The Ricochet Podcast - Adios, America!

Episode Date: June 4, 2015

It’s always must hear podcasting when our good friend Ann Coulter stops by and this episode is no exception. Ann’s new book Adios America: The Left’s Plan To Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole is as provocative as the title suggests, and the conversation does not disappoint, including but not limited to her choice for 2016 (hint: Doc Brown needs to start warming up the DeLorean). Also... Source

Yeah, when those immigrants get deported, there'll be a lot more elbow room for regular Joes like you and me, Apu. Ah, Mr. Simpson, it may astonish you to learn that I am an immigrant. You! I don't believe it. Hello, everyone. I'm not gonna get... I don't know what's gonna 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 Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lannix, and our guest today, well put some nitroglycerin in the paint shaker and stand back, it's Ann Coulter. Adios, America, let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. And welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number 262.

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of which this is the flagship podcast, which has on it proudly the founders, the men who made it all possible. Ooh, men. Was that? Ooh, that was a gender-specific term that's going to alienate a lot of people. The individuals, the persons. Right, I know, all those patriarchal heteronormative assumptions that I made. You know what?

I love when people use the word cis because it's a perfect reason to ignore them for the rest of the conversation. We'll get to that in just a second. In the meantime, Rob Long, who is here – no, he's not. He's in Balmer, I believe – is going to tell you why you ought to crack open your wallet with the jaws of life and let those little cartoon flies come out of it to indicate that it hasn't been used very often and part with some shekels, which will get you, Rob, what?

Well, look, if you are listening to this podcast and you are a member of Ricochet, we are pleased to have you along for the ride with us. We need 10,000 members of Ricochet. We have, short of that, we have about a million two downloads a month across all of our podcasts.

So, about a million two listeners, slightly less than that, people listen to Double or Trouble, or just say 500,000 listeners, and all we need is 10,000 members of Ricochet. Being a member of Ricochet isn't for everybody. I'm sure there are people listening who are like, I never want to join. Here's what you get. You get to participate, start, contribute to the biggest, widest, and we're going to start having more and more of them in hot spots around the country. And by I say hot spots, I mean important primary states.

We feel like this is a great time for Ricochet to flex its muscle a little bit and maybe start to shape not the outcome of the conversation, right? I mean we all come from different points of view from the center, right? I mean, we all come from different points of view from the center, right? But to shape the rules of engagement, I think everybody on our side watches what the people in the news do to our candidates. They find the stupidest, most out of context thing, or sometimes an outright lie, and then they burn up their time demanding that a candidate answer this or that. They did it to Ted Cruz last week. They did it to Scott Walker two weeks ago. They do it to our guys all the time.

Ricochet is taking a stand against that. We want you to join with us. We want you to become a member. Three levels, Coolidge, Thatcher, and of course the highest level. There can be no higher level, the Reagan level. They all have their own goodies. Come to Ricochet.com. Check out the site. Just do it for own goodies. Come to Ricochet.com. Check out the site.

Just do it for a month. A month's free. If you like it, we know that you will. We're like the drug pusher on the corner. The first one's free. We'll know.

We know we'll get you. So come to Ricochet.com. Join us. Join the conversation. You know, here's a point to be made based on what Rob said. Peter,

I'm going to throw this to you. There's been this dispute on the right side between Charles C.W. Cook and Ace over at Ace of Spades as to whether or not refusing to let – to hold the left up to the rhetorical and inquisitive standards that they hold up to the right is somehow unilaterally disarming. In other words, shouldn't Bernie Sanders be asked not only about his 1972 all-women-want-to-be-raped essay, but shouldn't every single democratic candidate be asked where they stand on the rape issue in order to, to humiliate them as much as their side does to us. Peter, throw that to you. The answer is of course they should,

but they never ever will be. This is the, this is the fine line we have to walk. Rob, actually I'll throw it over to Rob in a moment because I'm sure he's seething right now. Rob gets furious with us when we – against the inequality, the inequities that the mainstream media – that almost all the media imposes on us. Because if I understand Rob's position correctly, but this is certainly my position. You have to remind yourself of the injustice of it. You have to do what you can.

But what we can do about it isn't much. Join Ricochet. Talk back to the extent that you can. But we have to be very careful to conserve our energies and do what we can where we can. And simply, you know, I've been in this for a long time now. So I can tell you that if you think the press is monolithically anti-conservative or anti-Republican today, believe me, working in the Reagan White House during the 1980s, before Rush Limbaugh, before Fox News, wow, talk about monolithic opposition. Then it really was monolithic.

Rob? No, I agree with you. I think my issue with it is just that I sometimes feel that our side, you know, throws up their hands and says, well, why bother? Because if we fall into nihilistic arguments, you know, where we get really mad about stuff and all we are is mad about stuff. And I feel like that's a problem. You won. Reagan won some major, major victories. You can win without the gatekeepers. I mean we'll have Anne on in a moment. I love Anne, but Anne must be the only person who's the most loyal MSNBC watcher in the world. And I don't know why she does it. I don't think it can't be good for her blood pressure, but she does it anyway. So I just feel like our – I mean I fight on my side. For me, I fight against myself all the time, this urge to sort of look for external reasons why.

This is what people do. Reasons I can't change for why I'm failing, right? That's what – when people lose money in the financial markets, they always ask themselves two questions. Did I lose it or was it stolen? And they always want it to be stolen because it was stolen. That's why it wasn't my fault. So when we lose an election on our side or we lose the debate, we say, okay, well, maybe we were just stolen from us. You know, that's why people say, I think we've got to take our country back like our country was stolen from us. Well, it wasn't stolen from us. We lost it fair and square.

And so I kind of try to, I want to redirect my own head so that I'm not thinking all the time about, you know, all the forces arrayed against me that I can't change and instead look at the things that I can, because that's the stuff I can actually do something about. That said, it is to me ridiculous. And now becoming kind of a parlor sport to identify all the double and triple and quadruple standards that are in the media. And I think, and I'll say this, I think I'm wrong about not flagging it every time it happens. As long as we do so without whining and moaning, but if we do so like Charlie Cook does in sort of good humor as a happy warrior, I think there are reporters out there now who are really not on our side but are starting to see the problem.

And it's starting to see it in, I think, amazing ways. I think Jake Tapper's won at CNN. I think there are reporters now who are starting to see just how distorted the press reporting is, and I think it's going to help us. I thought entering this cycle, it was going to be all Hillary Clinton all the time, drum beats for Hillary, and I have a, it was going to be all Hillary Clinton all the time. Drum beats for Hillary. And I have a feeling she's going to get some pretty bad press, which I would not have predicted a year ago.

By the way, it is important. I agree with Rob. Of course, I agree with Rob. We co-founded this thing. I've agreed with him for years. But not on big things. No, no, no. Not on big.

You rhino squish. But one point worth making. No, no, no. Not on big – you rhino squish. But one point worth making. I agree entirely. No whining. No whining. And we do what we – but it is important to point this out. I give you one example.

It's a dated example because this is the last time I went to the trouble of actually looking up the statistics. The press does do our side damage. It does steal from us sometimes, sometimes demonstrably so. This goes way back, but it's still an important example. The debate between George H.W. Bush and Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, when they were both vice presidential candidates, The polls immediately after the debate ended showed that Bush had won hands down by an unambiguous margin, something like 10 points. And they remained for several hours afterwards, all the polls indicated that Bush had won the debate. But what happened was that the television networks took that one snippet where Geraldine Ferraro barked at George Bush and said, don't patronize me, Mr. Vice President. And because this was the glorious emergence of the women into, they played that one clip

over and over and over. And about 36 hours later, the polls had flipped and they started saying that George Bush had lost the debate and people were not responding to the debate itself. They were responding to the press coverage, to replete, to plucking out one segment that made him look bad and playing ad infinitum for 36 hours. That's true. And not, and not just that, but by defining the parameters of the debate. I mean, this last week we learned something, which I think was no surprise. Before we, before we, like, don't forget Reagan Bush carried,

I think 56 States that states that they carried. So, um, yes, yes, no, my, my old,

this was always the, we used to say in the, in the speech writing shop, if the press, if the press had total influence over the American public, we'd all be communists by now. But they do have influence. It's very hard to pin – I only mentioned that one example because there you could actually see it. Okay.

Well, I'll say this. The three men on the podcast who are cisgendered males over 50 or getting extremely close to being over 50. Remember that. I remember that moment really well in that debate because of the weird lame response that Geraldine Ferraro had that people

played that clip over as it was triumphant, but her actual response was, I believe his rejoinder to her was, let me help you, Mrs. Ferraro, with the difference between the hostages in Iran and Grenada. Yes. And her response was, I don't need you to help me with foreign policy, Mr. Vice President. I was – I've been on the House – it wasn't the House Foreign Relations relations committee but it was some strange subcommittee house foreign relations subcommittee for east asian trade affairs for over three terms or some

really small thing it's like she might as well said like i have my foreign affairs merit badge from the girls you know it was completely ridiculous but somehow they managed to sort of get the colors right and the anger right so i I thought that was, I don't know. So let me ask you, Peter, because we're not face-to-face here. And it's 11 a.m. here on the East Coast. And it's 8 a.m. there on the West Coast. Are you, I mean, are you, did you hear the Perry news? No.

So Rick Perry's in. Oh, he is. Well, I don't know. I don't think he's made an official announcement, but I think he's all, but I mean, I think today it's happening. Right. Are you, are you ready to toss your hat in the ring for Perry? No, I'm not ready to toss my hat in the ring for Perry.

I doubt that that man will win the Republican nomination. However, if he were a stock, I would buy him. I believe Rick Perry is very undervalued and I believe he has a chance. I base this on three things, one of which is a couple of personal encounters with him. We've interviewed him here on Ricochet and I interviewed him down in Texas face to face for an hour and spent about an hour with him off camera. Rick Perry is not the man who put in one bad performance after another in the presidential debates last time around. He's explained, and now I believe it because I've spent some time with him myself, that

he had had back surgery and in every single debate he had to make a choice between being medicated or being in pain. And those are not choices you want to have to make when you're standing next to Mitt Romney trying to argue him into proper place. So Rick Perry is smart and funny. He is thoroughly conservative, item one. Item two, Rick Perry is – he reminds me of Ronald Reagan in the following sense. He likes the process.

He likes people. At the debates, the first presidential debate last time around was held at Dartmouth College. I was not present. But there is a picture of Rick Perry surrounded by the brothers of Beta Fraternity on the wall of Beta. Why is that? Because after the debate, when all the other candidates went back to their hotel rooms and huddled with their advisors to do a postmortem on the debate, Rick Perry strolled around campus saying to the kids, what's happening? What's interesting? Exactly. Exactly. You see that over and over. He just likes people. He's genuine.

And then the final point is Rick Perry is – he is a thorough conservative. He is genuinely conservative. He's a severe conservative, is Mitt Romney. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, don't you – isn't it sort of interesting? I mean if you – if we throw Kasich in because Kasich is – if he's not running, he's making a big mistake. You've got a very, very, very, very successful popular sitting governor of Texas. Very, very popular sitting governor. Former governor of Texas, you mean. Former governor of Texas, right. But recently former, yes.

Very, very successful, although controversial, but ultimately very successful governor for Wisconsin in Scott Walker. Right. You've got a very successful, not as um as perry or casick but a popular governor of louisiana bobby jindal right um that's that's that's a very strong field i i would be interested to see what those four guys have to say about the problems we have and by the way you just proved my point about george pataki yeah well yeah i i didn't even... My point about George Pataki is nobody, when they heard that he'd announced, everybody turned to each other and said,

oh, he's still alive? Yeah. I have a very good George Pataki story. One of my friends and a writing partner from Yale for years was sitting, this is 80, no, 2008, no, 2007, he was sitting at the Yale Club, and he had a familiar voice at the chairs behind him, and it was George Pataki sitting with someone.

And Pataki was going through a list of Republican candidates. Yeah, McCain will probably run. McCain's going to go nowhere. This guy, Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney's a loser. Went through all these things. When you get down to it, it's got to be Pataki. It's got to be me.

The country wants me. Wait, I hear some laughter. Hi, Rob. Anne, how are you? Fine, thank you. Sorry, I forgot my Skype password, so I'm on the telephone. Anne, can I have a hug?

Yes. Yeah, that's likely. Okay, should we do it? Let's do a proper introduction, James. Should we do a proper introduction? Sure. I was hoping to do so before. I think that was about eight anecdotes back.

But pre-Pataki, somebody had mentioned something about being controversial and popular, which brings Ann Coulter to mind. And, of course, we don't have to tell you all the books that she's written. You probably have them or you should go buy them. We don't have to give you her vitae, which consists mostly of excoriating Rob for being such a rhino squish, but also for just coming up with one Cracker Jack book after the other. The latest, of course, is Adios, America. The left's plan to turn our country into a third world hellhole. And, Anne, the first question I have to ask you is this. This last week we learned something. I think the nation learned something that was only known to a few people in the publishing industries in the coast.

And that is Annie Leibovitz is a hell of a photographer. Yeah, I know. I'd love to have her take my picture. So how does this all fit then? The left's plan not only includes turning the country into a third-world hellhole, but also readjusting our various notions of gender and acceptability and so forth and what we're required to accept unless we want to be branded a hater or a phobic or something like that. As far as your book goes, you're immigrant-phobic, aren't you? You're other-hater, aren't you?

I mean, defend yourself, Ann Colton, from these charges. No, I'm an American lover, and the Bruce Jenner story, like the Dugan story, or whatever their names are, and the ISIS story, are all just ways for the media to distract us from immigration. They really just don't want Americans even thinking about it, because whenever they think about it, oh boy, they don't like it. They don't like it at all. Immigration has changed quite dramatically and intentionally by design with Teddy Kennedy's 1965 Immigration Act. So, I mean, apart from the blatant falsehood of the idea that America is a

nation of immigrants, for people to think about, you know, their grandfathers arriving at Ellis Island, no, pre-1970 immigrants were a whole order of business different from post-1970, post-Teddy Kennedy Act immigrants. Earlier immigrants were more educated, bought more houses, made more income. And oh, by the way, 30% of them used to go home. Post-1970, and also slash post-welfare state,, no one goes home. They go on welfare. They're far poorer, far less educated, shockingly less educated, with the majority certainly of illegal immigrants and 30% of legal immigrants without even a high school diploma, which means they'll be getting back about $35,000 a year more than they pay in their little sales taxes every year

in taxes, in money from the U.S. taxpayer. What country would do that? It's utter madness to have anyone come in who instantly is going on government assistance, not to mention instantly committing crimes. And that's why we have to be constantly distracted by the media, no think about anything else, talk about anything else. And all these big mass immigration advocates who love to go on TV and retail lies about what a boon it is to America

to drop 30 million poverty-stricken, welfare-receiving immigrants on the country. Boy, none of them will come out to debate me now. They really just don't want to think about immigration at all. They don't want Americans to know what's happening. So, Anne, can I ask you, I got one question, and I know Peter wants to jump in. When people talk about immigration, I mean, on our side, or your side, of course, because as you know, I'm just a total rhino squish, but they say... I meant to include you in my subtitle. That's what makes him so huggable. When they say, well, you know, this is part of the plan. This is part of the plan

to create this enduring voter legacy, this enduring voter block for the Democrats. And then everyone else kind of rolls their eyes and says, oh, come on, really? Is this a plan? This is a plan? Give me a break. In your book, you show, by their own words, that this was a plan. Yes. Yes, thank you.

Yeah, it's not a crazy conspiracy theory. Now, they're a little more open about it now that it's almost complete. They used to at least have to bite their tongues. But that Roy Teixeira, I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name correctly. Incentively, that's what took so long with the audio book, which will probably come out later this week. I taped it myself. And, you know, I have the whole book memorized. I was just flying through it. The sound engineer had to go in and add pauses, except when we got the comical foreign

name. So I think at the end, we're going to include the outtakes of me trying to say these insane names. But anyway, the big Democratic consultant, Roy Teixeira, I think that's roughly the ballpark of how you say his name. He recently said about Obama's re-election in 2014. He calls it George McGovern's revenge. And ha, ha, ha, the post-1970 immigrants, they're voting 8-2 for the Democrats, and this is what elected Obama. And he's absolutely right. With the demographics of this country, as they were even in 1980, just 10 years into the plan to transform the country, Romney would have won a bigger landslide against Barack Obama in 2012 than Reagan did against Carter in 1980.

And Peter here, is this book a lament or a call to action? Is it to – it sounds as though it's too late. Oh, it's a call to action. Go ahead. No, a lot of my friends think that. I wouldn't have bothered writing it if I really thought it were too late. I don't. I think we're getting pretty close to too late,

which is why... I mean, one thing people want to be... Classic trite cliches about me and anyone else, or writers anyway, that people don't like is, oh, you're just doing this to make money to sell books. I promise you if you wanted to sell books, you wouldn't write about a topic that the media has completely blacklisted from discussion. And spend your entire life attacking the media and then wanting them to put you on for your book tour. I will get no mainstream media attention for this, none whatsoever,

and I'm having a little trouble getting it from the, quote, conservative press, but I don't care. This is completely a call to action. I just want people to read this book. I don't think it's too late, but drastic action does need to be taken. When I started writing, well, I wasn't planning on writing this book. It was when I started looking for basic facts about immigration, like, hmm, how many foreign

born are in prison? And I saw the great lengths both the government and the media go to to hide that information. But I called my publisher and I said, I'm writing a different book now. This is unbelievable how all this information is hidden and disguised. But because of that, people don't really think about it. People don't realize how much the menu of items they think about are set by the media and the media culture. Everybody has a position on Bruce Jenner or gay marriage or the Iraq War or even abortion. This is on today's discussion topics. or gay marriage or the Iraq War or even abortion.

This is on today's discussion topics, and if it isn't mentioned by the press, nobody ever hears about it. But when I started writing the book, the immigration part, I thought, you know, we just need to go back to the pre-'70s rules on this. We're trying to get immigrants who are better than us rather than worse than us, as any sane immigration policy would do. But having written the book, there are so many, I mean, we're up such an, against an enormous bureaucracy of people who hate America. I mean, that's what needs to be said about the pro-mass immigration groups. They have the La Raza, the ACLU, the George Soros type. Half their time,

they're talking about what a horrible, racist, sexist, war on women, imperialistic, greedy, capitalist country America is, and then they're trying to drag these poor third-worlders here. This is just another way for them to attack America. Instead of fighting with the Tupac Amaru in Peru, they're hating America from right here, bringing in peasant, primitive, violent terrorist cultures. And when you see the list of the groups doing this, and they're the ones who become the immigration judges, to shut down the entire immigration bureaucracy, and then, of course, a wall and an end to anger babies. Okay, so the Ann Coulter plan does not involve – what was Mitt Romney's crazy phrase? Self-deportation. It is not a crazy phrase. Oh, that's right.

And Mitt Romney won, didn't he? Just as Ann Coulter predicted he would. Well, he did better than Lincoln did. I think that's pretty good. You will notice it's been almost two years since he lost. And not once have I sent you an email saying I told you so. But that's another matter. So, no, but serious question.

However many illegals in the country, and you make the very good point that nobody actually knows, and most of the figures quoted are probably too low. Fifteen million is probably too low, says Anne. And as far as I can tell, you're absolutely right about that. You do or do not call for deporting them, getting them out of the country. Rounding them up. Well, my main point is, two points. First, that self-support business, the idea that that is an ugly phrase, that is the compassionate answer. We will enforce, e-verify to protect the jobs of Americans. When the jobs dry up, illegal aliens will go home the same way they came.

Now, that takes a lot more words. Self-support may be a little wonky, but from the hysteria over that phrase, I am convinced the left could turn the phrase apple pie into some horrible gasp, because every night on MSNBC, they'd be sneering and saying, did you hear him say apple pie? And then the whole panel would laugh and giggle. And a year later, Peter would be saying to me, well, that crazy phrase, apple pie. There is nothing offensive about self-deport. That is the compassionate solution, point one.

Point two, I think the whole what do we do with the illegals here, it's exactly like the demand that pro-lifers spend all of their time talking about what to do about rape in the case of, or rather abortion in the case of rape and incest. No, it is tendentious to even discuss what to do with the illegals already here until we can stop the new ones from coming. And that is to say a fence, just like Israel's fence, which instantly worked. It went up in 2013. You know how many illegal immigrants came in after that? Zero. Zero. Something that was boasted about in the New York Times,

the same New York Times that tells us that fences don't work. We need a fence on the border. We need to end the insanity of anchor baby policies. But as for going forward, I mean, it's legal. That's illegal immigration. It's legal immigration that is just amnesty on the installment plan. And I think we are getting pretty close to the tipping point. Self-deport. I prefer onanistic relocation, which people won't figure out what it means,

so they won't have their antenna go up. You were talking a little while ago about this. Yeah, this crowd does, and we don't like that. You're talking about the hatred of America that you find in La Raza and the rest of them. And, of course, your book is called Adios America. But when you look at the progressive prospects in Europe, what they did was to import people antithetical to Western culture because they themselves as good progressives, transnational progressives, hated Western culture. And they did so because they were bold-line Marxists and because World War I was bad and the continent had suffered nationalism and all of that stuff that we don't share. What is it about American progressives that makes them despise the American experiment

so much that they believe it has to be, in the president's words, fundamentally changed? What's the root of their rage? Well, you would need a team of psychologists to figure that out, but I think that's more explained in my book, Demonic, that goes back to the French Revolution. There's just always been this love on the left for the noble savage and anarchy. I mean, I suspect part of it is they figured, okay, the country will be Zimbabwe, but we get to be Mugabe. But no, they could be the ones eaten by Mugabe, as usually happens in these communist revolutions. But one part of the communist revolution, it's always my favorite part, when they start killing the people with glasses.

Yeah. Well, as in any sort of egalitarian experiment, it eventually ends with a tumble and a guillotine. And the problem is after many, many times you've chopped off heads, those blades get dull. And anybody who's shaved with a department store or a drugstore razor knows that after a little while that you paid way too much for this thing and you're scraping your face and you're drawing blood. Don't go French Revolution. Don't go old style. Go Harry's. And, yes, I am stepping in here to part the seas. And Anne can take a breath for a second as I remind you that Harry's.com is one of the sponsors of Ricochet.

So for good reason. They give you the best blades you can find in the world because they own that factory in Germany. They're going to have an experience that comes right to your door. Because why do you want to walk down the street and pay too much money when you can pay less and have it come right to your door for free shipping? Now, the starter kit's $15. That includes the razor, three blades, and your choice of shave cream or foaming gel. And as an added bonus, what the heck,

$5 off your first purchase with the code RICOSHET. And after you use that, you can get an entire month's worth of shaving for $10. Ridiculous. Shipping's free, as I noticed, and satisfaction is guaranteed. Go to harrys.com now, and Harry's will give you that $5 off

if you type in the code RICOSHET. That's H-A-R-R-Y-S dot com. Start shaving smarter today. Back to Ann. So what would you do then? That better not be subtracted from my time. No, no, no. As a matter of fact, we are just happy that Ann Coulter is here to discuss Adios America.

You have unlimited time to talk about your book Adios America. I got a question. Okay, go ahead. I got a bunch of them too. Yeah, I know. We'll get into this. You're not going to talk about your book, Adios America. I got a question. Okay, go ahead. I got a bunch of them, too. Yeah, I know. We'll get into this. You're not going to— Go ahead. So you pinpoint Ted Kennedy's 1965 Immigration Act. Would you be—what if I said to you, okay, well, in the contemporary politics of today, what we could achieve, one of the things I would say if I was on the stump, a presidential candidate on the stump, and someone said, well, you know, you're anti-immigrant.

And I'd say, no, I love immigration. And in fact, I think we should go back to the immigration laws we had in 1955. Yes. Right? I like that. Oh, please start advising Republican candidates, Rob. I mean, do you think that would fit along your principles? So, okay, first of all, we secure the borders,

and then we pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill that is exactly what the immigration laws were in the United States of America in 1955. Yes, after my 10-year moratorium. Because the difference is this isn't 1955 America. I mean, part of the sneaky trick is simultaneously with changing our immigration law in order to make it much easier for the third world to immigrate here and to make it extremely difficult for the first world to come here. We also, of course, got all the great society programs, which is why, I mean, among the enormous differences

in the pre-1970 and post-1970 immigrants is pre-1970, about 30% of immigrants went home. And this was after being checked out at Ellis Island and having the idiots and the ones with a fever go home and the ones who had survived vomiting all their way across the ocean. It wasn't just within walking distance. But even among those, if they couldn't make it in this country, they'd go home, and an awful lot did. So we do have to acknowledge that it's a different country when you have a welfare state.

Oh, so, and a lot of them went home. I'm thinking in particular of the, this is Peter now, and thinking in particular of the Italians. As I understand understand it was more than 30% among Italians. Something like 50% or even a little bit more eventually went home, and some of those went home after making it in this country. They made a bundle and returned to Italy where it was cheaper to live. Their American money would go much farther. Question, so what about a workers' program? What about Ronald Reagan was always very fond of the old Bracero's program here in California? What about that, Anne?

No, no, no, no, no, no. Number one, I wouldn't be citing Ronald Reagan on immigration. I mean, he's the one who gave us the amnesty that wrecked the country, point one. Okay, he won the Cold War. That's in the pro column. But, you know, these Johnny-come-latelys to Reagan worship seem to think that he was Jesus Christ and could do no wrong. No, this was the one thing that was this and Sandra Day O'Connor. Sandra Day O'Connor. Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy. I'll give you both of those, Ann. But,

remember, the Immigration Act that he signed contained two pieces. One was an amnesty. Ann, be very careful here. They always have two pieces. They always have two pieces. It's always, we'll cut spending if you just give us three. But it wasn't Donald Reagan

who failed to enforce the second piece. But he didn't get it! What do you just give us... But it wasn't Donald Reagan who failed to enforce the second... But he didn't get it! What do you mean he didn't get it? He didn't get the border security! So, yeah, he also agreed, and by the way, he agreed to the deal I just described, too. Okay, we'll raise taxes if you cut spending. He was double-crossed on that, he was double-crossed on amnesty. He left office two years later. Okay, but I grant

your point. There are a lot of people here who shouldn't be. Not according to his diary. He said it was that he was double-crossed by Congress and he said it was the biggest mistake he made. Now I'm talking about their claim that they'd cut the federal budget in exchange for him raising taxes, but the same thing happened with, oh yes, we'll

secure that border and we'll have the big thing were employer sanctions back then. Well, the employer sanctions never came. Moreover, of course, Chuck Schumer was involved in the last amnesty. And I mean, look, we've tried this one before. We know we're going to be double-crossed. And I can tell you how the double-cross is going to happen. There will be no border.

So tell me what this I mean, I will defend Ronald Reagan to my dying day, but precisely for that reason, it's boring. I move beyond that. The bill that he signed had overwhelming bipartisan, bipartisan support and it was a product the drafting was a product of

a bipartisan commission that Jimmy Carter, of all people, put in place. It was headed by Theodore Hesburgh. So the whole thing was bipartisan, seemed very calm, very sane. Ronald Reagan signed it, and you are exactly correct. The employer sanctions were never enforced. Question, when you have bipartisan support for an action that will decrease or limit or regulate immigration, why do we find ourselves double-crossed? Why does the federal government refuse to enforce it? What are the politics? What are the dynamics? Because, well, we know the Democrat policy, they're changing

the voters and suddenly they're winning elections they never could have won before. So, ha, ha, ha, you're dying off old white America. That's the Democrat position. The Republican position is, let's see, they're looking at their watch. They figure, yeah, the electoral consequences won't be felt for, oh, another five or ten years. I'll be retired by then, and I can collect all this big donor money because the Chamber of Commerce wants lots of cheap labor, and all my friends have maids and nannies. So that's the end of America, but I'll be dead or retired and I'll have made my pile. It's incredibly cynical, selfish, and terrifying. And I think it's

magnified by the fact, I mean, any congressman or senator can get some job lobbying afterwards. It's not really so much the lifeline for them, but it is the lifeline for their staffers. Their staffers need to make their pile when they leave office. And you just see this weird echo chamber among rich people, politicians. Yes, and I specifically care about conservatives and Republicans because I know Democrats and liberals want to wreck the country. I think a lot of, I think most, probably, Republicans

and conservatives don't, but they're being hoodwinked and fooled by the echo chamber. You know what it reminded me of? It just occurred to me earlier today, because I'm in New York City and, you know, I know a lot of the New York Republicans and everything that that entails. And this is just the damnedest thing.

For 20, what is it, like 30 years now, every lovely Upper East Side Republican woman, it's like Night of the Living Dead. You're having brunch. Everything's going well. We're all good Republicans. And at some point, you know, Linda Blair and the exorcist comes out and they start haranguing me about how Republicans have to give up their pro-life position. Oh, yes. How many years do we have to go through this? And it's the exact same thing with immigration. They all say the same thing to themselves. It's politically stupid. It is morally

horrendous. But the echo chamber, they all say, well, we have to appeal to the Hispanic vote. We have to give grand amnesty. What else are we going to do? And they all repeat it to one another. And they don't have anyone like me coming along and saying, no, you're wrong. We can't let the Hispanic vote appeal to the white. That's why my second to last chapter, I literally wrote that. I turned the book in. It's called, it was a placeholder, and then I decided, ah, what the heck, I like it.

It's called, I wrote this chapter after realizing how stupid rich people are. I turned in my book. I went to a fancy dinner party where I was the only non-billionaire, and I tried to politely harangue them throughout the dinner because they're such utter morons politically.

And, you know, for one thing, rich people, they can be very stupid because they've made a lot of money, so they think they know everything about everything, point one. And they do know more about making money than I do. But point two, you know, because they're busy making money, they're not sitting home for months at a time reading old nexus reports on, for example, Proposition 187, a huge landslide victory for Pete Wilson in the 1994 gubernatorial election for backing an initiative in California that would not allow illegal immigrants to access government benefits. Overturned by the courts, hugely popular with the people. He and the initiative got a huge percentage of the black vote, enormous percentage of the white vote, and even 30% of the Hispanic vote. ACLU overturned it, and then the news story is liberals don't want Republicans trying anything that's popular with voters,

so now that's supposed to be what killed Republicans in California. No, all the illegal aliens becoming citizens is what killed Republicans in California. But anyway, rich people don't know that, so I had to lay these things out for them. But it's really a problem that our rich people are so stupid. A test of Ann Coulter as a practical politician. First of all, you've just mentioned that your position has no chance in California. We therefore reliminate 11% of the United States of America, which is about the population of California and all of California. But that's not my position. That's anyone with an R after his name.

Okay. So we now have what, 10 as of Rick Perry, George Pataki of all people. We now have 10 declared Republican candidates and maybe 10 more, as many as 10 more quite plausibly to come. Who, and I think the answer is none, but who is taking up Ann Coulter's position? Who is your champion? These guys are professionals. Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney was Jan Brewer before Jan Brewer was Jan Brewer. When your pal Jeb Bush was pushing through driver's licenses for illegals in Florida.

Oh, and by the way, footnote, 13 of the 19 hijackers on the 9-11 attack were using Florida driver's licenses. Thank you, Jeb Bush. This is the sad thing. So when he was pushing through that. You're writing a lament. Mitt Romney was your champion, and he got buried. He did better than your guy, Ronald Reagan. Oh, I am so happy I am not in the crosshairs for once. This is fantastic.

Wait a minute. I was finishing on Romney. Yeah. Finish on Romney. Go ahead. So as Jeb Bush was pushing through driver's licenses for illegals when he was governor of Florida, Mitt Romney was striking a special deal with the federal government to allow Massachusetts state troopers to arrest illegal aliens. He vetoed a bill that would give illegals in-state tuition,

and when all the usual groups, including Teddy Kennedy and Ali Noorani, who won't debate me on this book, denounced him, Mitt Romney just invited the press to his office and showed how much it would cost Massachusetts taxpayers. And he had, since Dwight Eisenhower, the toughest position and stated in a compassionate way on immigration as any, I'd say Republican, but any presidential candidate since Vince Dwight Eisenhower. And he did better than Ronald Reagan. And pretend for a moment that I'm James Carville. So far – or no, no. Let's pretend that I'm Rudy Tejera, which is why you can't pronounce it, I think.

I think there's a – in there, like Mexico. So pretend that I'm that guy. And so far, I'm listening to Ann Coulter and I am just delighted because once, twice, and three times in a row during this interview, Ann Coulter has been asked, is it a lament? Is it too late? Or is there a practical call for action here? And Ann Coulter responds by saying, Mitt Romney! Romney was the guy! It's all wrong!

Mitt Romney is gone and buried. Keep coming, Ann. If that's the best you've got, Rudy Teixeira is just thrilled. Why does Rudy Teixeira have to say that? You're the one who's saying that. No, I'm hoping that you can say Rick Perry's got a good position. We can work with it. Rick Perry is quoted in my book saying 17 times that fences don't work.

You know why? He has a quip. Build a 14-foot fence and the business for a 15-foot ladder sure gets good. How come he never says that to Israel? Because Israel's fence is working really well. How come we don't constantly hear about how fences don't work in the case of Israel? Could Rick Perry say that to Netanyahu? You know that genius Rick Barry? And I go through each one of the candidates. All of them are pro-amnesty, pro-open borders, except finally Scott Walker has come along. And of all of the potential candidates,

Scott Walker, if you're excluding Romney, Scott Walker is the only one. I think Romney is a lot better. He was running against the Obama magic and the change demographics, though, again, did better than Reagan did. So, yeah, of course he would beat someone who isn't an incumbent and doesn't have four years to cheat with the auto bailout. And it hurt Mitt Romney a lot, having people like you, Sarah Palin, lots of talk radio hosts lying and calling him a rhino and establishment. People are busy.

Even our side needs to be told the truth, and they weren't with Mitt Romney. You had Rick Perry. Oh, your love, Rick Perry, calling Romney a vulture capitalist. A vulture capitalist? Are you kidding me? No, these losers, they are jealous of Mitt Romney because they're about the same age. They're men. They're men. They're in politics. And Mitt Romney went to Harvard and Harvard Business School and Harvard

Law School, and he has a beautiful family. There isn't a scandal within 20 miles of him. He's smarter than they are. He's better looking than they are. And you see the ugly face of envy coming out in vicious attacks from people like Gingrich and Huckabee. And I'm starting to throw Peter into that category. Well, wait a minute. He's certainly better looking and richer than I am. But I'll put my family up against his. So Scott Walker is the answer?

He's the best guy right now? That's what I'm trying to get to, Ann. Who's the best? I think you're – I'm maneuvering you into the position Oh, my gosh, it's got to be Romney. I want Scott Walker as the vice president. He needs to learn from from that. But and Mitt's not running. Well, that's not really an answer.

Who is the best candidate? He's available. He's there. But he's not. I mean, he's not going to run when he has to take on both the New York Times and Sarah Palin and the Fox News Network. Part of the point of this book is to wake people up to realize they were lied to. I mean, there's only a short chapter at the end on the candidates.

We have to say, this book is not at all about political candidates. It's about a large sweeping look at American immigration policy starting in the early 20th century to today. I mean, just to write people the book. Well, mostly it's about child rape and gang rape of our current immigrants and incest rape and how people are being lied to and what they realize that they're being lied to. And you can't just throw immigration into one of many categories. Well, there's immigration, and there's the internet tax bill. No, whatever is the most important issue to you,

whomever is listening and all of you on the phone with me right now, whatever is the most important issue to you, we lose if the voters keep changing the way they are changing. Romney would have beaten Obama. We wouldn't have to have a second term of Obama. There was a mass psychosis that seems to have gotten Obama elected in the first place. We might have had the first term. There's no way we would have had the second term. You lose everything across the board. You lose gun rights. You lose on abortion. You lose on taxes. You lose on OSHA regulations. It's over once this

country becomes Mexico. And we're about five years away from that happening. And one amnesty going through. One, I am leading over and over again. And what about these figures? You say five years from away from that's happening. But about the mexico's the the okay roughly the growing mexican middle club by the way i don't know the figures here so i'm just this is pretty loose this question but the growing middle class in mexico mexico we hear about the drug wars but in fact of course drug wars are taking place in mexico but a large story in mexico is also the rising economy. And immigration from Mexico has slowed. And what was it?

This is probably because our country, the economy was so bad. As the economy here picks up, immigration is likely to return at least to some levels. But what was it, last year or the year before, on some calculations, there was net out migration ofigration of Mexicans, more return to Mexico than came in. So you've got some huge number here. That's a problem, but relax on immigration in the future. It's likely to be much less. And Ann Coulter replies. No, that's preposterous.

That's utterly preposterous. I don't even believe the net loss. I mean, we're talking about, as an absolute conservative rock-bottom estimate, 30 million illegal aliens here, the vast majority of whom are Mexicans. More likely, it's 50 million. I mean, the 11 million figure that we've been hearing for 10 years straight is based on the census asking people, are you an illegal alien? And, or, you know, where were you born and are you legal and subtracting, whatever.

It's based on illegal aliens answering government surveys. The more legitimate information is closer to 50 million illegal aliens, and that is really harming Americans, including Mexican immigrants from a few years ago, the ones who are here legally. And this burgeoning Mexican middle class, no, Mexico is a crap hole. It just is. It's not as bad as a lot of places in the world. But much of that middle class, I mean, it's incredibly corrupt government.

Every transaction with a government official in Mexico involves a bribe, so get used to that becoming our new country. And one cost of illegal immigration that Americans are never told about is the fact that Mexican immigrants, legal and illegal in this country, send back at least $20 billion a year, which goes directly into the pocket of Carlos Slim. That's money that's just being sucked out of the American economy. That is more than we send to Mexico in direct foreign aid.

$20 billion a year. How would Mexico, with their corrupt government and bribery and peasant culture where child rape is the norm, how would they be doing if they were plopped in the middle of Africa and not situated, oh, cheek by jowl to the wealthiest country in the world, which they are sucking $20 billion out of a year, plus, you know, another $15 billion in foreign aid we pay directly? Well, Anna, let me ask you one last question. What's the bloody point then? It sounds as if we have a foregone conclusion

here. The adios happened a while ago. No? Well, Romney's not... Well, if it is done, then what we're doing right now, there's no point to this. You may as well shut down Ricochet, shut down Fox News, shut down talk radio. Ronald Reagan would look at this country and say, who are you Ricochet, shut down Fox News, shut down talk radio.

Ronald Reagan would look at this country and say, who are you guys? I don't know how to win an election here. I mean, if it's over, there's no point to anything any of us do for a living. I don't think we're at that point yet. If we are talking, and we certainly are an absolute minimum of 30 million illegal aliens, probably more like 50 million. Once that problem is dealt with, once we have a fence, which Israel is allowed to have but we're not, because Rick Perry says you can build a ladder, and once you end the insane anchor baby policy, which does not come from the Constitution, it comes from a footnote in a Justice Brennan opinion from 1982.

It was invented out of whole cloth. Everyone knows it's crazy. This crowd, and probably your listeners, know who Richard Posner is. Many don't. The most cited federal judge and certainly no friend of social conservatives, he concurred in a case a few years ago involving immigration simply to write a concurrence that demanded that Congress take action with this crazy anchor baby policy, that illegals can run across the border, and if a Border Patrol agent doesn't catch them and they drop a baby,

ha-ha, you can't get me, I'm an American citizen now, or their kid is. This isn't the purpose of the 14th Amendment. It was passed after the Civil War. It was to give free blacks the rights of citizenship. It wasn't to reward illegal aliens who drop a baby on U.S. soil. It's madness. It's crazy. Everyone knows it's crazy. Congress has to shut that down. And with an immigration moratorium, yeah, we can totally come back. And left to their own devices, conservatives way out-populate liberals. Well, in my daughter's social justice warrior theater class the other day when they had their final show, there was a young girl who was doing an anchor baby routine, a dream act person,

who was lamenting the fact that her father had been deported and sent to Mexico. And everybody in the audience is drying their eyes because this poor child is fatherless. And I'm looking around and saying, the father was deported? That actually happened? Yeah, that's a fantasy. They had to make it so for the story to work. Because emotions, that's how you get to people.

Well, when we can change the debate and change the terms so it no longer seems a simple statement of fact like illegal is hate speech, then we might be onto something. But until then, I advise everyone to read Adios, America, The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole, the latest from Ann Coulter. And I'm sure her next book will be out in about two and a half weeks. And we'll have her on for that one as well, if we're lucky.

Ann, thank you. Ann. Thank you. As always, a pleasure. It's a great book. It's a really great book. It crackles and come back often

come back often I will I want to be in the room with Peter next time so I can hit him I wanted a hug I want that too I want that so much you have no idea alright goodbye crackly bye bye goodbye idea. All right. Goodbye, Crackley.

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This man had the gall to take his own money out of the bank in a way that the government did not approve of. Yeah, it's – I actually feel like this is a real – I mean it's a really interesting test case because he's not accused of doing anything illegal. There's no victim here. At least there's a person – it was a young man, but the young man does not file any charges. It's his own money. It's called structuring, right? He structured his withdrawals and payments so that they were underneath the reporting requirements for his banks. And he did so not to conceal something that was illegal because it's not illegal to pay money to somebody.

He did so because he didn't want to have to explain why he was doing it because he was embarrassed by why he was doing it, presumably. So we're in this weird situation. It's a little bit like what happened with Martha Stewart, actually, where the crime is he lied to investigators, but he was not under oath at the time, and his actions were designed to conceal behavior that was, in fact, legal, but the actions to conceal were the ones that were illegal. It's really kind of, it's kind of disquieting. I mean, two things are disquieting.

One is this, right? But the other thing that's disquieting is how rich you can get leaving office in this country. How rich Denny Hastert got from being kind of a middle-class guy from a Chicago suburb, high school teacher and coach to congressman to Speaker of the House

and then a few years after he's Speaker of the House, he's a multimillionaire. Anyway. Correct. His salary as Speaker was, as I recall, $170,000 a year. And he is now in a position, let's see, he stepped down in 2008, as I recall, six years later. He's in a position to pay someone $3.5 million. Wow. Rob, we've been doing this. Join Ricochet. Yeah. That's, I mean, there's something, you know, it's funny because my responses to this are.

Complicated, right? Complicated, yeah. And they're probably all competing, but I think it's prosecutorial misconduct, but I don't think this is right. I think it's fair. I think it's disquieting that a guy can be that rich by basically hanging around in D.C. and selling influence. I think it's probably – there's some deep down – who knows, but it does seem like there's a moral failing deep down there. I think it's a very weird thing that you have this chain of events that led to Speaker Hastert started from a series of sex scandals that now feel like sex scandals um if you go back in history but in fact uh only two of them were truly sex scandals or or romantic entanglement scandals the um the two former speakers

livingston and gingrich um it is on it is not right to say that um the clinton scandal what we call now the lewinsky scandal was a sex scandal. That is not correct. He lied under oath to a prosecutor. It was perjury. He was not in trouble because of his relationships with women, although were he a Republican, he certainly would be. It would be disqualifying and his entire career would be – he wouldn't exist as a public global figure were he a Republican with those stories coming out. But that's a separate issue. He was on – he was impeached and on trial in the Senate for lying under oath. Lying under – this is what bugs me about him. He was lying under oath because of a lawsuit

that moved forward because of a crime bill that he signed proudly. It was Bill Clinton who loosened the requirements for filing a sexual harassment lawsuit. So he actually wrote laws that he thought were good for you and me and everybody else listening to this podcast, but when it came time to zero in on him, he suddenly threw up his hands and said, I shouldn't have to answer these questions. And he lied. That grew out of the Packwood panic. That grew out of the idea that Congress was just a bunch of grovers and the country, we're

sort of having the precursor of the rape culture idea that's going on in campuses right now. But then again, Bill Clinton signed the Iraqi regime change law. And when it came time to actually do something about it, of course, intentions matter. The actual specific individual advancing the good idea doesn't – they get a pass. Nina Burleigh famously said that she would get out her knee pads and perform a certain act on the president simply thanking him for keeping abortion legal. So he gets all of his sins absolved. That's obvious. That's just the way it works.

Obviously, this is now we could have put this conversation in a blender here. We're talking about Bill Clinton. But I'm not sure that I understand why structuring is the law. The structuring is designed to catch drug dealers and people who are hiding money from the IRS and from investigators and hiding illicit cash. This was not illicit cash. This was after-tax income. This was his money to do with that which he wished. This feels like power play. I'm not defending the guy. I'm not defending what he did. I'm not defending whatever it was,

but I don't like the idea that you can't spend your money your way. I also don't like the idea that you can't lie to a federal prosecutor or an FBI investigator when you are not under oath. I mean, for some weird reason, the libertarian part of me feels like I should be able to lie to anybody I want. And if you don't want me to lie to you, then put me under oath. And if you don't have enough to put me under oath, then go get it. Yeah. You know what?

Both sides of what makes us queasy about this, Rob, go back to how the government is too big and out of control. The reason Denny Hastert is able to get rich as a lobbyist, the reason there are so many lobbyists and they're all getting rich, is because the federal government controls what? 50%, 60% of the economy, maybe more. Direct taxation. They tax 20%, 21% out of the economy, but add the regulations, maybe more. Direct taxation, they tax 20-21% out of the economy, but add the regulations, the mandates. And if you're in business

of almost any kind in America, out here in Silicon Valley, the tech culture prides itself on not having to lobby Washington, but of course all of that is changing. Apple has representatives in Washington. Google has representatives in Washington. When you want to file an IPO, you learn that you need to go through regulation after regulation

after on and on and on it goes. And if the government is going to exert that much control over that larger proportion of ordinary economic activity in this country, then all kinds of people will quite rightly say, how do I get my case put before Congress? How do I stick up for my company? How do I defend my shareholders? And the answer is you pay a lobbyist. That's the way it works. You may not be happy about it.

I'm not happy about it, but that is the system that will naturally emerge when the federal government lays claim to over half of economic activity. Exactly. What I find so irritating is when you hear about politicians like McCain and Feingold and those people talking about campaign finance reform, their arguments are always, let's see if we can't make it easier for me to do my job, basically. They're always arguing like, well, I don't really like flying around and having to beg for money. I feel like that's beneath me. So let me rig the rules so that I don't have to do that. Right. And it all sounds like, oh, it's going to be cleaner government. But it isn't because as long as they have that amount of power and that amount of influence

over these over, you know, reams and reams and reams of federal register regulations and tax code, 8,000 pages of tax codes that are – some are written specifically for certain companies or specifically for certain regions and industries. As long as they have that power, they are never not going to be corrupt. And the idea that, well, let's pass a campaign finance bill because that will make your life easier. That way you can spend more time regulating the U.S. economy is just kind of ludicrous. And I think Anne probably – this goes back to Anne's book. A lot of it has – are these hidden regulators that we don't think about is say the secretary at the secretary's discretion can write a rule, can enforce a rule, can rewrite this, can rewrite that. It is simply a gigantic blank check written for regulation. That's a big problem. And all that's going to be is to make the lobbyists and the rule writers richer as they revolve

in and out of government and the rest of us will be suddenly wake up in the morning and realize we're being over-regulated. To return for a moment, only a moment, to the 1986 Immigration Act.

The point, we keep making the point that the federal government expands its power constantly, right? And of course, they do when they want to. But what happened in 1986, what happened following Ronald Reagan's signature on that bill in 1986, was that from that day until today, the federal government has failed to enforce the law.

What happened there was that the regulators, the bureaucracy, all the people involved in actually implementing a piece of legislation that had bipartisan support and was signed by the president of the United States, called for employer mandates, certain new controls on the borders, just were not implemented. When they don't want to enforce the law, they're quite good at doing that as well. Well, Peter, as a conservative crypto-fascist, of course, your opinion is quite predictable. Government's too big. Government's too big.

What you don't realize is that government isn't big enough and government is starved, dare I say, on the ground parched and flopping like a fish in the dock for more money. You need only look to a CNN.com money story this week which said, you know, the IRS, they just had that 100,000 patron customer break-in. Is it because they're bad at their job or because they don't have enough money? Could the IRS be broke? And sure enough, those dastardly Republicans cut jobs from the IRS in punishment for what they had done with the Lois Lerner scandal and then actually shaved a little bit of money off their budget. So they can't afford to pay the people enough to keep their databases secure. you see a couple of things. One, it said that some equipment that the IRS is using hails from the Kennedy era, which makes you think that the reason the hackers were able to get into the system is that they mailed them punch cards with Frank Sinatra's social security number and hacked it in that way.

And the other was that they're using Windows XP, which Microsoft itself discontinued support for last year and which is quite, quite vulnerable. Now, they have had, of course, a program to upgrade their computer systems, but it's, quote, severely delayed, which means that like any large institution, they're completely mired in the process of putting together the PowerPoints to describe how stakeholders will be brought on board in order to affect the change to the transition to the new system. And at the end of it, they will come up with a system that's four or five years old and who's... It's one of those circles with the arrows that keep going

around it. You've seen the PowerPoint slide. It's always like a circle. And then arrows going inputs. Reflection. Refinement of mission. It keeps going around in a circle. Am I the only one seeing that slide? Right. Exactly like that.

Yeah. Well, that's exactly... Also also remember, from a certain political perspective, the government spends money to make us better and to make us better people and to make it a better society. And we are, because if you really believe that, we are infinitely bad and infinitely flawed. And so we need – it needs to be infinite number of resources expended to improve us. It's a constant self-improvement. We're never going to be good. We're always going to be rude or bigoted in some way or the playing field won't be perfectly level in some way. So the expenditure cannot end. You're getting me into a Ted Cruz frame of mind here, Rob.

The way you and the government – I'm getting angrier and angrier and angrier. And I want a candidate who's going to go to Washington as president of the United States and smash furniture. And that's Ted Cruz. Apparently that candidate is Mitt Romney according to Ann. Oh, hold on. A serious question. Well, semi-serious at least. Is Anne genuinely proposing a draft Romney movement?

Is that what she wants to do? I no longer am in the business of predicting or interpreting what Anne wants or thinks or is going to say next. Because, first of all, whatever she's going to say. And you say that as a man she wants to hug as opposed to me whom she wants to hit. Well, I think she'd rather hit me too. But I will, whatever it is, it's, she is, here's why no one wants to debate her on the other side. Because she knows her facts. You can't, you know, she doesn't write a book every – she doesn't write that many books that often.

She spends a year just like basically reading. Right. And she absorbs everything and she can – she just nails you on the facts. So she's a terrifying debate opponent. And that's why they won't have her on because she'll win. So they'd rather just caricature her, right? I her that's what they'd rather do she's a firebrand or whatever but in fact if you read the book

the book is three quarters facts and stats written in a humorous incredibly incendiary and wonderful way but go ahead and argue with it, it's hard to debate and the book actually the title of the book once again is?

Adios America. Exactly. Before we go, we should just – there are just two things in the member feed I would point you to. I don't necessarily want to – we don't have time to talk about it. But Jen Ferre wrote a really good piece about FIFA. You know, the World Soccer Association, the big scandal. What's his name? Bletter.

Sepp Bletter. This fantastically named former head of it. Bletter. Blatter. It is the sound you make when you step on a toad. Sepp Bletter. Everything you know about FIFA is wrong. It's a really good piece if you just want to catch up on what on earth that must mean.

Well, let me ask this. I don't care. I feel sorry for him. To go through life named Blatter, unbelievable. Well, it means something different in his language. Ah, all right. I don't know what that language is. I was just going to say I'm under the impression that FIFA has to do with European soccer or football, as they call it.

Is that wrong? No, it's not. Therefore, the headline is an error. There are two things that we should avoid on Ricochet. One of these is you're doing it wrong. Everything you know about this is wrong. That bossy pants, hand on the hip kind of stuff. I'm not to insult Glenn Frey, but that style of headline makes me nuts.

The other thing that we should be cautious of in Ricochet is the number of posts that end – or the topics that end with a question mark, which is a way of sort of making an assertion but weaseling out of actually coming out and saying it. So let's be careful about these things. Is Mitt Romney the best candidate for 2016? Right. So what I mean is – So your post is declarative statements and question marks. I think you're excluding a little too much territory there, James. Well, everything you just said, Peter, is wrong. Rob, what was the second?

The second one is by Batterbrow, which is something maybe the members we should we should brood about. Interesting idea. You know, we've had some code of conduct issues last couple weeks. You know, everybody gets passionate and sometimes, you know, people write stuff. and it's maybe a little bit on the other side of the code of conduct. We have a very strict one here at Ricochet, but there was some movement and a suggestion that maybe we should have a non-code of conduct tab where you could go for stuff that's a little more freewheeling and not quite so prim and proper. Fight Club Plus. That is a non-crazy idea, actually.

Yeah. All right. We will have to think about that. I don't know. It's like, does it, I don't know. It's an interesting idea. You got to think about it. Well, perhaps so.

A little blue tab where it's Fight Club plus Plato's Retreat. Writhing around in the mass. Punching each other. Until then, of course, you can be assured that everything in Ricochet is code of conduct compliant. And that means that – I was just at this event, the Center of the American Experiment, 25th anniversary down in Minneapolis, and ran into a Ricochet member. As a matter of fact, I was going past a conversation and I heard somebody say, Ricochet. And I had to bear right in and make the pitch and say what it is. And maybe we got somebody out of that because when I told them, no trolls, civil conversation, you got to pay, but it's worth it, eyes lit up.

What a marvelous idea. So tell everybody, get us up to that 10,000 and beyond and ensure the future of Ricochet as far as the internet goes on. And of course, you can also do your part by going to casper.com and getting yourself a mattress. It's a lot to ask, but once you get it, you'll realize that we're doing you a favor. You can go to harrysshave.com, harrys.com. In both cases, your coupon code RICOCHET will get you something that the rest of the world just simply can't.

And that's to thank you for listening and to thank you for being here. And well, everybody, you've got Ricochet swag all over the site as well. You've got a new Start a Conversation button, which is not beveled. I can't tell you how happy I am about that. It's the one possible mark I've made in civilization

in the last six months was to rail against the beveled conversation button. And now my life is complete, so I'm done. I'm stepping away for good. We'll see you in the comments, everybody, and thanks for listening to this on Ricochet.com. Next week, fellas. Next week.

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