The Ricochet Podcast - Get Schooled

Episode Date: July 24, 2020

Hello faithful Ricochet Podcast listeners. It’s us. We have another show for you. It’s a good one. We have Ricochet Editor and Twitter celebrity Bethany Mandel sitting in for Rob Long. We have the WSJ’s Jason Riley as a guest. We have political strategist to the stars, Luke Thompson as the other guest. We also discuss aliens and Ricochet member Kephalithos wins this week LPoW for the very... Source

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Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie By the way, Luke, it's been a long week. Just lie to me. Will you please tell me we're going to win everything? I just can't. Let's save it.

That's our first question here. All right. You ready? You ready? 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 No sitting president has ever done this We have racists And they've existed They've tried to get elected president He's the first one that has I'm the president and you're fake news And they've existed, they've tried to get elected president. He's the first one that has. I'm the president and you're fake news.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Beth Mandel sitting in for Rob Long. I'm James Lilex. Today we talk to Jason Reilly of the Wall Street Journal and Luke Thompson on Trump's chances in 2020. Let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Welcome, everybody. This is the Ricochet Podcast, and it's number 505. If you're keeping track, I don't know why you would, because I tell you every time, and who cares?

What matters is that we're here, zesty, timeless, but yet piquant to the moment. That laugh you heard, of course, was the genial soundings of Peter Robinson in California. Hello, Peter. James, how are you? Just jack dandy. And then, of course, filling in for Rob Long on the East Coast portion of our program, driving around the suburbs of D.C. in a minivan with stencils of grandma on the side for at least six or seven confirmed kills. Bethany Mandel, how are you?

Thank God, doing well. How are you? Fine. I like how, because I live in Minneapolis, people now say. How are you? Thank God, doing well. How are you? Fine. I like how, because I live in Minneapolis, people now say, how are you? Which they never say before. Because the entire conception of the place has changed. You know, this afternoon

I went to the suburbs to get my daughter a Christmas present, going to various places. And it was nice to be in the suburbs because everything was clean and orderly and there wasn't any graffiti and there wasn't any murals. There weren't any pieces of plywood, which are still over the storefronts in Minneapolis's uptown area. It still looks like they rolled through yesterday. It looks like they're expecting it to happen tomorrow.

I was thinking about that as I read another article in Human Offense, I think, about a guy from D.C. who was saying, that's it, I'm out of here. A reasoned case from a lover of cities. And I thought, how many of these cities have these people killed? What exactly is the future going to look like? But that's irrelevant because what really counts is the fact that everybody's now facing up to the fact that Donald Trump is the first racist president, according to Joe Biden. That's what we should focus our attention to. Hold on. All of these matters are great and important.

We have to come to them, of course. But this just went off in my mind. You were buying your daughter a Christmas present? I'm sorry, did I say Christmas? No, I'm sorry. You said Christmas, I think. Right, right. I'm sorry. My fault, because I was listening to the old-time radio channel on the XM, Sirius XM,

and they do this stupid thing called Christmas in July. Yes, yes, okay. Christmas shows in July. That's, and I was just thinking again, nobody wants Christmas in July. Stop doing this every single year. It's tiresome. But it infected my brain so much that I said Christmas. Thank you. Actually, I mean, I know you are squared away in all kinds of ways, James. But if you were getting your Christmas shopping done now, I was just going to have to stage an intervention. Beth, question about the schools. What announcement have you heard about schooling for your kids this fall? So nothing has changed, thank God, because we already homeschooled.

So life is pretty much unchanged. It's a question mark if there, I mean, we do a lot of sort of other activities and we're just, we're basically just planning on none of those happening. And so I'm trying to plan other social opportunities for my kids that don't involve like the community center, which won't open and things of that nature. But thank God, I mean, our lives were pretty much built to withstand this and life won't look very different. Now, Bethany, I have to confess, I follow both of you, both you and your husband on Twitter. And Seth put up some posts the other day that just were more than intriguing to me. But I think they reflect that you're under some pressure again.

And Seth wrote that your fellow Jews in your community will accept either a convert or a Republican. And Bethany is both. What's going on? What's going on? So, it was an interesting thing so um there's a very very vicious mommy blog called dc urban moms which is apparently very um sort i'm looking for um it's well known but not in a good way um so there was a there was a thread on the forum posted, why is Bethany Mandel so terrible, I think, was the name of the thread. Are you kidding me?

Yeah. And it was like, it popped up on my Google alerts, because Lord knows I don't look for forums searching for my name. But it popped up on my Google alerts. And it was four pages of, like, how terrible I am. By people who had no idea who you were, this is all. They're all anonymous. But somebody mentioned something that happened last summer here in our community at the pool with our son. And so it was someone who knows us oh no and it was like clear that it was someone

from like our direct community within i don't know several blocks of us because everyone goes to the same community pool and so it was about something that happened at the pool last year and uh it was it was creepy that like there was this four-page conversation of all local mothers talking about how terrible i am and like mentioned my son oh no that's just horrible horrible so let me is this just is this excuse me just as if as if as you know i've i've raised a lot of kids myself. We have five kids, but our youngest is now 18, so we're through it. But the last thing a mom needs is other moms being difficult or catty, which they can be, human beings are human beings, regardless of politics, regardless of fights over schools,

and regardless of whether or not there's a shutdown taking place. Was this moms being nasty to each other, or was there a political or ideological component to this so um it's it's it's already a nasty place apparently this forum and it's it's very well known as being such but the tone of it was about my politics and what's different so it was interesting that the pool thing came up because I always felt a low simmer hostility there. And I felt like it was in my head. And then with that post, I was like, that was not in my head. And it was my politics.

And so it's kind of an uncomfortable thing now because we're like, who of our literal neighbors is posting about us? And, like, who can our children have playdates with i mean this this happened to us in new jersey um we were iced out of playgroups and my daughter stopped getting birthday invitations because of politics yes and i was still super duper never trump and i we stopped getting birthday invitations and we drove by play dates. Uh, and my daughter was like, wait, wait, all my friends are there. And I'm like, well, we were not invited to that. Um, and I heard from one of my daughter's friends who remained friends with us. She was literally the only one. And, oh no, there was two, there was two that stayed friends with us. But one of them

directly told me, she was like, I was confronted about being friends with you. And I told them to take a hike. But your evaporating social invitations is not in your head. There was a consensus made among other parents in the community of similar ages to your children to stop inviting you guys to things because they don't like your politics. And I was like, oh, well, that sucks because that affects my kids. Wow. I mean, that is so bad. I don't even...

My mind is going toward pompous things like, well, think what it must have been like to live under the Stasi in East Germany or in Cuba where there's an informer in every neighborhood. But, of course, that's communism. This is ordinary suburban American life. It's just unbelievable.

I have a friend here who she said that her husband was thinking about putting a Trump sign on her lawn. And I was like, don't do it if you want to have playdates. I'm looking at the site right now, DCUrbanMom.com. That's the one, right? Yeah. And I'm not seeing the post. Did it get taken down? Yeah.

It deleted it. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. And as is typical for the day, there are two political threads on DC Urban Moms. Because, of course, when I want to talk parenting, I necessarily immediately want to go into a political discussion. And one of them is username required. And the other is you don't have to use your real username.

The one that requires people to actually show their face is completely underpopulated. I don't think there's been a post there since 2003, tumbleweeds. The one where people can sling in anonymity is just a zesty brew of all these wonderful little things that people are saying. It is extraordinary. Bethany, it seems like the teachers are playing an interesting game here. They're assuming that if they make things miserable for the parents, that the parents will, of course, vote for the party that has got nothing but health and teachers in its heart and hate Trump. But at the same time, people who are now looking at alternatives are realizing that, gosh, you know, the public school is not the only option. I think you wrote or tweeted about these pods that are popping up as people scramble to figure out ways to school their kids. And

what's interesting there is that if you add an ideological component to that, then the balkanization of society, at least in classrooms, you can get kids from disparate groups together to perhaps argue. But now, if everybody self-selects, then it's even more hermetically sealed. Yeah, and I'm seeing it sort of in Facebook groups of parenting groups. The middle class and upper middle class folks, and they're just plain out wealthy, are creating these learning pods. And among my friends who are not in the upper class and not in the middle class, and honestly don't have enough disposable income to have one of the parents step back completely or step back part-time to take charge of their

kids' learning, they're begging for babysitters online. And that's all they're going to be able to do is beg for a babysitter, a body to stay with their kid. And I'm like, I, and that's all they're going to be able to do is beg for a babysitter, a body to stay with their kid. And I'm like, I'm thinking about my childhood and, and my mother wouldn't have even been able to afford a babysitter. I would have been left alone. Right. Bethany, explain these pods. Here's what's happened here in California. Last week, the governor announced that schools would not close. I beg your pardon, that schools would not open. Full stop. He ended the conversation. Schools will not open. And now I hear that Harmeet Dhillon, who is a Republican in San Francisco, very prominent lawyer, she appears on Fox News, she's suing Gavin Newsom.

And of course, I'm thrilled by this. We sent our kids to Catholic schools. Catholic schools tend to be schools of very modest means. And so, you shut those down, and they don't have piles of cash like the teachers' unions, exactly so. So, it is an outrageous thing to do, but he's done it. And I've heard just the other day, a friend was mentioning to me that parents are putting together pods. What does that mean? So, basically, people are posting online, mostly on Facebook, what I'm seeing. I live in Tacoma Park, and I have a six-year-old and a four-year-old. I have a backyard or a playroom, and I'm looking for two other families to join with us.

We're going to hire a teacher and split the cost between the three of us, and I'd like someone to teach them general studies between 10 and 2 p.m. Send me a message if you're willing to be a teacher or if you'd be interested in joining our pod. And so then they form a group of three, four families where they make a pledge basically that this is, we're not going, we're going to be very careful when we go to the supermarket or we're not going to socialize with people outside of this circle, but, and then we're going to hire a tutor, and the tutor, they're going to pay, I don't know, let's say $40,000, and so they'll all chip in 10k if there's four families. Wow, wow. Do you know what this is? That is exactly,

I have memories when I was a kid of my mother who was born in 1916 and grew up in farm country in pennsylvania the farm families would get together and advertise for somebody for a teacher and the teachers tended to be young women who would only stay for a year or two to come out to their rural community and teach in a one-room schoolhouse yeah and that that was that's what's happening. Families spending together. This is a throwback to a century ago. Yeah, and it's interesting because they're hiring college students

who don't want to go back full-time. They're hiring teachers. And sometimes the teachers, if they're able to cobble together two different families, so if they meet from 8 to 10 and then 11 to 1 and then whatever,

if they're doing two-hour slots, I mean, they could put together a significant chunk of income if they can if they can fit in two or three families in a day they could make people could make this figures yeah wow the teachers could make six figures and the and the families could figure out ways to make this work i mean it it's a lot of juggling and it's a lot of weight on the families and on the teachers to just basically start from scratch and start an education revolution in three weeks but it makes you wonder if the liberal people who are protesting on dc urban moms will then um pitch a bit of a fit when all of the class instruction is tossed out and doesn't count towards graduation because

their privilege enabled them to get a leg up on other people. I mean, this is the epitome of a society where the haves are doing well, and the people who actually relied on education to provide them with instruction and a place to be during the day are not. They don't have the ability to form a pot like this. So it's got to be, you have to toss that, if it's a half a year, you can't let that count count, or you privilege these people in ways that other people were not able to do. So it doesn't necessarily have to count, though. There's no such thing as, so if they pull their kids out and they file the paperwork that they're homeschooling, they can put them right back whenever they want. And they can't hold kids back legally.

It's the same as if I enrolled my kids in school next year. My kids will go into first and second grade. This is just fast. 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.ee yeah and bethany what about the what about the distinction between working moms and stay-at-home moms this feels to me like the kind of thing where a stay-at-home mom, which of course requires a certain degree of wealth to be able to stay at home, wealth may be the wrong word, but the stay-at-home, this will fall heavily on moms who need... Okay. Explain that. I'll push back on you a little bit on the stay-at-home mom thing because the statistics right now on homeschooling families is actually they make less money because you have to survive on one income.

So this is going to be a really significant hit towards the bottom line for a lot of families. I have the luxury, and thank you Ricochet.com, of working part-time from home. And so we're not at a total loss for my income. But a lot of people are going to have to quit their job or shift to part-time. And it's really going to affect the economy because the two-family earning model is not going to survive. It can't. And all the women are going to drop out of the workforce, all the mothers. All right. Well, Bethany, the thing is, if you're going to do this and sit in for Rob, and we'd love to have you, you have to realize,

you have to keep your eye on the clock. You have to realize where I'm going. You have to realize I'm getting to a spot and then you have to interrupt me instead of going on to make a very good point, which you did. But I need your help here. Without Rob... I'm going to be the mom of the podcast. Well, if mom consists of interrupting what the kids are doing and not realizing that the kids are actually having a learning experience that's driving the world forward, yes. That said, my point was going to be, of course, that all this ad hoc stuff about trying to learn online and learn in pods, it makes you want to go to a professional. Yeah, learning from home. It's not for amateurs, right?

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Welcome Mr. Riley. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you. You had a piece, one of your columns, which spoke to me because it said a lot of the things that I'm hearing here in Minneapolis where I live, and that is America has a silent black majority. They fear crime more than the police, and they know that rioters are opportunists, not revolutionaries. Quote, you wrote,

quote, nor should the political left assume that the black voters need to turn out in large numbers five months from now. We'll thrill to this agenda. In a 1970 memo to President Nixon, advisor Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote that there is, quote, a silent black majority as well as a white one. So what are they saying now? And is anybody really interested in hearing what they say? Because it's so counter to the narrative. Well, I'm not sure if the powers that be are interested. You seem to see an ascendance of progressives in the Democratic Party. I think some of the older folks in the party understand what I'm talking about, but I'm not sure the faction that seems to be in control right now cares much. They

care about pushing a certain agenda, and that depends on spinning a narrative that I think is so far alienated from the truth as to be almost ridiculous. This pretending that the biggest problem in these underserved communities is policing and not crime, that the cops are the problem and not the criminals. And anyone who's lived in these communities or knows anything about these communities knows that that is exactly the opposite of what is true. A lot of what you're hearing, at least, again, here, what I hear in Minneapolis, is that the police have pulled back from the neighborhoods, and this has led to more crime, but it's also led to more just general disorder,

that people who didn't used to speed through traffic lights now go through them at 50 miles an hour, that there's this feeling of anarchy creeping into the neighborhoods. And the defenders of the police reduction say that it's a good thing because it reduces the number of interactions between police and the black community and therefore diffuses what could be potential problems. But isn't that sort of granular presence a safeguard for the people who are not running through the stoplights at 50 miles an hour and are not out at 3 o'clock in the morning selling and shooting. Exactly.

Most of the members of these communities are law-abiding communities. You're talking about a minority of a minority group that is responsible for almost all of the mayhem. I mean, you often hear that blacks, who are about 12 or 13 percent of the population, commit more than half of all murders, for instance. Or that, you know, the violent crime rate among blacks is 7 to 10 times higher than among whites. Even though, again, blacks make up such a small percentage. Well, even among blacks, it's a small percentage of the black population.

So you're talking about mostly men and mostly young men. So that 12 percent is down to 6 or 5 percent of the black population who is responsible for all of this antisocial behavior that we see all over the country. And so, yes, I mean, these people have it exactly backwards. If the police are going to be scapegoated, you are going to see them pull back. We've seen it before. We saw it in Ferguson after Michael Brown. We saw it in Baltimore after Freddie Gray. We saw it in Chicago after Laquan McDonald. So this has been documented. This has been shown empirically to happen, and I'm not at all surprised that it's happening again.

And no, efforts to defend or to defund the police are not going to make things better. They're going to make things worse. And what that will result in is even more dead black bodies, which, of course, is not what we want to see. So, Jason, this is Bethany Mandel. So I wanted to ask you sort of along the lines of the folks who are committing the majority of the crimes, what do you think is going to happen in cities where schools are not reopening and we kind of inch through August and September and October and there are young men who are not in school, physically in school. Where do you see this sort of problem going? Oh, obviously, it could be a much worse problem. But that's not a uniquely racial problem, just to have idle young people around.

Yes, I mean, I think it's going to be a problem for everyone. Bad thing, particularly young men of any race. So no, this is all bad. In addition to, you know, people not being able to go back to work until their kids go back to school, you're going to have all these other social problems. And people talk about, you know, the mental health of people and so forth. But no, there's going to be a safety issue as well. Jason, Peter Robinson here. You had a terrific piece in the journal the other day on Tom Sowell's new book, Charter Schools and Their Enemies. And here, I interviewed Dr. Sowell a couple of weeks ago, and of course, I've read the book, and then I read your marvelous piece. Just to sum it up, what Tom has discovered is that charter schools in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in Harlem,

of all places, which we think of as decades of failed experiments in urban planning and all of that, not only outperform ordinary public schools in the same neighborhoods, but often outperform public schools in white neighborhoods. And Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York, is trying to shut them down and disrespects the people in the charter school movement in every speech he gives on education. And I just don't get it. Are the liberals, are the putatively good liberals of New York that hypocritical?

Do they not see that good schooling from, just give the black kids good school. They'll be fine, for goodness sake. Is it hypocrisy? Is it power lust? What is going on? Well, as Tom writes about in the book, it's a matter of incentives. And we have a public education system in this country that is really geared toward the adults who run the system, and it puts their interest ahead of the kids and education of children. And the unions and the adults who run the system like to pretend that those two sets of interests are perfectly aligned, but they're not. And we know this in so many ways, mainly by the fact that when successful public education models do arise, like charter schools, for instance, they get rejected because

they threaten the power structure of the status quo, what's already in place. So that's what this is. I mean, you know, for the left, public education is a jobs program for adults, first and foremost, which is why things that have no educational benefit pass muster, like teacher tenure laws that give a teacher a job for life after a couple years in the classroom, or a last hired, first fired rule that places seniority over whether you're a good teacher or whether anyone in your classroom is learning. These are job protections. These have nothing to do with educating children, yet they prevail in public education. Bad schools stay open even if they're failing generation after generation of children, because those schools

are still providing well-paying jobs for adults. And so you have to look at the incentives that have been put in place. It's not an indifference, I think, to the children. It's just those are people responding to the incentives that have been put in place. So one of my favorite quotes that I've been thinking about with school choice stuff with everything that's been going on is you can't let a good crisis go to waste. And I feel like this is a moment where school choice advocates cannot let this crisis go to waste. What can we do right now to encourage school choice to break up this public school monopoly of the education of our kids? Well, highlighting what's going on is a good place to start. Just making sure the public knows. Again, and I fault my industry, the media, for this, but they do pretend that

the interests of the teachers and the unions are perfectly aligned with the interests of kids and they let teachers and unions get away with presenting the situation that way. So teachers go on strike, and they say, oh, it's all about the kids, and so forth, when it's really about them and their own interests. And so out in California, for instance, you have teachers' unions saying that we will not go back to school. We're talking about the Los Angeles School District, the second largest in the country after New York.

So you're talking about a lot of kids here are saying, we will not go back to school until we get things like Medicare for All, until we get defunding of police, until we get a moratorium on new charter schools. I mean, I think this would surprise a lot of people in the public that this is the price of them returning to the classroom and how any of those demands benefits the children. So I think it's really just shining some light on some of these ridiculous demands and pointing out how divorced they are from the actual interest of children. Hey, Jason, Peter here one more time. So, there's a silent black majority. Well,

here's the way I think of it. I'm trying to frame a question, so I'm slopping along here, but I'll do my best and then hand it to you. Silent black majority. Before all of this hit, this COVID hit, we had a strong economy. And one of the features of that economy was that African-American unemployment had fallen to the lowest levels ever, ever recorded. And so tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, especially the disadvantaged and especially African Americans, were beginning to lead better lives. And according to the best polling I could find, Donald Trump's approval rating among African Americans soared from 8% to 9%. You spoke a moment ago about incentives. What incentives do politicians on either side, Democratic, Republican, liberal, conservative, what incentives do they face if African Americans simply continue to vote en bloc for Democrats? Is there some way to break that political logjam?

Well, I think that the Republican Party has to do a better job of outreach. I don't think outreach, Peter, is going into a black community and saying, look what I have done for you. Why aren't you voting for me? Look at unemployment. Why aren't you voting for me? I support school choice. Why aren't you voting for me? What is wrong with you? That is not outreach. You have to make a group feel welcome within your party, and you have to actively go and court those voters. And that is not something Republicans typically do. 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 if your horse loses on a selected race. That's how we celebrate the biggest week in racing. Cheltenham with LiveScoreBet. This is total betting.

Sign up by 2pm 14th of March. Bet within 48 hours of race. Main market excluding specials and place bets. Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie Do. It is still the rare Republican that is advertising on, say, black radio or black Twitter or black

internet outlets and so forth. It is the rare Republican that goes into these neighborhoods, goes into barbershops and grocery stores, community centers, and says, here's what I have to offer. Here's what I'm about. Here's why you should give me a look here. They don't do that, Peter. And I don't think they do it. I don't chalk it up to racial animus. It's that they know they can win elections without doing it. And when you are a politician, you're thinking about these trade-offs. Time spent courting one group is time not spent courting other groups. And Republicans know in the past they haven't gotten much of a return on their time in the black community, and that they don't need it to win.

And so I think until they do need that vote to win, I doubt you're going to see much black outreach among Republicans. Jason, I love this, though, because what you're saying, your advice to Republicans is try politics. Try work in a neighborhood. Try doing it the old-fashioned way. Jason, I've got one more question here about African-American leadership. I have sort of felt encouraged in a modest way, and here's why. Not many single-digit numbers of years ago, if you were going to name African-American intellectual leaders on the side of free markets, conservatives, for want of a better term. You would name Tom Sowell and Shelby Steele and Walter Williams and Robert Woodson, and then you'd be done.

You'd be pretty much done. And so, I've kept thinking, where are, and now we have, people have stepped forward in this crisis. You, of course, have been on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal for some years now. But now we have Jason Reilly and Roland Fryer and Coleman Hughes. And Glenn Lurie has in some way resurfaced. He was a prominent voice in the 80s who, as far as I can tell, sort of went quiet. Now he's back. Do you find this encouraging? Do you feel you have colleagues now? You do. I find it very, very encouraging. And there are so many more. There are some in academia now. There's a guy named Wilford Riley

that is very prominent right now. And he's been writing for Commentary Magazine and conservative outlets like that. He's published a couple books on hate crime hoaxes and things like that. So there are a number of young people coming along who I think, you know, it reminds me a little bit of what happened in the 80s during the Reagan administration, and you would know this, Peter, but you had this sort of, there weren't people who would self-identify as conservatives, but they were people who were willing to challenge the civil rights orthodoxy on race. And I'm thinking of people like Stanley Crouch, you mentioned Glenn Lauer, but yeah, Stephen Carter.

You even had people like the Harvard law professor, Randall Kennedy, writing books like Race, Crime, and the Law back in the 90s. Orlando Patterson was saying things. William Julius Wilson. You had this group of people who were willing to challenge. They weren't Tom Sowell. They weren't Walter Williams, I'm not saying that, but they were more willing to challenge the left, and then a lot of them went quiet. And I'd like to think that a younger generation is

coming along, and we're going to need them, because I'll tell you, when the Michael Eric Dysons hang it up, and the Cornell West hang it up, and the Owls and the Jesses go away, there is a whole army out there of black leftists waiting to take their place from Ta-Nehisi Coates on down. And so the left has successors to their current, you know, sort of leaders among liberal thinkers. So I'd like to think that another generation of Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams is out there somewhere. And you're right, the names you just

mentioned, they do give me some hope. And you're it, baby. That's very flaring, but I'm a journalist, guys. I'm not an academic. I'm not a scholar. I'm a journalist. I try to do what I can as a journalist, but I know how to stay in my lane. What if we request you not stay in your lane? Would that work?

Last question, Mr. Riley. You mentioned Ta-Nehisi Coates. You can always tell when somebody's been reading him and drunk deeply at his particular well when you start hearing the term black bodies, which to me, I trace to his work. That seems to be one of those terms that he injected into the conversation. Another one, thanks to Kendi, is anti-racism. Now, most people would think, well, anti-racism sounds fairly anodyne. How can anybody have any questions about that? But it really does mean something else, doesn't it? Oh, yes, absolutely. These are people who don't think that blacks can be held in any way responsible for their current situation, in any way responsible

for the antisocial behavior you see playing out daily in places like Chicago, until racism has been vanquished from America. And so long as they can point to a Confederate statue someplace, someone using the N-word, they'll say, look, there, see, racism isn't gone. Don't talk to me about black personal responsibility. That explains your achievement gap. That explains your income gap. That explains the unemployment rate differentiation between blacks and whites that we've had for

so many decades. So you white people go take care of that first before you start blaming black people for not taking responsibility for all the problems that they have. And unfortunately, that side is winning this argument. They have convinced a lot of people that any racial disparities are automatic evidence of racism, structural racism, you know, or what have you. But all they need to point out is that blacks are this percentage of the population, but they're not this percentage of law firm partners or this percentage of dentists or this percentage of the freshman class at Duke. Therefore, something nefarious is going on. Racism still exists, and you guys have a problem to fix here. That is the mentality that a lot of

people have, and it's been spread quite effectively by the progressives and by the left. And I don't think it holds up to scrutiny. There are many things that cause disparities in outcomes. There always have been. You've never seen racial parity in outcomes anywhere in the world, not in America, not abroad, not now, not before. So it's a silly argument. It doesn't hold up to scrutiny. But they have convinced people that, you know, if the incarceration rate among blacks is higher than it is among whites, it's because police are picking on black people. It can't possibly have anything to do with blacks committing more crimes at higher rates, I should say, than whites. And the left has just run with this argument, and I don't think the right has done, and the media in particular, has done much to push back at it. But isn't the term anti-racism also now redefined to be this modus vivendi, this lens through which everything must be seen and every action must be taken?

I mean, that's how I come to understand it. Not just race, but this is the intersectionality stuff, I guess. Race, gender, sexual orientation, what have you. Yeah, this is how you start every sentence with, as a black man, as a woman, as a transgender this or that, and then you proceed from there. And yes, it's an encouraging people to not only, you know, nurse grievances, but to view all things through that lens. You don't look at what we have in common. You look at where we're different and you go from there. Well, as a transracial transhuman, I don't know why I'm even talking to you.

We have nothing we can possibly share. I think, Peter, I had one more to go before we return to normal life. Peter, did you? Jason, how are things at the Wall Street Journal? Can you offer words of comfort? The Journal, what was it, 280 people on the reporting side of the paper wrote and signed some sort of petition complaining about those of you on the editorial pages. How are things at the Journal?

Well, I, you know, my understanding is that they're fine. I think the editorial page decided to let that editorial speak for itself. So I don't think they want anyone to elaborate on it. But so far as I know, people there are in very good spirits, and they're doing what they've always done. And, you know, the Wall Street Journal editorial page is one reason that a lot of people buy the paper, frankly. Absolutely. The guy who hired me, Bob Bartley, many years ago used to say that, you know, if not the only, editorial page of a major newspaper that actually sells papers. And I think that's still the case. And I think it's needed now more

so than ever, given the way the pendulum has been swinging nationally. That's true, and you're one of the reasons that we buy it. Thanks so much for joining us on the podcast today, Jason Reilly, and we'll talk to you down the road. Thank you. Jason, thanks so much. Keep throwing those beautiful punches. Thank you. Thank you, guys.

Take care. Bye-bye. The beautiful punches. Are you a fan of these sweet signs, Peter? Are you an actual boxer? My father actually loved boxing. I know very little about it. But what I love is, actually, I've seen it

twice in this podcast. Jason, of course, what I love is somebody who has a feel for going on the offensive. Here's the argument. Here's what we should do. And did you notice Bethany just did that? A crisis is a terrible thing to waste. And Margaret Thatcher-like, she turned that to the advantage of us conservatives. What can we do to attack the unions i do love you bethany i just love that thank you i'm always ready to go on the offense and my husband can attest to that so we're coming out of a spot i bring up a non-sequitur like boxing and then peter goes to talk about something that bethany had said a rahm emmanuel quote in brink and thatcher i i i got nothing to work with here, you guys.

It's just... I was throwing things... I thought I was giving you everything to work with. Choose anything you want. Well, right. I mean, so the house is creaking in the wind, and Peter throws you every kid in the toolbox, and you end up with a plunger in your hand saying, thank you very much for this kind assistance of yours. I'm just going to declare this an utter failure as far as segues go because I have no help here whatsoever.

No help. But you're probably wondering exactly what I was going to do. If I was talking about boxing, what was I going to get to? Do we have any sponsors for gloves or liniments? You know, musty gyms who are crotchety guys with cigars shout at Italian stallions. No, you'll never know how I was going to get to quip.

You'll never know how I was going to get to quip. Oh, please, I'm begging you. How were you going to do it? We'll leave that for the comments. But I am getting to quip. Let's talk about brushing our teeth, shall we? 75% of us, 75% of us have old, useless, worn-out bristles. You know, those splayed ones you see in the glass in the sink.

It's disgusting. They're ineffective. Even more people, even more than 75%, forget to floss daily. Well, good health starts with good habits. And Quip makes it easy by delivering all the oral care essentials you need to brush and floss better. The Quip electric toothbrush, which I love, I will never be without it. It has timed sonic vibrations with 30-second pulses to guide a dentist-recommended two-minute routine, and there's even a size-down version for kids, too. Paired with Quip's anti-cavity toothpaste, which

now comes in mint or watermelon, by the way, you get all the ingredients teeth actually need, and none they don't. Quip also has an eco-friendly refillable floss with a dispenser you keep for life, an expanding string that helps clean between the teeth that are spots where you got some popcorn hole or some meat or something. The Quip brush head, the toothpaste, and floss refills are automatically delivered on a dentist-recommended schedule every three months for just $5 each. It's a friendly reminder when it's time for a refresh and to stay committed to your oral health. And shipping? Shipping is free. Join over 3 million happy customers. I'm one of them. And practice good oral health care easily and affordably with Quip, starting at just $25.

And if you go to getquip.com slash ricochet right now, you'll get your first refill free. That's your first refill free at getquip.com slash ricochet. That's spelled Q-U-I-P dot com slash ricochet. Quip, the good habits company. And now we welcome to the podcast, Luke Thompson, Republican political consultant and a contributor to National Review. Ahoy, cruise ship emoji. Kidding. We love National Review. I love National Review. I'm bright for National Review. So brother, brother. All right. Here we go. A couple of months, X number of months left to go. The convention is canceled. Boo hoo. Can Trump win? Can he turn it around? He can. We all know he can. Is he going to? I guess that's the prognostication we're doing here. Well, it's Friday. Are you planning on having a good Friday or bad Friday?

Boy, let me put it this way. You mentioned the National Review cruise. I've been on one of them, and the boat we were on was subsequently one of the stranded coronavirus boats. Oh, my God, really? Yeah, yeah. This was obviously not the National Review cruise, but it was the same boat. And it was drifting around from various South American ports looking for someone to take it in. And its fate was deeply uncertain, but it was running out of supplies and time.

So I would say that the good ship Zandam was probably a decent metaphor for where we are with the Trump campaign. Fox put out a bunch of swing state polls this week, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and there were some interesting takeaways there. Trump is down in all of them. In Michigan and Pennsylvania, they had polls from April, and the ballots were basically unchanged. That was surprising to me and interesting. Trump is lagging with seniors, not as badly in Pennsylvania as elsewhere, but he's still struggling with seniors. And so the biggest issue here is you would expect from April, beginning of April to now, beginning of April, the president is doing pretty well in the polling, in the nationwide polling. You would expect him to have fallen off in the swing states

as he has in the national polling. But it doesn't look like he's fallen off. It looks like he's holding set. But those swing state polls weren't that great to begin with in April. So he can do it. But it's going to take a couple of things that are outside of his control and a couple of things that are in it. The first thing that's outside of his control is the economy needs to come around. I think another round of stimulus from the Congress will certainly help with that. And if we catch a lucky break with seasonality on COVID, it'll help. The things that are in his control, he's got to be more disciplined. He's got to drive a message on jobs and economic recovery. And insofar

as he can get out there and be active, even though the rallies are probably off the table, the more he does that, the better. But let's say you've been dropped into the job of being the Trump campaign manager. What sort of discipline do you impose? Do you just take the Twitter office phone and say, you know, we're only going to do press conferences now, and somehow install a governing mechanism that keeps him a little bit more focused and less likely to tangentially ramble? I mean, what do you do? I think about the two times where we've seen Trump first as candidate and then as president be disciplined, really, really disciplined. The first is in 16, the last 10 weeks of the campaign, when he was on the road constantly, he was pretty disciplined. He had a script, he had an MO,

and that's what he was doing full time. And it was pretty effective. There were still Twitter spats and all that. But more than anything, when he is busy and there's kind of a battle rhythm, I think he does well. The other instance was the first three weeks of coronavirus briefings during the 15 and then 30 days to slow the spread sort of rollout. He was pretty good, and that showed up in his numbers. He was prepared. And that's because he saw quite clearly, one, that his performance in those events was directly correlated with his reelection likelihood. And second, you know, there was there was a pretty standard run of things.

There's a cast that showed up and they were they were sort of supporting cast and he had a reason for doing it. So if they're going to do the briefings again, you know, whatever they were doing to prep him for those early sessions, keep doing that. And then, as I said, if you can get him out on the road and give him something to do, idle hands are truly, you know, the political devil's work when it comes to Trump's ability to undermine himself. So I'm sort of wondering how much discipline he, is it just a discipline problem with the president or is it also his campaign? I'm seeing a lot of people complaining, and people who were unquestionably voting for him just a couple weeks ago being extremely frustrated with the tone of the text messages they're getting and the emails they're getting from the administration, or from the campaign, rather. Just, you know, why— you let me down how dare you

not donate to me and that kind of tone how much damage do you think the communications from the campaign is doing to his sort of goals well i don't i don't know that i would say the text and email stuff is doing that much damage. Though I would say as general practice, you don't want to burn your list out. And people will see that show up in the form of increased unsubscribes and diminished contribution rates. The bigger issue with the campaign thus far, and look, let's give Stepan some time to get in there and begin to execute on a new strategy. But during the Parscale regime, the campaign had no message. And they weren't able to find one. And it's very difficult to do strategic messaging

when you don't have a message anchor or lodestar around which to build strategy. And so I think that complaint about the campaign is justified. But look, that's why a change was made. And that change will hopefully be, will yield some results for them because it's trying to fight about Joe Biden's senescence for seven months was a stupid idea. And, you know, there will be more than enough time to drag down Biden's favorabilities by exposing his actual record. He happens to have a, to be polite, mixed record as in a lifetime in politics. But the reality is, is especially in the middle of an unemployment crisis, people want to know what you're doing for them and what you're going to do for them. And Donald Trump could very easily point to the first three years of his administration and a recovery and say, look, I've done more for working Americans in three years in politics than Joe Biden's done in 45. He didn't do that. Instead, his campaign was sitting around

talking about, oh, where's Hunter? Oh, Joe Biden doesn't know where he is. You know, like, let Joe Biden make the case for why he's senile. He's going to do it. Like, the guy can't help himself. Don't waste the opportunity to be for America by being against Joe Biden's capacity to construct a coherent sentence. Luke, a couple of questions that may seem outlandish, but probably ought to just give you a chance to address them. Is there any chance, if this thing continues to go sideways, that he just drops out the Trump, the president? None. All right. Is there any chance that Mike Pence drops out in favor of, say, Nikki Haley, who would come, presumably suburban women, or Tim Scott, who might generate some African-American vote? Is Pence on the ticket to stay? I mean, barring some sort of, you know, unforeseen health emergency, I don't think the ticket changes.

Okay. I would also say that the notion that a vice presidential pick has real political power to help is unproven. They can hurt, but I don't think they help. So Trump and Pence, it is. Now, here's another just sort of basic threshold question. There are still people who knew Donald Trump in New York in the old days who think he stumbled into the presidency running as a marketing ploy that worked too well. Does he want to win? I think he wants to win. Otherwise, he wouldn't have run for reelection.

You know, it's pretty, there's real power in just saying, okay, I did what I wanted to do. I'm walking away. Does that mean he wants to or is willing to do the things he needs to do to win? Uncertain. Uncertain. And then how much of the current... So three months ago, when the economy is still booming, his numbers were pretty good. They still were never above 50%, but the numbers were pretty good.

You could see how it could stitch together a victory in the electoral college. Oh, he was on path to beat Joe Biden before the shutdowns. Okay. Okay. So how much of this is, you mentioned this earlier, but how much of it is the economy and where he's trailing among seniors, how much of it is people are just frightened of COVID and they have the feeling that he's not, he's somehow not coming to, he's not protecting, he's not giving jobs to people at middle age and younger, and he's not protecting older people. Is that really what it comes to? Yeah, I think that's basically it. I think, you know, you've got high unemployment, which is never good for a president running for re-election, and he has not looked like he's been in control. He hasn't looked like the master of himself, and he hasn't looked

like the master of the situation. And when you're the chief executive in a crisis that's what you have to project and he hasn't done it i don't know why he felt it was so important to have like bizarre vendettas with peripheral members of the media but i don't live in his head and you're better for that i have one for me one For me, one more question. The Senate. That's looking bad as well? Boy, so there are some tranches that I think... People always talk about a firewall or this, that, and the next thing. I think it's the case that there are clusters of seats that are probably going to move together. Oh, really? Yeah.

Right now, I think if Donald Trump does not close the gap, Democrats stand a very good shot of winning the Senate. If Donald Trump loses nationwide to Joe Biden by five points, Democrats are going to have a hard time taking the Senate. Oh, really? Oh, that's actually a little more hopeful than I suppose. Yeah, it's it's tough to beat incumbents. And if you look at where the incumbents are located, the only state that I see Donald Trump winning and a Republican senator losing is Arizona. You know, Colorado, Trump needs to lose close in order for Cory Gardner to win. Cory Gardner will outrun Donald Trump. But, you know, Trump needs to probably lose Colorado by two or three in order for Gardner to get the crossover appeal he needs to win. Tillis, I would expect to be right on Trump's hip.

And then the Georgia special election, it's not out of the realm of possibility that you have two Republicans get into the jungle primary runoff after November. And the pickup in Alabama is certain, correct? Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, who knows? Maybe Tommy Tuberville has even more dark secrets than we know, but it's unlikely that he's going to get to Roy Moore territory. Now, I keep saying this is the last question, but of course, talking to you is fascinating, and there's nothing more fun than politics, even when it's looking a little grim. If you were a campaign manager, how much would you be saying to yourself, okay, okay, yes, we're getting this wrong and that wrong, and Biden's starting to raise a little more money, but don't worry because we still have the debates, or is that a danger and

a snare? You know, to paraphrase Machiavelli, you never want your power to depend upon someone else or to hold power at the whim of someone else. And waiting for an event that Joe Biden can just decide he withdraws from to be your strategic breakthrough would be a bad idea. I do think the debates will be interesting. I think that they will happen. Oh, you do? Yeah, right now, I think it would hurt Biden to withdraw. I just don't think he has that kind of latitude. Now, he might whittle it down to a single debate, but I don't think he's in a position where he can say we're not doing any debates. I have one more. Luke, this is, I don't know what, Tell us how you're answering this question, just on your own gut, your own observation, or whether you hear things as well. But really,

when it comes to it, how mentally deficient is Biden? I don't know how to put the question in a way that doesn't sound outrageous, but how bad is he? Well, he was never great to be fair um and so even when he was firing on all on all cylinders he only had about three going he always had loggeria and he always had some some matters of of what you would call lexical prudence um if you look at him in the 2008 debates, he is the Democratic primary debates from 2008. He speaks in full paragraphs, even if they meander a bit. Today, I think he doesn't do a great job speaking in full sentences. Now, does that mean that he lacks the cognitive capacity to be president? Not necessarily. It could simply be that he is rusty or has lost a step or just doesn't have the same kind of day-to-day practice speaking. claim to say that a person who used to be able to put together several interconnected ideas

in one go is now struggling to stay any kind of complex sentence. Which would seem to be a big thing, especially since everybody's talking about Trump's cognitive decline in his tests. It would be, but for the fact that, you know, there's no campaigning going on right now. And so he's able to avoid any perception that he's tired or lacks energy and doing the not even front porch but basement campaigns working out. I hate to say this because this sounds like the last refuge of the desperate, and I'm not in that camp. But a recent survey said that a lot of people, something like 60% of the people, were afraid to mention their political ideas. Now, we have no idea who these people were, but you can guess that a lot of them were those who were disinclined to admit support for GOP or conservatism or even Trump because these ideas are anathema and associated with racism and death

and all the rest of it. So you don't want to do that whole silent majority thing out there. But there are people I know that did not vote for Trump, didn't like Trump, not particularly impressed with him at this point, but find the alternative. Joe Biden propped up as the figurehead behind a not a liberal regime, but a leftist, a leftist collection of politicians who, if they had the levers of power, would do fundamentally, Joe Biden even tweeted the other day, whoever guides his hand on his laptop, that we're going to transform America. Again, with the, it's always the transforming of these people that may be, that presented with that alternative, people, a lot

of people who didn't vote for Trump before will say, look, there's just no way I'm giving these guys power to look at the cities, look at what they want. There's no way I'm voting for these people. Or is that just a pipe dream and a statistically nominal amount of voters? The shy Trump voter is not a pipe dream. I think we have some good reason to believe that there are some noncompliance things going on with polling right now. If you look at self-reported partisanship within the electorate in phone polls from January to now, the Republican Party has dropped off a cliff in terms of people willing to say that they're Republicans. Maybe that's because everybody's quitting their party and now there are fewer Republicans. But given everything we know about partisanship, that's unlikely.

I also think that probably Trump did worse with Republicans in 2016 than people realize. Exit polls are bad. They're hard to sort of ID. But with sort of white upper income conservative to center conservative voters, I think he underwhelmed, and I think he's going to do better with that block. The question is, is he going to lose the populations that he overperformed with among non-college-educated white women, minority men, and then seniors, where he really cleaned up, but in recent polling has

been struggling. So the Trump re-election coalition probably is going to have a fair number of people in it who didn't vote for him in 16. The question is, is he bleeding people from 16 who were already unlikely to vote for him that year, but did because of a combination of Hillary Clinton and a desire for change, etc. Again, without coronavirus, the economy clipping along as it was, he was on a trajectory to overtake Biden and beat him by March 1 of this year. But the virus has just totally inverted the race. Luke, thanks for joining us today. And if your observations prove incorrect,

we'll burn all copies of this tape so it doesn't come back to haunt me. Outstanding. That's all I have. All right. We'll talk to you again before it happens. Thanks. Yes.

Thanks, Luke. And a little more good news next time, please. I will do my best. Thank you. I generally tend not to watch election returns. I just find it too stressful. I just go to bed, wake up the next day, Thank you. lot of daily life is like that as well. Tight muscles, tough workouts, signs of aging are just simply making it through the busy day. Everybody, everyone understands what it's like to feel tense and feel sore. And that means that everyone can benefit from TheraOne's CBD products. You may not have heard of them before. Well, this is your first opportunity. You're going to like this. Started by Dr. Jason Worsland, TheraBody exists to provide you with the best scientifically

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slash ricochet. And our thanks to theragun.com. And our thanks to TheraOne for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. Now comes that often mangled, sometimes on point, frequently maligned, occasionally forgotten, Lilacs Post of the Week. The James Lilacs Member Post of the Week. And it's from a member with a long Greek name. Kefathilos. Kefathilos. Kefathilos. I think so.

That's it. Keep on trying. I will. I will. It is called American Architectural Geography Part 1, Timing. Now, you're wondering what is this doing on a center-right political blog. I'll tell you. Kapp writes, being something of a geography geek myself, the map-loving kind, not the critical theory spouting kind, I thought I'd try my hand at writing something a tad less detailed and a tad more ambitious,

a brief description of American architectural geography. And that is exactly what it is. It's long. It's got maps. It shows you the housing stock, the building stock of America, how it grew, how it aged out, when it was replaced. And it's this fascinating look at a young country. And when you look around, you know, our built environment, if you live in the city, things seem settled, but they're still relatively new compared to a European city. And if you live in a suburb, you might be surprised to find out exactly how that stock gets turned over too. So it's part one, which is the timing

of the way the building's in the building stock. Part two is going to be about how the architecture changed over the years, and I can't wait for that. And I understand part two now a little better because of what I saw in part one. The reason I bring it up is because it just shows that Ricochet is not just a bunch of people banging on about the latest campaign ad or this or that. There's long, detailed, in-depth discussions of things that, frankly, this member may not have a place to post anywhere, but I'm glad that he or she did because that's what Ricochet is for. And Bethany and Peter, just want to ask you, are your houses old or new? And what do you consider to be old and what do you consider to be new? By the way, I agree.

This post was absolutely fascinating. More, more, more. Absolutely fascinating. I live in an old house. It is over 50 years old. And in California, that's old. Yes, indeed. So I don't think my house is old.

So it was built in 1966 1966 and we bought it from the original owner did you really yeah he uh was incredible and seemed to have like no emotional attachment to the house because i kept on assuring him like we're gonna love it we're gonna take care of it and he was like yeah whatever just give me your money. I'm like, you've lived here your entire adult life. I just want to emotionally tell you that it will be loved. And he's like, I don't actually care.

You can actually, you can possibly tell when it was built by looking at the underside of the top of the toilet tank. We had to replace all of the toilets. You should have checked before you did that, because up until a certain date, they stamped the date of manufacture on the inside of a toilet. Oh, interesting.

Yeah, we had to replace all of them because our plumber came in and laughed and was like, this is not a thing that you can continue with. And I flushed once and was like, yeah, that's true. My house is from 1915 in an area that was pretty underpopulated when it was laid out. Nobody moved here. And when they ran the streetcar lines out, then they did. And in 1920s, the housing stock. So my house is somewhat anomalous.

But to somebody just driving through, it all looks the same. It's actually not. The difference between a 15-house and a 1922 house is quite significant. Whoa, whoa, whoa. So in what ways are, what changed in that seven years between the construction of 15 and 22? You mean technologically things changed? No, in the 20s and the boom year, what they tended to do is they added a lot more historical encrustations.

They gussied things up with little kitschy historicity. Ornamentation, the woodwork in your house, They gussied things up with little kitschy historicity. And so... Ornamentation, the woodwork in your house. I've only been there once, but it's beautiful. That's the kind of thing you're talking about? My place, yes and no. I mean, mine is sort of arts and crafts. And there was a period there where there were styles of decorations and construction and

ornamentation that were not related to historical trends. They were invented as sort of new American ideas, and that's what influenced this house. But in the 20s, everybody wanted to go for the mantle of history, so you started adding classical details and Spanish gigas and Moorish stuff and all stuff like that. Anyway, small, decent point. Before we chat, and actually before we close, I got one more question I'm going to ask you guys. But first, because I know everybody tunes out as soon as they hear this, unless they are a regular

Ricochet listener in which they know that this series of statements is not the end of the show, that there's something more fun to come. And that is this. This podcast was brought to you by Quip, by Laurel Springs, and Thera1. Support them for supporting us. Support us, support them, everybody wins.

And if I ever told you that there's this thing called Podcast run by Apple, there is. And they let you rate things too. And if you gave us five stars, that'd be awesome. And we would send you lots and lots of good wishes and thanks for us. So those reviews help other people

find the show and that's great. It helps keep the whole operation going. So our last question then before we go is, apparently, according to the New York Times, the Pentagon's UFO unit is to make some findings public about the extraterrestrial and all off-planet craft that they've been sitting on for a while.

What? What is this? This is the Times reporting it. It's not Art Bell. What do you guys think? Honestly, James, I was waiting for you to tell me what to think. I was thinking that too. First of all, your mind would lend itself to this sort of offbeat, strange, peculiar, but intriguing sort of thing. But then over the years, Bethany, you wouldn't know this,

but we've had conversations over the years, a few set-to's, James and I, very friendly set-to's. James is a believer in space. My view is there's plenty right here, and I'm just very dubious that there's much worthwhile out there. The moon, fine, go stand on it, bounce around, but then come home because it's just this rock. And that's what I think there are a lot of rocks out there. And James is not going to tell, but James will always say, no, spirit of exploration. We don't know who or what might be out there. But so what do you think of it, James?

I honestly have no clue what to think of it. Well, the article is couched in such a way that they may be able to get away with saying nothing. But again, they've admitted to the existence of this unit, which is studying these things. They released the footage of that wild craft, those chases that they have, of those amazing craft that we saw a couple of years ago. That creeped me out, man. This stuff is just stunning.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. X-Files, the truth is out there. Okay, alright, alright, X-Files. Yes, I know. It's a bad version of it. It's not even the original. Mark Snow, great composer. It goes, I mean, I would love for this to just go back to 47 and Roswell, for them to stand up and say, yeah, we've been lying to you all along about Roswell. I know it's a big surprise.

Your government has been lying to you about this, but we have. Because if you remember, in 47, they reported that they found a saucer crash the next day. Weather balloon. No, that was a weather balloon. And then a couple of decades ago, I think it was, they said it was some high atmospheric nuclear testing monitor thing or something like that. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But I don't know why this is coming out now. I don't know why it's in dribs and drabs. But the fact that they're saying something like this after releasing footage like this means that there was probably, you know, a Project Majestic folder stamped with open in event of pandemic. They say this is going to get out at some point. The best way to do it is in the peak of a political election and an economic downturn and a pandemic.

This is when you tell everybody about this stuff. Because frankly, in this news cycle, I think it would, if they said that they had an alien craft, I think there'd be a week of, huh, how about that? Then it would just, it would be jokes on Fallon and memes on Twitter. Because I, for some reason, I just, I don't think this would have the impact that it would have had when we had a more concentrated media environment with fewer outlets and distractions like back in the 90s. So I don't know, but we'll see. I'm keen to see exactly what they're talking about. So, James, do you believe in intelligent life elsewhere?

I mean, it's yet to be demonstrated that there's very much on this planet. I can't stand it. Beam me up, Scotty. There's no intelligent life here. There's tons of intelligent life. For heaven's sakes, if an alien civilization, and again, I'm anthropomorphizing, approached our planet, they would see this beautiful blue globe ringed by all of these devices

in perfect synchronous orbits. These vast cities, these enormous roadways, they would say, of course there is intelligent life here. Is it perfect? No, but of course, yes, there is. So, anybody who gets here, I have no idea. You can't extrapolate what an alien mind would be. It's

foolish. But you can make a few assumptions that would lead you to believe that perhaps it's possible that there would be somebody exploring and somebody curious as to what's going on here. So, whether or not I think it's out there, I don't know. The Mulder thing, I want to believe, but I've got to have some proof.

I've got to have something that satisfies my proof, because I yearn so much to believe in this that I have to discount anything that I say, hey, that proves that I'm right. But yeah, the universe is absolutely vast. And I mean, if not in this galaxy, behold the super clusters of galaxies that exist out there, the innumerable, countless planets, and tell yourself that it's impossible, that we are the only ones. Again, there's the line, if we're the only ones in the universe, it's terrifying. If we're not the only ones in the universe, that's terrifying. But I prefer to be in a populated one because that tells me that there's something beyond this rock that we can stretch our hand out to

and maybe have another hand clasp it in greeting. Or, you know, it'll have a gun. So that's it for me. Bethany, thanks for joining us today. It's been a pleasure. And great job, guys. And I hope everybody loves the podcast as much as we have enjoyed doing it. And we'll see all of you in the comments at Ricochet 4.0.

Tell Seth we said hello. I will, for sure. And then my voice comes in, pow, in the middle of the night, and this is what I told her for you. Every time I make a run, girl, you turn around and cry. I ask myself why.

What to? What to? Why? See, you must understand, I ask myself why, oh why. See, you must understand, I can't work a nine to five. So I'll be gone till November. Said I'll be gone till November, I'll be gone till November. You tell my girl, you I'll be gone till November. I'll be gone till November, I'll be gone till November.

You tell my girl, you I'll be gone till November. January'll be gone till November. I'll be gone till November. You tell my girl, you'll be gone till November. January, February, March, April, May. I see you crying, but girl, I can't stay. I'll be gone till November. I'll be gone till November. And give a kiss to my mother. When I come back, there'll be no need to clock. I have enough money to buy out the blocks.

Tell my brother, go to school in September so he won't mess up in summer school in the summer, tell my cousin Jerry wear his condom, if you don't wear condom, you see a red run, oh oh oh oh, you suck at MC's you got no flow, I heard you style you S.O.S.O. Every time I make a run, barely turn around and cry, I ask myself why, oh why. See, you must understand, I can't work at 9 to 5, so I'll be gone in November. Ricochet! Join the conversation.