The Ricochet Podcast - Jiggery Pokery

Episode Date: December 12, 2020

This week on the Big Show, one guest: John O’Sullivan. We booked him to fact check this season of Netflix’s The Crown as he was a speechwriter for Margaret Thatcher and was a witness to much of what occurred in the show (and what didn’t). But that wasn’t the only topic we covered with John. We also had a long and shall we say lively conversation about the Trump legal team’s efforts to overturn the... Source

I can hear you. Can you hear me? We can hear you. We can hear you and pretty soon the people of New York. Yeah. I have a dream. This nation will rise up. Live out the true meaning of its dream. We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal.

There are ways of Britain being great again, and that is through a revitalized economy, not through association with unreliable tribal leaders in eccentric costumes. But isn't that all I am, Prime Minister? A tribal leader in eccentric costume. I'm the president, and you're fake news. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lallex. Today we talk

to John O'Sullivan about Brexit, about the crown, about the election. So let's have ourselves a podcast i can hear you welcome everybody it's the ricochet podcast number 524 i'm james lilacs in chile minnesota joined by rob log in new york and peter robinson in california and gentlemen there's a lot to talk about but i know that all of you everybody is bursting with an opinion of the fact that disney is going to make 43 new Star Wars television shows, including one that I believe explores the rich backstory of the third Jawa we met in episode four. So we can get to that at some point, I suppose. We should talk about Texas. We should talk about Hunter Biden. We should talk about the deficit. But there was

something that was bothering me this morning, and it has to do with the vaccine. First of all, Peter, Rob, hello. Are you going to take the vaccine? Absolutely. Sure. I expect to. Sure. Me too. But the problem is a lot of people aren't. Some people won't. There's a story in the paper today about how the minority community is suspicious because A, they have low vaccination rates because of access, and B, because they mistrust the medical establishment, which experimented on minority people in the past. Ergo, there's going to be a larger percentage of unvaccinated people in these communities. What happens when having proof of vaccination becomes the new means by which you are granted access back into civil society?

Proof of vaccination. Well, we're probably getting a little ahead of ourselves here, but I instinctively recoil against and feel that I would object some sort of health car. I don't like having to carry papers. My driver's license is about as far as I'm willing to go. Well, then, Peter, we'll just, we'll, we'll, we'll spray a barcode on your forehead. I don't know why you got a problem

with that. Rob in New York. Do you think that's going to be the case that they're going to require after all a business has every right to do so? Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I mean, all these, all these sort of hysterical freak outs seem to me to be right. There aren't enough already. People are freaking out over what might happen. And they to me to be, there aren't enough already. People are freaking out over what might happen and they're going to say, and I read a thing on a blog that said we're going to have to carry, you know, the anti-vaxxing movement, I mean, it depends on really where you live, who those people are. When I was living in Venice, California, I couldn't find, if you give me a million dollars, I couldn't find an

anti-vaxxer that was even a self-described conservative. All the anti-vaxxers I knew were crackpot, way out, loony left liberals. Conspiracy theorists in general that I knew, mostly in my life and my life in school, they were were all they were all believe they were all crackpot left-wing liberals um you have to there are school i mean there's current legislation or at least this current um litigation about whether you need to have a vaccine to go children need to to go to school and that has been the first fault line of sort of the vaccination not vaccination i do know people who do not want to take the vaccine first. I know people who do take the vaccine first for a lot of dumb reasons. I know people who don't want to take the vaccine first because they're smart and because they've studied

this topic. I know people like me who want to, I'll be first in line for the vaccine and I know precisely zero about any of this stuff. And I know people who'll be first in line for the vaccine because they know a whole lot. So in general, I think enough people are going to take the vaccine that is going to be useful and beneficial for the world. I speak as, you know, I have my victim status here is I did once get whooping cough about five or six years ago, maybe six years ago, seven years ago, six, seven years. That still exists. Yeah. And I was talking to my doctor when he said, you got whooping cough pertussis, I guess I forget what it's called. And I said, wait a minute. And my doctor was, you know, straight down the middle, right.

A left-wing kook, right. I mean, it was like a left-wing kooky magazines. Here's a classic West side back in California, back in California. Right. And I said, wait, do I have, did I get whooping cough because of the, it goes because of the stupid anti-vaxxers.

Yeah. Yeah. And he went off on this, what sounded to me like a right-wing rant, but what he's in fact, you know, total crackpot liberal about his friends who live in multimillion dollar houses in Santa Monica,

who didn't want their chill. I don't want my God. I don't think the measles thing is real. I think that's big pharma. I don't know. I don't think there's a partisan answer for this, but I will be first in line and I can't begin to have any scientific reason for doing so except that I just want it because I want to get on an airplane and travel. So do I. One of the things we're always told is that the whole lockdown strategy has been crazy. That what we needed to do is to protect the vulnerable and get on with the rest of our

lives well one of the elements of protecting the vulnerable it would seem would be able to say hey here's my card i got vaccinated so i can walk into your store where your 70 year old grandma's behind the counter and the store owner you would think would have an absolute right what it means to me is there's going to be a tremendous black market for fake cards that tells people that that's what's clear james you don't usually do this in the opening segment but you've done it this time well you've actually made my head hurt these are actually pretty interesting serious and non-easy questions about right so we know i'm you know I'm clicking through the hierarchy of rights here. The government should not force anybody to get a vaccine, right? It should be your right because

it's your health, but it's not your health. Getting a vaccine is an important step toward getting to herd immunity, blah, blah, blah. This is all quite complicated, actually. And I had just last night, I was with some friends, and one of them had pretty deep medical knowledge. And he quoted a poll showing that something like 27% of nurses have said they do not, I don't know whether it was a California poll or a national poll. A lot of medical professionals have said either, I don't professionals have said either I don't want it or I don't want it for a few months. There's not a lot of data. This thing was developed really fast, more power to Operation Warp Speed, but we're professionals. We know people who work at Big Pharma. They're no more competent than anybody else. Let's just let this thing come out and see

how it does first i i feel like i heard from a health care professional uh recently who said look um you know uh hold on he said look uh uh what's what's happening in the uk is weird because it has they have not they've simply accepted they haven't checked they haven't verified the trial data, which is what normally happens. Although the FDA last night said, you know, the Pfizer vaccine can go through. The panel recommended the Pfizer vaccine be approved. And, you know, and doctors see mostly what doctors see are the results, the side effects of vaccines that, you know, look, vaccines, they have a percentage of people get sick or get seriously ill. I mean, there are enough cases of people having a vaccine or having a flu shot and having this, I forget the name of it, some weird reaction that if you're a doctor, you're like, well, I, you know, just your, that's the evidence

that you see mostly in your office is, you know, you don't, you don't see well, people, you don't see all the number of people who don't get the flu. You really only see the people who get the flu and, or get, have a side effect. So these are all natural human things. I personally am a gambler. So I'll roll the dice and get the, get the vaccine because I want to travel. Well, it's, it's just amusing that it started out with this whole thing started out. It's when can we have a vaccine? Oh my God, please, please let us hope that they are laboring night and day in laboratories with the white coats peering at test tubes. And then of course, we never thought at that point that when we get it, when we actually get it,

we'll be split in the people who don't want it, the people who don't like it, the people who are concerned about what it means. I don't know how you can actually make sure that everybody has it in some commercial settings, like a gas station. There's no way where the people coming into a convenience store, unless everybody, unless they fit the doors with a pass card and you've got to beep your card to get into the store without that,

you're just going to have this constant mixing as you had before. And Rob's a gambler. It's all going to be rolling the dice. When you go back on that plane, when you go back into the stores and back into the restaurants, you'll have no idea how many people actually took it. But you will have taken it, so you won't be worried, right? We all know that when you go get your flu shot, even though we're told it takes four to six weeks to be effective, when we walk out of there, we are bulletproof. That's it. But here's the difference, is that the flu shot is this dart they throw at a dartboard with all the different flu strains.

And at some point in the preceding April, and they go, we think it's going to be flu A and B or flu B and C. And then they make that's the vaccine for that year. The vaccine cocktail, right. And sometimes they make that's the vaccine for that vaccine cocktail. Right. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And what they don't want to tell you is like, well, really, if you don't know if it's going to work or not. I mean, the the we we know it's effective against what we say it's effective against. But we don't know if what we're saying it's effective against is even going to be out there. This is different. This is like splitting the arrow that's in the already in the bullseye okay so i have to say here the the perversion of the the perverseness of the present moment is

that it is entirely legitimate for people if you're going to make a political argument for uh even non-supporters even people who are repulsed by the current you know standing of the trump administration they did it right this was a smart smart thing. Operation Worse People was exactly right. And so you have a bunch of people like me on the right saying things like, actually, this is big government working. This is how you do the moonshot. You spend money and you guarantee stuff and you let the private sector do its job. And then you let the big pharma, which is not very nimble, sort of farm it out to a bunch of little crazy crackpot labs where all the mad geniuses are there with test tubes. That's exactly what it's supposed to be.

And so you have partisans on the left saying they didn't do a damn thing. That's ridiculous. And partisans on the right say, no, no, big government. Big government works. It solved the problem. As we go through and begin screaming at each other over, I'm sure we'll scream at each other over what's happening, let's remember that there is something gloriously, hilariously perverse about what's happening now. James, do you want one more thought on vaccinations, or may I change the subject? Shall I change the subject? You may have either.

I'm ready with either, James. Change the subject. Change the subject. All right. Because I was just about to change the subject change the subject all right because i was just about to change the subject to get around to hunter biden but you may oh no no no this is way more important than the mere trifling question of whether the son of the incoming president united states is dirty uh way more important sometime over the last year

andy ferguson and i were chatting and he gave his usual ringing defense he to him the Beatles are up there with Shakespeare and Dante and Michelangelo as one of the great efflorescences of all that is great about western culture and I, I took a couple of hours and I just listened. I use, you can do this these days. Of course you type in Beatles and stuff comes up. And I suppose it may have been the first time in my life when I really listened to the Beatles music and it wasn't just background. And I thought the tunefulness the the the memorability i thought these guys i don't know whether they're up there with beethoven i probably argue against that but these guys these guys were really musicians okay wait and then in the last yes i know

you've just discovered the beatles yes yes yes i'm telling you god i'm telling And then in the last 10 days, I have gotten so sick of simply having a wonderful Christmas time that I think Paul McCartney and that song tank the whole project. You understand that the Beatles did not record that song, right? I just feel I need to tell you that. Well, it's Paul McCartney. He's part of the thing. Uh-huh. I didn't have this on my bingo card. James, save me.

No, right. I mean, Paul McCartney's post-Beetle work is all over the road. You could say that simply that wonderful Christm Christmas time is just the most banal and irritating thing you've ever heard. And yet it occurs and occurs and occurs and occurs because of the smell. Party's up. Stop! I beg you, stop!

Every decade produces a bad, banal Christmas song that is nevertheless stuck in our collective gums like a popcorn hole forever. The 50s did it, the 60s did it, and that was Macker's contribution. I'll give him a lot of slack for his post-Beatle work because there's some really interesting things in there. Yeah, yeah, I agree.

But when it comes back to the Beatles themselves, yeah, it's a great tune book. It's a great song book. It's a great contribution to Western popular culture. There's really nothing else at the time. I mean, even though a lot of guys were getting out the guitars and banging around, they were different from that first galvanic chord of the hard day is night to the under harmonies that define the sounds that they made. They were special.

The more experimental they got, the more they drifted off. I think the more diluted the impact was on, on, on music and culture, but there was still beautiful stuff there. There was a wonderful combination of sensibilities between a combination of sensibilities plus Ringo that produced great popular music now beethoven nah not just doesn't

even compare because it doesn't have the ingenuity doesn't have the complexity doesn't have the sophistication but you know you can put them up there with gershwin gershwin is one of those guys from whom flowed this endless series of effortless melodies and he was a great player cole porter gershwin yes right right and so but there was a great player. Cole Porter, Gershwin, yes. Right. And Gershwin was a great American songbook sort of stuff, right? Right. So, I mean, yes, the Beatles were extraordinarily influential

and important and a great contribution, but there's not at the same level of a... Can I just make two... I can see Rob's face. Can I make two moments here? I can't believe I'm listening to this in 2020. I cannot believe that in the middle of this, we're talking about the Beatles. But okay. Me, I mean, I'm a huge Beatles fan. I'm listening to this in 2020. I can't believe that in the middle of this, we're talking about the Beatles.

But okay. I mean, I'm a huge Beatles fan. I'm a giant Beatles. I'm sort of, I co-sign everything James just said. I just would only say that what's most remarkable about them is that they started in the early 60s. And they were wrapped up and done by 1970. So maybe about eight years, seven, eight years of actual output. Astonishing.

Yes. Astonishing level of even cultural change. They start in a black and white movie on the Ed Sullivan show and they end in bizarre day glow technicolor with beards and hippie wigs on the roof of the Abbey Road Studios, singing an impromptu outdoor concert. That's pretty incredible, a huge amount of cultural and creative life packed into a tiny amount of years, considering we've been listening to Lady Gaga for eight years.

But I just want to say we glossed over, first of all, we're not even going to talk about why suddenly Andy Ferguson introduced Peter Robinson to the Beatles in some weird, super annuated, old folks home kind of transfer. I know we say it every year and I say it every year. And it's that time of year where we, you know, it's the Christmas season where we have to say there is nothing worse than Frosty the Snowman. That is the worst, lowest, darkest period in American culture. The worst aspect of American culture I can ever think. I can't imagine anything I hate more than Frosty the Snowman. Well, even with even that, even with that sort of jolly no that's makes it worse no no no i i mean rob's correct in a sense i mean there is some what what sort of devilish necromancy is in that hat that brings frosty to life i don't know while we're

on old man stuff one last christmas song so technically we're always on old man's topic. I have now got to this stage where I'm looking back on my father, who's been dead for 20 years, more than 20 years. I didn't grow up in a very well-to-do family. And there was one record player, and we only had a little, maybe there were a dozen of 45s. This is way back, earliest memories. And then eventually there was a stereo that got bought. But still, very limited record collection. And the one Christmas song we had was Bing Crosby and White Christmas. Oh.

And I spent a lot of my life looking back on that thinking, oh, my, there's just what, what lowbrow tastes. But now I realize when I was a little kid, the second world war was still that my parents were close. They lived through the war. They were closer to the second world war when I was a little kid than we are to the Reagan administration now. And white Christmas was a, came out during the war. It was about Americans who missed each other. And so I now see, I can sort of understand a little Christmas thing in my upbringing. And the second half, let us put it this way, the second half of middle age, there are certain graces in that it, it, it permits understanding of things that baffled one for a long time there. That's my little, I'll be home for, I'll be home. I was just going to mention that. Yeah. I had a sad song. Yeah. I had the

first year is that, is that a world war two song as well? We're two. Yes. And I remember sitting in a bar in Washington, DC, and I wasn't going to be in Minneapolis or Fargo that year and hearing I'll be home for Christmas. And it finally hit me at the end of it, if only in my dreams, because you weren't going to be home for Christmas. Right. So, yes, I mean, the entirety of the of the 20th century pop music canon, you'll find an emotion in there. There's endless reasons for and pleasures to be found in exploring it. But Rob's right. I mean, Rob said, I'm a giant Beatles fan. I immediately thought, of course, to Kafka, you know, waking up and finding oneself indeed to be a giant Beatle. But there is a moment in the Beatles canon where they just instructed the orchestra to go from this note to this note. And this incredible cacophony that arose as all the instruments

clawed their way individually up the scale until they got to the top. And then there's that great piano chord, that great reverberation and this extraordinary piece. It's a great moment for the 20th century, utter chaos. And then out of that, this great moment of transcendent celestial peace. Our life has felt a lot like that in the last year, 2020, right? We don't have the big chord of happiness, but we've got the climbing and the dissonance and the noise. Life can be stressful even under normal circumstances, but 2020 has challenged even the most difficult times of life, right? You need stress relief. You need to hear that chord that the Beatles gave us at the end of it. That goes beyond just simply quick fixes. That goes to something we're going to call headspace. Headspace is your daily dose

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well-being and this this sounds like the sort of thing that Rob Long knows about. Rob, you're a meditative sort. You can tell us that this actually works. I mean, it does actually work. I mean, there's medical studies that go way, way, way, way deep. Certain kinds of meditation, even if it's, I think, I think the one I really like is as any kind, you know, everybody's trying to tell you their kind, but any kind of meditation lowers blood pressure, reduces stress,

can, can help with, you know, heart patients do it. I mean, everybody, everyone who tries it and does it and you can't really fail at it. You just have to just keep doing it. And the great thing is you don't see tangible health benefits. So I'm a huge fan. When it's app-based, you don't have to go anywhere. You don't have to make any appointments. It's right there in your hand.

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period. So you got to go to headspace.com slash ricochet today. And our thanks to Headspace for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Now we welcome back to the podcast, John O'Sullivan, former editor of National Review, a position he held between William F. Buckley and Rich Lowry in the years 1988 to 1997. He's been editor-at-large at NR since then, and in recent years, a senior fellow at the NR Institute, also president of the Danube Institute, which is a think tank devoted to promoting conservative and classical liberal ideas. That's in Budapest, and he's also the director of the Washington Think Tank 21st Century Initiatives in D.C. John, welcome. The thing I really want to ask you is your opinion on this sad fact about British life.

I've heard that the Coleman's mustard store in Norwich has closed. And somehow that deep that saddens me deeply because it just seems wrong. But we're not going to go that specific. You can get Coleman's mustard pretty easily in places here in Budapest. So there's obviously a lot of stocks we have to run down. Well, that's good. That's good. It just seems that closing the store in Norwich is just a horrible comment.

But here we have something even worse than that. We have an election. Now, we'll start with that. You have been critical of the process of counting the votes and the rest of it. What's your view? Do you think it was stolen? Do you think it was a bunch of errors that culminated in, you know, essentially what the outcome anyway? Is Trump going to win with this Texas thing? What do you see coming down the pike? What I see coming down the pike, I think, is probably agreed with all of you, all three of

you, namely that there isn't going to be a reversal of the election of Biden. There was, of course, there was undoubtedly voter fraud. There is, by the way, voter fraud in almost all elections, particularly in certain states in the United States, in the U.S. And there was on this occasion. We know there's a great deal of evidence from affidavits about what happened to particular voting counts. And there's highly suggestible statistical irregularities, which imply that there must have been some kind of jiggery-pokery going on. But although you might be able to demonstrate some of the voter fraud that occurred and which has been witnessed that's quite a modest number of votes um and since you can't at this moment anyway no one's allowing it to happen you're not able to really check the origin and validity of the statistical

irregularities on the basis for objecting um since that's not happening, I don't see that the election can be overturned. And would Biden have won anyway? Well, I mean, I think probably the answer to that may well be yes. We don't know, because if we don't know how much voter fraud was, we don't know to what extent it affected the result. I think what Rob is going to say here is that there may have been jiggery, and in a lot of places there was probably pokery, but whether or not there was jiggery pokery is another matter. Isn't that right, Rob? No, I don't know if I would say there was jiggery or pokery.

And anyway, the Texas lawsuit doesn't argue that. It argues that by shifting the dates and shifting the deadlines. Right. Because this argument, especially as made by the president's putative defenders and lawyers, is so manically incoherent and involves so many things they say on television and in papers, but not in front of judges, because it's such an incoherent mess of an argument, it's hard to parse out those things. I think it's fair to say, as with everything, there were irregularities. As with everything, we probably need to clarify who has the final say in moving um deadlines back and forth was it a judge or is it a legislature i mean we've had rulings on both sides um the idea that to me just astonishing the idea that this is the election that republicans think was stolen from

them is just i mean they are doing themselves no favors, no favors at all by these, by this, this, this Texas lawsuit is, is it's ludicrous. It's ludicrous. I wasn't suggesting the Texas lawsuit as such, Rob. What's that, John? Can you repeat that? But John, your problem is that there aren't any lawsuits left. Yeah, no, no, I don't have a problem. Because the fact is I agree that we're probably not going to get this election legally overturned.

The evidence will not be there in a form that could be used in court and so on and so forth. And so therefore, I'm not suggesting that legally there'll be a different result. Politically, I don't think that that means that people who object, which is some Republicans and one or two other people, people who object that voter fraud occurred, I think that over the next three or four years, that's going to prove to be a lot of people. And there is a sense on the right, and not just on the right, some people would acknowledge it elsewhere. There's a sense that since from the moment that Donald Trump was elected four years ago, the whole system was determined to oust him, to block him, and eventually, in this case, to try to get rid of him. Now, that may be, as I stated, exaggerated,

but it's a deeply felt feeling among a lot of people. There's a lot of evidence for it. And it's that it's allied, I think, to a sense of injustice. And that's never underestimated. That sense is on the left as well. It's been on the left. I've spent four years rolling my eyes at people who say that, oh, you know, the Republicans stole an election and Stacey Abrams is really the governor of Georgia. And I roll my eyes that please. And they, and they, and often they use as one of their signs. Well, the Republicans have been trying to run against her for four years. Yes. That is what politics is. The Democrats have been running. I agree. The Russia business was, was, but The Russia business was a complete put-up job.

I agree with you 100%. Reagan managed to get things done under investigation, but Clinton managed to get things done, and Trump managed to get things done under investigation. The idea that his administration and his progress was stymied by this is just, I mean, actually it's counter to the argument that he was a successful president. I think he was pretty effective

for a guy with no particular political skills. He did okay. And then we had an election and he lost. No, this won't do. Of course, you're right to say that we don't have the evidence to overturn the election. That's true.

And it's a pity maybe. And maybe the evidence is there, election that's true and i i mean it's a pity maybe and maybe the evidence is there but can't be found as is in the you know maybe it's not there yeah maybe it's not there but there's enough point to you i can't take you to the place where i didn't bury the money that i didn't steal look i'm not arguing that there's a look do you not accept the concept that in a legal case sometimes evidence is not either not available or in court because the rules prevented being presented to court that obviously happens in life as well and i think where did it happen here look i don't actually want to argue the case that we're going to overturn the result. But why can't you say this is silly?

Don't you think this is bad or not bad? You don't think it's bad at all? I don't think what's bad at all. You don't think this is a stain on or could potentially hurt a Republican brand in the future? You don't think that the suburban, as you voted against Trump, and I think it could equally hurt the Republican brand in the future? You don't think that the suburban voted against Trump? And I think it could equally hurt the Republican brand in the future if the many people, mostly

Republican-supporting, think that the Republican officials don't really care about this and won't fight the battle. Now, what is the battle? No, it is not to overturn this result. This is to make sure... But that is the battle right now! No, no, no no let him speak please

second i'm not but you're arguing not against me here you're arguing against the mythical figure who's arguing we can overturn the election john that is the case that is the current case john your advice to donald trump now your advice to donald trump now is go home to Mar-a-Lago. You've done, you've taken four brutal years. You've proven more effective than anyone might have supposed, but it's over. Go enjoy yourself and golf. Or you are in a unique position. No one since at least Theodore Roosevelt, no former president since at least Theodore Roosevelt, no former president, since at least Theodore Roosevelt has been in a

position to carry on a particular kind of fight to keep his party united, to accomplish certain measures out of office, keep at it, remain in the public eye, keep fighting. Of those two, what would you say? I'm hiring you as my spokesman. That's exactly the second one that I think over the next four years, there is and there ought to be a battle to make sure that there can be no suspicious results in future American elections. Now, I can't, we can't rule that out completely in very close races. But nonetheless, we don't want a feeling at the end of other elections, as there have been legitimately in the past.

The Nixon-Kennedy case is the most famous, but there are other ones, for example, in Maryland and in Michigan, the senatorial seats that look suspiciously as though their votes were invented at the last minute and added to the total against the man who was winning. So I think we must try to make sure that doesn't happen. But there's another point, surely, which is more important, which is we don't just simply ask about the votes cast. We say the circumstances in which they were cast. Now, this won't overturn any elections and shouldn't. But it is obviously interesting that the decision to bring in changes in the electoral rules and in bringing in the system,

particularly of mailing votes out en bloc to all sorts of people who didn't exist has produced some irregularities and we've got to make sure those kind of of rules um do not allow future um future elections to be stolen i don't see why anyone would object to that we're waiting a moment to see whether rob can i don't expect that at all i but that is that is and that has not been the argument that anybody who represents Donald Trump in court or in the press. Right. It is not the subject of the Texas lawsuit. It's not something anything. This reminds me not not so much. And I say this, John, you know, I love you. I say this as a great affection and respect. This reminds me of the people during the Clinton impeachment who said, can't we just move on? Let's talk about the bigger picture here. Can't we just move on? Because the smaller picture they wanted to erase. We are going to have to go through another four grotesque weeks where emotionally imbalanced people are going to be speaking in front of judges or in front of tv cameras saying all sorts of

crazy things and like we've been doing for four years under trump ignoring the crazy but the truth is that people listen to the crazy and they listen to it very carefully and that is why trump lost i will maintain it's because of the because trump voters heard him especially in that first debate and thought this guy can't be president anymore i think we're hurting ourselves hold on a second here rock wait wait wait and say if you go back and look at the early years of the trump administration when people were talking constantly about russian collusion and the fact that he's taking orders from putin and the rest of it there are others swalwell himself conjuring up the most ridiculous scenarios those people were crazy as well they They just had a

veneer of sanity that was granted to them by a media that was completely on board with what they were doing. And I'm not saying that there's not the craziness in the right. There is. But the craziness on the left that was going on then was this flavor. I'm not arguing

with you, Rob. But I agree. Do I have to argue with you about how i'm not arguing with you the most outrageous conspiracy theories i've ever heard in my life the ones that are the most crackpot and i don't mean the ones that say hugo chavez and the loch ness monster stole the election of donald trump the the ones that i the ones i really remember being insane were spoken from the lectern at Yale University by tenured political science professors. So I'm perfectly willing to believe it. I just like to think that we weren't as crazy as they are, and I guess we are.

On this matter, forgive me for protracting it, but I think there may be ground on which everyone here will agree. It's critical. And it is the ground that Kim Strassel, of which Kim Strassel has persuaded me. The fraud that's being brought to our attention now is a question of what happened after election day. That is to say, the vote counting, the irregularities, were they spotted? And that's not to the point. What's to the point is what took place before election day and the effort by the Democrats, a systematic effort. Nancy Pelosi's H.R. 1, two years ago, her first bill, which did not pass, but it announced their

effort, was to establish looser national rules. The Democrats, again and again, in court case after court case, in appeal after appeal to this, that, or the other state official, succeeded in changing the rules. And the Republicans let it happen, weren't ready. I am one who thought that this time around, Donald Trump had professionals in his campaign who were going to be combating all of this step by step. But Kim's point is, if you want to say the election was stolen, the paradox is it was stolen legally. And the question now is, can those rules be tightened up, rolled back, made more sensible? That's, that's the, that's when it comes to elections, that's the real issue now, is it not? I go to John. Well, you certainly can

argue that case. I think it's a very strong one, that it happened beforehand, that it was all legal. At the same time, why did the Republicans not respond more vigilantly and more aggressively to this. I think if you think about the last 10 years, that any attempt to suggest there's any voter fraud has been laughed out of court. As Kevin Williamson, our colleague, has said, the thing that never happens somehow keeps on happening. Voter fraud popped up here and there. And I think that meant that the Republicans were fundamentally, you know, psychologically afraid to raise this case until what they thought, what I think there is evidence of, there was voter fraud. It suddenly made them angry, passionate and prepared to fight and i think that we have peter's kind of summary of my argument has got two parts it's that we've got trump has got if he's going to handle this at all well he's got to accept that he lost and he's got to behave with a certain dignity a bit late for that

maybe but nonetheless on the other hand in the context that something went wrong, it mustn't go wrong again, and I intend to make sure that it goes right. And I think that will bring, I mean, I think there's a case for arguing that on its own merits, but also because I think you've got to try to appeal those to your supporters who at the moment feel like the supporters of Dreyfus in France, the beginning of the last century. Okay. Wow. That's right. I'll have to recalibrate everything after that. No, I, I, I can, I agree. And I just can say time there's a voter, you know, people who study this say this, you know, there's voter fraud and there's election fraud. Democrats are very good at voter fraud, not so good at election fraud. Republicans are actually not so

bad at election fraud. There are, there's one or two of them in prison right now in North Carolina who were tried and arrested, tried and convicted for it a couple of years ago. So that's that. Those are all possibles. Right. The problem that the Trump campaign had was that we know that judges left right center judges, judges appointed by Ronald Reagan, judges appointed by Bernie Sanders, if there was such a thing, the last thing they will do

is throw out a vote. The last thing they will do is disenfranchise, to use their term, which is loaded, but still to disenfranchise a voter. That's the last thing they're never going to say for that. So if you say there was a snowstorm and there was ice on the roads, we had to keep polls over for the 24 hours. They always say yes. If you say there's a pandemic, we're going to keep the polls over for the three weeks. I'll bet you they would have said yes. The Democrats took advantage of what they knew was going to happen. And the Republicans, their leaders said, whatever you do, don't vote early. And that is a fundamental mistake, a fundamental mistake born of a kind of bloody mindedness that is self-destructive and that is absolutely consistent with the way this president has led. All of his failings and

failures and even his successes are the result of his stubborn inability to make a strategic decision which requires him to forego one thing, the immediate joy of been exactly the same, but this, all this kind of craziness and sort of this idea that, oh, these voters, that Hugo Chavez typed in new code, all that stuff, we wouldn't be having to talk about. Is that fair? It's perfectly fair. And I think that as I've already sort of accepted, I think there's not going to be a change. I don't think it's particularly a bad thing for him to try to pursue his legal rights to a great extent, because that, among other things, shows that the left's view of him and of America as somebody who was an authoritarian, who was going to seize power. It's completely false and absurd. And I really, in other words, it's part of the education

that the American electorate needs to go through about the last four years in order to have a better next four. I want to just go back to something that Rob said, which I still can't believe. He was saying that some people say that the election was stolen by Venezuela and the Loch Ness Monster. That's a really cute way of putting it, Rob, because the Loch Ness Monster, nobody's talking about that. People are talking about the video where Bigfoot

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All right, John, let's move on to something else. Brexit. The disappointment with Boris Johnson seems to be astronomical in its proportions. But at least Brexit is happening, right? Or is it? How's that going? And how exactly is the British economy and popular mood looking these days? Well, as a matter of fact, I think it's going a little better for the moment. It looks as though the Europeans have

overplayed their hand, that they're making completely unreasonable demands. For example, that the British should be compelled after they've left to not only continue to observe existing EU laws, but also all future EU laws as well. It's called dynamic alignment and it's an absurdity. So there's a strong possibility that Brexit will now happen, a genuine Brexit. There's also a strong possibility because this is always a perils of Pauline exercise in which, again and again, you think the girl is going to be run over by the locomotive. And the last minute the hero turns up, in this case, the hero is improbably Michel Barnier or Macron or Angela Merkel whips the girl from under the train. And and so, you know, Brexit never really happens. There is there is a kind of agreement to to stay

half in and half out of the eu and that's an exaggeration but nonetheless it's a sufficiently serious possibility that you have to you have to consider it so i'm not happy about that about the way things are but i hope to be disproved wrong if If I am disproved wrong, I'll still be unhappy because the British economy at the moment has got three burdens, really, of which the adjustment to Brexit is actually much the least significant. That's not a huge economic problem, as a matter of fact, despite all the jerrymines. The other two are that we're spending money like drunken sailors, like drunken admirals, really, on the pandemic and the recession and living through them. Everybody is, but we're

doing so with particular brio. And the other big thing is we now embarked, and America's going down the same road, on the green industrial revolution. And that is being promoted as something which will be, you know, bring about greater wealth and modernity to Britain. In fact, the biggest element in the green industrial revolution is what's called net zero. In other words, we will have net zero carbon emissions by, I think it's, yes, near 2050 or something like that. Then in order to achieve that, you won't be able to buy a petrol-driven car after 2030 in Britain. And that means that people will gradually be compelled

to buy electric cars, electric vehicles. Now, that's a big outlet. An electric car is expensive. And it's not only an electric car here, but the government, the taxpayers, are going to have to spend a lot of money to electrify the whole of Britain because you can't actually have electric vehicles unless they're able to get the electricity fuel that they need in the thousands and thousands of staging posts that will replace petrol stations. And that's a huge series of other things. dramatically, make British industry less competitive against its rivals, and a whole series of other things. In other words, we're going to be poorer, and we're going to be poorer

in conditions in which other things are making us poorer as well. Now, that's against a background generally of improvement over centuries. I can't be too pessimistic. The British economy is an extremely adaptive one, efficient and so on. So one has to say what the devil is going on when it's the government that is piling pelion upon ossa in terms of expenditure, expenditure which is actually designed in some weird way to make us poorer. The diminution of prosperity and mobility and freedom is not, those aren't bugs. Those are features of this. Rob? I just want to go back to Boris for a minute. Is he being, you know, he had dinner with, you know, he was in Europe, he was making the rounds. Is he being shrewd about

this? Is he playing a game? I mean, does he have more cards than they do from from here it always seems like the british have much more leverage than these crackpot europeans but maybe i'm wrong i mean but he does seem to be um of all the politicians i can think of in the world who are using covid as uh you know playing it as as adroitly as possible he seems to be the one who's doing it i mean the idea that there's a sort of a worldwide economic slowdown perhaps it's time for europe to sort of make concessions and let britain um keep the good parts and jump the bad parts or is that my set of fantasy well let me put it back and reply quickly i'll leave it this way you're absolutely right that Boris is a droid politically. He's also an attractive person.

He can make a good case. He does have one or two weaknesses, and the principal one in this context is he loves big projects. He wants his name attached to bridges between Ireland and Scotland, to a bridge over the Thames when it was London there. He's backing strongly HS2 fast railway line, which no one else in the country seems to think is a good idea,

except there was those ministers who backed it in the past. And now he's embarking on the mother and father of all transformations in deciding to make Britain, well, more or less free of fossil fuels by the end of the century and maybe halfway there. So we should beware of this Napoleonic personality type. And unfortunately, it's one of his weaknesses. He's the Robert Byrd of Britain. Well, you mean putting his name on everything yeah you name on everything yeah john john peter here we we've got to get to margaret thatcher and and the crown yeah yeah

and and clear up a few factual difficulties here i think and i but the opening question you just mentioned this margaret thatcher of all people associated herself very strongly with the channel did she not oh yes i thought she supported the channel but she what she she didn't try to make it an emblem of thatcherism i mean she got it yes that's he went along with it yeah she was happy with it yeah she was happy with it all right okay So we come now to the crown and the crown portrays Mrs. Thatcher in extremis in 1990. She's the coup was underway against her. She realizes that she's got trouble with the grandees of the Tory party. And in fact, she's very close to deciding to step down. But the first step she takes is to go to the palace, to the crown and this is not hinted at it's explicit

there is a scene as you well know showing mrs thatcher with the queen in which mrs thatcher very explicitly recommends to the queen that the queen dissolve parliament and the queen simply refuses did that happen no it didn't that and by way, was it even thinkable at the time that she might have done such a thing? Well, I don't believe anyone ever thought it. After all, the reason she lost the conservative prime ministership was because she lost the leadership of the conservative party. And once she'd lost that, she had to resign. Now, could she have taken some action? Yes, she could have said, I have lost the leadership She had to resign. Now, could she have taken some action? Yes. She could have said, I have lost the leadership of the Conservative Party. I intend to remain Prime Minister until

I'm ousted in the House of Commons. I ask those of my supporters to rally around me in the parliamentary debate. I would have liked to do that as a romantic, dramatic perhaps end to her career, but she didn't do it. And that's the only way she could have gone. And that would have meant that you would have had, and you've had the situation in the past in which the leader of the government was not the leader of the party of government.

That happened essentially in the national governments in 1931. When Ramsey MacDonald, ex-Labor, was prime minister, but the real man running the show was the leader of the tory party stanley baldwin an interesting way to go but not one way she considered all right now back to mrs thatcher and the queen tensions between them constant in the crown and again there is one episode in which this is, again, not hinted at, but made explicit in the portrayal, in which the Queen authorizes, in effect, commands the press secretary to leak to Fleet Street that the Queen disapproves of Mrs. Thatcher, that she's not best pleased with Mrs. Thatcher's confrontational approach and so forth. I searched my memory. I do remember stories about tensions between the Queen and Mrs. Thatcher. I don't recall that they were ever, in any event, you were there, you lived through all this. Two questions. One, is it conceivable

that the palace intentionally leaked against Mrs. Thatcher? and two, explain to our listeners why it would have mattered that this mere figurehead had an opinion of the elected prime minister. Well, as a matter of fact, I don't believe that. The problem with the Quran is that when you start inventing some things, then everything you say looks a bit dubious. I think on this occasion, that particular row is kind of accurate. Now, as a matter of fact, I was on The Times at that time. Oh, this was before you were at Downing Street or after? It was Downing Street. I was on The Times. But the man who was close to that at the time was the editor of The Sunday Times, Andrew Neill. And Andrew Neill has given the accounts in The Crown,

he's given it his informata. He says that's exactly how it was from the side of the Sunday Times. I do think that the only mystery, and I think that the Crown is probably right on this, is the degree to which the Queen herself encouraged her press secretary to leak the story. And the scene in which both her senior courtier and the press secretary talk to the queen, she gives the order and they both urge in a kind of very old-fashioned courtier-like way, don't do this. And she insists. That's the

scene which might have been over-egged, but I don't know it was over-egged, because everything else seems to be confirmed by other people around at the time. And certainly, Michael Dean, I think it was, who's the press figure, he resigned. That is presented as an act of betrayal by the queen in the movie. If he went further than his instructions, that's the other interpretation. She said, I think I'd like to distance myself from this a little. And he went over and he gave a much more aggressive picture of her disquiet and opposition. That, it seems to me, is a real possibility. But how can I resolve it?

Hmm. So I'm watching The Crown, John, and of course I'm applauding at all the wartime stuff. I love it. And I'm applauding the early, early, the early seasons. And I love the wartime stuff and I love the Cold War stuff, and even the early 60s stuff, and then this starts. And I'm jumping out of my chair for the sort of people put it together the creative figures wanted to show that she was a problematic stubborn uh haughty probably a little bit above

her station figure as they say in the south you know she was above her raisin uh and her sort of school marmish language talking to the queen but nevertheless what comes out is that mrs thatcher was trying to rewrite or to revivify a sclerotic class-bound tired worn-out kind of culture and that she succeeded and the queen really is simply uh fighting a rearguard action with her corgis at Balmoral. Is that unfair to the Queen? Is that, is that, but... Well, it's not unfair to the Queen, particularly if you consider this, Rob. The job of the sovereign, the only time the Queen in a sense directly and importantly intervenes in British politics is when there's a massive constitutional crisis which requires the sovereign to bring in

all the other parties and try to get it settled. That happened in 31, it happened in 1911, and so on. It hasn't happened in her time, so in the Queen's time. So what she's got otherwise is the general role of representing the kind of established view, which is also the view of the establishment. You can rock the boat a little, but not too much. Disquiet has got to be appeased. All of these kind of perfectly reasonable reactions, which in the case of Margaret Thatcher's government, the establishment felt very strongly. And the Queen, I think, represents that point of view. But Mrs. Thatcher, as a prime minister, that job is about taking controversial decisions every day. And what she had to deal with was the fact that the established way of doing things was, as you said, sclerotic. It was in some minor ways corrupt. I mean, you had

a lawful lot of rent-seeking in British economy at that time. So she had to administer a shock to the system. And the view, and that brings her into a clash with the Queen. She's trying to reform. The Queen is saying, it seems to me that this reform is causing a hell of a lot of trouble. The point, I think, this is now, the key point here is that in the end, Mrs. Thatcher proves to be right. She wins the next election, which is hardly considered in the end, Mrs. Thatcher proves to be right. She wins the next election, which is hardly considered in the recent crime episode, and the Queen gives her the OM. But that doesn't mean to say... Sort of a touching moment in the show, by the way, when the Queen gives her the OM. I thought it was emotionally false, to be honest, and I didn't think, I didn't like the portrait of

Mrs. Thatcher. He wasn't nearly so effective or accurate or true as the Meryl Streep's portrait, which was covering both the old Mrs. Thatcher and the figure in her prime, the dynamic political leader with a lot, just walking majestically through the House of Commons with a lot of boys who are weak men trailing. Yeah, yeah. The crowd does capture that a bit. So I have just two questions. I know Peter wants to jump in. Just two sort of fact questions and you can give us a little atmosphere.

Did she actually cook kedgeree for you, I should say? Well, no. Bacon and eggs for me. I don't think Mrs. Thatcher did a lot of cooking for people in the Downing Street apartment. I have no idea whether she cooked for the generals, you know, chief of the imperial general staff and so on. It was made, I know that as far as we were concerned, it was the speechwriters. And that was because Mrs. Thatcher, when she was doing a party political thing,

could not, under the rules of the game, are quite strict uh and use as the servants of the official servants in downing street she couldn't use the cook and their servants um so she had to do something herself or she had to persuade dennis to do it or she had to get conservative central office to send over marx and spencer's lasagna which did happen okay so we've established she's cooking bacon and eggs that's good. So my second question is sort of a larger political issue. She's talking to the queen. The queen says, which a lot of people say, look at all the unrest, look at all the trouble, look at all the minor strikes, et cetera. Look at all of that. And her response is, so to me, something was weird about it. I couldn't figure out what it was she says yes that is it's trouble but we that's what we need it's a sign that this change is

happening any modern politician any contemporary politician the person in the white house right now and the person who was in the white house before him would have instead of saying that would have said no no no no it's not really no no it's not really happening it's not really happening no no no it's not unrest it's actually no you're you're overplaying it. You're just looking at the media. Mrs. Thatcher seemed to be very singular in my recollection of politicians say, yes, this is happening. I'm not going to deny it, but it's good. Is that a fair assessment of her? Is there any other politician that you can think of who had that same not many um not now but but let me say the theory of mrs thatcher in that in the crown is by the way the same as the theory of mrs thatcher

in the merrill street movie and that is that yes this woman was a fighter brave admirable in many ways but the the troubles she solved were caused as much by herself as by other people and they could have been solved more easily uh by a more amenable easygoing the mirage of approach getting people in to downing street giving them beer and sandwiches which is the traditional way of solving industrial disputes and and and the and my view of that is quite simply the tensions, the difficulties, the backwardnesses, and the problems of the British economy and society in the 70s were so serious that it is sentimental rubbish to think that they could have been solved and corrected by that kind of ameliorative approach.

It hadn't worked in the previous 15 or 16 years, and we needed someone who was prepared to actually implement genuine, effective reform with all the pains that that brought about, that that required. She did it, and that's why she's a great figure. God damn, she was great. She was great. Hey, John, Peter here. I just want to establish the portrayal of Mrs. Thatcher struck me as in one register, correct and not bad.

And that register was a relatively formal television interviewee, Mrs. Thatcher, which is certainly not the way she would have been with the Queen, or in her own kitchen of the upstairs apartment in Downing Street. Can I just, let me just put, she was capable of charm, was she not? Oh, well, she certainly was, and a lot, I mean, she was worshipped by many people, and some of her opponents, like David Owen, for example, I think is on record as saying, you know, you see her in the House of Commons, 6.30 of an evening, in one of the bars, she's had a whiskey, you know, she's a really attractive woman.

Yes. So there was that element. I would say the more important element, at least as I encountered it, was her warmth, her kindliness, her toughness of argument, but her concern about the people, particularly the servants in Downing Street, or even more so the detectives. She really would do anything for them. She always thought about them.

She thought about her staff in a general way. So there was that element in her personality. I didn't think that the portrait of Mrs. Thatcher was more right. You're right to say it was an attempt to convey, as if it was the whole of her, that the politician had begged. Yes, yes. her that the the politician that beg yes yes yeah but i also think that the queen and uh mrs thatcher did not have as contentious of the relationship as as they imply i think if they'd been in the same political party they would have sorry if they'd been in the political party it would have been the same one mrs thatcher would have been the head of the reformist wing the queen the head

of the queen would have been a wet queen would have been a wet butcher would have been the head of the reformist wing, the queen the head of the... The queen would have been a wet. The queen would have been a wet, but she would have been Tory. Yes. That's my view of the matter. And I think that Meryl Streep managed to capture the roundness of personality, the

full personality, in a way that I'm afraid that Gillian Anderson didn't. But it's hard to do. I have two more questions before relinquishing you to the pleasures of the Budapest evening, Budapest Friday evening. I'm interviewing Charles Moore on Monday, Charles, who's published a third biography of Mrs. Thatcher. Charles makes quite a lot of, he said, yes, yes, there were tensions. The queen represented consensus

and the establishment, Mrs. Thatcher, just as you've said. And then he talks about, it was actually quite important that the queen gave Mrs. Thatcher the order of merit because that is not done on the advice of the government.

That is in the personal gift of the sovereign. It was an act of personal graciousness. And it was very important that the queen attended Mrs. Thatcher's 70th birthday party, her 80th birthday party, and that her funeral, it is the only funeral of a prime minister since Winston Churchill that the sovereign attended. And here we are. the Queen is 94. And if in my occasional dips into the British press, people had begun to think past her. We've been talking about Mrs. Thatcher. Why does Elizabeth II matter? Why is it important to Charles and indeed to you that the Queen did give Mrs. Thatcher the OM, that she did honor Mrs. Thatcher by attending birthday celebrations and her funeral?

Why does this lady, whom in some short number of years we are about to lose, why does she matter? Because she completely fulfilled her vow, which you had at the beginning of the fourth season of The Crown, when she was very young, Princess Elizabeth, on a tour of South Africa. And she gave this speech to the, quote, the British family of nations over the radio. And in that speech, she vows to devote her life to the service of the peoples under the crown. And she's fulfilled that. She's fulfilled that in a way that no one could confidently have predicted, even if they'd known of her strong qualities of character. So that, I think, is a remarkable thing. And, of course, she's surrounded by a lot of people who haven't fulfilled those duties.

But she is the slave of duty and she has and she deserves our admiration secondly um she has actually done well so to speak she the episodes you're talking about are isolated the ones that controversial they're isolated episodes in about 70 years of service aren Don't we think that's a remarkable thing? I mean, that someone should be faced in this position and think of how, I mean, she's not a politician, she's not subject to the same attacks, but everybody recognized that and all prime ministers have realized that and treated her that way, I think. So that's worth bearing in mind. But a final point is that I think there was a

temperamental difference of opinion between Mrs. Thatcher and the Queen. But it's worth quoting Robin Harris's view. He wrote another biography of Margaret Thatcher. He was an aid, her aid as well, and a very important one. He said the the tensions between queen and prime minister have generally been exaggerated they got on pretty well and very and much better actually in her later years but the real relationship between the royals and mrs thatcher was that between mrs thatcher and the queen mother who is portrayed as in her head in this yes Yes, yes. No, no, no. She was a shrewd, tough lady. Yeah, and that, and that, that, that, and I'm sorry, I'm quote robbing. That was a deep admiration on Mrs. Thatcher's part.

And it was reciprocated by the Queen Mother. I see. John, last question. What does she mean to us today? Mrs. Thatcher, I mean. What does her example mean to us today? Mrs. Thatcher, I mean. What does her example mean to us today? Surely it must mean something. You can't have this heroic figure who has nothing to say to us.

What does she mean? Well, as a matter of fact, I think the answer is not one, because I think she means today less than she meant 30 years ago. And she means also less than she will mean in the next 30 years, because so many of the same mistakes that she came into politics to cure, more or less explicitly, of distancing themselves from Mrs. Thatcher as somebody from the past, which is no longer relevant, and also distancing people from her because they feel she's a too severe a figure, which is we know she wasn't as a person. But politically, you can see why people might say that. But I think we're going to look back. And the British people have already reached this conclusion, even if their leaders have not. They're going to look back and see Mrs. Thatcher as a heroic figure who was bold enough to say what she would do and do it.

And then she wanted to stay around and deal with any other consequences, but was dismissed, not by the people, but by the politicians whom she'd embarrassed by proving wrong. Well, John, thank you for joining us today. I haven't said anything about this because I haven't watched the show. And for once, I'm't said anything about this because I haven't watched the show, and for once I'm not going to talk about something I know nothing about. I know I was tempted to watch it because I'm a big Gillian Anderson fan from way back, but I was afraid that she would bring her understated, smoldering, intellectual, erotic appeal to Margaret Thatcher, and I didn't really want that.

She did a little bit. I didn't really want that, and did a little bit. I didn't really want that and if she didn't bring it to it I'm not sure what the point of watching Gillian Anderson would be. One of my favorite actresses but you've convinced me that I'm wrong and that I should probably start at the beginning and watch the entire thing even though my love of British shows usually requires some earl to be killed by a candlestick in the room at some point and nobody knows who in the village did it. Well we didn't we didn't talk about the portrayal of Princess Diana, which is absolutely sensationally good by the actress Emma Corrin. And she's unbelievable. In fact, the woman playing the queen said of her, it was eerie

for the rest of us. When she put on the clothes and the makeup, she really was Diana. And the rest of us had to shake. So I'd watch it for that reason. I think the portrait, very sad one, of Princess Margaret comes across very well. She's a hero in it. Don't you think? I think so too, actually.

It's interesting. She's actually, curiously enough, she's the voice of wisdom. Yes. Yes. So I think there's a lot in it. And I admire it. Did you go to Edinburgh,burgh john what do you make of that portrayal well um i i prefer the the the present duke of edinburgh than to the first duke of edinburgh because i think that from it i think you have the actual

present the actual duke but yes the this portrayals of the duke of edmund seems like he's sort of settled into his he is a sponsor he's got some wisdom there he's got some wisdom and he's a decent guy i think he's been a you know he's been a very strong support for the for the queen over the years i think most english people like him as a matter of fact and uh and then i think that the portrait of prince char Charles is absolutely terrible. I've just been writing about it, and I said it seems to me as though the writer has either got a wife who's a Republican or a mistress who's a modern architect. Well, we'll have you back for the next season. We'll have you back before then.

We release you to the tender beauties of a Budapest winter uh winter night and uh thank you for joining us merry christmas john merry christmas all the best cheers i you know i was right i do love watching british television but it's it's often the historical murderer series i know there's some interesting agatha christie remakes they've made there's my one of my favorites, an independent show called Ripper Street, which is pretty good for a few years. It's about the rise of policing in London. Sensational and dramatic and the rest of it. But Peter and I have talked about Endeavor before,

but the odd thing is that when you go back to the show set in British history, what you oddly find is remarkably modern dentition, as opposed to what we expect to be, sort of the snaggletoothed, imperfect dental sets that we associate, perhaps unfairly, with Britain. In America, though, we've got good, strong American teeth. And why is that? Because we brush and we floss, right? Very good. I knew that.

Are you one of those people? Are you a frequent flosser? Or are you just flossing and you've got something stuck in there? Well, only one out of two people brush twice every day. Only one out of two people brush twice every day. Interesting statistic. And the same goes for flossing regularly. You might ask what kind of person you are. I know what I am. I'm the sort of person who brushes three times a day because I got my quip and I love it. You know, quit, right? It's the electric toothbrush you hear about all the time. I've been nattering on about it for years for a reason because it's great and it's good and you should have one. But there's also this sleek reusable

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Well, the Quip smart electric toothbrush connects to the free Quip app. That's right. Toothbrush talks to your phone so you can earn amazing rewards like free products actually and discounts. So as you track and coach better oral health habits, two minutes, twice a day, you're rewarded all sorts of ways. Quip also delivers your brush head, your floss, and your toothpaste refills every three months for $5. Dentist recommended schedule and it's cheap. Shipping's free, so you can save money and skip the store. Bring delight to your everyday brushing and join the over 5 million miles brushing with Quip starting at just $25. This holiday season, check out Quip's exclusive deals, but you got to go to getquip.com slash ricochet now. Getquip.com slash Ricochet now.

And you'll get your first refill free. That's your first refill free at Getquip.com slash Ricochet. And as ever, we thank Quip for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now quickly, I mentioned that it's time for the... The James Violet Member Post of the Week. That was tight as a tip. I'd be happier. Post of the week. Sean Buell, Jeopardy champ.

That's his handle on Ricochet. Post was 2020, a year of conspiracies, real and imagined. Unpopular opinions contained herein. So I looked at this and I said, okay, well, let's see exactly how unpopular or real or unimagined. His first unpopular opinion, Donald Trump lost the election fair and square. His second unpopular, there exists an international cabal of pederasts consisting of people placed at the highest level of well-respected and powerful organizations who have for decades perpetrated the crimes under the nose of law enforcement officials and within

the very framework of the legal system itself. And you're thinking, did he go Q? Is this pizza ping pong? No, he's talking about something else. And his third conspiracy. It's very likely that secret agencies of the U.S. government possess definitive knowledge that non-human intelligences are in control of vehicles that routinely violate our airspace and harass our military fighter jets. Why was this the post of the week? One, because the thing about Donald Trump winning the election fair and square sums up a lot of the debates that have been clanging on the member feed. Two, the idea of the international cabal of pederasts not being who you thought produced some very interesting discussions on that subject you'll have to go there to see what it is and see i'm fascinated by the idea that we seem to have agreed in 2020 uh yeah those are ufos uh we don't know who's

driving them probably aliens got a space force now uh yeah and uh you know that israeli retired space minister said oh yes oh yes yeah well it it's the Galactic Federation and the higher levels of government have known about it for years. We're just not ready for it yet. And that's what I want to ask Peter, of course, because we all know that Peter is one of those guys who's fascinated by space and space exploration and putting ships on other planets. A kid, of course, couldn't care less. Peter. Yes. No, no, course, couldn't care less. Peter? Yes. No, no, no.

You keep saying that. I just don't want to pay for it. Let Elon Musk explore. Elon Musk pay for it. Right, and so he shall. I mean, we had a great, there was a little bit of a hot ending on the landing they did this week,

but watching that beautiful craft performance, its maneuvers was just crazy, right? It was fantastic. I'm just stunned by it. I mean, I grew up with rocket ships that landed craft performance, its maneuvers was just crazy, right? I'm just stunned by it. I mean, I grew up with rocket ships that landed like that, right? They landed like in the movies. And now we've got them. Sorry about my dog barking. There's an alien outside.

So I'll ask you, Peter, how do you feel about the whole... In 2020, we seem to have... When the U.S. military is releasing footage and saying, yeah, we call this one the Tic Tac, we call this one the cube, and this one here, this triangular one, we're not sure. I mean, where do you stand? Rob Peter, where do you stand on this? I suffer from total incuriosity. It is just so far down the list of things I would like to find out about.

Let's put it this way. If I were made president tomorrow, I'd call in the CIA and I would not say, first, what's the deal with all these alien spacecraft? I'd say, what's the deal? Have our satellite mapping agencies actually picked up Noah's Ark

on a mountain in Turkey? That's the one I want to get to. I don't, I just, i don't know but of course i'm the guy who thinks paul mccartney disgraced the beatles with simply having well you're you're correct you're correct he disgraced the important thing for for us to understand and for us to know that you know is that in your opinion paul mccartney just disgraced the memory of the beatles because of course that was a decade later. I just need to know that you know that.

I'm nodding. I'm nodding. For people who are just listening, I am nodding in Zoom. I will say that I wrote about this. I did a martini shot about this in 2019. A year ago, there was a bunch of Navy pilots in somewhere, and they saw this crazy thing flying around like a giant orb. And they were saying, what the F, and what's going on. And then traditionally, what happens after that is the Navy Aviation

Public Information Department says something like, it was a weather balloon. It's a this, it's a that. It was a missile, blah, was a missile but what all these things right this time they came out in not in in november in 2019 saying well we don't know we're i don't know what do you think it was it seems crazy to us and they've actually they'd call it something it's not an unidentified flying object but it's like it's like what you call something when you can't call it a ufo it's like a as yet unidentified aerial phenomenon or something like that. And everyone kind of shrugged and went back to like what some crazy thing that Trump tweeted and something else. Right. And what I thought was funny about that was that for years that the bedrock fundamental assumption, the prior of every science fiction movie, pretty much every movie, people in general think, well, the government knows. They just don't tell us because they think we'll freak out.

And the truth is, we are now unfreakable. Most people believe that there's life in outer space. We're absolutely ready for them to come. There'd be no pandemonium. People would be screaming and yelling. Actually, it's one more instance of, that's the case of the government thinking, well, we can't we can't tell them the truth. We're already we already got the truth. In fact, we're so used to the idea. We're bored by it. I mean, like I can see the spaceship lands. The door opens. A man totters out and says, take me to your leader. And and somebody steps forward and said, you joe biden or the guy who really won or or it's more like uh first club you know do you think a hot dog is a sandwich it's like whatever the twitter argument is at that moment

right it turns out that you know when when gort comes out and issues some strange phonemes in another language he's actually expressing his doubt that Die Hard is a Christmas movie. Right. None of these things will matter. I mean, if the most important thing to come out of this is actually some, is the recognition of life on this planet, and that we're actually being contacted by these people. None of the other stuff that we're talking about today matters.

It really doesn't, because this is the big one. This is the big thing. Especially if we understand how that upends so many. I mean, the philosophical theological implications of this are extraordinary. And what I love about it is that it splits people into two camps, people who care about this. The one people who say, this is, this is big. This is great. We can be part of something larger. And the people who say, this is big, this is great. We can be part of something larger. And the people who say, why would anybody from any other planet be concerned about us? Why won't they just regard us as a bunch of stupid monkeys? We can't do what they're doing. What's interesting about us to them, which I find really unimaginative. I mean, yes, if you have a craft which is capable of traversing

these great distances, either by folding space or by know popping through wormholes i don't know how they do it um yes you would look at us with a certain amount of clinical interest but also and again this is all anthropomorphism because it assumes that there's the same level of concerns and interests and observations in them as in us but what if that's the case i mean what if they are actually curious and interested yeah and they are explorers and they found us and they found us worthy of study they're not here for our resources if they can get here they don't need our water or minerals they're not here to enslave us what if there is actually something no but what if there is actually something intrinsically fascinating and good and rare about humanity that makes this blue marble maybe not one of a billion interchangeable worlds, maybe not the only place, but part of a small little collection of things that are actually rare and precious and they regard us as something not to be studied clinically and dissected, but to eventually become part of a fraternity larger than ourselves. And that is all just because I've listened and watched too many science fiction shows.

But what if somehow all of those shows and those plots and those ideas all grasped towards the truth that was out there waiting for us? There must have been some magic in that old hat they found, huh? All right. Last question. I'm going to tell you, we've got one last thing to go. And Rob's going to go to town on this, no doubt. But I got to tell you, before've got one last thing to go and Rob's going to go to town on this. No doubt. But I got to tell you before we posed to Rob and Peter, the last point, the podcast was,

well, it is still going on, brought to you by Headspace, by Quip and by Mack Weldon. Support them for supporting us. And of course you can listen to the best of Ricochet show hosted by some short guy lives in Minnesota. That's on the radio America network.

Check your local listings and hear all the little clippings of the podcast. You don't even have all the time to catch. But you do have a minute to go to Apple Podcasts and leave us a five-star review, don't you? Yes, you do. Your reviews are very helpful, and they help surface the show. So, closing question. Last week, gentlemen, Jason Clark, I can't pronounce that correctly, WarnerMedia's chief executive, call it that, said that 17 Warner Brothers movies would roll out on HBO Max.

The directors were not happy about this. So that's Warner's new streaming service, and some people are saying that's it. That's the end of theaters. That's the end of the movie theaters. What do you think? Let's ask Peter Robinson first, because he just got a blue check on Twitter this week.

Oh, yeah. He's more important than any of us. Yes, yes, yes. I just got a blue check, and this week. Oh yeah. He's more important than any of us. Yes, yes, yes. I just got a blue check and I called blue Yeti and said, for once I'm ahead of Rob Long. And the Yeti said, no, no, Rob was, Rob has had a blue check for years. Yeah. But that's that feeling when you think you're ahead and you find out you're still just catching up yeah go to the supreme court you know how many followers do you have on twitter uh the amazing thing is that a blue check actually does make a difference i think i got something like 500 followers in the last two days which is since i've had a blue check, I'm still in the low thousands, not in the mega millions like Xi Jinping and Rob Long.

Theaters. I don't have any idea, but I'd be fascinated to hear the thoughts of someone who actually does no show business. Mr. Long. I think, I think it's a smart move for,

for Warner media to do that. I don't think it's really good. I mean, look, everybody's going to complain about it, but the truth is if you're, if you offering people money to make movies, they're going to take that. I don't think it's really good. I mean, look, everybody's going to complain about it, but the truth is if you're, if you offering people money to make movies, they're going to take it, uh, and they're going to make movies for you. And then there'll be be complained about how

you distributed them. They always do. Um, but they'll take it. And I suspect that, you know, HBO max and the born, they put a lot of money in HBO max. They're looking at Netflix, which has 200, you know, some astronomical number of subscribers and seems to be holding on. And they're looking at Disney, which has got 80 million now worldwide. And they're going to probably have 250 million in the next couple of years.

And they're saying, well, Disney, we understand what Disney is. And Netflix is the first mover advantage, I guess. What do we got? And we have all these movies and we're splitting it up. So maybe they'll spend a year and they'll use COVID as the excuse to sort of gin up some memberships in HBO Max.

They know that once you subscribe to these things, it's hard to unsubscribe. People just don't do it. They do it, but it's never, as of today, it's not a big thing. It's a big fear, but it's something that you can easily sort of defend against.

But the most, the hardest thing to do is to get them to subscribe. And that costs money because getting subscribers costs money. Getting members to anything costs money. Or you have to have some moron do it for free like me, and you beg and say, please join Ricochet, and people kind of say, oh, please shut up. And then everybody you know in business kind of tells you how bad you are. That's kind of where HBO Max is. So that's what they're doing. They're putting it all behind that paywall, making you join in order to listen, to watch the content. It'll probably work for a year. And then a year later, they'll have, they'll come up with some other way of describing superhero movies or big movies that need to be out there or autumn date

movies and then they'll try to re to reinvigorate the movie going experience which i think will be good i think it ought to be i think we'll be back in theaters i think that they have to movie companies need to give us a reason to go to a theater it's not the default setting anymore and that just means you have to work harder. I mean, everything that's happened in the entertainment business since about 2005 has been for 15 years, the internet streaming, the disruptions that have occurred

have only reinforced one thing is that people in show business now need to make money in the worst possible way, which is they have to earn it and they have to work hard for it. And that's something they didn't really, really. Better products will help. Yeah. Better products always help. You're right, right. We do want to go back to the theaters

because the theaters provide something that we just can't get any place. When you're a kid and you go to a movie that it scares you, the fear that you feel in a theater is different than the feel that you fear at home. You can watch something at home and be entertained and it's great. And you can pause it whenever you want, which is convenient because you got to use the bathroom and you're not worried about missing a plot point because you got to run down the hall. I get all that. But at the same time, there's never been a moment in television in my life that compared to when I was a young man sitting in a dark room and the words a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. And this crash of glorious sound and the logo

and the trumpets and the fanfare unfurled before me. You cannot replicate that in your home theater. I don't care how damn big it is. There's nothing like... Do you remember, James, going to a movie theater and seeing the trailer for the empire strikes back and it was that same kind of like classic and then the slant and it was like the whole theater kind of exploded we didn't we didn't know i mean and we just like whoa this is gonna happen that's

great it was a great feeling right and never would we have thought in a million years that 40 years later they'd be making the same damned movie we We would have been happy to hear about it. I want to go back to my young self in 1978 and say, you know what? Here's the deal. When you're in your 60s, when you're eligible for Social Security and AARP and the rest of it, there's going to be at least 700 Star Trek shows in the tank, in the can, 10, 15 movies or so. And they remade Star Wars again a couple of times. There's nine Star Wars movies, and they're going to come out with 20 more television shows. I wouldn't have believed it because at the time we thought that was all we had.

Well, they're going to – actually, to your point, I know we've got to run. To your point, they are now doing a series about the origins of Batman's butler. Of course. Alfred, what's his name? Threadgood or Goodneedle, or I don't know what his name is. Who's he? How'd he get before he became the butler to Batman?

What's his story? And so that's when you know somebody's sitting around at like two in the morning, how about his butler? Can we do his butler yet? I'm really waiting for the next Batman reboot. Did you know his parents were killed? It's so tragic.

Hey folks, thanks. We've been simply having a wonderful podcast time, as Peter Robinson would love to sing for you right now, but we've got to go. It's been a pleasure. Gentlemen, next week. Is it next week or is next week off? Somebody tell me first.

Okay. All right. We'll see everybody in the comments. Last night at sundown, Hanukkah began. So happy Hanukkah. Happy Hanukkah. My majesty's a pretty nice girl, but she doesn't have a lot to say. My majesty's a pretty nice girl, but she changes from day to day.

I want to tell her that I love her a lot, but I gotta get a belly full of wine. My majesty's a pretty nice girl Someday I'm gonna make her mine Oh yeah, someday I'm gonna make her mine Ricochet! Join the conversation. Peter Piper picked a pack of pickled pepper.