Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna be disciplined today, Steve, you'll be
Speaker 1: so proud of me.
Speaker 2: Well, whiskey, come and take my pain, the moneys, my ry,
Speaker 2: oh whiskey.
Speaker 3: Why think alone when you can drink it all in
Speaker 3: with Ricochet's Three Whiskey Happy Hour. Join your bartenders Steve Hayward,
Speaker 3: John You, and the international Woman of Mystery, Lucretia where
Speaker 3: they slapped it up and David, ain't you easy on
Speaker 3: the soul? I have got to give me and let
Speaker 3: that whiskey flow.
Speaker 1: Well. Welcome everyone to this edition of the Three Whiskey
Speaker 1: Happy Hour, which is super extra special. I'm not really
Speaker 1: sure why, but every edition of the Three Whiskey Happy
Speaker 1: Hour is super extra special when the three of us
Speaker 1: are able to get together and pontificate about all the
Speaker 1: important things we know so much about and usually things
Speaker 1: we don't know very much about it at all, but
Speaker 1: we pretend to. So Welcome gentlemen to the Three Whiskey
Speaker 1: Happy Hour, my co hosts Steve Hayward and John You.
Speaker 1: How are you today?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 3: I am much relieved, you know, John, I was afraid
Speaker 3: that I kept from text messages all week. I thought
Speaker 3: Lucretia was in an extra grumpy mood, and she sounds
Speaker 3: positively abulliant here, So this is gonna be a good episode. No,
Speaker 3: you don't like being called a buliant. I've ruined the
Speaker 3: mood already.
Speaker 2: They get out on.
Speaker 1: Them, have it, John, You look like you're enjoying some
Speaker 1: views of something behind you in that beautiful place you're in.
Speaker 2: I am in the last days of the Claremont Institute
Speaker 2: summer programs. They have week long programs, one for policy
Speaker 2: and journalist and I would say government officials called the
Speaker 2: Lincoln Fellowship, which was last week, and this week is
Speaker 2: the one for law students and lawyers and future law
Speaker 2: clirks called the Marshall Fellowship, which is coming to an
Speaker 2: end tomorrow and is our tradition. I take all the
Speaker 2: faculty and staff out to a gigantic Korean barbecue on
Speaker 2: the last night. Oh yes, complete with you know, burning
Speaker 2: meat and very bad liquor called soju.
Speaker 1: Oh what is it? What is the the provenance of soju?
Speaker 1: What is it made from?
Speaker 2: Everything in Asia, in one way or other, is made
Speaker 2: out of rice. So I believe it is made out
Speaker 2: of rice. There are other weird Korean drinks which we
Speaker 2: don't show to the foreigners made out of other things
Speaker 2: which taste even worse. Soju is a thing you usually
Speaker 2: see them drinking on Korean melodramas on Netflix.
Speaker 1: Well, you usually don't see any of those things because
Speaker 1: I've never watched the Korean melodrama on Netflix. But hey,
Speaker 1: oh oh for the Tisha Netflix.
Speaker 2: Well, Lucretia is the mini series. Notice, squid Game would
Speaker 2: be a rom com. Yeah, okay, you have no idea
Speaker 2: what swig game. Squid Game is a game where you
Speaker 2: start with I think one hundred people who have to
Speaker 2: fight to the death and there's one person at the end. So,
Speaker 2: like I said, a Lucretia, yes to the.
Speaker 1: Wow, Okay, maybe I have to watch it.
Speaker 3: Taking everybody to Korean barbecue. I guess that's fitting revenge
Speaker 3: for you for having inflicted all your positivism on them
Speaker 3: in the course of things.
Speaker 2: I'm I'm paying because I have. They should be taking
Speaker 2: me out for listening to two weeks of this natural
Speaker 2: law book business plus at the Claremont Institute, and I
Speaker 2: think we should. We got to upgrade our merchandise store
Speaker 2: because they were rolling out a new merchandise store and
Speaker 2: then be showing me all these hats, and some of
Speaker 2: that has to just say natural law on the front
Speaker 2: of them. You didn't get one, no, And then there's
Speaker 2: one that Lucretia. I've got for Lucretia says mass deportation.
Speaker 2: Who's going to walk around town with a hat that
Speaker 2: says mass deportation?
Speaker 1: Only with Krisia my town, you could do it. I
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't want to do it in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: But can I just mention one other thing while we're
Speaker 3: getting started? I do you know, I'm trying to modify
Speaker 3: the substack side. I finally figured out some of how
Speaker 3: it works. It's quite complicated really and limiting. But the
Speaker 3: other thing to be mentioned, and I will have a
Speaker 3: post on it sometime Friday is because this will be
Speaker 3: good for ratings. Sydney Sweeney's back in the news. I
Speaker 3: don't know if you guys saw this, but The New
Speaker 3: Yorker has this. The New Yorker has this absolutely preposterous
Speaker 3: article by one of their radical black authors who hates
Speaker 3: white people, according to her sense deleted Twitter feed, about
Speaker 3: all the liberal creches about why the Sydney Sweeney thing
Speaker 3: has anchored in white supremacy and all the rest of that.
Speaker 3: So thank God for the New Yorker to keep this
Speaker 3: story alive and give it, shall we say, legs? That's all?
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm already then, all right, well let's get going.
Speaker 1: Enough of you guys. I want to know your quick
Speaker 1: thoughts on the major issues of this last week, just
Speaker 1: so if people are listening to this a year from now,
Speaker 1: which I sometimes do and have been lately just for
Speaker 1: the fun of it, they know what's actually going on
Speaker 1: in the world. So the first thing is today, are
Speaker 1: we are actually recording early? Even though you will see
Speaker 1: John drinking whiskey at ten o'clock in the morning in
Speaker 1: the picture that Steve's gonna post, maybe that the Alaska
Speaker 1: summit is going on today and we don't know how
Speaker 1: that's all going to turn out. But Steve had an
Speaker 1: analogy man piece about it yesterday or today in substack.
Speaker 1: If you are interested in finding out what exactly is
Speaker 1: the historical parallels between Reggaevic and Reggaevic and Alaska. I
Speaker 1: guess if it's cold in both places. I don't know
Speaker 1: if we can go beyond that. But look, before you go, Steve,
Speaker 1: tell me John, what do you think is going to
Speaker 1: happen today? You pro Ukrainian War longo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just saw the original Neokon. You mean, well,
Speaker 2: you know, first, I don't think summits are really very
Speaker 2: good ideas in general. The most the most effective ones,
Speaker 2: I think the ones where there's already an agreement that's
Speaker 2: been basically made, and then the people show up and
Speaker 2: they are ceremonialize it, if that's a word. So you know,
Speaker 2: Reagan and Gorbachev getting together in Washington and Moscow as
Speaker 2: they were winding up the Cold War, signing things like
Speaker 2: the I n F Treaty, which actually the Soviets never
Speaker 2: really obeyed. But you look at other summits and they've
Speaker 2: been pretty bad for the United States, you know. I
Speaker 2: think the most famous one was Kennedy Krishtchov and in Vienna,
Speaker 2: which historians think encouraged Krushchev to try to take advantage
Speaker 2: of the weak American president, lead to the Berlin Wall,
Speaker 2: which we allowed to go up without a shot, and
Speaker 2: then the Cuban Missile crisis, where the Soviets tried to
Speaker 2: actually place nuclear missiles in Cuba. And people sometimes point
Speaker 2: to the as Steve did, the Rekuevik summit between Reagan
Speaker 2: and Gorbachev. I don't think that was a bad one.
Speaker 2: I mean, there wasn't There was no productive, positive agreement there,
Speaker 2: But that actually was a victory I think for the
Speaker 2: United States because we didn't give up anti ballistic missile programs.
Speaker 2: So I don't really see what's to be gained by
Speaker 2: having summits. Maybe it will get the peace process started
Speaker 2: in Ukraine. I don't really see how it could change it.
Speaker 2: The facts on the ground are that the Russians are
Speaker 2: going to I think, keep the slice of eastern Ukraine
Speaker 2: that they've taken at the cost of over one million casualties,
Speaker 2: and the Russians could keep fighting this war of attrition,
Speaker 2: and we and the Europeans could keep paying and supporting
Speaker 2: the Ukrainians, and the Ukrainans could keep inflicting massive casualties
Speaker 2: on the Russians for inches and feet and not really
Speaker 2: I think the results on the ground now. So if
Speaker 2: you want to have a ceasefire and eventually peace agreement,
Speaker 2: I think it's going to look like where the troops
Speaker 2: are roughly today, with some kind of North Korean armistice
Speaker 2: or face off. But I don't think having a summit
Speaker 2: between Trump and Putin is really going to change that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, Jeohn, you mentioned the famous Krushchev JFK summit
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty one, where even Kennedy knew because he
Speaker 3: said to people afterwards. It's on the record in multiple
Speaker 3: places that boy he ate me for lunch or something
Speaker 3: like that. He just brutalized me. I think Krushev realized
Speaker 3: that Kennedy was weak and experienced, et cetera. And you
Speaker 3: rightly say that open the door for not just the
Speaker 3: missiles in Cuba, but building the Berlin Wall and several
Speaker 3: other things. Let us remember that Biden had a summit
Speaker 3: with Putin in twenty twenty one, and I'm guessing that
Speaker 3: Putin could tell right away what the rest of us
Speaker 3: became apparent ultimately to everybody, that there was no there
Speaker 3: there with Biden, that he was already decrepit in, weak
Speaker 3: and so forth. And Trump, I think is right to
Speaker 3: say that Putin would not have invaded Ukraine he'd been president.
Speaker 3: So I do think that, by the way, I think
Speaker 3: you know, the Reiki BC summit, the parallel. There's some differences,
Speaker 3: but one parallel is the Reagan people. They pretty much
Speaker 3: knew or were pretty certain that this was going to
Speaker 3: be an ambush. I mean, remember the reason for it,
Speaker 3: put together in haste, kind of like this meeting put together.
Speaker 3: And by the way, Reagan people said, it's not a summit,
Speaker 3: it's just a quick meeting. Nancy didn't even go along
Speaker 3: with the president. And the idea was it was a
Speaker 3: Gorbachev's idea, not Reagan's. That's because their negotiators were deadlocked,
Speaker 3: and and Garbagchov thought he'd be clever saying, let's meet
Speaker 3: together and break the deadlock and have the outline of
Speaker 3: agreement and make our guys go back to the table
Speaker 3: and work it out. And of course it was as
Speaker 3: we know in ambush. Reagan said no and got mad
Speaker 3: and walked out, and it was his finest moment. And actually,
Speaker 3: I think even Gorbachev recognized later that's when we won
Speaker 3: the Cold War. We didn't know it at the time.
Speaker 3: And I won't go on further with all that, but
Speaker 3: I am hoping we're talking before the meeting's taking place,
Speaker 3: and most people will listen to this after it's over,
Speaker 3: and we may know something. I think we won't know
Speaker 3: for years. All that goes on behind closed doors, as
Speaker 3: we didn't know for years. What went on in detail
Speaker 3: between Reagan and Gorbig Job is actually fascinating, the whole
Speaker 3: the whole back and forth between them that came out
Speaker 3: later in the transcripts, But the listeners are going to
Speaker 3: know what happened. But I am hoping that Trump will,
Speaker 3: in his own Trumpian way, emulate Reagan's performance at that summit,
Speaker 3: and that will represent progress in my mind, even though
Speaker 3: the media and everybody else will say no, okay, so yeah, the.
Speaker 2: Best thing that can happen is nothing. Yeah, Steve, is
Speaker 2: what you're saying me too. The best thing I have
Speaker 2: is not don't give away the store, don't sell anything,
Speaker 2: don't agree to anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it could be right, Yeah, and what is You
Speaker 1: don't think that Putin is prepared to give up anything?
Speaker 3: Well, I think he might agree to Okay, we'll cease
Speaker 3: the air war, we'll cut back the missiles, bombings and things.
Speaker 3: They may be short of munitions. Anyway, I'm not sure
Speaker 3: that as much of a penalty for Putin because I
Speaker 3: think they need time to regroup and rearm and they'll
Speaker 3: continue to grind it out on the ground. So you know,
Speaker 3: that is an easy thing for him to give away.
Speaker 1: Maybe would do you think Trump would never consider trying
Speaker 1: to get Zelensky to agree to giving up some territory.
Speaker 3: I don't think that, but I think the terms of
Speaker 3: that are important. You know, we never recognized, even when
Speaker 3: we were allies of the Soviet Union in World War Two,
Speaker 3: we never recognized their conquest of the Baltic States, And
Speaker 3: I think that as a practical matter, we might say, Okay,
Speaker 3: the facts on the ground are like we did with
Speaker 3: Eastern Europe at the end of World War Two. The
Speaker 3: facts on the ground is there's the Russian army. They're
Speaker 3: in possession of this land. We're not going to contest that.
Speaker 3: But we might also as a political matter, not recognize it.
Speaker 3: That has its defects, but I think something like that
Speaker 3: might be acceptable.
Speaker 2: Okay, John, I agree. I don't think that the Russians
Speaker 2: are going to give back any of the land they have.
Speaker 2: Why would they, I think domestically, even though it's not
Speaker 2: a functioning democracy, I think it's that difficult for Putin
Speaker 2: after these kind of losses to return anything. At the
Speaker 2: same time, what is it that Putin wants a part
Speaker 2: of it is? I think Steve's right that he needs
Speaker 2: to rest and regroup I also think that Russia wants
Speaker 2: access back to the world economy. Again. I think their
Speaker 2: economy must be suffering terribly, and even though it's a dictatorship,
Speaker 2: his elites are going to be extremely unhappy along with
Speaker 2: the people. So you could see why Putin would want
Speaker 2: a cease fire of some kind that would allow him
Speaker 2: to keep the land that he has, and we're not
Speaker 2: going to spend the resources to dislodge him from it.
Speaker 2: Not clear the Ukrainians even could at this point. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's much easier to fight that fight on the defensive
Speaker 2: and inflict casualties. But we saw what happened when the
Speaker 2: Ukrainians tried to go on the offensive, right they didn't.
Speaker 2: They were unable to carry one out. So I think
Speaker 2: that's why you can see the terms of an agreement there.
Speaker 2: But I would also say Trump shouldn't try to negotiate
Speaker 2: right there in person, even though he thinks he's a
Speaker 2: great negotiator. It would be better to let the you know,
Speaker 2: the underlings do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you in that sense you underestimate the
Speaker 1: dynamics of the personalities involved and how much won't get
Speaker 1: done by underlings if they don't. If both if both
Speaker 1: personages can't sort of claim the victory in the negotiations.
Speaker 1: But I could be wrong about that. I do want
Speaker 1: to say one last thing about this and we'll move
Speaker 1: to the next topic, and that John, that is that
Speaker 1: even though you know you and I disagree about Ukraine's
Speaker 1: importance to our national security, one of the things that
Speaker 1: you've never done, which so many of both the people
Speaker 1: on the right and the left tend to do to
Speaker 1: try to shape the narrative, is to claim that you know,
Speaker 1: Ukraine is winning this war and Putin's on the run,
Speaker 1: and you know, on and on and on with just
Speaker 1: this this really specious sort of evidence about Ukraine's victories
Speaker 1: over the course of the last three years. So I
Speaker 1: want to give you, I want to call out you
Speaker 1: for being an honest, original gangster.
Speaker 3: Neye Khan, Well you wow.
Speaker 2: I've never heard you pray Steve like that about anything once.
Speaker 2: Come on, I know what I'm saying, Steve. Steve doesn't
Speaker 2: get that kind of love.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break and we'll come right back,
Speaker 1: and maybe I'll have a worse mood. All right, Let's
Speaker 1: talk about crime, guys. Is crime up? Is crime down?
Speaker 1: Are you afraid of getting mugged every time you go
Speaker 1: to your car, or only when you're in DC, New York,
Speaker 1: Los Angeles or Chicago.
Speaker 3: Or when you're shopping at CBS and everything's locked up
Speaker 3: behind the counter. You know, Trump is genius. He's gotten
Speaker 3: Democrats to argue that crime is not a problem when
Speaker 3: and the statistics I think are even worse and more
Speaker 3: inaccurate than the job statistics, which have lately been such
Speaker 3: a fuss of the Bureau of Labor statistics. I mean,
Speaker 3: didn't DC dismiss a command recently or suspend a commander
Speaker 3: recently for faking the statistics? And there's been suspicions this
Speaker 3: has been going on for a long time with the
Speaker 3: crime reports. But look, everybody you know sees these videos
Speaker 3: of shoplifting going on, They see the disorder on the streets.
Speaker 3: James Lynx was just telling me that on his block
Speaker 3: something like twenty five cars had their windows smashed in
Speaker 3: one night earlier.
Speaker 2: Times because Lylax was walking out late at night.
Speaker 3: That's why, right, Well, I mean my joke is, well,
Speaker 3: this is this is literally an example of what happens
Speaker 3: when you don't practice broken windows policing. Right, how much
Speaker 3: more direct can you get than that. I won't go
Speaker 3: through the whole argument here. I mean, we know what
Speaker 3: works in fighting crime and why the left abandoned it
Speaker 3: on purpose over the last ten to fifteen years. And
Speaker 3: as I say, I think people walk into any urban area,
Speaker 3: walk into CBS or a Walgreens, and everything's locked behind
Speaker 3: the counter. Don't try telling people that what they're perceiving
Speaker 3: with their own eyes is wrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah. What do you think, John about this the fact
Speaker 1: that some I think some tiny little progress is being
Speaker 1: made in demonstrating to the world. Think about Scarborough's confessions.
Speaker 1: Call it on MSNBC the other day where he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: ninety one percent of the black I think minority Americans
Speaker 1: want something done about crime. Crime does not affect the
Speaker 1: people in Washington, DC who have either most of them
Speaker 1: taxpayer provided security. They live inside of gated communities in
Speaker 1: places with dormen that stop crime from coming into their homes.
Speaker 1: They you know, Trump doesn't care about crime from a
Speaker 1: personal point of view, Right, Well, I mean, nobody's going
Speaker 1: to break into his car and steal his radio, his
Speaker 1: sound system. And my point is they're trying very hard
Speaker 1: to pretend that this is just racism. On Trump's part
Speaker 1: that it's because black people happen to be the mayors
Speaker 1: in all of those places that have the very worst crime,
Speaker 1: and so it's all about racism. But are people buying it, John,
Speaker 1: I guess is my question.
Speaker 2: So first, the people who I think suffer the effects
Speaker 2: of inner city crime the most are the minority communities,
Speaker 2: and they're often the ones who want the stronger police presence.
Speaker 2: I remember this from one of Justice Thomas's opinions, because
Speaker 2: Chicago actually tried to pass a law with Chicago minds
Speaker 2: you in the I think in the nineties to make
Speaker 2: loitering something like a misdemeanor loitering on street corners because
Speaker 2: this is where a lot of drug activity happens, and
Speaker 2: the Supreme Courts struck it down. And just as Thomas wrote,
Speaker 2: I think at dissent or concurrence, just laying out the
Speaker 2: facts of how much crime affects the people that the
Speaker 2: liberals purport to be helping. So I was on a
Speaker 2: TV about this question of the federalization of the police.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of different issues, but just to start
Speaker 2: with the crime issue. People in DC will say, you're
Speaker 2: hearing them say, now, crime is falling in DC, why
Speaker 2: do you need to send in the troops. Essentially, crime
Speaker 2: is falling in a lot of our cities, but that's
Speaker 2: because they're comparing it to the pandemic statistics. When crime
Speaker 2: was already going back up before the pandemic, and then
Speaker 2: it shot way up during the pandemic because you basically
Speaker 2: told people they couldn't go outside for two years, and
Speaker 2: so a lot of people like went nuts, I think
Speaker 2: during the pandemic. But if you look at the statistics
Speaker 2: compared to the pre pandemic, particularly is de pointed out
Speaker 2: during the period where and Republican mayors and governments are
Speaker 2: allowed to put tough on crime policies, in effect, crime
Speaker 2: is extremely high. So if you look at the DC
Speaker 2: murder statistics, yes they've come down since the pandemic, but
Speaker 2: if you compare it to ten years ago murder when
Speaker 2: I just eyebought the statistics, it looked like murder was
Speaker 2: up about sixty percent. I mean, that should be unacceptable.
Speaker 2: So that's one second.
Speaker 1: D before you go on really quick question on that
Speaker 1: specific point. There's a lot Steve talked about crime going unreported,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of different reasons for that, not
Speaker 1: just all of them. Manipulated crime statistics the kinds of
Speaker 1: things that go unreported. Murder, it seems to me, is
Speaker 1: not one of those crimes that can be unreported. Is
Speaker 1: that correct? And that's why if you look at the
Speaker 1: murder rate as opposed to other kinds of violent crime,
Speaker 1: it's much more accurate. Is that true?
Speaker 2: I think murder, I mean, I think the murder rate
Speaker 2: is the most reliable statistic because you have a dead body,
Speaker 2: and so even if it doesn't depend on like people's
Speaker 2: subjective opinions, right, like, you got a dead body, So
Speaker 2: I think it's I mean, they're always, you know, differences,
Speaker 2: But I think murder, I think gives you the best
Speaker 2: picture of what crime is like.
Speaker 3: Can I add to that? But I'm well, first of all,
Speaker 3: I'm having the clearance rate is important on murders, and
Speaker 3: I'm not sure that stands. But I think clearance rates
Speaker 3: have fallen and that's very bad. So even if you
Speaker 3: have perfect statistics on murder rates, if they're not solving
Speaker 3: a large number of them, that's a bad sign for
Speaker 3: law enforcement. Second, I'm having flashbacks to the late great
Speaker 3: Mayor Marion Barry, who sometimes remember sometime in the late eighties
Speaker 3: or who's a crack addict. Right, Sometimes in the late
Speaker 3: eighties or early nineties, he said this, He said, really,
Speaker 3: the crime rate in DC isn't that bad if you
Speaker 3: leave out all the murders.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exact, which is actually true, right.
Speaker 3: But I will add this only because it's a cultural
Speaker 3: relevant cultural commentary. Is the good old days. When Jay
Speaker 3: Leno had the United Tonight Show. His remark, which imagine
Speaker 3: if he said this today, he said, Mayor Berry is
Speaker 3: the person that puts the Columbia in the district of Columbia.
Speaker 3: That was one of his monologue jokes. This shows you
Speaker 3: what's happened to our late night shows, you Carson. Those
Speaker 3: guys skewered both sides equally, and that's what's missing today.
Speaker 3: But that's another subject.
Speaker 2: Okay, can you let me just finish up one last point?
Speaker 1: Interrupted?
Speaker 2: Oh no, but the on the on the sorry, but
Speaker 2: on the on the first line is I just want
Speaker 2: to explain the difference in policing that occurred before because
Speaker 2: of before the pandemic even was that you know what
Speaker 2: Giuliani and people like that figured out what to do,
Speaker 2: was that you would use crime statistics to predict where
Speaker 2: crime was going to happen, so you would surge police
Speaker 2: officers to these It seems like common sense, but this
Speaker 2: was considered a revolution. You would use uh these statistics
Speaker 2: to search police to these street corners, and then you
Speaker 2: were allowed to do what we call stop and frisk,
Speaker 2: which the Supreme Court is upheld, which means you don't
Speaker 2: have to have problem caused someone's committee crime to stop
Speaker 2: them asking questions for some for weapons. A lot of
Speaker 2: these mayors that Steve's talking about overturned those policies around
Speaker 2: the end of the around the time of the first
Speaker 2: Obama administration, and we see it's just a cause and effect.
Speaker 2: Crimes starts surging, and it just started keeping and then
Speaker 2: it really exploded during the pandemic, and we haven't been
Speaker 2: able to bring crime rates back down because these mayors
Speaker 2: and city councils will not allow us to use these
Speaker 2: policies they know work.
Speaker 1: So, Steve, I don't know if you remember. I think
Speaker 1: that we were actually on Ricochet, not on this podcast
Speaker 1: a few years back, and we had a guest who
Speaker 1: was talking about crime, and I won't remember. The one
Speaker 1: thing I remember from that was was the there was
Speaker 1: a map of Chicago, John and you know, talked about
Speaker 1: the huge crime rates of Chicago, but when you actually
Speaker 1: looked at the map, the crime was like ninety percent
Speaker 1: concentrated in and I'm going to say ten fifteen neighborhoods
Speaker 1: of Chicago. And that's a going back to the point
Speaker 1: you made before I interrupted you, which is that crime
Speaker 1: affects those marginalized communities and so much more severely than
Speaker 1: it does So people in Chicago can say, yeah, crime
Speaker 1: is not a problem to me. I don't happen to
Speaker 1: live in those areas. Now, Washington, d C is a
Speaker 1: little bit different because most of Washington d C is
Speaker 1: a crime ridden.
Speaker 2: Well, go ahead, Actually there's three there's three quadrants in
Speaker 2: Washington right, northwest, north southeast, south OFLK, and all the
Speaker 2: people with any money will live in the northwest part.
Speaker 2: All the white people live in northwest right, and the
Speaker 2: crime is in the other three districts.
Speaker 1: By the way. Really, Oh sorry, see, I just want
Speaker 1: to make a quick point that I want you guys
Speaker 1: to come in on before we go to break, and
Speaker 1: that is that, you know, the big talk lately is Okay,
Speaker 1: if DC is such a problem, it's because home rule
Speaker 1: really doesn't work, and you've got to just make us
Speaker 1: a state and that sort of thing. And I saw
Speaker 1: a proposal the other day that said, no, what we
Speaker 1: really need to do is preserve the original idea of
Speaker 1: a district of Columbia for the central government, but we
Speaker 1: need to confine it too the area that's encompassed by Congress,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, and the White House, and give everything
Speaker 1: else over to Maryland.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I'm for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, that's very and that's not far off from
Speaker 2: what the Liberals wanted to do, except they wanted to
Speaker 2: make all that remaining land a state, right back to Maryland.
Speaker 2: Will be done, Okay, go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 3: There is a heat map of crime in DC, and
Speaker 3: it does show that the northwest has very little. It's
Speaker 3: all concentrated in the other areas, kind of like Chicago,
Speaker 3: although it has crept in the northwest. I mean, you
Speaker 3: talked to Christine Rosen, who lives in a very nice
Speaker 3: place up in Upper Georgetown, and she talks about crime
Speaker 3: in her neighborhood quite a lot. The second thing, the
Speaker 3: person you're trying to remember, Linda is Lucretia is our
Speaker 3: friend of mine. John's Rafael Monguel Manhattan Institute, and he
Speaker 3: is the go to guy in all things in these days.
Speaker 2: Well, one last point about your point, Lucretia, which is
Speaker 2: interesting about this is the right now today the DC
Speaker 2: Attorney General that like they have one and the city
Speaker 2: right and the mayor filed lawsuit to prevent the takeover,
Speaker 2: and you know, and their arguments you can't federalize Washington, DC.
Speaker 2: And I was like, has no one read the constitution?
Speaker 2: It is all federal. The whole thing is a federal city.
Speaker 2: And you know, the mayor is on thief saying Trump
Speaker 2: is invading the prerogatives of local government over police. And
Speaker 2: he's like, that can't happen to Washington. You are just
Speaker 2: a subset of the federal government. And here's it. So
Speaker 2: here's an interesting constitutional question because I Trump hasn't mentioned
Speaker 2: this as administration, as mentioned it you heard it here. First,
Speaker 2: I think Trump should fire the mayor and fire the
Speaker 2: chief of police and the attorney general and remove them
Speaker 2: because they're parts of the executive branch. Right, how are
Speaker 2: they anymore free of removal than you know, all these
Speaker 2: NRB and SEC agencies. That would be a great constitutional test.
Speaker 2: If Trump just said, okay, you want to file suit,
Speaker 2: then I'm firing all of you because I'm the chief executive,
Speaker 2: and the laws must be faithfully executed. You know, the
Speaker 2: first place they should be faithful executed the district that
Speaker 2: belongs to the federal government in the Constitution. I think
Speaker 2: this would be a great challenge to this idea of
Speaker 2: independent agencies.
Speaker 3: I like it.
Speaker 2: I like it, and it would restore criminal restore you know,
Speaker 2: criminal justice in the city.
Speaker 3: Got it.
Speaker 1: I like it too. And it would undermine the argument
Speaker 1: that's constantly being made about when he that he's just
Speaker 1: going to take over the whole country, right. It could
Speaker 1: it could create a little bit of distance. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break, very quickly.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Welcome back, everyone. I'm going to drive my co hosts
Speaker 1: Steve and John crazy by m absolutely over the top
Speaker 1: discuss dismay, despicab how I find so despicable anybody these
Speaker 1: days who even claims to be affiliated in any way
Speaker 1: with Obama or Biden administrations. And I think they are treasonous, seditious,
Speaker 1: conspiracy conspiracists is at the right now, and I know that.
Speaker 1: A couple of weeks ago, we discussed this briefly and
Speaker 1: John was like, there's nothing really there there, John, Let
Speaker 1: me first ask are you changing your mind yet?
Speaker 2: Not really? I mean I don't see a big change
Speaker 2: in the facts we know. But that's because I've read
Speaker 2: the Durham Report pretty closely, and I think a lot
Speaker 2: of this is in the Durham Report. So I don't
Speaker 2: really feel there's a lot more. And then a lot
Speaker 2: of it has to do with whether you think so
Speaker 2: the primary or dispute I think is this that President
Speaker 2: Obama tasks the intelligence agencies after the election to figure
Speaker 2: out whether Russia tried to interfere in the election or
Speaker 2: help Trump. Right, So I don't think that's actually an
Speaker 2: illegitimate thing for a president to want to know about.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's well within its constitutional power. So the
Speaker 2: question is, right is my I understand this, and this
Speaker 2: meeting is discussed in the Duram Report. But the question
Speaker 2: is this question of intention? Did they do it on
Speaker 2: purpose to try to screw over the Trump administration or
Speaker 2: was this actually a legitimate question for intelligence?
Speaker 1: So can I reframe the question as you phrased it?
Speaker 1: It was not a question of whether Trump was whether
Speaker 1: Russia assisted Trump in becoming elected. That was not the
Speaker 1: question because they had already determined that Russia did in
Speaker 1: fact interfere in the election, but not to help either
Speaker 1: Trump or Hillary Clinton, but that they just interfered like
Speaker 1: we interfere in other people's elections, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: It was a an order, and there seems to be
Speaker 1: more and more. If I'm not sure that you can
Speaker 1: get it all the way up to Obama, but you
Speaker 1: certainly can now with these released emails and so forth,
Speaker 1: pin on Clapper and Brennan that they wanted to create
Speaker 1: the intelligence that made it look as if Trump was
Speaker 1: helped by Russia, and they wanted to do everything illegal
Speaker 1: like leak parts of it and of the intelligence and
Speaker 1: so forth, made up intelligence, the Steele dossier and all
Speaker 1: of that purposefully to harm Trump in his first term.
Speaker 1: And I think if you, if you present it like
Speaker 1: you presented it, whether the Russians interfered in the election,
Speaker 1: that's not what happened. It was already determined that they had.
Speaker 1: The question was, how, oh, can we prove that when
Speaker 1: they interfered in the election, they did so to help Trump,
Speaker 1: when in fact more evidence indicates that they did so
Speaker 1: to help Hillary. They knew about Hillary's financial problem, shall
Speaker 1: we say, her corruption and the fact that she's a
Speaker 1: crazy old hag of a harpie. I mean, she's got
Speaker 1: mental issues, psychosis and physical issues, and they knew that
Speaker 1: and they hit it because they knew they could use
Speaker 1: it against her when she won. So there's lots of
Speaker 1: evidence to the contrary.
Speaker 3: You left out Herodin in that. Yeah, it's one of
Speaker 3: my favorites. Look, I think I was gonna say you
Speaker 3: were a little unfair to John, but then he went
Speaker 3: and mumbled that there's not much here. I think what
Speaker 3: John said a week ago or two weeks ago was
Speaker 3: this doesn't really qualify as treason sedition maybe, but okay,
Speaker 3: leave that aside, because that's yeah, leave that side. Look,
Speaker 3: I do think I think my reading of what's come out,
Speaker 3: and I haven't read at all, but is that the
Speaker 3: Russians are more interested in sowing chaos than necessarily favoring Hillary.
Speaker 3: And they succeeded at that, right, I mean, look what
Speaker 3: it did. And I do think that the big question is,
Speaker 3: and this is gonna be hard to get at, is
Speaker 3: what was Obama's motive? I think they I think we
Speaker 3: now know better that intelligence concluded early on that there
Speaker 3: was no connection between the Trump campaign and the Russians,
Speaker 3: which you know the Democrats want. And I think this
Speaker 3: was contrived to hobble his presidency. And now are we
Speaker 3: going to get I mean, it's a practical thing. What's
Speaker 3: going to make this blow up? You need the equivalent
Speaker 3: of John Dean. You need somebody from inside Obama or
Speaker 3: maybe the Biden administration to come forward in testimony one
Speaker 3: way or another and spill the beans, so to speak.
Speaker 1: Well, that's what's come out this week. By the way,
Speaker 1: the whistleblower inside, a Democratic appointee intelligence person inside, has
Speaker 1: come out and spoken to several of these issues.
Speaker 3: Well, I say, is a When I say as a
Speaker 3: practical matter, I mean, what is going to galvanize public
Speaker 3: opinion to the point where the public says, you know,
Speaker 3: this is intolerable. This is a greater scandal than Watergate.
Speaker 3: There need to be prosecutions. It took John Dene being
Speaker 3: televised at the hearings in the summer of seventy three
Speaker 3: for Watergate to turn upside down and turn decisively against
Speaker 3: the Nixon although be it albeit slowly. I do think
Speaker 3: the last point on this is, you know Trump I
Speaker 3: mentioned in the article I wrote for Cimitas this week
Speaker 3: that very interesting interview Trump gave an April to The
Speaker 3: Spectator to Ben Dominich was the interviewer where he said, boy,
Speaker 3: I knew who politics in Washington was rough, but I
Speaker 3: had no idea on my first term how bad it
Speaker 3: is in retrospect. I think Trump knows he should have
Speaker 3: fired Comy on day one. He should not have a
Speaker 3: point of Jeff's sessions as Attorney General of Sessions is
Speaker 3: going to give in to a special counsel and recuse himself.
Speaker 3: Uh And and that's uh. And I think it explains
Speaker 3: a lot of how.
Speaker 1: Trump was about the Hillary decision not prosecuting Hillary. Do
Speaker 1: you differently if he knew what would have happen.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't. I mean, I don't know if he
Speaker 3: could know. If the president shouldn't, I think probably not
Speaker 3: waiting to try and reopen that particular thing. But I
Speaker 3: think what he could have said to Comya is I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: He could have been nice about it and said, look, job,
Speaker 3: well done, but you're too compromised because of the whole
Speaker 3: Hillary mishandling and so forth, and and uh, look we
Speaker 3: say it this way. I think one of the objects
Speaker 3: of that whole operation between election date and inauguration date
Speaker 3: was to force the appointment of a special Council, which,
Speaker 3: as John knows, absolutely hobbles a White House. It just
Speaker 3: distracts all kinds of time from staff and from the
Speaker 3: White House Council's office and so forth dominates the headlines.
Speaker 3: And you know, it took forever to get the Muller
Speaker 3: report finally out, and so, uh, where's going with all
Speaker 3: that is? I think Trump too understands those things, and
Speaker 3: if he had to do it over again, I think
Speaker 3: it would have gone quite differently. He would have fought
Speaker 3: back right away about all of that and say the
Speaker 3: Steel Report this is. You can imagine how he would
Speaker 3: talk about it now, knowing what he knows. I mean
Speaker 3: that interview, as I mentioned, quite revealing, and Trump, having
Speaker 3: thought about it during four years out of office, has
Speaker 3: come back for his second term. I think a completely
Speaker 3: transformed person. And it's why he's a more comfortable in
Speaker 3: his own skin and more effective and also much more
Speaker 3: aggressive in a certain way than he was in the
Speaker 3: first term.
Speaker 2: Let me let me go back and like distinguish, I
Speaker 2: think who's liable for what? So my response was mostly
Speaker 2: about Obama I think Tulsa Gabbart has been irresponsible saying
Speaker 2: Obama committed to engaging creusing this conduct. And again, I
Speaker 2: think that's very different than John Ratcliffe, the head of
Speaker 2: the CIA, referring right Homey and Brennan now actually not Comy,
Speaker 2: just Brennan and Clopper for prosecution. That's so I think
Speaker 2: President bomba but just can't be That's what I mean.
Speaker 2: He can't. I don't think he'd be prosecuted. He has immunity.
Speaker 2: He's acting in his official capacity, and he can say
Speaker 2: I would like this question investigated by the intelligence agencies.
Speaker 2: And right, maybe he was trying, Maybe he could have
Speaker 2: wanted to hobble the Trump administration. Presidents can do that
Speaker 2: if they feel like it in a lot of legitimate ways,
Speaker 2: using their authority. He doesn't have to hand over the
Speaker 2: government nicely to Trump. That's different than the liability of
Speaker 2: Clapper and Brennan, who I wasn't really talking about. So there,
Speaker 2: I think that it's I think it's legitimate to open
Speaker 2: up an investigation. And what they're going to say, of course,
Speaker 2: is President Obama ordered us to look into what affected
Speaker 2: the Russians have? What were they trying to do. Was
Speaker 2: Trump involved with them? We all know that's all untrue,
Speaker 2: now right, We all know that this was all the
Speaker 2: hoax and this was manufactured, you know, maybe one of
Speaker 2: the greatest dirty political tricks in presidential campaign history, which
Speaker 2: is part of the way, is not necessarily illegal.
Speaker 1: But you've said it. I'm gonna play Steve for a moment.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna play analogy girl.
Speaker 2: Sad day.
Speaker 1: But remember what it was that Richard Nixon was prosecuted
Speaker 1: for or investigated for. Some people broke into Daniel Ellsberg's
Speaker 1: psychiatrist's office to get dirt on him so they could
Speaker 1: undermine his reputation. On the whole Pentagon papers thing, Democratic headquarters. Okay,
Speaker 1: all those those minor, minor things that I mean seriously
Speaker 1: but illegal minor things. But Richard Nixon didn't do them.
Speaker 2: That's obstruction, is what you're talking. He was talking about
Speaker 2: your construction.
Speaker 3: Justice and conspiracy and conspiracy.
Speaker 1: How is this different?
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't see how President Obama committed obstruction.
Speaker 1: To the extent that all of those people all the
Speaker 1: way through never said a word that they were, that
Speaker 1: his people stopped investigations into Hillary Clinton, that his people
Speaker 1: uh that his people over zealously went after Trump. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a short amount of time that it happens. I'll
Speaker 1: give you that. But I think that you could go
Speaker 1: back and say, insofar as he directed the intelligence community
Speaker 1: to find to manufacture.
Speaker 2: A because he did not order that, that's an exact
Speaker 2: that's going too far.
Speaker 1: We'll see. It seems that that reports of that meeting
Speaker 1: say that that's exactly what he did. I mean, the
Speaker 1: reports about what had happened with Russia, the intelligence reports
Speaker 1: were all ready extant. He wanted them changed, and he
Speaker 1: wanted anything that could be done to prove that, yes,
Speaker 1: they actually came in to help them.
Speaker 2: So you would you so you think it would. A
Speaker 2: president can't say, Okay, the CIA are telling me this
Speaker 2: and the FBI telling me that. I feel it in
Speaker 2: my bones though that this there's more to it than that,
Speaker 2: So I want you to go back and look for more.
Speaker 2: President can't do that.
Speaker 1: I think he absolutely could do that, But I don't
Speaker 1: think that's.
Speaker 2: What That's what that's all that Obama does. You know, Facially,
Speaker 2: that's what it looked like he did Facially that Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, you're gonna yeah, but you're trying to
Speaker 2: say you know, but in his mind, he really had
Speaker 2: a different intention.
Speaker 1: I think there's more evidence of to it than that.
Speaker 2: But but let's take a quick That's why, I mean,
Speaker 2: that's why I say I don't see it.
Speaker 1: Well, Steve has something to He's going to be much
Speaker 1: better at being analogy man than increase you could ever
Speaker 1: be an analogy girl.
Speaker 3: So take aways I have so much it's more practice
Speaker 3: of this. Why do you even presume to contest the
Speaker 3: champion of this?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: It's the sad thing is, I know you have superhero
Speaker 2: costumes that say this on them, and like you guys
Speaker 2: watched dists in some way and launch new super power.
Speaker 1: Someday when when I get my my uh Tiffany inspired
Speaker 1: tinfoil hat, will get Steve his analogy man super hero costume.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The problem is, you know I made I did make
Speaker 3: one with a big A on it, and I weren't
Speaker 3: in the public and people, yeah, you know I was
Speaker 3: something like that, or you know, I was like trying to,
Speaker 3: you know, do some reenactment of the Thaniel Hawthorn or something.
Speaker 3: I don't know. Look, I mean, you know, if you
Speaker 3: go back to the Nixon impeachment, a lot needs to
Speaker 3: be said about it. I'll just say one thing quickly,
Speaker 3: is one of the charges brought against him that was
Speaker 3: did not pass the Judiciary committee was abuse of power.
Speaker 3: H And also, I mean they had two or three
Speaker 3: different counts that related to abuse of power. One of
Speaker 3: them was about the budget, one of them was on
Speaker 3: war powers. And you know, the argument of Republicans then,
Speaker 3: which succeeded, was no, No, the standard for impeachment should
Speaker 3: be actual crimes, and that's why they're repaired to conspiracy
Speaker 3: and instruction of justice. I think those charge I think
Speaker 3: those charges were wrong about Nixon's abuse of power, but
Speaker 3: those are much more like what Hamilton had in mind.
Speaker 3: And was it Federals fifty five about an inquest in
Speaker 3: the conduct of public men? Uh? And?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 3: So I think what happened to was it sixty five?
Speaker 2: Right? Sorry?
Speaker 3: Sixty five? Yeah? Okay? In any case, the point is
Speaker 3: is that it seems to me that the abuse of
Speaker 3: power standard is a political standard more so than a
Speaker 3: criminal standard. And for that, I think Obama and the
Speaker 3: people around him deserve the most searching scrutiny for it.
Speaker 3: And and you know, I'm not for retroactive impeachments, but
Speaker 3: there ought to be.
Speaker 2: At least you can't impeach people who are out of office.
Speaker 2: But right right, I totally agree with you. I'm not
Speaker 2: saying that this shouldn't be investigated. I actually think congress
Speaker 2: would be the better form, because you just want to
Speaker 2: lay out what people did and the bad judgments or
Speaker 2: ulterior motives they had, even if they can't be criminally prosecuted.
Speaker 2: I think it's a mistake, you know, to say, oh,
Speaker 2: we can handle this by referring this to the Attorney
Speaker 2: general for prosecution. That's actually setting the bar too high.
Speaker 2: You know, if Hillary Clinton executed this dirtiest of political
Speaker 2: tricks in campaign history, then lay it all out for
Speaker 2: the American people. You can't do that for the prosecution
Speaker 2: because you can't prosecute her for this, but you can
Speaker 2: certainly have a committee laid out and then.
Speaker 1: Can I ask a question about that? Though? Let me ask.
Speaker 1: So we were discussing the John dene example and the
Speaker 1: Watergate hearings. I was fourteen at the time.
Speaker 2: I watched them.
Speaker 1: From beginning to end, and I wasn't even all that
Speaker 1: interested in politics at fourteen, like Steve was, you know,
Speaker 1: but after years of these these investigative committees that go
Speaker 1: nowhere in Congress, and I blame Republicans probably more for
Speaker 1: that than I do Democrats. You know, the Bengd hearings.
Speaker 1: We could go on and on how much attention would
Speaker 1: be paid to congressional committees in the world. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that the larger, more legal structure isn't still important,
Speaker 1: But from the point of view of public perception, have
Speaker 1: we just we've just turned them into a circus and
Speaker 1: people don't pay that much attention anymore, Am I wrong?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: Well, and it's harder for some of the conventional reasons,
Speaker 3: more media, shorter attention spans, the fact that we overtelevise.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'd be for going back to not televising
Speaker 3: the House and Senate, which I think have ruined the
Speaker 3: deliberative capacity of them. But look again, I think of
Speaker 3: this in show business terms. And I've mentioned this before,
Speaker 3: although it's been a while, and it's also thirty years
Speaker 3: ago now, so maybe it's obsolete also, But you did
Speaker 3: have those hearings in the late nineties that have all
Speaker 3: unlikely people Senator Bill Roth of Delaware prosecuted or prosecutor
Speaker 3: ran about IRS abuses, and the moment that got on
Speaker 3: the front pages of the papers and on TV above
Speaker 3: the fold is when he had someone come in and testify,
Speaker 3: an inside whistleblower from behind a screen. I think in
Speaker 3: one case, like voice Altering that it was great theater
Speaker 3: and great show business. One of my criticisms is that
Speaker 3: Republicans aren't good at that kind of theater. The hearing
Speaker 3: format is bad for that. They could bring in Cheney, Well, well, well,
Speaker 3: what you do is you do what the Watergate hearings
Speaker 3: are like, and what the Iran Contra hearings are like.
Speaker 3: You bring in councils who do you know there and
Speaker 3: they're they're they're unable to do consistent twenty thirty minutes
Speaker 3: of questioning, and there you lay out a consistent argument
Speaker 3: and really pin people down. It's hard to make hearings
Speaker 3: work when each person gets five minutes, and the bad
Speaker 3: habit of senators and congressman is they want to speak
Speaker 3: for four and a half of those minutes, and that's
Speaker 3: a mistake. They should go right to question. That's why
Speaker 3: John Kennedy is so great at this right. Why we
Speaker 3: see highlight reels of John Carey from Louisiana is that
Speaker 3: he's really good at this. Put him in charge of this,
Speaker 3: and I think you would get some results.
Speaker 1: What do you think, John Well?
Speaker 2: I think committee hearings and investigations are very effective. I
Speaker 2: mean you mentioned the Bengazi hearings, and they may have
Speaker 2: gotten everything Republicans wanted, but they should damage Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 2: And I remember that's where they had that clipper for
Speaker 2: getting exasperated and saying something like but they're all dead anyway,
Speaker 2: different right it really I think that really damaged her.
Speaker 2: And then you know from the other side that I
Speaker 2: got to think the Democrats have to think their January
Speaker 2: sixth hearings were very effective. I mean they really skewered,
Speaker 2: you know, people on our side, and that that shows
Speaker 2: you how good they can be if our side were
Speaker 2: to conduct them well well.
Speaker 3: And remember they hired a producer from ABC Television to
Speaker 3: organize those hearings because they understood that this was spectacle
Speaker 3: as much as it was serious investigation. I hate to
Speaker 3: put it that crudely, but that's how our modern world works.
Speaker 3: That's even harder now with our mass media Twitter environment.
Speaker 1: So I just want to sort of end a segment
Speaker 1: by saying that my real concern and I told you
Speaker 1: guys that my ultimate point to this discussion, to get
Speaker 1: the point to get across, was the fact that Nixon
Speaker 1: had none of that ever come to light in Watergate.
Speaker 1: Had it never come to light that there was a
Speaker 1: break in or any of that stuff, had there never
Speaker 1: been a deep throat, there would have been no The
Speaker 1: damage done to our republic was greater from the Watergate
Speaker 1: fiasco than if nothing had ever happened, because there was
Speaker 1: no inherent danger to the republic from the actions that
Speaker 1: precipitated Watergate. The opposite I believe is true here. And
Speaker 1: what I mean by that is all of these things,
Speaker 1: and you've said it yourself, they're investigated by Durham to
Speaker 1: this and that they continue to be more or less ignored.
Speaker 1: But the damage that was done by Obama insisting that
Speaker 1: our intelligence communities be completely partisan, one sided, and targeting
Speaker 1: an opposition candidate and then actual president those that is unparalleled, unprecedented.
Speaker 1: Even analogy man over there in his fancy red shirt,
Speaker 1: I don't think could come up with anything that even
Speaker 1: approaches the kind of perfidy and maliciousness and destruction that
Speaker 1: it does to our republic. Okay, analogy man challenge, Uh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well a minor one. First of all, this is
Speaker 3: no ordinary red shirt. This is my antonin Scalia original shirts. Okay, wow,
Speaker 3: that's yeah. You don't have one of these, John, you should? No, Well,
Speaker 3: we'll have to get you one to go with your
Speaker 3: Claremont review books. Hat. Look, I think the intelligence community
Speaker 3: was just as hostile to Nixon as the one as
Speaker 3: the current intelligence community was to Trump. And that's a
Speaker 3: long story, still a lot of murky aspects of it,
Speaker 3: and I'll just leave it there.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break and we'll come back and
Speaker 1: close out this show. Welcome back. The final segment of
Speaker 1: our show, we are going to offer, at the request
Speaker 1: of a reader. A listener who is both a former
Speaker 1: student of mine from a very long time ago, was
Speaker 1: involved in the DA's office in San Bernardino, and is
Speaker 1: now living his best life in Utah, asked us to
Speaker 1: talk about books because we've been promising to do that
Speaker 1: for I don't know, a month at least and never
Speaker 1: get to it. So we're going to try to do
Speaker 1: at least a small portion today, maybe more next week.
Speaker 1: But the question that we're going to look at today
Speaker 1: is what book would you recommend to say, a young
Speaker 1: person or somebody who was a liberal and is getting
Speaker 1: more and more confused about what the left is doing
Speaker 1: and is thinking about becoming a conservative. What book one
Speaker 1: book is all you get, Steve, What book would you
Speaker 1: recommend to that person that you think would help them
Speaker 1: understand the conservative movement, right wing politics, whatever you want
Speaker 1: to say.
Speaker 3: Well, if you're going to start with me, well, Darning,
Speaker 3: here's only one book, because I've got three from Roger Scrutin,
Speaker 3: including his How to Be a Conservative, which is fun.
Speaker 3: It's not American, yeah, but you know what he writes
Speaker 3: about American. He got better and better partly under my influence.
Speaker 3: But one book, the one I like for sort of
Speaker 3: a neutral audience. It depends on the reader and what
Speaker 3: they want. But the one that I like and use
Speaker 3: with students with great effect is Thomas Soul's book A
Speaker 3: Conflict Divisions the Ideological Origins of political struggles. I think
Speaker 3: it's not as complete as it ought to be, and
Speaker 3: I think that's defects, but I think it has some
Speaker 3: great for jew because it's you know, the basic theme
Speaker 3: was the basic difference between left and right is the
Speaker 3: left believes in the unconstrained vision based on the view
Speaker 3: that human nature is entirely plastic and changeable, and that
Speaker 3: power is good, whereas conservatives believe in a constrained vision,
Speaker 3: constrained chiefly by human nature. And you know, Soul's writing
Speaker 3: I think is very accessible. He reminds me of Crowdhammer
Speaker 3: a little bit. I think he's the economics equivalent of
Speaker 3: Charles Crowdhammer. It's an old book, but still one of
Speaker 3: his favorites. By the way, what happened to books of Soul?
Speaker 3: Written forty Maybe he said that this is his favorite book,
Speaker 3: And so that's the one I'd recommend to someone first
Speaker 3: who is curious about why conservatives differ from the left.
Speaker 2: Hey, John, I don't really have a modern book like
Speaker 2: Steve does, because I don't. I don't really read a
Speaker 2: lot of books about modern politics because we're like living
Speaker 2: through it. So I was going to say, read things
Speaker 2: that were written before the printing press. So if I
Speaker 2: was like reading a book, like a book about like
Speaker 2: what makes you conservative, I would say, like, read like
Speaker 2: Plutarch's Lives or something, and you just see everything just
Speaker 2: cycles over and over again, and there's nothing new to this, Like,
Speaker 2: you know, this conservative liberal divide you see over and
Speaker 2: over again, that's one lesson I would take from something
Speaker 2: like Plutarch. And then the other thing, you know is
Speaker 2: that you see how important humans and agency and individuals are,
Speaker 2: I think. But then I think the third thing is
Speaker 2: you kind of see you see life as a tragic
Speaker 2: and nasty, British and short and so when you read
Speaker 2: about agent history, you come away you see, yeah, there
Speaker 2: have been all these crazy people in the past who
Speaker 2: had utopian dreams and they always fail because you guys
Speaker 2: are like this, because human nature is somewhat immutable.
Speaker 1: Oh really, that's a really good answer, John. It sort
Speaker 1: of leads to mine and Steve and I discussed this
Speaker 1: a little bit back and forth this past week. I
Speaker 1: would choose that this would not be the only book,
Speaker 1: but since I said the rules were one, I would
Speaker 1: choose Witness by Whittaker Chambers. I think it was Reagan
Speaker 1: Steve who said that that was, what did he say,
Speaker 1: the most important book he'd ever read, something along those lines.
Speaker 1: The reason I say that is actually, uh, piggybacks on
Speaker 1: what both of you two said, and that is I
Speaker 1: think in Witness, John, what you get is that same
Speaker 1: sort of tragedy, that same one side of the ideological
Speaker 1: divide believes somehow that tragedy can be removed from human affairs,
Speaker 1: and you see the tragic consequences of that. So the
Speaker 1: book Witness is about UH, an American who becomes what
Speaker 1: would you say, UH, is it a.
Speaker 2: But he is.
Speaker 1: He succumbs to the Communist UH part of the American
Speaker 1: Communist Party's UH attempts to turn him, I guess you
Speaker 1: could say, and it becomes in many ways a true believer.
Speaker 1: But what happens is his human nature, and much of that,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, includes what happens when he actually finds
Speaker 1: a wife in the Communist Party and then they have
Speaker 1: a child. And the reaction of the Communist Party to
Speaker 1: this is, I mean, they're very They're worse than dismissive.
Speaker 1: They almost want to see the whole family destroyed. And
Speaker 1: there's no support for his marriage, no support for his child,
Speaker 1: and he begins to see because of course, communist ideology
Speaker 1: says that the family is the ultimate capitalist horror because
Speaker 1: you know, you say my husband, my wife, my child,
Speaker 1: and you think of it in terms of possessions. This
Speaker 1: is the communist view. So they want to destroy the family,
Speaker 1: and it is his humanity, not any sort of real
Speaker 1: political change of mind so much as his human elements
Speaker 1: that say, wow, this just doesn't make any sense anymore.
Speaker 1: And I think that there's no difference. This is where
Speaker 1: you and I might disagree, John, no difference between the
Speaker 1: horror cores of communism and the modern progressives. What I
Speaker 1: sent Steve in this regard was an article about the
Speaker 1: Democratic Socialists of America had a convention where they know
Speaker 1: they endorsed Mindami, but they also endorse the idea of
Speaker 1: destroying the traditional family, because it is indeed the building
Speaker 1: blocks of capitalism, as we would say. So I just
Speaker 1: think that all three of those come at the problem
Speaker 1: from a different way, and I think when it came
Speaker 1: down to it, you might want to recommend different things
Speaker 1: to different people, depending at least to start, but what
Speaker 1: you need to do is you need to you need
Speaker 1: to show in whatever book it is that, at least
Speaker 1: to some extent, the difference between conservatives and progressives in
Speaker 1: these days is the one believes in an unchanging, immutable
Speaker 1: human nature and the other doesn't. And there are tragic
Speaker 1: consequences because of the latter. What do you think, guys?
Speaker 1: All right, that's not bad? All right, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: to Babylon be's. I hope you guys have your part ready.
Speaker 1: I'm ready every week with mine. John still has the
Speaker 1: same old tired drink.
Speaker 2: Your whiskeys, right, I have a second line to add.
Speaker 1: Okay, good, so let me do mine really quick. Then JB.
Speaker 1: Pritzker joins police force in hopes of getting sandwich thrown
Speaker 1: at him.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we didn't talk about that r J crew
Speaker 2: guy through. My only comment on that is that, of
Speaker 2: course that didn't work because if you're a subway now
Speaker 2: on the Philadelphian cheese steak, that would have been an
Speaker 2: actual weapon.
Speaker 3: What's the charge assault with a deli weapon?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Actually the funny thing is.
Speaker 3: Anthony over the story.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there's been some good ones. There's a there's
Speaker 1: a giff maybe going on on that I've seen on
Speaker 1: X a couple of times. Now. You guys have probably
Speaker 1: never seen those, uh the shooting shows, the gun shows
Speaker 1: on television, but they always end up shooting at like
Speaker 1: a rubber person or an actual pig, or they slice
Speaker 1: up an actual pig to see if a knife is sharp.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, anyway, so it's this one and they they
Speaker 1: they it was a subway sandwich at one of those things,
Speaker 1: gelatin covered skeleton and the wholdy is just destroyed, and
Speaker 1: it talks about how this is a lethal subway sandwich. Anyway,
Speaker 1: but I'll remember that, John, No subway sandwich is Philly
Speaker 1: cheese steak sandwich.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Newsome vows to double California's violent crime if Trump doesn't
Speaker 1: stop cleaning up DC. It takes a minute, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: crime is down in DC, shouts journalists currently being pummeled
Speaker 1: by a group of thugs. We didn't talk about this one,
Speaker 1: even though the three of us went back and forth
Speaker 1: on it a little bit last week. The judges in
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania and New Jersey, I believe, who are again suing
Speaker 1: the little sisters of the poor. You know, of all
Speaker 1: of the people to pick on these these nuns who
Speaker 1: dedicate their life to caring for the elderly.
Speaker 2: Poor and sick.
Speaker 3: Right, not even the big sisters of the poor, but
Speaker 3: the big sisters.
Speaker 1: Okay, so my league, excuse me, Uh sorry, I can't
Speaker 1: read anymore. Today federal court requires nuns to start worshiping Moloch, right, okay.
Speaker 1: Adam Schiff worried legal troubles will make it hard for
Speaker 1: him to afford his upcoming head reduction surgery.
Speaker 2: I like that.
Speaker 1: Back to DC puzzle, DC police chief asks reporters, what
Speaker 1: is this black and white car? That thing that goes you?
Speaker 1: Trump vows to drastically reduce the number of criminals in
Speaker 1: Washington by sending Congress home. Yeah, I'll end there, John.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to hear it.
Speaker 2: Oh, always drink your whiskey meat. And Steve wanted me
Speaker 2: to say always add to your book buying budget, but
Speaker 2: I would just say the second line should just be
Speaker 2: buy more books.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, always, Steve, we don't read.
Speaker 1: I get so many of them piled up waiting.
Speaker 2: For me to read them. And Steve, you're lying your
Speaker 2: your strange selection, your deep relationship with a What's the
Speaker 2: latest line in your love affair with Grock?
Speaker 3: Okay, here's I use chat GBT for now, but I'll try.
Speaker 3: Here's the latest stanza through AI on the three Whiskey
Speaker 3: Happy Hour. It's short. They spar with glee, they sip
Speaker 3: with flair. They skewer the news with a libertine air
Speaker 3: from woksh homes to college despair, to clauses that vanish
Speaker 3: in textual glare there It is I like it.
Speaker 2: That was pretty good. I know they're getting very deep.
Speaker 1: I know. Anyway, well, gentlemen, have a wonderful week. Listeners,
Speaker 1: have a wonderful week. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 3: Right bye bye, everybody. Ricochet join the conversation.