The Ricochet Podcast - Hammered

Episode Date: February 4, 2016

We’re into the meat of the primary season now, so the time for talk is over — it’s time for action! Unless you produce a podcast — then we need more talk. And this week, we bring you two of the best talkers in the biz: the great John O’Sullivan and Fox News analyst and columnist and editor for The Washington Times Monica Crowley. We talk Ted, Trump, Bernie, Hillary, and yes, even some folk music. Source

Hello, everyone. God bless the great state of Iowa. I'm not going to get, I don't know what's going to happen here. I don't have any information on that. They don't understand what you're talking about. And that's going to prove to be disastrous. And what it means is that the people don't want socialism. They want more conservatism. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lileks, and our guests are John O'Sullivan and Monica Crowley. Bernie, Trump, Hillary, fight! There you go again. Well, all the polls said this would be Ricochet Podcast number 291, but they were wrong. It's Ricochet Podcast 290. Everything stops you during this strange election year.

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Good afternoon. Good evening, whenever the people may be listening to this. Good day. Good morning. Good day, yeah. Yes. And, Rob, I believe this is the point at which you tell people that really the comedy of the republic is at stake unless people subscribe to Ricochet. The comedy is, yeah.

Listen, if you're listening to this podcast and you're a member of Ricochet, we thank you. If you're listening and you are not, it is important that you understand how much we need you. If you love these podcasts, like these podcasts, if you listen to ours, you listen to Mona and Jay's. You listen to Glop. You listen to Law Talk, whatever. Whichever one you listen to, maybe listen to them all. We really need your help. And I run into people all the time. They say, oh, well, I'm going to subscribe. I'm going to join Ricochet. I haven't had a chance to. Make a little note to do it and do it today. That's all I ask. It's a busy time for everybody. It's a really exciting time in politics. It's a lot of fun. We are having're around and you want to see the giant chaos of American democracy, small d, very small d, very small. All the other letters are tiny too, democracy in action. New Hampshire is the place to be. So there you go. It's a co-branded operation with National Review, right?

It is co-branded. That's a very swank term. Well, speaking of National Review, Peter, usually this is where we have an engaging colloquy before we get to our first guest. But we're going to get promptly to him. And again, speaking of National Review, senior fellow of the National Review Institute, director of the Danube Institute in Budapest, editor of Quadrant in Australia. We welcome back John O'Sullivan to the Ricochet podcast. Good day, sir. Welcome.

Thank you for welcoming me. Nice to be here. Hey, John, it's Rob Long in New York. How are you? I'm fine, thanks, Rob. You wrote a piece. I think you're just around the corner. Exactly right.

I think you are just around the corner. Exactly right. I think you are just around the corner. You wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal this past weekend about Donald Trump and what he means. It meant something a little different. Did you change your mind after Monday night? Have you changed your mind? Do you see things a little differently, or is it all just the same? No, I don't see it differently. I never thought that he was absolutely sure if I wanted him to have everything. I said that he might very well self-destruct, which he, at the moment, is beginning to do, but he can draw back from that. No, I thought he suffered a reverse. I thought initially, by the way, he handled the reverse graciously,

so that he seemed for a moment a slightly different and nicer person. But I don't think... You mean that speech, that one speech? Yeah, that one speech. And if he'd kept up that kind of tone, I think people would have warned him. But the point is, people are not voting for him solely because he's a winner. That's a foolish thing.

They're voting for him because he says things like, let's make America great again. You know, that appeals to a lot of ordinary people. And the hostility to him is often from people who feel a certain snobbery towards the masses. You know, we're clever, they're stupid, and this is the kind of Bulgarian they like. Then admitting the fact that he's saying perfectly sensible things as well as crazy things. And they're responding to the let's make America great again, let's give a

fair deal for the middle class, and so on and so forth. I think that I can see the reason for his appeal, and I think that Republicans would be foolish to alienate those voters. John, what's the difference between those voters, the Trump supporters and Reagan Democrats of old? Peter, Peter here, Peter Robinson, by the way. Yeah, I mean, hi, Peter. Look, I think there are differences. They're not exactly the same voters. I suspect

their social class is slightly different. I think that fewer of them will be unionized, for example. Fewer Americans are unionized these days. Some of them will be, more than will be, small businesses who ought to be in the Republican coalition anyway, but have been, in a sense, annoyed and alienated by it. We know a lot about them. We know that they tend to describe themselves

not as conservative, but as Republican or as moderate. They're more white, actually, than, say, the Tea Party voters. So that, in a sense, you're now seeing different factions of the electorate. Somebody, John Zmarik and Samirak, I think, said that Trump represented a kind of Jacksonianism and Cruz represented a kind of Coolidge republicanism. I mean, there's something in that comparison, small government versus activist government. And so they're different.

They have different feelings about politics. John, to the other side, one of the striking statistics to emerge from Iowa was that of the Iowa caucus goers on the Democratic side, no fewer than 43 percent describe themselves as socialist. 30-some percent call themselves progressive, but the largest number, 43%, socialist. What on earth is going on? Well, all over the world, the left of the left is beginning to feel energetic and energetic again.

The moderate left is beginning to feel energetic and energetic again. The moderate left is beginning to feel it's failed and people are going from there to the left. And among the young, the concept of socialism has always been an attractive one. So it's not surprising to me that these things are happening in America as elsewhere. It's going to be a rocky few years in the future. Remember that, too, that a lot of these people who voted, particularly for

Bernie, were young people and students. And they, if they're students, they've been subjected to an endless diet of socialism and progressivism since they were in college. And, you know, Republicans tend to say things like, well, they'll grow out of it, it doesn't really matter.

But the fact is that again and again and again, the right has simply written off its own children without realizing it by sending them to schools where the first objective for the teacher was to knock all that parental nonsense out of them and to instill some progressivism and or socialism into their heads. John, it was striking to me that the statistics showed that Bernie Sanders won biggest. Well, we know he won biggest among the youngest voters. Where the margin for Bernie Sanders was absolutely overwhelming was for people born after the end of the Cold War. Question, is the impulse towards

socialism permanent and only damped down when there's a large, vivid example of socialism in practice taking place someplace else in the world? I think Tom Bethel said some years ago that socialism is what fills the gap when religion and patriotism vanish from the human heart. I think that's very true. And we've made patriotism unrespectable among educated youth and semi-educated youth as well. We are creating in this country and throughout the world a lump of intelligentsia of unemployable graduates in occupations that no one wants to buy things from or services.

So you're going to have a restless intelligentsia, which we used to think was a province of countries like Russia or the Middle East, where unemployed graduates were the rioters in the 30s and the 40s and the 50s. Well, that kind of world is coming to Western Europe and the United States. Is it permanent? Well, it's permanent unless we can actually get our act together and teach the truth and bring up and ensure that our children are not corrupted. Well, that's a long task.

In the short term, we'd have to add laudanum to their coffee drink so they'll just nod off and not do any damage. But you think this will be confined to the capitals, to the coasts, and that here in the Midwest we will continue to breed the hardy souls that keep the country going. But then, I mean, do you think, John, that actual contact... In Iowa, in the Midwest, by the way?

Yeah, it is. That's part of the problem. Do you think that contact with actual socialism as in practice, which is to say half your money going to the government and at the very least, do you think actual contact would dissuade some of these people from – because right now they just think that socialism is just – well, it's being good to other people. I saw a picture of Bernie Sanders going to help a man who had fainted. They're always fainting at the democratic events. He went to help a fainting man and the caption was this is socialism in action. Do they know what they're talking about?

Human decency, yeah. Well, look, there is an element of human decency in the emotions, a very strong one in the emotions that lead up to socialism. You can't believe in socialism if you lived under it, though. Not only because it produces an economic wasteland in a relatively short time,

but also because it corrupts human beings. It begins by being a crusade against the desire for materialism, consumerism, greed, and so on. And it ends up with a situation in which materials goods are so scarce that a decent girl will sell herself for a pair of blue jeans. I mean, that's the kind of society that we ended up with in the Soviet Union. Right now, Bernie Sanders is a novelty act, like Donald Trump was for so many. But

unlike Trump, he probably has the ability not to self-destruct unless he really starts talking about what he's talking about and means and believes. Do you believe that Bernie can go the distance? I think Bernie, in a way, doesn't have the capacity to self-destruct, actually, simply because he's the kind of person whom his audience will forgive almost anything.

I mean, there's a kind of... Remember, he gets the benefits of being old. There are not many of those, but one of them is that people understand it when you make blunders. So I think he's pretty indestructible from that standpoint. I don't mean to say he's going to win everything, but it means to say he won't be easy to sort of knock out of the way. Whereas you can imagine the Donald making some horrendous blunder that people actually notice and that damages him. And in some of his responses to his defeat, the later responses, are beginning to, I think, undermine him.

But I don't think he's likely to lose this time either. I think he's likely to do well. What's interesting is whether or not the Rubio can continue this rise. He reminds me of the remark by David Frost on Malcolm Muggeridge. I thought when he arrived that he would think without trace. Instead, he has risen without trace. And I think that that rise

has managed to sort of overcome the obvious thing at the moment. That rise has managed to sort of overcome obvious things. At the moment, like his support for the Gang of Eight bill, because he has the desire and approval of the press, as well as a big section of the establishment and a smaller one of conservatives, that he should be the candidate of whatever else happens. And it's going to be interesting to see if, like others, like John Edwards in the past, like a lot of these candidates

who look tremendously attractive and manages to sort of keep rising, or whether something will happen and drag him down. So Cruz would be your man, John? You don't sound terribly flattering about my man. Yeah So Cruz would be your man, John? You don't sound terribly flattering about my man. Yeah, Cruz would be my man, yeah. I see. By the way, Paul, I just this morning... No, I'm not for Rubio.

Rubio's in second place in New Hampshire now. He's just edged out Cruz in one poll and only by two-tenths of a point, but still he's moved up. So why Cruz then over Rubio? Well, people say about... Well, because he's not a flip-flopper. He's flipped. He hasn't flip-flopped, flip- well, because he's not a flip-flopper. He's flipped.

He hasn't flip-flopped, flip-flopped. Lucio has flip-flopped. He was in favor of amnesty when he was Speaker in Florida. When he ran for the Senate, he was against it. When he got into the Senate, he was for amnesty. And now he's against it again. So the term flip-flop is often misused to mean someone's changed their mind.

You flip-flop when you flip-flop four times. And I think that's why, that's his weakness, which may bring him down. But because he has sympathy of the media class and the significant section of the right, he may well survive an even triumph. And you don't buy the argument that Cruz is too dark, too negative, too brooding? Well, Richard Nixon was pretty dark and brooding,

and he was one of the most consequential presidents, not always for the good, of course, from a conservative standpoint, but certainly in terms of international politics. He was somebody, he's a sort of a hero, but I don't expect most people to accept that for some time. John, we have to let you go. I know you have calls stacked up like planes at Midway waiting for your wisdom, and we'll talk to you down the road.

It's a very unusual state of affairs. We'll talk to you down the road, Thank you for joining us on this. By the way, Rob, if you're still around, let's have a drink or something. I'm explaining tomorrow. All the best. I would love to. I'm heading to New Hampshire in a few hours to watch this nonsense happen. I'll ring you up after this other broadcast ends. Okay?

You do. And I assume that we're going to cut that out for the podcast. No, I think we should leave it in. We should pick a spot, actually, at a time. Really? I think that kind of behind-the-scenes stuff is what – there's no such thing as – Kill radio. There's no establishment whatsoever. And say hello to your lovely wife to us too, John.

It sounds like we're all one big part of a self-adulatory pact. Not that that would be the case. All right. Restarting the podcast in three, two, one. John said something interesting there about getting the press's approval. Rubio. I mean, the New York Times has already dinged him for being the wrong kind of Latino politician. Did you guys see that?

That was a while ago, right? No, I think that was just today or yesterday. As a matter of fact, I was reading it. Let me find the exact. They've been saying that about Rubio for a while, that Cubans don't count. Right. It's the point. The exact quote is this.

The answer is not that complicated. They're explaining the rise of these two in the party of racism. Neither Mr. Cruz nor Mr. Rubio meets conventional expectations of how Latino politicians are supposed to behave. That supposed to be so condescending is absolutely so. And in order to figure out exactly how they should do, who do you think that they get? They get Jorge Ramos, the Univision anchor, who of course himself is a neutral observer, objective-wise, of politics. So

here's the thing. They have septuagenarians on the other side, and on the right, we've got two candidates of relative youth with Hispanic origins, and yet still, and yet still, they are the party of diversity, and they're the party that cares. Explain that to me.

Well, I mean look. For a long time, that has just been a shorthand, hasn't it? Diversity for Republicans equal bad. Monday night was so astonishing where you had two Latinos, an African-American, and a woman doing really well and an old white guy, rich old white guy on both parties. But certainly the more diverse winner's circle was Republican, and they have a hard time now dealing with it. They have a hard time now dealing with the first woman thing with Hillary because it brings up all sorts of other issues. Once you say that, you have to say – you are sort of legally required in a way to say – and two Latinos are running neck and neck in the Republican – on the republican side so they're kind of disappearing um their diversity standards for now until uh until i think they get clarity and they understand i mean you can hear them sort of groping around for what how what are we going to call what are we going to

get away with calling these republican candidates uh fake latinos uh white latinos um whatever it is whatever that phrase is you can hear them trying it all out. It's like they're tuning their instrument for the big race to become. It's the same – Mrs. Thatcher wasn't a woman, you may have noticed. Exactly. Condoleezza Rice wasn't the first African-American female secretary of state. All sorts of things. But you could – it's actually palpable as you read New York Times, The Washington Post, and sort of you scan through the morning papers as I do. We all do, right?

You could see them trying out ways to diminish the diversity or whatever it is they want to call it, ways to actually take away that little plum that's really reserved only for Democrats. And they're not all doing it the same way, but they're going to figure it out. I mean, they're going to coalesce around one or two dismissive terms or dismissive definitions probably around next month, I would say. You know, February, April, they'll have their vocabulary ready. Can't wait to see what epithet they choose. Bernie, mainstreaming the idea of socialism will be fun when people start proclaiming themselves to be socialists.

Yes. It becomes a great thing. If there's anything that's going to put anybody off this, though, there are two things. One, I was listening to a Bernie campaign rally where they had a couple of people get up and croak, this land is your land. Because, of course, every single freaking hymn from the folk era, Pete Seeger Pete Seeger is still with us.

has got to be resurrected because lord knows that was the most important time in music and or politics and or culture so this land is your land and it was it just brought back all of that crunchy, earnest, folky stuff from the 60s that was out there when I was little.

Trini Lopez, how long has it been since we thought of If I Had a Hammer? Yeah. And as I've said frequently, what do you mean If I Had a Hammer? There's a hardware store about every six blocks in this country. Go buy one for about $8.99. Just don't hammer out justice in the morning, okay? Not early in the morning anyway. When I've had my coffee, you can start hammering out peace and justice and love between your brother and your sister.

But for now, keep it under – stupid song. And the second thing is the optics on – and I hate that word when I mean pictures. Let's say pictures are dreadful for Hillary when they're showing some of these rallies where there just aren't a lot of people. And if they are, they're eating the stickers off their face. And the enthusiasm and the youthful enthusiasm for this aged, wispy, white-haired, crunchy, leaning-over, hunchbacked demander of confiscation is a fascinating image.

When you put it in black and white, it's almost like you've gone back, I swear, to 1967 to a Life magazine picture of some rally for peace. But if you would like to learn how to take a picture like that, well, you need to know the fundamentals of photography. And believe it or not, that would happen to be one of the great courses, believe it or not. We're excited about this because the great courses plus video learning service, unlimited access to a huge library of lecture series that teaches you so many things. I mean, we've talked before about the history of the cooking and the science and the sociology.

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But it's only available for a limited time, as we like to say, so hurry. To stream the fundamentals of photography from the Great Courses Plus for free, you must go to thegreatcoursesplus.com. That's thegreatcoursesplus.com. So back to Bernie. Either you guys give me your give me your take on whether or not you think this this man is going to capture the imagination of America. I think numerically the Democratic Party has it figured out that he'll never get the electoral votes ever. Period. It's got to be Hillary. Really? If she's not under indictment.

Yeah, I don't know. Look, I mean, there's something refreshing about a socialist I think. These are real policies he really has and he really believes. And he's not lying to you. The numbers add up. He's going to raise taxes and he's going to pay for a lot of stuff. Wait a minute. The numbers add up.

You think his Wall Street taxes is sufficient to raise the – No, but we know that he will raise income taxes on the top 5, 10, 20 percent until he pays for what he wants. But there's still not enough money there. The money has to come from the middle class and he has to say that you're the ones I'm going to tax because that's what he believes. But that's OK. And he's lying. He's not being honest, is he? But he is. No, no, he is. No, he's not saying the middle class – Wait, wait. James, James, James to tax because that's what he believes. But that's okay. And he's lying. He's not being honest, is he? But he is. No, no, he is. No, he's not saying the middle class.

Wait, wait, James, James. No, that's not true. What he's saying is that he's going to give you all this stuff and he's going to raise taxes to pay for it. We do not yet know how low that – how far down the economic ladder that tax is going to get. But his point is he's going to give you services. So – and there are a whole lot of people in America who like that deal. It's a much, much more honest than saying I'm going to give you services and not raise your taxes. This is the argument that the liberals have been making for years and Republicans have always

fallen into the trap. We talk about taxes. They talk about goodies. And the American people say I like goodies. Right. And then they vote. What I'm saying is that in order to give the goodies, he has to tax the middle class. No one who votes for Bernie Sanders is under the impression that taxes are not going to go up. They're going to go up. Here's what I'm saying. Right. Everybody thinks they're going to get the free stuff because Bernie is going to tax other people. It is impossible for him to provide everything that he wants without, like the other nations, taxing the middle class and even the lower class regressively with a 50 percent levy on their income and a VAT of 23 percent, which is incredibly regressive.

And because he is not telling the middle class that he's going to tax them, he is not being straight with the middle class. So the idea that he's some truth teller, no. He's telling the part they like. He's not telling them the part they don't, which is that they're going to have to pay for this as well you know what here's the problem the problem is that that is what we do that is what our side does uh that's even what moderate democrats do that's what hillary clinton does the chief benefit of bernie sanders is that he actually is telling you the truth that people who vote for bernie sanders know that know that middle class taxes are going to go up they know that their marginal tax rate's

going to go up now he says it's going to be mostly on the rich and it probably will be the rich people will feel a pinch it'll be 60 70 pretty soon and there's going to be a tax on uh on corporate offshore corporations which is going to be hard to do but it'll probably get he'll be there's a way to do it that way uh there's going to be all sorts of extra – he's probably going to add a vat in there too somewhere, although he's not saying it. But absolutely. But at least it's a fair exchange. Now, I disagree with all of it, but he's not a charlatan.

He's actually selling the truth, which is we're going to give you all this stuff. Now, you and I know that stuff is going to be lousy, but we're going to get it for free, and everyone's going to pay more taxes, and you're going to be happy. Half of Americans don't pay federal tax anyway. I heard a speech the other day at a rally, and I missed the part about everybody having to pay. I missed the part about him talking about a litany list

of what everybody was going to get concluding with, and we're going to pay for it with a tax on Wall Street speculation. Period. End of sentence. Peter, go ahead. No, James Pethokoukis had a good piece on this on Ricochet yesterday maybe. If you want to provide Scandinavian-style welfare state, you're going to have to tax the middle class the way they're taxed in Scandinavia. To the larger point of what people hear – by the way, I take Rob's point that there's an authenticity about Bernie Sanders. He's a real socialist.

He's a red baby from Brooklyn. He hasn't changed his views in – He had a honeymoon in Russia or Cuba, right? Right. So that's – It was a sister city to be fair. As to what people understand when they hear Bernie, I'm not so sure. There's a poll.

If I can find it, I'll link to it. There's a poll that goes deeper with those 43% in Iowa who say that they're socialist. And there were some follow-on questions. And one question was, do you want the government to own businesses or do you want individuals to own businesses? And a majority of the people who called themselves socialists said, oh, no, no, no, no. We want people to own businesses. In other words, they have no idea. Bernie Sanders is permitting large numbers of his supporters simply to strike attitudes that make – attitudes of self-righteousness, self-indulgent self-righteousness. They feel like superior beings when they're at a Bernie Sanders rally. What portion of those people have any idea what socialism really means, the implications of the programs he's backing, how much taxes will actually go up on the middle class? I have to suspect that's a small proportion who really understand it. Not sure I agree. Well, everybody's tapping into anger this year. And if you look at the Washington Times, there was a recent editorial about how Donald Trump made anger legit. And it'd be a great opportunity to talk to somebody from the Times, maybe their editor of online opinion. Sure. Welcome to the podcast, Monica Crowley.

How are you? Hi, guys. I'm great. Thank you for having me. So as we were saying, anger, anger has been legitimized this year. The left used to have the monopoly on it, and now the torch has passed, so to speak, to the right, and it's burning their sleeve down to the elbow. How is that going to play out? Is it possible to keep people's anger in a fever pitch, or eventually do things moderate and cool and by, say, oh, I don't know, November? Well, I don't think anger is going away this year. And actually, my column last week in The Washington Times talked about anger on the right

and how, as you mentioned, the left has had this long monopoly on anger. They've actually encouraged and trained their activists to be angry, whether it's Black Lives Matter or Occupy Wall Street, Al Sharpton. Anger on the left has always been considered legit, and not just legit, but a very useful weapon in the political battles. Whereas anger on the right has always been mocked, dismissed, belittled. Those who were angry on the conservative side were attacked, intimidated, smeared. We saw it with the Tea Party, right? They were criticized for being racist and bigot.

And then, of course, the White House turns around and uses the most fearsome agency in the entire U.S. government, the IRS, to intimidate and silence them. So for a long time, the right just hasn't had the tool of anger. What I say is that Donald Trump is essentially an avatar of anger for the right just hasn't had the tool of anger. What I say is that Donald Trump is essentially an avatar of anger for the right. Whether you agree with him or not, whether you're going to vote for him or not, it doesn't matter because what he has done is performed a very useful service for conservatives going forward, which is smashing this idea that anger is not legitimate on the right because he just doesn't care. He's angry, he admits he's angry, he embraces it,

and he validates the anger that so many people feel, not just Republicans and conservatives, but moderates and independents. He's saying it's okay to be angry, and we're going to use it to our advantage. In terms of going forward, I think this year the anger, frankly, on both sides, is so deeply entrenched, guys, that I honestly don't think it's going anywhere. Whether Donald Trump is the nominee or somebody else is, I think it is such a huge vehicle this time for voters to vent their frustration with Washington, with the establishment, with the state of the country, that I think it's actually going to carry the nominee straight through the general election. Hey, Monica, Peter here, Peter Robinson. Thanks so much for joining us. Hi, Peter. Question. Sure.

On what my side question is, how on earth do you handle Bill O'Reilly so beautifully? But we'll come back to that. Here's the question. Is it that people on both sides, that is to say supporters of Bernie and supporters of the Donald, are angry about the same things? That is to say an economy that simply isn't growing, reduced national standing in the world and so forth, but that they have different attitudes or beliefs about what should be done about it? Or are they angry about different things? There is some overlap, Peter. Not a lot, but there's some. To the extent that Donald Trump is running a populist campaign, right?

We hear about the different lanes of candidates, the establishment lane, the conservative lane. Donald Trump is basically in his own lane, the populist or nationalist lane, if you will. And the people who support him are angry at the state of the country, which I think a lot of people on the left supporting Bernie are angry at the state of the country for different reasons. But that the overlap is that a lot of these same folks believe that the system is rigged against them. So on the left, you hear a lot of talk about income inequality. That's Bernie Sanders' big bailiwick. And on the right, with Trump, people think, hey, you know, I can't get into the system,

or the establishment is shutting us all out. They've ignored us. They've mocked us. They've dismissed us for so long. The political game is rigged. I think maybe that's the distinction, that on the right they feel the political game has been rigged against conservatives, average Americans, that the elite have been running the show. And on the left, it's more of an economic rigged game,

where they look at income inequality and the billionaires and the 1% and all of that. But the same sensibility is there driving the anger, I think, on both sides. So, okay, next piece in the puzzle here, next question from me at least. Donald Trump talking to people who are angry about the political system being rigged. Donald Trump, and this is not actually to denigrate him, because this is what people do when they're in major business figures in the city of New York. But Donald Trump has been funding political candidates and wining and dining city council members and regulators in the city of New York. He's been working the political system to advance his business enterprises for his entire working life. How is it that the Donald becomes the vehicle, the Donald who himself knows how to work a

rigged system, is a complete insider. How is it that he becomes the vehicle for anger against a rigged system? Two things, I think, and I'm speculating here, but I think, first of all, his supporters don't care. It's like nobody cares that he's not a principal conservative, or at least his supporters don't. Right. Because the promise of Donald Trump is, I'm going to come in and smash the existing order. And yes, I took part in the rigged game, and I know how it's played because I played it at

the highest levels. And you know what? Y'all are right. It is rigged against you. And I know because I was on the front lines and I did it. And I promised the president to come in. Yes, it's working for him. Look, nobody knows this better than I do because I played it at its highest levels. And I'm going to come in and smash the system.

If he's going to smash it, he has to replace it then with top men, great people. And after Iowa, he was telling us that his ground game team wasn't that good. I thought that his ability to find winners at all levels and to employ them and deploy them with great skill was one of his attributes that people loved. Is that going to take a little bit of a tarnishing after his ground game team turned out not to be A-League? Yeah, I think a little bit. Yeah, more so I think his brand is taking a hit because his brand is, I'm a winner, everybody else is a loser, and he simply couldn't abide

second place. I mean, I think the humility and the modesty that he showed, the graciousness on Monday night lasted about as long as it took him to process the fact that he had come in second, and now, of course, he's reverted back to form that, oh, I really won because Cruz ripped off the race, right? I think a stronger argument for Donald Trump going forward is, look, I'm a first-time politician. This is my first race, period. And to perform that well in a state that's not really favorable to me is quite an incredible feat. And I'm going to leverage that going forward. Rather than looking back to Iowa, you know, elections are never about the past. They're always about the future. And I think the stronger argument for Trump is trying to

leverage that going forward. So if you were inside the Trump plane, advising him, that actually is a ridiculous setup because nobody advises him as far as I can tell her. He takes no one's advice, all that. If you were inside his head and you were a voice in Donald Trump's mind as he were thinking through his next moves, he's now come second in Iowa. On the other hand, the polls all show he retains a totally commanding lead in New Hampshire. 538, Nate Silver predicts with 60% likelihood that he'll win in New Hampshire. So if you're Donald Trump, do you say to yourself, I'm just going to continue doing what I've been doing? There was a little bump in Iowa, but only a little one.

It's going to work. Or do you say to yourself, you know what? I actually like this game. I'm going to run for president according to the usual rules and beat the other guys at it. I'm going to start talking about policies. I will explain my new positions. I will explain why I am genuinely pro-life, even though I was pro-choice in the back in the past, why I'm genuinely opposed to Obamacare, even though I supported it in the past. I'm going to offer explanations. I'm going to run for president in a substantive way. A or B, Monica, which voice would you be in that man's head?

Well, you know, I don't think they're mutually exclusive. I think he can actually do both. I think he can keep up with the combative tone while also kind of shifting gears and talking more about policy, less personalization against Cruz and Rubio, who are his biggest threats, I think, going forward. I think he can do both. And I think, I think, although who knows with Donald Trump, that he might be doing that a little bit. I mean, today, for example, he's got five events in the state of New Hampshire. In the past, he's only scheduled max two events, whether it was Iowa or New Hampshire or any other state. He's got five on his schedule today. That tells me he's doing more of the traditional dance.

He's working harder. On the other hand, he is still blasting way on Twitter in classic Donald Trump form. So I actually think he is proceeding by going ahead and doing both. Wow. And what's your feeling about it? Look, we'll talk to you again after New Hampshire.

I know this is a tricky moment at which to make any kind of prediction, but does it feel to you as though he's going to go all the way to the convention? It depends. I think, look, I think his ego was bruised out of Iowa. So I think it depends how steady he performs here going forward in terms of actual votes. It might be if we end up with a three-way race, which is what it looks like now, and it could end up in New Hampshire that you get Donald Trump at 25, Cruz at 21, Rubio at 21. If you get three men basically running even, going through the whole

primary process, where none of them get to the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination, I think Trump will go all the way. Remember, this man is a very fierce competitor in business and in politics and in life. I know him a little bit. He does not give up easily, and he doesn't like to lose. So I think he's redoubled his efforts, and I can see him, if he's in a credible enough position, I can see him probably trying to take it all the way. Monica, this is the last question for me because I know Rob and James want to get in as well. Who does he listen to? You mentioned you know him a little bit.

All the other have reams of advisors. Frankly, as you very well know, having studied at the feet, so to speak, of Richard Nixon when you were extremely young. One of the things that politicians do is use advisors by flatter. But in other words, a politician has more advisors listed on his campaign website than people he actually listens to. He wants half the country to think they're advising him. Donald Trump isn't like that at all, but there must be someone he talks things over with, some small inner circle. Is there? Who are they? Yes, he does.

He's got a couple of trusted advisors on the business side that have been advising him on the political side. I don't know what the content of their advice is, so I can't speak to the quality of what they're telling him. But I do know that he's got a very clever and smart campaign manager by the name of Corey Lewandowski, who I've also come to know a little bit. And this guy is just as scrappy as Donald Trump. He comes out of New Hampshire. In fact, he worked with one of the Koch brothers, Umbrella Organizations, Americans for Prosperity. He was their New Hampshire director for a while. So he knows the grassroots. He knows how to get grassroots mobilized for causes and events and elections through AFP. The guy is very clever. He's young, he's scrappy. He knows what he's doing. Whether or not Trump listens to him all the time, that I can't speak to. Got it. And is this young person conservative? Yes.

Got it. Yes. Yes, he is. Yeah. But remember, Trump's appeal is less ideological. The way we traditionally think of ideology driving a conservative candidate is less ideological and more attitudinal. It's I'm going to come in and blow up the system. And I am a doer and I get things done and give me six months as president and I'll get that wall built. I'll do it because I've done it. That's what's appealing to people.

It's set aside ideology and get us a doer. Okay. I'm sorry. I can't resist. There's one last question. As you know very well, all kinds of people like us who talk for a living have said for six months this can't last. He's going to blow himself up. He'll make a mistake.

And, of course, six months later, he's still way up in New Hampshire. He's running for president and in front in at least one primary. Question. Are we all wrong as well when we say he's just not the best candidate to put against Hillary Clinton. All the polls show Marco Rubio beating Hillary Clinton much more easily than Ted Cruz and Ted Cruz much more easily than Donald Trump. Donald Trump, of the big three at the moment, he's the least likely to defeat Hillary Clinton. Is everybody wrong in saying that? Because, of course, that's what everybody is still saying. Yeah, I don't really trust those polls. First of all, you guys know that

the theory that I put out back in August, for goodness sakes, on the Democratic side is that Hillary Clinton is not going to be the nominee because President Obama is basically taking her out with this FBI investigation. So I don't believe these head-to-head polls amount to a hill of beans right now because I don't think she's going to be the nominee. Neither, by the way, will Bernie Sanders. But that's a conversation for another day. I think Donald Trump, I think his crossover appeal is vastly understated. I can't tell you, and I know it's anecdotal, but I can't tell you how many times people come up to me and tell me that they're lifelong Democrats,

they're union guys, my doormen, my car mechanic, people who say, look, I've voted Democrat my whole life, but I like Trump, I'm voting for Trump. And when I say why, they say because he's talking about the two issues that directly affect my livelihood, illegal immigration and trade, particularly with China. These are the two things that directly threaten my economic security and the nation's security. And I like what he says. I like he says what's on his mind. He's not always graceful about it, but I don't care. I like Trump. So it may be, and who knows if he's going to be the nominee, but if he is, I think that he actually have the potential to pull in the old mcfinnan

reagan democrats union guide people who voted democrat their whole life and put into play state that have never been put into play before like new york like pennsylvania you know some of the hardcore blue date i think trump might be able to make them more competitive. Got it. Rob Long, I believe that you have. Oh, hey.

Monica. Hey, Rob. New York. How are you? Hi. Great. I have two questions. One is sort of larger about the mood of the country. But before we get to that, let me ask you, have we ever had a candidate like Trump who was this emotionally unstable?

Do you know what I mean? Like the tweets and the crazy – the mood swings, the accusations that then drop back and the friends and he makes – he's mad at Fox and he's making friends with them. Doesn't that all seem alarming to you, or am I just old-fashioned? Well, you're not. You're a little old school, but I completely get it because a lot of people feel this way. Look, we've never had a candidate that, I wouldn't use the phrase emotionally unstable, I would use the phrase volatile. And I would use the phrase brutally honest. Brutally honest. We've never had a candidate like this. We've never seen anything like this. And that's a huge part of his appeal. People are so sick of politicians. They're so sick

of being BS'd to death. They're so sick of being BS'd to death. They're so sick of the establishment and being told one thing, and then they get to Washington and they do something else. They're sick of it. And especially on the Republican side, a lot of voters think, okay, we have trusted the Republican Party, such as it is, for a long time, and we have sent Republicans to Washington washington in wave elections 2010 2014 took the senate took the house and we sent them there for two reasons one to stop barack obama's radical agenda and two to advance a conservative one and with the exception of ted cruz and some others they have not done it so the attitude now is i don't really care what donald trump says on

twitter or how he rants We're going to try something completely different, y'all, and we're going with Donald Trump. Yeah, okay, but every time a business executive has been in government, they almost always say the same thing, which is, God, it's impossible to get anything done. It's hard. You can't fire people. You can't simply order a wall to be built. You can't – lots of things you can't do, lots of things you can only do when you deal and negotiate and persuade, all of those things, by the way, Donald Trump is a master at. But that doesn't seem to be what the people are electing him to do.

They're not electing him to be a better dealmaker, to go in there and craft legislation that's a compromise, they're, as you say, they want to blow up the system. So it just seems to me like the President Donald Trump is going to have a miserable first 100 days. That could very well be. And this is part of my issue with Trump. And I have been one of the few national conservatives who has actually been supportive of him. I haven't endorsed anybody.

That's right. But I get the movement and I get the phenomenon. And I've been out there on Fox and elsewhere explaining what the phenomenon is because so many on our side don't get it. And I've been trying to explain the appeal of Trump and why he's doing so well. The thing that bothers me is the deal-making thing. So when he says, well, I'll get to Washington and I'll work across the... No! I mean, conservatives going, no, we support you because we don't want you to make deals. We want you to go in and smash McConnell and smash Paul Ryan and smash the left and Harry Reid and whoever's going to succeed him in the

Senate. We don't want you making deals. So his message is working at cross-purposes, and this gets to who is he talking to. Is he getting advice that says, listen, your messaging is a little inconsistent here, and you might want to straighten that out? Does he listen to that? Is he even hearing that? I don't know.

Monica Crowley, we'll talk to you down the road, and when Hillary drops out, we'll have you straight on. Yeah, that's right. So you can remind us. I can't wait. You laid a market on that a long time ago. I think that's the most interesting prediction, most exciting prediction I've heard in months. I'll put money down on that for sure.

So who, Monica? Well, I hope I'm right. Me too. Okay, not Hillary, not Bernie. Who? We can't let you go unless we ask that one syllable. Who? Well, I'll tell you, at my column in August that went to the top of Drudge on this,

when I explained how Obama is going to take her out and why he's taking her out, I suggested that the Democratic ticket ultimately will be Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, for a whole variety of reasons. And I am now hearing that they are, in fact, getting Biden ready, and they're preparing that ticket. And, in fact, getting Biden ready. And they're preparing that ticket. And, in fact, when that column came out in The Washington Times and on Drudge last August, saying Biden-Warren was going to be the ticket, within 36 hours, guys, Drudge had a screaming headline, Biden meets in secret with Elizabeth Warren. Got it. So I think I'm pretty much running the Democratic ticket.

You are, yeah. From my little apartment in New York City. Good for you. Good for you. So at what point, when does it become too late for Joe? Is there some date by which he has to make a decision? No, it's never too late because both parties do not have a nominee until their conventions in July and August. And both parties can basically rip up all the rules and do whatever they want.

And remember, we're dealing with Democrats here. Barack Obama, they just do whatever they want. So they can rip up all the rules and introduce another candidate whenever they please. Oh, what a year. Give our regards to Gotham, and thanks for being on the show. We'll talk to you later. Always my pleasure. Thanks, guys.

You know, Hillary gave an interview the other day where they asked her, attempting to humanize the hillbilly, asked her about her granddaughter, and she referred to her granddaughter as the creme de la resistance, which is an interesting new locution, the creme de resistance. And I was just wondering exactly how that would taste or whether it's a dessert or a floor wax or a topping or something like that. You skim off the top of the resistance and you get the creme of the resistance. And if you slathered it over your face and tried to shave with it, would it fight the blade? No.

Not if it was a Harry's blade because a Harry's blade can just go through anything whatsoever. Now, you're not going to have a creme de resistance with a Harry product. You're going to have the most wonderful facial emollient you can imagine that will encourage a great gliding, shaving experience because you know the story. They bought themselves a factory in Germany. It's a century old, making the best, finest, greatest blades ever in the history of mankind. And those blades are brought directly to you at a price that says, there ain't no middleman going on here. So what you have to do then is go to harrys.com slash ricochet,

and you will find a coupon code that will give you $5 off what's already an extremely low price. You get the starter kit, and you will get an introduction to the Harry's product, which just isn't the blade, and it's just not the shave cream, and it's just not the gel or the aftershave lotion or the peppermint exfoliant that you can get as well. It's details like the feel of the blade, the razor itself in your hand, the way it's weighted. And you realize you've been going to the store

and buying these cheap plastic things that feel weightless. You've been spending far too much money on blades you get from Target or Walmart or the drugstore or wherever. You'll get a quality product at a great price and you will feel manly, dare I say it, when you shave. And I'm still waiting to hear from some women about how the Harry's products happen to work in their cams. I'll bet it's just as good. Harry's.com slash ricochet. That's Harry's.com slash ricochet.

Gentlemen, say something because for some reason my browser has locked up because it tells me that my Flash player is out of date. As it always is. No, interesting. Here's the question I was going to ask Monica and I know she had to run. And we hear about,

actually, I don't think Peter and I have talked about this, anger or dissatisfaction or unease. and that's what I really think about socialism. The reason socialism is popular, when it becomes popular, is when a people surrender the future. When they say the future is going to be kind of worse or certainly isn't going to get any better. So what we have to do is we have to start apportioning and and rationing out stuff which means um you got to take care of me i i'm nervous about the i'm not i'm nervous about my old age uh i don't have any more ambition anymore that there are things to get good and cool and new and fresh i believe that

we're all kind of in a slow decline socialism makes sense to me because um we're all we're going to share everything and nothing is going to get better. That's kind of I think the psychosis behind socialism. And then the twin psychosis behind it is fat cats run everything. They get their – more than their fair share. The system is rigged, all sorts of things you hear from Bernie and from a lot of Trump voters. My question is really the latter. Are they right?

The system is rigged. There's not the slightest doubt about it. And if you want – excuse me. Look, I'm a Monica child. I'm angry. I'm angry. If you want – But who are you angry at?

I'll tell you who I'm angry at. I'll give you an example of a way in which the system is rigged and in which we all know it's rigged and we've become numb to it. GE just moved – just announced that it's going to move its corporate governments across the country and saying, who's going to buy me off? Who's going to screw his own taxpayers to the greatest extent on behalf of GE? That should not be – this is like getting an apartment in Moscow in the old days. Who do you pay off? How do you cut the special deal?

You know that GE got better terms from the city fathers of Boston than you could or than I could if we were starting. If we wanted office space in Ricochet, do you think we go to the city fathers and negotiate? Not a chance. If you're big enough, you get to cut a deal. That's wrong. It should not be that way. By the way, nothing against GE. I love it.

Oh, no, no, no. If I were Jeff Immelt, the chairman of GE or the CEO of GE, I would have done a business. But presumably the argument there was. As they exist, but the rules are rotten. Presumably the argument there was, give us a deal so we move to your city and bring all these employees here. And you're a big employer. That's the deal. Right. That's the deal that it always gets cut. If you're an NFL owner, you go around and you try to shake down municipalities to build you a new stadium. This is always the rationale and it works one time in three, maybe. Maybe, yeah.

The taxpayer is ripped off most of the time. No, I agree with that. But I guess what I mean when I say the system is rigged, I really mean more a gigantic social system that is rigged for people at the top to stay at the top and is rigged so that we hire each other. We know each other. We're a tiny little cloistered group. If you go to DC – I mean Tucker Carlson wrote a very good piece about this in defense of Trump in Politico, and he really did describe this town, the town of DC as this strange, incestuous little bubble where people's brothers and brothers-in-law and sisters and parents and children all kind of work together in this enterprise of the federal government. And it doesn't really matter what side you're on because you're a good guy. I know that guy.

Yeah, it all works that way. As you recall very well, Rob, a couple of years ago when we were asking him to invest in Ricochet, which he did and God bless him for it, and we met Rupert Murdoch in Washington, jumped into a car to drive someplace and he looked out the – he just stared out the window as you drove and then he turned around and said to us, this is a boom town. Washington was booming. The rest of the country was – Richest city, richest county in the country, right? Absolutely right. There is – I mean details to follow but you can smell the rottenness in the air.

That is wrong. It should not be that way. The system is rigged. So if the system is rigged, how do you – I don't know that my own – when it comes to anger, I share the impulse to send somebody there who's going to begin by breaking furniture. I'm just not sure that the Donald's going to know what to do next. But what does that mean? I wonder what does that mean when people say he's going to go bust it up?

What does that mean? Actually, what are the what are two or three things that the the president United States can actually do? That will do that. We've set up the chief executive. So there actually, there aren't, I mean, there aren't that many things he can do unilaterally. Correct. Correct. It's true. There are 2 million federal employees, another couple of million people who work in one way or another for the armed services, 435 members of the house, a hundred members of the Senate, nine justices on the Supreme Court. It is really hard to affect change.

That's why you want to look for somebody who's putting together panels of advisors who actually know how that town works. This is very, very – this is sort of the catch-22. To get any – to change anything, you have to play by rules that look old-fashioned, that look as though you're already – Designed to slow progress, designed to hinder the very kind of chair-breaking, table-flipping, third-act drama that people seem to be demanding. I mean it's sort of tragic in a way because there's – I mean the most unhappy person in America will be President Donald Trump on day seven. It's going to be a drumbeat of what he can't get done. People seem to think that there's any system devised by humans that does not result in a sort of managerial class. There just isn't. You can find a small you can find a nice little small town somewhere that is idealistic as possible

but anything this large is going to result in a managerial class. The question is its composition and its attitude toward the rest of the country. So you can't blow up that thing up. You can try but what you're going to get is the same damned thing. And if it's the

existence of an elite class that you're objecting to, well, just wait because another one is coming right along down the pike. Now, you mentioned GE, and now you have nothing against GE. I bear GE a little bit animus for doing as damned hard as they could to get rid of our good old incandescent light bulbs and replace them with deadly CFLs. And now GE is saying, you know what? We're facing out all of our CFL production

because LEDs are just so wonderful. Well, that's just great. That's magnificent. Thank you for once again manipulating the system to your advantage. And now you're going to say we should buy these things. What do I do with the ones that, you know, if I break an LED, I don't open every window in my house

and put on gas masks because they're full of mercury. They are? If I break a CFL. Unbelievable. The CFLs, yeah, oh, no, you can't throw those things in the trash. The CFLs are those little Dairy Queen-y looking things, the big curlicue stuff. Oh, I hate those.

And if you break one or if you want to dispose it, you have to take it with tongs down to the local disposal bin. And, of course, most people don't. Most people throw them right in the trash, which means we've probably got more mercury right now in the trash stream than we ever had before, thanks to progress, thanks to fear, thanks to GE, thanks

to crony capitalism. Thanks to environmentalists. Here's the other thing about what the young folks are getting today. I got an email from 8Tracks, which is an online music sharing organization. Rob, you seem to have grown there. I said, uh-oh, because I'm sensing, and I encourage you,

and I don't even mean to interrupt this, but I'm sitting down to enjoy what I think is going to be a wonderful, delicious rant. About 8-Tracks? No, 8-Tracks is quite wonderful. You upload music, and you can't listen to it in the same order twice. Somehow they get away with all of the copyright restrictions and the rest of it.

And it's a message from the company's CEO. And he says, hi there. In an unusual turn, I'm not writing today to suggest playlists. He's writing about me investing in his company. Here's the paragraph. This is aimed right at your millennial group. Under U.S. law, only wealthy individuals and venture capitalists have historically had the ability to invest in startups that interesting uh depending on yes startup i

suppose this changed last summer the jobs act now allows anyone to invest in private companies imagine that people millennials now anyone can invest in a private company somehow i think that he's just not telling you the whole story here. And on and on it goes. It's an interesting little letter. It makes you go and look at the jobs act itself, which indeed does allow for a little bit more minute investing by normal folks. And the letter itself was positioned exactly where I thought it would be. It was in the bin that I don't have to look at right away. There we are. It's a segue. Holy moly.

I'm like, you do this to me all the time. It's like this. It's like a fake out thing because now I want to talk about that email and the jobs act. And so we shall. But before I got to tell you, if this had been absolute junk, it would have gone to junk and I wouldn't have seen it. If this had been something that I needed to see right now, it would have been at the top of my list. But it's not something that I needed to see at that very moment, but wanted to get to. And that was the genius of SaneBox.

It knew. It put it where it wanted to be. Now, a lot of the conversations you have in email with new friends or old get to be big and onerous and just huge and wobbly conversations of 100, 500 letters. And you've got no time to talk to anybody about the things you wanted to do.

If that sounds like your email box, and it just might be, then SaneBox is the trick. SaneBox does the sifting for you. Diverge the trivial stuff into a separate folder so that all that's left are the emails that matter to you. Now listen to this for features. One click unsubscribe. Goodbye. See you later. Never again. The ability to snooze non-urgent emails and the ability to just put things in a black hole so you never hear from those people again. Your email productivity will go up 25%. So try it yourself.

Two free weeks of SaneBox. You can visit SaneBox.com slash Ricochet to start. You don't need a credit card at all. You can get $25 off a membership, which is the deepest discount you will find anywhere in the galaxy. Again, it's S-A-N-E-B-O-X.com slash Ricochet. So the JOBS Act, guys. Have you heard about this? This was something that apparently the Republicans got passed, right?

And it's a good thing, right? I thought they weren't doing anything, right? It used to be to invest, you had to be a qualified investor. You had to submit your tax returns to prove that you could absorb the losses. That's really what it was. I mean it was – it's one more regulation which came about because of lawsuits and then was I guess slightly lifted due to – like due to the fact that everybody was like throwing money into these Kickstarters, and Kickstarter couldn't give you a return. They would just give you a goodie or a product, one of the products they say they're going to

create or some kind of goodie. And so in general, it's not a bad idea, although it's still highly regulated, and I'll bet you there's five pages of tiny print on that email or five screens of it on that email disclaiming, saying this email is not a prospectus. This email we're sending you trying to get you to invest in our company is not an email trying to get you to invest in our company. That's usually what these things say. I'm looking at right now here.

Let's see. In tiny type, and I'm talking the type that is half the size used in 1962 to describe the returns of the Women's Softball League, okay, in the newspaper. A-Tracks is, quote, testing the waters, end quote, to gauge market demand from potential investors for an offering under Title II of Regulation A. No money or other consideration is being solicited and if sent in response, it will be accepted. No offer of sales to the security will be made or committed to purchase except in the qualification of the operating statement by the Securities and Exchange Commission and approval of any other required government or regulatory agency. The application of interest made by the prospective investor that is non-binding involves no obligation or commitment of any time to make an investment or any deal currently testing the waters of the Seed Invest platform.

The company must first register and qualify both the state and federal regulators. Member FDIC. Something like that, right? They all have to say that. It's like these pharmaceutical ads with a list of side effects that are just incredibly terrifying. But right. They have to do that. Although in general, it's probably not a bad idea and the truth is millennials, the lower – the younger quadrant of millennials tend to be a huge saving generation.

They are a saving group, a cohort. Their economic activity sort of matches that of their – Because they're terrified of investing. Is that it? They want it under the mattress? No, no, no. They just save. They are savers, which we haven't seen for 50, 60 years as a generation.

Why? There has to be a reason. I think the reason – I mean who knows the reason. I think one of the reasons is because they are the generation that was turfed out of college in the teeth of a recession, and they're the generation that probably has the young person's perspective on the old person's anger. That's one of the reasons why I think they like Bernie so much is because Bernie is like, OK, well, you'll get all the cool stuff, but everybody's going to pay for it. And now you don't have to worry about all these other things you worry about. That's what socialism tells you. Socialism says basically all the stuff you worry about, we're going to take care of, and what you're left with is your allowance, and, 40 years, all the stuff that's fun, the candy in your

life, your smartphone and your TV and your computer and all the toys, the things that make your life fun, the price of those has plummeted. The price of everything that makes your life not fun that you need, education, healthcare, childcare, adult care now. I mean if you're 30 or 40, you're worried about your parents now. That's all zoomed almost to multiples of five or ten. I mean it has not kept pace with inflation. It has outpaced inflation by a factor. So if you are a young person, if you're under 40 and you're looking at the future, your future is going to be filled with fun little toys that you can go and you can buy. And that's your discretionary income.

And the rest of it you want the government to pay for because that's too scary to think about. Well, quite soon, Joe Biden will rip out those hair plugs and let himself go gray and wispy. And as he's slotted in there to replace Hillary, he'll look like Bernie and everybody will be happy because they're convinced that goodness and lightness can only follow. Hey, goodness and lightness now concludes here because we're done. This podcast was brought to you gratefully by the great courses, insanebox.com and harrys.com.

Go to all those places. Use the coupon code Ricochet. Save money, live better. And, of course, we thank Ricochet itself for existing. We advise you to go to the Ricochet store for plenty of our branded swag. And we invite you to join. It's cheap, it's easy, and you get access to all sorts of things like

the member feed, for one, which is the life of the party, 24-7. Peter, Rob, to our guests, everyone, thank you, and we'll see everybody at the comments at Ricochet 2.0. Next week. Next week, fellas. I had a hammer. I hammered in the mall. I A hammer in the mall

A hammer in the inn All over this land A hammer out in church A hammer out of war And a hammer by the light Between my brothers and my sisters All over this land If I had a bell

I'd ring it in the mall I'd ring it in the evening All over this land I'd ring in the evening All over these lands I ring out danger I ring out a warning, yeah I ring out my love Between my brothers and my sisters All over these lands Ricochet

Join the conversation Ricochet. Join the conversation. In the church, I sing out a warning, yeah. I sing about love between my brothers and my sisters. All over this land. We will raise taxes. Yes, we will.