself about every thirty forty fifty years.
For the forty years, at least it gets good. It
figures it out, figures out what the problem is. And
usually what it figures out is, oh, oh oh right, right,
I forgot people like movies where the bad guys are
clear and they get taken care of and then the
people the romance gets together and I can project myself
onto one of those two people on screen. I'm either
carry Grant or I'm you know, even Recaint. And that's right.
When they figure that out, you know, they still you know,
what's that the regions say is like, do not attempt
to grow a brain. This is Hollywood. You don't need
a roadmap. This is what just a simple movie, like
a simple show. We need a beginning, middle, and the end.
And the end's got to be something somewhat satisfying and
so people like and and it'll get back to that.
What needs to happen is what's kind of happening. What
needs to happen in Wall Street is that Wall Street
needs to start having you know, tough earnings calls with
these studios and say you're in big trouble. Uh. What
needs to happen is a lot of private equity people
need to go broke, which is gonna happen probably next year,
who have invested a whole lot of money in these
ridiculous valuations of these ridiculous production companies that have done nothing.
That's going to collapse, and then there's gonna be no money.
And when there's no money, you gotta fire people. When
you fire people, you get smaller. When you get smaller
than there's enough, not enough people to start overthinking whether
in fact we should have whether one of the kids can't,
can't one of the kids be trans like you. That's
a conversation you have only when you have plenty of
time to think about it. So I suspect that that's
all gonna that's all gonna change, because what people don't
want to see is revenue and revenue which does not matter.
It has not mattered in Hollywood for ten years. With
interest rates at zero and everybody trying to spend money
just to build up this their streaming library, that's gonna
it's like going broke is embracing mind, focusing back to basics,
kind of zesty feeling for Hollywood. It's a good thing.
Last time Hollywood really really really went broke was in
the late was in the sixties late sixties and ushered
in one of the greatest years in entertainment in American
entertainment ever, which is the seventies, which are incredible, incredible
box office years, TV years, amazing that could happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean one little data point on this that
I noticed and just recalled is I've been watching this
Netflix series with Kerrie Russell called The Diplomat, and it's
very lavishly produced and very well shot. And Carrie Russell
is compulsively watchable. She was always she plays this sort
of hard as role. So that's all fine. But the
first season they had a conspicuous trans character who was
only there to plant the rainbow flag, had no real
plot point and conspicuously missing if you're paying attention, from
the second season, which just wrapped, so that was quietly
dropped from the from the production.
Speaker 3: So you know, maybe that's one.
Speaker 2: I will still tell one story, and I want to
tell you who said it to me, because he eventually
had me too trouble, so that you know, I'm already
deep in the hole here in this podcast by I
uh like easily missed the street comments. Uh, we were
casting a show. Uh it was the head of the network.
We're casting a show, and there were two two actresses
were testing the Usually they come and they test in
front of all of us. So we would do all
the additions, and we bring two choices to the network
in the studio and we'd say, look, here's where we are,
here's kind of who we like, here's who we you know,
here's what you like. But we got to decide in
this room together. And it was an actress. She's really good.
She went on to do great stuff. She was incredibly good.
She's very talented, and and she was just a little
prettier than the other one. And and there was silence
in the room and like nobody wants to say that
because it's like it's like it's you know, you don't
want to say that. So I but I said, I
don't know, I kind of like her. I just feel
like she's more she's more appealing in some way. You know.
It's got to wheel the wording it, you know, and
she feels like she's like, I don't know, I could
kind of like feel it. I gotta feel this vulnerabiling
it just it was just it was just nonsense words
just to not and the pad of the network. It
was sort of an old style guy who like he
was alone at that point, even a rare character. Then
he said, yeah, you know, it's never a bad idea
to put a pretty girl on TV.
Speaker 3: Rob.
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, that's that's really true. Let's just that's
just you said it. Let's go. I like that that
these seems it seems very simple and everybody watching it knows,
but people making it don't often know that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, all right, We've got about maybe two minutes
of slack time to see if either one of you
want to say anything about ABC's settlement. ABC News settlement
with Donald Trump over the libel case, which I think
is hysterically funny but also significant in a number of ways.
Speaker 4: Charlie, I think that there was a conversation that was
probably recorded in some way, likely over email that would
have come out during discovery. ABC was told by its
insurance company settled this now or the jury will give
some Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, we went through discovery in the Fox
News dominion lawsuit, and that settlement ended up costing seven
hundred and eighty million dollars. So ABC got off easy.
But you do hear these stories that there's mayhem inside
of ABC. Stephanoppholops is very upset and so forth. There
was a little tidbit as gets the legal geeking men.
There was a little tidbit in the Wall Street Journal
account of the dissension in ABC saying Disney's lawyers, remember
Disney owns ABC. Disney's lawyers were worried that with the
current Supreme Court, this might reopen the New York Times
versus Sulliban libel standards, and they were afraid this might
happen and be open season on the media. But you know,
Trump is, he's not sick everybody else in sight.
Speaker 3: By the way, a little slat tangent here.
Speaker 1: This talk of investigating Liz Cheney, I think is a
psy o patrolling operation. I think what Trump wants to
do is provoke Biden into giving a pardon to Liz
Cheney and faut cheat everybody else, and then Trump can
say pardons for it. They didn't do anything wrong, cleterally,
they're guilty. You know how this is gonna play out? Right?
Speaker 3: Something like that? Is that the storyline? You're right?
Speaker 2: Rob? Yeah? I mean I don't. I mean, I would
like I'm an as you know, I'm an optimistic pessimist, right.
I would like the House Republicans and the President and
the House and the Senate Republicans to get clear on
how American politics works, which is that you really don't
have a big window at this moment. You really don't.
It doesn't work that way. There's gonna be another electually,
gonna be a midterm. Someone's gonna mess up, there's gonna
be trouble. You got a moment, you have some runway here.
Pick five important things. Just do those five things right.
Do not attempt to boil the ocean. Just do five things.
Do not get distracted with all of your little Twitter
maga stuff. We're gonna get Liz Cheney in prison and
all that stuff. Just do the five big things you
need to do and live to fight another day. What
often happens with these these sort of moments is that
the reprobagans go in all different directions and decide what
they really want to do is they want to have
fights on Twitter and on Hannity and on Tucker, and
those never get you what you want. And then you
end up after four years of a Trump administration in
twenty sixteen, without a wall and with a lot of
a lot of the stuff that he promised. Because you
spend a lot of time just talking nonsense and you
want to put Liz Cheney in prison, go right ahead,
but make that number one hundred and ninety seven on
your journey. Don't have that much time.
Speaker 1: Well, well, there's the Rob Long of hope and forgiveness
at the Advent season. Charlie, I don't forgive, Charlie, you
are not politically agnostics.
Speaker 3: Certainly, I'll give you the last word before we have
to get out for the day.
Speaker 4: Well, I will say Merry Christmas, which I celebrate with
my family and love.
Speaker 1: Oh excellent, All right, Well, this podcast was brought to
you by ricochet dot com and as James likes to say,
and I will try to do it as well as
he does and will fail at it. Please help the
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It's the best place for civil center right conversation. See,
we don't even make fun of Rob for being the
rhino squish that he is.
Speaker 2: I'm I'm diversity, I'm the d hied here.
Speaker 1: That's right, right, And as always, please, if you have
a minute, leave.
Speaker 3: A five star review for us on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Uh.
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we will see you in the comments. Everyone at Ricochet
four point zero. I think that's what we call it, Charlie,
I think it is right all right. Next week, guys, Merry.
Speaker 2: Christmas, Ricochet, ye
Speaker 3: Join the conversation.