The Ricochet Podcast - Build That Wall

Episode Date: May 20, 2016

This week, we present a super-sized edition of the Ricochet Podcast (75 minutes plus of thoughtful jabbering!) where within, we attempt to answer a few burning questions: First, is Peter Robinson in the tank for Trump? Rob Long and James Lileks investigate. Then, Tevi Troy stops by to opine on his recent Politico piece, How GOP Intellectuals’ Feud With the Base Is Remaking U.S. Politics. Then... Source

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I'm James Lileks, and today we're talking to Tevi Troy about the split between the intellectuals in the base and the GOP, and Mickey Kaus on the wall. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome, everybody, to the Ricochet Podcast, number 304. We're brought to you by Casper's Mattresses. Yes, a premium mattress for a fraction of the price delivered right to your door. Casper is changing the mattress industry, turning it upside down by cutting the cost of dealing with resellers and showrooms and passing all those savings directly on to who? To you, right.

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including, of course, a mention of The Great Courses, one of our favorite sponsors as well. They really want you to try The Great Courses Plus, so they're giving our listeners, you, this chance, a special chance to watch their popular course, The Conservative Tradition. And for that matter, hundreds of other courses, absolutely free. Get started today by going to TheGreatCoursesplus.com slash ricochet. There you go.

Anything else in the realm of commercial pitching? Oh, yes, of course. Here's Rob Long to tell you why you should do the thing that keeps Ricochet afloat and going into the difficult re-election campaign of 2020 when Trump is going to be facing maybe a challenger and Hillary. Probably not. I mean, at that point, the term limit. Hillary will be at Elba at that point. So go on.

Well, that would mean she almost conquered all of Europe, which is not so bad. It was really only the last act of the French empire is a problem. Thank you, James. If you're listening to this podcast and you're a member of Ricochet, we thank you. If you are not a member of Ricochet and you like this podcast, we need you to join. We really do need you to join because we're trying to expand. Here's the Ricochet mission. If you are on the internets, you know that they are a swampy mess.

Every comment section is disgusting. And if you're just a person who wants to contribute meaningfully to the dialogue, you find it really hard because your comments are going to be completely swamped by nastiness. We have solved that. And if you are listening to Ricochet Podcast, you know how and you know why. We use the center right pre-market solution that Peter Robinson and I came up with, sprung forth from our brains as a eureka moment. We said, hey hey what if everyone joins ricochet like a club and you know you join a club you remember a club you don't mess it up uh and that's why we charge a little bit very little bit for you to join ricochet to keep the conversation civil and interesting to get you to participate in any way you want uh and to pay of

course the people who put these podcasts together and they do work and we do pay them. We do. You get a free month for free. We do. Oh, well, not the talent, James, of course. We're a lean organization here. We're a lean startup, James. Come on.

That's right. The most disruptives have to be. So you're absolutely right. And there's something that people can get to. They can rejoin or something? You can rejoin easily, and you can join for free for 30 days. If you don't like it, you can buzz off, but we know you will like it. And here's an example of the ricochet spirit, the esprit, what we're trying to do here.

If you're in the center right, you are faced, we are faced with a quandary. I mean, I don't think it's fair to say that it's obvious. It's not an obvious thing what those of us on the center right are going to do in November. It's not clear. And I think I've noticed there have been some friendships and collegial relationships have been frayed over the choice a lot of us face. Peter Robinson and I have been friends for over almost two decades probably, Peter, right? Not quite two decades. Close. He is supporting Trump, Peter?

And I say that before you finish. Yes. Before I finish? Before you start, yeah. There is literally nothing that Peter Robinson can say that will – wait, don't start laughing. This is serious. That will diminish my respect for him or make me feel like he's any less of a conservative than – certainly than I am. That's a joke.

He still is a towering figure in the conservative movement peter what's going on nothing has changed formally i still say today as i said i think beginning about two weeks ago when trump clinched the nomination if it's a choice between donald and Hillary Clinton, I don't see how I can do anything other than vote for Donald Trump. That's the same today as it was two weeks ago. What's changed in the last two weeks is that having thought it all over, I had decided to stop apologizing for taking that position. Not only does it strike me as a totally reasonable position, but so reasonable that I

don't need to slink around and feel apologetic and defensive among my fellow consumers, least of all to you. I know. Isn't that hilarious? This is just absolutely staggering that I, Peter. Now, I have not yet. So let me ask you this, Peter. Of course. Do you think that George Bush lied about WMD in Iraq? No, I don't. And I'm not happy. By the way, it is not the burden of my argument to say that Donald Trump is the finest candidate since Ronald Reagan. He is not. That given a choice, a very specific A, B choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, there is still some possibility that an independent candidate may emerge. But given that choice, all I say is not that Donald Trump is as good as Ronald Reagan.

Not close. All I say is that Donald Trump is quite likely – we make decisions under uncertainty as they say at the business school. Donald Trump is likely to prove better for us than Hillary Clinton. That's all. The reason I ask that question is that all of the things that he said and the behavior that he had is now normalized and are just – I want to know how comfortable you are with that actually. No, I – well – Sort of putting that all on the table as uh as uh as something we have to we have to accept on our side i i sort of get the premise that if

this man becomes the nominee then in the media loosely speaking standards have been lowered yet again i get that it seems to me though that at places like ricochet national review the weekly standard it is intellectually coherent. In fact, it will be necessary for us to draw distinctions again and again and again over the next four years between some outrageous or even pernicious comment that has escaped the lips of Donald Trump and what we really believe and the limited reasons for which we're supporting him. I think we ought to be able to draw those distinctions. So Trump's – no, I get it. I believe – The egregiousness isn't normalized on Ricochet.

Peter, how – on a meter of your comfort level because I don't want to say that you're comfortable because I know you well enough. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. But how buoyed were you by the list of prospective judges that he put out last week or this week, early this week? The list of prospective judges, kind of a crazy wish list for every, you know, the right-wing kooks like us, right? We looked at that list and we thought, holy moly, this is like the Avengers. Did that help? Are they on the right track? Here are things that are helping. At the Hoover Institution, I have colleagues who are economists. I don't know whether they're going to be advising Donald Trump, but I know I've received a couple of, I know that the Trump campaign is reaching out to them.

That encourages me. That's not public information. I'd name the names if it were. It's not. But still, there are things going on that look to me as though grownups are seeking grownups to advise this non-grownup who looks as though he's going to be the candidate. That's very good news. Names that are being floated, how formally or casually, I don't know. But the suggestion has been in the internet that Donald Trump might begin naming cabinet members, beginning with Rudy Giuliani for homeland security.

That would be fine by me. Rudy Giuliani and I disagree. I don't think you would disagree with him. I would disagree with him over social issues, not a bit over the security of the nation. And then this list of 11 justices, which on our very own beloved ricochet, John Yoo, who is brilliant, Richard Epstein, who is brilliant, and both of them, John at greater length, Richard put up a brief note. But both of them said this is a very, very impressive list and it shows real depth of knowledge. Now, do we suppose that Ronald Reagan, I beg your pardon, that Donald Trump, there's a non-telling slip, that Donald Trump did this research himself?

Of course not. But that he assembled people to do this research who are aware not only of the justices in the federal appeals courts, which is the obvious place you look for Supreme Court justices, but that they went to the next level down and looked at state Supreme Court. That's very, very impressive and very heartening. Now, can I tell you that Donald Trump will choose from that list? No, but I can tell you that he's now set up a situation in which he will pay a cost with his own supporters if he doesn't. No, he's already –

That's not nothing. He's already said he's not bound by the list. He's already said in an interview with Sean Hannity that he would either choose from that list or pick people who are close to the list. Right. And so maybe somebody else who's close to the spirit or whatever. His main criteria is intellect. He said, I want high intellect. I want gray intellect.

And all the people on the list are high intellect. So if that's his main criteria. Maybe Peter Robinson should be on the school. Here's what I, here's, here's my analysis. So you guys, you're not buying it. So just, I'm not buying it. It's possible. It's possible.

What about the list, James? That list of justices, James and Rob, let me, what effect did that have on you guys? None, because somebody handed it to him and said, this is the, these are the names you need to say in order to get this unification process rolling. And he nodded and said, okay, fine. So, I mean, does it tell me anything about the man himself other than he's canny enough in this instance to listen to what somebody else says, which conforms probably with his own political instincts? It's no news to me whatsoever. Do I believe he's a constitutionalist? I don't.

I don't even think that what that actually means occurs to him. So, you know, the idea that somehow he's motivated by the same sort of long study in the wilderness that led Ronald Reagan to come up with the ideas that he had. No, absolutely not. So, I mean, but it, I know the guy, everything we need to know about him, we know because we saw it in the prime in in the primaries that's who he is there's no other anything that emerges subsequently is either a manicured version a tailored version a more presidential version or the or the rest of it but we know he is and i'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing when he tweeted yesterday for example

that you know egypt airline goes down, right? Everybody knows what happens more or less. It's probably terrorism. And if so, it's probably jihadis, which is the word we say when we don't want to say Islamists, which is the word we say when we don't want to say Muslims. So Donald Trump comes out and says this and everybody says, well, duh, yeah. Hillary Clinton comes out, jumping the gun, this isn't presidential, et cetera. This is why he's going to get millions of votes from people. Yeah. Hillary Clinton comes out, you know, jumping the gun. This isn't presidential, et cetera. This is why he's going to get millions of votes from people. And I don't want to say that they're disaffected or working class because those are the words that people use when they want to say stupid. OK, right. Right. When your coastal commentary says they're disaffected in the working class.

No, he's going to get guys who might have instinctually gone to the Democrats because we're the middle, the real guy, crush whatever, because he's not telling the lie that everybody feels compelled to say. And this is the era in which people feel compelled to say lies in public that they don't mean for fear of appearing like a jerk or for losing their job because they've said something that six months ago was perfectly acceptable, but now is indication of a hate speech thing.

So when he comes out and says this, you've got a lot of people saying finally we have somebody who's just saying what needs to be said. The problem is that you can't say that when you're president. You can't do that when you're president. So that guy that they like who's not PC and tells it like it is and doesn't lie like Hillary, he's going to go away. You're not going to see him like Hillary, he's going to go away. You're not going to see him very much when he's president, which I'm now beginning to think is entirely possible. Oh, by the way, well, if I was ticking down – excuse me. I do want to hear what the list of 11 – the effect that that had on Rob. But the polls have started to come out now.

It's not a trend yet, but there are two or three polls that show Donald Trump up a few points over Hillary Clinton either nationally or in important swing states. So the argument that we had through much of the primary and the force of which I granted, which was that Donald Trump would lead us to an electoral catastrophe, I think that argument is fading pretty fast. One argument against him. Oh, and actually, and you, Rob, were the proponent on this podcast. And at GLOP, you were a proponent of that argument. Get ready for Hillary. It's already done. He's going to lose.

It's going to be massive. Right? I still feel that. I still feel that. I don't think these late spring polls or actually mid-spring polls are meaningful. I think – I mean I'm speaking tactically now. There's $300 million sitting in a pack, two packs that are anti-Trump packs and they're going to be devastating. I do think that he's going to lose and I think he's going to lose decisively.

That said, what I think people are saying, and I don't think it's necessarily crazy, they are saying that, but I think it shows, it is consistent with a trend that's happened in the federal government and our way of looking at government for many years, that what we have as a president is kind of a king. He presides, he's an enormous amount of power, but he presides over this gigantic, gigantic bureaucracy. And that we are electing the figurehead as sort of a quasi-king. People always want a parliamentary system. We kind of have one.

He's going to be the figurehead. He's going to set the cultural tone. But look, i was having lunch yesterday with a very very smart guy uh at the wall street journal and we were talking about this and we decided like it just assume trump is insane and decides he's gonna bomb you know as he said i'm gonna bomb the whip the wives and children of the terrorists right just simply not possible and and we said well it's a constitutional crisis right because he'll order the joint chiefs to do it and they won't be able to do it. And the commander in chiefs, his direct order will be circumvented or ignored or just disobeyed, frankly, by his subordinates, right?

The civilian control of the lawyer in the room. The lawyer in the room will set the policy. The lawyer in the room will approve things, whether things are legal or not, And people instinctively know that. And I think they instinctively – the reason I think for you – I mean I can't speak for you. But I think for a lot of good conservatives, the reason it's not enthusiastic but it's OK, you can live with it, is because you've diminished him and his ability to actually have principles. And you think he's a vessel that's going to be in there, and he's going to be a popular vessel, which we need, and a shell, and he's going to be able to be a salesman

for probably some unpopular things that need to get done in America, we hope. They contravene everything he's promised, right? No touching entitlements, trade wars, all that stuff. But there's something appealing about that and his list of judges seem to suggest that he's going to all the right people. He's listening to all the right people and that feels like a win kind of. Only in this cycle can a billboard on which every square inch is covered with writing can we call this also a blank slate agree agree yes it's just extraordinary that's what he actually said that he's that guy so i i can i mean i am not there james you and i

agree but i can see how you can even make a tactical green eye shade argument. Oh, so can I? Yeah, absolutely. But this is all syndicated on, I mean, but you're, excuse me for a second, Peter, but that entire postulate that you set up there, Rob, suggests that he actually would consider bombing the wives and children of terrorists. That that actually is something that would occur to him to do. Yeah.

That was a line of speech. That was a line to get people on their feet that was a line to show america's going to be back and we're going to be tough he's not going to do that all of these things are lines lines lines and speeches and you have no idea what the guy's going to do when he gets in there other than be that that vessel into which people can project what they want to be done and so the very idea that somebody who has said, and you may be right, he may have said,

we're never going to touch Social Security or Medicaid or the rest of it. We're going to balance the budget with waste, fraud, and abuse. Fraud and abuse. Possibly he'll get in there and change his mind completely. It just seems like, gosh, that's a big bet. Gosh, that's a hell of a, yes.

Here's what I'll grant both of you that I don't like at all. And the three of us have just been demonstrating it for the last ten minutes. We are forced with this candidate. We are – and with Hillary. The Democrats have to do this as well, I believe. But we are forced to engage in Kremlinology in our own country. It's as though we're three analysts at the CIA. The Soviets give a speech.

Okay, they can't possibly mean that. They can't possibly mean what they just said. So what do they really mean? What are they going to intend to do? What will the bureaucracy permit them to do? How much flexibility? And we are forced. There is no way, I don't believe,

that anyone at this stage can take Donald Trump at his word. What you do is say – and so we're all forced to interpret this guy as we – it's a kind of simultaneous translation that you're doing in your own head as he speaks. I believe we're going to have Mickey Kaus on as a guest. And so I want to know how serious he thinks Donald Trump is, for example, about deporting 11 million people. I hear that. We'll get to that in a second. You're absolutely right about the criminology. The thing about the criminology is the beauty of it.

When it was discussed to us here in the West, they would always look at them and say, well, the right-wing element is taking power. And the right wing over there was the people who wanted more state control, which I just love. There's no great conservative tradition over there in the sense that we have it here. But we do have a conservative tradition. You should be well-schooled about it. That's where the Great Courses Plus is giving you the listeners a special chance to watch. We can all agree. Well, the great thing when they would talk about Sovietology and Kremlinology is they would always say that the right wing was gaining power.

The right wing means absolutely nothing in a Soviet context. I mean these are the guys who wanted more complete state control over absolutely everything. They didn't have the same conservative tradition that we do. And by the way, if you don't know what our conservative tradition is, well, maybe you ought to go to The Great Courses. We're excited to tell you about this new video learning service they have, The Great Courses Plus. You're going to learn about anything and everything. Rob, you going to cut me in here?

Okay, not. Fine. I'm just surprised enough. He's stunned once more. The Great Courses has unlimited access to a lecture series on thousands of topics taught by top professors. And we really want you to try this Great Courses Plus thing. So they're giving the listeners a special chance to watch their popular course,

The Conservative Tradition, and hundreds of other courses absolutely free. It's taught by award-winning professors who provide an unbiased, interesting look at conservatism in both the U.S. and the U.K. Now, it's a fascinating look at how early English conservatives influenced more recent generations

of American politicians like Ronald Reagan. With Great Courses Plus, you can watch as many courses and lectures as you want, anytime, anywhere. But you got to go there first, right? They're offering you, the listener, a chance to stream hundreds of these courses, including the conservative tradition, which is, by the way, a $320 value. You get it for free. If you go to thegreatcoursesplus.com slash ricochet, that is, you'll get it free. Greatcoursesplus.com slash ricochet. Get started today.

That's thegreatcoursesplus.com slash ricochet. Okay. I do want to – let me make one confession. Only one? You're only going to get one, Peter. One today. One today. I'm not going over to the other side too soon. I want to make one confession that a lot of, I think what people, certainly people like us, people who make

political pronouncements or have political views or have political teams they root for, there's a certain amount of ego that is folded into that. Sure. We're all human beings. Right. OK. So in my late night agonies, there is – and I believe that the likelihood of Donald Trump becoming president of the United States is somewhere between 20 and 30 percent. It's not zero. It's 23 percent.

It's not zero. I agree with that. But I believe that of the 20 – assuming that that happens and he is president of the United States, I believe that there's a 20% to 30% chance that he'll do – he'll be OK. And I think there are a lot of people who just don't want to think that we have a president like this, even if he's okay, even if he appoints conservative judges, even if he backs away from his insane and innumerate trade ideas, even if he understands that border security does not mean mass deportation, even if he does all those things, I don't want to live in a country where this kind of vulgar, nasty, low rent, emotionally unstable person is president. And so I kind of don't want him – I don't want to find out if he'd do a good job because I don't really want to think that that's the kind of president we could have. But that isn't the same thing as saying that I disagree with his policies or I think he'll fail or any of those things. So part of me is trying to surgically remove from my analysis the ego part that's wrapped up in this,

which is like I've said he can't win and if he does win, it will be a disaster. We'll live in a chaotic nightmare and what if that doesn't – what if nothing I've said happens? How dumb am I? And if I feel that way, I mean my bread and butter, what pays my rent isn't really political prognostications or political debate or political commentary. But if I feel that way, I can only imagine that my friends and our friends, our mutual friends and colleagues who really make their money, this is what they do. Their job is to analyze and write about and think about American politics, how they must feel. No need to be coy about this. As you know, this is true of all three of us. Some of our best friends are the editors and journalists at National Review and National Review devoted an entire issue to saying why Donald Trump must be stopped. I can't think of anybody I revere more

intellectually or cherish more as a friend than Bill Kristol. And Bill Kristol in his lead editorial at the Weekly Standard has devoted himself for months now, literally months, not years, but months to explaining, explicating all the reasons Donald Trump should not be president. And in the recent, what, month and a half or so, Bill has been trying very hard to make the argument for an end. Fine. a half or so bill has been trying very hard to make the argument for an fine if donald trump gets elected as i now think is well i put a higher percentage on it than you would rob still not not 60 but i'd put him give it give him more than 30 at the upper end of the range

if donald trump gets elected we have good friends who will be in a journalistically tight spot. Okay, so abstract all that away. I don't think they'll be in a tight spot. I think they will be in the same spot that they were before, and they'll be able to argue from principle in a way that others won't be able to. What's the principle? What is the principle? Adherence to classic conservative values and certain levels and standards of decorum, which probably are secondary at this point. But you're right.

You're absolutely right, Peter. But, you know, the thing that is, is a lot of people out there and saying, Bill Kristol, I care what that pointy-headed K Street guy sitting in the beltway thinks. One won't care about him. Well, if there is some sort of schism or schism, if you're stupid, in the intellectual base, it's going to be an impact on the policies. But if only there was somebody we could talk to about this. Oh, wait a minute. We do. We've got Tevi Troy,

the presidential historian and former Secretary of Health and Human Services and a senior White House aide in the George W. Bush administration. His first book was Intellectuals and the American Presidency, Philosophers, Gestures, or Technicians. He's a Ricochet podcast fan, we understand, which means that you should follow him on Twitter. That's at Tebby Troy. And we welcome him to this, the Ricochet podcast. Thanks for having me on. I am indeed a big fan of the Ricochet podcast and of all you guys. So thanks for having me.

Well, thank you. And likewise, we were just talking about how Bill Kristol and maybe Kevin Williamson and Jonah Goldberg mentioned some people that Peter had written about were painting themselves into a bit of a corner should Trump win. And you've written this piece about how the intellectuals' feud with the base is remaking the way U.S. policy seems to look at how the GOP finds itself. Well, as we know, are there even long-term possibilities of disintegration, to use the word that you choose?

Yeah, I think that the Republican intellectuals or the conservative intellectuals and the GOP base do seem to be going in different directions. I don't think that that is necessarily a long-term development, but it may be. And I think there are some GOP intellectuals or conservative intellectuals who've been looking at this issue and said, hey, we need a new issue set. It's not that there's anything wrong with a strong stance on foreign policy or free trade or lower taxes. It's just that those issues are not necessarily resonating with the base, and maybe you can focus or emphasize other issues. So, Tevi, may I just read one sentence to you? I'm quoting you to yourself. It is possible that the interests, that's the word I want to ask you about, it is possible that the interests of Reagan

era intellectuals were more aligned with the GOP base than they are today. Can you explain that? What do you mean by that? So a lot of the Reagan-era intellectuals, as you well know, Peter, were the neoconservatives. And the neoconservatives spoke to that group of Reagan Democrats, the kind of urban ethnic types who were frustrated with America being a punching bag at the UN, were frustrated with high taxes, and they felt just like this generation today feels there's something wrong with the country. They felt that the country was going in the wrong track and that the neoconservative intellectuals had the right solution for the time. So I think there was a good alignment of interests at the time. I think for conservative intellectuals to be successful today, they need to find an alignment of interest that doesn't go against their core values, but that also resonates

politically. Now, Tevi, why is it not the case, as I know that it is not the case, but why is it not the case that Tevi Troy is essentially saying to his fellow conservative intellectuals, Trump has won, fellas, we need to fall in line. We need to start rowing the intellectual hoes that Donald Trump wants hoed. Well, you know me well enough, Peter, to know that that is indeed not the case. I am not saying that at all. I have a lot of problems with Trump. I have not made myself declared never Trump, but I have declared never Hillary. I don't know what I'm going to do. You and me both, baby. We're in the same desperate place. Oh, go ahead. Well, I'll tell you.

I gained a lot of insights from the Rick F. Shea podcast on this issue. I thought Haley Barber's interview where he talked about politics is about choices. You've got to face the choices you have, not the choices you want. So I am not saying that conservative intellectuals need to get in line far from it. What I am saying is that we don't seem, and I use we to include myself in the world of conservative intellectuals, we don't seem to be capturing what the voters this year want, and we missed something in this Trump phenomenon. That's what I'm saying. Got it. So you're not saying Trump won. Let's start figuring out how best to

help that guy, how best to keep him from screwing it all up. What you are saying is the American people themselves, this is a democracy to remain relevant, to do genuinely useful work. We must have points of contact with the concerns of ordinary voters. That's the argument. That's absolutely what I'm saying. Trump did win. We need to figure out what we can do so in the future that it's not a Trump winning, but somebody who understands the conservative philosophy and can articulate in a way that attracts the right voters. Okay, so let's try a couple of examples, if we can. Free trade. Right up until the day before yesterday, right up until Donald Trump looked as though he's going to clinch the nomination. I don't think, actually, to be fair to people, even today, I don't know that you can find anybody in a conservative think tank. Maybe I'm wrong about

this. In any event, free trade from the 1980s, from the sainted Milton Friedman until right up to who knows when, today, yesterday, the day before, was absolutely undoubted as a central intellectual plank of right thinking among conservatives. How do you get around that? What do you do with it? You can't say we were all wrong, or can you? What do you do? I certainly don't say we were all wrong, but I would have to say that free trade is something where it's changed in both parties. It used to be that free trade bills used to be able to pass with Republican votes in the House and Senate

and the passage and the support of Democratic elites. Now the Democratic elites don't support it, the Democrats mainstream, and now you only have the GOP elites support it. So I think we need to rethink how to articulate this issue. Why to explain that free trade means that you actually get goods cheaper. I know it's not working, but that doesn't mean it has to be your top issue. So when you go out there, you have to pick issues that are working. So maybe I wouldn't focus on

free trade as the first thing in my plank if I were going to run as this new conservative intellectual in a post-Trump era. And what would be the first thing in my plank if I were going to run as this new conservative intellectual in a post-Trump era. And what would be the first thing in your plank, Debbie? I think you've got to get away the burdens of the regulatory state. I think that is something that people feel on a daily basis. I thought Charles Murray's book about the regulatory state was really frightening. And he talked about how it just saps all entrepreneurship. It prevents people from starting their own businesses.

And one of the reasons why people feel disconnected and people feel unhappy is that they feel like they can't make it in this society. They can't make a go of it. And part of it is because of the lack of entrepreneurship. Wait a minute. Tevye, it's Rob. Go. So here's my – You don't have to put up with anything from here, Tevye.

Here's my fear, right? My fear is that people will then say we got to like – we got to learn from Trump. And then when they say what they learned, they end up saying stuff that isn't really that different from – I mean every candidate in the Republican primary was against the regulatory state. But only one of them had the bona fides of being anti-immigrant because he started by saying – any illegal immigration by starting by saying I'm going to build a wall. Don't you think that any Republican primary candidate in the future or if we lose in the next four years or whatever is going to have to toe the line on building a wall? That seems to be what started the prairie fire in Trump Tower, if I can confuse a million different images all at once. I think that there have been a lot of conservative

intellectuals who are for a wall with Mexico, maybe not using the language that Trump uses. I think what a wall means, at least to the conservative intellectuals, is a real security apparatus that prevents people from just walking into the country. But who are these conservative intellectuals?

It's not the Wall Street Journal editorial page. It wasn't the immigration compromisers in D.C. It's Mark Ricori and a few other people, but it seemed kind of like uh you know every time i brought it up to people and i'm and i again i can't i can't claim to be a you know a wall builder uh republican intellectuals like well i think that's that's somewhere on the list but not nearly as high as regulatory reform or any of the stuff that you and I, you know, jones for in a new administration.

So I think the National Review crowd has been in favor of a wall. They're not all. That's right. That's right. Everybody. That's right. So I think there are a lot of examples. Early on, by the way.

Yeah. Right. But I think the other point to make here is that, like the other conservatives, is against this regulatory apparatus. But the rhetoric he uses, now, I don't like all the rhetoric he uses, but the rhetoric he uses in talking about the regulatory state, about how it's stupid, we don't do things the right way anymore. Again, I'm not endorsing the Trump approach,

but I think you can use more direct language to connect to the American people in a way that the other candidates weren't able to do. Well, especially you can come from the perspective of a businessman who's built things, who thereby would have experience with what codes are required to do anything, anything. And how from that he's got a, he has an encyclopedic grasp presumably of what everybody else goes through, projecting what he goes through on everyone. Right, I'd like to see him make that point. But to get back to the wall, there's something more there.

It's not just the argument about sovereignty and control over the borders, which are conservative issues. National Review has been behind that. And I've appealing to people who feel as though we've lost something when you've got people showing up waving Mexican flags, protesting, that there is a cultural aspect to this that is remaking California and Texas in ways that are presumably different from previous waves of immigration. Victor Davis Hanson writes about this all the time. So isn't that part of it as well? And it's difficult to talk about that without sounding xenophobic or nativist, which frankly some people who respond to that message

are. But you don't have to be a xenophobe or a nativist to feel concerned about that issue. It's a difficult, subtle, nuanced thing to do. And I don't think that he's the guy to do it, but at least the issue perhaps is on the table is it right but i was glad you mentioned victor davis hansen because he's certainly a bona fide conservative intellectual and he's been writing quite

eloquently about this issue and i think in a way that's not at all nativist so i think there are ways to make these points without being not only nativist but also befoolish so trump broke trump broke the mold and made it permissible to speak about these things we've been talking before about how people project upon him and to use maybe larry kudlow's idea that he's a disruptor now and because things are disrupted into this breach can flow the smart people the intellectual class who can explain it and guide us a little bit better is that a future we're possibly going to have maybe but i think part of part of the projection problem, and it's something the conservatives really need to be careful of, is that people project what they want onto Trump because he says three different things

in every answer. And so if a conservative decides to vote for him, and there might be reasons to do it if you're in this never Hillary camp. Peter, are you listening? Just recognize that you will be disappointed. He may do some things you like, but overall there will be disappointment to come. As I said in a comment somewhere, the last time I saw something projected like this onto a blank object, I was in a dark room with a ticket that said IMAX on it. Yeah. Well, I just – I know, Peter, you have one more. that the great William Rusher, Bill Rusher, who was a publisher of National Review for a billion years, had one saying he would say, one thing he would say,

remind young journalists, he'd say, politicians will always, always, always let you down. Doesn't matter who they are. Anyway, I'm sorry, Peter, you were going to ask. No, listen, this is not the last question because frankly it's not a strong enough question. So, James, Rob, you each get a chance to come in with one more because this is too weak a question. Tevi, I want to try out an idea on you that a friend of mine just floated over lunch. This is a friend who refuses to permit himself to be interviewed on the Ricochet podcast because he's pro-Trump and works in San Francisco, just cannot become public

about it. Nevertheless, he made the following point. Ronald Reagan was anti-big government at home. And although he rebuilt the military, he was very, very careful about actually fighting abroad. The only actual open encounter was in Grenada. Of course, our troops were fired on in Lebanon. However, this makes the point. Rather than go piling in without a military plan, he realized, frankly, that he'd been talked into putting Marines on the ground

without a specific military objective and pulled them out. Mrs. Thatcher advised him to pull them out. Get out. You don't have a military reason to be there. Okay. Then along comes George H.W. Bush, whom I revere personally, but I think it can be said of his, it can at least be argued that he was more interventionist abroad, not just the first Iraq war, but the toppling of Noriega in Panama, and much more at peace with the expansion of the federal government at home. And that, George W. Bush showed much the same. So the argument runs as follows. Donald Trump does not mean what many conservatives have been saying, that is to say the end of the Reagan era.

Donald Trump means the end of the Bush era and an opportunity to reach back and establish continuity with the impulses and policies of the Reagan era. Now, that was a long windup and your answer may simply be, no, that makes no sense to me. But what do you make of that?

I won't say it makes no sense. What I will say is that Rob had a good point on this when he said that he sees Trump as a Rockefeller with a wall, right? Yes. He is a big government liberal Republican. So that's still, you may choose that as over Hillary, but big government liberal Republican who says a lot of blustery things and believes in, you know, resonated with this wall point.

So I think he might be more of a continuation in the deviation from Reagan that you're talking about in terms of more emphasis on government at home and more emphasis on government abroad. Except he says he can manage it better. Tevi, that was as elegant a slap down of the argument as

you could possibly have produced. All right. Having asked a stupid question, I will now... That was not a stupid question because it... It's out there a little bit. It led to have you to rehearse

one of my brilliant Von Mello from this podcast. It was brilliant. Which I cite all the time. You do. Thank you. Only person. I have a very small fan club

and it's high quality. I'm going to make a few... Let me start with just an assumption just just accept this little as given just in order for this question to work the american people are slow to act it takes them a while that when they react in general campaigns maybe not so much midterms, but even midterms. It's usually a cycle behind. Part of what you hear from people who are angry, and I think you hear them as much in the Bernie rallies, the Trump rally, is this idea that everyone's in cahoots and that everyone kind of figured out how to game the system and no one cares about them and that there's really no difference and that part of the joy, the fun of Donald Trump for them is looking at the shocked faces of establishment figures who they just don't like for a lot of reasons. How would that be different if in the financial collapse of 2008, if some people, many people, say two dozen, three dozen, 100, 200, had been spectacularly bankrupt? I don't mean go to jail. I think the go to jail thing is silly. They didn't break laws, but they also didn't go broke.

And we've had, what do we have, 2%, barely 2% growth over on average 1.5% of GDP growth on average since then, and yet the stock market has not only regained its value but increased. I mean, if you're an American, it just doesn't feel right. Something feels

wrong. You wanted people wearing barrels and selling pencils. I did. I wanted – I'll be honest with you. I felt that the people who are in charge of those investments and those big banks should have been – should be – should have lost a huge portion of their net worth. I'll tell you the – excuse me. Just let me – Rob, here's the problem, period. Today's modern office skyscrapers are hermetically sealed.

You can't open the window. So when we had in the 29 crash when you had the sky darkened by flocks of stockbrokers leaping out the window as we're told, you can't do that nowadays. But they weren't depressed because the market tanked. They were depressed because they were personally broke. Right. They were depressed because they were personally broke. And being personally broke, knowing what it's like to have to sell your penthouse and take your kids out of fancy private school and buy a used Subaru instead of the fancy car. And that – the sting of that is the essential part of free market capitalism. If you lose that, if you socialize the risk, meaning if you lose the money in the casino, we cover your debts. If you make the money in the casino,

you get to keep it all. There's something about that imbalance that I think undergirds this anger and we weren't attentive to it because we like, we understood the system, we needed to keep the system up and they're all good reasons why, but I think the people are, I mean mean I don't have zero evidence for this.

But it feels to me like when I read people who are pro-Trump and even people who are pro-Bernie or people who are just anti-establishment, they keep coming back to that. Not to the Iraq war but to that. What do you think? Last question then, Troy. Do you believe that in the end, Donald Trump's instincts will be with the people or they'll be with the Bosney Wash financial establishment apparatus that he's been trying to get the respect of for his entire adult life? Well, to Rob's point, I think he makes a good point. But I think there were people who did have to take their kids out of fancy private schools and lost their Lamborghinis and all that. I just don't think the journalistic community did a good job of covering it. I saw a few articles about it,

but it wasn't that widespread. In terms of your point about whether Trump will side with the people or Bosniwash, I'll have to say neither. I don't think he's an accurate representation of what the people want. And he's certainly not what Bosniwash wants. So I think he is sui generis, but not necessarily in a good way. I think he represents what his interests are at the moment. We talked about the regulatory state. He knows how to use it to his advantage even as he complains about it. So I think there will be a lot of people who are disappointed if he's elected. But at the same time, it's not like I'll be high-fiving anybody if Hillary is elected.

You know, Trev, when you said sui generis, I actually saw that in italics. I saw them open for somebody else. Thanks for joining us on the podcast. We're going to have you back. It's always a pleasure. Follow him on Twitter, buy his books, read his stuff, and thank you once again for joining us here.

Rob, when you were talking about the people who should have... You've made this point before, that you almost sort of wanted a parade of shame in a way. I did. I really did, yeah. I mean maybe I'm mad about it and, again, it's getting rich, the price you pay is that you also can go broke. I just didn't see enough broke. I really didn't and I'm not sure that it – I'm not sure that it – it certainly didn't happen commensurate with the number of people who had enjoyed the bubble on the way up.

I'm not against bubbles even or even asset inflation. That's sort of a natural thing. Although I'll tell you, I'm reading the new George Gilder book. It's fantastic. It's called The Scandal of Money. About halfway through it, it's dense reading, but it's great. And so I may appear next week as a gold bug when I finish it. Well, without asking.

There does seem to be that problem. There's been no – I understand. I may appear next week as a gold bug when I finish it. Well, without asset inflation. There does seem to be that problem. There's been no – I understand. Without asset inflation, where would Kim Kardashian be? But you're right. When I mentioned before the stockbrokers jumping out of windows, that didn't happen. That's just one of the clichés that got built into it. And when Tevye mentioned –

It didn't happen really? It didn't? No, not really. I mean a couple of people maybe went home and took the lead pill, but they weren't jumping on the ledges. They took a dirt nap. And I love that Tevye mentions the classic image of the guy in the barrel, wearing the barrel, the barrel of poverty, which of course I don't know – nobody ever did it. But it's just the standard image that you have of somebody. There are two things.

There's the guy who's pulling out his front pockets, right? And there's nothing there. And then there's the guy in the barrel who is so poor that all he can do is hide his shameful nakedness with his barrel with a couple of straps. And of course the other belief that in the 1930s, the entire economy was powered by people standing on street corners selling apples to other people who then went to a different street corner and sold them. It was an all completely Apple-based economy. Well, if you actually think that you can run an economy based on the bartering of apples, you're pretty dumb when it comes to money. And even if you're smart when it comes to money, you wonder exactly how you're going

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Mickey, Peter Robinson here. There was a piece in the New York Times yesterday, the day before, on essentially on the impossibility of doing what Donald Trump says he wants to do, which is to send the illegal immigrants home and build a wall. And you were tweeting about this, essentially mocking the New York Times. The New York Times says it's impossible to house a thousand temporary workers. Doesn't sound that impossible. That was sort of the tenor of your tweets, which I found impressive. But on the building of the wall, of course we can build a wall.

But the part that I found a little harder to argue with in my own mind was the question of deporting the people, the illegals who are already here. Now, so all of this is a big, big windup. And here's the pitch. The pitch is simply this question. To what extent do you really believe, really believe having studied this issue that Donald Trump can a deport some 11 million people who are here illegally and B build, if not a wall, then some, some combination of walls, fences, drones in the air that really does get control of the border?

To what extent will he really be able to do A and B? Well, the second one is the easiest. The idea that we could build the Hoover Dam and not build a simple wall on the Mexican border is sort of insane. And the New York Times sort of found people who said well it'll cost a lot of money yes well they'll have to have multiple concrete casting sites yeah well I guess they will

they'll have to house a thousand workers yeah well we can do that and that it'll you know they have to figure out some way to let the Rio Grande flow under it with you know wire mesh or something well I think we're up to that job. And they didn't debunk it. It's just they find a source who will say, well, I don't think it can be done.

And they declare victory and go off. There's no effort. There's no effort to find the people who say it can be done. And the same thing applied to the deportation. First, there are three points to be made. First, it's very similar to a plan that was put forward by advocates of amnesty called the Touchback Amnesty, where the you're here illegally, you go back home, but your employer sort of sends a carefully worded request saying, we want somebody just like you, and you go to your local computerized kiosk in Mexico, and you say, hey, I'm that guy, and then you get back in. So his idea was he would very quickly launder millions of people and they would volunteer for the job. So you don't have to deport

them, they would volunteer. It's a common criticism to write that Trump's plan is really a disguised version of that, in which case, if that could be done, it could be done. The second thing is, I think it's actually the most plausible

way it would happen would be as a sort of disguised version of what Romney called self-deportation, which is once people couldn't get jobs and a few for show were actually deported, maybe there was a raid on the American apparel factory in Los Angeles or something where a third of the workforce was illegal, that people would start voluntarily leaving. And, you know, we have seen that in the past few years there has been a voluntary departure of the United States from Mexico. When the Mexican economy is booming and the American economy isn't, people go to where the jobs are. And the third thing is it's obviously just a negotiating tactic that Trump will settle on something less of that. Okay, that you just you anticipated my next question. This is what James and Rob and I have been talking about throughout this podcast, and frankly,

in some ways for weeks now. To what extent do we take Trump at his word? And to what extent do we simply have to suppose that he's only establishing negotiating positions or to what extent? I think I'll let James speak for himself. But James thinks he just mouths off. They're not even they don't even rise to the level of negotiating positions. So the question then is, having established that A and B are both feasible, that you could deport a lot of those 11 million and you can certainly build a wall, that they're only a question of political will, to what extent do you really believe he intends to push hard for them, that he will demonstrate will and that he's not just mouthing off for effect or even just establishing a negotiating position? How do you read what he really intends?

Well, I think it's a negotiating position, although that doesn't tell you very much because you don't know whether he's intent on caving all the way or actually intends to drive a hard bargain. This may be wishful thinking, but I think the wall is sort of he has to hang tough on that. Yes. Because that is his big applause line at rallies. That's sort of why he's elected. And it's the most doable. I mean, if he wimps out on that, you know that nothing he says can be can be trusted. Maybe once he's in the office, he doesn't care that much. But remember, he can always be impeached and he has zero institutional base of support.

So if the Democrats or Republicans see an opportunity to get rid of him, they will get rid of him. So there's that check on his on his ability to wimp out on promises on on mass deportation. It's sort of interesting. I tend to think he'll wimp out pretty quickly on that, you know, and and and and settle for something less. But and I hope that what he settles for less is enough. But I may just be projecting my own preferences onto him. Hey, Mickey, it's Rob here. Hi. How are you doing?

Yeah, we've been talking about projecting. People are projecting a lot onto this guy. But this kills me to missed it. Well, not everyone. Well, a lot of people, at least in my circle. You kept saying to me it's a bigger issue. Immigration is a bigger issue than it seems in poll rankings or focus groups or voter, whatever, issue identification among voters. You said that, and you were right. So is Trump your ideal candidate now? Of course not.

I would rather have a candidate who wasn't as unpredictable and who wasn't as vulgar and didn't say all the distasteful, controversial things that Trump said but was rather sort of an eisenhower like mature person uh that would who had all the same positions but i you know trump is right on four big things trade immigration while you know while society is coming apart don't mess with entitlements and resist the neocon push to war uh and we it's a you know so that he starts with that actual policy base the problem with him is not his what we think his policies are the problems are all character and you know it's a long campaign but i but i do i i i i let me push back on that because the last time you were on the podcast and we were talking about this very subject, I said, well, what's the difference? These two issues go hand in hand, illegal immigration and trade – or immigration and trade I should say.

Let's not even specify it. And you said, no, I don't think they're linked. But they certainly are linked in this president, in this candidate. Do you really feel like he's absolutely required to enforce border security in a major way and not required to slap a 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods? That's not an applause line either? Is it 45 percent or 5 percent? I mean I do not think that that is a – Say it's 5 percent. Is 5 percent good?

Is the trade good? He has to stay some sort of show of renegotiating our relationship with China, and he has to think big about that and not be mincing and incremental. But I do – It seems to me – It seems to me like a smart guy once again just saying, OK, well, Trump is going to be my man and he'll be my avatar to dazzle and and baffle the proles who vote for him and they want 45 percent. He's going to give you know, he's going to make a show of it and they'll be satisfied. Is that what you're saying? Is that the kind of country you want to live in? Well, I that's one way to put it. The other way to put it is that he wants to make it possible to make a living as an unskilled

worker in America, and that requires both controlling immigration and restraining the effect of trade, which is to devalue our civil labor. And he's vowed to push back on that, and we want him to push back enough, and the proof will be in the pudding. Enough to satisfy, enough to push back on that and we want him to push back enough and the proof will be in the pudding. Enough to satisfy – enough to bring back big industry assembly jobs to Detroit. Is that what you're saying? We should build a – we should essentially build a wall, a trade wall to keep out the future, to keep out tomorrow, to keep out industrial progress that we should say, oh, well, you know what? It's better for us to live in 1923.

And also, he's going to have to ban robotics because if you want to make Apple, if you want to force Apple somehow to make their phones here in Idaho, it's going to be done with robotics. And he's in favor of a higher minimum wage, which destroys the entry-level jobs that aren't going to be created by manufacturing.

But your point, if I could just continue to interrupt you rudely, which destroys the entry-level jobs that aren't going to be created by manufacturing. So – But your point, if I could just continue to interrupt you rudely. Your point is that he's not going to do any of that stuff anyway. It's all just kind of talk and it would be good because you're going to get the wall you've always wanted. Okay, enough. Rob and James, I am now calling on Mickey to answer the questions. A, what should be done on trade? B, what will Trump do on trade?

Go, Mickey. He has no answer to the problem of robots taking over, but nobody has that answer. We're all talking about what happens in the interim before we are subdued by robots. So, and I'm serious about this. Nobody, I think, has the answer to robots taking jobs, whether robots will actually seize control and kill us all.

That's a separate question. But the employment displacement problem, I haven't seen anybody propose a solution other than the Amish solution, which is just stop it and say it's our sacred duty to actually perform this work. I've always favored controlling immigration, i.e. people coming in, more than I favor controlling goods coming in, because I think goods do represent positive force of innovation. And, you know, we get a lot of good, cheap products from abroad and it helps the world. So it's generally a good thing. So I would I would hope Trump would just slow it down to the point where the lives of people who work every day at the bottom gets better. And, you know, subject to that caveat, I'm all for free trade. Now, whether he is a full-blown protectionist who doesn't really want free trade, I don't know, but I don't think so. I mean, I work for a full-blown protectionist, Ernest Hollings, whose whole career was in part defending the textile industry of South Carolina.

And he just didn't want any foreign competition. Trump doesn't seem to me to be that kind of person. He seems to actually accept that the marketplace should eventually work its will. Well, you also mentioned that he tells people to resist the neocon instinct to go and smash things and break things. He wants to destroy ISIS. Oh, he's going to destroy ISIS. He's going to give them such a headache, and he's going to take the oil.

Isn't that using the military to go to a foreign country, invade it, and occupy it? No, he's just going to occupy the oil fields. Just the oil? Okay. His foreign policy is not well formed, but he's pushing back on the instinct that we can screw around in the Middle East and make things better. An instinct that has produced

nothing so far, but trauma and trouble. If Donald Trump and the United States military occupied the oil fields and started pumping them again, would they honor the contracts that the Iraqi government had set up with other countries, France and China? Well, you know, he said he'd honor contracts but be very meticulous about enforcing them. I don't think that's going to happen. I just think that's bluster. So it's just that.

But my big point is it's a six-month campaign okay trump seems to feel he has to be in the news every day so that means the campaign is moving incredibly quickly it seems like we're halfway through it already in the race against hillary he'll be it'll be over by july i mean we'll run through an entire campaign's worth of charge and counter charge and so we have he's gonna have to think of something else. We have an incredibly long period to find out what this guy is like before we have to make up our minds. It's a mystery.

It's like we have to wait a whole second. Do you think it's a mystery what Donald Trump is like? I do. The things we've been discussing are mystery. We don't, we don't know if it's all fake, if he's going to sell out immediately, but how much he's going to sell out immediately. We don't know how much he's going to sell out. We don't know if he really wants to stop trade or not stop trade. So we have to elect a man to know what's inside his head.

Like we have to pass the bill to know what's in it. Mickey, can I ask one more? You have to nominate him. You have to nominate him. So, I mean, on a scale of the last bunch of general elections, presidential elections, I remember you had a bumper sticker in 2004 with a picture of John Kerry and the phrase was, he'll do. What would your bumper sticker be with Trump? Worth the shot. It does seem to me, the only thing that troubles me, I mean, for any sort of domestic overreaching,

there's always the impeachment remedy, which will be cocked and ready to go off. So I think the institutions of our democracy are plenty sturdy enough and they will have a great old time resisting any authoritarian impulses that Trump may give into. If he tries to persecute the press, I'm sure the courts will defend the press. And so he has a great chance to do some big things as opposed to Hillary's mincing incrementalism, and I think that's going to be the contrast. So all that's good. The only thing that troubles me is his finger on the button. Details, details, details. Well, I figure his fingers are too short to reach the button. Also, there are ways – there must be ways to handle that fear and to diminish it, appointing a soothing barrier of old foreign policy hands between him and the button. Just put the launch codes in a very difficult Sudoku grid and then just uh hey i got a bumper sticker

for you something his wife said he's not hitler he's not hitler that's we're getting into the papoon for president uh exactly area do you remember that it's the far sign theater ran a guy named papoon for president oh yes yes yes yes his campaign slogan was not insane so mickey's this is a little too long. Rob will have – Rob's the wordsmith here. Rob will have to work on this. But the bumper sticker would be – it will be a long bumper sticker across most of the back of the car. But big letters vote for Trump.

Small letters underneath. If it doesn't work out, we can always impeach him. That's the Mickey position. Well, that – basically, yes. Well, that basically, yes. Uh, you know, okay.

The, um, I'm contributing to your pack for sure. That's, that's, that's, I like that position. He has to be very careful to pick a vice president who people don't really want to be in the white house. All right.

The idea of a reality TV version of the impeachment hearings complete with sounders commercial breaks dramatic close-ups is too delicious to even conceive we're having that we're having the the reality television version of a campaign so it's only fair to yeah that'll be the that'll be the third season the first yes making third yeah the first the first season of the election the second is the is the man in office in the third season. The first season of the election. The second is the man in office and the third season is... It's hard to see how they'll teach this

in the history books to our children assuming that they survive the Trump presidency. Well then, all of American history completely changed and turned into a reality show. It's hard to write that textbook it it is certainly hard it is well when it comes out you can review it we'll talk to you then too or before the election and after the election and everybody go read mickey of course at his blog

and follow him on twitter and uh wait for the next moment he graces we will put a link to the blog which is excellent and must read you must read it uh cows files.com it's cows files.com still right yes we'll put a link in the show notes because it's great if you haven must read it, cowsfiles.com. It's cowsfiles.com still, right? Yes. We'll put a link in the show notes because it's great. If you haven't read Mickey Cows, you're missing out on – Fun. Fun. And an engaging perspective.

How's that, Mickey? That's pretty weak, Rob. Yeah. Give me a minute. I'm just a little – I'm a member of the GOP. It's going to take me some time. I think I'd rather have not insane than an engaging perspective. Well, I don't think not insane – not 100 percent insane I think would be – OK. Well, we're negotiating here. OK.

Right. Exactly. We'll talk to you later. Thanks, Mickey. Sure. Thank you. We didn't get the chance because we're hard up against the clock here to note that Mickey was pushing back against the idea that Facebook curates their news feed to be pro-left. There's a great piece over at – I think it was Hot Air yesterday. I think it was Molly Hemingway, as a matter of fact, who was talking about – some actress had come out with a fairly anodyne little tweet about support life. It was an organization that helped pregnant women and their children get medical care. And that Facebook tagged this as the actress making an anti-abortion statement.

I mean, right there. Wow. Nothing about that whatsoever in the piece. But there it was. Classic example of the sort of thing that is what they don't see. It's like Google yesterday does this, and I did this thing on Ricochet for it. Google does a doodle now and then to commemorate a person or invention.

In this case, they chose an activist who was a Maoist, a Leninist, a shining path admirer, somebody who in 2003 expressed specific admiration for Osama bin Laden as a freedom fighter and put him up there in the ranks of the people she admired like Che and Fidel. And, you know, that's, that's, they don't see that that's, that's odd to some of us. As a matter of fact, you just saw pieces about how the right was going, Google, Google memorialized a Japanese equality fighter and the right wing is going nuts. Yeah.

And there's a reason for that really, because you look at this and nowadays you, I mean, in the past you would take your fainting couch. Now we just build this into the daily dreary reminder of what these people believe and what they think of us. But if you did want a fainting couch, by the way,

you'd want a Casper mattress on it. Oh, brilliant. Long way to go, but I got there. Casper, as you know. I didn't even interrupt. You didn't even see it coming. Casper, as you know by now, and you ought to, and if you don't, we're going to remind you, they are upending the mattress industry. You know, in the past, they've forced you to pay notoriously high prices and markups for the showrooms and the dealers and all the rest of this. No, Casper's cutting the cost of all of that stuff out and passing the savings on to you. It's a quality mattress, and take it from somebody who sleeps on one every night.

It provides resilience and long-lasting supportive comfort. Had it for a year, still as springy as the day I got it. Casper's mattress, it's one of a kind. It's a hybrid that combines premium latex foam with memory foam. And you're thinking, what is this going to cost me, James? Well, mattresses can cost you $1,500, but a Casper, well, $500 for a twin, $600 for a twin XL, $750 for a full, $850 for a queen, and $950 for a king. That's a lot off the usual price. And they understand, of course, that buying a mattress online, you're thinking, how does this work?

Really? I can't. How can I? What? Well, they'll send it to you risk-free. Free delivery and returns within a 100-day period. It's that simple. I mean, you go to a showroom, you put your finger, you bounce up and down for a couple of minutes. I tell you about how you're going to live on this thing. You get 100 days in order to experience it. Now, it's a risk-free experience to send it back as well.

What do you get? You get an obsessively engineered mattress at a shockingly fair price with just the right sink, just the right bounce, a risk-free trial, and a return policy. Try sleeping on a Casper for 100 days with free delivery and painless returns, and they are made in America. $500 for a twin, $950 for a king. Compare that to industry averages, and that's outstanding. And you get $50 off your first one. Go to casper.com and use the coupon code RICOCHET at your checkout and we will sleep better

knowing you did. And we thank Casper Mattress for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Guys, I'm spent. I'm done. That's a lot. I suppose we've given everybody a podcast that they came here to get. So I should mention Ricochet 3.0 is coming. Yes.

Well, I mean, the 3.0, all that stuff, I don't know if that really means anything. We're adding some more features. Part of the fun of being in WordPress is that there's incredibly rich feature set we can get into. And so we're going to be starting to add that soon. A little bit, some pieces here and there. We've been testing it out with a very, very, very, very thorough test group,

beta test group of members. And we just hope that people who want to use them use them. You don't have to use them, but they're there. And we want to make it a richer, better experience. We're going to do a lot more stuff, try to get some more IRL experiences between now and November. It's part of the fun of being a member of Ricochet is being part of a community.

We want to make sure the community is. And we start rolling out the new features when? Do we have a time? It's not going to be like we're rolling all of them out on Monday at 8. It's going to be sort of a rolling introduction. So the features will start to appear, and we'll announce them when they appear. Or maybe you'll just discover them, but I think we'll announce them when they appear.

It'll be a lot more flexibility in conversations and forming groups and posting and tagging, and it'll be a lot more fun. And a better mobile experience too because mobile is really crucial. It is. Sometimes you look at a threaded thread on a thread, and you'll have a line of two characters going down by the bar because it's squozing. Yeah, it's squozed. We should say, I mean, I know we're wrapping up,

but I want to say that from the member feed, because the member feed is really the heart and soul of Ricochet. Larry Kohler has got a great piece called Hillary's Help by Never Trump, and that is a very – that's kind of an ancillary point to Peter Robinson. Ancillary point. It's directed straight at your head. That's between the eyes of Rob Long. I'm just trying to heal. I'm not about unifying and healing.

But that's one of the things I'm most proud of at Berkishay is that we have passionate and intelligent and articulate pro-Trumpers. We have passionate, articulate, and intelligent never-Trumpers. Everyone's going to have to work it out. And everyone's going to have to work it out together somehow.

It doesn't mean we all have to agree, but this 80 percent of the stuff that we agree on we can we can all roll in that direction so there you go excellent you'll also find a post about favorite movies oh yeah that's great which is hard for me to think of one because i got bits and pieces scattered all over the place but i gotta go there and add something to it so there you go folks um what is your favorite movie soundtrack that's front Front Seat Cat, by the way. Front Seat Cat. Right. What's your favorite movie soundtrack?

I can't come up with one at the time. I just can't because there are bits of the James Bond gold finger soundtrack, which I love. There's John Barry stuff that's incredible, but then it gets incredibly tedious. There's always filler. I mean, there's always the bonk-tuous action music that they throw in sometimes. I could say the Pennies from Heaven soundtrack because it's nothing but great old 30s film music.

But it depends. Anyway, go there. I will tell you that just before we're wrapping up. No, you don't. I was in a bar a year ago in a hip bar and they had a live band playing a song. And I was like, what is that beautiful song? It was You Only Live Twice. a hip bar and they were playing and they had a live band playing a song and i was like what is that beautiful song it was you only live twice from oh that was a great theme it's an incredible song even though he's even though he kind of stole it i think from rock mononove a little bit that opening a little descending part which starts way up in the strings i mean those guys have got their

fingers practically scratching their necks um it's got all of John Barry's great modulations. Hey, James, we've got to go. We've got to go. And Nancy Sinatra's version of it, attempting to sing so bad that what you're hearing is like 50 takes all spliced together. But it works, and it's a beautiful, haunting song. It's a great song. And when it comes to beautiful and haunting,

I mean, one life, you only lived twice. One for your living and one for your dreams? And one for your dreams, which you'll enjoy in a Casper mattress. And we thank you for inviting them to the podcast. Greatcourses.com slash well, thegreatcoursesplus.com slash ricochet and betterment.com. All proud sponsors go there and sign up and visit the Ricochet store with lots of great Ricochet swag as well. And we'll see you at the comments at Ricochet where everything is civil. Everything is polite.

And if you don't join brackets, comment redacted and bracket next week, fellas, next week, fellas. You only live twice Or so it seems One life for yourself And one for your dreams

You drift through the years And life seems tame Till one dream appears And love is its name And love is a stranger Who'll beckon you on. Don't think of the danger, for the stranger is gone. This dream is for you, so pay the price.

Make one dream come true, you only live twice. And love is a stranger who'll beckon you on. Don't think of the danger, for the stranger is gone. This dream is for you So pay the price Make one dream come true You only live twice Ricochet! Join the conversation.