The Ricochet Podcast - Epic Fury

Episode Date: March 6, 2026

James, Steve and Charles are back together to discuss life during wartime.

A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran. Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime. His eminence, Grand Ayatollah Imam Khomeini, we send salutations. Yesterday, we eliminated the tyrant Kamenei. Along with him, we eliminated dozens of senior officials of the oppressive regime. Our forces are executing with unmatched skill, and the mission is advancing decisively. This is the kind of no-nonsense, results-driven, war-fighting that America demands. Welcome, everybody. It's the Rikershay podcast, number 779.

You can join us at Rikershaw.com. You really can. You can be part of the most stimulating conversations and community on the web. I'm James Lillax, in the middle of the country, in Minneapolis. where it's very foggy, and I'm joined by Stephen Hayward in sunny California and Charles C.W. Cook in Florida, who knows what the weather is, who cares? And gentlemen, it seems, in retrospect, that our first clue should have been renaming the Department of Defense, the Department of War. Here we are with one of the most astonishing displays we've seen in a long time. People were goggling over the snatching of Maduro, and now that appears to be like walking down to the corner store for a pack of smokes. This is big. This is something the likes of which I've never seen in my lifetime, and I've been around for the desert for the Iraqi wars and the rest. It feels different, too.

It feels like weapons free, like unburdened, like the rules of engagement have changed, like there is a martial spirit breast puffed that we haven't seen in a long time. And we can attribute that probably to, probably, to the president and to the SEC Def. So here we are. It's been since February 28th, BDA from you guys. Stephen, go first. Well, I think not only the Department of War, but I think a bigger clue is the obvious one, which is sending so many forces over to the theater. And, you know, when Trump does that, and I think this was true of Venezuela, you know he's going to use it.

He's not just going to say, never mind and withdraw without some kind of deal, which clearly was not in the offing. I think that to me, the most significant effect so far, it's not the scale of it so much, although that is a big thing, but it was the sinking of the Iranian warship out. in the Indian Ocean with a torpedo. You mean the war crime? War crime, right. For the first time since World War II. And the reason I say that's such a big deal is, well, it's not exactly the same. But, you know, if you know your early World War II history really well, before we were in it.

And it was when the British sunk the French war fleet in North Africa after asking to surrender and they refused. And, you know, Churchill didn't want to do that, but thought it was necessary because you didn't want the fleet to fall into German hands. and that's when Roosevelt and his people said, oh, they really do mean to see this thing through and to win it if they'll do that. And that was a powerful moral effect, as Churchill put it.

And I think the fact that the order went out, yeah, sink that ship out in the middle of the ocean, rather than just hobble it or blockade or who knows what, shows that, in fact, Trump and his team are in it to destroy Iran's capabilities from head to toe. Charles has been a lot of talk from the usual talkers about that this is a war crime, it was an unarmed ship, it was in international waters and so forth, most of which were waved away by people said,

no, actually, it's war, it's worship, it's heading where it shouldn't be, and yeah, it seems we have the starkest dichotomy we've had in a long time between those people who believe still that there is an international rules-based order that is simply exists and is enforced by moral persuasion and by those who say, no, that is a fiction that is promulgated by people who wanted to fang the United States and have us all descend into a Brussels-style EU talking shop where nothing ever gets done and the bad guys get to go away.

Is it the end of the old international order? We exposed it as just simply something that existed because American strength backstopped it? Well, that's what it's always been. That wasn't a war crime, but I will say that the apologists for the administration do need to accept that this is a war, which many of them won't,

including the Speaker of the House. It is a war. That was an act of war. We can tell this because if somebody did any of these things to us, we would describe it as such. We wouldn't say it was a limited kinetic action, actually. It is a war. As long as no one calls it a special military operation.

Right. I load that. I think we should own it. Now, that doesn't mean it's wrong. I don't think it is. But we should own that it's a war. the sinking of that ship was not a war crime and in fact the arguments that it was are based upon a misreading of the rules the rule is that you have to help insofar as it is possible to help but

you can't by definition help with a submarine submarines have always been considered different because they have limited space. You can't just fill a submarine with 100 Iranians. Well, they can sit on the top and you can drive the ship home at, you know, without going down. I mean, this is silly. And I've seen some people on the far left saying, and this just proves that we're worse than the Nazis, because even the Nazis, no, absolutely not.

This was normal within the rules of war. and I think what it highlights more than that the United States is wrong in some way is the people have just forgotten, thankfully, what wars look like because we've had a very long peace, because even that we, there we are in one now, we live so far away from it that, with the exception of higher gas prices, perhaps, it's really not going to affect too many people, especially those who don't have children in the services. It does affect them. But the average American doesn't. So the average American is sitting watching this as if it were a TV show and thereby fixating on that sort of thing.

But no, this wasn't a war crime, but this is a war. When you talk about the realities of its striking home, we have seen ever since the Gulf War a series of what are basically bloodless engagements. We see thermal imaging footage of people running around a missile launcher and then there's a bloom and then they're not there anymore. the graphic nature, the horrible nature, the upfront nature, the mangled nature of it is just, it doesn't seem to be, is not our screens. But there was something about the sinking of that vessel that did actually drive it home to you because when the torpedo exploded beneath the bow and cracked the spine, an awful lot of heat signatures went up in the air. And you had to look at that and say, those are, were people. We don't see, you know, the mangled bodies being, I'm not saying that we should. I'm just saying that the sort of unreal aspect of this continues to this very day.

Today, I just saw something on Twitter that said, again, this has to be confirmed that an Israeli sortie of a large number of planes dropped a large number of bombs on what they call the remaining government figures of the Iranian regime. And you can see the bunker busters. You see the blocks exploding. And it's all topped down from above. And I have no point here other to say that you're right. We don't see the consequences of our action. And I'm not saying that we should have our noses rubbed into it. I'm just simply saying that once again, we have this sort of video game aspect to it.

I suppose that's unavoidable in modern conflict. No point there whatsoever. I'll hand it over to Steve to perhaps find a point in what I was saying. Well, I'll just pick up on the international rules-based order you brought up in your last question. And look, I've always been skeptical of that for a long time. I think you put your finger on it. It's usually used as a tool to hobble the United States and its allies. International law only works among nations who can be expected to abide by it.

And, of course, that would not be Iran, right? And lots of other regimes, Russia. So throughout the Cold War, James, I would ask people the question, why don't we need arms control agreements with Britain or France, or he might add Israel to that since they have nuclear weapons? Well, the answer is obvious, right? They're fellow democracies with whom we have good relations, so we don't need it. We only need those kinds of agreements with our enemies.

And even when you get them, like we did with the Soviet Union, they're not very good. Okay, that's point one. Point two is to extend your last comment. I do understand now in the press that we're flying a lot of B-52s because we've cleared away the air defenses of Iran, and they can fly pretty much with impunity. And, of course, those can carry so much more ordinance than even the B2, let alone the B1, whatever. They're always the B1 and B2, the stealth ones. And those can be used to really reduce a lot of targets to rubble.

And, you know, I go back to the end of the Vietnam War in 1972 when Nixon had had it, and the skies were dark over Hanway with B-52s, a number of whom were shot down. Back in those days, air defenses were more effective, and we didn't have as many effective countermeasures. But it's sobered up the North Vietnamese that actually we do have to make a deal. And it ended up being an unenforceable one. That's a problem for another day.

And so the big question here is, are we really going to be able to achieve our war aims with air power? And most experts say you can't. But what Hegseth has not ruled out, boots on the ground. And when that happens, I think this whole thing goes pear-shaped politically that may or may not succeed. I don't know. But, well, I'll just end with this.

Trump has taken a huge risk. He's bet his entire presidency on this. Because if our economy wobbles, I agree with Charlie, we're the most immune from economic consequences in the near term. But that's not true of our trading partners and the European economies and Japan even and South Korea. They could be having some serious economic troubles soon. And that will spill over to us eventually.

So this is a huge risk on Trump's part. And once again, you've got to kind of admire him and worry about him. Well, the buffs are doing the job they're supposed to do, which is taking out the missile storage facilities. It doesn't matter if you can get your launchers out if you can't get those, you know, and taking out the launchers too. I mean, there's a very long-term calculated process going on here, which seems to be proceeding correctly. But there's also something beyond that, which is China. and the whole part that this fits in into an anti-China-China containment strategy.

That is what seems to me to be the emerging reality at the end of the day behind this. I mean, yes, Iran is off the table as a terrorist force. They're no longer supporting everybody. That's great. The region stabilizes. But it seems as if Iran made a bet

that their underground cities full of missiles would be something the United States could never take out like they did in the Gulf Wars because they're underground. And China made a bet that by propping up Iran, that they would pin down the U.S. and in the Middle East in a series of engagements that were inconsequential in the end and unresolved, and that China would prosper and flourish because of this. Am I right in saying that, I think it's easy to say that the Iranian strategy

seems not to have worked out for them in the end? But am I right in saying that a success here really does not put Xi in a good position and it's his own fault? Charles? I think there's a huge gap between the political performance of the White House, which I think has been poor and almost indifferent, and the extraordinary performance of the military, which I assume is being watched around the world. And not just in this instance, but also in Venezuela, which was really quite impressive.

So as a piece of geopolitical engineering, I am thrilled that the Chinese and the Russians and anyone else has watched this and been reminded that the U.S. is number one and ought not to be messed with. As a domestic political matter, I think Trump has once again been his own worst enemy. Well, expand on that. I mean, we don't want to sit here and apple politics.

Tell me, you think that they are domestic political soundings and statements have been insufficient or have been lackadaisical or what? Well, if you look at how this went down, not that I am part of the story, I just say this as a preface. I wrote a column two weeks ago saying we needed to debate this and it needed to go through Congress. This is a thing I write every time under every president. And I had a line in there saying, I don't want to wake up one morning and be told we're at war. I would prefer as a citizen to be part of this. And of course, on Saturday, I woke up and was told that we were at war because the president had decided to do it. That's not a judgment on the merits.

It's not a cover for criticism on the merits. I'm agnostic on this question. I'm totally open to the argument that this was the right thing to do. But the average American... You're right, because every Charles C.W. Cook's speech ends with, and we must have a congressional resolution on the destruction of Carthage. Or whatever the Latin equivalent would be. Right.

You're right. You're consistent, and I agree with you. But I went to my son's flag football game, and people there who vaguely know what I do came up to me and said, so what's this Iran thing? And I do think that's somewhat astonishing in a democratic republic. Now, if Trump believes this is a right decision, and I'm open to being persuaded that it is, I think at the very least, even if he wasn't going to go to Congress or have a long debate prior to doing it, and there are strategic arguments against that, he had to do more than give a very short speech, in a white baseball hat from his private club, and then disappear.

But in the meantime, talk to lots of journalists on the telephone and give them different answers as to what we were doing. There have been three, four different explanations as to why we're in Iran. It's been a humanitarian case. It's been that it was an imminent threat against us. It's been that we were tired after 46 years of them targeting us. It's been that we were going after the weapons program and so on and so forth. I think that Trump should have come out and said,

ladies and gentlemen, I understand that this is somewhat surprising, but this country has been a thorn on our side for 47 years. It has an institutional animus toward the United States. It says death to America, death to Israel. It's been trying to get a nuclear weapon. It's been killing our people for years, including in Iraq. And we were presented with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do something about this. And I, Donald Trump, unlike the feckless presidents who came before me,

that's his line, not mine, have finally pulled the trigger. And then I think he should have kept to that line for a week and acknowledged, and this is something that Trump, and it's not just Trump, lots of presidents, the same. Biden was also bad in this regard. Then he should have said that he could not, in good conscience, pass up that opportunity, even though there would be downsides, including domestic ones such as higher gas prices. I have been arguing for months in a separate sphere that he should be saying, yes, there is pain in the economy, because there is pain in the economy. but he won't. He says we're in a golden age. And I just worry with this that this is going to have been the right thing to do, that it's going to lead to really good outcomes in the long run geopolitical and in the Middle East, but that the American public is not going to be sold and that if he isn't hurt by it, at least he will have got away with it rather than be rewarded for it. Perhaps he was never going to be rewarded for it. Perhaps he had to take a brave decision and deal with the consequences. But I don't see him doing a great deal. So I'm drawing a distinction here between the domestic political question, which matters because we have elections, and the performance of the U.S. military, which I think has been stellar, and the potential geopolitical ramifications, which I'm open to being told are solid, including that China, Russia, and other countries are watching this and remembering, oh, yeah, that's why America's the hegemon. Steve, is Charles living in an old world where Martin Sheen gives us a speech from the Oval Office

and with his hands folded and starts with my fellow Americans and ends with God bless America? Is that era just gone? And now it's you announced to the world what you've done in a vertical video on TikTok and then you tweet about it a little bit later and this indistinct message. It's just part of a fractured attention span. of the American public today. Yeah, well, I mean, if you go back to the Cuban missile crisis, when they first got the intelligence in that the Soviets were putting in missiles,

the Hawks wanted to do an attack right away. And I forget who it was, and I've read all the books on this years ago, but I forget who it was somebody around Kennedy. It might have been Kennedy himself who said, we don't do surprise attacks, we don't do Pearl Harbor. Now, this isn't quite the same, but it does, I take Charlie's point, you do it out of the, kind of out of the blue like this. I mean, we knew had the forces there, and we've been talking about it for a while.

Trump has. So it's maybe not out of the blue, but out of the purple. I don't know what the right color is. The other thing is, oh, the Oval Office Address, James. I mean, in the old days, you know, you and I grew up, that's the days when the three networks had the roadblock, right? The president would always appear on all the networks, and then the cable ones when they came along. And so everyone would tune in because you weren't going to watch anything else while that was happening. Well, of course, that world was long gone.

because of cable and 500 channels and so forth. And that's why I think one of the biggest reasons presidents no longer make the formal Oval Office address anymore, which I think is unfortunate. I think the way Charlie laid it out would be much to be advised. Trump, as usual, just improvises every day, including this morning as we're talking, saying he wants unconditional surrender from Iran, which is probably a mistake to say that. And we'll see if they really means that. But your other question, you know, Bridge, Cole.

who was a guest on this show two, three years ago, he's been very open about, and I think the administration's gone along with it. They would like to settle business in the Middle East so we can pivot to a more robust defense posture against China in the Pacific. And so a lot of people are saying that is what's going on. Oh, by the way, I'll add, Charlie, that I've been scribbling notes to myself, I do wish Pete Hegseth would switch to decaf before his briefings, right? I mean, just a little bit too over the top. So it is kind of a mess. But the last thing I'll say, and here I agree with Charlie's inclinations on this, but think we have, A, an enfeebled Congress across the board for years now. And it is an important project to try and unenfebled them on so many

ways. And I think the Supreme Court is helping with that on domestic matters. But second, you know, we had Bill Barr on here, about just three, four, five weeks ago, whatever it was. And he reminded us that before Gulf War I, President Bush thought he did not need the approval of Congress to launch that war, but they decided for political reasons to ask for it anyway. Now, the Senate vote in that was quite close. I think it was only 53-47 or 54-46. Most Democrats opposed it. And remember, we had moved 500,000 troops in the theater and all the pieces there

while trying to do a negotiated settlement. It's similar to what we've been through the last, you know, several years with Iran. But if that had failed, or if Congress held a debate here in the last two weeks and Trump have lost in the House, which I think is conceivable, that he might have lost a resolution in the House. Then he's in a very weak position because I do think at the end of the day, our Constitution has always been in tension on this, but I think the commander-in-chief powers do authorize the president to take us into action like this. I think, by the way, the War Powers Act, most presidents, I think all presidents since then think it's unconstitutional, but none have wanted to challenge it, and Trump is the one person who will challenge it if it comes to that.

ask. I'm like Charles. I mean, I agree with all of his positions about what should be done and the processes that we have that have served us well in the past. I can't disagree with any of his positions. But at the same time, I feel as though I've got one foot on the dock in the 20th century and the other on a boat of the 21st and they're drifting apart. And if you've ever been down at the lakes and found yourself in that situation, you know, at some point you have to make a choice or you're in the drink. And so I don't, I mean, I've, put it this way. If we had had, and I'm not saying, well, if we'd gone ahead and asked Congress and done the whole thing by all the rules, I mean, but if we had, you know that answer, Code Pink, everybody would have ramped up the pre-printed signs and the big demonstrations, and there would have been this sort of faux show of moral superiority in every city in America that would give the spineless people in the House and the Senate a reason to say, I'm going to decide with those who are protesting because, as we know from the 60s, anybody who gets out in the street and waves of placard is indeed themselves on the moral high ground. And that might have affected what happens.

And then at the end of the day, eventually Iran scoots and scoffs at us and the Chinese solidification of the Chinese tightening of their own hegemony is unabated. So, I mean, that's not an answer for anything. I'm just saying that I feel sort of intellectually confused to the point of useless inaction by what I'm drawn towards and new realities that seem to be in our politics and society at the moment. And nobody answered my China question, by the way. Somebody take my China question. Did Xi make the wrong back? I mean, it's just open-ended softball, but did she make the wrong way?

How does this redound in Chinese politics, especially since he just killed about 200 of his top generals? Well, look, I mean, I think it was a traditional alliance where you want to make links with the enemy of your enemy. So the alliance with Iran looked good. I think the bigger problem for, or at least one of the bigger problems for Xi right now, is at least from what you can read in media sources, which maybe isn't everything or even correct. But a lot of the Chinese technology has proved to be ineffective. And there's a broader point about that. I mean, China is more technologically available and has a more robust economy than the Soviet Union area. ever had. And so we worry about, you know, they build more ships in a year than we have in 30

or something like that. Do you know those figures? But there's also, I know a lot of people who really know their Chinese history and they say, yeah, they can build submarines and aircraft carriers, but you know what? They have a really bad record of fighting wars over the years, unlike the Russians, right? They're not very good at it. And what, they had a submarine that sank at the dock, what, two, three years ago, you know, brand new submarine and somebody didn't close the screen door or something and sank at the dock. I think there is some doubt that the Chinese military capacities are all that good. But we're making, this takes us now back to Iran.

We are making the bet and have now at the same bet we did during the long Cold War with the Soviet Union, that our quality of armaments would overwhelm their quantity. And, okay, that's fine. But we have a lot of really expensive stuff. And the whole new frontier drone wars we've learned about in the last few years. it means, you know, we're now shooting down what, you know, I'll just say a $500,000 drone with a $5 million missile. That doesn't pencil out very well over time. And I think we're learning a lesson from that.

And we're going to have to figure that out pretty soon because I think we, the old American way of war of overwhelming them with our wealth and technology has got its vulnerabilities. Yeah, it's interesting on that, because we went from World War II where we overwhelmed them with our ability to produce to, the Cold War where we overwhelm them with our ability to think. And now we're probably going to need both. Yeah. I agree with Steve. I don't have too much to add. I think it makes sense for China to ally itself with other countries that don't like the United States, given that China wants to become the global hegemon and believes that it's been embarrassed for a thousand years

and that it is destined to rule the world once more. I, of course, oppose China in that age. and hope it loses, but I don't think it made the wrong bet. I think it should in this game behave accordingly. I'm just glad that we were once again able to thwart them, and I hope that if they are planning on going into Taiwan next year, this has had an effect on them and reminded them, as I say, that it's not just theoretical.

We can apparently do incredible things. I've been surprised. I'm not a military expert or a foreign policy expert by any stretch of the imagination. But I do have a very rosy conception of America's military capacity in my mind. And I was surprised at the sheer brilliance of our operations. So I hope the Chinese were too. I just want to say in reference to what Charlie said about China and then looking at our technology. Yes.

I mean, we've seen lasers in this war. Israel has developed, you know, sort of an iron dome system that doesn't need actual missile, but, you know, just can pew, pew, pew them down. when you see the laser beams striking into the sky, you think, well, this is a different level. And if I were China, I would not be surprised if they massed forces to go into Taiwan and then looked up into the sky. And there we had a death star, you know, with Peter Cushing behind the debut of the consoles, you know, making it fully operational. What do we have in the quiver yet still ought to keep them interested? Three Gorge's Dam, for example.

It's not a military target, but it sort of puts them behind the eight ball. Anyway, you're going to say about Iran. Well, are you saying Marjorie Taylor Greems right about the Jewish space lasers, James? Well, I, oh, boy, I let it out of the bag, didn't I? Yes, they control the weather. They control the weather as well. Oh, let me just, oh, my dreadlocks are twitching an embarrassment here. So go on. Well, it's a quick observation about Iran, and we'll see how this plays out. But it's one thing for them to shoot missiles at the American bases in the Middle East, but they seem to have been somewhat indiscriminate about it. and arguably wanting to punish the other Arabs who have been hosting our bases

and are friendly to the United States and hostile to them. And they've done an amazing thing. They have united most of the Arab world against them. And the reason of this, I think this is really significant is, you might remember Independence Day from 30 years ago, you know, the remake of World of Worlds.

And there was a scene toward the end after Jeff Goldblum was going to send a virus to the motherships where, and then the whole world going to coordinate by Morse Code to attack. And there was a scene, it was a scene as maybe 10 seconds long, and it showed Israeli and Arab troops

getting together to prepare their attack. Now, that caused a huge controversy, and Arab nations wouldn't show the movie unless that scene was removed. I don't know if you remember this. It made some press at the time. So, I mean, that's how, you know, how the politics have fallen out.

Since then, we've had the Abraham Accords and so forth. And now you're having Arab nations saying, we're going to fight alongside United States and Israel against Iran. And I think this would have been unthinkable even 25 years ago. And yet here we are. And, you know, we'll see. I mean, it looks to me like this is arguably Iran just lashing out.

If they're going to go down, they're going to go down and take as many people with them as they can. And so, and by the way, I mean, the other thing is, when are we going to see kamikaze-style 9-11 attacks on targets in the Middle East, including, you know, the Burge, Khalifa, right? I wouldn't put that past the Iranian crazies to do something like that, just to make a statement to all that are neighbors that you're not putting, you're not taking us down without you having a lot of hurt. James, I just say before we move on that we know that the Jews can't control the weather because if they could, there wouldn't be so many of them moving to Florida. And if you could control the weather where you live, you'd stay and do it, right? You wouldn't move down to Fort Lauderdale. Well, that's just the Dodge, the cover story.

Isn't it just though? Yes. Well, I mean, when it comes to what Stephen was talking about, are they going to hit the birch? I think they, you know, they tried. They did some stuff beforehand. They seemed as if they had their own Sampson option, that long rumored story about if Israel was attacked by a nuke that they just simply hit everybody in the neighborhood. And now it turns out it's Iran doing it. But it is kind of funny to say, knowing the history, that Iran has done something quite astonishing.

They've united the Arabs in hatred of the Persians. at the same time you have the Greeks who are, you know, dealing with the, you know, the ancient. It's, yeah, nothing changes. Nothing changes. Nothing is new under the sun. But what we do know is that the sun is getting warmer because the year is getting longer, you know, the days and the rest of it. You know, the resolutions are you made on January 1st, they seem like a long time ago, but that doesn't mean they're not pertinent and they're not important.

So if you've done all your resolutions, You know, probably not. Well, good thing is, there's nothing stopping you from making another go of your resolutions in March. And what was the one that was bugging you got under your skin? Maybe you feel a little nervous. Well, there's nothing stopping you from thinking long term about insurance. Oh, that word, that word that everybody just rolls.

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So the next question is, because I had something else about the Samson option and the money. Never mind. Europe. Ah. How relevant are they to this? One of the saddest stories, Charles, and I'm sure you might agree,

or you might not think it's sad at all, you being an expats, and come here to be an American citizen, for which we are always grateful, is the sad decline of the British Navy, the inability to put anything out, it seems, to see. What once spanned the globe is a bunch of rusty buckets, dry dock, without enough sailors to go on, and it's dismaying. So let's start there and talk about where Europe finds itself in all of this.

Yeah, there's no rum, no sodomy, no lash left. It's all the past. I was thinking that very thing, Charlie. It's astonishing, isn't it? I don't find it sad. I find it predictable. Perhaps it's sadly predictable. But it's astonishing.

The British have slowly slipped into irrelevance. I was thinking about this yesterday. Back in 2013, when President Obama announced that he might like to go into Syria, and I, James, said the thing I always say, which is you need to go to Congress, and he said, no, I don't, which was a complete reversal of his promise in 2008 when he was running, quite explicitly, a reversal. all, the American public revolted such that he backed down and said, I could do it, but I'm not going to. And there were a couple of things that happened that led to that backing down.

One was that there was a bipartisan sentiment against going into Syria. It wasn't just the Democrats, the Republicans also were hostile. star to the idea. And the second thing that happened was the British Parliament met, debated whether they would join the United States in Syria and said they wouldn't. Now, that wasn't just positive and it was perhaps less important than the British thought it was at the time. But it did have an effect. It made big news in the press and it was, by all accounts, processed by President Obama. And I was thinking that if that happened today, no one would care or even report on it. Could you imagine caring whether the British Parliament was on board with this Iran adventure or not?

The idea is almost silly, and that was only 13 years ago. 40 years ago, it would have killed any plan. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were close because they shared a political worldview, but also because they had to be. Britain really mattered in the 1980s. It mattered in the 1990s. We joined in Kosovo, and it mattered in the early 2000s.

Getting Britain on board with the Afghanistan and Iraq wars was crucial. Now it's not. It's not just that the British don't have a Navy and that their military is weaker than it should be, but Britain as an economic power, is declining. Britain as a cultural power is

declining. Britain as a member of Europe. I don't mean the European Union solely, but as a cultural member of Europe is declining. I take no joy in that, but

you're absolutely right. It's true. And to look at the state of the British military, which is a choice. All that money, I'm afraid, has gone on welfare. This is not me being a mean right winger. Just look at the books. They've spent it all on welfare.

They have cut everything except welfare. They are now at their highest tax rates as a percentage of GDP since 1945. That is to say, the British public is now being taxed more than it has been since the end of World War II. And they have this pathetic military to show for it. Why? Because all they spend their money on.

is welfare. And that has been a choice, it's been a disastrous choice, and it has led to them being irrelevant to the point at which now they are less important to world affairs, not regional affairs, to world affairs than Israel. Well, it's gone from a special relationship to a special ed relationship. Stephen, you have, in the background, if I'm seeing it correctly, way in the corner of your room there back by the door, I think you have a poster of Churchill, and it says, if I recall, deserve victory. I was always caught up by the phrasing of that.

Am I correct? Deserve victory. Be a people who deserve it and earn it. Are the British public, are they still that people? Is there still something there that you can blow on the dying embers and find the lion's spirit, the bulldog spirit that got them through the blitz and the rest of it?

Because I don't see it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the full quote that that's taken from is Churchill said something like, it's not possible to assure or guarantee victory. It is only possible to deserve it, which, again, gets back to the phrase I used earlier about the destroyer being sunk, the moral effect of the people. I mean, you know, that crucial period that's dramatized in, you know, the darkest hour

movie that came out three, four years ago with Gary Oldman as Churchill. The calculation then was the morale of the, everything depends on the morale of our fighting forces, which have now evacuating without their weapons from France, right? And consequently, the morale of the people. And if we start saying, we're going to have backdoor negotiations for a deal with Hitler, everything will collapse. And, yeah, it's hard to see. I mean, we made jokes about France forever.

Well, you know, we want the French to teach the Iranians how to surrender, right? But boy, this is not good. Although Charlie's right, and it's very significant that we can stand alone without them, if need be. It would be much better to have them. I think, by the way, I thought you were going to say, Charlie, when you mentioned the Thatcher and Reagan, I am not sure if Argentina invaded the Falklands again, if Britain could muster the military might to fight back.

Absolutely. No, no. I had to be very onymus, right? No, of course not. I'm convinced their entire culture decided that the Falklands War was wrong because Elvis Gustavo wrote a mean song about it. Well, she was exceptional even within that era for willing to do. do that. I, well, no, the idea that this was a reflexive British response that the island was

consumed by Churchillian fortitude is just not true. The institutional response, the establishment response, what we would call the swamp today, said leave it. Because Britain had been through decades of decolonization. That was its reflexive mode. And the British public initially and certainly the bureaucracy thought that this was just another example of dismantling the empire. And she said no. And she was right, of course. She said, not literally, but I'm paraphrasing, that there was no meaningful difference between the Argentinians invading the Falcons and the Argentinians invading London, in that they were British citizens who wanted almost to a man to remain British citizens. It was British citizens. It was British.

British territory and you can't allow it to stand. And this was regarded in the same way as Ronald Reagan's evil empire speech that we all love was regarded as sort of the black and white manichean thinking of a jingoistic rub. But she won. And having won, the public loved her for it. But I think the point you're making is the right one, which is not really about the resolve, but is about the ability to project force, which the British at that point could still do quite easily. We sent an armada of sorts down to the Falklands. We just couldn't do it now.

Also, it's not just a lack of ships and modern weaponry. It's little things. For example, did you know that the aircraft carriers, the British have, they don't have the catapults on them. They don't have any of the stuff that American ones have had since the 80s. They have to be VTOL. They have to be VTOL. The French have catapults. The Charles de Gaulle can show them. off. And it's amazing. The Brits invented, if I'm correct, the angled airstrip on the aircraft carrier, but we don't need that anymore.

American roller coasters have catapults to launch them, but the British aircraft carriers don't. Well, speaking as a jingoistic group who believes in Mennican dualism, I side with the Thatcher view of the world, alas. But now

people are saying that one of the reasons that Britain seems politically, culturally paralyzed in a leadership level is because Kierre Starmer can alienate those people who are really mad that the mullos got pounded. And that's a different element now than existed back at the Falklands War, that the idea of British and the idea of a monoculture, the idea of what it means to be English and all the rest of these things have been defined differently, in different ways, without the consent of the people who previously fit under that definition.

So that's our obit for them. France, however, seems to be using this opportunity to look muscular, Macron, sending the Charles de Gaulle. I believe, didn't Macron recently say that he was going to extend the French nuclear force, you know, force frape or whatever it is, to England, that he would, he would, was willing to include them in the nuclear umbrella? Did I get that correctly? Well, I miss that if he did say it.

But, I mean, you know, we love to throw a lot of shade of the French, you know, why do they plant the trees? Because the German army likes to march in the shade, all those great old jokes. But the truth is, you know, it's, I think it's still true today that when the French get their backup, they're not hesitant to lash out quite effectively. I mean, my favorite moment, it's now back in the 80s, but, you know, they blew up a Greenpeace ship that was trying to interfere with one of their nuclear tests in the South Pacific. I kind of admired that, right? And, you know, they've rummaged around a bit in the last few years in Africa and some of their

former colonies and some governments that are allied with them. Now, they often had to borrow, I think 10 years ago, as I recall, now maybe more, they had to borrow, transport capacity from Russia. So they do lack certain complete capacities, but when the French want to do it, they can still do it, which amazing. I like to think Macron has a sense of humor saying, we'll defend England now, which I can see him doing that just to be mischievous

and annoying. He did four days ago in Brittany, speech in Brittany, saying Macron said, quote, the next 50 years will be an era of nuclear weapons. I guess we're past the old days of the freeze and the rest of that stuff. Yeah. Right. So,

gentlemen, if you could talk amongst yourself, I'm seeing a huge amount of smoke coming from outside my house. I just want to make sure nothing's on fire. Uh-oh. Go ahead. Yeah, well, good grief. An Iranian on this song. Well, I mean, well, maybe we should ask James about this when he comes back if we have time.

I just saw some figures yesterday from a friend of mine, Mark Perry, used to be an economist at the EI, but he's from Minnesota and he's moved back to the Twin Cities. apparently auto thefts are soaring in Minneapolis, St. Paul, right now, 18 a day on average this year. And that's while crime and auto thefts are falling everywhere else around the country. So what's this about? I get the feeling that the, I mean, you may know this, that the number of deportations by ICE are much higher in California and Texas, now they're bigger states. But that's not what we're seeing the protest and the trouble. We're seeing it in Minneapolis, St. Paul.

And I don't know, I'm never going to understand that crazy place. serve worse off even in Portland, Oregon. That's one thing. I think there's two things going on there. One is the lack of enforcement, which is how you stop car thefts as the National Guard showed in Washington, D.C. I don't want the National Guard outside of Washington, D.C., necessarily, because Washington, D.C. is a federal city, and Minneapolis is not. But you do stop this with preventative measures. And on the immigration front, California is very interesting there, But Texas is explained by the cooperation of the state with the federal government. Because once you have that, it makes it very difficult for people to get in the way.

If the state's handing over the people that it wants to the federal government, it's easy. But that's interesting about California. I wonder why that is. I don't really know. I actually drive by every Sunday a anti-ice protest with maybe 100 people with signs on Highway 101 outside the county jail and sheriff's office. because I think my local DA is cooperating with ICE because he's very conservative. But I think it varies from place to place.

The topic, James, is why is Minneapolis crazy? Oh, so many reasons. So many reasons. And by the way, I'm not on fire. It's in excess of water or vapor coming out of the heating system. Since we're selling soon, I'm a little... Actually, I would prefer for the place to go up in absolute fire and just collect the check and walk away.

But it wasn't that. Why is Minneapolis crazy? Remember, Rob Long always. said that if you're in California where you can't afford earthquake insurance, right? I mean, it's off the chart. They go offer it to me every year, and I say, forget it. And he said, if you have an earthquake and your house falls over, what you want to do is set it on fire because the fire insurance will cover it. Minneapolis is crazy because it decided that it had solved everything and that the thing to do

to make things better was keep expanding every single instrument of the state that it thought had solved everything. and there were a couple of instances where things weren't solved, so just spend more, so that's it. So the process naturally pushed into politics, people who believed in strong statist intervention. Now, the thing, which is not unusual, but what made Minnesota unusual was we had a high Scandinavian, North European culture quote, which gave us a lot of social capital. One of those high-trust societies, all the people are always nattering about on X. We were that.

You paid a lot of taxes, but you got a lot of. got good government, you got clean streets, you've got no potholes, you had an expectation that the corporate leaders were giving their money as well. The big companies are pledged to give 5% of their stuff to charities and whatnot. And it all produced a wonderfully civilized society that's generous with its benefits. Generous benefits attract people who do not desire to contribute. And then that gets more of that. And eventually the social capital decreased, the trust decreased and the people who stayed in Minneapolis in particular were generally

hardliners, I mean just dead enders or there are people who had not changed their politics at all ever since college and believed these things with increasing fervor and it never really examined the whole intellectual constellation in their head that made them both the way they did and so the city sort of self-selects

and it's a smart city, it's highly educated people but it's those highly educated liberals and progressives who have a moral certainty attached to outmoded unworkable ideas. And so that's what gets you crazy. And alas and a lack.

So I am going to be moving, but I'm going to be about, I don't know, 12 blocks from the city limits. No, I was going to ask you. I was hoping I might have a new neighbor. No. Alas, Florida isn't on the table yet.

But it wouldn't, I have sort of a year here where I'm figuring it out and we will see. I, you know, or Alabama for that matter. I should be on commission, I think, in my proselytizing for Florida. I just,

I want to go to Alabama so I can lord it over the Canadians. I was thinking of going to a Winnipeg, but, you know, but it's poor compared to Alabama. I know, that's the thing. That's the great thing.

Well, yeah, I mean, so are we alone in this? I mean, we seem like an outpost of what you take to be Southern California, or just California, you know, crazy liberalism, transplanted here. I mean, Des Moines isn't like,

this and I wouldn't say that Des Moines is necessarily historically all that different from from Minnesota. Iowa was not settled by a bunch of raging individualists who objected to any form of collective society. I mean, the Midwest is generally sensible, settled place.

Why we are that shanker of red in, or shanker of the well, no, no, that shanker's done. Why we're crazy? Yeah, but you know what else is interesting about this, James? And you can tell if I'm wrong because I'm making comments on your state.

But if you look at, say, the presidential election results in Minnesota, it's really close. So you've got a strange phenomenon here where the Democrats win and they win most of the time. And then they're completely crazy as if they were winning in, say, Oregon, where they win by 20 points, which is unusual. And Wisconsin is in some ways a progressive state. but that is much less so than Minnesota. And it's a swing state two, or it's close to being one. So there's something about this that really pushes the people who are in charge to go for it

in a way that they don't seem to in other states that are divided by five or six points. California is a bit different. I mean, California is, what was it, like, 61 to 30 in the last presidential election? It's just not even close. It's more than that, but I, yeah. Yeah, they can just run hog wild. as you might say. And now in Florida, maybe this will change.

But, I mean, the last gubernatorial election in Florida was decided by 20 points. Of course they came back and did constitutional carry and school choice and tax cuts and so forth. But I'm just fascinated by Minnesota because it's actually not that democratic. It's just that the Democrats who are there are wild. It is and it isn't. I mean, you're right. It's the metro core that is the throbbing blue. Outstate, it's red and it's purple as you go out here and there.

is also a strong socialist tendency when you get up north to the iron range in places that were settled by people who said, now we're going to bond together for union reasons, for the rest of it. So you have that old early 20th century sort of leftism that still is part of the character. And so, you know, they may vote this way, they may vote that way, but they're culturally not on board with the whole progressive 21st century agenda, just not. But they find themselves ruled by a party that is. I mean, Peggy Flanagan, you know, the tenant governor shows up with a shirt that says, protect trans kids and he's got a big knife on it. I'm supposed to just, who am I supposed to stab?

I mean, when they had a trans day of visibility or a trans day of remembrance, I can't remember what it was, they had this drag guy, queen, dancing in high heels in this sort of demonic costume. And I'm not saying that lightly. I mean, I think he had horns and a tail. On the star, which is this in the rotunda of the Capitol building, there's this beautiful inlaid star, symbol of the state, and it's roped off so that nobody walks over it,

like the flame of the unknown soldier, to the unknown soldier flame. There he was, clopping away at it, and everybody's clapping away to, and, you know, the guys outstate in the range, farmer sitting there at the VFW club looking at this, is thinking, what a bunch of weirdos, I have nothing

to do with them. But then, but then, you know, come in election time, they may pull the letter, lever for the D. Yeah, it is, it is a peculiar place. It is. But don't misunderstand all the things that you hear from Minneapolis and all the things that you've seen. It is still a beautiful city and a fantastic city. And I leave my neighborhood with regret against my will. And the state itself is beautiful. And the people are good. And it's, it's mad in spots. It's daft. But damn, it's still home. You sound like a Californian talking

about California. I know. It's a Stockholm syndrome. It really is. Well, gentlemen, we're on the way out here. Just got a few minutes before we come to the end of our arbitrarily decided time package here. Any notes? Stephen, anything you'd like to tell us that we talk about that we haven't mentioned in our and a basis around the world? Well, there's a whole lot. I mean, we could go on on a Christy-Knoam. I'll just say, I won't tell the story because there's in time, but I just, yeah, she's from South Dakota. Those people are curious. Well, there you go.

I did see her only once up close and in person where I formed two impressions. One is, wow, she's really pretty in person. But second, I came away from what should have been a slam dunk, easy command of the room where she was very stiff and didn't read the room that was terribly sympathetic to her. And I came away thinking, you know, she really hasn't got it at the high level that she aspires to. This is five or six years ago now. That she really has not got the talents and political nose for the level that she aspires. to, and I think that's what we've seen over the last year with her, unfortunately, because I'm inclined otherwise to want to like her.

She should never have been chosen, and it is one of the great and possibly fatal flaws in the MAGA movement that they have this absolutely fervent conviction that if they don't win on every issue they care about, many of which are the issues I care about, the country's over. and yet they put in positions of administration people who are simply not up to the task and you can see the difference between the results when they find good people, say Marker Rubio or Scott Besant than when they find not good people, say Christenome or we nearly got Matt Gates which would have the worst of all but Pam Bondi who I was open to but it's not up to the job

And I think that the Trump administration ought to be aware that if it had filled itself with Edwin Meese types, it would be further along in its goals than it is now. I have nothing particular against Mark Wayne Mullen. I think some of the criticisms of him are deeply unfair. But the border and security in general was Trump's issue. Why can't they find someone who is boring, but unbelievable? be good at running an executive department that will, for better or for worse, be in charge of deportations for the next three years. I don't understand this. You could get me going about how the fact that Malin wants to leave the Senate is an indictment of the state of our legislature, because no historical

senator would have been caught dead leaving for anything other than Secretary of State. But the Trump administration just has a problem in this regard. If it could fill every position with some someone excellent, which it could. I think it would be better off, but it doesn't. And so you get Christine Nome, of all people, at DHS. You get the feeling that Mark Ricorian is checking his phone settings to make sure the notifications are turned on. He should be.

That's exactly who they should pick. Someone like that. Yeah, exactly. Or us, for that matter, we who convene here weekly and have all the answers. Well, actually, no, we don't. But we just like to talk about the things that we think that we know. And I hope that you've enjoyed hearing the things that we've said, because otherwise, What's the point?

But as ever, Stephen and Charles, you have been a delight and interesting and fun to listen to. And I always come away from this. Glad I've spent this hour with you. And you folks at home, if you haven't been a member of Rickashay yet, what the Sam Tootin? Hell are you waiting for it's cheap? And the thing about it is, it's not just one of those websites where people post opinions. It's about everything. And there's a member site that has just a community and a breadth of topics.

the likes of which you have not seen on the internet. It will not drive you mad like Facebook. It will not waste your time like Twitter. It will not be a scrolling endless time suck. It is a place to sit down and actually expand and be calm. I get a little head up when somebody says this, but it's a community waiting for you the likes of which, as I said, you haven't found. And if you remember, you get to post.

And if you're not, you don't. And that's why it's a civil, sane place to be. If you could go to Apple podcast or whatever it's called these days and give us five stars, we'd really appreciate that. somewhere around episode 1,000. I'm going to stop saying that, but since it's 779, that gives me, oh, how many more, 221.

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