The Ricochet Podcast - Happy Family

Episode Date: May 19, 2017

Another slow news week…yawn. Uh, no. With so much to talk about, we present another super-sized Ricochet Podcast clocking in at just under 90 minutes. We’ve got our pal David French, who wants us to Stop Making Terrible Arguments for Blind Loyalty. That’s followed by two Ricochet members (that’d be Robert McReynolds and Max Ledoux) who wants us to give the President the benefit of the doubt at... Source

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of our country will be forgotten no longer. Are you going to send me or anybody that I know to a camp? We have people that are stupid. You're saying President Trump is under attack by the deep state intelligence community. Fair statement. Mr. Gorbachev teared down this wall. It's the Ricochet podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. Today, David

French from the National Review and two Ricochet members talking Trump. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast number 353. And we've made it this long because we've got great sponsors like Bowling Branch. The right sheets can take your sleep and your style to the next level. And with Bowling Branch, that upgrade has never been more affordable. If you go to bowlinbranch.com, that's spelled B-O-L-L, and branch.com, you'll use the promo code RICOCHET to get $50 off your first set of sheets.

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Now, Away Travel's luggage is designed with highest quality materials, and it's still under $300. And for $20 off that, go to awaytravel.com slash ricochet and use the promo code ricochet during your checkout. Is that the end of the commercial pitches? Oh, no, but this one is right up your alley if you are a shirker, a wrecker, a kulak, or any of those other people to whom we can point and say, you are the cause for the downfall of, well, I can't say downfall

because it hasn't fallen down, but we want to keep it up. We want to keep it propped up. And that's why Rob is here to tell you about an incredible deal for joining Ricochet. Thank you, James. This is Rob Long, one of the co-founders of Ricochet, along with Peter Robinson, who's also here with us today. You know, I've been trying to get you to be members of Ricochet for years and years and years.

And a lot of you have, and a lot of you have not. And a lot of you who have not been members of Ricochet keep saying, well, why would I be a member of Ricochet not and a lot of you who have not been members of ricochet keep saying well why would i be a member of ricochet it's a conversation site i don't really want to join or post or you know comment or any of that stuff okay so what so podcast listeners we are we've created a membership just for you there's a special tier you can join ricochet for just two dollars and 50 cents a month that'll support the site and keep the lights on and the business running. For $2.50 a month,

you can read the whole site, including the member feed. You can comment on podcast posts if you want. You don't have to. And this is for all the people who tell us, hey, I listen to podcasts.

I want to support Ricochet, but I'm never going to write a post. I don't want to be a real member at the higher level. Okay, we called your bluff. If you're one of those multitudes and you want to support Ricochet, please do. $2.50 a month is not a lot. It's not too much to ask. If you enjoy these podcasts, if you're listening to me right now, I think you and I both know that you should be a member of Ricochet at the podcast listener tier. Now, here's the secret.

The secret is that I know, we all know, that when you join, you'll be a podcast listener tier member for a while. But eventually, you're going to want to post or comment or join a conversation. And then you're going to bump yourself up. That's the way American business works. That's why we have a civilization that works. That's why we're the greatest country on earth. You know it. I know it.

Let's get this show on the road. Stop putting it off. All kidding aside, we really actually do need you to join. We really do. So please do it today. Well, you've made two assertions there that some people might quibble with. One, that we're the greatest country in the world, and two, that we have an economy in a country that works. Peter, there are those who believe that neither of those things are true,

that Sweden's better, and there are other countries that do a better job of caring for people. Our problem is the swamp. The swamp needs to be drained. Is Joe Lieberman a sign of swamp draining, or is Joe Lieberman a sign of swamp draining or is Joe Lieberman a sign that the pool of available people in Washington can probably fit into the ballroom of the Marriott? Has Joe Lieberman been named? Has he passed the rumor stage? I am speaking to you from Hanover, New Hampshire, where I'm visiting my alma mater, Dartmouth College, where I've spent the last two days speaking to kids who are studying politics and history and the writing and rhetoric program about a speech that I wrote 30 years ago. And so I have to start telling them to just run as far away as possible.

Emphasis on history. We're talking about the 80s, the 70s, the 60s, even the 50s. And so I've been in and out of classrooms, buoyed up by two things. One, I have not been reading the news. And two, oh, smart kids are just such a delight. They ask such good questions. There's such shiny new coins of the whole future ahead of them. So Joe Lieberman, I gather there's a rumor that Joe Lieberman might be named the next FBI director. I would take him in a minute. Lieberman is a liberal on certain issues, but he's certainly been an honorable, completely honorable man as best as I can tell. And I would take him – and he's a deeply trained lawyer.

He knows about law enforcement. I'd take him in a minute. Does that answer your question? Yes, it does. And then some. Rob, how about you? The reason I mean, yeah, well, it is because I mean, people are pointing out that Lieberman worked for a law firm that had ties to Trump. And this is not an example of Maverick coming in. New broom sweeps clean. But this is an example of the incestuous nature of Washington, unless such things are just absolutely unavoidable in that town. Well, yeah, the town, D.C., swamp, all that stuff, I find that all profoundly dumb, all that language. It's dumb, and it carries with it this umbrella term that somehow the new guy coming in is going to be able to do things differently.

And what they mean is he's not going to have to compromise. He's not going to have to twist arms. He's not going to have to bribe, cajole, cut and trim and do things probably that he didn't expect to have to do. And if that's the who you want as president, you don't want a president. You want a dictator. And you don't want a president as envisioned by the founding fathers. You don't want a presidency as envisioned by the Constitution of the United States. And it is incredibly, incredibly attractive to envision a chief executive like that. People do it all the time, and that is why we have the Constitution, to prevent exactly that.

The swap, the way people describe it sometimes, and certainly the way the Trump administration is describing it now, is a constitutionally designed thing. Yes, Rob, you're one of those vellum fetishists that doesn't understand that in a post-constitutional, post-Flight 93 election season, it is time for our own brand of Caesarism, right? But I can't tell. We need – Are you arguing? Are you using but i can't we don't we we need we need we need are you arguing are you are you are you using i mean i don't know are you being serious are you being disingenuous are you using somebody's argument ironically i don't or are you interrupting before i made my final point okay that is definitely true that is because i don't believe that obviously i think

everything that i've said and written means that i don't believe it but we were told prior to the That is without doubt true. Caesarism is inevitable and therefore the Caesar should be our kind of guy. And the Gordian not cut are the man who does things. But we have an executive that is constrained on all sides and can do more than issue executive orders unless he learns to govern and compromise. So Peter, I'll ask you then. Do we see signs that we're going to have an administration that compromises and governs and does the things that they usually do? Or is there still going to be the demand for the swamp to be cleared and the stables to be shoveled out, et cetera? I read it as follows. Donald Trump actually did have more of a mandate than the numbers might have suggested. He lost the popular vote.

He won fairly significantly by the Electoral College, but still, as everybody has heard 100,000 times now, a shift of a simple 100,000 times now, a shift of a simple 100,000 votes redistributed among three states and Hillary Clinton would have been president. Still in all, I believe he did have a mandate because although there was no consensus about what should be done, there was a general consensus in the country that something had to be done. The economy had been growing too slowly for too long.

The government was too large and too bureaucratic. And had Trump taken seriously the notion of the first 100 days, that is to say, when you have political capital, when you have the mandate still with you, and had he filled out his administration, sorted out an agenda, and moved on it with dispatch and professionalism, and no nonsense about draining the Trump, but a deep understanding of the way Washington actually works, he could have gotten something done. That's over. We now have a mess on our hands.

But just as Rob said, this is a constitutionally mandated mess. The federal government is as big as it is because this democratic nation has decade in and decade out elected politicians who spend more and more and more money. It's not anything that was done to us. We did it ourselves. The only way to undo it is by constitutional processes. And it is still possible that Donald Trump will get his act together and go out, but he's certainly lost any momentum. We are now in for a hard slog at best. Well, Rob, isn't the truth that he can will get his act together and go out. But he's certainly lost any momentum. We are now in for a hard slog at best. Well, Rob, isn't the truth that he can't get these things done is because the deep state and the media, the lying media,

have combined instantly to oppose him and defeat him and blunt his every move? Well, I mean, look, he faces a uniformly hostile media, but so did George W. Bush, so did Ronald Reagan. The whining from this administration has got to be off the charts. And yes, there is the deep state. It's all grandiose with the Trump side. It's always like the grandiose talk has really become the style now. But yeah, there's a bureaucratic ossified bureaucracy that doesn't like anything. But what has he tried to do?

Reagan at least tried to cut stuff. And that's what they argued. If you're old, you're old and I'm old and Peter's old. And if you're not as old as us, you can't remember. But if I say ketchup is a vegetable, those four words mean something to old people. And what they mean is that Ronald Reagan, big, meanie Ronald Reagan, tried to cut the budget for the Department of Education. And what the liberals and Democrats decide to do is hang on on his head the idea that in the new federal guidelines, ketchup would be considered a vegetable under the school lunch program,

which was, of course, a distortion, which, of course, was not true, but was a very, very useful thing to say if you wanted to attack a president who was actually trying to cut the budget. He was trying to cut the budget. This president isn't trying to do anything. There is no policy they're trying to stymie. They just don't like him. He's not moving in any direction. He's not on offense to do or he has on deck because there is it is a clown car down in washington dc and he's driving it i mean at this point it's such a failure it's such a a monstrous chaotic nightmare down there that the bureaucracy and the deep state seem like a relief they seem like professionals at least the trains will run on time i mean here's my example you have now people saying and you have conservatives saying oh what the hell let's just have a single payer because

the alternative is too confusing he's made and and the Republicans have made such a hash of it with their repeal and replace and all the nonsense they weren't prepared for, that we are going to have – the irony is that all these people who voted for Donald Trump because they hated Obama and Obamacare so much, of CNN and the elements, and it remained there long after the reference had been remembered by anybody. So you would have future generations walking up to it and scratching their head and not knowing exactly why that statement was there. But you're absolutely right, Ron. Oh, for the days of yore, when that was the sort of scandal and meanness that they could uh that they could tar the administration also it was legitimate too i mean he was trying to cut the budget

so it was a i mean it was a lie he wasn't trying to feed people ketchup and say it was a vegetable but he was trying to cut the budget there was a budget that he proposed and it was smaller so i mean he was trying to do he was trying to do x they were against x so they lied about it i don't know is trump trying to cut the department of education i don't know doesn't seem like it um well we were told that a variety of these things were going to be cut uh the i mean let's be fair here let's be this i want this to turn into a predictable screed against trump we've got a couple of people coming up later who are going to defend him. And frankly, you know, that's going to bring some balance to the show here.

But the the idea that we OK, it's the executive orders that have gotten things done, right? It's not any law that's passed through Congress. Have there has there been anything presented to Congress for them to pass? I mean, sometimes it would be great to think of Congress as having all of these options that they're about to deal with. And some of they are going to some will run with some go back to committee. This one stays. This one doesn't. It's kind of like that feeling you have when you get a box from bomb fail and you spread everything out in the bed and you realize that's perfect. Those jeans, I'm not so sure this jacket. Whoa. And when you do that, you realize that they is perfect. Those jeans, I'm not so sure. This jacket, whoa.

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You know him, right? Senior writer for National Review, senior fellow at National Review Institute, an attorney, a vet, and a man who set up a server in Iraq to play World of Warcraft, among other things. One of our favorite friends. And we bring him back here to the podcast to – well, there's been some stuff going on, David, legally and otherwise, and you have been keen to hop over the corner and remind people to have some perspective but also that this is not the slam dunk that some Trump defenders say that it is, that there actually may be problems down the road with the Comey memo, whatever it says. Yeah, absolutely there might be problems. I mean, let's break it down. You can't tunnel vision on this one incident. I would say that the memo don't constitute obstruction of justice.

They don't even constitute an order to stop the case, to stop the investigation. They express a presidential preference that he do it, not an order to do it. So there's not obstruction of justice. Now, the problem comes when you put that in context of a larger story. And if the larger story is, well, the president expressed a preference that the investigation be dropped. He gets increasingly angry as the investigation continues. He fires the FBI director and then at least initially in the first 24 to 48 hours is deceptive about the reason. Then you're getting a lot warmer in getting closer to that obstruction territory. And it's the whole story.

But a lot of people tunnel vision on the memo and they go, oh, that memo is not obstruction of justice. That memo isn't evidence of by itself of destruction of justice. Well, they're right about that. It's not by itself. The question is, what's the larger story? And that's the larger story. Frankly, we don't know yet. There's just a lot of rumor and unsourced allegations, and we haven't even seen the memos yet. So we have to just wait and see. Hey, David, it's Rob Long. I am not traditionally in this position of being a Trump defender, but I mean, come on. Like I read the notes that Comey made. He's just a guy. Trump's just a guy saying, come on, he's my friend. Go easy on him, can't you? This is, I mean, this all seems like people who don't mean, look, he's a deeply unpopular, widely unpopular president. Maybe the most widely unpopular president we've had, I mean, in a long time. And they're just picking at him. I mean, look, there are plenty of things I don't like about Trump,

but this seems like ridiculous small potatoes nonsense. Well, you know, I would say if the whole story, all of it, was, look, he had this meeting with Comey and this is what he said. Oh, could you see your way clear? Then, yeah, I'm with you. If that's the whole story, if that's all there is. Yeah. I mean, so what? I mean, it's improper. It's improper. I mean, that should not say that. Well, guess what? Yeah. But President Trump is going to be improper. Yeah, yeah. But so that's what I said about tunnel visioning. So there's the larger context. Well, he asked the attorney general and the vice president to leave the room before he says, hey, let's not – could you see your way clear to dropping this investigation or Flynn's a good guy, whatever the exact words were. So he asked the AG and the VP to leave the room. Well, that indicates that he knows what he's about to say is not exactly kosher.

But even that, even that, that's the whole story. It's still improper, but it's not DEFCON 1 like that Twitter reached on the day this was announced. But then you loop it into the termination and of the FBI director. Then you loop it into the deception following the termination. And I'm telling you, uh, as a litigator, you put that story together in front of that.

That's how you construct a story for a jury. I am not looking at like a news cycle. I am. I am not blindly low. I don't know. Peter wants to jump in here a minute, but I'm not blindly loyal to this president by any means. And I again, we should talk a little bit of blind loyalty and the problems of blind loyalty coming up. I could probably poke holes in that prosecution. The idea – my idea of hellish punishment is to try to get a prosecutor to prove intent in anything that Donald Trump does. Right. Right.

David, if I'm – Peter here, if I may. May I kind of – just a few questions here. First of all, we have Comey's memo. That makes it Comey's word against Trump. Nobody else was in the room. And there is the very good question that if Comey thought this was improper, let alone obstruction of justice, why didn't Comey report it to the Justice Department or even resign there and then on the spot. The Wall Street Journal argues this morning that this is typical Comey behavior, typical Comey drew up a memorandum, very one-sided, very much favoring himself in whatever actually took place and filed it away as protection against the evil hour,

which is now upon us. And Comey is leaking. He hasn't released the memo. And then item two, of course, we have Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, who wrote a memorandum, which is, I'm not a lawyer, but as far as I can tell, it was calmly, carefully reasoned, and it drew up a very compelling case for dismissing James Comey. So you've got, he said, he said, on the memos, which are now being leaked and serious questions about Comey's behavior. and as to the dismissal of Comey, good reasons for doing so. What do you make of all that? Well, a couple of things. Number one, again, the memos as described don't make the case that Trump told him to drop the case.

They make the case that he made a strongly implied that that's what he would like to see happen. They're not an instruction. But let me take issue with one thing that you said about he said, he said, and this is coming from the standpoint of a person who's litigated a lot of cases in my day. There's a he said, he said, which is two people that are relay remembering conversations that occurred months ago or weeks ago then there's he said he said where one person took actually created a memorandum right after the conversation that's evidence gold in a in a typical litigation now evidence platinum is an actual tape recording that's that's evidence platinum and we don't know if that exists or not but evidence gold is a

contemporaneous recollection that was recorded at the time. Yeah, it can be self-serving. But what that Comey was going to be fired before he drafted the memo. So – and Trump contradicted the reasons for – the reasons outlined in the memo in his own thinking for firing Comey. So what you have with the memo is a classic case of what's called pretext. And so what you've done is you've taken a termination that might be able to be justified on one grounds, but you fired him on other grounds and put forward the pretext as the reason. And again, that's something that when you begin to look at this whole story in context, now that's when it begins to be more problematic. And then when you back up and you look at other things, such as, for example, it's now emerging that Flynn's ties, for example, to Turkey were deeper than were known at the time. And that might have influenced a policy decision made.

And when that's – and this is going against the background of his firing. And so how much did the White House know about how in deep Flynn was with Turkey? And so then you say, well, now I'm beginning to see why you would want it dropped, not just because he's a good guy, but because the guy's rotten. It's going to be bad and embarrassing when he just kind of lurches from one thing to the other. The question is, would he permit that defense to be his defense? He likes to be seen as a mastermind. One is simply – I guess I'm going to ask if I'm understanding it correctly. The recourse that the special prosecutor has full subpoena powers. He's going to have – who knows what the budget is, but nobody is going to tell a special prosecutor, no, you can't have as much money as you'd like. So he has full subpoena powers. He has as much time as he wants.

He has all the money that he wants, and he can do anything that he wants, which is why we're all agreed, separate matter, but we're all agreed with Justice Scalia that special prosecutors are a bad idea. Nevertheless, we've got one. criminal behavior on the part of the president is a to the press he can just freeze this country with a series of leaks keeping the press in a state of hysteria or b what happens if he behaves more properly than that he files a secret finding with the house of representatives the constitutional remedy for dealing with a chief executive who's capable who is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors is exactly one, impeachment, which must begin in the House of Representatives. How do you see the special prosecutor? What is his actual recourse if he finds culpable behavior?

Yeah, well, I guess it depends on who committed the culpable behavior. I mean, obviously, if, say, Michael Flynn violated federal statutes in his dealings with Turkey or failures to report this or that, then there's an obvious criminal recourse. If it's a political matter involving the president, I think what you would then have is you would have a special counsel issue a report, much like Kenneth Starr, who was an independent counsel under a different legal regime, issued a report. And so you issue a report, and then once that report hits Congress, then Congress can decide what to do with it. The House of Representatives can ignore it, use it as a basis for that one single action that they can take. It can be a subject of political

debate in the next election. But I think that what you would see come out of this is at the very least a report that offers at least as much as we can get a comprehensive accounting of what happened and who knew what when. And it could very well be that that report says there was no collusion between anyone on Trump and on Trump's team in Russia, because amongst all the sound and fury right now, there's no evidence that's emerged yet in all these blizzards of anonymous leaks that there has been any collusion. And I think that's an important point to to emphasize. I agree. And I don't think there was any collusion you're going to find between Trump and the Russians. I think it's all going to be a dry hole. And I think that by then there will be something

else that they will move on to with remarkable nimble alacrity. And we'll be screaming just as loud about that as they are about this. It's an extraordinary time. David, thanks so much. We'll see you on Twitter. We'll see you at the corner. We'll see you on the New York Times bestseller list the next time you sit down and write a book, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's a big assumption to make. But you will see me on Twitter. I can promise you that.

Well, get going. Well, get going. Get to work. What are you doing? It's God Weigh Street. I'm on a podcast. Thanks, David. Thank you, guys.

That's how it's going to be, right? I mean, when this is all over, does anybody think that the left is going to say, well, we gave it a shot. Turns out we were wrong. We'd best sit down now and see what this fellow has to say for the next couple of years. Of course not. I mean, they're going to be screaming this until actually. It doesn't help, really, of course, that we have an administration that seems to aid them. I was talking to somebody the other day and saying, do you remember when when Trump gave the speech, the state of the union?

Remember that, guys? I'm asking you, Peter. I do. Yeah. Looking for reliable IT solutions for your business and innovate. We are the IT solutions people for businesses across ireland from network security to cloud productivity we handle it all installing managing supporting and reporting on your entire it and telecoms environment so you can focus on what really matters growing your business whether it's communications or security innovate has you covered visit innovate today innovate the IT solutions people. Yes, yes, that was the one good speech, I thought.

Right, and everybody said it was the greatest speech ever made in the chamber, and there was that time. Do you remember what happened the next weekend? Oh, he tweeted crazy things, as I recall. Do you remember what he tweeted? No, I don't. Rob? No, I can't. Rob? No, I can't.

Isn't that fascinating, though? It was the tweet, I believe, about Obama wiretapping him. Oh, yeah, right, right, right. Which just completely blew everything that had been accumulated off the face of the earth by that tweet, which we

now don't even remember because it's been replaced by more, which is why I say that no matter what, no matter what happens to the Russian investigation down the road, it's going to be something else. And he will have abetted it. And he just I know the guy only sleeps like four hours a night, but somebody ought to just barge in at five o'clock and slap the phone out of his hands and say, get some rest. And, you know, you can get rest, though, because there's three words. What if his sheets are no good?

You know, like sometimes his sheets are no good? Sometimes the sheets are scratchy. I don't know. I wish there was a solution to that. You mean scratchy as in uncomfortable? Uncomfortable. You mean like fitted sheets that are difficult? You know sometimes how you need two people to put on fitted sheets and it's still going to be a trouble? I hate that so much.

There's no solution to that. We just have to live with that james well i was going to say that when you have two people put on a sheet that you need uh the other person working in concert with you as opposed to uh you know putting on the wrong end or doing it upside down or otherwise trying to make your life miserable uh in which case you're just better off doing it yourself yourself but no matter what will you have help or not well it's the quality of the sheet that really counts because there's three important words for getting a good night's sleep, and that's comfortable, comfortable, and comfortable. If you want the best sleep of your life, you need to be comfortable, and that's what sleeping

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when you use the promo code RICOSHET. That's $50 off the U.S. shipping right now at BolanBranch.com, spelled B-O-L-L and Branch.com, promo code RICOSHET. BolanBranch.com, promo code Ricochet. BolanBranch.com, promo code Ricochet. And now we've got members from Ricochet itself, people who are in the pro- Trump camp, people who feel as though, well,

why should I sum it up? I'll let them tell it. We've got Max Ledoux, I'm not sure I'm pronouncing that correctly, and Robert McReynolds. Max has been a member of Ricochet since 2011 and joined the staff of Ricochet in 2015. He oversees the technical aspects of the site and responds to member support requests and writes the occasional post. Robert is a young husband working as a defense contractor in Washington, D.C.

He's part of the All Source Intelligence Analyst, served five years in the Navy, took a Master of Arts in International Affairs at Catholic University of America, and seeks to defend his country and his family from enemies, foreign and domestic. He's currently seeking a JD from Catholic University and has been a Ricochet member since 2014. Welcome, guys, to the podcast. Hey, Robert. It's Rob Long.

Thanks for joining us. No, thanks for having me, guys. So, okay, you're a Trump supporter. How's he doing? Okay, so we need to – there needs to be some clarification. Wait a minute. No, hold on, hold on. Yes, I voted for Trump, but I think it would be more accurate to characterize my support for him in the same way that I would characterize Mr. Robertson's support in that basically I didn't want Hillary Clinton picking Anthony Scalia's replacement.

That was my bottom line. And you can go back and you can go back and look at posts. Okay. Wait a minute. You and me, you and me both, Robert, you and me.

We're not on trial here. Nobody's on trial here. Okay. So it's then spent then by the, by the Peter Robinson standard, it's been a rip roar and success, right? It's been a rip-roaring success, right? I mean, this is great. There have been elements of the Trump presidency that I would point to to say, yeah, those are things that I would think are good news and that I would think that conservatives and folks at National Review ought to point to and say, hey, here's some stuff that we can get around. There are other things that I would point to as a what I like

to consider myself as a 1787 libertarian and say, no, this is not the way we need to be going. You and I are now having a high-minded conversation in a world, in a political world that is not high-minded. I give you Gorsuch. I like that. And you know, I mean, we're all members of Ricochet together, so you know how I feel and I know how you feel. We all know how Peter feels.

I think the guy was a dangerous lunatic, right? But I get to – the reason I get to say that is because he won. Okay. And because, you know, I'll just be honest here. I'm kind of, I don't have to defend him, right? I am, I'm not going to try to, I'm not going to break the ricochet code of conduct here, but I'm chicken, you know what? Not chicken salad, but you know what? The other one.

Right, right. Because I get to say all the mean things I can about Trump and I don't have to sit and defend President Hillary Clinton, right? Because I like the Gorsuch. I like Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch. That's great. I like Mattis. I like McMaster. I like all those guys, right? I'm not on board with those guys. I look at those guys as perpetuators of an American empire that's founded on a gross exaggeration of executive power in the United States. It's unconstitutional. That's where we differ. So this has got to be, so explain to me how, so just, I mean, then politically, how do you feel as a watcher of politics, how do you feel this administration's doing? I mean, is it going to satisfy you at the

end of the year or the end of four years if he makes it? Well, okay, to start with that question, I don't think so. I just think it's going to be a continuation of what we've seen my entire lifetime, and that is a continued expansion of federal government, the usurpation of power that was not delegated to it by the states in 1787. And we're just going to keep getting the same old, same old. Now, whether it would have been the same amount of same old, same old had Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, or any of the other 16 won, that's a debate to be had, sure. But it's still going to grow. Would it have grown as much as if Hillary Clinton had won the presidency?, sure, but it's still going to grow. Would it have grown as much as Hillary Clinton – if Hillary Clinton had won the presidency?

Probably not, but it's still going to grow. I mean it's still going to be the anathema to what I thought conservative ideology was against, and that is the wanton growth of a omnipotent – Rob, can I just wait? Can I? Of course. Go ahead. But what about Donald Trump made you think that he thought that way? This is a guy who had been a lifelong Democrat.

It's a guy who, in the first couple of debates, talked about how much he loved the single payer health program in scotland and canada this is a guy who's used every little the kilo of the eminent domain rule it's a guy who basically is a plutocrat who loved big government right and used all the levers he could and i will challenge you as one of the founders of ricochet to go through your website and find anywhere where i wrote that no i find anywhere where i wrote that don J. Trump is going to be the Thomas Jefferson of our generation. No, no, no. Listen, I would hate to put anybody on trial, as I said. I have no standing thought was that you were, I guess maybe I was misinformed,

because I thought you wanted to come on here to defend him. Okay, okay, I do want to defend him against the things that are going on in, say, the Washington Post and the New York Times that are being picked up by people and National Review without question and saying this is what we told you was going to happen. Because the things in the Washington Post and the New York Times, they're not factually correct. They're not accurate in any way. And, in fact, in some stories that they write, for instance, one of the most recent pieces in the Washington Post about divulging classified information to the Russians was contradictory in and of itself.

There were contradictory parts in that in that story. So the issue I have is not not necessarily, you know, we must rally around Trump no matter what, as Mr. French would have us believe in his most recent piece. But the issue I have is that the left, the left wing in this country that hates the United States with every fiber of their being is telling us why Trump sucks. And the right is looking without going anywhere below the surface and saying, yeah, Trump sucks. Let's get rid of him. That's what I can't stand. I cannot abide by that. Robert, Peter here. Rob, may I ask a question or two of you? Okay.

I'm sitting in a hotel room with a laptop, and my computer is not as powerful as it might be. Have you hit the mini bar? No, I haven't actually. Self-control this time around. Robert, you are an interesting guy. You're getting a JD at CU. That means you're smart. Well, I don't know how smart that means.

But you talked about the American presence in the world being much too big, and yet you served for five years in the most powerful military force in human history, the United States Navy. That's right. Did you feel a sort of cognitive dissonance your whole five years? powerful military force in human history, the United States Navy. That's right. Did you feel a sort of cognitive dissonance your whole five years? Was it during your five years that you came to the conclusion that American, that your experience, your thinking? Yes. Part of what you were asking cut out, but I think I caught the gist of it. No, my evolution as a conservative began when I turned 20 and seriously took a look at a pay stub and wondered where the hell is all my money going.

Found Rush Limbaugh on the radio. He starts talking about this guy named William F. Buckley. So I look into him, and the rest of him I could say is history. Come around 2006 – no, I'm sorry, 2004, 2005, I was working in a small mom-and-pop national Christian radio network in the newsroom, and this was around the time of Abu Ghraib in Iraq. And the newsroom is doing what I would have envisioned the newsroom in the New York Times is doing, and I said, you know what, I'm going to throw my lot in with folks who I thought were men and women of honor and integrity. And for the most part, they are. So I joined the Navy because my grandfather fought in the Navy in World War II. I probably should have joined the Air Force, but that's where you are. At the time, I was your, you know, your cookie cutter conservative. I thought big, you know, big, big, powerful military

fight for limited government on the domestic side and and family values now for the most part i'm still two of those pillars but since then i i've i've seen i've seen the belly of the beast from the inside it's just another bureaucracy except they have cruise missiles and i've i've just evolved to the point where i don't think that the united States, when it comes to quote-unquote national defense, is serious. I think they're using it as a means. And when I say they, I mean neoconservatives like Bill Kristol, Jonah Goldberg, the whole list of neocons that you want to go look up. They want to use this as a means to ingrandize themselves, ingrandize the federal government. So you're on the libertarian.

You're a thoughtful and experienced libertarian smaller government including smaller presidents abroad now so let me put to you my own position ish i'm still thinking things through on donald trump and see how you respond to that okay you tell me if i'm one of these conservatives who's not sticking with him or doing him an injustice okay uh preferred him very much to hillary clinton very happy by a number of his appointments because they seemed like tough seasoned experienced grown-ups but now and thrilled by the gorsuch appointment had all kinds of qualms about it's obamacare light but on balance very good that they got it through the house hope they get it through the senate

because it's a step or two or three in the right direction. But now we have something new. Now we have a president who almost seems to be insisting on a kind of self-destruction. Richard Nixon was all more sophisticated, more experienced in all kinds of ways. But the parallel I'm beginning to worry about between Donald Trump and Richard Nixon is this self-destructive impulse. Nixon had no need to burglarize the Democratic National Committee because he was running points and points and points ahead of McGovern, and he was going to crush McGovern as he did. It was gratuitous. Donald Trump had no need to tweet about James Comey and say, he better hope there were no tapes. He had no need to change the rationale that his administration had already presented for

the firing of Comey. It seemed to me to have a man here who, however correct his instincts on most matters, however fine the appointments he has made, however much good he might have done if he had actually stuck to his agenda and moved it, is so vain and so insecure that there's a self-destructive impulse that is now going to draw us all into one of these horrible, months-long psychodramas, and I'm sick of it already. If I could jump in here, if you don't mind, Robert. Sure. Peter, with all – This max yeah wait for max yeah go ahead but wait but before you do i just want to put a pin in this because uh robert i gotta come back i want to talk about jonah goldberg okay because i i think i i i think i think that was

ad hominem and i think i think i need to hold you accountable for that okay okay you don't think he's a neoconservative okay uh no i don't think he's in it Okay. You don't think he's a neoconservative? Okay. No, I don't think he's in it for himself. I don't think he's benefited from anything. Looking for reliable IT solutions for your business? At Innovate, we are the IT solutions people for businesses across Ireland. From network security to cloud productivity, we handle it all. Installing, managing, supporting, and reporting on your entire IT and telecoms environment so you can focus on what

really matters growing your business whether it's communications or security innovate has you covered visit innovate today innovate the it solutions people i don't think he's a big government i don't think he's a big government advocate okay um quite the reverse. But go ahead. Sorry, Max. So I had to jump in there to counter this narrative, which is being pushed by the media, which is part of the anti-Trump left and is embraced by the never-Trump right, which is that Trump is in any way self-destructive or that he brings this upon himself. That is, in my view, simply false. And if you think for a moment that the media and the left would not be attacking any Republican president as viciously as they are attacking Trump, respectfully, I think that you're deluded. We know how they treated Mitt Romney. We know how they treated George W. Bush. We know how they treated George W. Bush.

I'm going to ask one more question. I just want to add one statement. What you're seeing in Donald Trump is someone who won the presidency that came out of Fishtown and not Bloomington or whatever Charles Murray's upper class thing. It is a class thing. He talks like someone from Fishtown, and that's what you're seeing. President Bush, Romney, McCain, they came from the other side of the tracks in terms of politics. They knew how to talk. They knew how to walk into the room.

They knew how to do everything that your typical cookie cutter politician would do. Listen, fellas, I grant you, I grant you every word of that, but I don't. No, I don't either. Two specific points, and then I'll mute myself because I'm running on a little laptop that's screwing up Skype here. But two specific points. You can talk, yes, the press would have been vicious to him no matter what, just as it was vicious to can talk, yes, the press would have been vicious to him no matter what, just as it was vicious to Romney, just as it was vicious to George W. Bush, but just two specific points in recent days. He fired James Comey, and he had a good reason for doing so, as the Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein explained in a carefully reasoned memo.

Trump would not leave it at that. He then gave a couple of interviews, Lester Holt and then Judge Jeanine Perrero, in which he said, ah, I was going to fire him anyway, totally undercut the stated rationale, humiliated his own staff who had been explaining that he had fired him on the rationale put forward by Rod Rosenstein. And then the next morning, he tweeted this strange veiled threat to James Comey. You'd better hope there were no tapes of this conversation. That was Trump. It had nothing to do with Fishtown, nothing to do with Queens versus Manhattan.

It was totally gratuitous, utterly unnecessary, and self-destructive. Peter, when's the last time you've been in a dive bar? That's how people talk in the real world. I agree. I respectfully, it's not self-destructive at all and you're skipping over a very salient point which is that the media and the left and the never trumpers attacked him immediately upon the news of james comey being fired and his uh interviews and his tweets

were in response to that but you know what grow to david from saying that it was a coup for him to fire somebody who works for him big deal big that's a huge deal no it's not get off twitter stop obsessing you know what you guys are you are the people who are obama supporters and obama acolytes right who whatever anybody criticized obama's oh you're just racist. This is what this is. This is all this is. Every time, yes, it is. Every time you say, if I say he should have tweeted that, you say, yes, he should have. Wait, wait, Max, is there anything Trump has done to bring this on himself?

And you know, it's the media. It's the left wing. It's the analog here is the left wing it's yes the analog here is the race with the left no again again the question wasn't what i'm doing the question wasn't i'm on the wrong side that's what the liberals do the question i'm asking you is is there anything trump has done but i am that has caught has brought, no. Answer my question, Max. Is there anything Trump has done that has brought this on himself? Is he culpable at all? Yes.

Name two things he's done. Do you want to know what he's done to bring this on himself? Yeah. One. One. He ran as himself, and he refused to kowtow to – Oh, come on, Max. That's a disingenuous response. And two, more important, he won. Oh, give me a break to political activists. Oh, come on, Max. That's a disingenuous response.

More important, he won. Oh, give me a break. So nothing. So nothing. That is very important because people like you, respectfully, people like you said that he could not win by being himself. Okay, you know what? Agreed.

Agreed. Max, I apologize. That is very confusing to you. apologize i know i give up i apologize he's great he hasn't done one thing wrong everybody's named one thing max he's done wrong and don't give me this well he's just too good there's nothing this man has done that you think oh man i wish he hadn't done that. Even Ann Coulter thinks he's blowing it, but not you. I'll give you a couple of things he's done wrong, but it's all based on substance and not some stupid Twitter account. He's lobbed missiles into Syria without congressional

approval and there was no clear and present danger to any U.S. citizen or asset. He signed on to an Obamacare white bill that, despite what Peter says, is basically the same damn thing, except it's got a little bit of republicanism in it. So it's just a little less calories. And then he sends his vice president out to the Rush Limbaugh show to tell me that the CR that he signed on to is good for us because we get more than they get in domestic spending that that's not conservatism rob max what do you think those are things he's done wrong you want to talk about things wait that's you i i i'm not necessarily disagreeing with you but max i thought this podcast was about defending trump not about piling on and attacking him well no what are you actually

interested in are you actually interested in? Are you actually interested in learning about what people think about Trump or about attacking Trump? Look, I know what people think about Trump. They think you've already explained it. You think I'm an idiot because I didn't think he was going to win. And you think it's all about class. And you think that's the way real people talk. And you think he's done everything right. And you think the worst, the only two things he's done wrong have been that he got elected and he was himself. Right. That that is what he's done wrong in the mind of the. That's not what I asked. Never Trumpers. That's not what I asked.

What do you Max think he's done wrong? If you had to like somehow, somehow you had to criticize him. What would you criticize him for? You won't criticize him for tweeting about Comey. You won't criticize him for tweeting about the mean media, the never Trumpers on Twitter who've heard him. I mean, come on. I know you had David French on earlier and he just wrote a piece about blind loyalty. I'm not asking for blind loyalty from anybody. I would like just maybe a little bit of support. And for, you know, in defense of David, he's been willing to write when he agrees with something that Trump does. I think David French is better at that than certain other never-Trumpers who are not willing to give anything to Trump.

And also, I would like maybe just, if you are not willing to support Trump, simply don't pile on. What do you think is going to happen? I'm not going to take account of how many people are writing or commenting on something before I add to their number. Can we retire the term Never Trumper? No, we can't because it still exists.

No, it's not entirely helpful. It's like saying Never 2017. Neither is griping about a man's Twitter. I mean, come on. Well, if you're allowed to refer to that. If Trump's Twitter account is really the biggest. Stop. Let me. You just said something. Let me respond to it.

One, there were many people who were never Trump in as much as they supported another candidate. That was during the election. That's over. Those of us who are criticizing Trump now are not necessarily coming from this NT perspective. We are critics of Trump from the election. That's over. Those of us who are criticizing Trump now are not necessarily coming from this NT perspective. We are critics of Trump from the right. That's permitted. Why do they happen to be the same people? You see what I'm saying? The never Trumpers that were against him in the election are now also the same people criticizing him, quote, from the right. As you say, I was a never Trumper. I was a never never trumper but if you call me a never trumper today you are wrong because i am not trying to get rid of donald trump it is a fact

of life he is our president my president i hope he succeeds that is not the sentiment of a never trumper the sentiment of somebody who was free to criticize him. That's fair. Okay, so just I get called a never-Trumper all the time, and I have my opinion seen entirely through that prism, which makes it very easy to dismiss for what they're saying. But to me, when I hear never-Trumper

applied to somebody who is simply a critic, it's like hearing libtard or rethuglican. It's just this little way of saying yeah i don't have to listen to you as for the as for the twitter thing it's a that's an irrelevant criticism i mean to criticize trump for his tweets is is illustrative of the man and the character and the intellect it's a window into the id and to say that that it's simply something that we should just shrug and whistle and walk away from is preposterous.

He wants us to slather over these things, and that's what people do. In the meantime, there are serious things that you could criticize him on from a conservative perspective and crickets. All I hear is Twitter. Well, that's not true. Twitter. And jumping on these fake, false reporting in the Washington Post and the New York Times that time after time are proven to be false and yet people on the right

are who are never Trump. It exists. I'm not going to give you that. I'm going to give you lilacs that you don't want to bring down Trump, but there are people on the right who want to bring down Trump. No. Max.

President Pence. Peter, you guys have to be patient with me because I'm dealing with hotel Wi-Fi, but I'd like to ask Max. By the way, Max, it turns out you have a beautiful radio voice, and Robert, you're doing just fine. So thanks. Just a little flattery before I try to rough you up. It turns out you have a beautiful radio voice, and Robert, you're doing just fine. Thanks. Just a little flattery before I try to rough you up. Max, the question is then, as somebody who's a Trump supporter and very understandably suspicious, to put it mildly, of the press, how do you understand the current state of events. Namely, there were investigations underway at the FBI in which possibilities of some kind of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia were being examined. The man in charge of those investigations was James Comey. And Donald Trump has the staff,

the White House staff has leaked saying Trump was growing increasingly frustrated by the way Comey was handling the Russia investigations, and then Trump fired him. Now, so does that not look – does it not look bad? How do you understand that as a Trump supporter? Well, of course it looks bad. That's why people are leaking these bits and pieces and morsels of information, which we have no way of verifying. We don't know if it's true or false or what the context is. And it's only being leaked to damage Trump, to damage a Republican in the White House. That's the only reason these things are being leaked.

Much of what we know of any investigation is from leaks. And I just simply do not believe the Washington Post and the New York Times and other outlets anymore when they rely solely on anonymous sources. So what we know is that Trump fired Comey and that he had a right to fire Comey. And my opinion before the election was if Hillary was elected or if Trump was elected, Comey was out the door because he had kicked off. You know what I mean? Absolutely. Absolutely. For sure. So last question for you, Max, and then I'd like to turn to Robert once briefly and then throw you back into the den of lions and let Rob and James have back at you.

But Max, are you then happy? How do you feel about the appointment of a special prosecutor? Are you happy that we now have a special prosecutor, a man of, as best I can tell, nobody questions Robert Mueller's integrity. He served as FBI director under both George W. and Barack Obama. Nobody can detect a trace of partisanship. But you're okay with having him as special counsel? you're okay with having him as special counsel? I'm okay with having him as special counsel if we have to have a special counsel. I don't think that we have to have a special counsel because I think the entire thing is a witch hunt and based on false premises. The entire thing is based on the idea that the Russians hacked the DNC, right? But that is only based on not on actual FBI investigation of the DNC server. The DNC didn't allow the FBI. And then the FBI, the other genesis of any investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia came from this dossier, which was paid for by Trump's opponents in the Republican primaries.

And then it was passed to the Clinton campaign and then went to the FBI. The FBI may or may not have paid this guy to make up fake stories about Trump paying prostitutes to pee on a bed that supposedly Obama had slept on. I mean, the entire thing is ridiculous. That is what this whole thing is based on. It's even based on a rotten… Got it. Over to Robert. Over to Robert.

Robert. So one question for you and then again i toss you both back into the den of lions robert senator sass i'm looking at several republican senators lindsey graham and john mccain have john mccain understandably because donald trump insulted him pretty brutally during the campaign lindsey have been very critical of Trump. So let's set them aside. Look at Senator Ben Sasse. Ben Sasse was dubious about Trump, but in the end supported him. And now we have Senator Sasse saying that the firing of Comey is very troublesome, that we've got to have an investigation. Fundamentally, he's saying this man has my support because he's president, but I don't like the way he's conducting himself in office. I don't like the tweets.

I'd rather have thoughtfulness, and we absolutely have to have an investigation that produces all the – in other words, I'm with him, but I'm dubious about him. What would you like to say to Senator Sasse? Well, a couple of things I'd like to say to Senator Sasse is, A, just look at the timeline given to us by the Washington Post and New York Times in regards to Trump and Comey's relationship. You've got, and Rush Limbaugh did this, I think, yesterday and the day before on his radio show. You've got the Washington Post in late January saying that the FBI has said that there is no, in terms of the Mike Flynn portion of this investigation, that there is no nefarious activity between the phone calls of Flynn and Kislyak, the Russian ambassador of the U.S.

Then supposedly you have three weeks later, Trump and Comey at dinner and Trump saying, hey, can you lay off Flynn? And then on top of all that, you've got at least on May 3rd, we've all seen the video now on the member feed of Comey under oath saying, hey, there was no political pressure to drop the investigation into Flynn. Now, some people were trying to come out and say, well, he was saying that in terms of the DOJ applying political pressure. But come on, we all know what was going on here. And just look at what the Washington Post

themselves is writing. Get past the first two or three paragraphs, get into the story, and all of a sudden you come to find out that the writers of the Washington Post or the editors, or both, don't understand what contradiction in terms means, or they're just, they're, they're fluffing up the lead paragraph to make it look like something else, banking on the fact that nobody's going to go any further. That's what I would tell Senator Sass is that there's no, there's nothing to this stuff. When you read the, read the reporting that is spurring these investigations or at least in the media spurring the investigations there's nothing going on okay fellas it's rob again um

listen max by the way rob i love you i love you too yeah mr long look i want to say too i love i love you too you're a funny guy. Big Cheers fan. We're all Ricochet members together. Now, Robert, I want to get into Jonah first because I really feel – I know him well. He's a good friend of mine, and if he was on this podcast right now, he'd be incensed. He is a lifelong small government conservative. He has paid a financial price for being a Trump critic, whereas others have reaped the benefits of being pro-Trump, financial benefits. There is no financial incentive. People go, oh, you're out for yourself.

No, there's no financial incentive in being a conservative Trump critic. There was no financial incentive in National Review as a magazine having taken an editorial stance against Trump at all. Quite the reverse. They paid a financial price for it, and they continue to do that. Right, and like 90 percent of Republicans voted for Trump, right? So what you're saying is absolutely true. So the idea that someone's like doing this because of anything other than those are his beliefs, that's fine. His Trump criticism, as is the criticism of a lot of politicians, aside from the personal stuff and the other stuff, is based on his small government principles. You and he agree on small government.

Probably you're more closely aligned than either one of you are to Donald Trump, that's for sure. So just to stand up for my friend there. Okay, that's fair. I'm just – the way I get – my sense of the lay of the land, if you will, is that if push came to shove between engrandizing executive power versus cutting a domestic program, if push came to shove, he might go the other way. That's all I'm saying. No, no, that's quite – the body of work and his body of work – I think probably everybody on this podcast body of work suggests the reverse.

Much rather cut – look, we spent eight years complaining about what Barack Obama did to aggrandize the chief executive. And by the way, the imperial chief executive has been a continual path since, I don't know, since FDR, since Lincoln. Can we go to Lincoln? Well, no, I mean, look, at least Lincoln had one bodyguard, right? And Truman would walk across the lawn to the hey adams to have a drink in the afternoon i mean these are small things but they're kind of big things um all right so so putting that aside next question now i know for whatever however you interpret the present situation politically uh it's the media it's this that's whatever you know how i feel and i know how

you feel so we don't have to relitigateate that. And just indulge me in this one piece of analysis, that this is a president who is in first term political trouble. This is not a unique situation for a president to be in. Presidents have been in this situation before and presidents have been in the situation before and gone on to have verylikable and was in disarray in his administration and didn't have the press behind him in his first term. That's how old I am. I remember that. And he pulled himself together. Now, the premise of my question is that you have to admit that in some way Donald Trump and the Trump administration has to pull itself together. What are, I'm asking you, Robert, and you, Max, what are the three things you would say to Donald Trump and his administration politically? Not philosophically and not sort of, you know, not the big stuff that we all agree on, but politically. What would you tell them to do to pull themselves together and turn this thing around? Max, you first.

Okay, well, first of all, I reject the premise of the question because I don't think that they need to pull themselves around. There's a narrative that's being put out by the media, and it's not the same as reality as I see it. And this goes back all the way to the debates. Let me stop you for a minute. Just a point of clarification do you mean they shouldn't have to or do you mean that the generic ballot polls that are coming out that suggest that the democrats are going to have a wave election and take back the house

that those are false do you mean that they don't need to you mean the same polls that said hillary is going to win by landslide that's what i'm saying that's what i'm saying okay yeah go ahead are you saying that they don that they shouldn't have to or they don't need to? I'm not. I can't. I have no idea. What I know is that the media

narrative that this is a presidency in disarray and that he is sabotaging himself and that it's falling apart and he's going to get impeached because he's being – he's a paid agent of Putin. That's all nonsense. That's all I'm saying. I'm really asking you a political question.

He's a first-term president. My premise is he's in political trouble. This is not unique. It does not make him special. It does not mean he's about to be impeached or anything disastrous. A lot of presidents have trouble in their first term. And actually, I appreciate you pointing out, you know, some historical. So what advice would you give him to turn it around? Just one second. I want to point out that John that the whole Putin's Patsy thing, John Adams was portrayed, you know, as a monarchist and that he was going to, you know, turn the country back over to England.

So this really does have a powerful context. OK. All right. But just I mean, I'm just talking about your political thing. You're sitting in the room. It's like he's the chief executive. He's a he's a politician, whether you like it or not. The president of the United States is a politician. What's give me give me some political advice. Well, I would fire Jared. Fire your son. I would have Trump do a press conference every couple weeks.

I don't know if maybe Spicer doesn't need to do the daily briefings. Maybe Spicer could do twice a week, and then Trump could do every other week. What's your theory there? Sorry? What's your theory there? My theory is that the last big press conference that Trump did in March where he was out there, I think it was like two and a half hours. And he really just whatever the controversy was at the time, which I don't even remember, which obviously says something.

He just killed it. He killed whatever it was that was the current, you know, made up controversy. And I think that he is his best spokesman. And that's why I think that that he should i would say continue tweeting that's so my advice would be do your own press conferences continue tweeting and fire jared lean in let trump be trump fire jared yeah all right robert well mine's going to be it's strictly political analysis this is not a libertarian thing or anything like that. I would just strictly go to the House and Senate, and I would tell these clowns, look, you guys need to start passing legislation, period.

All this other stuff, the things that Max mentioned, those may be well and good, but it's all surface. What needs to happen is moving an agenda. Give us some big legislative items for him to sign and if the democrats threaten filibuster change the damn rules tell chuck schumer you lost sit down shut up or you can get on board and and offer some legitimate um um you know amendments to these bills but we're going to pass this stuff we're going to sign we're going to do tax reform and don't give me this nonsense about how, oh, we can't legislate if they're investigating. But you're telling me that people as smart as Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan can't walk and chew gum at the same time?

I don't buy it. Get off your ass. Do your job. Pass legislation. That's what I'm telling you. So your logic there is politically – The American people sitting there – the American people sent him there to do a job, and they're not doing it by saying, oh, we can't pass legislation because of this or that. Trump needs to go down there and rattle some heads and get in their face.

I would say that that's actually something that Trump has been doing that's good, which is that he has a lot more communication with Congress than Obama ever did. I mean, there are Democrats who have said that they've spoken to Trump more times than they spoke to Obama. And there actually have been quite a few bills that have been passed and signed into law. So I actually think that Congress is more productive than it's being credited for. At the same time, myself being a small government conservative, I prefer it when Congress doesn't pass things. Hey, I'm with you. I would prefer it if Congress just, and the entire city for that matter,

just went back to being a swamp. But the idea is what it is. Wait, wait. Don't drain the swamp. Refill the swamp. I don't want to drain the swamp. I want to flood the damn thing and get everybody out of there. Well, first drain the swamp. Then get back into the swamp.

Yeah, okay, fellas. I think that's really interesting advice. I mean, I'm not totally persuaded, Max, about your radical solution, that the solution to the disease is more disease, but that there's something really compelling about that. And, of course, but there's something really brilliant about that strategy. And I think that we can all agree that I don't want this.

I don't want there to be four years of waste. I think we have, you know, we could have four years of actually conservative government. Why wouldn't we want that? And with that, I step in and say, thanks, guys.

We'll see you on the side. Max, Robert, thank you. Thanks. I appreciate it. I've been listening to the podcast for six and a half years. It's a great honor to be on. About time you got a chance to talk back.

Thanks, guys. It's an honor to have you. Bye-bye. Well, we've settled that, so I don't think the issue ever needs to be discussed on Ricochet again. Put it in a box. Put it up on the shelf. We've settled the whole Trump thing. We have settled it all.

We can all move on now to other things. No, of course not. We will continue. You know, Rob, you are – what's the word I'm looking for? I'm not exactly certain how quite to say this, but you're one of the founders of this thing, and your opinion is deeply unpopular amongst the people who subscribe to it. Does that make you ever want to rethink your position? No. It's like – Why would it?

No, here's why. Because the people – this is the perverse. who are the fellow members of ricochet james as you know are super smart and they are uh tend to be and they are by by because they've opted into this incredibly civil conversation they are super civil and uh i love mixing it up with them and i'm and they have changed my mind on a lot of things and i hope i change their mind on other things and and um i actually think that what they need to do i think that what the trump supporters need to do is just to kind of give him a spanking and crack his head a little bit and get him to pull himself together and we can accomplish a lot of good stuff. So I'm not sure that we disagree on all that many things. But the whole point of Ricochet is that we don't have to agree on everything.

We just have to be polite and like each other. And that's possible. Well, you know, and the whole narrative is going to be reset again this week when the president goes on his foreign trip. And I hope he brings the right luggage, though. That's what I'm concerned by. Oh, good. Yes, Rob, I hope that he does, too. Oh, did you want me to say something about all the I carry a lot of baggage when i go to ricochet they know i have some baggage is that there's a bunch there's a bunch of stuff like that i wasn't thinking that i apologize my sole contribution to the effort being just simply that um so now that's ruined and over but you're right uh luggage is it is luggage is a personal thing um and it's it's you know every you have one of those black indistinguishable pieces like everybody else with a little piece of color tied around the handle.

So when it comes down the baggage thing, you can say, that's mine. There's no real joy in your heart unless you've got a piece from Away Travel, in which case when it comes down the baggage, shoot a little song in your heart because it's a nice piece of luggage and it's yours. Listen, Away Travel's approach is simple. They create special objects that are designed to be resilient, resourceful, and essential to the way you travel today. Away uses high-quality materials while offering a much lower price compared to other brands by cutting out that middleman and selling directly to you. Four sizes, nine colors. They've got the carry-on, the bigger carry-on, the medium, or the large for extended stays.

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Roger Ailes died and that occasioned a lot of glee and ghoulish dancing on the left. People who believe that he destroyed the national conversation by inventing Fox. Peter? That's nonsense. Roger Ailes enriched the national conversation. It was loud. It was brash. But he created voices that simply had not been there before.

I am old enough to remember. What a horrible dependent clause with which to start. But I can remember leaving the Reagan White House, poking around in conservative journalism. On television, no conservatives at all. In print, George Will and William F. Buckley Jr., full stop. I actually poked around thinking maybe I would try to get a job in journalism myself. I got nowhere in television and the newspaper editors I spoke to said, we already have a couple of conservatives,

that's enough. Along came Roger Ailes about a decade later with Rupert Murdoch and said, wait a minute, 40% of this country calls themselves conservatives. There's a big stretch of America that lies between New York, Washington on one end of the country and the LA, San Francisco axis on the other end of the country. Let's give them something that they'll enjoy. Let's give them something. And so that wasn't polarizing the country that was adding a voice that had a real market that people enjoyed that people and i have to say in my own little life which is i'm not a professional journalist but once fox news got up and running even npr started calling me every so

often to do commentary because all of a sudden you couldn't be considered fair unless you had one conservative on your podcast or I beg your pardon on your radio broadcast or on your television show. He changed not simply by creating Fox News, but he changed the temper or complexion of political commentary across the board. He had his faults. There's no doubt about that but he was a patriot and he was smart and he was a brilliant showman rob how's he seen in the television industry well well i mean i mean if you're a fair and uh dispassionate and disinterested industry viewer analyst he's a an icon he's a titan he's one of the very great broadcasters he's probably the second generation second wave generation right after general sarnoff and bill paley of people who intuitively grasp what television was and what television could be

also knew what television wasn't great thing about roger ailes is there are no pictures. He wasn't about pictures. He didn't care about pictures. He cared about talking and people and personalities. You know, the vision part of television is always overrated. I remember Jimmy Burroughs, the great TV director and impresario and my first boss saying, it's just radio. It's just radio, which goes against every fiber of your being if you ever think about, well, we're making little movies, which are film. But no, it's – and he knew that. He knew that it was about a personality and a character and somebody that you – a friend of yours that you felt kinship with on screen. And he kind of knew.

And there are, there is, I can maybe count on one hand the number of people who are alive today who I think intuitively grasp that, intuitively grasp what the television medium is. And mostly because I think the television medium is something different now, and it's become something different. So in a way, that time has passed. I mean, he's 77 years old, so that gives you an indication of how old the medium is now

and how, I think, outdated, in many ways, the Roger Ailes grasp of the medium is. And there is something incredibly moving and poignant about the man i mean i loved him i thought he was fantastic every 10 minutes with roger ailes became an hour with roger ailes where he just spin these great stories and he was like this like five foot tall fire plug of a guy filled with rage and like fantastic um stories and anger and he's still you know furious about stuff and and great and and great humor really funny guy profane like you know

like he was a mogul like he had everything but a cigar right and a fur coat and a and a it was great it was exactly what you expect um if you really – I mean Michael Wolff has a great piece. I tweeted it out. Maybe you should put a link here. A great remembrance of him who wrote a piece. Michael Wolff is very critical of him but wrote a great remembrance of him, and they stayed in touch. But Roger was the kind of guy who would – if you wrote a mean piece about him but it was well-written and funny and fair, he stayed your friend. He would buy you a steak for lunch and then yell at you for lunch.

And Roger, if he didn't like you, you were – for whatever reason, you were done. But if he liked you, it didn't matter what your political beliefs were. It didn't matter what you – it didn't matter. I mean – and I'll say this. I know I'm sort of rambling, but the one thing – I mean this is small. I am not trying to excuse his behavior in the workplace. I was not there. I was not part of any of those altercations, right? Right. But I know and knew him well enough to know that nobody went into that office who thought that if they did something or didn't do something, they'd be fired because Roger didn't fire people.

If you were if you were hired by him and you weren't fired in the first 20 minutes, he was loyal. Now, he may take you off the two o'clock time slot because you blew it in the ratings, but there are a lot of people on the payroll at Fox News for a lot of reasons. Some of them probably not so great, but a lot of them were there because they didn't deliver for whatever reason, and he just didn't want to fire them. There's a lot of loyalty in that guy. And I'm not trying to make excuses for any of that other stuff but of the full picture of that man is pretty amazing and i think what's interesting about it is that now we're seeing that even the fox news the ratings are changing and it's not because he's not there it's because the world is a little different yeah last. And this in some ways may say, this may say more than anything. Maybe six, seven, eight years ago now, I interviewed Roger for Uncommon Knowledge.

And when you interview Roger, you go to Fox News and use their studio. And before he came onto the set, everybody was conscious that I was going to be interviewing Mr. Ale. So the makeup people were taking special pains and the lighting guys and the camera. And so we had a few moments and I chatted and I asked every person, how long have you been here? And the makeup lady said, oh, I've been here 18 years. Oh, I've been here 12 years. I've been here 15.

How do you like the work? Oh, we love it. And then Roger Ailes walked in and you could tell from the body language of all these people, they liked him. It's one thing if you're megan kelly being paid 20 million dollars a year and roger wants to move you in a time slot or heavy but what the what the people off camera felt about the man the low level of turnover the way he cared

about them the fundamental uh respect that they had for rogeriles. And I'm talking about the camera guys and the makeup people and the lighting guys. That says a lot about what kind of person he was. And he was a fundamentally, he had his flaws, but he was a good guy. Yeah. I mean, you know, they're complicated. He's a complicated person, a real person. And no one understood him but him. Thanks, everybody, for listening to this very long, but I hope, meaty, beady, big and bouncy podcast.

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there's a new tier for you, $2.50 a month, cheap, and you'll get to comment on the podcast commentary sections. Thanks to our guests. Thanks, Peter and Rob, and we everybody that got in the comments at ricochet 3.0 next week next week fellas i'm exhausted okay molly We're a happy family, we're a happy family, we're a happy family, me, mom and daddy. We're a happy family, we're a happy family, we're a happy family, me, mom and daddy. Sitting here in Queens, eating refridges. Wearing all the magazines, gulping down for a seat. We ain't got no friends, our troubles never end.

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