The Ricochet Podcast - Everything Is Broken

Episode Date: July 10, 2020

We’re back after our 4th of July break (well, most of us are back — we have Ricochet Editor Bethany Mandel sitting in for the vacationing Peter Robinson) and we’ve got another super-sized episode to make up for our time off. First up, the always great Heather Mac Donald, who speaks truth to protestors like nobody else. Then, meet Shermichael Singleton, former political strategist... Source

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Innovate. The IT solutions people. I have a dream this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. So you can't really say you're better off than you were three years ago because, at the very least, the pandemic. So you can't really say that, right? No, no, absolutely. Of course you can say that. I'm the president and you're fake news. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Bethany Mandel sitting in for Peter. I'm James Lilacs, and today we talk to Heather MacDonald about the cities and Shermichael Singleton about his new Speakeasy podcast. So let's have a podcast of our own. I can hear you! Welcome, everybody. This is the Ricochet Podcast number 503. I'm James Lilex, Minneapolis. Rob Long is in New York, I presume. And sitting in for Peter Robinson, it's that turf-adjacent Nazi grandma killer at the zoo, Bethany Mandel.

Hey Bethany, how you doing? I'm good, thanks. Thanks for having me. First of all, can I just correct? You're wrong. I'm not in New York. I'm in the American South. I'm in North Carolina at the beach. Oh, nice. At the beach. Rob Long at the beach. Okay, well. Just to be clear here. I should have noted that because you tweeted

out a picture of some barbecue menu with 174 options with the plastic letters set into the thing. And it just looked like, oh, Rob is elsewhere than New York. But there's a lot of New Yorkers who are elsewhere than New York. We hear the places emptying out. We'll get to that in just a second here.

Bethany, you, when I said turf adjacent to this week, it's because you had a little conversation, you had a validation from J.K. Rawlings. Wow. Celebrity brush. Which pitched you into the middle of the Harper's letter, which has roiled the intellectual side in the world of Twitter, which is to say concerns about.007% of the American population.

But nevertheless, it's instructive. So here's the deal. Artists and writers had this letter where they said, we're seeing a lot of intolerance on our side. Ideas are not being allowed to be discussed, and we're kind of worried about it. And they were promptly excoriated for wanting to enable the bigots and the haters and the transphobes and all the people who, you know, the ravening mobs of alt-rights out there who are this far from swamping the entire planet, if not the country. So let's, I'll give it to you guys. What did you think of that whole curve, Fluffle? Does it matter?

I want to hear, I actually want to hear more about your best friendship with JK Rowling. It was so uninteresting. Are you, I don't understand. Are you the kind of parent? I mean, they're two kinds of parents. Are you the kind of parent who's like the kids, I would prefer you not to read stories that glorify witchcraft. I don't really know where you are. Of course not.

Do you even know me? I don't, I don't know. Have we met? I, you know what? Judaism is a mystery to me. Oh, my Lord. Not the reformed kind. The reformed kind is basically, that's show business.

Rob would never ask that of somebody with one child. One child, you can assume that they're secular and not doing the replacement, right? But once you start to give about three, they might be into that whole sort of weird religious thing where you don't teach about the witches or we just do a lot of things that lead to babies just saying yeah exactly right she should uh she should write a she should sign a couple books to you well anyway we should just say jk rowling has been uh rather i mean she's she's a she's a dyed-in-the-wool liberal too i mean that's what's interesting about this whole movement. I see her getting red-pilled, man. Yeah, maybe. So she has said, she's been, she's questioned

and criticized the more extreme trans rights positions. I'm trying to speak neutrally here. She has said such shocking and radical things, such as the definition of a woman is you've got to have a uterus. And the definition of a man is you got to have a uterus.

And definition of a man is you got to have a penis. Now, you can alter that as you move through life if you wish, but you're not going to alter the basic cell divisions that occurred in day two of your embryonic state. For that, she's been attacked. You then take the story from here. Yeah. I mean, I basically just tweeted, like, you are the hero we need. And it sounds very, you know, Batman, but she is the richest woman in the world and she does not give any and because she doesn't have to, she can get canceled up to Wazoo. She's like, what are you

going to do to me? am literally invincible and so she is just like no i'm not i'm not putting up with this ridiculous orthodoxy that we now all have to adhere to and she is a feminist that i just i i have been screaming internally i where are the feminists where are the feminists when when they put when the la leche League changes their verbiage about their mission. La Leche League is a league to support and to encourage breastfeeding. Right. So they have changed their verbiage to parents instead of mothers, chest feeding instead of breast feeding, stripping away every

ounce of femininity out of the most feminine thing that we do. Well, the most feminine thing you do is complain about little things. As if you could handle having a nine-pound baby on the side of the road. I'm sorry. Let's be real here.

James, can I ask you for a memory? Do you remember there was an All in the Family episode or something where they invented a pouch? Yes. Like a hot water bottle for a man to wear? Is this from my dream journal or did this really happen? I remember a show that simulated contractions and they were like electric shocks and they hooked it up to men. I don't remember what it was. I mean, they're like YouTube videos and stuff.

I seem to recall there was a hot water bottle device that people were really selling so that the man could simulate breastfeeding to his newborn, thus utterly confusing the child, I think, in a way that is really kind of unforgivable. All in the family, if you really want me to have the mental image of Mike Stivick with a big rack, nursing glorious child. No, I don't want to have that image, and I reject it completely. But Bethany's right, though. I mean, and if you don't believe these things that she's saying, you are not only causing injury to the whole idea that there's absolutely no distinction between men and women when it comes to physical, but you're actually harming people, right, Bethany?

Yeah. You are harming people. And it's this cure. Well, it's not just violence, it's self-violence. It's this idea, no, there is nothing psychologically wrong with people who believe they are another gender. And if you don't agree, they will kill themselves. Yeah, no, that's absolutely correct. And the number of the studies that have come out of England about the number of people who, even after transitioning, even after they were affirmed, ended up committing suicide are shocking. And the NHS reversed their sort of treatment plan for people suffering from gender dysphoria because of it.

They were like, this is obvious. Affirming people is not helping. And I don't, I mean, we don't do it with any other mental illness in which people, if someone with schizophrenia says, I'm hearing voices, you don't say, oh, really? What are they telling you? Oh, you should do that. Like, no, don't do that. I don't understand why this is the one mental illness that we play along with instead of treat. Yeah, right.

And we will treat it later. But I have just two questions here. Because I think what's interesting is that one of the criticisms of J.K. Rowling from the other side has been, well, she's just a billionaire. So she just says whatever she wants. I don't think that's a criticism. Well, that's what I mean. And then when the letter was published in The Atlantic, so the letter a bunch of people read, signed, a bunch of people from all across the spectrum, including Noam Chomsky and other sort of famous liberals and some conservatives signed, talking about cancel culture and the intolerant climate of free speech. And so those general sort of bromides that we, you know, we sort of didn't think that we had to argue for anymore. There was an immediate reaction to that. And then a lot of people who signed that letter then tried to recant and take back their signature because they didn't know

certain conservatives would be on it. And the argument they made is, I didn't know that I'd be associated with those people, but underlying all that seemed to be like a lot of career fear, right? Wait a minute, what conservatives? Matty Iglesias? Well, there were a few. Did the Kruppiers put him over the others? There were a few. Chloe Valdry was on it. I mean, you know...

Yeah, there were some. But, I mean, the point was that, like, as I saw somebody mention, Noam Chomsky, who really had no problem with uh hugo chavez or fidel castro or any range of um you know communist dictators um no no even noam chomsky thinks that we live in an intolerant public atmosphere so if you've lost noam chomsky you yeah you should do some soul searching. But I guess what I

mean is that those people really did, while arguing that they disagreed with the letter that they wrote, which implied that there was a lot of self-censorship, they ended up saying, well, if I could, I'd just like to self-censor myself. Meanwhile, half of those people were complaining that J.K. Rowling's, that her chief sin is that she is unreachable by the mob, so therefore her voice should be less valid and have less credibility, which I find this weird inversion of the definition of truth-telling, right? Or am I just blabbering? No, I mean, I find it kind of strange that you can be too rich to have opinions. I think that it's incredibly valuable for her to just be able to let loose and say whatever she wants because there are no consequences for her. These are the people that we need to hear from because everyone else is cowered into silence. There was a Scottish woman, a journalist,

who sort of spoke out in support of J.K. Rowling and she lost her job. And we need people like Rowling to be able to speak up because there's millions of other people who can't. It's a curious point, though, because it betrays one of the flaws in intersectionality. Did I say that correctly? Intersectionality? One of those lovely words we're forced to say a lot these days. In that, J.K. Rowling ought to speak from a position of absolute moral authority because she's talking about being a woman as a woman and what womanhood is. Therefore, in the essentialist view, she has every single right to claim her experience and to identify it and to stake it out. But at the same time, she's running up against people who want to pick apart that essentialism that's part of

intersectionality and say, no, this is my identity. And on the pyramid of grievances it trumps yours so the fault line between feminism and the transgender activists not necessarily transgender people but the transgender activists is one of those lines that you would think would become more apparent to all and illustrate more the absurdity of parsing people into these little particular elements but nobody is ever going to ask Joe Biden the question, do you think someone with a penis is a woman? I would love to have it happen, like the moment in Star Trek when the smoke comes out of the computer as Joe is pitched into this battle, but these are actually things which affect the way the laws go forward.

Yeah. When Biden talks about we're going to bring back Title IX, battle but these are actually things which affect the way the laws go forward yeah these this this i mean when they do when biden talks about we're going to bring back title nine this is a big deal when biden talks about and we'll talk with this with our next guest we're going to bring about the change of the suburbs to conform them to the look and the demographics of the city these are these things matter but there's not a single reporter who will actually seem to ask him about these foundational tectonic shifts that we see in the American landscape today. It goes beyond the J.K. Rowling's thing. I mean, that's illustrative of it. But, Bethany, let me ask you this. Is it because the reporters working today don't think of it in these terms? They just say, well,

these are the natural good things that we're all moving to. Why would we have to question Joe Biden about them? He's progressive, ergo he believes. Or do they just not see the world in those terms at all? I mean, I don't think that they would put him on the spot like that because there's no good that comes from him answering that question, and they are looking out for what's good for him and not what is their job. Right, right. I mean, an example of that was, I think, this morning or maybe yesterday, Bill de Blasio was on with Wolf Blitzer. Yeah. And de Blasio was saying, we're going to close this. We're going to close that. We've had a spike. Maybe we shouldn't open restaurants.

Maybe we should keep schools closed. Everything should be closed. People should be staying inside. We might be looking at another shutdown. And certainly you can't be in large groups. And certainly we can't have sports. And certainly we can't go to church and then well which is what about uh black lives matter protests and he said well those are okay well yeah and wolf blitzer didn't stop to say wait a minute why are they okay he just said okay what about the u.s open yeah went right on yeah and and that kind i mean the irony to me is that kind of cosseting of your left-wing, cherished left-wing politician doesn't help them. No. It doesn't help your position either.

It's not, it's really bad propaganda. Yeah. Good propaganda is to air the question because the question is inside everyone's head. Like, wait, what? Why? And if you don't air it, it just seems like you're lying, which of course they are, but you're supposed to be better at that than this. So that's funny. And in that circumstance, it's funny because like everyone's sort of saying, you know, why aren't people taking this seriously anymore? Because you're not taking it seriously anymore. This is not a serious position. And so, yes, people are going out to restaurants and yes,

people are sending their kids to camp as I'm doing, because this is not a serious thing anymore. And you have signaled that. And it makes you mad enough to want to tear out your hair. Yes. Well, thank you very much, Rob, because we have to get to the spot. I was just simply going to say that what is serious is male pattern baldness, because I was going to do the most inelegant, fast little segue. Well, you're welcome. Because we have a guest. You almost sort of borrowed that one from Jay Bob.

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visit Innovate today Innovate, the IT solutions people didn't you, you just handed it off to me but Rob's right, you don't want to tear out your hair you don't want to lose it, you don't want to stress to make this stuff slough away in your hands, ugh,. But if you do, you're not alone. Two out of three guys will experience some form of male pattern baldness by the time they're 35. I got my hand up in the air here on this one. The best way to prevent hair loss is to do something

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And I got to say, I've tried this stuff before and it never worked. The aroma, the experience, nothing. Keeps, I'm rubbing it in there. And I got to say, I've tried this stuff before and it never worked. The aroma, the experience, nothing. Keeps, I'm liking it. And I'm going to keep on with the Keeps is what I'm saying. If you're ready to take action to prevent hair loss, go to keeps.com slash ricochet to receive your first month of treatment for free. That's K-E-E-P-S dot com slash ricochet. And our thanks to Keeps for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. And now we welcome back to the podcast heather mcdonald fellow with manhattan institute in one

of the country's leading experts on policing and law enforcement policy also a contributing editor at city journal and a new york times best-selling author welcome heather and we say you're a leading expert and all this we did not know that you had the most amazing power in the world. Simply, if you cite a study, it is withdrawn. It vanishes. It's a great magic skill. Do you have a wand? Do you have a magic word? And what else would you like to apply this to?

Exactly. I've got practically the entire academic output. I can start citing it with respect, and boom, it's gone. I may actually be able to bring the world back to a more normal balance of truth and error if I continue having this. Yes, I cited a study that showed that there is no racial disparity in police shootings once you take into account violent crime rates. That is what the authors explicitly concluded in their study. I cited it verbatim, and as a result, they have now retracted the study. And they've retracted the retraction because the retraction mentioned,

cited my works exclusively as the reason for the retraction, and now they've retracted that. They've erased my name from their retraction, lest anybody think that this was a political decision on their part. In fact, these two authors had been under a massive political assault by almost the entirety of the criminology profession, which is completely left-wing. The criminology profession is dedicated to providing fodder to the Black Lives Matter movement at this point. So they absolutely, this was a political move because, in fact, the authors still stand by their study. The only thing they object to, which is probably a first in the history of scholarship, is their study being brought into public debate. You know, you'd think this would be what every researcher wants, is to not sit moldering on a library shelf, but actually to be used. But that was the only problem with

their study is that I cited it. That you read it. In future, they should just put that on the title page. This is for everybody except Heather MacDonald. Do not read this. Yes, it'll be the Institutional Review Board will say, is there any chance that heather mcdonald will cite this well okay so so um just to take everybody at good good faith you have a lot of african-americans who believe that the police are um the police brutality happens to them more often that they are stopped more often that they are hassled often, that they are hassled more often. You have the Republican senator from South Carolina telling stories about driving around as a senator, a sitting senator in Washington, D.C., being hassled by

the cops. What do you say to them? Statistically, it's trivial? Yes, statistically, it's trivial. I hate to say that, and it's always difficult to move from an individual case to the statistics. But if you look at the absolute sum of police actions, let's look at fatal shootings in particular, because that was the motivation of the Black Lives Matter movement in its first iteration, was the claim that we're living through an epidemic of racially biased police shootings of black men. It's simply not the case. In fact, this very study that got retracted, not on its merits, but because I cited it, found with consistency with other studies that actually when you take violent crime rates into account, whites are the ones who are overshot. They're overshot about four times more than their violent crime rates would

predict. Overall, I hate to go into numbers, but you asked for it, Rob, what the statistics are. Police shoot about 1,000 people a year fatally. Is that a large number or a small number? Put into context of the tens of millions of arrests that they make each year, it's not clear that 1,000 fatal shootings are too much, especially when about 95% of those shootings consist of the officers dealing with a violent suspect. About 25% of all people fatally shot by the police each year are black. It was 23% in 2018. Well, that is twice what the black population is, which is 13%. So if you use population as a benchmark for any kind of police activity, it is going to look racially disparate. But the reason that is is because blacks commit an exponentially higher rate of violent crime.

And so what predicts police shootings, and again, this is in the retracted study now, is the chance with which they encounter violent, armed, and resisting suspects. And that is a chance that is much, much higher in the black community. Blacks commit well over 50% of all homicides in the country, about 60% of robberies and shootings. And so that's the relevant benchmark. One of the things we hear about that is that a lot of that is drug-related crime. And the solution of that is to decriminalize or legalize drugs. Would that work? Well, that's not necessarily what's going on in this extraordinary spate of drive-by shootings that has happened since the riots after George Floyd's terrible arrest.

What these are is just youth gangs that are shooting at each other for slights, for perceived violations of territory. Now, there is obviously some gang shootings that are related to drug territory. The fact of the matter is right now, this is what the police hear every time they go into a police community meeting. You arrest the dealers and they're back on the streets the next day. Why can't you keep them off the streets? The push for drug enforcement has been overwhelmingly, each time, coming from the black community, whether it was the Rockefeller drug laws, something that Michael Fortner has written about, or the crack laws, which were instigated by the Congressional Black Caucus. So I have two questions. I know that Heather and James want to jump in,

but one question is, how big is the difference or the opinion, attitude, wishes, agitation between the political activists black lives matter african-american slice of the pop of the african-american population and the put the guys behind bars we need more cops on the street side of the african-american population where where does that land up when they they survey just African-Americans, where does it land up in defunding the police and all that stuff? I mean, is it just an elite group of activists who are arguing for this, or is it a sort of, there's a general feeling among African-Americans that we need fewer cops? Well, the polls show that blacks want more cops at a greater rate than whites. the so-called broken windows type laws, the public order offenses, the graffiti, the drinking in public, the hanging out on corners than white voters. So I think it is a large divide.

When I go to inner city police community meetings, I hear things like an elderly woman in the South Bronx who burst out apropropos of nothing how lovely when we see the police they are my friends so is is there some middle ground that is both we want more cops and we think that we're being treated brutally uh that could be there was a letter to the editor in the Chicago Sun-Times within the last month by the widow of a cop who had been assassinated five years ago by a black gangbanger, and just completely rebutting the claims of the Black Lives Matter movement. It was an extraordinarily moving letter in saying, of course, we want more policing. That's the only way that these neighborhoods for now are going to be safe, short of reconstituting

the black family. And in your opinion, those neighborhoods we're talking about, in the aftermath of the past month, we'll say, of riots and civil unrest, are those neighborhoods safer or unsafe? And if they're unsafe, by what factor do you think? They're hugely unsafe. The spike in shootings and homicides is happening in cities across the country, whether it's Minneapolis, which we're going to see a new version of what I call the Ferguson effect. It's going to be the Minneapolis effect now.

It's a precise replica of the Ferguson effect, which was the combined phenomenon of officers backing off of discretionary policing and the emboldening of criminals. So you have these gangbangers now who feel like, especially after the absolutely feckless response to the riots, that they control the streets. And the degree of proactive activity in Minneapolis and elsewhere has dropped. So you have rises in shootings in this last month that are almost 100% in some places, whether it's Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, New York, Minneapolis. And the children that are getting gunned down, one-year-olds, three-year-olds in Chicago and elsewhere, it's just astounding. And none of this makes any news. If these were white kids, if we had lost a dozen white kids in the last month

to drive by shootings, there would have been a national revolution. The fact of the matter is, is that the press doesn't give a damn about black lives or black children unless they've been taken by a cop. Their lives have been taken by a cop. I mean, it is literally inconceivable. Imagine if in Park Slope, three-year-olds were getting fatally shot in the car with their father. This would be, we saw what happened after the Newton school shooting. If white kids are killed, are shot, the country freaks out. And when black kids are shot, it's treated as a matter of course. So yes, the crime that we're seeing is, it's risen faster

and more radically than we saw in 2015 and 2016, which resulted in another 2,000 black homicide deaths compared to 2014. This is happening faster. The unanimity on the part of the elite establishment that policing is systemically racist is far broader and far louder. So this may start now entering white neighborhoods, in which case it will be turned around, but not before then. Heather, this is James Lilacs. I'm in Minneapolis, so I can vouch for everything that you've been saying here. And as far as the elite liberal media opinion, our newspaper for which I work has been going into the African-American communities and asking them, and they've come away with exactly what you've said, is that the people who live there do not

want to have themselves left to the deprivations of the gang members because they see all the time the violence that has resulted from this. And you're right about the Minneapolis effect, about the emboldening of the criminal class and the police deciding to lean back. But there's something else at work here. There's a fundamental atmospheric emotional shift in this city that has taken place since the riot. And part of it has to do with large sections of the town. Looking for reliable IT solutions for your business? At Innovate, we are the IT solutions people for businesses across Ireland. From network security to cloud productivity, we handle it all. Installing,

managing, supporting and reporting on your entire IT and telecoms environment so you can focus on what really matters, growing your business. Whether it's communications or security, Innovate has you covered. Visit Innovate today. Innovate, the IT solutions people. Nice parts of town still boarded up and still boarded up with graffiti and paintings and testimonials to George Floyd and commandments to re-examine your whiteness

and the rest of it. These could have come down by now. They could have put the windows back up, but it's like huge parts of the city are still in this cringe. This sort of, We're so sorry. Don't beat me again. Please don't break our windows again. And it's like we live in this suspended animation where now everybody's driving a little faster. There's more violence in the streets. There's all of a sudden a huge encampment of homeless people in one of the parks because the park department has said, go forth, sleep in the parks, everyone. You have our blessing, which was never okay before.

But when you say that eventually this abrades the consciousness of the liberal voter in this city, I am not sure that they have the intellectual fortitude to stand up and say we actually demand safety because policing nationwide has been delegitimized as a concept so greatly in the mind of the liberal imagination that all you can do is is is defund and dismantle and send out social workers i don't i don't see exactly where this turns out for any of us for the best well you know, that capitulation, that pathetic groveling before the tyranny of lawlessness we saw in New York City, before the fortunate and belated election of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in 1994, when we saw the posting of groveling signs in car windows saying, my radio's already

been stolen, please don't break in again. And that was the best that was seen that anybody could do. And the belief was widespread that violence was simply the natural state of cities and we would have to live with it. There was eventually a revolt against that capitulation to lawlessness. Right now, there is no leader in sight, whether it's in New York City or elsewhere, that seems to have the courage to say the very fundamental possibility of civilization is is receding very quickly if it's if it hasn't been permanently uh lost to us but you know i agree with you james the the new york times ran that his hilarious article uh maybe two three weeks ago about two women uh in powder powder horn park we're not to women in Powderhorn Park. We're not going to call the cops.

Maybe stick us up. But I don't want to subject anybody to the criminal justice system. It's just a car. It's just a life. I'm glad that you found that as risible as a lot of us did here. And it's changing, too. A lot of them are. Because now in that very area, more drugs, more drive-thru, open prostitution, more sexual assaults.

And the actual good liberals of Powderhorn Park are looking around and saying, maybe it's not a good idea to have 800 people housed in this park without any sanitation. Yeah, and that happened in Atlanta as well. People are saying, you know, if the mayor had stepped in and not allowed that Wendy's to be taken over, there would be a three-year-old girl still alive. These things don't happen in isolation. When you let there be a complete vacuum of law and order, that isn't just about cars and property. It becomes about lives. Right. I mean, we are living a national experiment or proof as if we needed it again in the broken windows theory, which is that this ridiculous distinction, I see police departments across the country saying, well, we're only gonna go after violent crime. We're gonna ignore the public order offenses.

In fact, as poll after poll shows, it is almost exclusively the public order offenses which are complained about in inner city neighborhoods, because that is the condition of their lives. And these people understand that it is out of those groups of youth hanging out by the hundreds. I was at a precinct meeting in the 43rd precinct in New York, and they were complaining about, well, those kids hanging out, why are they hanging out? They're like birds perching there. Why can't you enforce loitering or truancy laws against them? Shootings emerge out of those gatherings. And when you ignore low-level forms of lawlessness, you are definitely sending the message to criminals that anything goes.

Right, Heather, but I have to interrupt you again. And you're right, but here in Minneapolis, for example, we got rid of the lurking laws because lurking was used precisely in the sense that you were talking about. And because it had a disparate impact in the statistics, that meant that it was systemically racist to do so. So that tool was taken out of the police department's hands. So again, around here, if somebody from the north side calls up and says, there's kids congregating in my neighborhood, they're not up to anything, there's nothing the police can do, and they're disinclined to do so. What's in it? I mean, what's in it for them? It's going to make the cops stay harder. It's a mess.

Bethany had a... Go on. I would just say that disparate impact is the most pernicious concept in the legal armamentarium of the left. Because it is the tool that was used before this horrible summer that we're going through to dismantle every remaining meritocratic standard, every remaining criminal justice standard, on the idea that any standard that has a disparate impact on minorities is by definition racist. And what it means is that the culture is not allowed to take into account behavior. It is behavioral differences that result in disparate impact. But the myth of bias, which now has taken over the national discourse that says that every disparity that we see in America, every disparity in employment, every disparity in the criminal justice system, yes, the prison population is about 30% black. Again, that's more than the population. It's about three times what the black population is. We're only allowed to say that that can come from systemic bias. We are not allowed to say

that that disparity, an over-representation in prison, or let's say an underrepresentation of blacks as engineers at Google, is due to, on the one hand, criminal behavior, and on the other hand, the vast academic skills gap where you have the average black 12th grader reading and doing math at the level of the average white 8th grader, that gap never closes. You're not allowed to say that. And so now we look around, we see disparities, and we see it's systemic racism. We are going to dismantle whether it's loitering laws that have a disparate impact on young black gangbangers or reading and writing tests or the SAT for admission to the University of California.

It is all coming down. Bethany's got a question before we go. I'm sorry, Bethany. You're interrupting me. Thank you. Interrupting me. Thank you. Interrupting you. So I'm sort of, I'm a former New Yorker and sort of born and bred, and I'm looking at the exodus from New York and the violent crime spike and the 411% increase in NYPD retirements this week, and it's going to keep on going. What is the future going, what is the future of New York going to look like in the next five years as far as

policing and public safety? Well, I think we've lived through the biggest failure of government accountability and responsibility and decision-making possibly in American history over the last three or four months between New York City specifically nationally but New York City specifically between the grotesquely overbroad coronavirus shutdowns that absolutely decimated urban economies and the the concept of social distancing the six distant sixfoot rule is completely arbitrary. The World Health Organization has a three-foot social distancing rule. Cities are not possible with six-foot distancing rules.

You cannot have opera. You cannot have concerts. You cannot have theater. You cannot have restaurants. This is impossible. You're speaking to the choir. The city was already on the ropes. The tax base was decimated. The boarding up was already there. And then we had, so that was the Cold War on cities. The riots were the hot war. And so before we were sheltering in place under government mandate, then during the riots, people were sheltering in place for good reason, terrified to go out at night after the curfews

in that state of unchecked anarchy. I see New York, if we don't get another Giuliani coming in and saying, I'm turning this around, I'm opening the economy, these rules, these metrics are completely arbitrary, and I'm going to enforce the rule of law, New York City is over. So here's a just quick question. When is de Blasio out? He's out, but he's replaced by an even more left wing. Right. But when is his actual term out?

Like, when do they have a chance at electing someone like Giuliani or Ray Kelly? I think we're on the even we elect on. No, we elect on the odd years so it would be i guess next year right so we have another year of this yes 2021 yeah right right hey that's a lot of damage what what is amazing in this is that it does kind of uh support the great man theory of history. It's extraordinary how dependent democracy is at a certain point on leaders, on individuals. Unless somebody can come forward to really articulate a message of colorblind, civilizational respect, we're kind of doomed. And, you know, I would say as well that this capitulation that James was talking about in Minneapolis of these white people saying, well,

we also don't want to condemn looting. You know, there was an amazing line in that article about the powder horn or powder keg neighborhood of, oh, there's, oh, darn, we lost the Walmarts. That was torched. But I'm not supposed to say that. It's just a Walmart. It's just one of these damn corporate entities. There has never been a society like this that is so self-hating. You know, Western civilization has nothing to apologize for.

Nothing. It has had the same flaws and sins of every other civilization, but it uniquely has given the world the ideas of equality, tolerance, the rule of law, the very ideas in which the social justice advocates are implicitly working. Without Western civilization, there would be no Black Lives Matter movement because the idea of equality between the races is a Western idea. You know, you want to see tribal hatreds go to Africa. You want to see anti-gay go to Africa. Yeah, you really need to decolonize your mind because this stuff about individuality and rationality and objectivity and the rest of it is just appalling to hear, frankly. I mean, when it comes to Walmart and the rest of it,

there was a video that was played by a guy in the neighborhood who was watching a bunch of white kids from the Burbs LARPing at their anarchist games, breaking into a dollar store. And he was angry at them because that was his dollar store. And he knew the people in the neighborhood depended on it for goods, cheap goods, and the rest of it. And they were angry at him for standing for a Walmart man, for a chain, for a corporation, because apparently they believed that once they destroyed every single possible edifice of Western civilization, automatically, instantaneously, organically, something better and more egalitarian would evolve.

The problem is they're violent, disaffected, alienated, and they're idiots. And we're out of time, and we thank you. So depressing. I just got to say the idiocy. Yes, let them lose their electricity, let them lose their smartphones, and they would turn on a dime. We should have sort of mandatory capitalist training. Go out and try and start a business and figure it out and see how difficult on a dime. We should have sort of mandatory capitalist training. Go out and try and start a business and figure it out and see how difficult this thing is. We should be on our knees before the virtues of the free market and capitalism

that give us all these goodies that these leftists depend on. There's something we can take a knee for. Thank you so much, Heather MacDonald, for joining us on the podcast today. Bye-bye. Thank you so much, Heather. Thank you. Bye-bye. I wish Heather was like, we couldn't, she'd come out of her shell. Draw her out some more. I know. Thank you so much, Heather. Thank you. Bye-bye. I wish Heather was like, we couldn't be, she'd come out of her shell.

Draw her out some more. I know. She's so shy and retiring. Yeah. The great thing is we got video going on here. So, you know, I can see Bethany

waving her hands when it comes to Heather preaching the gospel about the shutdowns and the rest of it. And you know, I'm looking at what I have to do next year

and I'm thinking you, how many kids you got at home right now? Four. Four, okay. And how many more on the way? Scott, did you talk to him? Infinite number. Yeah, that's what I figured.

They're going to people the valley. Because now they're talking about, I mean, my daughter is thinking about going back. She wants to go back to school, but they don't know if it's going to be online or the rest of it. And her experience with online learning was not good. No, it wasn't good for anybody. As we had a here, our exchange student, who was doing it for high school and my daughter doing it elsewhere because these people had to make it up as they went along. They didn't know how to do it. They weren't pros. They weren't any good at it. And it doesn't mean that you can't get good learning online. You can. I mean, you're listening to this podcast, right? And you're

learning so much. But what it takes is somebody who knows what they're doing. So this school-at-home thing meant an adjustment. But let me tell you about Laurel Springs. They are the experts in online learning. Laurel Springs has the tools and the curriculum your child needs to maintain their learning unhindered by whatever the future may hold. Their flexible learning programs are designed for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. And they offer challenging and diverse courses, including summer courses so that brains don't gutter rot. And Laurel Springs is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and Cognia, which means their transcripts are recognized by colleges and universities worldwide. So you can register your child at laurelsprings.com

slash ricochet today and receive a waived registration fee. Yes, you will receive waivers. That's laurelsprings.com slash ricochet for your waived registration fee. laurelsprings.com slash ricochet. And our thanks to Laurel Springs for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. Now we welcome to the podcast, Shermichael Singleton, political strategist who's worked in the presidential campaigns of Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Dr. Ben Carson. And in addition to his work as a political operative, Singleton worked as the deputy chief of staff at HUD, the youngest person ever appointed that position. Along with Antonio Okafor, he hosts the Speakeasy podcast right here on the Ricochet Audio Network. Welcome, Mr. Singleton and HUD.

We've got to go right there, right away. A lot of people, perhaps, after yesterday or a couple of days ago, Tucker Carlson gets up and tells everybody about the affirmatively fair for housing, you know, the Obama-era program with all the Cory Booker bells and whistles hung out now, which wants to make the suburbs exactly like the cities. It's a big thing. It's a really big thing. Biden's for it. Tell people what it is and why they ought to be worried as hell that this is coming down the pike. Yeah, you know, I actually remember that. I think it's affordable, fair housing, something like triple F's, I believe. That was actually one of the questions that came up during the confirmation process for Dr. Carson. And ultimately, after reviewing the information, we actually met with the guy,

an African-American professor, I believe, at UCLA, who actually wrote the legislation. We did a couple Skype calls, I believe, with him at the time to try to get a better understanding of what the legislation was. And he sort of explained that it was not enacted the way he had initially intended. And it was supposed to make neighborhoods that are predominantly one demographic more diverse. And by diverse, I mean by giving individuals from, let's say, more impoverished areas an opportunity to live in better places where there would be access to better jobs, better education, et cetera.

Instead, what the Obama administration ultimately ended up doing was essentially mandating, forcing, you have the federal government forcing through compulsory force these municipalities to abide by this. And so ultimately, Dr. Carson decided, you know, I don't want to agree to this. Yeah, I think we should give everyone an opportunity to live in great neighborhoods, to prosper, to have access to great education and great jobs and great transportation, et cetera, for themselves and their kids. But it's not the role of the federal government, through compulsory force to mandate, to force that these municipalities and cities comply with this. And if they didn't comply, then there was all types of different

regulations and processes that the Obama administration was going to, to essentially fine these areas for not complying with this reg. And so ultimately, Dr. Carson did not support it. I certainly don't support it after going through the process and learning what the Obama administration did with it. I understand why Biden would support it. But again, I think the overall concern has to be, well, what happens when a place says we don't want to force? Force isn't good, right?

If you believe in liberty, if you're conservative leaning, you're going to automatically be skeptical of the government mandating you to do something versus having a more natural process. We said, hey, lenders or homeowners or renters, we want to sort of figure out a way to incentivize areas to allow these people to come into their neighborhoods and into their communities. That is a more capitalistic, more free approach, if you will. And that's certainly not what the Obama administration did. And I would imagine the Biden administration, if he were to win, would probably fall into the same trap. Well, let me ask you about the mentality at HUD, because we tend to believe that if you get a conservative running the organization, it'll filter down, but there's got to be strenuous institutional resistance to something like

the policy that we're discussing. I mean, it's sort of hardwired into the egalitarian leftist mindset that everybody ought to be able to live anywhere they want, whenever they want, without regard to money. I mean, we had something here in Minneapolis called the life cycle theory that whatever stage you are in your life earning demographically, you ought to be able to live wherever you are. So you should be able to live on the lake next to a $5 million mansion, if that's what you believe. So is HUD itself sort of constituted by people who love that top-down mentality of planning cities for them? Like it's SimCity on steroids, except it's really got the money. And no matter who's at the top, it's a hell of a hard thing to turn that ship around and change the culture. You know, look, I think from my brief time at HUD,

and I know a lot of, I have a lot of friends that are still there that work under Secretary Carson. I still have a great relationship with Dr. Carson and his family. And I think the intent behind the civil servants there, the career individuals at HUD, I think the intent is good, but you know, the old aphorism intent doesn't necessarily matter because absolute power corrupts absolutely. And so I think there's this idea for many, and I want to be careful here because there are a lot of very, very great hardworking people there. And I don't like to group and lump people all together, at least sometimes I will. But in this case, I'm going to try not to do that. I think their idea is how can we maximize what they believe is access to the greater number of people. And I think the problem with this idea and notion is that they've tried a lot of different processes

that just have not worked. And so ultimately what ends up happening, at least from my perspective, is that people get to the mindset, well, if we've tried ABC ideas or policy platforms or positions, rather, and they have not worked, then we're just going to force. We are going to dictate through, again, through tons and tons of regulations, through the bureaucratic process that people have to obey or abide by this, that municipalities have to do this if they want to receive funding from HUD, if they want additional funding for contracts, if they want additional funding for contracts, if they want additional block grants, community development block grants, they have to obey ABCYZ, et cetera. But I think one of the concerns with that, and Dr. Carson used to talk about this

a lot, he doesn't talk about it much anymore, one of the concerns with that issue is that that still didn't work. And you can look at it from the Obama administration to see that although the intent perhaps was good, they attempted to enforce a lot of things that ultimately failed. And it failed because you had a lot of areas across the country that was essentially suing the department. They were taking the department to court saying, well, the department is essentially saying, we're going to dangle this money in front of you. But the only way you can get this grant funding or the only way you can get these funds is if you do exactly what we say. And some municipalities would say, well, who are the folks in D.C. to give us a directive on what is the best policies for our locality?

We know best. We know the people of our area. We know what the people want, not the people there in D.C. and HUD. So I think the intent is good, but the problem with bad intent, it always ends up becoming corrupted. And I think that's ultimately what you have seen so often, quite honestly, since the founding of the agency. And I will say to Dr. Carson's credit, he has tried to take a more market-based approach to how he views housing. And he's also tried to sort of allow the individuals who rely on public housing to have some skin in the game. So Dr. Carson would say, for example, if you're going to rely on public housing, then you have to put in X amount of your own dollars that were going to an escrow fund. Because obviously when you put in your own money, you value something more. You're a lot more conscious and cognizant in how you deal with those things and how you maneuver and moving forward.

And he's seen some success in that arena. And he's also seen some other individuals attempt to contest it in a court system because they would say, well, this isn't exactly fair. It's a violation of the Fair Housing Act. I think HUD actually had a lawsuit about that two or three years ago. I think they ultimately won. But to throw all of that out there, I guess what I'm attempting to say here is that you do have organizations that view society almost as if it's a petri dish that can constantly be experimented with until you create this perfect utopia. Well, that does not exist. Some things have to occur organically. Some things you have to prepare people for. And I think that's my position. I'm pretty certain

that's the position of Dr. Carson. And I would ultimately argue that's likely the position of many conservatives. You can't just experiment with everything. You sort of have to let some things take their course when people are ready. And I think when you go about things that way, you would likely see better outcomes. So here's my question sort of along those lines with sort of what Biden has been crime and just it doesn't appear pleasant to live in many American cities right now. Not also just because of crime, but because of all the things that were nice about living in cities, like the restaurants and the theaters and everything, are not there anymore. I don't see the value out of a lot of urban areas now. Do you think that this is something that Biden is actually going to run on, or just be kind of quietly planning to do once if he's elected? I mean, I think he, I don't know if he would necessarily run on it, Bethany, because, I mean, looking at 2018, they don't necessarily have to make a case to the suburbs.

I mean, Democrats compared to Republicans at the congressional level performed a lot better than we did. I mean, it was the first time that Republicans actually ceded the suburbs to Democrats. So if I was advising Biden, I wouldn't run on that. I wouldn't even make it a part of my policy platform. Now, with that said, if I were Trump, what Trump should do, if he's smart, is make the case that the suburbs are changing and the suburbs are changing with younger, more college educated, more diverse people. This is naturally happening. We don't need to force this you don't

need to dick send out directives saying we want this area to look like i don't know like an urban center you don't need to if i go to college i get a degree bethany i get married i i make good money i do everything i'm supposed to do you have lots of space exactly well space but bethany i also don't want to live next to people who are tearing stuff up, and this isn't about race. I just don't want to live next to those people. It's loud. I don't want it to wake up my baby. But it also ignores what's happening, right? I mean,

in our city, for example, the inner ring suburbs, the first ones that came about in the post-war boom, are now changing demographically to accommodate a lot of Hispanic immigrants, a lot of people who come from other parts of the city, because it provides that safe milieu that they want. And the idea that the suburbs somehow are a monolithic block, that the inner ring is the same sort of society as the farthest exurb is nonsense. But to the left... Well, it's not true. It's not true. The data

says... I mean, that's ridiculous. The data already suggests it's not the case. As I just stated, if you look at demography on who is moving to suburbs, whether it's white, whether it's young Hispanics, young Asians, young blacks, it's a young, educated, based group of people that are naturally saying, I have gone to college. I've gotten a bachelor's. I've gotten a master's. I'm having a family, I want better schools, I want a nice home, I don't want to live in the city. Those people are naturally moving in that direction. You don't need to force that. And see, this is the problem with people on the other side. And I don't, I want to be careful with how I say this, because again, I always try to understand people's intentions. But again, the intentions always appear to lead to the wrong results. And I think for us as conservatives, I should say, because I'm no longer affiliated with the party, but for conservatives, I think the message should be this. Everyone has an opportunity to access the American dream. If you work hard, if you persevere, if you do the right things, a part of the American dream means you have the ability to elevate yourself and your family to the next level. The suburbs can be that next level.

Let's make it a challenge. Let's make it something for people to inspire, to ascertain. Who wouldn't want to get to that next level after working so hard? That's what America is all about, constantly moving up the ladder. But I think what the other side would like for us to all appear to believe is that we're all at the same level. We're all even. Well, that's not the case. I'm sorry, guys. I'm not a nuclear scientist. A nuclear scientist is smarter than me in a certain arena. I accept that. And I think that those on the other side need to accept that we're all different. We all bring different things to the table.

We're all going to climb the ladder at different heights. Some will supersede others, and that is perfectly fine. But I think as it pertains to the suburbs, if you want to protect the suburbs, I grew up in the suburb. I loved my suburb. I had a great school. I had a lot of good friends, a great community, great people. If you want to preserve that, and I may sound elitist by saying this, I don't know if it should be just accessible to just anybody. And I hope what I'm saying isn't coming off wrong, but I guess what I'm trying to say is it should be something that people have to work and aspire to get. And if we just open the door

for any and everybody, then what the heck is the sake of having any type of community for that regard? What gives it its uniqueness, if you will? Hey, sure, Michael, it's Rob Long coming at you from North Carolina. I just want to say welcome. But before we get going, I want to also remind people that you have a podcast here on the Ricochet Audio Network. Let's do a little plug, a little business here. And we're thrilled to have you. You're here with Antonia Okafor, and you guys are having some really, really interesting conversations. I would tell people who are listening to us right now, this is a really great podcast to listen to.

It's thoughtful and smart and a good conversation, and it probably gives a perspective that people don't hear uh anywhere so can i get personal for a little bit i'm just uh i'm just fascinated so you're you're you're a texas native born in dallas and you were a republican at like i don't know in like in diaper well how when did you become... Tell me when you were a Republican. How does that work? So, TARS is a group that was started back in the 1970s by a lady by the name of Barbara Barbie Wells. I think she's a Republican committee woman. At least that once upon a time she was. And I remember I was at the Meadows Intermediate School briefly, and I had a history

teacher by the name of Miss Tammy Hicks. And we had to do a project on a president. You choose whatever president you want, and I naturally chose Abraham Lincoln, at least knowing a little bit about Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation. And as my mother helped me get through the book, and her and my stepfather helped me work on the project. I remember thinking to myself as I was reading about all these other African-American individuals from Frederick Douglass, et cetera, who were all Republicans, I thought, well, why in the heck aren't we Republicans? I mean, what they're saying, as it sort of all wrapped around the overall story of Lincoln, I was like, oh, it sounds like stuff my parents are yelling at me about all the time. And then I said, I think I'm going to be a Republican. And for a while,

they sort of said, okay, whatever, this is a phase. Kids go through phases. They didn't pay much of any attention. And by the time I got to 15, which was my freshman year in high school, I started looking up and researching any and everything Republican. And I found out about TARS. And I said, oh, wow, this seems to be unique. So I ended up sending them my information. They sent me this whole package to start a chapter. And I remember my mom said, you're really serious about this thing, aren't you? And I said, yeah, I think I really am. And she said, well, I think we need to have a little talk about this. So we had a talk and she said, yeah, you know, I don't know if the Republican Party is the same Republican Party from when your granddad, your great granddad was alive.

So I called my great-granddad a west point military graduate and i said grandpa i think i'm i'm a republican your great-grandfather yeah he was still alive at the time and uh he's deceased now and uh he said okay and he listened to what i had to say and he asked why and to the best of my ability i tried to describe and explain why and he chuckled and he said well you know a lot of us in the family were Republican a long, long time ago. He said, but we haven't we don't really vote for them as much as we used to. If there's a good Republican, maybe we'll vote for him. But, you know, as a family, that's just something we don't typically do. And I asked why I said, well, you know, I read this book like a year ago and I was explaining to him about the project, how fascinated I was.

And he said, oh, yeah, those are all consistent values, but the party has changed. And he sort of explained to me from his perspective why he believed the Republican Party had transitioned after Nixon, which is, you know, I guess pretty historically accurate. But he explained to me why he felt the Republican Party started to transition into a direction that he no longer felt comfortable with as an African-American. And he made it very clear, Democrats aren't a perfect party. But from his perspective, he thought out of the two, they were the best alternative. And as I've gotten older, I've come to understand exactly what he was saying then. But I stuck with it. I just stuck with the party, you know, up until a week or two ago. I want to get to that in a minute at every level.

So was it weird? I mean, I just I'm trying to figure out how to speak. I should be blunt here. Was it weird being an African-American in Texas as a Republican? Was it weird for you with other African-Americans? Or was it weird for you with other Republicans? I mean, it seems like a very idiosyncratic, courageous kind of thing to do. Did it feel that way at the time? You know, I remember when I was in high school and I started the chapter my freshman year and my tennis coach, I played tennis, white guy.

I couldn't find anybody else to be the advisor for this group. He was the only Republican that I could find in the entire school. And and he said, I said, coach, I'm trying to start this Republican chapter thing and I don't really know how to do this. I don't know how, you know, to properly set this up. And he said, oh, I'm a Republican start this Republican chapter thing. And I don't really know how to do this. I don't know how, you know, the properly set this up. And he said, Oh,

I'm a Republican. I'll help you. And so I got with my best friend who's still my best friend to this day, my childhood best friend, my name, Galen Jones. And I said, Galen,

I need, you know, somebody else to be like the vice president of this group. And he was like, Mike, I don't know what my parents are going to say about this. I was like, I don't know.

Tell him whatever, but it's just temporary. I just need someone to help me start the group. And so he said, okay, fine. And so he told his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Jones. And I said, oh God, here you go with Mike again and his crazy ideas, but you know, check it out, see how you like it. And we did. And I ended up being able to convince quite a few of my peers, some folks from the tennis team, a couple of other friends of mine to actually join. And I don't know if they necessarily were Republican any more than they were just interested in debating politics and learning more about the political process, which was what the group

allotted us to do. And so I think for a lot of my friends who I went to high school with, my friends I went to college with, I know they didn't always all agree with me on every issue, but they respected the fact that I believed in something, I had convictions. And I didn't just say, oh, I'm a Republican. I spent time studying, what does it mean to be a conservative? My grandmother has a PhD in education and she made it very clear to me, if you're going to believe in this, you need to understand it from bottom to top. And by the time I got to Morehouse, when I was studying political theory, one of my long-term professors said, you know, look, you're like the only one. Morehouse College, Barack Obama just got elected, and here you are

talking about Republican politics. This is insane. He said, but if this is what you believe, you need to have an epistemological understanding of what it means to be a conservative. And so that's when I began the process of studying Burke and Oakeshott and Rawls and Scruton and all of these great theorists and Kant, et cetera. I mean, to the point where when I was graduating college, I even considered going off to get a PhD in political theory. And so I guess I say all that to say that being a conservative for me was more than here are a few tangential things that I care about. Here are some wedge issues that I care

about. And that's it. I'm a conservative. For me, it was a way of life, a way of being, the way I perceive things. I thought about all the values that my parents instilled in me. And understanding and respecting their political persuasion, I believed all of those things contextually more aligned with original conservatism. If one were to be an originalist interpreter of conservatism as originally put pen to paper by Burke, I think, or even at Confucius, if you want to go into Eastern conservatism right i think they're they're very similar parallels and so for me it was more than just a couple set of ideas it was my entire being that said this makes the most sense for you so you were a

republican or a self-identified republican from high school to very recently. Yeah, so just give me briefly, so what two or three of the key reasons why you no longer are a party member and where you think you're going to go next? Well, I can tell, I'll answer the first one first. I'm just going to be unaffiliated. I mean, I live in Virginia, so technically in the state of Virginia, you don't register by party. You just register to vote and you can vote Republican or Democrat, which is one of my friends sort of chuckled and said, well, do people actually realize that technically you're not affiliated because

that's not how it works in Virginia? And I said, I don't really know. So that was a bit of a sort of comical thing. But I think that's where I find myself for now until hopefully the Republican Party gets back into a place where I feel comfortable. But for me,'s where I find myself for now until hopefully the Republican Party gets back into a place where I feel comfortable. But for me, you know, look, I worked for the president. I never really agreed with the president. Wasn't ever really fond of the president. Dr. Carson decided to work for the president. He's someone who I have great admiration for. He's a hero of mine. And so wherever Dr. Carson went, I was going to follow. And I'm thankful for him for giving me an opportunity, however brief, to serve at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. With that said, there were many things about the president that sort of concerned me from Charlottesville, from some of his more controversial statements on religion and not religions of Christians, of course, but Muslims.

It just sort of showed to me that this is someone who's not well read who's not well studied that bothers me if you're a leader you need to be able to understand all kind of complex things whether you agree with them or not that's just something that i was always raised to believe and the most recent thing was just the white supremacy video that was the last the white power video that was so he reached just so he retweeted a white uh a guy in a we sound like a real sort of new england accent saying white power and that too much that that was it and let me be clear about this i don't know that guy's intent i don't know if the guy was just saying to piss people off people do that all the time i don't know but i do know for the president considering all of the racial stuff that's going on in the country, it's like, man,

you'd have to be a complete idiot to not recognize the environment that we're in to tweet or retweet a video like that. I mean, it just, to me, it spoke of his character. And so I just, I said, that was the final straw for me. So can I push back on you a little bit? Yeah, of course, Bethany. Sure. So I feel like there were some red flags before this. And I felt like that video was actually kind of, I see the president's tweeting like I would see my grandparents tweeting as if they had Twitter. They don't necessarily turn the sound on. They don't necessarily totally understand how it works. I think that video was him just stupidly retweeting something without listening to the sound, not defending him. I think he has done other things in the course of his career that raise up some racial red flags.

Why was it this and not those things? I wish I could remember the timeline of it exactly. But he tweeted about the NASCAR situation and he sounded upset that NASCAR ditched the Confederate flag. That to me is like way worse than retweeting something with sound that it says white power in the background. Like, I don't really care about that tweet. I think it was a mistake. I think it was stupid. The things in his own words that he types on his phone with his two thumbs about, well, you know, how dare NASCAR

do that to the flag? And which flag are we talking about here, President Trump? We know which flag he's talking about, and he's upset about that. I feel like there's been some of those red flags all throughout. I feel like he fetishizes the black community when it supports him. And so why, my question is, I'm being really verbatim, I'm just- No, that's okay. Why was it that? Well, I mean, I think, Bethany, it was a combination of all of those things. But that video, I just, I mean, I have one great-grandparent that's still alive.

She's in her 90s. She's almost 100. And her and I talk every week. And we talk a lot about the president, but she loves politics. And we talk a lot about what he tweets, a lot about what he says. And I've heard so many stories over the course of my life growing up being a southerner. A lot of them with that, having aspects of people saying the whole white power phrase, and just listening to that and knowing the president, it was just,

I mean, I don't know how to explain it, but it was just like, dude, come on, man. You know, I've been critical of Trump, sometimes really critical, and sometimes when Trump has done good things, I've tried my best to write a couple of columns. And I think this is a good position. I've tried to go in there and say, you know, I don't, I think he could have done this better. He could have said it better, but I get what he, why he's doing this. I get the politics. I think this gives him some type of leverage or advantage. I've tried to do that with this guy. I got to tell you guys, I've tried. I got it for me, it was just like, I can't forgive that. You know, the amusing thing here is when we have a guest who is anti-Trump, and always in the comments, somebody will say, well, you know, nobody was really pushing back against what he said.

So Bethany comes and says, I'm going to push back a little on what you just said there. Why did you resign over that racist element when this racist element over here was far worse, which I don't think is going to satisfy the people. They're going to love me in the comments. Right. And I mean, I don't know where to fall on this exactly because I tend to believe that the mistakes that he makes in terms of rhetoric and comportment are not because there's some deep-seated racial animus there. I think that he's motivated mostly by himself, period. Yeah. And that the stupidity comes out because he's either clueless or toneless or doesn't get

exactly what this means. He doesn't care. He doesn't care. I agree with that. He doesn't care. But what's interesting is that the critics of Trump on the left tend to ascribe intentional malevolence as opposed to Occam's razor telling you, Right. tend to ascribe intentional malevolence as opposed to Occam's razor telling you, right? No, it's, it, it, it ain't that. I mean, he's either both the stupidest person to operate the office, the, the, to occupy the office. And he's also the most brilliantly Machiavellianly intentionally racially evil because he knows precisely how to stoke and pick these things

apart. I, I just don't see it working that way from day to day. It's not a defense to say, I don't think it's malevolence. It's a lack of awareness. I think it's stupidity. It's stupidity. But at the end of the day, as we hate to say, because it's a cliche and it shows up all the time in these shows, the result of a Trump presidency at the end, because that's what I look at. I don't look at what he says, don't look at what he reads. I look at what are the manifestations of his occupying of the office. Do you think that at the end of four years of a Trump administration, the African-American community, the minority, people who, let's say HUD clients, if we will, are better off pre-corona, if the environment was still kicking along, than what they would get from a regulatory state that is devoted to intersectional

parsing of people into particular categories based on skin color and eye shape. In other words, Trump's Trump, but is everybody better off generally after four years of that? Sure, sure. After four years of that? Sure, sure. After four years of statism. No, I would say, I mean, you can't, again, going back to that whole Petri dish thing I stated about folks on the ideological left. I mean, I just don't think you can experiment with culture that way. I get having some basic level of regulation. Heck, even Adam Smith even articulated that in The Wealth of Nations, as well as the

theory of moral sentiments of one of his other great writings. Some very, very limited level of regulation, right? I think most people are okay with that, but I don't think you can overregulate because it's impossible for the state to know how much of a good is needed and versus how much is it needed it's just impossible right uh and so if if trump were a normal republican president i would say this is a six it would have been a successful four years so far i would say that without any problems but my issue and i get what people say look at the results not the rhetoric i i get that i've worked on enough campaigns understand that and for some people that may be okay for me the rhetoric. I get that. I've worked on enough campaigns to understand that. And for some people, that may be okay. For me, the rhetoric also matters because a person gets elected in part because of their rhetoric. I mean, campaigning is all about the ideas of

marketing and messaging and communications along with promises and policy positions. And so I think it matters because for someone who spent so much of my young life trying so freaking hard to expand the tent within the Republican Party. You guys can't imagine the stuff I have been called, the experiences that I've had merely for being a Republican. And even though I think most black people have generally accepted or respected my position, there's always a heightened level of skepticism. And here comes Donald Trump, regardless of the policies, that unemployment record low. That's a great thing. The economy is doing very well. Deregulation, a great thing. Strengthening the military, a great thing. Being tough on China, who I believe is our greatest global adversary, is a good thing. Although I don't like necessarily how Trump has gone about the trade war,

I would go about it differently, but I understand the underlying position. Those are good things that I typically support. But it's difficult for me to go in front of a bunch of black people or any people of color and say, well, look at all these great things. You guys should become Republicans. And then they say, but Trump, but Trump tweeted this, but Trump said that. The way you connect with people is through messaging and communications, regardless of the policy. Jack Kemp said in the early 90s, it doesn't matter how great your ideas are. People don't feel or believe you care about them first. And that's the problem the Republican Party is having with Donald Trump.

And so that's why, for me, the policies alone is not enough, because it makes it difficult for people who care about expanding this party to go into those communities and do that work when you have to defend every idiotic thing the president says. So I have one last question for you before we let you go. So you're a Republican strategist. What do you do now? Seriously, like where do you go now like i i was just about to beg you not not to stay in you not to retreat to some think tank somewhere but to stay that's what i've been thinking about doing no no no no we we need you in the fray uh so that that was my way of a little bit pushing that. But this was not a move that we've seen some people who call themselves Republican then cycle into writing the same column over and over and over for the same usual suspects. This is why I left the Republican Party. This is why I left the Republican Party. I don't see you doing that. I see you still fighting for what you believe. But where do you go from here?

Bethany, that's the part I have to try to, I'm just going to be honest with you guys, Canada would oblige me to do so. I don't know. I wrote a column about why I left. And if you read the column, I talked a lot about Oakshot. I talked about what it means to be a conservative, why I think conservative values are good and important. I said, yeah, I don't agree with Trump. I don't think he lives up to these ideals. But for me, this is what it means to be a conservative, why I think conservative values are good and important. I say, yeah, I don't agree with Trump. I don't think he lives up to these ideals. But for me, this is what it means to be a conservative. It is so important to me to expand that definition to as many people as possible, particularly people of color who are inherently conservative. This isn't my opinion. Heck, Pew Research, the data shows the majority of African-Americans are moderate to conservative. Only, I believe, 26 percent consider themselves liberal. And guys, when you ask blacks if they consider themselves progressive, the number is so small it because it's so small. And so that tells me that there's an existence of people out there who needs the right messengers to approach them where they are to help bring them along the journey.

And so, Bethany, to answer your question, what does that mean for me? I don't know. I mean, I hope that if things get better, I'm going to become a Republican again. I'm certainly not going to become a Democrat. I don't believe in what the Democratic Party represents. And liberalism as a philosophy, as an ideology, I think there are some great writers, Locke, et cetera. I love what they sort of came up with as far as the ideas and notions of at least classical liberalism. I think it's sort of superseded that at this point. And I respect that intellectually speaking, but that is not the way I view the world.

That's not my personal values for myself or what I believe is conducive for producing the best society for all people. I respect it, but it's not for me. And so it leaves me in this place sort of wondering, well, what do I do? Do I go to a think tank like AEI, maybe try to do some work with Heritage? I don't really know, because politics is what I love. It's been my whole life since I was 14 years old. I've always known what I don't know if there is. I hope there is, but I don't really know, which is, again, which is why I found myself going further and further into a place where I said, I am a contextualist. Anyone who's ever had an in-depth conversation with me or anyone who's ever read any of my pieces about conservatism, I always go really deep back to the basics, back to the beginnings. And I believe we need a Republican party that lives up to those traditionalist ideals. Well, I got to say, the one thing I got to say,

you may be on a journey, you may not know where you're going to end up, but in the meantime, you got a podcast, and I'm going to plug it one more time because it's great. Speak Easy Podcast, the Ricochet Audio Network,

we're thrilled to have you. You and Antonio Okafor are doing great and it's just fascinating. And it's exactly what we need right now. And it's speak easy with a dash. It's a little hard to find. Speak dash easy. All you got to do is subscribe to the Ricochet Audio Network super feed.

All you got to do is do the super feed. You get it automatically. So there's the solution there. I just wanted to say I want to thank Bethany for one randomly reaching out to me a month ago out of nowhere saying, hey, so we got this idea for a podcast. And I'm just like, why is Bethany reaching out to me about a podcast? This is random. And she said, we have this idea. We think you and Antonio will be good for this. What do you think? And I didn't even have much time. I was like, well, hell, okay. I mean, I know Bethany's husband, so her husband's good, so she must be good. So sure, why not? He is good. Husband's okay. Hey. So thank you, Bethany. Thank you. Well, it's always good to hear from a contextualist, and DC is the kind of place where

you can go to the AEI, it's a beautiful building, and say, I'd like a job as a contextualist, and they'd give you one, but I want to go into a coma and wake up 20 years later and see you on the presidential debate stage saying to your opponent, he may quote John Rawls, but I don't believe he's even read the entire material justice, because I know I will have awakened up in a better world than the one we occupy now. I mean. Mr. Singleton, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Everybody listen to it, and we'll have you again down the road. Absolutely. Thanks. You know, fantastic conversation, which began where we're talking about the suburbs and the rest of it and moves all the way around the rest of it. One of the things we should have talked about and we didn't is that the, uh,

Cory Booker amendments to this, uh, this triple F thing that they're talking about would take away funding for transportation to a lot of these suburbs if they don't meet these current standards. Okay, because everybody's got a car, and car insurance is pretty cheap, so it doesn't matter. Well, car insurance is not cheap, Rob. No, it's not cheap at all. And it'd be interesting if I was talking about car insurance, but I'm not. I'm talking about the actual repairs on your vehicle itself. Because they've got computer systems, right? They've got all these touchscreens. They've got all these electronics.

It's the new normal, as they say. From electronically controlled transmissions to touchscreen displays, dozens of sensors. It's all expensive. But you can't fix these new features yourself. You just can't. Today is a pop and open the hood and changing a gun. So when something breaks, it could cost a fortune. And now, as we know, is not the time for expensive repairs. So that's why you need CarShield.

CarShield has affordable protection plans that can save you thousands for a covered repair, including the computers, GPS, electronics, and more. The people at CarShield understand payment flexibility is an absolute must, too. So monthly plans can be customized to your needs and rates as low as $99 a month. No long-term contracts or commitments. CarShield gives you options others won't, I should note. You get to choose your favorite mechanic or dealership to do the work, and CarShield takes care of the rest. They also offer complimentary 24-7 roadside assistance and a rental car, too, while yours is being fixed. What more do you want? CarShield has helped over a million customers. You could be one of them. Drive with confidence knowing you get coverage from America's number one auto protection company. For as little as $99 a month, you can protect yourself from surprises and save thousands for a covered

repair. Call 1-800-CAR-6000 and mention code RICOSHET or visit carshield.com and use the code ricochet to save 10% 1-800-CAR-6,000. That's carshield.com code ricochet. A deductible may apply and our thanks to car shield for sponsoring this, the ricochet podcast. And I'll quickly, because you know, we got to get out of here before this thing hits three hours. That's what happens when we have Bethany on,

you know, Peter is so concise to the point, you know, five word questions. You know. It's one last one. I have to go in the chat to ask to talk, but that's fine.

And that one thing would be... The James Lydon Member Post of the Week. And it's from Jenna Stocker, who wrote a nice little essay called The Space Between 9-11 and Year Zero. Why is she one of your favorites? It's good that she is. Do you know her? Have you talked to her? We go back and forth a ton on Twitter.

She's a former Marine. She's fantastic. She's one of our strongest contributors to Ricochet. Indeed. Well, she wrote, slowly but steadily toward a more just society. But judging by his actions during the civil rights era, it takes more than just being a bystander to its fate. We must be active in bending the arc by engaging and defending against an anti-American mob that would lay claim to its own historical truth. It prefers we erase everything deemed problematic, restarting our nation at woke year zero. It sums up a lot of things that people have been talking about on

Ricochet, and I like the way that it resets back to 9-11, which is now, of course, receding in the rearview mirror into a little point on the horizon as we barrel forward into the fog. One more thing to ask you guys before I go, but I have to tell you, because if I wait until the end to say it, you say, ah, the show's done, I'm gone. I got to tell you this. Podcast was brought to you by Laurel Springs and Keeps and CarShield. Please support them for supporting us. And of course, this is my weekly pointless, absolutely futile request for you to go to

your music app, Apple Podcasts, whatever, and give us a five star review. It helps. It really does. It allows new listeners to discover us, which helps keep this show going. And if we are dire and foundering and hopeless, Rob's going to bring back his member pitches. Do you want that?

No one wants that. No one wants that. No, nobody wants it. All right, last thing then, guys. I'm sorry, somehow I just activated Siri. By mentioning Apple Podcasts podcast i turned on siri that's mildly terrifying mildly terrifying all right reset three two one so last question no politics how do you see the rest of the summer playing out culturally bethany Bethany? Rob? Oh, it's bad. Okay. That's bad from Bethany, bad from Rob, who is enjoying the cue of the South.

Truth be told, I'm very happy, personally. We're getting a dog this weekend. Oh. I am so excited, let me tell you. The world will be falling apart outside of this house, but this house is delightful. I'm enjoying it immensely. I guess I describe it this way, that I have friends from all different walks of life.

They're all very intelligent. And it's not like we're, some of us aren't reading different news. Some of us are reading the same news. And even the ones who are reading the same news. And even the ones who are reading the same news have radically different understandings of the facts, especially in regards to COVID. And that I find the most shocking and depressing thing is that people now have a level of distrust, justified in my experience, but distrust and a level of distrust justified my my appearance but experience but but but distrust and kind of an ability to read even the same piece of paper and come to radically different conclusions and that

does not suggest that we're heading for smooth sailing have they moved their climate panic science thinking into covid is that where it, well, definitely. That's definitely happened. Some people have done that. And some people haven't. And in a way, it's almost sometimes it's kind of a worse outcome, in a sense. This kind of weird, cynical just acceptance and expectation that whatever the news is, it has an agenda. And that is just sad.

And it really was what it is. It reflects the total breakdown of the idea of telling what the news is, telling what the news is, the insistence on people, for people, mostly in the mainstream media, but I think even Fox News, you could say, which is first, let's figure out what we want people to think. And then we will tell them a story that supports that. Well, I'm glad this entirely new development has been exposed. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's depressing when you're like, well, I read that article. I read that article, too.

And this is what I took from it was what I took from it. You think, wow, that's remarkable. But I don't think that's ever happened to me before. Maybe you haven't read what I've been reading, or I've only sent you this piece, or what do you think about that? That has happened amongst my sort of circle. But the idea that we've both been reading the same thing,

and we have different, and radically different. The other argument I would make is that it suggests that we are living in a period of great uncertainty, legitimate uncertainty, especially when we're talking about a virus, and we are just not equipped as a culture to handle uncertainty or risk. We just haven't thought about it for a long time. Especially when, and it could be tied to the fact that the number of common assumptions that we share has diminished to a point of one or two, like water wet and oxygen good,

and even you can debate the first one if the water identifies as sand. Let's move along to the end of the show. Thank you, Bethany, for sitting in for Peter. It's been great. Rob, give our regards to the South. Have some. I will. Thank you.

And we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0, and we'll talk to you next week. Thanks for today, fellas. Broken lines, broken strings, broken threads, broken springs, broken idols, broken heads, people sleeping in broken beds. Ain't no use jiving, ain't no use joking, everything is broken. Broken bottles, broken plates, broken switches, broken gates, broken dishes, broken pots. Streets are filled with broken hearts, words never meant to be spoken Everything is broken Ricochet! Join the conversation. Seems like every time you stop and turn around

Something else just hit the ground Broken cutters, broken saws It's really unprofessional. Did you guys see what I did to Scott yesterday when we were FaceTiming? No. We were FaceTiming and his facial expression turned to just abject horror. And I was like, what is wrong with you? What's going on here? And then I realized I was changing a poopy diaper and he like had the whole

show. And I was like, oh, I'm sorry.