The Ricochet Podcast - Fill Your Hands!

Episode Date: January 27, 2023

Agree with him or not, our guest today is a man of true grit. Former Navy SEAL and representative of Texas’ 2nd congressional district, Dan Crenshaw joins the podcast to discuss the Intel Community; the rising temperature of the conflict in Ukraine; and our very own border, which, you may have heard, has its own problemos. Florida man Charlie Cooke is with us again, and he’s got thought on... Source

I have to go home and shovel. Snow, right? Yes. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Read my lips. No new taxes.

Today, Kevin McCarthy removed me from the House Intelligence Committee. We knew it would be bad when the Republicans took over, but it's far worse than we expected. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Charles C.W. Cook, Peter Robinson, and myself, James Lilex. Today, we talk to Congressman Dan Crenshaw about everything. So let's have ourselves a podcast. America is a nation that can be defined in a single word. I was going to put him in a... I agree. You'll never get bored with winning. We never get bored.

Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number 627. Why don't you go to ricochet.com right now, or later, later this afternoon, tomorrow morning, midnight. I don't care. Just go there, take a look, and you'll say, where's this place been all my life? And if you're a Ricochet member already, well, you know what's great about it. The most stimulating conversations in community on the web, a center at Wright Haven you've been looking for all your days. And what else have you been looking for? Why, the dulcet tones of Charles C.W. Cook and Peter Robinson. Charlie is sitting in for Rob Long, who we understand is snorkeling at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. I don't know where he is. Someday he'll be back. Who knows?

Could be Mauritania. Could be in Peru. Could be, you know, he could be right now riding a calved iceberg somewhere that peeled off a glacier in Greenland. He doesn't write. He doesn't call. We don't know. But who cares? We got you guys. We got the audience. And we have a whole week's worth of stuff to talk about. How have you been, first of all, Charlie, Peter? I've been very well. No, you haven't. You've been in a big sulk ever since the last weekend. Go ahead.

Explain why. Admit it. Admit it. I was in a sulk on Sunday briefly. And then as I was in Kansasansas city because i went to the game on saturday i went for breakfast excuse me there were other games being played that weekend you don't get to call it the game it was the game it was the it was for him for him it was of course it was the game for him funnnily enough, I did read that it was

by far and away the most watched of the four. Oh, was it really? Yes, and apparently the executives at CBS said this was because of the two quarterbacks. So Trevor Lawrence is a draw. Really? Oh, for sure. But no, I didn't talk too long.

One of the reasons I didn't talk too long was that the people of Kansas City, especially their football fans, are just the nicest people in the world. It's actually remarkable. I was moderately nervous about going as an away fan because you hear about how loud Arrowhead is. But people kept coming up to me at the stadium as if they worked for the Kansas City tourist board and saying, how is it going? Are you having a nice time?

Are people being friendly? Can I buy you a drink? It was actually remarkable. Midwestern decency. Thank you very much. That's exactly what we are all about here in the flyover country. Sure. Although in this case, they have a decent football team too.

He says, James. He says, James. Rise to the bait. Gripping the table, Putin-like. Yeah, no, I wasn't in a funk, actually. I sort of expected it, and I knew that had we won, we would have had our collective clocks cleaned in the next game. So it's okay.

What I was grateful for was a great season. I was grateful for the fact that we got as far as we did, that we won what we did. I was entertained consistently. I had hopes. I had dreams. It was an enjoyable time to be a Minnesota football fan, and it ended well. It didn't end with ignominy. It didn't end with humiliation. It ended as it ended, and that was it. Now I could go on and not have my guts consumed in a never-ending, churning morass of watching them fight their way to the Super Bowl again and lose. I can't stand to bear the thought of it.

So, yeah, I was actually in a very Midwestern Minnesota sort of way happy that we lost. And I was spared further perturbations. So I understand Charles' opinion exactly. That's how it was. I had a little bit of a funk, but then I got my car and drove home, and it was a beautiful day. Did you go to the game? No, I didn't. I wasn't able to secure tickets. I'd been to

the stadium, which recently was announced in a survey, a Twitter survey, be that what it may, as one of the ugliest buildings in the country, which I find remarkable given the... Ugliest buildings full stop, or one of the ugliest stadiums? No or one of the ugliest state eons? No, one of the ugliest buildings.

And given the tremendous amount of meritorious architecture that was scattered across this country in the 60s and the 70s, with brutalism and college-style architecture, I think that's ridiculous. I think it has a certain beauty to it. It's a prow of a ship. It's a glacier. It's angular. If it's anything other than just another white mushroom sitting in the edge of downtown somewhere. And you're sure they weren't talking about Kirk Cousins' playing style?

I am not going to sit here and argue about that with you. Stats are perfectly fine. The man can throw. He's good. He's not one of those showboating guys who says, oh, let me take it, guys, and I'll run it in myself. I'll do a Mahone-style play.

No, he's a completely fine quarterback. Selfless. Selfless is what he is. He is certainly unlike Patrick Mahomes. Yes, that he is. And I understand the double-barbed thing that you're saying. But if you look at Justin Jefferson and Thielen's receptions,

I mean, who was throwing exactly to Mr. Jefferson with such pinpoint accuracy that he was able to rack up the stats that he did? So I like Kirk, and I'll be glad that he's back for another year or so, and he has a decent godly Midwestern hairstyle as opposed to some of these hippies who just let it all hang out in a fashion that would look fine for the five-man electrical band. So anyway, so there we have it. But back to... But Trevor Lawrence can play football. That is one of the advantages of Trevor Lawrence. Yes, and Kirk Douglas

can, or Kirk Douglas, Kirk Cousins can play football as well, as evidenced by the fact that he got them to where they were. This is a Freudian slip, because he is probably more of an actor slash model than he is. Alright, but boys, you have yet to utter. I'm not interested

in tearing somebody else down. You noticed that there, Charles? I'm just teasing you. I'll just keep quiet and watch this happen. I don't build myself up by repeating other things. If we were in a bar room, you guys would start swinging at each other in just a moment. No, but back to Florida. We should talk about, there's been

more on the DeSantis front. There was a tweet, again, but it was a blue chat. Wait a minute. You can't talk about football and just skip the 49ers. I knew this was coming. Who are, after all, still in contention, which cannot be said about either of your teams. That's true, but I feel that the audience would enjoy it. The biblical dimension of the 49ers, that the last shall be first.

The audience who loves us is willing to entertain our indulgence on this factor. The audience that does not care about football at this point is hitting the search button, and they may go past an ad, and I don't want that to happen. Fair enough. They've come here for raw meat. They've come here for heads on fire. So we give them this. The tweet, and Charles, perhaps you saw this,

you live in the soon-to-be-fascist state of Florida, if not already so, that one of the more authoritarian things that DeSantis had done right out of the Nazi playbook was suggesting the teachers should confiscate these cell phones from their students before class begins. This is a sign of an incipient authoritarian tendency. That was one thing.

And then even worse was his banning of a, well, he banned the study of black history. Just straight up, just banned the whole, well, actually, no, just the part of it that conflicts with the state law that says you can't teach something that is racially essentialist and the rest of it. But other than that, he banned the teaching of black history. Charles, as a resident, how would you view these things and how do you think they're playing on the national stage with America's governor? Well, I think there's two elements to this. One is structural. One is on the merits structurally i find it utterly bizarre that this has been cast as some sort of unwarranted incursion into schools but public schools

of course they're going to be subject to the scrutiny of parents school boards in the state legislature uh if we want to have public schools that goes with the territory illinois apparently wants to teach this stuff the governor of illinois came out yesterday and said i will not teach black history unless it contains queer theory and race essentialism well that's fine if you live in illinois good luck to you but that's obviously not what the majority of floridians want and that is going to be reflected within a democratic republic by the democratic republican institutions. On the merits, I think it is absurd to teach what was in that course. The Stop Woke Act, one part of which applies here, mandates the teaching of slavery,

of racial oppression, of segregation. The idea that this is not going to be taught is not right what it does not allow is the inclusion of queer theory the teaching that color blindness is in and of itself racist and so forth so and as a floridian as a parent as a taxpayer i like this on the merits but i really think that there is this unholy alliance at the moment between people on the left who don't want to see public institutions that they set up and cherish being controlled by the people who win elections and certain people on the right who, in most circumstances, legitimately say, not sure that's a role for government, but who here are importing that tendency and that habit and that reflex simply so that they don't have to fight over

what is, by definition, a public issue. This is going to come up. This is going to come up this is going to come up in every state it's going to come up in republican states and democratic states and it came up here uh you asked me what i think will happen politically i think desantis is going to win this fight because i just think to the average person including the average african-american parent for what it's worth who are not well represented by the activist groups that get quoted in the media, the idea of teaching people that colorblindness and neutrality is racism is insane. This is literally the thing that I teach my kids. For what it's worth, I haven't really had to. One of the things that I like about living in this era, I know conservatives often cherish and lionize the past, but one of the things that I like about living in this era is it is just totally normal, it seems to my children,

as it was to me, that there are people on television and at school and in the streets who have brown skin and black skin and white skin and speak different languages and have different accents and come from different places. I have never had to sit my kids down and say, be nice to that kid. They don't notice. But insofar as it ever comes up, neutrality is the line. And the idea that you would tell children in schools that that is bad is just so grotesque to me. So I like this pushback. Exceptional, yes. No, I'm'm sorry i was just stunned by that uh no i wasn't stunned i was just collecting my thoughts and that is when you

mentioned that there's a the people who are who hate this the people who don't want the the color blindness the people who are who want it all to be infused with black queer marxist theory etc intersectionality um seem to presume that they are speaking on behalf of an inevitable future that's about 90 minutes a couple of days just just around the corner whereas the rest of america does not like this that all the vast majority of America does not want this at all. Yet it seems somehow that it's inevitable for us, even though nobody really asked us, did they? Mm-hmm. Go on. I'm sorry. I think you're both onto something really profound. Charlie's first point about the democratic process, our side loses overwhelmingly in every institution

except the ones to which people have to be elected. And I have come to the conclusion that the real loathing for Ron DeSantis on the left is that DeSantis keeps going back to the people. He keeps going back to politics. He keeps refusing to give long sit-down interviews on 60 Minutes with Leslie Stahl and stands up and takes questions. You can see when he's taking questions, he'll take questions from bloggers, from local Florida newspapers. He puts out his own videos. He's insisting on speaking directly to ordinary Floridians again and again and again. And the other side has, this is sort of the deep,

deep, the deep madness on the other side, the deep mental illness. The other side thinks that's cheating somehow. How dare he do that? How dare he go back to the people? I just find it so refreshing. I love it. It's so, there are many aspects of this, but one aspect, Charlie gets to live there, of course, one aspect is it's so refreshing to see a Republican who's deft, who actually knows what he's doing. When I see a video clip of Ron DeSantis come through my Twitter feed, I don't tense to think, oh, no, how's he messed up now? I push it to see, oh, this will be fun to watch him master at work. He writes some of his own stuff, and it's easier to – when you write your own material, you're not just mouthing words for the sake of doing so because somebody in the staff focus tested this. You're saying what you believe, which is what we'd like to think. We all have to regard every single politician on the face of the earth with a great deal of skepticism.

That said, sometimes the good ones get through. You're right, Peter. It's cheating to go to the people because the people are not the people you want to go to because they're going to fight the inevitable, wonderful, transnational, reconfigured future where all of the old ideas have been swept aside and the new ones are established, whatever those may happen to be. They do happen to sound like a particularly joyless, unhappy, and repressive and restrictive set of ideas, though, when you look at it, even though they're put up there under the guise of freedom for all, it never turns out that way. And I know this seems like a weird transition, but in New York, on the top of a court building, there was an empty plinth in which a statue was to be placed. Now, this is like in London, there is an empty plinth. Where is it, Charlie? It's in front of the National Gallery.

What is it? What's that square? What is it? Trafalgar Square. Trafalgar Square. I'm sorry. I should have known that. There's an empty plinth, and periodically they put a new piece of art up there, which

they say is meant to counterbalance all of the old patriarchal, colonialist, etc. statues that stand there. And they're, without question question without exception they're all ugly they're all very woke they're all very up oh courant when it comes to what they should express but they're all ugly well in new york they had an empty plinth on a statue and a courthouse which had lawgivers all around the top they had zoroaster it had moses and all they used to have muhammad but they took him down in 1955 and they put up this work by a Pakistani-American, I can't remember the exact configuration, a statue of some goddess emerging from a lotus with no arms but writhing tentacles,

and her hair braided back into horns, which is not meant to be a pagan animal thing. No, it's Indo-Pakistani, whatever. And she's wearing the little lace bib that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had in order to connote the necessity of abortion rights. Now, A, having a statue like that on top of the building, making a case for abortion rights is probably not something you want on a courthouse, which you want to be neutral. But B, I looked at that. You look at this, this monstrosity that it's aesthetically interesting, but it's a complete intentional rebuke to all of the other classical statues. And it's saying that we are here to replace those. We are here not to coexist by those, but we are here to show you that the future is not one in which those will play any role whatsoever and that's the part that nobody gets asked about

do we all get do we all vote on whether or not we're throwing away all of western civ in favor of goddesses with writhing tentacle arms no we did not but we're constantly having it foisted on us by the people who want to remake the world all for our benefit of course but that's my you know what i find so interesting about the question of racial equality in general and that is that under neither interpretation of our constitutional system do the people who wish to impose new racial preferences have a leg to stand on we We are, this Supreme Court term, going to get a ruling from the nine justices on the question of affirmative action. We've had a bunch of them since 1978, and this one may be different. Certainly, those who wish to continue

discriminating on racial grounds think that it's going to be different, and they're panicked about it. But have either of you seen the opinion polls because the opinion polls show an american public that does not like affirmative action that likes race neutrality when this was asked in california of all places yes exactly it lost yes so if you are of the view as i am that public opinion is irrelevant to the law you will simply make the straightforward case that the civil rights act of 1964 which applies to many universities through their funding mechanism makes it illegal to discriminate racially it doesn't matter if that's popular or not that is the law as it exists but if you're not of that view if you believe in a living constitution or that statute should be

interpreted in a broad sense you also have no like to stand on because all the opinion polls that you would be pointing to are against you. And yet they still talk with the confidence of the majority. And they're not the majority. People hate racial discrimination in America. That is a beautiful thing. And yet they cannot internalize that. And I just think we're seeing it again here. This curriculum is not popular. People do not like it. And yet, the way that the DeSantis decision has been cast in the press is as if he is some wild-eyed radical. Does the confidence come from having control of the institutions and the means by which these ideas go across? And now that actually there's some pushback to it, there's some confusion. What do you mean that having complete ideological capture of the universities is not a guarantee of us getting our way in the courts and the society as a whole?

What happened to the certain knowledge that this future was going to be delivered? And hence the frustration, hence the screams of rage. Peter? I got nothing. I don't know what we... You rage peter i got nothing i like the i don't know you got nothing well if there's if there's an empty plinth in florida if there's an empty plinth in florida i vote for putting a for bronzing charlie and putting him on top of it and then and and and chiseling into the plinth people in america hate racism and that is a beautiful thing. You can't bronze him. Well, actually, you should bronze him using a bronzing fluid,

because being an Englishman exposed to the sun, I'm surprised that he doesn't explode into a fire. That's exactly. Mad dogs in the noon and the rest of it. But when you say you got nothing, I don't. I mean, I've run out of my usual cliched, pathetic little remarks to jive at you, so I thought I would get around to that. But when you say nothing, Peter, I thought for a minute there you were referring to your general state, your general possessions, like your larder. You'd gone to your larder and opened it up and said, I got nothing here. That's true. I live in California.

It's all been taxed away. It's been taxed away. Our eggs, I complain about the eggs every week. I'm learning a little bit more about the whole egg situation. It's not just the avian flu. I was reading this fascinating thread that Scott Adams, of all people, popped up about how a change in feed amongst chicken farmers had led to a drastic drop off in egg production.

And they were thinking, is this part of the plan? Is this part of the plan where they're going to make a... I hear a lot of this not-so-crazy talk about how there's going to be a food shortage and it's part of the plan? Is this part of the plan where they're going to make a, you know, I hear a lot of this not so crazy talk about how there's going to be a food shortage and it's part of the plan. Get us all into camps and eat the bugs. But I will tell you this, the other day when I was at Target and there was absolutely no pasta, zero pasta at all, I thought, oh, do I have to do that stockpiling thing again? Well, listen, it's the drought, it's the inflation, and even new policies are pushing American's food supply near its breaking point, you think. That's why survival food is more important than ever. You can create your own stockpile of the

best-selling four Patriots survival food kits. Now, first of all, it's not ordinary food. We're talking good for 25 years, a quarter-century super survival food. It's hand-picked right in a family-owned facility in the U.S. of A. and giving jobs to over 200 Americans in the process. Kits are compact, they're sturdy, they're water-resistant, and they stack very easily. And they have delicious different breakfasts and lunches and dinners. You can make these meals in less than 20 minutes. Just add boiling water, simmer, and serve.

Right now, you can go to 4patriots.com and use the code RP to get 10% off your first purchase of anything in the store. Including the 3-month survival kit, you'll get their famous guarantee for an entire year after your order, plus free shipping on orders over $97. Why that number? Well, go to the site and find out. They're called 4 Patriots because a portion of every sale is donated to charities who support our veterans and their families. You know, I'm probably never going to need it, but I love going downstairs in the closet and seeing it stacked there and knowing that if I do, I got it. Just go to 4patriots.com and use the code RP to get 10% off. That's 4patriots.com, code RP. Start building your own stockpile today.

And we thank 4 Patriots for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast, Dan Crenshaw, former United States Navy SEAL officer, serving as the U.S. Representative for Texas' second congressional district since 2019. Welcome to the podcast, Congressman Crenshaw. Great to be with you guys. Thanks for having me. So, you're a fresh member of the Intel Committee, and here we are with the right side of the aisle. The constituency has generally been supportive of the Intelligence Committee, Law and Order, and the rest of it. But now we have grave institutional distrust of the intelligence community and the FBI. What do we do to restore that?

And I know that's like a really simple five, six-word question, but I'll let you have at it. Yeah, it's important, and it's unfortunate, it's important and it's unfortunate. And to some extent, it's well-deserved. If you look at our side, there's always been some suspicion of the deep state. People are always suspicious of things they do not understand. They don't understand classified operations, so they're suspicious of them. They can't see what goes on in the FISA court, which is obviously the point of it, so they're suspicious of them. They can't see what goes on in the FISA court, which is obviously the point of it. So they're suspicious of it. Many constituents of mine believe they're being watched. And I have to assure them that, trust me, you are not being watched.

One, it's illegal for the CIA to watch you. And two, they don't they don't care about you that much. But some people believe it nonetheless. So there's so there's obviously some worries that I think are unfounded. But there's certainly others that are very much founded. And they mostly come from the FBI, if not entirely from the FBI. And that's that's based on the the instances and the events that we all know about, starting with the Russia gate and the the the falsification of actual documents for the FISA court. I mean, there's some really bad stuff going on here. There's some really obvious political bias. We see the text messages that come out from FBI agents.

And so people just want people need to know how far this goes. And it will be up to Republicans to expose that exposure will be the best way to save the institution. In my opinion, transparency is the best way to save the institution. I would stand by any of the assertion that the vast majority of these agents are very good people, and we should not tarnish their reputations along with the bad apples, but you do have to find the bad apples. So, Peter Robinson here. Let me sound like one of your constituents for a moment. Here's what unnerved me. I've been suspicious of the deep state for a long time, although I wasn't really, I thought, no, permanent bureaucracy isn't exactly the deep state.

There are people who develop expertise. We need them to some extent. All right. So it was going back and forth in my mind. During the campaign, 51 former high-ranking intelligence officers, including Leon Panetta, who had been White House Chief of Staff, Secretary of Defense, and Director of CIA, including John Brennan, former Director of CIA, including General Michael Hayden, former Director of DNA, as I recall, 51 of them signed an open letter to the American people saying that the Hunter Biden laptop bore all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign. They knew, because they were professionals, that they had no basis whatsoever for making

that assertion. We now understand that the FBI almost certainly had satisfied itself long before then that it was genuine. So you say, well, most of the problems are with the FBI. And honestly, for the first time, I don't think of myself as a right-winger. I don't tend to think of myself as a crazy right-winger. But for the first time, I thought to myself, it's rotten. It's all rotten. It all stinks to high heaven. All of it. Now, what are you going to do, Congressman, to calm me down?

Well, I can't change what those 51 people did. I can discredit them. And I think that's been done. Were you shocked by that as well? Or do you know these people so well that you thought, oh, it's business as usual for them? I don't know if were you shocked by that as well or did you do you know these people so well that you thought oh it's business as usual for them i don't know if i'm shocked by anything anymore in politics maybe a little um maybe i'm just that cynical at this point but people have political bias and they're willing to they're they're willing to say something untrue uh in

favor of their political bias uh i say it often. Both sides, I think, just think that the problem with the Democrats, well, the problem we have with Democrats is that they just have more of a platform. They're far more clever when it comes to making their lies sound legitimate. Very clever at this. We all know this. We are not clever at this our life when when we when we put out rhetoric or points made or whatever it is we put out arguments um it has this sort of hair on fire style to it that i wish you know what i appreciate about you know we got charles cook here what i appreciate about national review and you peter is you don't sound like that all right there's certain institutions that don't sound like that the wall street journal does not sound like that. All right. There's certain institutions that don't sound like that. The Wall Street Journal does not sound like that. The Daily Wire does not sound like that. We sound reasonable. We make good arguments. Not everyone does. When the left makes bad arguments and sounds

crazy, it's dismissed easily by your more moderate voters. This is what I see on a daily basis. This is an unfortunate truth that we have to deal with as Republicans. And so they're, and they're able to harness these so-called experts, right? The so-called, whether it's from the, from academia or whether it's, you know, former intelligence agents, former officials, uh, in a way that we just usually that we are usually not able to, I don't know. I don't know how to fix that. I just know how to make the right factual arguments and discredit them when they do it and call them out when they do it. And that's the battle, right? That's the battle. And that will always be the battle. It can frustrate us or we can be happy warriors. Those are our choices. I don't have another choice.

And that's what I tell voters all the time. Like, if you want me to be angrier, I'll be angrier, but I'll be less effective too i'm just telling you that and they'll be like okay fine keep being who you are because i guess it's the truth what about congress i mean these are federal agencies they don't exist without congressional say so congress can conduct oversight after the fact but also congress can determine the scope of the fbi internationally of the cia i mean should should the republican congress insofar as it can with a democratic senate and a democratic president be changing the way the fbi works um certainly now it's not necessarily in my jurisdiction i can't speak to exactly what i

think the the changes should be but they should be on the table for sure um yeah i i've i've talked to some people who i think do understand the fbi a little bit better than i do i've never worked for the fbi i don't understand the institution exactly right um but they say that some of this one way to solve some of these what i would call opportunistic deep state problems because that's what you're dealing with you don't have this vast conspiracy you don't have this top-down uh policy of screwing republicans what you have are biased people in the right position at the right time making a very very poor ethical decision and happening way too often that's difficult that's that since that happening way too often. That's difficult.

That's that since that's an anomalous event, it's difficult to predict and it's difficult to prevent. So how do you do that? You might do it through different hiring practices. You might do it through different promotion practices. I think we should, I think we should look at the military in this way too. Like what, what, what incentivizes someone to be promoted? You know, what are, what are the objective standards by which someone is promoted? Is it some woke crap? Because that's what's happening more and more in, say, the military. It's probably happening more and more in the FBI too. Are you incentivizing this left-wing philosophy? I'm sorry. I'm all head up again, Dan, Congressman. Calm me down here. Okay. You're talking about hiring practices. You're being

very, very, you're being exactly what you said you wanted to be, which is straightforward, and Dan Crenshaw, the Congressman whose hair is not on fire. So let me light mine. Christopher Wray has been director of the FBI for years now, not decades, but years. It's his job to do something dramatic enough to reestablish the confidence of the American public in that institution. That institution engaged in outrageous behavior, outrageous behavior. And all that he's done is see to it that certain protocols for reprimanding, there's been no reform of the institution at all isn't the first thing to do to call haul up christopher ray and say sorry you run an operation that to be

effective must operate in public and that means you need the trust of the american people and you don't have it what are you going to do isn't that the i'm sorry now okay so calm me down i'll well if you're asking we're just gonna if we're gonna have hearings where we demand that he testifies in front of congress under oaths and i i think that's a that's a no-brainer um but but if you're asking me exactly what reforms need to take place i'm not sure yet right i think we need to do another another deep dive into actually what happened and what would actually prevent those in the first place i can't i could just make up reforms right now see there you go again there you go again insisting on knowing what you're talking about before you open your mouth

yeah it's a little bit of that a little bit of that because i mean because because all our side is you know the more hair on fire style of our side all they've said so far is abolish the fbi and i'm like you sound like a democrat you sound like a democrat wanting to defund the police that's obviously not what we're going to do threatening funding if they don't do certain things that's on the table right that that should be on the table um getting rid of all their diversity and inclusion officers uh that's that would be a nice thing uh will it get through will it make it through a divided government probably not but i would certainly be all over that i'd be more concerned about the military. So can I ask one more? I'm sorry. I want I really do. I'm going to shut up now because I actually enjoy listening to you

and I enjoy listening to James and Charlie. So I ask one more question, then I promise I really will shut up. You guys control the committee. You're in the majority in the committee. And the big thing that happens right away is you get to control the staff and congressional staff properly hired and properly deployed can be a very powerful tool by and large it's a bunch of very bright eager young kids smart young kids is generally congressional staff have you guys got control of the staff and are you in a position to say, look, we feel that some reforms may be needed. Go figure it out and come back to us. How does that work?

So on each committee, you don't control all the staff, right? You just have more. So right now we have about half the number of staff on. Well, sorry, last year we had about half the number of staff on each committee as the Democrats had. Now it's just reversed. It's a ratio thing. So they're allowed to hire whoever they want on their side. There's staff that supports a Democrat congressman. There's staff that supports a Republican congressman. Whoever is in charge simply has a larger budget to hire staff. And so we just have a lot more.

But yes, you task them with exactly that to figure out these details. And again, this is not my committee. This would be under Judiciary's committee. This is Jim Jordan. If I were them, I would be hiring people who've actually worked at the FBI and to figure out and tell us or at least hire them on a part time basis or at least have them come in and testify in private. I don't like trying to find information in these public hearings. That's usually a lot of grandstanding.

It's very often the case that if I really want information, I have to pull them aside and go talk to them for three hours. It's actually why I started my podcast because I figured out all these interesting people were coming up to Capitol Hill

and I had no time to actually talk to them. And then nobody would hear what I talked about. And so I started bringing people into the podcast to do exactly that. And that's how you get the fact finding done. and that's how you figure out how to craft the legislation and your staff is there to both coordinate that but also translate what you just what you talk about into legal jargon you know and that's that's a combination of them working uh with will ledge council here at the house and then then you have actual legislation so we had a protracted fight over the speaker and you were critical of some of that i wonder

did anything come out of that did any of the concessions that were achieved um meet with your approval do you think the whole thing was a game was there a difference between say a matt gates and a chip roy i mean how now that it's done and mccarthy won nevertheless what's your view of that four days it was a waste of time there was no reason for it the um the concession there was no concessions i mean to the extent that there were any changes to the rules package um it was a it was a change of the threshold of the motion to vacate from five people to one that's it which is basically no change at all everything else is exactly the same as the same rules package that everybody liked and had been in favor of prior to the speaker's vote. So it was it became

very that's what actually caused all the animosity, because before the first vote, McCarthy asked one of the leaders of this group to tell us as a conference in public, not in public, but in private, but with everyone there in the Republican conference, what else do you guys need? Let's make it happen. And they didn't have an answer. That was a really bad moment. That was a really defining moment. And it made it seem like it was all for nothing. It made it seem like there was something else going on here. And then, of course, everybody's heard about the multiple pages of other concessions that took place, but those are private. I don't get to see those. Those are generally in the form of more personal favors.

So it was a very, I have nothing good to say about that week or the supposed conservative cause that we needed to do that to get such a good historic rules package, quote unquote, historic rules package, which, sure, let's call it that if we want. Do I sound cynical? Well, it's just all BS. We had that before. We had that before the speaker's vote. And also, if it really was about true debate on what needed to change then we could have adjourned the first day and actually just hash it out like adults but no they wanted the votes they wanted the votes every single time and so yeah i just i won't let this narrative go because of that that was that was the narrative that many tried to to create afterwards

thank god that these 20 fought for these changes otherwise we wouldn't have and this is not true it's just a that's a completely false statement and a false narrative now it is true that some of them like fought for them earlier and and got it wasn't much of a fight though it was just offering ideas and they were agreed to and so so some some deserve some credit for just having some of these ideas in the first place. Now, you can question whether those ideas are good. We have like a thousand amendments to vote on right now before we vote on this strategic petroleum reserve bill, because our rules that we created to create a more open process have now allowed the Democrats to waste hours and hours of our time while they put in a ton of amendments. So everything has a consequence. Congressman, let's cast our eyes to the other side of the globe, where the United States is involved in a war. I mean, we're not fighting, but we're helping. A year into the Ukrainian conflict, nobody thought it was going to last a year, but here we are. Battle lines are hardening. The United States is shipping some tanks, which might tip the balance. We'll see.

The Kremlin doesn't like this, naturally. They're saying that, of course, it's not just you guys selling them stuff. We regard this as direct involvement, and there will be consequences, but they've been saying that forever. What do you think is in the cards? How do you look at the Ukrainian situation, the United States' involvement in it? And are you worried it's going to get hotter? I'm obviously for our involvement in it. I do not think that we can stand by and watch one of our longtime adversaries simply engage in wars of conquest. And also have the foolish and naive belief that it'll simply stop there um if you look at statements by putin himself and his generals and the general leadership in the

kremlin there has long been intentions of moving beyond that um and to to sort of recreate the soviet box and then you get into a real war because now you've involved nato so this to the idea that we should have let them is i'll just take the other side's argument the other side being you know the tucker carlson's of the world that putin should be our friend and we should have let them run through ukraine and um and and let them have it i mean these ukrainians they're corrupt anyway so they obviously deserve the genocide they're getting i mean that's the argument it I mean, that's the argument. It's nuts, but that's the argument. Okay, so now you have our longtime adversary right on NATO's borders in that sentence. Is that a really good idea? And they've proven that they'll invade at least multiple

countries to get what they want. How is this a good idea? And how does that make us less likely to be at war in the future? You know, this stuff is complicated. It involves a better understanding, I think, than most people have of how international relations work, deterrence, incentives, the nature of the world we live in. And there's this idea that if we just ignore everything, that everything will be okay. But that's a fine sentiment if you're living in the 1800s. But even then, I'm not even so sure. Maybe the 1700s is a fine sentiment. It took six to eight months to get to europe now it takes nine hours so it is it is a very small world that we live in it's a very interconnected world and as

much as i wish and i'd love to write a fiction novel about a different world but that'd be fiction we live in the world we live in um so that's kind of the general strategic argument for why we do what we do putin is full of crap and he can say that he's gonna he's gonna escalate all he wants he does not have the capability to he is hiring afghan soldiers to fight for him he is hiring chechnyans by the way they think chechnyans are fighting for them no the chechnyans and i've just spoken to people on the ground in ukraine about this because there's americans out there who've gone and joined the ukrainian military just had them on my podcast this week. The Chechens are actually there not to fight Ukrainians, but to put to stop Russians from from bailing, from deserting. They have Chechens in the background waiting for for these

poor Russian conscripts who are not trained, who are totally screwed. If they desert, they get killed by Chechens. There's talk now there's talk now trying to merge the Chechen and the Wagner groups because they're having trouble recruiting the prisons, getting Central Asian people in and somehow getting an army out of this, which is an impossible thing. It's an incoherent force. It's impossible. So the tanks, with your original question, the tanks, yes, tanks are good. Tanks are good. Again, and I hear it from only our own side.

It drives me crazy. These Ukrainians, they're backwater corrupt Ukrainians. They can't operate our tanks. Yes, they can. Yes, they can. Most of these people have engineering degrees and computer science degrees. This is a pretty advanced population. They can work a lot of our stuff already.

Yes, they can work our tanks. This isn't rocket science. We put 18-year-olds with just a high school degree into those damn tanks. Okay? We can train them to work the tanks and there will be a very effective battlefield changer um it also helps that this is this is what the germans needed to to give their tanks uh this will tip the scales i do not there is not much more putin can do short of a tactical nuclear weapon and and i think every

expert analysis i've seen on this is that is a highly highly unlikely scenario he does not want moscow to then be bombed after that so um i i think we're in a good place to actually see the ukrainians continue to win and then come to hopefully some kind of conclusion well putin can bring up the t-14s which refers to the year of their manufacturer which is 1914 uh peter go ahead on the tactical nuke the argument goes like this z Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians, who are doing pretty darn well right now, and they'll do better if we give them more equipment, want it all back. They want to go to the Crimea and they want to recapture that. All right. Interesting. Sevastopol, which is the chief Russian port on the Black Sea, was founded by Catherine the Great in 1683.

Sevastopol and the Crimea has been Russian since some years before, almost a century before this country ratified the Constitution. That's the point at which Putin might actually use a tactical nuclear weapon goes the argument and dan crenshaw says in reply i i still i still think that's highly unlikely um yeah i mean we and again our i wish i wish our own team would stop making putin's points for him it's it's a very frustrating thing to see on a daily basis. It's one thing to believe, and I think this is a naive belief, that the world doesn't matter. We can just not involve ourselves in it and we can focus on, quote unquote, America first. And my response to that is usually it's not America first when Russia and China are doing whatever the hell they want all around the

world and gaining more influence while we have less that's not america first that's america last but at least it's a it's a naive argument but it's not a pro-russia argument it concerns me when the pro when the russian talking points that putin himself likes to put out sort of make their way into the public narrative um and say and so so things like well this really belongs to russia in the first place well that's like saying tex Texas belongs to Mexico. That wasn't that long ago either. So, you know, and if and if and if Mexico invaded Texas right now, I think we'd have a problem with that. I think we'd have a very big problem with that. And I think we keep fighting for every inch of it, even though the Mexicans could say, well, look, this was not that long ago when we had this. I mean, look, I mean, you guys basically speak Spanish down here. here what it should be ours it's

they're ethnically mexican everybody has a mexican last name i mean it's the same argument we would never allow that and we shouldn't expect that the ukrainians would stand for that either i think i think and if you if you talk to ukrainian about this and look we do because same way that we talk to israelis about their situation we look at it from a western point of view and we say look i don't understand why you guys can't just divide it here, here and here and just like call it a call it a day. And they're like, you just don't get it. You just don't.

You're from the West. You just we can explain it to you, but you just don't get it. You don't understand our history the way we do. You don't understand our incentive structures. You don't understand the nature of deterrence. And the Ukrainians will say not one more inch, not one more inch. They have massive national, I think, regret that they didn't do more for Crimea in the first place because they believe that caused this war, allowing Russia.

And I would probably agree with them because that's just how tyrants and bullies operate. If you can, if they can take an inch, they'll take another and they'll take another and they'll keep poking you. And as much as you're for peace and against war, again, what a nice sentiment, but you can go write a fiction novel about that. In the real world, you actually have to push back and it's going to hurt, but it's going to hurt a lot less than the way you would have to push later on when the situation gets a lot worse and they keep going and keep going. And I think and I think that's that that's certainly how Ukrainians think about it. We can we can leverage them. We can leverage them and say, look, we really like you to have a peace

deal here. But to Biden's credit, you can't believe you're saying that he can't say that out loud. He can say that quietly to them, but he cannot say that publicly. It would be a disaster for him to say that publicly, to say that he's looking for some kind of off-ramp, right? Publicly, the right strategy is to say that we're going to support Ukraine until they gain every inch. Never to incur, never to infringe on Russian territory, but to gain every inch of their territory back. That is strategically the right public statement last question of course that's difficult now that russia has said that russian territory extends to the eastern states but we'll get to that later last question uh you'd mentioned that we would respond if mexico invaded and of course

we would but a lot of people will say that mexico or central america is already invading piecemeal streaming over the border. And one of the things that animates a lot of the anti-Ukrainian people, and I'm not one of them, I'm in favor of Ukrainian independence from Russia since I opened my eyes, is the idea that we shouldn't be looking over there, we should be looking at home. We should be doing something about our border. I think we can walk and chew gum. But still, the border situation isn't great. Texas is suing, I understand. What's your take on it? What do you think Biden should do?

And again, that's one of those questions you can probably wrap up in 10, 15 seconds or so before we let you go. Sir, no, and I do agree with that sentiment. The people who are like, hey, why don't we why can't we focus on our own border? Fair sentiment. That's a very fair sentiment. It is not the case that it's a choice. Right. You can easily do both. It's two completely different kinds of problems um i mean to some extent obviously i

think there's military action required uh because i just introduced an authorized use to military force against the mexican drug cartels and so i for one believe that there should be more resources there i'm talking i've been having extensive conversations with democrats on this too there's some who are interested. I think I have one already on the bill. So, and I don't want to release his name yet because I'm not sure he's officially on the bill. But we are very serious about the southern border. I'm very serious about the severe national security threat that the cartels pose.

They are there. Mexico will be, if it's not already in many places, a failed state. This is a huge problem. So nobody is wrong to say that we shouldn't focus on the southern border. It is, in some senses, an invasion. It's not the same kind of invasion that Russia is. That would be a non sequitur. But it is, in a sense, an invasion. There's an immigration crisis.

There's a security crisis. There's a fentanyl crisis. And it all comes from these cartels, hence the AUMF against the cartels. We'd like to hear so much more and that would be a great place for you to plug your podcast where can people what's the name of your podcast where can people get it wish we could get it through the ricochet network perhaps that's in the cards but what's it called i don't even know how to do that but let's do it um it's uh called hold these truths by dan crenshaw says it all And he's had at least one brilliant guest that I know of.

At least one. At least one. At least one. Peter was one of my best guests. Boy, oh boy, is it good to be able to say Congressman, a member of the majority in the House of Representatives. Congressman, thanks so much for joining us today. It's been great.

Thanks again. Thanks, guys. Great to be with you. You know, he's from Texas, Stan Crenshaw. And I know that Texas is big. We tend to think that Texas is hot all the time. No, but there are parts of it that get cold. Now, here in Minnesota, we got our own definition of cold, right? It's four degrees above zero when I woke up today. But I didn't really care because I'd had a warm night.

And I know that no matter how cold it gets today, I'm going to have a warm night waiting for me. And it's going to be cozy. And you know why it's going to be cozy and warm? It's because I have bowl and branch sheets. Nothing better on a brisk winter night. And you can stay cozy all winter long with a set of buttery soft sheets from bowl and branch made with 100% organic cotton threads that get softer every wash. And this is not something that I say that I I've recorded, that I drop in. It's different every week because it's true. My sheets this week, having been washed since the last time we did the podcast,

are incrementally softer than they were before. They just get better and better and better and better. And I should also note that they don't fall apart. They don't fray. They don't get thin so that if you turn too fast, somehow the friction makes them evaporate. No, they're still the same solid sheets that I had before. They're just even better.

And they were great when I got them out of the box in the first place. Why? Highest quality threads on earth. Made from a slow-grown organic cotton for a superior softness and a better night's sleep. Feel buttery to the touch, and they're super breathable, so they're perfect for both cooler and your warmer months. Warmer months, I'm thinking about those slap out of it. This is why the signature hemmed sheets are a bestseller and they're loved by millions of sleepers. And you can hear from more than 10,000 of those sleepers on the, uh, rave reviews you get on the online sites.

And of course, how many presidents altogether now that's right. Three have loved their bowl and branch. Best of all, best of all, really, Bowlin Branch gives you a 30-night risk-free guarantee. As I keep saying, I think they do this because they know that after one night, you're not going to take a cent back. No. But free shipping, free returns on all U.S. orders. Make the most of your bedtime in these cozy, cozy winter nights with Bowlin Branch sheets. Get 15% off your first set of sheets when you use the promo code RICOSHET at BowlinBranch. That's Bolan Branch, B-O-L-A-N-D Branch.com. Promo code Ricochet. And we thank, as ever, Bolan Branch for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast.

Hey, a couple of things here before we leave you. As you know, Ricochet is not just a website, it's a way of life, it's community. And sometimes people get together in person. That's right. Their actual physical selves, not just their little avatars floating in some horrendous hellscape meta world. No, they get together in bars and restaurants and do people things. Some meetups coming. Vacaville, California, a place to be tomorrow, January 28th. John Gabriel, a Saturday for the Phoenix get-together in March.

The French Quarter Fest Party in New Orleans is getting close, and Flickr is gauging interest from Minneapolis. Ooh, Minneapolis meetup around late April or early May. See, if you join Ricochet, you can go to these places and meet the people that you only know on the site, or they'll come to you. That's right, announce a meetup in your town, and Ricochet people will find a way to get there.

For details on our Ricochet meetups, go to ricochet.com slash events. Or just find the module in the sidebar on the site. On the site. On the site where the Ricochet people go. Before we go, guys, V has been canceled on Twitter. AP has now made an addendum to their style book. I read it for you now. We recommend avoiding general and often dehumanizing, quote,

the, end quote, labels, such as the poor, the mentally ill, the disabled, the college educated, the French. The French? Instead, use wording such as people with mental illnesses and use these descriptions only when clearly relevant so what are we to call the french now people with baguettes people people suffering from uh galois breath what what what do we call the french well i don't know what we call the french but i did see a fabulous tweet on this from somebody who said to the Associated Press on Twitter,

this association should be called Persons Associatedly Pressed, or Individuals Whose Press Is Associated to Avoid the Hurtful Dehumanizing Use of The in the Company's Name. That's very good. I like that. You know, I was going to make a joke with this.

There used to be a standing running joke about the French only, you know, not being particularly familiar with soap. And I guess that had to do with some stat that once was noted that the French only used one or two bars of soap a year. And I thought, well, that's funny until I actually encountered French soap, which is brick hard. And it takes a while to get that thing down to a nub. So if the French are only using two bars a year, that I understand now. It takes six months to get one of those things anyway. Also on Twitter this week, Trad West, one of those traditional, you know, it's interesting. Somebody had a whole big thread about how these traditional return restoration Twitter accounts

would show old sculpture and then contrast it with modern stuff on the plinth, would show old gorgeous buildings and then contrast them with hideous modern architecture. They're all actually entry points for white supremacism, that eventually they start to woo you into the world where you're you're uh you're you want to go back to the absolute worst part of it um i follow a lot of these counts i have not been i have not heard the siren song but this is ridiculous

trad west said medieval peasants worked less hours than you, had longer vacations than you, likely had a bigger house than you, definitely had higher tea, ate better food than you, paid way less taxes, and rarely saw their boss. So who's really living in the dark ages? There's enough there to... At least five, depending on which peasants and which period of history you're talking about, at least five out of those seven assertions are just not true, just inaccurate. My favorite bit was a follow-up I saw from the same guy who said that only 25%

of children under six died in the medieval era. Exactly. Well, there was one that didn't have the... Go ahead. Didn't have what? The San Francisco 49ers. You didn't think I was going to fail to work that in, did you? No, Peter, I think you may have missed the tone here.

We're doing things that were bad about the Middle Ages. Oh, not just the Middle Ages. Bitter, bitter, bitter Charles. about the middle ages oh not just the middle ages there's a follow-up tweets to the medieval peasant ones from somebody and i had to save this because it was so beautiful damn can you just imagine being a human during the paleolithic age just eating salmon and berries and storytelling around campfires and stargazing no jobs no traffic no ads no poverty no capitalism caused trauma is just pure vibes and he wasn't kidding this is a right wing left wing horseshoe i see this garbage from people on the left the russarians who believe that we all fell from a perfect state of nature

and i now see this from self-described traditional conservatives who think that we've destroyed ourselves because we have central heating and right ethanol well one of the ones that i follow just out of interest it has to do with the restoring the ideas of chivalry which strikes me as a tall order in this day and age but it's all full of guys on horses with shields and long pointy sticks uh going off on crusades which I don't really think is a model that I particularly want to emulate, especially when I'm wild about chivalry. If you actually look into it, it's full of people saying,

go over there and kill that large man. And you say, I don't really want to, I was busy building a small house. And they say, no, you have to, because I'm the king.

And also if you do that that woman over there will be forcibly turned into your wife not into it bring back a ribbon from a lady so she can hang it and uh and and yeah no neither am i so i don't romanticize any open doors for ladies of course of course i do uh well that's chivalry of course i met somebody i met a woman the other day and i stood to shake her hand that's that's how old old world i am if i had a hat i would have doffed it of course i don't so it's chivalry but it's not medieval chivalry it's nothing true we call it chivalrous because we've no other word for it used to be just basic decency. Do you open doors for women, Peter? Peter Robinson I do. I do. I have gotten on the Stanford campus, I have gotten some slightly harsh looks from undergraduates, women undergraduates for whom I've opened doors. But by and large,

people seem, women seem grateful. And I do, I'm of an age where I do it reflexively. I don't think I could stop myself at this point. Do you think that the reason that all the doors open of their own volition in Star Wars and Star Trek and other movies set in the future is that people got so tired of being told off for doing the right thing that they just put a motor. Well, here in Minneapolis, where we have the Skyway system that connects all of our buildings, there's automatic doors that seal off the, you know, all the various entrances here and there. So what you have to do then, if you want to be a chivalrous male, is leap in front of a woman and throw your body in front of the invisible beam so that it opens up and she can, and Milady can pass through. So we already had that Star Trek future world here in Minneapolis, by the way, Charlie. So I'm here to answer your question world here in Minneapolis, by the way, Charlie. So I'm here to answer your question.

Speaking of being of a certain age, I can remember the first couple of trips from upstate New York, where I grew up, to New York City. And my father pointed this out when he stood. So I would have been in single digits, 9, 10, 8, 9 nine in that range or early double digits in age so this is a long time ago men stood up for women on the bus to let them take their seats and that was that was a routine happening that world is gone that bit has just i haven't seen anything like that in years do you know how bad it's got there was a pregnant woman on the subway when i was in new york and she got onto the subway and a whole bunch of men sitting down i was already standing up that's why i didn't help and no one moved no one offered her and eventually she said that's bad guys i'm pregnant it's none you know

it's none of you going to offer me your seat and then one guy looked bashful and sort of got up and stared at the floor but what have any of the lessons of society in the last 20 30 years encourage men to do this or have they encouraged men to stay seated because she's a strong woman and the fact that she's pregnant with a fetus is that somehow a disability it's not you've just seen she was a woman too right it's common sense to do this for it's simply basic human decency when you see somebody old or frail or in a whatever perilous state is to give up your seat for them but what we what we got when we went to this whole notion of equality and and and erasing every possible distinction because they're harmful and make people internalize things and the rest of it, what we did was we

did not empower our better selves. We empowered the louts. We told them that there is now a cultural wind behind them to be as loutish as they wish, to not open the doors, to not stand, treat women like disposable property because everybody's equal in the sexual sense. We encouraged the deconstruction of the American male that had been 50, 60 years in the making. Nice job, 60s. Nice job, 60s. I saw it. Good work.

Well, I will note that the good work being done by Four Patriots and by Bowling Branch, which is good for you because your life is immeasurably better when you have these products, that the good work is not limited to them. No, the good work you, my humble listener, can do is to go to Apple and give us five-star reviews on the podcast. This being the 627th podcast, I haven't joined in about 100. I think I've asked you that 527 times. Will I ask you 528? I probably will. But if all of you did it, I wouldn't ask anymore. No, I'd keep asking.

Anyway, the reviews help because then more people discover us and the podcast and the site and Ricochet grows and grows and grows. And Ricochet, we hope, will be here so long that someday Rob Long will be back in the podcast. But until then, it's just a joy to have you here, Charlie. Peter as ever. Guys, it's been fun. And we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Next week. John U, 10 bucks, says the 49ers crush the Eagles.

Well, at least eke out a small victory. Next week, boys. Ricochet. Join the conversation.