The Ricochet Podcast - A Sparking Powerline

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

We've got a crossover episode, folks! Our friends of the Three Whiskey Happy Hour podcast (Steve Hayward, "Lucretia" and John Yoo) join to talk about the wacky legal matters of our time. There are environmentalists claiming the positive right to enjoy cooperative weather; they discuss the plush and cozy Hunter Biden tier of criminal justice compared to the briar patch tier that The Donald's living in; James dishes out some (ahem) tough love to the youts; and our guests pick the word that annoys them most these days.

Steve sent me a text message saying that I had to behave because you were going to be so well behaved. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Read my lips. It's the Ricochet podcast. Read my lips. No new action. It's the Ricochet Podcast. I'm James Lilacs, usually with Rob and Peter, but they're out.

But don't worry, we've got Lucretia and Stephen from Powerline and John Yoo. So let's have ourselves a podcast. It is now the duty of my office to prove these charges in the indictment beyond a reasonable doubt at trial. It's a witch hunt. It's just a continuation of a witch hunt. They want to silence you. They want to silence you. I mean, this is the sort of thing that happens in countries whose powerball jackpot is 387 chickens and a goat. Welcome, everybody, to the Ricochet Podcast, number 655. You like it as an area code. You'll trust it as a podcast. I'm James Lylex. And you might ask, where's Rob Long?

Where is Peter Robinson? Well, the founder, you know, our lineup here is rapidly becoming like a late Stalin era photograph where people just drop out, airbrushed, and never to appear again. It's just me. I'm kidding. Rob will be back. Peter will be back. In the waning days of summer, they are off on some p peregrination but we'll hear all about it when they return in the meantime we've got

something that's going to make you say who are those other guys why do we even need them rob who peter who we've got powerline people and rob and rob and john rob john rob john you if i can get my mouth to work we'll have an even better podcast linda from from powerline and steven from powerline gentlemen ladies welcome good morning great to be here we feel like we feel like the triple a team has made it to the show yeah everybody just jump in at once here that'll be great i'm just gonna sit back and let you let you cat fight for the microphone i feel like a ukrainian special forces guy behind the enemy lines yes i'm looking for the minds I'm looking for the mines. I'm looking for the mines Peter and Rob have left for us.

Well, not to worry. You're welcome to go right ahead, John, and hobble back as you please. But for the moment, before we get to all the fun stuff, the contentious things that I'm sure will polarize the audience right down the middle, what we learn about the Hawaiian fires is getting more and more interesting. And of course, people say that it's climate change. It's obviously climate change. Anytime anything burns, it's climate change, as if the sun had just focused its energy beams down and devastated Hawaii. But it turns out there might actually be man-made reasons for it that don't have to do with eating meat and driving cars. Now, what people will say is, well, even

if it is related to the electrical system, people should not have electricity in the first place to use their air conditioning because they will then do things like put wires where they shouldn't. What this is, is just the usual example, again, of an energy company deferring basic maintenance on the things that work in order to pursue this new dream of sustainability, which ain't going to do it. Which just ain't going to do it. So there are two things to this. One, what we're learning now about the crisis, and you guys can discuss that. And two, John had a piece this week in the Washington Examiner about how they're using the courts to push more and more extreme reactions to global warming. The Montana judge who essentially ruled that the children's future was being, that one of the kids, his artistic endeavors were being threatened because atmospheric particulate or something triggered his

asthma so he couldn't perform. And therefore, I i don't know what we have to ban the internal combustion engine so those are the two things what we learned about hawaii and then john's aspect on the law so go i'm gonna lean back i'm gonna pretend this is like i'm an amdj and i just put go i just put the wreck of the edmund fitzgerald on you know or or stairway to heaven i can hit the head i I can hit the head. I can go get some coffee or I can just let it play. And so there you go. James, you might want to stay for this because both John and Steve promised me a long time ago that they were going to get me my own designer tinfoil hat and they've never done so. So I can't put it on right now. And I'm really not all that serious about this.

But what you didn't mention is all the stuff that's come out in the last day or two, some of it on actual, you know, almost legitimate media sources. This morning, there was a picture of an aerial picture of the fire. And it was very interesting. Fire went from house to house and didn't catch the trees in between. And it didn't get the big, beautiful coastal houses. And there's a conspiracy theory going around that it's actually some sort of what's it called the energy blast of some kind, that this was purposeful, not just a lack of maintenance on the power lines because they're putting all of their resources into green energy, but purposeful because so much of Hawaii is, the zoning rules keep these properties in the family, and what they've done is made it impossible for the families that have this inheritance to live there forever to stay there because the insurance companies have canceled their insurance i don't know if i believe any of it but i figured you know it's time to throw something out there and wake people up well yes i i'm not implying to believe in jewish space lasers doing this in order to change the ownership thing.

It's, you know, Occam's razor would have you look at just things like sparking wires on the ground on abandoned, dry, tinder-filled agricultural fields. And why it skips from house to house, I saw that video, too. But I don't know what to make of it. Well, I mean, you, Lucret southern california girl uh when you have very high winds the flames tend to be low to the ground i think that's actually not that surprising and skipping houses i mean in the big california wildfires you'll often see a whole neighborhood leveled and then there's one house left standing and that usually can be explained by they actually have better event grades and other reasons right so? So it's weird that way. I think

you made mention of it. Oh, about the land tenure in Hawaii. I mean, there's the famous Supreme Court case about that back in the 80s. I won't revisit, but there's the United States and then there's Hawaii when it comes to land law. And it does have some really weird features that really clogs up the real estate market there. All right. I think the big story is, you made reference to it, James. I have, from time to time, talked about the climate change fanatics as the climate cult. And the Wall Street Journal story this week, and now there are more coming out, are absolutely devastating about how all the political forces were for green energy and hawaiian electric despite being warned repeatedly and themselves saying we have some fire hazard problems of need

attending to spent virtually nothing on in the last five years it's all about green energy and so that's why i have phoned down and said uh this is largely this is going to turn out to be the largest math mass death event caused by a cult since Jonestown. And I can give lots of other examples, by the way. And I can even cite one of the premier mainstream, quote-unquote, climate scientists. Eight or nine years ago, James Hansen, who started off all this business in the 80s, he did one of those typically dense regression analysis papers in one of the scientific journals. And what he said was, is the closure of nuclear power plants.

He's very pro-nuclear, by the way. That's the one place he departs from climate orthodoxy. But he calculated that the closure of nuclear power plants prematurely here and around the world increased the death toll from particulates and other air pollution by 50,000 people a year. And I say those deaths can be laid at the feet of the ridiculously anti-nuclear environmental movement. So I'll just stop there because I can rant on a long time about this because there's other examples of where this green energy mania has actually increasing risk for people, increasing prices, and leading to disasters like this one. John, let's go to your Washington Examiner article and talk about how the legalization, the illegalization of everything is going to be a really bad idea when it comes to climate.

Well, I think a lot of people saw the story out of Montana, where these kids, as you mentioned, sued for global warming against fossil fuel companies. The surprising thing is that they're late to the game, like everybody in Montana. They wanted to see how it turned out for the rest of the country first. So there's a bunch of lawsuits by cities and counties. In fact, Hawaii, Honolulu is one of these plaintiff cities. Oakland, San Francisco, Denver, Boulder, you can imagine. New York City, you can imagine which cities are in on these lawsuits. And they claim that global warming is what we call a public nuisance in the law. And this is a complete distortion of what people usually use these lawsuits for this is what you usually use for

example if uh say in james's beautiful suburb of minneapolis suburb suburb i live i'm a city boy thank you very much i mean it was a suburb when they it was a suburb when they laid it out in 1890 but it's it's firmly city now well i i thought that's why i said i thought the entire city was supposed to be a suburb well that's what it looked like when i was there last and then so suppose james is a perfectly leafy residential area in the downtown of minneapolis oh wow he's showing us his background there's a lot of towers behind him that there is and somebody opened up you know a leather tannery right in the middle that started polluting, ruining the environment all around a residential neighborhood. Then you can kind of say, oh, this guy is causing a public nuisance in our neighborhood. But no one has ever said, oh, you should turn this around and use it for global problems. And if you look at it in a situation where even if you could get these fossil fuel companies to stop doing business in Montana, which they might consider now, or even the United States,

it would barely make a dent because most of the global warming now is not being caused by carbon emissions in the US or even Europe. It's coming from China and India. So I think these lawsuits are eventually going to get thrown out of court. The problem is it's coming from china and india so i think these lawsuits are eventually going to get thrown out of court the problem is it's going to take years and years to get from these trial judges all the way to the supreme court which i'm confident will put an end to them and then kids in montana will go back to you know their climate friendly policies like shooting animals and spearing them with arrows and bows and going around burning things at big pit fires, stuff people do in Montana for fun normally. Well, it should be, I think, added, John, what this is based on is a clause in the Montana

Constitution, which was rewritten, I think, in 1972, so it's recent. As a modern Constitution, it has a clause that says something like, all Montana citizens are entitled to a clean and healthy environment, which means what? Some policy. I mean, really, the judge going to give an injunction against the weather? I mean, how is this actually going to work? That would have been, at the very least, a political question once upon a time and a clear slam dunk. But now, old-fashioned liberal judicial activism lives on, and they grab hold of that vague clause and say, it means we can do anything we want. Oh, oh, oh, Lucretia's going to love this. Lucretia's going to love this lucretia's going to love this this is a demonstration of the failure of the progressive

vision of rights because the 18th century american vision is that rights are negative it just says government leave me alone right within there now some state said i don't know why montana of all states would copy a european constitution but they have positive rights that say, you have the right to an education. You have the right, some European constitutions say, you have a right to a job. And of course they say, you have a right to a good, healthy environment. Of course, none of these governments can deliver on it, and they don't take the law seriously in these European countries, but we do in America. You stick something in the constitution in America, and people want it to become the real law

before we get to lucretia's response in that and we'll drift away from montana i just want to say i just struck me that perhaps the problem is not that we are listening to children in montana it's that we're not sacrificing enough of them on altars i mean the aztecs and the climate god yes well not to the climate gods but to specific geological manifestations i mean because of the you know the old mesoamerican civilizations believed that unless they ripped the heart out of children and held it up to the sky god uh the sun wouldn't come up or the rain wouldn't come or the rest of them now you know at some point that just became ritualistic um but it makes me wonder whether we're kind of missing an opportunity here because studies have shown suggested that we

may have global warming increased for years because of a very large volcano an underground volcano the hunga tunga or something like that that that put trillions trillions of gallons of water vapor into the air which in a stroke shows you that the earth is perfectly capable of doing all kinds of stuff to its own environment and its own regulatory system, which you'll eventually balance out, etc. But I mean, if we had, if these children who are so concerned about these things had willingly put themselves on altars to forestall the eruption of that volcano, it would show that they're dedicated to the cause. But I think the fact that they aren't willing to do that, they aren't willing to clamber

up there and hand the obsidian knife to the priest, leads me to believe they may not be as serious as they think. Now, a little creature you were talking about. I don't even, there's so much, but what I probably would say is the only place where you're slightly wrong about that is what we know about young people today who have been frightened to death by their idiotic teachers, et cetera, et cetera, about the existential threat that climate change poses to them, they are deciding not to have children, which that's a good sign because they're obviously idiots. And, you know, it's the whole Darwinian principle at work here. But I mean, is that good enough for you? Or do you think we really need to require a child sacrifice what do you know well i i i think actually that the number of people who decide not to have children because

of climate change is probably the same as the people who refuse to have children during the 80s because of nuclear winter and ronald reagan and all the rest of it there's always a group of people who are so pessimistic about the future and and somehow their concern for the future dovetails nicely with their dislike of children in general and specifically so i i'm not worried about that um so much as i am the fact that in general people you have generations of people here now who find it difficult to find a mate who find it difficult to settle down and find it onerous to have children because even if they do find somebody they're selfish

it's going to interfere with their ability to run out somewhere with a dog and the rest of it i i mean i heard of them at a meeting the other day when we're talking about coming back to the office and somebody was complaining about the fact that you know they have pet care demands that they're you know i think dogs and cats pretty much did okay up until 2020 when people had to go to work anyway i'm straying far um so gentlemen john uh stephen the subject of negative rights uh positive rights and the rest of it is that a lost cause has the west completely just adopted you know adopted the notion that that's what the government is there for to grant to to bestow these things, to declare them rights, and there's no coming back from that. Nobody's going to change that. Or does

society eventually realize it's expensive and unworkable and works its way back to another solution? Well, you want me to go first, John, because actually John is secretly unsound on, actually not, he's not secretly unsound on this issue. He's totally unsound on this issue. John is a grumpy this issue john is a grumpy positivist and by the way i'm grumpy john because i'm still smarting from you calling me a monarchist on tuesday at lunch uh okay uh yeah i mean that train left if the crown fits wear it anyway okay look steve you should be happy this is one of the most pro-monarchist podcasts in america You should have heard them weeping and crying when Queen Elizabeth passed away. Oh, I do remember that. Yeah, that's right. Peter cried all over his ascot and his tied-up sweater.

That's right. Not so much for her as for the institution and for the tradition, and also for her as having provided a cultural continuity for generations for a long time and really adding to the cohesion of the British Empire and the Isles and the rest of it. See? The hazard of your question, James, is that John and I actually team teach a class that goes into this for a great length, and we don't want to do that in a podcast. I'll just give one hint, though, of the problem. I think a key turning point came right after World War II when the U.N. gave us the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

And some of it was very conventional and familiar sounding, right to free speech, several other traditional, you know, American, Anglo-American style individual negative rights. But then I think it's Article 22 or 24, a fundamental human right is a right to paid vacations. Now, I think they put that in there at the behest of labor unions for bargaining purposes, but I'm thinking, you know, a lot of parts of the world, since this is meant for the whole world, be nice if people had a job at all. Think of some poor developing country where people live on a dollar a day, and the idea that who's going to pay for this paid vacation? It's ludicrous, but it's an example of now the government exists, you put it to bestow benefits on people and everything becomes a human right and this is why the kids coming up today hate conservatives it's because of you and exactly what you just

said because what they hear is that you should not have a paid vacation when you say when you say actually you don't you don't have the right to an Everhart No. 2 pencil delivered to your house by a stork every morning. You don't have that right. To which they respond, well, it would be really great if it happened. Yes, agreed, but you do not have the right for it to happen. And so when you say, you know, you don't have the right to a two-week paid vacation they hear you should be chained to your desk with a factory uh 365 and and that's what's maddening about it because put it rights becomes good things that's it it just becomes a synonym for great things so uh my son was reading something to me last night, some exchange, and it was, I have a right to health care.

And the answer was, well, I have a right under the Second Amendment to own weapons. Well, you get to enjoy that right. But I want the right to have the government pay for my guns. Well, that's not a right. That's just something you want. Exactly. And so I think we just have to push back on that and every single day and say, no, of course, there's no right to have some lovely sort of guarantee of beautiful weather, clean skies, clean water. Those things are really nice. Yeah, I mean, the one sentence razor people can use is,

if the right claimed requires taking resources from one group of people to supply this good thing to another group of people, it's no longer a fundamental right. Right. Well, you're describing socialism there. And, of course, Americans love socialism, as pointed out by the fact they love Social Security. Therefore, ha-ha, gotcha. I mean, yes. if there are two things that i could change one would be rights and the other would be phobe because you can attack anybody as being a blank phobe which indicates uh what that they have an irrational fear that the very existence of the whatever you're phobic about makes you crawl up in a corner with a racing heartbeat palpitations and sweaty palms no No! Phobia is being used to describe disagreeing, which is, again, just practically Soviet in describing how an inability to mouth or agree with this set of statements is

proof of mental illness. Only the mentally ill could believe such a thing if you're phobic. So, those are the two words. Do you have any words you would like to change permanently in the American political landscape? Yes, I got one. Diversity. Diversity. And so I was going to say, I'm not as pessimistic as Stephen Lucretia. I think actually, as you suggested, James, this whole positive rights movement and claims on everyone to fund my pet cause are starting to die. I think we've just maybe passed peak wokeism, just peak positive rights. We're just a little past that. And if I were going to trace it to some event, it would be the Harvard Supreme Court case this summer. Think about it. What would be a classic example of what you're talking about is universities desire to manage all

speech to racially engineer all the classes to decide what people should learn or not based on diversity rationales and the supreme court said no at some point it runs into our negative right against the government that we all be treated equally without regard to our race so i'd like to think that and the harvard case is popular the majority of american people don't want race based affirmative action that's true we're the worst if there's any place this stuff goes on it's our you know our three places of employment universities except in florida where the new school is making some changes and of course being excoriated for all

of them um I don't know if you've been following that Lucretia first of all I wanted to ask what word you would get rid of what word you would feel do you ever talk to a young person and every when they mean to say I think I believe it occurred to me that it's always, I feel like. I feel like they can't. And so when I grade papers from students, the first thing I tell them is I am not a psychology professor and I couldn't give a damn about your feelings. And if you use the word feel in your paper to me, I feel like this. I will fail you. And you should just see there because it's one of those things it's like you just pointed out it's not just that it's a misuse of the word it's so subjective that

the only thing that matters is your feelings and it's not yeah it's not an accidental conflation it's intentional because i mean the whole project from the boomers on and really we would have we'd be in a much better state as a country if the if the greatest generation had just beaten their children more i i i swear to god thank you so i'm not i'm now on i'm now on record for for more physical um discipline and the and the of course you know uh sacrificing of children so this is coming he's still never going to be as tough as an Asian mother, James, but you're halfway there. That's true. But the idea that everyone must be validated, everybody must be made whole, and that your feelings have to be nurtured and cared for, and no bruising can ever occur,

is nonsense. And that's not how the world works. And so the idea that if you feel something, it is authentic. And authenticity is to be rewarded over correctness, over morality, over virtue, or anything like that. The whole project of the boomers has been authenticity. I've got to live my true self. I have to be who I've got to be. I've got to be me. And that results in a society of spoiled little narcissists running around with no historical or communal sense. Anyway, I agree with you. I agree. Feel. Now to Stephen. We need to get rid of one more word. Yeah, I have a long list,

but I'll just give you one. It's holistic. You know, the liberals love you. We need a holistic approach to this problem. What that means in practice is we really have no idea what to do about it and want to change the subject and spend more money. That's what holistic means. When you hear that phrase, you know somebody just has no idea what's going on. My choice, if we had to go for like two-word phrases I would ban, I think I would ban last call. Actually, that's not true because I haven't been out drinking for a long time. Yeah, it's like, why do you hate the American bar? What's wrong with you?

No, I'm kidding. As a man of my age, I do my drinking at home where I can cause no trouble and drive no cars. But the thing of it is, you know, the older you get, it's a little tough. You might not bounce back the next day like you did when you were 20 if you had yourself perhaps an excessive, if you had a third to tipple where only a second should have been enjoyed. Well, here's the thing. If you've ever had that happen to you, you got to make a choice. You can either have a great night, live it up, glug it up and suffer,

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It's designed to work like your liver, but in your gut, where you need it the most, right? So just remember to drink Z-Biotics before drinking alcohol. Drink responsibly and get a good night's sleep to feel your best tomorrow. Now, Labor Day weekend is right around the corner. You never know what's going to happen. You can have everyone over. You can have a barbecue. Here come the beers. Make sure you stock up for the long weekend. Your friends and your family will thank you. And if they join you, they'll thank you for pointing out how ZBiotics is cool. Go to zbiotics.com ricochet to get 15% off your first order when you use Ricochet at the checkout. You can also sign up for a subscription using our code so you can stay prepared

no matter the time or the occasion. Zbiotics is backed with a 100% money-back guarantee. So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money. No questions asked. And by the way, yes, I've tried it. My next mornings? as lake como beautiful

we thank zeobiotics for sponsoring this the ricochet podcast do you not think of lake como as some absolutely gorgeous untroubled body of water blue deep in the rest of it or what are you thinking there you're thinking george i was going i i've been to lake homa several times but oh well compare comparing it but uh comparing it to your body is what made me go oh i'm talking about the physical the physical sensation of the rest of it all right well shoot if you must this little gray head but um so we've gone through the words we've gone through hawaii we've gone through negative rights we've covered more ground frankly than any of these podcasts usually does in in an hour which is great which leads us

to the press conference which was canceled now don Donald Trump put out a truth social meeting, which I have no idea why he engages in arbitrary capitalization like he's Samuel Johnson or something. I don't get the 1918th century capitalization thing, but there you go. So he put out the tweet on truth social and canceled his press conference, which had the irrefutable evidence assembled by somebody. And he said on on advice of his lawyers, he wasn't going to release it, which means he's actually listening to his lawyers. Remarkable. So between that and the not debating, tell us where you think the election, the campaign starts right now. Lucretia, you're next. I know I'm putting you up there. Tell us what you think, what you think.

And you will be you will be you will be held to account for this in a year from now too we will take all of you all of you guys statements and put them up and you won't be able to deny a word of them i don't i don't know where to start uh i think that it was the right thing to do to cancel the press conference i think he should debate because he's good at it. And he will, in fact, lose some of that free media coverage that he gets even from the media, most of whom hate him, of course, if he doesn't decide to debate. And that will be the only thing about him. I think he should go and debate. On the other hand, you know, I guess I'm probably, I hate to say it, one of those, what is it, 62% of people who are persuadable for another Republican candidate. If Trump is the nominee, I of course will vote for him. But gosh, it's, I don't know. I'm torn.

Honestly, I don't have an answer for you, James, because on the one hand, I want to see Trump just triumph just to put down once and for all this nonsense that's happening to him. What is it? Ninety nine counts spend three hundred years in jail if he was convicted on all of them. And, you know, I want to see this over with. I don't even want to take it seriously. I don't want to look at the indictments and say there's somehow some legitimacy to any of them. And but at the same time, why is that? Why don't you want to study them? I mean, isn't that sort of I do. I do. I just don't want to because because there's three different levels here. The first one is the biased prosecution, Trump being indicted for things that nobody else would be. I saw this morning even some liberals say, well, if Georgia's going to indict Trump on this,

when are they going to indict Stacey Abrams? But she paid a fine. I mean, did she not? She didn't pay a fine for denying that she won, denying that she lost the election. That's what Trump is being indicted for, denying that he lost the election. No, not for denying it, but for assembling a process to overturn it and to subvert it and to lie about what actually happened. I mean, you can lie about anything.

That doesn't mean you go to jail for it. The whole RICO, well, I should leave this to John, who's, of course, a lawyer and better at it. that that that doesn't mean you go to jail for it there's the the whole rico well i shouldn't i should leave this to john who's of course a lawyer and better at it but he's not being he's not being charged with lying if that was the case every politician would be in manacles he is he is by weiss he's being charged with lying by weiss um and that the result of his lies are not why smith you mean weiss's hunters sorry i get prosecutor sorry thank you uh but it is the same time okay yeah but you know the the problem is is that what he's being indicted for the supposed uh at least the part about it that has to do with um changing the slate of electors

uh is it's all above board it may have been dumb but he had some reason to believe not very much reason to believe that he might have been successful in that georgia suit and if he had been successful and did not have a slate of electors there would have been nothing he could do about it the whole thing if you actually look at the facts is is ludicrous it's absolutely ludicrous across the board you don't have to like trump to say this that this is the politic politicization i know it's a tough one it tricks me up every time of our criminal justice process in ugly ugly ways regardless of what you think about trump that's all i'm gonna hand that over to john why would i flip it around and i would say actually it's the criminalization of politics that's the problem and one way to understand that is to say look we're using a law rico here

georgia's version of rico racketeering influence corrupt organizations act which is designed to be used against the mafia designed to be used against drug cartels or terrorist groups even against an organization whose fundamental purpose is free speech right a political campaign and so a lot of the things that and maybe we were wrong about this when we adopted these laws in the late 60s early 70s maybe we supercharged the laws too much to be able to get mafia groups. And so here's one little way to explain it. Remember that scene in Godfather 2 when they've got the congressional hearings and, you know, the kind of greasy-looking majority council of the congressional hearings is questioning Frankie Pantangangeli i think is his name and they go they go hey do you ever did do you know when someone pushed a button on somebody did michael corleone order it did he do

it he goes no they got what you call it buffers yeah they got buffers of people in between right he goes buffers and so we created this law to be able to get the michael corleones of the world who never committed any crime who never did anything illegal they just always told people to do things for them as part of organizations where you could say more than half or maybe more than half of all the discrete things that organization did were probably innocent, but they're part of a group that does kill people, that does extort money, does steal things. But if you turn that around and apply it to an innocent group, an innocent organization, then you have, oh, if one or two bad apples in your organization commit a crime, does that mean everybody is guilty? The whole organization is criminal? That's essentially what we've done here.

We've said, okay, so when I looked at the indictment, okay, I see one or two things that are obvious crimes, like trying to physically harass a Georgia election worker, like trying to steal. I love the idea of crack a woman throwing a voting machine on her back and running out of a county commission office with one, but like stealing a voting machine. Okay, I could see that being a crime. But to say because of those kinds of actions, everyone who worked on the Trump re-election campaign and thought the election wasn't over is now part of a vast criminal conspiracy, that is criminalizing free speech. I think that's the real problem with the indictment. And in terms of how it affects

the election, Trump himself said, oh, all I need to do is get indicted one more time and I've got the nomination wrapped up and it sure looks like that. On the other hand, I don't understand how you defend yourself in court and do a campaign at the same time, because every time he says something in public is going to be used against him in the courtroom. And the courtroom strategy would be, if I was Trump's lawyer, thank God I'm not, but I would charge him five times the going rate, although he never pays his bills. It was to say, shut up, don't say anything, stop talking. Lucretia just put up a screenshot saying millions indicted in georgia for voting for trump but that's that's the problem that's the problem is those two things

running for re-election and defending yourself in court are going to create incompatible strategies and he's going to get screwed in one or the other before we get to ste Stephen, I have an irrelevancy. And that was when somebody was going through the indictment, they were pointing out that one of the things that Trump was being charged for was telling people to watch OAN and watch a particular story. And people were responding to that saying, you mean it's now indictable to tell people to watch something on television? And the response was, well, no, it's not. It's just proving it's part of the setting it all up. It's probably that just simply was an indication of him, how he was pushing the fraud narrative, et cetera, et cetera.

But I thought that's true. I get that. But you can tell me that we're not, that every single one of these isn't a slippery little slope. The fact that you tell somebody to watch something on Newsmax or a YouTube thing that is actually, that turns out to be demonstrably false later is not going to be held against you because it will, if it's convenient for them to do so well notice that the criminal conspiracy starts

according to the indictment on election day she claims the whole thing started when trump gave a speech saying i think i still won before there were any final voter tallies to actually show that biden had won and then a lot of these acts of the criminal enterprise quote-unquote trump left message on georgia state representative's machine how's that a criminal you know criminal they're not it just leads up to the thing that was the reason that was the thing now we got roger stone however on video before the election sitting there at his desk saying well what you do is you come up with another slate of electors is what you're doing and talking about the whole process and And they got somebody

videotaping the whole thing. I would think that videotaping your own stupidity is something limited to the younger generation, but apparently not. Stephen, your turn. See, once again, John is thinking too much like a lawyer and not like a political scientist. Touche, John. The shame, the shame. I mean, I think the trial, John, is another Trump opportunity. Look, this is going to be like if it ever goes to trial, which I can't imagine it really will. It'll be the OJ trial times 10, 18 defendants with a battery of lawyers with all these different counts.

It would go on forever. And every day Trump gets to come out and say about what was wrong in the courtroom that day. And the judge might try to gag him. But how do you stop Trump? And that brings me back to James's question. How is this going to play out? I mean, I have no idea, but I'm struck by a couple of things. First, a broad theme, and then a couple specifics. The broad theme is, I'm going to do this to annoy Lucretia, Trump is this world historical figure right out of the pages of Hegel. I mean, he's Napoleonon which may not be the best comparison but i mean he's an unstoppable force in world politics a full stop uh and what strikes me is uh yeah i mean i think uh it's

he's like a figure of destiny i can't believe i'm using these terms because i usually evaluate politicians the last four years have been exiled before he comes out and yes yeah i mean i mean i know that sounds grandiose and preposterous, but in a larger sense, I think it's kind of true. And here's the numbers behind it. Even this week, now with the fourth indictment coming down, you have several polls from reputable organizations showing Biden with a one-point lead.

You know, Biden led by three, four points consistently in 2020. And there have been a few polls the last few months that had Trump up by five, six points, a couple of them, and shocked the heck out of Democrats, which is why they're panicking about Biden and Harris and so forth. I mean, the staying power of this guy is just unbelievable. And so you can point to lots of surveys that show that people really don't like Trump. That is true. But I think people really don't like Biden either. And it's going to

depend on the circumstances. But by the way, finally, James, I'm certain Trump is going to show up for the debate next week. You don't have to wait for a year on that prediction. I think the we'll hear won't he thing is part of the whole Trump magic. You know, if he says now he's coming, well, then, you know, he's coming, you know, standard storyline. If he shows up at the last minute, makes a grand entrance, it's just going to blow everything up. The media is going to be all abuzz. Oh, Trump showed up after all. He'll have some great opening line about, well, I thought I was going to be indicted again today, but since I'm not, I thought I'd come here and vanquished all these pipsqueaks on the stage with me. So I'm sure he's going to show up unless

there's some other very good reason not to. Well, good luck with the vanquishing, because, I mean, debate-wise, he's entertaining. he's entertaining debate wise he spins stuff and says things um but his grasp of the particular and his ability to to intellectually inhabit an argument is is diminished it was never great and it's diminishing now and he also takes personal attacks on his ability and his knowledge uh far too much to to heart and responds poorly to them and starts lashing out and has no respect for anybody. So it would be interesting to see him there. It would be interesting to see him get his clock cleaned on particulars as opposed to just gusting and venting and doing the rest of it. I mean, a lot of people like the all-cap style of leadership. I get that,

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retail business to the next level today. Shopify.com slash ricochet. And we thank Spotify for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. Last topic, Hunter Bideniden something was dismissed the other day some tax charges the rest of it and some people were freaking out and saying what he's not going to serve any time for anything what what what's going on here lucretia uh what i said earlier this is a what how did you put it you said it was the criminalization of politics i said it was the politicization of criminal uh law it was john who said it and much better than me because i would have stumbled on politicization but uh yes but here's the point uh what every american who's not a partisan a rabid partisan

hack can see is that there are definitely two justice systems in this country. And the vaunted Department of Justice that was once rightly or wrongly considered, you know, the most professional law enforcement agency in the world is now shown themselves also to be rabid ideological hacks in the service of a corrupt and senile president, executive. And, you know, the whole getting into the whole Hunter thing in the appointment of David Weiss's special counsel, nobody can even concentrate on what's actually going on there because there's so many ins and outs, a little bit like a 99 indictments. I think that what the problem is, is we know now, as long as you're a lefty,

as long as you're a part of the democratic party, as long as you're protesting George Floyd and not writing preborn black lives matter, as long as you're not ever complaining about who might've won the 2020 election if you're never questioning it. One thing happens to one group of people and one thing happens to another. And America is not supposed to work that way. I know there were problems, you know, in the post-Civil War period with segregation and that it wasn't always fair prosecutions against people of color. I get all of that. But I think the idea that we have now turned it into political persecution by using the criminal justice system on the one side and then using the criminal

justice system, the ins and outs of it, the prosecutorial deals behind the scenes to save the president's son and possibly the president himself. I mean, it's going to destroy this country. That's my belief. It's going to destroy this country. Before we get to John, I just want to applaud briefly the little note that you made about pre-born Black Lives Matter. It's a reference to the case in D.C. where during the riots of 2020, of course course there were a lot of things scrawled a lot of things sprawled and sprayed and stuff written on the streets and there was nothing done about it because well the times they had a changed and that was encouraged because it was a you know inclusive thing to do recently there was a case of a couple of pro-life activists who

chalked outside of an abortion provider i believe um reborn black lives matter they were arrested they were arrested for that quite promptly as a matter of fact and lucretia what was the outcome of the case it was that they would finally when it went to they they uh they what happened they were uh exonerated i guess you could say but for first amendment issues not for anything like and john has a lot to say about this, his commentary on it's you know, who they liked and who they didn't. It was a viewpoint problem under the first amendment that the, that what, whatever else the, uh, law enforcement can or cannot do, they cannot prosecute people for viewpoints and proof that all of those black lives matters and Antifa protesters were never even so much as arrested for doing the things they did when those abortion protesters, pro-life protesters were actually arrested, you know, charged, convicted of drawing with chalk.

It was proof that this was a viewpoint discrimination. Again, to me, there's a deeper issue, which is, of course, the biased prosecution, because what if it's not a viewpoint matter? But anyway, I'll let, you know, John's got a much more interesting commentary on how we handle politicized... Do you, John? Do you? Come on, prove it. Let's see it. Let's hear it. Come on, bring it on. Well, I'm not sure how interesting it is, but it does solve the problem, which is you're not allowed, actually, to second guess in the legal system the decisions of prosecutors. Prosecutors have what's called prosecutorial discretion, and they are the ones who decide which cases to bring. And it's based on the idea we can't prosecute every crime that

occurs every moment of every day, so prosecutors have to choose which ones make the most sense in terms of the public interest. That's fundamentally a political decision i think uh it involves uh things that i think elected politicians really know best so that's why we elect a president and the president is the one who takes care the laws are faithfully executed and that president for good or ill under this administration sets the priorities of what are going to be prosecuted or not now because it's a political choice though that's how we influence it so So I quite agree with LaCroix and Steve when they were beating the drum about this two-tiered system of justice. I agreed that Hunter Biden seemed to be getting a free pass while Donald Trump and his associates are under a microscope. So

I thought the right answer is what the Justice Department did, which is to appoint a special counsel. The answer is not to lift the scrutiny on Trump. The answer is to increase the investigation into Hunter. So that's of equal importance. A special counsel is really the first step of that. Now, I would not have chosen the same guy who's been investigating Hunter and gave him this sweetheart plea deal. It's a really bizarre plea deal. So instead, I think the next step, and the reason why the special counsel was picked was really because of the political pressure being brought by the House, all these revelations we've been hearing about Joe Biden's involvement in the Hunter-Biden influence peddling scandal. So I think the next step is for those guys in

the House to keep pushing hard politically and to get a new special counsel appointed. People forget, I mean, I was around for this stuff. People forget Ken Starr was not the first special independent counsel to investigate Clinton. There was another guy before him, and he was doing such a bad job that everyone decided he had to go, and Ken Starr was appointed instead. And I think that's what we've got to do here with the guy down in Wilmington, Delaware, Weiss. Bring in someone. I say let's bring in our version of Robert Mueller and get to the bottom of this. I think the most interesting story late in the week is, well, explained maybe by the old management book from the 70s, The Peter Principle.

You remember that one, James? The Peter Principle said that. Right. That was the big hot book in the 70s for management circles. The Peter Principle was, and help me if I get this badly wrong, that everyone sooner or later rises to their level of incompetence. That certainly explains Kamala Harris. But it also explains Biden, who for some reason had apparently an anonymous email account by which he participated in his son's scheming. And his chosen alias was Peters.? Might have been. Yeah, I forget the first name, but I just thought that was. It's Dick Peters is what he's going. I thought you guys did a curse in Minnesota.

Come on. You guys are so nice. I've said nothing that would violate FCC standards. Go on. Though that was all I was going to say. I don't know yet what the content of those emails are, but it sounds like that is next avenue of uh probably very damaging revelations of what was going on you know and we all know what that's about don't we i mean the idea that hillary clinton was running the secret little email thing out of her server in the closet and it was only doing so is to keep yoga appointments and wedding details uh private

everybody with a brain knows that that was set up to avoid freedom of information requests, right? To keep the things out of the archives, right? To maybe say, okay, a little money to the Clinton Foundation, we'll see what we can do about this bill that your ambassador says he would like to maybe see down the road. I mean, the idea that that doesn't happen or didn't happen is absurd. If you can make the argument that it probably didn't because the Clintons were so Simon Pure and built of such stern ethical timber that they would never do something, but let's just say it's within the realm of possibility. Just like it's within the realm of possibility that Joe Biden or somebody set up for him an alternate email account where he could keep things sub rosa. It's within the realm of possibility so i'm waiting for

that one to come out because when you lay that at people's feet and say well the president here's the special email account he has people eventually if they're on the the biden side or not the biden side so much as just on the left or liberal don't care they don't care they don't care because the basic end result of these guys their guys being in power are the good things and the good things are unlimited abortion welfare state um um moving towards green energy and all the rest of it diversity don't forget diversity and diversity too which they'll add it on to an elite power elite well not no easy here but you're both wrong it's yes diversity but diversity in by the most superficial aspects

of eye shape and and skin color not a not of character ideology or anything like that and a rule by elites is not but rule by elites in their mind it is a a careful steering and a a wise manipulation society by the people who know best. And you would think that that concept had been abraded significantly in the last three years when it's evident that we haven't been. And the old notions, I mean, I mentioned this before, sci-fi movies in the 50s when they find the giant ant in the desert or the huge cricket climbing up the skyscraper. Somebody affones the authorities. it was not mothra no i'm talking about a movie with peter graves called the end i think the beginning of the end is what i'm talking about not mothra not that japanese ridiculous stuff with men in suits throwing each other around in a tojo studio

no um they would call the authorities and the authorities would would as a as one respond into action garages would open and out would stream the men on the, and the authorities would, as one, respond into action. Garages would open, and out would stream the men on the motorcycles, and the army would come with their jeeps and the rest of it, and the police would fan out, and there would be cars that would go through the neighborhoods and tell everybody to leave for the hills, and everybody would leave for the hills. It was all very orderly, because the authorities were in charge. And there was a basic trust that there is some of that still.

We go back to the movies that we saw even ten years ago, and you will find in your basic action film that to consult the military will inevitably end in some ramrod guy with a buzz cut, a straight neck, and the rest of it, who is all business, probably chomping a cigar like Jack the Ripper, and has it together. Now we come to realize that more likely the higher you go up, the more you're going to find somebody who's been in the military bureaucracy all their days and is more interested in producing a DEI thing or a trans-friendly dance act that they're going to use for recruitment. All of the authorities and elites that we believed in, grudgingly or enthusiastically, turns out to have been a misplace of our trust. So while they still believe in the idea of that, though, they still believe in the same old things-to-come 1930s H.G. Wells idea of a white-robed technocracy that can use science, which they believe in, to solve all of our ills. And the rest of us are more content to devolve things down to the lowest possible

political atomic level whatsoever, which is why we'll probably go out with this. The country is now split firmly into two camps. Those who like the guy with the ginger beard singing that song and those who don't. Those who don't, don't like it because whatever, it's inauthentic, it's ridiculous, it's crying, it's weeping. Or as one guy, I think a national review said that he should be more grateful and the people on the right like it because it is an authentic statement of outrage and lament and from an unheard unsung unheralded minority that's where i will take it to lucretia first james really quickly on that the the problem that I have with the positive way you spin that is that the difference now, maybe, between now the authorities and the authorities in the past,

is that we used to believe that those authorities had to be subject to the same laws, rules, and regulations as the rest of us. And what we see now, and we saw very clearly, of course, in things like COVID and so on, is that they're not. There's one set of rules for them and a different set of rules for us, and they lord it over us. And I think that Mr. Gingerbeard really tapped into the resentment about that more than anything else. The money that, it's it's not that um things are so tough and we should or they're not that tough when we should be grateful it's that why do you get to do this and tell us we can't you can't go to the grocery store but we can go to the french laundry with our masks off john noted expert on appalachian folk music what say you? I got to say that I probably don't like Appalachia or folk music,

so it's probably not good for me to be associated with that. But this is the thing I think conservatives have a hard time with is your basic question, James. And me and Lucretia, I think we often disagree about this on our Three Whiskey Happy Hour podcast coming soon to a station near you. Like this one. How should conservatives, I mean, we're like the Borg, we're taking over their resistance as she taught. How should conservatives think about institutions? Because, yes, we have a lot of problem with the way institutions have been run these many years. Universities are only the beginning of the problem. You're talking about law enforcement now, corporations, Hollywood, media, and so on.

Military. Yeah, military. But on the other hand, institutions are what maintain social stability and order and are really what's preventing us from Hobbes' war of all against all. And so I do accept your diagnoses of the problems with institutions. What worries me when I hear conservatives, I'm here right now teaching in Newport Beach for the Claremont Institute, and we're studying a lot of what is going on in the conservative movement these days and there's a strong wing of people who want to burn everything down and i i don't really disturbs me because what's you burn everything down and you destroy all the institutions because yes many of them have been taken over by this sort of liberal blob but what are you going to replace it with i mean what what's going to work that's what really

works. I don't really hear good explanations for that from our friends on the right, which is, what are you going to do when you burn all the institutions down? I mean, it could very well get much worse than it is now. Some cases you build parallel institutions. I think with colleges, as they're showing in Florida, you can come up with an alternative model and see how that works uh with movies everybody points to you know the big hit this year and say it's proof that we can do this on our own etc no not barbie and oppenheimer the child the sex trafficking movie um and yeah there's always going to be those those one-offs those indie films that do great but i would rather inhabit and occupy and change the institutions that exist now because you have a certain i mean yes it's hard to do because they're

immovable they're like it's not like just turning the titanic around it's like the titanic the oceanic and the britannic all all riveted together and try to get them to do you know 180 turn while they're going 40 here's here's where here's where i think Lucretia, me and Steve disagree. I think Lucretia would like to end the FBI. I think Steve would like to have the FBI move to Wichita, Kansas. I think he'd just change a few people and policies, but you keep the FBI pretty much the way it is now because if he got rid of the FBI, then we're really screwed. I think like, who's going to protect us from terrorists and drug dealers and, you know, organized crime cartels, despite all its faults, despite the mistakes it made getting

into politics and conducting this investigation into Trump from the headquarters? Still, the FBI is mostly very good, patriotic people, and we do need it. I agree to move to Wichita. That would be fantastic. And I think the way you do that is that you have a general declaration of aesthetic atrocities at the Hague, and you have the world court decide that the FBI building in Washington, D.C. is the greatest affront to civic architecture ever built in the 20th century, and then you tear it down. But you don't necessarily give them a new place in town yet, even though there's a lot of office space not being used in D.C., you just say, in Wichita, we got a really nice new place here. So why don't you just hang out here until we build your new building? And then you just don't build a new one. That's what I would do.

If I can sum it all up, more sacrificial children, boomers should have beat their young, and we should detonate large structures in D.C. and not tell anybody about it. And it's that kind of a reasonable thing that makes me the host that I am. I'm going to leave now. You mentioned it's the Three Whiskey Podcast, which indeed it is. And if you're that sort of person that kind of likes that idea, that's why Z Bionics is here for you. I should tell you, maybe, that there are some meetups coming, too, as well.

But you know what? That's a Rob Long thing. And when Rob comes back, he can do that. You can go to Ricochet.com anyway and take a look at the list and the side panel and see where we hook up. And by hookup, I mean meetup. I don't mean that other stuff. Maybe I do. I don't know. It's been a while since I've been to one. And so go to Ricochet, if you would, and check it out. If you've never been there, this is the first time you're stumbling upon us and you say, wow, I love these guys. That means I have 654 podcasts to go back and listen to. Yes, you do. But you can also sign up at Ricochet to get this stuff piped

directly to you and also for the member feed, which yes, yes, it costs a little bit of money, a little bit, but that's how we keep it interesting. We've got skin in the game, as Rob said, which means it's just not a bunch of anonymous randos shouting at each other in a discus thread. Plus, Ricochet 5.0 is coming, and you're not going to appreciate 5.0 unless you get used to 4.0. I mentioned ZBiotics. You'll want some, and you'll get it. And I mentioned Shopify, and you'll want that for your business. And you will get it by going to Shopify.com, ZBiotics.com.

Use the promo code Ricochet and you support them and you support us. Take a minute to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts if you wouldn't mind. It's the last time I'm ever going to say this. I've said it 621 times before. And if you haven't gotten to the point, I don't know what I got to do. But there it is. In any case, it's been great, guys. It's been lots of fun having you.

And we traveled a lot and learned a lot and uh this is a great great advertisement for the three whiskey podcasts which can be found where ricochet.com starting when tomorrow morning there you go enjoy have a great weekend guys and i'll be gone next week pulling a peter and rob because i'm going to be at the state fair and we can we do this again can we just get rid of the three of you and just take over completely it's gonna be back steve and lucretia will be back next week only john when you learn how to do those segues and i'll just leave it at that there we have it i fade away as the parasitical organism now completely inhabits the host and flat makes it flash on and off great okay i'm gone i'm gone i'm out of here thanks james talk to you later thanks james thank you

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