The Ricochet Podcast - Curtain Call

Episode Date: September 14, 2018

This week on the podcast, silly political controversies, a good old fashioned smear campaign, some expert analysis from Millennial voter expert Kristin Soltis Anderson, we visit New Hampshire’s 1st District to check in on Republican candidate Eddie Edwards, CBS CEO Les Moonves gets #MeToo’d, and guess which podcast host actually defends the President in this podcast? The answer will surprise you. Source

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teared down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Lonn. I'm James Lileks. Today we talk to millennial pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson and New Hampshire congressional candidate Eddie Edwards. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number 412. No, 416. We finally got our numbers in order. Welcome. It's brought to you by the fine people at Boll & Branch. You know, the right sheets can take your sleep and your style to the next level. And with Boll & Branch, that upgrade has never been more affordable. Go to BollandBranch.com. That's spelled B-O-L-L-andBranch.com and use the promo code RICOSHET to get $50 off your first set of

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And we're brought to you by Ricochet itself. And here once again is Ricochet's Director of Technical Operations, Max Ledoux, speaking through his Sherry Lewis-like meat puppet, Rob Long. Yeah, yeah, this one's going to be really rough. Look, as you know, as you're listening to this podcast, we do these things and we hope that you join ricochet.com and a lot of people stop me on the street and say hey i'm gonna join or i i was gonna join or i'm gonna join today um and and then they don't they forget about it i know people are listening to me right now and have their idea that they're gonna do it i'm gonna do it this is this weekend i'll do it please do. We actually really do need you. We need to expand. We need to add some titles here because we need to get bigger.

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Membership levels start at $2.50 per month. If you just want to support the podcast, you're already listening to those for free. Or $5 a month, which is nothing basically. per month if you just want to support the podcast you're already listening to those for free or five dollars a month which is nothing basically if you want to write your own post and join the community and become a member along with us so join today ricochet.com join we've got swagger we've also got swag in the store and that's what mike pompeo says about american diplomacy we've got swagger on the world stage again all thanks to donald trump this is not true the greatest presence george washington that is kind of an abomination to say now there was a man with swagger george washington that's

exactly wrong max george washington was famous for not having swagger if he had swagger he'd be called king george the first of the kingdom of the united states george washington listens to rickshay podcast he would listen to rickshay podcast so there you go ricochet.com join i will say one more thing um ricochet uh the the site and the members uh sometimes it's light sometimes it's funny sometimes it's personal sometimes it's uh polemical uh and sometimes it gets really really deep and there are exchanges on ricochet.com that are um thoughtful and learned and um, incredibly well-written and passionate. And that is the best of American democracy. That's the best of American society. That's how we started, smart people exchanging letters. So please join Ricochet.com, $2.50 a month.

If you want to just do the podcast level or $5 per month, if you want some more goodies, we actually really do need you and what sums up the conservative side better than the founder being unable to actually read the membership bitch without having an internal argument I thought that was absolutely fascinating for free we got Rob

to write dialogue we got himself talking back yeah talking to myself then we got a little soliloquy I thought I thought we were in theilton we were in the theater pretty good i could well at least we do have that debate peter welcome back um the debate the debates this week uh within the republican party are are myriad but i think we can agree that the republic that the democrat side seems to be pretty much unified when it comes to saving the republic from the reign of terror, horror, oppression, tyranny that will come if Kavanaugh is elected. And hence, any tactic is fine.

So isn't this – Diane Feinstein, if you regarded her as some sort of moral avatar before, perhaps she's fallen in your estimation with her last little salvo against Kavanaugh? Somebody out here where I live, because I live in the district represented by Anna Eshoo. Somebody sent a letter to Anna Eshoo, Congresswoman, Democratic, very Democratic Congresswoman Anna Eshoo. Somebody sent a letter to her, which she forwarded to Dianne Feinstein. And now it leaked. It was all not the letter, as far as I can tell, not the text of the letter itself, but somehow or other, the content seemed to have leaked and they're not being denied. So I think we know with some certainty what the contents of the letter were. And the contents were that at a party, when they were both high school students, the letter writer got locked in a room for some period of time, brief period of time, as part of a prank by Brett Kavanaugh and one of Brett Kavanaugh's buddies at a high school party.

And she managed to get out of the room and there was no damage done. One and 40 years later, she's writing a letter to a congresswoman who's forwarding it to Dianne Feinstein, who is making ominous statements about it and saying that she can't release it, but she's forwarding it to the FBI. I mean, perhaps if I had been Brett Kavanaugh's, actually, not perhaps, for sure. I've had three boys now who've been 17 years old. I would have given them a very stern talking to and made them call the girl in person in question and apologize. But I mean, 40 years ago, the 17 year old Brett Kavanaugh. Ridiculous.

What's crazy about it also is that it it is so obviously desperate and so obviously over the top that the only thing it's going to do is devalue and discredit the theory of the – I guess the Me Too movement or whatever that Dianne Feinstein I'm sure is a chief acolyte of. The idea that – I mean what this side has never quite grasped is the damage they did to their own cause by fully embracing bill clinton delayed all this reckoning i mean i you know i don't believe that uh these you know brett kavanaugh is very different this is very very tame but i don't believe that all these guys saying hey listen uh you know this was 20 years ago 20 years ago i don't think it's a coincidence that they they that they believed by living through the 90s that they had a pass on this kind of – I'm not speaking about Brett Kavanaugh's behavior, but this sort of – what Dianne Feinstein is probably alleging in her – in the cobwebs of her mind is that this is just like Harvey Weinstein or just like Leslie Moonves or just like whoever else is in the news today.

And of course that's just ludicrous. And all it does is devalue the currency. So it's this very, very strange kind of desperate action when the math is really clear. The math is clear. Brett Kavanaugh is going to be a Supreme Court justice. And it just seems very strange to me that in this death spiral, they're going to try to bring down all of their credibility along with it. It just seems just dumb politics. But they don't see it as that.

What they see it as is ensuring that every subsequent action that he makes is illegitimate. He's already illegitimate because Merrick Garland should have the seat. Right. And now that he's a criminal and a sexual predator and has been accused and convicted, I believe, of lying. Right. And believes also in the abortion producing, that the pill is an abortion. All of these things that are being said by Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, et al., are not meant to derail him.

They're meant to completely delegitimize every action and put an asterisk after everything that he does. And yet you can't, but that's why I find it so silly because you can't do that. It's a lifetime appointment. You don't leave. And it didn't work with Clarence Thomas. Correct. It didn't work with any of their – of the great boogeymen that they hold up as the great evils of conservative jurisprudence.

It didn't work with any of that. It's just bad politics. That's true. But what it does is it helps everybody on that side feel so good about themselves. That's true. It restores and centers them as the moral point of view. Can I make another data point? Oh, go ahead.

No, no. Everything the two of you are saying is true. I remain baffled about this, because among the three of us, for sure, Rob Long would be easy to pick off and maybe James could be persuaded as well. If only, right, the only argument for Donald Trump for voting for him, I who voted for him will tell you again and again, the only argument for Donald Trump was Hillary Clinton. Now here we are almost two years into it. Where is one Democrat, one, standing up and saying, this has gone too far. The American people are not with either side here. They're not with that extreme or that extreme. And I don't care who's funding the writing the biggest checks to the Democratic Party right now. When that vote comes to the floor i intend to vote for brett kavanaugh to the supreme court he and i may have our differences i certainly would not

want a democratic president to have nominated him but he was duly nominated he falls well within the range of acceptability well qualified yes well qualified as even the american bar association they gave him their top rating whereas whereas one Democrat, one, sounding like a grown-up, the press would run to that Democrat, the polling data would start, and Rob Long would be given the opening monologue about that Democrat. Where is he? Where is she? Where?

That's what makes it so strange, is that the market opportunity is so enormous for a Democrat, for a moderate Democrat to scoop up the center and the people who say Trump is too rude or boorish for me. The opportunity is so giant. All you have to do is give up your weird fringe leftiness. And the other data point I would just say is that I don't think it's going to happen. There were Democrats crowing on Election Day, which was yesterday in New York, about the massive turnout. There was massive turnout. And people are saying this is the best thing ever. It shows what has drawn election.

And a massive, massive turnout which is you don't normally expect and democrats are using this some democrats in new york city in new york state we're using this as an indication of the the the energized attitude of democrats but what that really means is that they all live and vote and are energized in brook in New York. And the Empire State is going to go D no matter what. The challenge for Democrats is to get out the vote not just of Ds but of Rs and Is in places like Minnesota and Wisconsin and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Florida. And that's really, really hard. And you can't do that if you keep screaming about what happened at a party at a high school uh a party 40 years ago from a guy who everybody recognizes as a decent guy you can't do

that you need to be normal and being normal is the trick to american politics today well it might be possible that there's somebody out there who is just biden his time sorry uh no i think you're absolutely right i think you're absolutely right. I think you're absolutely right. And he'll be tanned, rested, and ready. Hey, if you want to be rested as well, you know that there's three important words for getting a good night's sleep, and that's comfortable, comfortable, and comfortable. If you want the best sleep of your life, you need to be comfortable.

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Promo code Ricochet. And our thanks to Bolan Branch for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. Stop. Oh, I think you should. Absolutely. Do it. All right. All right. So are we on right now? Okay.

Well, boys, you just mentioned Joe Biden. I want to announce right now. I'm pretty sure he's going to announce for president. He's going to run for president. I'm going to need help. In fact, I may even need therapy. As you may recall, way, way back at the beginning of the summer, Blue Yeti and I flew over to Copenhagen, Denmark, where I moderated a panel and we shot some episodes of Uncommon Knowledge. And I came backstage after moderating this panel

with the former prime minister of Spain and the former president of Estonia and several other former this former president of Mexico. And I walked right into Joe Biden and Joe Biden shook my hand and he said, was that you moderating out there? And I said, yes, Mr. Vice president was through gritted teeth because of course I'd never met him and I wanted to dislike him. And he said, you know, you were really good. And I said, no, no, no, no, no, really. I was trying to work on my speech, but I kept listening. And that's hard to do.

You were really good. OK, this went on for a few minutes. Imagine how conflicted I felt and how confused I still feel about sort of finding myself warming to Joe Biden for the craven flattery. He's a professional. That's what they do. Really good ones can do that. Bill Clinton could do that. George W. Bush could do that. Absolutely.

Anyway, so – Did you ever meet Clinton? No, thank goodness. I never met Clinton, partly because – I mean I had a couple opportunities, but I thought everybody seems to fall for this guy. If Newt Gingrich walked away from his first encounter with Bill Clinton dazed, I just don't even want to do it. There's a reason why he was president twice. There's a reason why he was a successful general election politician, which is an extremely hard thing to do. It's like winning five grand slams in a row. I mean the good ones are really, really good. And you know what? Even the bad ones –

It's like the Kurt Reynolds story from last week. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The big stars are always charming. That's what they do. And even the bad ones, right? Even the ones we kind of like roll our eyes at. Michael Dukakis ran in 88, got trounced by George H.W. Bush. You think, well, he was a loser, right? No, Michael, I met Michael Dukakis a couple of times. He was incredibly

charming. He was at the top of his game. He just wasn't at the tippy top. But it's really, if you don't respect that, and you don't, even in a political opponent then you're doomed to lose because that is a very very important thing if you have charm you uh uh you can i mean you know even people who hate donald trump say he's personally can be really really charming and really really funny no one says that about hillary clinton there's a reason bojack

horseman keeps getting work i was thinking last night about Vladimir Posner, who used to be a Soviet. Oh yeah. Had a drink with him once. Absolutely charming fellow. Just really interesting. I mean, just had that natural charisma and you walk away from that saying,

well, Vlad's kind of a friend of mine. Oh, that's right. He's a mouthpiece for an evil society. Yeah. You know, but he would say that our people,

of course are, you know, our commentators are themselves mouthpieces for our society which has its faults and you have to nod and say well yes we do have our fault but yes we're better than they there is there is one you mentioned the last point here while we're on charm and the limits thereof someplace in his diaries, Harry Truman, after meeting Stalin at Potsdam, writes in his diary, so help me, but I like the son of a bitch. Okay. Can I tell one more story?

I know you got to go, but here's the story. We used to tell this joke about a comedy writer traveling in the Amazon deep in the forest, and you come out, and there's a little area there, and there's a house, and Hitler is living in the forest and you come out and there's a little area there and there's a house and Hitler is living in the house. He's an old man but he's still Hitler, recognizably Hitler with the mustache and everything, the brown shirt and all that stuff. And you see him and you say, you're an evil monster and I will be my great pleasure in life. One of my greatest honors is to drag you back to civilization so you can stand trial for your crimes, and I hope they hang you by your neck until you're dead. And he says, I'm really sorry to hear that. I understand it. But by the way, I really loved your last show.

And then you say, well, you know, let's not get hasty. And then eventually you leave the Amazon, you leave Hitler there in his little hut because he said a nice thing about your show. That's, you know, I don't know. We're human, I guess. We're also Craven. We're also Craven.

Speaking of Craven, James, I'm so sorry. We need to introduce a guest. And now we welcome to the podcast, Kristen Soltis Anderson. She's an ABC News political contributor, columnist at the Washington Examiner, and the co-host of The Pollsters, a bipartisan weekly podcast. In 2014, Anderson was a resident fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics, and her research on

millennial attitudes has been featured in the New York Times Magazine. She regularly speaks to audiences of corporate leaders and public officials about how to reach that millennial generation, and we're happy to have her here because we're terrified about the youth of America, Kristen. They seem to love socialism. They don't understand the wonderful boon of capitalism that has given everything that they love. And now, if you look at BuzzFeed, boy, are they in the mood for some violent redistribution, but the kind sort, right? With, you know, pumpkin spice lattes. So are we holding millennials responsible for pumpkin spice lattes? Man, millennials are playing for everything these days. My gosh. No, no, no. I'm not blaming them for it. I think it's a marketing tool that has been foisted upon them. And they're smart enough

to know when they're being had on this and they're turning against it. That's the good thing about millennials. But they seem as a whole to be uniquely credulous, or so we're told, when it comes to socialism. I mean, we're being told it's the next big thing. You take surveys of them, and only 42% of them want to live under capitalism, and the rest of them are saying, yay, European-style, wonderful socialism. Is that right? Or are they more diverse than the media would have us tell? So I think they're more diverse than the media would have you believe. I think their ideas of what socialism is differ greatly from those of anyone who has studied history.

But also, I think there has been a complete abdication of responsibility on the part of the right to make the case for markets to this generation in the first place? So first, on the question of, are millennials socialists? The good news is that I think a lot of young people, the way they're living their consumer lives, they expect things very quickly. They expect things very directly. They expect to be able to have their voice heard. They expect accountability, transparency, a whole bunch of things that you can get from the free market, but you cannot get from socialism. So the good news is that their preferences in terms of the way they live their lives do not at all align with socialism. I think, however, when they think of socialism, they are thinking Sweden, not the Soviet Union.

And that's a big challenge because when you look at a country like Sweden, which has a lot of government intervention, very high redistributive tax rates, a big welfare state, it is still nonetheless a market economy. Communism did not produce the Ikea bookshelf you just built in your house. So I think, you know, there are a lot of young people when they hear socialism, that's just a code word in their minds for a generous welfare state, which is not the same thing as what socialism actually is. Hey, Kristen, it's Rob Long. Thank you for joining us.

So you first said like the millennials' idea of socialism isn't an impression that comes out of a study of what socialism has meant in world history. Isn't that because they haven't learned any history? a study of what socialism has meant in world history. Isn't that because they haven't learned any history? I mean they went to school when at that point they're young. They don't teach history anymore in any meaningful way. It's all Native American dances and stuff like that, right? I mean how would they know anything about history if they weren't taught it? I don't think that that's – I don't think that's entirely the case.

I don't think that our public education system is quite as useless as you've just portrayed it. I mean, look, I'm a millennial. But has it betrayed socialism as bad? I am a millennial. I came out of the public school system. And part of why I am a conservative is because I was taught about the Cold War in the 10th grade.

And I walked away from it thinking that Margaret Thatcher was the good guy in that whole story. So some of us can come out of our public schools and end up in the right place. Okay. I agree. I'm sort of the same way. I'm no millennial, but I'm Gen X.

But I was taught that the Cold War – I was taught a lot about the Cold War, but mostly that it was our fault. And Thatcher was crazy, and Reagan was going to blow us up in a nuclear Armageddon so when that didn't happen i had to sort of rethink a lot of different things but okay uh so i take your point i was just being sort of you know no i know but i will always old people are always criticizing millennials right i mean isn't that kind of what we do for sure for sure and and this is part of why i think the right has as i said abdicated its responsibility to make the case for markets or for why socialism is bad to young people. About 10 years ago, I started studying this topic and started seeing the hints of this really scary data that showed young people were pretty far to the left. And every time that

I'd mention it, hey, they're all going to vote for Democrats. Hey, they don't like the Republican Party. Hey, they don't like free markets. What I'd hear was, well, you know what? They'll get older. They'll get jobs. They'll have kids. They'll buy homes. And this will solve itself. And now the millennial generation, they're in their mid-30s. They have homes. They have jobs.

They have kids. And they're still just as progressive as when they were in college, googly-eyed over a soon-to-be President Obama. So the right, I think, just sort of said, well, these kids are unsalvageable. We don't need to reach them. They'll all just naturally come around to the joys of the free market when they realize they have to pay taxes. And that has not happened. And so I think the sort of lack of attempting to reach this generation on the part of the right has meant that we've just ceded the ground to whoever is teaching young people about politics, and they're not always friendly to our views. Okay, can I – I know Peter wants to jump in. I just want to ask you to thread this needle for me because I'm curious about this. It comes from an anecdote. I was talking to a younger friend of mine, and I was making the standard kind of like roll my eyes, talk about millennials, and he – and I used the term entitlement and entitlement the sense of entitlement and he sort of stopped me and kind of was angry and said hey i've worked a job

my almost my entire life i mean from the moment i was legally able to work i started working at 15 and worked had always had an after-school job, always had to earn my own money. Everyone I know in my cohort – and he's just now 30. So everyone in that cohort, they're all millennials. They all have jobs. They are all incredibly thrifty. They use every possible deal and coupon and they're always searching for the best deal. They're incredibly smart consumers and they are very thrifty.

They were came smart consumers and they are very thrifty and they were sort of – they were – came of age. They were turfed out of college right at the financial collapse. And so on the one hand, you have some millennials who behave financially, economically like depression era young people. And then you have some other millennials who were sort of bicycle helmets and participation bicycle helmets and participation trophies. And where's my, why is my boss being mean to me? Who are these people? I mean, are they, are they actually reachable in any meaningful way? Or are you suggesting that those, that, that way we just let go and we just redouble our efforts on the 18 year olds now coming out? Well, I, I, for a long time, I thought there was a chance for us to reach the millennial generation for exactly the reasons you described.

The millennials that give millennials a bad name are a very small slice that are dramatically overrepresented in industries like media and politics. Because people who come from fairly privileged backgrounds and graduated from Ivy League schools, they tend to be really overrepresented in the fields of media and politics. So you think about young people who, you know, like pajama boy from the Obama ad about, you know, have a cup of cocoa and talk to your parents about Obamacare. Like that's not the norm. Most have come of age in an era that was really tough financially. When you look at things like how are millennials investing their money, most keep their money in cash because they're risk averse and they don't trust the stock market. They think it's important to save. As you described, kind of a

depression era light view of personal finance. So there were huge opportunities, whether it's talking about decentralized power and accountability and transparency and things you don't get from government but you can get from the private sector. Huge opportunities there that I worry have been missed because once someone votes for a particular political party a couple of times, they tend to be pretty locked into that view. It's very hard to change someone's mind. So while I don't think that it is impossible, I think that the right has wasted a lot of time by ignoring a generation that could have been won back. And now they have voted for Democrats election after election after election. Sort of turning the ship around is just going to be much harder at this point than it would have been had the right started doing this work 10 years ago. Kristen, Peter here. So you're saying voting for Democrats is addictive and maybe

we should run an ad showing fried eggs and the caption, this is your brain as a Democrat. Well, voting for any political party is addictive. Voting itself is a habit forming behavior. It's why you see, for instance, people who came of age during the Reagan era are now more likely to be Republican than those who came before or after them. Like there was a big, you know, Republican wave that sort of cascaded through the years as that cohort aged. So this is a thing that happens not just with Republicans, not just with the elections. Okay. Just under eight weeks until the midterm elections. You want to call it? How does it look for Republicans in the House and in the Senate?

Doesn't look great in the House. If you'd asked me six months ago, I would have said, hey, things are looking a little better. You know, say what you will about the tax reform bill. I think it is unmistakable that you look at it passed and Republicans went from numbers that looked terrible to numbers that looked not quite so terrible and spent most of 2018 in a place where the president's job approval was above 40%. The generic ballot was Republicans were losing, but by single digits, which isn't great, but isn't complete catastrophe territory. We come back from after August recess, and suddenly the president's job approval is back below 40 percent. Generic ballot numbers are looking particularly grim.

And you're seeing individual district polling that is looking rough for a lot of incumbents. Bear in mind that Republicans, of all of their members, 23 of the Republicans in Congress come from districts that Hillary Clinton won two years ago. And that was with Democrats who are less enthusiastic than they are this election. And Democrats only need to win 24 seats to take the House. So the math is just really ugly on that side. The Senate's a little better because you have so many Democrats up for reelection in states where Trump won, the sorts of places where you may have voters that go, hey, Heidi Heitkamp, why are you going to vote against Brett Kavanaugh, that sort of thing. So even in a year that looks ugly for Democrats, the individual state level incentives are such

that the Senate is a real big question mark. You have still only a question mark, though. I thought you were going to say the Senate is still relatively safe for the GOP. But no. So what's what's strange about the Senate is that Republicans could be picking up seats in a place like Florida, where Bill Nelson has been pretty negligent about not campaigning or building a good political operation that has left him vulnerable to a challenge from a reasonably popular Governor Rick Scott. But Republicans might lose a Senate seat in ruby red Tennessee because Marsha Blackburn, the nominee there, just doesn't have great favorables in the state, while the Democratic nominee is sort of fashioned himself as a conservative to moderate Democrat and has quite good favorability

in the state. Likewise, Arizona. Likewise, Arizona, the Democrat is just a more attractive candidate. So, I mean, I think in that case, you have someone who is a very progressive Democrat who has tried to fashion herself to be more moderate, where in Tennessee, I think former Governor Phil Bredesen, like he actually has more of those moderate credentials to go on. But the reason why I just say question mark for the Senate is because there are so many moving pieces that where individual personalities have the potential to defy either the red tint of a state because Trump won it or the blue wave that may be coming this year. Okay. So let me ask you about three races almost going in order of – well, just in order of increasing intensity of interest on my part. How's that? Totally self-indulgent questions here.

Go for it. North Dakota. Heidi Heitkamp versus – oh, goodness. Now the name of her Republican challenger escapes me. But the Democrat is the incumbent. Wins or loses in North Dakota? I think she is among one of the most vulnerable. I think in part because North Dakota is not just a red state, but it's a very red state.

And so I think if I have heard rumblings that internal polling there is is very bad for her, very good for the Republican. OK, on to Missouri, on to Missouri, where the incumbent Claire McCaskill is the Democrat and she is being challenged by the attorney general, Josh Hawley, young, attractive Republican. How do you call that one? I think McCaskill may have a slight edge here, if only because she is not just a first term senator running for reelection. She's been around for a long time. She's been quite vulnerable because she, you know, you may have heard of Air Claire, the private jet that kind of follows her around and such. But in that one, I feel like she's the type who could get a political operation to find a way to hang around. Okay, so so far you're saying in North Dakota, which Republicans should pick up, they probably will.

In Missouri, which Republicans were hoping to pick up, you're saying, eh, kind of doubt it. Now here we go. Texas, where Ted Cruz is running against Beto O'Rourke, a young and apparently very dynamic Democrat. And I have to say I am astonished by how close that race seems to be. Your thoughts on that one, Kristen? I think part of it is that Ted Cruz's favorables are not great. And part of that's driven by Republicans who are still not necessarily huge fans of his. Remember what all went down about two years ago during the Republican primary.

Ted Cruz put himself on the opposite side of Donald Trump. I personally wonder if people still remember that, if that's driving some lower favorables or some lower enthusiasm. But I also think this is exactly the type of race that is primed for being overhyped by the media. I don't think it's, I think it's troubling that so many Republican groups feel the need to now go in there with money. And I think it's also noteworthy that in the 2016 election, Texas and Ohio voted about the same. They were both red states in the same measure. Texas has been a long-term thing Democrats have wanted to win, and it keeps being loosey with the football. They keep trying.

They keep failing. I don't know if this time around – I think it's going to be loosey with the football again, but I think longer term – I have long been preaching Republicans need to wake up about demographic change and be prepared for a state like Texas to be harder and harder to win in the future. I bet you Ted Cruz hangs on, but it should never have been this close. Well, Christian, I mean, you have to admit that Beto is tremendously charismatic. He skateboarded, he shredded it in the parking lot, and there's a picture of him with a guitar. These things, I mean, there's no way that Ted Cruz can compete with that. It goes back. Oh, hey, allow me a brief defense there.

I know the Texas GOP tweeted out a picture of him from his band. As someone who was in a band 10 years ago and tried to scrub all of that off the Internet, I look forward to that being used against me in a political campaign one day. Actually, I read about his band. It sounds like he actually had some legitimately talented musicians with him, like a vocalist from the Mars Volta and things like this. So while I'm not necessarily rooting for him to win the Texas Senate seat, going after someone because they're in a band, that is just silliness.

Well, you know, the thing of it is, is that Bill Clinton put on shades and played the saxophone and realigned politics for a generation because all of a sudden, oh, my gosh, this big Southern bubba, he's actually cool. I can be cool. I feel cool voting for him, which is a big part of this. I mean, you go back to your metier, the millennials, and when you said that it becomes addictive to vote for a particular group, you get locked into it. Your brain sort of rewires to accept what the one side is saying. Is there any way that the GOP or the right can master the tools of getting to this generation? Because they're not speeches and they're not ads.

It's meme culture. It's stuff that bubbles up from Reddit. It's a whole different way of communicating that seems lost on people who are kind of lawyerly and boring and white bread. This is the thing that astonishes me perhaps the most about the last two years of politics. If you had told me that the Republican Party was going to nominate in 2016 a candidate who is extremely savvy on social media, who used it frequently as his primary means of communicating his message, who understood the medium well,

I would have been like, wow, who do we nominate? You know, but I think just understanding the medium is not enough. You also have to have a message. I mean, we have a president who gets how social media works, but it's not a message that is rallying tons of young people to the GOP. So you've got to have both. You can't just have a good message but deliver it through old channels. You can't just get the new channels but have a message that is out of step with where young people are.

I think when it comes to social media, he's a one-off. It's almost impossible for somebody to duplicate the tone, the style of what he does there. So, yeah, he may get it, but what lessons others take from it, we'll see. And we'll look forward to hearing what you have to say about it again. We'll see you on ABC News. We'll see you in the Washington Examiner. And we can't wait for another book to follow your last, The Selfie Vote, where millennials are leading America and how Republicans can keep up.

Kristen Soltis Anderson, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. Thank you for having me. Kristen, thanks. Thank you. Even though the news was grim. Sorry, I'm the angel of death, but I feel like I often am. Well, if the angel of death sounds like that, you know, the quietest that awaits us all may not be so bad. That was grim, but it was charming to listen to.

Well, thanks, guys. Have a good one. Let me know if I can ever be helpful again. We'll have you on again. All right. And by the way. Oh, that's fine. I will hang up.

No worries. Okay. Bye, guys. Three, two, one. Yeah, I want to read that book. And there's a lot of books like that that you probably want to read. There's no time to read those books whatsoever. James, you don't have time to read that book?

Come on. No, the list of books you want to read. People suggest read this, read that. It's never-ending. It's never-ending, and it's always expanding. There's no solution. There's no solution. It's like Netflix.

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He's the former chief of police for the town of Southampton, New Hampshire, and he's the Republican nominee for U.S. Congress from New Hampshire's 1st District. He's a Navy vet, a graduate of the FBI's National Academy at Quantico, Virginia, and he spent a career in law enforcement before moving to the private sector and launching a business. That's quite a resume, and it seems that New Hampshire would be out of their minds not to give this guy a chance, a shot. But you're running against somebody who's called for Donald Trump's impeachment. So how is that playing exactly in New Hampshire? Well, you know, I'm in the district, actually, where the president won.

The president won CD1. Our U.S. Senate candidate won CD1, and our governor, of course, won CD1. We lost the congressional seat. And so my opponent's opinion is not in line with the voters of CD1. Eddie, Peter Robinson here. As I understand the district, obviously you're going to have a much better grasp of this than I do. But Congressional District 1, there are two congressional districts in New Hampshire. And Congressional District 1 is over on the eastern side of the state.

So you've got Portsmouth, but by far the biggest town is going to be Manchester, correct? Yes, Manchester. Okay. And did Donald Trump carry Manchester? I don't believe he carried Manchester. We haven't had most Republican candidates do not carry Manchester. The key to victory here is not being blown out of Manchester. That's the key. So if you keep it close to Manchester, because the surrounding communities are strong Republican communities that surround the city. And we believe that we could make a strong dent, possibly win Manchester. So we're really fighting to win Manchester this time around, because we believe our message of more family and less government works. We believe most people want less government

in their lives and they want more family control in their communities. And how are you campaigning? Are you spending a lot of your time in Manchester to try to control that negative vote? Oh, absolutely. We're really going to make a solid push in Manchester. That's where our focus is. As you know, New Hampshire, this is much more retail politics. People like when you show up at their door. They like when you knock on their door. They like to meet you in public places. They like to beat you up a little bit. You have to meet them three or four times. New Hampshire is very unique. You just can't run television ads and radio ads and think you're going to get it done that way. You really have to meet people here. They're used to

presidential candidates, and you're just running for Congress. You've got to turn to them every day. So, Eddie, I've never met you, but wow, Navy, FBI, and then you're chief of police in a in a New Hampshire town and furthermore you've got a picture on the on your website showing you and your wife and you've got a poodle and a bulldog and man that just that's that covers every that covers both ends of the spectrum but oh yeah yeah let me ask you how do you handle campa? I am imagining that like most other Republican candidates, you're running into, say, 30 percent of the people who can't stand Donald Trump and 30 percent of the people who want to make sure that you're supporting every word Donald Trump says. How are you handling Donald Trump? Oh, I think the president, first of all, I think the president is doing a great job. I think the president is doing exactly what the American people voted for.

He's certainly doing exactly what the folks in CD1 here in New Hampshire voted for. And, you know, what I've said to people is we spend an awful lot of time beating up on the president. And do you think the next president will have an easier time? You know, we've gotten to a place now where everything he does is subject to question. Even the things that people agree with him on, people resist. And you go right back to his State of the Union address when he talked about Black unemployment being at record lows, Latino unemployment being at record lows, women unemployment being at historical lows. And many people on the left did not support that. That tells you where they are.

There's a level of hate for our president that is really extraordinary. And so for me, when I talk to citizens and voters around the district, that's what we talk about. We talk about do we want a better country? Do we want a unified nation? And to do that, we have to have some commonalities, and we have to agree on our Constitution. We have to agree on the flag. The flag is the greatest symbol of peace, unity, and justice in the world.

And the fact that we've gotten to a place where we can't agree on those – our founding symbol, our founding documents, is really troubling. Hey, it's Rob Long. Thanks for joining us. So how does a district vote for Trump and vote for a Republican Senate and then vote for a big lefty? I mean the divide, it seems to me, in CD1 in New Hampshire is a lot of ways to divide in the country, right? You've got extremes on both sides. I mean how are you going to thread that needle? I mean, how are you going to thread that needle being so pro-Trump in a district that clearly has at least a huge portion of its voters who are either very against him or ambivalent? I mean, did the ticket splitters just have a minor stroke when they were voting? I mean, what goes into the psychology? What are you talking about when they voted for the congressional? Yeah, in CD1, in your district. Well, sure, sure. What's unique about New Hampshire, again, is that they really do focus on the individual person.

And so they can look at each person very differently. And so when they looked at the president, they wanted something authentic. They want something different. They wanted a pro-America agenda. America First agenda resonates with voters across the spectrum. Then when they looked at our U.S. Senate candidate, they felt the same way. It was Kelly Ayotte. She lost the race, but she won the district. And so in our district, just like our governor, he won the district and he won the state. But the voters in CD1, they're very educated around politics. So they're able to examine the character of each candidate.

Right. And so at the end of the day, I think if you're elected, your job is to go to Washington to represent your district and make sure you work with the president. Whether you're a Democrat or Republican, you should be going to Washington to find solutions. I get it. I get that. I guess what I'm asking is, like, why did that why did that district vote for Carol Shea Porter? I mean, she's against Trump. Well, there were a number of different factors there, right? So in that race, we had an incumbent who had issues that people brought up in his race. And in addition to that, you had an independent in the race. You had a libertarian in the race that took votes away from our Republican candidate. So let me posit another theory.

I take that. You're probably – there's probably a whole bunch of moving parts there that I don't understand. Let me posit another theory that the voters in New Hampshire being independent-minded and flinty realists as they've always been recognize that maybe you need a Trump in the White House, but he's not a great guy guy and he needs a lot of supervision and restraint and so like a lot of voters they say and by the way voters across the country have been voting this way since 1994 they have said we like the president but now we're gonna vote in a pit bull to keep that president in line they did in 94 in 94, they did it twice under George W. Bush, they did it under Obama, and it looks like they're going to do it for Trump. So my question to you is, your full-throated support of Trump, doesn't that make you a little nervous in an independent state like New Hampshire? Do you think he's a good guy?

You're running kind of on character issues. Do you think he's got the... A couple things, right? So when we say what's a good guy, who's determining who's a good guy, who's not a good guy, right? So we have 535 people that make up our Congress. So tell me in the House and the Senate who's good, who's bad. At the end of the day, the voters spoke in this country, right? And so this check that people talk about, particularly in

New Hampshire, we have a complete Democrat federal delegation. New Hampshire wants balance as well. So they don't want all of their federal representatives to be all Democrats either.

And so at the end of the day, what they're looking for is a strong, independent conservative who can stand up when necessary for them. And I've proven myself in this state as someone who is willing to work with the president to benefit our country. You can't complain about gridlock in Washington and say Washington is broken and things need to be fixed and then send people to Washington whose only purpose is to resist. That doesn't make any sense at all. So you have to select candidates who are willing to stand up, and I'm more than willing to

stand up when it's necessary, when it's right, not just for the sake of standing up, though. But if you win, chances are you're – I mean it's highly likely that you're going to be entering the Congress as a minority member of the – a party in the minority. To what extent are you willing to stand up to – I mean obviously you'd be standing up – I mean God, I can't imagine this. But just assume the Democrats remain as foolish as they are and they nominate – they're, you know, machine politics, they nominate Nancy Pelosi. She's going to be the speaker of your house. Just say, I mean, are you going to I mean, standing up to her is going to be easy.

Are you going to be able to stand up to Donald Trump? Well, I think I've proven myself in the state, right? And I've said this repeatedly. Well, the president's right. I'm going to support him, particularly when he's right for our district and the residents and the citizens and voters in my district are benefiting. When it doesn't benefit our district particularly when he's right for our district and the residents and the citizens and voters in our my district are benefiting when it doesn't benefit our district when it's wrong for our district and i'm going to be a strong advocate as the constitution requires past two years past two years what would you have voted against him on

what do you differ with him what would believe it or not i i uh i differ with him on the bump stock issue and the reason i say the reason i to that is because this is one of the main problems I have, not with this president, but with all presidents and what Congress has done. Congress has transferred its authority to the administrative branch of government. So now we have people we did not elect deciding how we're going to live. They set policy for us. They passed regulations that carried a full weight of federal law. Our constitution never envisioned this. And so when the president says that we're going to stop this, we're going to shut it down, we're going to use an agency to do it, that's wrong.

So my advocacy is for our constitution, because our constitution is the only thing that's ever guaranteed our rights. What we've done is closely condition ourselves in this belief that somehow every elected official who was a Republican this year has to figure out a way to live with the president or fight the president or show that they're willing to stand up. I think there's no better party that shows their independence when it comes to doing what's right. The fact of the matter is that when a president is wrong for the country, you have to recognize it and you have to believe in the voters. The voters wanted an agenda that he's trying to deliver on. You have a lot of people resisting that agenda. That's the problem.

And so they look for opportunities to point out things he hasn't done right. But let's kind of focus on where our country's moving forward. You know, the entire process is a negative one. Everyone wants to figure out where you're going to be fighting. Not where you're going to be working together. And then we turn around in the next

breath and say, well, Washington's broken. Washington's broken because a lot of people who are involved in politics like the conflict. That's why. What you just said was pretty gutsy. We're used to former LAOs saying that gun control is the path to the future. We've got to have more of it.

And the bump stock issue was the cause celeb for a while. It's the next thing we have to get rid of it to ensure our safety. But you're going back to first principles. And that's a good thing to educate people on because otherwise you lose your moorings and everything is just a referendum on what we feel at the moment. Edwards4NH.com. That's where people should go to learn more. And Edward Edwards, we thank you very much for showing us on the podcast today. Thank you so much for having me.

I greatly appreciate the opportunity. Chief, good luck. Peter Robinson here. Doggone it. I wish I didn't live in California. I would love to vote for you. I would just live in California. I would love to vote for you. I would just love to vote. I would love to have you vote.

Guess what? Guess what? You can always send a check to support my campaign. That's right. That's the vote. Done. Good luck to you, Eddie. Best of luck.

Thank you, guys. You guys have a great day. You do. Good answers for the live free or die state, I got to say. But New Hampshire is insane. So that first district, you never know. They're weird up there. Having lived in Massachusetts for a long time, they vote – they do vote for the crackpot left-winger for the House and the far-right gun nut for the Senate.

I mean these are extreme versions, but they do. They're a lot like American voters. In the southern part of his district, you've got a lot. It's turned in in the last, what, 20 years or so. It's turned into a bedroom community for Boston because there's no tax in New Hampshire. People are willing to do a longer commute. So you've got essentially Massachusetts liberals living in the southern part of that district. And up north, up in the mountains.

Oh, man. It's small farmers and – It's farm time. It's Trump country. It's a complicated place in which to live. But it's an interesting place because it kind of has a lot of – it's emblematic of sort of American politics as a whole, right? On the one hand, you do have these tax refugees from Massachusetts. I mean my parents – my dad would drive 20 minutes across the border to New Hampshire

to buy liquor, to buy beer and wine and liquor because there's no tax there. Why would you – I bought my first computer and my car. You go to New Hampshire to do that. And then so a lot of progressives and liberals from Massachusetts like to live in New Hampshire because they like being progressive and liberal but they don't really want to pay the price for it, which is usually what happens, which is a lot of ways American politics are. People like goodies. They like entitlements.

They don't really want to pay for them, and they don't want to give them up. But I'm always worried when – I'm not worried, but I always want to push back a little bit when I hear – I don't have to say this when people set up an ending gridlock in washington because any any interpretation of the past 30 40 years of american politics has been americans like gridlock they vote for it all the time whenever they have a chance to vote for it they vote for it and um if you're not tuned into that and maybe somehow trying to leverage that to your benefit as a candidate, you may be in for a bad surprise. Well, they vote for it in the aggregate. But I think if you polled people nowadays, they would prefer one-party rule. They prefer a president, a senate, and a congress to be able to get through what they want to get through. The idea that the left presented with the opportunity to have single payer,

third gender on all driver's license, complete amnesty for everybody who's here, disbanding of ICE. I mean if somebody ran for that and they got the presidency, the House, and the Congress, or in the Senate, I don't think you'd see a lot of Democrats two years later saying, whoa, we got everything we wanted. This ain't going so well. We need more gridlock. We need more checks and balances on our –

And yet they do. And yet they do. I mean that's what – that's the story of 1994 and the story of the later part of the 90s and 2010 and George W. Bush in 2006. And yet they do. They often vote for a very clear, strong leader, and then they ticket split. The ticket splitters in this country are legion. They're everywhere. I know, but you can say maybe that Bill Clinton running as a moderate sort in 92, people were – Hannan has had in 94 because Hillary care was going too far. There's always an issue, a crucible issue, but the pattern is so clear

that these are not one-offs that are just sort of uniquely linked together because they happen to happen. This is a real problem, not a problem, this is a real, the psychology of the American voter. I know, part of which depends

on an irresolute middle who have no ideas that necessarily are grounded in a deeply thought-out worldview. And so they're battered about like a reed in a – they're the flag on the webcam that we watch when the hurricane comes in. But anyway, there you are.

As he mentioned, Peter said, you know, you'd like to send him a check. He'll always take that. Maybe he'd even take plastic too. I don't know, credit cards and the like. Everyone likes them. Problem is, problem is. But by the way, FEC violations. So careful with the segue here.

Yeah, I wasn't sure whether or not that was actually, is that so? You can't. No, I don't think it's so. You could use your credit. But I think you, there's a certain. Rob is just trying to get into your head, James.

Just go. It's just another Rob ploy. Yes, everyone who is in Canada listening should send money to us now. I think that was Michael Moore. Even Michael Moore thought that was a little bit too much when Mr. Hogg said so on the stage. Full stop. Forget everything I've said before. None of it is relative, but I want to talk to you about credit cards.

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We've got a bit of a problem here with Nikki Haley's curtains. If you're not outraged, I don't know why you wouldn't be. I've been looking at Twitter, and this is just – this is who these people are, thieves. They will bleed this country dry for their own privilege. Wait, I missed this one. Fill me in. We should give background. So ThinkProgress and the New York Times reported today, I guess this morning, on a piece about Nikki Haley that in her glamorous apartment in Manhattan paid for by the US taxpayers

as she's the ambassador of the United Nations from the United States, there's a set of electric curtains, automatic curtains and blinds of some kind. And installing them was a $51,000 enterprise. And ThinkProgress is actually the article you want to read because it's so breathless and hilarious. But the New York Times, they said this is a huge expense and it comes into the heels of Donald Trump's budget cutting in the State Department, cutting ambassadorships and cutting staff and cutting personnel. And then in the wake of this, they're spending 50 grand on curtains, automatic curtains. It just seems crazy. And then in paragraph 97 or like way, way down there in tiny print written in different font, there's a little paragraph saying the expenditure was initiated and approved by someone under the Obama administration. And Nikki Haley had no ability to circumvent it and had no knowledge of it. It's just something that's happening. That is a

classic case of the times did that the new york times they bear unbelievable unbelievable they should be ashamed of it's unbelievable that used to be a great institution and i mean only three or four years ago i was talking i know i was talking at the office with somebody about this and the idea that the New York Times is just this beacon of impartiality. Well, the Times said, I wrote on Ricochet earlier this week about something about it. This is how stories get made

and manufactured and work their way into the mainstream media. You have a raving congressman who says, oh, look, Trump has moved $ million dollars from fema just as hurricane season began just as florence is bearing down upon these innocent people he's taken money out of fema and put it into ice so that they can rip families apart and he bangs on

that and met rachel maddow and then you know the news cnn new york times everybody else looks around says well he is a congressperson. We'd best report on this. And so that's the first paragraph is the accusation. And then two or three down, you'll find somebody saying, well, it's 1% of the budget and it was approved months ago and it's kind of standard and it has nothing to do with preparedness whatsoever. But it doesn't matter because the narrative has been made because it fits what everybody believes that Trump, uh, first of all, hurricanes are now begun by presidents. I think we learned that under his watch. Right. And, and that her presidents are directly personally

responsible for everything that happens afterwards. So the hurricane is a great opportunity to, to show that Donald Trump is, is the most evil, corrupt, stupid, etc. man ever to hold the office. And this story just pops up, sort of pops up like the Kavanaugh story at that point. And I was wondering with the Nikki Haley story, whether or not this thing was intended to be around the time that we were cutting off money from the Palestinians, that we were going to not give the corrupt institution anymore. I mean, really, this is how you look at it. We have no money whatsoever for the poor, starving people in the refugee camps, but yet Nikki Haley in her petite trianl throws little crumbs of brioche out the window after she opens up her expensive blinds. It's almost as though they're attempting to craft and shape a narrative.

Almost. Or just that they – any weapon to hand. I mean what's strange about these arguments is that there is an outrageous – an outraged Consumer Reports-style article to be written about a $52,000 expenditure from the State Department of Curtains. There is something to be said about that. Even during Reagan's famous arms buildup or military buildup in the 80s, the people were complaining about the $900 hammer and the $1,200 toilet seat. Those are legitimate outrages, but yet every single thing must be twisted and used to attack the president in a way that just – first of all the blows do not land but second

it just reveals them to be lunatic and insane and i think that's you know as somebody who has you know i'm not everybody listening to this podcast knows how i feel about the president but this stuff is just so bananas and so over the top and so so meretricious ultimately that – look, Donald Trump has problems with the truth. He doesn't understand what the truth is. He doesn't understand what facts are. Donald Trump blithely accused George W. Bush of being complicit in 9-11 during the campaign. He blithely accused Ted Kennedy's father of being part of the Kennedy assassination, right? And everyone attacked, right?

But it seems to me that they've taken their cue from him. So their argument is, well, if it's all – if we can do all of this, then we're all kind of in the cesspool together. And if you're Dianne Feinstein, you can release a letter that doesn't say anything. And if you're The New York Times, you can complain that Nikki Haley spent $50,000. It's all this kind of giant primordial soup. Do you guys remember – I think you may remember the reputation. Do you remember Abe Rosenthal? As far as I can tell, he was the last truly –

Yeah. – of The New York Times. Well, when I worked in New York, I worked in New York in 91 to 92. I worked in New York for only a year, but I was fortunate enough to get to know Abe Rosenthal through Bill Buckley. Abe Rosenthal was a very devout liberal, but he was also a wonderful journalist, a wonderful investigative journalist. He and Bill Buckley respected each other because the rules were understood. You would attack the argument. You could even have a little fun attacking each other. But Abe Rosenthal, there's story after story after story where a reporter tried to do something that was unfair or bury the exculpatory information information in paragraph 98. And Rosenthal was famous for outrageous outbursts of anger in the

newsroom when the New York Times did something unfair. So as recently as that, the notion of a thoroughgoing liberal who wanted bigger government and social liberalism of every kind could coexist with a notion of great journalism and scrupulous fairness. And that is gone. That is just gone. Yeah. A lot of it went out the window when they realized how satisfying the Clarence Thomas assassination or the Bork, the Borking could be. A lot of it was – I think a lot of it happened after the 2000 election when there was just sort of a collective dissociation from reality. They couldn't handle what happened and they could not handle process. 9-11 within the parameters of their sort of America is always at fault feeling, which is why you had six months there.

We were all kind of together, but that had to fall apart as it did and ever since then bush has been hitler um obama has been the savior and now it's it's it's bush it's bush without the intelligence coherence and ability to i mean so it's yes and the unhinging is one of those things that is astonishing because abe rosenthal had standards and even the people who didn't necessarily live up to them at the time were at least believing in the idea of standards that should be upheld, which brings me to CBS and Les Moonves. We're going to ask Rob about that in just a question, but first I want to say the following thing so you don't turn away thinking that the podcast is over. It's not. It was, however, and will continue to be for the rest of this next few minutes, brought to you by Boland Branch, Blinkist, and Lending Club.

Please support them for supporting us, and you'll get lots of great stuff, too. I've enjoyed the show. Take a minute to leave a review on iTunes. The reviews help new listeners discover us, and that helps the show keep going. And A.S. Yankee, one, was one of the fans who said, I am a liberal over here, but I still enjoy the Ricochet podcast. Always up to date on conservative perspectives from modern events. I appreciate the candor, intellectual debate and humor you all bring.

Keep up the good work and maybe bring a liberal to interview on this week. Dabble in different perspectives. Well, that's what we have, Rob. You guys will say Peter thinks that's me. I do. So we have, you know, you have these networks which have been preaching to us forever, certain standards of ideas. And they regard themselves as the avatars and the shapers and the guiders of civilization. And it turns out that that that, you know, the people at the top aren't so nice. What do you know about Les Moonves, who apparently isn't going to get the payoff that he wanted to get on the way out?

Yeah, I mean, I've worked with Les since 1996. He put one of our shows on the air when he was just – I mean, he had only been in the job running CBS for about a week. I mean, his office didn't have the paintings. The wall hangings were still leaning against the wall. They had nothing been hung yet. So I've known him a long, long time. He's put me on the air many, many times, taken me off the air many times,

and I speak to him – used to speak to him pretty regularly and spoke to him regularly last spring. He was always a tough guy, a tough competitor. He really wanted to win. And when he was behind you, he was really behind you. He's canceled me a bunch of times and was always an incredible gentleman about it and really blunt but truthful. This stuff is – he is probably I think the biggest catch I guess in the net here for the Me Too movement. It is amazing to me that um it happened it's like not because i don't think it was justified i don't really have any way of knowing whether

it was justified or not i haven't seen the of the file but um this is a huge huge business story and it takes business and financial transactions and what used to be a corporate wrangling from the boardroom and from the law courts into another realm. The ramifications for this are a billion-dollar ramifications. A company that was not going to be combined is now going to be combined. It's a huge, huge story for shareholders and media participants alike. And it's just strange to me that what used to be this bright line between business and finance and your personal conduct, I mean even personal conduct of 20 years ago, has now been erased. I'm not sure that's a good thing. I'm not sure it's a bad thing.

But to me, it's a good thing. I'm not sure it's a bad thing. But to me, it's a monumental thing. And I think that we'll be looking back at this as a watershed moment, either the beginning of the end or just the beginning of the beginning. You're right, but I think it should – I mean do you read the Linda Bloodworth Thomas piece in The Hollywood Reporter? Yeah. The way you say that is interesting because what she is saying is that the abuse doesn't have to be sexual to be abuse, and that's true. The point that she seems to get across is that just this is a really nasty person. But then again, the business as such, as I've come to understand it, is populated at that level almost entirely by very nasty people. And also the – yeah, well, I – here, listen, I have a little minor career in talking about that on KCRW on the radio here.

I have a little three-minute podcast talking about that. So I'm not going to deny that people here are people. They're venal and greedy and desperate and all sorts of things. But the argument that anyone who had a hit TV show and then a show that was not a success despite its long time standing on the air, Evening Shade, was somehow hurt and was a victim of not getting her full $100 million for the deal that she signed subsequent is kind of hard to believe. It's easier to believe, and I think I can say this with pretty – 100 percent certainty or as close as anybody can get to that, that what she proposed, the shows she proposed to do weren't good. That happens a lot. People have hit shows and then the next couple of shows are really, really rotten. There aren't that many Chuck Lorre's around. Chuck Lorre has been phenomenally successful for CBS

for many years, but he's put on hit TV shows. There are people who are very, very talented but don't have more than one hit show in them. That's not a criticism of somebody. That's not telling them that they're no good.

That's just saying at that level, at that pinnacle, with that kind of money, you got to have a hit TV show. And if you don't, you're looking for somebody to blame and I'm sure Les was mean. Les can be mean. Les can be really mad that somebody signed this giant deal with her and he wouldn't have done it. But that's not the same thing as being cruel or wrong or misogynistic. There's no – in business, I should say, there's very little evidence that he was a misogynist. He was promoted and was very loyal to female executives, first female president of any network, first female president of the entertainment. I mean his longstanding, incredibly loyal development teams were helmed by women. I mean he was – in his – at least part of his business life, he was extremely, extremely supportive of women.

He put showrunners in cop shows for the first time. Right, and then there's the appalling treatment of other people. So what I'm hearing from you, Rob, is something that is not expected today and not acceptable either. And that is something that is not just a knee jerk, automatic agreeing that this person should be now memory hold. And I don't know, I take them at their word that he did these awful things. Yeah, me too. And so I have no sympathy whatsoever for monsters who treat people like this. And I don't care if they're not misogynistic when it comes to business practices elsewhere. I don't care if they produce art. They're awful people. And that ought to be measured into any sort of evaluation of them and their work. So

bye. But if you do not have the proper opinion about that immediately, in other words, if you, Rob Long, say things that have around the edges the indication of a number of a gray area about certain things you are then are going to have to explain those comments and either apologize for them or do the really stupid thing and attempt to explain what you're explaining i mean this is what norm mcdonald went through this week if you don't, if you say something that's slightly, any way contrary to the unequivocal, simple black and white verdict, you then yourself get cast out. And John Gabriel made a great point on Ricochet this week and also repeated it, I think, on Dennis Breger yesterday, is that the Church of Social Justice has more rules than you know an organized religion around its own

high holidays but that but there are there is no path for redemption amongst these people and they're hidden rules yeah they're hidden rules yeah they're hidden rules they're always evolving and they can make them up in the fly and but there is no way to redeem yourself there is no way back from this there is simply memory holding you unpersoning you um which makes everybody just shut up and say yeah yeah, I'm glad he's gone. Wouldn't that be maybe the proper response? But if you can't say more than that,

if you can't have a discussion about it without fearing what's going to happen to you when the Twitter mob comes with the pitchforks, well then, oi. Oi. Oh, I'm sorry. I said oi. Did I also mention that I said shackles earlier? Because apparently that's now the sign of somebody who's an anti-Semite. Good Lord.

All right. Well, there I've done it. There I've done it. Have at me. I'm the worst of the worst. But I'll be here next week with Peter and Robert, who are also, I'm happy to say, the worst of the worst. Or maybe we're kind of like the best of the center right conversation. You've got to throw some shackles our way in the way of subscription.

See you in the comments, everybody. I'm seeing the comments, everybody, Peter, Rob, it's been a blast. We'll see everybody at ricochet 3.0. Next week. As I travel down the back roads of this home, I love so much.

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