The Ricochet Podcast - A Glitch in the Matrix

Episode Date: March 3, 2016

As we recorded this week’s podcast, Mitt Romney was giving the stem-winding speech of his life in Utah against the candidacy of Donald Trump. We cover that in real time with our guest Rick Wilson. Prior to that, our old friend and Ricochet Super Fan, Purdue University President Mitch Daniels stops by to talk about political correctness on campus and throw some light in the state of the country at... Source

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Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie This is National Review publisher Jack Fowler urging Ricochet members to sail on our groovy Caribbean post-election cruise this November 13th through the 20th on Holland America's New Amsterdam. The place will stink of Ricochet stars Long, Goldberg, Nordlinger, Bedard, and more. Hey, you might even spot Lilacs in a Speedo. Expect great seminars and conversations and receptions, tons of exclusives, and tons of fun on seven warm nights with 500 cool people.

Plus, there's a $100 discount for any first-time NR Cruiser who is a paid Ricochet member. Join us. Get complete information at nrcruise.com. Hello, everyone. Here's what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. I don't know what's going to happen here. I don't have any information on that. They don't understand what you're talking about. And that's going to prove to be disastrous. And what it means is that the people don't want socialism.

They want more conservatism. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lallix, and today, the Mitch Daniels, the Rick Wilson. Let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. Welcome, everybody, to this Ricochet University, where we turn losers into chockers. It's podcast number 294, and it's brought to you by a variety, a panoply of great people that you ought to patronize. The Great Courses, for a limited time, The Great Courses Plus is offering you, our listeners, a chance to stream the fundamentals of photography. That's a $235 value. Hundreds of of other courses if you like for free and we're

brought to you by hillsdale college which is a real college by the way and they have this constitution 101 course all of our listeners owe it to themselves to study the constitution and know it as much as possible because we can't have free enterprise without freedom and we're brought to you by harry's shave because overpaying for drugs to raise your blades is a bad habit. You've got to break it, and it's easy with Harry's. Use the coupon code Ricochet and start shaving smarter today. And we're brought to you, of course, by the entity, the edifice,

the thing, the juggernaut that is Ricochet itself. And with us are the founders, Peter and Rob. Good day, fellows. Here's your diploma. Thank you for giving $35,000. You know, I love the fact that Trump University is almost indistinguishable from Scientology, but do go on. Can I just do the

intro? We always talk before, we do a little chit-chat before we start the podcast, and you always seem like there's stuff in the background, like you're moving stuff around. James always seems like you're organizing something or you're doing something else, and you're a little bit preoccupied, and then five – three, two, one before you start.

And then suddenly you have this great intro that makes me laugh. Where did that come from? I thought you were kind of like he was building an Ikea bookshelf while he was doing it. You prepare. It's called preparation. I was resizing and adding a two-pixel stroke to a variety of pictures for the third week of March on the website. But anyway, I know Peter was doing the same thing as well. I would just like – exactly.

I would just like to say that if you're listening to this and you're a member of Ricochet, we thank you. And now more than ever, look, it's going to get contentious whatever happens. We, all of us, everyone on this website, everyone in our community of Ricochet, now more than ever we need Ricochet. Now more than ever you need Ricochet. If you're listening to this podcast, you'd like civil conversation, civil disagreement, and I think Ricochet stands for that. big fat uh trump hater or a big fat trump supporter um we want you to be members of ricochet because we are going to have to figure out whatever happens how to be civil to each other because um because that's how civilizations work so that's what i'm saying if you're listening and you're a member thank you if you're listening you're not a member please join

um we actually do need your help very much, so we'd love for you to join Ricochet.com. If you just don't want to join yet, go to Ricochet.com, check it out, and sign up for the Daily Shot. Our daily email blast fills you in on all the complicated details of every day. You can win with your little factoids, and Witty reposts any argument with any liberal you come across. Boy, that sounds so quaint, but it's a lot of fun and it and and we should just say once again we said this last week

very briefly we're a little at the end um people uh uh in the corridors of power or the the establishment media they read ricochet and they um um, we had a Ricochet member, um, recently give his 10 cents on, on the Fox news. So, um, it's worth it. Join, uh, you get a free month, absolutely risk-free and I don't know what else to say. Well, other than civility, the point that you made civility, you're right. And civility is you'll find find on Ricochet, is a two-way street, which doesn't mean that two people can't just drive down the middle head-on in any given thread, but that's sort of the fun. If you've been around the web and you've watched how people have talked about the primaries last Tuesday, you know that it gets very heated very fast. Even on National Review, somebody can be writing a piece about, I saw a blade of grass today and a robin lit upon a tree with a worm in his mouth. And within three lines, within three posts, somebody is slamming the author for being part of the N.R. GOAP.

You don't have that at Ricochet. You do, however, have Peter Robinson. The N.R. what? The National Review. The N.R. GOAP? You don't know, Peter. GOAP is G-O-P and then a little E. GOAP establishment.

Yep. Oh, thank you. I call you a GOP because you're – I've never heard it. I've never heard it. It's actually a good – it actually is a very – I heard it. It's one of those signifiers to me.

It's one of those – it's like libtard, refugicant. It's just kind of – it's one of those shorthand words that tells me, oh, OK, dialogue with this person might be interesting, but there's – I don't know. I mean I'm sorry. On a purely aesthetic basis, I actually think it's – I mean it's kind of good. I mean I actually think Rathoglican is not terrible either. Not that I would ever use it, but I just – in the – if you read 19th century political handbills, they're always coming up with great invectives. And those are two I think that aren't terrible.

They might have found their way onto a handbill in 18-whatever. Well, they're invective, yes, but it's – you would have high-flown, long boxcars of rhetoric where people were talking about grifty pigs sticking. Yeah, that's true. Anyway, so here we are. So, yes, GOP. And, Peter, I'm sure you're a member of the GOP. Let me ask you this. How do you think this last week has played out?

Everyone's beating the KKK thing to death. It's obvious perhaps that once Donald Trump is ensconced in office, he will no longer do things like give interviews to – decline to condemn the Trump or have his son give interviews to white supremacists because he'll have better handlers. He'll have an establishment. Won't he have an establishment to plug into in Washington that will help him? They'll turn into the establishment mighty quickly. This is why – Yeah why they all do this is and and and and of course they do. The Constitution, of which a few shreds remain, is constructed to make it difficult to enact legislation. This is one reason Barack Obama is going around it so often. But even going around it requires observing certain regulatory laws. You need people who know the law,

who understand the procedure. You're there with Congress, most of whom have been there. I don't know what the average tenure in Congress is now, but every, and the lobbyists and the lawyers in that town know the system. He, no matter who is the next president, he or she will be unable to get anything done without cooperating with people who understand how the mechanism works. And one word for those people is the establishment. Well, it's actually worse than that for him because the truth is the chief executive is remarkably, remarkably circumscribed. And it's worse than that for a president. And there's going to be no appetite, I don't think, or maybe there will be, but I suspect that unless he has a,

unless the next president of the United States is Donald Trump and he has not had some kind of entire personality change, he's going to be facing a Congress that's ultimately hostile. I mean, the best news, if you are a member of the GOP establishment, a renewed and reinvigorated Republican House and Senate and Hillary Clinton in the White House is considerably, considerably more attractive than a wild card in the White House like Donald Trump and the prospect of probably losing the Senate. That's what – we're all – of course, losing the presidency would be terrible.

Losing the Supreme Court for a generation would be even worse. I have to say, to me, what is particularly heartbreaking is the thought, and that doesn't seem to be getting reported much, understandably, it's a kind of hidden story, is the thought of losing the Senate. Last time around, we had the best, in my judgment, we had the best incoming class of senators on the Republican side, Dan Sullivan, Ben Sasse, joining very impressive senators who were already there, including Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, but also Mike Lee, Barrasso of Wyoming. It's just a very impressive pool of young Republican talent. And to see them, to see some of them lose their seats and to see the rest of them go from the majority where they have at least some prospect of getting things done to the minority would be just terrible. Or they have some prospects of getting things stopped.

I mean that ultimately is the way the system is set up. It's set up that the Senate especially stops things. And so I mean look, or as my friend Jim Grant, who's a great financial writer, likes to say, hey, nothing lasts forever, right? There's no monetary system that lasts forever. People tend to think the dollar is sort of sacred and sacrosanct. It's going to last forever. There's no currencies lasting forever. Monetary systems last forever. Maybe there's no political party that lasts forever and maybe it's time for a change. Maybe we need a Republican Party called something else.

The names of the parties don't really matter. Maybe there's another party there with libertarians and foreign policy hawks and small business, local – not big, fat DC Chamber of Commerce but local chamber of commerce, city boosters and Asian something or others and you just move forward. So suppose Ross Dow – Bill Kristol has been talking about a third party, Ross Dow, that tweeted something the other day. Call it the Constitution Party and make the candidates Mike Lee and Ben Sasse. And you know that sounds very, very appealing to me. Then the question becomes, well, wait a minute. That doesn't sound appealing to you? Well, I hate the name.

You don't like the Constitution Party? It shows what they're standing for. Oh, that's a loser. It's a loser name. It's spinach. What are you, Donald Trump all of a sudden? It is, though, yeah. It's spinach.

It's associated with – Okay, so – Go ahead, James. Yeah, I agree. Constitution Party, anything that smacks of grandpa's bircherism and brings to mind a minute man with his rifle in one hand staring resolutely into the distance, regardless of whether or not the connection or the connotation is true or fair or accurate. That's how it's going to sound. Constitution sounds like spinach. You're like one of those weird guys who thinks that we should get back to the basics, which meant slavery. And if we are dealing with a part with a populist that elected Barack Obama twice and 30 percent of which wants to go for either Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump. So we're not talking about people who have immersed themselves in the details and specifics

of exactly what the Constitution means. Got to find some other way to appeal to them. We'll find a Sharpie. We'll find a slick Madison Avenue guy. He'll brand it. The Sharpie party. There you go. I like that.

The selfie party. I don't know. Peter, you're going to say something here? I think we've been joined by our first guest, James. Oh, we indeed have. It's time for your usual brilliant introduction. Well, I don't know what needs to be said. The brilliance is all on the other side.

Mitch Daniels is a former governor of Indiana and the current president of Purdue University. We welcome him back to the podcast. We were just asking what we're going to name the next party after the GOP fractures, sunders, and turns into like a cold bit of honey bar when you slam it down on the counter. Mitch, are you on? I'm here. OK. Welcome.

Thank you. You're welcome. It's Peter Robinson here. Listen, I know you're not in politics anymore. And if I ask a question that feels to you as though the answer is going to be too partisan, just stop me as if you needed to be told. But just stop me. But here's my first question for you. I want to talk about Purdue, the great university of which you're now the president in a moment. But just this question of education generally, how can it be that 25 years after the United States won the Cold War and defeated the

Soviet Union, which was, I think, pretty nearly everyone agrees, even if they don't agree on the terms, an evil empire. How can it be that just 25 years later, huge numbers of the youngest cohort of voters, 18 to 25-year-olds, call themselves socialists? And Bernie Sanders, who again calls himself a socialist, openly embraces socialism, finds his strongest support among... At LiveScoreBet, we love Cheltenham just as much as we love football. The excitement, the roar, and the chance to reward you. That's why every day of the festival, we're giving new members money back as a free sports bet up to €10 if your horse loses on a selected race. That's how we celebrate the biggest week in racing.

Cheltenham with LiveScoreBet. This is total betting. Sign up by 2pm 14th of March. Bet within 48 hours of race. Main market excluding specials and place bets. Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie College kids and that age cohort. How can this be? Where is education failing us? Well, Tempest does fugit, Peter, and if I look out the window here, you know, the students who arrived on our campus this year are, let's see, I guess the ninth consecutive cohort born after the Berlin Wall fell, actually born after the Soviet Union crumbled. And so when they have heard nothing about the nature of socialism, the consequences of socialism, even the definition of socialism, and when they have heard next to nothing about our constitutional underpinnings, I don't fault them for their, let's say, openness, not to say gullibility, about some of these ideas.

We just hope, I hope anyway, they leave Purdue and other places with a little better understanding than they arrived with. But no, our K-12 system, there's nothing new about this for at least that whole quarter century, if not more. We've seen alarming surveys about the civic ignorance of not just young people, but many of their elders. You know, in a country where some significant percentage thinks Judge Judy is on the Supreme Court. I'm laughing to avoid crying. Yeah. So, yeah, Judge Judy should be on the Supreme Court. I'll just leave that there and let you let the adults continue.

Yeah. This past, I guess it was late summer and early autumn, we had kerfuffles, worse than that, on a lot of campuses across the country having to do with affirmative action, decrying so-called rape culture. On and on it went. Serious disruptions among other places at the University of Missouri and at Rob Long's – Rob's on the line, Rob Long's alma mater, Yale. And you quickly – frankly, in my judgment or as far as I know, there are only two institutions that have absolutely – that have laid down unambiguously in writing a clear statement of freedom of speech. One of those is the University of Chicago, which I think produced its statement last year, and the other is Purdue, and that was a statement that you sent to the entire campus within days of all of this starting. Why did you do that? What's

the response been among your faculty and students at Purdue? Are you pleased you did it? Well, the answer to the last question is yes. It preceded the post-Missouri eruption by several months here. And it's not just two schools. I'm happy to say that there are something like eight or nine. Oh, really? Which have embraced the same principles. It's an idea that I'm trying to promote that I think it will have greater power if a lot of schools were to sign up to the same statements instead of everybody trying to say the same thing each in their own words. Maybe you remember the Sullivan principles on apartheid. I think back to that, I think they had greater impact because so many different entities all embrace the very same language.

But, you know, we all have seen the excesses, and no need to review the parade of horribles here, but I will say maybe our old common employer, Peter, trained us this way. I do see some reasons for optimism. One is that, and I think that possibly the worm has turned a little bit. You've seen faculty at a few places, including Harvard Law School, for example, assemble letters reacting to what they believe is a serious trespass of First Amendment rights, due process rights, and the like. The reason that I think we might see some diminution of this fever. First of all, it started to bite faculty. It's one thing when dangerous figures like Condi Rice and Christine Lagarde were being

shouted down or disinvited from campuses, but when faculty, many of whom see themselves as bold liberals by the old definition, wind up getting complaints filed against them because they said something in class that made some young person feel unsafe or offended, etc. That's a different deal, and that's happening a lot of places. The other thing is that the press has seen that they're not immune either, and you saw that in the Missouri incident where the faculty member tried to recruit some muscle. We need some muscle over here, exactly. Unbelievable.

We need some muscle over here. These press people don't necessarily agree with everything we're saying. So let me give you one other example that I think is interesting. So there's a huge irony, of course, that the American University is supposed to be the bastion of free inquiry, free speech, free debate. That's our proudest tradition. It's obviously ironic and perverse that these have become places of conformity where heretics are shouted down and punished and all the rest. But here's another one. We've had two wonderfully principled, by their own description, liberal leaders on this campus recently. One of them is Professor Stone from Chicago, who drafted those principles that we copied, yes. Very renowned constitutional scholar. And the other was Nadine Strawson,

the first woman to head the ACLU and led them for many, many years. And each of them, in almost the same words, mused on their discomfort. led them for many many years and each of them in almost the same word used on the uh... their discomfort in the world they grew up in liberals defended free speech and as they thought reactionary administrations on campuses and elsewhere tried to call it

and now they see a complete role reversal and they're in the strange bedfellow's position of coming alongside people who see the world from what we today call a more conservative viewpoint, but who are the defenders now of free speech. It's a very interesting flip-flop, and they each freely confess to finding it not just ironic, but a little discomforting. Mitch, one more question while you're talking about reasons for optimism. The background to this is that one of the times you were on this podcast, it was at least a year ago and maybe closer to 18 months ago. And the question then was, how does the present day compare to the late 70s when Reagan came in and we saw the renewal of the 1980s?

And you said, just as the podcast was ending, you said, well, I think there are prospects for hope here in the current situation, but we have structural problems now. I think that was your phrase that we didn't face in the 1980s. And then the podcast ended because you had to go. And that has lodged in my mind for lo these many months ever since. And I wanted to ask, maybe this is unfair because you may not remember quite what you were referring to. But so the simple question is this. There you are, the president of a great university where the business of the university is – it is an act of faith. Every time you admit a kid, it is an act of faith in the future.

But what do you think is the prospect? How does the present hour compare with the late 70s? I'm pretty sure that when I use the word structural, we must have been talking about economic revival. And the 80s, of course, brought two or three forms of revival in America. But I think we were probably discussing economics at the time and my point is that it is less clear to me now that that the innovation the inner being the dynamism of capitalism which despite a lot of people's efforts is still there still hasn't been strangled right it whereas it once it's it's it's genius it's it's genius, its new inventions, its new business models created large numbers of middle-class jobs.

That was certainly the story of the industrial era and even the post-war era. These days it creates incredible progress and incredible wealth, but it only takes, in many cases, a few people to produce it. That's the structural issue that I think we're all looking at, automation and so forth, racing ahead. Here's just one example. In this really anemic recovery that we've technically been in, yes, the American people, they know this is a lousy economy.

But technically, it's been a recovery. The three biggest categories, last I looked, of new jobs were retail, food service, and call centers. Wow. Which, first of all, are not highly remunerative jobs, and they can be temporary under any circumstances, but they also happen to be three of the most easily automated activities in the whole economy. And so that's what I meant, that we may be moving to a world in which people who really want to provide for themselves

in much greater numbers have to be self-employed or moving nimbly to patch together income from a little temporary work here, a little Uber driving there. Right. A little rental with the A and B on the side. Rob Long is getting in now, Mitch. Hey, yes. It's Rob from Los Angeles. Thank you again for joining us. So you just described what they call the gig economy, right? Gigs here, gigs there. You do a little of this, you do a little of that. Is it any wonder that the American voters are nervous or frightened or furious at a political class?

No, Rob, it's no wonder at all. It's no wonder that three and four, in what, remember, they're being told is a recovery. Three and four say the nation's on the wrong track. Right. In the lives of the vast number of our fellow citizens, there is a very natural, very understandable fear and apprehension. Fewer people, a lot of people have given up looking for work. Many of those who are technically employed are working in part-time or temporary jobs, or they're working at a job that pays less than the one they once knew or the one they expected to have.

So I think that when you see support for what would have been fringe or even joke candidacies a cycle or more ago, I think this is at least half the explanation. I agree. Well, let me ask you then. We started the conversation. You said, hey, Peter, Tempest fugitive, right? Has the Tempest fugitive for what you and I know as the Republican Party, do we need a new thing to maybe reform and readdress these issues with something more dynamically responsive to a whole cohort of Americans who feel like their problems aren't going to be solved by the same old solutions. Well, we've seen political systems that seem – or in our country, we've seen more than one time a system that seemed very stable, which anyone who watches Europe, for instance, would not desire. So I can't say that it's impossible. Looking at it clinically, it appears to me that what's happening on the Republican side is that standard issue, card-carrying, long-time Republicans are not much enamored of the frontrunner, but he has brought large

numbers of new people in, and people who weren't a voting Republican before, at least in primaries, and I don't know, might not again depending on what happens to him. Ordinarily, it's something to be welcomed when people are newly energized about their citizenship. In this case, of course, it's around some themes that many of us find unacceptable. Well, can I ask one more question? Because I was talking to a diehard, good, solid Republican, good Republican person just two days ago. And she voted. She's voted Republican, and she's got all – she ticks all the boxes. She's for small government.

She's for lower taxes, and she understands the benefits of free trade. And she said to me, maybe we were wrong about NAFTA. Were we wrong? no, we weren't, and there's plenty of evidence to that effect. But I understand, again, in an economy that I think could be generating significantly more growth than it is and more jobs than it is and better paying jobs than it is. But in that economy, I understand why people might ask that question. I don't think the facts and empirical data say that this is the problem, but I don't think we can blame people in that anxious position that they very legitimately feel themselves to be for asking questions like that. Well, now, okay., we have this podcast.

We have a chat room going on with Ricochet members and they are asking questions. One question they asked was this, which is that you have been a governor and now your title is president. And doesn't that seem like the right – you're going in the right direction? I hear your thoughts, though. Yeah. Okay. We are facing obviously as a country a little bit of disarray, chaos. Sometimes that's good, and I think good conservatives love that. Like, all right. Well, let's have it. Let's figure it all out. But, you know, there might be an opportunity to go from president to president, and there are a whole lot of people who wish you would. Or am I being too subtle? I'm trying to be polite. Rob wants you to go to Cleveland and show the convention? All I'll say is that people do surprisingly often say things like that, at least in a teasing way.

And I generally talk back and say, no, I held out and got a better job. And that is the way I look at it. Okay. Right. Well, but maybe we've got to have a little bit more campus unrest to kind of give you a reason, give you a little motivation. Yeah. Yeah. You're having are you having fun? Is the presidency of a major university working out to give you time to enjoy or enjoy yourself?

I imagine intellectually it's a feast, but those are rough jobs, is my impression. Are you enjoying yourself? Thanks for the question. I get it often. The answer is temporarily yes or tentatively yes, I should say. Yes, my little formulation is you get to hang out all day with young people and smart people. At this stage of life, it's a wonderful opportunity. Twenty minutes after we hang up, I'll be over in the gym surrounded by all those young people and probably picking up some good G2.

You can learn a lot in the locker room. I've always found that. So, yes, on the other hand, I can't give you a final answer because if we get the kinds of things done that I hope are in train here at Purdue. I'm very excited about some of the projects and investments that we're embarked on. If we bring them to reasonable fruition, I'm going to tell you, a guy could not have had more fun. If we get stuck in the molasses of higher ed, and that can happen, it'll take a lot of the fun out, because, you know, the fun of any job,

don't you see it this way, is ultimately in the fulfillment of feeling that you did something useful. And I'm really optimistic about that, but it's a little premature to give you a verdict. Governor Daniels, thank you so much for dropping by today. And we hope to see you again. And of course we'll see you at Cleveland when you are winched down from the

rafters as the savior of the party. Well, I've passed this back before, but I think Ricochet is a terrific product. It's got wit. It's got it's got it's obviously informative and I you know, if it didn't show up in the morning, I'd go looking for it. Well, thank you.

Bye-bye. Talk to you all later. Bye-bye. Rob, I like the idea, however, of you going to the campus and fomenting discord. I could do it. I'd be so good at agitaprop. You have no idea. It would be fantastic. To make him quit and go back into politics.

But I can't imagine if you would be the Bob Hope in a hippie wig thing, you know, where you would show up as the obvious square. Hello, fellow kids. Precisely, the Steve Buscemi meme. Or if you would be, for example, a Rasputin-like character, the anarchist cliché from the turn of the century, with the gown sort of, because they always wore the smock and they're always filthy and hairy and they always had a bomb, which – and the bomb was always lit, right?

I mean the bomb always had those little sparks. The round bomb, yeah, it's always lit. Right. The round bomb, which is the faithful anarchist symbol, which I think you ought to have done. And if you go back and you look at the guy, he's based on – that anarchist cliche I swear is based on Rasputin. And as much as I love the old color photography that people have gone and found in the archives of the czar, it's just those stark black and white lined scary face pictures of Rasputin that make you think this is what craziness afoot in the land seems to look like, which brings me to not anything that you think about but the great courses because photography and its ability to coax the truth out of an era is one of those skills you really ought to have. Now, the great courses plus video learning service has got – it's got a huge library of – where's Rob? I'm right here.

Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, my god. I am using – wow, that was a really interesting psychological thing. As you know, my internet is down, and so I am on LTE, right, on Skype on LTE. So it sounds okay, but it's a little choppy. And I was just trying to – I just realized that there was the New York Times thing is sending me updates and I was trying to turn it off. And that's, and so I kind of zoned out a little bit while I'm trying to get my, you know, uh, connectivity up and I didn't have, I forgot

to interrupt your, but this is so weird. But what's so horrible, Jay, and I feel terrible, is that you now, in some kind of weird, creepy Stockholm syndrome, battered wife syndrome, you now interrupt yourself. Some kind of? What do you mean? You did it to yourself. My heart is broken. I self-supported my own commercial. You did. Because it wasn't there.

The segue, the interruption, the all-powerful segue interruptus hadn't come crashing to the wall like the Kool-Aid man. It's amazing. It's amazing. You actually – you know what? This is almost like the weird version of the Wizard of Oz, James. You don't need someone to interrupt your segues. You can interrupt your segues all by yourself. Great thing, however, is that if you're streaming the great courses, video plus learning service on any app or device that you have,

you can interrupt, you can stop, you can pause, you can come back to it. If you've got to let out the dog, let out the dog. You can come back and learn at your leisure. It's not like some kind of course where you have to sit with your can in the seat and there's a bell that rings and that's it. No, no. The fundamentals of photography, it's absolutely free. It's filmed in partnership with the National Geographic, which I believe knows a thing or two

about shutterbugs. And it's taught by the professional photographer, Joel Sartori. Now, it teaches you how to make great, stunning photographs like a pro to capture memories of what we see and what we experience. You know how to position things, tripods, leveling, just the basic stuff that sometimes seems obvious, but it really isn't, especially when you look at other people's photos. Now, for a limited time, the Great Courses Plus is offering you, our listeners, a chance to stream the course, The Fundamentals of Photography, a $235 value, and hundreds of other courses, for that matter, for free. Stream from any internet-connected TV, PC, or through the Great Courses Plus apps, if you're like Rob, and at the moment are just accessing the world through your phone but free offers only available for a limited time so hurry to stream

the fundamentals of photography from the great courses plus for free you must go to the great courses plus.com slash ricochet that's the great courses plus.com slash ricochet um i have noticed, however, that people who are on Instagram, like me, and like to Instagram stuff because it's like just a picture, we should take that fundamentals photography class because the camera in your phone is really good, right? I mean you always said that. It's getting really good. And one of the fundamentals that they'll teach you, I'm sure, is not to slap a faded yellowed filter on it to make it look like it was taken in 1977 and thrown in a shoebox somewhere. Those of us who were around in 1977 – I actually took a speaking offer the other day to speak in Reno, Nevada at a car museum in 2017 about the 70s, which is now an object of some sort of aesthetic veneration. Those of us who lived there know that there's nothing to be – but at least – The Gran Torino. The Gran Torino.

If we're going to blow up America, let's do it in a whole new fashion. We may be looking at a whole new way of changing America and not for the better. It's not the Carter years all over again. It's going to be something completely different. It's the Carter country years. It's the comedy version, yeah. And oh, the joy of having an author like Rick Wilson on. Now, I know Rick isn't – he's a consultant.

He's part of that class of hated people who will be strung from the lampposts when the revolution comes because he consults. But he's also a great writer to read and follow on Twitter. Not always safe for the whole family. Rick Wilson. Well, since you mentioned aesthetic veneration and here I am. Exactly right. Rick Welser. beans um and you you are a you are a loyal diehard republican and you have been forever um for my entire for my entire life and so let me ask you what i asked uh we had uh former indiana governor mitch daniels on right before you i asked him this question basically um hey is it time to just start a new one new name new brand just start a new one, new name, new brand, just start a new one?

You could do that now. What we've seen is that people can run insurgent independent campaigns within the party structure, so the party structure can't be all that great. And people can identify a party with somebody who really doesn't necessarily stand for the values of that party. If that can happen, then how hard could it be to start a new one? Is that what you're working on now? Well, I'd prefer, I mean, here's the thing. The people that use GOPE unironically are having this belief that they're purging the Republican Party of impurity and they're going to establish the new Trump order inside the framework of the Republican Party. But the fact of the matter is, just stealing the name doesn't make it the same product. And if Honda started making Studebakers today,

it would not be a Studebaker. It'd be something, it's just, it's taking the label. So the argument of, will there be a schism and will there be, have to be a new conservative party? There will have to be a new conservative party because we're either going to have Donald Trump at the head of a Trump Republican faction, or we're going to have to form something that represents conservative values with a new label on it. I'll take either option at this point, but like a growing number of people, I'm in the Never Trump movement. In fact, I jokingly refer to myself as the OG of the Never Trump movement. I was anti-Trump before it was cool. But we're going to look at a scenario here in the immediate future where conservatives have to decide if they're willing to betray every single principle that

we stand for, no matter what part of the conservative movement or the Republican movement you come out of. Donald Trump is not a social conservative. He is not a limited government conservative. He is not a fiscal conservative. He is not a national security conservative. As Mitt Romney, who is laying the wood to him right now, is making abundantly clear, probably if Romney had been giving this kind of speech during 2012, he'd be president right now. So you're watching this, but you're watching this and we're not, we were doing a podcast, so we kind of, we're missing it. What do you think the point of Romney's speech is? Like, Rom, I mean, he knows that people, the people who love Trump are going to say, well, yeah, we got to listen to a loser now.

This guy lost. I mean, I can write Trump's speech right now. I'll tell you. So what's his point? Here's the thing. None of us are trying to reach Trump voters anymore. OK, they have proven time and again they don't want to be reached. You can't talk to them. You can't present them with facts. They do not care. Nothing moves the dial with these people anymore. They are locked in. They're not going to go anywhere, and they are completely impervious to reality, the Trump reality distortion deal that surrounds them.

You can say Donald Trump just murdered an an infant and they go yeah so what rhino they don't care he was right when he said i could kill somebody on fifth avenue and no one and i wouldn't lose a single book he's absolutely correct so what mitt ronnie's doing today is twofold and it's brilliant the first part of it is it's signaling to every other Republican officeholder in this country not to join fat Judas Chris Christie and the crazies that are endorsing Donald Trump, okay? Because he's signaling there's going to be a public shaming function involved in this, because they now know on record from previous nominee, from a prominent national figure, that people are going to get called out if they endorse this guy. He's not a conservative. He's probably not sane. And there's now an

accountability function being built in. This is going to pump the brakes on people who are thinking, oh, Trump's so powerful. I'm going to ride the wave along with Donald Trump. And I wrote a piece about this the other day. It's a fallacy to think you get to be Donald Trump. What's Romney's second point? What's Romney's second point? The second point is to be in Donald Trump's head all day today and tonight into the debate. And tonight, the rest of the day today, I assure you, Donald Trump is going to be scanning Twitter like a maniac.

He's going to be looking at Twitter like a heartbroken teenage boy looks at his girlfriend's Facebook page when she breaks up with him. He's going to be freaking out all day about this because Romney's going straight at the things that Donald Trump thinks are definitionally Donald Trump. Charisma, presence, seriousness, wealth, business success. Rick, let me interrupt you for just a moment. Let me interrupt you for just a moment because CBS News has, we have a few quotations. Romney is still speaking as we record this, but here's something, here's what he said already. Quoting Mitt Romney, here's what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises or his word for us is a degree from Trump University. He's playing the American public for suckers. He gets a free ride to the White House, and all we get is a lousy hat.

His domestic policies would lead to recession. His foreign policies would make America and the world less safe. He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president, and his personal qualities would mean that America would cease to be a shining city on a hill, close quote. By the way, I have to agree, if we'd seen that Mitt Romney four years ago, things might have been different. Okay, I just wanted to get a little Romney on the record here while we're talking about him. Yeah, yeah, no, it is certainly, he is certainly making an indictment of Donald Trump right now that spans the entire spectrum, including some things about Donald Trump's personal character that that surprised me coming from Mitt Romney. Pleasantly so. And he came right out and said Donald Trump brags about his affairs with married women.

I mean, this is this, you know, no one ever thought Mitt Romney had the trolling skills before, but man, he is epic today. And he is proceeding to make this broadcast. It's going to heat up a lot of news cycles. It's going to be – it's going to send Trump into a spiral of Trumpism, which is personal attacks on him always get greeted with this cycle of mania. And we've seen that it works. Look, Marco Rubio closed up. Look, he won one state the other day. Would a boy like to do better? That was my state, by the way, where I happen to live in Minnesota. And I salute you, sir. But here's the thing. He closed

hard on Trump. He closed hard and changed the debate by going after Trump's strengths, by going after the things that Trump thinks are definitionally amazing about himself. That's what Romney's doing right now. So he's going to be up in Trump's head tonight. I assure you, Trump will go through in the debate tonight and get totally off message and go, well, Romney asked for my endorsement. He wanted this and that. And he's wrong on this. It's going to be – psychologically, it was a terrific play. So, Rick, let me ask you something.

Let me ask you something. So Romney is making this speech now. Next week we start having winner-take-all primaries, and we have closed primaries mostly coming up. And closed primaries are not great places for Trump. He doesn't win closed primaries. He hasn't won one, right? He's only won the open primaries.

So if you are... Right now, about 20% of his votes is coming from registered Democrats. Right. Let me be cynical for a minute and say that now it's kind of a bull market on Romney bashing right now – I mean on Trump bashing right now because he's probably going to have some setbacks coming forward, and everyone wants to take credit for being the Trump killer. Has Mitt Romney got a plan here besides just saying mean stuff about Donald Trump? I mean, you think he's thinking to himself, hey, I'll be very close

to Cleveland. I'll be at the Spring Hill Suites in Cleveland if anyone needs me during the convention. Is that what's going on? Many hands make light loads. Many hands make light loads. And one of the things that was happening for a couple of weeks there was Republican elected officials were teetering. Washington is not a city known for its great moral courage. And a lot of these officials were going, I don't want to be too far behind the curve. I got to be careful. They're very nervous that they were going to get caught up behind this wave because they don't – they are also not long-range thinkers.

Two things that have happened that have put the brakes on this. But that's what I mean. I mean Rodney is a long-range thinker. That's kind of how he made his millions. What's his long-range plan? Isn't it to like, hey, listen, I'm available, tanned, rested, and ready when the convention falls apart and no one can go less than anybody? As he said today and from what I've heard from folks around him and other people, Mitt Romney is not running for president, has no plans to run for president. And as he said today, he's not endorsing. He's going to endorse. He's going to back whoever the sane nominee is. And the dream of Romney as president has passed us by short of some – I think some astounding externality that none of us can rationally anticipate. I mean if Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are killed by a meteor, there might be a different conversation. I don't know, Rick. Astounding, astounding externality. It seems like the title

of the book about the campaign for president in 2016. I'm like, that could happen. I don't discount many meteors. Go ahead, Peter. Rick, realistically, what is the probability that Trump will arrive at the convention with enough delegates? It's over 50 percent now, wouldn't you have to say? I would say that because we're getting into winner-take-alls and close primaries, that Trump has had his best day in the campaign in terms of the delegate collection effort. So he can be stopped. There are a lot of ways to model it collection effort. So he can be stopped. There are a lot of ways to model it. He said he can be stopped. There are a lot of ways to model this where Donald Trump comes to the convention with

under 50 percent. In fact, there are a lot of ways to model it where he comes to the convention with under 30 percent or under 40 percent, rather. And as much as this will cause a gigantic explosion of rage in the Trump world and will have lasting consequences as the Trump nativist faction of the party splits off or stays home or what have you, when it gets down to a floor fight at the convention, everybody who knows how to do that kind of trickery is not on the Trump side of this equation. And the fact of the matter is, yes, the votes in the states count. It is not direct democracy. It is a selection process for delegates who are only bound on the first ballot and who are only required to be loyal to the direction of their state committee on the first ballot.

They're also able to do a whole bunch of other things without violating Rule 40, which there's a lot of party arcana here that has its own set of high priests. But there are a lot of things that delegates who do not want Donald Trump to be our nominee would be able to do during the convention to deal with credentialing and qualifications and all these other things that make it less of a certitude that Donald Trump will be able to cobble together a win from a plurality. And if he's only got a plurality going into there, I can assure you this is going to be a battle that is fought to the last, till the last dog dies. Rick, you know, if I'm just thinking, Rick, that if Romney does come in, it's going to be a real problem for Ann Coulter, who was real big on Romney the last cycle and is just as big on Trump this

time. And I think that actually those contradictions will cause her to fuse into a black hole and actually wink out of this universe into another one entirely. But we've seen odd things rhetorically in this. And aside from all of the little ins and outs of the convention and the delegates and the whatnot, there seems to have been in this cycle a level of conversational rhetoric, vitriol, an empowering and liberating of a side of the right that previously we had underestimated, maybe a number.

What are those people going to do? Where are they going to go? If they don't get Trump, are they just simply going to walk away like Jesse Ventura voters who, you know, made their contribution and evaporated? Or are they going to, well, let's just talk about those people who, the poison that's been injected into the rhetoric this year is not something I think we can take back. Is it? Oh, well, here's the thing. We have to either, we have to either reach a point where, where this fever breaks,

which I used to think it was going to break. And I don't know. Um, or those people who are insistent upon an overtly racist, overtly anti-constitutional, cult of personality-driven vision of what America is. At this point, I welcome them to form their own party, and I welcome them to leave. And you know what? We may take losses because of it. We may take damage because of it. We may lose seats because of it. But at this point, if we let them stay in the in the in the Republican body politic, it is a cancer that will destroy us utterly. Well, they can be the Rumpelstiltskin party that grabs their ankles and tears themselves apart. And we can be the low teak cuck party, judging from the uh you know the stuff that i've been reading on the internet there's a line there's a line in the in the uh in the matrix where the where the master control program you know says he may blow up the whole matrix there

but you'd be destroying us oh there are levels of survival we can accept and even if we have to go into a long-range rebuilding process um after this, it's going to leave us with a stronger body politic to the Republican side of the conservative movement after. We have to destroy Zion then while our messiah is being absorbed into the machine. Rick, I have to tell you, I'm really disappointed here because the master controller was Tron, and in The Matrix it was the architect. Now, how can we attempt to get to the – how can we get the young generation? I may have conflated my two seminal virtual reality movies. Yeah. How can we reach the youth if that's the case?

We were talking before, Rob and Peter, about what to name a new party, and somebody suggested, well, Constitution Party, because that's what we stand for. And we thought, no, that's spinach. That's to eat your vegetables. How exactly do you speak to a generation that 30 percent of whom, 40 percent of whom on college campuses and elsewhere believes actually that there's this golden goose somewhere in Washington who excretes eggs that can be chopped up and distributed to anybody with no with no harm to the economy? How do you rebrand individual liberty, federalism, and the rest of these things to people who think that government is the guarantor of their success, of their prosperity, and their happiness? Well, I mean, my idea for naming it the Awesome Party is still out there.

I like it. I like that. It works. But look, I think we have to – if we end up in a rebranding situation, it needs to be something that's prospective and forward-looking and optimistic. And it isn't trapped in a lot of the same – and look, I do a lot of – aside from the political and public affairs stuff we do, we do a lot of – we help corporations do stuff to fix problems and talk about their image and things like that. And I got to tell you, rebranding is the hardest thing, and mostly it's done by stupid people for a stupid reason. They think, oh, we're just going to rebrand. It's going to improve our sales or what have you.

We're going to polish up a turd is what happens in most of these situations. If we become a party that's directed toward reform and prosperity and individual freedom and to looking forward rather than merely being the powdered wigs guys. I think we have a situation where we can be, where we can reshape the conservative image a little bit while sticking to our conservative principles and where we can move toward something that isn't bound by the damage that's going to be done to the Republican brand. Because I will tell you this, the greatest con game ever, ever

in the history of politics in America is that the national media is bribing with the whip hand Donald Trump to be our nominee. They're not doing it because it's just fun TV and the spectacle. They're doing it because they look at the brand damage, the prominent damage to the Republican Party image and brand that they will achieve by making Donald Trump our nominee. They look at it as a way to forever say that every Republican is a loudmouthed, racist, bully thug like Donald Trump who hates women and Hispanics and blacks and anyone not named

Donald Trump. And they are going to, with absolute certitude, they will hang the Klan around our necks now tighter than any damn noose. Watch what happened, that Kirkpatrick ad in Arizona against McCain. That is the prototype. That is the template for a billion ads from Democrats this fall that says Congressman John Smith wouldn't condemn Donald Trump. That means John Smith, like Trump, loves the Ku Klux Klan. Strange fruit coming to our district because John Smith loves killing black people just like Donald Trump and the Klan. And there'll be big dramatic ads and there'll be total BS, but they'll still do them and they'll still scare

people. And, and if you don't think that's going to be a central feature of, of the coming year, because you know what? Congressman John Smith isn't, isn't, isn't Donald Trump. He doesn't have that Teflon protection that, that the media has given him. He doesn't have a 30-year role as a reality TV star and game show host. Those people down the ballot are going to take all the damage from the things that Trump does. So purging that part of the party, I have no problem with it at this point. Screw them. We'll get back on. We'll come back because we've got principles and ideals that mean something. And if we want to preserve an actual constitutional republic, we're going to be the only landing spot for that.

I would prefer that it never become the Trump Republican Party, but if we have to never supported, donated money to, praised, voted for, or had at my wedding any Democrats. It's just not what – I have trouble believing sometimes the depth of the desire by these folks that are supporting him to be conned. They want to be conned. They want to be told some comforting lie by the strongman. They want to be told that Donald Trump is going to fix all your problems, that Donald Trump's got the magical recipe to restore your $45 an hour union job and magically make the Chinese. Let's talk about, let's talk about, I mean, you're right.

Absolutely. It's going to be hunger. The Klan is going to be hung around everybody. One of my favorite talk show hosts happens to sell sheets and I'm waiting for the people who have that account to say, I don't know, maybe sheets isn't a good mix for us in this year. People will talk. Let's think about alternatives. And one of which that everybody was touting was, was Marco Rubioio uh marco rubio won one state people thought he'd have more why isn't he winning more states well i can break it down i can break it down in two ways for you

the first thing is marco came out of um iowa new hampshire and and South Carolina having had roughly $40 million of negative advertising dumped on his head by Jeb Bush. And here's a fun fact for you. The total number of negative ads run against Donald Trump as of this day, as of right now today, I just had my guys do this math, is less than the amount of negative ads that hit Marco Rubio in one week in New Hampshire. In one week. So no one has punched him yet. Now, those things are changing quickly. But Marco has been in a situation where we've been in states where you've got – you had a big field. You had open primaries. You had a sense that the inevitable broad field broke up the mainstream conservative vote.

And you also had a situation where the timing wasn't quite there for him to go full on to Trump. And now that he has, look, we saw in Virginia, in public and private polling, Marco was 19 points back in Virginia the weekend before the election. 72 hours of Marco going Wu-Tang Fist of Fury on Trump, and he falls behind him by only two points. He's a good closer. The field being narrower, he's got a shot here. It's a narrow pass. We've got to win Florida.

I can tell you as a Florida guy, there's a lot of work going on right now, and there are a lot of ads coming up on TV in Florida right now against Trump. A lot. More than he's ever faced. We got to run and we can't wait to see exactly how this plays out to say the most obvious, banal, noncommittal anodyne thing ever. Advise everybody. I believe

it is the Rick Wilson on Twitter where we can find the cogitations of the moment. We thank you for coming back to the podcast. We hope to have you down the road as well. Rick Wilson. Thanks. Thanks, Rick.

I look forward to it. Thanks again. Bye-bye. He's right about rebranding, though. You can't, I mean, it is a bit of a,

the minute you do that, it usually says that you're so confident and you've got so much money that you can putz around with meaningless things like changing your logo. You, Uber did that

and came up with a really stupid logo. Or it just sounds like you're trying to evade something you don't want people to think about, which is why Harrys.com will always be Harrys.com because Harrys is the term you know period in your heart if you're that kind of person that it means shaving.

It just does. Now you've sort of doomed them to actually changing now. Bad karma. Today something will happen. I don't know why. For a shaving company to have bad karma it would accumulate over the course of many people, millions of customers nicking themselves. It doesn't happen. Never drawn blood once with a Harry's. You know some of those razors?

They start out good, then they get dull, and then they get the taste for sanguinity. No. Harry's, every single time it's a smooth shave. Started by two guys passionate about creating a better shaving experience. And, you know, how did they do it? Well, first of all, there's the German plant. I think it's 100 years old now, which provides a direct link of quality blades to you in the United States at a fraction of the price. And they have these wonderful emollient gels or the cream that you can use to shave.

Either way, a light scent, and it can be supplemented or complemented, if you wish, by the peppermintub Cream, which they also have, which I highly recommend for you fans of exfoliation. Now, the starter kit's $15. It gives you a razor, three blades, and your choice of the shave cream or the foaming gel. And as an added bonus, you get $5 off your first purchase if you use the coupon code EVERYBODYNOWRICOSHAY. After using that code, you get an entire month for $10. Shipping is free. It's great. Who wants to drive to the store and park and get in and walk out?

No. Blades come right to you. Harrys.com right now. Five bucks off if you type in the code Ricochet with your first purchase. That's H-A-R-R-Y-S.com. Coupon code Ricochet and check out for five bucks and start shaving smarter today. A little bit from the member feed, folks. You know, it would be fun to talk about what we think the debate is going to be,

but people will be listening to this after the debate. At the last debate, though, I did think, oh, man, do I have to listen to another one of these? And then it got good. And I have the feeling it's going to be good again because once you get in the OODA loop of Mr. T, he starts to flail. When he starts to flail, it's kind of fun. We'll see. Ben Carson won't be on the stage, of course. He'll be sorely missed.

From the member feed here, we just have a question to draft Sass, Sassy. I think the problem is that people don't know whether or not it is Sass or Sassy. Gentlemen? Sass. It's Sass. Do you find this drafting late hope talk to be just absolute sign of complete collapse and defeat and utter pointlessness of accepting anybody else other than Trump? I do. I do. I do find it that.

By the way, what was it? Two or three podcasts ago when we had Michael Barone on and one of us asked him the question about brokered convention and Michael made two points. One is this time around it may actually be the case, the math does suggest that it could end up being a convention at which none of the candidates has enough delegates to win on the first ballot. Okay, fine. I mean, that's not brokered, though. No, but and exactly you're remembering what his second point is, James, which James is anticipating is that in the old days, when you actually had party bosses and the convention was the only place people saw each other, it was an exchange of information. They'd go off. There was a reason for the smoke-filled rooms.

They were talking things over. They were talking about their districts. Now we have telephone, internet, email. So Michael said, this won't be brokered. They'll have it worked out. People, the delegates will be in touch with each other. Things will be worked out by the time of the convention. That strikes me as sensible, at least plausible, more than plausible. So I have a feeling there's drama to come for sure. But the idea that the convention itself will be some sort of,

somebody's going to stage a push or there'll be some tremendously unexpected event, that strikes me as implausible. Rob? Because I want somebody who's a caricature from a Thomas Nast cartoon with a vest, a huge belly, the gold watch chain, you know, the big thick whiskers

to come out and start with a cigar and start beating delegates to get them to do what the GOP wants them to do. I mean that's what they sort of think is going to happen. Rob, do you think that actually somebody might actually before the convention pool forces? Well, I mean maybe. Look, these things – I mean you listen to people who are Marco Rubio supporters, right? And Rick is a supporter, right? And there's like

a whole litany of excuses for how this or that, if this had been different, that had been different, he would have done better here. But there is something happening in the race, both structurally and not structurally, that is interesting, right? And I don't know whether it's going to mean that it's going to be harder for Donald Trump to find the votes he needs in closed primaries or not. But a whole lot of votes are left. A whole lot of delegates are left. And I guess I believe in general that Republican primary voters will revert to mean because I think they always do. But I mean I don't know.

The long and short answer is the same, which is I don't really know. But that answers every question. Exactly. We don't know. It's mathematically possible. And there is something about party regulars, card carrying party faithful. That has up until this moment been predictable and is still predictable. Party regulars are still voting for party members in large groups. So I think the party could still choose and it would be better if the party chose. Let me tell you something.

We went to Cleveland with someone with a majority of delegates. I think that would be better. with someone with a majority of delegates. I think that'd be better. I just had a taste of what this democracy is like on the local level when I went to my caucus. And somebody said something that I'm going to tell you right after this because you may ask yourself, is caucusing and the rest of that in the Constitution? Is it? I don't know. Well, you need to know your Constitution. And if you're like many Americans, you may not know exactly specifically what's in that third, fourth paragraph way down.

You get the basic gist and the importance of it. But, you know, the rights and the liberties it provides are enumerated and you kind of should acquaint yourself with it. That's why the Hillsdale College has made Constitution 101 course available for everyone online for free. Because every one of your listeners owes it to yourself to learn and study the Constitution. As I said at the top of the show, you can't have free enterprise without freedom. Now you can sign up have free enterprise without freedom. Now, you can sign up for free to this today, and once you start the course,

you'll get a new lecture every week to watch on demand, along with readings, discussion boards, and more. And nearly a million people have taken this course and given it rave reviews. So sign up for the Constitution 101 for free at hillsdale.edu slash ricochet. That's hillsdale.edu slash ricochet. Hillsdale.edu slash ricochet. That's hillsdale.edu slash ricochet. Hillsdale.edu slash ricochet.

Look at me. I'm like a Rubio robot repeating things over and over. Ricochet. Ricochet. We'll have fracking on ricochet and we'll all be rich. I went to the caucuses. We'll close up with this because I know we're running over time. But I went to the caucuses here in Minnesota.

I had never seen a lion like that before. They never had. They had prepared for one-fourth of what came. As I said as I was making my way through the crowd, it's like people heading for the last collapsible raft in the Titanic. And it did feel that

way. We got up to our room and eventually there's about 30 people in there. This is what I love about democracy, about caucuses. It's straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. You expect some raw bone farmer to get up and grasp his lapels with a rumpled paper in one hand and speak some Lincoln-esque plain speaking truth about it. And we did have some guys who – three people spoke briefly. One on behalf of Ben Carson who we believe was a decent and honorable man.

This was from a 75-year-old Swede who was just huge, like a barn. And the other was a 70-year-old businessman who was in favor of Trump because he just – everything needed to be shaken up. They didn't do anything. They didn't care. Everything needed to be shaken up. And then one sort of bald Lex Luthor type who said that if you listen to Rubio, he was a neocon who would embroil us in endless wars. And everybody sort of looked at him and said, you know, the is on the second floor and then we took the vote and there was some uh scattered lint for various characters and uh crews got i think five trump got nine and rubio got 19 wow and and and that was repeated in

every room in the school which by the way was the elementary school to which my daughter attended and i was sitting in this little chair in a room that she had once been educated. And that sets out a play. And Minnesota, we are the most politically schizophrenic state you can possibly imagine. It's Norm Coleman. It's Al Franken. It's Jesse Ventura. Now it's Marco Rubio.

But it wasn't necessarily – I don't think because of distaste for Trump. I think that there was just – there's something about the Minnesota Republican liberal character that may have naturally gravitated to somebody that they felt was a safer alternative than Mr. Cruz. Before we close, thanks to Peter. I'm sensitive to the name because it's my own. Thanks to Peter in the chat room for suggesting – for typing up the question about drafting Ben Sasse. And I might add that five days ago, I shot an episode of Uncommon Knowledge with Senator Sasse. And the Blue Yeti informs me that we will have that up within a matter of days, single-digit number of days. Wow, that's good. Uncommon Knowledge, Ben Sasse. Believe me, we'll put a link on Ricochet the moment it's available online.

I still think that Senator Sass is a great line. He's a great name for Rob in chat room somewhere. And for all we know. Oh, yeah. Senator. I'm Senator. Yeah. Yeah. I think I like that one. It's better than better than Carlos Danger. Yes. Well, it'll be fun when we can get back to talking about criminality. The highest reaches in the Hillary Clinton administration. Yes, yes, yes. Maybe next podcast, folks. In this case, we thank everybody.

We've got to thank our triptych here of sponsors, which would be harrys.com, hillsdale.edu, and thegreatcoursesplus.com. In each case, a coupon code RICOCHET will get you fine goods and edification. We'd like to thank everybody who subscribes to Ricochet, of course, and pops up in the member feed. In each case, a coupon code RICOCHET will get you fine goods and edification. We'd like to thank everybody who subscribes to Ricochet, of course, and pops up in the member feed. It's spicy over there. It's fun, and it's great. I can't stay away. It's like popcorn.

It's like that popcorn with sriracha on it. It's just good. Anyway, thanks for listening. Rob, Peter, great. See you guys next week Next week, fellas Next week At home Showing pictures

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For all this world Jeremy spoke in Yesterday Jeremy spoke in Yesterday There'll be spoken. There'll be. Clearly I remember picking on the boy. Seemed a harmless little fuck.

But we unleashed the lion. Gnashed his teeth and bit the recessed lady's breast. How could I forget? Peace. Oh, like the honey I heard Money didn't give a faction, no And the boy was something that money wouldn't wear King Jeremy, the witch head Oh, ruled this world Jeremy's fallen Oh, rule this world. Jeremy Spokane. Last day.

Jeremy Spokane. Last day. Jeremy Spokane. Last day. Ricochet. Join the conversation. Try to forget this. Try to erase this From the blackboard

Tell me it's forgiven Last day Tell me it's forgiven Thank you. Tell me, Spohan, Spohan Tell me, Spohan, last name But the reality is he's a bully. And if you don't confront a bully, you get the same result where he just pushes people around.