The Ricochet Podcast - Guns and Brexit

Episode Date: June 17, 2016

This week, a debate about guns, some inside dope about Trump, courtesy of the great Byron York, one final conversation about Brexit compliments of the ever brash James Delingpole, and the complexities of giving up the thing you know. Music from this week’s episode: Happiness Is A Warm Gun by The Beatles The brand new opening sequence for the Ricochet Podcast was composed and produced by James... Source

Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. North and South American, all the ships at sea, let's go to press. Hello. I think the media is among the most dishonest groups of people I've ever met. That's terrible. One of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you don't use a politician's filter. However, that is not without its downsides. What Boehner is angry with is the American people holding him accountable. If I become president, oh, do they have problems.

They're going to have such problems. I don't know why that's funny. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lalix, and today from the campaign trail, Byron York, and from across the pond, James Dellingfold. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome, everybody, to this, the Ricochet Podcast, number 308. We're brought to you by a plethora of fine sponsors.

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For a great shave at an even greater price, you can go to harrys.com and enter the coupon code ricochet. And of course, we are brought to you by ourselves, which is somewhat topological, but here to tell you about Ricochet is Rob Long, who's back from the center of panic, fear, floods, and Islamism, Paris. Yeah. Well, the floods were receded when I was there.

But man, that river was still pretty high. I mean it was up to a few – maybe a foot from the lower embankment of the river. It was kind of wild. That sounds like kind of an outdoorsy thing to say. But in fact, as you say, I was in the center of – in the Ile de France as they say or as I said. If you are listening to this podcast, let me try to pull myself together here. And you're a member of Ricochet. We thank you and we're pleased to have you as a member with us.

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So we've got Rob, we've got Peter, we've got everything we need to discuss the issue of the day. Now, what exactly is that, though? Is it the fact that we had a gay Muslim Democrat shoot up a club and the problem seems to be Republican legislators in Nebraska. Is the problem the guns itself? Or is the problem perhaps the Constitution itself? And it's pesky, pesky due process, which is just killing us, to quote one of our leaders.

What is to be done, gentlemen? Or is anything to be done? And are we just going to do what we do all the time after one of these events is just wait for it to blow over and saunter on to the next one. Yeah, what's to be done, Peter? Thanks, fellas. You're first. So I go from small bore to large bore.

Small bore is the reason I'm a little late this morning is I had to chase two teenage boys out of bed and remind them that they actually have summer jobs this morning. So that's the small bore. Big bore. Here's my reading. I am totally in favor of the Second Amendment on the guns. On the other hand, there's a line between permitting everybody to own tanks, which we don't. No court holds the constitution.

Yes, you do. You can buy the constitution. Yes, you do. You can buy a tank. Yes, but you can't use it. You can only use it. Actually, there's a fellow who he just died a while ago, but there's a fellow not here in the hill, a rich guy whose hobby was spending his high tech money acquiring largely World War II large weaponry. But I'm almost sure you have to decertify. You can't fire the things.

Anyhow, so I don't know where an AR-15 fits into this. I have to say I'm just not sure where the legal lines should be drawn or where they are drawn or the right to defend yourself certainly can't mean that everybody gets the right to carry around an Uzi. So I'm open to the argument. I certainly feel that gun control should be a matter – gun laws should be a matter for states and perhaps even municipalities. I can't see why ranchers in west Texas should have to follow the same laws as in New York. All of that said, the issue of issues here is radical Islam. And we've got one presidential candidate making that point, but making it so ham-fistedly,

so crudely, so ignorantly, so offensively that he's damaging his own cause. So I am just beside myself. That Newt Gingrich, after Donald Trump, one of Donald Trump's crazy tweets, Newt Gingrich said something to Byron York, our next guest. Byron was the only one I saw who got this from Gingrich. He had his own interview with Gingrich. This is after Orlando. Donald Trump tweets something, and Newt Gingrich says,

Donald Trump has been right about radical Islam. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been wrong. And the truth, however crudely put, is always better than sophisticated lies. And I thought, good for Newt. Only Newt can interpret Donald for the rest of us the way Newt does. But at some point, the more crudely you put the truth, the less people listen to it. All right, Rob will now sort this out for us. Well, let me ask Rob this question.

And yes, of course, we have to rely on Newt to parse exactly the particulars of the Donald's statements. But Rob, why aren't we talking about AR-15s? Why do you think Peter is worried about AR-15s when an AR-15 wasn't used? Oh, I thought it was. I'm sorry. Sorry. If I've got my facts wrong, correct me. No, that's what the conversation is now about.

And the fact that that actually wasn't the gun that was used I think is irrelevant because we've moved on two or three steps away from the event itself. As Peter correctly said, it's Islamic terrorism. But we don't want to talk about that or at least we're not supposed to want to talk about that. Rob, what do – Yeah. I mean why we're talking about AR-15s or A-14s is because they're super scary guns. They look scary and they're painted in black matte. I mean a lot of it is just the trade dress of the weapon. Um, uh, Colt 45, the old Colt 45s, which were, uh, polished, uh, metal and gleaming and wooden

handle, um, just don't seem that scary, but this one seems scary. I really believe that. I mean, I know it sounds, I know it sounds crazy, but it's a big deal. Yesterday, yesterday I had a breakfast with John Pedortz, our old friend John Pedortz, and we're downtown having breakfast. And we actually went to a place that's right across the street. It's around the corner from Sheridan Square, right across the street from Stonewall Inn, which is a gay bar in the West Village that had the famous riot in 1969. There were some threats against those locations after Orlando, so it's pretty well locked up tight. There's some – the police presence actually all over the city is really, really high in New York City. And a couple of cops walked by the window.

I mean not really cops. They were like the counterterrorism unit of NYPD carrying AR-14s. So it's funny. It's a funny thing. In scary backlighting on TV, on the news, when it's just there or being fired by some crazy person in grainy B-roll, it looks scary. And then somehow it's carried by these sort of super-competent people. It's like, well, thank god those guys have those guns. And I couldn't help but think in all of these arguments, and you do hear it, you rarely hear that the solution – I mean if you accept that all of the security measures we go through are basically faulty, right? The TSA, they're always being revealed like letting bombs go through. If you accept that any regulation of anything that people seem to want and want badly enough, it's going to have gigantic perforations in it, viz the drug war. Then the really – the only practical solution to protecting yourself in a situation like happened in Orlando at the Pulse nightclub is somebody else has got to be armed. One of the good guys has got to have a gun. Um, so, but, but, but, but that wasn't your

question. Your question was why are we talking about it? We're talking about it because I think broadly defined, we now see our all news, every single event comes through filtered through our newsfeed, right? In some version, whether metaphorically or practically and so we we no longer experience news or events just as the events themselves uh in all their complexity in orlando it's a pretty complex event when you get right down to it um we have to experience it only from our news feed which is like filled with like bizarre kind of specific axes to grind. And so what seems like blindingly obvious is that this is a crazy dude who had a lot of mental health problems, who was inspired by horrible teachings on YouTube and his own weird personal demons that he did this thing. And I guess what I'm saying is that everyone has jumped onto it to try to take one piece of it and use it as their cudgel and i wouldn't want to rank them but if

you had to rank them in the most absurd ways you'd have to start at the most absurd is this kind of idea that it's uh it's a gun control issue the second i would say it's the uh we all have to love each other and stop the hate issue uh you get down to the third and fourth levels and maybe you're getting closer to the reality but i think it's hard now to sort that out because it's a weird news feed prison where he sees everything for i understand i'm sorry end of rant sorry no the i i think the weirdest and the worst and the most ultra ultra out there you were just in france you know that word bro yeah um is the idea that this is actually a reflection of america's sins the sins of Islamophobia and homophobia, that that's what this fellow marinated in.

And that's what presented because no matter what, no matter what you aspect of America you look at, you have to agree that this is the worst possible country on earth. And the most egregious manifestations of every single sin that humanity is capable is America. So you can't blame what this guy did on something that was being pumped from the Levant over the internet. You have to blame it specifically on legislators in the South who do not want to change their position on marriage as quickly, you know, as the, at the same time as the president

and what's weird. What's fine – I find so bananas and distorted about that is that in a way it's correct because that is the attitude of the radical Islamists, that we as a nation are sinners and we are decadent. And a nightclub in Orlando that caters mostly to gay people is the epicenter of decadence that needs to be wiped out. I mean the attitudes, the actual Puritan attitudes are remarkably similar from those – I know. From progressive zealots and the ISIS folks. It's sort of the same thing. They're just choosing different things to hate about America, but they still believe that the problem rests right there in that in in in in a nightclub in a in a in a town in a state that is um uh often overcome by uh you know

religious uh christian fundamentalism or whatever they believe it it's a very strange way of looking at of looking at the problem from the same perspective ultimately. I know. I know. And when the stuff that they're pumping out – when both sides – when a letter from ISIS condemning the morality of America is indistinguishable from the sort of stuff that I might get forwarded me by my grandmother – my mother-in-law with a re-re-re-re because it's somebody – when those are indistinguishable, yes, you have a particular twinning of the cultural strands that are odd. But then again, I don't see her stuff anymore because it goes into Sane Later. And you should do that too. If you have a relative who's sending you stuff that you maybe don't want to get, you don't want to black hole them, but you want to

Sane It Later, right? Now, if this makes no sense, let me ask you a question. How many emails do you have in your box right now, unread? Hundreds? Thousands? Twenty,000? If your email is anything like people who don't have SaneBox, the answer is you got too many things you haven't gotten to. But here's the thing. Even though you know you want to do something about it and get to those emails and read the ones and find out what matters, you don't know how necessarily. If you just bulk delete, you're going to miss something.

But there's too many to go through one at a time. So when SaneBox was recommended to me by Rob Long, of course, who's achieved inbox zero, the zen of inbox, I said I'd give it a try and I have been honored and I love it. Can't recommend SaneBox enough. It sorts through your emails, moves all the trivial stuff into a folder so the only messages in your inbox are the ones you actually want to see. Now aside from moving the junk so you can focus on the messages that matter, there's the black hole. When you put an email in the black hole and you never hear from those SOBs again, it just crunches them into non-existence.

It's so rewarding. I love it. And you'll do. You will love it if you go to samebox.com slash ricochet and they'll throw in an extra $25 credit on top of the two-week free trial. So you don't have to enter your credit card information unless you decide to buy. So there is nothing to lose. Check it out today and let us know if you love that black hole death feature as much as we do.

And reach inbox zero like Rob. And might I add, as of last night, like me too. That's S-A-N-E-B-O-X dot com slash ricochet. Now we welcome to the show Byron York, chief political correspondent for the Washington Examiner, Fox News contributor, and author of The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy. You can follow him on Twitter, of course, at Byron York. Welcome back to the podcast, sir.

Thank you for having me. We were discussing... No, no, go ahead, James. No, I was simply... Stop. Tape. After you, my dear Alphonse. No, no. Go ahead, James. No, I was simply – stop. Tape. After you, my dear Alphonse. No, no. After you.

After you. All right. James, you go. You go. I had nothing, Peter. I'm going to get a cup of coffee. Peter, go. OK.

Byron, Peter Robinson here. Is it the case – I have a couple of questions for you. One sort of tradecraft as a reporter. Is it the case – am I correct that there is nobody who interprets Donald Trump for the rest of us half as well as Newt Gingrich? Item one and item two, that the only political reporter who's really onto that is Byron York. Well, the latest piece I did, which involved Newt, was him talking, Newt sort of interpreting Trump's response to the Orlando killings. Yes.

And I have to, on the tradecraft part, I have to confess, this is an example of green room journalism. I run into him at Fox. Sure, of course you do. So I ran into him, and I agree with you that he is a very, very good interpreter of Trump. And so I wanted to know what he thought about this. And basically, you know, his point was a point that we don't know if it's really correct.

Gingrich's point was a point we're not sure if it's really correct yet. speak, I think the polls have shown us pretty definitively that Trump's attack on the judge in the Trump University case was a big failure. I mean, I think we've seen really negative reactions in the polls, but it's way too early to get a similarly precise reading on the public's reaction to Orlando and Trump's reaction to Orlando. But what Newt said was Trump was right. Obama and Clinton were wrong. Trump has been warning again and again that this has been getting more dangerous. Obama kept reassuring us that everything was under control. Neither Trump nor Hillary can bring themselves to tell us the truth. So they have this fantasy. They lied to us about Benghazi.

The president's statement was totally misleading. And I think that is why, frankly, as you know, Newt always says frankly, despite his weaknesses and despite the fact that he is just learning the trade now, Trump shows enormous resilience because telling the truth clumsily, in the end, means lying in a sophisticated way. I think that's a very interesting way to read this, and it fits some of my instincts about how this will play out, but I really think it's time to just wait to see what the public thinks. I have to say, when I read that, I thought to myself, what a brilliant formulation. If only Donald and his own people could be half as astute as Newt. All right. Next question. This is a large

one. And I just want to sort of, this is, I'm going to throw a bunch against the wall and you do with it what you want to. Donald Trump captures the nomination roughly three weeks ago. He did a couple of things that seemed statesmanlike. He released a list of 11 very fine jurists from whom he might choose Supreme Court nominees. a speech in one of the Dakotas, I think it was North Dakota, on energy policy that even Holman Jenkins of the Wall Street Journal who has been resisting Trump all along, Holman Jenkins wrote and said it was a very fine speech and an excellent energy policy and it looked as though – and the other – you would know much more about this than I but this tussle, would Paul Manafort, this very seasoned professional, gain influence within Donald Trump's organization or not?

Looked almost as though he was gaining influence that we were going to see a real presidential campaign. Peggy Noonan made the point that all the American people want from Donald Trump is reassurance that he's A, stable, and B, that he has a good heart. And you ought to be able to demonstrate that with a few speeches. And it looked as though he was moving to do just that. And then he begins attacking Judge Curiel in a week when bad job numbers come out. He's attacking Judge Curiel when he could be talking about the country and taking it to Obama, taking it to Hillary. His poll numbers have dropped steadily for a little, almost three weeks now.

The latest polls show him he was up two or so, up three against Hillary. He's now down against Hillary in double digits. Is it not fair to say that his behavior over the last two and a half weeks is dispositive? He can't pivot because he is the man he is, and the delicate should be thinking hard about dumping this guy. Byron, how's that? There's positive stuff I'm not sure about, but he's definitely messed everything up in the last few weeks.

There's no doubt about that. I have maybe some doubts about the double-digit part, but I don't doubt at all that he is behind Hillary Clinton by a significant margin right now, and that he had basically pulled even with her a while back, and that the reason he's gone down is a bunch of mistakes that he's made. One thing that is absolutely stunning is before the California primaries June 7th, and that's going to be the end of everything, and course, Trump is going to win it all because he's the only candidate left. But he goes out to campaign, and he goes to San Diego on May 27th.

And now, on that day, that week, Trump University was not in the news. It's not like Trump had some sort of attack on him that he needed to rebut or anything like that. Trump University, which has been a controversy in the past, was not in the news when Trump goes to San Diego. But the case is being tried in San Diego. So Trump apparently, and I'm reading his mind here, thinks, oh, this is San Diego. I'll talk about Trump University. And in this speech, which goes about 55 minutes, which is about normal for a Trump stump speech, Trump spends 10 minutes, 10 minutes talking about the plaintiffs by name. He talks about the ins and outs of summary judgments. He talks about the testimonials on behalf of Trump University from some of the former students.

And that is where he happens to mention that the judge is, quote, a Mexican. And then it's off to the races. You know, the next several days, this starts up a brush fire. The next several days, he makes it worse. And, you know, he loses a week. And he also turns off a lot of voters because he could not stop himself from going on and on about Trump University, in which nobody in the crowd was interested. And by the way, you're absolutely right. It was shortly before a terrible jobs report came out, and it was the day of a really damning report on Hillary Clinton's emails. Right, right. Not from Trey Gowdy or the Republicans, but from the State Department. So he's got lots of good stuff to talk about if he wants to attack Hillary Clinton. And yet he spends all this time on Trump University.

So, Byron, Peter here. No, you can jump in. Just one last question. One last question that I know Brother Rob Long wants to get in here as well. So the last question is this. So, I mean, now he's got Republicans who were sort of leaning in his direction. By the way, I'm one of these. I've never been – I'm in and out of the never Trump in my own mind.

But I've always been never Hillary, right? So a large group of us who were willing to put up with this guy as long as it looked as though he might beat her. But when he drops below and demonstrates total just unprofessional – OK. So my latest dream is that he goes to the convention. The very first day, he says, I've raised issues that would never have been raised otherwise. I'm proud of my campaign from beginning to end. But I recognize that I may not be the best person in this moment. And for the good of the nation, I'm stepping aside and opening this convention. Is there any prospect that such a dream might come true?

Or do you pick up as a professional reporter working this beat? Any murmurings that delegates are now talking to each other? Ted Cruz may be gaming. Are people beginning to wonder if they can dislodge this guy if he doesn't step down himself? Dream on. That is total fantasy. Oh, Byron! A stake through my heart.

The Trump speech that you just outlined is a complete fantasy. You know, he has been... I mean, there are all these people who write, well, you know, he's doing these crazy things, so he must not really want it. He's trying to undermine his own chances. He really wants a network on television, yes.

We've talked about this before. Trump has been pretty serious about this the whole way. No, you know, you can argue that maybe he didn't really expect to win in the sense that, you know, everybody knows they might not win going in, but he's been pretty serious about this the whole way. So the idea, I think, of having that happen is not possible. Now, is there some possibility that the delegates would revolt? And of course, the Republican National Convention,

the delegates acting, have the power to do anything they want. But personally, I don't see that happening where we are right now, today, June 17th. You know, is there some amazing, incredible controversy that dwarfs all the previous ones that could cause that sort of revolt? Sure. I don't pretend to know what's going to happen. But I think right now it's

extremely far-fetched. Hey, Byron, it's Rob Long. All right, so let's go back just to Peter Robinson's, you know, what should we say? Neurotic projection for a minute. Because I think it's symptomatic of a problem, sort of deep problem with this candidate, which is that there's a certain exhaustion that sets in.

I can't keep up from day to day whether Newt Gingrich is supporting or opposing him. And it's because all of these sort of Republicans are lined up. They're just trying to instruct him from afar, and it's as if the entire campaign strategy and all the things that happen in a conference room in some benighted office building somewhere in DC are now happening on talk radio airwaves and on Fox News as the sum total of the Republican talking state attempts to shout into the wind and try to get into the Trump brain from afar. And there's a certain – and I think people feel that way. They feel this kind of whipsaw like, well, he's up, he's down, he's up, he's down. I mean like when he was up two weeks ago, I got emails aplenty from my friends who were Trump supporters, euphoric. See, this is what's going to happen.

We're heading for a landslide. And now the polls have been severely reversed, now it's radio silence. I mean, there's a certain kind of exhaustion emotionally and intellectually and I think just as a general, politically, with this guy that can't help but be at Hillary's camp. Sorry. I'm so glad that you said that and gave me time to Google my own story from February 28th in the Washington Examiner called A Brief Theory of Trump Fatigue. And this was during the Virginia primary. And I had been out there, and I was actually at a Rubio rally out in northern Virginia.

And a number of people told me they were really quite open to Trump. But with all the controversies, and this was just after the David Duke and Ku Klux Klan thing, it was also when Marco Rubio was in his Don Rickles phase. There was craziness going on with the Chris Christie endorsement. That sounds like a million years ago, what you just described. It does. But it really wasn't that long ago. February 28th.

And so a number of the voters said, you know, I like Trump, and there are a lot of points that he makes that I agree with, but it's all just kind of too much for me. And this is what I wrote. Everyone has a certain tolerance level for uncertainty, disorder, and controversy. If a candidate's campaign stays below that level, all is fine. If it climbs above that level, a voter may begin to think a candidate is more trouble than he's worth. The voter sees the campaign as a taxing experience, just one thing after another, and looks for an alternative. The problem is Trump has an infinite tolerance for uncertainty, disorder, and controversy.

He can be comfortable and prosper in a campaign that wears his voters out. has an infinite tolerance for uncertainty, disorder, and controversy. He can be comfortable and prosper in a campaign that wears his voters out. And I think that a number of voters that I talked to that day, February 28th, had just hit their point. They just thought, God, this is just one thing after another. And so we're probably in the June 17th version of that same thing with some voters about Trump. And I mean the response to that is always, well, we always say they're getting exhausted and they never do. But eventually you do get tired.

People just do get tired. So let me just flip it, talk to the other side because we sort of know what – I mean despite Peter Robinson's dream journal, I think we do know what's going to happen, who's going to be running against whom in starting August 1. sky bunker or whatever it is where she does her uh her dark uh strategizing with her her minions her winged monkeys or whatever um don't you just think to yourself i just gotta play this safe i can talk about elizabeth warren all i want but you know i should just say i should make joe biden my vice president i should play this safe down middle, scoop up all the people who are exhausted by Trump and the moderates, even maybe even the slightly right of center. Play it like I'm a steady hand, no drama Hillary. Pick me if you want smooth sailing rather than this constant turbulence. Isn't that a good strategy for her, or am I missing something?

Oh, yeah. Well, absolutely. I think she's already doing it. And I think – here I am touting another one of my pieces. I just wrote one called – Good journalist, though. Can Clinton do to Trump what Obama did to Romney? And I think what you're seeing – if you remember in the postmortems after 2012,

a lot of the Obama people were kind of, I don't know, they were bragging about the fact that they had defined Romney early. And they had just put him in a box very early, before the conventions. And they had portrayed him as an uncaring, out-of-touch rich guy. And the image stuck with him all the way through the campaign. And David Axelrod, in I think December of, or sometime in 2013, he said, we defined the race in Governor Romney before the conventions. And he was digging out of that hole for the remaining months. I think what the Clinton people believe they're doing now, with a big assist from Trump himself, is doing the same thing to Trump.

As we speak, there is a really big Hillary ad buy in seven or nine swing states, a lot of money, part of which is aiming at defining Trump as being dangerously unfit for the presidency. We've already seen Priorities USA, other pro-Hillary groups that add in hitting Trump for mocking the disabled reporter. The Democrats think it's been very effective. I think it's focus grouped really well. And that's been playing a lot. So they believe that if they work really hard now, and Trump helps them out himself, which he's very willing to do, that they can actually define Trump, put him in a box, dig a hole for him, whatever you want to say, before

the conventions, and he'll never get out of it. He's an unusual guy. He's not Mitt Romney, but that's a real possibility. When it came to defining Mitt Romney, what was required was for mendacious people with no character or soul to lie. When it comes to defining Trump, all they have to do is hold up a microphone to him and turn it on. Byron, this is James Lilex here in Minnesota. Aside from Trump fatigue, there may be those people who just never got on board in the first place, and unfortunately, they're the ones with money and organization, fortunately for Trump. We keep hearing stories about how he's down in fundraising. And then when it comes to any sort of national organization, he's got nothing.

He thinks that tweets and YouTube responses are going to be sufficient to carry the day. Is that perception correct? Great. That is absolutely correct. Trump does not actually have a campaign in the sense that we understand campaign i think he's feeling that he can kind of uh... contract out a lot of the ground game to the uh... republican national committee which is going to do a lot better work than it did in two thousand well that's what the whole autopsy was about to go well doing better for contact

work um... and but but the the other parts is is just in some of the fundamentals of the campaign, specifically a communication shop and a rapid response shop, Trump doesn't have them. And

for example, during the Judge Curiel controversy, put aside the judge part, there is actually a case to be made for Trump University. I haven't made it. I haven't looked deeply enough into it. But you can't say that the people who feel that they were cheated were not cheated. But you could say that there are a number of people who felt that it was a good thing for them.

They felt it was worth their money or they enjoyed it, they'd learn something. This is the kind of thing that a rapid response office would do all the time. I was talking to a conservative journalist the other day during the judge thing, and he said, you know, with any other campaign, my inbox would be full. You know, five facts about Trump University, the truth about Trump University, you know, why Democrats are lying about Trump University, the truth about Trump University, why Democrats are lying about Trump University, whatever, there'd be tons of that stuff. Trump doesn't do any of that.

His campaign doesn't do any of that. He doesn't have that shop. Instead, he seems to feel that he is a one-man rapid response unit and that he can, by getting a lot of TV exposure, just make the case for himself in a convincing way. And the reporters who, for example, would want to dig into a lot of the evaluations that are signed or the affidavits or the court papers or all the things that make up the

Trump University case, you know, they're on their own. Forget it. He doesn't do that. And he doesn't really have a communications shop. He has one woman, Hope Hicks, who handles pretty much everything, which, given that it's a presidential campaign and the amount of traffic that's involved, is crazy. So they've been promising they're going to do this.

Oh, we're going to hire a communications person or open up a communication shop or do rapid response. They say they're going to do it, but they haven't done it. And it is June. So, you know, some of the very, very basics for campaigns, and you might say for successful campaigns, he doesn't do. Well, when it comes to the campaign in the months to come, everybody go and read Byron York, who will either be plowing through the guts of whatever he's slaughtered to find out what the augers say

about a Trump speech or telling you what Newt's saying or just watching from afar as this all unfolds afar and close. Thanks for joining us in the podcast today, Byron. Thank you, guys. Thanks, Byron. Byron, you're the best.

You're the best in a world of tweets and Twitters. No, listen, everybody who's listening to this, I just want to double down on what James said. Sign up to Byron York's Twitter feed. Look at the examiner for Byron York because the world still needs a genuine political reporter, and Byron is just that, and there just aren't that many left. You're the best. Thanks, Byron. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

You need to have something to sell here, Byron. Don't come on again without something to plug. That's right. You've got to say money-making opportunity for you. Maybe hats or something. All right, guys. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it take care hey have me out to stanford sometime be happy to come got it you know when this is all when this is all over

i want to read every single book about every single aspect of this campaign in most campaign books recollections rehashes bore me but there's just something about this one, which when, when you look at it from, from looking back, it's going to be fantastic. I hope Byron writes one of them because Trump will probably write one too. God knows he's written enough books.

Can you all name the titles? Give me a title of a Byron of a Donald Trump book. Well, art of the deal, of course. And then there's the, where have all, all the flowers gone?

Isn't that? No, that's yeah. That's Bob Dylan. Sorry. That's Bob Dylan. Yeah. My favorite is Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and Life, which –

No. Is that a real title? Yeah. Well, it is. If you go to audible.com and search for Trump, then you'll find a whole bunch of them because audible.com has got just – it doesn't just have Trump books. It's got books about Trump. It has books with Trump in the title. Like, for example, I had no idea.

I'd forgotten that book six of the Chronicles of Amber by the great science fiction writer Roger Zelazny is The Trumps of Doom. And if Trumps of Doom is how you're feeling this year, well, then, you know, you're going to want to either study up on what this is all about, this guy, or find yourself amusement in reading something that has nothing to do with any of this.

But audible.com is where you want to go. Free 30-day trial membership for you, our listeners, and a free audio book. Just go to audible.com slash ricochet and browse over 180,000 audio programs, not all of which have to do with Donald Trump. Download a title free and just start listening. It's that easy. So go to audible.com slash ricochet. That's audible.com slash ricochet and get started today. You know, from the audio book publishers, the broadcasters, the entertainers, the magazine, the newspaper publishers, the business information providers,

there's so much stuff. And once you get started, you'll find that a month isn't enough. Two months isn't enough. A year isn't enough. You'll be an audible.com customer for life. So Trump or no Trump, that's your place to go. Now we hop across the pond, which has been seeing a spasm of its own violence. If you read the British papers yesterday, you know that a Brexit supporter killed a woman because he is mad like everybody else who wants to leave the EU. That's actually not how it turned out to be,

but it didn't stop the papers from running with that. And here to tell us about how things are going in Blighty is is james delling bowl writer journalist broadcaster who's in his words right about everything he's also the co-host of the london calling podcast here on ricochet with toby and you can follow him on twitter at james telling bull uh welcome back sir how is uh did that stick did it is it now has brexit now been tarred forever by this guy who shot and stabbed the MP? It's quite possible, yeah. I mean my concern is that the democratic future of 60 million people has been decided by a random act by a madman. I mean, it would be so depressing if that were the case, because so much effort has gone into the Vote Leave campaign. James, Peter Robinson here. You'd better just,

for American listeners, just tell us what happened. Who was Jo Cox? What happened to her? Why is the country so shocked? And why does it bear on the Brexit vote next week? Right. Jo Cox was a Labour MP and she was very much a campaigner for the cause of Remain. She wanted, for example, Britain to take in more Syrian refugees. So she was a woman of the left, but I think she was well liked. She was very, she was very principled. She was the MP in one of the northern seats and she was going about her constituency on business in a village in West Yorkshire. And suddenly she was attacked by this man with a gun and a knife and she died of her injuries. And there was debate about exactly who this man is or about what he believes in,

whether this was a politically motivated attack or what. What we do know for certain is that the guy had a long history of mental illness. He'd been treated over the years. His half-brother said that he was apolitical, that he was not a racist. And the brother said, look, i'm of mixed race myself i never heard this guy guy say anything racist in our time together we were friends um so it looks like that that this is this was just a sort of a tragic one of those awful things that that that happens when mad people don't take their medication, but we don't know any more than that.

One, what's really depressing is that because it may be that this guy, uh, has, uh, right wing sympathies, it's not clear that he is going to be now used as an excuse by the remain campaign in a kind of Rahm Emanuel, never let a crisis go to waste manner to essentially derail the Leave campaign.

Because let's not forget, let's be cynical and political for a moment. The campaign had hitherto not been going at all well for Remain. The polls were suggesting that they were on track to maybe even lose this one, despite having the weight of the establishment behind them. They tried every argument, they tried all these scaremongering arguments, like there's going to be a third world war, according to the Prime Minister, the economy is going to collapse, according to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. None of this stuff played with the people. So now I would say that they are subtly, consciously or unconsciously using this tragic incident to advance their agenda.

Now, how – just nuts and bolts here. First of all, political background or at least the polling background, you'll correct me on this, James. But generally, in broad strokes, for roughly a week now, perhaps not even quite a week, for roughly a week now, perhaps not even quite a week. For roughly a week now, the polls have shown what seemed at the beginning of this period quite a sudden and sharp reversal. As I understand it, for months now, the Remain campaign has been ahead in the polls. Their lead has been dwindling. But suddenly, last week, late last week, polls broke showing that the Leave campaign had jumped into a lead. All the polls this week until this incident yesterday – I don't know that the polls have been conducted since then.

All the polls showed this week. So about half a dozen polls showed that by varying ranges from three to six, seven points, not quite double digits, the Leave end of the argument had broken into the lead. Suddenly we have this incident. But as I understand it, just from looking at the internet this morning, the news in Britain, both sides have formally suspended their campaigning for some period of days, perhaps through the weekend. So how is it that Remain are using this for their ends if they're not campaigning? You're seeing it on a much more subtle level than that. You're seeing it in social media. You're seeing it among the commentariat.

For example, Polly Toynbee in The Guardian today, Alex Massey in The Spectator, which as we know is a conservative publication. Nevertheless, on a blog and the most read blog in The Spectator last night, he wrote this piece essentially saying that even though he didn't blame Nigel Farage and didn't blame Vote Leave for this, basically, actually, he did really because of their inflammatory rhetoric blah de blah de blah so uh i'm afraid to say that that although on the surface you will see david cameron george osborne uh jeremy corbyn the the political leaders of the Remain campaign maintaining a dignified position on this. We must not make capital out of private grief, et cetera, et cetera. What we are actually, I'm afraid, going to see under the radar is this very cynical campaign by an establishment which does not wish to lose its hegemony. You've got to remember how much the establishment stands to lose if Britain votes to leave the European Union.

There is nothing they will stop at. James, again, for the American audience, you've got to tell us what you mean by establishment because you're talking about Tories as well as labor. What do you – just fill us in. What do you mean by the establishment? I'm talking about the political establishment, which embraces everything from the big corporations, which can happily afford to wear the massive social policy imposed on business by the European Union. We're talking about the central banks. We're talking about Goldman Sachs, inevitably. We're talking about the International Monetary Fund.

We're talking about the prime minister of the UK. We're talking about the chancellor of the Exchequer. We're talking about the trade unions. We're talking about many, many lawyers. We're talking about the entire edifice of the kind of corrupt, increasingly democratically unaccountable establishment, which has certainly been increasingly empowered since the 2008 crash, which has shored up its power. This class is very heavily dependent on its relationship with the European Union. And they do not want Britain to leave. I've got one more question if I may and then I know – I think Rob Long and James Lilacs want to come in.

So as I read it – again, you can adjust the question, James, before answering it. But as I read it, it's possible to dismiss Nigel Farage. He's never held office. He's been something – he has something of the air of a gadfly. He ran UKIP, which didn't win anything in the last – well, what, they have one seat or two in parliament. But it is impossible to dismiss the two figures to whom all eyes now turn are Michael Gove, who as best I understand it – you're the one who's explained this to me, actually. Michael Gove, a minister in the current government who has broken with his own prime minister to campaign for leave and who is, I believe, universally respected as extremely clever,

very accomplished, risking his career for the highest of motives. Then Boris Johnson. Boris Johnson is not as widely respected. He's viewed as a bit of a rogue. He's viewed as someone who would oppose the prime minister and campaign for leave to advance himself politically. But at the same time, he's understood as immensely intelligent, highly accomplished. He's served as mayor of London. He's now an MP.

And as I understand it, if there is a single rock star in British politics, if there's one figure in British politics who when he walks the streets of London gets stopped for selfie pictures and autographs, it's Boris Johnson. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, all eyes now turn to them. They have the very difficult task of continuing to argue for leave while distinguishing the leave campaign from this tragedy. Can they possibly pull that off? Your summary is very good. One addition to Boris Johnson, I think he's a lovable rogue rather than just a rogue. Got it. Got it. Yeah. Your assessment is very, very, very good. And this, of course, is one of the things why the Remain campaign has been so frit,

so nervous and frightened by the success of the Leave campaign, which they were not expecting. And my analysis of the reason why the Remain campaign has been so unsuccessful is ultimately because its tone has been so unpleasant and negative. It's been all about scaremongering. They haven't really advanced any reasons why we should remain members of the EU because they've admitted themselves it's a pretty dodgy arrangement. All they've done is said,

no, believe us, it'll be much, much worse if we leave. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Nigel Farage, I mean, who is actually, for all his faults, he's a cheeky chappy who commands tremendous love and respect, particularly outside London, London being a bastion of remain because of course it's part of the establishment um leave have generally conducted a very positive campaign which which wasn't necessarily on the cards at the beginning because don't forget that their their um trump card is immigration and immigration always comes across like a like a nasty thing if you talk about if you don't want immigration you sound like a bad person who doesn't care about little boys being washed up on beaches and so on and so forth.

They haven't played that card except in a very subtle way. So they've been winning until yesterday. I think yesterday is going to have a marked effect on their fortunes because it's injected a tone of nastiness that was hitherto missing from their cause. Got it. Hey, James, it's Rob

Long here. I have two questions. The first one is just sort of a general one. If the vote goes the other way, so if the vote is just to remain, the remainders win. How over is this issue? The boil will not have been lanced.

I would say that the kind of viciousness and the depth of feeling that will exist in Britain as a result of this, as a result of the ugliness of the behavior, I'm afraid almost most of it from the Romaine camp, will be akin to the resentment you still experience even now when you go to villages in France and you see the people who collaborated with the Germans playing bull on one terror and the people who were resistance or who claimed to be resistance on the other terror. These feelings run really, really deep. People are going to fall out of this. They're going to remember what's happened. And subsequent events will probably be seen through this prism so every bad eu decision every sort of uh you know mess up every immigration problem every brussels edict is going to be seen to the prism of well this is what you brought to us oh absolutely and you know what if if we do get remain stuck in the european union the levers are going to be proved right.

It's going to be a bit like when somebody is trying to escape from the prison camp and being caught by the guards. And then it's going to be hauled up and thrown in solitary confinement, you know, like in The Great Escape, like the cooler king. Right, right. It's going to be like that. We're going to be punished. Okay, so my broader question, I think I ask this to you every time you're on because I'm fascinated by it because I never quite know how to gauge it, certainly from across the Atlantic.

This seems to be a question, which happens a lot in Britain on these referenda, of what does it mean to be British? What is the British character anymore? What does it mean? Does it mean that you're just one – an influential part of a European federation? Federation? Are you still this sort of island of hardy eccentrics walking their dogs in the rain and watching gardening shows on primetime TV and standing up to fascism? Where can we place this? It seems like this is completely childish, and feel free to drill down on the subtleties, but it seems on one hand we have a bunch of people who are saying, new globalist economic thinkers saying, no, no, we're going to be part of a larger system

and a bureaucracy in Brussels will be good for us, et cetera, et cetera. And there's probably some things about that that are correct. And then you have the other side, the sort of, even the Nigel Farage side, that's classically British, maybe really classically English, standing out there in hats in the rain saying, no, no, no, no, no.

We have done it by ourselves for millennia, and we can continue to do so. Am I close or am I off? that to be genuinely British, all that you've got to do is believe that you have won the lottery in life in having been born British and you are conscious that you are the product of your country's history with all that that entails. So we haven't really been invaded since the Norman times.

We're proud of the fact that that that half the atlas was once colored pink uh we we still believe that well we we remember as our finest hour the moment during the second world war in 1940 when we stood alone until the americans deigned to come and join us um we stood alone against against hitler we have rescued the european continent from tyranny on countless occasions you think for example in the early against Hitler. We have rescued the European continent from tyranny on countless occasions. You think, for example, in the early 18th century,

we rescued them from Louis XIV. In the next century, we rescued them from Napoleon. Then we rescued them from Hitler. We also... Get a little help on that one, though, buddy. Get a little help on the last one there, dude. Yeah, yeah, whatever.

Remember the Kasserine Pass. You made your mistakes. We love American. It's great. It's great. And we're very proud of the fact that you've done very well since the revolution. We're proud of our kids. We love you.

You've done good but but um this this tendency to we don't we don't and never have done consider ourselves as europeans europe is what happens on the continent and the people who consider themselves europeans tend to be the kind of people who also want to join bild Bilderberg and get cushy jobs working for the EU Commission and who don't really believe in any traditions and customs like Morris dancing and fox hunting and the things that I do believe in, things that are about individuality, eccentricity. You know, we're tolerant of each other's eccentricities, but we don't want to wipe them out.

We don't want to become this sort of homogenous Euro blob. That's what it means to be British. And so what does it mean if you lose? It means that it's going to be like Herowood the Wake, the Saxon who fought hopelessly against the Norman tyranny. It's going to be like trying to escape from cold. It's no matter how many times that times the camp guards try and drag us back. That's what it's going to be like. Right.

Cold. It's that's great. I think that's that's what I was looking for. I want to know. I want to know how to think about this. And I do think it's escape from cold. Oh, James, listen,

Peter here. One more very briefly. Yeah. You said we have not, and we never will think of ourselves as part of Europe. Yeah. I have to say, I was having a conversation with someone who now lives,

this is a younger person still in the, in her twenties, Oxford educated, not our beloved alma mater, but Jesus College. And she said, well, I'm a European. I won't know how to feel if leave when. And I thought to myself, oh, my goodness. At some level, the European project is work of our generation.

When I was at Oxford, it was unthinkable that anyone, even a bibulous 19-year-old would say I'm a European. Impossible to imagine such a thought. I thought, oh my goodness, they are succeeding in creating a kind of new consciousness here. Tell me I'm wrong. No, I fear you are right. The Remain campaign has very successfully planted in the ideas, in the heads of a lot of people, this completely false notion that unless Britain is part of some kind of socialistic super state, that we will no longer have access to a single market where we do a lot of our trading. Don't forget that, that we, um, uh,

that, that Germany buys. So we buy a lot more stuff from Europe than they buy from us. But secondly, the idea that somehow travel will be abolished. I mean, I went to Hong Kong the other day, Hong Kong,

as far as I know, is not a member of the European union. It was really, really easy. I didn't have to use the visa. I got off the plane. I didn't have any problem with customs. It was really, really easy. I didn't have to use the visa. I got off the plane. I didn't have any problem with customs. It was really cool. There's not going to be this sudden wall

that's going to appear south of the cliffs of Dover if suddenly we leave the European Union. We'll continue to be able to enjoy to stroll along the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. We'll still be able to enjoy cappuccini in Venice if we can afford them. We love Europe.

We absolutely adore the continent. But the reason we adore the continent is because each country has its distinct character. What we don't want is this homogenous sort of European continent, which has been rendered that way by the European Union. Yes, well, that's just a defense of nationalism, which is all we know is just a code word for white privilege and imperialism. Yes, you are so right.

Yeah, tell it like it is, brother. You disgust me. Thank you, James. We'll talk to you later. And everybody should listen to the podcast as well when it pops up and hear more about the Brexit, or not Brexit, as it continues. It's not talk to you later. And everybody should listen to the podcast as well when it pops up and hear more about the Brexit or not Brexit as it continues. It's not going to go away. And it's illustrative of our time.

He's right. The enormous blobby transnational super state or individual nations able to establish their own character. That's the future. Thanks for joining us. We'll talk to you later. James, thank you. Thanks. Bye.

Yes, James. James, thank you. Thanks. Bye. Yes, indeed. What he was describing there is the old Britain, the hedgerows, the Morris dancing and the rest of it. You really do feel as though it's being reduced down to in the popular imagination of the people in the city and the people in Belgium and the people who want this all to be one large feature of the state, that essentially the people who cling to little regional eccentricities like that are the equivalent of the guy who stabbed and shot the MP, that they're madmen who sit in small, dim, wattle-covered huts rubbing their skin with Brillo to remove imaginary impurification. Without national and regional identity, you don't have a culture, but that, of course,

is what they don't want. Culture, regional, local identities are inconvenient to the general larger product, and that is a very easily controlled homogenous state. That's what they want. statement that the progressive – being a progressive liberal is always going around with that – the unhappy apprehension that somebody somewhere is having a good time. Well, that's Puritanism. Mancun. Mancun. Right. Not Bob Dylan.

I'm sure of that. No. It's not that somebody is having a good time. They're perfectly welcome to have a gay time. They can – in all senses of the word. They want people to go to festivals. They want them to patronize the proper

ideas as they are paraded up and down the street. There are certain kinds of good times that are absolutely essential to keeping the population nice and content. What they don't want is the idea of people whistling some little tune that has an origin in Wales that the people in Northumberland wouldn't get, because that divides us. And all of these little things must be erased, because what did they do in the past? Why they gave us World War I and World War II. And it's as if the minute you start

to talk about national culture and the existence of nations and the reasons for nations, you're endlessly going down a spiral that dumps you again in continent-wide war. And so by keeping a lid on it, of course, what they do is make the pressure build up until you have an explosion of nationalism. And that's what we're seeing right now. What's the line? The passionate

are full of... The good people lack... What is that? It's from the slouching toward Bethlehem thing. Passionate intensity. The worst people are full of passionate intensity. But that's not always true because sometimes people can be passionate about something and they can be right about something and the result is a blade that shaves like nothing else.

And that's why. I was wondering how we're going to get there. From TSLA to Harry's shave. That was. be right about something and the result is a blade that shaves like nothing else and that's why i was wondering how we're gonna get there from tsla to harry's shave that was oh i i am yates it was yates yes no slouching toward yes of course i thought it was yeah well in my whole pro-national pro-nationalism rant there was in the back of my mind i'm desperately scrabbling for some sort of handhold that i can use to hoist me up and get me into the hairy spot. But passion is... Well, there was that factory in Germany that... I guess

that would go with what James was talking about, but go ahead. It is, but that's sort of my emergency reference right there with that. Okay, that's good. When I'm really desperate, I'll go to the factory in Germany. Well, I feel like I'm sitting behind the set here and the complex inner workings of James Lilac' Segway machinery.

They weren't desperate when they went to that factory in Germany because that factory in Germany for about 100 years now, it's got to be that. I've been saying almost a century for two or three years. It's a place that has more than a century of tradition and a century of expertise in making a great blade. And all of us who shave with Harry's know exactly what that's like. Now, Harry's bought that factory so they could cut out the middleman and offer an amazing shave for a fraction of the price of drugstore brands. And if you're a Harry's customer, you know. I don't know what you do with all that money you have left over,

because you've got tons of it, right? Because you go to the store and you spend $20, $30 on a stupid cartridge. No, they ship the blades right to your door. $15 is the starter pack. That includes the razor, three blades, and your choice of Harry's shave cream or foaming shave gel. You may have a preference for one or the other. I don't. I love them both.

As an added bonus, $5 off your first purchase with a ricochet code, and that's an entire month of shaving for $10. $10. And shipping's free. You don't have to drive to the store. You just walk out of the mailbox, and there it is. And satisfaction, of course, is guaranteed. Now, go to harrys.com and Harris will give you $5 off if you type in the code ricochet with your first purchase. That's h-a-r-r-y-s.com and enter coupon code ricochet at the checkout for five bucks off and start

shaving smarter today. Well, gentlemen, where do you think Brexit's going to go? Let me just throw that out because I find this fascinating. The idea that people would willingly vote to stay in an organization and be ruled from afar seems so contrary to the notion that we have of our island forebearers. But again, if you listen to the BBC, if you listen to their news, if you read The Guardian and the rest of it, that old British culture is gone, replaced by people who are inflamed with all the justice that must be done. I mean, I was just reading the other day, Laurie Penny, who is this just unbearably tedious writer, exalting about the need to just destroy

the family. The family has to be destroyed destroyed and the project that is going on here in america to reverse and evaporate every norm because their norms because they're bad uh goes on over there and just as strongly it's where do you think it's going to go like i keep saying you know we're like winston smith looking out the window you know the proles there are there are only i feel that's a complete pipe dream. It's hard to – voting like this is a hard thing. I mean psychologically it's difficult because you're asking people to vote for changing their current environment and vote for an unknown environment. And I think that the remain people have done a

really good job of trying to create kind of uncertainty around that. Like what will happen? Oh my God, it'll be so, it'll be, it's going to be different. It's going to be hard to predict. And I feel that's a very, very, very effective way to get voters to keep a system, even if they hate it. And we see this in this country whenever – the last couple of times that there have been school choice referenda, all the polling data and the focus group data suggests that there's this genuine interest and appetite and sympathy for school choice and the voucher system and that people are genuinely sort of allied and aligned towards school choice. And then the election comes and school choice initiatives go down. And the question is – and they do the after polls and the after interviews. I didn't want to give up the thing that I know even though I don't like it. But I have it kind of worked out for me and my family, and I don't know what the tomorrow is going to look like.

And the opposition made it seem like it's going to be at the very least uncertain, and I don't want uncertainty. I have enough uncertainty in my life. I don't want to vote for more of it. And so sometimes it seems counterintuitive, but people will vote that way. Right. So my prediction runs as follows. England will remain for leaving. Scotland will vote for remain because that's the opposite of what England is doing. And that leaves London, the big question. London is its separate country essentially now. It's

become so cosmopolitan, so open to European influences, so open to money from around the world. And my own take on this is that the fears that Rob has been discussing are already factored into the debate. Both sides have adjusted to – they've thought things through and leave was breaking out. Now what's happened is that virtue signaling is going to become very important to cosmopolitan London and they're going to support remaining in a way that they would not have before to indicate

that they want nothing to do with whatever it was that killed this young MP yesterday Joe Cox. So my own judgment, I grant everything Rob says. I suspect that Leave will win narrowly because of events yesterday, not because of the fear campaign that the Leave – I beg your pardon, that the Remain side has been running on. That's been effective but not effective enough I think is what we've seen in the last week with polls breaking toward leave. Now what's happened is that to show that you're

a good person – this is the way London will read it. To show that you're a good person, you have to vote to remain. That's the way I suspect it will break out. On the other hand, we do have in the last British election, the conservatives won bigger than they – even they themselves expected. And the effect there was – Rob is quite right. The status quo effect is always strong. The countervailing effect is that people are less willing to tell pollsters that they're taking a politically incorrect position. There may be more people willing to vote leave than the pollsters are picking up. It's a total mess.

My own feeling is that virtual signaling will take over the day, will carry the day narrowly. It's sort of interesting, isn't it, that like for a while we've been – we've had this fantasy that we can predict how people vote and how they're going to vote. And we've had this almost 15, 20 years of this kind of incredible arrogance on the part of pollsters and audience researchers and people like that. And they're always wrong.

They're almost always wrong in some significant way. I mean people are always surprised. I mean the voters will actually surprise you. No one would have – if you bet $1,000 that Donald Trump was going to be the nominee, I mean the odds would have been spectacular even as late as September. Exactly. I'd still put some money on the opposite position. Yeah.

But that's only because I'm dreaming. My dream journal. Right. And this depends on whether or not the votes count. If the people don't vote the right way, then you have to have another vote a little bit later to make sure the right outcome comes about. And as far as the virtue signaling goes, Peter, the modern European, in order to show that they are a good person, must endorse the deconstruction of everything that compromised a national or cultural identity. Because to reside on that is to be monocultural. And monoculturalism is a sin.

It is a stain and it must be ameliorated by a changing of the culture. And nothing but good can possibly come of that, possibly. So, I mean, that's the idea. And so it smothers the very ability to make an argument for your own culture because you're placed in a box with screaming, ranting people who just hate anybody who isn't them. I mean, you read the stories on what Sweden has been going through, how Sweden's famous generosity has been tested and broken. And now the Swedish people themselves are saying, oh, my gosh, there is something to us that we want to preserve that's being lost. And they may find that it's too late. Well, we don't want you to think that it's too late to join Ricochet because it isn't.

It's never too late. And there's lots to discuss. And that's the place to do it. So go there. And also you might want to wander on down to SaneBox.com, Harry's Shave, that's H-A-R-Y-S.com, and Audible.com. And use that coupon code RICOSHAY4, a free trial on SaneBox, $10 shaving on Harry, and a free audiobook and membership at Audible.com. Visit the Ricochet store. Of course, you can get mugs so you can signal your virtue.

That way, T-shirts as well. All kinds of stuff, even hats that will make your life great. Maybe not America, but your life. Rob, Peter, it's been a pleasure. We'll see you both next week, and we'll see everybody in the comments. Every ricochet tooth will count. Next week. Next week, fellas. Happiness is a warm gun

When I hold you in my arms And I feel my finger on your trigger I know nobody can do me no harm Because happiness is a warm gun, mama. Bang, bang, choo-choo. Happiness is a warm gun. Yes, it is. Bang, bang, choo-choo.

Happiness is a warm, yes, it is gun. Happiness. Bang, bang, choo-choo. is gone happiness bang bang don't you know that happiness is a warm gone is a warm gone

yeah ricochet join the conversation