The Ricochet Podcast - Avengers Abroad

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

In ways both subtle and decidedly not, American foreign policy is a-changin'. Eli Lake joins James and Steve to caution against cuts to the National Endowment for Democracy and to nod approvingly of the Trump administration's boldness in the Middle East. We also get into "Breaking History," Eli's new podcast that pushes back against disheartening presentism by coloring today's headlines with historical antecedents. Plus, Lileks and Hayward applaud J.D. Vance's New Sheriff tour in Europe, and say their goodbye to copper change. - Sound from this week's open: Vice President Vance addresses the Munich Security Conference.

This country was built on a distinctly American work ethic, but today, work is in trouble. We've outsourced most of our manufacturing to other countries, and with that, we sent away good jobs and diminished our capability to make things. American Giant is a clothing company that's pushing back against this tide. They make a variety of high-quality clothing and activewear, like sweatshirts, jeans, dresses, jackets, and so much more. All made right here in the USA, from growing the cotton and adding the final touches. So when you buy American Giant, you create jobs for seamsters, cutters, and factory workers

in towns and cities across the United States. And it's about more than an income. Jobs bring pride, purpose. They stitch people together. If all that sounds good to you, visit American-Giant.com and get 20% off your first order when you use code STAPLE20 at checkout. That's 20% off your first order at American-Giant.com with promo code STAPLE20.

Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Stephen Hayward and myself, James Lilex. And today, we talk to Eli Lake about the National Endowment for Democracy, Bill on the Way, about Gaza, what's next, and Eli's next new project. So let's have ourselves a podcast. In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town. And under Donald Trump's leadership, we may disagree

with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square, agree or disagree. And trust me, I say this with all humor. If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk. Welcome, everybody. This is the Ricochet Podcast, number 728, if you keep the score. Don't know why you would, but if you are, then you know this has been a long, long, long series of podcasts that has spanned human history as we've known it for the last decade or so. And now we find ourselves at a peculiar place where, how do I put this, where we're missing

Charles C.W. Cook. I know, I know, but don't despair. He'll be back. He's just unavailable at the moment. But you have Stephen Hayward and you have me, James Lilacs in Minneapolis, where we're due for some snow. And apparently the temperatures are going to go down

into the negative region again. We'll be waking up to 18 below and wondering why, why, why do we not sit in humid comfort where steven is today although i'm sure you're going to tell me that it's a it's a bit rainy or overcast or something other california paradise version no i think what you need to know is that fire season is finally over and mudslide season has begun in earnest and this week so that that's our two seasons earnest california in earnest california that's up by Island Park, isn't it? Yeah, right.

I know the place well. Well, enjoy your mud. Slip knot, slide knot. Here we are facing another, well, you know, I think you described it when we were chatting before as a barn burner of a speech. I'm imagining J.D. vance wrote that himself and i'm also imagining kamala harris writing as a vice president writing a speech that she would give to european leaders um in which she would of course advise them to be unburdened what had gone before except of course for the legacy of colonialism and slavery a burden that should be carried eternally um and it would be full of

platitudes about working together in the shared mission and the rest of it. Yada, yada, yada, yada. The same blobby EU transnational talk that we've been hearing for a long time. This, Stephen, was different. Yes. Well, I'm having flashbacks. Well, I'm thinking of the reaction. I'm having flashbacks to the way Spiro Agnew so angered the media and the left. But I repeat myself, the speech was to the annual Munich Security Conference, which is a big deal for the international defense

and foreign policy elite. It generally goes unnoticed in America, but we take it very seriously. I kept seeing excerpts of the speech on Twitter this morning. In each one of them, I kept saying, wow, he said what? So he called out Germany for de-industrializing and how foolish that was he praised stop right there what has germany done exactly germany

previously regarded as the economic powerhouse of europe they have great industrial capacity and the rest of it uh when you say de-industrializing what does that mean yeah well so well look i mean the simple answer is they embraced starting 15 years ago or more this net zero climate change decarbonization madness and they've spent over a trillion euros about a trillion dollars on this and really haven't achieved all that much in fact their emissions have gone back up and they've started burning coal again to keep the lights on but their electricity prices have soared so high that a lot of german manufacturing has cut back starting to move out of the country or simply shut down and manufacturing employment has plummeted in germany in the last few years and it's not it's not just germany britain has done the same thing

britain's net zero policy has ruined his electrical prices and speaking to my friends in great britain they have meters that tell them exactly what their bill is. And the way that concentrates the mind on an individual residential level, and people should say, well, that's good. They shouldn't be using energy. They should be wearing sweaters and sitting inside and using the extra tallow for candles. No, that's not 21st century civilization as we envisioned it. So they have to cut back, and so this means, of course, a loss of jobs,

and this means less economic ability to fund a generous welfare state, and then you combine that with other social pressures such as immigration and the rest of it, and you have a recipe for a country that is casting its eye rightward, shall we say, much to the horror of the people who believe that it would be another rote installation of a left-wing, center-left-wing government. Yeah. Well, now, there's three or four other amazing highlights of the speech. He singled out Poland as our best ally in Europe on defense because they spend the most of any European nation on their defense.

That was his way of shaming all the countries that aren't living up to their obligations. He attacked Europe for censorship and for being election denialist. In particular, he mentioned, you know, they canceled an election in Romania because the wrong party won. And then my favorite part of it was, I forget the context now, but the i saw on youtube and i'm trying to find it in the text is when he said i say this with all humor but if we americans had to put up with 10 years of scolding from greta thunberg you can put up with a few months of elon musk and he paused he paused for a moment waiting for some even just a murmur of laughter dead stone silence from the audience they did not want to hear this and uh so he had some other things in there and i mean he may have written it himself uh he's perfectly capable of it i think i

know who might have written a large part of the speech but it's just speculation on my part but there's a new day in town and by the way second big speech of the week where vance said to the europeans well he gave a speech on artificial intelligence in paris a few days ago and essentially his message was uh borrowing from khrushchev in 1959 essentially he said when it comes to ai we in america are going to bury you so that was fun did he pound his did he did he pound his loafer on the table no he didn't do that but i did i did i did wonder though james i thought at any minute now he's going to tear off his suit and reveal his Captain America Superman crossover costume underneath. Well, you know, given how the latest Captain America movie is doing, perhaps that's not a wise idea.

But if he did morph it with Superman, you would have a nice archetype. Going back to Greta Sundberg, We hear, you know, nobody wanted to hear that, and they all probably felt a little bit of a personal sting, because they've all at some point had to genuflect towards the goal of carbon net zero, and Greta Sundberg has been the Joan of Arc, hoisting that banner as she walks around Europe, flies, bikes, I don't know, scowling at everybody and shaming them, shaming them. The thing is, is the reaction that they have, is it somehow, and I hate to psychoanalyze people, rooted in shame because, you know, while I think that there may have been a few true believers, I think a lot of people sort of made themselves believe

that this was necessary to do. It was a high-minded thing to do. It was a this was necessary to do. It was a high-minded thing to do. It was a saving humanity thing to do. And the fact that it intersected with the opportunities for more government power and state control, well, that was just a happy little frosting on the cake. And in their heart of hearts, they knew that this enterprise was a fool's errand

as long as China and India pump out. But they thought, well, I'm doing a virtuous thing. I will be regarded in the future as a virtuous person. And so on we go with less and less and less. I'll be able to fly to Davos, but you guys probably are going to have to have some carbon credits at the end if you want to take some cheap jet down to Ibiza. Is that it? I mean i you can't say but shaming them for following this children's crusade seems to me to be um uh overdue oh well

absolutely i i mean i have three or four field theories about this one is i think the combination of european guilt that goes back decades, not just German guilt, the whole European continent has lost their confidence. They feel guilty about their past, right? The culture of repudiation, as Roger Scruton used to call it. And they're sort of weak-minded. But then on the energy question, they're simply illiterate about how energy works. And they're uneducable it seems uh you can point out some basic facts about what's going on and not going on and how it works and they're just impervious to common sense they're not unique that describes the governor of california as well you need to sit them all down and make them watch a billy bob thornton landsman monologue is what you need

there you don't need to send jd vance over there. Send Tyler Sheridan over there. Right. It does tell you something about what's wrong. I know. Although that's an interesting cultural marker that you see a landsman come on like it has. I do think that, you know, this isn't really new, but the Thunberg episode was really, you know, blow the lid off. Time Magazine, remember, made her person of the year

four or five years back and you know there's a meme that goes around it pops up regularly on on social media and elsewhere and it shows greta thunberg about how she's this world celebrity and it shows judith curry of georgia tech a well-renowned climate scientist lots of publications ran the department of climate Science at Georgia Tech for many years, but dissents from the party line. She never gets any publicity because, of course, she dissents from the party line. And that shows you what's wrong with the world, that someone who really knows stuff gets ignored and somebody who knows nothing is made a global celebrity. You know, part of it, you mentioned before the civilizational self-loathing that has plagued Europe. They never got over World War I because that completely delegitimized the idea of nationalism.

And ever since then, and of course, with the unfortunate events that happened in the 30s and the 40s that compounded the matter. So we have to dissolve all of our cultural identities into this transnational entity we call the EU, the common market, etc., etc. I get that. I get that. But at the same time, it's been 111 years, and it's kind of like having a 30-something in your basement moping about the girl he broke up with in his first year of college. We've been hearing this civilizational despair and lack of self-confidence for an awful long time. There's a great deal for Europe to be proud of, and there's a great deal of its culture from which it can draw for hundreds of years in order to forge an identity that they ought to be proud of. But of course, the minute you start to

say that, then people get very nervous because then you're talking about national identities, and national identities are the whole problem. When he singles out Poland and Hungary, which some people may say is a less savory example, are perfect examples of European countries that are proud of what they are, and their folkways, and their language, and their culture, and their food, and whatever version of, you know, meat sausages they have. So, yeah, some spine would be nice. Some spine would be nice. AI, how are we going to bury them? What they doing to uh to to cause them to to to slide behind on that one again well i think uh the europeans want to control it and regulate it

and censor it and uh you know they're worried about you know all kinds of things and essentially advanced said is we're for this industry we're going to be the tech leaders and you know if you want to be left behind that's up to you uh so it wasn't quite the Khrushchev, we will bury you. I just stylized it that way because I think they were shocked. I mean, I know some European conservatives who are worried about AI and think there needs to be some kind of regulatory regime. And I don't, you know. What does that look like, though? What does a regulatory regime on AI look like?

Well, it's some kind of censorship, I'm afraid. But censoring what exactly that's where this gets so vague i understand when they say that there is you can have censorship regimes from the government that control information on social media and the like and everybody loves that because we can't have people saying anything on the internet my god people would believe it you know if we've got to go out there and send the little bots to crawl around to make sure that nobody is talking about COVID as possibly coming from a laboratory. It came from a sick pangolin in a wet market.

And if you say otherwise, then you've been banished to the dead zone. Well, I think there are two things that you can have legitimate worry about. One is that AI use fancy algorithms to invade people's privacy. That's going to happen anyway because it's not just the things for the Internet. The other one is, and I've worried about this, is there might be some regulation of deep fakes, right? I actually thought in this last campaign there would be some deep fake videos that would come out of, you know, Trump or Heron or whoever, and we might believe it for a day. And that could be quite disruptive, and we're going to have to figure out how to deal with that. But I think censoring preemptively, the use of artificial intelligence

to create visual content is very problematic for all the reasons that I think you understand. That's true. But on the other hand, am I a deepfake? Because if my cells replace themselves every single, you know, every couple of years or so like that, ship a thesis and all that, maybe I'm a deepfake of the man that I was 10 years ago. Don't know. All I know is that when it comes to your cells, let's talk about them. Your life goals and your career depend on your cells, right? You know, constituting the thing that is you and your goals. Well, they require productivity, frankly, but let's be honest, the aging process, not our friend when it comes to endless energy and productivity. Oh, there's coffee. Oh, there's monsters, Red Bull, the rest of it. But no, productivity. Oh, there's coffee. Oh, there's monsters.

There's Red Bull and the rest of it. But no, no, no, no. You need something, something that's from you, not imposed upon. And that's why we recommend Qualia Sinulitic. As we age, everybody accumulates senescent cells in their body. Senescent, you know, old, tired. They're known as zombie cells. They're old and worn out,

and they're not serving any useful function for your health anymore, but they're taking up space and nutrients from the healthy cells. Much like pruning the yellowing and dead leaves off a plant, qualiocenulitic removes those worn-out senescent cells to allow for the rest of them to thrive in the body. This clinically tested two-day rejuvenation regimen may hold the key to unlocking cellular health and revitalizing aging tissues throughout the body. I've taken it, and I'm here to tell you that I am a bundle of energy, and I go to the gym, and I work out every single day. And I feel pretty good for my age.

I feel darn good for my age. Aging at the cellular level? Resist it. Try Qualia Senulitic. Go to qualialife.com ricochet for up to 50% off. Use the coupon code ricochet at the checkout for an additional 15% off. For your convenience, Qualia Senulitic is also available at select GNC locations near you. So you can go to the store and buy it.

That's qualialife.com slash ricochet for an extra 15% off your purchase. And our thanks to Qualius Analytics for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome back Eli Lake, columnist for the Free Press, contributing editor to commentary and the host of a brand new podcast we're going to be talking about called Breaking History. We'll find out whether or not that means that history is sort of newsflash or whether or not he's being iconoclastic and smashing the old concepts. Eli, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Well, we continue to move at great pace in Washington, D.C., breaking, smashing,

disrupting, I think is what somebody might call it. And the judges are striking back and refusing to let things happen, barreling towards a constitutional crisis, we're told. Let's focus on one recent thing. Checking my watch here to see if they've abolished the Department of Education. Nope, not yet. National Endowment for Democracy. Yeah, that's the way I read it. Who would be opposed to cutting the National Endowment for Democracy?

You got a piece up at the Free Press, and you argue this signals quite quite change in American foreign policy. So refresh us. Tell us what's going on. Well, the National Endowment for Democracy was created in 1983 by President Reagan and allies in both parties in Congress, and it's an independent kind of foundation that is not part of the executive branch. It makes small bespoke grants.

In the 1980s, it helped like Willessa Solidarity and other Eastern European freedom fighters. And today it helps all kinds of people in Iran and China. There have been, like all institutions, some bad grants that were made. There was one that was made to a group called the Global Disinformation Index, which is, you know, I mean, the entire anti-disinformation industry, we can all say, is a racket. And that got involved in a really dangerous thing with the State Department's, I think it's called the Global Information Center or something like that. And that was really bad. But when, you know, the president of the NED, who I interviewed, found out about the grant,

as soon as he found out about it, he ordered a review. He severed ties with the organization. And he has worked pretty diligently to make sure that the National Endowment for Democracy does not, you know, funding these kind of flim-flam organizations that fight counter, you know, that fight disinformation or you know kind of bespoke causes like environmental justice under the banner of democracy which i agree there is a kind of bloat in the ngo industrial complex i think a lot of that stuff is wasteful and stupid but what ned does is like they don't recruit people they the people come to us it's basically like these are our

real allies in totalitarian regimes and you don't have to be like a full you know you know five-star neoconservative to uh you know just say i think it's a good idea for some u.s money to support the green shoots of freedom in these places where there is no political freedom that used to be non-controversial but apparently now we are hearing that it's you know and you know it's an interesting kind of contradiction or paradox of an argument because elon musk is arguing they don't do anything they waste a lot of money so it's too wasteful but then there's a kind of ideological momentum coming from the MAGAverse that says that they're too effective.

They're responsible for color revolutions and regime change. I support the color revolutions, by the way. That's a wonderful thing. But training nascent political parties in election law or supporting kind of independent media is not the same as orchestrating these kinds of things this is an expression of the desires of the you know people in this country where there were these color revolutions okay a couple of points um one there seems there's this idea that if if an

organization was set up for a good purpose under re, that it is therefore destined to be with us forever, that you can't get rid of it. You just simply have to keep giving it the same amount of money. I don't agree with that. I see what you're saying. Okay. And the second point is, is that even though it's funded with,

you could say it's funded to help like, well, less than we all loved him and we all supported solidarity and the rest of it is that inevitably any of these organizations will drift left in time and expand its mission so that you will find the money going to environmental or gender-based advocacy or the rest of it. That's possible. It's certainly possible, but that's not NED.

Right. I'm just saying that under a democratic administration, that it's more likely the third thing would be is that surely before 1983 we had means and we had we had means institutions subterfuge or the rest of it in which we could get resources to people in places if we need if if we thought there was some good skullduggery that needed to be done well the cia used to support political parties uh in post-war europe right to make sure the communists didn't take over so does that mean then that but that's not what the ned does it's like this is there was one quote that they keep taking out of context of somebody say well the cia used to do this and now we do it and so that's just we're doing the cia thing out in the open or something and i'm like well you know the cia did a lot of things in that period, very different than the National Endowment for Democracies. The National Endowment

for Democracies is a transparent organization that makes grants to organizations that request funding. The CIA kind of would, you know, by its nature, recruit people. That's a big difference. Another big difference is that they have a grant making process. They don't hand out bags of cash like, you know, Bill Colby in early 1950s Italy. I mean, it's not the same thing. More importantly, there isn't a wing of the NED that also, you know, occasionally, you know, tries to assassinate foreign leaders or, you know, is stealing state secrets.

It's like the whole point is that this is something that is non-controversial in American support. It is part of our political DNA, going back to Thomas Paine, who, you know, went over to France to support the French Revolution. The idea that we believe our founding principles are universal and that other people, you know, deserve freedom as, is like, yeah, of course. But I want to challenge something that you said earlier, because I'm not sure that if the same people that are making these arguments today

would have supported Lech Walesa. I think they would have said, we're trying to do regime change in communist Poland, and it's going to lead to World War III. That's the argument that I'm getting, because these people and unfortunately there have been people like involved with the heritage foundation who sort of made an argument that the national endowment for democracy is to quote blame interesting choice of words for

the orange revolution and the maydan revolution in ukraine as if a those are a bad thing which and b if it's true which is not true true, the credit goes to the Ukrainian people. And it completely just whitewashes, it airbrushes away the idea that the Ukrainians might have a problem living under the thumb of a pro-Russian autocrat. And I just want to, I mean, like, and these people want to kick me out of the conservative movement? I'm sorry, you're kicking yourselves out of the conservative movement if you can't get your head around the fact that we believe in certain things now that doesn't mean i want to you know i want a hot war with russia i don't but it's like the idea that russia had no choice because of the national endowment of democracy to launch a brutal regime change war of conquest that's ridiculous no that's nonsense and i want to put people are saying this

nonsense i know and they're they're welcome to do so and i can call it nonsense i am in i was in favor of like valessa i was in favor of the maiden revolution absolutely completely whether or not would have you know would have happened without us is is something we debate i'm not saying this because i have a great dog in this fight and i'm giving what I intuit people to say, and I may or may not be correct about it. I wouldn't, would I be particularly bothered if the NED continued as an institution and was funded as it was and we went on and gave money to people who came to us? think it's the biggest uh problem facing us today but you are indicating that it represents sort of a change in american foreign policy in the way that we want the world to think of us not as somebody to whom you can come for assistance but an example you can get around to following if uh you can figure out on your own and steven i mean i i i i don't think that it should be

kind of stark either or if you think in retrospect retrospect, the war in Iraq was a horrible blunder. That does not necessarily mean that we should stop the we should stop supporting people who want a free press in Iran. I mean, you can you can those are apples and oranges. Those are Mac trucks and you know raisins it's not the same thing supporting such groups is something that ain't the people who accept the money are taking the risk this is what they want why wouldn't we want a foundation to necessarily support them now when you get into the sort of private foundations or sort of related groups like Soros' Open Society Institute,

that is an organization that started, you could argue, did a lot of admirable things in the aftermath of the Cold War in the 1990s and has turned into a kind of giant foundation to support a bunch of really pernicious progressive causes like media matters and disinformation and censorship and all kinds of things i don't like and you don't like i don't think people listen to this like but that's not the national endowment for democracy national endowment for democracy has a number of people on its board that are trump allies like elise sifonic or people involved with their sister organizations like the international republican

institute tom cotton marco rubio was on the board. These are people who basically are, you know, Trump supporters and part of the Trump movement. So the idea that they're, you know, the whole thing is bad because Victoria Nuland is now on the board, or Ann Applebaum, okay, fine. By the way, Ann Applebaum was no longer on the board. And, you know, it's a conspiracy theory in a lot of ways and it's really unfortunate because i do think that it's important even if it's a relatively compared to the rest of the budget it's a small amount of money but i do

think that it's valuable to support these and it's also valuable for us in washington because oftentimes i've found as a journalist who wants to cover something in one of these countries the national endowment for democracy usually has access to the people who really know what's going on on the ground. And I know that as a journalist, that benefits me, but I also know that people at the State Department, you cannot get the same perspective of what's happening in a country just by relying on the people who staff an embassy who deal largely with other government officials. So there is a benefit to this and once you start making the argument that this is part of um a kind of stealth regime change and

that we are interfering in the affairs of countries with that that is where i just draw the line i think supporting people who don't want to live under uh despots is a good thing and um i just you know i i can't get my head around the fact that there appears to be a lot of momentum behind an element of the right that thinks that that is, you know, part of the new world order or something like that.

So Eli, it's Steve Hayward out in Burning, California, which we'll come back to when we talk about your podcast. Oh, thank you. I want to tax our listeners and just go one more round with you about the NED.

Okay. And then also I want to bring you in on the latest on the middle east because you know way more about that than i do uh look a general observation and a couple points about ned and a reform suggestion uh the general point is i think we have to understand that with the shock and awe tactics of the trump administration they're going to be indiscriminate about some of the things they cut and attack, and they're going to make some mistakes. Okay. That said, I remember, you know, by the way, I actually wrote about this in my own book about Reagan. You know, the NAD started with one of his greatest speeches, the Westminster Address in 1982. And you also mentioned something briefly a minute ago that's in your article, that there

are these two sub-organizations, the institute and a democratic institute yeah and i actually did some work for the republican institute back in the 80s when this was all getting started and i was a huge fan of the whole effort on the other hand i've always been inclined to go along with john o'sullivan and robert conquest that all organizations are not explicitly right-wing will become left-wing over time i think that's what's part of what's went wrong with USAID, which serves. I agree. Right. OK. Generally, that's, I think, correct. Yes. Yeah. OK. So here's my reform suggestion. I'll accept all of your defenses of what NED has done. But my reform suggestion would be this. Why do we have the Republican adjunct and the Democratic adjunct? I think that represented the partisan splits on foreign policy

between the two parties uh you know the democrats in the 80s were very nervous about this kind of thing for opposite reasons of the people on the right who are opposed to it the democrats of the 1980s sound a lot like the uh maga types today yep they're not all maga types i should say i was you know the ones i'm arguing with on social media. Right. Yep. Understood that completely. My thought is maybe what we ought to do is reconstitute the National Endowment for Democracies and simply let the two parties go their own ways. I can see it deeply. So if the Democrats want to support gender education in Pakistan, let them and be transparent about it. And Republicans want to support like two gender only

education let's support that yeah okay or you know i mean there's of course there's the arguments you raise which you will skip over now about you know what kind of democratic efforts do you want to support overseas and i know there's people who say none and okay uh anyway that's my reform suggestion is why don't we just be more honest and direct about this i'm open i'm open to that um and i agree like the broader international ngo space is rife with nonsense and corruption 100 that's a real problem by the way but it's not also with usaid i remember when i was stationed in egypt in 2005 and 2006 i did a piece about um a kind of editor of an egyptian newspaper who had written a column about um you know endorsing this cockamamie david irving view that the holocaust was overstated and everything like that it was a kind of typical fair and what

stood out to me is that you know earlier in his career this is 2005 so like in the early 80s he'd gotten a usa id grant to like learn journalism in america and i'm thinking like oh wow you guys really know how to pick them so you know yeah i yeah there's a lot of problems right now and you know some of the things that we're learning about what usa id supported is uh you know shut it down as far as i'm concerned i agree although i'm sure there's plenty of good things with USAID as well. And it can be an important tool of U.S. foreign policy. You know, yeah, we've got to deal with that O'Sullivan conquest problem. That's certainly true.

And we have to deal with a hyper-radicalized Democratic Party today that just got out of power and their fingerprints and tentacles are all over government and you got to root it out agreed i just think ned is the wrong target and it is being and it is a target in part because of a lot of um just kind of you know ill ill thought out conspiracy theories that have gained enormous traction a lot of this is supported by the way by people who would never you would never consider to be conservative it's like this is a big hobby horse for something known as the gray zone which is max blumenthal's site which basically is like the um you know it's it's it's it's the uh it's like a

propaganda arm of every anti-American tyranny and terrorist group. So that's what we're dealing with. And my point is, is that now going to be part of the coalition? Because I largely see myself as somebody who, I have a lot of criticisms of Trump, but I think he's much better than the alternative of a party that weaponized the Justice Department against their political opponents, that propped up a senile um incompetent old man and claimed he was you know sharp as a tack i mean we can go through the list so like you know i'm i'm now like really hoping that he gets it right but i don't want to share a voxel with the gray zone or people who

are these kind of lunatic conspiracy theorists who, you know, think AIPAC is running everything. Those people shouldn't be in a decent political coalition. But people on the center right who might who would agree with you that the NED serves a function and ought to be pared down and focused on that function are probably at the end of the day and i hate that phrase i'm very sorry going to say well let it go because to fight for it is to then get on the other side of the barricades and say uh no this one actually has to stay because i mean right now the the the left the progressives the center left are at the point where they have to defend usaid and they have to defend waste in the treasury and they have to defend all these things because if they if they give up then they they cede to the other side the idea that there's lots of waste and stuff that they can pare away so they have to fight that you have to you have to say you can't

cut usaid because it is because there's an old woman in thailand who is dependent upon it for her oxygen and she will die oh she's died already i mean so they got to fight that and if guys on the right say you're as good as the ned is and it's done some good things i'm not gonna that's not the foxhole in which i'm going to expire because we need root and branch and if this is one of the good roots well then so be it i mean that's that's what i think is gonna that's fine i'm a journalist uh my fidelity is to calling it like i see it so i understand if that's your view and you're a member of Congress and you want to save your powder and keep your powder dry for the fight that you think is going to be mattering more. Fine.

Okay. I mean, okay. But at a certain point, I just think you need to, I wanted to put out because I just see there is so much like wrong information about the NED. They're fighting a kind of phantom and I worry that if people like that have the ear of Elon Musk and Donald Trump then you know what else are they going to say I mean I I'm kind of you know I'm not going to try I'm trying not to freak out on things but why would we kind of before negotiations with Russia even begin concede everything that Russia would want like I mean just to kind of give an example of what we saw this week in europe with with defense secretary hexa so eli let's switch

gears to the middle east uh and you know a minute ago i used the imagery of shock and awe that we've been using for 30 years now since the first gulf war yeah when i look at trump in so many areas but especially on the middle east instead i want to shift to the Big Bang. I mean, who would have ever thought that anybody, let alone a president of the United States, would say, you know, we just ought to move everybody out to Gaza and other Arab countries and rebuild the place into something else. I mean, and, you know, utterly heedless of the predictable response that he's calling for ethnic cleansing and other nonsense. But still can i can't imagine any other responsible politician ever suggesting such a thing what do you make of all that and i mean is this a shaking up of things and and challenging the foundations of 50 years of settled attitudes is this a good or a bad thing or somewhere in the

middle how does eli lake size it up i think um it's a good thing to move the overton window on this i don't think it's a i don't think that it's necessarily i don't know that it'll happen but i think it's that the idea that before trump comes into office the big plan was there'll be saudi israeli normalization but you're gonna have to make peace and, it looks like Gaza's going to have to be still run by Hamas. It's totally unacceptable, and I really do think at a certain point, the message

to the Palestinian people has to be this. Unless you start turning on these thugs and making it clear that this is not how you want to live and some of this is they they rule by fear and they rule by you know they rule by coercion um so it's it's harder than said and done but like you can't have the the leadership of the pal full stop. And, you know, obviously, shame on the

rubes and moral idiots on campus who consider Hamas to be a kind of freedom fighter resistance organization. But you can't have like, just, well, we'll work around it. And, you know, the leadership of the Palestinians is terrible right now. And it's nonsense to think that there could be a state if that leadership continues in perpetuity. And by suggesting maybe people leave, which is what usually happens when there is a horrible war, that, by the way, was started by the Palestinian side, of course, as we know, that lots of populists, there's 5 million, what, 5 million Ukrainians are living in Europe right now?

How many refugees came from the Syria war? So the idea that there are going to be refugees from a war because the place is uninhabitable is not terribly controversial. Trump did say eventually you can move back, but it's going to take a long time to try to rebuild it. That to me is like non-controversial and you know i understand i know the history of this conflict very well but remember in 2005 israel left gaza and what they got in exchange was hamas so the idea that israel really deeply

wants to like reoccupy gaza some israelis probably do and they say that but not i don't think that that's really that the game plan of the state is at this point i think it's just that they you need to have a strategy for you cannot have hamas in charge and that the propaganda play that we saw that prompted these initial outrage from trump when he said you know we're not going to take this much anymore uh from nearly a week ago um it kind of proves the point. Those people cannot remain full stop. I mean, I think the offer should be bullet in the head or Elba for Hamas I'm talking about. I mean, I'm a hawk on this matter.

And as we are talking, we are 24 hours away from supposedly another round of hostage releases. It's not clear how many yeah i don't know my opinion is and i'll just state this and get your reaction my opinion is israel needs to finish them off the war needs to resume uh well israel eventually does have to finish them off yeah um but if there is a way by floating this idea of like well you're gonna have to take hundreds of thousands of palestinians egypt jordan other places like that um or you know if that's if that becomes part of the conversation even if it's a threat lurking in the background then maybe you begin to open up space because i the main thing that has to happen here is that the qataris need to be told

that um you've got to make a decision here. Yeah. And, you know, you need to use your influence to get the remaining hostages back and to take care of the leadership of Hamas. Yeah. And if you don't, we'll move our base. And you know what? We'll leave you, you know, we'll let the Iranians take care of you.

Right. Oh, I'm really, yeah, I'm sorry. I'm really glad you said that. I mean, all the talk is always, well, Iran, you you know they're behind all this that's all true but i've been saying exactly what you've said we need to lean hard on the qataris to step up their game and behave ourselves and threaten them by the way i thought the same thing you did i thought maybe i was being crazy saying we threaten we pull out our military installations and other things and punish them and i'm all for that yep no no no no yeah

threat threat threat indeed do you think that do you think there's any consequence in the long run to the world realizing that the countries around the palestinians don't want them if egypt says no i mean really i mean jordan who can can you know look both ways and say you know technically you know we're kind of palestinians you know we don't have room for anymore uh in egypt no we don't want them because it causes trouble uh i i i think the world would look at that and and blink a couple of times and then move right along to blaming israel for the continued existence of everything that that befalls the people in gaza well the only thing i would just say is a counter to that is that we saw under the first trump administration the expansion of the abraham

the abraham accords so at a moment when um you know the elite opinions of europe and on our campuses and so forth um you know sounds an awful lot like what we might hear from black september um there's also this sort of realization in the region itself that um you know this nearly century-old struggle to either prevent the birth of a jewish state or to destroy it uh has failed and we have to move on um that i think has sort of sunk in at least at the leadership level in the region and that's a good thing so um mean, I don't know what to do about, but then again, it's like, I mean, you know, getting back to our earlier thing,

and this is a problem also of the corruption of the international NGO complex, the United Nations, and all of these sorts of things that they just are kind of committed to this idea of propping up these, you know, two-bit genocidier terrorists in Hamas. Screw them.

Yeah. So, Eli, last subject for today. I want to talk about your podcast a bit, Breaking History. Thank you. By the way, your two latest episodes are really timely for me. I'm teaching the presidency this semester, so your episode on Andrew Jackson will be of great interest. And, of course, I live in Burning, California.

So, first of all, I guess do this. For listeners to get a general flavor, sort of what's your theory? What's your approach? What does the breaking part of breaking history mean? Is that the right question to- Yeah, I think that's a good question. I wrote an AI song called We've All Been Here Before,

simply lead mix. 80s music fans will get the reference. And that song's chorus is i know it seems we have no hope um we can't can't take it anymore but if you know our history we've all been here before and uh the next verse is america has been on the brink of going straight to hell um the civil war and watergate, the War of 1812. Okay, so that's the song. You rhymed hell and 12? I did.

You rhymed hell. I'm going to write an AI version of Cole Porter to find you. This is why Europe, their artistic sensibilities, wants to censor and control AI. Because people will create song anyway okay i'm i'm kidding you i'm sure it's a song it's good i will hear it but but the point the point i make is that um usually we are kind of you know captured at something historians call presentism which is we just think we are living through the worst thing in the world. And it's kind of remarkable.

And I've always been, I love reading history and I approach history as a journalist. So I love not having the obligation of being an historian because I know I'm not. And I have great respect and admiration for people who are trained historians. I don't claim to be one, but I do claim that as somebody who reads a lot of history and loves history loves literature and i approach it as a journalist and i love to find new things so you know what i did with the sort of episode on california burning is i asked the question of like well you know it kind of reveals just how in utterly incompetent and desiccated the ruling you know mono party of california the democrats have been where did this start and what i tell is the story of the 1975 mayoral election in san francisco

which proved that you could have a coalition as i say you know learn to stop fighting the freaks and invited them into city hall and that's what happened because part of that coalition included the Reverend Jim Jones of the People's Temple and one of the worst sociopaths in the 20th century. And this is, and because, I don't want to give too much away, but anyway, because of events, they never really had a reckoning for this sort of radical tolerance. And we see the people who survived that era went on to become the power brokers of the state politics in many ways, Dianne Feinstein, Willie Brown. And San Francisco still, in my view, is the big city that kind of really runs the state in a lot of ways. We see Gavin Newsom was the mayor of San Francisco.

Kamala Harris was mentored by uh willie brown um so that's the that's the story that i tell and i kind of you know i i try to i don't tell it ideologically i tell it more as a kind of this is i try to give credit to like you know i don't think that we should go back to an era when the police could, you know, arrest, you know, two gay men for holding hands or something like that. But at the same time, there was a sense that, I mean, I see a real similarity, for example, in the police chief that George Moscone brings in, who effectively kind of legalizes prostitution by saying we're not going to enforce it anymore he did it with a district attorney that also won that reminds me very much of like the decisions of of uh gascone and los angeles and chesa bodine to say we're not going to prosecute shoplifting so you have a shoplifting epidemic and it's all i see it as a very california thing which is that the road to ruin is paved with the most noble

intentions like we're trying to save an indigenous milk veg weed so we can't you know clear the forest road to build steel instead of wooden poles for the electric lines you know we we want to help the homeless and they're human beings too and these unhoused citizens have rights wonderful but like as you're doing all of that, you're either allowing tent cities, which is what happened, or you're spending gobs of money to hire caseworkers that work for NGOs for the city,

you know, at like $50,000, $60,000 a year, where you can try to give like motel rooms and set people up and be life coaches for homeless people and vagrants. And what I'm saying is that this is like an example of a kind of very California mentality. Like, well,

right. Well, you put your finger on something that's bothered me for a long time as a native Californian. It used to be that Southern California, LA dominated, or at least competed with the Bay area to accommodate California politics. But that's because,

you know, LA 40, 50 years ago, you had Hollywood aerospace and a lot of manufacturing. Yep. with the bay area to accommodate california politics but that's because you know la 40 50 years ago you had hollywood aerospace and a lot of manufacturing yep now it only has hollywood and silicon valley came and now as you say san francisco dominates the state even though the la and southern california population is bigger and this is an interesting um a really interesting phenomenon so my daughter I'm watching my daughter. I'm single parenting. Everybody say hi to Nora.

Before we let you go, lean back a little bit so I can see your daughter's charming. What your t-shirt is, because you always have a rock band t-shirt here. This is not a rock band. He is a rock star. It's Theater Herzl. Oh, there we go okay well you know i don't know give him a heavy metal

makeover or something like that gene sim a gene simmons cod piece and uh give him a heavy metal klezmer uh ai version of the song and uh and we will love to see assignment assignment taken good sir good i'm glad you understand the assignment to use the cliche that everybody is now using that i cannot wait for it to die yeah what we do want to live forever however is your podcast and everybody well let me just tell you can i can i tell the listeners oh yes uh next episode drops on wednesday who shot john the story of jfk's conspiracy theories i i'm not a conspiracy theorist on this but okay sounds like somebody is but uh but it's a it's a it's a great um it's a great

episode that looks at sort of the evolution of the various conspiracy theories into jfk the fact that trump is going to declassify the final state secrets regarding JFK and everything else, and the role particularly played by a 1991 film by Oliver Stone called JFK. Don't get me started. I saw that at a Washington premiere, actually, with Oliver Stone and Sam Donaldson. And afterwards, I'm in the men's room with Sam Donaldson and Oliver Stone. You know, two alpha dogs in the small kennel.

Wow. Yeah, and I couldn't say anything to Stone because I thought it was all stonking nonsense, but interestingly shot. And so we talked about the way that the opening sequence goes from the 4.3 aspect ratio of television, and then there's the gunshot, and it opens up to widescreen 16.9,

and how that is a nice transition. It was a nice little conversation, but I didn't want to say, Jim Garrison, are you crazy? So anyway, what I'm saying is between... We play some great clips from Jim Garrison, and we get into his lunacy. With all of the things that have been written and said,

including, of course, Posner and all the books that have exhaustively come down on one side of posner we interview posner by the way posner's posner's great and and vincent and you know all the so what i'm telling the audience is if eli is giving you this take on one of the most told stories of the 20th century you know he's got some interesting little thing that you haven't heard before or a way of putting it that you hadn't thought about before so listen breaking history of the podcast and people can find it on on what particular uh network oh it's well it's it's a free press podcast but you can get it on apple spotify wherever you get your podcasts we got it everywhere it's a it's really great i'm i'm very proud of the work and i'm thank you for for asking me about it that's great and we

also appreciate the money that you paid us to push the podcast. And I will note that I cashed it immediately because it was from the NED and I figured, Hey, they may not be able to honor this anytime soon. Yeah. Funny. All right. Thanks for joining us. We look forward to talking to you again.

Bye-bye. All right. Thank you. Yeah. So the thing is we were talking before about how somebody's got to do something, something about the Hamas leadership and gutter and the rest of it. Anyway, the point that I was trying to make was to segue into a commercial. And this was like an opportunity long gone.

Frankly, I'm just going to tell you this. HR. Right. You know, if there's a lot of HR scratching of heads going on in Washington, D.C., how do we outboard these people? How do we fire these people? What do we do? What do we do? Well, I'm sure that they're having to scramble because they probably don't have bamboo. Now, a question for the business owners out there. Have you ever felt totally lost when it comes to HR? Well, it's okay. It's not what you do best, but what you really do best, right, is to find solutions. And the solution to your HR problem is Bamboo HR. Bamboo HR is a

powerful but flexible all-in-one HR solution for your growing business needs. Stop spending countless hours on your payroll and your time track and your benefits and performance management. No, with Bamboo HR, those hours are shaved down to minutes. And it's why over 34,000 companies trust Bamboo HR, because it's got an integrated system that's designed to handle your current and your upcoming HR needs as you grow. Plus, Bamboo HR prides itself on being super easy. Easy to use, easy to learn, easy to implement, and very easy to love.

Bamboo HR. They'll handle everything from hiring and onboarding to payroll and benefits. When business owners switch to Bamboo HR, the intuitive interface stands out right away. Take a look yourself. Take a couple of minutes to check out the free demo and see how nimble and affordable this valuable tool can be. HR is hard, but Bamboo HR is easy. Reclaim your time and do what you do best. Check out the free demo at BambooHR.com slash free demo. See for yourself all that Bamboo HR can do and how truly affordable it can be too. That's BambooHR.com slash free demo.

BambooHR.com slash free demo. And we thank Bamboo HR for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Let's leave in a few more minutes here. Yes, you can say. Can I, I mean, before you move on, can I just say something about, something nice about Sam Donaldson? Because I mean, I can understand the horror of being stuck next to the urinal between him and Oliver Stone. And I always used to rage at Sam Donaldson when I watched him in the 80s

on TV. But I may have a worse circumstance by the way i was once stuck sitting next to lanny davis on a coast-to-coast plane flight he was uh you know clinton's white house council it was in 2008 and he wouldn't shut up about how obama was terrible and hillary clinton was going to save the country i felt like that guy in airplane who commits seppuku having to listen to Ted Stryker go on and on, right? Here's the thing. Sam Donaldson I got to meet a few times privately and off the screen, and he turns out to be a really nice guy. Partly it was an act. I mean, the sharp elbows of the press corps in Washington.

And what endeared me to him finally was he brought up, to me, something that's always been on my mind, one of Reagan's greatest moments. It was Donaldson in 1982 with his full pomposity saying, Mr. President, you've blamed the deficits on the mistakes of the past. Do you take any of the blame yourself? And Reagan, in his usual way, said, well, yes, Sam, because after all, for a long time, I was a Democrat. And the press room erupted, and you can find this on YouTube. The press room erupts in and you can find us on YouTube, the press room erupts in laughter, and Donaldson said, Reagan humiliated me many times, but that was his greatest humiliation.

I thought, good for Sam. Anyway, he's a nice guy. Yeah, I'm not sure we have his type anymore, because you could disagree with what you took to be a partisan shading the way he was saying things, but there was something more to the man. There know, there was life beyond politics. And you get the feeling with a lot of today's resistance core in the press that there is nothing beyond politics because nothing matters more than saving the country from the existential threat to our democracy that constitutes the current government. So, yeah, there's that. So there's a couple of things we could talk about before we go out. And one of them, I suppose, is the penny.

Trump says he's going to be, we're done with the penny. And I'm of two minds of this. You know, you get rid of the penny and immediately everything is rounded up to a nickel or a dime. We all know that. And there is still something in me that likes the fact that they're still trying to fool me that an item that is $2.49 is somehow cheaper than something that's

$2.50, which it is. But that little psychological nine is such a part of 20th century marketing technology. I don't know what they're going to do with gasoline. Gasoline is constantly moving by increments of pennies. What exactly do you do about that? Round up, round down. If you round it up, does that mean that they get the money and they're obliged to get you know all the individual gas stations are obliged to take that extra rounded up money into something philanthropic with it if they're supposed to round down are they supposed to take the hit i i don't know i kind of like the penny for that reason but i can't remember the last time that i actually had one because everything everything is the is of the phone, the wave of the watch, the wave of the card. And it's rare that I come away with coins.

Yeah. Well, I'm for keeping the penny, I think, for a bunch of reasons. But one of them is it's the different color from the other coins. I think getting rid of the penny would be an implicit concession that we're going to have more inflation. Right. So the penny is kind of a nuisance for the reasons you mentioned. I do know that maybe you probably know this because your culture may have been that in World War II, when we were so short of copper, I think it was 1943, we minted pennies out of aluminum because we had lots of that.

And maybe what we ought to do, because a penny apparently costs more than one cent to make because copper is expensive and we need it for all of our green energy forget that for the moment but maybe we ought to just reformulate the penny so that it's made out of an alloy the same way we got rid of silver quarters in 1965 right the poor afford they were zinc pennies i remember the first time i saw one of those i thought i'd seen something from an alternate dimension that had leaked into mine. It was amazing, those things. And I have a few of them. The fact that we are now in a coinless era or an era that no longer really has much use for them, I think is sad. While I don't want to sound like an old fart saying, hey, you kids today with your watches. There is something comforting about a pocket full of change. When I was in my 20s,

if you had a pocket full of quarters, you were assured of many things. A couple of them and a dime and a nickel would buy a pack of cigarettes. One of them would get you an hour on a parking meter. One of them would get you three games if you were good at a pinball machine.

You could save them up and you could use them in the laundromat. The pennies were exceptionally useful. And when you had a half, half dollars would occasionally swim into view, but by then they were working their way out of the system along with a dollar. You didn't see a dollar. And the quarter had a hardiness to it and it had an abiding quality because it had never changed the way it looked. Now you would have a dime and sometimes you'd find a Liberty Head dime and that would be amazing. It'd be worn down like a buffalo nickel, also worn down. And you could almost sense the weight and the passage and the length of history by looking simply this vehicle for endless tinkering and revision. Let's make all 50 states and people will collect them and never spend them.

Let's slap somebody on who hasn't had a coin. Let's make it gold. Let's do this. And it just has no place in the modern imagination as it did before, except when it's clattering out of a Vegas machine into a bucket. And even then, people are using cards and slapping and cards and slapping and cards and slapping. I hate to be an old coot about these things, but I guess if I have to, I'll defend the quarter against all critics and comers.

And if that means I have to make common cause with the penny advocates, then I will do just that. Well, that brings us to the top of the hour, and that brings us to the end of the show, because unlike some people who just have absolutely no care as to how long they ramble and blather, even though, Stephen, I know that we could go another 15, 20 minutes, an hour is a good time to say we are done, like we were the Ed Sullivan show, you know, or some network program. You hear the sound in the back of your head, the toll at the top.

Hit the post. Get out. Let people get on with their lives. Of course, I've just made it an hour and a minute by going through all that. We thank our sponsors, Quality Ascenia Olympics and HR Bamboo. Support them and you support us. We hope you give us a good review wherever you happen to give good podcast reviews. We want you to go, of course, to Ricochet.com

where the member feed is available for a very small amount of quarters and we'll introduce you to a sane center-right civil world that you've been looking for on the internet ever since you plugged the damn thing in. Stephen, it's great. I'm James Lollix. This has been the Ricochet Podcast 728

and we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Ricochet. Join the conversation.