The Ricochet Podcast - Fundamentally Unserious

Episode Date: November 6, 2015

In a recent post, Ricochet member anonymous posits that the U.S. has become “an unserious country.” Today, we do our best to dispel that notion just a bit (despite the disturbing image above from EJHill) with our guests economist Russ Roberts from the Hoover Institution as well as his legendary EconTalk podcast and Fox News chief Washington correspondent James Rosen (read his new book Cheney One... Source

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Just Eat. Delivery and service charges apply. See JustEat.ie for details. be disastrous. And what it means is that the people don't want socialism. They want more conservatism. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lylex. I'm not here, but you've got economist Russ Roberts and Fox chief political correspondent James Rosen. Let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. Hello and welcome to the Ricochet podcast. This is number 281, which means we've done this for 281, not straight weeks in a row, but pretty close.

Pretty close. Pretty close. Yeah, pretty close. This is Rob Long. I'm coming to you from kind of some muggy and murky New York City. On the line with me as always is my Ricochet co-founder, Peter Robinson in sunny Palo Alto. Peter, how are you? I'm extremely well.

Thank you, Rob. Well, murky. Muggy? Murky? Muggy and murky both. Both muggy and murky. So there's a kind of Indian summer, murky. Muggy? Murky? Muggy and murky both. Both muggy and murky. So there's a kind of Indian summer with murky. Yeah. Well, that's what you say.

I say global warming. Oh, of course. Of course. Of course. But before we get into that, let's just remind everyone that the Ricochet Podcast is brought to you by SaneBox. Is your email inbox out of control? Get it back in control with SaneBox.

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I cannot permit it to stand. I said something. I didn't mean what I said. What I meant was a moment ago. I cannot permit it to stand. I said something. I didn't mean what I said. What I meant was Native American summer. Yes, yes. That's much, much, much better. You meant feather, not dot. That's important.

Exactly. We are also brought to you by Ricochet.com. Ricochet.com is the fastest growing, most civil conversation site between and among our contributors and members of the center right on the web we are striking a battle for civility we don't like the nastiness we don't like the rude language we don't like any of that we like polite civil fun spirited witty amusing and even passionate conversation um between the civil the center right that's how we're going to win the country back my friends by not by stooping to their level. If you were a membership, you let it lapse, just use the coupon code REJOIN, get two months free.

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Use the coupon code JOIN and you get 30 free days. There's absolutely risk-free to you. Speaking of Ricochet, we are also pleased and honored to have on the line today, Ricochet Editor-in-Chief, John Gabriel. John, how are you? I am doing fantastic, gentlemen. How about yourselves? I can't complain.

Here's what I can't complain about. I can't complain about two things. One, it really does look like that weird little mini election day we had on Tuesday that everybody – I completely forgot about. In Kentucky and in Virginia seem to suggest that Republicans are stronger than ever. Am I right or wrong? John, I think that it bodes very, very well for Republicans. And the interesting thing is, look at the damage that Obama has wrought upon the Democratic Party everywhere, but in the seat in which she resides. They are losing state legislatures are losing governorships.

They're losing all sorts of seats in the House and the Senate. It really is amazing. And every off year election, the Democrats cannot, their vaunted get out the vote machinery completely breaks down. So it really does play into this feeling of it's an Obama personality cult almost that's that has led his run to the White House and it's only tied to him. I don't see that following with Hillary. Matt Bevin, the new Republican governor elect of Kentucky should not have stood a chance. In fact, that's what the polls showed until about a week before the election. Why? Because he's a rich guy from back east and that is just not the way Kentucky politics works. And he was taking on – it's a small-ish state, small-ish state, small enough so that candidates get to know folks.

He was taking on somebody who had been in Kentucky politics a good long time, who was a centrist Democrat. The whole formula, his opponent should have won the governorship. What did Matt Bevin do that enabled him to not only to win but to win by nine points, a big win and it broke in the last week? He ran against Obamacare and the Republican – the Republican Governors Association put in some money to support him putting up on ads again about Obamacare, tying the Democrat to Obamacare, tying the Democrat to Obamacare. And all these years after that thing passed the United States Senate in the middle of the night without a single Republican vote and the Democrats were convinced that within six months or so, the American people would love it.

And they would have locked in a gigantic new social program that would make Americans their wards for decades to come. All these years afterwards, that thing is so unpopular that even a centrist Democrat who knows everybody in Kentucky by his first name gets clobbered by it. This is – even Donald Trump can't screw this up. Well, OK. Here's my other question, right? So nobody predicted that Matt Bevin was going to win. And I think even in Virginia and in the Virginia, the Virginia sort of state statehouse elections, I don't think anyone predicted that the Republicans would retain would be that strong in the Virginia Senate because the polls said that they weren't. So if polling is so weak now and so inaccurate, why are we letting them use it to decide who gets to debate in the Republican primary? I mean Chris Christie, who whatever you think, whether you're for him or you're against him, he's a formidable candidate and a smart guy.

Mike Huckabee, the same. They were just relegated for the Fox Business Channel debate coming up to the undercard, to the kids' table. Based on polling. What was the threshold they failed to pass? They need 3 percent or 2.5 percent? It's some relatively low number. I believe it was 2.5. 2.5.

OK. But it's within the margin of error or whatever that is. Yes, yes. They're cutting it more finely than they have and a science to back it up. So, John, you are on – you're a social media maven. How mad are people about this or do they not care? It seems like – I don't see a lot of people caring a lot. There is frustration that the networks are choosing our candidates for us and things like that, and you'll have individual candidates getting upset. Actually, Jeb Bush was complaining that Lindsey Graham didn't even get enough to qualify for the undercard debate. It's kind of interesting because Fox News and I believe

the Wall Street Journal polls just removed asking questions about Graham in their last poll, and that's why once you averaged his numbers, it came in as a zero in their poll, so he didn't even qualify for the 1% for the undercard debate. So I don't see people really angry about it. I think after seeing several debates, both the big table and the kids' table, I think people in general, voters, are sick of all the candidates and say, all right, let's narrow the field, even if good quality people, Bobby Jindal is someone I had wished had been on the main

stage the whole debate. He's obviously a very bright guy, successful governor, but there's just so many people running. And I think after we've seen several debates, people are getting tired of the 72 people on stage or they can just install bleachers. That's the other option. Exactly right. You know, we have we have a couple of guests here. I want to get to Russ Roberts, James Rosen. They're coming up. But before we do, can we talk about Ben Carson for a couple of minutes? um ben carson's been getting um

i did red eye last night we sort of talked about oh how did that go you so you haven't you haven't slept in hours did you do yes well we do it a little early so don't worry about it um but uh joked around a little bit about his idea that joseph built the uh the pyramids to store grain um i made the point that i thought that was a rel i'm much more concerned about some I'm much less concerned about what somebody thinks about the pyramids than I am about somebody thinking you can tax and regulate your way to prosperity. However, this morning, Ben Carson's campaign admitted that one of the central points of his sort of political bio was that he was given a – admitted to West Point and given a scholarship. But that is not true, that he met General Westmoreland at a banquet when he was a top ROTC student in Detroit, which that is true. And he met it and I guess Westmoreland said you got to – if you apply, man, you'll get in and he just never did. How bad is this going to be?

That's serious. That strikes me as serious. So the case on Ben Carson runs as follows. He's a lovely man. He was a wonderful surgeon. He is in no way qualified to be president of the United States. That's the case that gets made out loud. Then here's the case that gets made in sort of whispered voices, except by Donald Trump, who to his credit will say out loud what everybody else is only whispering. And the whispering is he's a little bit nutty. The Seventh-day Adventist, he's not a sort of mainstream Christian as Donald Trump said. I'm a Presbyterian. I don't know about the Seventh-day Adventist.

So that's – and then he believes that the – he said – I can't tell whether he meant it or whether he was joking. But in any event, what people are saying is Ben Carson claims that the pyramids were built – the pyramids which are solid. We know that. Granite and sandstone I think. In any event, they're solid except for tombs at the very bottom that they were built as huge granaries by Joseph at the biblical times to store grain and save Egypt from the famine. And now we have the new thing. Well, gee, he's a little bit – he's just vain enough to tell stories on himself that aren't quite true. All of that adds up.

It's serious. Of course, I think it's serious. And I think the West Point thing too, you kind of have the conflation of bringing in the military, which is – of all groups in the country is basically sainted at this point. And just bringing in that, I think, gives an additional heft. We're talking about a guy who doesn't have experience to be commander in chief, saying that he was given a full scholarship to West Point.

And that's just like you guys, the pyramid thing, whatever. I'm getting tired of people disqualifying politicians because of their beliefs on esoteric issues. I care about what they want to do with those beliefs. And also too, one thing that is left unmentioned by our biased press is Pataki thinks the ziggurats were filled with hoagies. I never see that mentioned anywhere. I thought it that mentioned anywhere. I thought it was potato canisius. Oh, yeah. Actually, you're right.

That was during the captivity I think was canisius. OK. But is this – is this along the lines of Hillary Clinton under fire? Is this closer to Elizabeth Warren? Where do we put this? I would put both of those. You put it where, John? I would put it below both of those.

I think both of those serial lies and Elizabeth Warren lying about your race to, you know, right. Come on. She she lied about a race to get. Yes. And that's and that's persistent. That isn't I mean, she filled out forms in which she claimed to be a, that's just.

What's amazing is that nobody ever called her on it because they had never really seen a Native American. They were all at Harvard. As far as they're concerned, that's what one looked like. We got to get back to this. I know, but before we do,

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That's thegreatcourses, all one word, dot com slash ricochet. We are pleased and happy that they are sponsoring the Ricochet podcast. They know Ricochet podcast listeners are smart. Let's bring in our first guest, Russ Roberts. He's been here before, brilliant economist. Russ Roberts is the John and Jean Denault Research Fellow at Hoover Institute – Institution, sorry, Peter. And he's here right now.

Hey, Russ, first thing, we want to get to all kinds of things eventually. And you're on the line with Rob Long, who's up in New York, and John Gabriel, who's in... At LiveScoreBet, we love Cheltenham just as much as we love football. The excitement, the roar, and the chance to reward you. That's why every day of the festival, we're giving new members money back as a free sports bet up to 10 euro if your horse loses on a selected race that's how we celebrate the biggest week in racing cheltenham with live score bet this is total betting sign up by 2 p.m 14th of march bet within 48 hours of race main market excluding specials and place bets terms apply bet responsibly 18 plus gambling care.ie arizona peter's here i'm in northern californ California. Listen, Virginia went to the polls. Virginia, your state where you live most of your life. I have to correct you. I actually live in Maryland. It's hard to understand and hard to imagine, but it's nearby. Virginia is nearby.

You drive into Virginia every day? No, I am now full time at Hoover. Oh, OK. So you spent years teaching at Georgia. The point is now I'm backtracking. But still, the point is, you know, Virginia politics better than the three of us. Let's put it that way. Possible election on Tuesday. Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic governor, huffed and puffed and crisscrossed the state for four days, making I think it was over 20 stops. The Democrats spent a ton of money and the results were as follows. In the assembly, the Democrats picked up one seat. It remains by a margin of about two to one, a Republican controlled chamber. And in the Virginia Senate, which is where

all eyes had turned because the Republicans controlled that Senate by only two seats, 21 to 19. In the Republican Senate, after Democrats spent millions of dollars and the governor huffed and puffed his way around the state, no change. It remains after the election of what it was before Republicans 21, Democrats 19. What are we to make of this? Does it have any implication for the national races? You know, Virginia is a very strange state. Like many states, it's divided between urban and rural areas and their political preferences. But in recent years, there's been a very large population move toward northern Virginia,

which is essentially a suburb of Washington, D.C. So there's a tension between those two parts of the Virginia electorate as there is elsewhere. I think it's too early to tell. It's not much happened. I don't think we can make too much of the fact that Terry McAuliffe didn't do particularly well in influencing things or that they

spent a lot of money. I think I'm sure both sides spent a lot of money. So I don't know. It's too early to tell. What you essentially get is the battle lines in Virginia are clearly drawn. They didn't shift. Northern Virginia is still heavily Democrat but the rest of the state is still heavily Republican. Correct, which is true of a lot of other places.

Yeah. Hey, Russ. It's Rob Long in New York. I got to change the subject quickly. Today, new jobs numbers, 271, number that most people would have been very, very happy with. Five percent is pretty low for unemployment. And 271,000 is a decent job number. It's better than they've been, significantly better I'd say. So it's an encouraging sign for those whose fortunes ride on the success of the economy.

But I think you have to put the numbers in perspective. Labor force participation, the eagerness of people to be in the workplace to start with, is still not very high. And by any standard, this has been a mediocre recovery. It has finally at least gotten us to something looking like full employment, but the wage numbers have been disappointing. The pace of it has been appalling by historical standards. The fundamental question that we don't have an answer to is why.

People on the right like to blame Obama. People on the left blame the severity of the recession itself or the special circumstances of the recession. And we really don't have as economists much of a way to distinguish between those two theories other than our own biases. So while I'm sympathetic to the idea that this Obama recovery is up to him and finally is decent and it's taken forever, it's really hard was, 7 percent unemployment then. What's going to happen when Hillary runs and it's five or maybe even a little bit below? Well, I wouldn't count on it being five or a little bit below. November is a long way away, November 2016,

October 2016, when the campaign is at its peak. And I would not be optimistic if it were her that the good times will last or the sort of good times or okay times will last till then. That's number one. Number two, she has other issues that I think will dominate her election chances. I don't think the economy – if it stays like it is, it won't hurt her but she still will have to overcome her issues with respect to trust and reliability. The simple fact that it's very rare for a candidate from the party that's been in office for eight years to win again. George Bush 41 was a rarity and I think Hillary will have to face that as well. She does have the advantage of being potentially the first woman – female president and that will help her with some voters. But right now, if the economy were like it is today in 2016, I'd say it will be OK for her. But I don't think that's a sure thing at all. Hey, I know John Gabriel wants to get in. I have one more question. The labor force participation rate, what's it called? U3 or U6? I always forget what that is. That's – No, the labor force participation rate is the – it's very tricky because people have an intuitive idea of what things are that they talk about in the data.

But the way the data are collected are not the same as those intuitive understandings. So let's just take an easy one, unemployment. Well, we think we all know what unemployment is. It's – you don't have a job. But of course my teenage son doesn't have a job. He's in high school. Is he unemployed? Well, he's not employed, but is he unemployed?

The answer is you would say he isn't as an everyday sense of the word and the government would say he isn't because the government's definition of unemployed is looking for a job and not finding one. So for example – so that's – my son is easy. But let's take a construction worker who was thrown out of work in 2008, has done some odd jobs here and there, went back to school and is now thinking of doing something different from construction and can't find a job. Is that person unemployed? Well, he is if he says he's looking for a job. Is that person unemployed? Well, he is if he says he's looking for a job. What if he's given up? What if after not finding a job for 18 months, he gives up? Well, he's not unemployed anymore.

So the definition of labor force participation is either employed or unemployed. That is either working or looking for work but not finding it yet. There are other people who have given up or decided to go back to school or done something different with their lives. They've joined the underground economy perhaps. Those folks aren't counted as unemployed. So when we look at the unemployment rate, it is somewhat subjective. It's not an objective measure because it ignores people who have given up. But the labor force participation rate right now is the lowest it's been in what, 25, 30 years? I mean – Yeah, it's a long time and it's tempting again to blame that on either – well, let's say this. Whether you're on the left or the right, it's tempting to blame

it on the current state of the economy. There are other factors. There are demographics that are involved, the fact that the population is aging, getting increasingly old, not just that we're all aging, but the mix of people in the population is shifting toward older people. There's a question of disability. Disability rolls are way up over the last 10, 15 years. Is that because work has gotten more dangerous? That's hard to argue. Most work has gotten safer and the jobs that we have are safer than they used to be. So most people believe that's because of changes in the eligibility and the way that the courts have enforced it. So those people aren't in the labor force anymore. Well, let me just try to theory on you if I could just – that the number of people who have jobs now are surrounded by more people than ever before who don't have jobs and are looking or have given up.

And that creates this kind of disquiet you see. standard, 5.1% unemployment is pretty good. But we see a whole bit of – we see nervousness with voters and a disquiet and a kind of concern and all the wrong track numbers are high. Is it because we know – we all just anecdotally know now more people who are just looking and not finding jobs and have given up? Is that – or am I just kind of making up a story that I should just not make up? Long pause. I'm not sure. But I hate to say you're making up a story that you shouldn't make up. But what I would say is that voters aren't terribly well informed. We all have our own perceptions of economic reality.

They come from three sources, our personal lives, the lives of people we have direct contact with and things we read in the paper or on the web. That last source is wildly uninformative. We filter those stories through our own biases and our own experiences. The people we know may or may not be representative of larger groups and our own personal experience is certainly not representative of a bunch besides ourselves. So I think just to take an obvious political parallel, most people believe that their congress – member of congress is pretty honest and hardworking. But everybody else's is awful. Well, how can that be? Somebody is wrong, right? So a lot of people – similarly, in the economy, you can have periods where people say, I'm doing fine.

I feel bad about everybody else. In fact, everybody else feels that way too. Now, I would say the reality is somewhere in between the story of it's all going to hell in a handbasket versus we all think everybody else is doing poorly. But in fact, they're doing okay. The truth is that we do know people, most of us know folks who have lost their jobs, who may have struggled to find work, who eventually did find work. But I would say that it's wildly different. Our experiences and our perception reality are wildly different depending on our education level and the people we hang out with. Among people with college degrees and higher, more education, master's, et cetera, this recession has been pretty mild. Unemployment rate is pretty low.

Whereas if you don't – didn't finish high school, you're not doing so well and you haven't done very well. You've struggled possibly for quite some time. So I think the challenge we think about trying to assess whether the economy is healthy or not healthy, it's an aggregate and it's often misleading relative to what's happening for any particular group or types of people, especially by education. Hi, Russ. This is John Gabriel. The left, their big bugaboo now, The injustice they need to right is inequality. We're seeing that everywhere. We're seeing it all over left-leaning blogs. We see massive crowds turning up for Bernie Sanders and inexplicably many, many educated young people turning up despite his retread socialist ideas, which have never really worked in the past.

And you are someone who has done a great job reaching out to people, not with white papers on economics. You have those Keynes-Hayek rap videos, which just get millions of views. They can reach out to people in new ways. How solid is the case, do you think, for the left with their complaints about inequality, their remedies for it, and how can we on the right, everyone here is a communicator, how can we make the case to oppose the wrong parts of their agenda basically and this creeping fascination with socialism? Yeah, they do tie together unfortunately. First I'll mention I'm working on a video series, not as entertaining as the Cain's Hayek rap videos, but I do want to create some – trying to create some videos that would help people understand the data and the statistics behind inequality and some

of the claims being made about stagnation in the middle class. Some of those claims I believe are manipulations of the data, distortions of data. But some of it is true. Let's look at the part that's true. And then let's think about what the remedies are, if they need to be remedied, and how it plays out in the political sphere. So what I think is true is that at any point in time, recently, the higher end of the economic distribution gets more money relative to the middle or the lower end than it used to. So the gap between the lower end than it used to.

So the gap between the high and the low is growing. It doesn't mean the rich are getting all the money and all the gains. That doesn't actually follow because they're not the same people being followed over time in the data. So that's one of the misleading and distortionary aspects of this. But I think it is true that the people at the upper end are doing better and some of that relative to other people and some of that is fabulously good and most of us like it and would applaud it even if we're not those people. Relative to the average person who's following the NBA, compared to say what Larry Bird earned or Magic Johnson earned 35 years ago relative to the average NBA fan, that gap has grown. LeBron James is more of a king than Larry Bird or Magic Johnson financially. And the answer – the reason is simple. It's not because LeBron James cheated or broke the rules or tipped the playing field. It's that the NBA has a much wider audience than it had 30, 40 years ago. It's reaching people in China.

And to make – put it simply, LeBron James is making more people happy and entertaining more people than Larry Bird or Magic Johnson 40 years ago ever could, 35 years ago ever could. And that's fine. So that kind – and that would also be true of entertainers. It would be true of Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs, his wealth that he created was created because he could make the lives of a lot more people a lot more successful with his products than somebody could have 50 years ago when markets were less global, when people were poorer.

And so when you win, when you create an extraordinary product today, you do much better than you did 40 or 50 years ago when you made an extraordinary product. That's great. We should applaud that. That's a wonderful thing. On the other side, if you get rich by taking advantage of government favoritism, what I would call crony capitalism and not the real thing, that is something we should try to do something about. The problem I have with most of the criticisms of the left besides the statistical

distortions and their willingness to blame every social ill and medical ill on inequality, which is I find remarkably unscientific. Let's put that to the side. If it bothers you, I think it's important – inequality. If it bothers you, it's important to distinguish between the causes of inequality because if you don't distinguish between the causes, your cures will not be helpful and may in fact be counterproductive. So I have no problem with getting rid of special corporate subsidies.

I have no problem with reducing the subsidies that Wall Street gets from its too big to fail, which is I think a horrible thing for capitalism and democracy. So I would like to get rid of those. That would reduce inequality. I would like to get the Fed out of the business of softening the blows of financial cycles, which would be good. It would make it – that would reduce inequality to make the Fed less active. All those things would be good. Now, the other – but that's not what typically the left wants. The left wants something more leveling overall.

They want to have more redistribution. Now, redistribution, you can debate. It's a philosophical question and I think it's wonderful that Bernie Sanders is putting it out on the table. But general redistribution of the kind that he seems to favor of taking, quote, from the rich and giving it to the rest of us or to the poor, that doesn't have a great track record. And I say that not because it leads to communism or tyranny and sometimes it does. But I say that more because if you're a high-end lawyer and you're making a great deal of money, you're making your $1,000 an hour and the government raises taxes on you, you're going to raise your fees. Now, not because you want to but because the market will allow you to. Now, it won't allow you to pass on all the tax to your clients. There will be some redistributive effects, some attenuation of how much money you can take home. But some of the effects of high taxation will be offset by labor market competition for people with high skills. inequality would be great, like getting rid of crony capitalism. There are some I think that would be possibly good if you like redistribution, but not as effective as you might hope, such as

higher tax rates. And I think a lot of this issue is a distortion of the data. But part of it's real and that part we ought to get behind who are less interventionist. We ought to get behind the parts that should be improved, such as the crony part. The book – we should just say before we keep going. Your book is called Adam Smith Can Change Your Life, An Unexpected link to the book and also a link to those great Keens Hayek rap videos which do more to explain current economics than any economics class I ever took

they are so good both a sign of how good they are and how bad my econ classes are thank you very much for joining us. We're thrilled to have you. Anytime you want to come back, please do. I especially want you to come back sometime when the November and December numbers come out because I've got more questions to sort this out. Russ Roberts, thanks for joining us.

My pleasure. Russ, thanks a lot. Take care, guys. That is interesting. So it's funny that these numbers come out now. I mean they came out this morning, and the first thing people do is attack them or praise them. They don't even think about the number of the millions of people they represent. They just think about what it represents to the probably half dozen or maybe dozen delusional people who want to be president of the United States.

They only think about, OK, how does this affect Hillary? How does it affect Barack Obama? How does it affect Marco Rubio, Donald Trump, the people running for president? We don't really think about the 62 – really only 62 percent of the labor force is actually participating in the labor market. That's kind of dangerous, don't you think? I think so. It's really disturbing. And you just see this. And I think this is what's fueling a lot of we mentioned Bernie Sanders. But I think Bernie

Sanders for the left, Donald Trump for people who are more right leaning. I think that's what's fueling a lot of it. There are a lot of people who feel left behind. And even if they have studied jobs, they aren't as flexible as they used to be. They're just getting killed with health care. And I think, you know, gosh, probably most of our listeners have experienced that deductibles increasing, monthly rates increasing and feeling like, again, yeah, unemployment numbers come out and we wonder how it'll hurt incredibly rich people in Washington, D.C. and New York City. They don't think about everybody else that's being affected by the economy. And it's not, you know, if you are a multimillionaire and your investments dip a bit, well, that's too bad for you. But that's pretty minor. You'll do

fine. The rest of the people are really being left behind, I think. And that's why they're reaching for, you know, somebody just to shout at the madness going on in the beltway. Speaking of being – of feeling left behind, this is a segue. You can get behind on your emails. Segue approaching. You can get behind on your emails. You know how it happens. Some of the best conversations happen through email. You know the kind.

A friend or colleague reaches out to share a few thoughts. You write back a few of your own and before you know it, you've secured a loyal fan, a friend or customer, or maybe even some new ideas to share, but very quickly, 10 emails becomes 100 and then 500, and it isn't long before we all have thousands of messages in our inbox and no time to sift out the conversations worth having.

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I am indeed. How long have you used it, Rob? You discovered SaneBox a couple of years ago. Three or four years. I mean when it first came out, it was like a cult. I joined the cult. I discovered it through Ricochet and, man, it helps a huge amount. I've been using it for three weeks now.

Hey, John, how many emails do you get a day? You must get a million. Actually, that's a low estimate. On Sundays, I get a million. I get a little more than that. And my email folder is such a mess, I'm afraid to even employ SaneBox because I feel like I need to clean it out first. What I'm going to do is immediately when this podcast is done, I'm signing up for SaneBox, taking the plunge, and I can report next week on it. All right. That's good. All right. We'll

hear from you next week. Our next guest is James Rosen. James Rosen is the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News Channel. He hosts the online show The Foxhole. He's got a new book out, very interesting and timely, called Cheney, One on One. We are thrilled to have him. Welcome, James Rosen, to the Ricochet Podcast. Great to be with you. Thanks for having me. So I've just – I've got to ask.

The book out – the John Meacham book about George H.W. Bush is out. He says some critical things about the Dick Cheney that served his son, George W. Bush, and Donald Rumsfeld. What do you make of that? What do you think Cheney makes of that? Well, first of all, I have great admiration for John Meacham. And he has some admiration for me as he contributed a blurb to the back cover of Cheney one-on-one. I think it's an odd spectacle to see Bush 41, who had established this admirable principle of refraining from criticizing his successors in the Oval Office, now on the historical record being a lot tougher on Cheney and Rumsfeld than any ever was on clinton or obama right moreover uh... bush forty three had issued a statement just last forty hours disavowing

his father's comment saying that the cheney was a quote superb vice president and that he considered himself fortunate to have cheney at his side of the eight years of his presidency a moreover there's just certain aspects to the substance of what bush forty one alleged that uh... don't really withstand scrutiny. One of the things that he told John Meacham was that Dick Cheney, during the Bush 43 administration, had been engaged in building his own empire. And in Cheney One-on-One, we go into great detail about Cheney's experiences as the chief of staff to President Gerald Ford in the 1970s, where Cheney all too frequently was able to observe the vice president's staff,

the staff of Nelson Rockefeller, being sort of estranged from the president's staff, and this leading to problems between the principals, political issues, PR problems. And so when Cheney became vice president, he took the unprecedented step of having several of his staffers, key people like Mary Madeline and Scooter Libby, wear dual hats, whereby they served officially on the staff both of Vice President Cheney and of President George W. Bush. This doesn't come after the need of empire building. This is integration, not empire building. Yeah, that was looked at at the time as trying to expand his empire and trying to be powerful, but in your book, and you say it was really kind of a management decision based on inefficiencies

that he witnessed in previous administrations. That's right. And the prospect for a vice president's staff to somehow become separated and apart from the president's staff, if he were really interested in building his empire, he wouldn't probably give the president's staff that kind of window or visibility into what his staff was up to. Can I ask one more question? Because Cheney actually yesterday sort of felt like he sort of admitted, I mean, he said, listen, yeah, I did get tough.

I did become a hardliner after 9-11. And I'm old enough to remember that first debate in 2000, the vice presidential debate with Joe Lieberman and Dick Cheney sitting at desks. And afterwards, the general consensus, not just of Republicans and Democrats, but of everybody in the media was, boy, I'd rather have either one of these two guys president than the two running at the top of the ticket. How did it change so much from being this kind of moderate, thoughtful, steady-hand statesman to being sort of demonized as you see him now? Well, victory will have a way of demonizing conservatives in the eyes of the left. Dick Cheney himself rejects the idea, though, that there was some radical break in the nature of his decision-making at some point in his career, that he was some moderate way back when, and then he became a kind of neocon warmonger. It's true that he did work for Gerald Ford and worked his tail off day and night to beat

back a Republican primary challenge from Ronald Reagan. But as a member of the Congress himself for 10 years, Cheney compiled one of the most conservative voting records of anyone in the House, and he told me with pride that it would still be considered such today. He worked directly with Ronald Reagan, and he shares some of those stories that are not in his own memoir with me and Cheney one-on-one. And Cheney doesn't see any discontinuity in the way he was always approaching public policy problems or the way he was using his mind. It's just that he adapted to the new and radical circumstances of 9-11, and he's very proud of the fact that there weren't any follow-on attacks, any mass casualty attacks under the Bush-Cheney administration for the remainder of their term. Hey, James,

Peter Robinson here. How are you? Hey, Peter. Good to hear your voice. What does the former vice president make of a couple of things? Here's one. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. On one hand, this is, we have to move fast here because this is an interview. So this is a kind of crude characterization, but fundamentally Hawks

on the war in Iraq. And then you've got Colin Powell and his chief of staff, Dick Armitage, whom we now know was leaking left, right, and center. That's a matter of record now. Came out during the Scooter Libby trial.

Yes, Armitage was the deputy secretary of state. The chief of staff, I think, was Lawrence Wilkerson. No, no. Who was Lawrence Wilkerson, who now has spent all his years since attacking the Iraq war. In any event, we've got State Department opposed to the vice president and the secretary of defense. And by the way, the tensions between the State Department and the Secretary of

Defense, those are almost traditional at this stage. They have quite different interests. Nevertheless, it was the job of the President of the United States and his National Security Advisor, who for many of those years was Condi Rice, to force these disagreements, very deep policy disagreements, up and out and get them to decide and unite and go forward. And it never happened. I'm not saying that is a kind of common account at this stage. What does the former vice president himself have to say about that account? Look, I interviewed Dick Cheney for 10 hours across three days this past December at his home in Northern Virginia in his book-line study shortly before he was to turn 74,

and you've never heard Dick Cheney open up the way he did in these interviews on a whole range of issues. And he was very candid in his assessments of his colleagues like Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, whom he even had some criticism, and George Tenet, director of CIA. And we explored in depth Condoleezza Rice's tenure as the national security advisor. Cheney maintains respect and a cordial relationship for Condoleezza Rice. It did not turn out that way with Colin Powell, where the difficulties became personal. I think Cheney regrets that, but still views that he was right on the issues. And one of the problems that Cheney identifies in our interviews is that Condoleezza Rice had a tendency as National Security Advisor to want to present to the president a consensus view,

even when no consensus had been achieved. And it isn't that these things fail to get adjudicated. It's just often that Cheney, as he also admitted quite frankly to me in these interviews, often used his direct access to George W. Bush in that first term and his gravitas as the most extensive, the most experienced foreign policy national security hand in the president's war cabinet, to short-circuit the process and get his way and shut out his rivals for power before they even knew a game was afoot. And the question that I put to him that triggered that acknowledgment from him was as follows.

Did Vice President Cheney approach the business of presidential decision making in a way that chief of staff, Dick Cheney, would have found in terms of the proper paper flow to the president and so forth unacceptable. He said, if you're asking, did I use my access with the president to short circuit the system, sometimes to get things done after 9-11? Yes. James, that was a beautiful question to put to him. That was a – that's why you're a good journalist, my friend. Thank you. That Cheney was using his power, his gravitas, just everything that you just said to short circuit the ordinary process and exert what the old man would now view as undue influence in his son's White House. What do you make of that? Well, I think we are wise to distinguish between seeking to prevail in given policy disputes and the enterprise of empire building.

They're not the same. And where one aide of George W. Bush's has put it, Cheney, in the case of George W. Bush, was pushing on an open door. And again, we do have this record, this statement on the record from Bush 43 just in the last 48 hours. He considered Cheney a superb vice president. One more question, if I may, for you, James. Sure. And I'm revealing – what I'm revealing is that I haven't read the book yet, but boy, do I intend to over the holidays. So here's the question.

Great. Thank you. And then that war goes sideways at best for going on to four years before the administration finally pulls itself together American Enterprise Institute with the Kagan's and retired vice chief of staff of the army, Jack Kane, who sorted out the – sketched out the essentials of a surge policy and then went to the vice president, Dick Cheney, whom you interviewed, who went to the president. In other words, it was this kind of cockamamie outside operation that saved Iraq in the end. What does the former vice president say about those four years of drift? Well, again, in Cheney one-on-one, we covered the Iraq war over several hours of interviews. And Cheney was quite candid in acknowledging to me mistakes that he and George W. Bush made at various stages

of the Iraqi venture, from the planning stage to the execution stage to the reconstruction stage. You have to remember that this man, of course, had been the Secretary of Defense alongside then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell a decade earlier and led our country to victory in the first Gulf War. And policymakers operated... And those two worked together well at that time. Am I not correct? At that time, yes. Yes. So the Cheney says so in his memoir, although I was able to read him 10 or 12 references to Powell about that time period of the first Gulf War that occur within a 60-page span of the Cheney's memoir that are all faintly or

explicitly negative. And I challenged the idea, really, that he and Powell worked together so well in that time. But they led the country to victory. And as we approach the run-up to the Iraq War 10 years later, Cheney told me that policymakers were operating under sets of assumptions inherited from the earlier conflict. They assumed that Saddam Hussein would behave in similar ways. Number one, that he would torch oil fields.

Number two, that he would unleash chemical weapons against advancing U.S. troops. And he stated to me flatly, there's no question but that there were various things we anticipated that didn't materialize and various things that we didn't anticipate that did. He does fault the State Department for failing to fully staff up the provincial reconstruction teams that were necessary for a kind of pacification program. But all in all, he still does not regret launching the invasion. He thinks the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power, and that Iraq, for all its problems, does still exhibit many signs of a flourishing democracy uh but there's no question that uh i do i also wanted just to address this idea that it

was a rump group a cockamamie outfit that that uh produced the surge we went into great detail on the formulation of the surge policy and there were in fact several groups both inside and outside the bush administration that were that were grasping at something new to turn things around. Cheney takes credit for bringing Jack Keane to the attention of President Bush. Yes. But there were other figures as well, such as Colonel H.R. McMaster, Elliot Cohen and other figures who were contributing to the policy at that time.

OK, it may have been cockamamie. Cheney was on the opposite side of the argument, which is fascinating, too. I'm sorry. No, no, it may not be cockamamie. But the point there, Jack Kane was retired. Elliot Cohen, by then, I believe, had left the national security staff. H.R. McMaster had wanted him to be chief of staff of the army, and he had turned it down. That's right.

And H.R. McMaster was a colonel, not a general. In other words, the vice president, by the way, I'm delighted this happened. I don't mean it as an attack on the vice president. I mean it on why on earth wasn't the administration proper over at the Pentagon in particular? Why weren't the chiefs of staff insisting on some new policy? And in fact, as best I can tell from talking to Jack Kane and others, the Pentagon was just lying on the effort to rethink policy as if it were a mattress. So the vice president had to go to these outside junior and retired figures. I mean that was an amazing effort, but there was something wrong in the administration of George W. Bush that it took four years. And in the end, he had to go outside to put together – anyway, I will be –

I did avert to some of that because he concluded that Condoleezza Rice too often sought to present to President Bush a false notion of consensus about what his advisers were thinking. Got it. Got it. John Gabriel has some questions for you, James, although I could go on for hours. I could go on for more than the 10 hours that you interviewed the man. OK. Over to John Gabriel, James. that you interviewed the man. Okay, over to John Gabriel. I like mash. Yeah, hi, James.

Fantastic. We're interviewing you on a podcast. I know you're really active on social media. You're one of the journalists who really gets the impact with social media, and you interact with people all the time on there. But you're still on a network. You're on Fox News. But you're kind of straddling the old world and then the time on there. But you're still on a network. You're on Fox News. But you're kind of straddling the old world and then the emerging new world.

What does the future hold for organizations like Fox News as we go forward? Just the amazing explosion of digital platforms. So many people get their news from their iPad or their iPhone or whatever. What do you see going forward in the next few years if you can pull out your crystal ball? I'm not renowned for it, like, say, Larry Sabato,

but I'll give it the old college try. Obviously, it's a period of volatility and upheaval for the media industries right now. Rome is burning down to the ground on pretty much a weekly basis. It's not entirely clear what is going to be reconstituted in its place, but I think it's a period of opportunity as well as a period of potential peril. One of the things Dick Cheney and I talked about, I made a point of asking him stuff that nobody ever asked Dick Cheney about. I wanted his views on the digital revolution and how that's going to affect American labor markets going forward.

And one point he made, cursorily really, but I thought it was fascinating, was that previous revolutions in the American economy, such as the Industrial Revolution, tended to have the impact of expanding employment opportunities for Americans and globally, whereas the digital revolution so far doesn't seem to exhibit that feature. But what's going to happen ultimately is there's always going to be a need for accurate information in capitalist society, at a minimum, so that investors will know where it's safe to place their money, who's just been indicted for embezzlement and that sort of thing. Or as homeowners, you're going to need to know, just by way of security, where did the

robberies occur last night? And so I think news will continue to exist in its many forms. The question of whether we get it via television or handheld devices or through some Kurt Vonnegut chip that's ultimately placed in our molars. I haven't the expertise to forecast, but I expect at a minimum personally to remain employed. Hey, James, it's Rob Long again. One last question. Next week, another debate.

What do you think everyone's going to – what do you think everyone's learned from the CNBC debate and what do you think is gonna how do you think the tone of that debate is going to go what can we expect you know at the time after the August 6th debate the opening debate in Cleveland moderated by my Fox News colleagues Brett Baer, Megyn wallace uh... those folks took the black from the right from social media uh... for their conduct of the debate at of course notably from donald trump himself and as we have uh... seen this debate season unfold it just strikes me that brett megan chris wallace or star standing taller and taller

uh... because of the way the subsequent debate have been moderated uh... in terms of fbn coming up the fox business network and taller because of the way the subsequent debates have been moderated. In terms of FBN coming up, the Fox Business Network, on what, Tuesday, I gather, I think that you will see serious questions from serious people. And I think on the part of the candidates, however, you're going to see some increasing signs of desperation. Some thought that they saw that on display in Jeb Bush's half-hearted attack on Marco Rubio in the last debate. I think, if not necessarily from Jeb Bush, who may have learned a lesson about his skills in such exercises, you will still from the other candidates see more of that as the exercise unfolds and people become more and more desperate.

Well, I certainly hope that's the case. I'm speaking for myself. I'm a little tired of this. A little tired of this. James Rosen, thank you so much for joining us. Hey, it was great to be with you. You guys were very kind to me. James, would you please do a sign-off as Barack Obama?

James does the best Barack Obama. He really does. I see where Dick Cheney says that I'm the worst president of his lifetime. Which is interesting, because I see Dick Cheney as the worst president of my lifetime. I was there for that. And that was in response to the interviews in Cheney as the worst president of my lifetime. I was there for that. And that was in response to the interviews in Cheney one-on-one. Really? Fantastic.

Oh, yeah, in April. That's a – you know, it's hard to do Obama because he's not – it's a hard one. There's not something – you can't hook on to him. It's W had the accent. The notion. He had the little hoovery voice. There's not something you can't hook on to. W had the accent of the notion that somehow I would or somebody on my staff would seek to stretch out a sentence and keep stretching it and stretch it some more is false. There you go. I've exhausted my Obama at this point.

You've nailed it. James, listen, if social media does destroy Fox News, which won't happen, but you still have a second life in stand-up in Vegas. Oh, yeah. Yeah, in board of capitals, maybe, yes.

You got another career. Thank you, guys. James Gross and the Gross Singers soon. Take care. James, thank you. James, Jamie, one-on-one. All the best. That's going to be a great book.

I, too, Peter, will read that over the holidays. Lying on my Casper mattress is where I'm going to read it. Okay. Well, I won't be lying on your Casper mattress when I read it. That's okay. Before we go, we just want to do a quick rundown of some of the member feed. John Walker posted, serious statesman of a Serious Country in Serious Times. He went and watched the Nixon-Kennedy debates, which are referred to constantly every four years.

People talk about those debates. And the one thing they focus on is, well, the American people, people who watched that debate, they thought Kennedy won. And the people who listen to the radio thought Nixon won because of course pictures are important and all that nonsense. John Walker has got another take. He says either one of those guys sounded more serious and more mature and more thoughtful and frankly more qualified to lead a great nation than anyone running today. I don't disagree. I do not disagree. There are a couple of things going on.

Part of it was the war. Don't forget, those men had both served in the Second World War. The entire generation – in 1960, people who had served in the Second World War were in middle age. And so everybody understood in some basic way the stakes. Most voters, the majority of voters had lived through some part of the Second World War and many of them, I'm thinking back to my own father, had grown up during the Depression. They understood what it looked like when things went wrong. The country could fall into a decade-long slump. The entire world could erupt. Millions of

people could die. Richard Nixon and John Kennedy understood and they knew that the voters they were addressing understood what could happen when things went wrong. We've been through a long period of peace. We've been through a long period of prosperity. Even what we're going through today would look like prosperity beyond the wildest imaginings to somebody of my dad's generation who, when he graduated from high school in Johnson City, New York in 1930, 1938 or so, the best job he could get was a job digging ditches with the Johnson City Public Works Department. Well, right. It's a 1950 indoor plumbing. It's 1950 refrigerators. I mean it of remarkable. Oh, exactly. Exactly. So that's a big, big part of it, I think. And then the other bit of it, which I'm going to blame on the two of you who are masters of this medium, even as I remain suspicious of it, is social media. You're going to push back and tell me i'm all wrong you can be perfectly serious and 140 characters but i'm not so sure john defend yourself i just wrote a fascinating

white paper and 140 characters on kimoy and matsu so i i refer you to read that it's followed by 73 tweets of footnotes so i I encourage everybody to follow me. That's why I get the big numbers. It really – it is a fundamentally unserious country. It is. And when John Walker wrote that, before we were talking about issues of life and death, and now it's arguing whether someone's a loser or if they're a dummy. And that's what our debate culture has done. I really think our prosperity, our success is to blame for a lot of this though.

When we're facing an existential threat and when we face the existential threat of the Cold War, you go back to the Cheney-Lieberman debate as was mentioned earlier. Those were more serious men just because they had seen more and now it's about people are giggling because somebody isn't familiar with the latest viral video on YouTube serious men just because they had seen more. And now it's about people are giggling because somebody isn't familiar with the latest viral video on YouTube, which unfortunately I have

wasted my time watching. But I don't want my president spending time watching cat videos. The other bit – I'm sorry, but just one other thought is that the federal government, the welfare state, what Franklin Roosevelt did during the New Deal was really quite modest by comparison, as Rob often makes the point, when Goldwater lost in 64, it was a very serious setback because the great society of Lyndon Johnson was really where we get the massive welfare state. And once you get a massive welfare state, the politicians begin playing to this or that constituency. We know the Wall Street Journal takes a shot at Marco Rubio this morning for supporting sugar subsidies and on and on it goes.

But in the days of 1960, when the welfare state was much, much more modest and social security was still understood as aid to old people, relatively modest, relatively limited. There was still a sense of a national interest. Neither of those figures, Nixon nor Kennedy, faced the incentives that, for example, Hillary Clinton faces trying to bat off Bernie Sanders to divide up the nation into this group, that ethnic women, this group that needs this welfare program, farmers need that welfare. There was a much more concentrated sense of a national interest and a national interest is a much more serious thing than how much support farmers are going to get for growing corn for ethanol in Iowa. There, I'm done. OK, now, Rob, over to you to lighten it up again.

No, I think you're right. I think it's – but again, I mean part of me looks around for the environmental factors and part of me says, well, this is what people seem to be gravitating to. This is what you ask people, people who like certain candidates over certain other candidates. Well, he's more fun. I'd rather have a beer with him, all sorts of things. I mean although to be honest, I would rather have had a beer with John F. Kennedy than one with Richard Nixon. Oh, everybody would have. Sure. Everyone would. That was the problem. Before we go – By the way, that is the answer to the Ted Cruz question or it's an answer. We'll see. But the Ted Cruz question, people know, people just don't like him very much. He just looks a little shifty. OK.

This is a well-developed, thoroughly crystallized criticism of Ted Cruz right now. And the answer to that is that in 1960, Richard Nixon essentially tied John Kennedy. And depending on questions to which we will never know the answers, and those questions turn on the actual vote in Cook County before the daily machine got to the voting machines and the actual vote in Texas before the Lyndon Johnson Democratic machine got to the voting machines. Richard Nixon may actually even have defeated John Kennedy. And then in 68, Richard Nixon did defeat a much more likable man, Hubert Humphrey. Warm, funny.

Again, you'd rather have had a beer with Hubert Humphrey than Richard Nixon. But when the stakes were high, people voted for a guy. They didn't feel – on the face of it, it wasn't as likable. The likability isn't everything. Go ahead. I don't want to have this podcast be forever and jump in. But there's also another possibility or an additional possibility that people back then believed that there was – and I don't know how else to put this. of leaders who were smarter than they were in world and economic and national affairs because they spent that was their job and they were still patriots and they were men always men

of a certain practical background i think that's what the war does um uh certainly when john f kennedy ran against richard m nixon that was without a doubt there were class ripple uh crap classroom ripples there you had a poor kid from a farm town in southern california who went to public school and you had one of the richest people in america um and yet somehow it seemed like they came from the same place and they because they really they had they had debated together for years in Congress and that they were both supposed to be on that dais. There seems to be a strange thing right now where people – and I don't really know what I mean here,

but like you go back to even the television of the time. There was a time when broadcast networks would put on plays, live plays, Arthur Miller plays plays and put on the symphony. And they did that because it was – they just said, no, it's like this is good stuff and good stuff should be on television. And we get to choose. We get to put Toscanini on TV. The Book of the Month Club, the notion of high culture that was still available to ordinary Americans that ordinary Americans took seriously. Right.

And no one looked at Kennedy and Nixon and said, oh, those two guys are so serious. Oh, they're too – they're so somber. They're like, well, that's kind of what I want, my president. I want a somber, serious dude. And we have kind of changed that now. Everybody has got to be friendly on a first-name basis and nobody can be better than anybody else. And hey, we're all just kind of the same and my opinion is as good as yours and while I agree with a lot of that and I prefer an egalitarian society like that, I also feel like we missed

something. We missed the basic idea that – I don't really know what I mean here but the idea that there are qualified people. We may not like them. We may not vote for them, and that it's a serious business. I mean I wonder – I mean just as a thought experiment, I wonder if I – and I really – I don't know. I've never met the man. I don't know. But if Donald Trump spent an hour every morning just reminding himself, be serious, be bigger, I just wonder whether he wouldn't be at 60 now hmm hmm i i this is hard to

put into words but we're both groping toward the same thing because i know exactly what you mean and i think the answer is yes i think the answer is yes john will be crazy yeah it's your fault, John. It is your fault. Yeah, what's kind of odd to me and trying to understand how the voters approach this is I always look at I am interviewing somebody for a job whenever I'm voting for a politician. And when I want somebody to do a job for me, I don't want somebody who just happens to be the friendliest or the most clever or the most enjoyable to have a beer with. Those are all positives, mind you, because I'm going to be stuck working with this person in the cubicles in the offices all day. But I want some display of competence. And that's partially one of the good things about the debate is just understanding how the debates handle the media, how they handle hostile questions, how they handle fawning audiences, how they handle these things. Those are small things. But I want to see a resume too. I want to see that, okay, this person has had executive leadership over a large organization

and has learned from their mistakes since everybody has mistakes. That was one of the biggest disappointments of Governors Walker and Perry, their departure so soon because executive experience is very different from legislative, extremely different, and from business and from neurosurgery and anything else you could think of. But yeah, unfortunately, even the serious people need to play to the less serious people at this point, and that's just – that's the way it is now unfortunately. Well, I guess we have to hope that when the primaries actually start and people start voting, that they take that into consideration. I'm not really arguing for one candidate over another. I really am not. But there is something – I mean I do blame the media and I do blame the moderators

and I do blame these idiotic debate formats. But there's also something willfully childish about the candidates, like they're being trained to be something other than presidential, which I think is unfortunate. Peter, say something positive. No, no. I keep waiting. I'm thinking, wait a minute now. Rob is the one who's supposed to lighten this up and lead us out with a laugh because he appeared on Red Eye last night. Peter, say something positive. No, no. I keep waiting. I'm thinking, wait a minute now. Rob is the one who's supposed to lighten this up and lead us out with a laugh because he appeared on Red Eye last night and it's his job.

Rob, the serious business of ending on a laugh. I leave that to you. Well, all I'll say is that Donald Trump is going to be on Saturday Night Live this week. So that can't but be entertaining. Oh, yeah. And it's also going to cause John Walker to throw his shoe at the television. Somewhere in Switzerland. Exactly.

Some serious country this is. Exactly. And just a prediction, Donald Trump will kill it on SNL. That is a perfect format for him. He will be fantastic on it. Yep. He's good at that. He's good. He's very good at that.

I guess that probably says it all. Hey, thanks's good at that. He's very good at that. I guess that probably says it all. Hey, thanks for joining. That was great. If you are listening, we want to remind you once again, this podcast is brought to you by TheGreatCourses.com. You get a great deal there. And SaneBox.com, you get

a great deal there. These are two great deals you get because you're a Ricochet podcast listener. But the best deal of all is to become a Ricochet member. These are two great deals you get because you're a Ricochet podcast listener. But the best deal of all is to become a Ricochet member. Go to Ricochet.com. Sign up for The Daily Shot. Check us out. Try us out for 30 days.

You have no – there is no risk to you and you will join a lot of great people. And we're doing some hard work winning back the country with civility. And of course visit the Ricochet store. Lots of great Ricochet swag there. And we will see you next week and in the comments. Next week, Thomas. Next week. Next week.

Thank you. I'm so scared in case I fall off my chair And I'm wondering how I'll get down the stairs Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right Here I am stuck in the middle with you Yes, I'm stuck in the middle with you And I'm wondering what it is I should do It's so hard to keep that smile from my face. Losing my toe, yeah, I'm all over the place. Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right. Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.

When you started out with nothing and you're proud that you're a selfish man. And your fans, they all come crawling. Slap you on the back and say, please. Please. Ricochet. Join the conversation. Take it. you