The Ricochet Podcast - Don't Tread On Ye

Episode Date: October 13, 2018

This week, another one guester as we call on Ricochet alumnus Mollie Hemingway to help us sort through Kanye, Kavanaugh, and other assorted issues of the day (she also gives us an instant review of the new Gosnell movie, which Mollie had just seen). Also, the Senate is looking brighter, and the guys recommend some Peak TV. Music from this week’s podcast: Good Golly Miss Molly by Little Richard... Source

We have special news for you. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Are you going to send me or anybody that I know to a camp? We have people that are stupid. I love this guy right here. Yeah, come here. Yes. That's really nice.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lilex, and today we talk to Molly Hemingway about, well, everything. Let's have ourselves a podcast. It's the Ricochet Podcast, and it's number 420. We're brought to you by the fine people at Quip. Quip is a better electric toothbrush. It was created by dentists and designers, and it starts at just $25. But only if you go to getquip.com slash ricochet right now.

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Find out by going to calm.com slash ricochet where you'll get 25% off a Calm premium subscription. And, of course, we're brought to you by Ricochet itself. And, you know, again, once again, Rob is a little late here, so I've got to do the Rob thing. And Rob will say, hi, James, you know, we have a payroll. If everybody who listened to the podcast paid for the podcast, we'd be rolling in it. And he's right. But I'd like to say, that's not your problem. We put this thing out there for free, and you hoover it up.

And if we don't charge you for it, well, that's kind of our decision, isn't it? And don't you feel just a tad guilty, though, after 420 podcasts? Well, 419. We can do the 420th now. Freeloading as long as you have? I mean, really? Suckling at the teat of Ricochet, which fountains forth great content all the time, and you just sit there and you do. Now I'm getting a little exercised.

No, it's not your problem. But it will be a problem someday if you go to Ricochet to discuss the 2020 election. And shucks, it's shuttered. Let's not let that happen. We've got all kinds of tiers where you can pledge and contribute. And the great thing is, is that if you contribute, you get to go to the member feed. And the member feed is where people talk about things that gasp, aren't politics, which is cool. And it's one of the reasons that Ricochet is a great community.

Go there, sign up, read the member feed, chip in, and you'll know what we mean when we say it's a community. And not in the sense of YouTube commenters are a community all their own or Reddit is a community. No, no, it's a good place. It's a good place to be. One of the founders here, of course, is Peter. Hello, Peter. Hello, James. How are you? Dandy. So Texas, Beto O'Rourke. They threw a lot of money at this guy and they thought he's got teeth like a Kennedy. He should win. He's raised a little over $38 million, which is more than any candidate for the United States Senate has ever raised before. I beg your pardon.

I believe it's in one quarter, has ever raised in one quarter in American history. It is just staggering. So we have that data point. The other data point, the other big news from Texas over the last week is that since the Kavanaugh hearings, Ted Cruz has finally broken the race open. So the liberals are pitching money into Beto O'Rourke and Ted Cruz now leads by six or seven points. As also Heidi Heitkamp, the Democrat running for reelection in North Dakota, voted against the Kavanaugh nomination and she's done. That race is just over. She's now trailing her Republican challenger by double digits. That will be a pickup.

Frankly, that's about the only one. Ted's going to win in Texas and Heidi Heitkamp is going to lose in North Dakota. And the other big news, it's such a quick reversal that I'm a little skeptical it's going to stick. But in Tennessee, the Republican who's – no. Now, my problem with Tennessee is I can't remember who's the Republican and who's the Democratic. Save me, James. In any event, the Republican was trailing – has been trailing the whole race running behind the former governor, Democratic former governor who's about as moderate as a Democrat can be these days. And since the Kavanaugh hearing, she's now up by five, six points. So it looks

as though the Republicans are likely to keep the seat in Tennessee, keep the seat in Texas, pick up the seat in North Dakota. The two that I myself am watching now, Heller, the Republican Heller running for reelection in Nevada has, I believe the conventional wisdom in Republican circles is that Heller is the weakest or the most exposed or vulnerable of the Republican candidates. His opponent has been leading him throughout the race until now. That's a dead heat. In Florida, Rick Scott is running against Bill Nelson for the Senate. Bill Nelson, who just effectively brain dead as far as I can tell. Rick Scott – but Rick Scott has been trailing by a point or two. That seems to be a dead heat now.

So Republicans may actually pick up on net. They may pick up a seat or two, which would be a remarkable thing. All this would turn around as a result or at least coincident with the Kavanaugh hearings. Which means democracy seems to work, right? What do you, who do you know? Well, yes, but the more democracy work, if democracy works and the result is that the right stays in power or gains additional power, that means that democracy is not working. My favorite part, and I say favorite with a pained smile in the last month or so, as we were told that

Donald Trump, if he were elected, would tear down all the constitutional norms. And that was because he had an authoritarian instinct and didn't seem to know what was necessary and had no reverence for it and flew by the seat of his pants, etc. Now what we have is the Senate has to go. The Supreme Court has to go or has to be packed. The proportional representation has to be packed. The proportional representation has to be, you know, we have to have proportional representation now in the Senate. Everything has to be by direct vote. All of these institutions that were perfectly fine when they elected the

right people now have to be modified and thrown in the dust heap of history because they're producing the wrong result. Almost as if reverence to the Constitution is not baked into the left side of the equation these days. Amazingly enough. Well, that's what happens when you go from liberal to leftist. What is going on in Arizona? Isn't the candidate there who was talking about the state being the meth lab of democracy and the rest of it? Yeah.

Charming last. Charming last. Cinema. This is what happens when you go to Netroots and you speak to friendly audiences and you love those yuck lines and you just slam in your own state is a bunch of you know uh sunburned bubba's um there's going to be a lot of tape to roll when it comes time for you so i think that that uh isn't going to do her any favors but the president is it bresnan where the jit where the uh president is the democrat former governor running in t against Martha Blackburn. And didn't he didn't James O'Keefe and Project Veritas go and talk to a bunch of people in this campaign who basically said the voters are stupid? And he's just, you know, he's this whole thing about he won't be a pawn of Schumer is like, you know, come on, you know, he'll be predictably Democratic vote.

And, you know, we have to say that we don't hate Trump, but we do. Rather damning footage from the people who work for his campaign, and I can't tell as it's made a single ripple in the press. And I think it's just because if James O'Keefe is attached to it, they assume that some sort of trickery and skullduggery and magic editing was done, you know, even though he'll dump three hours of raw footage out, it just, you know, the, the guy could come up with a second Zapruder tape and they would say, you know, yeah, well, okay. So it's a different, it's a different vantage point. Um, you know, and it shows Oswald's face in the book depository, but, uh, you know, that it's from O'Keefe. So what, you know, it's, it's, uh'Keeffe. So it's interesting.

It is interesting. By the way, latest in Arizona. Just check this. Cinema is the Democrat who's been leading throughout most of the race. And this past summer had a six, seven point lead. And in the latest poll, she is now down. Actually, it's too close to close. Well, within the margin of error but the latest polls show the republican martha mcsally up not quite a point but up over cinema for the first time well she had she was

up over cinema a little bit in late september but she's that race is definitely in play definitely in play this could be an interesting last three weeks here absolutely audible applause coming from the arizona republicans. And speaking of Audible. Ah, nicely done. They're not our sponsor. Quip is. Quip, which I've already used twice today because I've had two meals, and I love those things. Quip.

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he doesn't even bother to give me that complimentary toothbrush at the end of it, because he knows I've got a better one waiting at home. So we love Quip. They're backed by over 20,000 dental professionals. It starts at just $25. And if you go to getquip.com slash ricochet, G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash ricochet right now, you'll get your first refill pack free with a Quip electric toothbrush. That's your first refill pack free at G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash ricochet. And our thanks to Quip for sponsoring this the ricochet podcast and now we welcome back to the podcast molly hammingway senior editor at the federalist

fox news contributor beloved ricochet alumnus welcome molly hey that kavanaugh story that's old and over there's nothing to be learned from it we've moved on right or are there some lessons here that we can take away you know it's it's weird being a week or so out from when he was finally confirmed because those three weeks leading up to that were some of the worst weeks I think we've gone through as a country in terms of media coverage and just how well we as a people understand some of our founding principles. But it was not a good week or not a good period of time for media credibility. I cannot believe some of the stories they ran with and just how all standards seem to just fly out the window. But are the standards ever coming back? Excuse me, Peter here. Was that were the standards flying out the window or was this just a reveal of what has been going on for a long time now, but particularly under Donald Trump? Did we just wake up and see not only what the Democrats were capable of, and I still can hardly believe that all 10 of the Democrats on that committee put up with it and went along with it, but set them aside. side, New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, organizations that would still tell you they're impartial and

capable of reporting the news were engaged in open advocacy, dropping standards temporarily or just revealing themselves? No, I think it's both that we have seen this happening for a long time, but also that this was truly uniquely bad in a way that we haven't seen before. This is only the latest in a long series of journalistic failures, and it explains why people have such low regard for the media and why they feel they can no longer trust what they're reading from some of these mainstream publications. But I was shocked by some of the stories. I mean, USA Today running a story saying

that Judge Kavanaugh shouldn't be around children. I mean, this is a married man with daughters whose basketball team teams he coaches. And the idea that because there was no evidence of anything wrong at all, that he should no longer be able to be involved in his daughter's life lives. I mean, that's just, that's appalling, appalling. And I don't know how anyone could allow something like that to be published. Even if you have the strongest political objection to Kavanaugh, you have to remember that this is a real human being with a real family and with children who need their father in their lives.

Hey, Molly, it's Rob Long. Thank you for joining us. So I'm going to ask you just to put on your shrinks hat. You're now officially my therapist for the next two minutes. What do I do? I'm starting to walk through airports and think about wearing a MAGA hat. I am exactly that thing, that person that the Kavanaugh hearings galvanized. I was thinking to myself, you know, I'm not a fan of the president. I'm not a fan of the kind of man he is. I don't admire him. I don't I don't aspire to be like him. I don't think anyone should. I think he's, you know, low. And yet. And yet, Molly, let him run with this.

You have no idea how good it here the title of my autobiography i think will be and yet so what do i do molly hemingway dr hemingway what do i do i mean well i think you're not alone first of all but i i heard from so many friends i'm like most never trumpers only friend who's not never trump so they always talk exactly that's why i heard from so many of them that were making jokes about you know does the maga hat come in a fedora style i think i'm ready to wear it you know exactly wait a minute wait a minute i just before you keep going i'm just gonna i'm just gonna lie down here on the couch and like this is i'm gonna be i've. I want you to think of me as I'm on the couch in your office, and I'm anguished.

Tell me it's all going to be okay. But I think that what was interesting about the moment was that you saw what they were doing to someone who was so unlike Donald Trump. I mean, Donald Trump really is a guy with all these moral failings. And so when you see his name dragged through the mud, you think, well, kind of serves him right. He left these wives or whatever, you know, whatever the thing is. With Kavanaugh, it was not that type of person. It was a man who, by all accounts, is very well respected, lived his life morally. Does he like beer? Yes, he likes beer, still likes beer.

But that you could do this to a man like that, I think was very clarifying. And it was a unifying moment for a lot of people. And it showed that, you know, I think sometimes the problem that people have is they make too much about Donald Trump and being able to see that the media were behaving in the same exact fashion they do toward Donald Trump, if not worse, towards someone much less deserving of their opprobrium, I think, is a helpful experience to go through because it is clarifying. It shows you that you're dealing with people who are not always good people. That is certainly true. That has certainly been the case for me. In a strange way, it's sort of Donald Trump has forced everyone to clarify their position, right?

If you hate Donald Trump so much and you're in the media, it sort of, as far as you're concerned, gives you like this carte blanche to attack anybody, right? To use whatever tactics you want to make your point or to get your way. And on the other side, if you're on my side, if you find him just this reprehensible creature, you have to remind yourself, as you just said, to separate the politics or the partisan politics of the moment and look at what really happened. I mean, just to bring this to the past 24 hours, in the past 24 hours, Donald Trump made a speech in Ohio in which he compared the two great civil war generals, Grant and Robert E. Lee. And he was actually making

a fascinating point from a person who rarely, if ever, engages in any kind of meaningful introspection. He was making a fascinating point. He was saying that Grant, for all of his faults, he was a hard drinker. He had plenty of personal failings. Nobody respected him except Lincoln. And Grant, despite all of his manifest failings and his alcoholism, managed to beat in the field one of the greatest generals of his day, Robert E. Bush. Peter, are you feeling like somebody who's watched a guy come late to class,

raise his hand, and then just answer a question? No, no, no. Go with it. Go with it. Go with it. No, go, go. I'm kidding you. We'll do it again. If you already done it, then we should not do it again. No, no, no. Go with it. Go with it. Go with it. No, go, go. I'm kidding you. We'll do it again. If you already done it, then we should not do it again.

No, go on. Go on. But it was an interesting position, interesting point that actually was sort of newsworthy. It should give Sunday morning talk show hosts a chance to talk, even to run Donald Trump down if they want. But instead they went for Trump praises Robert E. Lee. Yeah, it's amazing. They didn't even, I mean, it's amazing, except it's what they do all the time. And once you see it, you can't unsee it.

Dr. Hemingway, may I ask Dr. Hemingway a question as well? Yes. I am not, I'm not going through quite the anguish of Never Trump or Rob Long. On the other hand, I have always – I said don't look at Trump. It's an almost unbearable sight. Just look at the policies. Now, I saw something during the Kavanaugh week and I just want to check with you whether I really saw it or whether I am hallucinating. All week long, Donald Trump effectively disappeared. He was almost entirely disciplined in his tweets and in his absence.

And then when he swore, when he oversaw the swearing in of now Justice Kavanaugh in the East Room of the White House, from the beginning of that ceremony until the end, including the words that he spoke, he looked presidential. He looked Donald Trump looked presidential. Am I mad? Well, you're you're actually a little bit wrong in that he did in the week leading up to that, say, during a rally, he pointed out that Christine Blasey Ford's testimony was riddled with inconsistencies and didn't make sense. I do not agree that he made fun of her. I think he said

a lot of people, yeah, I know everyone said it was mocking and making fun of her, but in my mind, I was shocked that there wasn't more conversation. When I watched the hearing, I saw that prosecutor, the woman asking her questions, Rachel Mitchell, asking a series of questions that revealed that she was contradicting herself. And then nobody, when you watch the news afterwards, they'd say, oh, she was so compelling and incredible. And I think, well, she was lying about her fear of flying. So, you know, I think like she was lying about this or she told contradictory things about this. But yes, I thought that that ceremony was important for the apology. When he apologized on behalf of the nation for what he had had to go through,

I was disappointed that it had to come from Trump. I think there should have been more Democrats to apologize. I was disappointed that none of the people were able to withstand the pressure from within the party to say what we did to this man was wrong. But not one. Even where's fair play Joe Biden? Zero. Silence.

Not one. I don't think they think there's any political upside to doing that. I think that just maintaining the idea that Donald Trump put a rapist on the Supreme Court and now there's two of them is what they need. Because it makes people – I mean we may look at this and say the man was maligned and the rest of it. The other side looks at this and says this was all about not listening to women and it doesn't matter whether or not it happened to her and it doesn't matter whether or not he did it.

People like him do it to other people and to have it not immediately become that's the issue made people incandescently furious. And they are still so. And they ought to go to Calm.com right now. Come on, I'm doing this as quickly as I can because I want to get Molly back to here. But really, these are exercising times. And if you find yourself hyperventilating or furious or just a fine spew of rage and blood coming out of your ears periodically, you might want to try meditation. Be like Rob.

Be calm like Rob. Have you ever meditated personally, you, the listener? And if not, what do you think it would do for you if you learned how to do it? Well, it would make you calm and that's why we're excited. Excited may not be the word. We're calmly excited to partner with Calm. It's the number one app for sleep, meditation, and relaxation. It was even named Apple's 2017 app of the year.

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Molly, before you join, Peter and I were talking about the Kanye West thing, which has just divided the entertainment community. 75% of them hate him now, and 25% of them hate him intensely. And the discussions of his behavior have been quite interesting in telling us who can say what. How do you look at this whole little incidence? I don't know.

It was when I was watching him in the Oval Office. It's that reminder of just how weird things are these days. But I always think Kanye is kind of weird, although I do like his music a lot of it. But what was interesting to me was more the reaction to him being there and how enraged people got that he was saying things that you're not supposed to say, like, you don't have to vote Democrat. he speaks in a weird way, but he says really interesting things. And I think people find it threatening that a huge celebrity like him is aligning himself with Trump because it's very important that you make that something you can't do, that you cannot survive that. And so you're seeing people just come so hard against him because it threatens the whole sort of argument that if you're black, you have to be Democrat. And if you are in Hollywood or in entertainment, you have to support Democrats. And I think that people shouldn't be so threatened by it. He and his wife, Kim, have actually probably done more for criminal justice reform than a thousand celebrities doing whatever else they're doing because they actually do talk to the president and advocate for who they want to receive commutations. Although one of the commutations that Kanye thought was one that should not be granted.

Molly, Molly, Peter, isn't there a relation? No. Leading question. Yeah. Leading question. Do with it what you want to but isn't there a relationship between what we saw with kavanaugh and the rage at kanye west in the following sense if kavanaugh got on the court and now he's on the court there was going to be and now there is a five

four originalist constitutional constructionist majority. In other words, a conservative majority on the court and the democratic game of using the Supreme Court to get what they wanted, but couldn't legislate would be over for the foreseeable future. And they were furious. Kanye West, if African-Americans begin voting for Republicans in even very small numbers, the Democratic Party in district after district and state after state is doomed. So these people are squawking because their jobs are at stake for many of them. Am I right about that or overconstructing it? No, I think that's I think that is true. And I think that you're seeing a lot of what you hear in the mainstream media

narrative is that the Republican Party is imploding and it's a disaster and there's going to be a blue wave and demographically they're on the outs. And then you look at actual polling and you say, you know, like in Texas, more than, I think it's like 40% of Hispanics are voting for Ted Cruz. In Nevada, 40% of Hispanics are voting for Heller. Trump got more black votes than Mitt Romney, even though the narrative was that no black person could ever vote for him. And things are going well in those numbers. And I think people say we cannot let that happen because it's very threatening to Democratic electoral prospects. But in general, it's not healthy that you don't want to see parties, you don't want to see racial groups voting in mass, in block.

That's not healthy for anyone, I don't think. Hey, so Molly, two questions here. The first question is you said it was weird. Things are really weird. I think things are really weird, and Kanye West kind of embodies the weirdness, not because he's weird and maybe he's not so stable. That could be true. But also it wasn't that long ago, or maybe it was.

Maybe I'm just an old man. But it wasn't that long ago that conservatives were up in arms about Kanye West saying on a Hurricane Katrina fundraising telethon, George W. Bush doesn't care about black people. And at that point, he was absolutely the hero of the left and the scourge of the right now he's in the oval office wearing not a maga hat because he said you know the maga hats uh make america great again and the again part hurts black people so make america great is the hat he is he's just mag not maga and now the left is outraged and the right he's the hero to the right is it is it because we're Is it because we're nuts? We're all

nuts? We're all weird? Do you think that Kanye West is sort of like, he's grown in office, as they used to say, about certain Supreme Court justices? Or is there something else weird happening in America? And that's my leading question for you to talk about it. I do think everyone is way too political and tribal and they think only about whether it hurts their party or helps their party. But yeah, it's the same Kanye saying, doing what he does really well, which is saying provocative things that you're not supposed to say. But I would think that people should be wise enough to think of it this way. When he said that about George W. Bush, and I have nothing but disagreements with George

W. Bush, but I thought that was pretty unfair what he said. You cannot deny that he was capturing a sentiment that a large percentage of black people felt. And so that's, I think people should be cautious. Again, they should think through this. Maybe they don't like that he's in the Oval Office with Trump, or maybe they do like it. But more interesting to me is that he's capturing some kind of sense or feeling that, like for me, even when he said that thing about how wearing a MAGA hat gives him power, I live in a place where you're not allowed to say anything positive about Donald Trump or else people just say that you've, you know, you've lost your mind. And I do sometimes say positive

things about him. And I do find it very empowering to resist the pressure. And so when he said that, I kind of thought, I get what he's saying. When you can be, like, if you can withstand that pressure to say something or speak your mind, even though you know, even though you know, you're not supposed to, it's a, it's a very powerful thing. Um, and so I think explain that what you mean is like doing moral pushups or something. You get stronger from it. I'm just not sure I'm following the point, Molly. I'm sure you're on to something profound. I'm just not sure I've got it. Yeah, I'm not sure if I can articulate it well, and I apologize for that. But I know that I feel a lot of pressure to join the group in DC and always say stuff against Donald Trump. And I do a fair amount of criticism, but mostly I like to talk about things in a different way. And when I do it, I get a lot of pushback.

But when I feel good about myself that I'm able to withstand the peer pressure, it makes me feel good about it. It's an assertion of self-respect in a certain sense. Got it. I'm going to let you finish, Molly, but I have to say that what it is they'll say is that you're just finally realizing that the culture has a has permitted you enabled you to be the racist that you always were. That what you're getting into. I'm serious that you're we're now free to speak these horrible things because Donald Trump has granted ability to say to somebody in Washington, D.C., that you found this legislative initiative good They see all the nuances. But when we start to nuance Donald Trump, all of a sudden, they're the Manichaeans. They're the ones who are utterly binary in black and white. Yeah, it's like binary systems on, binary systems off. They just kind of go back and forth in terms of whether you're allowed to think in a binary fashion or not. But this is a great example. Kanye was there to talk about criminal justice reform,

and that is an issue that is of tremendous concern to the Black community because of the disproportionate numbers affected. And this is something that I wish people could say, let's put aside some, could we just stop being politically tribal for a moment and think about what we could do in a moment where we all care about criminal justice reform? But no, apparently we can't do that. We have to pick our teams and go one way or the other. And you know what also is important to the black artistic community? Royalties. And I believe there was a signing ceremony there for a bill that extends protection and sort of codifies the way by which streaming systems are obligated to pay royalties to musicians.

That also got completely glossed over. Now, it's not something that I believe is burning in Donald Trump's heart for all these years, but he signed it. There you go. But me saying that is just because I'm empowered now to just speak my mind. But, Molly, do you think that happens? Do you think it's happening in other groups? I mean, I read the same statistics for his support for Donald Trump among Hispanics that you did, and it was astonishing. I mean it really was kind of an arresting moment where you think, well, wait a minute. They're supposed to at the very least dislike him, at the very most be energized to hate him, and yet – those two words again and yet it it isn't happening

yeah and i think that there are some basic reasons for that like the country is going really well if you're not spending all your time on social media the economy is thriving and it's thriving in a way for the first time in a long time where it's affecting people who are outside that top economic quartile. It's filtering down to a lot of different groups, and that is an exciting thing. There's job opportunities that weren't there before, and things just are going well. We're not launching any new wars, knock on wood, anytime soon. And so if you're on social media, it seems like everything is going to hell in a handbasket. And how could you be anything other than 100% opposed to Donald Trump? But I

think most people are just thinking, well, this is actually going well. They were expecting it to be maybe really not good. And it's going not just all right, but pretty well. And so I think that has to be reflected in those numbers. I don't know. Well, I guess my next question then is sort of based on that. And are we looking at a moment, I mean, this is, I'm just trying this out, right? For me, a big part of who I am politically and my political beliefs came when the Berlin Wall fell. Because not only was it not supposed to fall, but – and obviously we're here with Mr. Berlin Wall himself – but it was vulgar to even demand that it fall. And it was kind of small-minded and petty and stupid and sort of kind of flyover country kind of reductionism to believe that the Soviet Union was an enemy. They should have been our friend.

It's a different system, of course, but it's a system that works. And then suddenly the wall came down, really, which was astonishing to people behind the wall, many of them, and also to people in political science departments here in the United States. But if you were paying attention, all you knew was that everything people have been telling you, for me, in my age, in high school and college about communism, the Cold War, about who was right and who was wrong was suddenly upended. And so if you are one of those sort of groups, just say you're a Hispanic group, and you've been told that life's going to get very hard for you, and these are very dark times. And if you talk to any academic – I'm right here in an academic conference right now, and it is considered absolutely okay to say things like, well real political – where your real political loyalties lie or should lie. Do you think anything like that is going to happen, or do you think this is just going to be a little blip and it's entirely Trump-related, and in five years when we have a new president in there, moment, and it's not just in this country, but globally, where a lot of assumptions that people held in sort of the Cold War, post-Cold War, post-World War II era, are being questioned about the way that we were managing our positions of strength and also like not just in terms of foreign policy or banking systems or things like that but going all the way down to like how we interact with each other in terms

of political correctness there were all these rules and people always praise the rules-based order and you think of it mostly in an international sense but that rules-based order was kind of becoming this way that we had to talk amongst ourselves too. And there's something very liberating in knocking down that wall of how you speak and words you're allowed to say and words you're not allowed to say. And I think people are getting a taste of that freedom and thinking maybe we don't have to give up this fight. And that is a much more universal call to freedom than Republican Party or Democratic Party. There was a poll this week showing that political correctness is deeply unpopular and people really worry about it.

We'd still be talking about a rule-based order, and we'd still be talking about the importance of international institutions if people hadn't felt that it was developing into this snooty sclerotic layer that wanted just to do what was best for us. As I mentioned before before i think it was a eu decision to regulate the power consumption of british kettles so that it would take longer for their tea to boil that finally made the britain say that's enough we've had it get you exactly get get your brussels sprouty smelling fingers out of my life uh get your hands off my pot very very there's

one moment in the woodward book fear there's only one moment that's useful as far as i can tell but trump is meeting the generals and trump explodes about afghanistan and says we've been there for 16 years and you're the ones who got us into it what what comes next and woodward has quote some unknown person is saying that's the thing about trump he's always questioning the premises as if that was a bad thing as if that was a bad thing exactly what you said molly rules are getting questioned and this crazy man donald trump is questioning all of these premises and people say you know what i'm not sure what the answer is but he's right to ask the question.

Last subject before we let you go, because we know you have a Saturday to get to, and that is you've seen the Gosnell movie, and I'm guessing that most major media outlets will treat it like a Dinesh D'Souza production directed by James O'Keefe and will ignore it. What did you think? Yeah, I just got home from seeing it and it is incredibly powerful. And I didn't really know what to expect.

I don't really love seeing, you know, like a political movie or something with a strong agenda. And I was so elated to see this because it's just a very well told story. It is a- Molly, remind us, who was Dr. Gosnell? What's the subject? Just basically, we won't remember the story itself. Gosnell is a man who ran an abortion clinic in Philadelphia for decades and ended up being

imprisoned for the murder of several of the children that he delivered alive and then killed after they were alive. He was also on trial for the murder of a woman who children that he delivered alive and then killed after they were alive. He was also on trial for the murder of a woman who died in his clinic. Other women had died at his clinic or other people. And like his preferred method of killing babies was to deliver them and snip their spines. It's a horrific story. And it was also interesting because once he was finally brought to justice or when they started to take him to trial, even though there were all sorts of interesting stories about he was a black man who would give preferable treatment to white patients over black patients. He was basically running a drug operation out of the clinic. He had a filthy clinic that was not safe to evacuate patients if they needed medical care. There were so many interesting angles,

no matter what your pet project is, your pet issue, immigration, abortion, healthcare, drugs, all sorts of things. And the media almost refused to cover it. It was a local crime story, I think, the New York Times said. Yes. No, that was a Washington Post reporter who said that to me when I asked her why she wasn't covering it when she covered every other abortion story under the sun to the tune of like 80, 80 stories about some random little, you know,

thing that helped the pro-choice side. And she told me we don't cover local crime. And I was like, okay, which is not true. Papers cover local crime all the time, particularly when it's of such major significance. So finally the media were sh shamed into covering the story.

And this movie is just about him being this prolific serial killer who was doing really bad stuff for decades. And the casting was so good. I couldn't believe how well cast the Gosnell doctor was. It was almost like seeing actual Kermit Gosnell on film. He played him perfectly, and it was just really well done. It was just a very well-done story, although it is very intense. I will say that. I kind of cried throughout the whole show.

Who made the movie? This is not a major Hollywood production. Who made the movie? So there are these – it's Spellam and Anne McElhaney. Is that their name? I'm sorry. I'm totally awful with names sometimes. McLear.

Irish. McLear. Thank you. Sorry. I'm horrible with names. Who heard about the story and they just couldn't believe what an interesting story it was. So they put it together. Nick Cersei directs and stars in it and kind of steals the show.

He's like really good playing the part of Kermit Gosnell's defense attorney. And it's just, you know, it is a very sad but important story for people to know that this happened in America and that it took a lot of work to bring this man to justice. And just to say, I don't know much about the actual full IMDb report of the picture, but Andrew Klavan wrote a version of the first draft, or one of the drafts they used. Yeah. Story or teleplay, I can't quite remember what it was. And this was, if this is the kind of movie you want to see,

then you should go see it, because you should vote with your dollars, because it was independently financed, it's going to be independently distributed, and if conservatives like this kind of media, they're going to have to make it themselves and support themselves. It would be an issue of go now,

too. You should go this weekend as soon as possible to see it, because that's how it works. But it's very much worth your time. And if you can handle the difficult topic, it's like a gripping, very emotional, but very interesting and well-told tale. Well, thanks, Molly.

And I'm bad at names, too, so don't feel bad about that. We've been speaking with Mary Catherine Hemingway. I'm sorry. Molly Hemingway. Molly Hemingway. We'll read you at the Federalist, and, of course, we'll follow you on Twitter. We are lots of fun as well. Thanks for joining us on the podcast today, Molly. Thank you. Have a great day. Thanks, God. Molly Hemingway. We'll read you at the Federalist, and of course, we'll follow you on Twitter. We are lots of fun as well. Thanks for joining us on the podcast today, Molly.

Thank you. Have a great day. Thanks, Molly. Tell Mark we said hello. Oh, we'll do. You know, I was going to ask her that perhaps if Mark is in need of some cologne because – Well, you chuckled as if this is the most obvious thing in the world. I mean, for heaven's sakes, it is.

And if I'm thinking of fragrance right now, it's because my dog just walked in and he's been freshly washed. And let me tell you, this guy had become a little high. But now he's got that great dog smell. And I'm wondering if that's one of the top notes that somebody will ever put in it because there's all these wonderful aromas, right? There's mimeograph fluid. Some people like the smell of a Sharpie. There's all these great things. Remember that when you were a kid and you got a Ditto?

Oh, Ditto fluid was the best. So people have these – you have emotional reactions to aromas. And obviously I'm doing a perfume commercial here. But the thing of it is, is when you go to the store and you try to buy some perfume, it's the worst possible place because there's just this cacophony of aromas there at the perfume counters, right? There's somebody standing there spritzing something on a little paper strip and waving it at you, or you put it on and you really get it off because you don't like it. It's the worst way to develop frank. What if there was – what if, he said, leading up to something, what if there was a way that didn't just sell you what you smell there in the store but came up with a different way to tell you what you wanted? Because the idea of buying perfume online sounds absurd, doesn't it? It's like, well, until smell-o-vision is invented, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to tell what this is,

but that's just the deal. Now, here's what Fleur does. Me, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about fragrance. Before, I never did. Now, I don't because I've got this Fleur sample set, which I love. Some guys may have their go-to stuff and it works for them. I've got several go-to ones and they all work for me. Women, however, think about this a little bit differently. They notice what men wear and they have great emotion about what they put on themselves. If you're a guy, maybe ditch the body spray from college and the designer cologne you picked out about five, six years ago because it's probably stale. Go to floor. Here's what's different.

Well, first of all, they're created by world-class perfumers. They're inspired by real moments for your real life. Is that some silly idea that a celebrity comes up with? You should wear this, and I've got a bottle that's shaped like my head. No, no, no. What matters is what you like. And how do you find what you like online? You go to floor, and you like online? You go to floor and you watch

pictures. You listen to music. Every one of the scents has its own sort of emotional profile online. And if you like what you hear and what you see, the odds are you're going to like the scent. That's how it works. And believe me, work, it does. You find something that connects with you, with all these other sensory inputs and then what you do is you choose three and they come to you in this small little containers you get to sample them it's not so small you use them in a day and if you like something you get you get the purchase price that you paid for the samples applied to what you finally buy um i right now am wearing it's called olmmsted and Vox.

Olmsted, I think, may be a reference to the great landscape designer. I have no idea, but it's me, and I like it. It's a completely transparent fragrance company. They tell you every ingredient in their product. That's why it's there. No secrets, no nasty chemicals, no BS. Everything is certified, friendly. It's just a great product, and I love it.

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the Ricochet Podcast. Rob, you're in Oxford, Mississippi. My gosh, that sounds very literary of you. What's the mood there on the ground? How are people? Well, you know, the mood is and the GDP seems to be growing. Things are good. Or it's that we're living in a dark time.

It really is amazing. There's nobody now who feels comfortable doing what – or nobody in a certain world feels comfortable doing what Americans have kind of always done, which is sort of shrug and say, yeah, things are fine. They could be better. The guy – the guy's – everybody in Washington is a bum, but it's all right. Like that's kind of the American attitude. They're all bums, but what – but we got jobs. That seems to be a hard thing for people to say now, which is very strange. It's a sign, I think, in general of a kind of a decadent prosperity. So when you expect things to be so good, you start looking mentioning on the on the day is just catching something about 40 years or 35 years at least of unbridled

ceaseless increase in the health the wealth the longevity of of of the entire globe i mean hundreds of millions of people a billion people almost pulled out of abject poverty the south the south asian continent emerging from from the apocalypse china no longer suffers from every 60 years of massive famine these are these are entirely at the entirely because of capitalism and the idea that we have to find some weird way to put it down um rather than saying well maybe it's flawed or maybe there's still work to be done or maybe there's still other things we can think about, that's fine. But to blame capitalism is so self-evident that the problems that we are all suffering under today are because of capitalism just takes a certain kind of delusional nuttiness that it until you know they get power and then it's not funny anymore but it doesn't emphasize emphasis here this is taking place at old miss this is not taking place at yale and new ham or harvard and cambridge this is university yeah but are the

speakers from elsewhere in other words what i'm asking is has the rot penetrated all the way to Ole Miss? Well, of course. I mean all universities are the same. They have – because they have tenure, they have a certain kind of culture and society. And those culture and society sort of encourages a kind of a – I mean your life is so rosy that your outlook has to sort of compensate for that. Oh, Rob. People don't have tenure in real life no one has tenure that's that's a fantastic idea that could only be you know but if you have tenure you have to earn it you know you have to pay for it well the way we wanted to

pay for your comfort is to sort of be pointing out the discomfort for everybody else or inventing new discomforts for yourself i mean we've all become versions of the princess and the princess and the pea. Rob, I'm shaking my hand here. What you don't realize is all of these wonderful things that you talk about, it could have been twice as good if some other economic system had done them. If we'd had socialism, we would have been twice as good as the situation we're in now, and we wouldn't have inequality. We wouldn't have all these structural inequities and all the rest of it, and everybody who's oppressed now in Western society would be elevated.

As long as there's the existence of an inequality, it damns the system. I mean, that's it. If inequality exists, it is prima facie proof that the system itself is flawed and must be replaced with something else. I was reading this article the other day called Against Creativity. This brave guy had come out, and he was against creativity because anything that is revolutionary or new is immediately commodified by capitalism and turned into a product, and it's their way of making us think that things are interesting.

But actually, it's just this massive little game that they're playing on us. Well, I had an interesting conversation today at lunch because this is a food conference. It's an organization, Southern Foodways Alliance, I love very much, been on the board for years. And I support it, and I think it's doing great work, and it's doing amazing historical work and oral histories. And so the academic part of it is really, really top-notch. But there's a lot of food people. We talk about food a lot. I'm at lunch. It's a fantastic lunch made by

the chef, Mashama Bailey, who runs a restaurant called The Gray in Savannah. If you're anywhere within 100 miles, you've got to go to The Gray. It's fantastic. She's just a genius. At a certain point, we're talking about authentic food, authenticity, not inauthenticity,

and all that stuff. At our little corner of the table someone we were just talking about like there's there's a joy to inauthentic food too there's something fun about you know red sauce we call we call red sauce italian which is not an italian food that you could get in italy but you can get it in new jersey and new york and certain like like Philadelphia. It's delicious. There's a certain kind of American Chinese food, a chop suey. And that's stuff that if you've done right, it can be really, really interesting and fun. There's a certain kind of American Mexican food, the enchilada plate, which can be – Enrique Oliveira's restaurant in New York called Cosmates, one of the best restaurants in the country. He has a restaurant that specializes in that kind of thing. And I'd say the same thing about Indian food, the places where you could get old waspy dishes

like lamb curry, which weren't really like Indian curry, but they were marvelous kind of mix-ups of very American ways of cooking ethnic food and maybe making it a little bit more bland than the authentic way but that's still really interesting how we how what we see on our plate you know you go to an american restaurant you order nachos you're you're talking about cultural appropriation that denies the live that denies the lived experience of marginalized people yeah but i don't think it denies it but i think i don't understand that's always the pushback. But and yet the funny thing about it is that like, yes, exactly. I'm talking about cultural appropriation, which I think is great.

I don't think it's something to be excused. I think it's fantastic. More cultural appropriation screams America. As do I. And the people who say what I just said are the most joyless people you can possibly imagine. Nobody wants to be around them because they want to draw lines around everything and forbid everybody to do anything that isn't essential to where they went to grade school. It drives you nuts. Well, I'm not surprised that the rot has reached there, but I am happy that you made a pitch for meatloaf and nachos with American cheese and the rest of it. Millennials apparently, according to Bloomberg

this week, are killing American cheese because they don't want processed food and there are so many other interesting alternatives out there. I think they're right. But I'm waiting for the next thing for millennials to kill because apparently they're taking requests now. And I'm wondering if it will be one of the streaming services. And perhaps we should end here because Rob, TV guy that it is um i just read something the other day that said once again this is peak tv it's never been better uh so peter what are you watching now let's give everybody a recommendation before we wind up i just finished i downloaded a couple of uh episodes and finished it on the flight back from new york yesterday i just love this show and i just finished

season three which is which may be the final season. I don't know whether they're going to make another one. Better Call Saul is brilliantly acted. It's humor, drama, crime, camera angles, music. Everything about every minute is fresh and interesting. That, and then my wife and I are starting season three of man in the high castle and you know what this season it's slow it's slow so far it's slow so far anyway those are the two things we're watching it is peaked i mean i don't remember tv this good no rob how about you well i

remember what was this good um i mean aside from of course in the 80s. You know, I push back on all of this. I push back on all this little fancy TV. I don't like it when people say to me, oh, this show is really good. But the first four episodes are slow. Four episodes are slow? That's two or three hours of my life. Forget it. Here's what I'm watching, and it's a guilty pleasure.

It's on Netflix. It's called the windsors if you ever if you ever watch the crown this is the the cruel low hilarious version of the windsors it's really but the contemporary windsor the contemporary royal family in britain uh actors are playing all the characters except you never see the queen and you ever see prince philip because they they won't attack the queen but it is vicious and hilarious they're all played as sort of slightly uh brain addled not very bright not very smart not very plugged in uh uh you know kind of dysfunctional family but it is absolutely hilarious and the kind of character assassination and sheer cruelty that only the English can really do.

And if you have any – if you watched The Crown and you liked it, this is the perfect antidote. Ah, good. I'll give you my recommendations in just a second. I just have to tell you first that this podcast was brought to you by Quip, by Fleur, and by Calm. Support them for supporting us, and you get wonderful things in the meantime. You get the best brush teeth you've ever had, you smell better than anybody you ever know, and you're going to be calm. What more do you wish out of life? If you enjoyed the show, you might want to head off to iTunes, drop a little review.

Those reviews always alert new people to Discover Us, which keeps it going. And then they sign up, hopefully, by which I mean they sign up in a hopeful fashion. And then that money keeps the show going and Ricochet is happy and you'll be happy when we're here for the 2024 election. As far as what I'm watching the other day, I started watching this show, highly recommended by all my friends, Maniac, Jonah Hill, Clark. And it had this great retro 80ies clunky futurism to it, sort of Blade Runner without the fog. It was intriguing. And it was, and I watched a couple

episodes and by the third and by the fourth, it started to get incredibly self indulgent. And it's like, okay, this is all going on in the character's heads. And apparently it's brilliant. Apparently it's obscurity is what makes it fascinating. And apparently it's brilliant apparently its obscurity is what makes it fascinating and apparently it's just not you know usually stuff like this is in my lane but i'm finding myself increasingly less likely to stick with something that is just so indulgent and doesn't even bother to ever tell you what's going on because it's they've got license to do so and i'm sure rob remembers the golden age of television where you know a show was manix crime solved credits yeah quinn martin production and well i don't i don't necessarily want to go back to that and i do like a lot of the sci-fi that's

come up in the cable channels there was just something about this has said i don't like these people and i don't want to spend any more time with them so what do i end up spending time with billy bob thornton in an Amazon early show called Goliath, where he's a lawyer, get this. He's on the skids. Believe it or not. He drinks too much, even though for all of his drinking never slurs his word. Get this. He's got a beef going with a partner of the old law firm that he's no longer in. Who's will, who's William hurt with his face, horribly scarred. Get this.

He's got a legal assistant. who's also a hooker. And she's going – in other words, every David Kelly cliche in the book. But the thing of it is I know I'm guaranteed that after eight episodes, I'm going to have an answer. And there are shows where I kind of want that answer at the end of it, even if it's like Occupied where it's a little bit more unclear as to what goes on. Even like Man in the High Castle where, Peter, you'll have to tell us at the end of this if you kind of get that answer. But the more indulgent like Legion they get and the more it's just a brilliant exercise roaming around the endless corridors of the cerebral – I'm not so sure, which makes me sound, I know, like an utter Philistine. Anyway, the comments will now probably be all television shows uh but do so tell everybody how great you think molly is and um and what you think about the senate and all

the rest of it and you can do that if you pay us money because that's what we want you to do ricochet is supported by you the listener gosh i sound, I sound like NPR. So support us, right? Peter, Rob, it's been a pleasure, and we'll see you guys next week. Next week. Next week, fellas. Eat some grits for us, Rob. I already did. Too late. Just show like a ball When you're rockin' and rollin'

I can hear your mama call Good God, it makes me smile Yeah, sure like a ball Good God, it makes me smile Just sure like a ball When you're rockin' and rollin' Good night. Sure like a bomb When you're rockin' down the road I can hear your mother call Ricochet.

Join the conversation. We'll be right back. Good night.