The Ricochet Podcast - Big Ben, The Indomitable Donald and the Tush Push

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

Ben Domenech returns to the Ricochet Podcast to give a progress report on Trump's second go at running things. James, Charles and Steve glean insights about the builder from Queens as Ben divulges about his long sitdown with the president in February. Plus, the hosts rap on the pope from Chicago, Germany's lurch toward state censorship, series worth a watch, and pieces worth a read.- Sound from this week's open: a clip from Ben's interview with Trump. 

Bye bye, bye bye, bye bye. We hadn't agreed what key we were in and James didn't give us any indication at all like usual. You always leave me stranded, James. 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 Charles CW Cook and Stephen Hayward.

I'm James Lalex. Today we talked to Ben Dominick who sat down with Donald Trump and he's going to tell you what he said. So let's have ourselves a podcast. You're familiar with this because you watch the game. There's been this whole debate about the meat slayer that they were on, the tush push. I wouldn't ban it but what I would ban is this horrible kickoff rule, this new kickoff rule that is so bad. It is so terrible. You know, when in football, when the ball moves, you're supposed to be moving. This ball was up in the air and they're all said it is so horrible. Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number 740. I'm James Lalex in a beautiful, gorgeous May day

here in Minneapolis. Charles C. W. Cook at the moment is dealing with a water emergency, as he put it, which is not a British euphemism for anything. Apparently he's got some water where it ought not to be in his house. He's probably right now putting down bounty towels, soaking it up and strewing sawdust

so he can get to us as soon as possible because of course this takes priority. Stephen Hayward is with us as well. Stephen are you in California? I am it's a beautiful sunny day here after several days of heavy fog along the coast so I am welcoming my chance to replenish my vitamin D levels. Good. I understand the gas is gonna hit something like eight bucks in California. I read that they're taking a couple of refineries offline because why, why would you need refineries? Um, and then consequently they expect gasoline prices to spike to an absurd.

Like gasoline will, will be one of those prices that you see on a sign in a, in a, in a dystopian, post apocalyptic movie, you know, when they cast deep into the troubled future and gas is nine dollars Is this true? Do you drive a lot does does something like that affect anything the way that people live or do they just growl and pump and Snarl and go on the way as usual. Well, California is testing the limits to how much pain you can exact from people I think Californians have gotten used to gasoline being much higher than the national average for quite a while, but now as

that saying goes, the calls are coming from inside the house because it's some of the, you know, I forget it's the state auditor or whoever, but it's official estimates from California state agencies saying, hey wait a minute, if we keep doing some of these crazy things, we're looking at the realistic possibility of eight dollar gasoline within say 12 months from now. I think that would be a tipping point to use that dumb old cliche, right? And even Newsom apparently has put out the word

to his regulators, we need to back off. I should back up for listeners who won't know what the proximate cause of this is. California has its own special gasoline. You cannot sell it anywhere else in the country and no one else can make it for us. Well, what happens is if you have a maintenance problem or a fire at a refinery, suddenly the supply gets hit, the price goes up. And so what was the answer? Well, price controls, of course, and reserve requirements and all kinds of other stupid interventions that aren't

working. And you've had a couple of refiners, Valeros One, Conical Phillips and others, saying, you know what, we're just going to close a couple of our refineries. They're not very profitable and so forth. So suddenly you're looking at a real crisis of gasoline supply in the state for our boutique gasoline that, by the way, we don't need anymore, but that's a technical subject for another day. So even Newsom is now putting out the word, we need to back off on this because this is going to kill my chances to be president. Well, he doesn't say the last part, but that's clearly what is on his mind. Eight dollar gas, eight dollar gas. It's just extraordinary. And of course, your refinery

schedules, you know, affects the rest of us too, because everybody has to shut down and reformulate. I mean, it's great that we don't have to, that nobody else can make it for you, but the rationale behind this is because of the special ecological needs of California and that what does this go back to? 1973, they were concerned about too much lead and sulfur being belched out the back of the pipe,

so they said you gotta do this, this, and this, and none of those things apply anymore, but like most of these things, it staggers on and on and on a zombie regulation that can't be killed. Yeah, well I mean most people think if you ask people how many kinds of gasoline do we have in this country they'll say three you know 87 octane 89 and 91. The answer is more like 75. In fact actually in your neck of the woods James there's a special blends for the Minneapolis-St.

Paul area, I'm pretty sure. I've seen the color-coded map for this. And what it goes back to is you're close to being on it. It was really the Clean Air Act of 1990 that said, you know, we've got to have a lower – the technical term is you want to have lower read vapor pressure in the summer so gasoline isn't evaporating. In the old days, that meant out of cars with carburetors. But ever since we got catalytic converters

and fuel-injected engines, cars are a much less of a source of air pollution. And so now it's just evaporation out of gas pumps. But it is so minor now that these regulations are obsolete. We can go back to, well, you could just have sort of a lower volatility gasoline in the summer, but there's no reason not to have a nationwide blend for it. And finally, I can geek out on this all day and I don't want to bore listeners, but you know, after Hurricane Katrina and then was it

Hugo was the second one in 2005, so 10 years ago now, President Bush waived the gasoline blending requirements because, you know, half of our refiners were shut down in the Gulf. And there was no increase in air pollution. The environmental groups said, oh, we understand it's necessary, but this is terrible. Well, that showed you that 20 years ago, these regulations for gasoline were obsolete and we're still stuck with them,

because like other environmental rules, they're almost impossible to get rid of. Yeah, the evaporation thing, there's that seal on the pump and there's the new gas caps, at least in the car that I have, which form a tight seal with the hose and the nozzle and all the rest of it.

It's not as though you come up to a gas station and you are beset by an ice stinging miasma of evaporated gasoline. As a matter of fact, I don't even smell gas when I'm at the pump anymore. But of course, we don't have the pipes that we had in the bad old days of the 60s where black smoke would come out of the back. Now speaking of black smoke, white smoke, we've got a pope. And this is Pope Leo XIV. And I have

been not surprised, I guess, but I've been really sort of dismayed by the quantity of memes that this has spawned and there are none of them Are very good. There seems to be an intersection between Catholicism, popery, new popes, Leo, Chicago That just didn't catch fire this time. That of course is the most important issue of the day But no, I'm not Catholic. So I have no canum in this fight, but Stephen you're probably more theologically astute than myself. What are we looking at here? Are we looking at more of a return to what some people want in terms of traditional Catholicism? I think if that had been the case, they would have got somebody from Africa

or somebody who's going to sort of continue along the path of his predecessor or be like Leo XIII and, you know, be in the office forever. I think he was the fourth longest serving pope. Yeah, well, right now my first guess is he's going to be halfway between Francis, who was pretty progressive in a lot of ways and equivocal and confusing, and Benedict the 16th. And two things give me hope about him at least. One is that on sort of traditional Catholic moral questions, he looks pretty solid. He's made some strong statements against the sort of gender identity madness. He's pro-life. He's condemned, as he put it, the

homosexual lifestyle and same-sex marriage. So far, so good. He has retweeted a lot of progressive stuff on climate change and immigration. But I noticed two things about good. He has retweeted a lot of progressive stuff on climate change and immigration. But I know there's two things about him. He's not unlike Pope Francis who used to traffic in the old days in Argentina with a lot of those liberation theologians – liberation theology, in short, is just Marxism with salsa, what it was back then. But Bob, Pope Bob, I'm still calling him Leo, he is Augustinian by background, which I think is very interesting. Second, he was a math major as an undergraduate at Villanova, and one of his scholarly publications after he went through theology school and

whatnot was Bayesian statistics applied to theology. In other words, he's as far away from sort of Marxism and goofy phenomenology as you can possibly get, I think. I take those as somewhat hopeful signs that he's a more grounded guy. Good. Well, in that case, if he's an Augustinian by training, it'll be great to have somebody come out and thunder against Manichaeism and the Pelagian heresy and all of these things, which remain to this day, actually relevant topics. If you want to drill down into it and consider that human nature doesn't change and these issues continue to be devilish. But so there's that. Well, we'll see how it goes. Another thing that might might be of interest to people that have been chewing over the stats and figures and shape of the world is the fact that Charles is now with us.

And I say that in the most commanding voice possible. Charles has entered the chat. Charles has entered the chat. Are you, are you, are you in dampened? Well, you did worry me a bit when you started talking about pipes and evaporation and I thought this was a microaggression. No, we don't do microaggressions. We do macroaggressions. Yeah, just straight up aggressions. We were casting our eyes, or about to, to Europe, where an

interesting thing has happened in Germany. We're being told again, what the parameters of possible political discussion should be. The German intelligence agency said that this party over there's extremist right wing organization and they're going to watch them. I love any sentence that begins an interesting thing has happened in Germany. And I love I love reading Germans. excusing their authoritarianism. I love it. Because and for good reason, historically, they don't want to say, yes, we are authoritarians.

So what they do is they say, yes, we did it, but then explain why. So recently when JD Vance criticized them, they didn't say, no, no, we don't arrest people for speaking on the internet. They said, oh, no, you have to understand. We are not, we are not censoring you. If you're just making sure your opinions are as good as they can be, according to our guidelines. And with this one, it was even better. No, it's not an attack on democracy.

If you're not, we are not attacking democracy. We have just enabled this secret services to look into you. And if you do not like us and you cannot run for office and we will not tell you if we found things on you that you might dispute because that would just feed into your extremism. You see, it's amazing. They just they just they just they go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we did that. We did that. But we did it for your own good.

They are they are incorrigible, James. They are unsalvageable. The Germans. It if I could jump in, it it's an amazing thing to me that the alternative for Germany party, AFD, they got 21% of the vote in the last election. So they came in a close second. They're now polling at 26% in the latest round of polls, the number one party. I think because more and more Germans are saying, wait a minute, we keep wanting change and we don't get it. And the question I have to ask is, oh, they say AFD is a neo-Nazi party. Is there anybody who really thinks that 25% of the German population are wannabe neo-nazis. I mean, you do?

No, come on. The last thing, the final thing is the German intelligence service, our producer points out to us, is called in German, I can't pronounce it right, but the Verfassungsschutz. Of course it is. Yeah, well my favorite German technical term is Weltverschlechter, which means world worsener. And that ought to be the title of their intelligence service. If you ask me, well, does it seem to you gentlemen is if they are, what they are doing is,

I mean, I don't, I am not there. I don't know whether I'm sure that there are some people in the organization who have appalling views about this, that and the other. But, um but it seems to me that what has set them apart is their criticism of demographic shifts in Germany and that they are expressing an idea held by a not insignificant number of Germans that the general European project to reorder or rejigger the demographics of Europe is not beloved by people who would prefer their country stay as it was before that and I don't know does energy feed into it as well because it'll be interesting to find out whether or not advocating for nuclear power and and and and casting an eye as scant at windmills is now a signifier for Nazis.

We all know, I mean, if you look at the right... Well, we all know how the last war ended with the use of nuclear. Yeah. And now you want to bring that back to the world. How dare you? I mean, because if you're against the transgender agenda, you are regularly called a Nazi. So the word is appended to anybody nowadays

who doesn't follow the parameters of the standard progressive beliefs. transgender agenda, you are regularly called a Nazi. So the word is appended to anybody nowadays who doesn't follow the parameters of the standard progressive beliefs. But is this part of it? I don't know, is what I'm asking. Is energy that much of a component of the AFD or are they basically just seen as the guys who will probably do something maybe down the road

about reducing the increase in the rate of migration into Germany. Look, we're joking about this. English people cannot help but joke about the Germans. But I really do think that this is ultimately a sign of very low self-confidence. And I've been making this argument in different contexts for years. When I was at Oxford, we had all manner of people come and speak. And in 2008, the year after I left for the first time, I think maybe in the history of the Oxford Union, which was set up as a free speech debating society in the Victorian era, the invitation to someone who was truly awful, was

canceled, we were supposed to have a debate with a guy called Nick Griffin, who was the leader of the British National Party, fascist and David Irving, who really had gone crazy in his later years, and they rescinded the invitation. And I remember saying at the time that this was actually not a sign of civilisation or self confidence, but the opposite that is to say, did you really think that 450 Oxford students were going to go to this debate with these two silly people and goose step out?

And I think the Germans do suffer from the same thing, which is they do wonder at the back of their minds, whether if the wrong political party is allowed to speak or the wrong internet influencer is left unmolested on Twitter, whether they will go back into it. I'm not here doing my schtick anti-German thing, which I know I do as a running joke. I do think they have that fear somewhere in their psyche.

That's a bunch of running jokes, a goose-stepping one. Gentlemen, it's time for our guest, Ben Dominic, editor in charge of, editor in law, and charge, who knows, Spectator World, a Fox News contributor, and the host of the just released podcast, Insert Sound Effect from London, here, The Big Ben show Ben welcome hey it's great to be with you you know Big Ben was also it was also a name of a product by West clocks and it was one of their most famous and enduring domestic clocks that they sold absolutely millions of them so you're going for

that ubiquitous in the house of every good American or the symbol of something loud sonorous and historic in another country. I was thinking a little bit more of that. And frankly, a nod to the fact that as editor at large for the spectator, the oldest English language magazine in the world, as Charles Cook is currently nodding, um, it was, uh, designed to, uh, make a nod to the fact that I have to put up with a lot of Brits.

to make a nod to the fact that I have to put up with a lot of Brits. I will only know it as a Minneapolis chauvinist that the Minneapolis city hall, where I'm a block away from has clock faces on its tower that are actually larger than big Ben. So if you want to extend your reach, you might want to call yourself the Minneapolis city hall Ben show, but it's not as euphonious. I will take that under advisement that I believe as Charles will probably know, it's actually the bell. It's not the clock.

Yes, yes, of course. Yes, you're right. You're absolutely right. This is English people's favorite pedantic point to make. And they do it with terrorists. I know. And it has been made to me on several occasions. And there are so many of them from which to choose.

By all the people, by all the people who I thank for bringing me Don Hills at the end of the year when they go back home for holiday. Well, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm heading off to a blighting myself. I can bring you back some players, some triple fives. What do you want? Fantastic. All of the above. I'll just bring you 20 Roflans. All right, so here we are. Quick sketch, Trump so far, I guess that's a world start.

We're a third of the way into the year already, 412th. And how's it looking? Well, I think you have to give it, I mean, this is always sort of a random point. Everyone has their columns tied to, you know, how you assess things, but it's incomplete in so many ways. The degree to which that he's moved fast has been eye-opening for me.

And I really do believe, especially after, and I hope that you had the time to read and consume the interview that I did with him in the Oval Office, which was a first magazine interview. Yeah. Oh, thank you so much, Steve. Always be selling. See, Steve holds up the actual physical copy. Yes. I only have a few left, so I need to make sure that I hold on to one. He, you know. Different politicians take different lessons from near death experiences. My friend Chip Roy, who I worked with back

when I was a speechwriter for John Cornyn, had the stunning thing of being diagnosed before he was 40 years old of lymphoma and beat it. And is now obviously a member of Congress, a fire-breathing member of Congress. And he went from being sort of a vaguely centrist Texan Republican to being what he is today, I think in part because of that experience.

It sort of shortens your timeframe. It says, life is short, I have to fight as hard as I can for the things that I need to do. I think that the president has taken a similar lesson here and applied it via the people that he's named. The only problem that I think that comes with that though is that you've named a bunch of people to these jobs who are front-facing public faces. They are used to doing TV. They

are used to doing podcasts. They are used to being out front. That's not necessarily the skill set that it takes to run bureaucracies. And especially, you know, as I look at, you know, my another former boss of mine, Jim O'Neill, who's up for the secondary, the basically the second in command position at HHS and hearings this week. Getting him in at HHS is critical because he actually knows the place, knows the way the bureaucracy works,

knows the way to get things done. You know, the problem when you have someone like Pete Hegseth who goes into the Pentagon, is that as much as you might like him as a spokesperson, my brother who's an army major, said it's so unreal to have a secretary of defense who can actually go on TV and be cogent. The problem is he also brought with him

a lot of his advisors who were clearly at odds with each other and feuding over different things. You had essentially a slew of firings in the wake of Signalgate that really had nothing necessarily to do with Signalgate. And that to me is an indication that when you hire these front-facing people, they don't necessarily bring people with them

who have the cognizance of how to steer the ship of state. And I think that that's been the real challenge for them in this early going. I also think tariffs are silly and that the fact that we are having the kind of reaction from Capitol Hill of just not knowing on a daily basis of what's gonna happen to major industries in states across the country is not a position that Republicans want to be in going into the midterm.

So that has to be sorted out in short order, because essentially the midterms start in September, you know, realistically. And also just one last point, living in Virginia, the unfortunate, I think Virginia is going to be the Canada of this election cycle in November, I would say, because Winsome Sears, wonderful woman, great candidate, you know, think that she would in a normal year, I think that she would be able to best a Democrat, especially one as completely in the swamp

as that they are on pace to nominate. But in this situation, the backlash from the bureaucracy toward the Trump administration is probably going to lead to a Republican bloodbath in the fall here in Virginia, which is of course a bellwether election that people take their cues from. And it's going to have, I think, Capitol Hill Republicans quite scared going into this next year about the midterms.

And the White House itself, and I've had numerous people within the White House tell me this, they view this as being an existential threat, meaning that if Democrats take the House the way that they did the first time around for Trump, it essentially puts the stops to their entire agenda. And that's something I think that they have to be concerned about at this point.

Yeah. I want to get back to tariffs when you said before, I too am not a fan of them. I grew up, you know, with the specter of smooth holly hovering over my brain, having been told that it was passed and the next day the stock market crashed and stockbrokers jumped out of windows. Don't like them though. But here's the thing. If we are to have a more equitable trade position with China and do something about their IP

thievery in general, commercial stalduggery, is there something in the toolbox behind a wham-diggas, a 145% tariff to get their attention and force them to the table? Or would you have preferred that we just concentrate on China while not doing the whole blanket thing around to the world as somebody who has an unequal trade balance with us and talk about Britain as well? There you go. You've got, you've got 90 seconds. Go. Well, what I think is, um, there's,

there's a difference between understanding something as being strategic ambiguity, you know, an actual choice that you've made versus the lack of a strategy. And I think that that's really the question going on here, which is that strategic ambiguity, which sort of says, I'm gonna throw these things out there just to get people to the table talking about various things. I actually, I did a rant on my podcast the other day

on these Hollywood tariffs, which I'm sure you probably have opinions about too. The thing that is actually true about them is that Hollywood is losing a ton of business overseas. America has lost Star Wars. America has lost the next two big Marvel movies. America's losing all this stuff to Canada and to overwhelmingly to Great Britain

because they have a support for filmmaking that is to the tune of a 40% rebate. And competing with that is very difficult. Even if you're competing with it from Atlanta, which is where most of the Marvel stuff has been made recently, including Thunderbolts. The thing that is interesting though about this is that you sparked a conversation about what would it take to bring

this type of movie making back to Hollywood. And to be honest, the answer to that is have Gavin Newsom undo every little, every single thing that he's done. And that's the actual answer. Uh, unfortunately instead, what he wants to do is charge us for the stupidity of his policies. So to the tune of, uh, you know, a multi billion dollar package of rebates, uh,

to make up for all of these stupid union rules and California, uh, regulations. Personally, I think tariffs only work as something that can force a conversation that the other side doesn't want to happen. You never want them as a long-term solution because they are attacks on your own people and they are wrongheaded. But I do think that there is a lot of wiggle room in this space and just because the president thinks of things in terms of tariffs as like that's his go-to. You know, John Voight,

by the way, who was behind apparently this policy, when he was interviewed about this, said, I wanted something that was a tariff paired with a rebate. And it seems clear that the president just loves the tariff part of that. You know, and so he just goes in that direction. We'll see how it plays out. But one thing I do think is clear, he has responded to the pressure that he's had from a number of other Republicans who say,

look, you know, you can go after China all you want. That's fine with us. We don't like going after nations that we view as our allies and punishing them in situations that do not benefit the people. And that's what he's going to continue to hear, I think, including from members who are very safe, from Katie Britt in Alabama, that kind of thing.

And that's something that I think he does listen to. And just like every other decision that he makes, he throws it out to the table. He sees the people debate. He listens to what they say. And then he picks a side or picks a person and says, you know, they won this argument. I'm going to stick with them.

But I want to ask about that because I agree that they need to get rid of the tariffs pretty quickly. But also I agree that Trump really likes tariffs. That's what he focuses in on. And I just wonder, is this one different? Because this is something he has believed for 40 years. Yeah. A lot of political topics.

He's something of a chameleon on, not because he's necessarily on principle, just because he doesn't care. Is this something he can fix quickly? Or is this one going gonna be his undoing? I think that more than anything, he responds to pressure in this moment that connects to his popularity and to his understanding of what the people

who love him love. And so from my perspective the big thing that's kind of the open question on this and Charles you're probably aware of this you know one of the biggest aspects of going in a tariff regime like this is how much it hurts American working families and I think people underestimate the fact that we're not talking about dolls. We're not talking about two dolls and 30 dolls. What we're actually talking about

are things that you are required as a parent to buy, such as even in New York City, you are required to, when you take your baby and leave the hospital, first prove that you can put them into a car seat, even if you don't have a car. You have to have a car seat. Car seats, 97% of them in America come from China. And that's because China has produced these car seats in a way that lines up with America's

overwhelming regulatory state. They even have offices there. There's one County in China, by the way, that does this. Um, they have offices there to assess, uh, you know, what they do and make sure it lines up. And by the way, you know, if you are not a recent parent, you know, car seats have expiration dates now. You can't even re-gift them. There's no like aftermarket. They're perfectly good. Yeah. So it's not like a crib or something like that

where you can donate it. It's ridiculous. And then that same county, by the way, also produces an overwhelming number of American bicycles and of, for youngsters and of strollers. The most popular, like mid-tier stroller band, Up A Baby, announced that their most popular like mid tier stroller band, Up A Baby, announced that their most popular model was going to go up in cost by $300 about four weeks ago,

which means that they now took that into an area where middle-class families will be paying $1,000 for a stroller. That's ridiculous. Like, I mean, we should not be in a position where that but that's the thing That's not like a decision about whether I get the doll for the kid or not. It's like I need a stroller I have to have one, you know, and so I think the problem for the president is that if those impacts are felt at the middle-class level

Everyone's gonna be looking around and saying, this is not what I voted for. And that's where I think the rubber meets the road and you actually have to have a pullback, but that hasn't happened yet. Uh, and until it does, uh, I think this is still kind of in that uncertainty space. Every poll that I've seen, and I'm sure you all get, you know, sort of leaked stuff behind the scenes as well, but every poll that I have seen from people who have sent them to me in terms

of the breakdown, basically show Trump supporters as being cautiously optimistic, but nervous, essentially saying, I trust the president. Not sure this is going to work. So Ben, I want to draw you back to your terrific interview with Trump in The Spectator. I love the headline, by the way, clear and present Donald. I think that works both for his fans and his enemies. Look, I mean, there's really a lot of news in this. I mean, some stuff that's familiar and fun, like him saying, let's get rid of the NFL's

horrible kickoff rule. I love that one. Building the ballroom at the White House like Marloco. Some of this has been out in the press. But what really struck me about it was what you drew out of him, which I've been wondering about for a while now, about the difference between his first term and his second term. And did you explicitly ask what he'd learned from that experience? Because you get into it here, and culminating, by the way, those very interesting comments about Nixon that I gather you did ask him directly about.

And so here's my hypothesis, which was, what came through in your article, and either confirm or clarify this, is that is it really right to say that in the first term, he really underestimated how vicious the attacks on him were gonna be once he won the election and took office? That came through at one point where, I mean, this guy's been around New York real estate and all the rest of that. That's a pretty rough and tumble world, but even with all that experience

and what happened in the campaign, it sounds like he was admitting that he underestimated how insane and off the chart vicious it was going to be. Alan Taylor He totally did. And one thing I would say is the interview, and we do have the audio version that people can go and find at thespectator.com of our conversation, which is consistent with our transcript, but I will say the audio version is about an hour long.

He talked to me for more than 90 minutes. So it's long, I actually think it's the longest interview that he's given other than like Joe Rogan or something like that. And you know, he just goes off the record all the time, which is, I mean, it's fine, but it's kind of funny because usually it's like he goes off the record and it's because he wants to insult somebody's wife.

Oh, he has good qualities. Right. Right. Yeah, exactly. She was a mess. You know, that kind of thing. So, so, uh, he actually told me a phenomenal anecdote about, uh, Bob McDonald's wife, uh, that, that I, you know, couldn't put in because it was, it was off the record, but it was just very, very funny. But the thing that is, he also says serious things. And in fact, I would say I emerged from that interview

believing that he understands Mexico a lot better than I thought necessarily going into it that he did. And I think that this whole idea of his administration being kind of a Western hemisphere foreign policy, you know, Polk influenced admin is definitely something that comes from the top and is not just being, you know, something that's being said by- Yeah, well, there's that rare moment of circumspection that you quote him not just being, you know, something that's being said by- Yeah, well there's that rare moment of circumspection

that you quote him about Mexico saying, you know, I'd rather not tell you what might have to be done. I think everyone knows, but- He says, I'd rather not tell you, but you know what has to be done. And then he went off for about another 15 minutes off the record.

So anyway, unfortunately, it's the best thing. No, but you can't say it. But the thing that is really interesting about him, I think on the second term versus first term thing, is I don't think he anticipated being surrounded by haters the way that he was the first time around. I think he thought of this as being, I'm gonna walk in there and I'm gonna be able

to do business with Chuck Schumer and do business with Paul Ryan, and basically ad you know, adjudicate that and there was sort of a glimmer of a moment. I mean, Charles probably remembers this cause I think you may have written a piece responding to it about that Ezra Klein take that like, it was like a Democrat should work with Trump to fix Obamacare. Like that was, that was his take about two weeks before

inauguration. That all went out the window when you had the women's march and when you had the Russiagate stuff and everything else that came after that. Um, and I think this time around, he has a clear-eyed view of it, but he also feels vindicated. He feels like they threw everything that they could at me. They threw the kitchen sink at me. I fought through it all and I came back. They tried to, you know, someone tried to kill me, you know, and multiple people in fact. And, you know, and because of that,

I think he just has this, this sort of, the difference between, I interviewed him before in, in 20 when he was about to start his reelection campaign, you know, same kind of thing, you know, in the oval. I got about to start his reelection campaign, you know, same kind of thing, you know, in the oval, I got less time than I think it was an hour. But at that point he was kind of surrounded and he was leaning forward on his desk. You know, he was, he was just like, you know, he was just really in it and, and kind of, you know,

angry and frustrated. And you got that vibe this time around, he's sitting back in his chair. Yeah. He seems very relaxed. When I got the high sign that we needed to bring things to a close, I asked him a question about the, I asked him about the tush brush. Right. That was, whenever you go into an interview,

you have kind of, or at least this is the way that I approach interviewing. When I approach interviewing the president, cause I've you go into an interview, you have kind of, or at least this is the way that I approach interviewing. When I approach interviewing the president, cause I've done it now three times, the thing is one, you interrupt him if he starts repeating himself or going in a chain that you kind of know where he's going, which he does respect.

The second thing is ask him some questions about celebrities because he always has opinions about celebrities. The one question that I forgot to ask, I'm kicking myself for this is I was going to ask him if Stephen A Smith would be a good kid. I only forgot to do that. Um, and then the, the third thing is I always go in with like, what's your last question, you know, like, cause, cause you never want to end on a like sour note. You always want to have something that's a little interesting. And so I,

because it was currently during the NFL meetings, I asked him about his perspective on the touch push. And then we talked another half an hour about sports. And it was great. I mean, it comes through in your writeup that he is more relaxed. I think he's funnier. This is my observation from afar is that

it's a different person in some ways. In other ways, he's the same Trump as always, but a different person from the first term, more confident, more purposeful. Well, but he also, I would just say one more thing, which is that he has a much, much savvier team in terms of his, like, especially in terms of his media team around him than he did before. They're much more cognizant of all the different elements going on there.

And that's not a slight against those past people, but it's detectable in terms of their awareness and situational sort of perspective on things. There is one topic missing from your write-up, more than one, but one particular one is missing. Now, maybe it's in the complete interview that you say is online, but I didn't see any discussion or about what is the centerpiece of his legislative agenda

or ought to be, which is the tax cut bill. And you know, in the first term, he essentially farmed it out to Paul Ryan, and that's basically fine. And I get the feeling he may be doing the same thing this term, what is your, did you talk about it at all? And what's your sense of how engaged he is in the tax package, other than just wanting something passed?

We talked about it very briefly and it wasn't all that interesting. It was not that, it was the only, the reason it's not in the article is because he basically said the same things that he'd been saying publicly. And so it was not something that I included for that reason. But the thing that is interesting about this moment

for the Republican party is, they've made all these promises about the kind of party that they're gonna be, but I feel like, and feel free to disagree with me, Steve or Charles or James, I don't know that they have a consistent perspective on tax policy that is a through line because everybody seems to be just gnawing at their own personal priorities, especially these moderates currently who, for whatever reason, you know, salt is more important to them than almost anything else. And I mean, I don't know about you,

but I personally think it's a bad thing to take Medicaid dollars and give them to someone like me versus someone who is disabled or a mom or a kid, you know, and basically send that money to a hospital at a higher, you know, percentage coverage rate. You know, that was something that was always messed up about Obamacare. And the fact that suddenly Republicans are like, no, no, no, we have to defend that because otherwise we'll be seen as, as horrible people.

I think if you're an able bodied American, you know, you should be, you should have to work for that. And that's, you know, been a Republican priority, essentially until yesterday. What else did you get the sense that he really cares about? If he doesn't care about this, and it wasn't a great part of the interview, and he said what he said in public and so on? I mean, are there topics, this might not come across in a transcript so much as on a tape or in I mean, are there topics, this might not come across in a transcript so much as

on a tape or in a video, are there topics where he lights up and you can just tell, yeah, this is why he's there? He lights up when he is talking about building anything. You know, it's like a, it is just in his core. I mean, he was so interested in like hearing my opinions about the new Redskins, I mean, Redskins Washington Stadium thing. And he was just like, it's so beautiful when you come in and the road splits. And it's you know, it's a fan to like, he was like, he had strong, he has strong opinions about that. And then I think he also he's his own political consultant, you know, in the way that like, there are certain He's his own political consultant.

You know, in the way that like, there are certain members of Congress, as you know, who self staff, like they read their own stuff and then they come up with their own ideas, which is often frustrating to staff. For Trump, one of the things that he kind of, it's clear about him is that he thinks that he understands Americans I think more than his own consultants and staff do. So when he says things like

do you think the the election was about inflation? You know do you think it was about that? Well you know he thinks you know he thinks it was about the border. He thinks that the border was a bigger issue for people than the polls or than the consultants necessarily understood. I happen to think he's probably right about that just in terms of the determining demographics, but he thinks that he has a better gauge on where people are.

And then he also, he thinks Democrats are crazy, but he likes that they're crazy. Like he doesn't, he sort of doesn't want to say, it doesn't work. It's like he wants to be able to point at them on a daily basis and say, look at these lunatics, you know? And, but he kind of,

I think he kind of respects the crazy because he thinks they're making like a play for a certain demographic of their own party, uh, which is kind of forward looking. Uh, and so I wouldn't, you know, uh, we, to the degree that I would say he, he sort of is, um, is aware of this. It's almost like he doesn't want Republicans to actually pass policies that change

some of the craziest transgender stuff because he likes being able to play off of it. He brought up the main governor who he had had an interaction with about two weeks before the interview. And, you know, just insane, insane stuff that they're doing up there. And but I think he actually enjoys that they're doing it because he thinks it's like an admission on their part of of how crazy they are. The the Merrill and Dad stuff hadn't happened when I interviewed him.

But I imagine that he that that would fall in the same category. Like he would, he, his reaction would be, I love that they're going to El Salvador. Go to El Salvador. Make this your whole thing. I would love to talk building with Trump, frankly, not football stadiums, but like ask him about the JP Morgan building in New York, which I think is just a dark, glowering obscenity in the skyline. He has tons of opinions about that stuff. And it's clear that it's like he's, I imagine if he was a little bit younger,

he would be like a Sim City obsessive. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, ask him about Trump, about the, the, the, uh, the Trump, uh, hotel in the Commodore location next to Grand Central Station. Why did you choose that kind of window? Do you like this kind of window? Do you miss that kind of glass? And what's the problem with it? Why haven't they started the Commodore Tower yet?

I mean, I would love to. I don't think that necessarily his opinions would be all that. I'm not interested in his aesthetic opinions, because I don't think is the aesthetic sense is is is all that sharp. But when it comes to just the sheer the last line in the last line in the piece is about you know nothing shines like gold. Yeah yes. You know he says. Yeah okay well all right it's a bit gim-cracky.

I've never been a gold guy. I know and you know and when they when they did the Plaza Hotel everything got gilded. Got it got it got it. But so let's look at something else, though. We'll leave you with this. So let's say the worst happens for Trump and that he loses control of the House and the agenda is stymie, that it gives him a narrow window here

in which to do an awful lot of things. And some of these things, in order to be, I mean, it's not like somebody coming into office and cutting the budget of something for 50% and then the Democrats waltz back in and it increases by 120. If you eliminate things, if you get rid of things, if you pass laws that say you know what you can't have any more petroleum-based dyes in your food, the party that comes after you is required then to

rebuild, not just not just wake up, but to reconstitute the things that were taken away. If the Department of Education is zeroed out, I mean, what do they do? They got to make the argument that we have to restart this whole thing. USAID, they have to make the argument it is necessary for us to establish a procedure to get money to Peruvian alpaca farmers for diversity and general awareness. I mean, they got up, they're gonna have to make that point. So energy is good, speed, all these things, breaking things, all this disruption.

Do you think at the end of two years of Trump, then a little before, but at the end of two, he will have significantly reshaped a great deal of how the government actually expands, operates, et cetera? I do, but a large part of that is, I think, because the decrepit nature of the current bureaucracy is one that lends itself to significant change, meaning that a lot of the things that they've been doing

in terms of these Doge situations, and I know several people who've taken the buyout here, just living in the Washington DC area. That's something that I think lends itself to catering to these reform-based projects. When it comes to education, certainly I'm optimistic about it, but I don't know how far they'll be able to get in that timeframe because there's a lot of things that need to happen. Our next issue at The Spectator is actually about

reviving the American mind. It has an interview with me, with Chris Rufo. It has a piece from Amy Wax. Has a couple of other things as well. And certainly the higher ed is under their target lens. And you've seen the clash that they've had with Harvard as being something that they're choosing to have, I think at this juncture,

because they believe that the wind is in their sails on it. One thing though that I think is going to be a real problem for them is that as long as they're doing these things through executive actions, emergency-based actions, et cetera, they are also things that can be undone. And one of the things I do think that they are smart about this time is that they have teed up so many

of these questions early on in his first, you know, hundred days that are going up through the legal processes. We will have some resolution on some of these questions before the end of the year. It won't be something that is just a lagging issue that, you know, comes in at the tail end of his term. And that, I the tail end of his term. And that I think was a smart move. I think that Stephen Miller did this within the immigration space on purpose because he believes that he has the better of the argument.

I disagree with him on certain points, especially the birthright citizenship point, because I think that the court will reject their opinion. But it is also something that hasn't been resolved. And so they want resolution on a lot of these questions earlier rather than later, so that they can try to do what they wanna do and then operate around it.

So look, I do think that this is already a significant presidency in terms of the policies that they put in place. The shift on foreign policy in particular, we see, you know, he's on his first trip other than the Vatican trip, obviously, which was unanticipated to Saudi as he did the first time around.

And you're going to see those interactions there play out around so many different issues, Israel, Iran, the Houthis, everything that's related to energy policy in the world. And I think that, you know, Israel, Iran, the Houthis, everything that's related to energy policy in the world. And I think that this is a dramatic, dramatic shift. I'm not sure that we are going to be able to fully grasp it until we've had some remove. But one thing I do think is

without having the legislative policy that is necessary to put these things in place permanently. Um, Republicans run the risk of celebrating too much about wins that are temporary and that can be swept away by. You know, whoever you think, you know, is quite honestly, I think it's Gretchen Whitmer right now. You know, like she's the one who's playing this moment the best. But if she ends up in there after this, or pick your poison, what was the line from Jasmine Crockett today? The safest white boy they can find?

Jasmines Crockett, my favorite member of Congress. Oh yeah. If you're gonna be one of those old style people who think that we oughta pass laws and then debate them and then pass them and vote them. Boring. No, we're gonna move hard with the great things. You mean I have to read things?

That's terrible. We're gonna do EOs, we're gonna concentrate power in the executive because it'll never come back to bite us in any possible way. The Big Ben Show is what you oughta listen to and it can be heard on all of your favorite platforms and podcasts streaming places. And Ben, we thank you for joining us today. It's been a great pleasure.

We have always great talk to all of you. And I just have to say, Steve Hayward, again, the writer of one of the greatest lines about any president ever, uh, that Jimmy Carter got elected promising an executive as good as the people only to discover that the people were no good. That's a great line. Thanks Ben. All right Ben, thanks. We'll talk to you later. Gentlemen, before we go here we have a few little minutes.

Oh, we could talk about... what could we talk about? We can always delve into popular culture and do a brief one minute roundup of anything that you think that other people should be watching on their streaming services. Not an in-depth review, but just simply give them a little heads up or a thumbs down. I'll start with you, Stephen.

Oh, you know, I don't watch much TV or streaming, although I did, at the recommendation of John O'Sullivan, take in this show out of Britain that Charles probably knows about that was made way back in 2019 about the Brexit referendum. It has Benedict Cumberbatch as a right. It's called Brexit the Movie or something like that. It's on Amazon streaming and it is very well done.

And yeah, I've enjoyed that because it's a great political drama. Very well cast. The person who plays Boris Johnson, I don't know who the actor is, but he's a dead rigger for Johnson. He's absolutely fabulous. I imagine you've seen that Charles, I'll probably have your own opinions on it. I have. I watched it on a plane.

I thought it was terrific. Charles, what are you watching? Well, I just finished a show that is not new, Justified. Not the remake, but the older one from 2010 to 2015. Yeah. Timothy Olyphant? Yeah, I started watching this in, I think, 2011 and I just never finished it.

I think we had babies and you know, but, well, I know we had babies. I think that's why. But I loved this show. It was just really well written. The performances are good. It's light enough that you can watch it after a long day, but it's not mindless. I just loved it. I'm finishing up this weekend Land Man.

I'm not a big Taylor Sheridan guy, although I've always enjoyed everything of his I've watched. Primarily to watch Billy Bob Thornton smoke an awful lot and say cruel things about renewable energy. I love that. But I've also been watching a Paramount Plus show called Mobland, which was, it's basically your mob drama except it's set in England

where the people live in much tonier houses. But it's fantastic. Pierce Brosnan is in it. Helen Mirren plays one of those Livia style moms and mothers who's absolutely horrid and vicious and it's just great fun, possibly, because of the accent.

And then somebody also, it was Hugh Hewitt, told me that I should watch The Agency, which is based on The Bureau. Or perhaps it's The Bureau, which is based on The Agency. I don't know, it's a French show about intelligence services and it's set in the UK, it's the CIA, Richard Gere is in it and that's something sometimes that's the only pleasure you get out of a streaming service show is an actor that you remember from the

1980s popping up and still alive and able to speak and doing a credible job. You know if I can jump into that's an important point that I mean Richard Gere is not completely over the hill but the reason you don't know the reason you don't see him cast is that he's been an outspoken supporter of Tibetan independence and I think maybe the Falun Gong and the Chinese will not allow any movie that has Richard Gere in it to be screened in China. And we put up with this. That's why you don't see him very often. Do you know, I sat next to Richard Gere on an airplane about five years ago. Did you, did you make conversation with him or leave him alone? I did make conversation with him, but I never acknowledged that I knew who he was.

And this is my, yeah, that's how I always do it. If I find myself sitting next to someone who's extremely famous, I never say, my goodness, you're Kevin Puskett. I just say, nice weather we've been having. And maybe they bring it up, but they never actually do. And then I go on and it's just between us that I knew because I assume they know that I know. I know, I do too.

I never tell them, you know, I just, I let them, eventually, you know, I'll say, yes, I am James Lylex. And then I get a glassy bovine stare. James, I have to ask you something. You said 20 Rothmans in the conversation about cigarettes. Why did you say that? Because of a Monty Python sketch. Oh my goodness! I knew it!

Yes, hello, run down to the store, give me Tony Rothman. Right. Yeah, that's why. And there's a, but in the book, in the Monty Python Pappabot, the story about the, the, the, the medieval woman who is betrothed to the guy who kills the dragon right read this well that's the one reason he's always playing this on dumb dum dee dee that's right that's right okay okay good well same thing I just thought wow that's so random he must have seen it well you can also get them in smaller packs of ten which I learned later at the time and

hence the question and hence requesting 20 Rothmans was a specific size and product. Otherwise you'd just say, give me a pack of Rothmans. But to say 20 was to indicate that. Yeah, so, and also last before we go, we don't do enough pitching of our own stuff here. We pitch Ricochet, we pitch all kinds of other people's works. By heaven's sakes, we should, for Fenn,

we should pitch our own. No, I understand Charles you you are spreading the gospel of AI in a recent piece and you hear out Ross Douthat and on matters of faith working people find these pieces yes so I spoke to Ross Douthat about his new book which is about why everyone should be religious and I asked him about the book and I asked him some metaphysical questions and then I asked him to tell me why I should be religious. And I asked him about the book and I asked him some metaphysical questions and then I asked him to tell me why I should be religious. It was a very interesting conversation which you can find on the Charles C. W. Cook podcast, which you can Google or find on Apple or Spotify or what you

will. And then I had a piece about AI helping me fix a grill, which really was heartfelt in that I am incredibly impressed with the strides AI has taken. The ability to identify problems with machines based just on a photograph is something else. Yeah. I was using AI the other day for some self-soothing. I was asking some questions about websites, hoping sort of coyly that it would get around to mine. And it did, because I was asking questions about matchbook collections and the rest of it. And eventually it came up with my site. And when I asked to say more about it,

it was just fulsome and complimentary, and I felt great, and I felt so good about it, I kept asking it more questions, and it was praising me and saying all these things, people said. When I asked it the next day, I didn't know me at all. It was just remarkable. As if your childhood best friend had been taken out

and pithed in the back of the neck. Steven, you've been talking, well, I'm sure you have many pieces. You talk about Damon Linker's hit piece against the Strausians. Now that, we know, is a box office pananza. Right, yeah, well, yeah. Thanks, babe.

Well, I've started my own Substack. You can find it at stevehayward.substack.com. It's partly me, but I've also recruited a few other contributors, and I'm using it for longer form things that are somewhat more academic. It's not for everybody, but I try to make the writing lively. I carry on these interminable debates with John Yoo about all kinds of things that are fun, so we snipe at each other. I've got Max Kosak, which is the plume of a novelist, writes every Thursday on music

and movies and popular culture, and he's turned out to be a big hit with readers. So I'm doing that. I'm writing a fair bit for the Civitas Institute people down in Austin at the University of Texas where I may be taking a larger and larger role as that whole thing unfolds. They were just given another hundred million dollars by the Texas legislature yesterday. So follow that story. It's gonna be fun as that unfolds. Well I suppose I should pimp my own stuff down. You can find it at two places at jameslalex.substack.com where Monday through Friday,

there's something for the paid crowd. Monday, always a free column. Tuesday, there's always a little bit of Joe Ohio, a fictional story, a long running story, short story collection about a man who actually is a matchbook designer in Cleveland in 1950. Wednesday, a lot of outtakes where I riff on the things that I take out of my columns and explain why.

Thursday, the Gallard Pregnerable Food. Friday, another column. Wednesday a lot of outtakes right by riff on the things that I take out of my columns and explain why Thursday the gallery Pregnerable food Friday another column so all that is there at lilacs.com You can find Monday through Friday the bleat which will update and has an extraordinary amount of content that I have been putting out for years and I am seriously considering that after 2026 I might cut it back a little bit because between the sub stack and the bleat there's there's ten pieces ten fifteen shall we say pieces that I put out a week and that's a lot national review of course I've got

a piece coming up in discourse the discourse comm which is a great website I've got a piece there about the gauche American habit of asking where are you from and what do you do which I think are perfectly sensible questions, what else are you going to talk about, and other things. And of course then there's, that's my interesting writing, then there's the stuff I do for the newspaper here. That ought to do it, that ought to cover it for this podcast, number 740, James Lilacs, I'm thanking you for listening, I am thanking Charles C.W. Cook, who can now get back to bailing out The Living Room, and Stephen Hayward, Hayward and gentlemen it's been great we'll do it all again next week

we'll see everybody in the comments at ricochet 4.0 bye bye