The Ricochet Podcast - Can I Get A Witness?

Episode Date: January 30, 2020

Do not adjust your podcast app or web browser, you are in fact seeing this week’s Ricochet Podcast drop a day early. And we’ve got a good one for you: Chief Impeachment Pundit John Yoo stops by to grade Alan Dershowitz’s impeachment defense arguments and then The Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel gives no you-know-what’s about the Democrats and their tactics. Also, our crew punditizes (we just... Source

I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University. As government expands, liberty contracts. It's funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food. That's a good thing. First of all, I think he missed his time. Please clap. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lalix.

Today we talk to you who? John Yoo about impeachment and Kimberly Strassel about resistance and also, of course, impeachment. So let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number 481. I'm James Lytleks here in Minnesota. Rob Long, I presume, is in New York, Gotham, where he strides about the flaneur that he is. I am not.

I really interrupt you until you know I'm in Miami for just one day, and then I'm going back to New York tomorrow. I see. So you're doing that continental thing where you just go to the clubs with your mirrored sunglasses and your silk shirt open to the sternum and, uh, and, uh, generally engage with dubious commerce with some Colombian fellows. I'll bring the keys into the cigarette boat. Got it. That's my Miami vision right there. Peter, he goes from Flannery to dirty, rotten scoundrel. Yes. You're in California, Peter. I am. Okay, good. So we, between the three of us again, we stride the nation.

Right. I was listening this morning to National Public Radio, the 1A show, and they were talking with grave tones about the influence of Mike Pompeo and how, you know, he's sort of taken over now as the leftist boogeyman that's driving America into conflict and blood. When they got around to the Middle East, their expert said that this plan that Trump proposed is just postural. It's not worth the paper. It's written on that it's ridiculous to have your son-in-law negotiate this. What does he know? And this shows the marginalization of the State Department. And then it was sort of, well, that said, it's as bad as everything else that we've ever done because it puts no pressure on the Israelis and expects everything of the Palestinians. And their other host chimed in and said, yes,

well, of course, the Arab world hates it right away because there's no right of return. There will never be a right of return. So just take that off the table. And the Palestinians would not have control over the Al-Aqsa area, which is the third holiest, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right, right. So was this plan in good faith? Was this intended to take the heat off Bibi, who was indicted that day? Did Trump actually believe it, want it? Is that another piece of paper that's going to go absolutely nowhere? Rob, you want to go on that one?

Well, yeah, the mini solution. Let me just take the Jared Kushner of it all first because, yeah, Jared Kushner is probably, from all accounts, kind of a numbskull and a moron. Oh, really? All sorts of terrible things. But, I mean, compared to whom? I mean, show me the success in the Middle East peace talks from the past 17,000 presidents. I mean, not that they were smart or dumb, not that they were not well-intentioned, not that they weren't trying to do something great, but they accomplished very little. As you put your finger on it, it's an intractable

problem. If the right to return, the Palestinian right to return, which means the right to reenter what is the state of Israel, become citizens of Israel, and then vote in Israel, if that is the deal-breaker, which is—by the way, it's been in all of the sort of past two or three, in my memory anyway, high stakes negotiations, presidentially supervised negotiations. Well, then it's an onstarter. We no longer have to, actually, that's what put Mideast negotiations on the ice for a long time, because if that's the issue, if you're only willing, if you're Palestinians and you're only willing to come to the table, if Israel essentially signs a suicide pact. And forget about it. Yeah, forget about it. What are you going to do?

So, look, yeah, maybe it's dumb. Maybe it's crazy. Maybe it's just boilerplate. Maybe it won't work. But Trump, in this one instance, Donald Trump and Jared Kushner cannot fail any more than any other president and chief negotiator. Right. That is very nicely put. I don't know what calculations they were making in the White House between Kushner and the

president and Mike Pompeo and all the experts at the National Security Council about the likelihood that this would ever actually come to pass. But every so often, it's important for the United States to remind itself and the world and the Israelis and the Arab world where we stand. And in this administration, things are different. Two big things are different. For the first time in seven decades, the United States of America doesn't need Middle Eastern oil. And that means, really, we don't need the Mideast. Goodwill, support for Israel as a democracy, but this is not our problem. And fundamentally,

it's not our problem in a new and more serious way than in, as I say, decades. And the second thing that has changed, they're related, but the second thing that has changed is that although Israel, of course, already has formal peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, now Saudi Arabia is more open to some sort of support that we know already that Israel and the Saudis are engaging in closer diplomatic relations. So the Arab world is changing, shifting largely in response to Iran and Iran's drive to acquire nuclear weapons and hegemony in the whole region. So here's where the United States stands, fellas. You can have a peace. The Palestinians need to formally forswear all resort to violence.

And if they do that, they may have their own state. And look at it. Here it is right on a map. It's a complicated picture because lots of people have lived here for millennia, and you have to squeeze—you get this territory right—relinquish resort to—forswear resort to violence. And now, I don't know whether you want this, and I don't actually see any reason to suppose the Palestinian leadership is tremendously different in attitude toward—its attitude when—during the Clinton administration, which was the last time it came, as far as I can tell, this close to actually drawing lines in the sand, so to speak, almost literally in this case.

But at a minimum, it reminds everybody where matters stand. Israel runs a peaceful rule of law democracy, and the Palestinians may have their own state if they just give up violence. And that's the American position now. Take it or leave it. That's new. That's new. So the only other thing that I think the Palestinian side needs to understand is that you don't get your territory—this has been a long process in which they—basically, the state

of Israel is larger now than it was before just by certain settlements. And those settlements were originally designed to be bargaining chips that would be bargained away. But over decades, they became actual places to live. And you don't get those back. The Palestinian negotiators seem to be saying, well, we have failed to get what we want for the past three decades. And we've lost. So part of our negotiation will be to get what we want for the past three decades, and we've lost. So part of our negotiation will be to get back everything that we lost from wasting time and from creating violent outbreaks. And that is just simply not the way the world works.

And all you've done is remind Israel, the state of Israel, which is 11 miles wide. It's much narrower. 11 miles wide. That's what we're talking about, which has actually very few people compared to its economic power. All you've done is remind them that they have something precious they need to protect. And so you cannot blame Israel for being obsessed to the point of maybe we would find exhausting their own physical and political security.

That seems to be, they have earned the right to have that as their twin obsessions more so than many other countries in the world. Well, the Palestinian leadership has something that they need to protect too, which is the free flow of that wonderful honeyed milk from the international community, which they can siphon off in large part for themselves and enrich themselves and live quite nicely. So there's no incentive for them to change that. I mean, if they go all Sadat and everybody and it's a peaceful, happy world and the international community no longer fountains all kinds of shekels, well, not shekels, their way, what's in it for them?

The NPR piece also said that, you know, the problem here with the administration is that they've refused to engage Iran. Is it now, for heaven's sakes? You know, they walked away. They walked away from the nuclear deal. Pompeo seems to be talking to the Supreme Leader through interviews. interviews and not, and they were just sort of, again, you just want to look at these guys and say, what, describe for me how you believe the government of Iran would like to behave in the region. Do they want to be an equal player amongst everybody else in a concert of nations that exists with cultural exchange and music and ping pong should, you know, go back and forth and trade and happiness, or do you think they want dominance and the continuation of the ability to hang the

gaze from the cranes? Because that's what you seem to be on the side of. By the way, may I amend my earlier remarks? It's not just the United States that's in a different position. Israel's in a different position. Consider the big threats to Israel. One was terrorism, people blowing up bombs in Tel Aviv, suicide bombers. They built a wall, they increased security measures. I talked to him, it was really not long ago, and I said, what about all the tunneling? And he said, Peter, we have sensors all around the border.

We know if a worm turns, that's how, we've got that one. They handled the problem. And the next problem, of course, is the rockets coming in from Southern Lebanon, the Hezbollah and so forth. And they have now built a defense against that. This is all an arms race, of course. The other side will build better rockets. But the Israelis have the upper hand right now. And while all this has been going on over the last couple of decades or quarter century, the Israelis have transformed their economy.

That state, which was founded by European socialists, Ben-Gurion. I know, isn't that amazing? It was founded by people who really believed in the socialist state, the kibbutzim, all of that. And that is – it still has a very large government sector. But the tech sector, the Israeli economy is red hot. And things are changing. It's just Palestinians, you don't hold things over. You don't hold the cards in your hand that you held when Eirat was doing things. I know we want to move on, but before we do that, not only is Israel different, the entire Middle East is different.

The entire network of intelligence in the Middle East is different. And the only thing that stays the same are the Palestinians. And the Palestinians are kind of the odd man out. You know, there's a Jordanian intelligence desk in the Mossad, and there's a Mossad intelligence desk in Jordanian intelligence. That is the thing that happened after 9-11. The one thing the Jordanians and the Saudi leadership, whether, you know, obviously there's like religious bureaucracy in Saudi Arabia that does support terrorism and was responsible in many ways for 9-11.

But the Saudi leadership and the Jordanian leadership and a lot of the other sort of strong men in the area, rich guys, are doing all they can to stop Muslim fundamentalism. Because, of course, true Muslim fundamentalism will reach its apogee when they take over the Holy Land of Saudi Arabia. So everyone—the greatest, most interesting thing about the Middle East has been for 2,000 years, it has been the most complicated political place with hypocrisy reigning and double dealing and double dealing that's out in the open and secret deals. I mean, someone wants, a Middle Eastern expert once said to me, here's all you need to know is that Israel's enemies that surround her are terrified that Israel will one day decide to

use the nuclear weapons that they do not, that Israel doesn't officially have. It is nuclear deterrence without any acknowledgement that that is what's going on. And there is something just cool about that. Yes, there's also something funny about the way you put it. All right. All right. All right. No more Middle East. Whenever I read a Middle East article, I always like I try to read it. And by the second paragraph, you know. Well, to speak of another small place that has an oversized impact on the world, Iowa, it seems to be we've got the Iowa Cocks is coming up. And Bernie and Sanders, Biden and Sanders are our neck and waddled neck, which is interesting. And Biden is out there showing that he's just a strange campaigner.

He puts his hands on people. He pokes them in the sternum. He gets prickly and old and weird. And it's just the old Joe Biden of the sunny cheer, the delightful anecdotes about leg hair tugged upon by small children. It's all adding up to a very strange campaign. But then on the other side, you have a hectoring, angry, mad, old, commie, red guy who wants horrible things. So who do you think is going to win?

Quickly, because we've got to get John Yoo. And we know that John is sitting there drumming his fingers on the table, looking at his watch because he's got places to go and people to talk to. Bernie. Bernie will win. If you want it to be quick and people to talk to. Bernie. Bernie will win. I'm just, if you want it to be quick, it's as simple as that. Bernie will win in Iowa. Is that because the Iowans themselves are constitutionally socialists now, that they've

made that change, that switch, or there's just a motivated group of people who are going to these things to bring Bernie about? Largely, here's the, if you put on a split screen, if anybody wants to do this, you'd be crazy to want to do it. But if you want to do it, and I have over the last year, suffering occasional insomnia, you go to C-SPAN, watch Joe Biden in action, watch him for 20 minutes, giving a speech, working a crowd to the extent that he works a crowd. And so and then watch Bernie. One man simply has more energy. One man is simply more believable in saying what he says. One man elicits far greater enthusiasm from the crowd in the moment. So the idea of Joe Biden is this man who will return us to normal normalcy. When you get out

to Iowa and you start shaking hands, it's a small state. Everybody either meets the candidates or knows somebody who's met the candidates. Word starts to get around, not TV ads, not radio ads, word of mouth. You know, Joe Biden's looking a little creaky, says one farmer to another, you know, says the word gets around. One of these men is inspiring. Wrong. He's completely mistaken in every particular, but he connects with people and the other simply doesn't. My prediction is based entirely on that. My prediction is based on insomnia watching C-SPAN. Right. Well, I'll take the opposite side just to make it interesting. But I sort of agree that the baseline here is that to be a Democrat in Iowa

is weird, A. And B, it means you're kind of a early FDR Democrat. You might actually be a communist. And I mean that in a respectful way. So Bernie appeals. I just kind of feel like Biden – I feel like – I've seen Biden on the stump, and I think he's really, really, really, really good. I think – Oh, you do? Yeah. People tend to sort of shrug and say, I don't know. I think he's really good. First of all, I think that he's operating at a very high level.

We watch him on TV, and we think, what a moron. But look, to be there, you have to be pretty good. He's pretty good. He's won more statewides than Bernie, I think, in his career. He's been on a national ticket. He's been in Iowa before several times, has failed. But, you know, you learn from that stuff. I don't know. I think Biden could pull it out. I think Biden pulls it out because there's a sick feeling among Democrats, even the commies in Iowa, that they are giving this election to Trump. That may be, well, it. The Iowans at the last moment pull back like some conventioneer in Las Vegas who's picked up the phone and is ordering an escort.

And he gets out his credit card, pictures of his wife and kids fall out. And he realizes that he can't do this, and he pulls back at the last moment. So that's it, Iowans. Be that Shriner in Vegas who doesn't order the escort. Five bucks, Rob. Five bucks. Or maybe do. Yeah, five bucks. I'll Venmo you five bucks if I lose. All right. James, if you want to vote one way or the other, I'll make the same bet with you. No, I don't. No, I just don't. I am feeling one way or the other because, like I said, I think there's a lot of people who want to, but there may be some cooler heads that prevail and say, listen, this guy isn't going to be able to beat Trump because people kind of sort of like to have their health insurance and maybe some other parts of the economy that aren't completely nationalized.

And besides Bernie on the other day was on CNN. I think they asked him what his project was going to cost. He didn't know. He didn't know. He's honest about that. It's going to cost a heck of a lot of money, but I don't know how much. Which means, of course- He could just put it on his credit cards if he wanted.

Well, you know, the problem is with those credit cards is that for decades now, the credit cards have been telling you and me, the people- Genius, genius, genius. Well, he greased the traces. I do. That's what I do. I grease the traces. That's because I'm late to getting this.

I have to get to this. I thank you. Go ahead. But the credit... Oh, thank you, Peter. Feel free. Feel free. You have my permission.

Even my admiration. Well, I was talking about credit and spending and borrowing and all the rest of that. And, you know, the credit cards, what's the basic message there? You buy it now and pay for it later, right? With interest, of course, with interest, you know that. But, you know, despite your best intentions, that interest gets out of hand and it gets out of control fast. Well, that's why Lending Club is here to help you. With Lending Club, you can consolidate your debt or pay off credit cards with one fixed monthly payment. Since 2007, Lending Club has helped millions of people

regain control of their finances with affordable, fixed-rate personal loans. There's no trips to the bank. There's no high-interest credit cards. Now, just go to LendingClub.com, tell them a little bit about yourself, how much you want to borrow, pick the terms that are right for you, and if you are approved, your loan is automatically deposited into your bank account in as little as a few days. Lending Club, it's the number one peer-to-peer lending platform with over $35 billion in loans issued. So, go to LendingClub.com slash Ricochet. Check your rate in minutes and borrow up to $40,000. That's LendingClub.com slash Ricochet. LendingClub.com

slash Ricochet. All loans made by WebBank member FDIC, equal housing lender. And our thanks to LendingClub for sponsoring this Ricochet podcast. Now, welcome back to the podcast, our special impeachment expert, John Yoo, who, of course, must be preceded by a long list of tedious accomplishments. He is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law. He's director of the Korea Law Center, visiting scholar at both the Hoover Institution and AEI. That's a lot of visiting. At some point, though, they hand him his hat and look at their clocks. He's also a podcasting machine.

He co-hosts the best legal podcast on this planet, which is Law Talk with John Yoo and Epstein. But John Yoo, and also Pacific Century with Michael Oslin. But these honorariums just pale in comparison to his recent elevation to our podcast chief impeachment pundit, a position that he won by beating literally hundreds of other candidates. I mean physically beating them. So you can't follow him on Twitter because he is a sensible man and does not go there, which is why he maintains a sunny chair. John, welcome back.

Here's some Dershowitz. Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest. And mostly you're right. Your election is in the public interest. And if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment. You had some problem with this, I believe. I think that's got to be wrong. And I'll give you a simple hypothetical to explain why. Suppose Trump gets acquitted on Friday, tomorrow, which may be the case. And then a week later, he says, I'm going to bomb the bejesus out of Tehran. And he could say in

public, I'm doing it because it's in our self-defense and the national interest. But suppose he talks to his aides and he says, I want to bomb Tehran because I want to keep the spotlight on me. I want to remind people why I'm such a great president. I want to show why I'm better than those Democrats. Now, Alan's right. There could be a mixed motive because every president thinks their reelection is in the national interest. But I think that's actually an illegitimate reason to exercise presidential power. But he is right that the problem, the tough thing here is you look at something the president's done,

and it could fall within his constitutional powers. And so what separates something from being OK and something from being impeachable is the mental state, the reason the president did it, not the act itself. And the proper person to tell us all why President Trump did what he did is obviously Adam Schiff, correct? Well, you know, the House, they're like the prosecutors. Their job is, if they think an impeachable offense has occurred, to put the best case forward on behalf of removal. But the people who decide is the Senate. Under the Constitution, the Senate makes—I'm sorry, the Constitution makes the Senate the jury. And so it's not Adam Schiff who should decide. In fact, we should distrust their conclusion.

We should always be testing it just like we do in a criminal case. But hey, John, it's Rob here. I've been following this and it seems to me that the Senate, I mean, maybe I'm misunderstanding here, but the Senate isn't so much the jury because we kind of know that Trump did it. Trump kind of said he did it. It's kind of already we've we've we've sort of settled the matter of that. He did it. Isn't the Senate really kind of a sentencing hearing? OK, if he did it, what are we going to do now?

Do we kick him out or do we not kick him out? That's what it feels like to me. What am I missing? Rob, as always, you go for what would make the best television. Because when you watch Law and Order. If only I did that with my actual television career,

we'd be in better shape. I wouldn't have to be on these little podcasts with like law professors. Rob would be like, we've got to move these cameras. We're not going to put angles on these. Yeah, right, right. Until he's bald.

What about we can't see the comb over? Right. You can always see the comb over with drama. The drama is always in the sentencing, right? But here, actually, the jury is—the Senate is a jury. The Senate is the court. And you're right. The Senate is also the executioner in the end. So the Senate is a jury. The Senate is the court. And you're right. The Senate is also

the executioner in the end. So the Senate finds the facts. Did actually this happen? I agree with you, Rob. I actually think President Trump did say favor, look into this, these Bidens, and then decided to hold the aid up. And then there's a legal question too, though, and I put it to you this way. Suppose everything Adam Schiff says about the facts is true. Suppose Trump did all these things that me and Rob agree on. Is that actually sufficient facts to meet the standard for moving someone from office? This is like the great TV moment, because in a lot of criminal prosecutions, you get cases where someone did kill somebody. The question was, was it deliberate? Was it planned? Or was it a mistake? You see in Law & Order, because that's on cable TV every hour

of the day. So everyone turns that on and sees it. That's basically what the Senate here, I think, is really doing. They're accepting that these facts occurred. The question is, does it meet the impeachable? Yeah, that's what I mean. It's it's a sentencing hearing, right? I mean, the guilt and innocence we've established. Now we've got to figure out whether we care enough to to overturn an election, to replace a president with a vice president. I just don't. To me, what seems so strange is that, you know, their argument—well, first of all, no one's legal reputation has been enhanced by participating in this zoo, it seems to me. The Democrats and their House—the impeachment managers seem—they've taken leave of their

sentences. And then Dershowitz makes this, what I like laughably create an argument that it defines the reason why people despise lawyers. It's a semantic, tautological argument that is sort of risible. But as long as we get paid a lot, who cares? But there was one other article of impeachment, which I find so useless and so empty and so baldly ham-handed that it almost taints, if it not does taint, the entire proceedings. And I know that we have a clip, another Dersh thing, just for your enjoyment. So I'm making exactly the same constitutional argument. I'm not arguing about witnesses. What I'm saying is the charge of obstruction of Congress and abuse of power are not within the constitutional terms, high crimes and misdemeanors. The framers rejected terms just like that. They rejected maladministration as a potential term. And maladministration is virtually

the same as abuse of power. That was the constitutional scholar Joy Behar, whom you cut off. This is like listening to this is like law professor's version of the ninth circle of hell. Or the ninth circuit. It's like having to listen to clips of Alan Dershowitz playing over and over again, interrupted by CNN hosts. But he's right, right? I mean, he's right here. He's right. His second article is nonsense, correct?

Well, I think Dershowitz is right, but for the wrong reason. He's wrong. Very good law professor answer, you. He's got it wrong that high crimes and misdemeanors means it has to be a crime, that the president has to commit a crime. And he's right. The framers rejected treason, bribery, and maladministration and replaced it with treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors, that doesn't mean everything goes except for crimes. Abuse of power could still fit in the current language. I think

it does. I actually think the key word is other, which people are ignoring, because the provision is treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. And that word other to me suggests high crimes and misdemeanors has to be as similarly harmful to the country as treason, bribery. It just can't be any little thing that the House gets upset about. And so I think Dershowitz is wrong on the standard, but I think he's right. The second article has got to be thrown out because the president here is just invoking his right to executive privilege, which the Supreme Court has recognized in the case of the Watergate-Tapes-Nixon case.

How could it be impeachable for the president to claim his constitutional authorities under constitution? Because it's good PR. I mean, they crafted this so that it would strike people who aren't paying attention as an obvious thing you can't do. What do you mean? He's obstructing Congress? You can't do that. Congress is in charge. Right.

So that's the— So, John, one more thing I want to talk to you about before we get there. In your time in a White House working for administration, how much time did you spend looking at executive privileges and executive privilege histories and presidencies? My bias is that every single president that I can remember invoked executive privilege and was lambasted for it by his political enemies. But it's been this thing that every president does all the time. Am I right? Oh, yeah. No, it's something that we spent a lot of time thinking about. We have several full-time lawyers at the Justice Department whose only job is to review matters for executive approach, because Congress deluges. Is that a word, deluges? I don't know. You're the professor. You get to make them up. It's a question of

non-delugia test and est in precipio. They flood the executive branch with requests for information, and so you have to check and see where there's... I'll give you an example of a case everyone agrees was a great use of executive privilege. It went way farther than anything Trump is claiming here, and that's Eisenhower responding to the McCarthy investigations. And Eisenhower got up on national TV and he said, I forbid, not just my appointees, I forbid every single employee of the executive branch to refuse to cooperate with the McCarthy investigation. And anyone who does will find that the next day they show up in the office, they will not have a job. And everyone thought that was great. Precisely. Weren't we just moving toward militaristic authoritarianism at that point?

I mean, that's just astonishing that he'd be able to do that. Hey, John, Peter here. We have in the official records, State Department records of the United States, we have note takers, notes on conversations at Yalta between FDR and Stalin. And FDR said to Stalin, I'll get this a little bit wrong, but anybody who wants to go to Google can look it up very quickly. FDR said to Stalin, listen, I'd appreciate it if you'd go easy or at least go slowly on Poland, because we have a number of Polish voters in the United States, and I'm up for re-election. Should Franklin Delano Roosevelt have been impeached, convicted, and removed from office? No, I don't think so. In fact, I remember that affair. Was that not far more outrageous than anything Donald Trump did? But the question is, did Roosevelt really

go soft on the Poland issue and at Yalta because of re-election? I don't really think so. I don't think Roosevelt really meant that. Here, let me give you a harder case. He didn't. He said it explicitly. It's in the record. Oh, I know. But this is the question. This is why it sounds like it sounds like a quid po' quo to me, if you please make him go stand in the corner, Professor Affairs.

Now, this is a question that makes it hard. And this is where Dershowitz has his finger on something, is that even if you think that the president's state of mind, his intent for acting is illegitimate, impeachable, it's extremely hard to prove. And do we want to allow Congress or the courts to conduct these fishing expeditions to try to decide what the president's real intent is. You remember in the travel ban case, remember President Trump banned immigration from six Muslim countries, and he was accused of doing it for illegitimate, either religious or racist reasons, went all the way to the Supreme Court on the same ground. All the lower courts said, we can divine the president's state of mind, which I think is incredible, because I don't even know if Trump can divine his own state of mind. This is his state of mind. He's racist, and we're going to strike it down. Every lower court judge who heard the case concluded that.

But the Supreme Court said, no, we're going to allow the travel ban to go forward because we don't think that the courts should be rummaging around in the president's head to try to figure out whether he has a good motive or bad motive. The court said if he had a bad motive, that would make it an illegal order. But how do you prove that? How do you figure that out? So we always presume the president is acting for good reasons. The problem with the July 25 call and what happened after it is that it's very hard to construct what the good reason is based on what Trump said in the phone call. But let me, Pierre, I want to give you a reverse case, an even harder case for you. And since you're from New England and you went to Dartmouth and you wear the sweater tied

around your eyes. Are you getting the contempt here? I object. This is a delusion. I totally agree with you, John. 1864. President Lincoln's up for re-election. Yes. Historians have attacked Lincoln for, A, allowing Sherman to go into the South and try to take Atlanta and go on the march to the sea because they claim he wanted Sherman to get a victory to get him reelected. And then President Lincoln actually asked his commanders to release the troops to go back home to vote because he thought the military vote would be in his favor. Do you think Lincoln should have been impeached? Me? Yes, you, Peter Robinson, New England, union member, you know, graduate of

the College of Daniel Webster, who put the union over everything. Do you think Abraham Lincoln should have been impeached for those two? Not remotely, of course not. His reelection was in the public interest. But of course, I don't, that to me is dead easy. My point about Franklin Roosevelt, and your point about Abraham Lincoln is if you take the Adam Schiff set of arguments that Donald Trump—and I disagree with you and Rob, by the way, it doesn't seem obvious to me that he did it. You have to define it a little more carefully. But you read the—it's not an exact transcript, but you read the note-taker's version of

that call, and it seems to me there's a quite innocent construction that can be put on it. I'm not saying that it's absolutely compelling, but there are different constructions that can be put on that set of notes, I think. Nevertheless, Schiff says it's obvious that he intended at one point to lean on the president of Ukraine. He changed his mind. He delivered the money. No harm was done. But still, he had it in his head. He was leaning on him in this phone call. Throw him out! If you make that argument, you have to say throw out Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and you have to say throw out Abraham Lincoln. Isn't that correct?

No, I don't think so, because— You bastard. Cut him off. Scott, Blue Yeti. Just send me some McRibs. I'll stop talking. No, go ahead and make that point. You do surprise me there.

No, no. So again, I think that if I were senator voting or if you were senator voting, the way I would look at it would be like this. Of course, every president thinks what they're doing is in their personal interest and the national interest. They all are such megalomaniacs. They think the country can't survive without me. All right. interests. They all are such megalomaniacs. They think the country can't survive without me, right? They all think my reelection does protect the country. I mean, that's why FDR runs for

reelection in 1944 when the man's dying, right? So the question for senators is to separate it out. Was what the president was doing really dominated by true national interest, or was it really to advance him, his party, his state, his region? Again, the founders talked about this when they designed the impeachment clause, and they gave us an example. The defenders of the Constitution gave us an example of an impeachable offense. It was a president who signed a treaty that seemed okay, but was really done for the advantage of himself and his political party, even though he might say, and there might be some smidgen of national interest to it. So I think that's a tough call. That's why we elect those senators to office,

to make that tough decision. Well, John, we know you have to go out and teach about nodules to some skulls full of mush, as Rush calls the college students. So we'll let you go. And remember, Carthage deluges us. You are Cato the Simpliciter. We've had it with you. Thank you. Well, better than Cato the Short, which I perhaps could describe to be. Thanks, John. We'll talk to you later.

And don't worry. Don't worry. It's not like there's double jeopardy at play here. After Trump gets off for this, there'll be another impeachment thing thundering right down the road. We'll be calling you later. And don't worry. Don't worry. It's not like there's double jeopardy at play here. After Trump gets off for this, there'll be another impeachment thing thundering right down the road. And we'll be calling you up every other week after that. Oh, of course. Thanks, guys.

All right. Take it easy. Hey, listen, no time for a segue. No time at all. I mean, also, look, after all that great—that was really good red meat that John, you gave us. It was indeed. But the reason that I have to get to this is that,

is that it's people may be listening to this the day it's released, in which case they've got the Superbowl coming up and thinking, Oh my gosh, what am I going to do? I've got people coming over. Even if you're listening to this after the Superbowl, what I'm going to tell you still applies because it has to do with, with meat guys like to have meat when they're watching the Superbowl. But you know, even if they're not, that's past.

You guys like to have meat and women love meat. Everybody loves. But, you know, even if they're not, that's past. You guys like to have meat. And women love meat. Everybody loves good meat. But where do you get it? Well, whether you're going to be watching the big game or you're going to have a party later, here's a great reason to call ButcherBox. ButcherBox is offering, are you ready for this, free wings. And you think, that's really good.

Oh, it gets better. Free wings for life. For life when you sign up now. Now, whether you love football or just love any excuse to eat a plate of wings, this is your chance. Sign up for ButcherBox and snack like it's game day all year round. Every month, ButcherBox ships a curated selection of high quality meat right to your home. All meat is free of antibiotics and added hormones. Each box has nine to 11 pounds of meat. That's enough for 24 individual meals. It's packed fresh, shipped frozen, vacuum sealed, so it stays good and fresh. You can customize your box, or you can go with one of theirs. And either way, you're going to get exactly what you want.

I do. I get exactly what I want because ButcherBox is a no-brainer. It's the best meat shipped right to my door, to your door. And that means, well, one less trip to the grocer. Frankly, several less trips to the grocer. They have options like 100% grass-fed and finished beef, free-range organic chicken, heritage pork, wild-caught Alaska salmon, and sugar-nitrite-free bacon. It's the way meat should be. ButcherBox, it's the most affordable, it's the most convenient way to get healthy, humanely-raised meat. And with ButcherBox, it's the most affordable, it's the most convenient way to get healthy, humanely raised meat. And with ButcherBox, you get the highest quality meat for just around $6 a meal. And they even have free shipping nationwide, except for Alaska, Canada, Hawaii.

Here's what you have to do. Right now, you can get free wings for life. I repeat, free wings for life. Plus, $20 off your first box. That's three pounds of wings in every box for the life of your subscription, plus $20 off your first box. Just go to, well, you know where, right? ButcherBox.com slash Ricochet. Three pounds of wings for every box for the life of your subscription at $20 off your first box at ButcherBox.com slash Ricochet, or use the promo code Ricochet at checkout. That's ButcherBox.com slash Ricochet, or use the promo code Ricochet at

checkout. That's ButcherBox.com slash Ricochet, or use the promo code Ricochet at checkout. And our thanks to ButcherBox for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Now, welcome back to the podcast, Kim Strassel, author of the new book, Resistance at All Costs, How Trump Haters Are Breaking America. And she's a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board. You can follow her on Twitter. I do, at Kim Strassel. It's a great read. Well, Kim, you wrote this earlier, about a week ago.

Quote, Mr. Schumer's job this week was to secure the cooperation of a handful of Republicans for his demands to drag this trial out further. He has likely failed. Will there be Republicans who break here and there in the witness demands? Probably and understandably. But given the New Yorker's undisguised political hardball, that's Schumer we're talking about here, it seems far less likely that he'll get enough to win the motions. So how did your prediction turn out? And do you think perhaps maybe the New York Times finding

this Bolton excerpt may have been their way of persuading some of the easily persuadable senators. Well, he certainly did get an assist with that New York Times editorial. He wasn't doing a great job all on his own. His complaints of a cover-up and the House managers accusing senators of not conducting a fair trial, of not being impartial, had been up until that New York Times story serving the purpose of actually making them less likely to vote for witnesses. Now we've got this bombshell. But I am still of the mind that what you're going to see here in the end is Republicans come together to just shut this down in the end. There are going to be a few breaks here and there, but I think the majority of Republicans understand that there is no

substantive or political benefit to continuing this. Kim, Peter here. I know we want to get to the politics of the next 48 and 72 hours in the Senate. How are they going to vote on this, that, or the other? But I have a kind of a prior question. You have been, this may sound fawning, and I honestly, I don't mean it that way. You have been, this may sound fawning, and honestly, I don't mean it that way. You have been one of maybe half a dozen, and I think probably the real number is smaller even than that, journalists who have been doing the hard work of reporting and not for one moment throughout the last two, really all three years, taking anything for granted. The sheer, I don't know, repertorial guts you've displayed have been just magnificent. And here's the question.

When you see Adam Schiff, whom we know lied about the dossier because the Inspector General's report has told us that Adam Schiff lied about the dossier. When you see him stand up in the well of the Senate and talk about the importance of veracity and authenticity and truthfulness, and you hear no one object, I mean, half that chamber should be rolling on the floor, cackling with laughter. Nothing. When you see the media continuing to play the story of Russian collusion, even though you disproved it, the IG's report disproved it, what on earth keeps you from going crazy? Well, it is remarkable. And look, I think this gets to—you can tie these two things together, the politics coming up and what we've seen in the past, because I would make the argument,

and again, based on a lot of good reporting and what we've all witnessed out there with our own eyes, is that we are in a situation in the Senate where I don't understand how Republican senators can even go down the road of considering witnesses, given that what we have been presented so far has been such a violation of procedure and due process that it's impossible—it has now become impossible to fairly judge Donald Trump's conduct. Because, look, his entire legal team was excluded from the House proceedings, prohibited from questioning witnesses. Democrats called 17 of their own witnesses. The president has still been yet to call even one in his defense. They couldn't add to the trial record. They were denied the ability to put anything in there that spoke to the central question of the

president's focus on Ukrainian corruption. So how now at this point, it's a little bit late for Adam Schiff and others to be saying it's your job to conduct a fair trial. What they've been presented makes it impossible to do that. It is as naked a power play. I don't know. So you're younger. Everybody's younger than I am. But even you can remember when you'd assume that the ACLU and journalists and the leading law schools in the nation would all rise to the defense of process, of procedure. And not only is there weakness on that point, but they're arguing just the other way. Well, Dershowitz made the point, what was it, yesterday evening in the well of the Senate, he said academic opinion and legal academic opinion would be just the other way around if this were Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, who had been impeached and was on trial

in the Senate. So I guess what I'm saying is—I think I must know the answer—but does it break your heart to see journalism so corrupted? Is there any way out of this for journalism? Yeah. The moment that was still stunning to me—it still remains stunning to me—is the moment when Adam Schiff secretly obtained and then published the communications records, not only of the president's private attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and an elected member of Congress, Devin Nunes, but a reporter in the Beltway Press Corps. Now, there would have been a day when all

of journalism would have gone on strike over such a thing, and he would have been reviled and called out. Everyone cheered him on. And, you know, you see this happening, too, with the Bolton. The coverage is so one-sided. It's so—and think about what that means for the future going ahead. Like, take Donald Trump out of this, which is what I try to do all the time when I'm looking at this, to the extent you can. You know, I mean, I know it's very difficult, right, because he's such a presence. But here's a reality. The Senate has been presented with two articles of impeachment that fail to identify a single crime.

And look, they don't have to put a crime in there. Let's all acknowledge that. But what it means is the Senate is being asked to render verdict on one vague abuse of power claim that would have enormous implications for the power and the office of the presidency going forward. And then, secondly, on a contempt of Congress charge that was the result of the House's own refusal to play things out in court. I mean, this is kind of nonsense from a constitutional perspective. And the press corps has an obligation to say that, and it's failed to do so. Right.

Hey, Kim, it's Rob Long. Thank you for joining us. All right. Your recent book is called Resistance at All Costs, How Trump Haters Are Breaking America. You look at Donald Trump's approval ratings. They're not great. They're pretty low. People don't like Donald Trump's approval ratings. They're not great. They're pretty low. People don't like Donald Trump.

However, they do like 3% plus unemployment and a growing economy and all sorts of other metrics that they are enjoying. This shouldn't be so hard for the Democrats. But it seems to me that they're, I don't know whether they're breaking America or not, but they're definitely breaking themselves. When this is over, which is going to be over probably in 72 hours, and Donald Trump will be acquitted and he'll be swanning around as my favorite verb around his rallies, how much regret do you think there's going to be in Democratic Party circles, if any? I mean, I'm showing my bias here, but is there any regret happening now that you hear? Well, look, I think if you step back and you try to understand what were Democrats trying to do here, okay, because this is just the fundamental question. Everyone understood

from the beginning of this exercise that the Senate was not going to vote to remove Donald Trump from office. So what was the goal here? And the goal seems to have been to—and you just touched on it—to really throw a lot of dirt at the president to drive up his unapproval ratings. The problem is, for any political party, when you jump into that, the great risk is, do the actions that you take have the counter effect of also driving up your own unapproval and right. And because by the way, this is going to be who wins the white house in the end, right? This is not going to be a race to the top. Believe me, this is not going to be who comes out there with a sunnier vision for America, whether it's, you know,

yeah, right. Like don't, don, right. Don't get your hopes up for that. This is going to be the race to the bottom, right? Who can paint the other side in uglier and nastier terms? And I think the fail here for Democrats is that they have given the White House as much ammunition as they have given themselves against the White House. Well, can I try out one theory on you about the misapprehension? And maybe it goes into, and I got to plug your book again, because it's so great, Resistance at All Costs, How Trump Haters Raking America. You should go out and buy it if you're listening to this podcast. It is great. If I could just, one theory here is that the Democrats' problem is that they think they need to drive up Trump's

unapproval, his negatives. He's already got high negatives. Trump does that every day. What they need to do is drive up. Yeah, to himself. They need to drive up their positives, and they don't seem to be able to do it. It just seems like they're looking at the glass from the other side. Do you buy that, or are they playing a better game than I think? No, I think what the Democrats are doing are playing a game that doesn't work with Donald Trump, right? I mean, the great contradiction of Donald Trump is that you look at his approval ratings. And we've had these questions that we've asked people about prior presidents is when you break out voter sentiments about him, they say they really dislike him as a person, but they really like his policies. OK, and you go back and that's not been the case.

It's usually the opposite. You look at what people said about Barack Obama. They really liked him as a person, but they didn't really like a lot of the stuff he did in office. So that's, the problem is that they're working off of this old playbook. And, you know, I think in the end doing themselves some real harm, because again, in the end, this is going to be a close election. And, and to the extent that he can look at them and say, this is the kind of leadership you'd get if they were in charge.

This is a beat. Did you not like the service of the past year? We'll put these guys in charge. And the other damage they've done themselves. I would just point out too, is every minute they're doing it, this, it gets to your point, is one less minute in the day they have to prove that they can get anything positive done for the country. Thank you. Yeah.

Kim, Peter here with three predictions, asking you for three predictions. In the next, what, 24, 48 hours, they're going to vote on witnesses. Up or down? I think down right now. It's going to be close. Mitt Romney and Susan Collins? Mitt Romney and Susan Collins. And then the question is if there's a third, because that could put us in some weird territory of a 50-50. Right.

And we don't have a tiebreaker, remember, in the Senate. And the Democrats remain totally unified. Joe Manchin doesn't even vote with the Republicans. Not a single Democrat votes with the Republicans, you suppose. Well, watch this space, because I predict that Joe Manchin and Doug Jones are going to split the difference somehow, whether they vote with Republicans on witnesses, but then vote against them on final acquittal or conviction or the other way around. They're going to try to play both sides of this, is my prediction. Okay. That's Joe Manchin, a Democrat of West Virginia, and Doug Jones running for re-election Democrat of Alabama.

Next prediction. Who wins the Iowa caucus on February 3rd? Right now, my betting is Bernie Sanders. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I think that, remember, the 15% threshold has the ability to really mix some things up over there. This is, as Rob said the other day, this election is going to be just wonderful between Donnie from Queens and Bernie from Brooklyn. You shut up. No, you shut up. You shut up. That's going to be about that.

And so last prediction here. Fox News has a certain market, and that market is about half of the country all to itself. Can that continue? Will that continue? You know, I think part of it depends on how our politics continues. You know, I think it's for the worst that we now have a media environment where everything is soundbites and it's a kind of war of perceptions on TV. So people, they like knowing that this is the way it is, right? Knowing that you can no longer go to a cable channel and just get the kind of news, the facts as presented, that you're going to get a sort of side or a perspective one way or the other.

People tend to tune into those things because it's self-reinforcing, right? They want to listen to the stuff they like. So if we continue having the drama, yeah, I think you see that. About half of the country does have that perspective, and there is no other outlet that provides it. Kim, James Landlix here in Minneapolis. Last question. You mentioned that the Democrats seem unable—that you always try to keep Donald Trump out of this and just look at the facts and the issues, right? Yeah. That would seem to be the wise perspective that a lot of people in the media are unable to do. It may not be conscious on their part, but in the back of their heads, they don't like this guy. They hate this guy for a variety of reasons, starting

the fact that he's a Republican and moving on to the fact that he's Donald Trump. And they regard this, as I've said before, as this impeachment is cosmic justice. He may not have done these things precisely this way, but we know he's guilty of all of these other things, and this is sort of a summation of his sins come before us. How much does that actually color, do you think, the coverage that we've gotten from CNN, from MSNBC, from the Times and the Post who are supposedly taking this from a disinterested, objective perspective? Oh, it's an enormous part of it. It's every part of it. Look, everyone understands that there's always been a bit of a, you know, there was bias in the media. I have always long thought

that it wasn't necessarily even a conscious bias, right? We are all subject to our bubbles. And unfortunately, the vast majority of the Beltway press corps all went to the same schools. They all live in the same neighborhoods. They don't necessarily think that they are left-wingers, you know, but they were. And it kind of comes out in their coverage. That changed when Donald Trump took office. They joined one side of a partisan battle.

You know, I mean, you don't change your masthead to democracy dies in darkness for no reason whatsoever, right? But, you know, what I worry about is that short-termism is so damaging to the industry and then to the country overall. We need our press corps to fairly call balls and strikes, because it is what keeps our politics on an even keel. When one side breaks all the rules and the press corps is rooting them on, all it does is encourage even worse behavior and more breaking of traditions and standards and due process. And my perspective is, whether it's one year from now or five years from now, Donald Trump is not going to be president anymore.

And I don't want to wake up amid the smoking ashes of a republic and say, what did we do here? You know, which is why I just think it's important that you got to try at times to remove him from the equation and say, what standard are we setting with an abuse of power article of impeachment or with a contempt of Congress article of impeachment? What does that do to the presidency in the long term? Those are really big cosmic questions, and they're just not getting touched on by the press. Exactly. So the press will come out sonorously, say democracy dies in darkness. And Trump turns around and says, we're going to make

incandescent bulbs legal again. It'll be beautiful. No more of that orange light. You hate that orange light, don't you? It'll be nice white light. Democracy will be great. It'll be beautiful. Hey, Resistance is the book. Everybody go to Amazon. Just Google, you know, Kim Strassel and you'll find it and lots of other great stuff. And we thank you so much for coming on the podcast today and hope to have you back soon. Thanks, guys. Keep up the good work, Kim. Thank you. You too. Well, the vote's coming up soon, and I don't think Donald Trump is losing any sleep about it. He's probably sleeping quite well. Wouldn't you say, Rob? Well, you know, look, I don't think you want

to don't sleep on Donald Trump's ability to turn a negative into a positive. That's what I would say. You know, the young people are saying that now. That's kind of their own phrase. Don't sleep on that, meaning don't let that, you know, surprise you. So my segue to you is to say don't sleep on Donald Trump's ability to turn impeachment into a political win for himself. Yeah, I think the Eastern European judges are giving that one a six. Okay. I mentioned the sleeping and I mentioned the president because, you know,

there's a brand of sheet on the market, which you might've heard is actually used by U.S. presidents, by three of them. But what's more important and a more important testimonial, I think, would be the fact that I sleep on them. I'm not the president, so I don't have the same exacting standards, perhaps, and I don't have access to the finest in the world, as many presidents do. But when I get in between my bowl and branch sheets, I know that this is as good as it's going to get, and there's absolutely no way that I'm going to ever consider buying another sheet ever. Not that I need to, because these things last forever. I love my bowl and branch sheets because they're comfortable, and because the more I use them, the more I wash them, the more comfortable they become. Oh, they're great. Now, why listen to me, though?

Why listen to presidents? You're the ultimate arbiter of your sleep. So listen, you can try Bowling Brand Sheets for 30 nights risk-free. They have free shipping and returns. And like I mentioned, the only bedding loved by three U.S. presidents and maybe four. Who knows? We'll find out eventually. They're the softest.

They're the most comfortable sheets in the world. For a limited time, you can get their luxury flannel bedding to keep you cool sleepers warm. And because they breathe, keep you warm sleepers cool. Shipping, as I mentioned before, is always free. You can try them out for 30 days, 30 nights, risk-free. And right now, you get $50 off your first set of sheets at Bowlinbranch.com with promo code RICOCHET. Get $50 off at bowlinbranch.com, promo code RICOCHET. That's spelled B-O-L-L-N-B-R-A-N-C-H.com, code RICOCHET. Restrictions may apply. See bowlinbranch.com for details. And our thanks

to Bowlin Branch for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now, as you may have noticed in the past, we've had a little post of the week and needed something to spice it up just a bit to let you know that the post of the week is coming. Something to set it apart from everything else, all the wonderful blabber that's come before. So maybe I could whistle a theme song. Maybe I could. The James Lylex Member Post of the Week. Oh, no. That's right.

We're in trouble. An official shout. I haven't had a shout in years, and I love that very much. And it's great, too, because they pronounce my name correctly. Oftentimes, it's Lekas. And, boy, you really don't want to have the James Lekas Post of the Week. So what do we have this week? We've got Henry Castaigne.

He's got a post called Epic Crossover Event, Doctor Who Battles the Gods of the Copybook Headings. It's a fascinating, it's a long piece, and it's the sort of thing that you'll find on Ricochet. And it's the sort of thing you look at it and you say, this belongs in a magazine. This could be in a newspaper if newspapers spent this much time to deal with intellectual subjects at this length and depth. This is great. Who is this guy? Well, he's a member of Ricochet who happens to write very well and think clearly and pose

interesting questions. It was all prompted by a Doctor Who episode in which they went back in time and found that London was remarkably multicultural. Now, the question, of course, is whether or not he's going back to some alternate dimension. No, this isn't a sci-fi piece. It's about the sort of the insistence on the entertainment industry to reshape the past according to what they believe should be our perception of it. In other words, if London wasn't particularly multicultural in the 18th or 17th century, well, it should have been. And so we're going to portray it as such in order to make you think that this is the desired goal to which we all go. Now, setting aside the whole

idea of cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic cities and how that works out and the rest of it, fact of the matter is, is that when you go back, for example, and you say, we're going to do the Vikings, and the Vikings are going to be multicultural, it's not right. It's wrong. And it changes, supposedly, what we're supposed to think about the past. Now, you can make a whole lot of arguments, and they're interesting, about casting, for example, in Shakespeare. I mean, is Shakespeare the same if Othello is not a Moor, if he's Chinese? Not really, because the Chinese hadn't invaded Europe at that point. You can go back to Merchant of Venice.

Would it be the same if Shylock was gay instead of Jewish? Both had social opprobrium. Maybe. I don't know. Probably not, because there's a special element to the role of the Jew, as was seen in Elizabethan times, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, so you can make the case that there's changes that are interesting, but there are some things that are actually factually accurate about a time, and we probably should not be mucking with them, or should we?

Or do the gods of the copybook headings reassert themselves no matter what we do? It's a thought-provoking piece, and you can get it at Ricochet if you belong to, what's the word I'm looking for, to Ricochet. You can get the membership feed. Now, I also believe we have a long poll. And does that have a sound as well? It does not have a sound, and I'm glad it does. And I think we don't need two sounds.

What your sound, I think, should be the signature sound. We haven't done it in a while, but we have a really good one. And it's from Max Ledoux, our director of technical operations, which is a fancy title. It's actually a really good one. I mean, it's a simple, simple calculus, which we would like you as members to ring in on. Should the Senate depart from precedent and call witnesses in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump? A, yes, it will help Trump. B, yes, it will help Trump. B, yes, it will hurt Trump. C, no, it will help Trump.

And D, no, it will harm Trump. So yes, because yes, if you say they should call witnesses and you say yes, tell us whether you think it'll help or hurt Trump. And if you say no, tell us whether that's because it will help or hurt Trump. And I think that's a really good one. I'm interested in the calculation there. Full disclosure, I actually think that if they called witnesses, it would actually help Trump. But that's me. So I might actually choose A there. You think that would include Hunter Biden? Yeah, it would have to be. You have to make a deal. The deal would have to be,

if we're going to have an actual, if we're going to have a fair trial and everything, we got to have a fair trial and everything. So, you know, you can't cherry pick. I mean, that seems like a perfectly legitimate argument for Senate Republicans to make. You know, and I suspect that there will be some Democratic senators there who are currently running for president who might not mind having a guy at the very tippy top of the cluster of frontrunners hurt. You know, I mean, you might find yourself, you might find some Democratic senators currently running for president making a deal about that vote. There you go. You have to go to Ricochet. You have to answer the poll, the long poll. And

when we start to really get good numbers on these, because more people are flooding into Ricochet and joining and making sure that it stays into the future forever, you know, perhaps you'll hear one of these news organizations pick it up and that'd be absolutely fine. Rob, you'd be happy with that, wouldn't you? We'd have to draw your face in a sort of cartoon form, you know, give it a little badge, make it sort of an easily identifiable thing online. You'd have to get a Twitter account for it. You'd probably have to get a Facebook page for the whole thing.

Well, no, we'd have it be a Twitter account for it. You'd probably have to get a Facebook page for the whole thing. Well, no. We'd have a – it'd be a ricochet only. No, Rob. Everything, absolutely everything in the world has to turn to Facebook now. An evil colossus of time suck. Hey, this podcast was brought to you by Bowling Branch, ButcherBox, and Lending Club. Support them for supporting us. And what do you get out of the deal? You get great sheets, fantastic meat, and perhaps money into your account to help pay your bills.

You can't lose. And please take a minute. Please. I'm on my knees. I put on pads so that my knees don't hurt when I do so because it's a hardwood floor. Please leave us a five-star review. God, that's pathetic. But there I said it.

Go to Apple Podcasts and say, yay, Ricochet, because your reviews let new listeners discover the show, and that keeps the show going, as does, of course, your contributions when you join Ricochet and have access to all the wonderful things in the member feed. I've just mispronounced two words in the last paragraph, which means that I'm no longer capable of speaking at all on any level. So I'm going to say Peter's gone. He had to leave. Rob, you're still here. I'm here. But enjoy Miami. Rob, you're still here, but enjoy Miami. I assume you're there for some Southern food thing, right? No, I'm there. I'm just here for two days. And I'm actually in the middle of the Super Bowl madness. So I'm leaving tomorrow.

Oh, that's fantastic. It's crazy. It's great. Coming to a warm, sunny, tropical city for the Super Bowl, I think is an NFL, uh, brainstorm. Um, there's lots of people here from Chile, Kansas city. Well, I still see you, uh, sitting, uh, with the mirrored sunglasses on your boat with an alligator waiting for a partner to come up and tell you that there's a deal going down that you have to do something about. So off you go in your Lamborghini on the rain, slick streets of Miami. And it's interesting that my concept of the city still dates back to a show from the 80s. From the 80s. Creaky and old.

And I'll say goodbye, everybody, and we'll see you in the comments at Ricochet. Are we up to 3.0 or 4.0? It doesn't matter. It's still Ricochet. It's always Ricochet. Go there. Join. See you there.

See you soon. Sometimes safe But I believe I believe That a woman could be loved that way But it hurts me so inside To see her treat me so unkind Somebody Someway Tell her it's unfair Can I get a witness Can I get a witness

Can I get a witness? Can I get a witness? Somebody Is it right to be treated so bad When you've given everything you had Even talking in my sleep Cause I haven't seen my baby all week Now you check who I'm with That this ain't the way love's supposed to be.

Let me hear. Let me hear you say, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A girl in the morning was on my mind. I just to find out all night that I've been trying. But I believe a woman's a man's best friend. So I'm going to stick by her till the very end. But she calls so much memory that I forget how love supposed to become my

somewhere tell us it ain't fair can I get some wisdom

can I ricochet join the conversation