The Ricochet Podcast - Frozen in the Safe Lane

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

Iowa braces for a cold Caucus Night and now the Trump, DeSantis, Haley and Ramaswamy teams have their work cut out for them to keep their engines from stalling. Since blizzardous conditions are keeping us from visiting, we asked Jim Geraghty, our man on the ground in Des Moines this week, to give us the scoop, the had-to-be-there insights and some informed speculation. Plus Peter, James and Rob vent their lack of confidence in this administration to meet this week's foreign flare up; and have some advice for Sanctuary Mayor Eric Adams.This week’s sound from the opening of the Jan. 11th KCCI Newscast in Des Moines. IA

So let's roll, shall we? Let's do it. Let's do it. All right. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long.

I'm James Lylex, and today we talk to Jim Garrity about what's going on and what'll happen in Iowa. Let's have ourselves a podcast. We are just days away from the Iowa caucuses. And dangerously cold temperatures could affect turnout on Monday night. But you have to ask Iowans, do they really want to head out that night when the wind chill will be 20 below zero? Sounds corny. Not a joke. Think about it. We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women created by, you know the thing. Welcome everybody. This is the Ricochet Podcast and this is episode number 674. I am James Lilacs and also I am emphasizing words for some reason. I have no idea why. But here is Rob Long, and there is Peter Robinson.

Gentlemen, welcome. Thank you, James. I am here. Good. Nice to hear that. That was very bright and chipper. What the hell? Somebody pointed out that guys in the NFL,

when they're giving their college affiliation for some reason, now are saying the University of Minnesota. Somebody started it, and it's spread to all of them. Speaking of spreading, here we are with the latest iteration of our interminable war with Iran, which will not end until they light off a nuke, and then Israel converts them to smoking glass and is castigated for doing so at the International Criminal Justice Court. We have hit the Houthis.

Enough? Sufficient? Too late? Well, it's early here in California, so I haven't read the accounts in detail, but as I went to bed last night, the news was that they had attacked us. They. They're Iranian proxies, but they had attacked bases in which American soldiers were based. They had attacked bases that Americans are using or have used or plan to use throughout the Middle East, Iraq, Syria, and shipping over 130 times. And we had scarcely answered. So the idea that we have replied strikes me as obviously necessary, whether we did it well. I don't have, first of all, I'm not a military mastermind, but I haven't even read the papers this morning to begin forming a judgment on that.

But we had to hit back. We had to. Well, that's the whole point of the U.S. military. I mean, the ultimate beginning of the U.S. military was to protect trade routes, right? That's why we have Marines. Correct. The halls of Tripoli. The big winner, though, has to be, you know, once again, Mohammed bin Salman, the leader of Saudi Arabia, right? That's why we have Marines. Correct. The big winner, though, has to be, you know,

once again, Mohammed bin Salman, the leader of Saudi Arabia, right? Because they were fighting the Houthis, not the Houthis, the Houthis. Right. The Houthis are in Rwanda. The Tutsis are in Rwanda.

Houthis and Tutsis and then Houthis are somewhere else, but not that far, actually. They were fighting them for years. We told them to stop because they were doing it too brutally, I guess. And then we said, oh, well, we'll do it. It could have been, you know, the Houthis could have been already occupied by a war with Saudi Arabia, which we didn't want them to have. So far, 2024 is going very well for Mohammed bin Salman. That's all I can say.

He's getting what he wants. He is earning, I think, earning some kind of credit for the fact that the potentially incendiary war, wider incendiary war in the middle east and israel and gaza is not actually spreading i mean there's always like a the threat of it but it's been 90 days now and hasn't done it yet it could of course with my luck it'll happen this afternoon but but um you know it does it it um it does show you that the foreign policy is really, really hard, and that the Biden administration is really, really bad at it, mostly, and that the world is a really dangerous place. And boy, it would be great to have some smart people back, I think. Or even just to have the people who are already there in place i mean the questions this raises about the chain of command we have a

president who is yeah to put it lightly a little on the aged side we have a vice president who how do we put this pull i leave that one to you rob we'll circle back to you to put this politely? I leave that one to you, Rob. We'll circle back to you to put it politely. He is an idiot. And then we have a Secretary of Defense. Thank you, James. Then we have a Secretary of Defense who checked himself into the hospital. We now note that it was to treat complications arising from prostate surgery. Prostate surgery is not life-threatening, but it can be mighty unpleasant, and it does involve surgery deep inside the body. Right.

And he was out for four days, and nobody seems to have been exactly aware of where he was or what he was doing, and his Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense was in Puerto Rico on a vacation, which she did not interrupt when she became acting secretary. All of this matters because of course the commanders in theater have wide discretion, but as I say, the Houthis had been attacking us and international shipping for weeks now, and the commanders must have had battle plans. They must have drawn up the plans. Clearly, there had to be something going down the chain of command. And the old saying that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, there we have right at the top, Commander-in-Chief, Secretary of Defense. The links

aren't even in place. It's just astonishing to me. Yeah, I mean, that is the first order of business for the United States military, is to secure the trade routes in the world, right? That's what else, you know, it's got other things it's doing, it's also not doing, but that is one of its central missions. The idea that this was, the idea that you would not anticipate all these different possibilities and plan for them is kind of weird to me uh and it's not as if well you know world's kind of quiet these days you know they're getting in around 10 leaving around 5 15

uh take it on our lunch no it's a the world is actually more inflamed now than it's been in 20 years. I'll tell you, here's a little anecdote about the way these things go. This goes all the way back to the first couple of years of the Reagan administration. And Muammar Gaddafi in Libya had been acting up. As you know, he had bombed a disco, killing many American soldiers in Germany. We knew it was Qaddafi. All right. Our military drew up plans to retaliate to, I can't remember exactly what it was now at this stage, but I think we were kind of going to embargo, we were going to interrupt shipping to his port, and we expected trouble from the Libyan Air Force. They had it all planned out,

they had it all figured out, but, and Ed Meese was present in the Oval Office, he's the one who told me this story, the military wanted to make sure that the Commander-in-Chief understood what they were about to do and approved the rules of engagement. So a map gets rolled out across the President's desk, they show here's the MED, here's at Libyan airspace and the question was mr. President Do we have your permission if they attack us? do we have your permission to pursue them back into Libyan airspace and Ronald Reagan said you have my permission to pursue them back into their damn hangars All right, they needed to hear that from the commander in chief. I just can't imagine how these conversations are taking place in this administration where the secretary of defense has checked himself into the hospital without telling anybody.

And the president is slow. It's a strange time. It's a very strange time. I mean, I think, I mean, my sort of overarching metaphor here, or the theory I'm working on, is that we have been, we have treated, all of us, I mean, both sides and both positions, have treated kind of the role of government and what it can do and what it can't do and what we should be doing kind of frivolously. This is a product of incredible wealth and decadence good these are good things they're high class problems to have but um we need to get serious one of the problems with the biden administration is that it is the and i'm getting in trouble for people who didn't like dan quayle but it is the um the epitome of a frivolous pointless um meretricious vice president meretriciously arrived at vice presidential choice the goal of the vice president it's a stupid job the idea is

to be a competent person who provides no political competition for his boss but is nevertheless qualified to be president at a moment's notice and for the past many many cycles it has been treated by clever uh pundits who think they know things and by candidates who think they know things it's like well this is how i'm going to appeal to my bit i'm going to do this and that i'm going to get these are the people which of course never happens it never ever happens on election day and instead what they end up with is a person that most people are nervous will become president of the united states um and that is unacceptable on any level but especially when the president's 975 years old or alternatively is seventy five pounds and looks terrible. Right. That is just not how it's supposed to go.

I mean, Mike, I mean, to Trump's defense, Mike Pence, who is far more conservative than I am and who I would love to have been president United States so I could oppose his policies, was ready to be president, I think, I would say. I mean, does anybody want to see a picture of Kamala Harris in the Situation Room? Like, looking at that monitor, you know, like that famous photograph of barack obama and um and hillary clinton secretary of state hillary clinton watching the osama the osama bin laden assass killing uh in real time anybody want to see kamala harris there i mean i don't think democrats don't want to see her there it doesn't it's not a partisan thing it's just that she's not qualified to president the president's 900 years old and um and that it when when everything's great and doing good and everybody's happy i guess you can get by right like we all do sometimes when times are good um but it's dangerous now these are real jobs this is serious it it depends really what you think the job of

the president is and a lot of the people on the other side of the aisle i believe think that the job is to stride manfully down white house corridors spouting aaron sorkin dialogue you know they just have this you know that's basically it about doing the right thing and act like martin sheen and that everything somehow takes care of itself because the government is staffed with government people who are good at what they do and smart at what they do and and and have the right instincts and all the rest of it but rob's right i mean you have a tremendous amount of wealth and a bacchanalia of job seekers who just sort of inhabit their space without doing much of anything now the good part about this i would like to think i would hope to think is that you don't have the Secretary of Defense doing the map spreading and

saying, here's what I want you guys to do. You have the people who design and execute these things, put it up the chain and tell, here's what we would like to do, and then it's approved and so forth. So the fact that we didn't have the SecDef right there in the office monitoring, this doesn't really bother me that much. I tend to think there's enough competence in place to be able to run this. You know, they get a thumbs up and they go. But who gives the thumbs up? Who gives the thumbs up if the Secretary of Defense is not there and the President's out to lunch? Well, that's my point. I think you're right. And they will get a thumbs up from the president or the person who's handling his calls or whoever is in charge of putting something in front of him that day to wipe the pudding off the corners of his mouth and get an okay to do this. But what I worry about more than any of the stuff that you were talking about before is the lack of that Reagan-esque will to follow them back to the hangars.

Because, you know, we're all about sending a message. We're all about showing them that we're serious, and don't you do this again, or this is, we're going to come over, and we're going to spank you lightly across the buttocks one more time. We spanked you harder the left one last time, we're going to spank you a little bit harder on the right the next time. Follow them back to the hangars is something that we haven't done for a very long time. the hangars aren't where they are the hangars are in tehran correct and nobody's but nobody is ever going to say well you know we've got to take this back to this nobody will so again

that that concerns me the lack of hangar following concerns me more than the lack of hangar following right now is part is the is a um is a function of the american people i mean the american people do not want another war they do not want to go to war with iran they do not want this um well they will they will when something else happens here and it goes back to late too late i mean maybe not i mean i who knows we invaded iraq for no reason um the the the the far and away leader for the republican nomination is uh uh i mean and i agree with him he's an articulate spokesman against american military intervention abroad and an and an inarticulate spokesman too both of those kinds of spokes he's both those kinds um so the i mean i i am a mean, the answer is two ways.

I'm also kind of a, you know, corny traditionalist. I think I like the idea that the president of the United States is sort of a citizen's job in general. And the citizen is a commander in chief. And that the secretary of defense and the secretary of war, whatever it was, was back in the day, was confirmed by the Senate. So it was confirmed by the senate so it was confirmed by a democratic process and i like the idea that two people who are accountable directly to representatives and voters um make these decisions i think that's a good thing and when it's sort of outsourced to sort of well the sec def the guy who was confirmed by the senate he he was he was under

propofol he was anesthetized at the time and the president is sort of who knows where he is at any at any point um so it was like the undersecretary of something or the whatever the guy running centcom who kind of this seems like a bad move for everybody involved that if i was at centcom i would say whoa whoa whoa wake the Secretary of Defense up. I'm not doing this until I get... Exactly. I mean, if you put yourself in the position of the captain of the Gerald Ford, or the admiral who's in charge of the fleet there in the Eastern Mediterranean,

we have two carrier groups in the Eastern Mediterranean. The situation is dangerous. It's really dangerous. The Biden administration lifted the sanctions against Iran. That means that Iran has for some three years now been selling billions and billions of dollars worth of oil. Their treasury is full to overflowing. We also know that Iran has the most developed drone program on the planet. They've been selling military drones to the Russians that the Russians have been using to counter the drones in Ukraine. We know that the Houthis and Hezbollah in the north of Lebanon, the Houthis down south of Saudi Arabia, and we've got the Hamas fighting

back Israel. We're tied down in Ukraine. The Chinese are violating Taiwanese airspace every single day. Now, you're a commander. You know that our bases and international shipping have been attacked 130 times in recent weeks. And you think to yourself, well, if we're here, we'd better defend ourselves. But if we defend ourselves, this may happen, that may happen, and the other may happen, and things may start. Now, I want to know whether the Commander-in-Chief is aware of all this before I push the... It just seems to me that those guys who are in the theater making decisions saying we could do this and we could do this and we can do this,

but do you know what might happen? Do you understand how dangerous this is? And there's no answer. There's no answer coming back to that question, I would think. It's also kind of a general model about the way the American military is supposed to work. I mean, they fired on u.s ships so they have to so there's really there can't be much debate there needs to be a incredibly vigorous incredibly incredibly um effective response right because there's a direct american interests um but i feel like we have this kind of muddle right now in the administration maybe in the country in general about what the american interests are and i suspect that if you ask you know you pick a

random person and you don't even need to know what their party affiliation is but most americans think if they had to list things they would say but the american military supposed to do is that one protect the borders of the country and two protect american interests abroad um narrowly defined as sort of commercial interests right our ships and then you know we can debate about the three numbers three through 100 but the numbers one and two are pretty much there's a consensus there there's even a constitutional consensus there um and it doesn't seem like the Biden administration is aware of, certainly not aware of the border problem. And there's particular confusion in the Democratic Party because there are many Democrats, whatever her name, Alexandra, the squad. I never have been able to pronounce her name and I keep hoping that she'll disappear so I won't have to learn it.

But the squad would say, wait a minute, we're only getting fired at because we're there. And we're only there because we're there to support Israel. And we think Israel is in the wrong, not in the right. So instead of attacking Iran, let's bring the Navy home. That is a very strong position in the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party isn't just muddled, it's split. That complicates things for the... I was seeing it on the right as well i was seeing

people say no you know we've got no we have none of the goods that are good that are that are going through that area are headed to the u.s so it's it's not our deal uh which is blinkered and short-sighted you look at all the things that are having to go around the horn a lot of china that's going to be a lot more expensive by the time they get over here but before we go any farther i want to leap back a few minutes here and ask and point out rob just said that we invaded iraq for no reason i don't agree with that now you can disagree with the reasons but we had a lot of them i mean the world had changed significantly in a blink of an eye all of a sudden we had been you know we've been dealing with a lot of Islamic terrorism for 15, 20 years. We'd seen them try to blow up the World Trade Center before by, you know, truck bombs in the basement.

And all of a sudden, there was just a root and branch approach. Just that we're done with these guys. This is, I'm sorry, you're over. We're going to take them out of Afghanistan. And then we're going to take out Iraq because Iraq had chemical weapons, which everybody had known for 15, 20 years because they've been using them. Because Saddam Hussein was a bad actor because he was in an open ended conflict with the United States that involved constantly firing on our planes in the no fly zone and plotting to kill presidents. You know, he's a bad guy. Finish that off and then have a base there with Iran encircled was the idea. That was the second, I mean, Iraq was the second campaign of this new war.

So I wouldn't say that we didn't have a reason. I don't think it was some spasmodic reaction that had nothing to do with reality. I think there was a strategic decision there that would encircle Iran and help facilitate a turnover there. I mean, so am I wrong? Oh, no, I think that's probably a fair um a fair assessment of their justifications for it um i think those justifications were ultimately foolish um because the truth is that you you foolish or just plain mistake simply mistaken well i mean i think that they um they they had an idea about the world that it's a game of risk in which you move the pieces around instead of what's sort of messy and noisy and horrible. um uh and he argues um really passionately and kind of convincingly that iraq is much much better

off now that it was before that may be true i'm not sure that it was worth the treasure and the american blood to do to go in there and and to do that i think or the iraq we wanted more than i don't think we made the world safer necessarily i'm not i'm not i'm i'm decoupling iraq and afghanistan i'm not sure we had a choice with afghanistan um but i think iraq we had a choice and i think when the downside of that is that you end up when something kind of ends up in a muddle and not a W, but a question mark, you end up with a nation of both Republicans and Democrats on both sides who are queasy and unwilling to make stands when they should. So, you know, you can't fight everywhere. It wasn't perhaps that we had to go. I mean, yes, we had to go into Afghanistan.

What was a choice was attempting to nation-build in the aftermath. Yes, yes, I agree with you. Attempting to take this big mess of a place and tie it together with freeways and air conditioning units and Kentucky Fried Chicken and call them a nation. As with Iraq, I remember when we had Rumsfeld on and asked him whether or not debathification was a mistake. And if you remember, he said that it's a very good question, and he didn't really have an answer for it. In both cases, if we'd gone in, toppled, installed our kind of strongman instead of trying to remake them into Western-style democracies,

he might have had more success. That's a bit condescending to say that Iraq can't be, you know, like the rest of the countries, but hey, that's, you know. Well, you might have had success, but i guess what i would say about that is that while that may be true it has never occurred in human history so it will be the first time that that ever happened maybe it could wait whatever happened i'm not following exactly you invade a country install a leader of your choice and that leader runs the country for a while successfully just doesn't seem like that's a very good plan well south korea japan west germany west germany yeah there's a couple of examples different from from invading a country like iraq and then installing a leader that wasn't

really what we did they had elections we pretty much installed the south Korean guys. South Korea wasn't a democracy until a dozen, 15 years ago. 79. Korea and Germany are geopolitical, cultural, ethnic entities. Iraq is... Yes, I mean, now you're drawing distinctions, right? Right. Iraq is one of those conjured countries with arbitrary borders and the rest of it. But Rob is right. We are still dealing with an aftermath that makes Americans queasy about that sort of actions. And frankly, you know what? If you are, you know, like my age and you go out on the town and you have a good time, you know, you can be the aftermath can be less than salutary. Frankly, you don't bounce back the next day like you used to when you were 20 years old and hard charging and out there and having fun in the weekends. So, you know, I got to make a choice.

Sometimes I really do. I can either have a great night or a great next day. You know, is it worth it? Well, Z-Biotics changes all that. Z-Biotics pre-alcohol probiotic. It's the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after you've had a few. Here's how it works.

When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut. It's this byproduct, not your dehydration, that's to blame for your rough next day. Z-Biotics produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down. It's designed to work like your liver, but in your gut where you need it the most. Just remember to drink Z-Biotics before drinking alcohol. Drink responsibly, of course, and get a good night's sleep to feel your best tomorrow. So where do you get this stuff? Well, here you go. Zbiotics.com slash Ricochet.

And you will get 15% off your first order when you use Ricochet as the code at your checkout. You can also sign up for a subscription using our code. So you can stay prepared no matter what the time or the occasion is. Have it on hand. Pop it back before you go. There you go.

Good to go. Bob's your uncle. ZBiotics is backed by a 100% money back guarantee. So if you are unsatisfied for any reason, they will refund your money. No questions asked.

So remember to head to zbiotics.com slash ricochet and use the code ricochet at the checkout for 15% off. 15% off. And we thank ZBiotics for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Nicely done, James. Well, thank you.

I understand the difficulty there. No, it's absolutely no difficulty whatsoever. Woodhouse would refer to it as a cheery evening. Yes. I will use that in the future and now we bring back to the podcast the man that jew hewitt himself calls garrity the indispensable you still are is that still the case with you jim are you still absolutely indispensable to the hue hue show it is okay good and every time he does that it invites the old legend of you know the graveyards are

full of indispensable men. Jim, of course, is national. Nobody's that indispensable. Life goes on. Jim is National Review's senior political correspondent and a Washington Post contributing columnist, author and co-host of the Three Martini Lunch podcast and author of many fine, hilarious fiction works as well. And of course, I last saw you at the National Review Party where we all we all participated in in the 12 days of Christmas set to anti-Biden japery. And I think we were all singing in about 47 different keys, but it was a great merry time. And it was it was good to see you. But here you are now and you have flown to Iowaowa you well i assume you flew did you fly did you drive did you do that thing where you meet with americans and you drive on the freeways and you stop at the small town diners and see what they're saying or did you just like parachute in no i i

live down to the beltway beltway stereotype of parachuting in uh and i was by the way one of the reasons i'm able to join you i don't know if you can see how much snow is outside behind me, we are getting apparently what's being called the blizzard of the decade. I arrived here Monday, apparently one hour before the previous blizzard of the decade, which put about a foot of snow onto most of the state. So my reporting has pretty much been the Des Moines area. I have not gotten out of the immediate city and suburbs too much. Covered the debate on CNN Wednesday night. But I was supposed to be heading back today. And the airline said, nope, not happening. So I'm hoping for tomorrow.

Jim, were you heading back because, you know, stick a fork in it and it's done? There's nothing to happen here? Or there's still some surprises left? That's a reasonable interpretation. It's nothing to happen here or there's still some surprises left that's a reasonable interpretation uh it's it's good to see you by the way that basically um i i have been here all week i have another speaking gig down in atlanta next week and if i don't spend some time on the home front i'm going to be in serious trouble uh but yeah like look trump has been around 50 in just about all these polls looking at the caucuses.

I've heard Republicans out here say that, look, DeSantis has a good turnout operation, all that door knocking. He should beat his final poll numbers, which is good. But his poll numbers right now, mostly they've been around 20. Some of them have been the teens. And the most recent one that came out from Suffolk has him in third place behind Haley. Now, we'll see. There's one more card to drop. The Des Moines Register is going to have a poll out apparently this weekend that will probably be our last look before people actually show up on Monday.

So, Jim, I know Peter wants to jump in. Can I ask you one question before he jumps in? Are you getting that thing that they do, that the campaigns do, you know, certainly in the early primaries where they say hey listen if my guy breaks 10 that's a big win for us hey my guy gets five people in that um that school gymnasium on tuesday that's a huge one are they doing that expectation thing so that hey we came in up we're a solid fourth that that you know we didn't get smoked are they doing that or is it rob i have yet to hear the if we have just one person show up, we've done better than Dean Phillips at his event.

That's right. Better than Asa Hutchinson, right? Oh, yeah. Like, look, everybody. Look, if DeSantis isn't in second place, it's really bad news. I don't know if it means he's automatically got to get out. But like, this is a state where he's been endorsed by the governor. This is the state where he's visited

all 99 counties. He's spent a ton of money. I think he's had good debate before. He's done all the things you should be doing if you want to win Iowa. And it just hasn't been working. Now, again, maybe he'll surprise us on Monday.

I think it's ideally for him. You definitely want Trump below 50. And you definitely want to be the closest guy. And you probably want to put some distance between yourself and Haley because New Hampshire is Haley's state. You know, the Sanders campaign is open. They're not really competing in New Hampshire that much. But he's got to get some momentum out of this, because if he doesn't, where does he win?

Right. You know, South Carolina doesn't look good. He's trailing Trump by quite a bit in Florida. This is supposed to be his good state, and if it doesn't look good, I don't think spin's going to be all that effective. Peter here. By the way, our listeners

are listening, so they can't see you, but you're extremely well dressed, beautiful tie, cinched all the way up. It looks as though you're about to go downstairs to a speaking engagement in the lobby of that very hotel. What's what? I'd love to. Actually, I just did Fox News this morning. Ah, I see. Okay, you got it. Yes. Rob and I, James, of course, always looks flawless,

but Rob and I are unshaven and bleary-eyed and so forth. All right, listen, I know a couple of people from Iowa, and here's what they told me about caucuses. There's a reason they're unpredictable. Particularly on the Republican side, people change their minds. They're Iowans. They're neighborly about it. They discuss their reasoning. It is particularly, again, my friends stress on the Republican side, it is a neighborly

get together. on the Republican side, it is a neighborly get-together. They bring cookies to share with each other, and they talk about whether a vote for DeSantis might be wasted because Haley's the only one in a position. They talk it this way. And that being the case, and it being the case that the weather is really cold, predicted to be really cold even by Iowa standards, so you might think certain iowans particularly the older folks might choose to stay so it seems to me that although we're of course grasping for polls to get some feel for what's going on that this one really really is going to be unpredictable we we're very likely to learn something but But you're so the question is, is that right?

Or do we actually know what's going on? It is, you know, I don't doubt past caucuses have worked out that way. And so, yes. The thing I point out, you know, if the polls are right, it's not like DeSantis has to gain a little bit. It's like Trump right around 50. DeSantis maybe at 20 in some of these like you you need a big you know scoop scoop there the two of actually again you mentioned weather and like you know besides you it's a shame this is only audio because like i'm i can see you behind you the window yeah yeah it's you know it's it's coming down it's not quite white out conditions

it's it yeah but there's a lot um i see again i went back and I checked in 2016, I got 26, 27% of the caucus goers on the Republican side were age 65 or older. I would not want my parents driving in weather like this. The roads might be icy. And remember, this is all in your local high school, your local community center. So people have to go to participate. Oh, two other last factors.

I pointed out, this is the first Iowa caucus that will occur during an nfl playoff game they're having a game on monday night i don't think there are a lot of tampa bay buccaneer and philadelphia eagle fans here in iowa but if you are if it's cold and it feels like trump's gonna win anyway yeah maybe it's like ah you know i'll stay home and watch the game. But the other factor is the Democrats do not have a caucus here. They're caucusing, but they're only doing party business. They're doing a non-counting vote by mail system. The results will be announced on Super Tuesday. Iowa Democrats do not get to go first here.

So if you're an Iowa Democrat, I could see a scenario where you're like, welliden's going to be the nominee i don't really care about what's going on with that maybe they support haley maybe they see trump is the easiest to beat and they decide to show up and go for trump this would mean though like oh you could it's technically the caucuses are republicans only but you can change your party registration up until that night wow so oh so there's no control over it right yeah i'm Republican, and then boom, I don't know how much paperwork has been involved. I can't imagine there's that much to say, change party registration.

And so theoretically, Democrats could come in and say, let's all go out for Asa Hutchinson, or whoever they think is the most, the one they like. Or maybe they just want to stop Trump. Rob wants to get back in, but before he does, so one more question. Sure. You said a moment ago that DeSantis has done everything.

He's been to all 99 counties. He's spent a ton of money. He might as well be governor of Iowa. I'm sure he's getting guffed back in Florida of that very kind. Why hasn't it worked? It just hasn't worked. Why? Yeah. I'm sure there are some people who would say charisma i don't think he's that bad but i think you can say that he's not people don't want

to go and watch him like it's a show the way it is for trump i do wonder if the we're now entering year eight or nine of trump being the central figure in our politics and that kind of has conditioned republicans to expect a you know snazzy personality where you just never know what he's going to say and all that stuff. The other thing is also, I think the party has changed. And for a long time, the person who won the Iowa caucuses was the one who wore their Christianity on their sleeve. Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, even you could argue Ted Cruz last time around. And I think it's a, you know, I was talking to some other reporters, it sounds like evangelicals are not unified behind anyone. Some of them are Trump, some of them are DeSantis. I

think it's a slightly smaller group for Haley. It's very much splitting along kind of class lines uh the more professional white collar class evangelicals being more desantis the blue collar and even like people who self-identify as evangelicals but who don't necessarily go to church every week they're you know kind of leaning trump in that direction so look i think look part of the problem is i for desantis i think he had an a plausible sounding but erroneous argument of how you win, which was to be, hey, I'm kind of like Trump. I just don't have all the scandals and the baggage. And I think the Trump folks are like, no, I want Trump Trump. I don't want Diet Trump.

I don't want Trump zero or whatever. to everybody else who are repelled by Trump, they kind of ended up drifting towards Nikki Haley, that DeSantis wasn't distinct enough from the things they didn't like about Trump. I guess that was kind of ultimately my question. Has there been a political collapse of a far and away front runner, seemed to capture not just, you this you know de santos was not an establishment republican he was a firebrand he was a you know he was a reagan figure i mean

very different from ronald reagan but in the sense of like from one of those slightly batty states where they vote for the real conservative and the guy's pugnacious and he's in this in the in the fight and he does this incredible stuff during covid and we all think i think well this is going to be a key just walk to it just give it to him now and not only is he having to fight for it but he's having to fight for second or third it's just has there ever been a story like this uh we were talking to nr about like you know presidential campaigns that have crashed and burned yeah and you could point to rudy giuliani in 2008

uh some people nominated scott walker who'd left very early in the 20s okay cycle um but i think that like you know look coming off that huge win in 2022 when uh in the midterms over uh that whirling dervish of raw charisma charlie crist like by the fact that like you know uh the fact that uh desantis has not not taken on the world by storm man how bad is charlie crist right you know right you can banked like that right um but i so you just kind of think also like what didn't go right he decided to stay in florida in the early months of 2023 to get his last agenda items through the state legislature trump went on the attack trump did his part to define him i think that didn't i think you've had to do that over you probably don't want to start your campaign on a twitter thing

that doesn't work uh and where no one can hear you that's probably less than ideal um he did and like we've had all the kind of different resets and all that stuff like you look at the amount of money he has spent on tv advertising yeah it doesn't appear to have moved the needle at all and so i don't know and some of this is like you know how much could you coordinate with the super pack and the super pack was independently spending its own money and so they had their ideas of what messages would work best. Look, I think from the beginning,

like if you had to do it all over again, I think DeSantis had to take on Trump much more directly and had to say to Trump voters, look, I almost like staging an intervention for a friend. I know you think this guy's great, but he really didn't deliver for you. And DeSantis has intermittently hit these notes and kind of gone with this

message. I don't think he, you could tell, I don't, don't i don't it's not that his heart's not into it but i think he doesn't um he wanted he just kind of naturally went over some of these trump supporters and it just it was never going to happen that this was uh you were never going to be hey i'm kind of like trump that that was not what these folks want and i think it really needs to be much more look trump is a big talker who doesn't get stuff done. Right. And it turns out to be Nikki Haley who makes that. She's making that argument better in a way,

isn't she? Yeah. I mean, like, I think he wanted to be a little, a little column, a little column. Yeah.

And he ended up in this inverse sweet spot where he was too Trumpy for the non-trump for the trump opponents and not trumpy enough for the trump fans and it's a very bad place to be um i my i i wrote a little stupid little book a few years ago called like set some of trump's speeches to verse it's called bigly right it was kind of whatever it was somebody asked me to do it i thought it was a funny idea um the trump fans thought i was making fun of him and you're not allowed to make fun of donald trump if you're if you're trump fans do not like that he is without a doubt the great messiah and the people who hate trump thought what are

you you're just making fun of him you can't make fun of him he's how can you laugh at a time like this yes the new yorker said i was democracy It dies in darkness. Oh, by the way, Florida Democrats canceled the primary. But so sometimes you can kill it right out there in the open. It dies in darkness. Washington Post, by the way, is awesome. Everyone should subscribe to it. I really like my columns and

Jeff Bezos' money and everything is great there. The New Yorker said that I was guilty of jocular sanctioning. That's what I said. Basically, you're a Trump politician. How dare you? Right. That's your brand.

Jocular. But how much runway do these guys have? Like, okay, so Trump is far and away ahead. Is it just a bunch of, like, very, very rich funders thinking, not again, no Trump again, we'll keep you alive. We will pay for your oxygen until the convention begins? Is that what's going to happen here? It's okay.

So how much runway do they have? An aircraft carrier is worth. Not a lot. But enough. Because my sense for this, it's kind of the case in both the early states and nationally. Roughly half the party is, yep, we want Trump again. Ride or die. This is our, you know, which means that if you want to, if your name isn't Donald Trump

and you want to be the nominee, you got to get that other half. And you got to hope that it's a bigger than 50%. And you got to have a fight all the way than 50 and you're going to have a fight all the way to the convention and it's going to be really really hard but it could be doable but to do it you got to unify that other 50 and some of those people were ted cruz voters back in in 2016 some of those people were john casick voters in 2016 that's not there's a big ideological divide big different ideas of who you know there's a big gap between like liz cheney and brian kemp right you know for how they see things so it was always going to be tough and

a couple weeks ago i promote as i like you know looking at the way things are and how not much is changing in these polling numbers you know desantis and haley should think about a unity ticket say you know whether you want to sandus haley or haley de santis put them together that's the one way to make sure you get all these in the same pile and uh everyone hated it every there's enormous the de santis people see nicky haley as lilith um that's not just okay i didn't realize it but that's a good cheers reference for you rob um and then you know the uh and the just say you know and say haley fans see desantis as billy elzebub that he's every bit as and so even if they wanted to do that it sounds like both of their uh bases of support have come to really dislike the other and i think based on what we saw in that debate stage wednesday

night i think they really don't like each other anymore i think they really have cotton you know like there there was a it was like two hours of my opponent sucks. And you're right. You know, not enough folks on. There's a sky 30 points ahead of them that you'd think they'd intermittently remember to criticize. Dana Bash and Jake Chapper had to keep reminding them. Say, is there anything you'd like to say about Donald Trump that, you know, so. We haven't even mentioned Vivek, by the way.

Just not a factor. We haven't even mentioned. Oh, okay. He'll probably be in single digits, not particularly high single digits. You also see people clustering towards the frontrunners towards the end. I will say, I watched Vivek at a rally at the state capitol. It's against these carbon pipelines. Basically, they want to run from the ethanol plants which generate carbon dioxide they want to take the carbon dioxide liquefy it run it through pipes lines to other states where they'll dump it into caverns and the by under the inflation reduction

act the biden administration will just say here's a giant pile of money for you for doing this so uh the ethanol industry loves it the whole bunch of farmers who have their would have the pipelines go over don't like it and they sure sure as hell don't want eminent domain used. So I watched Vivek in person, and he said all kinds of things. I am not a Ramaswamy fan. I'm the opposite of it. And I find all kinds of nasty, stupid, false things he said in the debates. But when you agree with them, as in this case,

it's like, no, we don't want eminent domain to use to help ethanol companies. He becomes a lot more persuasive. And as somebody put it to me, you just wish he would use his powers for good instead of evil. Because he's got natural charisma and retail politics. He dealt with a heckler just so on. I wrote about this in the Morning's Old Newsletter. Woman starts shouting environmental activists. And it's basically like, how can you oppose these pipelines and still support oil and gas pipelines? And he says, you know what? I'm going to give you the microphone for a minute. And as long as you agree not to insult people here, I will give it to you and you get a chance to make your case.

Do you agree to that? She said, sure. Puts a microphone in her hand. She says who she's from. And within 30 seconds, this man is lying to you. This man thinks you're stupid. She probably is like 20-some years old. You're classic green environmental activist type. Unsurprisingly, the crowd was not persuaded. She did, after a minute, give the microphone back. And Ramaswamy looked magnanimous and he said look we're in the state capital we believe in freedom of speech we just we believe in free of expression

so you know i disagree with your opinion but i'm glad you're able and he just handled it and he looked like and then he goes off and he talks about why he doesn't why he thinks the climate change agenda is nonsense and it was just like he she came across as a angry incoherent uh you know lefty and and she he came across as a guy who actually had done his homework and knew about the issue and i looked at i was like that was just handled really well and he just does you can you look at this you're like man in silicon valley those venture capitalists must have been like listen to him and say take my money yeah this is you know he's got gift uh and i just again i like this guy told me i wish he i wish he used his powers for a better philosophy uh rather than the the agenda he's got and why is he still in you're a billionaire you

can do whatever you want yeah okay okay new hampshire so i think uh think Nikki Haley's path got easier with Chris Christie out of the race. I think both CNN polling and Christie had alluded to his own internal polling on Hugh Hewitt's program, indicating that most of his supporters will probably go to Nikki Haley. As I said, DeSantis is not really playing in that state. There's supposed to be a debate in New Hampshire next week on CNN. To qualify, you had to have 10% in national polls and in New Hampshire polls. DeSantis has not hit 10% in a New Hampshire poll since mid-December. Wow. The bottom has dropped out for him.

Now, if you finish third or above, you still get to qualify. So he should still qualify for this debate if i'm uh nicky haley though do i want to do another one-on-one debate with with desantis one week later no i you know what what's the upside for her so what is it what is it about desantis that the people of new hampshire the republican voters don't like his positions, his track record. What? What do you what doesn't do it? Is it just that they regard him as a sack of wet tinder and they can't get behind somebody they don't regard as particularly charismatic as opposed to the fiery loveliness and, you know, warm embrace that we all get from Nikki Haley.

What what don't they like about DeSantis? Here's a guy with the right record, the right coveted uh the behavior with uh who fights as they say okay everybody was saying i'll fight for you we'll fight well he's fought successfully a lot of the bugaboos that we're supposedly concerned about what don't they like what's not to like well one thing to note is that desantis early on looked at these early state you basically you either pick iowa or you pick New Hampshire, right? And so he put his advertising, his money, all that stuff into New Hampshire, got endorsed by Governor Kim Reynolds. And so as a result, you're kind of like, you know, you pick one, New Hampshire's already, oh, he's one of those Iowa guys.

Also, let's point out that like New Hampshirepshire um as i mentioned you could change your party registration up until that but independence can vote in uh the republican presidential primary up in new hampshire and so let's point out this is a good venue to talk about this so you know every year there's john weaver candidate right uh not just like by himself but there's a candidate named john who runs as the kind of Republican, if you're not really into the Republican Party. It could be John McCain, it could be John Kasich, or it could be John Huntsman, but the character is always

named John, the candidate is always named John, and they almost always hire John Weaver, and MSNBC loves them, the New Republic loves them. Usually they go on The View and they wow them. It's kind of like, wow, I thought I hated all Republicans. Why do all Republicans right exactly right john anderson there's another one john anderson yes there we go um and so nicki haley is as close as we have to that john candidate unless you want to

say asa hutchinson but like you know he's he's looking at uh dean phillips and saying wow that guy can't attract a crowd so i think that's either either that he's just, you know, his brand doesn't match the state. The state wants somebody who's flinty and independent and, you know, Sununu endorsing Haley Helt, you know. I'm waiting because Rob and James both look like they have more questions. No, I'm here in Minnesota. Okay, this is like Jeopardy. I'm going to hit the button first. Jim, question.

I ran into Karl Rove a couple days ago and said, well, you know, if Nikki Haley does well in New Hampshire, I assumed, I took it for granted, she's a former governor of South Carolina, she ought to do well in South Carolina. And he said, that's a very, very good question. There are a lot of good old boys in the Republican Party, at senior positions in the Republican Party in South Carolina, and she had a tense relationship with the good old boys of the Republican establishment in South Carolina from the first moment of her governorship to the last, said Karl Rove, who, like you, is a man who understands the grassroots in state after state after state.

So South Carolina is not a gimme for Nikki Haley at all. Is that right? Oh, absolutely not. Polling there is as bad as it is pretty much anywhere else. Culturally and kind of character-wise, it is still a very Trumpy state. And the assessment is right. Apparently apparently she had a falling out with Mark Sanford, but she was seen as like a Sanford, you know, acolyte, you know, somebody who actually wanted to complain. My parents live down in South Carolina. And so I feel reasonably comfortable talking about the dynamics of this state for a long time. It might be changing a bit, but like for a long time, South Carolina had republicans who governed at the state level not

all that different from democrats they love their bringing money back to their district they love their highway projects they love their you know they were not fiscally conservative by by as most people would think um and you you know haley clashed with them she was not the favorite in that primary she really was helped by Sarah Palin. And obviously, if you win the Republican primary in South Carolina, you got a really good shot at winning the general election. And she was running in 2010, the Tea Party year. So the dynamics worked well, but she came in there as this reformer, and she was not part of the good old boys network. And so, yeah, there was tension there. I think she is still liked and respected. But I keep emphasizing this for all kinds of people.

For every senator who looks in the mirror and sees a president staring back. The goal is not to be liked. The goal is to be somebody's first choice for president because they really only get one. Maybe at the caucuses, if your person gets knocked down in the first round, okay, then we'll vote for them. You really have to be there. You're going up against an incumbent president who

won South Carolina twice by a wide margin. Now, here's the thing. If she wins in New Hampshire, it's like 300. The God King bleeds. You know, Xerxes, you are vulnerable now. And, you know, maybe the question is, does everybody who doesn't want Trump coalesce behind Haley?

Because that's like a prerequisite. And then does Trump start to look a little more vulnerable? But somebody pointed out to me this morning morning there's like a month between New Hampshire and South Carolina. And you probably guys remember George W. versus John McCain in 2000. This is a state where it gets nasty. It really does. When Haley was running for governor

that Schmo said he confessed to having an affair with Nikki Haley. She denied it and it was never proven. And let's point out that by the standards of politicians, Nikki Haley is a very attractive woman. So if you're a guy who says, yes, I confess I had an extramarital

affair with that smoking hot gubernatorial candidate, and I am ashamed for the many, many times, you know, like, there were good reasons to be skeptical of that assessment. So, yeah, like, she would have a shot at South Carolina. Oh, you know what's interesting? Do you think maybe

she regrets taking those shots at Tim Scott during the primary debates? Maybe his endorsement would be helpful right around now? Okay, so, Jim, I got a larger political question. I know you gotta run. Because, I guess you don't have to go anywhere. I've got nowhere to run.

I've got nowhere to go. Take off your tie. Relax. Has anybody ever won playing it safe? I mean, I guess what I'm saying is like, I'm looking at the DeSantis campaign and I'm thinking, okay, well that, you know, I, there was a highly controlled, highly disciplined campaign for most of it.

And they did this thing where they split the campaign up into this monsterly overfunded super PAC that was run by the brain, big brains. And then the campaign, which is run by, you know, kind of like your local cronies, your kitchen cabinet, but also big brains. Nobody's dumb here. And they just thought it was, you know, here's how you do it. And it just seems to me that the political graveyard, at least recently, past 25, I might say three, four, five cycles, has just littered with people who sat in rooms and said, look, let me tell you how it's done. You go from Iowa, then you go here, then you go there.

And has anybody recently, who's the biggest winner that you can think of right now who played it safe um would you count trump by not doing debates and stuff is that kind of well no because i think he's such a renegade he he sort of like jumped i mean you know had you had you told trump to whether he was going to jump in or not before he jumped in in 2016 you would have said don't do it there's no way you can win the people said there's no way you can win um on that tuesday morning election day he trump didn't think he was going to win tuesday morning election day you remember in 2016 there was this idea of lanes right there was this establishment lane probably somebody with the christian conservative lane and you know and

and um i i think one of the hard lessons for everybody else not named donald trump in that primary was donald trump wasn't in any lane he was in every lane he he you know he could be very conservative at times he could sound very moderate at times he would sound you know like sometimes in the same speech and he could sound very hawkish uh we're gonna bomb the s out of uh at a right right right and they say we going to end the forever wars. And he would do it in the same paragraph and nobody sensed

any blatant contradiction there. So I think there was the idea of like, well, like you're not, like ideally you're running to be president of the United States. You're not just running

to be president of the Republicans and you're not running to be president of the Christian concert. This is my big beef with the Santorum and Huckabee stylestyle campaigns. It's like

I am the president of a faction. That's great. The point is to be president of the country. You have this, great, you appealed to the demographic that is most inclined to like you. That's the lowest bar to clear. The aim is to get you to appeal to all kinds

of different people, all different walks of life, all kinds of different... You're right. I life, all kinds of different, you know? So there's there, you're right. I think that there may have been like, nobody's going to look at the DeSantis campaign and say, yes, this is how you do it.

This is how you run it. You know, like I think the idea of like the super pack, like there's nobody would say, oh, that, well, that worked well, you know,

Jeff rode to parting a couple of weeks ago. I had people insisting it's no big deal and i'm like nobody leaves the super pack like with a month to go because things are going so great right and so well you know like um you know so i think there's that i think the but also let's keep in mind know, my kids will periodically repeat Mike can get it done because Mike Bloomberg ads were all over their video games back in 2020. Right. So you can spend a bazillion dollars. Right. And if you people think, yeah, you're this little, you know, little weirdo guy from New York City, they're not going to be interested. So in the end, like you can make it was always going to be hard running against effectively an incumbent

president. Trump's base was extremely... We may look at this and say, what did DeSantis do wrong? And somebody might say nothing, that this was never a race that anybody but Donald Trump... Yeah, you can make that argument, I guess. It was always a very steep climb. Everybody would agree.

And yeah, he brought in what's... Oh, the other thing is that like we don't worry about covet anymore and that was his big you know big success periodically people will still talk about fauci and stuff like that but it's just not front and center on people um but that was i don't think that was a given i think he made that that was a problem it's choice that he made i mean i guess my point is that they seem to make it to come up with a very complicated mousetrap when in fact if you're a sitting governor of a big state you say look at all the good stuff i did in the state look at all the good stuff i did in the state and you don't talk about a lot

of the extraneous stuff you know you just play you just do not attempt to grow a brain i think is always a very very good piece of advice for people in politics stop thinking so hard you know just run on your record and keep saying that over and over again and um you might do it better in new hampshire yeah i i so okay so back in 2016 uh i was the president of the bobby jindal fan club uh we did indeed hold our meetings in a phone booth um yeah it was see kids a phone booth with these places they have to have on the street um and so like they had found on their his campaign went nowhere and he they said like the country the republicans were in a very bad mood in fall 2015 heading into 2016 and they would like do focus groups and they talk

about all the good things he'd done in louisiana and they found that people just didn't believe in they found that like like they were in a mood, you know, the country's going to hell. You know, like they don't. Right. Outing your record. Now, again, like the fights in Florida were national news, particularly over the COVID stuff. So, like, on the one hand, you would have thought that would have done more good. But, you know, maybe the downside of being a governor is that maybe the average Republican isn't as impressed with what your record is. And let's also point out, you know, best observation of that debate.

You look at the gubernatorial record of Nikki Haley and the gubernatorial record of Ron DeSantis. Haley was a pre-Trump Republican. That's true. And he keeps hitting her on, you know, the Chinese factories opening in South Carolina. Right. Every governor had Chinese factories. Every governor was welcoming Chinese investment back then. So, and if you want to, oh, do you think, you know, she's soft on China?

Well, look at her at the UN, right? I think we could say that she's not a secret Chinese spy or secretly soft on Beijing or anything like that. Like, this is kind of a, you don't want to nominate her, fine. This is kind of a dumb argument. Yeah, right. Flip side, looking at Ron DeSon desantis you know when he was in uh the house he voted to raise the debt ceiling yes so did 166 other house republicans like you know do you want to know how or she's like well you know he didn't manage the finances of his campaign well okay but

we have this other record of how he manages finances called the state of florida and things look pretty good there they like a 2.2 billion uh uh surplus there so like they they spent the night doing dumb attacks on each other the whole time um and so that's the first thing is i don't think you know any of those attacks attacks will get any traction against either one of you either one of each other um but yeah look forward talk about what you're gonna do yeah i guess i think there was like for a couple of these debates it's like like, okay, we've heard about what you did in Florida. Things are great, but what are you going to do for the other 49

states? All right, Jim, listen, if you can't get a flight out, hop in your car and come up to Minneapolis. Where the weather's nice. Yeah, it is, actually. Warm and balmy. James has a beautiful house and he's a wonderful host. you should do that

actually okay i've been there we all watch fight for fighting yeah second uh second point is after the show after we let you go we'll bring you back you can make a series of predictions about how you think i was going to go and then we'll run the correct one next week so you know that's a good idea like that yeah like like yeah i'll do this here yeah i'm like, Trump's going to win. Because people are telling me that DeSantis' get-out-the-vote operation will help, and because it's going to be miserable weather, he'll be, let's say, low 20%, 20, 25, somewhere in that range, which will be okay, but not great. Haley will probably be impressive for a state where she wasn't, but probably like 17, probably like 17 or something like that, you know, and everybody else would be single digits. That'll be great. Well, you know, Donald Trump has spent the last four years broadening his base.

So this coasting the victory I can see already. Thank you for joining us, Jim. It's been a pleasure as ever. And we hope to talk to you as much as possible in the year to come. Always, always enjoy it, guys. This is the perfect day because I got nowhere else to go. Stay inside. That's right. We're going to try to take that Always enjoy it, guys. This is the perfect day because I've got nowhere else to go. Stay inside. We're going to try to take that as a compliment, Jim. Oh, it's great. Yes, indeed.

Oh, man, just traveling around. You know, it would be great, though, if you managed to get out and get out to the diners and whatnot. Because one of the things that you want in an Iowa diner, they've got these great hot turkey sandwiches. You've got the hot turkey, you've got the mashed potatoes, you've got the gravy.

They're absolutely delicious. And if you save it and you take it home, the next day you can have a cold turkey and it's a good sandwich. But cold turkey is not the way you want to quit something. No, it just isn't. Wow. No, there's a better way to break your bad habits. And that's where our sponsor Fume comes in. Spelled F-U with an umlaut, as they would say at the take a break. You know, it's bad for your health.

It's a waste of time. It leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth and an unpleasant odor on your clothes. Everybody can tell when you came in or you've been. Well, instead of electronics, fume is completely natural. Instead of vapor, fume uses flavored air. And instead of harmful chemicals, fume uses all natural, delicious flavors. You know, they sent me one of these things to try, and I just absolutely enjoy putting in these little flavored cartridges and inhaling. And it's just cool. And it's a delicious, minty break from doing what you might do otherwise.

Now, stopping is something we all put off because it's hard, right? It's tough to quit that stuff. But switching to fume is easy. It's enjoyable. And like I said, it's even fun. Fume has served over 100,000 customers and has thousands of success stories. So there's no reason that that can't be you too. Join Fume and accelerating humanity's breakup from destructive habitus by picking up the Journey Pack today. How? Well, you can head to tryfume.com, T-R-Y-F-U-M.com, and use the code RICOSHAY to save 10% off when you get the Journey Pack today. That's T-R-Y-F-U-M.com, coupon code RICOSHAY to get 10% off your order today. And we thank you for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. We're running a little late here, so we kind of get out of here. But anything come to mind? The Hunter Biden story is, it is what it is. You know, I'm just tired of a whole bunch of them. I think the most interesting thing this last week, and if we could spend maybe one or two minutes on it.

Rob, you're there. New York, I wrote about this this week in my site. New York said, you know what? Storm's coming in. We're going to take the migrants. We'll put them in a school. Kids got to go home. Remote learning. It was one of those examples of, here are these guys who are not citizens that we apparently are more obliged to accommodate than the actual children of the citizens of the country. And when you come with

the couple of other governors, or not governors, but mayors saying, you know what, we ought to put these people up in private homes as well. You begin to wonder exactly what the end game of this is here rob you've got 47 seconds ordering uh yeah look these are these are these are the consequences of a policy the policy two policies right one policy is don't enforce the border and the second policy is um have passed lots of like uh nice sounding notions in cities that aren't touched by um illegal immigration. We're a sanctuary city. We're this, we're that. Pass all sorts of rules because you're absolutely 100% convinced that you'll never be held accountable for them.

And now they are. And it is unfortunate that these leaders didn't have the foresight to think about what would happen if the migrant problem in the southern border somehow made its way up north to New York City. But it has now, so I suspect that there are going to be a whole lot of people trying to figure out a way to use what is essentially a Trump-era immigration platform and weasel worded here and there so they can say it's their own and run as run as democrats run as liberals that you're going to be seeing massive amounts of liberals trying to figure out how to be for border security without being for border security it's going to be kind of fun in a way you will but it's what this means i think looking at this in a couple of other things, and it means basically perpetual Democrat rule, because you will have the smart ones realizing that there is another lane here, as Garrity was just talking about. It's like Fetterman all of a sudden getting strange new respect for making

statements. It's like the people around Pennsylvania saying, no, you're not going to take down the statue of William Penn. The Democrats are saying this. So when they say that say that and they get outside of the Prague narratives and realize that there's actually a lot of middle of the road Democrats who say, yeah, I like that. I don't like the whole Prague thing where you tear down the statues, where you quarter the people, where you do that. Then you have the rise of that faction, which, you know, we'll get more votes than your Trump faction, period. Look, I think that's a general good. I think it's good when people are forced to realize that their bizarre, extreme positions

have either negative consequences or are foolish. And that, I mean, it's good. The party that, the Democrat or Republican party that wakes up to realize that it's a 51, 52% nation and you need the people who don't like you now you need to vote for you you can't you can't just sit there and scream um those are the people uh who understand how the system works and they're going to get the most done they're not going to get everything done but they're going to get the most done and they're going to get the most done under the system that

we have we we we now are governed by and was created by the founders for this express purpose, which was to force people to somehow make common cause and to accept the C-plus version of what it is they want. And that's just the way it works. So you can either change the way it works, but you can't bang your spoon in your high chair. The awakening from the awokening will be their salvation. And how we respond to that on the other side of the political aisle

is something that we will see, and we will be here to talk about it with you rob and peter who had to scamper off i want to remind you the podcast was brought to you by fume and by z biotics and you can support them for supporting us and improve your life immeasurably take a minute to leave that five star review at apple podcast if you would to like and smash and subscribe and as they say as youtube yes i'm sorry no what matters is that uh Ricochet and keep it going, because we want to be here for you throughout this entire election and the administration to come. Rob, it's been a pleasure. And we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet still for point out next week, next week.