The Ricochet Podcast - Don't Self-Impeach — You'll Go Blind

Episode Date: May 10, 2019

This week on America’s most beloved political podcast, we get deep in the weeds on impeachment: can it happen, how would it work, and the politics surrounding it. But first, we travel to Venezuela where our intrepid correspondent Annika Rothstein, who tells a harrowing story that we won’t spoil here (yes, we know the audio on her segment was sub-par — socialists run lousy telecommunications... Source

The things aren't, things don't happen. Hold on, I just dropped my mic. I'm going to say I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University. As government expands, liberty contracts. It's funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food. That's a good thing.

First of all, I think he missed his time. Please clap. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lalix. Today we talk to Annika Rothstein in Caracas and John Yoo, probably from the lobby of a McDonald's. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number CDXLVII. If you're citing this in Roman

numerals, 447. If you're not, we thank you for joining us today. And I'm James Lalix, Minneapolis, with an eye out the window looking for the tanks to roll because, of course, this is a constitutional crisis. The nation is about to fall apart. Rob, Peter, in your various places of California and New York, I assume that everyone is also on tenterhooks because the very foundational documents of this country are about to be shredded by a process that threatens to consume us all in a lake of fire. Or, as somebody I spoke to yesterday said, this is just white noise to me now, which I think is interesting because if you're really involved in all of this, it's incredibly important. And if you're on the right side of the equation, you're thinking, this is not going to work the way you guys think it is. But there seems to be the idea that unless

there is a constant banging of every available drum on the obstruction and the impeachment and the contempt and the rest of it, that somehow Trump will, I don't know, win. What do you guys think of the Democrat strategy? On the spectrum of the fearful fear that tanks are rolling versus all this is white noise. I'm much, much closer to white noise. All three of us. One of the great benefits that tanks are rolling versus all this is white noise i'm much much closer to white noise um all three of us one of the great benefits of this podcast in my opinion is that all three of us are outside washington apparently if you're in washington and above all these days journalists i don't know what the strip is like james but i'm told that in the washington examiner

the washington post every magazine every website in Washington, they all have screens on. So they're up on the wall. They're watching television. They're watching CNB. They can't get Donald. They cannot escape. Of course, they don't choose to escape him. But they have Twitters.

All of this stuff is in their face all the time. Poor people. I'll answer that for you then from a newsroom before we get to New York. Yes, yes, yes. We do have – I mean we have a central hub here in our wonderful modern newsroom that is arranged in a horseshoe around a series of monitors. Like we're watching the monolith from 2001. Tell us what's going on. And that's just part of being in a newsroom. You've got that news going.

We have ancillary monitors elsewhere. The business department will be monitoring the financial channels. People will be monitoring local back and local. But over where I live, my next-door neighbor has turned it on a little while now and then, and I give him trouble for it. It's like this ain't Watergate. Right. No, it's not even close to Watergate. Just when I walk in and I see it and I see the chyrons and I see the scrolls and the rest of it, I get this sense that something is happening.

Just the very presence of the fact that the television, you know, the holy rectangle has been activated means that there's something going on. Of course, if I were in an airport, I would ignore it completely because that's just CNN International pumping out what they do. So, Rob, you're in New York. The mood there is. I know your thumb is so gently yet so sensitively placed at the pulse of Gotham.

The carotid artery, yeah. Well, I mean I just think a thought experiment. Just say it is Watergate. Just say it is. Watergate didn't have news 24-7 either. That's right. I mean things don't happen that way. They just don't. You don't have a situation where – I mean like unless there's some kind – unless there's a war on. And remember, this really did start. This kind of 24-hour cycle started with the first Persian Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm. That's when it started, and it kind of made CNN. It really kind of was its first big moment on stage. It sort of created its business model. But life and politics, even Watergate-style politics,

I mean, I don't think this is Watergate, but just say it is. It didn't happen 24-7. It managed to be reported in the newspaper every morning, every other morning. It didn't really approach daily 24-7 news time until, I don't know, maybe the impeachment vote maybe or the House hearings later on. But even then, just the idea that everything's breaking news and everything's an emergency and everything's a crisis is designed to make people who are selling crisis and emergency a lot of money. But it doesn't – I mean it moves a lot of – on Fox News, it moves a lot of gold coins and self-lubricating catheters. And on CNN, it moves a lot of like insurance stuff.

It moves a lot of daytime advertisers because those rates are pretty low. But it doesn't actually edify anybody. And I think what it does is drives people crazy. The story this morning, it's still – well, it was morning until a few moments ago out here in California. The story of the morning was that Trump has just ramped it up by invoking executive privilege. Actually, no. No. The White House hasn't ramped it up. After the White House invokes executive privilege, almost for certain it goes to the courts. So what happens is Nadler says this. The White House says this. Nadler fines for contempt and then the White House invokes executive privilege and this won't get resolved for months. The White House just slowed it down. They didn't write. Also, a thought experiment again or Google it.

It is sum total of what percentage of recent American administration starting with, oh, I'll just pick one, Reagan. Has there not been a controversy or some kind of trouble around the issue of executive privilege. And I will say 100% of all administrations have had this issue. 0% have not. The idea that this is breaking new, it's crazy. This script has been written. 95% of the script has been written already and has happened already in every single administration. And the idea that this is somehow we're breaking new ground,

I mean, even the phrase breaking new ground isn't new. Even the phrase constitutional. We've heard this all before. We didn't hear it as much under Obama, but we did hear it. We heard it plenty under George W. Bush, plenty under Reagan, plenty under the first Bush, plenty under Clinton. So you can't break new ground in a swamp. Rob is absolutely right about both sides doing this. I mean, that Fox bong that always tells you that something is breaking. Years ago, I just learned to tune it out before I tuned out the channel entirely. Because unless we have just sent a carrier fleet to the Gulf and they're deploying and the B-52s are going over Tehran, the bong and the breaking does not qualify. But let's be honest. I mean let's say pick any singular thing about the Obama administration that Republicans are angry about, be it Obamacare, the extra constitutional disbursement of funds there or Obama taking unto himself the right to make immigration as opposed to the powers of the Congress or droning a citizen without trial and killing him, et cetera. Let's say any of these things were occupying our minds to the extent to

which Donald Trump's obstructionism is occupying the mind of the left. Would we be complaining if there was particular, detailed, incessant coverage of the issues on our television screens? I don't think that we would. I think we would say this is a necessary corrective. So I take Rob's point as true, but if we really believed that this was as important as it was. Yeah, but the difference there is that Obama was in the wrong and Trump was in the right. Well, true. But I mean, I guess I would say I found it annoying and irritating when they would do it under George W. Bush. But I suppose, I guess, if you're going to make a comparative kind of statement, I guess, well, it was during a war, so maybe it's like wartime. I don't know. Obama, I had policy issues with him, and I had some ethical issues that I felt were not properly addressed.

I don't think the IRS investigations, which I'm still upset about, still angry about, I mean, I don't think, I think the fact that no one went to prison for that is evidence enough that the that the deck is stacked for the other side. Since James is our conscience here, he can keep us honest on this. But I'm with I believe that what I find most irksome about the coverage of the Obama years is what wasn't covered. Yeah, the IRS, Lois Lerner and the press years is what wasn't covered. Yeah, right. The IRS, Lois Lerner, the press gave that very scant coverage. The outrage, I really do think this is outrageous, is how little investigating and how little reporting the press did into drones that we kept firing on Pakistan and Afghanistan.

And Obama, we won't torture people. No, but we'll kill them. We will kill them. We won't do rendition. That's right. We won't do rendition. But as long as it's out of sight, as long as the press doesn't ask questions, as long as the coverage is very light, we'll just drop rockets on people from the air. Very little coverage of that.

And very little coverage, of course, of the immigration. I mean there's that wonderful photograph of Secretary of Homeland Security, Jay Johnson, I think. Johnson? His last name Johnson? Jay Johnson. Jay. Right, Jay. Walking along a detention center close to the Texas border and behind what I guess you could call cages. Uh, there are children and it's a news photograph of the, from the time. And there he is.

And all we hear about is children in cages. But then this, this is a photograph that was readily available at a news photograph and was used and was probably the former secretary of Homeland security. And nobody noticed it. But that's because the underlying predicate for the administration was compassion and a transnational goodness and wonderfulness for all. If the underlying predicate for this administration is that they are racist

who hate these people specifically because of the concentration of melanin in their blood, in their skin, then this, then even if this photograph was taken from a previous administration, it speaks truth about the contemporary administration. But for a moment. But nobody ever sits down and says, we're going to – let's ignore this.

Nobody ever passes that around and says, let's stifle this story. It just doesn't rise. It's not a piece of balsa wood that comes to the surface. It just sort of gets waterlogged and floats down because there are more important narratives to talk about. Yeah, I heard a friend of mine describe it as it's not a match. It's like when you're playing Patience or Memory or one of those games, you turn over and it's a butterfly. And you don't even remember it and you turn it down. And the butterfly doesn't click to you until you pick up another butterfly.

And you go, oh, I know what that one is. Now it's a match. If it doesn't match, then it doesn't really – it just kind of goes out of your brain. You forget where it is. But I would say on the other hand, just for a moment, it is right now indicative of what I find to be – I really find baffling about American politics in general. Whatever you think of Trump, he is the real – I mean this is – he's a polemical president with actual policies, some of which I disagree with, some of which I agree with. And he has the personality of a self-lubricating candidate. Yeah, he's a horrible person. To use your term.

But he does have positions and policies. And so there is plenty to run against. Yes, there is. Now, it's hard to run against an economy that's humming along. You can, you know, listen, when there are Democrats in there, all Republicans want to the, is the national debt. And when a Republican's in there, all the Democrats want to talk about is the national debt. And when your guy's in, you never want to talk about the national debt. Right. But, all right. But there's other things you can talk about if you wanted to, I suppose, but you're in, if you're running against a president in good economic times,

you have a challenge. You have a real challenge. It is not new to American politics. It is sometimes you're doomed. If you're Bob Dole in 1996, what are you going to do? Or Michael Dukakis in 88 or Mondial in 84. Or frankly, if you're John McCain in 2008. Correct. He's in the tank and it's the reverse, right? Correct. So it's hard, but it's not as if it's impossible. And it's not as if this president has not given you a lot of room. And yet they insist on this complicated Jenga game of trying to topple him.

Well, we've told this and this. And the only people who are an audience for that are people who are never where we're never going to vote for donald trump and it just seems strange to me that to wrap themselves up in this when they should be wrapping themselves up in normalcy is that i think that's how you that's how you're going to beat him that's what i've been saying for a long time here and peter tell me what you think about this that perhaps the democrats are making a bid that the people on the right who don't who did not like don Donald Trump because of his character, um, are going to be lured over to the side that has all kinds of policies with which they disagree because that side also shares their verdict on his character.

I, I, I don't think that works. Well, I mean, we're sort of your Mac, your max boots. It'll work. It'll work for you. Yeah. You know, your bill crystals, but it's gone. Here's for you. Yeah, you're Bill Kristol. But it's gone. Here's the here's the level at which I can see it working. We know that Republicans did much more poorly than they might have done otherwise in the midterms for one reason.

Suburban women. These are typically many married women. I mentioned their marital status because married women tend to vote Republican. So women who might otherwise have voted Republican just found Donald Trump too repellent. They just couldn't stomach him. So they voted Democratic or stayed home and Republicans lost seats in the House that they would otherwise have carried. At that level, I can see some sense in what the Democrats in Congress are doing. Just keep making the people who dislike Donald Trump continue to feel troubled by him, continue to feel that somehow or other, all this is Trump's fault. It's trouble. It's irritating. It's annoying. It's upsetting.

Make it go away. And the way we make it go away is by voting against Donald Trump. At that level, I can see it working. At the level of ideas it go away is by voting against Donald Trump. At that level, I can see it working at the level of ideas, policies, zero chance it's going to work. Rob is exactly right. They're not going to persuade anyone who wasn't already with them in terms of policy. But I can see just keeping pressure on, frankly, suburban women, one particular Republican constituency. That makes some sense to me maybe they just got that out of the way in the midterm right well yes that was that was the character election yeah that i could like and then i think that's so that's a fair argument but i still think

that your problem with that is that you are instead of normalizing him you are normalizing the opposition to him and you're making that, I'm not making it seem normal, you agree with it, but making it seem humdrum and of course, what new thing are they throwing at this guy? And there's a point at which they took a shot at him, a really big one, and they lost. And at that point, I just think good politics suggests you move on. The idea that you're going to like, no, we're going to sift through the ruins of the Mueller report and find something. We're going to sift through his income tax for the past 20 years and find something.

We're going to sift through something. A guy has been sifted through and has sifted himself through for years and years and years. Something is just I think why it's part of my larger view of the world and people in general and human nature, which is there's something very strange about people when they look at something that's very, very hard to do. And they act like, oh, that's easy. I'm not gonna even think about that. They find something very, very easy to do. And they try to make that hard. And that is a way to avoid doing something that you're really lying to yourself about, right? I mean there's theological arguments here and there's political arguments here.

It is a hard thing. It is a hard thing to impeach a president. They're trying to do that because they don't want to run against him. The question will be whether or not people think that in 2020 Donald Trump is a lumpy pillow or a pillow with a big rock in it because one of those you can get used to and the other you can just never learn to acclimate yourself towards. Well, sleeping is like that. I mean comfortable. You got to be comfortable, right? How many times do you say to yourself, oh, I'm not comfortable?

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And now we welcome back to the podcast, Annika Rothstein. I've been handed a bio here, and it has some interesting little changes to it. Instead of saying she's a journalist, it says she's the journalist, and I'm not going to dispute that. It also says she's a lover of meat, freedom, and smooth cigars. And again, you're our nomination for Miss America 2019. You've been our woman in Caracas for the past several months now, and we've been following you on Twitter. It's a harrowing story. Before we go any farther, a lot of people listening to this podcast and in the comments are going to say, look, we've read what you've written. You've provided incredible testimony, great stories.

I got a better view of Venezuela because of you. But for God's sakes, get out before something horrible happens. We worry about you. What do you say to those people when yet another story comes of what happens that perhaps the peril may exceed the information that the rest of us are getting? Well, I will say there are, you know, there's a limited amount of times that a woman can dodge a bullet. So they do have a point. And yes, I'm about to get out. Good. Before we get to it. It's about that time. Before we get to the situation right now,

which is not good, hasn't been good, gets worse, tell us what happened to you. You got kidnapped. I got kidnapped. So I was attending a meeting with a couple of contacts and my contact never showed up. I had a brain behind the whole kidnapping operation.

This was a person linked to the Chacao police. So he was a police officer. And I was meeting him for an interview. And then when I was leaving, after sitting around waiting for an hour, my car, our car, got cut off. And three men in spice uniforms with automatic weapons stepped out of the car

and grabbed me. Four to five hour long, you know, harrowing afternoon that went from bad to worse. I mean, from shock to shock. I was told that I was going to be put in the Sabine prison. And for anyone who doesn't know that, that means not coming back. Basically. It was described to me what they would do to me. Very explicitly. What type of torture is done to women in the Sabine prison. And,

and then, you know, magically solution was presented to me. And they said that the fine for what you have done is $20,000. So, you know, in order to get out of the predicament I was in, I said, okay, I'll try and do what I can. And I was held prisoner while trying to find a solution, trying to come up with money, trying to, you know, figure out what to do. And then four and five hours into it, suddenly more men show up with their weapons drawn. I have no idea what's going on. And then it's, it's the fight. I mean,

it's complicated. So bear with me. Telling me that the people who had kidnapped me were not actually FICE officers, but that they are. And that they are now going to capture, they had captured two of the culprits. And that I was to come with them for a raid to find and identify the others. So I was put in the back of one of four FICE cars, FICE trucks. And there are at least 20, 25 people there with automatic weapons. You know, I can't even, you can't even imagine the sight in the middle of the night. And we speed off and there's gunfire. There's an exchange of fire. Two people are shot. Two people are

apprehended. Three people are apprehended at what was supposed to be a drop-off site that the fights had arranged. And then, you know, that's just the start of what is 36 hours of identifying criminals, interrogation, drama, realizing that everyone you trusted in the city betrayed you and sold you out. So that's the short version. Good Lord. How did you get back in? I mean, I want to come back to this,

but how did you get back in? Because a little while ago, we heard the story of you being turned away at the airport, put back in the plane and sent back to Paris. How did you get back in? Well, I'm famously, you know, the woman who can't take no for an answer and who won't take a hint. So I came in through Columbia. And there are ways to get through Columbia, even having no clue what I'm through. And so I did that. We're going to wait to read the whole account of your story because there's so much we have yet to hear from this,

and I can't wait, and we don't want to, you know much we have yet to hear from this and I can't wait. And we don't want to, you know, we want you to sell it for an awful lot of money. So let's, let's look at detail. God, I hope so. Because I am, you know, as the vice officer said, when they, you're basically Santa Claus to these people. Well, yeah, this is, you know, Patreon is, it only gives out once a month. So this is really a case of GoFundMe.

The situation that we seem to be hearing right now is that perhaps the last uprising, they pulled the trigger a day too soon, that they had to go prematurely and it didn't work. And now everybody, everybody's going to be rounded up. What's the sense on the ground there? Well, that's true. What happened was that, as I've been told, they were supposed to do this May 1st. I mean, Guaido had planned a huge rally for May 1st, and that what took place outside La Carlota Air Base was supposed to happen midday on May 1st,

but it happened four in the morning on April 30th because they got word that Leopoldo Lopez uh, midday on May 1st, but it happened four in the morning on April 30th because, um, you know, they, they got word that Leopoldo Lopez was going to be moved to the Sabine prison. He has been in house arrest, of course,

and he was going to be moved. Never to be. Um, so there was an operation in the background where officers, even to be officers, uh, accepted, uh,

money in exchange for money to treat, and had gone with Guaido. And so everything that was supposed to happen on May 1st then happened at 4 in the morning. And they were not prepared for it, obviously. I mean, it became, as I described, the Ikea of coups. It was dead on the ground. It was built to fail. So it was, you know, it barely lasted a few hours because what they didn't have,

the officers that were supposed to go with him, the part of the army that was expected to turn to Guaido, didn't because they could see, of course, that he didn't have the authority. He wasn't prepared. And the price for going with him is, well, it's the ultimate price. So they didn't. Hey, it's Rob Long in New York.

Thanks for an incredibly harrowing story. I hope they make a movie about you becoming a zillionaire. But before that happens. Oh, God willing. Yeah, the last time we talked, we were all waiting for a moment when American forces or American influence or support would either make a decisive move or not. It seemed to be that that was scheduled for the May 1 coup. It didn't happen.

There are a lot of American foreign policy, you know, Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense kind of shrugging and saying, well, we did what we could. Meanwhile, there was an intervention, we'll say, in the region by the Russians in violation of the Monroe Doctrine, and that has also been put on ice. So if you could give us, what are the next three things, what should we be looking at to happen next there with a proviso that it doesn't look like an American intervention of force is imminent? What game is everybody playing?

Well, I mean, as far as I've been told, one of the reasons why this failed so miserably was, of course, had it succeeded. I mean, what those people are telling me, I don't I can't swear to it, but what they are saying is had it actually succeeded, you would have a military government now under Russia, meaning that the people that claim to have sided with Guaido actually had sold him out and had a deal with Russia behind the scenes. And that the plan was to remove Maduro and have Guaido be incredibly unprepared for what was coming next and then put Perino in his place and basically give them the head on the platter that everybody wants in the international community, which is Maduro, and it's business as usual, except for the military government. So what most people are saying is that, you know, it's sort of a blessing in disguise

in the sense that this was a rotten deal to begin with. So that's one thing. And the other now is that after all of this came to light and everyone saw that a lot of people were taking a lot of money and a lot of deals everything is shifting right now so the head of the sabine has been has been taken out and and put in place another person has been put in place uh that person is being shifted everything is being shifted so i would say that venezuela has never been more dangerous than it is right now because no one knows who is where, who is loyal to whom, or if the deal that was made on a Monday is good on a Tuesday. Everyone is very, very nervous. Annika, Peter Robinson here.

That anticipates my question. Think back to Cuba. Fidel takes over in 1959. There's several hundred executions, living standards drop, a million Cubans leave for Florida. But after two years, two and a half, three years, a certain level of stagnation sets in, and it stays that way. So between Chavez and Maduro, Venezuela has been undergoing this slow rolling catastrophe for many years. Do you have the feeling that the people who are going to leave have left? And now that Maduro has stared down this latest attempt, he's in to stay.

Are we at the stage now where things are becoming stagnant but stable? I would say that Maduro's fate is very uncertain. I mean, this failure, it was bigger than anyone could have anticipated. And having survived this, the regime having survived this, now shifting everything around, it's scary. People lost hope. You remember me having very hopeful and, you know, conversations a month ago. I'm a cynic now.

And, and apparently that's what Venezuela does to you. You know, I mean, a few kidnappings in and, and I'm, I'm getting kind of rough around the edges. So Annika, what is there with regard to living standards, just medicine, food, has the country bottomed out? Have the people who remain there got enough to live on? Or do you think things can continue to get worse still? They can still continue to get worse. Definitely still. I mean, I don't know what's below hell i can't you know i can't

say i don't have a word for for the next level but the majority for you know at least 85 95 90 people here okay uh but you can still hustle people hustle still there is a way of thinking because you've had this dream of it's going to change, especially for the past three months. What's been new to people here? You know, the rallies alone, the fact that there's been this new guy on the scene, that the international community seems to care. You know, the reason I've kept coming back is because i for whatever reason i fell in love with this country completely like head over heels in love and a lot of it has to do with the people that you know for no good reason no apparent reason are hopeful are good you know are are

struggling and when you see them lose hope and when you meet people who are crying, literally crying in front of me, saying that, well, after this, what is there? Because it's going to close down even more. And the exit, no one is, you know, people are trying to get visas. Visas are being denied. You can't get a passport. You can't get a driver's license. You can't get identification so you can leave. So the people who could leave have left.

And the rest, you you know what is there and i got last question before i'm sorry i'm bumming everybody no no this this is yeah i'm pumped out actually where i saw it going for a long time ago um this may sound like a stupid question i want to talk to you when you get back and you've got a little space and distance to it. But when you look at Havana today, you see a city that was beautiful, that was the colonial architecture, the Beaux-Arts styles, and then it just was ossified, stuck in time, deteriorated, fell apart. But there was still a beauty there and nothing replaced it except for some brutal Cuban buildings. In Caracas, is anything new? Have they built any new buildings? Do they paint any signs? Are there advertisements that the government hasn't put out that indicate some

life outside the government sphere? Is there, or is this the sense that things got stuck and are now just falling apart bit by bit day by day? Well, it's, it's different from Cuba in some ways. I mean, I've spent some time in Havana as well, and it's not that. It's not that bad yet, no. Things are being developed, but when you say, is their life apart from the government, my answer is no, because this is happening, you know, they have this word here, you know, entropados, which means people who are connected, doing

business through connections to the government, which means they're still business. People are still making money. Those people, those intrepados, we identify by, you know, they're driving the good cars. You know, people point to the nice cars that are not, you know, actively falling apart. And they say, oh, intrepados. And that means that this person has a link to the government. And he has a store. He has a restaurant. he has a hotel.

Like these people can still manage, but is anything, you know, everything is part of the government. Because you need to actively work with them and be in this system and know how to hustle with that in order to make your life work. And this is, you know, this is a city of hustlers. This is a country of hustlers. If you're not a hustler, you know, this is a city of hustlers. This is a country of hustlers. If you're not a hustler, you know, you're a chump. Wait a minute. Something that was supposed to use centralized authority to benefit the people ends up only benefiting the people in the centralized authority? That can't be.

Where have we seen it? Listen, Annika, tweet when you're on the way. Tweet us when you're on the plane. Tweet when you land wherever you go. Keep everybody informed because we want to know that you got out safe and you landed somewhere and you can begin to write again about the story that you've experienced because it's a tremendous one. And we thank you for coming on Ricochet and telling the tales. And we'll read every word of what you put up next. Thank you.

Take care. All right. Stay safe. Bye-bye. Oy, G Gewalt. Oh, yeah. I mean, I just – what it must be like to be in a country in turmoil in which there's a certain – I mean, a great amount of lawlessness, and then you're staring down the barrel of a gun. Yeah.

It's extraordinary. It really is. And it makes you wonder that there's no lessons to be drawn from that from America There's absolutely no lessons whatsoever We can talk about the dangers of centralized authority And charismatic leadership And the rest of it and all the other things So did we dodge that with FDR?

Who knows? Who knows? I'm still worried about climate change, James. Yeah, me too, terribly so. But it's like – today I was listening to the clip of AOC and Bernie talking about using the post office as a banking facility. Wouldn't that be wonderful? Wouldn't that be absolutely great? I mean I love my local post office.

It's filled with very nice people who are doing a great job at taking things from you and putting them elsewhere so they go someplace else cheaply. I like that. But there's just this sort of decreptitude about the entire building that you don't find in a modern post office or in a modern bank, which are shiny and fighting and the rest of it. Also, it used to be – it was – there was a banking component to the post office about 100 years ago. Well, there used to be. It's like the oldest idea in the world, post office savings. And the Japanese do it quite well, and the English do it. I remember reading about some sort of crisis of Japanese postal receipts or something like that because the population of Grange and all the rest of it.

But I don't know. The current system we have today, if we want to backstop it with the federal government and extend credit to people who don't have the best, who is actually going to pay for the overdrafts and the stuff that doesn't get paid for? I tend to think it might be us. And that's maybe a debate that we ought to have about. But in the meantime, when it comes to credit and it comes to buying things, cards and the rest of it, what if you got like, you know, zero, zero, zero, you know, well, nobody likes zero anything. I mean, zero money's bad. Zero credit's bad. You break your phone, you lose contact with the outside world. You got zero calls, you got zero texts, zero social media. Life without a phone means pretty much zero everything, right? Having zero of anything is hardly anything good. Unless, is he going to an ad by gum he is unless unless

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every single day the president is making a case. He's becoming self-impeachable. Okay, John, self-impeach. Do you go blind or get hair on your palms? Which or both? Never heard of self-impeach before. I mean this wouldn't be the first time I heard a member of the Democratic House insert a new clause into the Constitution that wasn't there. But people forget though that obstruction of justice can be an impeachable offense you know president nixon as far as we know didn't actually order the watergate break-in itself but he was impeached for the obstruction he uh you know engaged in afterwards in the face of the investigation but i don't i think i'm sad to say i think that what pelosi is saying is that she wishes someone else would impeach Trump rather than her.

Right. But other than the Constitution, it's the job of the House to make the decision. Okay, John. Peter here. Legal questions first, then political questions. The legal – I'm not even asking a question. I'm really asking for a little bit of a tutorial. Nadler's committee in the House, Jerry Nadler of someplace in New York, he's the chairman of the committee.

They have now voted to hold the attorney general in contempt. That means that it has to go to the floor of the House and be voted on before he actually is held in contempt of Congress. But they voted it out of committee in favor of holding the attorney general in contempt. The response from the White House this morning was to invoke executive privilege and as you have noted in print and on various television appearances by the way how can you be on no this is i gotta say i i think i've achieved the impossible one day one day i was on fox c CNN, NPR, and The Washington Post. Even Rob Long cannot achieve that. Well, I have a job.

I mean do you have a job? He has tenure. That's better than a job. Just have somebody – you have a publicist letting everybody know you are in full hair and makeup all the time. So, hey, John, so here's what I'm thinking about. This is something that prosecutors do right they they keep trying to set traps perjury traps and more traps and they need more investigations so you know they couldn't get martha stewart an insider trading or anything else so they got her you know they in a long interview they got her to lie don't isn't that

kind of what's going on here after you know firing blanks with the mueller report they're just they kind of keep wanting to to rake the ground a little bit to get somebody to say something under oath that's illegal so they can put somebody behind bars for something isn't that what's happening here actually if i were the house and i actually did want to impeach trump What I'm trying to do is something a little different. I'm actually trying not to have to spend all the energy and time that Mueller did. The House isn't good at investigations. They're not going to be able to do everything Mueller did. So that's why what's really important is not the Mueller report itself.

They want access to the investigation. They want all the transcripts of all the interviews. They want all the evidence. They want to just go over the same stuff that Mueller did because they don't want to spend that much time and energy doing it. I mean look, I was a Hill staffer. We're fundamentally lazy. We like to spend most of our time conniving and conspiring, actually reading millions of pages of documents. That's for other people to do. So that's – You have people on your side you want to shank. You don't want to necessarily shank the – so let me ask you this. There's one other bigger important point here, which is – which does get to the executive privilege question, which is you might remember Trump actually said he wasn't going to invoke

any privileges at all. He allowed every witness to testify before Mueller. He gave – handed over all documents, and that's led to a lot of the embarrassing things about – in the report, like fire, ordering from McGahn to fire. All those privileges can be re-invoked against Congress. So Trump could say, okay, well, I'm not going to – as he has said, I'm not going to make McGahn available to Congress. So if Congress really wants to get the really damaging, dirty, juicy stuff that Mueller got, the only way they're going to get it is if they can get access to Mueller's files. Right, but now Trump has exercised executive privilege on some things, and we are once again having this argument or debate about what executive privilege constitutes what's what you're all what the executive is allowed to do what they aren't allowed to do and it seems to me and we're talking about this before you got on that this happened has happened in every administration in which i've been you know even a young adult i have been reading about executive privilege what what is it about executive privilege a young adult. I have been reading about executive privilege. What is it about executive privilege?

What did you say about a young adult? Yeah, well, thank you. But it seems to me like this is a settled matter and has been settled, but we reopen it. Political opponents reopen it like an old wound. Every time there's a president, they're trying to take down, which is pretty much every time there's a president. Well, presidents have invoked executive privilege from George Washington on, and so these kind of conflicts aren't unusual. But the scope of executive privilege is still unsettled.

And that's sort of what I was writing about in the post today was that actually the House is overreaching. They are claiming things that they aren't allowed to have, like grand jury information and anything involving the communications of the president with his advisors. So that the courts have been clear, clear that the president can keep secret. The interesting thing is most of the material that are going to be in Mueller's files, a lot of it is not going to be covered by the existing definition of executive privilege as set out in the Watergate tapes case. So you could see the House demand for this information and the sanction as being the platform for Trump to go right to the Supreme Court, essentially, rush this case through and say, we need to have a broader definition of executive privilege. We need to protect not just my

communications, but all the documents within the executive branch where we deliberate on stuff, even if I'm not involved, and all law enforcement material, like investigatory files, like witness statements, and so on. So in the end, I think that the House, by overreaching, could trigger a permanent win for the presidency and a longer-term victory for Trump. So, John, Eric Holder, Barack Obama's attorney general, was held in contempt of Congress, went through, voted in Congress as a whole, and nothing happened. He remained in office and continued to serve as Attorney General of the United States for some three years after he was held in contempt of Congress. So what does it mean if Attorney General Barr is indeed held in contempt of Congress by

the full House of Representatives and not just Nadler's committee? What happens? Nothing? It's a good question, Peter. Actually, being held in contempt is just the trigger for the lawsuits that will go up to the Supreme Court eventually. The other kinds of contempt don't work anymore. So there's three, actually, there's three kinds. One is criminal contempt, which actually requires, which makes it a crime to be held in contempt of Congress. But that crime has to be prosecuted by, guess who? The Justice Department. And so what Holder proved, Holder was actually the first attorney general to do, he was the first one to be held in contempt, and then Holder ordered his own Justice Department not to bring the case. So you would expect Barr to do the same thing. The second kind of contempt

is the House could issue contempt under its own authority and send its own officials to try to enforce it. So this would be the only time you would see the sergeant-at-arms of the House ever do anything but hold the door open at the State of the Union. But if he could move his walker fast enough to chase the attorney general's motorcade and somehow get past the attorney general security detail i think that would be an awesome reality show to see the sergeant at arms trying to arrest attorney general bar who himself who himself is a burly fellow yes exactly so then the third kind of contempt is what we call civil contempt which means that this is another thing i sort of suggest in the post piece today is that the Congress wrote its own statute giving it the right to try to go to court, not criminally but civilly, and try to sue the executive branch. The lower courts have allowed this, but the Supreme Court has never actually passed on this law. And so I could easily see the Supreme Court saying – if they're not going to say executive privilege is really broad, we're going to – that Trump may use this as the opportunity to broaden the theory of privilege. I could see a court, this court especially, saying, what the hell is it our business?

The federal's papers actually, when they talk about the separation of powers, they don't ever actually mention the courts being involved as the umpire. It says each branch has its own powers, and then James Madison says in Federalist 51, he says we expect, quote, ambition to counteract ambition, unquote. They expect the branches to fight with their own powers, and Congress has a lot of powers like the power of the purse. If you're Pelosi, why not just say we're going to shut the government down in the election year and make the economy worse? Good luck in getting reelected, and why don't you hand over the papers now? So when I worked on the Hill, we actually always got the information we wanted in the end, but it was because we were willing to use all kinds of other tools to pry it loose. Hey, John, Peter here with one last question, and it is this. When you're not appearing on television, you appear in the classroom.

Is there a time when he doesn't? You mean that 10 minutes a month? His online biography at the University of California at Berkeley Law School claims that Professor Yu is indeed a professor. Here's the question. Donald Trump has been in office for a couple of years now. The economy is booming. Everybody's sort of gotten used to the idea that he's going to tweet this and tweet that and that the Democrats are going to be outraged by whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah. But he's been in office for a long time. The economy is booming and the Mueller report was a

dud. Do you notice any change in the way your students and your colleagues at Cal Berkeley think about and talk about the chief executive? Oh, no, they still hate Trump. I think they're still in a state of depression about the Mueller report. I think everybody expected Mueller to find something, and people are dumbfounded. I love it. It's great. It's almost as quiet now as it was the night of the election. All right. Last question before you go, John. And these guys have been pussyfooting around this for the entire thing. And frankly, I'm tired of all this just blase, weak sauce, dishwater talk here. I want to get down to the real issue. When you order the McRib from the touchscreen at McDonald's, do you use your finger? Because that's what you use to pick the food up with. I use my knuckle. You know, I was you know i was just a mcdonald's yesterday i you know i don't really like the touch screen but they didn't have the mcrib yesterday so i ordered you know this neither of you have actually none of you have actually been in a mcdonald's lately i bet

because right now they're running an outrageous two for five dollars promotion and so i got a big mac and a quarter pounder with cheese this is the man who appeared on three television programs and npr what's the regular joe how do you think i stand listening to all these hosts ask their their questions i got i'm just right when you see me on tv a prize yeah right what sort of man of the people nonsense is this i know you're showing up in a tux with your hair carefully pomaded and you've got your pancake makeup from the studio still on and somehow you're casting aspersions on me here in the heartland where real america is that i don't go to a mcdonald's it is when we are on the cruise ship i often have a tuxedo on

and i noticed james you like it you favor the yellow tank tops that were banned after the 1970s. It's been great talking to you today, John. John, you, of course, read his piece in The Washington Post. We'll link to it. And goodbye. See you later, John. So long, John. See you on television.

Yeah, I know. That's where you live now. John is dead wrong, though. Don't have that yellow tank top anymore. I've got yellow shirts, though, because if you're going on a tropical cruise, why not wear something bright like the sun, like the culture itself? Magenta, fuchsia, tangerine, all kinds of hues. I got them and I like them. People say you look like a tropical flower.

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And bookmark ProFlowers.com, too, because there's going to be times coming forward you're going to want to send flowers as well. And it's the best place to do it. Our thanks to ProFlowers for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Well, gentlemen, before we close up here, another episode of a show I did not know necessarily. We had a recurring, we should get a theme for this. Democrats run for president.

I think it's up to 27 of them for now. Biden way up. Beto, interestingly enough, turning into yesterday's chewed out, flavorless, well-masticated gum where everybody – now the stories are, you know, this privileged white male has failed upward his entire life. Was it just the appearance of the surge of Mayor Pete or the arrival of Biden that made them just say, all right, we can put this guy in the trash heap of history now. As long as Rob was talking about self-lubricating catheters and John Yoo was talking about self-impeachment, I have a self-correction to offer. I overestimated Beto, and so far it appears pretty dramatically that I underestimated

Joe Biden. Beto is just a flake. I thought he was actually going to prove quite formidable. Anybody who holds Ted Cruz to within three points in as red a state as Texas should be struck me as somebody that we ought to pay attention to. Wrong, wrong. People are just not buying the Beto Act. And my view was that Joe Biden was yesterday's man. Actually, that appeared, I think actually that was right, but that's exactly what seems to be appealing about him, at least among Democrats. So I stand self – not self-lubricated, self-corrected. Rob, do you think that there's a problem with Biden running when you've got 20, 30 years of him saying stuff that can come out in an endless series of ads?

Because of all the people running today, he's got the record of saying stuff and it's going to come out doesn't matter well i mean the stuff he's the stuff's going to hurt him now is not this crazy stuff but the stuff he said that's sensible i mean that's what's hurting him now with democrats it's not the dumb things he said but the sensible things like we need border security you know things like that are really going to upset the bay, his upset, a part of the base. But we don't really know what the Democratic primary voter is thinking, what they want, how close they how close they want to cut it or whether they're willing to take a risk. I mean, the problem with Beto is that he isn't different enough in anything from the collection of all the rest. So he's not really that exciting.

He's sort of exciting, I guess, if you're a Texas Democrat. But if you're an Iowa Democrat or a New York Democrat or a California Democrat, you've got bigger celebrities to deal with, right? His market, his addressable market is smaller because he's got two strikes against him. He's white and he's a guy. And if you don't want a white guy but you want crackpot left-wing politics, you can get them from Kamala Harris. You can get them from Elizabeth Warren. You can get them from – and Elizabeth Warren, as we all know, is also Native American.

So you get – it's like why would you go shopping for vanilla when you can get pistachio? And so – and then you have Joe Biden, who's like, he's the guy. He's the one whose negatives for a long time in the Democratic Party among Democratic activists are going to be that he's not crazy. I mean, he's crazy, but he's not crazy left wing. And I'm not sure that's going to hurt him. Who knows? I mean, primary voters are weird, right?

They're very weird, and they're very to to pin down, especially these days. They used to be really easy to pin down, but they're hard to pin down. And to prove it, we have President Donald Trump. And before President Donald Trump, we had President Barack Obama. Neither one of those two, according to the old rules, should have come out of the primary process as the nominee. But both did. So it's clear that both parties are kind of redefining what it is like to be a primary voter, what it means to be a primary voter. And, you know, who knows? Biden's a very good campaigner. He's a very, very good campaigner.

And we know that because he's run for president a lot. He has won. So, you know, I but I suspect there's just there's just so much room. There's only so much room in there for a run of the mill progressive. And so if you're Beto, like, OK, well, Mayor Pete's more interesting or it's just there's just not much room. So it's getting crowded by market realities. And I think the market realities are probably going to last for the next six to nine months. And then my guess is it's going to get super serious. The people are going to get serious about it. And if there's no interesting, exciting, uplifting, positive Obama-like candidate, it's going to go to Joe Biden. And Joe Biden seems like he is that candidate now. He's – Joe Biden, Mayor Pete, those are the people that – I had lunch with a friend of mine today who's – she's in the conservative movement, and she said something really interesting she is a first second generation american um from new york city and her uh father

who's a was an immigrant uh just kind of naturally voted republican or maybe here's her grandmother and and the reason why she said she didn't really know why but the reason she said was like i don't like the i don't like the uh all those other people they seem like complainers they're complainers and she didn't like complainers she's from south america complainers and what she kind of means is like the her the president who is the icon in her mind is reagan who was never a complainer right and look for the most positive uplifting hopeful uh everything's going to be great everything could be better um look for that person to win that that person usually wins and then certainly on the democratic side rob james i have a i have a thought experiment for you i agree with everything

that rob has just said it's going to be joe biden overwhelmingly likely at this stage nothing's going to change for six then people will get serious and they say well well, we want to win. Unless at the last moment, before it becomes impossible to get your name up on the ballot in every state and to enter every primary, at that last moment, one new candidate will enter the race, seize the Democratic nomination, and become the next president of the United States and her name will be michelle obama oh interesting that is it is not crazy is it it is it is a non-crazy thought i think that is a non-insane yeah thought and and you and we will know that this is going to happen or has happened or is it has been decided in private circles as a sure thing because the it'll be they'll play the sad news it'll be hillary clinton

left off of the gw bridge and that's how we'll know holding hands with kamala harris well no because they're gonna you know they know they get another shot at this. I suppose. Yeah. That's a great point, Peter. And Lordy Massimi, we'll see what happens. Peter has one more question for Rob, by the way. Something he's never asked. No, no, no. Oh, I see.

Yes, yes, yes, they do. Okay, so here's the thing. James, first of all, I'm going to ask this question. Sausage. Sausage. How is it made? Let everybody see exactly how it is. He said attempting to do formatics and

close the show peter go on okay so i want james to critique the question here's the thing i grew up in upstate new york and all my life growing up the city new york city was cool i am also of a generation in which every industry that i cared about and and I am a pre-Silicon Villa. So Manhattan is still – Let me stop you right there. Let me stop you right there. One of the industries that you care about are the sponsors of our show. Go.

If you go ahead and say everything you say, after which I say the sponsors, people tune out. We want to leave them on tenterhooks, where you're going with this. So before you do, I have to say, I want to say with pride that this podcast was brought to you by ProFlowers, by Zebit, Z-E-B-I-T,

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go to iTunes, leave a review. We love that, especially if it's five-star and glowing. That helps other people find the show and that helps the site prosper and make money and we'll be here next week and the week after that.

So Peter was just saying that when he was growing up, Manhattan was a monument of fascination. Exactly. And so my question is, and I'm sorry to say, James, I do not feel the same interest in what you might do this weekend in Minneapolis as what Rob is going to get up to in the great glittering Gotham. Oh, you know, not much. It's going to rain. It's going to be rainy. So I've got to be honest.

I set you up like that and you said. I know. I wish you had told me. I could lie, but I'm not going to lie to you. I'm going to tell you the truth. It's going to be a little rainy, so not much. You can't be arsed to go outside because you can't get a cab. Is that it?

I mean we all know that when it rains, the cabs disappear and all the guys come up with the cheap umbrella. I'll tell you. I may go out to dinner. There's that possibility. Okay. I'm stimulating the local economy by going to a big box store and buying about 50 yards of low voltage cable. I'm going to be embedding them in the ground of my earth and attaching little devices to them that glow in the night so that the house has a domestic sheen to it that cuts through the Empyrean gloom of a Minnesota night.

And then I'm going to have a pizza and I'm going to have some whiskey and then probably on Sunday, I'm going to go to McDonald's and I'm going to have two McDonald's. Wait, wait, wait. You can get a yard job that big done in one day why by yourself are you having have you hired a crew to come in and help it's not that hard to do really it isn't it's not like you gotta get a trenching machine out i just gotta get a little hole make a little cut make a little run around where i needed to go attach the lights i've been doing this for 15 18 years oh by the way everything you just said, Peter heard like it was the teacher on the Peanuts cartoon.

It was just wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. All right, boys. We'll leave you with that. Everybody, thank you for listening. We'll see you in the comments, of course, at Ricochet 4.0. Next week, fellas. Hey, Matilda. Matilda. Matilda, Matilda, she take me money and run Venezuela once again.

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