The Ricochet Podcast - Georgia On Our Minds

Episode Date: December 4, 2020

We’re back from the holiday break and have Georgia on our minds. As such we welcome Erick Erickson, host of “Atlanta’s Evening News” on WSB AM/FM, and he joins to us to analyze “suitcase-gate” and give us his take on January’s double US Senate election in the Peach State. (Erick’s podcast is available right here on Ricochet.) Then we talk to old friend Dr. Jay Bhattacharya... Source

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is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. I can't say that. I have a dream this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal Between you people, don't talk to me that way You're just a lightweight, don't talk to me that way

I'm the president of the United States, don't ever talk to the president that way I'm the president and you're fake news. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lylex. Today, it's Eric Erickson about Georgia and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya about COVID. Let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you. Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast number 523. I'm James Lilacs in beautiful, bright, clement, slightly jittery Minneapolis. Peter Robinson is in clement California as well. Everything's clement. You can imagine Peter and myself sitting inside a nice cafe, enjoying this December time, and pounding on the window is Rob Long.

We can see him pounding. We can see his mouth moving, but he can't come in. He is at the moment attempting to crowbar his way into the Zoom meeting. We assume that he will, because what would a podcast be without Rob or Peter, for that matter? Peter, how are you? I'm fine. That is an absolutely beautiful, if at the same time horrifying. And let's say it's an absolutely apt image rob is somewhere pounding away we're having technical difficulties when don't we but they seldom cost us uh rob um so you said that minnesota is slightly jittery how come neapolis right well this this whole crime thing you know uh we have we have a we have a wave of carjackings and in my neighborhood uh we had a a housekeeper who was car i can actually see it from here about a half

a block away at gunpoint was carjacked and uh the miscreants fired three shots at the car because she refused to give up her purse um so struck a little bit close to home there. But then again, if you regard the entire city as your home, you think that all the things that are happening everywhere are linked. Do we think that this is linked to the riots earlier and the pressure on the on the cops? Heather McDonald

was on Tucker Carlson the other evening saying that police across America are demoralized when they are demoralized. They tend to back away from their ordinary duties and crime creeps up. Is there something like that going on? Yes and no. In this case, there actually were cops

right around the corner because the housekeeper ran her car into the car of the carjackers. They got in, fled. She chased them. And a few blocks away, a police car saw the chase and pulled her over, from what I believe the bad guys got away. So there were cops in the neighborhood.

I mean, we're down over 100 cops. I know that a lot of them have just taken time off for stress or strain, or the rest were quit. They're trying to figure out how many cops we should have in the future. So it's not necessarily the fact that we've defunded the cops. And it's not entirely the fact that we've defunded the cops. It's and it's not entirely the fact that there's demoralization. What it is, I think, at the heart of it is an emboldening of the criminal class who has just taken a look at what's going around%. Now, that's personal and anecdotal, but it says something. Because the ideal Minnesotan is somebody who sits at a red light at 2 a.m. in the morning in a small town where there's nobody, because that's what we do. The minute you go through that light, you start to unravel the entire social contract.

And now we just have this sort of, well, what are they going to do? There's not enough of them. They're not going to pull me over. I'm going do what i want and that's sort of we're going to do what we want emboldened nature um has characterized james there's one piece of the story that i is absolutely fascinating has anybody done a profile of this housekeeper she she refused to give over the purse they They opened fire. They took off. She gave chase. She rammed into their, I mean, this is. Not yet.

There must be some good citizen metal for her. Wow. Not yet. But we're told that this is the absolute wrong thing to do. We're supposed to give everything over. We're supposed to give up our possessions. We're supposed to hand over our keys. That's what we're told.

You do what you say. So you have this general attitude citywide that nothing is safe, which isn't good. But, you know, the whole country is sort of, well, you know, I don't know if the entire country is having that sort of jittery mood. COVID, actually, of course, we're going to talk to Dr. Che about that. Even though we have record cases and record deaths, there doesn't seem to be the same sort of despair and bleakness that there was at the start of this. And we're going to ask him about that. And Peter, perhaps you can fill in what the psychology is like out in California, where the laws are even more

stringent. You can't walk outside. You can't go outside. You can't ride your bike, which seems preposterous to those of us here where it's bad. but the idea that you can't walk outside your house is, is, is ridiculous. Wait a minute. Right. Right. Well, I, I mean,

do you, are you able to do so? Do you actually, are you emboldened to stroll outside of your front door and, and say, come and get me? I mean, are we all little Caesar right now?

It is. It's a complicated picture in that a lot of people are just sick of it. Governor Newsom laid out very draconian guidelines that we were all supposed to observe for Thanksgiving. And then, as you know, he himself violated those very guidelines within 48 hours by having a very expensive unmasked meal at a fancy restaurant and i don't know honestly i don't know anybody i'm sure there are some especially in northern california where i live but among my friends nobody took the restrictions on the thanksgiving dinner seriously for a nanosecond no eat outside mask between wash your bathroom between every use ridiculous nobody took that seriously at all on the other hand um this our our little church

in menlo park they've the county has banned indoor church services. So we're all, mass is being celebrated on the front steps, and we're all sitting there shivering as Californians do when the temperature drops. Shivering. Shivering, he says. And we're all sitting there masked, even though I don't think there's a single member of that congregation who believes there's any evidence, we can check with Dr. J on this, who believes there's any evidence that masks work outdoors, or who thinks that churches should be, Catholic churches are never full, I mean, Catholic social distance without any encouragement, for goodness sake. So people are, there's a kind of outward, what bothers me most of all is, I keep going back to something that Nathan Sharansky said about what life was like in the soviet union is that a melodramatic comparison yes it is but still it's a comparison

that in some way is valid and natan shuransky said here's what it meant to be a good citizen of the soviet union you behave the way you were told to behave you read the books you were permitted to read you said the things that you knew they wanted to hear. And yet at the same time, you knew that it was all a lie. And that's the state of mind for a lot of us here in Northern California. And it is just not good. It is to use a term that still sounds probably hokey, if not crude, if not even offensive, but I think it's strictly correct in this case. It's un-American. It feels it. And I know what you mean about outward compliance and inward seething. I mean, I've been masked up since March. I get that. But when President-elect Joe Biden says that he's going to suggest, and I love this, we've gone from a, I'm going to mandate masks to a national suggestion that a hundred days after his inauguration, we should be into April,

which will mark more than a year after two weeks to slow the spread that we're supposed to be masked up. I mean, there's going to be a time when I'm going to have my vaccine and I'm going to have my booster shot and I'm not going to be wearing the mask anymore. I'm not, I'm going to have my vaccine and I'm going to have my booster shot and I'm not going to be wearing the mask anymore. I'm not. I'm simply not. Because the idea that everybody there's going to be a national day on April 29th when everybody's finally going to be able to take it off. Of course, that's not going to be the case. They're going to make this the norm throughout the entirety of 2021. And by the way, we have to go to a guest in just a second,

but I should note Rob Long has entered the restaurant. Yeah, this is so dumb. I'm so enraged at this. By your inability to join the podcast or by the mask mandate until April? Well, the mask mandate until April, I think it's sort of ridiculous, but i'm

more concerned as like most most normal people i'm mad about stuff that happened to me right now and that is that this ridiculous i'm so i just am tired of it i'm tired of people i'm tired of opening up the newspaper and seeing people in the tech business so waltz around like they've got it all figured out and yet a very simple thing i'm clicking on the same damn link over i didn't change a thing and sometime i get in somebody i don't i want them to sort that out before yeah i don't need to tweet reels or or whatever whatever i don't need that i don't need any of that fleets whatever. I don't need that. I don't need any of that. Fleets. Fleets. I don't need that. I need just this to work. Everyone focus on this now in Silicon

Valley. If you're listening, just make this work. Well, you realize Rob, the problem probably was since all of this is being routed through a Chinese server so they can transcribe it and look for evidence and things they can use against us it's entirely possible that the the uh the cia piped it through their frankfurt servers and your connection was interrupted by it by another firefight no your your connection was interrupted by a firefight between delta force um uh military operatives and the CIA, which was protecting the server, which has I mean, that's one of the stories that's going around about why Trump lost the election.

Right. You've heard this. You know, I can't keep track of them. I can't. I can't. I'm baffled by all of them. You're not up. You're not up on the Frankfurt firefight.

Oh, my gosh. No, I'm not up on any of them. I find the whole thing depressing and embarrassing. I think it's really embarrassing. And I'd like to I want to know from our our our political geniuses and and brainiacs in Georgia, just if this is going to be a problem or not. It seems like this morning it's a problem that the president of the United States is behaving like a crazy person who is unhinged. Well, he made a 46-minute Facebook page video. Like he's PewDiePie now. Which I didn't see. Well, PewDiePie, I think, has better ratings

and a bigger fan base. I didn't watch it because I'm... When I heard that the president had... Did either of you pick up on the particulars? I did. I watched it. My view on all this is really simple. I was actually paying attention. Blow by blow, which in my case meant tweet by tweet.

There was a good friend of mine in Nashville of all places, my friend Mike, who was following the arguments on fraud, fraudulent, the arguments on fraud fraudulent about the arguments and then bits of evidence began to be produced and legal cases began to come down and he's a lawyer so he's reading these cases and summarizing them for me and i kept this whiplash this seems real and then no nobody's paying any attention the wall street journal is dismissing it. For me, the decisive moment, something just ended, snapped for me. I won't say it snapped, but it ended when Bill Barr, the attorney general, who knows how to take the heat, who's paid a great deal, a very high price in the press and probably professionally for the rest of his life, practicing law in Washington for making Durham a special council, when Bill Barr

came out and said, we just don't see anything, any evidence of anything that would overturn the election results. I thought, now then the press ran with that and the headline was, Barr dismisses claims of fraud. the spokesman from spokeswoman i guess from the department of justice came out and said no no no he didn't say that he said we haven't found any evidence yet and at that point i thought fine i am going to repose my confidence in bill bar and if he's calm and hasn't found evidence i'll just wait until he does and and until then i'm tuning out and i have sorry to say it well i just have i know and the talk in the net was they got to bill bar too eventually they get to everybody

get to everybody right uh it's uh we should we should we should probably bring in eric because you're a good piece we do because that was a transitional point to the spot that i'm going to do later oh great okay i'm going to think about whatever that's going to happen to be okay never mind what i just said there that was a faint. That was a sleight of hand to keep Rob from interrupting because he thought a segue was coming. No segue, just the spot. And it's for Tommy John. We love these guys. Look, you've had enough to deal with this year, right? Don't overthink your holiday gifts. We've all been living in our sweatpants anyway. Why don't you give your loved ones some pro level Tommy John loungewear? This holiday season, Tommy John is making sure you can give

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and see how we can support your business. FBD Insurance. Support. It's what we do. FBD Insurance Group Limited, trading as FBD Insurance, is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Now we bring into the conversation Eric Erickson, editor of The Resurgent and host of The Eric Erickson Show on WSB Radio. He's been both a CNN and Fox News contributor and appears regularly on NBC News' Meet the Press and HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher. Eric's a lawyer by training, serves as a campaign manager, consultant, or lawyer for various federal, state, and local

campaigns, and is also working on a degree in theology to round it all out just a little bit more. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram, where he will show off his master's degree level in barbecuing. Welcome to the show, Eric. Okay, well, the video that everybody's talking about this week, like it's a Pruder film, is a suitcase being pulled out from under a table and being taken someplace else, and supposedly it's full of ballots. Scott Adams, who's been all over the map on this stuff, went on to Twitter today to tell everybody that it's not how it seems. What are your thoughts on this? Are we reading too much into every single little grainy piece of 480 resolution video that seems to confirm what we want to believe? Or is there actually something afoot?

And if there is, is it just a local thing, the sort of fraud and stuff that happens? Or is this a national coordinated campaign to steal the election? First of all, let's start with there is always fraud in every election. I have been an elections lawyer. I've challenged elections, defended elections. There's always fraud. But it's always a local level guy trying to be too clever by half. Actually, a Florida lawyer is now under investigation for registering in Georgia to vote for the

Republicans. Even though he doesn't live in Georgia, he was caught on a live stream YouTube or Facebook admitting he had done it. So there's always fraud. It's just never significant enough to overturn an election with tens of thousands of votes between the two candidates. Small town elections, you can do it. In this case, though, there's not actually fraud. And this film, I actually knew immediately when people were saying, look at this, look at this, look at this, what was going on there because I used to do this sort of stuff. Those aren't suitcases. Those are the secure ballot containers and the

secure ballot containers in which there were no ballots. Because what happened there in Fulton County is they started winding down for the evening. Mistakes were being made. People were getting punch drunk. They'd been there since six o'clock that morning. So they said, you know what, we're going to, we've opened the stack of ballots. We need to count these. You're not allowed to not count ballots once they've been removed from those containers. So we need to count these ballots. But some of you people are screwing things up. So y'all go home.

And those of us who aren't screwing things up, we're going to finish counting the stack before we go home. So you had a Secretary of State monitor. If you watch the film, there's a guy in there. He's got a blue shirt on. And he's watching the entire time. and they've already got the ballots out the republican and the democratic poll watchers have reviewed the ballots to make sure they're legit and they're just counting those ballots now i can tell you i actually interviewed the people i interviewed the monitor i interviewed the secretary of state's office i interviewed the board of elections for

my interview the actual people in that video not all of them the monitor yes i interviewed the Secretary of State's office. I interviewed the Board of Elections for my own reading. Eric, you interviewed the actual people in that video. Not all of them. The monitor, yes. I interviewed the monitor. I interviewed the head of the Board of Elections who was walking out the door you see in the video. And all of them are of the same. And also I interviewed the Republican Board of Elections member and the Secretary of State's head of elections to try to figure out what was going on. And they're all very consistent. There's nothing nefarious here.

They're trying to go home. But because they had opened this massive stack of ballots, you're not under Georgia law allowed to stop counting ballots once you've opened them and gotten them out of the container because you don't want someone to come along and stuff new ballots in the container. So they've got to be counted. And so you had to have five people there along and stuff new ballots in the container. So they've got to be counted. And so you had to have five people there finish counting while everybody else was going home. Okay.

So that we can get – I'm sorry, Rob. Go ahead. No, I just want a question about this. Is any of this – does any of this explanation – is any of it going to work, do you think? No. No, no, no. So I will tell you an anecdote. When I was in college, I had a friend. We were headed to law school together, and he was in a very serious relationship and asked if he and his girlfriend should move in together.

What did I think? I thought, one, you're going to law school, so you'd be an idiot. And two, you move in together, you've got a much higher rate of getting divorced later in life. I didn't think it was a good idea. Guy was pissed. Never talked to him again. Even though we went to law school together, he was mad at me for not affirming what he believed. And by the way, he's now divorced from his girlfriend, but we've never talked since. And I'm finding this on my own radio show in Atlanta. I can tell you the truth about what

happened, but you're going to be really mad at me because I'm not affirming what you want. People would rather believe the election was stolen. So what percentage do you think of the Georgia electorate or even maybe the American electorate is delusionally clinging to this set of even more ludicrous and outlandish conspiracy theories to protect their very fragile snowflake like affection for a president who lost a fair election i really think maybe 20 of his supporters i really don't think it's as as much it's just a very loud minority right okay that's that 20 by the way i'm happy now you've made my you've made my weekend i'm like okay that's i'll take 20 and run with it not to say you don't have doubts it's just that the vocal minority i think is smaller than what most people realize eric what percentage of the democrat side in 2016 do you think believe that

donald trump was installed in office by a russian so i i think probably 60 of them did but again probably about 30 or 40 were the ones marching in the streets. So still more than the Trump supporters. Eric, so sort of I'd like to get to the Senate race, of course. That's that's one way that remains undecided. But get there because this was stolen. So you're not allowed. That's right. That's right.

So sort of a sort of a lightning round here. Election in Georgia not stolen. Correct. Correct. It was not stolen. All right. In any other states, you're a lawyer, you've done election work, you know how this all should look. Arizona, Pennsylvania, other states. Does it look to you as though there is enough of a margin to overturn the results in any contested state, any state that the Trump team is contesting?

No. And you know,, people not even close. Not. No. And let me explain this to you. Let's just take Georgia, where you've got a 12000 vote margin. The problem is another 20000 Georgians did not vote in the presidential race. And because you're not allowed to ask people how they voted, you can't just throw out 12000 fraudulent ballots. You've got to also add in all the votes of people who didn't vote in the presidential race. So really, your margin to throw out is not 12,000. It's 20, it's 32,000. And in Michigan, you've got 150,000 vote margin, and you've got 30,000 people who didn't vote in that race. So you'd have to exclude 180,000 ballots. It's impossible. So Eric, another couple of questions. This is

something that comes up again and again in my Twitter feed and among my friends, and I'm paraphrasing the argument. I'm no election lawyer, but why would Rudy Giuliani, why would Sidney Powell, why would, and then you can go on to name a dozen or so other, as far as anybody has any reason to suppose, good lawyers, not as well known as Rudy or Sidney Powell, why would these people make the arguments that they are making unless there were something there? Just the question of motive. How do you handle that one? I tell everyone we've reached the day and age where performance is more important than reality uh the dog and pony show is what people are paying for they they expect this sort of stuff so you're giving them the show uh they'll get a great book deal out of it maybe they'll get a contract on

one of these new conservative tv networks but also the president will be able to fuel his 2024 run with they stole it the last time let's let's stop them this time and i guess the question is how are you going to stop the the deep state from not beating you again? We had Sean Trendy on a couple of weeks ago, and Sean said, look, I'm sorry to say it, but the point of departure for analyzing the Senate runoff races in Georgia is this. Joe Biden just carried Georgia. You just have to assume that the Republican candidates are starting from behind. Item one of two. Item two of two. We now have members of the Trump team, Lin Wood, is that the man's name? Lin Wood, and apparently Sidney Powell has been saying this as well, have been saying to Republicans, don't vote. This system is so crooked that the only way you can protest it is by refusing to vote in this race so we have republicans close to the

president saying tank the race throw the give the senate to the democrats all right of course you'll have views on the wisdom of that or the mat whatever's going but with you take those two as a point of departure how bad is it for the Republican candidates in this race? It's not great. It's not as good as it should be. Republicans should have an advantage. But let's deal with Sean's point first. I actually think when you look at the data in Georgia, Joe Biden did legitimately win the state and he won it because Republican voters turned on the president in the north suburbs of Atlanta. In

fact, I know the only Senate candidate, state Senate candidate in Georgia who lost on the Republican side, P.K. Martin in Gwinnett County, actually relayed to me that prior to the first debate, he was knocking on doors in his district. His district is the one district that has shifted the most demographically in the state. And even there, a lot of people were saying, you know, I could support this guy. After that first debate, he never encountered a person saying he'd support the president or saying they'd support the president. That is a rumor that's widespread across the country.

I'm saying rumor. That is sort of what early data suggests in Wisconsin and Arizona and in Nevada, that President Trump's performance in the first debate was probably the most disastrous performance of a candidate in any debate since maybe since Gerald Ford said that, you know, Eastern Europe was not dominated by the Soviet Union, which even he knew was a mistake. Yeah, and it was a turning point, I think. So the reason I bring that up is if you look at the North Metro Atlanta suburbs, David Perdue outperformed the president in those. David Perdue, the senator, actually got more votes than the president. But let's look at the Republicans statewide in Georgia. If you add up all the votes cast in congressional races in Georgia, the Republicans got 51 percent.

In state house races, they got 53 percent. In state Senate races, they got 54 percent. And when you add up all of the not the center right, but the right of center candidates in that 21 person Senate race, they got 53 percent of the vote against Raphael Warnock. So the Republicans still dominate the state. They tend to turn out more in runoffs in Georgia. The question is how many of them internalized the race was stolen and there's nothing they can do about it. And I don't have an answer to that. But the polling suggests there's a lot of them. Hey, Eric, I got can do about it. And I don't have an answer to that, but the polling suggests there's a lot of them. Hey, Eric, so I got one question about that.

So do you think, I mean, if you could, I guess replay the last month, but sort of play forward the next four weeks, right? We're in the midpoint between election day and the runoff election today, I think, actually. If not exactly today, but close, right? Would it be easier for those Republican Senate candidates to run against the danger of a Democrat majority Senate? Or is it easier for the Democrats to run against Trump and say, see, he's insane person, we need to

punish them and the Republicans can't be trusted. So if you're if you're a Republican strategist, what do you hope for? Do you hope that the Democrats you get to run against crazy liberals or do you hope that the president stays in Washington under a heavy tarp and a heavy blanket? Yeah, look, I don't know that it matters what the Democrats don't think can make a case in Georgia against Trump, largely because when you look at the internal dynamics, look at the exit polling and stuff, Loeffler and Perdue are being voted for by people who are voting

for them, not the president. When you look at the Democratic voters, they're actually voting for Warnock and Ossoff for the Democrats, not for the candidates. But there are a lot of people in there. Just take Ossoff, for example. Ossoff trailed Joe Biden in Georgia by about 100,000 votes. Eric, give us a couple of sentences on each of the candidates. You say Ossoff,

and some of our listeners just won't know who he is. Okay. So John Ossoff, there's not a lot you can say. I call him a trust fund socialist. His parents are very rich. He's done other than work for two members of Congress and supposedly a documentary film company. No one has ever seen the documentaries. The documentary film company allegedly took on dictators, but was actually, we now know, thanks to his disclosures, paid for by the Chinese Communist Party and Al Jazeera. They're his two major clients. So he's never done anything. He lost a suburban district the Democrats picked up a year later.

He lost it in a special election. Now, Raphael Warnock is the interesting one. He is the minister at Ebenezer Baptist Church. That was Martin Luther King Jr.'s church. He is a hyper-progressive socialist. He has been in various ministries around the country devoted to social justice. He has taken on police, called around the country devoted to social justice. He has taken on police, called them thugs and bullies.

And he is the one that the Democrats essentially looked at Stacey Abrams in 2018, saw that John Ossoff was going to run this time and said, oh, we're going to need a black man to excite black voters to turn out. John Ossoff's not going to do it. So they got Warnock to do it. He's wanted to run for a while. And the matchups are Ossoff versus and Warnock versus Purdue. Yeah. Ossoff versus Purdue, Warnock versus Loeffler. And then ironically, and everybody misses this, there's actually a third statewide election that nobody cares about for our public service commission that the Republicans moved to January, hoping it would inspire more turnout. So we'll see if it works. But so the problem with John Ossoff is that in the North Metro area, white voters voted for Joe Biden and then voted for David Perdue. They didn't vote for John Ossoff. And then in South Georgia, if you look, this is one of the most consistent

data points in the state. Heavily minority precincts in South Georgia, overwhelmingly black precincts, voted for Joe Biden and didn't even vote in the David Perdue, John Ossoff race. They went to the Warnock race and they didn't even vote for Raphael Warnock necessarily. So for South Georgia Democrats. And what's the explanation? What are voters thinking to do that? So in North Metro area, it was white Republicans who were just tired of Donald Trump. They voted for Joe Biden and then voted Republican the rest of the way down the ballot. In South Georgia, you've got a lot of culturally conservative black voters who think that Ossoff and Warren.

FBD doesn't stand for friendly business ducks. Or for the freelance beatbox department. FBD stands for support. We support businesses and communities across Ireland. Visit your local branch to talk to your FBD insurance team and see how we can support your business. FBD Insurance. Support. It's what we do. FBD Insurance Group Limited. Trading as FBbd insurance is regulated by the central bank of ireland talker to liberal forum so if you're um so so if you're um i mean my thesis about what happened in november was that

the that people traditionally republican or socially conservative or moderate voters who are traditionally part of the Republican addressable market, whatever you want to call it, they surgically removed Donald Trump from office. They wanted him gone and only him gone. And they like Mitch McConnell and they want to keep Mitch McConnell there. And they actually, we've given another shot in two years, they may want to give the house back to the republicans right um so if you're um leffler or purdue this seems like good news you could now go to those north suburbs in atlanta and say hey orange man gone don't have to worry about that anymore it's just you and me against uh crazy chuck schumer and the you know new y York liberals. That seems like a winning, winning slogan.

So I call them 401k voters. They don't really care about the social issues. They care about their retirement fund. Hey, that's me. You're kind of close to the bone there, buddy. And they did not like the K. They didn't want to have to wake up every morning and see if Twitter started World War Three and wreck their 401k. So they got rid of the guy they were worried about and then packed Republicans all around the other guy.

So he couldn't change any of the policies that they liked from Donald Trump. So so no tax increase with these Republicans. And yeah, that's really good news. And that's why I still think the Republicans have the edge in Georgiaia here because you've got a lot of those voters and they consistently i mean the republicans in georgia really genuinely expected to lose 12 seats in the state house representatives uh they lost two seats but then they beat the democratic leader of the state house and picked up his seat for a net loss one big deal i got one question we have we have we have a ticket splitting in november we have down ballot runoff you know that's the term of art for when you vote for one guy and run away and don't vote for this yep we have all those things is it likely that voters georgia voters

will go in and split the ticket for the senate or are we really talking about a pair of twins versus a pair of twins see i actually think that you're more likely to see that on the Democratic side, looking at the general, the number of black voters in Georgia who refused to vote for John Ossoff or David Perdue and just went straight into the other Senate race. I think you're more likely to see that Republicans fairly consistently did it. And, you know, ironically, this is one of the arguments that Georgia voters have that while the race was stolen from the president is the amount of ticket splitting uh but we used to have this phenomenon on the reverse side and no one said it was was a solid election where georgia consistently voted republican for federal races and democrat for state races and now suddenly the role has reversed

to a degree but only in the president's race so you think oh i don't this is my last one sorry you think leffler has got an advantage over Perdue? No, no, no. I think Perdue has an advantage over Loeffler. Perdue has an advantage, one, because he's running against John Ossoff and some black voters won't vote for him. But also, David Perdue and the Perdue family here, his cousin was

the governor of the state for eight years. They're very well known, very beloved in the business community and also in the farming community. Loeffler has, this is her first run for office. She's a weak candidate, but she's also a billionaire, so she's got a lot of money to burn and define herself. I know I said the last one. No, no, go ahead. You're not worried about the negative campaigning against Purdue? You're not worried about the stock trade? You're not worried about any of that stuff? No. That Senesela corridor attack, I call it. I mean, listen, let's just do a real pop quiz for you. You're David Purdue. You've gotten insider trading knowledge. What stocks, when you find a

global pandemic is coming, what do you buy and what do you sell? Well, if you're David Purdue, you sold Clorox and Lysol and bought Delta and Caribbean Cruise Lines? You sold Moderna, but you did buy Pfizer. Would you do that if you had insider trading knowledge? Which, I mean, Purdue, it's been well documented in Georgia that most Purdue wound up losing money in the trades. So he's too dumb to be a senator. I would run with that. I mean, the reality is, so Purdue has an outside investment team he hired when he ran for office the first time because he knew this was going to be an attack. Offshore, all of his spending business decisions to them

doesn't talk to them. And everyone in Georgia, this has been well documented here. This is all news to people outside of Georgia, but it's been a headline here for six years about Purdue's stock price. Now you've made my weekend. Now twice. Twice in 15 minutes you know you made my weekend now

twice twice in a twice in in 15 minutes you made my weekend i'm donald trump is still scheduled to appear in georgia on saturday tomorrow is that correct yes uh now well up here in georgia he's going to valdosta which is as far south in the state as you can go without accidentally winding up in florida so well outside the atlanta metro market it's i live in the state as you can go without accidentally winding up in Florida. So well outside the Atlanta metro market. I live in the geographic center of the state, and it's still two and a half hours south of me. And wow. And dare we hope that he will say Republicans vote. You must vote. We must retain the Senate. Do we hope that? I hope we will. Donald Trump Jr. is starting a super PAC PAC running ads across the state with himself and his brother and sister saying republicans go save our dad's legacy go

vote oh well that's that's decent of them don't you think why is it decent okay eric one big boy are you smart you know this stuff look i was a lawyer i can lie convincingly there you go one big last unanswerable meta question and then on the way out a couple of things you said one um you said that a lot of these people who are involved in this are looking for a book deal or a little spot on a conservative network it seems as though we're going to have a new conservative ecosystem arise from out of this that fox of course is falling from favor drastically we're and that it's going to be the rise of Newsmax and OANN and the rest of it. And that will be intrinsically bound up with the post-presidency of Donald Trump, because unlike usual presidents who just sort of fade away and go and learn how to paint or golf or go to Hawaii, he's going to be the opposition on the news every single day somebody gives him the oxygen.

Right. So, I mean, we're in a new cycle now. We're in a new experience when it comes to a post-president deciding that he's going to run again and he's going to use these new tools. Is that necessarily going to be positive for the conservative movement, or are they going to create these bubbles in which all kinds of strange atmospheres form that the rest of the country might not want to inhale? Look, I think it's not going to be helpful. The majority of people I encounter around me in middle Georgia who think the race was stolen

say what progressives said in 2016. I don't know anyone who voted for that guy, so it must have been stolen. The increasing sectarian divides within the conservative movement are not helpful. But at the same time, I've had a number of conversations with a lot of friends of mine in the media, and everyone points out no one seems to be talking about cable access rights. Which cable companies are actually going to put these things on? Newsmax has been trying for years and has barely broken through cable access with, I think, the Dish Network. They're struggling with DirecTV, Cox Cable, Comcast. Who puts them on? So we're talking about this business.

I know we have to let you go, but I would like to say just about this one thing. The issue with all of these channels isn't really ultimately going to be carriage and households you're in. It's going to be your willingness and ability to sustain losses. Because running a TV business means you lose a lot of money before you start to make a lot of money. And when I say a lot of money, you got to be ready to lose a billion,

not lose 200 million or 400 million. Anybody can do that. Any moron can lose $400 million, but it takes a genius. It takes Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes to lose a billion and then make a billion a year for the next 10 years so um yeah i i wouldn't hold my breath for that stuff to work well in

the meantime people can always make money by going to substack and i believe it's ewerickson.substack.com did i get that correct this time oh like a good radio guy there we go especially now because it's going to be a really interesting four weeks absolutely eric Eric, thanks a lot. We've learned a lot. And I would be loathe to say that I've talked to anybody who had this sort of encyclopedic knowledge about what's going on on the ground as you did.

And that's just the sort of flattery intended to get you on the show again. Well, look, I'm always happy to come. Thank you very much. Merry Christmas to you all. And to you too. Merry Christmas to you too, Eric.

Thanks. Bye. Oh, that's right. You live in Georgia. It's still legal to say that by the way have we broken the law having this many of us on a zoom call because i know some of y'all are in california well yeah don't tell the governor yeah i'm locked down in new york so we have a special we have a special filter on our on here. Nothing larger than half a micron gets through. And that includes some of the things we say. You know, Rob was making...

See you later, Eric. Thank you. Thanks, Eric. Thanks, Eric. You know, when it comes to getting these things, carriage, to use Rob's term there, because he loves to throw around these industry terms, right? A lot of it is just going to be apps.

You download the app, you stick it on your television, you stick it on your Apple TV and the rest of it. You don't have to worm your way into Dish and Direct and the rest of them, which are just, to me, old 20th century models that I'm just, I can't wait to get rid of them. I mean, and it costs a lot of money. Yeah. But, you know, podcasts like we're doing here cost less because you don't have the big facilities. We all love to listen to podcasts, don't we? Well, it's one thing to listen to podcasts about politics, but it's another thing to do something about it, right? In an age where conservatives are silenced and censored, it's time to speak up and take action, he said, obviously leading to a spot. About what, you ask? About caucusroom.com. What is it? Well,

it's an online community working in tandem with Ricochet exclusively for conservatives. That's right. We're all in this together. Caucus Room is an online community for conservatives to gather, encourage and engage locally to do something. Only real people who are verified conservatives can become caucus room members. But caucus room will never share your information with anyone ever. So you're not going to get hooked up with those mailing lists. The signup process ensures you're communicating with real conservatives in your area and interest groups, not bots or trolls. CockerStream allows you to engage with your neighbors. You have no idea how many

conservatives are hiding in your neighborhood, do you? No, they don't put up the signs. How are you going to know? Well, it's a great way to get engaged on issues where you can make a difference locally. You might not feel emboldened to put a yard sign on your yard right now, but you know if there are more conservatives around in your area, you might feel all better doing it together at caucus room. What do you do when you go there? Well, you can participate in live virtual meetings that are so secure, the platform played host to over a dozen virtual Republican Party conventions this year.

So don't worry about that. You can also share news and jokes and find ways to get involved with causes near you, all without fear of Silicon Valley overlords stopping you. Caucus Room is made by conservatives for conservatives to get organized locally, take action, and make a difference. Join Caucus Room, that's C-A-U-C-U-S-R-O-O-M.com today. And we thank our friends at Caucus Room for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. Now, welcome back to the podcast, Dr. J. Dr. J. Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University, professor by courtesy of economics at Stanford, senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and a senior fellow by courtesy at the Freeman Spolier Institute for International Studies. And I hope I said

Spolier correctly. Very popular fellow, of course. He also likes board games, which we're going to discuss completely here because we're all sick of COVID. No, we got to talk about it. All right, Dr. J, surge. Supposedly, we did everything right, did we not? Michael Moore says that 73 million Americans are not wearing their masks, but that's not so. Mask compliance is pretty good, but yet we're seeing the second surge almost exactly as everyone predicted that we were going to do, which of Americans wear masks, at least some of the time in most places where they're crowded and things like that. And we're seeing Americans on a grand scale comply with these orders. I don't think it's right to say that. I mean, just think about the sacrifices Americans have made, people around the world have made to these lockdowns. To say that we haven't complied is just, I think,

it spits in the face of all of that. As far as the surge itself and the lockdowns, you know, if you look at what the theory actually says for these lockdowns, for the models, what the lockdowns do is they delay the cases into the future. And that's what we're seeing. We're seeing the cases that might have happened in the spring or in the summer happening now because of the lockdowns um and the other thing about this virus it seems like it does follow a seasonal pattern right and this is seems to be the season for the virus um you know in northern climes all around the world you see you saw that the same thing happened in europe just a week or two ago. It's starting to come down in Europe. But, you know, the surge and in southern climate, you know, Australia, New Zealand, Australia, there's it's it's not there right now. Right. It's gone. It's a seasonal pattern to this virus. That seems pretty clear by now.

Are we seeing more fatalities now simply because there are more cases? Because we were told that we developed a robust arsenal of tools that kept it from being as lethal as it was at the beginning. So the fact that we're seeing record deaths now, is that just because we have record numbers? Or is there some other mutation at work, perhaps, that we're not aware of yet? No, I think it's record numbers. But it's also a policy failure. I mean, I think part of the issue is that many of these states that focused on lockdowns as the tool to protect people from the epidemic should instead have been thinking more deeply about who's vulnerable to getting sick. Right. That we know a lot more about now than we once did. So people who are older with chronic conditions, that's who gets sick. Nursing homes. I mean, I think we're doing a better job at nursing homes than we did. I mean, that's certainly true, but it's not as good a job as we could have done in

many, many places, including places that have these lockdowns. And we haven't protected workers, for instance, who are basically, if you're a 64-year-old and you're diabetic and you're obese and you're a grocery clerk, there's no protection for you. We say, look, you're essential. You have to go out and get risk infection and potentially die. I mean, we basically didn't use the knowledge we have about the virus, about who's vulnerable, to change policy that would protect the people that would get sick. I mean, that's really the major problem. Last question. I mean, we knew at the beginning that those were the vulnerable populations. We were seeing it ravaged through the nursing homes, the long-term care facilities. So it's like we knew that. So that's one of the things we knew at the start. But even

now, so long after, it seems that the basic things that people ought to know are still completely up in the air, whether or not fomites come into play, whether or not we can get it by touching a doorknob, whether or not asymptomatic breathing of somebody that you pass in the street i mean we still is is it that we do know and they're not really getting a doing a good job of telling us what we know or are we still just all over the map when it comes to transmission asymptomatic uh dangers and behaviors i mean you see what i mean it's like we we ought to know we ought to have really solid things in place right now. And it seems like we don't. I mean, we've learned a lot about the virus and how it spreads in the, in the, in the, in the months since March. And I think the key, like for instance, fomites, it seems very, very unlikely that fomite spread is

an important thing. You don't, don't wash your girl. Don't wash, don't, you know, don't, don't lice all your groceries. You don't need to do that. I promise. Oh, the taste, the taste though, it really does add a certain, or you could just take my approach and never ever eat vegetables anyway hey jay uh peter here as you can see i don't know that everybody can see that um i'd like first to address my blood pressure and here's what I mean. Every morning, the first thing I see in the Wall Street Journal, or the first thing I see online at the New York Times or in my Twitter feed, is the rising caseload. And I think I'm correct that that number is only a vague interest, that really, in some sense, if people get the virus without, what we care about is how many people get sick. And we already

know that some very large percentage of people overall can carry the virus without any symptoms at all. And every time we hear of an American carrying the virus and not becoming ill, we should pop a little bottle of champagne because we're on the way to immunity. So the utter failure, you can hear I'm getting worked up about this is what's going on in my mind. And if I understand this incorrectly, please correct me, because then I'll be able to read the news more calmly. But the utter failure of journalists to distinguish between case counts, which as a number by itself isn't really telling us very much, in some huge number of cases, that's a benign statistic that you happen to have the virus in your body. The failure to distinguish between cases and illnesses from cases is just a kind of basic failure of journalism. Please tell me I'm wrong.

No, you're right. I mean, I think that the number of cases is not the most interesting thing to track. The interesting things to track are how many older people get the disease and die from it. Things like that. Hospitalization, are we really, really close to capacity? That's important to track. But the case count itself, look, if you had all of the cases in younger populations, you'd have some tragic deaths, obviously, but many, many fewer. The question is who gets the disease and how well are we protecting the people we know to be vulnerable? That's the most interesting. It's like tracking during the Vietnam War. People would track the

number of casualties of the Viet Cong and say, look, we're doing well in the war or we're doing poorly in the war. It's the same kind of mistake, right? The number of casualties is not the key thing. The key thing is, what are we doing really strategically? What are our objectives? Are we achieving those objectives? And the statistics need to match that. That's not true in this epidemic. The number of cases is not the key relevant question, unless you think that lockdowns are the only answer, which they're not. Okay. Next question. Thanks for nothing, by the way, because now that you've confirmed I was exasperated for good reason, I'll be even more exasperated. I mean, I'm going to have a stroke before this is over, which leads me to my next question. That is already known. That is what

people in Silicon Valley call a known issue. A known issue. Okay. By the way, Rob, come in anytime, because for some reason, you and Jay have some kind of thing, I've noticed on our podcast, that he answers your questions with greater alertness and thoroughness. Jay knows me too well. when way, way back at the beginning of this, when you first appeared, when I first interviewed you for Uncommon Knowledge, you made what strikes me as a basic point that to any public policy, there are costs and benefits. And the benefit, at least the putative benefit to the lockdown, is that it slows the spread of the virus. The costs, you argued, A, nobody's paying attention to the cost. There isn't a responsible figure anywhere in America who's actually even making a serious effort to add up the costs. But B, the costs will be enormous. Educational deficiency for kids who are locked out of schools. Cancers will go up because people haven't received their

pap smears or their colonoscopies, and on and on it goes. So the question to you is, have the benefits indeed been what you suppose the benefits would be, or has the lockdown not even worked terribly well in slowing the spread? Do we know that? And then the second bit is, do we know now more about the costs? Are we beginning to get data? You even have said in the past that there's likely to be an increase in suicides. Do we know the pathologies that the lockdown has caused? Do we know more about the costs? So let me start with the benefits. I mean, there's some controversy in among scientists about the extent of the benefits. On the one side, you see people with studies

saying, look, the lockdowns averted X number of deaths. I think a lot of those studies are very naive about what lockdowns actually are capable of doing. Lockdowns, they reduce the number of human interactions among people, but that's the whole purpose of them to reduce your contact with other people um and uh what that does i mean obviously you can't keep that forever that's just i mean humans are social animals uh what that does though is it delays when the disease actually comes to you right it doesn't prevent the disease forever it just i mean unless you die in the interim you're going to you, right? It doesn't prevent the disease forever. It just, I mean, unless you die in the interim, you're going to, you will interact with other people eventually. And you will, because we're not rats where we're quarantined, isolated from each other forever. That would,

that would eliminate the disease, but that's not humanly possible. So a lot of those evaluations, I think, make the mistake of a short-term thinking. There are longer-term articles that understand, that say that what it does is it delays when they occur, and those tend to find that the lockdowns, what you're seeing, the rise in cases now, these are cases that might have happened earlier, except the lockdown prevented them from happening earlier. They're just happening now. To me, it's a validation of what the theoretical predictions suggest about what lockdowns can do. As far as lockdown harms, we now have seen that it's impossible to miss them.

Every single listener in the audience knows them, has felt them personally. Every single human on the face of the earth has felt them. I saw an absolutely heartbreaking story yesterday about an 11-year-old who shot himself on a Zoom call from suicide. Right. So for, I mean, that's a lockdown. I mean, the mental devastation, the psychological harm, one in four young adults seriously considered suicide this June, according to a CDC study. That was this June. It's likely worse now.

The psychological damage from these lockdowns are absolutely devastating. And it's not just the United States. It's worldwide, wherever these lockdowns have taken hold. For children, it's been particularly devastating. So there was a study that was just published a couple of weeks ago in the Journal of American Medical Association

and Open Network. What they said is that, so a kid misses a few months of school. You think it's not a big deal. But it's an enormous problem because that kid then goes on to life less well-educated. Then they make worse decisions about their health over time. It has consequences for their entire life. They live a less healthy life and they live less long. What the study did is just estimate how less long they live. So just from the shutdown,

the school shutdowns in the spring, they estimated that the kids lost in the United States five and one half million life years. We've robbed five and a half million life years from our children. From the, and you know, if you compare it against the benefits of the lockdown, We've robbed five and a half million life years from our children. And, you know, if you compare it against the benefits of the lockdown, even from the most optimistic articles, they're not getting anywhere near five and a half million life years. I want to square this up really tightly and succinctly. The argument is that it is now demonstrable, we can put numbers on this, that the lockdown has done more harm than good. Is that true? To me, if the only question is, we don't know by how much. I think it's going to be orders of magnitude. Sorry, Rob, go ahead. No, you finish. I'm sorry. I have a question about that.

Yeah. So let me just give one other, like, I think I might have mentioned this earlier, like 130 million people are at risk of starvation from the economic damage caused by the lockdowns worldwide. 80 million children are likely are sort of plunged into deep poverty worldwide. These are lockdown harms. I mean, you can argue over how much of it would have happened anyways. But, you know, part of the lockdown is the panic that we induced over the virus. The panic caused the economic harm as well as the lockdowns together. So to say, look,

people would have reduced their economic activities anyways, it's true in part, but that was a policy decision to panic the public. So, Jay, okay, so we know that young people aren't at risk as much, and I'm looking at the death numbers because it's the weekend, TGIF. Why don't I look at the death numbers? And, you know, they're sort of interesting, right? I mean, some of them make total sense, right? I understand why New York, 177 deaths per 100,000 people. That's what's today, I think, in the New York Times. I understand that.

What I don't understand is Florida, 88 people per 100. Why is Florida filled with old people who do nothing but be old all the time. Old people self-deport to Florida from all over the country. Why is Florida, which to my knowledge has not done any of the crazy things that Governor Newsom in California done or Governor Cuomo in New York State has done, why is Florida not a charnel house? Yeah, I mean, I think Florida,

Governor DeSantisis i think sometime uh realized that the lockdowns were not the solution to this i think they've done a much better job than many other places not not perfect job by the way but like much better job than many other protecting nursing homes um their death rate is half of new york Yeah, I mean, I think the lockdowns, it's the wrong thinking about the epidemic. Lockdowns, they might be the right thing if literally everyone is at equal risk from the disease, but we know that's not true. So the only question is, how do we change our strategies to focus our efforts where we know there's going to be the most bang for our buck. The nursing homes, people living, older people living alone at home, workers who are older but have the risk factors.

That's the strategy we should be using. Let's work, let's design our policy to protect them. And I think that Florida has come closer to that than New York has. But I mean, to me, it's... No, Rob, the reason is obvious. In Florida, the old men are driving around in Cadillac Eldorados, right? With their pants hipped up to their sternum. In New York, they're all packed into Subway.

They're all packed into Subway. I guess what I mean is, like, there's... Iowa. Iowa has about, you know, what, 3 million people? 3.5 million people? Its death rate is 83,000 per 100,000. Florida's got 22 million people, something like that? It's 88,000.

I mean, to me, Florida feels like a success. Like, we should all be saying to Governor DeSantis, would you please come and run the COVID whatever response for the world. He seems to have figured it out. Well, I mean, he's, he's, I've actually, I had the honor to be able to talk with him. He seems like, well, I didn't have anything to teach him. He seemed to have read all the articles I knew about. I think the,

I think the, I mean, it is a complicated story, right? So New York is, New York city is more physically dense. There's more people per, per square mile. So that's higher risk. There are other things that are complications that will go there. But I think if you think about what the policy effect is, there's no first-order case to be made that New York is a success. It's, in fact, quite the opposite. The first-order case is that it's an utter failure, whereas Florida, I think, is much closer to a success story.

Yeah, I mean, look, Vermont, Maine, Alaska, Utah, I get it. cases that it's an utter failure whereas florida i think is much closer to success story yeah i mean look vermont maine alaska utah i get it this should you know people live they live way far apart but i don't mind there's miami and tampa you got some big cities jay you've got to understand what's going on here with rob he's saying to himself wait a minute wait a minute i just bought a place in greenwich village you're not allowed to move to Florida. It's too much that you get no income tax. You also get to live longer down there. I'm just old enough that it started sounding like,

hey, you know what? I don't know. Maybe it's, I don't know. I don't know. So, Jay, all this stuff is really interesting that you're telling us, but none of it matters because the vaccine is weeks away and it'll solve all the problems.

It might. The question is how we use it. Right. So I worked on this thing called the Great Barrington Declaration, where basically what we argued is for focus protection of the of the older population while letting people mostly live their normal lives. The big pushback we got was, no, no, it's impossible to protect people that are older. There's no way we can do it. The only way we can do is the lockdown. I don't believe that's true. But actually, with a vaccine, we actually can do that. We can use the vaccine to protect older people. Assuming that the safety data look like the way I anticipate they'll look, at least those still haven't been released yet. But if the vaccine is safe and effective in older populations, and the CDC actually said to do this, let's vaccinate something sensible for once we're out of them.

So vaccinate all of the people that are older, that are at high risk. And then for the rest of the population, COVID is less bad than the lockdowns. And so let us free. Right. So that that's that. I mean, in a sense, it's a perfect vehicle for focus protection. The problem, Dr. J, is that Joe Biden came out today and said that the Biden effort, he's taking the vaccine now probably is something that he's done, that they're going to make sure that it is distributed equitably. And equitably on that side of the aisle indicates that if it's a choice between giving it to a whole bunch of old people first, they're not going to do that. They're going to also, they're going to

want to give it to a lot of people who they believe have been suffering a disparate impact from COVID. So, I mean, what seems logical is to first inoculate those people who are at the most risk. I don't think that's going to be what they're going for. I think they're going to add to it a certain level of social justice, if I may say so. Unbelievably, they're going to distribute the vaccine on diversity principles? Well, I mean, we have seen like there are like minority populations have actually had high risk, but that's partly because it's correlated with being essential worker that has to be exposed. I think if you're 65 and you're 64 and you're an essential worker, I don't care what race you are. You should get the vaccine.

You should be first in line. You know, like I think so. I think there's some some aspect of that is fine. I mean, I think but I think the main principle you hit on, James, and I completely agree with, let's find everyone who's at high risk for mortality if they get the thing and prioritize them for the vaccine. That's really the right sort of ethically right thing to do. Actually, the other thing, can I circle back just a little bit about the vaccine?

Because I've seen a couple of strands in the vaccine discussion that I think we need to head off at the pass. So one is, let's wait until we have enough doses for the entire country, the entire world, until we open up. Because that's going to take a year, maybe longer. That's what they want, though. That's what they're going to insist upon. It's an enormous mistake, right? So if we have, like, with Operation Warp Speed, we have enough doses to help at least all of the vulnerable people, most of the vulnerable people in the U.S. that want it. And then we can open up the rest of the world. I mean, because the lockdown harms are so devastating. The only argument, James, for that would be that if you ignore all the lockdown harms on young people, on less vulnerable people.

Those harms are devastating, which we just talked about. On net, it's immoral to say, let's wait for the vaccine for them. I think you're absolutely right. But those people, the problem seems to be was that the lockdown advocates are the people who believe that home is the only safe place that there is. And everything outside of the world is contaminated. And they've assumed this mindset mindset and it informs every single decision that they make rob rob you've muted yourself so unmute i was gonna say in fact it's the opposite right jay it's like the home is where you're gonna get it yeah like the talk the contact tracing says i'll say that that's the number one source in some sense i mean like it it

you know it's um we're not lab. We're not isolated from one another. The picture people have in their head of what a lockdown looks like of these like, you know, sort of automatons all isolating from one another, never interacting. It's just not right. I mean, I actually have a lot of sympathy for these like Democratic politicians that are that are going to parties. I mean, they're human, it turns out. So it's like, I mean, that's actually a good are in that are going to parties i mean they're human it turns out so it's like i mean that's actually a good thing um in that sense like it's it's uh they you know that you have to understand these are not just uh theoretical policies but the things that actually have to interact where people have to interact with one another right okay can i uh i'm on a roll now because i'm i'm unlike peter i look at the news i've done as this is a choice peter by the way uh despair is a sin you have to turn away from that i look at the news. This is a choice, Peter, by the way. Despair is a sin. You have to turn away from that.

I look at the news and I think to myself, what is everybody's problem? This is the most fantastic time to be alive. We have this worldwide pandemic that starts 10 months ago. We already have two companies fighting it out for primal, for the, for the primacy of the vaccine. They managed to do this in 10 months. They did it on the free market basis. We have, if you, if you're, if you're, if you got a thing for multicultural immigrants, you got this, this husband and wife, Turkish team in Germany. If you have a thing for a big farmer you got pfizer if you got a thing for little startups you've got the one in uh in uh in cambridge you

got all that like and then now i read in the new york times or the walter journal this morning do you to get this this vaccine you're going to need to put it on dry ice it's got to be 70 degrees below zero so now we have people investing in dry ice machines this seems like we should be like we used to do it new york city at 7 p.m everybody would applaud lean out the windows and applaud we should be doing that for the free market economy this seems like the high water mark the past 20 years for free market economics free market health care and what why aren't we because there's a smear of orange self-tanner over this entire thing maybe once we get away from that then we'll feel a little bit i don't know jay should we be should we be celebrating it feels

like we should be or am i just you know the vaccine is it's a it's a it's a successive sign like absolute signal successive science. Like it's incredible. I mean, yeah, the markets certainly played an incredibly important role. Although I say like the Operation Warp Speed, the investment by the government made it played a role, too. So I think I think there's I think it's it is a success. And absolutely. Like I think one other one one other thing where I before I give it an unmitigated success, we can actually still fail, right? So another idea that I've heard floated around is that we should make the vaccine mandatory. You can't go to work unless you have a vaccine.

Share your card. Yeah. I think that is a terrible idea. I mean, I think it would, first of all, like just for instance, let's take my children, right? So I can't make the joke about take my children, please, because that would be terrible. I was about to, by the way. So I admire you for not doing it. So they're mine, Rob. You can't have them. There's always a number. So for my children, COVID is very likely to be better for them than the vaccine. I mean, let's say that.

Like the lowered mortality rate, less serious adverse event rates than the vaccine. And I haven't seen the numbers yet because they haven't released them. But given how unaffected children tend to be to COVID infection, I mean, you can have some bad outcomes, but like it's really, really, really, really rare. Then, I mean, I'd rather have my children get covid than the vaccine for my 80 year old mom. The vaccine is going to be much better to mandate that my children take it as a mistake. Like you shouldn't be asking people to do things that are bad for their health from a public health perspective and then take away all of their life opportunities if they don't if they don't agree. If if like Prince Harry said the other day that actually covid is karma for us because we're so bad to the earth. If people believe that there's something in us that says we deserved to get this, then if there's a moral and philosophically religious character to it, then the absolution of a vaccine will be

absolutely necessary and demanded in order to participate in civil society again. I mean, I think you're right, but I think we're going to see you can't get into a restaurant unless you show your card. I mean, I think or your barcode tattooed with Bill Gates in the shape of a I mean, Joe had something to say to god about that if i remember right if i'm hey before we let you go we know you're a big board game guy at this at the office the other day i go to the office i'm the only man in the newspaper office three floors and me empty somebody on their desk had a board game that was sent to them before the empty the office emptied out it was covet 19opoly and i wondered if you'd played it because it was a version of

monopoly and the front of it had the usual board and instead of the hotels i think you built COVID-19opoly. And I wondered if you'd played it because it was a version of Monopoly. And the front of it had the usual board. And instead of the hotels, I think you built hospitals. It had Fauci with a mask. It had Burks with a mask. And then it had Donald Trump in the front holding a mask in front of him as if about to put it on or take it off. So board game enthusiasts that you are, student of the genre, have you yet played COVID-19opoly? I think we're all playing COVID 19opoly, James.

That's right. Well, do you stick by the rules or do you put all the money in the center and then when you land on go to jail, you take it? No, you're locked down. You don't get to throw the dice. You have to stay exactly where you are. You're in jail all the time and then eventually you go bankrupt. That's how it works. I look forward to a society that is willing to play a game called risk again i'll play happily with you james

all right see you see you at kamchatka all right dr j it's been a pleasure as ever we could talk about this forever and we'll have you back soon and uh can't wait to have more good news good news take care thanks doctor thank you j You know, I mentioned Kamchatka because if you play Risk, that's one of the things you know is that there's a part of Russia on the right side, on the eastern side that's called Kamchatka. And at the store the other day, there was

a charming clerk and she had an accent, a Russian accent, and I asked her where she's from. She said, I'm from Kamchatka. And I said, oh, and I told her exactly how I knew where it was. And she was stunned that anybody in America would know where Kamchatka was. It's like, no, I know nothing about it except to play the game of Risk. That's all. That's all there is to it.

I wish there was some sort of turn-by-turn podcast that we could do where we all played together to play Risk. It would probably last longer than this one right here. But I got to tell you, if you're with us so far in the podcast, that's because you like them, right? You like podcasts, and perhaps you're always casting about for another one to listen to. That's why I like to tell you about the Jordan Harbinger Show. Apple named the Jordan Harbinger Show. Let me start again. Three, two, one. Apple named it one of the best of 2018. The Jordan Harbinger Show is aimed at making you a better informed and more critical thinker so you can get a sense of how the world actually works and come to your own

conclusions about what's happening. There's an episode for everybody, no matter what you're into the show covers stories about like how a professional art forger somehow made millions of dollars while being chased by the feds and the mafia. Jordan's also done an episode about birth control and how it can alter the partners we pick and how going on or off the bill can change elements of our personalities. You won't find just one set of viewpoints on Jordan's show. No podcast covers a lot, but one constant is Jordan's ability to pull useful pieces

of advice from his guests. You'll find something you can apply to your own life, whether it's an actionable routine change that boosts your productivity. Just a slight mindset tweak that changes how you see the world. So go to Jordan Harbinger, three, two, one. So go to jordanharbinger.com slash subscribe or search the Jordan Harbinger Show. That's H-A-R-B as in boy, I-N as in Nancy, G-E-R on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you happen to listen.

And we thank the Jordan Harbinger Show for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. Now, he's had the time. He knows what's coming. The question, is he going to queue it up when I say, hit it? The James Lydon Member Post of the Week. Tied as a bowl of warm jelly.

Our member post of the week this week is from Eustace T. Scrubs, RIP David Prowse. Peter, do you know who David Prowse was? I have not got a clue. Okay, Rob, you know who David Prowse was. Of course I do. Who's the greatest director that David Prowse worked with?

Well, you want to know my actual answer? Yes. George Lucas. I think you're wrong. Here's what he says, and here's Eustace's quote, because David Prowse was the form of Darth Vader. Soon the camera took us inside that rebel ship.

It was being invaded. A huge masked man, all in black, including a grand black cape boarded the ship. Scary doesn't begin to describe him. In the film, he was an underling to greater forces, but it was difficult to imagine who Darth Vader could possibly answer to. Who could be more dreadful than this Sith Lord? When Vader escaped the explosion, the Death Star was frustrating and exciting. Multiple viewings of the film led to the discussion with friends,

will there be a sequel? Darth Vader's got to come back. So when you used to see Scrubs was talking about the death of David Prowse as the form of Darth Vader, it got everybody talking about Vader. It was fun, because it's a typical post. What's happening now? I'm dropping an actuality here, spoiling

Star Wars for everybody. And of course, it's James Earl Jones' voice that gives the character, but it's the size of Prowsese and it's his presence. And he's right. When that guy came on the ship in the first moments of Star Wars, this was a bad dude. But Rob, you're wrong.

I don't think George Lucas was the best director that he worked with. I think Stanley Kubrick was a greater director than George Lucas. And I think that Prowse's work in Kubrick's film surpasses actually, you know. Which one was he in? Which film and what work? Clockwork Orange. He is the bodyguard who is holding the body of...

When Alex goes to terrorize the old writer in his house, when he returns, the writer has hired David Prowse to be his bodyguard, so he's standing there. Not a fan of that movie. He may have been the best director. I mean, Kubrick may have directed i don't know that's a good question i mean the the star all the star wars are great i mean i i think george lucas is genius but i like paths of glory

and i do like uh dr strangelove i think uh clockwork orange is just not good i think calling lucas a genius i mean uh thx 1138 is great american graffiti is a huge wobbling sprawling thing that they managed to cobble together into something entertaining uh and star wars is a fantastic movie i think if he'd been the only person involved with it it would have been less so i think once kazan got his hands on it was better and i think the prequels show that lucas is is vastly overrated well that's true. That's true. But back to Prowse. David Prowse was known from the 70s to the 90s to an entire generation of children

as the Green Cross Man in British PSAs. He would be sitting at this bank of electronics and he would see two children about to cross in the middle of the street. That's wrong. He would turn a little dial and need a peer on the sidewalk and the kids would look up.

Wow, Green Cross Man. So for 20 years, he was this beloved character that kids in England grew up with He'd appear on the sidewalk and the kids would look up. Wow. Green cross, man. So for 20 years, he was this beloved character that the kids in England grew up with that we never had here. So for them at some point in their lives to put together the fact that this guy on television, this huge man who was devoted to keeping children safe as they crossed the street was also the most evil character in the universe. It was one of those little fitting together of disparate details in the little British kids' minds that must've been wonderful.

I am all for it. Pray I don't offer it any further. Before we go, what we haven't done this in a while. What are you watching? What are you guys watching on the, on the tubes there? Nothing.

I'm waiting for a recommendation. We finished undoing the huge. What did you, what did you think? What did you think? Oh, you know, I thought the first five episodes were really far more engrossing than I

expected them to be. And every single one of them ended on a twist. Yep. And my wife who hit is preternatural about spoiling things for me and 10 minutes into it and eric you'll paro she'll say oh of course that person did it and she'll be right even my wife was kept guessing and then episode six we find out actually no spoilers say nothing say nothing so episode six was a little bit of a letdown, but five out of six shows in a six episode season isn't bad.

And then what else did we? Oh, and then we finished the Mandalorian with the kids. So we actually have, we're at ground zero all over again as we approach another round of holidays. So I am waiting for recommendations, boys. I have one for you, Rob. I was frozen.

He was wool gathering. I'm not watching anything frozen he was wool gathering i'm not watching anything i don't i'm not watching anything i'm i tell you what i did i decided about a month ago that i was going to get the newspaper delivered and i get the wall street journal the new york times delivered and it is a sheer pleasure to read a newspaper properly meaning flip through it and you stop where you see something interesting and you learn something that no amount of technology and technologists and algorithms could predict I was interested in because I didn't know I was interested in it. The question of Silicon Valley is always, what do you want? What do you want? What do you want? What do you want? You like that? You look, you pick up a pencil. You want to learn about pencils? No, stop trying to figure me out.

I haven't figured me out. I'm just going to flip around until i see a really interesting article about people making dry ice i didn't know i was interested in dry ice but it turns out it's sort of fascinating that's what i'm doing well good for you and i have a picture of now i can just see rob sitting there in his with his smoking jacket with the clop clop clop of horses outside and perhaps the uh the scratchy sound of the gramophone needle being put down as he absorbs news the way it used to be done. But you're absolutely right. There's nothing like a newspaper for settling you down, fixing you to a place, and also giving you a serendipitous experience. On the web, you click on a link and you're gone. You're off over here. But in a

newspaper, when you read the story and you make it to the jump, you're still following that, but then you're exposed to what else is on the paper it's it's a chaotic medium but it still is one of the most human mediums for learning about the world and the day i think it's much more chaotic to have this thing continually be asking you what it is you want would you want this do you want this do you want this how about this this i once looked up some ridiculous thing on google and now whenever i hit my google app it gives me more information about that thing that i don't really care about it's a classic problem that it's over the that there are some things you can't actually make better or more efficient there's something splendidly efficient in a way about all the inefficiencies of our lives not all of them

many of them and silicon valley right now seems to be focusing entirely on the wrong things, making the wrong things efficient. So that's my rant. I have a more rant than that, but I recognize that we're on our way here. And I'll give Peter a recommendation in just a second. But first, I have to tell you, this podcast was brought to you by Tommy John, by CaucusRoom.com, and the Jordan Harbigand Show. Please support them for supporting us.

And you can also listen to the best of Ricochet. That's right. It's a radio show hosted by some short guy from Minnesota. You can find it this weekend on the Radio America Network. Check your local listings, as we always love to say. Peter, here's my recommendation. And I don't know if you've seen this show or already watched it. Mandalorian is fantastic.

It reminds you that everything that George Lucas did basically with the prequels was garbage. That the sequels were also, but that this is Star Wars and it's, it's absolutely wonderful. And so, yeah, everybody's applauding that show. It's great. But I finished the third season of Babylon Berlin, which is set in 1929, if I'm our Germany in Berlin, and it's the first two episodes, the first two seasons were really, really dark. And this one gets a little bit more lighthearted, although I wouldn't necessarily say that it's a laugh riot. But it branches out to other elements of German society in 29, including the film industry.

And it's compelling. And what I love about it is that it's one of those shows that you know there was somebody hired to research exactly what typewriter was used for most pharmacy labels. Because whenever somebody picks up anything or goes to a room, every single object seems to inhabit this time in a way like the things in Boardwalk Empire did. And it lends this convincing feel to it. The special effects, the green screen work they did to recreate Berlin is unbelievable. I mean, I can't say it's so accurate because I wasn't in Berlin in 29, but the sense of an inhabited, full, busy world is like few shows on television. I mean, The Undoing had about eight people and Donald Sutherland was two of them. This is something else. So I would recommend starting from scratch with babylon

berlin sticking with it you'll find an entertaining and interesting and fascinating and instructive television show that'll do it for us unless somebody else has anything else they want to say uh yeah i'm sorry i was of you we we should um at some point get some people together to talk about the crown um we should get a john o'sullivan on to talk about the crown since he oh we should yes yes he knows knew uh mrs thatcher very well i've watched the entire crown i can tell you that once again it's so clear that the british royal family are just utterly useless they're just trash start to finish they're just the worst people ever and the idea that anybody like the idea that they are kept around is just a sign of the glorious,

generous nature of the British people. They're completely, completely useless. And they, and they try to smear Mrs. Thatcher in this, the crown, they,

they, they make fun of her and her voice, all that stuff. But like, basically she's the hero in every scene. And if you're watching it, you don't even have to love Mrs. Thatcher to know that she's winning.

There's one moment that is, I, I, what i need to find from o'sullivan i think is a lie and is a is a is a is a incredible libel which is they say that mrs thatcher in the last two days of her prime ministership her ace in the hole was she went to the queen and she asked the queen to dissolve parliament untrue and i that's what i am that's what i've never read that i've never heard that i not only sound like her yeah it doesn't like and the idea that they did that was just ridiculous mrs thatcher is she is modern britain and the royal family are some horrible holdovers from some pathetic need to sort of dress up in red velvet. This this and this is like the British doing a television show about us that says that Ronald Reagan tried to suspend Congress so he could rule by martial law. A lot of people would believe it because, you know, it kind of comports with what they think.

And the libel would be accepted as fact. I'm sure that everybody now who watched The Crown and knows nothing of Thatcher believes that's the case. You're right. Should get John O'Sullivan on. You guys should get on there. Yeah, let's get it. We should have all, we should actually have little symposiums and Zooms dedicated

and voted to different shows that people like, because that's what ricochets, because that's, ricochets more than, it's more than politics. It's a lot of politics, but it's also the things that we share and the things we like to argue about, such as why have these podcasts become so bleepily long. We'll rectify that right now by saying we're done. It's been fun.

Next week, boys. Next week. The devil went down to Georgia. He was looking for a soul to steal. He was in a bind because he was way behind and he was willing to make a deal. When he came across this young man sewing on a fiddle and playing it hot and the devil jumped up on a hickory stump and said, boy, let me tell you what, I guess you didn't know it, but I'm a fiddle player too. And if you'd care to take a dare, I'll make a bet with you. Now you play pretty good fiddle boy, but give the devil his due. I bet a fiddle of gold against your soul because I think I'm better than you.

The boy said, my name's Johnny and it might be a sin. But I'll take your bet and you're going to regret because I'm the best there's ever been. Johnny, you're rousing up your bow and play your fiddle hard. Cause hell's broke loose in Georgia and the devil deals the cards. And if you win, you get this shiny fiddle made of gold. But if you lose, the devil gets your soul the devil opened up his case and he said i'll start this show and fire flew from his fingertips as he rosined up his bow and he pulled the bow across the strings and it made an evil hiss. Then a band of demons joined in

and it sounded something like this. ¶¶ When the devil finished, Johnny said, Well, you're pretty good, old son, but sit down in that chair right there and let me show you how it's done. Fire on the mountain, run, boys, run. The devil's in the house of the rising sun. Chicken in the bread pan, picking out dough. Granted, there's a dog bite, no child knows. Ricochet.

Join the conversation. The devil bowed his head because he knew that he'd been... So I have no idea why I couldn't get on. I don't understand. Oh, yeah, you don't get to do this without video.