The Ricochet Podcast - Discover the City of David

Episode Date: April 6, 2023

Since the Ricochet Podcast will be on haitus next week, we've got a big episode to tide you over! We're not only jam packed with extra gab time but with today's guest Ze'ev Orenstein, we head the birthplace of our Judeo-Christian tradition. His organization is excavating the City of David, making it possible for those currently celebrating Passover, Holy Week and Ramadan (or any curious visiter) the chance to walk through the grand sites of their prophets, preists and kings. The fellas also get into the disappointing elections in Chicago and Wisconsin; plus they touch on the outrageous culture war battles centered around Bud Light and Douglas Mackey.

Since 1997, I've outlived everybody, put them all in the grave. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Read my lips. No new action. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lylex.

Today we just talk about a lot of stuff and eventually get around to our great guest, Zev Hornstein of the City of David in Jerusalem. So let's have ourselves a podcast. Well, speaking as someone who very strongly does not want Donald Trump to get the Republican presidential nomination, I'm extraordinarily distressed by this document. I think this is even weaker than I feared it would be. We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with winning. Welcome, everybody, to the Ricochet Podcast, number 637. Why don't you just mosey on over to Ricochet.com and see what all the fuss is about? There you'll

discover the most interesting, diverse, civil conversation on the Internet today. We state that knowing that we can back it up and won't be sued yet. So go there, if you will, and join, if you will, as well, because then you get an abscess. That's, yeah, I've got to read my pitch here. Then you get access to the member feed where the real fun happens. So, yes, Ricochet.com. My name is James Liling. I'm in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where it was like 10 above and snowy.

It's going to be 70 degrees in a few days. Can't wait. Is it really? How great. I know. It's extraordinary. Is that what happens? Spring just hits?

The curtain goes up and it's just there? It's like a bag of sand on a stage that just falls from above and thuds on the floorboards. It's quite wonderful. But, you know, we had a blizzard. And on the first day of May, I found myself knocking the snow off these Bent Arbor Vitae, which were all kowtowing to the steps and trying to take off the Christmas lights and having the snow whip down my back and my neck and the rest of it and cursing why I live here. And six or seven days later, I'll be saying that there's absolutely no way I could ever leave. Rob in New York feels the same way.

I'm sure as a good New Yorker, he can't imagine why anybody would want to live anywhere else than the epicenter of the universe. And Peter in California, of course, is still suffused with that golden state glow that makes him happy that he calls it his home. Even though each one of us would like to radically redesign the places in which we live true true if you lived in chicago for example i would love to live in chicago because architecturally it is an absolutely fantastic city i love to walk around the museum is great the lake is oh yeah it's just it's it's this vision of urbanity that i've always liked and now now I'm thinking Kurt Russell ought to make a movie out of escaping from it at some point in the future.

Because they've voted in a new mayor who brings to mind the old adage that the voters have spoken. And now they're going to get it good and hard. Gentlemen, what do you think about the Chicago mayoral results? Well, what we see is the power of the teachers unions and we see the effects of Donald Trump. The candidate who was in favor of backing the police, the candidate who had the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police, if I am naming it correctly, was portrayed by his opponent, who had plenty of money to spend because of the teachers unions, as a MAGA-sympathetic Democrat. And the reverse, the race, the teachers unions and the taint of Trump and of the Republican Party was enough to flip the race.

The man who lost finished the primary ahead, as I recall, by double digits. And then the teachers' unions weighed in and began smearing him, and the race flipped. So, what do we got? Another great American city that doesn't quite work, doesn't come close to working. The mayor-elect has said that he's going to raise taxes to increase social programs. It's that old liberal notion, progressive notion that we don't attack crime, we attack the root causes of crime. And the root causes of crime are that certain people, certain constituents don't have enough money or schooling or social programs,

so we'll raise money on the rich. And yet, as Ken Griffin, the most successful hedge fund manager of the last decade and a half demonstrated last year, the rich can up and leave ken griffin and citadel his hedge fund are now headquartered in florida after decades in chicago they got up and left there's not a reason to suppose that things in chicago aren't about to continue to get worse that's what i think wow rob rob will find the laughs yeah no i mean i i mean i would just say first of all i find chicago politics so fascinating and baffling like this just this it's hard to know um what what what actually happened in chicago or why um i think it's i think that peter's probably correct in that it's a kind of an unholy perfect storm of enormous amount of money from a teacher's union that will doubt is desperate because there's education reform all over the country going on all over the country

and they've never been at their they've never been less popular they certainly are not delivering value to their customers in chicago that is for sure so they are desperately trying to protect their little um monopoly their low quality monopoly that they have in certainly in chicago and then i think there's a this ability in chicago certainly among many voters in chicago to sort of use donald trump as a gigantic sort of you know um you know graffiti engine just graffiti and the side of any politician you know mega and you're probably going to get a little points there um but i also feel like there's a little bit of despair here like there's a little bit of like uh i mean even people who are democrats were surprised by this because it suggests that

there are a lot of people in chicago who have not only given up but as peter said is left have left that no one really has the stomach for the fight anymore there's a kind of a throw up your hands quality to this uh election result just really sad not just that you know the moron one because the morons are going to win that's going to happen no matter how it wouldn't matter what happens in the countries you're going to have terrible mayors in big cities that's sort of what you get in a lot of ways but there's also i think there's a sense in chicago and i think new york and other cities that like well you know what why why even bother why even bother they want it this way let them have it this way if the machine politicians can

convince enough people to just pull a stupid lever and live in um crime-ridden uh hopeless urban hellscape then fine you know we'll get and i don't think it's gonna be just the rich it's gonna be what the middle class did in the 50s and 60s is just leave just leave you know you if you have a lot of dollars you have a lot of votes you can vote yourself to florida if you don't have a lot of dollars you can vote yourself to wisconsin you can vote yourself to outside the city you can vote yourself out of a urban environment you don't like i mean i i have a i know we want to keep talking about this. I just have a segue that happened to me on Sunday night. On Sunday night, I'm walking downtown from church, if you must know.

And I'm walking down on Madison Avenue, fancy, fancy Madison Avenue. And I walk by this little, you know, all these fancy stores. And in the doorway of a fancy store, now this is nighttime, so streets are not very crowded. I mean, not crowded at all these fancy stores and in the doorway of a fancy store now this is nighttime so streets are not very crowded i mean crowded at all really the doorway of a of a fancy store there is a gentleman crouching on his knees clearly shooting up something um i didn't stop to ask uh but shooting up on madison avenue on the street. And then I walked down a little farther, and I crossed over down Fifth Avenue. And Fifth Avenue, in front of Trump Tower, this is a Monday night. All of the, on the west side of the street, there are police barricades everywhere ready to go for Trump's arrival.

Not, I think it was the next day. And tape on the sidewalk already boxed off for the various networks and where they're going to place their people. So there was a CBS taped off square and NBC taped off square and a CNN taped off square and a WNBC. All of the media had their taped off squares in front of them. And then I'll walk a little bit farther down fifth Avenue, just,

just below just in Korea town. So just below the Empire State Building. And there's an obese man wearing a shirt, t-shirt, and nothing else. Now, I assume he was a man.

He was of the size where it's hard to tell, if you know what I mean. But he was wandering around, and then people kind of walked by him and you could see people like maybe 10 steps ahead thinking wait a minute what was that on fifth avenue in new york city in manhattan and it's just something that those three points are actually connected because you have a district attorney in manhattan who is more concerned with some obscure uh hard to prove quasi i don't know indictment i guess although people have a hard time finding the crime in those indictments

and and utilizing the resources of the nypd for a circus whereas there are actual things the quality of life for all new yorkers no matter who you are, no matter who you voted for, that need to be taken care of and are utterly ignored by a politician who is more interested in show trials, a media circus, playing to his far left base, getting an MSNBC show, whatever. And it was in the space of 40 minutes you saw everything you need to know about the problem with urban progressive politicians what you feel is understand rob is that the man who wasn't wearing anything but a t-shirt is there because we uh have given up on treating the mentally ill ever since since Ronald Reagan personally incinerated every mental facility in the country by himself, you know, he had a little dribble, a little sterno, light a match. Reagan did that.

And since then, the Republicans have steadfastly refused to acknowledge the existence of mental illness. So that's the problem. And New York is powerless. There's absolutely nothing New York could do about that man. The other thing you have to realize is that the man who was standing in the doorway shooting up has every right to do so because he was driven to that by the despair that comes from income inequality. He was walking down the street in a bad mood, perhaps, or smiling, perhaps. And he was hit by a heroin stick. That's precisely what happened.

A torrential rain of needles came down from the sky and the guy was dismayed because all of his life he tried to avoid heroin he'd seen what it done to everybody else and so he decided i'm never going to put that needle in my arm because i know what what happens from that but he was struck by the by the needle from the sky just as many people are hit by that pregnancy bolt that comes in all of a sudden just makes him pregnant and then you can do about that so there's what we must do is to focus all of our efforts not on making sure that the doorways and the streets are clean but to attend to the needs of the people who through no action of their own whatsoever um have become uh shooting up in public type people we have this argument here all day i know that sounds cold but we have this argument here all the time. I know that sounds cold, but we have this

argument here all the time in various conversational settings, online and otherwise, about the condition of our light rail, because our light rail here in the Twin Cities is in dreadful condition. It's a rolling homeless shelter and people are shooting up and doing meth and all the rest of it. It's just appalling. It's filthy. Nobody wants to go there. Even the people who are running the thing said, you know, we need some more cops here because this is really kind of biting into the revenue. But every single time the argument comes up, nobody can do anything about it until we address the problems that caused people to be in this situation in the first place. And of course, we've never addressed them. We've gotten out of the blocks when it comes to these things. You would think that we spend absolutely no money whatsoever on homelessness.

But unless we solve those things, we are required to be inconvenienced at every possible turn in order to rub our noses in the inequity of this capitalistic health. Right, right, right. Question for Rob. You've been watching New York for a long time. You and I both grew up. I grew up in upstate, you grew up in New England, largely. You were out here some, but you grew up in New England. You attended Yale, you went to prep school, the whole scene. Where New York, Boston was a marvelous place, Philadelphia, Baltimore, all these had something to be said for it, but New York was the town. New York was the town. And I have the feeling this is true of you, but because it's true of me, and what's true of me is true of you only about a year and a half earlier, that when you're growing up and you're

trying to figure out how things work, you begin to realize that there are a couple of secret New Yorks. And one secret New York was the mob. The Godfather wasn't made up. It's dated, it's old, but there was a secret New York where unions got run in a certain way by certain kinds of people. But the other secret New York was the rich guys. And they would let things get out of control so far, and then they'd say, wait a minute, we've got to find a candidate, we've got to raise money, we've got to do something. The phrase city fathers actually made sense for decade after decade when I was growing up. And the reason was that it was their town. It was where they did business, and it was the only place they could conceive of doing business. There were patterns of life, a house on the North Shore, your apartment in Manhattan.

They couldn't conceive of life anyplace else. And for many of them, there was family history that attached them to New York. The Jewish experience where the immigrants had arrived, dirt poor, and then they conquer the world by taking over the Goldman Sachs, gets established and becomes the biggest operation. All right. So, the question is, does the rise of Florida really just change it all? Is it Florida that permits people to say to each other, you know what? We don't have to do business here. I was talking, or our friend, Andrew Gutman, who is doing a podcast for us on starting schools, left Manhattan and moved to Florida. And when we had him on this podcast, I can't remember whether he said it on the air or during the little bit of chitchat before we began recording him.

The way he put it struck me. He said, everybody's here. Everybody's here. And that's what you used to say about New York. You were in New York because everybody was there. In show business, of course, you had to be in. But he said, everybody's here. And I'm thinking to myself, if that's the case, that the big guys, the people who in previous generations would have been city fathers, now city fathers and city mothers, if you want to use the term, attempt to to update the terminal i suppose we should just retire it in any event they don't have to do business in new york anymore ken griffin just left chicago it that's that's a change isn't it yeah well i think it's like a specific kind of change i mean i i think the rich people always leave and they kind of did for a while because the taxes, which I completely understand. But during the high, I mean, in general, crime in New York, as reported, isn't.

I mean, it's down from 70s, 80s and 1990 was the high watermarker. Well, the watermark, how you look at it for murders. It isn't crime. People don't have, you you know their their triple locks on but most people can avoid i mean most people don't aren't worried about crime what they don't like is the insanity on the street they don't like the fact this happened the other day that some guy sitting on the subway and another guy comes up to him and just clocks him in the face for no reason and they don't even he didn't even know it there's no way he wasn't asking for money he was just an insane person who was high who then of course was

arrested it isn't as if there's there was there were transit cops you could go to but just there's a sense that in new york city now it's not the people who are going to mug you it's not the people who are going to steal your car radio. That was happening. You had plenty of rich people in town. No one wanted to move to Florida. Moving to Florida was the worst thing in the world, right? That's when you go to dock. That's God's waiting room they call Florida. Right.

But there is something specific about the bedlam that's happening here that no one who is literally tasked with dealing with it, like a district attorney, wants to deal with, thinks there's an upside to dealing with it, like a district attorney wants to deal with, thinks there's an upside to dealing with, or feels compelled to, as opposed to, you know, grandstanding, you know, a former president downtown. Like that, that to me is like, to me it was, it's not even, I mean, it's dereliction, but it's just also a sense of vastly mispriced priorities. And I think that is kind of where

the right now is missing their argument we're getting enmeshed in arguments that the left is forcing us to we shouldn't be arguing about or i mean i think in some cases um a lot of this a lot of the way we talk about cultural issues but we should be arguing about priorities that was the thing the conservatives always had right was the priorities and right now it feels like we're all sort of running around with their heads cut off meanwhile a normal person can walk down a liberal democrat could be walking next to me and would have the exact same, I guarantee you, the exact same response I had, which is what on earth is the Manhattan district attorney doing? But that person will turn around and vote for the DA.

Maybe. If the alternative is somebody who abrades their sensibilities in a general way on some particular social issues that make them feel like they are the better person, they're going to vote for that person and then just tut-tut, what are you going to do? Yeah, but look, you're going to lose elections anyway, right? You've got to have an election. You might lose it. But if you're going to lose it, at least lose it by offering an alternative set of priorities.

Well, what priorities? I'm against that, but an alternative set. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll drag the ex-president into downtown. I'll arrest him, and I'll throw him in irons. Just as soon as there are no naked men running around loose on fifth avenue and we don't have people shooting up in doorways the minute we could do that i you know what drag donald trump through the streets of irons that's fine by me but my priorities are the law and order in the streets to vanhattan that is my job that's what

i would say that was the feeling back in the 60s and 70s when the city had been lost, it felt. Been lost to disorder, it had been lost to crime. There's this sense of feral quality to it that nobody could do any, it was a helplessness that nobody could do anything about it. And it turns out they could. What a surprise. But when you talk about priorities, what priorities do you think the GOP is putting forth now that are misguided and they should concentrate more on urban disorder? Because, frankly, a lot of people, twixt the coasts, don't give a fig for urban disorder in these cities. They figured they voted it. They wanted it.

They got it. Go ahead. This is what you voted for. And it's hard to appeal to somebody in Iowa or North Dakota or Montana and saying that we need to get our cities back. Actually, to tell you the truth, I think that there is an argument that can be made for that on a national scale. A pride in America, a pride in national restoration, return to the good old days when we had thriving cities, et cetera.

I think you can make that point, not as your primary point, but as part of a general renaissance in America. Why dare I say making it great again? But what do you think the republicans are doing now today that is misplaced in terms of priorities well i mean sort of you know it's been an astonishing list of defeats since 2020 so pretty much everything i mean i don't think it's the positions they're taking i think this is the way they're taking them and how they're taking them i mean it's perfectly legitimate to say i'm in i here's a perfect example it's very clear to

say parents have a right to raise their children in the system of values that they have they have a right they have a right to to impose their values on their family that is absolutely that's a classic great republican theme right so that a conservative could get behind supremacist i'm making distinctions of course i know you're about you're canceling me i'm making distinctions between republican and conservative because i'm one and off the other okay so that to me feels like a really clear thing but then the minute you say it i know it's unpopular i know people hate it but the minute you say hey if you take your kids to a drag show we're gonna call the county on you you're out like no you get to take your kids to a drag show if you want to. They're your kids. You're the

parent. You have a right to impose your values on your family. And you also have a right to keep other people from imposing their values on your family in schools. That seems to be a perfectly legitimate, clean, totally understandable priority that doesn't cross the line and everyone can understand it. I have, I mean, as you must know know i have tons of liberal friends right i have tons of them after a glass of wine i don't know maybe half maybe a sip maybe not even a glass of wine they're saying things like well i'm you know i you know me i'm a liberal democrat i'm a liberal democrat but and then they say things like but i don't think we should be teaching this stuff in fourth grade. I don't think we should be giving children puberty blockers. I don't think.

And he goes, listen to all the things. But I'm a liberal Democrat, he keeps saying. I'm a liberal Democrat. I don't. So I heard somebody just yesterday say, listen, I'm a liberal Democrat. I hate Trump more than anybody hates Trump. I hate Trump, blah, blah, blah. Right.

But I don't think he should have been arrested. This is BS. hate trump i hate trump blah blah blah right but i don't think he should have been arrested and done this is this is bs so there's this giant area of people who share at least our top five priorities if they are articulated and not and not part of this infection i think some people have on the right which is the most important thing is to troll the libtards if you do that it's funny and it's entertaining for some but it leads you to i think turning off a huge part of the country that is it's like desperately wants you to be normal and to scoop them up uh that's i mean you know me i've always said this. It's in the far right circles, it's considered insult to be a rhino.

You're a rhino, you're a rhino. Well, I got news for you. If you want to lead this country, if you want to change things in this country, you better make friends with the rhinos. You need them. That is just mass. And if you don't like it it then you got to change the

constitution because that's the way it works i think this culture is also entitled to say that it is illegal to take a two-year-old to a bondage dungeon that this should not be done uh that there are lines that can be drawn that uh as a parent you can't i mean back in the days of x-rated movies you could not take your child to see an X-rated movie. It would seemingly be one of those cultural guardrails that is in the beginning of some Stasi-like fascist state. So, you know, I'm not a harmless little drag brunch. Oh, yeah. I'm if it's not with somebody wearing the thong and the toddlers are tucking the bills in the straps, I don't know.

But what you get is what you're getting in Canada right now, where Ontario is dealing with legislation that will make it impossible to be critical of a drag event within a thousand feet or a hundred feet or something like that. I mean, what they're saying is you can't protest or the rest of it, but it makes it sound as if you cannot utter a discouraging word within a hundred feet of this. So if we, I'm just saying that a lot of people think of it this way, that if we don't put the guardrails up, they will take the guardrails that are already in place and flatten them and insist that anybody who does not believe in their new broad road to hell is a phobe and a hater and the rest of it. They will continue to demolish every cultural norm if we don't stand up in front of a few of them and put up a hand saying, no, no, no. So I see what you're saying, Rob, about that, but it's kind of shading into the old David French blessings and liberty thing here, which is.

Once you allow the government to tell you how to raise your children, you better hope you win every single election in every single district, in every single precinct, in every single county. Is that telling you how to raise your children, though? Is it saying that children are not to be in adult spaces and a drag show is an adult space and the whole point the whole point of drag time story hour is introduced some is is to introduce notions of gender realignment and expression and the rest of it i mean you are allowed to do if you're a parent who those that conforms to your values you're allowed to do it so a drag queen story hour probably does not abrade those but a drag if you say that you that this is an adult cabaret activity and children are not to attend it, that doesn't strike me as that much of a break with where we've been as a culture for 200 years. Well, we say that you if you run a you know, you can't be a kid in a bar, right? That the law is you can't drink if you're under 21.

So you can't have a kid in a bar. We have I'm not saying we shouldn't have any rules, but i'm saying that in the broad that if we're going to err we need to err on the side if we're going to be conservative we need to err on the side of parental rights you have the right to send your kid to if you pay property taxes to any school in the area you want to you have a right to uh control what your children are learning and when you have a right to understand what the your children are learning and when you have a right to understand what the consequences are if you don't want your kids to learn that the earth is millions of years old and there were dinosaurs on it i i i think you're wrong i don't think the earth is

5 000 years old but i what am i going to do am i going to tell you no you can't these are your value you're allowed to do it and to the extent that we're going to make rules, we have to make them, I think, just on the fundamental part of sort of health and safety. The minute we don't, well, we just got to win every single election all the time. And when we don't win every single election all the time, which we don't, we end up with people teaching two-year-olds and seven-year-olds that they're not really girls, they're not really boys. And I just don't think that's a world that makes any sense. Peter, chime in on this here. Am I right? Is Rob right? Are we both right? Oh, well, you know I'm not going to say that Rob is right. I couldn't force those words to form in my mind, let alone escape my lips. Political, you guys are making two different kinds of arguments, and they're both very well worth having.

One is a policy argument, what should be done, what shouldn't be done. And then the other, of course, is the argument for democracy. How do you get elected? What do you do to win votes? Okay, two points. One is that I believe, at least in part, as a response to the lockdown of schools, but set aside what it may or may not be in response to. School choice legislation is moving through state after state after state. There is a lot of really important activity taking place out in the states. Florida, big. Arizona, big.

Big meaning really quite generous voucher programs and charter school programs. Texas, I can't recall whether texas hasn't but in the current uh legislative session i believe they're expected to enact it if they haven't already and it's going it seems to me there are over a dozen states that have enacted very important quite sweeping charter education bills item one item two when rob says republicans need to wake up my thought is to the scene outside the courtroom the day before yesterday when the only republican of any note i could see who had turned up was marjorie what's her name again she has three names marjorie green marjorie and also george santos

okay so we should so two show up you don't get the speaker you don't get any prominent senator you each the republicans are just not so i believe there was a period when republicans were scratching their heads saying wait a minute this stuff seems to work for Trump. But as of the last election, and then again, as of last night, when candidates were just the merest taint of associates, even though this man was a Democrat and had been all his life, and it caused him to lose a race in which he had been leading in Chicago, Republicans want to back away from Trump. And Donald Trump is sucking up every bit of media attention. So, my question here, I guess I'm just asking you to make a prediction. Are we stuck? Is this man, has he got a lock on the nomination? Is it impossible to free up enough attention so that we can look at governors out in the states? Well, of course, DeSantis hasn't announced, but he seems to be running for, or who's, here's an amazing thing. Nobody's uttered the words Ron DeSantis for 72 hours or virtually all week now. There's a guy who, what, just a few months ago was leading

Trump in the polls. My point, though, is that there are governors who have remarkable records, records that would please Rob, because these are people who are trying to find out where can I get the votes? What can I win? What can I do? Rob may say DeSantis is tonally wrong. He may say that Greg Abbott in Texas, but Governor Ducey in Arizona, Arizona is a complicated state. I think tonally Rob would approve of him. Nobody can get any attention, any attention, because of Donald John Trump. The further irritation for me, and I know that you're both champing at the bit to come in and salve my frayed nerves. But the further irritation for me, I see Trump speak at Mar-a-Lago,

Mar-a-Lago, however it's pronounced. And of course, he has a case. He has an argument. That man who's doing so much to hold back the Republican Party to prevent the causes that we believe in from finding a way to be articulated and fought for. He stands up and says, they've been against me since the Russian hoax, they've done this, they've done that. I listen to this litany and I find myself saying in eight out of 10 claims, he's right. He has been done an injustice. How do you say Alvin Bragg is way out of line that what took place in charging Donald Trump, because everybody knows that those charges would not have been brought against a single other person on the face of the planet. It was purely political. And that man, Alvin Bragg, dragged this great republic in the direction

of a banana republic and it was outrageous. How do you say that without at least implying support for Donald Trump and perpetuating this inability of good people to break through? Oh, the test of a first-rate intellect is to hold two competing ideas in your head at the same time and still function, as Fott fitzgerald said as though that was some brilliant observation i it's entirely possible to see this thing as being ginned up and say it doesn't mean i'm going to vote for him it doesn't mean he's entitled to be the nominee i'm sorry he doesn't because he'd lose and even though to say that if he's not given the nomination that that means that we are rewarding bragging the rest of them for using the state and weaponizing these things.

Well, if that result is four more years of Biden, Harris, Gavin, Newsom, whatever, then we've just shot ourselves just in the foot, in the pants, in the groin area. So, no, I look at that and I just, i i mean i look at mar-a-lago sometimes i just think boy i wish i had somebody to do the manicuring on the foliage because i got a lot of trees and cutting them up is expensive and cutting oh you, I look at all those branches and I just think, oh, I'm going to feel so bad watching my wife cut them down. And then maybe I'll just,

you know, say I should help. Then I do. So you would think that I'd be the last person to want more trees. You're wrong. I always want more trees. Everybody wants more trees. The thing about a tree is it's just,

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slash ricochet and we thank fast growing trees for sponsoring this the ricochet podcast anyway so there's that then there's wisconsin if you want to talk about the trump taint because people are saying that one of the reasons that the wisconsin supreme court went the way it did was that the guy on the conservative side was too closely aligned with Trump because he'd been the RNC point man on the election irregularity thing, right? I may have been part of it. I think most of it was abortion, which leads, you know, led to an interesting discussion on Ricochet. It's like, well, so what was the point then of the conservatives going against Roe v. Wade?

What was the point of the whole pro-life movement if we lose? Well, you're going to lose in some places because they're going to be places that don't want a total, complete, and utter ban on abortion. There was an 1849 Wisconsin law that they were worried that this guy was going to uphold and there would be no abortion. They can't have that. I think it was an important case to make, but you're going to lose on it in some places, right? Well, you're going to lose some. I mean, there's a huge amount of energy and money and what pro-life Americans should be doing now that Roe v. Wade is not the ultimate roadblock is convincing their fellow Americans that persuasion in America is exactly how big things get done. this is a big thing you got to change people's minds i mean it it it it worked in abolition it worked in civil rights these are essentially religious faith-based movements and don't forget don't forget that it worked it worked for a while with prohibition too rob i was going to say that

was i was going to say they do i wasn't but it also has its drawbacks prohibition that worked for a while and that was faith-based. Americans are capable of changing them. I mean, the prohibition is a good example because this is a country built on whiskey, and they managed to get Americans to pass a constitutional amendment to ban whiskey. It didn't really work very long, but people respond to persuasion. That is the that is the gear that the pro-life movement should have shifted into very quickly after roe v wade was repealed or overturned and they didn't and i understand why they didn't but you know there's a long runway

here for them but instead of worrying about state uh legislature legislature and worrying about elections they should be worrying about their neighbor to the left and neighbor the right and since this is essentially a christian movement, they should be reaching out to their neighbors and trying with compassion and trying with humility to change lives. I know what you mean, but I feel bound to say that there are plenty of Jews involved in the pro-life movement. And Nat Hentoff, the great, late Nat Hentoff, who wrote for the Village Voice and was a liberal in every other way, and an atheist, as far as I recall, was pro-life. So, I'm going to agree with every word you just said. That

is extremely rare on this program and in life. And disconcerting to me, I have to go now. I want to hear what I said. Exactly. I disagree with me. Roe versus Wade was handed down in 1973. That is an even half century ago. That means we've had two and a half, I don't know how you count generations, two and a half, maybe even three generations of Americans growing up with the idea that abortion is A, legal, and B, implied, isn't it? Sort of normal? Isn't it kind of okay? At the very same time that church and

synagogue attendance has been drifting down over this half century, people have to be persuaded. You can't just expect that because we got to six votes out of nine on the Supreme Court overturning Roe, that two weeks later, abortion will be outlawed across the country. It just doesn't work that way because the people you're dealing with are people. They're human beings. History has to be taken into account. human psychology has to be taken into account, and we have to persuade our neighbors. That is still the way it works. Who remain remarkably unpersuadable on these issues. Well, in Minnesota, boneheaded would be, I mean, to hear you talk about your neighbors, James, but...

Oh, I have no idea. I can guess. I'm actually flanked by a wonderful family and a Christian mortician. So I think a pretty good idea. But people tend to convince themselves over time and experience. I'm not exactly sure how much we can bring to the table on that. Well, we've got more, of course, and we'll be back right after this and now we welcome to the podcast zev ornstein director of international affairs for the city of david foundation which we're going to speak about. So welcome to the podcast. I understand from looking at your website that you dug up the golden bell

of what was called a loud man. Well, among many things we have discovered the golden bell of the biblical high priest that the Bible says in the book of Exodus that would have been along the hem of the robe of the high priest and urban legend has it

that why did he have bells on the hem of his robe? Because the priest and urban legend has it that why did he have bells on the hem of his robe because the one day a year when he was allowed into the holy of holies atop the temple mount inside the the temple uh if uh something should uh happen and they stopped hearing the jingling of the bell they would go to pull him out he also had a rope tied around his ankle uh so that was uh as long as the bells were jingling, we knew that the high priest was still breathing. So, Zev, let's take just a moment to set the scene here. Zev is joining us from Jerusalem. You grew up in the United States, but you now live in Israel. You are part of

the archaeological team excavating one of the most fascinating sites in all the world, let alone in Israel or the Holy Land. And Rob Long and I, at different times, someday, let's hope, James, as well, but Rob Long and I have both been privileged to receive a tour from you. And this site, which began to be excavated about a decade ago, when was the first digging in this site? James Well, the very first digging goes back 150 years ago to about 1867. Queen Victoria of England, she wanted to discover the treasures of the Bible, like the Ark of the Covenant. And so she sent a man to the Holy Land. His name was Charles Warren.

He wanted to go to the Temple Mount, except 1867, the Ottomans, the Muslims are controlling the area, and they say it's not going to happen. And so Charles Warren says, if I can't dig on the Temple Mount, I'll dig near it. He comes down the slopes of the Temple Mount, and inadvertently he ends up discovering that the original biblical city of Jerusalem, the city of David, the place where Jerusalem began, is not found inside the walls of the Old City, but actually found just outside the walls of the Old City.

So the modern digging begins when? Modern digging? I mean, there's been going on during going back 60, 70 years already, there's archaeological excavations going on. But I would say the city of David really begins to be put on the map. 2005. When Dr. Eilat Mazar, world-renowned archaeologist, she comes up with a theory that she had discovered the location of King David's Palace. And that just set off one

major discovery after the next. And today, the city of David is known as perhaps the most significant half mile on the planet. There is no half mile that means more to more people than the half mile, which is the city of David. It's the place where the kings of the Bible ruled and the prophets of the Bible preached. And every single day we are unearthing antiquities that are showing that simply as a matter of faith, but as a matter of fact, that Jerusalem's biblical heritage is real. You could see it, you could touch it, you could walk on it. I was lucky enough to touch it and to walk on it, and thank you for helping me do that. Let me just set the stage a little bit. So, you go out the southern gate, one of the most southern gates, close to the southern gate in Jerusalem, what they call the Dung Gate, or I guess the Bab al-Maghareb, which is the old North African quarter there.

You go out that gate, and you kind of cross a busy road, and you're in a little part of East Jerusalem, I guess, called Silwan. And there's houses there, and there's little businesses businesses there and it's kind of a little village there and um the thing about jerusalem is that when you walk the streets of jerusalem you're walking above the streets the original streets so if you're christian as i was and you walked uh on the via dolorosa um really the stations of the cross you're not really walking on the path you're walking about 20 feet above the path because the path is below. What you guys have discovered is from the very bottom of the hill are the pools of Siloam, which are ancient. I don't know why I'm telling you this. I mean, happy Pesach, by the way.

But just for our listeners, which is an ancient, what they call mikvah, which is a purification pool for the purposes of Christians. That is where Maryary and joseph brought jesus they brought him into the pools of salome and they carried him up the path to the temple which is you know the second temple to for the presentation the temple which was what we call candlemas i think that's right you know candlemas that sounds right that sounds right yes yeah so you could walk that and you've been able to walk the path but what you guys have discovered is that the actual road the actual stones are there and they are underneath the existing road and some of the houses which is a little controversial. But you could walk through a tunnel.

It's not that, it's, you know, maybe, I don't know, maybe 12 feet high, where people are excavating the actual road, the actual stones that were there at the time. And it kind of gives you goosebumps. This was a busy road into Jerusalem. It is inconceivable that the adult man, Jesus, didn't walk along that path. There's some scholars suggest that that is actually the route he took in on Palm Sunday and not the route on the other side of town, you know, on what is now called the Lions Gate. Because that was the main route.

And there's little alcoves in the store where the shopkeepers were. And there are stone sort of plinths, looks like plinths, where preachers, especially at that time when there seemed to be preachers on every corner, would stand and preach to the crowd. It is not conceivable that Jesus didn't stand on those stones as an adult man. And it's really the only place in jerusalem that you're that jerusalem what they always say is when you're there you're like well it was you know it was either here or near right it was either right here where x or y happened or near here but when you're in the tunnel in the in that on that road it is not here or near it is right there set, the pools of Siloam, now uncovered, the roadway, those huge Herodian, I don't know whether they were, I don't know that you know yet whether those stones were carved

by Herod or by Pilate, by the Romans or by the Jewish authorities, these huge stones, Jews would come from all over the Mediterranean for which festivals? How many times a year? And this would be the ceremony, they would wash in Siloam, and tens of thousands of people for the great festivals would then process up to the temple. Is that right? So, the historian Josephus says that 2,000 years ago, you would have on the three biblical pilgrimage festivals, we're talking about Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles, where all of Israel has to go on pilgrimage up to the temple. The historian Josephus said that on Passover 2,000 years ago, you're talking about 2.7 million people who are going up on pilgrimage. Millions of people. Now, the Pool of Siloam was

the largest ritual bath. Before you can go up to the temple, you have to cleanse yourself. Now, Rob, you mentioned in terms of the significance to Christians, the Pool of Siloam, the Christian scriptures refer to also the story of the healing of the blind man, which takes place at the Pool of Siloam. And now, I've been asked by many, many

dignitaries and diplomats and so on, you know, the pilgrimage road that both of you had the privilege of walking on, that leads the half-mile journey from the Pool of Siloam all the way up to the footsteps of the Temple Mount, the Western Wall, the Southern Steps, this road is the actual road that Jesus would have walked on. Now, I've been asked many times, well, how do you know? And I say it's very simple. Jesus was a Jew. Right.

And he would have gone with all the Jews to cleanse in the Pool of Siloam, and then walked up the pilgrimage road through the City of David, coming out at the Temple, atop the Temple Mount. The Pool of Siloam was the same pool from 2,000 years ago. The pilgrimage road running through the City of David is the same pilgrimage road. And I've asked many pastors, many priests, the Via Dolorosa, the Station to the Cross, do you believe literally those are the actual stations? And I've received the same answer every single time, which is, well, not exactly. But what we're unearthing in the City of David, whether you're Jewish or Christian, this is as close to 100% as you're going to get. You are literally walking in the footsteps of the Bible. And I think it's for that reason that a few years ago, the previous administration

recognized the city of David as a heritage site. and i think probably you both saw it in the entrance of the city of david is a big plaque with a large american flag on it and the question is why is america recognizing uh the city of david not as a jewish heritage site and not as an israeli heritage site but as an american heritage site and the reason was that they understood that the bedrock of the judeo-christ-Christian heritage that America was established upon actually has its roots in Jerusalem, in the city of David, that the heritage that we're unearthing every single day, like the Pulis Dei Loam, like the Pilgrimage Road, and like so many other antiquities from the biblical period, are affirming not just the heritage of the Jewish people and Israel, but also of America.

And when people, it's the united nations or elsewhere deny jerusalem's heritage well they're also denying the heritage of america i mean could it get into the just the politics of it right because the thing about jerusalem is you can't get a cup of coffee you can't get a little you know baklava without a little bit of politics involved in everything so there's a little controversy because some people were displaced the way they often are when you do archaeological digs um and there's also a little controversy because the pilgrimage road goes all the way up to what they some people call the second temple and some people call the mazhar al-sharif the temple mount where um one of the holiest places in islam

and there's a lot of worry that okay well this there's this plan by far right israelis to sort of dynamite the mosque and put up the third now the third temple um so you kind of have to take it on faith that what you're doing is a matter of faith. But isn't there a part of it that's a little bit like politics? Well, I would say the irony is actually the opposite, because I don't think there are very many, certainly not mainstream positions within Israel or the Jewish people denying the significance that Jerusalem has for Islam, the deep feeling that Muslims have for Jerusalem. But if you were to ask Palestinian leadership about the Jewish heritage in Jerusalem, or even the Christian heritage of Jerusalem, they'll deny it. So the irony is not that there's a fear that, oh my god, Israel's going to do something that will threaten

Islamic feelings towards Jerusalem, but the reality is that whether it's the United Nations, European Union, Palestinian leadership, every single day is denying the Jewish and Christian heritage in Jerusalem, including resolutions passed by UNESCO and otherwise, and as far as the

archaeology goes, one, in Jerusalem, everything is political. Whether you sneeze to the right uh one in jerusalem everything is political uh whether you sneeze to the right or to the left exactly right right but but i actually i actually said i had a group of uh eu officials who visited the city of david and i said to them i said do you want i said they said what do the palestinians think about the city of david and i said well honestly their leadership hates it and they said well, well, why is that? And I said, well, it's very simple, because the story that they've been telling for the last century is that Jews and by extension Christians have no heritage in Jerusalem. You're a bunch of colonizers, occupiers, thieves, you stole this land,

you have no business being here. Now, the problem with that, of course, is the city of David, because every single day we're unearthing antiquities that are showing not simply as a matter of faith, but as a matter of fact, that the Jewish people, and by extension Christians, have been in Jerusalem for thousands of years. And I turned to the officials and I said to them, but you know what, you want to depoliticize the archaeology, I have a full-proof, guaranteed way how to do that. And they were very interested. I said, all that you have to do is one thing. You can keep calling for your diplomatic solutions, you can call for your divisions of Jerusalem, whatever you want. All that has to happen is that UN leadership, Palestinian leadership, and European Union leadership have to acknowledge one thing, which is what?

That the Jewish people, and by extension Christians, have been in Jerusalem for thousands of years. That's all. Once you acknowledge that, archaeology is no longer political, because then when we find something that affirms the biblical heritage, whether it's going back to the time of Jesus or going back to the time of David. Oh, wow, that's really cool. It's not, well, you see, you guys said we were never here, and now we're here, and that proves this, and that proves that.

It's just archaeology. And what did these officials say to me? They said, they'll never agree to that. What do you want from us? I mean, we're just... You're going to ask for the moon as well? Or ask them to state the Jews were on on the moon two thousand five thousand years ago i know i'm just surprised the eu officials went there in the first place uh it was off the record

so uh believe me they weren't posting on social media about it um i just say one thing i mean it's a remarkable place and i think if you're if you're um you know i have my own you know personal solution to the issues in the middle east in the west west bank i think they need more christians there um christians are now a tiny tiny minority and they just need to go there just more of us there is probably a good thing um but so if you're listening this is you know this is monday thursday a lot of people gonna listen to this on good friday if you're jewish right smack dab in the middle of of passover if you're a muslim we're right smack dab in the middle of of passover if you're a muslim we're right smack dab in the middle of ramadan because other issues and we're in the middle of holy week or you know

the end of holy week well we're in the middle of holy week um if you could go there go there because i do i mean look the the the hebrew bible you know a bunch of that's also in the quran same thing with the new testament but i look at the wall if you look, a bunch of that's also in the Koran. Same thing with the New Testament. But I look at the wall, if you look on the wall of donors at the City of David, you see a lot of American names. You see a lot of famous, rich American names, a lot of famous, rich American Jewish names.

If this is a world heritage, what would be nice, I think, is to see a lot of Arab names. To see a lot of, like, you know, I mean, if you were the... But also, if you're the keeper of the tablets of Islam, maybe a lot of like you know i mean if you were but also also if you're the keeper of the tablets of the of islam maybe if you that don't don't let him off i think also episcopalian names rob is going to write you a check the minute the minute we go yeah no that's right we don't do that you know what one of the things that that is beautiful and i think not not

focused on enough is as you said it's holy week's Holy Week for Christians, middle of Ramadan for Islam, Passover for the Jewish people. And in Jerusalem, as complicated as things may be, Muslims are able to go to their heritage sites, and Christians are going to their heritage sites, and Jews are going to their heritage sites. And it's very easy in the United States to take for granted values like freedom of worship, freedom of religion, freedom of access. In the Middle East, no one takes those values for granted, because virtually once you leave Israel, they don't exist. And as much as people may say, well, Jerusalem, you have this issue or that issue, the fact that during this week, where you have for billions of people, Jerusalem is at the center of the world, everyone is able to access their holy places, their heritage sites, to connect with their history, their heritage, including at the City of David.

And I think that's something that oftentimes gets overlooked with all the focus. And if I may, just 60 seconds on, it's difficult to explain, but 60 seconds on the effect that visiting Yusef at the City of David had on me, that at the top of the archaeological works, there are thick walls, and they look out over the valley, and it fits the Bible. David was here. David was here. And then you were kind enough to take us down to Siloam, and then the tunnel partly excavated where we could stand up, and those huge stones, which are as big as the stones in what we call the Wailing Wall. And my feet were on those stones that 2,000 years ago, sandals were treading across those stones, Jews from around the world, including a Jew called Jesus. It is somehow staggering to remind yourself, standing there, you're reminded of the basic fact that we all believe somehow, even if you, whether you believe

Jesus, whatever your view on the divine aspect, but we all believe somehow that the root of Western civilization is those people. And when you stand where they stood, they were real. They were real. I just have two impressions there. One is, you know know you cut into the earth and of course archaeologists know all that stuff so you cut into the earth and um 20 feet down 12 whatever it is 18 feet down and so there's layers you can see the layers in the cross section of the earth and one of those layers not that not that thick but it's entirely black it's like charcoal and like that shouldn't really be there except that in the year 80 i think the romans burned it all down they burned the city down

they burned the temple down they burned it all down and over whatever it is 2 000 years that so the actual ash of the city has been compacted and compacted into like i don't know it was like eight inches maybe 12 inches maybe not that much of of of black soot that you can take your index finger and swipe it through and you are carrying out your finger is now black with the soot of the ancient city of jerusalem of the houses and sheds and wooden structures that lined that road when jesus walked it and it's just sort of extraordinary to like think oh no this is and i just say one other thing it's like you know i read about this in my column this week for washington examiner like if you go, Easter Sunday is Sunday. And good Episcopalians like me, we go, we put on a fancy

pink bow tie, and we kind of dress a little wild, and we think, well, this is how we're going to celebrate Easter, right? In Jerusalem, they go a little crazy. There's like candles and flame everywhere, and people are running around lighting each other, lighting candles on fire. It's amazing no one's actually

self-immolated there so it's easy for us and you know the west you know here to like you know everything's kind of contained and simple and in a box and kind of historic kind of almost hypothetical imagined imagination but when you're actually standing on the rocks the actual stones it just takes on a different a different feeling and i think that's that's kind maybe i'm trying to voice your mouth kind of what you're trying to say is that um this isn't just faith this is fact and there is something about the modern mind that needs that and if you're looking for that you can find it right there underneath the city as the you can hear the traffic rumble over um you're

underneath this underneath the street it's pretty amazing so uh so like let's get when is it going to be open when can people actually go and see this well there are portions of first of all the city of david is open we have over a million visitors a year uh the pool of silam as we mentioned you can go see it uh the king david palace excavation go see it uh and there's a portion of the pilgrimage road right next to the pool of silam that visitors could can also go see it. And there's a portion of the pilgrimage road right next to the Pool of Ceylon that visitors can also go see. The area that you mentioned with the ash, that's probably about two years from now.

We're hoping that we'll have the north-south connection from the pool all the way up through the City of David, that half-mile journey coming out of the footsteps of the Western Wall and the Temple Mount. And one of the things that I think is special about the ash that you make a reference to from when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in the year 70 is that represented the period of the destruction, right, of Jerusalem at that time. And yet, when people walk on the pilgrimage road today, it's the same descendants of those people who walked it 2,000 years ago. This is not the pyramids of the Colosseum where it's once upon a time, you know, the pharaohs of the great Roman Empire that are today in museums and history books with some monuments left behind, that the people who walked through the city of David at the Pool of Sidon, the pilgrimage road, from thousands of years ago, it's their descendants who are going to walk on

it in a few years' time, many of whom worship the same God, have the same customs, traditions, festivals as their ancestors did from thousands of years ago, and where else do you have that? And I think the symbolism of the ash is in the one hand, it represents destruction, but on the other hand, when you look at that ash today in 2023, and you look at, you're standing in Jerusalem in the city of David, the capital of the state of Israel, is that, yeah, in the year 70, that seemingly was the end of the story, except that it wasn't, because 2,000 years later, Jerusalem is thriving, and the Jewish people and Christians are coming back, walking in the footsteps of their ancestors, of their heritage. And when you look at the challenges that I think both of our nations today, whether in Israel or the United States, that our nations are facing, I think the ash symbolizes that it does not have to be the end of the story.

That sometimes, you know, the Passover festival, the Seder that we celebrated the other night, one of the things we eat is the bitter herbs. And we make a blessing on the herbs, thanking God for giving us these bitter herbs, and saying, well, why are you thanking God to eat the bitter herbs? And the idea is that sometimes you go through a hard period, but if you can endure, you actually come out stronger on the other side. And I think that's the legacy of Jerusalem, of the city of David, is lots of ups and downs, lots of shortcomings, lots of destruction, but we keep coming back and we keep rebuilding.

And I think the heritage that both of our great nations are built upon, that's our story, which is, yeah, we're going to have setbacks sometimes, but we're going to keep going. A virtual 360-degree tour can be found at cityofdavid.org.il, and there'll be a link at ricochet.com where you can go and take a look. Seb, thank you. Next year in Jerusalem. Even this year in Jerusalem. Love to see you guys again soon.

Happy Passover. If that's the right way to put it. We Christians say Happy Easter. Happy Passover. That's right. And Happy Holy Week. God bless. Thank you. We'll be right back after this.

When Rob mentioned prohibition, though, for some reason, my mind went back to one of my favorite things about Prohibition, which was this grape brick they used to sell. You could order this brick of compressed grapes. And with it came a set of wonderful instructions that told you everything not to do or it would turn into wine. This was to make just juice but it's like don't put it in a glass bottle with sugar with sugar don't put that bottle in the dark and don't leave it alone for two to three weeks i mean it's just great and you know the government did try to do what they could about it maybe that's what we should do um when it comes to some of these positions just phrase them in the negative but i I heard somebody draw breath. I was about to ask.

No, no. There's a little touch of a family story there, that my mother grew up on a farm, and my grandfather operated a water-powered sawmill. And every autumn, that sawmill was rejiggered, the pulleys moved around to turn it into an apple press. And farmers from miles and miles and miles around brought apples to be pressed so that they could have cider. And it wasn't until years later that I tweaked to what was going on there, at least in part. It was a pretty Protestant group in that area of northeastern Pennsylvania. So you'd think there may have been, certainly my grandparents were teetotalers, but there were some hard cider being drunk in those summers and winters

there in Montrose, Pennsylvania. It wasn't just whiskey. It was cider that helped the American Revolution and American culture spring up. That's right. Rob, is the drink that you would associate with New Orleans? It would be the Sazerac. Sazerac. Probably the first cocktail ever invented

it was invented in the pay showed uh by antoine pay showed who was a pharmacist and a apothecary he had an apothecary on charter street and it is you rinse uh you rinse a rocks glass old-fashioned glass with herb saint you just rinse it put some herb saint in so you get the scent uh a little bit a little bit of sugar um uh ice rye uh and a dash of paste showed bitters which turns it which is a red red bitters and you kind of swirl it around the glass and maybe garnish it with a lemon peel if you're that inclined to that it it is a delicious, delicious drink. And I will, by the way, understanding and responding to your segue, James, I will actually be having one, well, at least one, probably several in New Orleans in two weeks with the Ricochet meetup. So if you want to come to New Orleans, I think of a big day is, is that Friday, April 13. Really? So it's a week away. Since I said two weeks, holy mo, so it's a week away. I said two weeks?

Holy moly, it's a week away. Friday, April 13. We are all meeting in New Orleans. No, that is Thursday, April 13. Friday, April 14. We're having a big party. We want you to come. It's a Ricochet meetup.

That's the fun of Ricochet. It's not just these brilliant podcasts. It's also the joy of getting together in real life. So that's a Ricochet meetup. That's the fun of Ricochet. It's not just these brilliant podcasts. It's also the joy of getting together in real life. So that's a little bit away. And then after that, on April 22nd, there'll be a meeting in Stillwater, Minnesota. I don't know if you're going to be there, James. And then there's one coming up in mid-July from Winston-Salem, and that stuff's being worked out. And Mike Balzer just sent notice about an annual German Fest extravaganza that will be happening in Milwaukee in late July.

A member, she, not she like the president of China, but she like the member of Ricochet, is wondering if members want to meet up in the Pittsburgh area for the Willie Nelson concert, which would actually be kind of fun. But look, if you can't make these, they too far away whatever reason here's the solution you join ricochet you go on ricochet.com you tell everybody your fellow members hey i want to have a meetup here on these dates and they'll come to you because ricochet people travel to get together and i will be traveling to get a sazerak great thing about the members actually by the way is that if you post a meme that's a bit mocking you probably won't go to prison as far as we know it hasn't happened yet

precedent hasn't been set but there's just a horrible story I can't get my head around this there's this guy I forget his name he was one of your basic social media guys who puts up the memes and he put out a meme about you can vote for Hillary Clinton online. Text your vote to with a phone number.

He's facing prison. You know this story, right? No, I don't. Really? Truly, truly, truly willing to win the story. I wish I could get the guy's name off the top of my head. But he he put he was charged with election interference, trying to deprive people of their right to vote, etc., etc., which is kind of like that thing that they also charged Trump with, with election interference, that paying off Stormy Daniels so the story didn't get out was illegal because people would be less likely to vote for him if they knew about it. Really, Donald?

I mean, we kind of knew this guy was a little bit. What a shock! All through the 80s and 90s. This is not a surprise. This would not change his my concept of his behavior. But anyway, this guy's facing prison time for putting out a meme that said, call this number and text your vote to Hillary as he was attempting to capitalize, perhaps on the stupid. But it was obviously a joke. It's that, how many times do you see that little meme on Twitter where, well, the Democrats vote on Tuesday, Republicans, you vote on Wednesday,

or some little joke like that that assumes the other side is dumb and does something like that. There was somebody who did it for Hillary as well, or, you know, did it for Trump, but since it wasn't as professional-looking as this troll guy's stuff, they have charged her. No, he used similar typefaces and color schemes and he's facing jail time man i can't that can't last can it um well it it has to fall on that it has to be i mean appealed because he's found guilty i don't know what the sentence is going to be but it has to be appealed on just basic First Amendment rights unless people actually think that putting a lame meme on Twitter is the equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theater,

which itself isn't even illegal. All right, you guys don't have an opinion on that. Well, I know you do, and you're again, the other big story of the week, of course, brace yourself. A lot of people are saying, thank God I have a reason to never drink Bud Light again. Do you know this one? No, I don't know that one. Yeah, I do know this one. But I'll take any reason you can give me. I should make this the quiz at the end of the week.

Yeah, we should do that, actually. It should be a new thing. Rob, explain it to Peter. Bud Light, a Budweiser product uh has named a new spokesperson um a person i was not aware existed and when i said i was not aware existed to a bunch of people i was like roundly criticized for being in just completely out of it a person named dylan mulvaney who is a trans activist um and a one, because sometimes people believe even people who are sort of trans positive, I guess. I don't know what the word would be spokesperson and it's gotten sort of it has

like i think has a new trans gender pro trans logo on some cans of bud light it's unclear to me that bud light uh they're not for general it's a very big company not for general distribution it's a huge company though yeah right right right this is not so this is not the bush family of st louis anymore they sold it a decade ago too yeah was the huge dutch company beer right they got it yeah they got a million billion trillion dollars they spend every day on marketing and audience research and customer research i i think they need their money back i'm not sure that they're connecting with the bud light drinker but maybe that's just me well and then some people went on to say that actually, if you go to gay bars, Bud Light is the preferred beer there,

so they know their market. It wasn't for general release. It was just they made a few cans for him because he's an important trender, influencer, and I want to gag as I say those words. It doesn't matter. It got out. People saw where the sensibilities and the sympathies laid.

Saw a little TikTok the other day from Ed, who was giving Anheuser-Busch a message. Uh, I got out his AR-15 and shot up about three cases worth of Budweiser products and said, he's never drinking it again, which is great. Travis, uh, the country Western star said he's removing Anheuser-Busch products from all of his, uh, his, uh, concert writers. Uh, a lot of people are just saying, okay, I get it, I get it, this is what you, this is where your values are, mine are elsewhere.

The reason that they're doing it is probably because in order to improve their DEI score, in order to make themselves, to be able to have something to point to when the activists come around and say, nice beer empire you have here, it would be a shame if anybody picketed you for not being sufficiently diverse and enthusiastic about the multiplicity of things you're supposed to be enthusiastic about,

that they buy off future trouble by doing something like this. It's inane, if you ask me, because what they end up alienating is remarkable. Jack Daniels is the latest to have done it. Jack Daniels Canada announced on their Twitter feed that they are partnering with RuPaul in order to have a drag queen summer camp. Now, Jack Daniels is not exactly my go-to whiskey, but the idea that a brand with that sort of image and heritage and Tennessee and all the rest of it would then throw its lot in with these creatures who are aesthetically appalling. It's caricatures of the long nails and the dolly part in the hair and the godly cosmetics. This is Jack Daniels wants to be part of this clique too. And I can't help but think it's the same thing.

They're trying to forestall future protests by saying well look what we bought here but the expanse to their image amongst people who actually care about these things is enormous it just is it's it's remarkably bad publicity and it just reminds you it makes you think how many tone deaf uh young folk work in their social media area and think well everybody loves drag and only really bad awful people who have closed, narrow minds don't realize how wonderful drag is. Well, anyway, I've just been rambling too long. It's time to get out of here because, you know, not every podcast can be 90 minutes to 120 and so forth. I have to tell you,

fast-growing trees have probably grown maybe an inch or so since last I talked about them. Support them for supporting us, and you'll get a great tree in the bargain. Take a few minutes to leave us the five-star review, if you wouldn't mind. And don't worry when I say that we'll see you at the comments at Ricochet 4.0. It won't be 4.0 forever. What do I mean? Go there. Find out.

Next week, guys. Next week. Next week, fellas. I am Andrew Gutman. And I'm Beth Feely. And we're a couple of accidental activist parents who woke up and started speaking out about issues that we saw in our children's schools. So join us every week on Take Back Our Schools on the Ricochet Audio Network or wherever you get your podcasts.

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