The Ricochet Podcast - Fishing Expedition

Episode Date: August 19, 2022

Since our plans to hide away forever at a remote Minnesotan lake house were dashed – on account of James not having one for us – we decided instead to jump on into the mucky swamp that’s swallowed up our institutions. At least we have Eli Lake (who, as you’ll hear, knows everybody) to tour us through the law enforcement agencies who’ve undermined their standing with the public in order to get the... Source

No, don't fix it. I insist you better not. You better not fix it. I have a dream this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. If I were like Donald Trump's lawyer right now, I would be advising my client to be telling my family I am looking at jail time. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. Yeah, Rob is back. I james lovick and today we all talk to eli lake about mar-a-lago and blue and on so let's have ourselves a podcast

welcome everybody to the ricochet podcast episode number 606 how do we get to 607 well you can help us by joining at ricochet.com. You can be part of the most stimulating conversations and community on the web. And how did Ricochet get to be in the first place? Because of the founders, Peter Robinson in California and Rob Long, who's back with us. He was recently in Marseille, I think, wearing a striped shirt and hanging around the docks

learning the latest Apache dance moves. But he's back with us. How's the accordion coming along? Well, you know, that's more Paris, but I accept your, as they say, the Woody Allen movie, I accept your condemnation. It was great. I got to say, it was really, it was a great trip. It was kind of crazy.

It had a lot of ups and a lot of firsts for me, including a fantastic ferry ride across the Tunisia, across the Mediterranean from Tunisia to Marseille, and kind of a coffee hour with Viktor Orban. So, you know, had a little high and low. Well, really, we should start there, because who wants to rehash some of the depressing stuff that's happened this last week? You had coffee with Viktor Orban. Yeah, so we were in Hungary for an arts conference, of all things,

or arts festival put on by the university there, which is called MCC Magnus Corvallis Collegium. And basically, it's the Hungarian Hillsdale. Although, like Hillsdale, it's filled with very smart young people who are super super sophisticated and very you know kind of in the world and then while we were there that we got a call say hey do you guys want to have a cup of coffee with the uh the prime minister before he goes to cpac i guess that's right that's right that's right and so you know like just to paint a picture of the guy uh he's funny and kind of avuncular.

And we kind of walk into the prime minister's office, and there's zero protocol. There's zero really pomp and circumstance of any kind. He's there. We have a cup of coffee. He needs some little pastries. Do you speak in English with him? He speaks great English, tells good jokes in English. Tore Doriz about of europe and

the war in ukraine which was interesting especially from his perspective which was ably well which was you know um it wasn't really more about ukraine than it was about his weirdly vulnerable position where he is in hungary he kept reminding us it's a country of 10 million people that's only really just now experiencing any kind of independence of any kind um so they kind of want to have their have their hungarian moment which they are sort of richly deserve after all these years so uh and then he defended himself you know he started off he'd just given a speech in um in romania yes yes which was very controversial which he said what he described as a very stupid thing.

And he said it wrong, and he didn't say what he meant, and it sounded dumb, and he wished he hadn't said it. But he said, look, I said it. And he said that to you. He said, I said it wrong. I wish I hadn't said it. I said it wrong. He said, I got to pay the price, but that's, you know, that's the, that's, so I got to. You know, his argument about culture, to us, that language to us has different uh has just different meanings and different um triggers what did he say to him well what he said what he said was that he didn't

think the hungary should be a big mixed up culture um and he and he and it sounded like he was talking about race um but he was really just talking about culture he made a very interesting distinction he said that um you know um european jews especially in places like france will will realize they'll be happier and safer probably in hungary than they will be in france which is provocative thing to say but i don't think he's totally wrong so that was how he answered the anti-semitism um charge i mean he's getting charged with everything you know he's he's right right the only thing i and i i found absolutely charming and and not a hundred percent convincing but certainly convincing from his perspective from the perspective of a guy in hungary just trying to make it work um so uh it was fascinating and but i thought i was just gonna

say the the his mannerisms and the way he handles it was, to me, the most interesting. He starts off by saying he did a dumb thing and now he's got to pay the price and that's that. There's no whining or complaining, no blame shifting. It was nobody's fault but his own. And then the way he runs the meeting, there are a couple of Hungarians there who were really ostentatiously not terrified to be in the room with him. So there was a lot of pushback from them. There's like interrupted him every now and then he looked at them like, did I say that wrong?

There was a lot of collegiality, which is impossible to fake, especially if you were the strong man dictator, you know, that's going to be hard to fake. And so I found him impressive. Peter, I think I said to you in text, I found him. Heeter i think i said you didn't text i found him

um he reminded me a lot of rupert murdoch obviously a lot's going on busy day busy set of uh things he's got to do every day but super relaxed and willing to speak in a broad kind of uh wide angle lens philosophically about the world in large and small and um inspires zero deference right that's from his underlings which is so crucial yeah very very telling great telling right okay here's the quote and i want to tell me tell you here's what is being reported radio free liberty speaking at an event in central central Romania in front of a thousand strong audience. Orban said, quote, We move, we work elsewhere, we mix within Europe, but we don't want to be a mixed race and quote a quote multi ethnic and quote people who would mix with, quote, non-Europeans and quote. So this was taken to be anti-Semitic. It seems to me that it's it's that it's it's obviously uh directed at immigrants from elsewhere from

from the middle east and what he's saying is that he wants hungary to be culturally intact to not change itself in order to adapt to you know to different cultures coming into it so that's no surprise right it goes against the whole european identity that there is actually no national identity at all there is a european identity based on ideas and anybody can apply to it uh which works for a little while until it starts to get cold and the money's tight and then it doesn't work at all yeah right this is no surprise so basically the problem with orban is that he doesn't believe that all societies in europe should atomize themselves and should balkanize themselves

and change into a a mixed bowl a salad bowl as they will so right yeah well i mean his point is that like it's one thing to say that if you're a country of 350 million americans or even if you're france i mean although i, or even if you're France. I mean, although I think the French are probably more generally on Orban's side than they are on the side of the Brussels bureaucrats, right? But I think his larger point is, look, we have this bizarre weirdo language. Hungarian resembles no other language. He says, look, when I go to these EU meetings he said i can't i don't talk my i don't speak hungarian to anybody whereas the all the other countries are at least one other person

they can talk to i'm all alone in my hungarianist they are proud of their ethnicity they're proud of their um they are kind of a cultural mixing melting pot if you if you add in hungarians and slobs and um people like that but he you know this is their shot. They were vassals of the Ottoman Sultan. They were vassals of an emperor to the west. They were vassals of a dictator in Moscow. They had a brief period for 10, 15, 20 years of a wobbly dictatorship slash democracy before Hitler invaded. When they were vassals of a dictator in Berlin. They want to be Hungarians for a little bit and the funny thing is he said he said two things i thought were very fascinating one is he cut kind of the shrugging bears remind

me a very hungarian way to look at life which is like hey you know we're going to try this for now sure that when i'm gone you know we'll end up looking less right but his goal is to like show hungarians what it's like to be hungry, to be specifically hungry, which is something that American ethnicities do understand. We hear it all the time. You hear it from Italians and Jews and blacks who want to like, you know. Anyway, the second thing he said was really fascinating. least at least to me was the idea that a christian democracy is the safest best place for people to live who are different so his point was that european jews are much much safer in a christian true christian democracy which is what he's building and then i've said the third thing

he's doing is he's saying that there's no way he can pass laws to protect this all he can do is try to build up institutions and so um and why was there as a guest of a university that he has helped build and help start because he's trying to build institutions rebuild institutions because of course in hungary the way united states the institutions are basically all left-wing um and i found that to be like that would be a rather than um focusing on some of those from his other other positions i think that is the lesson that american conservatives should take from orban which is yeah here's the here to me this is the problem that they all face and orban is the only one who shows any cognizance of the problem, and here it is. The population of Africa is projected to grow by one billion over the next 30 years, and the population of Europe, I've just got this in front of me now, the population of Europe,

including the UK, is projected to drop by about one or two percent within the next 30 years, and to continue dropping after that. So what you've got is 30 years from now, there are going to be a lot of empty villages in France and enormous pressure from just across the Mediterranean. So what do you do? If you let in a billion people and your population is 500 million, you're no longer what you were.

On the other hand, you want to be humane and encouraging and this is hard. And it strikes me that he's laying down, he's the only one who's thinking about it seriously. And of course, he's getting... Why is it hard? I mean, in America, why is it hard? In America, we have a civic identity. We have a set of beliefs to which anybody can subscribe, and we welcome everybody who wants to participate in those things. It's not based on... We used to. You're still talking in the present tense? I am still talking about the America in my head.

I want to live in your head too, James. The basic idea is that this is not based on soil and blood and the rest of it. This is a set of ideas that extend to all humanity. Come here, enjoy them. And so that's why you can come here from anywhere in the world and be an American as much as anybody else. And we love the people who come here from anywhere and be an American like us. Right. But that model does not necessarily apply or have to apply

to states that have a very tight ethnic identity. And it is not a language that nobody wants to learn well let's say it's even french let's say it's french or it's czech or it's or it's whatever it is when you have a state a state that goes back a thousand years one way or the other identify right that is bound by language by culture by folkways by music by a whole bunch of things. The idea that that state is somehow obligated to dissolve itself for altruistic humanistic reasons seems to me to be asking of them something that is asked of absolutely nobody else in the world. I'm willing to accept that the whole colonial endeavor of the 19th century was appalling. And it was. Ask the Belgians. Ask the Congo. It was a horrible genocidal event. But the Belgians. Ask the Congo. It was a horrible, genocidal event.

But the obverse then can't be true. You cannot say then that if we had, if we being the West, had the right to go there and impose our culture on them for the purposes of whatever, extraction, enjoyment, whatever, that somehow then,

100, 150 years later, that it should work the other way, and now it's morally pure and good because why no i i get your point i mean look i think you his point his he would agree with you and his point is that well it's one thing with a country with 10 million and it's another thing with a country of 350 million which is united states and then somebody said a very interesting thing so what's the difference and this shows shows, Orban really does read widely. He's a former intellectual and a

former professor, and he's very smart. And he reads very widely, and he read, and he says, well, because you guys are lucky. You have the Mexicans. And what he meant was, Mexicans come to the United States and they're basically Christian. They're basically aligned with the Judeo-Christian ethic. They're basically

excited to be in the United States of America and work hard, and they tend to work hard. They tend to do a lot of jobs that, you know, I think Americans would do, but it isn't like they come in to sleep in the bus station. You know, they come to work. And I just thought that was a very astute position for a guy who's supposed to be this troglodyte and this racist and this white supremacist to make. Well, the Mexicans, yes, but also the nigerians yeah i don't know if they're christian or they're muslim or whatever but they come i mean again again it's a self-select self-select probably but it's a self-selecting group and yes but they do extremely and the asians the asians aren't coming because they're christian coming because so i i mean i see his point but you can extend it to various

i mean we're lucky not because we have the Mexicans. We're lucky because we have a culture and an idea and an ethos that allows people to thrive if they want to. Yeah, we're a different country. We're a different country. And yeah, the DNA of the United States is you come here, you come to this country, and you build a life. That's deeply embedded in our DNA. There's no way around it. His point is Hungary's different.

That's not what he's facing. And it's not what he's facing his job is to help hungarians be hungarians for just for a little bit like he gets like just you know can just give us like a 50 years two decades yeah before we have to do all the other things and his point is that actually in two decades a lot of those countries in europe will realize that maybe the better thing to do is to figure out a way for the places that are exploding in population to um do for themselves right like maybe better ideas to have the economy of africa grow as a continent um that may be the solution anyway well fascinating cup of coffee with victor orban much more interesting than talking about Liz Cheney and the rest of it.

Somewhere in Hungary right now, Victor Orban is recording a podcast saying, you know, I had a fascinating cup of coffee with this man called Rob Long. Well, there are other people that I have to say, and as usual, I had to ask an off-the-wall question, which I think he enjoyed, which was, I said, you know, we're all conservatives in the his united states every now and then we're at a dinner party or something or an event and um we're talking to a liberal and they'll sidle up and they'll say after maybe a glass of wine or two you know i agree with you guys a lot like i think you guys are right about this or that or the other right we've all had experience right i said does it all the time has that ever happened to you in these eu meetings or in brus somewhere where some, you know, classic, you know, northern European, as he calls the post-West leader will come up to you and say, well, I agree with you, beat down. And if you laugh, he said, no, never. Which I thought was funny. Well, no matter what happens then, probably, when this post hits ricochet and people start commenting on it, the thread will be epic.

Speaking of epic threads. Nice. Yeah, speaking of threads, well, there's different definitions of the word. And, of course, one of them are the threads that make up your sheets. Thread count. You've been probably talking about that to impress people. Oh, they're 900-count threads. Listen, thread count, it's a myth.

It doesn't matter how many threads your sheets have if they're not the best threads possible. Bowlin Branch uses the best 100% cotton organic threads on earth for a superior softness and a better night's sleep. Their sheets aren't just buttery, breathable, and impossibly soft to start with. They get softer with every wash. Now, I come to you like I came to you last week, saying, it's true, my sheets this week are softer than they were the last, and will continue to be so as long as we're talking about Bowlin Branch and as long as I'm sleeping on them and washing them. Soft as silk, but they wear like iron. Signature hemmed sheets from Bowlin Branch are a bestseller for a very good reason,

because you'll immediately feel the difference. From there, however, the sheets get softer and softer with every wash, because they're made with threads so luxurious they're beloved by three, one, two, three U.S. presidents. And if the presidents can't convince you, check out their reviews on the web. 10,000 stellar reviews. Plus, Bowling Branch gives you a 30-night risk-free trial with free shipping and returns on all orders.

And I always thought, why would you let people sleep on your sheets for 30 days and then take them back? Well, I think it's because they know you're not going to send them back. After one night, you're going to say, these are my sheets for life. Get 15% off your first set of sheets when you use the promo code RICOSHET at BowlinBranch.com. That's BowlinBranch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D-B-R-A-N-C-H dot com. Promo code Ricochet. And we thank Bowling Branch for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast Eli Lake, contributing editor

for Commentary, host of the Re-Education Podcast, where he discusses what they'll be doing in Taiwan after China takes over. No, I'm kidding. Written for Bloomberg, Daily Beast, many, many, many others. He's been podcasting and tweeting about the DOJ and Mar-a-Lago, and since, well, since we podcast ourselves once in a while, we wanted to see if he'd like to podcast with us

mutually. Welcome, Eli. Thanks for joining us again. Thanks so much for having me. I love the podcast. You got a tweet. Let's talk about this recently. You tweeted, one way the Mar-a-Lago raid is so harmful to our republic is that it gives false hope to the blue Anon crowd. These poor souls need to be treated like alcoholics and encouraged to confront their addiction to innuendo and conspiracy theories. That's interesting. But yet they've taken this pure hit right to the veins and seem still to be on quite the high about it. Well, the first response when the story broke and we were told it was about a dispute with the national archive over presidential records was oh yeah

uh i hope they better they better have something you know this is a really this is a real escalation and so there was this window of less than 12 hours where you saw a lot of sort of mainstream commentators and others a little queasy about what had happened because it was not, the leak was not, this is related to January 6th or something that you could sort of imagine like this narrative that, uh, you know, no one's above the law. And then there was wild speculation that maybe Trump was selling nuclear secrets to foreign adversaries. And then, you know, then we found out that it didn't have to be even classified. And then, then the spin was, you know, Barbara McQuaid was saying, I mean, she's a former prosecutor, goes on MSNBC all the time, how brilliant it was that they didn't require picking up classified information and they can

get them on something else. And it sort of looks like any charge will do. And it's really about, you know, feeding a storyline. It's like the latest episode of The Walls Are Closing In. And I cannot imagine that Merrick Garland, the attorney general, will be so reckless as to indict a former president on a charge that has to do with mishandling classified information. Even though this falls under something called the Espionage Act, which sounds really, really bad, it's a troubling law in my view. And it goes back to World war one and the wilson administration and and it is you is never been enforced consistently and if you look at other senior officials as opposed to sort of regular folks you don't people like david betray us or even hillary clinton or sandy burger there's nothing comparable there that would suggest there would

be serious criminal liability for Trump for improperly storing classified information. It's unclear whether Trump had the power to declassify it. There's all these questions. There's so much we don't know that that's where that tweet was coming from. At this point, you're talking about this with your colleagues at Commentary. You're thinking about it. You're tweeting about it. You being you, you're reading everything about it that you can read. Can you construct a scenario under which Merrick Garland acted dispassionately, reasonably, in the wider national interest, and apolitically. Is that an

option? Is it possible to put such a construction on the facts as we know them? Or is this, do we just have to conclude that although there are many details to come, this is one example, in one way or another this is political okay so yes i can if i really if i'm being honest i could imagine that there was a um confidential informant inside the trump organization in at mar-a-lago who um noticed a delegation of uh you know chinese officials were given a tour i guess of you know this is where my personal safe is and oh my god what is that document over there i'm sorry maybe you're supposed to see it who cares yes i suppose you can if you really want to think about it you could

see a scenario in which there was sort of breaking information that the fbi had in their investigation that required this to you know that there be a raid right away so they could preserve evidence. On the other hand, if it's true that he deliberated on this for weeks and they knew that there was this dispute with the National Archive and that some of this might have been classified, we knew this since January when they returned the first batch and it wasn't all the documents, some of them might have been classified and very classified very highly well then what why is it why did you wait eight months right and then suddenly you have to do it this way if it was such a pressing concern that the documents were going to fall into the wrong hands there is a theory from andy mccarthy who i read uh everything he writes the former u.s attorney who writes a

national review who says this is a fishing expedition for january 6th related stuff right and he felt after looking at the war and it was so broad that it confirmed his view but that is that's that's i think informed speculation but it's speculation um but at this point we don't know and yet half of the political discourse is convinced that this is the time they're really going to get it. For the 97,000th time. Yeah, exactly. I mean, listen, there's a guy named Lawrence Tribe, who was a professor at Harvard, and actually was the professor of Merrick Garland and Adam Schiff,

and is very highly esteemed in the legal community. And he was just on MSNBC saying, I think this is a slam-dunk case for Merrick Garland, based on what I'm seeing. And I'm like, how many times has this guy said this before? And so this and it's it's it's a particular problem in the following sense, because it's one thing, you know, the right has its its its whackadoodles as well. But like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's a former aerobics instructor, it's not people who it's not last tribe a long time and exactly on short list for the supreme court pretty much every time as a democrat in the white house right yes exactly so that's my point is that you have on the it's it's there's an interesting disparity on this which is that you have oh wackadoodles are wackadoodles there's a

revered figures well that's right or what has been revealed in the Trump years is that people at the highest levels of the legal profession and law enforcement, all these former FBI people, I mean, just like Peter Strzok on Morning Joe,

who we sort of expect to be these, you know, non-political, very professional, you know, sober-minded and everything like that, have revealed themselves to have a kind of almost

a sickness when it comes to trump an addiction to this spy thriller narrative and it's scary to think that these people are you know teaching the next generation of justice department lawyers what is most scary about it because i i sort of, part of me has this keystone cops kind of, I've rolled my eyes because they've been saying this for, you know, five years, six years now, about they're going to frog march him out of the White House every month practically. Sure.

So part of me thinks it's kind of a clown car show. But there's another part of me that seems that they continually do this thing which is the most dangerous thing it seems to me to be doing, and certainly in the show but there's another part of me that seems that they continually do this this thing which is the most dangerous thing it seems to me to be doing and certainly in the realm of justice and democracy saying well look he's awful we got to get him out of there somehow and that seems to have that that philosophy seems to be an unembarrassed motivation that's the kind of

thing you keep keep to yourself in the past but does seem to be that's what the left is saying that's what the merrick garland of the department of justice is probably saying which is like yeah yeah yeah maybe this is maybe this is this is these are flimsy you know this is we're really just going to go in there and try to on a fishing expedition but we have to because he's just trump is just awful which um i mean i agree with the second part but he you know we live in democracy you get to vote for him if you want well well i think there's two reasons why it's it's dangerous the first reason is that uh these are important institutions that i do not want i'm not a radical i'm not i'm not a i'm not like a an american bolshevik or something i don't

want these institutions to topple and when you have enough of this, not just hyperbole, but when you have enough of this sort of like expectation that the big thing is coming and that then it discredits these institutions. And it further squanders whatever public trust is left for half of America when it comes to the FBI or the Justice Department. And it's really important that strong majorities of Americans believe that these institutions are on the level, which is something that is harder and harder to do. So that's one thing that happens when you just have all these constant former senior officials and others saying these things and behaving in this way. But the other thing that it does is it it's like, I look at it like this. The country is, do you remember a joke shops used to have something that was, uh,

that were called, I guess, Chinese finger cups. You remember this? These were bamboo. So, right, exactly.

So the way to get out of that is actually, you have to be very careful and like kind of wiggle around, but no sudden movements. If you pull really fast, then what you've done is you, you have to be very careful and like kind of wiggle around, but no sudden movements. If you pull really fast, then what you've done is you've only tightened the grip. So that's the equivalent of raiding Mar-a-Lago on a presidential records dispute. It's you're tightening the you're tightening the connection between trump and his base and you're making it harder for the republicans to nominate somebody else besides trump and you're just basically you know you're reinforcing the dynamic where both sides kind of prepare for this break uh i'm not

saying it's a civil war i think that's a little bit overheated but still so those are the two things is that you discredit the institutions that need to be respected and have the public trust of everybody, and you also are going to guarantee a kind of intense counter-response from the other side that's going to further break us apart. Eli, talking about institutions and the people who run them, two days ago, someone called Edward Luce put up this tweet. I've covered extremism and violent ideologies around the world over my career, have never come across a political force more nihilistic, dangerous, and contemptible than today's Republicans. Nothing close. And that tweet got retweeted by General Michael Hayden. Right. And General Michael Hayden put on top of his tweet, I agree. And I was the CIA director. What do you make of that?

Well, okay. I should say, I know both of those people, and I think they've had better moments off of social media let's just put it but very nice it's it's that's it's an insane that's an insane thing to say i mean we i don't know i mean like i've on both of their parts but yeah it's like like general hayden like you're the cia director during the 9-11 wars so you would have been aware of isis and al-qaeda like i mean are you serious we don't have an american basiji like they have in iran like a kind of paramilitary force that will make sure people vote the right way and you know who gets benefits from the state and everything anyway i don't even want to get into it it's a

it's kind of a nutty it's a nutty thing i mean listen it doesn't excuse i think you're going easy on me i think i didn't realize you were friends but that's very speaking of contemptible that kind of activity to a man who held that office yeah 74 million people voted for donald trump he's saying essentially that half of the electorate of the united states of america is contemptible how How dare he? And worse than, I don't know, Al Qaeda. Worse than all the people you just mentioned. Al Qaeda, right, exactly.

Worse than Al Qaeda. Which is nuts. How dare he? But of course, listen, I don't consider myself a wackadoodle, although I'm sure my friend Rob does, but I think to myself, wait a minute. I put some, all these years now now I have reposed a certain fundamental trust in the competence and disinterestedness of the people who are running our intelligence operations. The FBI has now totally disgraced itself. Christopher Wray may have been appointed by Trump,

but he has, if he, maybe he's reforming that institution in some quiet way and doesn't want to get press but if he doesn't understand the way half the country just thinks the fbi has disgraced itself yeah and any reform of that institution must be public or general hayden and leon panetta and the 48 others whose other former ranking intel officers who signed that letter saying that the hunter biden laptop was russian disinformation which they had no reason to suppose at the time and which we now know is untrue and not a single all right you get the picture yeah that strikes me as really serious we have 16 intelligence agencies in this country and they're all run by fools and partisans what other conclusion is there to draw i am i mean the hunter biden laptop is a

disgrace i listen it's i'm not i mean i've been banging on about this and i'm holding you you know i've been i think you're describing a lot of really intelligent people who are on the center right who are not Trumpers, are still red-pilled when it comes to the FBI in particular and also the broader intelligence community. And how can somebody say something like that? It seems so extreme. Even though if you just simply said, this Carrie Lake woman in Arizona is totally nuts. What's happened to the party of John McCain. I, I co-sign on that one, but is it the most extremist movement you've ever seen?

Give me a break. It's nuts. I hate to interrupt you, but business needs to be done. And so join me, Toby young and my very good friend, James Dellingpole on London calling with new shows released every Monday. We gripe and moan with impotent rage at the latest assaults on our freedoms across the English-speaking world,

marvel at the antics of our Oxford contemporary and former spectator boss Boris Johnson, and keep up a running commentary on the latest effusions of the entertainment industry, like a conservative country club version of Statler and Waldorf, except a lot more highbrow, obviously. It's all right here on the Ricochet Audio Network and wherever you download your podcasts. Good idea. And now, back to the show. Why are they making it so hard?

First of all, I have to say, to agree with Peter and everything, especially the fact that he's a wackadoodle. But why are they making it so hard? I mean,, I have to say, to agree with Peter and everything, especially the fact that he's a wackadoodle. But why are they making it so hard? I mean, I was talking to somebody last night, and one of the arguments they were making about Trump was that he undermined confidence in our basic institutions. Which is true, I think, about electoral integrity. I mean, I think, you know, on the record here, he lost. He lost fair and square. That's all there is to it.

But he didn't undermine our confidence in the FBI and he didn't undermine our confidence they they put the thumb on the scale for hillary clinton and then they uh clumsily took it off and then put it back on again a few weeks before the uh uh before the election um the intelligence community covered itself in absolute ignominy with especially with this uh hunter biden um um open letter although some might say it happened earlier when they pointed to satellite photographs of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that weren't theirs. Why is it so hard for us to reform what should be sort of easy to reform institutions? I mean, it's hard to reform Congress, but it shouldn't be hard to reform

the intelligence community. Well, it's hard because there's a necessary level of secrecy involved. And it's easy to justify that level of secrecy when the predecessor to the CIA, the OSS, was formed during World War II. The country was behind the war. Everybody understood the need to win the war and that there's certain secrecy that was needed. And for a long time, we were fighting a Cold War, the cia was on the front lines of that cold war and there was a level of secrecy that was needed and that began to erode in the 1970s for a number of reasons uh one of

them is that we had a very foolish decision by a cia director to ask cia station chiefs and senior officials to write down every crime they had committed which then was soon leaked to cy hirsch known as the family jewels and then there was philip agee who defected and then you know started outing people so the all of the cc in the 70s you know and then we have the church commissions which is sort of doing it a more legitimate way having a historically incredibly weak presidency in gerald ford after watergate uh they're unable to sort of do all that. And so we have this moment. And then we accepted a lot of that kind of necessary secrets, you know, for at least the first few years of the war on terror after 9-11. But, you know, eventually in an open society, these things out.

And there were reforms in terms of after Iraq, in terms of how technically some of these assessments are done. I don't know if they were necessarily effective, but there were some of these reforms. But we have a love-hate relationship, especially, I mean, with these institutions, because when there's a terrorist attack, the first question is, where was the CIA? Why didn't they know this? Why couldn't they have prevented it? But then when we find out that cia is doing some horrible thing that we didn't know about you know influencing an election in some country and everything like that we're like i can't believe these guys i'm so embarrassed and everything like that so it's this typical kind of schizophrenic you know relationship that we have

we we don't reform because the left likes what the fbi is doing now i mean well and the left is gaslighting the left would never i mean i keep i put this on twitter but i've said this to my friends who are more liberal and i said listen what have i told what let's just imagine the following hypothetical roger stone gives a rumor monger sheet of bs information to the fbi who embraces it and uses it in their in their investigation in number of ways including to get um an ill-begotten surveillance warrant uh against an aid to Clinton's Hillary Clinton's campaign but also you know to affect an assessment to strategically leak elements of it and to sort of keep an investigation which was hitting a dead end into um hillary clinton going you would be screaming watergate 2.0 how is it possible that a total

political operative could have you know had that much trust from the fbi on a matter that involves the his political opponent i mean it's an incredible kind of thing but that's what happened in reverse hillary clinton's people not only with this steel dossier which we've talked about before but you know we see now from the latest stuff that john dorham and the special counsel is doing you know they they had a fake white paper about the alpha bank trump tower connection um it wasn't just that it was it was bad oppo that was leaked to the press it was bad oppo that was leaked to the fbi and now we find out that when the line agents at the fbi said this is garbage what are we doing word comes down from comey and the leadership team then turn

it into a counterintelligence investigation and keep it open that that came out in the trial of michael sussman uh the former hillary clinton lawyer who won on a very narrow thing but all this information came out in that case so that to me is a huge scandal that needs that's crying out for reform and the question is and i guess i have mixed feelings about it is do we need a new church committee do we need a new yes we do to nuts reform minded kind of oversight to just look into all this because i think the fbi uh is in desperate need of reform in order for it to survive and have the public legitimacy the democratic legitimacy to still be effective right and it has to be done but all the people and and i hope that it will, right now what we see is people who are in favor of the FBI going forever on as it has are pouring tomein down the well.

Because the minute the Republicans take over again and start to do an investigation, it's not going to be seen as something that's for the better of the country, for the reform of our institutions. It'll be seen as pure political payback and attempt to politicize it in the direction that they want. So that will be hard to sell. I hope it happens. Yeah, but this is the thing. I mean, listen, I don't want to beat up necessarily on the mainstream media. How is it possible that Andrew McCabe is a paid contributor to CNN, which is Andrew McCabe.

Andrew McCabe, there's an Inspector General report about how Andrew McCabe lied repeatedly in an internal investigation into a leak actually about Hillary Clinton. It's a long story. But, you know, this is somebody who is in the center of all of this stuff, and he is just an analyst now? He's a documented partisan and a documented liar. And he's an analyst for CNN. On the public record. liar and he's an analyst for cnn record he should be interviewed as a target as a subject of a of a news investigation not as well what does this mean for trump and then when i saw peter struck on morning joe you have to see this clip it's amazing you know joe scarborough like winds him up and

says hey sometimes the fbi makes mistakes but you know it's still really important so should we trust this and of course peter struck says absolutely we should trust it and the fbi would never you know be partisan it's just not who we are i'm like are you giving he's the most partisan guy in the world come on now that we've worked ourselves up into unanimous indignation here's a new question up until two weeks ago or 10 days ago the polls indicated that the country was just moving powerfully against the Democrats. And of course, this fits as totally consonant, at least with my reading of the political situation. Joe Biden is demented. We have inflation. We have weakness. Just a catastrophe. Of course,

the country is moving to the opposition. I don't know whether the two events are connected, but I'm asking you. There's a raid on Trump. My thought is that's going to cause people to rally behind Trump. To me, that's distressing in itself. But I'm wrong. All the polling this week shows not only that certain individual Republican Senate candidates are doing badly. You could argue that Mehmet Oz is not a strong candidate in and of himself. It's still surprising that he's trailing by double digits, but on the generic poll, for the first time in weeks and weeks and weeks, whom would you rather elect to Congress? Not asking about specific candidates, but would you rather vote

for a republican or a democrat for the first time in weeks the democrats have moved into the lead what's going on i don't know if it's necessarily connected to the mar-a-lago stuff because i think the mar-a-lago stuff will turn up i think it might be reluctant i mean i don't know it's i don't want to it's pure speculation on my part, but. Eli, Eli, all our podcasts would be much briefer. Much briefer, right. But here's a theory I have potentially that might explain the raid, which is that Merrick Garland, his community is people like Andrew Weissman,

who was the deputy toer and all these former prosecutors who go on msnbc and write op-eds for the new york times who have been saying when are you going to take this investigation into trump in january 6th very seriously and i'm very concerned that iraq might not be doing anything even lawrence tribe the former professor of merrick garland has been saying that publicly or wrote something to that effect and so having an unrelated you know high profile raid like this is a way to convince the blue and on faction of the democratic party that i'm taking it seriously we're doing real stuff and that's similar to the to the sort of role that like, you know, the dramatic and probably over and over the top, you know, raids and arrests of like Roger Stone or Paul Manafort had, which was a way of sort of signaling. You know, we're taking this really seriously where we're using all of our resources to get to the bottom of this when what we learned at the time is that when those raids were conducted the muller team knew they did not have the goods on the actual

conspiracy between trump and russia so this is like maybe a way of staving off the uh you know the the most excitable uh partisans and let's also think about it like this merrick garland that's his community his community are all these, former senior justice officials and people like that. So there is an element there. I don't want to put so much into it. So Merrick Garland, when he showers in the morning, is thinking to himself, don't those Republicans understand? I staged this raid to hold the country together. No, I don't know. I mean, listen, I don't want to read his mind but i would just say this as a counter example henry kissinger had famously was denounced by all of the harvard ir professor like the faculty of their ir school if you remember do you remember this when he was

the secretary of state keep going i mean he's been denounced so many times okay right but i'm saying it was like he was you guys he's nixon secretary of state right and i think like a year or so into it like all the harvard professors who also did international relations were like henry kissinger is the worst he's terrible we hate him and it was like an open letter and it was kind of a big thing this is why henry kissinger's papers are at yale by the way and i'm not kidding right right right Kissinger, you know, it's very rare that you get a public figure like this. Reagan was like this, too. It's just like, OK, you know, love your passion. Thank you very much.

And didn't care. And that is rare, though, because people really do care when especially it's their, you know, tight knit community that is denouncing them. So, like, I don't really care when a rando on Twitter says, you know, you're a bald egg and we hate you. But if I was to be, like, named in a, you know, column, I don't know, in the New York Times or somebody who I respected, it would be more, it would cause me to think about it more. And I think that's just a natural human thing.

So there's all this criticism of Merrick Garland, and I'm just saying that may have influenced the fact that he wanted to show that he was taking it seriously because it's possible that we will find out that as bad as trump was and we all denounced how he would not accept the results of the election and he chinned up the crowd of january 6th and all of this stuff the proper venue for that was an impeachment which i supported the second one but it may there's not really a criminal prosecutable case against him in that and then as much as you know the january 6th committee and all these other people would like to say that there is so if mark ellen kind of understands that then he wants to sort of show hey it's not like i'm i want to give you your money's worth we're doing

a real investigation here eli thanks a lot and uh we look to forward to having you back yeah we got more also also i just want to say martini shot it's great Eli, thanks a lot. And we look forward to having you back. Yeah, I've got to talk about Ukraine. Also, I just want to say, martini shot. It's great. Oh, aren't you kind? Thank you so much. Oh, Eli, Eli. We've got to have this guy back. It requires a unanimous vote.

It requires a unanimous vote to have a guest return. But to log roll back in your direction, we should remind everybody that eli has uh a new podcast called the re-education with eli lake and we yeah there's a recent episode we will distribute it on the ricochet network and if uh until we do uh we'll let you know where to find it okay yeah i was gonna say if you if there's a really good recent episode on punk rock and uh the concept of creative destruction. Oh, that's interesting.

And I'm keen. I was just writing. It's a really good episode. And there's a lot. I cover the gamut from culture to politics. I should probably have all three of you on at some point. I would love to talk about why punk didn't take root in the United States and why it transformed into something that was actually more positive and more energetic and more hopeful than the actual dead end of punk itself eli before i'm sorry i just want to jam in this one last question you want to contribute

conversation peter was that exactly i know you're a rock and roll historian you you just mentioned the january 6th committee liz cheney the new york times she's a heroine she's a martyr frank bruni wrote a piece yesterday that was headlined, In All the Ways That Matters, She wait a minute, due process and the Constitution also involve representation, permitting opposing counsel to cross-examine witnesses, all the ways that congressional committees have always operated and why we look back on Peter Rodino, who was chairman of the House Committee that investigated Richard Nixon and say he did it fairly and dispassionately and built the case so that when Nixon resigned, it wasn't the wrench to the country. It didn't rip the country apart. So, I'm just asking, Liz Cheney. Well, I've known Liz Cheney for a long time as well you know everybody this is the problem i can't get one listen i i i'm

i'm i'm conflicted in the following sense because i do think that she's right on this one question of the election and we know this like in detail that almost all of her colleagues agreed with her that it was atrocious what trump did uh after he lost on the other hand it shouldn't be the only thing that republicans talk about uh when you have democratic control of washington especially since i mean it's it's so so it's a it's not my it's i don't want to say it's a criticism because i am largely on liz cheney's side but no one should have been surprised that she lost um you know it's there's there's a gazillion things about the Biden administration and Democratic control and the party itself, which has, you know, I think in some ways, if you go back, Biden said early

in his presidency when he was asked about something, he doesn't know if there will be a Republican party in four years, which is, it reveals a real contempt of the idea that we have two parties that would kind of work together on certain things which is in many ways one of the reasons he was elected and so i can understand why some voters would say you are participating in this sort of cancellation of one of our two major parties liz cheney but at the same time i i said i agree with her about january i agree with her about the election and how terrible it was and it would be nice if there were more Republicans who would stand up. But you can't do it when you are kind of participating in a committee that pretends that Adam Schiff is an honest broker. So, I mean, right.

Right. Yeah. Right. So, like, or it doesn't have any real cross-examination. And you're saying, oh, take our word for it. We're, you know, just all you need to know is this one and a half minute clip from this video well i'd like to see the whole deposition can you make it all clear you know i say that as a journalist so in that respect but you know i don't want to like this i don't know the the criticism she

the stuff from from elements of macker world about liz cheney the obsession with her it's so over the top i she voted with him 94.6% of the time. She was an incredibly loyal vote. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Hold on. The January 6th committee forbade the people under examination from being represented by lawyers, from being given a chance to cross-examine.

Isn't that just a fundamental, fundamental overturning of an absolutely basic norm and didn't she champion that she participated to me she let it yeah yeah okay so i mean what's weird about this podcast is we can't get rob to take a shot at victor orban because he's such a nice guy they're personal friends now and i've got eli i say eli michael hayden and he likes well you know i agree with you that was an atrocious comment from Hayden. I just don't want to like, you know, we should all be defined by our worst tweets. Believe me, I've had some bad ones.

Well, I don't know anybody. I'm here in an irrelevant part of the country, so I can say what I say. Eli, again, thanks. Thank you. I say that fairly confident that Rob's not going to come in with another one. No, but just come in with a plug. Just a plug. For Eli's new podcast, we'll going to come in with another one. No, but just come in with a plug. Just a plug. All right.

For Eli's new podcast, we'll put the link in the show notes. Who's being reeducated, by the way? You or the audience or both? Okay. This is, I should say, my wife came up with the name when I was doing, you know, many months ago when I was thinking about how to do it. And I know I'm aware of the sordid history of it. And I had a funny response to it saying oh you know when i just

started reading and becoming you know interested in ideas i read a lot of malte tongue and paul pott anyway as a joke that's not really too by the way were those buddies were those really good stories really generous he's not like all these history books but no the real is is that i was i would hope that uh you know both people on the center right and people on the center left could listen to the podcast it could be like a safe harbor where they pay we're getting out of you know we're gonna get a chance to breathe and uh rethink about rethink certain issues without uh you know feeling like we're constantly being cowed by uh the you know authoritarian zealots in our midst.

Well, I can't wait to listen. So we'll talk to you later. I think it's a good podcast. It sounds exciting. I'm in. Thank you. Bye-bye. I am looking forward to the one that has to do with punk rock,

because I remember reading my Cream magazine in 1976 about these strange creatures prowling the streets of London with their spiky hair held in place by glue, super glue. And we always thought, that must be uncomfortable to sleep with. And we always thought it was one of the kind of music they make. Well, for the most part, it was, it was dreck. It was, it was awful. And it didn't take root here in America because it was destructive and nihilistic and was coming out of a welfare society that we really didn't share. But I did go out and buy the first Sex Pistols album, never mind the bollocks. I bought it at Positively 4th Street, took it home, and was underwhelmed completely.

Couldn't imagine why they'd caused the stink that they had. Of course, it was because they weren't very good at their instruments, because they had so much raw energy, and because of a frankly, darkly charismatic front man named Johnny Rotten. Strange thing is, we thought that had to do with his morality and his character. No, they called him that because of his teeth. If only he'd had a quip. If only Johnny Rotten at some point had had access to a quip, he might not have been the person that he was. And entirely British music might not have gone in the direction that it did. You know, listen, Johnny knows it now. I do. You do. Good health starts with good habits and quip

makes it easy by delivering all the oral care essentials you need to care for your mouth. The Quip is electric toothbrush. Well, for example, 7 million mouths love it. I'm one of them. And it has, let's all recite, it's got timed sonic vibrations with 30 second pulses to guide a dentist recommended two minute clean. You get that little, and it tells you to switch to another quadrant. Lightweight, sleek design for adults and kids with no wires and bulky chargers to weigh you down. It's got a multi-use travel cover that doubles as a mirror mount for less clutter in your bathroom and reusable handles and a range of sleek metal hues, including the best-selling all black or all pink, as well as bright plastic colors to make sure that they add a pop to your bathroom counter.

Are you on top of your brushing? Well, you can upgrade your Quip with the new Smart Motor. The new Smart Motor, that's right. It tracks and improves your brushing with the free Quip app. You can even earn amazing rewards like free refills, products, Target gift cards, and even more. Beyond the brush, Quip has everything you need to build a complete routine. Try their sugar-free refillable gum. It's got a long-lasting mint flavor, and it comes with a dispenser.

Or try their refillable mouthwash that's a four-times concentrate, plus good for you, and it's good for the planet as well. Quip, they deliver it all for three months, every three months, from $5. Every three months from $5. The shipping is free, so you can save money and skip the hustle and bustle of in-store shopping. With stylish and affordable electric brushes starting at just $25, you won't be paying through the teeth for better oral health. Go to getquip.com slash ricochet. Right now, this very moment, you'll get your first refill free. That's your first refill free at getquip.com slash ricochet, G-E-T-Q-U-I-P.com slash ricochet. Quip, the good habits company.

And we thank Quip for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Well, though these last few months, doesn't seem like that, months, no, weeks, while Rob's been away, guest hosts, myself, we've all had to carry the burden of doing what Rob would usually do, which is telling you where people are going to meet yes real as part of the the growing real human being ricochet community the irl here's community first of all the texas tribune festival program is now live so you can go on the website and see it um texas breakout politics and policy event ideas event is happening in september so september 22 through 24 in austin for the line of big names you know and others you should including one of our own from the ricochet network thank god catch david

drucker we'll interview virginia governor glenn yunkin on arkansas governor asa hutchinson live at the trib fest stage that's september 23rd it's really worth going explore the full program grab tickets at tribfest.org t-r-i-b-f-S-T.org. If you want to attend, use our special discount code for a one-time 15% discount off a ticket. That's one of the perks of being a member. Go to tribfest.org and enter code RICOSHAY15 in the promo code box at the bottom of the registration widget. Click apply. You will get your discount. We hope to see you there.

And also, if you're a Ricochet member, it's time for meetups. You know, there's a bunch of them, so it's hard to keep up with them. So you have to go on the site and the member feed has them all listed. But we do know a few for later this month. Brian Stevens is hosting one this weekend, actually, in Atlanta. And Michael Collins is hoping to get the UK members together in Dublin on the 26th, which, man, I wish I was still in Europe because I would go to that one. I'm sure that's going to be fun. Got others coming down the pike in various stages of planning for Northern

California, Huntsville, Alabama. That is a beautiful, beautiful place. And even New Orleans, I'll be there for that, I'm sure. None of those are close enough to you? Well, join Ricochet, give us a place and time, and have the Ricochet members come to you. That is the joy of being a member of Ricochet. As well as contributing, of course, in the member feed where lots of fun stuff happens. I think Brian Stevens has got a YouTube podcast going on. He's pushing that there. So in other words, you join Ricochet, you come up with your own podcast to take the place of ours. You can promote it on the page because, frankly, we don't care.

We just want as many people to get as many things out of the site as possible. Before we go, a little note here. A judge completely acting in accordance with the most esoteric and refined concepts of idealistic interpretations of the Constitution has blocked DeSantis' Stop Woke Act. Let's see. I think he said, quote. Okay. I think he said, quote, OK, the woke act, the stop woke act, by the way, said that companies cannot make their employees go through training or as a condition of their employment, believe or agree to or be exposed to everybody on Twitter go squee because, oh, Stranger Things. Normally, the First Amendment bars the state from burdening speech while private actors may burden speech freely. End quote. The Obama appointed judge continued, quote, But in Florida, the First Amendment apparently bars private actors from burdening speech while the state may burden speech freely, end quote. So, in other words, telling people that they can't do the CRT onboarding or have them sit down for lectures like this is burdening speech.

So, in other words, and they can't make this a requisite of your employment, does this mean now that states are free, that companies are free to hire purely on racial grounds if they wish that they are that they they simply can do what they want doesn't this sort of invert the idea of the colorblindness that we have today it means that a district court judge got out of line and he'll be overturned at at a higher level if he's quoting stranger things yes exactly yes yes what it means is that the district district uh u.s district court judge um has written ronda sanders's most successful direct mail piece correct i will take this all the way to the supreme court for you the people

of florida exactly well anything else you guys would like to bring up before we leave or are we going to do one of those things? Well, I would just like to ask Rob if he's going to stick around in this country long enough to justify holding an American passport or if he has more travel plans here. I don't, not for a while, but I tell you, I hadn't been on a big travel, big, big trip in a while. And it was a lot of fun. I mean, that is where I'm actually actually the most happy which is when i'm sort of tramping around um and i so spent a little time in hungary and then i went uh to tunisia spent a week in tunisia which is on the heels of a constitutional referendum um which was very interesting to talk to tunisians about it um and then uh and then then to france uh so you know i had a kind of a a little mini mini world tour around the minute around the med from the daniel james how is the middle of this country well the heat has abated sanity has been yes yeah by the way are you the only minnesotan i've never heard you mention a

lake house and that would make you the only Minnesotan who doesn't have one. No, lots of us don't. It could be back in the old days. You could work at the Ford plant down in Highland Park in St. Paul by the river, and you could make pretty good living and have a little house in your nice little neighborhood. You could have a little cabin. It wouldn't be a great cabin. Water would taste kind of weird, and it would have a screen door that squeaked and banged,

and the dock was a little spongy from time to time. But it was your cabin. That culture is rapidly being replaced by people from the cities having just a second home up there. So whereas you used to have lakes that had a lot of little shacks that people could afford, that culture is going away. Lake Wobegon is no more. Lake Wobegon is no more. I never was. It was a fiction of Mr. Keillor's imagination,

and people really didn't realize how much he hated it in the first place. But, yes, the heat is evaded, so we have those sort of cool premonitions of fall coming in, just in time for the state fair, which will have two, three, four days of unbelievable, humid, blasting days of unbelievable humid blasting heat where actually the odors of the French fries and the cotton candy and the sweat and the barns and the rest of it

will congeal into an almost palpable sense that you could scoop up and put in a cup and take home and open up six months later and remind yourself of summer. So that's coming up at the end of next week, and I'm looking forward to it, standing on a stage with a neon fluorescent yardstick talking to people as they walk by in utter indifference. It's a good ego check. But the other part of it that remains unchanged is I'm sitting in an empty office, absolutely empty office, and the only one here, in a building that's largely empty, it being Friday.

And I'm really starting to get tired of it. I'm really starting to be depressed by the end and the death of office culture and what it means for everything. And what it means for downtowns all over the country, what it means for entire ways that we've organized life. And I feel stupid coming to the office here. I feel like Groundhog Day. Like I ought to hear, I've got you, babe, piped in the elevator every time i get in i get tired of seeing everything closing down and then i go to the store the other day

and about 60 of the people all of whom are upscale and in their middle age are wearing masks again oh really cloth masks for some reason possibly because they read a story in the new york times about how polio is back and so a bit ahead of that, and they strapped on. So, I mean, to be empty office in a masked city again, it feels like there was this big vote on how we were going to do things going forward. And I didn't hear about it. I'm only looking at the results. 11 o'clock at night on television with my jaw on my sternum.

And I don't understand how it's ever going to go back. And I don't understand how I'm actually ever going to adjust myself to it. I just don't. So it's like the world fundamentally, they wanted their fundamental transformation of America that they talked about so much and with such anticipation well we got that and it it ain't good it's not good and i don't know how to force it back i mean you can't strong-arm people into saying no you got to commute and go back to the office again a lot of them simply don't want to a lot of people who are just socially anxious don't like it would prefer to be home with a dog i get that i get that my wife's like that but there's a

there's a downtown culture we were told for decades that we all had to go to urban places and we all had to be dense and we all had to have the vibrant cities and the rest of it but apparently we were willing to throw that away in a in a trice if it meant that we could stay home in our pajamas and type away on our laptops with the expectations that people who actually got up and got out of the house would bring us our gas and our food. But I don't have any strong opinions about it. And I should probably wrap up right here. Unless you guys have something. Well,

I just want to compliment you. Good, good use of Trice. Yeah. Well, that's what I'm here for. Yeah. Extremely depressing.

Philippics delivered with an interesting, like a little spice of like a hello. Trice. I haven't seen you in a while. Exactly. Hey, this podcast, which actually we are bringing in at a reasonable time was brought to you by bull and branch and by quip support them for supporting us and your life will be better you'll sleep better and you'll have better looking teeth you won't be like johnny rotten join ricochet today by the way as rob would like you to do as i would like you to do as peter as

all of the people who participate would love to see you there. And it's cheap, too, and it's worth it. Wait a minute, you say this costs money? Yeah, because you've got to pay for it in order to post. That's why it's not like the comments every place else. Take a minute to give us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts.

If you wouldn't mind, the reviews allow new listeners to discover us. Keeps the show going, and we will be going going at least until episode 207. This concludes episode 206, and we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. You mean 602, don't you? You mean 602 is what it's going to say. I'm sorry. 206, my God.

I'm sorry. Boy, that was like Obama. I mean, was that Obama? Yeah, like Obama's first term. Okay, let me do that again then. Oh, no. No, no, I think we've got to keep the closing chat. Oh, so my mistakes get embedded.

Yeah, your mistakes get enshrined. For once. But Peter last week, Peter talks about FBI President Herbert Hoover Heaver, and he gets to go back and check. I see who matters. I see who matters.

Peter's of a certain age. Exactly. My dimension's genuine, therefore it must be hidden. Alright, boys. Take care. Next week. Ricochet! Join the conversation.