The Ricochet Podcast - Coulter & Kaus at Columbia University, with Rob Long (Explicit)

Episode Date: March 31, 2018

In this bonus episode, Ricochet founder Rob Long leads a discussion between Ann Coulter and Mickey Kaus hosted by the Columbia University College Republicans. The event took place on March 27, 2018. Listener beware: There’s some explicit language. Source

From big brands to local heroes, Hansen Burger, Supermax, Sansab, Shupa, Grilla, Bujum and Galorella. No hassle delivery direct to your door with Just Eat. Delivery and service charges apply. See JustEat.ie for details. When it comes to seeking fertility treatment, time can be of the essence. At Beacon Care Fertility, we are proud to offer prompt access to affordable fertility care. With over 60,000 babies born across our fertility clinic network, we have both the science and the expertise to deliver. We offer convenient payment plans and are partnered with VHI and Leah. Beacon Care Fertility, where science meets life. It was a very nice introduction. Thank you very much. It did miss

Mickey's years working for pretty much every left-wing crackpot in America in the 70s. So those are Mickey's plot lines. And I don't know about Anne's, but I'm going to start. The context here is that the three of us are actually friends, and Mickey and Anne are actually friends, even though we disagree on a lot of things. So use this as a model for the future. But I'm going to start by maybe stirring up some stuff. Mickey, if a couple of years ago you had written a book entitled In Trump We Trust, would you just feel like a total idiot right now? I'd be pretty disappointed.

I might be even tweeting nasty things about our president. He hasn't become a fascist. I mean, it seemed like the entire New York intellectual elite decided that Trump was hip-hired. He hasn't. He's been the opposite. He can't even build one mile of his wall. He's been the opposite. He can't even build one mile of his wall. He's been completely feckless.

He made one fatal mistake, which is he cast his lot with Paul Ryan and said, okay, Ryan, we'll do your tax cuts and then we'll get to my agenda. Now he's done Ryan's tax cuts and, gee, Ryan doesn't want to do his agenda. So in the past omnibus, basically Ryan didn't put up a fight and Trump didn't get anything he wanted on immigration. So that's crushingly depressing and I think it will, I'm scrambling to figure out ways he can come back. And he's scrambling. If you read the papers this morning, he's followed Ann's advice that he could build the wall with the military. I'm not sure that's going to go anywhere,

but he's about the mix of things I would expect. Maybe a little more of a failure on the immigration front. Ann, if you had written a book called The Trouble Trust two years ago, how would you feel today? I regret nothing. I would do the exact same thing. I would write the exact same book with the exact same title. To be fair, you say that about everything all the time. No, there are some things I regret.

We'll get back to that in another question. Things and regrets. We had 16 lunatics being chased by men with nets running for president and Donald Trump. Of course, I had to be a pedal to the

metal for Donald Trump after waiting 30 years for someone to say all these things. As both of you know, we Trump supporters, at least I and my friends, went into this completely clear-eyed. I knew he was a shallow, lazy ignoramus, and I didn't care. He's saying what I wanted somebody to say. And you know what I'm disappointed in him for is doing everything Jeb exclamation point and Rubio were promising to do. So, I mean, I still support him. I just feel like we're getting, it's the same as it's happening in England with Brexit. We vote and we vote and we vote and we can never get what we're voting

for. All right, Mickey. You brought some visual aids just to make sure this evening is excruciating for the audience. They're excruciating visual aids. Yeah, they are. That's why I've seen them already. Spoiler alert.

If you're past that first row, you won't be able to see it. Let me ask you. You have predicted past that first door, you won't be able to see it. Let me ask you. So is Ann, and I'll turn it back to Ann in a minute. I'm doing my best. Yeah, very good. You have said immigration is the most important

issue. Right. You have been ringing alone on your side, whatever your side is these days, alone you've been saying, unless we take care of our immigration policy and address it and adjust it, we are in deep trouble. It is highly likely that we will not do those things that you wanted us to do. Immigration, illegal immigration has gone down under Trump. Well, it went down under Obama,

too. No, it surged toward the end. So, the high was under Bush and Clinton and it's gone down since then, but the Trump effect is such that people were discouraged from coming illegally. That's starting to go back up as people realize

Trump's a paper tiger, and the economy is very hot. People come for jobs, so we expect there to be a surge in illegal immigration, but I guess I can explain why I care about immigration. That's what I mean. Why do you care about it, and then why, if you're gonna ring the alarm bell, as you have, I mean, Anna's, I think, running louder,

but you will just start small a little bit. If you're gonna ring the alarm bell, as you have, I mean, Anna's I think running louder, but you will just start small a little bit. If you're going to ring the alarm bell and it's not going to happen, how much trouble are you in? I wrote a book at the start of the Clinton administration called The End of Equality, which basically says we have capitalism, capitalism creates inequalities, we really shouldn't care about how rich the rich get, who cares. What we really should care about is social equality, which is we are equal in the eyes

of each other, we're treated as equals, we consider ourselves equal no matter how much money we have. And that sort of should be the goal of liberals. There was a sort of Clintonian consensus that that's great. We're going to deregulate. Capitalism is going to provide for us as long as we make work pay. It'll all work out. We'll have free trade. We'll have some immigration.

But then something happened. And the main thing that happened is in one of my fabulous charts. This is the, which I guess you won't be able to see, but I'll describe it to you. Hourly wages starting from an equal point in 73. You'll see people with advanced degrees went up. People with just college degrees went up a bit. Some college, high school sort of flat. But people who dropped out of high school, plundered, went down.

And I don't think you can have a socially equal society if the people who don't have, who are less skilled, sort of drop out the bottom of the economy. What on earth does that mean? It's even worse because this is a meritocratic distinction. Explain the badness of immigration. Immigrants are largely unskilled, and they bid down the wages of people who have a few skills. I could map a graph of worker productivity and worker efficiency over that that would also explain that.

Precisely, though. Absolutely. There are three forces pushing down the wages at the bottom. One is trade, and trade had a huge impact, and Trump says he's going to do something about it. One is immigration, which has maybe less of an impact than trade, but it's something we can do something about right now. And the third is technology, robots, and nobody has any answer to that. So Trump was at least addressing two of the three factors. But you understand the counter-argument to that fantasy economics you just presented,

that worker productivity isn't just about robots. It's about all sorts of, like, anybody here use an ATM? Anybody here use automated? Any automated service has been going on since the early 70s, since the 50s really. So how do you explain that? Why is that just immigration? I don't buy that argument. You don't? No. I mean, this is an argument Mickey always makes to me that the machines are going to take over and they're going to kill us.

Meanwhile, my room book has even cleaned the floor without getting stuck on the couch, so I'm not worried about them killing us yet. But since the beginning of humankind, man has created wheels and tools, and no, it just frees up time for us to do other things. It's never been the case, what he shows in his charts. And I would also ask

what state in the union has the worst income inequality? California, where immigration is most advanced. We are bringing in immigrants that are good for the very rich. They don't live in their neighborhoods. They don't fill up their schools or their hospital emergency rooms. And, oh, boy, you should see how clean Juanita gets the bathtub. You can eat off it after she's done.

You're a racist. So it's all good. No, I'm sorry. The people who are bringing in Juanita, the maid, and underpaying her are the racists. You are a moron. You are a moron. Legally racist. Down, down, you're very stupid. I can't argue with stupid people. They're driving down the wages of the people we ought to be caring the most about. And you have the rich walking around like they're Martin Luther King.

What do they want? They want cheap labor. They want to make more money. And that's why I think the state of the least income inequality is Utah. So, you know, the more you have immigrants coming in to do the low-wage work, you have poor people getting poorer and poorer. Do you buy that? Yes. I mean, there's a big debate on the effect immigration has on wages. The lower bound is 3%. The upper bound is maybe 10%, 12%. It's not a big range, but the arrow points in the wrong direction.

They're hurting low-wage workers. So the Democrats' platform is, we will only fuck you 3%. And Trump's platform is, we will unfuck you that 3%. So Trump won the election. I don't think you can have a socially equal society if this chart keeps going down. Do we have a whole lot of them? It's also true that there's an effect. Ann writes about it in her book. Professor Putnam notes that more diverse societies tend to have less trust.

They also tend to have less social welfare spending. You also cannot have a big welfare state if you invite the whole world. Those of you who support the universal basic income and open borders need to think about that. You can't invite the whole world here and then say we're going to give you a basic income. So those are three good reasons if you you are a Democrat, to want to control immigration. And it's just maddening. I got into this debate because my previous cause was welfare reform. And the same BS you heard from people who oppose welfare reform is the same sort of thing you hear in the immigration debate.

For example, people said people would never cross state lines for higher welfare benefits. That's a right-wing myth. Well, then they went to Wisconsin and realized, sorry, Minnesota and realized that, no, Wisconsin, sorry, that people were coming from Chicago to Wisconsin for higher welfare benefits. Of course people crossed welfare lines for higher benefits. Similarly, they said, oh, amnesty will never encourage more people to come. Well, that's insane. We amnestied 3 million people in 1986.

We got 11 million new illegals. So, of course, amnesty encourages. People are human. If you give amnesty to one generation, the people who are still back in the home country will say, well, see, the previous people got in. I'll go, too. It's just common sense, and it's common sense that's completely ignored by, unfortunately, my fellow Democrats. And what's the difference between illegal immigration and immigration? Not much these days.

There are even lower wage workers, the illegals coming in, I mean, in terms of the effect on society. And it's always driven me crazy that my party, Republicans, you know, they make a really big point of saying, oh, we're only talking about illegal, only talking about illegal.

I don't know, when legal immigrants are low wage and poor and consuming massive amounts of government welfare, it has the exact same wage depressing effect. It has the exact same effect on communities. A lot of the legal immigrants coming in now are finishing, as the federal judge wrote, Judge Hannon in the Dreamer case, he said they're just completing the cycle of the cartel. We're shipping them in, and then you get the anchor baby. So you now have American citizen members of these drug cartels. The drug issue, which Trump, sort of kicking and screaming, did finally start bringing up during the campaign and to great effect in New Hampshire.

Huge, huge heroin problem. I would recommend you read Sam Quinones' book, Dreamland. He was an L.A. Times reporter, very, very heroin problem. I would recommend you read Sam Quinones' book Dreamland. He was an LA Times reporter, very, very good reporter. I don't know if you've read it. It's a fantastic book. You won't be able to put it down, but it's all about the heroin and the opioid crisis. And as he documents, I think

beyond dispute, the heroin problem is a problem of having an open border. It is all the Mexican cartels right now. Well, that isn't affecting the rich. That isn't affecting Park Avenue or Nob Hill or Beverly Hills or where you live at all. Not affecting you. You're getting, oh my gosh, you've got to be smarter. You've got to be less racist. You were an immigrant too once. Your family were immigrants too. Just because you're white doesn't make you better. be less racist. You're an immigrant too once. Your family were immigrants too.

Just because you're white doesn't make you better. We shouldn't be racist. The United States shipped opium from a country that we didn't. Let me ask you this. This is all a problem of the border being wide open. And it isn't Tanao Hill. It isn't Park Avenue. it's going to these communities throughout America. I mean, the number of people dying every year from heroin overdoses and fentanyl

overdoses every year is more than died in the entire course of the Vietnam War. I mean, this is an attack on our society, and to have Donald Trump, who ran on one set of issues, decide to go to Mar-a-Lago rather than veto the spending bill, yeah, it's a little disappointing. Mickey, what's the difference between illegal immigration and illegal immigration? There's no difference as far as wages goes.

If you're going to control immigration, you have to say, this immigration beyond this certain level, which we set democratically, is illegal. So you have to be able to enforce the laws against people who come here illegally. this certain level which we set democratically is illegal so you have to be able to enforce the laws against people who come here illegally otherwise when it comes to seeking fertility treatment time can be of the essence at beacon care fertility we are proud to offer prompt access

to affordable fertility care with over 60 000 babies born across our fertility clinic network we have both the science and the expertise to deliver we offer convenient payment plans and are partnered with vhi and leia beacon care fertility where science meets life you have no control over the problems the depressing thing is you know there are four or five things you've got to do to control it. One is, I'm all for the wall. I have to buck up people in the Trump administration sometimes who have their own doubts about the wall. I think walls work everywhere they've been tried. They work in Israel. They're building a huge one in Saudi Arabia. There's no reason to think walls won't work. You have to do something to control people

who overstay their visas, which is now possible with computers. You have to have some computerized check of people who go to work so the employer can see if they are illegal and not hire them if they're illegal. None of that stuff happened in the budget. It all got, Trump got shut out.

It's like he played a whole basketball game and didn't score a field goal. It will be studied in political science courses. How could somebody blow it this big? And so none of the things you have to do to make illegal immigration illegal, you know, happened. And that's why illegal immigration is important. If you're going to get control, you have to have some laws. All right, so

you have a window. A month. A little window, say. What's your dream immigration policy for the United States? Everything Trump campaigned on. Build a wall, and isn't that magnificent book, Adios America? Build a wall. I think

we need an immigration moratorium to dust off the books, assimilate the immigrants already here, get their wages up, rather than, I mean, right now we're doing the sorcerer's apprentice thing, where we're bringing in another two million every year while trying to assimilate the ones who came in the year before, in the year before,

in the year before. And I mean, I think it's worth pointing out the year before and the year before and the year before. And I mean, I think it's worth pointing out the people this hurts the most and it's been pointed out in study after study after study are African Americans and Hispanic Americans, the ones who came

in last year and the year before that and the year before that. Sorry for voiceless Americans. Nancy Pelosi wants to pay her maid even less. Immigration moratorium, wall, and deport illegals. I mean, as Trump said during the campaign, we're a country or we're not. And to be having, we're the greatest country in the world. Try calling up any other country in the world, even one Trump would call a shithole. Call up their embassy and ask them, say, I'd like to come live in your

country. I don't speak the language and I don't have any skills. I have no money to bring, but I hear your country doesn't get that cold and I like the food. If I come in with my boyfriend and we can't make it, would you guys mind cutting us a check once a month? They'd say, no, not so fast, Skippy. Any country would say that. Whereas our immigration policy, the greatest country in the world, is anyone who lives within walking distance.

That's insane. We ought to be using immigration policy to get our average up. They ought to be smarter than us, better looking than us, better dancers, better athletes. It's just another government policy. Why would you have any government policy that does not help the people already here? It would be, you know, oh no, it's not fair to skim the rest of the world and just take the best of the rest of the world. It's not fair that

Scarlett Johansson dates, you know, good-looking guys with money. She should be forced to date an unemployed loser. She should be forced into a lottery for who she dates. You might win that lottery, Nikki, by the way. Before we go on. So I have a chance. Yeah, you got a chance.

Yeah, she's going to watch this and the charts are going to seal the deal. What about what Ann said? I mean, do you sign on to all that? Actually, no. This opened up actually, we actually

have some differences on immigration. I do think we want to remain a country that's open to immigration. I think we also want to remain a country that's open to refugees. The demonstrations after Trump's travel pause were, I thought, sort of proved that people do not like the idea that we are no longer a haven for refugees. It doesn't mean we have to take a lot of them.

We take more than anybody else in the world. Obama took 80,000. Trump's going to take 40,000. Big deal. We still take a lot of refugees. And that brings to my second chart, which is what happened to immigration over the course of recent history. We had a lot of immigrants in the 18th century, then we cracked down in the early, in the

19th century, we had a crackdown in the early 20th century, and immigration plummeted. There was a low point until Teddy Kennedy's law in 1965 opened the floodgates and immigration went back up. What happened during this period? To be fair, just for those of you in rows three and four and beyond, the chart that Mickey has drawn, and you did a great job. It's very neat and nice. It's a nice chart. Ends in 2060. So there's... Okay, but it's...

Yeah, just so we know, we understand that that's present day where your index figure is. Okay, okay. The point is, during this period of low immigration... It's in the future now. I'm glad you put it... I've never noticed that before. Thank you. The point is, during this period of low immigration, even sorts of people, in World War II obviously helped, became melded into Americans. People didn't think of themselves as Italians or Poles anymore. They thought of themselves as Americans. So with enough time assimilation is possible, but it's not possible if the numbers are way high.

So I think... Wait, can you leave the chart up? I mean, so they... What's wrong with that chart? No, I think it's brilliant to be neglected to mention that wages were also great. I mean, in terms of wages and income... Well, they weren't great around here. Right, right. But this was the period when the great American middle class was made.

Right. The period of low immigration. Yes, that was the creation of the American middle class. And if you care about income equality, which I don't think should be a desideratum on its own, there's always going to be some amount of income inequality if there's freedom. But what we have now with the tech guys and Wall Street

living like the most vulgar degenerates out of the czar's court, what we have now, there is no reason to have it, and this is 100% a result of government policy. That's part of what I present the most about this. This idea that it's just, oh, it's natural. It's like the roll of the tides. No, government policy could have been different.

When you hear the left talk about, oh, we want to be open to the rest of the world. Okay, I want to be open. How about we stop protecting Hollywood copyrights? We could have done that, you know, to be open. How about we stop... I have a view to you, baby. Back off. I'm just saying it could have been government policies. It could have been openness toward the world that screws over Wall Street and that screws over Hollywood. But no, it's openness to the rest of the world that screws over the working class in America. And just one other thing, Mickey may be somewhat unusual, not that unusual, total left-winger on everything, including Obamacare. But, you know, cares about the working class. I think it's worth pointing out that so does Bernie Sanders. His position, until the Democrats ganged up on him and said, oh, no, no, no, we've got immigrants now. We don't have to even pretend to care about those hicks in the flyover states.

His position, after he announced for president, he was asked, what do you think about open borders? And he told the Vox, you can look it up. No, I don't like that. That's a Koch brothers idea. That's where you bring in people to work for $2 or $3 an hour so you can drive down everybody's wages. I'm against that.

And then the Democrats ganged up on him. Back during Clinton's. Clinton is the one who opened up Democrats him. Back during Clinton's. Clinton is the one who opened up Democrats to be able to not care about the working class anymore. They used to pretend to care about the working class. I always suspected they never did. Now, no, they didn't. But during Clinton, he had a genuine civil rights icon, Barbara Jordan, chair of the Commission on What to Do with Immigration. And she testified, beautiful testimony, produced a report saying, this is really hurting our fellow Americans, African Americans most of all.

We've got to cut this down. And I don't think we'd be hearing so much about, you know, fundamental fairness and being open to the rest of the world. We're bringing in immigrants competing with Marco Rubio and Chris Christie and Jeb Exclamation Point and, you! And the hosts of MSNBC. But we're not. We're not bringing in people to compete with them. We're bringing in people to compete with their landscapes. Mickey, does it...

Please clap. Please clap. Please clap. Could you just tell us a little bit, I know Ernest Hollings, you work for Ernest Hollings. I work for a senator, does people know who Ernest Hollings was? Big lefty, rampant president. He's a senior senator from South Carolina who spoke with an accent so thick that even other Southerners couldn't understand him. All right, so Hollings.

What about Jimmy Carter? I worked for the Federal Trade Commission under Carter, under Robert Reich, who's now an icon of the left. Robert Reich. So Reich, Hollings, Carter, any other Democrats you want to throw in there? No, but... Wait, wait, just... No, I don't think so. I work for – no, I ran for Senate, probably stupidly, as a Democrat. I ran to see if there was any – this is relevant to what Ann was saying – to see if there was any support for immigration control in the Democratic Party,

and the answer was no. I got some bad news here, Mickey. That wasn't the only... No, I got 5%, and I was hoping for 7. I want to see the numbers. Five seems high. Why were... Those four people were here

sitting in the front row no no no those four lions of the Democratic Party or certainly opinion makers in left wing American thought Jimmy Carter, Ernest Hollings

Robert Reich and the other one whatever that is, would they, how betrayed or how furious would they be to hear your, hear you on stage with Ann Coulter essentially agreeing with everything she says? Well, of course they'd be horrified that I was on stage with Ann Coulter. But, you know, this whole theory comes from Robert Rice. I mean, Robert Rice provided the framework. He said, look, unskilled jobs that can be performed abroad are going abroad. Skilled jobs, they're still protected.

Those people are still getting rich. All that's left for the American working class is the unskilled jobs that can't be shipped abroad. And the next step, and if you read some of his book, he actually says it is control immigration to preserve those jobs for Americans. But now he's a big Democratic Party person and he can't say that anymore, so he has to hold his tongue. Wait, wait, but do you think he agrees with you secretly? He would never agree.

He's repressed himself so much that he would not even agree with me secretly. But they used to. But the whole question is, is there any hope for the Democratic Party switching on immigration? I was always a Democrat because I figured we want social equality. It's got to take a whole lot more spending than people like Ann Koltuk and Stubbett. We have to have a health care system. We maybe have to have a draft. We have to have all sorts of spending on job training and various things.

And the Republicans will never go for it. But now I also think we need to control immigration, and the Democrats will never go for that. Plus, the other thing that's happened is Trump has come along and made the Republicans somehow simpatico with big spending. Look at the latest budget. It's the biggest spending budget in decades. Trump said he's going to protect Social Security, and the Republican Party is going with him. So the Republicans have sort of solved my Democratic problem, and the Republican Party is going with it. So the Republicans have sort of solved my Democratic problem, and the Democrats have their own problem, so I

don't know which party I want to go with. Well, you'd be a plum for any party. Any party would be happy to have you. Do you buy all that? I mean, do you think that's the next step? I mean, you guys agree on immigration. Just say you get everything you want in immigration. Do you want those massive social policies and Obamacare and national health insurance that Nikki clearly wants?

No, no. I wouldn't really. I mean, I think the most freedom-promoting policy is to let states decide. So, you know, California, Vermont, they can be as left-wing as they want to be, have as many, you know, welfare, cradle-to-grave programs. And it's just the idea of our Constitution that you can move. You vote with your feet. You live in the place that provides the most freedom. And then I wouldn't really care what they do in California or Vermont.

You can move if you don't like it. And as for the other social programs, I mean, the main thing I'd say is I think it's kind of a, I'm annoyed, a little more than annoyed with Donald Trump, but buying onto the Paul Ryan program, as Mickey alluded to early on. What Trump allowed Americans to do was finally vote on a series of issues they have not been able to vote on before. The Republicans have been forcing anyone who runs for any office, actually, is a Republican, to run on a collection of issues.

When it comes to seeking fertility treatment, time can be of the essence. At Beacon Care Fert care fertility we are proud to offer prompt access to affordable fertility care with over 60 000 babies born across our fertility clinic network we have both the science and the expertise to deliver we offer convenient payment plans and are partnered with vhi and le. Beacon Care Fertility, where science meets life. They are not popular. And among them, everything is easier if we fix immigration, is entitlement reform.

Trump just looked around the country and said, you know, I'm a Republican, I'm not a Democrat, I don't need the donors, I don't need the party, I'm just going to pick the popular side of every issue. Americans like Social Security. So I don't really care about that. I want the wall, I want no more stupid wars, as Trump called them, making me a little nervous with this hiring of Bolton, and I want no more job-killing trade deals. This is what we voted for, not getting it. On Paul Ryan's entitlement reform, I mean, it seems like something really had to be done for years, and Christie and Paul Ryan

were some of the funds coming up with it. Number one, it's not popular. Number two, now I'm really angry at them for even suggesting it, because this is a huge problem of immigration. The H-1B visas, that's the STEM visas that a lot of foreigners being high IQ foreigners, mathematical foreigners being brought in to take really basic computer programming jobs. They get underpaid, but it's like indentured servitude because they're attached to the company.

So if Mark Zuckerberg brings somebody in as a STEM, as an H-1B worker, he has to keep working with the worker he brings in. He has to keep working for Facebook. He can't bid up, he can't say, hey, Apple just gave me a higher offer. So he can underpay them. But ha-ha, what does the immigrant get besides being able to come here? He can bring in all his elderly relatives who immediately go on Social Security. When I was working with the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1996, we were producing documents written in Mandarin in China instructing their elderly people how to immigrate to the U.S. and get on social security.

Well, that's meant for our people. How about instead of telling Americans you've got to tighten your belt and we're raising the retirement age and we're going to means test it, how about we stop bringing in the poor of the world to consume the government assistance programs meant for our own people? Vicki, you agree with that, right? I agree with that. Some of it was cut back in the welfare reform bill, but not all of it. This proves my point, which is the way

to defeat, to destroy Coulter is you agree with everything she says, and then she's secretly reasonable. I have that backwards. I think Trump correctly perceived that

Social Security is one of the few frameworks that people had to cling to when everything else about society was in chaos and confusion. Trade was destroying jobs. Immigrants were coming in. Their communities were changing. But they thought, at least if I make it to 65, I have social security and Medicare, so that will be there for me. And he was right to think, we don't want to change that right now. Maybe sometime in the future when we're more prosperous,

we can do something to make it more affordable. But right now, we don't want to change it. Which brings me to the issue of Obamacare, where we really do have differences. I'm no longer a supporter of Obamacare. I've moved on. Yay! I've moved on to single payer. Look, we have a... I hate the term single payer. Let's go moved on. Yay! I've moved on to single payer. Oh, you've moved on. Look, we have a...

I hate the term single payer. Let's go moving on. I hate the term single payer. That's why she went far back. I hate the term single payer because it implies that the government will have a monopoly and be the single payer that controls. But it's Medicare for all. Do we feel that the government has an insidious control over Medicare? No, Medicare is the freest, least encumbered way to get health care there is.

It's a popular program. It works. Believe me, when you get to 65, you'll be happy it's there. Whereas Obamacare, if you've been a blogger for the first time, Obamacare was an attempt to not do Medicare, but to do something else that was subject to competition and would make it cheaper than Medicare. And it clearly doesn't work because the people that are not on their employer's plan are terrible risks. So it throws people like Ann Coulter, freelancers, and me into the same pool

with people who are like one step away from opioid addiction. And it turns out it's very expensive. It's so expensive that middle class people don't want to be on it. So it doesn't work. So fine, let's give up on Obamacare. Let's move to a program that works, Medicare. And it also has a sort of solidaristic benefit, which is, I don't know, when my father was ill with cancer, he was in a Medicare waiting room with postmen and plumbers, and he was

a judge, and the classes were mixing. It was... Everybody gets lousy care. You got very lousy care. Except rich people who could get better care. The top 10% will always opt out. That's the best we could hope for. Rupert Murdoch will not settle

for ordinary Medicare. So will I. This is another problem. Absolutely everything can be made better by an immigration moratorium and a wall, as I write about. well, I don't leave my columns, but in Adios America, we're bringing in lots and lots of immigrants from very different cultures and cultures where different kinds of crimes are much more

popular, crimes we're not used to. American criminals are kind of used to. You can see them on forensic files. They kill their wives for the insurance policy and leave their DNA all over everything. Well, now we're bringing in immigrants who are fantastic at scamming government programs. And it's not even, I mean, in some cultures it's not even embarrassing. You're kind of a sucker if you don't. They've been, one, just by accident, I found, in fact, by watching Forensic Files. It was an honor killing in I don't know, Missouri someplace, something place like Missouri. And Forensic

Files, otherwise, you know, this never would have, you wouldn't be allowed to say this on TV, but they weren't really down with the PC thing. And they slip out, but they catch the, I forget what he was, maybe a Palestinian, but whatever, the Arab father as they're plotting.

They were listening to him because they thought he was a terrorist, and then he ends up killing his daughter on the tape, being listened to by the FBI. And he's talking about how, you know, I love America. It's so easy to gain their welfare systems. And, I mean, look at the reports from the FBI on Medicare fraud, Medicaid fraud, food stamp fraud. There's a lot more money for what it's intended for if we stop bringing in immigrants from cultures where it's just a way of life to steal from the government. To say that stealing is a way of life and part of culture is completely false. That's not a fact.

That will be a question time. I promise. How can you state's not a fact. That will be a question time, I promise. How can you state it as a fact? Wait, wait, wait. Because we're at culture free because I want that. We'll get to questions, I promise. I promise we're going to get to questions, I promise.

I didn't set up the hecklers as being stupid. What I want is, do you agree with that? They're not plants. I think food stamps is the main program that's abused. And I think there's a the main program that's abused. And I think there's a certain large percentage of food stamp budgets that goes to fraud. And I think in one of your books you have Medicare fraud being a much bigger, much incredibly costly because it goes to bogus bills,

like Senator Menendez's great friend who's the leading Medicare biller in America, he really built the government with quite a bit of money. I would doubt it's more than 20% of any of the programs. You have no idea. The biggest problem with Medicare. Any of the government. There is not an aggressive fraud prevention unit in the government. Well, with food stamps, there's this idea that you want to spread it around. You don't want to look too

closely at fraud for a while. I think that's changed now. The basic problem with those programs I don't think is fraud. Right. I see that. Alright. Well, we've talked about policy. Can we just talk about politics a little bit and then I promise we will get to questions.

I want to get a little bit of policy out. This is so boring. I'm talking about politics. This is more interesting. When was the last time you talked to the president? I generally don't talk about that. But the part, one of the times I spoke to him a few months ago that ended in a shouting and cursing match leaked, not by me. So I can acknowledge that.

Since then, I mostly have people in the White House calling and saying, could you stop tweeting such mean things about the president? Are you under a nondisclosure agreement? No, I'm not under a nondisclosure agreement. I am just very good with secrets and also very good with advice. I think he knows that at some point. How bad are the midterms going to be? I think they're going to be pretty bad. I mean, for Trump.

I mean, the basic dynamic of the midterms is the Democrats are super fired up to vote. They've always not turned out in the midterms. That's not going to be true this time. There was some poll recently of registered voters. How do you feel about Trump versus not Trump? 47% like Trump, 47% didn't like him. Of people who were excited about going to the polls, how many like Trump? Well, 27% like Trump, 67% hate him. So Democrats are fired up, Democrats are not. Trump desperately needs to get that 27% up, get the people who support him to the polls.

And this recent bill, especially on immigration and the wall, was a giant letdown that's not going to get them out to the polls. And that's why I think Republicans are looking at a huge loss where they will definitely lose control of the House. You know, the Senate is much dicier because, do you agree, Derek, more advantage? I mean, you never know, but yeah, I think it looks pretty bad. Why did he sign the bill? Well, according to reporting in the Wall Street Journal, he was about to veto it, and then I think it was General Kelly said to him, if you shut the government down, you can't go to Mar-a-Lago this weekend. And he said, F that, and signed it.

In Trump, we trust. It was the only choice we had. Well, immutable law of American politics, maybe you want to take issue with it. But for me, I feel like it's an immutable law of American politics. The American president has really one political goal. Unify and solidify his support. Divide the opposition. That's what triangulation is.

That's how you get through your difficult four years and the next four years. This president has managed to divide his support and unify his opposition. Why then do his supporters insist he's not dumb? I don't think

he's dumb. The main attribute he has is just amazing instincts for what is popular. The only line we used to have about Reagan compared to other Republicans was you could throw a glass of cold water on him in the middle of the night and ask him, you know, what do we do about the Soviet Union? You'd wake up saying evil empire, whereas the rest of them had to go back and read, you know, charts and stuff. I think the glass of water in the middle of the night test, Trump would do better than when he's conferring with everyone he has chosen to surround himself with. I mean, he is, as has been said, he's like a human couch cushion who bears the impression of the last person

who sat on him. And his White House is 10 feet deep with people who oppose the MAGA agenda. So where is Chris Gobeck? Why isn't the King House working for this White House? Why not Pacquiao? Where did Corey Lewandowski go? I mean, you can't blame these 63 million people who voted for Donald Trump. He was not showing up at I mean, you can't blame these 63 million people who voted for Donald Trump. He was not showing up at rallies saying, and don't worry, no matter what happens, I'm bringing Ivanka and Jared with me. Don't you worry. I will fill up half the White House with Goldman Sachs bankers. No, he said, build the wall every single rally. There's no question that that was what the battle cry was. It's just very depressing what he's doing. What he could do if he wants to win the midterms

would be to just go ahead and build the wall. I don't think he's going to. If I'm wrong, I'll say I'm sorry, but it's looking pretty bad, and I think probably the best thing for the genuine MAGA agenda people to do now is to start having tryouts for when we're going to have primary. Primary the president. I mean, if he's still in office.

The big problem with, is Trump going to have permanent changes? I don't see any other Trump on the horizon to succeed in. But why is that? I mean, you and I had a conversation about this, you probably forget, before the election. And what I suggested, in my very neutral way, was that this is not a person who's going to be popular or understand presidential popularity and how you use it in politics.

He's going to be under 40% for most of his term. And the very issue that you care the most about, he is going to toxify and turn into a political turnover. How am I wrong? First, I think he'll be, I think he has a very good chance of being re-elected.

Because the turnout problem that we talked about doesn't apply in presidential elections. Everybody't apply in presidential elections. Everybody turns out in presidential elections. So he'll do much better. He has to run against somebody, anybody the Democrats offer him is going to be, you know, a real human being with real human flaws. And the Democrat Party has sort of gone so crazy, especially on the immigration issue,

that they have limited appeal. And also, I don't think he's, you can't say he's failed. The economy's doing well, and immigration is down. If there's an immigration surge in the next year, which there may well be. Immigration and immigration together. You're loving them together? No, those are two separate things. You mean immigration is down, meaning? Just clarify. Fewer illegal

immigrants are coming into America. So illegal immigration is down? Well, immigration, the rest of immigration is governed by law. So if we take a million and a half people a year, we'll take a million and a half people next year. But during the high point of illegal immigration, we were also getting a million illegals a year. Okay, that's

fallen to a much lower number, and it'll never go back up to a million, but it might well rise to some very high number, and then his policy will definitely fail. We're not at war yet. He's left Social Security and Medicare alone. He hasn't been a fasc left Social Security and Medicare alone. He hasn't been a fascist. He's floviated.

You know, we still have a free press. We've got a lot of dissent. Dissenters are not being hauled off to jail. I don't think you can say he's a failure. He's done more in his presidency than Carter did, maybe not more than Obama did, but more than Carter did. So, you know, you maybe not more than Obama did, but more than Carter did. So you're not impressed. No, I always want to ask you the same question. Does it feel weird to be you saying that? I've had so many fights in my family where I've said no.

Last question, just to see how we're futurizing, but since you have a chart that seems to suggest what's going to happen in 2060, I may as well. Who's going to primary? Well, hopefully Mickey is right, and we won't need to. I just think we need to hold, I guess I should clarify this, we need to hold Trump's feet to the fire.

And I think these co-magnons who defend him no matter what he does, no matter how many promises he breaks, I really think that isn't helping. This is, I mean, on election night, I thought, okay, my work's done. I'm kicking my feet up. Trump's president. We're safe at last. No, this apparently is going to have to be a transactional presidency. No treats for doing nothing. Lots of blowback for being bad. And I just don't think it's helping to be cheering him on and keep saying, no, it's 3D chess. You don't understand. No, he blew it. He really blew it. And he shouldn't have done it. And he could have done some really amazing things with the election coming up

i mean one thing that kind of breaks my heart you know who knows i can't predict the future but in the midterm elections which i agree don't look very bright now because there isn't a reason to really energize the trump the trump base and he needs every one of them there are three democrats in total trumpster states who i mean, Claire McCaskill, she must have just, she has a rabbit's foot. Last time she got to run against Todd Akin. This time it's going to be, you know, the anti-Trumpsters. There's McCaskill in Missouri, there's Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, there's John Testred in Montana, very red states with Democrats that are ours for the taking. We should be picking up seats in the Senate this year,

and I think that is probably not going to happen now. Because of Trump. Yeah, because he's not giving us what he promised at every single campaign stop. And your prescription for that is less cheerleading, more tough luck. Tough luck, yeah. So you are in favor of giving the president his bank. And I do not mind him with his daughter.

Who's going to primary? I think he's likely to be primed by a never-Trumper. And he'll beat the never-Trumper. Oh yeah, never-Trumper to me is not the former-Trumper. And he'll beat the never-Trumper. Oh, yeah. Never-Trumper to mean not the former Trumpers. The logical successor to Trump was Tom Cotton.

Tom Cotton has two problems. One is he's a hawk in terms of war, so he's sort of in with the neocons. That's, as Anne said, not Trump's position. The second thing is everybody thought he was going to be the replacement for Jeff Sessions

as the champion of immigration control in the Senate, and he's been a little less than Jeff Sessions. It was his idea, apparently, to double the number of DREAMers protected from 700,000 to 1.8 million. A terrible decision, because that becomes the baseline for every other negotiation. And he didn't even get any Democratic votes for it. So it was a sort of salary on top. Traditionally, a sitting president, certainly a sitting Republican president, who is primary and who goes on to win, I mean, they usually win, loses in the general election. That's true.

I suspect if he does not build the wall by the time of the 2020 election, if he's still in office, he'll say, I've done it. I've made America great. I'm just not going to run again. Look, we've got drones on the border. I think he won't run again because he'll see. I mean, at some point, if he's been in office four years and he has some broken

ground on the wall, that's not going to be enough to win re-election unless Mickey's people run just a complete loser and... There is Chris Kovac. There's David Perdue. And Tom Cotton.

Tom Cotton, I agree with you on the neocon hawkish stuff, but Tom Cotton and David Perdue both voted against the omnibus. Trump didn't. I can't call you a Democrat because that's just ludicrous. You're not. Who will the Democrats run? I mean, the calculation in the little cubicles of the RNC is simple. They're going to run somebody crazy,

and we're going to have a cultural election like we had last year, in 2016. That the market opportunity for a, I mean, everybody knows, this is like a cliche, but a conservative Southern Democrat is unstoppable in American politics. That's usually who wins. They usually win big. There aren't any conservative Southern Democrats. There aren't any conservative Democrats. So who are they going to run? I like Cory Booker best, just because I've been impressed with the way he talks. And it seems to me he's more substantive than Kamala Harris. And he's capable of moving to the right.

He's a favorite of Wall Street bankers because he can talk their talk or he can talk the other people's talk. And he's sort of an appealing person. So I would think he would be tough. I think Kamala Harris is just a total placebo and would not be that formidable. Who would you run? Putting on a Democrat after me. I don't think it's true any longer that they need to run a Southern Democrat.

I think the Democrats have just given up. My money would be, if I were a betting person, on Kamala Harris. She'll have the Hollywood money. She'll have the Wall Street money. They've already had the first black president. Now it would be the first black woman president. I think it's so identity politics driving the Democratic Party now. Do you think that they will do that? That they will, not who I think they should. If you were giving them advice, who would it be?

They absolutely wouldn't take it. Sherrod Brown. I might vote for Sherrod Brown. What about John Hickenlooper, governor of Colorado? No, please. He's very bad at immigration. Okay. No energy, I'm a grad.

He runs the Cheers of Denver, though. He was a borrower. He has that going for him. You notice that Mitt Romney yesterday said, I'm tough on immigration. Which he always was. It's not like people don't think there's any political benefit

to being tough on immigration. Alright, so we've talked about policy, we've talked about politics, you guys have talked for an hour, no one's left yet, which I find remarkable. Because the minute you put all the charts, I thought I wanted to go. I was the guy who was just looking for Uber. But now we have time for questions.

So if you have cards, you can bring the files. So if you bring the cards, you write them. What is it? They write on cards, and then I get the cards, and I ask the questions. I have a few right now. And you can ask me. Why are you racist? Why do you hate immigrants?

Why are you a xenophobe? That's so clever. Write that down and I will ask. It's a plan. You may even go for the stupid. I have a short answer to that. I'm going to use my wife's free speech to point out that Ann Coulter has made a career on racism. That Ann Coulter said Timmy, I mean, the man should have bombed the New York Times building.

That Ann Coulter said all terrorists are Muslim. After what happened in Dallas, do you still believe that? After what happened in Las Vegas, do you still believe that? You answer this right? Who is the crazy? The president. The president. The president.

And Colton, can you answer that? Do you still believe that all terrorists are Muslims? Look, I've paid you to be a plan to make liberals look stupid, and you've done your job. Now we're getting on. Thank you. We'll talk with some of you who are willing to oppose your racism. You've made a career on racist policies. Alright. Alright. Let me ask this question.

Here's a very... You can't paint on that. These are flashes. Ask this question here. Here's a very Oh Listen to someone who's not going to you racism. Matt Raynor? Matt? I'm going to say thank you. I don't know why we're having to listen to this. Okay, we'll get Matt. Because I'm done otherwise. I didn't come here and listen to him.

Let me ask one of these good questions here. These are good questions. Some of them are tough like that. I don't know. Thanks, I'm leaving. He's not out in 60 seconds. I'm saying thank you. I just want to hear if she has a cigarette.

It's like bringing a book box and a watch ticket. This is a very good question. I want to just ignore she has a cigarette. It's like bringing a group of cops and asking if this is a good station. I want to know. First question is... All right. Fill out your cards. Did they do that? All right. Fill out your cards. I know it seems quaint and 19th century, but that's how we're going to do it. First question. Someone asked, should I regret voting for Donald Trump?

No. No, no, no. I mean, I think we both, I mean, Mickey's apparently more favorable toward Trump right now than I am, but look, there's no other way to express these are the issues we care about. We've never been allowed to vote on this menu of issues before. I mean, it's like you're at a restaurant

and, oh, I'm sorry, no substitutions. You can only vote on these three issues. Finally, we got a chance to vote on a wall, an immigration moratorium, and the end of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Both Paul Ryan and Hilary were in favor of the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership, as was, again, Bernie Sanders. I liked Bernie more when he was a socialist than when he was a Democrat. He actually seemed to care about the working class. But no, like I say, there's no one else we could have voted for. I regret nothing about what I did. I would still 100% support him as much as I did.

He was saying all the right things. I mean, we can't control that he got into office and seems to have forgotten who brought him there. No, have you regretted voting for Donald Trump, Mickey Kapps? First Republican vote. No, I don't. Was that your first Republican vote, by the way? That's my first Republican vote.

Did you vote for Mondale? I may have voted for Senator Thomas Kekle in 1940. I did vote for Mondale. You know, Hillary every now and then pops up and meets with some globalists and says, oh, isn't it great that we forward-looking people are, you know, 49% of the American electorate, and we just lost to those backward-looking people. And then you realize, well, Trump isn't so bad after all. Good point. A little question.

Does the two-party system die? It's very hard for the two-party system to die with the electoral college because you've got to have enough votes to put together a majority of states. If there are three parties, the third party tends to get squeezed out. I do think both parties are in trouble. The Democrats are split left to right between the Bernie people and the Hillary people. The Republicans are split top to bottom between the Bernie people and the Hillary people. The Republicans are split top to bottom between the globalists and the populists. And as Tom Frank, a very good writer, T.A. Frank, for Vanity Fair put it,

if you could only get the populist Democrats and the populist Republicans together, you could control American politics. And the only issue separating that is immigration. And I just don't see this enough of the, maybe enough of the Sanders people would go over to immigration control, but certainly it's a tough sell. That's how Trump may have harmed our issues. I don't know. I got two questions. What did you just ask? Yeah, because the Democrats are more reluctant now to

Yeah, I mean, Harry Reid, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, as I say, Bernie Sanders, Barbara Jordan. This wasn't a left-right issue. Even Obama, early in his career and early in his presidential term, was

much more moderate. Yeah. But the hate Trump seems to have turned the idea of having a border and controlling who comes here and arms our working class and African-Americans and Hispanics. That seems to have become

like this creative, you know. He toxified the issue. That's the danger. I hope not. Can we get a little high-minded here? These are two questions that are very related, so I'll read them. How get a little high-minded here? These are two questions that are very related, so I'll read them. How can we make legal immigrants feel like they are part of the community here?

They are citizens. How do we make it less us against them and more we are one America? No, that's a great question. And by restricting immigration and going through the assimilation. And I think a lot less identity politics from the Democrats. I just hate this identity politics. The one, if this is the end of America, and Trump keeps none of his promises, the one good thing about what's going to happen is it's not only the end of the Republican Party, it's the end of the Democratic Party. I mean, if you look at what Democrats do you know about Bernie Sanders, all the ones I mentioned, Nancy Pelosi,

DiFi, Biden, Clinton, they're all one foot to the grave. That's because this is the end of white Democrats in the Democratic Party. For your future, look to California. A big line among immigration restrictionists, like myself, is from the president of Singapore, who was, about 10 years ago, he said, no immigration to Singapore. And he explained to, I think it was the Financial Times, he said, look, the problem with multicultural societies is

people stop voting their economic interests, they stop voting their social interests. They stop voting their social interests, and they vote their ethnic group. That's what you're seeing in California. You don't have like the Joe Biden working class Democrats against the progressive Kamala Harris Democrats. You have the Hispanic Democrats against the black Democrats. We're going to have the Muslim Democrats. The current mayor of LA is a Jew who ran by pretending to be a Mexican. It's all about your ethnic

group. So, ha ha, at least I'll be able to laugh at the end of the Democratic Party, too. But you end that identity politics where we're all Americans together. I agree with the questioner here, and this is how you do it. We are Americans together. Stop thinking in terms of – I mean, it's just weird how identity politics has gotten taken over our world.

Okay, follow-up question. As a son of immigrants who are legally immigrated here and is pursuing the American dream, what is it that makes you an American, Mickey? Is it being born on American soil? Is it shared values? The best answer to that question, and it's a surprisingly hard question, I've found is a speech by Abraham Lincoln, the so-called... I won't read it. I can find it. It's in there somewhere.

It's a so-called electric cord speech. I recommend it to everybody. It's a fantastic speech. I recommend it to everybody. It's a fantastic speech. He gave in 1858 where he basically was addressing the previous Native Americans who didn't like the next wave of late 19th century immigrants, the Poles and Germans. They didn't like the Germans. They were too new. And he said, look, they weren't here when the founding of the country, so don't be pissed

at them because they weren't here at the founding, but they are freedom-loving people. As long as you're a freedom-loving person, it's as if you were there at the founding. So it's shared values, freedom-loving people from all over the world should be able to come here. I do want to add that I think affirmative action and race preferences makes everybody much more race conscious and identity politics conscious than they otherwise would be and that also discourages assimilation. I don't know how many Latino professors I've talked to and their whole career is identity politics. They're going to mobilize some people

at their college and get an assistant professorship and then they'll get full professorship by just by being sort of a professional Latino. And you have to eliminate that. There's a question, a follow-up question for Anne. I'm actually a lot of these questions for Anne.

But I'm going to throw some in your way. I know they came for me. Come for Anne, stay for the charts. They had to come for and stay for the charts. In a recent op-ed, Anne, you said that, quote, there are plenty of vague descriptions of dreamers, all of whom seem to be valedictorians, but can anyone identify what they have attributed to this country other than lots of police work, welfare, and protests?

End quote. Going by that logic, do you think we should expel all Americans who take welfare and protest and get detained by police? Well, if they came here illegally, no reason to keep them. The law is, if you are, until you're a citizen, if you commit various crimes, it usually has to be more than a protest, but I don't know why we want to bring in more people to protest. That isn't really the way we do things in this country

which I described in my book Mugged and contrasted Martin Luther King with Thurgood Marshall Thurgood Marshall did it the American way we have a constitution, we have legal processes one of the things, and by the way Thurgood Marshall didn't like Martin Luther King because his approach was no, they've got a U.S. Constitution. I'm going

to sue to redeem these rights. And he did. And he won. That's how you do things in America which is why historically we haven't really had lots of protests on the street. That's really a third world thing. We'll get a lot more of it with the Dreamers.

To be fair, we had a war. A civil war. That's not a protest. That's a war. There wasn't a court case either. No, but you know what I'm talking about. The protests. That is how people think they

want to change things now. They just protest, throw just, you know, protest, throw bricks, Starbucks windows, and we're supposed to give in to the babies. No, we don't live in a dictatorship. It would be one thing if there were no way to express what you want

by voting, by, you know, lobbying and petitioning your representatives. We have a constitutional system. There really isn't a reason for these, for running out on the streets and breaking things or even not breaking things. Mickey, you're a 60s radical. Do you believe that?

Not quite. I do think the problem with pursuing things through the courts is the left is much better at pursuing things through the courts than other people. And they're more having, in my experience, left-wing judges are much more creative in terms of creating new rights. So if the only way to go is through the courts, we'll end up creating a lot of rights that maybe Anne and I don't like. So no. And also, I think the protests in the 60s were effective. I think they were effective in bringing an end

to the Vietnam War because people thought there's all this chaos. We can't stand this chaos. Yet the kids are riding are riding and breaking windows. It's not worth it. I think the same thing had an effect, a regrettable effect, in the 2000 election. I thought people, including the Supreme Court, thought if we decide this thing for Gore, those Republicans are going to go berserk and we won't be able to control it.

There was the famous bourgeois riot in Florida. I completely disagree with that. I have to agree with you on that. You lost your mind. Yeah, thank you. You think this report was afraid of Republican protests in 2000? No, the Republicans were angrier than the Democrats. And they thought the Speaker of the Florida House was going to recognize the election,

and then there was going to be a huge brouhaha that winds up with the President not being inaugurated by January 20th. It was just a whole mess. No, here's the thing about court cases, and it's not just court cases. I'm saying there are democratic processes. You can vote for Senate, for state legislature, for president, for initiatives, and so on. If you think we're bad at court cases, we're wrong. We're just protesting. But I want to correct

this 1960s saying, and I'm going to protest to change the world. No. Nixon won two landslides. He may have gotten himself impeached, but if you want to have the people felt and what was happening through democratic processes, he won in the landslide elections. He left Saigon in 74.

Right, but Nixon ran on abolishing the draft and vietnivizing the war so that it would tamp down the protests because American kids weren't being killed, and it did tamp down the protests, so the protests were important in terms of what policies

Nixon pursued. Time for a few more, right? Okay. This actually has your name here, Mickey. Ann and Mickey. What, in your view, are the benefits of being open to refugees? In other words, how does this help current American citizens?

Does it maintain soft power? Does it improve international image? Small business creation? What's the point? I think there's no point other than we are a generous and kind nation, but we're kind of tapped out right now. He said before that we take more refugees than any other country. We take more refugees than every other country in the world combined.

I mean, the Syrian refugees, why didn't Japan take like two? They literally, look it up, they took like three. Israel's a democracy and a function of democracy right there in the region. How many, I don't know, Google it. They didn't take like the number of what we've taken. We need a break. If we're going to, I think by and large yes we've done some bad things I won't be starry eyed about it but by and large America has been a force for good in the country, in the globe

when there's an earthquake, when people are starving when a Nazi comes to power, who's rushing in? It's not Mexico so if we don't save ourselves it's going to be a thousand years of darkness for the entire globe

not just for those of us who live here I think we just need a break you can help people where they are we can still be a generous country but as for I mean we can bring them in and they don't have to be refugees if they're actually contributing anything

that's good for the people already here any amount of refugees we think it's going to be a drop in the bucket compared with the global potential refugees, but it does, it is purported their values. I don't think it helps the society in terms compared with general immigration that much, but there's no reason why we can't do it. What annoyed me about the debate is this idea that international agencies can tell us how many and who we should take, and we have to somehow obey. I think we take who we want, and we probably want to take quite a few.

Let's just drill down a little bit on the specifics of immigration. This is a complicated question, but I think it is comparing the wall, the idea of building a wall with the tacit use of the Sonoran Desert as a means to systematically deter, mostly through threat, death and starvation and all these other things, to deter illegal immigration. So I guess this question is, why do you need a wall when you have this giant desert?

Well, obviously it's not working. But why would a wall work where there's a gigantic desert? Ask Israel. And plus, as I said, the wall saves lives. People now die in the desert because they're ticked. Why do we have fences around swimming pools? People will go and see there's no fence and go into the pool and drown. We have to fence it to prevent people from coming and meeting an untimely death.

And so the wall will deter people before they even think about crossing the border. So I think that's the reason. The media coverage is weird. They'll say, oh, the wall doesn't work. The wall doesn't work, asking border guards. And the border guards say, no, we really should hire more border guards to pay them more. Of course border guards are the same. And they'll interview smugglers, and they'll say, well, we have trouble going over that

wall. If they build that big wall, we're in really big trouble. The actual smugglers are actually sort of deterred by the law. The question was more regarding the human rights issue, less so about as an alternative to the wall, and more so about the human rights issue that comes with the fact that the U.S. government has knowledge and consistently denies while consistently supports

the use of the system. So the idea is that no one's really taking responsibility. So your argument is that the wall is more humane than Yeah, I think a desert's a very inhumane way to police your border.

A wall is much more humane. The other great thing about the wall is the wall doesn't deport anybody. So the wall just prevents future people from coming in. It doesn't separate families who are already here. Here's an economic question, though, which I think

is interesting. What about the demand for cheap labor, the demand side? So when the unemployment rate was much lower in the 90s and tight in California, that was when there was this huge surge of legal immigrants. And if you went and asked the manager in and out of Westwood why he had a sign saying $11 an hour, he said because he can't get anybody to work there, and that's why he needed illegal income. So this question refers to the poultry industry, like the chicken in Alabama. I know they close to the chicken dog. But the question is, why not punish the demand side to get better wages?

Well, I agree with that. That would be E-Verify, where we require employers to, it's actually the only government system that's ever been shown to work. You can check very quickly what an employee applies to find out if that person is here illegally or not. I'm all for that, and I would be very critical of, I am very critical of my own party on this. I thought Trump would be different because often the block to me verifying this, certainly Santorum, Paul Ryan, I mean, I can name so many Republicans, the employers come to the Republicans and say, no, no, no, no, we need the cheap labor.

When there's a labor shortage, there's an easy way of dealing with that. You raise the wages. That's exactly the point. I think Mickey and I have been making it over and over again. And I'd also say about one of the things that people get scammed with, this is where robots can be good. No individual farmer is going to spend a million dollars for a strawberry picking machine when none of his competitors are paying for that machine. Strawberries are one of the most difficult items to harvest. There is a machine that's a robot. It has four little cameras so it knows exactly when the strawberry is perfectly ripe. It picks it beautifully. When they did this to the

sugar growers in Florida, they got all these robots that would start doing the harvesting. It was faster. It was better. But no one is going to be the only guy in the industry to pay for the expensive machinery, which is why you need a federal law saying, no, you can't keep bringing in the cheap labor.

So a lot of the... It's kind of a fake issue. Oh, no, Americans will work for this amount of money. Okay, you've got the machine. Mickey, are you afraid of the strawberry robot? I'm for the strawberry robot, but we want employers to have to make hard choices. They would prefer immigrants who are great workers

and docile and scared of them because they might turn them in and we want to force them to take Americans who are maybe harder to get to work you have to pay them more, maybe they have a prison record, if you want people to get jobs out of prison, you have to control immigration otherwise nobody will ever

look at them a second time and so we want to suck in all these slightly less desirable Americans who are on the fringes of the labor market and force employers to hire them and pay them more money. There was a stunning figure that I saw, which was so good I don't really believe, that thanks to Trump's immigration crackdown, there are fewer farm workers and the farm workers' wage has risen from $11 to $16, which is just a gigantic life changing increase.

Too good to check, too good to check. Much too good to check. But the mystery, the 30 year mystery in America has been the periods of tight labor market, low unemployment, 4%, has not corresponded to a rise in wages. Right. And the wage should, if you were making a rise in wages. And the way it should,

if you were making a general economic calculation. And your argument is... My argument is there's so many people waiting in the wings and so many immigrants willing to come that employers do not yet have to raise wages across the border, or in some areas, like agriculture, apparently do. Follow-up question on that. Could that be the, not the result,

but the cause of when labor costs don't go up and don't chew up profit, could that be the cause of this huge froth you see at the corporate level of large companies, even large manufacturing companies, able to

combine and recombine and pay these giant fees to Goldman Sachs or whomever because in fact, one thing they know is that their labor costs will be stable or frozen. It certainly helps that. I don't know about the history of the economics you were just talking about, but I do know that when that home and this or that is frozen or whatever, I thought we were all just agreeing that what created this huge, fabulous, and really the most amazing middle class in America, which was mostly in California, a state that's gone now, was a huge, prosperous, affluent middle class.

Most of it. And I forget what percentage, but I won't say most. But American families that traveled to Europe was quite astronomical for their vacations. It's less than half that now. That is gone. And the period that produced that and yeah, there were a lot of problems in the 50s and 60s. This isn't

endorsing anything else other than the enormous and affluent middle class. That began with ratcheting way back on immigration. Can we just talk about racism for one minute?

During a Republican debate, you tweeted Can we just talk about racism for one minute? I guess not racism, more like anti-Semitism. During a Republican debate, you tweeted, and this is Ann, not me, how many, did you say effing, or did you actually spell it out? No, effing. Effing Jews do these people think we have here in the U.S. So can you speak to this tweet?

Yes, it was my most successful tweet ever. My argument was you have to follow my tweets as I am live tweeting. I was live tweeting the debate and complaining this was the second or third debate. It was the one at the Reagan Museum, and the last question for their final answer was, and by the way, I've been writing endlessly about, would Republicans stop talking about how much they love Reagan, how much they hate abortion. I forgot what the other ones were. These are positions all Republicans hold. We don't need to see who's more passionate about it. So anyway, for the final question, Ronald Reagan changed the

world by winning the Cold War. How will you. How will the world look different under you? And the first three answers, maybe more than that, were how much safer Israel was going to be. So I keep tweeting, how about America? It's Christie, it's Rubio. I've been denouncing them for constantly arguing about the same things. And because that got a lot of attention, I could have arranged the adjective.

It could have been, how effing many? It could have been, how many Jews do they effing think? But because it was able to be lied about, that's what happens when you live tweet. You just spend a lot of time pausing and thinking if your

words can be ripped out of context, because it got a lot of attention. That shut down the endless talks about Israel and we fought, and by the way, I love Israel, support Israel, I'm a Republican, you don't need to, I'm against abortion, we don't need to hear you guys debate it. Stop it, stop it. You've got to get,

meanwhile, they all disagree on immigration. And Rukio didn't get a question on his amnesty bill until until I think it was the sixth debate. The sixth debate? What, are we trying out for who's the best public speaker? Could you get them arguing about something they disagree on? So anyway, because that tweet got so much attention, that shut them down on practicing to see who was the best public speaker.

You're deflecting. You're an idiot. Nick, you did that tweet by the end. No. Ann has some horrifying views. That tweet was just a joke. She was like, who is she appealing to? Is she appealing to the Citrus Group?

That's insane. Why are they saying this? So, no. Alright, we've got to wrap it up a little bit. Last one? Really? Let's stop. There's some really good ones here. Let me ask

just two quick ones. We did a Trump one, but now this one I'm going to share with both of you. And based off of Twitter data analytics, you are considered a key influencer. Congratulations. But I would say so are you, Nikki. If you could ask President Trump's detractors, the ones that are also social media influencers, One question, what would it be?

Why do you keep running off on wild goose chases on Russia when there are serious things to attack him on? I would say, we're the stormtroopers. I can't even pass a budget. The last one I told you I was going to ask, so I apologize for the ones I can't get to. There's some good ones here. The opioid epidemic was good. You kind of touched on it.

They're good. These are good questions. And I would be remiss before we wrap. I do want to ask one last question, but I want to thank you guys up there. That's actually a useful protest, I guess. The one I was paying.

You went on a list holder. We got to wrap it up. You had a card. I get the last question. Sorry. And this is actually, I'm actually building into this question. Show hosts and plumbers on MSNBC and Fox both attack each other and say completely different things. College campuses are becoming exceedingly dangerous spaces to even listen to views. They may be different from one's own.

Where are the moderate voices? How is anyone supposed to know who to believe or where to get their information? How can the left and right find common ground? That is a beginning of the question I wanted to ask you guys because you are friends. know who to believe or where to get their information? How can the left and right find common ground? That is a beginning of the question I was going to I wanted to ask you guys because you are friends. And you were friends before Mickey went through this bizarre odyssey where

he became incredibly arch-rague-man. Yeah. Is that possible now? I mean, it feels to me like in the world today, if you have opposing views, if you differ on Trump even specifically, that's it. I notice when I tweet an Andy Trump thing, my Twitter followers go down, because people don't want to hear Andy Trump things in my Twitter feed. In fact, the only time anybody gets any fish in my Twitter feed at all is when Ann retweets me.

And then it has the bonus effect that it goes into Trump's Twitter feed, because Trump only follows like 25 people, and I am one of them. So my tweet is on his Twitter feed. But unfortunately, there's no evidence he actually reads his Twitter feed. Do you have any friends who are still on Reconstruction? Yeah, I mean, I understand the laughter. People are so pissed off about Trump that they don't want to talk to me about politics anymore.

Do they want to talk to you about being friends? Seven. Have you lost more friends from being pro-Trump than you did from being in favor of welfare reform in the 90s? Oh, yes. It was hip to be for welfare reform in the 90s. Oh, yes. He was hip to be for welfare reform in the 90s. Among a certain group of people.

No, yes. I've lost a lot of friends. Anne, what do you think? I think a lot of it is fake hysteria. Mickey's totally right about the networks. We are friends, and I am friends with

liberals. Now, Mickey knows a lot more liberals and we are much more hardcore liberals, I guess. But I'm friends with a surprising number of liberals and liberal reporters. And most of the ones that I'm friends with are perfectly honest. Some of the ones that I'm friends with are perfectly honest some of the ones that we all know I know they're just doing it to get on to be on TV because you do kind of have to be I don't think that's true

I really think all the cable news stations are underestimating their audience I mean I'm getting the sense right now that unless I am balls to the balls for Trump and I'm going to be part of the Cro-Magnon crew of its 3D chess, that, you know, that's going to limit my appearances on Fox News. And I mean, at least with conservatives, and I think with a liberal audience, I think some nuance is possible.

I mean, I don't know why MSNBC, for example, couldn't have on people saying, you know, can we just admit that immigration really does hurt the working class and that Bernie Sanders is right on this? And can't Fox News people say, Trump ran on gray issues. We supported him for the issues he ran on, but he's not doing it. So if he does it, we'll say, well, what do I say? I'll be his biggest defender. I'm ferocious when I'm on your side. But until he does it, why

can't Fox be critical of him? And now I don't know that they're not, but this is just a very strong sense I have. I think that they're underestimating the audience. I think people can't understand that. And college campuses, I mean, at least from strong sense I have. I think that they're underestimating the audience. I think people can understand that. And college campuses, I mean, at least from what we've seen, I think it is not the smart liberals. I think it's just people who like throwing bricks.

You want me to add to that? Yeah, I do. I've had young people here, right? The problem with moderates is moderates are boring, right? The problem with CNN is CNN is boring. CNN tried to be in the middle. They're not moderates. No, but they shifted to the left to try to become more popular.

They're still boring. So that's sort of the problem. The deeper problem is I don't know where to go to find news anymore that I trust. I used to go to Drudge, but now he's palling around with Jared Kushner and I don't

quite completely trust him. I don't trust the New York Times. Maybe the Wall Street Journal is a little better but it's hard to it's hard to even find a sort of a pole to hang on to

a framework to hang on to that's I think the deeper difficulty we're all reasonable people we can always have an argument do you think we still can't have an argument? yes, not in California LA is worse LA is so much worse We can always have an argument. Do you think we still can't have an argument? Yes. Not in California. L.A. is worse.

L.A. is so much worse. It did strike me that what Peter Thiel said, he was leaving Silicon Valley, was just too much of a monoculture, and he was going to go to the diverse culture of L.A. Do you believe that two people who differ on essential politics could be friends? Oh, yeah, no, absolutely. And I think California is an unusual case. I think there is not another state that has people as active in politics who are as ignorant.

There's really something special about California. Yeah, yeah, it's weird. But in other states, I think in real life, I mean, I don't want to be destroying reputations, but I do. I know lots of liberals. And no, we have a lovely time. I lost one

friend through the whole Trump thing. Republican never Trumper. And the good news was all my other friends always hated him and I was always the one saying, oh come on, it's not that bad, he's funny, isn't he? And then, you know, he's the one who breaks up with me. Hallelujah! I don't have to, you know, justify bringing you along to dinner anymore. But only one friend of everyone I know. Mickey Kaus, Annie Coulter,

thank you very much. Thank you. It was a honor to have you guys speaking and talk about these issues that are really challenging our day. We're having events next month. We'll be hosting Dennis Prager, alum of Columbia, and we also will be hosting James O'Keefe.

So stay tuned, look at the emails, and come to those events as well. Thank you again. Thank you for being here.