The Ricochet Podcast - Ask The Founders

Episode Date: August 17, 2018

This week, Lileks is on vacation, so we forgo the guests and open the floor to you, our faithful Ricochet listeners. We get questions on the President (natch), Rob’s favorite restaurant, which Founding Father the founders resemble, who the characters on Cheers would have voted for and more. Also, Cuomo is a dumbo, newspapers collude, and so long to the Queen of Soul. R.E.S.P.E.C.T. Source

I have only one question for Mr. Mellon. In 27 parts. I'd like to break him in 27 parts. We have special news for you. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Are you going to send me or anybody that I know to a camp?

We have people that are stupid. Oh, freedom! Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! Freedom, yeah, freedom, yeah, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, oh, freedom, yeah.

Hey, take a bow. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast number 412. I am Rob Long along with Peter Robinson and today it is Ask the Founders Day. Peter and I ask each other questions, we answer our questions, we dodge the questions and we have a little fun. Stay tuned. Bye-bye. Hello and welcome to the ricochet podcast number 412 peter robinson doing these sanity i don't know where we have our priorities all turned around um i am i would just like i would like to note that you talked me into this some years ago and i thought it was a crazy idea

and do you want to know? 412 episodes later, my view has not changed. And you still don't quite get the technology. That's what I like about it. This episode of the Ricochet Podcast is brought to you – well, before we say it's brought to you, I'm Rob Long. Coming to you from sunny and very hot Southern California. On the line with me is Peter Robinson up north in Palo Alto. Peter, how are you?

I'm very well. It's sunny and cool up here today, so take that. Yeah, it's really hot down here. We are brought to you by the fine people of Borough. After all of these years of suffering, you owe it to yourself to experience the comfort and quality of a Borough couch. Customize your own Borough and get $75 off your order by going to burrow.com slash ricochet. We're also sponsored by the Good People Lending Club. With Lending Club, you can consolidate your debt or pay off credit cards with one fixed monthly payment.

Check your rate in minutes and borrow up to $40,000. Go to lendingclub.com slash ricochet and buy Ball & Branch. The right sheets can take your sleep and your style to the very next level with ball and branch that upgrade has never been more affordable go to ball and branch dot com spelled ball b-o-l-l and branch dot com and use promo code ricochet to get fifty dollars off your first set of sheets plus free shipping in the u.s you know what i know james lilacs usually does this i'm doing it now and one of the things what happens when you read these things a lot of is off of vacation just so you know um you say these are great great companies and really great they've been with us a long time I mean it's I'm really grateful for that

they've really been stalwarts of the ricochet podcast and so have our listeners and I hope that if you're listening to this podcast and you are a member of ricochet.com you will accept our warm thanks and gratitude for you as well because you're as much as important to us as ball and branch lending tree and burrow some of you are listening and are not members and you have been putting it off we really would love you to go to ricochet.com and join um today's member pitch again is written by ricochet's director of technical operations tech ops as they say, Max Ledoux. Last week, I complained that the pitch Max wrote was too long, so this week he sent me a condensed version. Here it is.

I can tell you right now it's not condensed enough. Ricochet, we're like the right of center NPR except without taxpayer funding. We try to be civil. We have a code of conduct that is enforced by community moderators. Please join. We need you. Ricochet.com slash join. Membership levels start at $ dollars and fifty cents per month if you just want to support the podcast you're already listening

to for free or five dollars per month if you want to write your own posts that's ricochet.com join also donald j trump is the great president of our lifetimes he puts those things in to make me say them because he thinks it's going to upset me but it and actually he's right it does i can't pretend it doesn't but please people have been saying the source of cheer and amusement to me yeah exactly they would say oh i keep meaning to join i keep meaning to join well you know what stop meaning please do it if you have to stop this podcast now and join we could really use the help the more help we get um the more we can do and that's really how it works we're not a non-profit. We are a business. We've got to pay people who do

our great podcasts and engineer it and send it out. People like our tech ops, Max Ledoux. By the way, is Max Ledoux really Max's name? It's almost too good. It's just the greatest stage name anybody

could have. It's a stage villain name, let's be honest. Or it's a broad – you know, those old movies, the Broadway – producer Max Ledoux presents, you know, like, downcoming. Speaking of Broadway and show business, this is not a leading question, Peter. What? Do you have any feelings at all about Omarosa? None. Do you give a darn one way or the other? I don't give a dang or a darn.

I just don't care. I am so numb. I cared just slightly that she had – if it's true that this was – if the recording was genuine and not faked, that she recorded the chief of staff to the president of the United States in the situation room. In the situation room. Firing her. That is just outrageous that you violate that – not only the West Wing of the White House. So I got slight – and then I thought, oh, I just – this celebrity nonsense who – she and Trump deserved each other. That's true. That's right. Let's move on. Let's move on in the Situation Room. I guess I fantasize that – maybe I'm too Tom Swifty – that the Situation Room was a room designed so that even if somebody tried to record something with a pen microphone, which apparently she had, it wouldn't work. You would hope so. or something would – but my second thing is what I'm trying to do now, and I tried to do it in the last podcast a little bit, is the hardest thing, especially with this administration, which has got so much stimulus.

There's so much coming out of it. It's generating so much noise is to try to discern between the signal and the noise, right? Because – and try to decide does this mean anything or does this not mean anything? Because, of course, you can't pay attention to everything, and everything isn't meaningful. I mean, if you go about your day, you realize some things are just not meaningful. So my retailoring of that statement is,

can I learn something from this? Is this something that's telling me something I didn't know before, or is this just noise? And i think this comes under the heading of noise oh i think so it definitely comes under the heading of noise if you were trying to discern any signal in it at all it's that the chief of staff general john kelly ends up with this miserable job of getting rid of this pretty clearly incompetent i mean she just doesn't seem coherent to me. The book doesn't seem coherent. She doesn't seem to be able to make sensible arguments when she's been interviewed, not that I've watched that many interviews, and that it ended up in the lap of... So all it tells

us is something that we already knew, which is that John Kelly, a highly decorated general in the American Armed Forces, has a miserable job. He has to clean up one mess after another. But you know what? We were already aware of that. We were already aware. By the way, if I may, your suggestion that the sit room, the situation room should be so high tech. Well, that's what it was always called.

Now I'm going back. Take my hand and walk with me into the past. One of the lessons I learned at the White House is that even at the White House, it's government work. So I had an office. I just give you this an example, right? I had an office on the first floor of what was then called the old executive office building. It's now called the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. And for something like eight months, directly over my head,

directly over my head was what were the offices of the Secretary of State. It's called the Cordell Hull Suite because he was the last Secretary of State. Cordell Hull, Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of State. And for six months there was banging and pounding and the sounds of drills what was going on well they were making that into a second situation room super secret secure room couldn't hear anything couldn't record anything incoming high top secret cables okay so finally it falls silent because they finished the work and word goes around we see some extra military people, extra officers in the building, more officers, more military officers than are usually there.

And we're wondering what's going on. And we're just told quietly that the new situation room, the Cordell Hall situation room, is going to be given a kind of test cruise. And there's going to be some super secret purpose to it. And I sit in my office directly below this room, and for the next three days, I hear war games. I hear blue army advance, red army, move your aircraft carrier, blow by blow war. They hadn't soundproofed the floor. They hadn't soundproofed the floor they hadn't soundproof the floor and so after about a day and a half or two

days of this i call somebody and within 10 minutes the war games just stop the whole thing falls silent that my friend is government work so if if omar rosa was able to record john kelly in the situation you know what i'm not all that surprised well. Well, I remember on 9-11, the Bush administration discovering that under certain circumstances, the president of the United States flying on Air Force One couldn't get a hold of anybody. anecdote i think even george w bush himself has acknowledged of him with the phone and banging the phone the handle of the phone against the side of the plane screaming this is unacceptable get me the vice president and there was an hour there where he was just flying around air force one and they couldn't it didn't work and so for you know we expect all this level of incredible efficiency we have all sorts of things we want the government to do. Primarily, database security, web security, just because it was sort of slovenly. And you can figure like, oh, yeah, they built it like they probably built something.

It's government contract work, right? Close enough to government work, they say. And yet this is actually pretty bad. So right so that is we were deciding that that is was decided we should have having spent 10 minutes on omarosa to say that she doesn't matter what shall we proceed to something that we think does well i don't know what that's isn't that the question what does all right so um andrew cuomo says america was never that great that also doesn't tell us anything we didn't know. Andrew Cuomo isn't that bright, but we already knew that, didn't we? He's not deft. He's just a political hack.

He's positioning himself in the most crude, clumsy, obvious way to run for president, and he can't seem to get far enough to the left. He's got Kirsten Gillibrand, a senator from New York who's moving to the left faster than Andrew Cuomo can. That's just the fix he's in. He's facing a challenger in Cynthia Nixon, the actress from Sex and the City. Right. Who, you know, we all roll our eyes and say, oh, please, how is she possibly going to win? But, I mean, didn't we say that about the president of the United States?

Donald J. Trump. I mean, even when he was running in the primary, he was a joke, right? He couldn't possibly beat the more established candidates. He couldn't possibly beat Tim Pawlenty, who... Who lost. Who lost. And what was interesting about that loss

was it seemed like... Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota. Right, Go ahead. Which is moving – which Minnesota has been moving – thanks – actually, I do really think this is true. Thanks at least in large part to our friends over at Powerline, John Hinderacker and Scott Johnson, who are based in Minnesota and run Powerline with their friend Paul Mierengoff, who's in Washington. And John Hinderacker is now at the Center for the American Experiment, which is the right-wing think tank, right-wing conservative think tank in Minnesota. And for years now, they've been writing and writing. And what I know, because I have some friends who live there, is that Powerline has enabled people in Minnesota, conservatives in Minnesota, to find each other.

They've called into being a kind of network, which is actually having a political effect. Great news, except that Tim Pawlenty is lost. I think we should keep talking about Minnesota because I suspect if James Lylex is listening, he's driving him crazy. What do we two know in California? We're like, you know, grandees here. And then, before we get, what we're going to do today is we're going to

talk a little bit about, we're going to answer some questions. We do this about once a year, I think, usually. Or whenever Lylees goes on vacation. And we ask for questions from our members, our fellow members at RickShade.com. If you're not a member, that's one of the things you get to be. You get to be a member.

You get to ask us questions. Before we do that, I just want to bring up two things. One, did you follow this newspaper editorial, the synchronized editorials that were printed in the newspapers, a million newspapers today or yesterday, anyone who's listening to this. So in order to attack Trump for I suspect saying that things like the newspapers are all against me, they have joined up to say shut up. We're not all against you. It reminded me of that scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian when the character Brian is being followed by fanatical devotees and he says, listen, we are all individuals. You have to think for yourself. You have to think. That's what it makes me. That's how I feel about the about this press thing. Sinclair Broadcasting was writing, pre-writing editorials for their on-air talent to say that were essentially, if not pro-Trump, not anti-Trump. And the idea was how dare they? How dare they? And yet here's what the newspapers are voluntarily doing, what they were accusing Sinclair of doing.

It is – this must be torture for you i i sort of expect a little bit of this but it torture for you which means a great pleasure for me watching you feeling tortured because every time you work yourself up into high dutch and denounce donald trump and of course you have my sympathies to a point you have my sympathies when you do that his opponents do something even stupider and more vulgar and cruder. It's just – they make this man – I saw a poster the other day for Dinesh D'Souza's new movie. Now, Dinesh is an old friend, but this new movie is called Death of a Nation. I don't quite know what it's about, but he's trying to make the – he's trying to suggest that we have the makings of a new civil war, I guess. But on the poster, it shows Donald Trump morphing into Abraham Lincoln. And I saw that and I thought, oh, Dinesh, Dinesh, what are you thinking?

But these people almost make it believable. A hundred newspapers across the country demonstrate their fierce independence as journalists by marching in lockstep. We are opposed to Donald Trump. It's unbelievable. Well, what's surprising – I had dinner last night with Blue Yeti with an old friend, an old podcaster, andrew clavin and andrew clavin is a very uh you know he's got a very sharp clear view of donald trump which is you know i think probably the same view which is that you know he's a horrible human being but but he's doing a good job um and i of course have i'm and he looked at me said what's your problem and i'm, I don't know. We decided that night, last night, that my brand, my personal brand, my personal brand is anguish because I don't – I mean I can't go there. And yet the – there's no normalcy left, and I can't go to the left-wing media because I'm so mad at them for stuff they – they can never atone to me because of the 40 years of having to swallow their nonsense.

But I also can't go to the other side because everybody I know – a lot of people I know who are Trump supporters think he's the next Lincoln. So somewhere there has to be some kind of thoughtful, meaningful, medium-sized perspective. And I suspect at the end of all this, and now I realize I'm losing signal to noise, but at the end of all this, I either have to decide

that, I mean, Trump's only got four more years five more years five more years of meaningful leadership right assuming he wants to tops tops yes yes um after that what's the what's the outcome going to be are we gonna i'm not sure it's the worst thing in the world that the presidency and the office of the presidency has been diminished i think maybe it needed to be taken down a peg so i'm not sure that's the worst thing in the world um i'm not sure it's the worst thing in the world certainly not the worst thing in the world that he and mitch mcconnell are um are rewriting and re and and and reforming the american judiciary in a in a meaningful way a way that I probably approve a thousand times. But I'm so petty.

And the economy. And the economy. Before you move on to the reasons that you're angry with him, you've got to move to the economy. I have more complicated feelings about that but um uh but i i'm too petty to let it go and not remind my friends on the trump side that they were screaming and yelling about mitch mcconnell and what and he needed to get he needed to go he should have been primaried we don't need the establishment anymore right and the reality is if you're going to rewrite you're going to reform the judiciary you're going to rewrite, you're going to reform the judiciary, you're going to do all those complicated things, you do need experienced, colorless, maybe even boring

establishment Republicans to do that. That's who's doing the work. Now maybe you need a crazy man at the top to sort of shake the trees and rattle the dishes in the cabinet. If you've got a china shop, maybe you need a bull. But I'm not sure – anyway, that's my long – as you can tell, I'm even inarticulate about this because I'm in anger. Look, so this is kind of a recurring thing. By the way, while you were having dinner with Drew Clavin, and I hope you gave him my best even though you didn't know I was extending my best until just now. I was having dinner with a couple of political scientists who certainly would think twice about being quoted on a center right or a conservative site such as Ricochet.

So I won't name them. But you know what polling shows among African-Americans? Donald Trump one cited a poll that showed 13 percent approval. And the other side and the other political scientist cited a poll that shows 19% approval. But it appears unambiguous depending – you can take – choose this poll, that poll, or the other poll. But Donald Trump's approval, a Republican president's approval among African-Americans is up in double digits. And that is a political earthquake. approval among African Americans is up in double digits. Right. And that is a political earthquake. And that is also the reason why I think there's an obsession on the left and in the media

to if there isn't the tape where he uses the N-word to talk about it enough. Yes. So it seems like there is. Maybe so. You know, that's one of the way this is a game of inches it's going to be you know no one's going to win a landslide probably in 2020 um it's going to be important to galvanize that vote what i don't know and what their polls didn't get to is what the age composition is if trump is appealing to younger african-americans so my thought is

the one thing that's unambiguous about Donald Trump for me is the people he's put. He's put Gorsuch on the Supreme Court. He's nominated Kavanaugh. What's going on in the courts is an unambiguous good as far as I'm concerned. It's actually kind of thrilling. Maybe Donald Trump is the vessel, but the result, look what's coming out at the other end.

If Trump, I won't go into all his shortcomings because you do so nicely on that if trump can reframe american politics such that both parties compete for the votes of african-americans that it ends this decades this decade that we've all become inured to it. But it is a role. It is a permanent tragedy of American politics that what is it, 11 or 12 percent of the population, African-Americans are ignored by one party and written off by the other because they vote 95, 90, up in the 90 percent for Democrats reliably again and again and again.

So Democrats take them for granted. Republicans write them off. If this crazy man can change that, that would be another utterly unambiguous good in my opinion. I sort of agree. I also – I guess what I like is I still like the idea and I don't like the opposite idea, but I still like the idea, and I'm hopeful when I hear people, certainly on the right, talk about winning that population over. Yes. almost un-American and dark and cynical about the way African-American voting block or population has been cynically manipulated by the left and by the right to make a difference or to discourage the vote, to make a tiny difference in their – rather than – I'm going to

put it this way. Rather than appealing to their – to the politics of it and the policy of it and appealing to that population on the grounds of we have a better idea. We have a better plan. We have a better idea of what creates economic growth in your neighborhoods, what creates wealth creation in your families. We are better at that. what creates wealth creation in your families we are right we are yes you're better yes instead i think sometimes people on the on our side are more cynically about let's just ignore them and maybe they if they don't turn out that helps us and the argument on the on the left has always been let's just rile let's just say whatever we can say let's call everybody a racist if we can to make sure that that block which we we own

90 of goes to the polls none of those none of those parties are actually interested in actually truly elevating persuasion persuasion or elevating the status of those families it is more interested in either either keeping them home or getting them on vans to vote a certain way um but the i guess the point i was trying to make is that um there's so much signal and there's so much noise, and half of the country seems that half the time, half the country is like fainting on their fainting couch, and the other half is then waiting and then fainting on their fainting couch, which reminds me that owning a couch from hell is like a right of passage. Almost worthy of lilacs. Almost worthy of lilacs.

Yeah, yeah. So owning a couch from hell is like a rite of passage, i.e. too expensive, too heavy, too cheap, too worn. You know, I maintain an apartment in New York, and it's always a problem. But so after all of these years of suffering, you owe it to yourself to experience the comfort and quality of a Burrow couch. Burrow brings style and comfort to a whole new level and ships to your door fast and free. Your relationship to your couch will never be the same. They are ergonomically designed, so I'm comfortable when I'm sitting and reading. I have one in New York City, and I plan to sit and do these podcasts from that chair um uh they you can

customize your burrow sofa to match your style select color size armrest height leg color peter you have one what is what is it well we here's here's i saw it briefly it arrived it got assembled and then my daughter stole it for her apartment uh here's what I can tell you. I can tell you that it's big and comfortable and good-looking. Also, that big and comfortable and good-looking as it is, it's inexpensive by the standards of furniture. You can put it together very quick. It comes in a couple of boxes. You put it together very quickly. And if you have somebody who's just graduated from college uh you need to lock it down

well i mean you put it together and then you took it apart and that's also the great thing is this it is not you do not need um you know tiny little ikea furniture fingers to get this thing done it's it's solid it's a piece of work that's going to last for a while we actually ordered a big chair with an ottoman kind of a very comfortable reading chair. Is that what you got? Yeah, with a low armrest because a low armrest is what you want. Right. Shipping, fast and free, unlike the rest of the furniture industry. And also, the cool thing, it has a built-in USB charger, which means that when you're sitting there with your iPad or your iPhone or your computer or whatever device you're using – I use an iPad – You don't have to have string cords all over the place.

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All right. So we've had our little chit-chat, Peter. Let's get to some questions. We have a bunch of questions, and they're pretty good. And Blue Yeti is adding to them as we speak. This is why we only do this once a year because the questions indicate that the Ricochet members are smarter than we are. Yeah, and also there's a bunch of questions, and we tend to answer one or two of them at length. Exactly.

Here's one from a Coolidge member, Coolidge-level member, John Stanley. John, thank you for being a member. Simple. It's a simple logic equation. One, socialism fails to young people like socialism. So how do you explain the first? So the second understands. I have an answer. I have an answer to that because I was just chatting the other day with a friend of mine who teaches at Dartmouth College. And he has been teaching a course on the 20th century and on the great conflict between socialism and capitalism. Now, I point out is no conservative. He is himself a proud and card-carrying Democrat, but he's a Democrat of the old school. He'd rather have economic growth than not. And he said, how do you get kids to understand the fundamental point of the Cold War without taking them through 40 years of history? And so he begins this course with a lecture that simply compares living standards in the United States with the Soviet Union across the 20th century. So what does an ordinary family in the United States

and the Soviet Union have as the 20th century opens? Americans start out better off. And then during the 30s, as the Soviet Union industrializes, you get a little bit of improvement in Soviet living standards. But by the second half of the century, Americans all have automobiles, they have cars, they have telephones, and a surprising portion of the Soviet population is still living in log houses out in the countryside and in dilapidated, crumbling apartment buildings, all built quickly and cheaply during the 60s and 70s. And Russ said, the kids sort of get that when you implicitly, you're giving socialism a century to get its act together and produce economic growth, and it just can't do it. That strikes me as a pretty effective little tour – whatever, the tour d'histoire, tour of history.

One dose of it and the kids sort of get it. I have a more sort of cynical answer, which is that the reason that young people like socialism is because they're paying for it. Their – young Americans are overtaxed, and their FICA, their payroll tax goes right to the over-65 crowd to pay for these outrageous federal entitlement programs that seem to get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And they, like any other segment of society – I mean one of the reasons why white identity politics is so corrosive and toxic and powerful in America is because all the other kinds of identity politics are so toxic and corrosive and toxic and powerful in america is because all the other kinds of identity politics are so toxic and corrosive in america so you know there's a lot of people saying hey where's mine i want my sugar where's my taste here if we're giving out goodies i want some and if you're the young people you're like well you know the richest segment of the population are old people and they seem to get the bulk of they sort of live with socialism they get a check every month from the government and they get free health care from the government.

And so if you're young and you know you're paying for it, you look at your paid stub and it shows that you're paying for it. It doesn't seem like a – it doesn't seem like a – it feels like a raw deal. So why not a little for me? We already are doing that for a giant and I think wealthy part of the population. Why not do it for the young people just starting out? As usual, they're the ones paying the price. So maybe it sounds like a good plan to them. I mean there is an argument that I think people make, which is that, well, these are programs that have been in place and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But I mean if you're a young person, you can do basic math unless you went to some kind of progressive, expensive Ivy League institution. You could do basic math. You can see that there's going to be a lot more old people than young people, and a lot more young people are paying for a lot more old people, and that doesn't sound that good. I can attest at least to the anger. I've had four kids now, four of our five are now old enough to have gone out into the workforce in one way or another, including summer jobs, and four times out of four, first paycheck comes and I get, hey, dad, wait a minute. Yeah, right. I thought I was making this. And then they're taking this away for the state taxes, federal taxes.

And then I get, what's FICA? What is FICA? Who is she? Yeah. No, that's right. And I always say that when people say why is people in Hollywood, why are they so liberal? And part of it is because they never really see a pay stub, which is the most powerful direct mail piece ever invented for Republican politics is the pay stub. And there's an old story of – which one of the Coors? It wasn't Adolph Coors. It was maybe his son at the Coors factory in Colorado. He refused payroll withholding. He would pay you on payday in cash in the cash window, your gross salary.

And then you had to go to the other window to give back your taxes by the way i i have it i have it from the man's own mouth milton friedman is a young economist his first job his first non-academic job was in the wash in the government in washington during the administration of franklin roosevelt and that was part of what turned Milton into the turn to what the free market began then. But Milton was part of the task force of the Department of the Treasury that worked out payroll withholding. And Milton told me this late in his life. He was deep into his 80s and may already have turned 90 but looking back on this long and magnificent life what what he really read you milton do you have any regrets yes

that i had anything to do with payroll reporting right right well i totally i mean the the wartime economics are always expedient. They're always solving. They're always putting out the fire right in front of you. And we never go back. The other bad wartime economic maneuver was to make health care, health insurance, a non-taxable part of your compensation, which encouraged and in many ways created the non-market, explosively expensive system we have today, which is also kind of a form of socialism. So young people basically are out of luck. Occupant CDN, another Coolidge member, thank you, Occupant CDN, has a question. Are you surprised by what catches members' attention where we find our differences in debates?

I'm thinking of the spending on Mars debate that was sparked by an offhand comment made near the end of a 90-minute podcast a few weeks ago. Remember that? I do remember it because in this thread that he's talking about, I was pilloried. By the way, may I explain myself? I don't mind if people want to go to Mars. I just don't want to pay for it. I think the federal government will do a lousy, inefficient job. In the middle of the Cold War, the space program made a certain amount of sense, actually made quite a lot of sense, as an assertion of national morale. It was a way of

extending the Cold War into the technical realm and demonstrating that we had technology the soviets couldn't match on and on and on no such argument exists now and elon musk has rocket ships and jeff bezos has his own space program and who's the man who founded virgin atlantic branson branson yeah richard branson is talking about spaceships let it be a private enterprise let they get the billionaires can put billions together yeah and do it more efficiently and more quickly in a way that's commercially sensible. We don't need a big, slow-moving, bureaucratic endeavor that's going to take two decades and cost trillions of dollars. That's my position. Go to Mars if you want to. As a matter of fact, there have been moments, Rob, when I wished you would go to Mars.

There's been moments where you just assumed I was on Mars. Only somebody on Mars can have the beliefs I have. All right. Now I'm going to put you on the spot, Peter. Pick a question. Pick a question. Okay. I like the question by Boss Mongo.

Boss Mongo. I'm reading his question. You've approached the Trump phenomenon from probably the same or close to the same starting point we did you and i this is addressed to us specifically by the way and came to radically different though ever shifting conclusions i don't know that a mind shift yours certainly do and through that process mind shifted within this podcast and through that through that process you've maintained an admirable level of comedy how can that be replicated through the conservosphere writ large do you think your

amiable agreement to disagree disagree over some topics is based on the fact that you had a real life relationship and knowledge of each other he adds not in a biblical way before you started dueling over trump topics the answer is to that bit in my – you explain our friendship to me if you can. I can't understand it. Well, mine is based on before I got to know you, I admired you. I was aware of your writing and thought, wow, that guy can sling prose. And then I got – then we got to know each other. And cover your ears because I'm going to say something nice.

You're so charming. You're so charming. You have such transparently good heart. And although this annoys me to some extent, my children just love you. So I'm stuck with you. So that's the answer. Mistaken though you are. It's that I'm awesome.

That's the solution. Well, obviously, Peter, it goes without saying that I feel the same way. Oh, shut up. But I would say I would genuinely – as much as interested I am in politics and policy and the ebb and flow of American history and all those things, I would hate and I would feel impoverished to live in a world or to be – have a world around me or have a life in which I was only friends with somebody because I agree with them or to not be friends with somebody because I don't agree with them. And I also feel like there's this pressure I think we feel for some reason, which is completely bananas, to take a stand, to have a position. Here's the flag I'm going to fly. And what I love about my friends and what I hope I represent to my friends is a very, very wide themselves or anyone else to change their mind or to entertain other options other ideas or to or to give a little or to live a bigger life i guess and that that that's it is sad to me when i hear people say i don't

know why you'd be friends with anybody who's a libtard like come on why wouldn't come on really like we don't we have a very short time on earth and we can't and i can't live a life like that by the way i realized that while you're talking i am so sure that where we disagree i'm right and you're wrong i just i just take it for granted that it's only a matter of time before you'll come around. That also helps. I kind of half agree with you, but not entirely as I normally do. My brand is anguish. Friendship.

I mentioned Milton Friedman a moment ago, so maybe that's why he's on my mind. But this would be just about six months before Milton died, so he was a very old man at this point. There was a table. It was a round table. We were in a restaurant in San Francisco. There may have been six or seven of us, dinner with Milton, and somehow or other, Bill Buckley came up. And I have to say, because we're this far along in history now, it's been years since Bill died, I have to say the great conservative journalist Bill Buckley came up because there will be people listening to this podcast who don't know who William F. Buckley Jr. was. And Milton said, what was Bill Buckley's greatest talent?

And we went around the table and somebody said he was a brilliant essayist. No, no, his fiction was superb. No, no, his speaking. No, the TV show. No, the debates. And it came back to Milton and Milton said, you're all wrong. You're all wrong. Bill Buckley's greatest talent was his talent for friendship. Yeah, I agree.

Yeah. It was funny because when Buckley – when excerpts of Buckley's – one of his memoirs, I think it was called Overdrive. Yes, yes, yes. And I forget which writer said this, and it was a writer on the left said, you read those diary entries and you don't think about politics. They're not about politics. They're about friendship. And I thought that was a very generous way to look at it, and I suspect these days that would be hard. It would be hard for somebody on the left to say a nice thing about somebody on the right. When Mark Duplass – I think it was Mark – one of the Duplass brothers here is a very, very talented writer-director. Said, hey, listen, friends on the left, if you want to follow somebody on the other side, break out of the bubble, but who argues coherently and from a position of good faith, you should follow Ben Shapiro.

And he was – I mean he was dragged through the streets by the left. Yeah, he took it back. He said, I'm so sorry. I apologize for offending you. I didn't realize that Ben had tweeted – I don't know. Ben tweeted – I don't know what it was. But the idea was how dare you say something nice about someone who disagrees with you on national policy, and that is a very sad place we're in. I won't contribute to it. So that's – one of the reasons why you and I remain friends is because our friendship is more important than – more important even than Neil Gorsuch or Brett Kavanaugh or 4% economic growth.

Well, maybe not 4% economic growth. But speaking of economic growth – Oh, speaking of? The last segue was so artistic and then you went to speaking of? I'm not doing that. I don't want to eat from James Lilacs' rice bowl, as we say. It's a hell of a lot easier listening to pundits duke it out over the latest washington whatever than to take a good hard look at your own finances with lending club you can consolidate your debt or pay off credit cards with one fixed monthly payment since 2007

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Thatcher member, thank you, Bruce M., for being a Thatcher member. Okay, I'm going to. Rob, what is your favorite place in the world to eat? Name one. Can you? Can you name one? You mean the favorite country? It would be France, of course.

It has to be France. You know what my favorite restaurant is, a restaurant that I'm always happy at? It's in Essex, Massachusetts. It's called Woodman's, and basically it's a lobster shack. And you go, and the guys – you pick your lobster on the – there's a bunch of lobsters on the outside tray, and you pick them, and they cook them for you. And then you go in and you pay and you get fried clams or fried oysters or a fried clam roll and piles of French fries that actually taste like fried clams because they're cooked in the same old fat that's probably rancid and delicious. And then you sit and eat out of paper cartons either outside on a picnic table

or inside in a big, loud, bustling warehouse of a restaurant. And nothing makes me happier than that. It feels like – even in the winter, it feels like summer. And there's just something – when you're eating something like that that's so perfect, you don't want any extraneous anything. You just want to eat them, dip them in the melted butter, and then get it all over yourself. Now, help me here. Where is – Essex? I draw a blank on Essex.

North Shore. So Essex is like near the – well, near the Essex River, just south – just short of Ipswich. Just north of Boston, not that far, about maybe half an hour. Okay. Okay. So halfway between Boston and Marblehead almost? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Okay. hour okay okay so so so halfway between boston and marblehead almost yeah yeah exactly um okay um ipswich itself and that area has fantastic clams so like they you know ipswich clam

there's actually a restaurant called the clam box there that's like in the shape of a takeout container you know old 50s architecture and the fried clams are delicious so i think if i had any like last meal that's what my last meal would be got it hey i have a question for you if i may i'm not a thatcher member or reagan member but i am a founder of this outfit so so do i get to ask one so i was told about a couple of weeks ago by somebody in a position to know, I think, that the demand for sound stages in Los Angeles is so great because of the new spending from Netflix, Amazon, and so forth, that the hourly rate for sound stages has essentially doubled in something like the last five years. So the question I have is, you're back home, back home in

Venice Beach, California. You're doing what you've returned to. This has been the well to which you have returned again and again and again, Hollywood. You go off to New York, you do this project, you do that project, and then you go back to pitching in Hollywood. Yeah, my shabby little wares. Yeah. So how is it different from, say, five? I don't even want to go to how is it different from when you were producing Cheers. I want to know in the last five years, what's different? Well, that's majorly different. And I'm a conservative deep at heart, so I don't think that things change so much as they change back.

I feel like it's a back and forth, right? That's what I believe as a conservative. We don't get better. We just get a little bit less worse and then we bounce back. reasons why the last show i shot was shot way out there in beth page long island in an old grumman aircraft factory is because that's the closest available one and the studio one of the studio finance guys was he was visiting us and we're having lunch and i was asking him like okay you know what could we move this back to california if we wanted to and And he said, no. There's no place on the Sony lot for this. We don't have any room. So a movie lot used to be a physical thing. You went to a movie lot and the movies that were made by that studio were made in the sound stages at that studio

and that's how that worked. And gradually all the studios have realized that all they really are is banks with a sort of creative team attached and they could make a lot much much much more money if they separated the physical part of the studio and sold it off or rented it off or just kind of made it up for grabs and then kept the sort of intellectual property creative movie making you know uh software part of movie making and just kind of put it somewhere cheaper um in an office building

or something um that is definitely part of the business i mean the second thing i'd say is that we're changing back in the old days you you had a lot of different gigs and you had to run around town trying to get a bunch of different gigs and then there was a period of about 15 20 years where um everybody was so rich and the studios were so rich and there seemed to be no end to this that they wanted everybody on the lot on a deal. They wanted to give me an office and a fancy this and a fancy that because they wanted me to sit there and stare at the ceiling and then come up with a big, fat, hit TV show.

And that was the unnatural part of the business. The business is much better. The reason why TV is better is because my life is worse, right? I just like to say. Like I can't go to – I mean I could go I guess, but those deals exist, but they're not that attractive because the place is so fragmented now that the minute you sign a deal with a studio, you're locked into that place and that network. And what people – look, people hate change, especially when it makes life harder, and everybody is looking for the easier way. But the truth is we're back to the 30s here. When the gig economy was much, much, much more prevalent, not so much for the stars back then because they were all under contract, but for the writers and the producers and the directors even, there was a – you hustled.

And nobody likes to hustle. I always say that the worst thing about the explosion of places and platforms and venues for your material is that you have to make money the old fashioned way. You have to earn it. Nobody wants to earn it.

So you guys on John Putthorst in particular on glop the the g stands for goldberg l stand lo stands for long and p stands for putt horowitz the podcast and again for listeners who aren't familiar with glop glop culture which you guys talk about contemporary culture john putt horowitz quite often waxes rhapsodic and john John does wax rhapsodic, about this current golden age of television in which the long form – the series television is it just overwhelmed by this? You've got to put together, you've got to stitch so much together because the studios aren't putting as many people under long-term cushy contract as before. now and there are a lot of people i mean i just had a great meeting uh over the hill with a business a company that is doing what you're not what you're not allowed to do at a studio they're making mid-range movies meaning mid-price movies not 100 million dollars to make the movie but somewhere around 15 or 30 million dollars which any studio you know cfo will tell you is

it's literally impossible to make money that way and yet they're making money that way. So I suspect what the short answer is I think disruption is good and I think it's going to be better and I don't think it's not a bad

idea to sort of recombine and combine and put teams together and pull teams apart and to rediscover the way not a bad idea to sort of recombine and combine and put teams together and pull teams apart and um to rediscover i mean the way it was described to me today and then on the feature film side not on the television side but the feature film side was um all of the studios the big ones are obsessed and by the way we just lost one one the 20th century fox and dis Disney are now the same. They are all obsessed with big tentpole pictures that are released in the theaters on holiday weekends. Holiday weekends writ large, maybe there's 10 or 15,

just say there's a dozen that you really fight over. A dozen holiday weekends a year. That leaves 40 weeks and 40 weekends. There's a lot of crumbs on that table. You can smush them together and make a loaf of bread if you want to. And if you're nimble and smart and you're disciplined, you can probably do it. So I'm not sure if that's the answer you were looking for. No, no, no, no.

It is sort of the answer. It's all – I'm watching my kids. For my kids, it has already happened. They have no sense of any distinction between television and movies. Just none whatever. They all watch it. The movie shows up on the big – the movie is when dad pays. That's basically it.

The movie is when dad pays because we can – we go online. We reserve the seat. We can all sit together because at home, I can't get anybody to sit down and watch anything with me. They're all, oh, no, Dad, I'm watching something on my laptop, something different. So the movie is when Dad pays. But aside from that, there's just no distinction, none, none, none. It's just all broken down. And yet I do – John is on to something.

There is stuff available now that's just better, more engrossing, better done. All right, enough of that. No, I think you're right. I know we have to move on, but can we ask – there's one political question, I think. Go. Winter Mute, Coolidge member. In a recent glop, the guys lamented the tendency of liberal pundits to overlook or underestimate the conservative voices criticizing Trump. Do you think that right-leaning pundits are likewise overestimating the extent to which Trumpism is changing conservative hearts and minds?

It seems like every other podcast has some equivalent of, I remember a time when conservatives believed in free trade, legal immigration, civilizability, blah, blah, blah. Are we overestimating trumpism are we underestimating it no no rob i'm getting it just right you're overestimating you're you're i listen to you guys john putt horowitz and jonah and you work yourselves into a lather on how trump is changing the republican party and you know what? There is polling data that shows that Americans are more protectionist than they were before Trump. Aside from that, it's very hard for me to see what's different in terms of the agenda. Stylistically, yes, but in terms of the agenda. Furthermore, I've said this before, so I won't belabor the point, but when I look at the young generation, not Mitch McConnell, who's, who's, who,

Mitch McConnell's deep into his 60s, perhaps his early 70s. But when I look at the next generation down, just look at the Senate and you've got Mike Lee, a brilliant, he can be an attorney, he could be president, he could be on the Supreme Court. You've got Ted Cruz. Take him or leave him. He's a brilliant man who argues for a particular kind of conservatism with real eloquence and has his constituency. of duty in Afghanistan, went back home to Arkansas and ran for the Senate. And Tom Cotton is as impressive as they come. Our guest last week, Ben Sasse. And on and on it goes. And these guys are going to be around for the next quarter of a century, long after Donald Trump is gone.

And every one of them, if you look closely at what he says and what he does, they're trying to use this moment. They're trying to reposition themselves so that they appeal to Donald Trump voters. We used to call them Reagan Democrats, that they don't forget how Donald Trump got elected. But none of them is pledging undying fealty to Donald Trump. All are criticizing him when they feel criticism is due. On that one point, now maybe I'm mistaken, and you and Jonah and John are very intelligent people, but I am just not worried particularly about the future of the Republican Party. I'm just not.

No. Good for you. I mean, I guess I'm not either i guess i am although i suspect what i what i what i i'm more concerned about the future of the ideas but i suspect that rather than blaming the symptom which is in the white house i should be more interested in the cause and the cause seems to me to be a kind of an autopilot remember I remember the feeling when Mitt Romney was talking about his economic plan, and it seemed like he was suggesting that everybody in America needs to be an entrepreneur.

It was a shorthand. I get it. I don't think he was wrong, but there's this shorthand kind of lazy way that conservatives and Republican politicians have been talking about these ideas as if they don't really have to reinforce them or explain them, as if they don't need to be always burnished and defended. And I understand that it's a natural human tendency to say, OK, well, we've settled the free trade issue, right? But you've never really settled it.

And voters have every right to sort of question, you know, the shibboleths of the of the faith. And free trade is certainly one of them. I think they're wrong. I think free trade, low taxes, a more entrepreneurial, a more small government, a look at entitlements. When we stop making those arguments, we can't then complain that people have lost the thread. We haven't continued to make those arguments. And there's no law that says once you make it and one generation believes it, that the next generation is bound by that. No, you always have to be reinforcing your ideals and your principles. That's why they're ideals and principles. If they weren't, they would just be trends that you just kind of surf along with it. So my resolution for the autumn is to stop looking at the symptom and to look more at the actual problem. Does that seem fair? Fair, fair, fair.

And don't worry because I'll be there to guide and correct you as we go. And rather than me just staying in bed with the covers pulled up, although I would like to do that because I'll give you the three most important words for getting a good night's sleep. Comfortable, comfortable, comfortable. If you want the best sleep of your life, you need to be comfortable. That's what all the sleeping pills are trying to do for you, but you don't need them. You just need ball and branch sheets.

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And our thanks to them for sponsoring the Ricochet podcast. Time for one more. I slept in Ball and Branch last night. Quake voter. There's time for one i slept in bowlin branch last night quake voter a fact there's time for one more yeah uh i mean people may stop listening to us but that doesn't mean we have to stop talking thatcher member quake voter rob whom did your cheer whom did cheers characters vote for in 2016 norm cliffy sam um in 2016 i well cliff clearly voted for trump sure In 2016, Norm, Cliffie, Sam. In 2016, I – well, Cliff clearly voted for Trump. Sure.

Norm, I don't know, always struck me as an old Massachusetts guy, Boston guy. He's probably an ethnic Democrat, only voted for – definitely Carla would have voted for the Democrat, whoever the Democrat was. Yes, yes. Carla would have voted for – she was a Kennedy voter. She would have voted for you know she was a kennedy voter she would have voted for you know any kennedy at any time um i don't know that's a really good question i don't know i don't know because it's hard meaning because i know ted and ted definitely didn't vote right right right um hey uh can we just stop right here while i collect my groceries hold on on one second. You can keep recording.

Rob Long's doorbell in Venice Beach, California just rang, and it's the grocery delivery service. I have a – I don't have a car so i have postmates delivering me fantastic food what um what are you cooking i'm not cooking anything this is just stuff for me to like shove in my gullet when i'm hungry so i don't eat um i don't order in really bad food and uh you know i need to get a little healthier than i am as there was a euphemism for fit into my pants better um all right so i'll take it from Sam, right? Well, Sam's a hard one because I know Ted, and I know Ted did not vote for Trump. I don't know.

But it's a good question because they are massive Boston residents, and they're sort of – traditionally traditionally they're democrats reflexive democrats yes but you know there have been republican i bet you i bet you sam voted for mitt romney for governor right right of massachusetts and i'll bet he voted for i don't know um i he might have voted for elizabeth lauren diane and frazier diane and frazier uh well diane uh diane was would have definitely voted for uh for um for hillary hillary absolutely okay that's easy that's easy frazier i think frazier would have told everyone he was voting for hillary but voted for trump and lilith would have found out uh yeah somehow that would have been obviously lilith would have voted for for hillary without a doubt without a doubt um not a not a there's not a a shred of

doubt in my mind about that so quake voter has a question for me and then quake voter has a question for each of us which looks to me like a beautiful set of questions on which to get out first is his question for me. Peter, do you ever entertain the breakup of the United States with anything other than horror and heartbreak? If I thought the United States were going to be breaking up, I would feel horror and heartbreak. I just don't see it. The notion of a new civil war, I don't see. What I do regard with horror and heartbreak is what Charles Murray was getting at in his book, Coming Apart. And in particular, the breakdown of the family. And in particular, that the breakdown of the family seems to be happening, seems to be concentrated among poor and working people. So kids who are raised without dads around, kids who don't understand

the notion of an intact family, that's really, really what horrifies me more than anything else. And it's just something we live with, something that's there. But you have a kid who doesn't have a father around, and there is no government program that can fix that. There just isn't. All the studies show developmental problems, educational problems. There's just no way to get at that. So that's what I regard with the most horror and heartbreak is just this economic growth rolls on and on and on. It doesn't. It's an accomplishment. Economic growth is something we, it doesn't, it's hard

to accomplish and we're accomplishing it. But what I'm trying to suggest is even in times of economic growth, the family doesn't seem to mend itself. and I have no answers to that one, but that one really is heartbreak for me. I think I would take the obverse or the – I don't know what a converse – I don't know the difference between those things. I always get them confused. The other side. break, what else Charles Murray writes about, which is the breakdown of the breakdown of society, that we are now in very, very tightly, tightly

guarded groups, socioeconomic groups that we don't get out of, that no one is marrying outside of their perceived social class. And that's something that wasn't the case back in the old days where people kind of mixed and mingled a little bit.

And you'd have somebody, my wife comes from money, I don't come from money, or all those things. Now people are more likely to stick with their own kind. I don't mean racially or ethnically, although that's also part of it. But it's also socially, economically, educationally. There's always the statistic about if you're a single woman living in New York City over 35, you have the devil of a chance meeting somebody and getting married because there are no men for you to get married to.

And the truth is there are. They're just not college-educated. There are plenty of eligible men in New York City. They're in the outer boroughs, and they're working a simpatico with the education or the socioeconomic group, you just – which used to be the way we churned society and society kind of mixed and mingled. And now because we don't really do that as much, and I think that's a real problem. That's a real problem. Okay, so Quake Voters, final question. The question for me, which American – we are founders of Ricochet. Which American founder does Rob most resemble, and then you are to name the American founder that I most resemble? So I think you – go ahead.

You want to go first? I'll just say just General Cornwallis. I mean he was there. The way he was – I'm not sure. You're not a Tory. I'll give you that. I just can't recover from that. So I was going to say Alexander Hamilton, but now the hell with it.

After that, I think you're the guy who's sweeping up and back at the Constitutional Convention. You're the guy who sweeps up and back and wipes off the hot wax drippings off the desks afterwards and makes jokes about all these guys, all these great men that you're privileged to associate with. And all you can do is reduce them all to comic caricatures. That's what you are. That's what I am. Right. And drink, drink them a Deera.

They, they leave in their glass. I'm going to go. I would say, I'm not done with you yet. I am going to, I'm going to go back as far as I can tell. Alexander Hamilton did not have much of a sense of humor.

So that's a problem with this analogy but aside from that alexander hamilton was brilliant wrote beautifully valuable argued incessantly picked fights with everybody did him no good in the end no no good there in burr but the sheer brilliance and volubility. And we know that you're capable of losing your temper from time to time. I think you're Hamilton. Hmm. All right. I'll take that.

That's very flattering. I, um, I'm bracing. I wish I had like, uh, I, I,

I, I'm torn between the pastoral kind of rosy-colored look at America of a Thomas Jefferson. But I think you're smarter than Jefferson. I would say you're Madison. Smarter than Jefferson? You know what I mean? Jefferson could be a fantasist. you're smarter than jefferson i would say you're madison smarter than jefferson well you know you know what i mean like jefferson was because it could be a fantasist not a great president actually jefferson was a great founder but not a great president i would say i would say madison

well i could live with that except that he was a princeton man well okay'll just have to accept that stain on your character. Madison understood people's weaknesses and understood the value of the word and also believed that the right words could build a country, which was something I don't think anybody really believed. That actually – to go back to the first question, our friendship, basically we both believe in the power of the word, or at least we hope that words have power. That's really what we have in common when it comes to it, isn't it? I think so. We both love language. Yeah. And then from anyone.

Like if it's good it's good yeah yeah that's true okay well a lot of questions alexander before we go uh james that really is that that i thought that question the last question was going to be funny and it was slightly but actually it turned out to be tremendously self-flattering i call you hamilton and you call me madison and toss in that I'm smarter than Jefferson. We can't let that stand. I died in New Jersey though to be fair. You at least write the constitution.

But before we go, Aretha Franklin died today and she was sick for a week or a week and a half or something. So it's been a rolling elegies um i i i'm really not asking this question as a joke but peter do you know who aretha franklin is i do actually know who r-s-p-e-c-t aretha franklin was and aretha franklin is one of those people she's she's a musician my mind, she's there. As you know, my musical abilities and knowledge is limited. But to my mind, she's right up there with Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong as someone who demonstrates just in a way that is irrefutable what the black experience adds to this country just such life and beauty and just music that is so completely alive and yet that comes straight from the black experience

and and she was just great she was a she was a great artist and a great american and i don't have the slightest idea what her politics were. aside from Respect and a few of the others, were covers of old songs, which if you hear it, you've heard it a million times. I mean the song is so great, it could be covered a zillion times and still feel fresh, which she managed to do. But the other thing she taught, which I think, you know, Peter, you'll appreciate, is that it really does matter when you're singing a song like People Get Ready, which has as its constant refrain,

I believe. I believe. It really does matter when you're singing I believe that you actually believe. Because if you don't, it sounds hollow. And if you do, it just hollow and if you do it just blows the doors off the song which is what you could do right um so i would recommend if you if you if you don't if you've never heard aretha franklin or you haven't listened to music a long time i i'm jealous of you because that's what you should be doing on spotify or apple music

tonight because she was the best she was really great peter was really great. Peter, this was fun. This was fun. This was fun. Lilacs. Lilacs. He takes a terrible risk every time. I know he does. But no one can do the. No one. No one's a broadcast professional like Lilacs.

That's for sure. And you and I sit here and butter each other up. And you know what's going to happen. And you know what's going to happen in the comments. The comments get Lilacs back fast. Fast. Exactly. It was terrible.

What founder he is is Aaron Burr. Because he would dearly like to shoot me in the comments the comments get lilacs back fast fast exactly missed him it was terrible what founder he is is aaron burr because he would dearly like to shoot me in the head this podcast was brought to you by lending club burrow and ball and branch please support them for supporting us if you enjoy the show please take a minute to leave a review on itunes your review allows new listeners to discover us which helps keep the show going reviews like this one from jude7, quote, the flagship podcast of Ricochet is a weekly pleasure. Rob Long and Peter Robinson, otherwise known as Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, provided bright and intelligent political and cultural commentary from the political center, right? I never miss it. Thank you. It means a lot to us. If you're listening and you're about to turn this off and you said to

yourself at the beginning of the podcast, yeah, I'm going to join Ricochet. I promise I'm going to do it. Do it now. Please do it. The minute you turn this thing off, we will be thrilled and that will enable us to keep doing it. So thanks. James Madison is imploring you. Yeah, exactly.

It's fun, Peter. Next week. Next week, exactly. It was fun, Peter. Next week. Next week, Rob. I believe. I believe. I believe. I do believe. People get ready.

There's a train coming Don't need no baggage You just get on board All we need is faith To hear the diesel coming Don't need no chicken Just thank the Lord People get ready For the train to Jordan

Picking up passengers Coast to coast. Faith is the key. Open the doors and open. There's hope for among his love and love. I believe. I believe, I believe, I believe, I do believe. There ain't no room for hopeless sinners sinners Sinners Who will hide all mankind

Just to save his own people And pity on those Whose chances grow thin For there's no hiding place Against the kingdom's throne There's no hiding place against the kingdom's throne. There's no hiding place against the kingdom's throne. So people get ready. There's a train coming.

Don't need no ticket. We'll just get on board all you need is faith yeah to hear those ears open you don't need no baggage

we'll just thank the lord oh we'll just thank the Lord Oh, we'll just thank the Lord Thank the Lord Thank the Lord I tell you we don't need no tears We'll just thank the Lord I say we'll thank the Lord

Oh, thank the Lord Thank the Lord Thank God alone Come on Get on board Oh, thank you because I'm living Come on Get on board I thank you today because I feel you Come on

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