The Ricochet Podcast - Check, Please!

Episode Date: April 21, 2023

Our apologies for leaving you with Ricochet-less week! In order to make it up to you, we go big with a couple of our favorite recurring guests. First up is Ann Coulter to explain why she thinks the Republican Party is doing all it can to blow yet another election. Then Debra Saunders returns to take us through Dominion's suit against Fox News and the outrageous biases therein. The gang also touch on Robert Kennedy, Jr.'s challenge to Joe Biden (and the damage it could do to him!) along with Rob and Charles' grand time in New Orleans meeting Ricochet members!- Sound bite is lead Dominion lawyer Justin Nelson announcing settlement with FoxNews

All right. Oh, I guess it's up to me, right? Who's driving the bus? You, Rob? I guess I am doing it. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Read my lips. No new taxes. Today's settlement of $787,500,000 represents vindication and accountability.

Lies have consequences. It's the Ricochet Podcast. I'm Rob Long with Peter Robinson and Charlie Cook. Today we're going to talk to Ann Coulter, love when you see belts, and Deb Saunders. Lots to talk about. Let's have a podcast. Believe me, you'll never get bored with winning. We never get bored. Hello and welcome to the Ricochet Podcast number 638. 638 podcasts. Oh, man. And I guess 638 more to go.

I am Rob Long in New York City. I'm joined, as always, by Peter Robinson in Palo Alto, California. How are you, Peter? I'm very well. I should say that James Lilacs is abroad. James Lilacs is taking that trip to Spain that caused so much commotion over the proper pronunciation of Barcelona. Depends on where you're from um and we're joined by charles c cook charlie cook in florida is that correct correct how you doing everything good we should uh we should before we get jumping into the news we have ann coulter as a guest and

deb saunders so it's going to be a packed show before you get in there we do want to say we had a great time in new Orleans, Charlie, right? We did. Absolutely. We stood on the street and we watched Dixieland Jazz. That's right. That's right. And that was after a great dinner with a bunch of people.

I don't know. We had about 30, maybe 30 more. Ricochet members came, spent, some people spent the whole week. Some people spent the long weekend. Some people like me flew in and flew out. Randyandy wayvoda he organized the whole thing did a great job of course melissa you know she set up the podcast recording which will be posted shortly which is really more of a conversation um among all of us because people joined in so you might have to tune up the video to hear the audio to hear everybody uh uh joined by a member named dan who

um has been a long time member a charter member a bunch of charter members peter by the way really yeah you should come to one of these they would like to shake your hand um and uh a lot of them like dan had never posted they're just members of the community um really and that's really great and then some great ideas came too many people to name all some great ideas came out of a lot of people had some great thoughts for Painter Jean, for instance. She had a great thought for maybe we'd have some kind of like a Ricochet version of Ricochet Etsy somewhere on the site, which would be awesome. Anyways, great time, a lot of great conversation, a lot of fun. I did have to buy two drinks.

I told you I would buy drinks for anyone who joined Ricochet just to come to that meetup and there were two people raised their hand they both got pretty good sazeracs by the way um and if you're listening to this and you've thought to yourself i yeah i don't know do i want to join i'll join just to throw them some money i mean we'd like you to say that by the way um you should join for the things like this this was loads of fun they're going to be more of them we'll talk about more of them later um but this is part of the joy of being in a community of actual people and not just uh faceless um and uh bots you know um we get together and we have fun so um next time peter you gotta come i'd love to i'd love to uh in the meantime we are um going to talk a little bit today with the ann and deb ann's another florida resident i want to talk to get ann and charlie to talk a

little bit about um whether this the implosion of ron de santis is real fake imagined uh wish casting in the parts of the liberal media what parts of it are true what parts of it are false if not all of them are false but before we do um speaking of 2024 robert kennedy jr is running for president of the united states he's already polling at 14 i don't know what to say about that, except until very recently, I just assumed he was kind of a crackpot on the fringes. But that doesn't mean that's not actually mutually exclusive. I don't know what to make of it either.

I thought he was a crackpot on the fringes because of his... Well, I'll tell you why. Because I read what the mainstream press has been saying about him for lo these many years. And so far, as I knew, he had dedicated himself after a series of sort of conventional liberal do-gooding causes, he dedicated himself in recent years to the cause of anti-vaccines. And then it turns out, according to friends of mine who know more about this than I do, that at least during COVID, he had the better of a number of arguments, and the public health authorities and the conventional wisdom had the worst. So I really don't know what to make of it. The numbers, of course, indicate that, well, it seems to me it indicates a couple of things.

One is that Joe Biden is just extremely weak. If Robert Kennedy, whom only people our age and up, and I refer to you and me, Rob, and exclude Charlie, our age and up, actually have a working memory of when the Kennedys were a glamorous and serious element in American politics, so that he's pulling 14% when most of the electorate can't remember who the Kennedys are exactly, says something. school term are way low now when it comes to presidential races. I don't believe Vivek Ramaswamy really is running for president. It's hard for me to believe it. Maybe in his heart of heart he is, but it looks to me as though there's no downside in running for president if you're Vivek Ramaswamy or now Larry Elder apparently has announced that he's running for president you get your talk radio numbers up you get your uh you start collecting email addresses to whom the publisher of your next book can promote your book and maybe rfk jr is doing something like that this is just you got to be careful because you might win i mean that's kind of what trump yes yes exactly

and on election night nobody is more surprised than he exactly so let's see what charlie trump charlie makes of all this well i think the second point you made is is the key one i i do think he's a kook you do but oh yeah you've looked into it more than i have well the the thing is is if you're reflexively against all vaccines and consider them to be a plot, you will eventually stumble upon a position that could, if you squint, seem prescient. My mother teaches children with autism and he ran around the country and the world telling parents that vaccines can give you autism as if it's an infectious disease, which is lunacy. But the guy's a kook but but i think you're

dead on peter when you say that the fact that he jumped up instantly to 14 15 shows us something about biden and i actually think the press is underplaying this story shock horror the history of sitting presidents who are challenged including by kennedy's is not one right that you would wish to see repeated has anybody you are a democrat has anybody ever won without happening no i mean obviously there are fringe candidates i don't mean ideologically i mean in terms of their support who say i'm going to challenge the president. In 2016, Bill Weld ran for the Republican nomination against Donald Trump, but he never polled at more than two or three percent.

Even that was rare. There was no challenger for Obama. There was no challenger for George W. Bush. There was no challenger for Clinton. There was a challenger for George H. W a challenger for george hw bush his name was pap buchanan he polled in the double digits and he really did a lot of damage to george hw bush's re-election campaign videos that Ronald Reagan ran in 1980 were just Ted Kennedy speaking. And then at the end, it said Reagan for president.

Four years earlier, Reagan himself had taken on Gerald Ford, nearly won the nomination. Gerald Ford lost. It never came to that in 68 because Johnson stepped out, but he had a challenger. Robert F. Kennedy was one of them. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s father. The point here is that we have not in half a century or more had a challenger who has polled in the double digits against a sitting president. And that sitting president won the subsequent re-election campaign this could do a lot of damage and the fact as you said that that biden uh is that 85 against this guy who is a kook who is not well known right shows you that he's weak and really

should represent an alum not because biden's going to lose the nomination not i think because robert f kennedy jr is going to be the nominee or the president but just because it's very unusual and it never ends well right i mean that that so how come you didn't provide that history lesson rob well i was gonna charlie charlie didn't even go to yale for goodness sake that's right uh well look i mean i guess the question is, if you're the Biden campaign, which is starting, I guess, people say it's going to announce next week, what are you hoping for? Are you hoping for Donald Trump? Are you hoping for someone else i mean right right now the political calculation seems to be to be just from looking at how incredibly over the top the the the criticism of ron de santis is and also just how um how you know this is my own uh takeaway here how overly um um uh excited and excitable

the press is about the missteps that that they perceive that ron de sanchez has done um that they're really frightened of him oh for sure um so they don't want him but i remember 2016 they really wanted trump they still want trump they still want trump they still want trump they still want trump could i this i'm going to say something that sounds obvious and it is obvious except that it surprised me at the time and it has never ceased to surprise me since the first time i walked into the oval office oh i was i can't remember. My first impression was, and it just, words formed unbidden in my mind, wait a minute, he's just a man. And we tend to forget, at least, and I would tend

to forget it, every time you see Ronald, I worked in a White House, so it's in my head that at the center of all of this is an 80-something-year-old human being who is clearly declining and declining pretty quickly. Everyone around him knows that. I can tell you from working in an operation like that, that if the president seems a little off one morning, word moves right through the whole organization. And so, there are people who we complain all the time about the way the progressive left is trying to keep us from saying anything out loud. In that organization, they're not allowed to say to each other, you know, I'm not sure he's going to look too good by convention time. So, there is this weird thing where they all know that he's declining, but nobody's allowed to say so, except RFK Jr., perhaps. But it's very easy to talk about these in terms of sort of strategy, as if these people we're talking about are big Macy's Day balloons parading down the political street. Or they have control over themselves in any way.

Correct. They're human beings. And we are joined by our old friend, Ann Coulter. That's how you know you're listening to an independent, fearless, conservative podcast. Because Ann's here to give us some independent and fearless conservative conversation. Ann famously wrote a book called In Trump We Trust. And then probably has an addendum to it, which is a little bit more full throated. I've given the answer one million times before. Yeah, of course, I would write in Trump. We trust again. Look at the people he was running against. They were all open borders. I mean, it was the same reason I supported Romney, his self-deportation versus Huckleberry, who said illegal immigration is how we make up for slavery. Newt Gingrich, who wanted to just say it like that, though, I don't think he said it like that.

Like that. Very good imitation. Gingrich, remember, he wanted to let them all pour in and let towns take it. We'll have town councils and have them vote on which illegals can stay. This has been a dividing line between the public and our leaders and our elites forever. I knew immigration was the most important issue. It still is because Trump didn't do anything. When I turned on Trump, you're obviously not following me assiduously on Twitter, pretty much right away. I mean, at the time of the nomination, he started hiring, you know, Jared Kushner and the rest of them. And unlike Fox News, I don't lie. I've been taking the slings and arrows for attacking him for not fulfilling his promises, which won him the White House. I said he wouldn't win if he didn't win re-election

if he didn't build the wall. And guess what? He didn't build the wall if he didn't win re-election, if he didn't build the wall. And guess what? He didn't build the wall and he didn't win re-election. So I'm still looking for a politician who will make those promises. The best thing that could have happened to the country, something else I've said a million times, would have been if on election night 2016, he comes out at 2 a.m., Woo-hoo, we beat Hillary, yay. He won if he had had a heart attack and died right then, because that's all we ever got out of Trump. He had the best campaign of any presidential campaign I've ever seen,

and then decided it was all about him, it wasn't the issues, and started immediately betraying his base. All right, so, okay. So, why? He didn't do it. shoes and started immediately betraying his base um all right so okay so that that why he didn't do it i mean i you and i and you and i have have have wildly and and bizarrely found ourselves on the same side in crowded dining and crowded dinner parties making these every now and then i could see and looking looking around this incredible table filled with like really smart people and saying, it's this guy I'm agreeing with. Like, you know, the shadow of doubt comes over you. Why isn't immigration still an issue?

I mean, no one's talking about it. Anybody talking about it? I haven't seen it. It's cultural issues. It's woke this, woke that. No one's talking about immigration. Well, I sort of despair of my party and the country and thus the world. I don't know. I mean, people have said it forever. Democrats are the evil party. Republicans are the stupid party. And whoa, mama, are they fulfilling that right now? They want to talk about, I mean,

how do we win? We win on crime and immigration, crime and immigration. That is what people are desperate to vote on. And no, our party is running off, I mean, many of them running off on conspiracy theories. And was the FBI really behind January 6th? And Big Pharma and Bill Gates is inserting us with with with with clip with chips. And now they've been played, as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, the Democrats only hope for getting Biden reelected and they are going to have to do the weekend at Bernie's thing is to maneuver Republicans into renominating Donald Trump, who has now lost three election cycles in a row for us. So what do they do? Exactly what they did throughout his term in office, which was the thesis of my book,

Resistance is Futile. Instead of attacking Trump for stuff he's actually done, they attack him on these utterly nonsense charges, and they drive people who hate him, like me, into defending him and saying, no, he's a douche, but he's not a Russian agent. Knock it off, media. And so they launched this ridiculous, and it is ridiculous, the DA Alvin Bragg's indictment of Donald Trump. And man, did they play the conservative media. I don't know if you guys listen to conservative talk radio. In a way, we're lucky that AM is being removed from all cars right now. Buck and Clay talk about nothing but Emperor God, Donald Trump, and oh my gosh, he's so great. And did you see the Republicans last week? Or maybe this week, whenever. They hold a hearing attacking Alvin Bragg. I mean, the entire Republican Party is

now in a, all they will talk about is we must save Trump. Tucker is interviewing him. Oh, he's back on top at Fox. So yeah, okay, Republicans. I thought next year was going to be a blast. We'd have Governor Ron DeSantis running against this senile dementia patient. Things would be fun. Woo-hoo. Finally, we start to win again. It's been a long time since we've won. Nope.

Nope. My party has decided we are pedals to the metal for a fourth loss. Okay, Anne, you're advising Ron DeSantis. Do you say what some people are blogging already? It's just not your year. You're young. You're too talented to destroy yourself, flinging yourself at Donald Trump. Just sit this one out. Or do you say, what do you say? I mean, the counter argument is there was a poll the other day that showed in a head-to-head matchup in, I think it was three

of the states, Arizona, Georgia, and one other of the so-called battlegrounds, not Pennsylvania, maybe it was North Carolina. In any event, Trump was trailing Biden in all three states, and DeSantis was up on Biden in all three states. There's a funny way in which DeSantis has not uttered one, He has not uttered the T word once. He's still holding his fire. And he's still in double... I mean, there's a certain sense in which he's still in a strong position, but it's hard to escape the feeling that he needs to do something. Fire a gun, run up a flag, let your people know that you're still in the fight. Okay. All I'm doing is displaying exasperation. What would you tell him? I totally disagree with your analysis. This was

DeSantis' to lose. He was doing everything right, ignoring Trump, pushing through really fantastic stuff in Florida. Just one thing, win after win after win. He was way ahead of anyone out there, except, I suppose, the president of Sweden on the reaction to COVID. And, you know, a lot of us have put it in the back of our minds. But no, a lot of kids were ruined. Careers were ruined. That is still a live important issue. And he didn't just, you know, flip a coin and say, oh, I'll keep the state open. No, he was talking to um you know rob's friend jay bakaria jay badacharya jay badacharya my friend yeah i lent him to rob who by the way who paid a price for um being right yeah the whole great barrington declaration guys he was

listening to them he did the right thing um same thing on crime same thing on black lives matter and up until this week or was it last week i called and screamed at all of his um campaign people well they must love to see your caller id pop up he was doing the exact right thing on abortion until a week ago. And now he's signed the Republican Assistance Suicide Act. So let's move on and try to find somebody else. No, seriously? You're done with Ron DeSantis? I think he cannot win. He cannot win. And by the way, Peter and Rob, I think you both know, I am a fanatical pro-lifer. I have been writing and talking about this

forever. It is because I want to save babies that I think it's better for Republicans to be elected than for Democrats to be elected. We've had 11 elections since Dobbs and these hardcore anti-abortion bills, initiatives, candidates, judges lose, lose, lose, lose, lose. What DeSantis did originally only allow abortion for the first 15 weeks. Beautiful, perfect. So what went wrong? Did he lose control of his own legislature? How did that happen? How did they move from 15 to 6? Who knows? He signed a six-week ban, and I have been in Florida for the past week and going out quite a bit with different kinds of people, not just idiot donors, but some

idiot donors. And I don't even bring it up. Every place I go, everyone is saying, he's done, why did he do this? Why did he do this? So what was he supposed to do? Because he he won the election so well. Nineteen points swept in all sorts of people all across the state, put super majorities in both the Senate and the House in the state. He couldn't veto the bill could he well for one thing he's kind of powerful what he should have done is call up the republicans and say knock this crap off but if you don't have the foresight to do that wow he has foresight with hurricanes he has foresight with tornadoes he has foresight with covid he has foresight with blm but this oh huh this just appeared out of nowhere i guess i gotta sign But yes, if it comes to

that and you're not anticipating anything that's going on in the Florida legislature, oh my gosh, where did this come from? Yeah, you veto it. Oh yes, you veto it. You say the public isn't there yet. We're going to do this incrementally. We're going to do it bit by bit. I'm pro-life, I would say, because I am. We try to talk people out of it. I mean, I did a video on this on my Substack, two videos, in fact, about how abortion was killing us. And I think, unlike a lot of other people saying this, I don't know if it's all of them, again, I am a genuinely pro-life person. I always have been. I always will be. These are zealots who don't care about saving babies' lives. Oh, and by the way, don't care about saving adults' lives, because once we have

huge Democratic majorities in the House, in the Senate, and the presidency, well, good luck keeping your guns. Oh, we're going to get the most heinous legislation. This is to be worse than the post-watergate congress if republicans if the zealots keep this crap up so more babies will die more adults will die but you'll have these zealots who will be so proud of their write-up in catholic insights magazine so ann you have some really bad news for you i think we agree i mean i don I don't, I would, I would, I would put it nicer, but I've talked about how the, you know, the, the argument about the anti rhino movement in the Republican party is a disaster that the Republican party needs more rhinos. Well, I don't think this is the rhino position. So I'm sorry. I disagree with you on

that. That's good. I'm trying to figure out how he gets out of this um because okay but isn't this early come on what it's like what is this like it's like a it's it's it's april i'm hoping that but unless he takes this back i think there's a very very good chance he loses the general against biden and i would i mean i have all these stake bets all over town that the nominee isn't going to be Trump. I didn't specifically say it would be DeSantis, but I have really been looking forward to next year, having DeSantis, you know, smart and energetic and all these wins, having him run against Biden. And now the presidential election will be all about abortion. And like every other election we have had since dobbs everyone everyone kansas new hampshire michigan not just you know crazy states like new york and california

apparently um i don't care what people say in polls when they go into the privacy of the voting booth and i think i know why they say this um they they decide okay i would never have an abortion i would advise everyone around me not to have an abortion i do think this is a life but i don't want to to prohibit other people from doing it and if i could just say one other thing about that this the stupid rhino line um or democrat line, about I'm personally opposed to abortion, but I don't think the government. OK, that's stupid when it's a constitutional right. We won pro-lifers. It is a hideous thing that for this long, the right to stick a fork in a baby's head was enshrined in our Constitution, according to the Supreme Court. It was hideous to get something attached to the

Constitution. It really should be a basic fundamental right. We won on that. But when it comes to state laws, I think it actually does make some sense. And I mean, I'm just trying to explain why people in polls say they're against abortion. They say, oops, don't want to end it. I think it does make some sense to say I'm personally opposed but six weeks is too short that's basically banning abortion from conception which i'm not against oh and i came up with the compromise proposal so don't think i'm not constantly working on these things you're a problem solver yeah i'm a problem solver and that is i think we need laws that ban abortion only for registered republicans so how does he take it

back? I mean, you said take it back. And if he doesn't and can't take it back, who do you get? Because, you know, Brian Kemp signed a six week abortion ban. Greg Abbott signed a six week abortion ban. Mike DeWine, he's a presidential candidate, signed a six week abortion ban. I mean, Glenn Youngkin, is that the sort of person none of those none of those are presidential candidates how he could take it back which i consider the more important thing um i think he'd he'd wait a few months um go back to the morons in the florida legislature and just say we think this is unworkable um you know attach some other stuff to it like i think they already have you know encouragement for adoption which great. I'm all for that. But take it back and go back to, I don't know, 12 weeks, 10 weeks. It can't. We will lose on that. And you know, Democrats will run on that. And who are my backup choices? I have two of them. them um one i'd like to ask you guys about because there's one thing that's a gaping hole in this

idea and that is yes the governor of virginia glenn yunkin and the governor of montana greg gianforte those are my only two backups everyone else you mentioned was ridiculous and would never be a candidate anyway wait wait wait hold on just one one pull elaborate on that a little bit. Greg Abbott, I can see, is too Texan. He's not going to travel. But Brian Kemp, I've not met him. I don't know the man. You're just shaking your head as though I'm talking crazy talk. Why is it crazy talk? Georgia's a big, complicated state. He's stood up. There's no Trump fingerprint on the man anywhere in his record. And he got elected pretty big, right? What's wrong with him exactly what he won on running against trump as by um that's the only thing that's good about him

um georgia republicans were trying to tell us please just send us a normal republican take that away and um no he's well i mean the reason I mentioned those people, I agree with you. They're not running. That was sort of what I was saying. So that's why I mentioned Glenn Youngkin, because it seems to me that that's your choice. Right. I mean, if it's not DeSantis, that's your choice. And I think he's good. I'd be totally happy with Glenn Youngkin as a nominee. The problem with him is, which I've seen because I've been promoting him as DeSantis's vice president until now. The problem with Youngkin, which shows up in all of my substack comments whenever I do a video promoting Youngkin as my vice presidential choice is, which kind of annoys me, is, oh, Carlisle, Carlisle.

Oh, I'd never vote for somebody from Carlisle. And I say to these people, for thing look at what we should we should interrupt you a very very powerful connected private equity um merchant what we used to call merchant bank and so there's going to be tons and tons of really really horrible stuff they're going to be able to dig up that carlisle did is that what you're saying well back in the 19th century when they were still funding whaling ships we called the merchant banks yes rob i keep the old ways that i'm deferring to you guys on well first of all what do i say to people who oh he was with carla i mean just for the fact that someone is smart and went to carla i was like rejecting to santa's because because he went to Harvard. Yes, if our candidate is in a black box and we know absolutely

nothing else about him, but he once worked at Carlisle, totally with you. So do you feel... We know other stuff and he's done really great stuff, but what I defer to you guys, and I haven't looked into this because I was just thinking of him as vice presidential candidate until last week, he was involved in some buyouts now i i mean it depends what kind of buyout it was so so you tell me when we we went through this you went through this in particular because you were very strongly in favor of mitt romney mitt romney was at bain capital and made 200 million dollars glenn yunkin went to carlisle and made

100 million so there's some rough cut where the opposition ought to be about half as much to Youngkin as it was to Romney. But was that fatal for Romney? Could he have overcome it? Because if Romney was able to overcome it, Youngkin should be able to as well. As far as I can tell, he's a terrific guy. He was, what was he, they had some kind of split leadership of Carlyle when he was running the place. They were co-CEOs or something like that. I myself have some doubts about the early days of Carlyle when it was filled with George H.W. Bush people and the Arabs were the first big investors. It looked a little little i would rather but glenn youngkin came along long after that after rubenstein had turned it into a big operation uh basically i mean the charge is

not that he's up to nefarious uh deals that i don't think that could stick against him let them dig and dig and dig as if the press ever actually wanted to do any real reporting again the charge is just that he's he's a white guy who's rich it's the same it's the romney problem well i i think um no no i mean i hope i hope you are you're that is correct but it isn't just that he's a white guy that rich that's rich it's romney's problem and again i would still support him he was the only he had the toughest position on immigration at the time. And our country is going, oh, my gosh, you guys are in California. You know what happens to the whole country with unrestricted immigration. So with Romney, I mean, the most important fact everyone in politics

should know, the Democrats sure know what Daniel Shore sure knows, that is every single election is decided by the white working class. Now, Youngkin has a lot of pull with the white working class. How did he win that election in a purple state? Exactly right. It wasn't his panics. It was the white working class. He went after the schools.

His first day in office, look him up on Wikipedia, his first day in office, it was just executive order, executive order. No masks, no vaccine mandate, no CRT in the schools. So he's done a lot of great stuff, and he does have that attraction to the white working class. So that's fantastic. What we need to know, what killed Romney, in my opinion, wasn't just rich white guy. He also was kind of a dork, sort of stiff. I don't think Youngkin is that. No, I don't think so either.

Specifically that his deals laid off a lot of people, a lot of the white working class. So on the DeSantis issue, I think that if you're right about the six week ban, and I'm not sure you are, although I do accept it's a challenge, then he's dead and you need to give up on him. Because the prospect of taking it back, I think, would be worse. He has a reputation as this fighter who doesn't back down, doesn't care. He's going to have to keep that reputation if he's going to beat Trump, let alone be a presidential nominee. If he goes back to the legislature and says, change this to 10 weeks. In the minds of the people who care about this, the difference between 10 and six weeks is not good enough. Also, he's already signed six weeks.

15 maybe. You stick with 15, I can see an argument. But 10, 8, the legislature is not going to repeal the law. Take it back to 15. So what you're saying, in effect, I think is he's done. If you're right about the underlying question, which, again, I'm that there is no way for him or the legislature to take it back. No politician has, no candidate has ever won an election on the grounds, I'm consistent. There's nothing wrong with changing your mind. There are changed circumstances. There is nothing wrong with taking back a bad bill. I think it shows flexibility and compromise. He's just got to

understand that this is going to kill him. And I don't think he does. Okay, so I got two questions for you. One question, easy. And I'm, you know, there are only two candidates that I can tell right now in the Republican Party running as if they're running in a Republican primary meeting. Fist flying. One's Donald Trump, and the other is former New Jersey governor, Chris Christie. He's running. Yeah. Well, that's the lesson.

And back to, to connect to the question. Peter asked me a couple of questions back. No, DeSantis can't wait. Chris Christie is the example. When your time is now, you better take it. Because when he was running and I would have supported him, turns out would have been a mistake because he was listening to The Wall Street Journal on immigration and many other things. But remember, Christie was, you know, the golden boy when he was when he was really going after the public sector unions in New Jersey. That was brave. It was smart. It was a crucial issue. People I know called it in Hollywood called it Chris Christie porn.

They would begin meetings or sessions because they want to go on YouTube just to watch him yell at teachers unions um so my second question is this right now um um if you're smart you're desantis you're probably trying to pivot quickly to away from the stuff that you're not going to win on and back to all the brilliant stuff you did and the trolling you did with immigration which is he's doing an inherited speech i think right today talking about sending illegals to martha's vineyard that's the first time that anybody cared you know, on ballot initiatives or judges or things like that in statewide, it's in general, they're going to on balance say, well, you know what, he might build a wall and he might get tough on crime and will live to fight abortion another day. Is that possible? Oh, my gosh, I hope so. Oh, my gosh. Because he is so perfect other than this. Really, really so fantastic. And by the way way he isn't just trolling on immigration

no i agree i mean you know what i meant though i want to mention this about him because it's crime and immigration are the issues republicans win on please keep talking about it and stop talking about abortion republicans um he um when after winning re-election getting a super majority he introduced an amazing immigration series of proposals that he is going to push through the legislature and standing up to donors on it, which is which is quite brave. There are a lot of agricultural interests in in Florida. It's huge ag state. And needless to say, the like like the slave owners, they want their cheap labor. So it is a very powerful interest group to stand up to. And yet and still, he's still pushing E-Verify across the state, all kinds of great ideas on checking, not accepting driver's licenses from states that give driver's licenses

to illegals. So it's just, I mean, it's point, point, point, point. Why he didn't force the Florida legislature to push that through first no let's start with the republican assisted suicide act and charlie wants to come in with what i'm sure will be an extremely perceptive question that will frame everything up and allow you to sum up everything you have to say i have a light question first. Is DeSantis likable? I think so. I mean, I've met him. I've met his people.

I've seen him speak. There's nothing creepy about him, which there kind of was with Mitt Romney. He was just, I mean, I liked Mitt Romney, but he was a dork and not everybody likes a dork. What's his name? Blake. He was just, I mean, I liked Mitt Romney, but he was a dork and not everybody likes a dork. What's his name? Blake. Blake Bastens in Arizona. Can I put the question, and then I will shut up because I'm sure Charlie will ask a brilliant question. So this puts things very, very crudely, but as you know extremely well, there are two basic ways of running for president.

One is the Ronald Reagan approach. Vote for me. I'm one of you. The other is the Mitt Romney approach. Also the Hillary Clinton approach. Vote for me. I'm smarter than you where's desantis okay i reject that characterization of romney but um no i mean it's the stuff i think especially right now um americans are feeling so beaten down and losing losing

losing the transgender stuff the the CRT, the endless attacks on white people and white males and guns to have this governor winning, winning, winning. When I've watched his speeches, it's funny. And I think he can fix this. The parts of DeSantis' speeches I hate are the beginning and the end, because that's when he does the bs like campaign speak and we we will never stop or i don't know whatever the nonsense cliches are the second he gets on to policy he's not only engaged but you just you could be you know trying to run an errand you have to sit on your bed and watch the speech because his wins on policy and his thinking behind it it's really interesting it's really engaging and i mean i think that's the the glenn young can appeal give americans issues to vote on

and they'll vote on them we just need our leaders and our conservative media fox news talk radio to please stop talking about the stupid stuff please please please stop yeah so i live in florida too although i i'm sure you're a lot more plugged in than i am and uh i'm actually but go ahead all right well i uh i have enjoyed him as governor i think he's been a terrific governor a very small number of things i objected to, but in the grand scheme of things, they don't matter. Why do you think we're seeing Floridian congressmen after Floridian congressmen endorsing Trump instead of DeSantis? I know DeSantis is not in the race, but Thomas Massey didn't care. Chip Roy didn't care.

Some people have said this is because DeSantis doesn't call them up himself. He doesn't rub shoulders. He doesn't do that part of politics very well. Whereas Trump will call people on his cell phone and say, hi, will you endorse me? Do you need anything? I'm sorry to hear you broke your foot. I mean, is this a problem or is this media nonsense i think that's media nonsense i mean i i i do hate to insult other republicans um or elected republicans at all but i think if you look at the list of republicans who have endorsed trump they're the or they're the equivalent of raoc um they're they're not the ones you necessarily want endorsing you they are kind of the crazy ones now i like some of the stuff crazy people on our side do um but they they aren't our impressive

republicans thomas massius our impressive republican incidentally i just had a one hour interview with him i put up on substack oh my gosh that man is great right so there's somebody you like and he's endorsed to santas and he's probably going to be the next senator from kentucky hopefully soon all right so and um uh uh we know you got to go uh before we go substack tell me about substack let's get a substack uh um plug in here right now well it's fantastic and i mean your substack i don't mean something like that and coulter.substack.com and the reason i went to it was because of all the censorship on twitter um substack it's lots of fun i put up columns random thoughts things that would be suppressed and shadow banned on Twitter. Videos, I mean, the video with Thomas Massey was fantastic. That was this week. I do Heather

McDonald a lot. Amy Wax, the most dangerous woman in America. I did a couple with John Lott with guns being in the news. I'm doing a few repeats because I realized right before I do the videos, I don't really just want to talk to somebody to talk to somebody. I want to talk to smart people. And I don't care if I have to repeat myself, oh, sometimes regularly with smart liberal Mickey Kaus. But if I could just segue to one thing that's really driving me crazy, and I think people who even aren't on twitter should care about it and that is um how twitter has gone from being the world's marketplace of ideas to to utter censorship we know what the old regime did and elon is if anything making it worse um the removal of blue check marks which the sole purpose of that was to prove you really are Bob Dole.

You really are Thomas Massey. You really are the New York Police Department. You just pulled Bob Dole out for... You were called Rob Long. You're the one who got me my Twitter handle because there was a fake Ann Coulter on Twitter. Well, you got it for me, got the blue check mark. I did. I'm very powerful. And by the way, approximately once a month month there is a fake ann coulter that happens to come to my attention and i need to report that person okay so the old regime turned it into oh this is a reward for liberals okay don't do that anymore but but let us be able to distinguish am i attacking aoc or am i attacking some idiot

right-wing meme creator who's pretending to be aoc so that he's ruined and the main thing i think he's ruined um i mean it's stupid to be driving liberals from off of twitter the whole point is we want to see them so we can tweak them and but the the biggest way i think he's i don't think he's removed the shadow banning um is that to show how um there will be no shadow banning, is that to show how there will be no shadow banning, we won't throw people off Twitter. He brings back on the worst people, the Nazis, the Donald Trumps, the Alex Joneses. But smart right-wingers who are saying uncomfortable truths, oh, say Jared Taylor. Nope, he's still banned we're not going to let you hear from any

smart people that are not safe for work but whoa we'll put the nazis back on thanks elon thanks that's great that's just what we wanted okay so that was the question about substech so we're we're going to make sure that's why everybody's going to substech no censorship no ads it shows up in your inbox it's loads of fun. And I have a lot of terrific content. And you're having a lot of fun with it. I'm a sub stack. I'm an Ann Colder sub stack subscriber. And thank you for joining us.

Thank you. Take a deep breath. Everything's going to be okay. Number D and four, say. Yeah, exactly right. See you soon. And thank you. Thank you.

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We are very lucky, again, have deborah saunders deb is a syndicated columnist fellow with the discovery institute's chapman center for citizen leadership you can find most of her work at the creator syndicate she was a white house correspondent during the trump administration she is now writing and thinking and thinking and writing about the press so i I got to ask, first of all, welcome. Thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. $787 million to settle a very, what looked like a lawsuit that was going against Fox.

Although who knows? Is there anything you can take away from this other than people pay a lot of money to not take the stand? We live in a corporate age. So there was a time when you would have seen Fox be pro First Amendment. We're journalists. We're going to fight this. We're not going to have anybody tell us that we can't do our jobs, which is what this lawsuit is all about. Dominion is going after Fox News for reporting on the election. Were there people on Fox News

that said things that were ridiculous? Absolutely. And Dominion's free to sue them, and they are suing them. But going after Fox News, that's going after the money, right? And it's going after the headlines, and it makes Dominion not look like a bunch of gritty people asking for a lot more money than they're worth, but as if they're champions for something. And unfortunately, the news media are just incredibly bad in their reporting on this. You don't really see the other side. You can read long stories about this case and everybody is dumping on Fox News and nobody's questioning this lawsuit. It's really upsetting. And, you know, Rupert Murdoch, well, he's used to paying off people in lawsuits, right? So I guess it's no big for him, but this is not a good thing for journalism and i wish more people

understood that so so the pushback on that i know peter wants to get me is that they were reckless that they that as a corporate policy they knew that this was false and they went ahead they didn't just say the election had been stolen because of course there's no victim there if that's the case they said that this company these two companies smartmatic and dominion stole it so and they knew that that wasn't true so what punishment if any should that should the organization suffer well there were people who said that on fox news but most of fox news reporting was joe won. So, I mean, you can find that there were people who said that. So, Deb, can I, as usual, within the first sentence you speak, I find myself swooning and in love with you all over again. But let me just make sure.

I love you too, Peter. Careful. Close the door. I don't want to rest over here. So, I haven't studied this. I haven't want to rest over here. So I want to, here's, I haven't studied this. I haven't followed it closely. You have. Isn't it, isn't it roughly speaking the case?

Shouldn't it, it shouldn't matter if Tucker Carlson in a private email says Rudy Giuliani is nuts and Sidney Powell is lying through her teeth. The fact that Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, both of whom were close to a former president of the United States who was contesting the results of the election, the fact that those people claimed, it may have been a crazy claim. We now know it was a crazy claim, but they claimed that the company responsible for some voting machines was in on an elaborate... That was news. That wasn't some sort of conspiracy to do down Dominion or overturn the reason, or even simply to throw red meat to the audience. That was if it's if you can sue fox news for putting on rudy giuliani you ought to be able to sue cnn for putting on jim comey they can sue c they can they can sue cnn and now they can and now they can isn't that i mean it would be a completely different matter

of sean hannity well, maybe Sean Hannity did. So I guess what I'm saying is I'm not sure that there's a, yes, it's tremendously embarrassing and everybody's chortling and chuckling and have wild impish glee that Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity are exchanging emails saying these people are idiots, they're fools, Donald Trump, I can't stand Donald Trump, while they go on the air and pretend to take these people seriously. I understand that that's embarrassing. But the distinction would be between reporting news and trying to push a narrative themselves. And I don't see, this is my memory, I don't see that Fox News championed any particular narrative. They were reporting reporting news and there were

crazy people in the news at that time am i right in my general understanding am i missing something you're completely right and let me just just you were talking about tucker carlson's text to his producer alex pfeiffer that's right okay so um that has nothing to do with this lawsuit it's just to embarrass fox news i mean right if you read this 100 plus whatever it is a statement that the dominion put out it's crack for journalists they're it is they're just giving them everything they want they're embarrassing fox news they're embarrassing the fox talent but it has nothing to do with this defamatory lawsuit. Right. It's just, they're just trying to, I mean, the fixation that other networks and major newspapers have with Fox News is unholy. And this is the spawn of that unholiness.

Charlie? So, I am, as you all know, a big First Amendment guy. Explain to me why this doesn't fit neatly within our existing libel laws. The libel laws in England are a disgrace because they essentially look only to the veracity of a statement and they don't consider anything else. The libel laws in the United States add some steps. They say you have to know what you're saying is false. And in the case of a newspaper or a broadcaster, you have to know what it is that you're publishing or echoing or platforming is false. And you have to do it to damage the target is there not an argument that

both of those conditions were met here fox knew that what they were platforming and echoing and broadcasting and promulgating was false they knew that and then they did it why did they do it because they wanted to appeal to their audience and take back market share from Newsmax. Why am I wrong? but he'd do it again anyway. If somebody handed him the dossier, he would print it again, but with different caveats. Right. And this was a bogus story, but nobody sued BuzzFeed for this, and nobody did it because,

as Ben Smith argued in his piece today, hey, this dossier was news. Everybody knew about it. Now, I didn't know about it. I don't know if you guys knew about in october i mean not in california didn't know yeah that's right in california i didn't know that so he acts so that this was something that everybody knew about so we had this um that he had to do it but i don't have a problem with uh dominion suing certain people for saying certain things who are Fox people. I mean, I think there could be a case for Maria Bartiromo or Jeanine Pirro.

But Fox News Network, they were covering news stories, and they had Sidney Powell on, so did other networks. They broadcast things that Sidney Powell said that were very questionable. So the idea, they're just picking on one network, and we all know why. It's where the big pockets are, and everybody in the media will be rooting for you if you go after Fox News. Yeah, but there's a couple problems with that. The first is that if people had sued BuzzFeed News, under American law, they'd have had a case if what you're saying is correct the fact that they didn't doesn't change that um the second is that fox did not invite a random guest on and then jump in horror when he or she said these things it was not like twitter

where we have section 230 in place, because they don't know what I could tweet in 10 seconds, they don't pre-review it. They knew over a period of time that they were broadcasting, and in some cases, including in segments that were pre-approved and pre-written, lies that were based on factual claims that were false. I think you're right about massive bias in the media. Of course you are. And you're right about the hypocrisy of the press. And you're right about all the people who should be upset about this, but aren't. And you're right that this works in one direction. But I'm not sure this is a violation of American libel law, is it?

Well, I mean, I think the way this case would have worked out if there wasn't a settlement is they would have won in the in the courtroom and lost on appeal i'm sorry they would have won in the court they would have won in the courtroom and lost and lost on appeal and again there are lawsuits to people who said things, but to go after a news network for reporting things that were said, that crosses a different line. So, again, if Dominion wants to sue Maria Bartiromo or Jeanine Pirro for things that they said, fine. But to go after this network, and I mean, if you read through the document that they put out, again, it's exceedingly embarrassing. I just don't know what it is. The fact that Tucker Carlson thought Sidney Powell was an serial killer, and then an editor published it, and it was subsequently revealed that the editor knew that the piece was not true, that's the standard that would need to be met under New York Times v. Sullivan. So that, I think, is why it matters. Well, again, I would just say that we're in this,

that when you look at what this lawsuit is about, the lawsuit is going after a network for having people on. I mean, if you read the documents, they're angry that they had people on who made arguments that they didn't like. And by the way, did Dominion get hurt? No, Dominion's making more money than ever. Is Dominion worth $1.6 billion? No, it is not. So we all know that the financial basis of this is crazy.

There's no sign that Dominion has been hurt. Now, I understand reputational damage, but Dominion's going to come out okay with this. That doesn't mean it's okay for people to say false things. But most of the stuff we're talking about here, they're not talking about what was said about Dominion. They're talking about what was said about the 2020 election. And that's a different thing. And they're really going after Fox News for what was said about the election. And they're going after people who on air said Biden won. So if they're saying over and over again, Biden won, Trump lost, and then you can cherry pick a few sentences that say otherwise, a lot of people are in trouble. I can tell you, or I would assume, that if CNN were under the same kind of scrutiny and somebody got their hands on all of their internal documents, that you'd find a lot of the same things, people questioning stories. And again, you have to go back to the dossier. People knew that was not a good story, and they put it out anyway. And somehow that, again,

not a basis for a lawsuit. Yeah, the idea, the standard, it seems to me there's an embryonic standard here, and that standard is that report that if you're in television news, print may be, well, print is dead anyway, so let's set that aside. If you're in television news, print maybe, well, print is dead anyway, so let's set that aside. If you're in television news, here's the new rule. You're not allowed to put a guest on unless you know that that guest is going to make claims that are verifiable. Well, that's just not the job. To put it just a slightly different turn on it, when Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell appeared on Fox News making their crazy claims, they had an effect on me. I thought, wow, the whole Trump organization has just lost it. It was valuable information in a working democracy. If they had been suppressed,

if they, oh, sorry, what Rudy's claiming is obviously untrue. We can't let him talk about that anymore. That would have created much more suspicion, I think. All right. So, it had value. It was a totally defendable newsroom judgment to put Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell on. I don't know about Maria Bartiromo. I guess that's a step where it would make sense to sue Maria Bartiromo. Okay.

So, here's my question to you, Deb. If I'm, and I don't mean to lead the witness here, but if you feel, as I feel, that there's a kind of latent, new, and unreasonable standard embedded in the result of this case, what does it mean for American journalism? What does it mean for television news? It's just the double standard. I mean, that's the thing about this. Again, you look at the Hunter Biden laptop story. Now, this is a case where basically we had people like Mike Morrell saying this is a false document, and it was suppressed by the media because of this bogus accusation, right? I mean, basically, we know the laptop story was pretty true. The current Secretary of State said it wasn't true. Yeah, but, and what do you not,

could you not report that? I mean, one of the things that the lawsuit makes really clear is we have to report what both sides are saying. Are we supposed to say that the President of the United States and his campaign, that we're supposed to censor them? I we know how much how distrustful people are the media what happens if they're not airing this and again i think fox did a pretty good job of explaining to people how that story worked and you can cherry pick sometimes when they did things that were wrong and and and it's and they get reputational damage except i actually think their audience wants that i think they're

people who want to be lied to and that's another issue that that fox really pretty much understood well that's what that's the one thing that those texts uh the the that were came out during discovery reveal was that people who were running these shows or the the stars of these shows knew that it was false but they they also knew that the audience wasn't going to and that's the one thing under american libel law you're not allowed to do it's not that you have to know that everyone you put on air is going to tell the truth it's that you can't put people on the air if you know for a fact that they're going to lie with your blessing okay is that what this lawsuit is about because i could swear when i was watching election coverage that they said joe biden won and that they did not buy into the all these phony claims did they error them did they

have people who said that yes but they were not doing stories about uh they weren't fox news was not putting out stories saying that dominion was wrong that the dominion was a problem you have random people who say that not all not all random but but what are they supposed to do they supposed to we we just saw this we're seeing it right now with with the laptop story where people decide that they have to squelch something because they've decided it's not true instead of letting it be aired out in public and let people make up their own minds that's what i thought we did that's what I thought the news was about. And this lawsuit is trying to tell people, no, you can't do that. So where does this go? We know where it goes. There's a double standard. We know that the left can do whatever

they want and break all the standards that you're talking about. We know that New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, they can all break all that and nobody cares. And there's only going to be one place it's going to pay for, and that's Fox News. Deb, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. But before you go, I want to make sure everybody knows that you're a limited series, podcast series with us covering Trump. It's there. It's great.

Like a lot of good old, a lot of good war stories. And my guess is that we might be able to convince you to do another one coming up for 2024. I would love to. Twist my arm, please. I'll twist your arm some more. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. Thank you all.

We still miss you here in California. Oh, I miss you. And I miss that room. That is Stanford, right? The Stanford Library? No, no, that no that's dartmouth no no this is an east coast room there's nothing like oh it's just a backing though he's it's fake it's fake i'm in the spare bedroom there's a patokin there's a dog on the bed behind me in the reality scene yes okay tell wes to stop sending me torturing uh to stop torturing me with texts about how

lovely it is in virginia okay i shall do that he's my tech guy so he's sitting oh is he right there okay wes knock it off okay but he can't hear because i have your ear that's good thank you for having me thanks for coming see you soon okay bye-bye bye-bye health insurance plans can be confusing and expensive then when you actually have to use your benefits there are deductibles and claims processes and other red tape to deal with. We have all been there. CrowdHealth puts you back in control of your health care and helps you pay for health expenses. We've all been there.

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Terms and conditions may apply. Find out everything you need to know at joincrowdhealth.com. And we thank CrowdHealth for sponsoring the Ricochet podcast. Wow, this is a substantive podcast. I think we we delivered value i really do think we delivered some value um before we go are you sure are you telling the truth i am i don't really think that i do really think that um it doesn't matter that because we haven't discussed it beforehand the new it's the new cook standard the cook it's not the cook standard the reason i got the reason i'm of this view though is while i absolutely agree with deb that this is unjustly uh meted out i think it was

wrong for example that sarah palin lost her case against the new york times which knew when it published the lie once again that she had been responsible. Remind us of the facts of the case. Well, there was a crazy guy who murdered a bunch of people and shot a congresswoman, Gabby Giffords. And this, back in 2011, was inexplicably and disgracefully blamed on Sarah Palin because on her campaign website she had a target. Now, of course

we use martial language in politics all the time. We call them campaigns for goodness sake. She got blamed for this. This is outrageous. It turned out that the guy who did this, I won't name him as I don't name my shooters, the guy who did this had no connection to Sarah Palin, had never looked at Sarah Palin's website, was in no way inspired by Sarah Palin. Now, when the Times originally blamed this on Sarah Palin, it was protected under the First Amendment. But after it had become abundantly clear and published a retraction, it knew. And yet, once again, I forget which year it was, it repeated the line. It just included it, like one of those things that just iterate over time. And of course, Sarah Palin palin who did this and she sued them now i agree with deb it's outrageous that fox got this settlement although they did settle it wasn't actually litigated and in court sarah palin lost but what i'm saying as

someone who is a big free speech guy wants very expansive libel laws is that i think that is a good threshold for libel when When you knowingly print a lie determined to hurt someone's reputation, then yeah, that actually is a good standard for libel. Sarah Palin should have got justice in that case. She didn't. And I'm not convinced that Fox is innocent under our libel laws. 10-second rebuttal. The 10-second rebuttal would be, I agree with Deb that it may make sense. I haven't read through all the reporting on the case, but it may very well make sense under the Cook standard that you just outlined, also known as the First Amendment, for Dominion to have gone after Maria Bartiromo, possibly also one or two other figures, but not for Fox, not to go after Fox News. As distinct from the New York Times, which repeated the lie in an editorial, which is formally understood to speak for the New York Times. That's quite different.

It's not different under the law, though. If the New York Times accepts a piece by Rob Long, well, no, I mean, well, the law might be an ass, but it's also the law., if the New York Times accepts a piece by Rob Long, well, no, I mean, I'm, well, the law might be an ass, but it's also the law. And if the New York Times accepts an op-ed written by Rob Long and Peter Robinson, accusing me of all sorts of things that I didn't do, and it knows when it publishes it, that you two are not telling the truth, then it is susceptible to be sued for libel. But if the New York Times reports in a news story that Rob Long and Peter Robinson are claiming all kinds of mad things about Charlie Cook, which the reporter knows to be untrue, it's still news.

Yes, that's correct. And that's why people say allegedly all the time. So that's why I am drawing the distinction. All right. Of course, that would never happen, and here's why. Because the New York Times pays about $275 for that kind of op-ed, and that's why I am drawing the distinction. All right. Of course, that would never happen, and here's why. Because the New York Times pays about $275 for that kind of op-ed, and that's just not enough to get me and Peter to say, I wouldn't even gin up some lies about Charlie Cook for $200.

It would have to be more. But Maria Bartiromo has a show on Fox that is produced. People sit around a table. They work out what's going to be said. They feed it into a teleprompter. They put the camera in position, and they platform it. And under current libel law, which is fairly liberal in a good sense in the world, that includes, that is included. You know, that's platforming.

Well, all right, if we're going to go at this, do you remember exactly what Maria Bartiromo said? No. Okay, so the distinction I'm trying to draw is between reporting something that even very loosely counts as news and instead asserting something in one's own person, so to speak. Right.

If Maria Bartiromo says, today Rudy Giuliani was at it again, that's one thing. If she says Giuliani was at it again that's one thing if she says of course okay that's all that that distinction strikes me as important and I'm just not sure where it fell in this case well we are not going to solve that now no but which if Charlie and I would like to go at this for at least another time you can go at this in person in the Twin Cities on April 22nd and Stillwater. It's a Stillwater meetup for Ricochet there. There's another Winston-Salem meetup that Randy set up again,

which is Randy's MVP of meetups in Winston-Salem mid-July. Matt Balzer is asking for RSVPs for the annual German Fest meetup in Milwaukee. So that's the last week in July. That's going to be fun. All of these meetups are available to you if you're a member of Ricochet. And if they don't work for some reason and you're not a member here's what you do you just join and then you announce on the member page hey how about a meetup here or there or somewhere and you will get people to show up that's the one thing that members of ricochet they show up um

a lot of other stuff going on but i think you know this we've we've we've hit the two big issues of the day. We've done enough. The podcast was brought to you by Ball & Branch and CrowdHealth, so please support them for supporting us. And join Ricochet today, ricochet.com. Go and join. Take a minute to leave a five-star review, only a five-star review, on Apple Podcasts because that's the kind of algorithm-y thing that they and helps to get people to discover our podcast. Not just, not just this one,

but the other ones we do, including with devs. And I guess, I guess that's the close. We, I, I can, well,

what can I say? So we need James back. Cause I am clearly very rusty at this, but in the meantime, we'll see you next week, fellas. Next week, boys.

This is Steven Hayward of the power line blog and the powerline show on ricochet inviting you to tune in each weekend to our three whiskey happy hour where john you and i along with the pseudonymous lucretia powerlines international woman of mystery break down the week's top stories, and continue our long-running arguments about first principles, and also critique the best whiskeys available in the world. That's Powerline's Three Whiskey Happy Hour, hosted by Ricochet, and found on all of your favorite podcast platforms. Ricochet. Join the conversation.