The Ricochet Podcast - Live . . . From New York!

Episode Date: May 13, 2022

While Peter’s venturing about the real America, James is vacationing between the Hudson and East rivers so he can meet up with his pal Rob–and, more importantly!–fellow Ricochet members for our first pub crawl! We hope you won’t miss it; but don’t worry, we’ve got more events to come. (There’s even a surprise announcement for our next one herein!) First up is a man who needs no introduction. Source

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. We can help you discover partners in new markets, advance your digitization and gain valuable insights into EU funding opportunities. Take advantage of free expert advice and innovation resources. Visit EEN-Ireland.com and take your business global today. Well, you don't know. I don't think he was big on the startup scene. I have a dream. This nation will rise up live out the true meaning of its creed we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created

i know you gotta be frustrated i know with all due respect that's a bunch of malarkey i've said it before and i'll say it again I know you gotta be frustrated. I know. I can taste it. With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long. I'm James Lylex.

Peter Robinson is out. He'll be back next week. But this week we've got Byron York on DC shenanigans and Rich Goldberg on the crypto crash. So let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Live from New York City, it's the Ricochet Podcast number 593. Who's the Ricochet Podcast? I want to be part of the most.

I know, 593. How did we get there? Well, we got there partly by people like you, as they say on the National Public Radio. People who join Ricochet to be part of the most stimulating conversations and community on the web. You can join, and if you join quickly, fast, like right now, you can be part of the meetup that's coming in New York, where I happen to be. I'm James Lilacs, sitting right now in that most coveted of location, a hotel room with a fantastic view of an air shaft. They say that air shaft is a bad mother. Shut your mouth. It's a great, it's a fantastic, chic, center of the world air shaft,

as New Yorkers like to say. And Rob, you're also in New York. I am in New York. I'm a little bit farther uptown from you not too far although you know there's a i i just discovered this i heard it that i don't know exactly where it is and i was going to the dmv someone told me oh right around the corner of the dmv facing the ocean uh i mean the bay i mean you know is the uh is the old cunard line headquarters and you could go and you could buy your ticket on the Titanic or something. And there's still the medallions of the various locations that they would go on the, on the front, which I'm, I'm now sending you,

I know that's the kind of that's lilacs bait for you that you'll, that's what you you're going to now want to go see all that. So. Can't wait. I went to pier, I went to pier 15, which is notable for being a, a location sorry my my motel my hotel coffee is gurgling here that's what you hear it's not me from the diner breakfast that's the other thing i'm right across the street literally from a diner with a neon sign it's completely wrapped in construction like everything else but uh i went there for a breakfast this morning it was absolutely perfect none of that chic stuff for me no No, just home fries and white toast. Anyway, so I went to Pier 15 where they had a shot from Annie Hall was taken there.

Right. So I had to go stand there and pay my respects. But there's a big, big, big ship. And it's an old ship with a rigging and the sails. The rest of it's a big tourist attraction. Sure. And I was noticing something. Four masts, three masts, I think, two.

There are flags. The topmost flag was the rainbow flag the next most flag was new york state and then there was some i think a new york city flag the flag that was lowest in this order was the u.s flag which ought not to be now i'm not going to argue about whether or not new yorkers think themselves on top of you i'm just saying that's not flag etiquette and i wanted to walk up to the gaggle of people with the crew shirts and say, did you know you're violating flag protocol? But that would instantly

tag me as somebody who cares about such trivial, ridiculous things. Yeah, I mean, actual flag etiquette is, for my Boy Scout days, I know, I mean, I'm trying to conjure it back. It was many, many years ago, as you know, but the flag etiquette's pretty clear. It has to be the American flag, the federal flag, I should say, must be at the top.

But you can't actually mix your flagstaff. I think you can have government flags on. You could have the federal flag, the state flag, and the city flag on one flagstaff. But you can't mix them up. No, you can't put the rainbow flag on top of the uh of the u.s flag you mentioned the boy scouts interesting you do so i'd been in manhattan for about 11 minutes before i was actually robbed uh i'm having the full experience here well sort of kind of i made the mistake of using my credit card at the newark at the newark

train station in order to get here and i think they had a skimmer inside because within about a minute or so, I started getting all of these false little attacks. Somebody had gotten my number and everything. That's technically being robbed in New Jersey, just so you know. Yeah, I guess so. That's true. But by the time this stuff hit me,

I was in New York. And one of the false little attempts to use my credit card was made at the Boy Scouts for $1. And I thought, is this somebody sort of atoning for what he's doing by giving a little, you know, throwing money to the boy scouts? Oh, it's a test, right? Isn't that what it is?

Yeah, it's a dollar. It's the test to see if it works, to see if the dollar is just like if it goes through and you don't complain that it works and then they go and they, I mean, I'm sure it isn't. And they rocked on it. If that goes through, they're going to give you, they uh i'm gonna give a thousand dollars to the scouts um well on the way on the way from the train station from penn station i walked down here about an hour and a half hike or so which is fun it depends where you go there's there's some stuff that uh there's a you know south of 31st north of houston it's not that exciting you You get a little Chinatown, a little Italy.

Walked through a rally, a choice rally, or an abortion rally. The decision rally, they call it now. Is that what they're calling it now? Yeah, they have a whole new way of, they focus groups in language. So it's not pro-choice anymore, it's pro-decision. Because you know, some people, James, don't have a choice. Saying you have a choice implies some kind of privilege true and the aclu came out today or yesterday i believe with a tweet that said the people who are most negatively affected impacted by an abortion ban includes

trans people and lbgtq plus people it would seem to me that that would be a disproportionately none unlikely to but whatever we live in a world of strange equivalencies right you may have perhaps somebody said this to you women are going to vote out the gop in november because they're very angry about the supreme court decision and also women are very very angry about the baby food shortage that's a false equivalency but do you do you note that that is now taking on larger amounts right uh unless of course it's just a fox news thing i think there was a reporter well no i think i think it's true i mean i think some things are i think some things become uh political um symbols or footballs and they're stupid or they're silly right and some become political symbols

and they're meaningful because they represent something yes um and um and the specific case here about baby formula represents a kind of a cavalier out of touchness that the biden administration has and the sort of the kind of the progressive movement in general has to sort of ordinary people's concerns so the obsession with the fact that there's a formula going to the border may or may not actually truly may not may or may not be true it may or may not be as being reported in sort of the outrage organs that we have but it does symbolize something that people know to be true which is that in the middle of what is, in fact, a domestic crisis on a bunch of fronts, the Biden administration seems unable to take one action or two actions or clear action of any kind to address the issue,

or at least to signal to the American people that it understands the problems. So, you know, gas prices are through the roof. And so what does it does it do it cancels pipelines it cancels oil drilling leases now you could argue well those aren't really going to come online in time blah blah blah the psychological effect hasn't it knocks down the price it does yeah and and it also suggests that the administration understands that you're in that there's trouble and it's trying to help. They're total cavalier, tin ear, not tin ear, they're utterly

deaf ear to the concerns of the American people. It's staggering to me in a... I am not a doctor. I am not licensed to practice medicine in the state of New York. But a president who was fully in command of his awareness facilities, meaning he was reading the newspaper, which all presidents do, or at least watching the news, which some do too much, or at least talking to his friends, which some do too much, he would understand that what he needs to do is go in the Oval Office tomorrow morning and fire a bunch of people, starting with his

chief of staff, who is probably the most incompetent chief of staff we have had in the White House since I can't even remember when. This guy cannot do the job. This is an administration that cannot do the job. And the fact that this is not obvious to the person sitting behind the big desk suggests that the person sitting behind the big desk can't do the job either um that this these kinds of crazy mistakes completely out of touch well you know what do you expect i guess you were really talking about a guy who's really out of touch but i find that very strange for a politician they said they've been on it for months right they've been aware of this for. They said they've been on it for months, right? They've been aware of this for months. Well, if they've been on it for months and they can't fix a baby food shortage by changing the labeling requirements, all of a sudden, you know, airdrops, airlifting some stuff in.

If they can't do it in months, it makes you wonder what else they can do. we've been talking about for a couple of years here since the pandemic started, we've seen every single institution practically that we expected would be able to do the baseline minimum to keep things going has proven itself to be inadequate to the task. And I'm not exactly going to say that the nation's baby food infrastructure is shown to be wanting here, but if they've known about this for months and they haven't done anything, and all of a sudden we're in the situation now where they're scrambling and you have people on tv talking as i heard this morning that we need a national stockpile a national reserve of baby food like they're going to haul a lot of mountains somewhere and store the stuff no getting baby food on demand on the shelf is part of the expectation of normal daily american life going to the store solves that problem right and and if out they're going if they're

out at nine o'clock at night they're going to restock whilst you sleep and it'll be there when you get there in the morning that's the baseline expectation we have stores all over the place so that starts sundering and it makes you wonder at some point something is going to be is going to be illustrative and symbolic enough to be what i call maybe the sky lab moment do you remember sky yeah yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. Very important. I think you're right. It was a cultural touchstone. Summer of 79, it fell, and it was designed to do so. I mean, they expected that after it outlived its usefulness, it would deorbit and tumble down. But Skylab falling was symbolic in a way, because many you know a few years earlier we were going to the moon

alice we were flying to the moon and now we put something in orbit and it fell it just tumbled and we had that sort of the whole feeling that we had in the 70s that our cars don't work and our leadership is bad and our money is crap and our culture somehow that came up came together in sky so there's going i don't know if baby food is it but something is going to break it's symbolic i think you're right it is symbolic i mean that the symbolic of the way people feel and the way and what was surprising to me is that when i mean i'm trying to be non-partisan about i think just in terms of what what happens with presidents when they get in there when presidents get in there traditionally i mean this is like begins with warren harding or

doesn't begin but warren harding said hey it's not my political enemies i'm worried about it's my friends my goddamn friends you know that's what took him down right um well when presidents get in there they rarely they don't sit and stew about their political enemies so much they have the the people doing that what they sit and stew is the incompetence of their team. When they blow a gasket, when Reagan very rarely blew a gasket, it wasn't because Tip O'Neill had done something or some opponent had done something. That's considered normal. That's the state of play. It's because somebody on his team had blown it and made them look bad or look stupid or look flat-footed. And you're not supposed to do that. And this guy, Biden, just doesn't seem to have an awareness

of how rotten and incompetent his team is now. I would say probably the one area in which they are, I mean, they are probably following a policy that I disagree with with regards to Ukraine, but it seems like it's a consistent policy that they are executing so i i don't think it's incompetent what they're doing i just think it's probably wrong but their domestic policy where we are a constellation of crises right as as as hilariously symbolic as a baby food shortage to uh in political death which is gas hike insanity inflation they just seem to be unaware of any of these or how to solve them or even how to look

like they're trying to solve them instead they seem to be doubling over bending over backwards trying to prove to the american people that they don't give a crap. That not only do they not care that gas is X number of tens of dollars a gallon, but they think it should be 50. And not only do they not care that there's no baby formula, but they're going to give some of it away to some other people. It just seems so insultingly incompetent that I i would feel more comfortable if i felt they doing it on purpose but i know they're not they're just really really bad at this right it's hard to shift from saying we should have gas prices like europe to saying we shouldn't have gas prices like europe they wanted it before because they wanted everybody to stop destroying the earth and making

polar bears drown with their cars and the rest of it. But now, all of a sudden, it's the sort of thing that they might want to get around before the elections, but they're not going to, and there's not going to be enough time. Switching gears slightly, though, because we could talk all day about how these guys don't seem to know what's going on. There was a piece in the Washington Post, the reporter went out and asked a whole bunch of game companies how they felt about the supreme court decision now i read that to the reporter to the reporter's credit he did go on twitter and you know he did the you know the usual lol y'all big mad triggered and he explained that uh with previous social movements, George Floyd, et cetera, that these companies had made a statement that they had put all black

avatars up in their site to indicate solidarity. And since they'd done that, then he was going to ask them about this. Now, it's a good point. And so I'm not really... 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. Take your business international.

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has you covered. Visit Innovate today. Innovate, the IT solutions people. All that concern about the guy trying to gin up the story. What I am interested in is companies that said, maybe there's a downside to not leaping on the current thing. Maybe if we make peanut brittle, we should confine our comments to peanut brittle but you can't do that anymore this i mean the personal is the political the political political the economic is the political so everybody has got to be out there with their flags flying letting everybody know they're virtuous and in this case it actually comes back to bite some of them because they don't want to

take a stance on that issue it's also a more complicated issue i mean to be fair i mean to these companies first of all it's bizarre to be calling up video game companies and ask them i mean it's one thing to say hey do you think um a policeman should put his knee on somebody's chest and kill him when he's unarmed um and the answer is like no i don't think that should happen right now the fact that it happens you fewer than 10 times a year, the fact that it's rare, the fact that everybody went insane about it and the with abortion is that the question itself people know they have been used to lying about and they have been used to lying to other people into their own conscience about um and the great benefit of the elito decision if it becomes a decision um and i guess we won't know for a couple weeks, is that it forces us to clarify what we really mean.

That we really don't mean pro-choice. Because if we really meant pro-choice, we're not saying we're in favor of abortion rights from conception to, I don't know, 20 minutes after delivery? 10 minutes before delivery? We're not saying that. We're not saying, and we're saying you're pro-life? Well, you know, Dobbs're saying you're pro-life well you know the the dobbs in mississippi's not pro-life it's just 50 the first trimester

so all of these great complicated areas are where you sort of examine your own conscience or where if you are arguing in good faith you try to persuade your friends and neighbors and loved ones and maybe even fellow citizens of your of why you believe what you believe zero of those things can be adequately discussed with a washington post reporter if you're an executive or designer at a game company it just seems so stupid to me and the fact that the entire and i say I say the pro-life movement is probably this way too, but I don't really – I'm not quite 100% sure about this, but I'm 100% sure that the traditional pro-choice community is so unused to having to talk to people about the complexities of it and the complexities of their conscience and the complexities of what human life is that they are absolutely they seem they see no reason why you shouldn't have a snap answer to this very complicated question that has been bedeviling people for 50 years and has

caused a lot of people to change their mind based on things like an ultrasound things like having a baby things like seeing a baby in an ultrasound and you can't do that i mean you're not going to be able to do that under the law the law that they just attempted to pass right yeah there's a lot of that so i mean that's one one of the reasons why that that law instead of being a normal law appealing to normal people and codifying roe v wade which is a 50 year old uh decision went way way way farther than it needed to which is another reason why what this what is equally surprising to me that joe biden is a terrible president an incompetent administrator as president and his team is incompetent is that chuck schumer who's been sitting in the wings in the senate for so long watching good and bad senate majority leaders

is so terrible at a job which has essentially given him so many gifts which is his hands are halfway tied around his back and he could get so much done if uh if he could convince joe mansion and one one lady from maine pick any lady from maine and he simply can't do it he could have been the hero here but instead he's so in the thrall of the crackpot left wing um that he got nothing done and to me it's just baffling it's baffaffling. And the Washington Post reporter asking game companies to snap their fingers and render a judgment on this and their inability to understand that this is actually a complicated issue, that good people, really decent people, some of them are even liberals. are on the fence or in a gray zone about this um doesn't speak doesn't doesn't make me optimistic for the chances of the big umbrella pro-choice movement to convince american voters uh to agree with them which is what the alito decision asks them to do and if if you're refusing to do that if your argument is we hate we hate justice alito because he's going to make us have to persuade people.

I don't know. That's not does not move in me. Well, persuading people leads to compromise and you can't have that. You talk about how it's complicated. If you pass or attempt to pass a bill which does away with all state restrictions, which does away with the ultrasound requirements, which even chips away at RFRA when it comes to forcing religious institutions against their beliefs to commit to perform abortions, then you are not interested in persuasion. You don't think that it's complicated at all. At all.

It is simply anything that gets between this and that is wrong and is oppressive and patriarchal and handmaidens tale and the rest of it. We have to put on our red costumes anything short of what they wanted to pass it tells you that there's really not much room or desire for complicated thinking or persuasion otherwise because if you if you need to be persuaded then you are wrong thinking and you are wrong thinking probably for reasons that have to do with christianity or patriarchy full stop on that because we want to talk about something else as i mentioned before i am in in New York and I am in a hotel room. And I got to tell you, I like this place. It's a great place. But I am just not crazy about the sheets. I'm just not. I mean, they'll do. It's a bed.

I'll sleep. It's New York. I'm exhausted by the end of the day. But it's one of those places that advertises, I think, that they've got 9,000 thread count or something like that. Did you know that thread count is a myth? It doesn't matter how many threads your sheets have if they're not the best threads possible. Bowl and Branch uses the best 100% organic cotton threads on earth for a superior softness and a better night's sleep. Their sheets aren't just buttery, breathable, and impossibly soft to start with. They get softer with every wash, and that's what happens with me. I sleep on them, Bowl and Branch, so it's when you go elsewhere and you're not sleeping on Bowling Branch that you realize the difference. I mean,

these sheets might be new. I don't know how many times they've been used and bleached and washed and the rest of it, but I guarantee that they are the worst for wear for having used and washed and bleached, unlike mine at home, which are as soft today as they were, well, softer in the day I got them. Signature hemmed sheets, they're called, from Bowling Branch. They're best seller for a reason. Bowling Branch uses the highest quality threads on the planet for a superior softness and a better night's sleep. The sheets are made with threads so luxurious, they're beloved by three, count them, three U.S. presidents. They feel buttery to the touch and they're super breathable.

So they're perfect for absolutely every season. Bowling Branch did not acquire over 10,000 stellar reviews for no reason. No. When you get the best sheets in the market, people notice. They're so confident that you are going to love them. Bowling Branch gives you a 30-night risk-free trial with free shipping and free returns on all your orders. So head over to Bowling Branch to get total sleep satisfaction. Get 15% off your first set of sheets when you use promo code RICOCHET at bolandbranch.com. That's B-O-L-L-AND-BRANCH.COM. Boland Branch. Promo code RICOCHET. And we thank Boland Branch for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome back to the podcast Byron York, chief political

correspondent for the Washington Examiner and a Fox News contributor. His work has been published in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Atlantic Monthly Foreign Affairs, and the New Republic. He's also the host of the very essential byron york show podcast available at uh well this little thing we got going here called ricochet ricochet.com the byron york show byron welcome how are you i'm doing great thanks for having me oh hey love team rob go right ahead oh let's just say hey byron so so up until um the the elito opinion leak um i you know we'd all be on this podcast saying look i don't know i don't know whether it's going to be the full red wedding for the democrats in november a modified red wedding uh i don't know

whether they're all going to go down or or most of them are going to go down it was just a degrees of disaster and then this weird thing happens because weird things always do happen that kind of puts it all a little bit just off kilter and everyone's got a different spinning a different scenario here um if you're the democrats you've got to be clinging to this like a life raft right we're going to make a big deal about this and if you're Republicans, you've got to be looking at polls thinking, well, wait a minute, we're actually not out of step here. Maybe this is a winner for us, even though we've been kind of running away from it for a long time. In the general, I mean, what do you think is going to happen? If you drop, put a

big, assuming the Alito decision is the decision that's handed down or basically decision, you put a drop of that in the political big drop of that in the political brew for November. What's going to happen? Well, I think Republicans still win. I mean, I think that's the big picture here. Obviously, the leak itself, which got a lot of people, including me, pretty agitated, is not going to matter. If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, that's going to matter. Now, I think there's no indication at all that whatever the court does, including overthrowing Roe v. Wade, will outweigh the effect of inflation on these coming midterms. In some cases, it will not outweigh the effect of crime. In some cases, it will not outweigh the effect of the border.

But for everybody, inflation is still the huge thing. Now, I'm not one of these people who says the road decision would not have any effect because i think it will and i think it will certainly fire up some parts of the democratic base because a lot of the research showed that democrats were just not very interested in voting uh this november and this will get some of them interested in it. So I think it will have an effect. It could have an effect in some House districts, but I don't think it is going to change the bottom line that Republicans appear to be headed for a big victory. So is this where the Democrats regret their relative weakness in the state houses

across the country? Well, you know, one of the things that's interesting is I took a look at, you know, the Women's Health Protection Act is the bill that Schumer forced the Senate to vote on, which he lost 49-51. Right. And, you know, it was the 2022 version of a 2021 bill, which had a lot more inflammatory rhetoric. And it talked about white supremacy and oppression and reproductive justice and all this stuff was in the 2021 version of the bill. They took it out to try to make it more palatable. But here's the thing here. The bill, which 49 out of 50 Democrats voted for, and which, by the way, 218 out of 219 Democrats in the House voted for it. Literally one member of the Senate who's a Democrat voted against it, and one member of the House who's a Democrat voted against it. The bill, when they talk about it codifying Roe v. Wade,

one of the big things that it did, would have done, was it would forbid the states from passing their own restrictions on abortion. So all of these restrictions that you've heard of over the years, parental consent, counseling, all of this stuff, a lot of it which has heavy majority support, this bill would have swept away all of that. And 49 out of 50 Democrats, and all but one in the Senate, all but one in the House are committed to it. And I think what we're seeing with this uproar over the leak is that which we could have known anyway, which is that there's kind of a broad middle in the electorate about abortion. The majority does not want to see Roe overturned. But at the same

time, an even bigger majority supports limits, restrictions on abortion. So this just tells you that they reject the people who want to make abortion legal for all nine months of pregnancy with no restrictions imposed by the states. They reject that as much as they would reject people who would actually make abortion illegal in the states. So there's this broad middle. And I think Republicans are closer to the broad middle than Democrats are. And who would have ever expected that? I mean, you know, within my recent lifetime, adult lifetime, the goal for the Democrats,

and they did this pretty successfully was to point to certain weird Republican candidates, you know, running for Missouri Senate in Missouri or various other places saying certain weirdo things about abortion for rape or incest or I was a guy in Missouri saying, you know, it was legitimate rape. Or even when when Trump ran in in in 2016, there was a minor little dust up when he said

there's got to be some punishment for these women. Right. It's got to be some punishment for these women right there's got to be some punishment um the idea was to always cast the republican candidate the pro-choice candidate as kind of weird on this and it seems like really within 24 hours 48 hours from the release of that leak of that uh uh opinion the whole political calculus switched. bring together unparalleled expertise to serve businesses like yours. We can help you discover partners in new markets, advance your digitization and gain valuable insights into EU funding opportunities. Take advantage of free expert advice and innovation resources. Visit een-ireland.com and take your business global today. Hey, move those routers there. Oh, hey, it's me, your data center.

And as you can hear, I'm making some big changes in here because AI is making some bigger ones everywhere. So I took a little trip to Nokia. Super fast routers, optical interconnect, fully automated. The whole data center networking portfolio, and they deliver. That's them. Hey, Nokia, right on time. Get your data center AI ready. Someday is here with Nokia. What we're seeing now is the result. And I've been discussing a lot of this,

like comparing the two bills on my podcast. I think we're seeing the result of the fight over abortion for the last 50 years in that in the beginning there were some Republicans who wanted to overturn Roe and they just beat their head against the wall trying to do it and finally in Casey which I think was 92 the the court says, no, no, we're not going to overturn Roe versus Wade. And Republicans around the country basically turned to another strategy, which was to work on imposing limits on abortion, like parental consent, like confining it to actual medical facilities, that kind of stuff. They worked on imposing these limits, and a lot of them struck people as common sense. Parental notification for minors who get an abortion. These things had 60, 70, 80 plus percent support in opinion polls,

and Republicans were pushing to pass these. Now, Democrats, this put them in a position, they knew that Republicans really, the long-term goal was to overturn Roe v. Wade. They knew that. They put themselves in the position of believing that anything that Republicans were proposing was a nose under the tent, and that they, Democrats, must oppose it. So they ended up opposing a lot of measures that the public thinks are common-sense limits on abortion, which made them appear more and more radical. And it made the Republicans appear more and more common sense. So we have the situation. If Roe is overturned and it goes to the states, it seems like there is an opportunity for a lot of Republicans to gauge

the feeling of the voters in each state, and it will be different in different states, but to really put in place a lot of these common-sense limits on abortion while not outlawing it altogether. Yeah, I mean, you know, Dobbs, Mississippi seems like, you know, it's fair bet to say Mississippi's going to have one of the most stringent anti-abortion laws on the books. And Dobbs was a week 15. So it's first trimester plus. Yeah. You know, which is essentially the conception of Roe v. Wade when it was handed down in 73.

Well, you see, I hear again, I'm just not an expert in the history of abortion politics, but another thing that happened... Well, why not, Byron? I mean, I really... We had you on here for a reason. The other thing that happened while Republicans were working on these common-sense restrictions is that there was the rise, the growth of sonograms. And that really changed a lot of people's image of the fetus.

Right. And improved medicine brought the time of viability earlier and earlier. And also the Republicans or the use of what was called partial birth abortion, their actual coining of the phrase partial birth abortion, these are all extremely effective. And they led to more and more support for these common sense measures. Now, you could say that, you know, if the court were a political institution, which clearly it's not, that they would just uphold the Mississippi law. You know, 15. And you'd have a political debate over 15 weeks. There would be a lot of people who thought six weeks in Texas was way too early because a number of women, and I will say it, women are the ones who get pregnant. How dare you? Women, and I will say it, women are the ones who get pregnant.

How dare you? But people are having, the thing about it, which is also surprising to me, is that people in America, I think this is silly, but they're doing it. They're having gender reveal parties. Yeah. At what, 18 weeks, 18 to 21 weeks? That's when that occurs? So they're having scheduling parties they're celebrating the baby that they're having if you don't want the baby it's not a baby it is right but i'm saying that this is a cultural thing that's happening if you do want it it's right right

but it's a cultural thing that's happening so it seems to me that i'm i'm just how do they miss how how does a a big political machine that presumably is trying to keep track of this, how does a big political machine miss this? Yeah, well, I will say that going to Democratic political events, and I don't go to as many as I do Republican events, but going to them like Democratic conventions, for example, when talk about uh abortion as being kind of a sacrament uh in some democratic political circles that's really not much of an exaggeration um they the the party views it as so foundational so foundational that it simply cannot be challenged and everybody who disagrees with it, with them on it, has been run out of the party. Right. Right. And all challenges must be turned back. So this this has become and it would be I'm sure there's some good book on it that I haven't read.

This would become an incredibly important foundational tenet of the democratic party which is support for abortion all right so i i know james was getting here i just got one sort of larger question about politics that i mean an old political friend of mine who was you know trying to sum up his big political philosophy winning campaigns he said just make the other guy look weird the other guys guy's going to look weird. If you look normal, he looks weird, then you're fine. And you're looking at a president now. We were just talking this before we got on.

His response to $5 a gallon gas is to cancel drilling leases and decertified pipelines. His response to baby formula shortage is to send free baby formula to the border. His response to a leaked memo, a leaked opinion is to encourage people to picket in front of the houses of the judges. How did they get so bad at this? I mean, at some point, aren't they looking to try to mitigate the damage?

I mean, if you were a Republican strategist, this would be, you couldn't write a better script for the other side. How did they get? On the leak part, i don't know who leaked it and i don't know what their agenda was but i do think there's a good chance that it was leaked to get it out uh so that there could be the kind of uproar firestorm and protest that we have seen while there was still time to change the vote the decision. So Democrats are not going to condemn these protests because the protests are the only thing they see is having the turn out of changing the decision. Now, it may just cause the five votes to dig in.

Now, on the broader picture, you know, Joe Biden was always thought to be a man who wouldn't be a good president. He ran twice, and there was never anybody outside of the Biden House. Now that you put it that way. He thought he would be a great president. So now he's older. He'll be 80 in November, and he has slowed down. He has lost a step, but he's still not a good president, and he wouldn't have been a good president if he'd been elected at 55 years old or 60 years old.

He wouldn't have been a good president. I guess what I mean is, like, but I didn't expect it to be so different. I mean, a president, any president, President X, President Trump, President Clinton, President Bush, whatever, facing a free fall in popularity the way he has. Widespread disdain from the voters. A drubbing in November polls. I mean, why are there not heads rolling? Why are there not heads on sticks? There are these foundational beliefs that are causing problems.

For example, I don't know if you saw this. I was very impressed by this. But the online journal Vox, which is not a journal of the right. A bunch of leftists. They do a story. Have Democratic or Biden administration policies contribute to inflation? The question is how much they do a story and show you quite convincingly that it's contributed quite a bit to inflation to this you know the idea that when uh the american relief act was planned was was

passed the 1.9 trillion dollar act was passed in the first few months of Biden's administration, there was a good idea that the economy needed some sort of stimulus, maybe in the $400 billion, $500 billion, $600 billion range. But Democrats, with all of this pent-up demand, passed a $1.9 trillion bill, and it overheated the economy economy and it contributed significantly to the inflation that we're seeing now, which Box points out is worse than other Western countries, in part because Democrats so overshot the mark in spending. So what you have now is you have this problem, inflation, which has been caused by another democratic sacrament, which is just spending vast, vast amounts of money, and the Democrats choose their sacrament. And they're going to defend this, and they're never

going to admit that this exacerbated the problem of inflation. Right. Ever, ever, ever. Because it's something they just believe in. Spend as much as you can. Well, Biden said the other day in a speech that he can taste our frustration. I'm not sure what exactly. What that tastes like exactly. But I know.

I don't think he has any idea what to do about this and the rest of the party seems to be it's see it well because as you're right the sacrament of spending money you can't stop doing that you have aoc who believes in that curious little monetary theory it says oh it doesn't matter we owe it to ourselves we can print as much as like everybody go out and get a wheelbarrow i'm sorry we can't get a wheelbarrow to carry the cash because of supply chain issues. But Elizabeth Warren the other day came out and suggested that we ban price increases as a way to stop inflation, which sounds to me a little bit like wage and price controls, which sounds a little bit like history repeating itself right in front of us once more when previous examples of wage and price controls and all of this stuff is is right

there to look at i mean it's just a couple of clicks away do they have anything in their ideological toolbox on their side at this point as the democratic party is now constituted that enables them to say yeah we know how to do this and here's what we're going to do they don't well do they biden well no i don't think so biden made his case. He gave it his best shot on Wednesday with his speech on inflation. He knew the numbers were coming out on Thursday, so he tried to get ahead of things. But he really didn't have a lot to offer. He blamed the pandemic. He blamed Vladimir Putin. He blamed Rick Scott, the senator from florida he blamed the oil companies he blamed all sorts of people uh but he never ever looked at his own uh contribution to this and the

democratic party's contribution to this now this is not to say that the after effects of the pandemic and the war in ukraine have not had an effect on our inflation. They have. But Biden and his policies have had a significant worsening effect as well. So when he comes out, he can't say that. He talks about cracking down on the oil companies. He talks about achieving, let's say, energy independence, except they call it real energy independence, which is somehow we're going to all become, we'll be driving electric

cars by 2030. And that will somehow reduce inflation. They're out of ideas because the things that they have put off the table, like not spending, not passing more $1.9 trillion bills, they won't put off the table. Well, we indulged a lot of this stuff because we were fat and happy and everything was going well. Okay, they can talk about electric cars. Okay, they can talk about solar and windmills and the rest of it. Oh, we're making lots of gas. We're an energy exporter right now. Go ahead, have your little fantasies. But now the crunch, now we're out of gas. The price is expensive. Got no baby milk on the shelves and inflation is rampant. And like I was saying before, you know, I'm waiting for the Sky Lab moment, if you remember that, Byron, when in the 70s, it seemed as if the American trajectory

was that of Sky Lab. But we know that's not the case with a dynamic, vital and country like ours that can change course fairly quickly. I hope I hope anyway, whatever course we take, the Byron York show will be there to describe it for you. Byron, thanks for joining us in the podcast today. Been a pleasure as always. Thank you. Always enjoy it. Thanks. Great fun. You know, I am right now myself close to Wall Street.

I could probably go over there right now and watch my investments vanish. I was wondering, you know, you have a stock market crash nowadays. You aren't going to see brokers throwing themselves out of windows. No. Because they work at home. You know, they work at home, right? Right. So, at the worst, it's out the second floor, and they land in the bushes, and they twist and angle.

Or they have a basement thing. It's like, I've got to walk up the thing. You've got to walk up the stairs to throw yourself out the window. Now the idea of the broker throwing themselves out the window after the 29 crash was something of a myth. But nevertheless, brokers, at least the ones that I know, feel responsible for their clients. And maybe you feel like you're responsible for somebody else in that sense as well. If somebody relies on you financially, let's say child, a parent, or even a business partner, life insurance gives you peace of mind that they have a financial cushion if something happens. Hey, move those routers there. Oh, hey, it's me, your data center.

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incorporeal alternative, it's time to talk to Rich Goldberg, which is a senior advisor at the Foundation of the Defense of Democracies, and he's the host of the podcast Kryptonite with Rich Goldberg. And there he guides listeners through the intimidating, strange, and sometimes confusing. Oh, what am I talking about? Always confusing for most of us world of cryptocurrency. Thanks for joining us. My Dogecoin is in the basement. I mean, I actually have a position. You got to have that looked at. Your Dogecoin should not be sagging. Do you invest based on whatever Ice-T tells you? Is that how it works? I actually have a position in Ethereum, which is very small and has gotten vanishingly smaller over the last couple of months. But Bitcoin is down big. And that's supposed,

Bitcoin is the one in the offshoots, Bitcoin Cash, et cetera, the ones that people say, that's the real one. The rest of this stuff is just play money for people who are trying to jump in and make something and get out. But Bitcoin is down, and a lot of people are looking at what they used to have and saying, hey, wait a minute, what happened? So there have been crashes before, right? Four or five crashes of Bitcoin price. I mean, stock markets crashed too, but what is happening right now, do you think, that's making the crypto environment what it is? Well, I heard you talking about people jumping out of windows. So I don't think there's any jumping out of windows at the moment.

But if they're operating in second life with their digital avatar and their Bitcoin going down, they might have digital avatar windows that they're jumping out of. Listen, I think we talk about on the podcast all the time, what is this? Where is it going? And we've had a range of guests so far, major cynics, moderate cynics, major proponents, people who are in the DeFi industry already. People are pushing different products. We're going to have an episode coming out next week with Alex Leishman, who's the CEO of River Financial.

He's starting up a whole financial services, Mecca, different Bitcoin type products, including how you can get your own mining but i go back i'd say listeners if you pull up kryptonite go back to episode two with michael green now here's a former portfolio manager for peter teal he's now on his own and he said listen this is a completely speculative asset that's what it is it's not a currency it's not a money it's not going to challenge government this is a completely speculative asset he compared it uh to all kinds of ponzi schemes especially the stable coins he said the stable coins are very dangerous you can't get an audit on them go ahead yeah just to just interrupt stable coins are crypto currencies that are pegged to or tried to peg

to the u.s dollar and they have now busted down below that to nine cents on the dollar the one that we saw really go bust was tara that that was the big one ust and you know folks like neil ferguson will say listen let's not compare all of them together they're they're modeled in a different way uh tara itself was a quote-unquote coupon coin where it was trying to incentivize you if the value went down below the peg. And ultimately, it just wasn't backed by enough money. And so people wanted their money out and it collapsed. It was also collateralized against a whole bunch of Bitcoin. Bitcoin went down and they lost all their money. And suddenly there's a run on the coin and it's done. But, you know, we had the Secretary of Treasury say, listen, this is a traditional sort of run

on the bank. And in a Ponzi scheme, when you have a run and it's of run on the bank and in a ponzi scheme when you have a run and it's all built on the idea that it can only go up if people keep their money in and there's something backed by something then yeah it's going to keep going down now what alex will say in next week's podcast is all these other coins are distractions these are the speculative assets these are where you're going to like make money in the short term, then lose a bunch of money and forget that stuff. Bitcoin is the one that's here to stay. We'll see. There are a lot of statements that were made by the industry over the last several months in its marketing that this was a hedge against inflation. This is a hedge against energy prices. This is going to be the new reserve currency. Well, I certainly wouldn't want to get paid in

Bitcoin. I wouldn't want to go home with my paycheck, which is what El Salvador has tried to do and what others have proposed doing. Now, if you're in a country where you have hyperinflation and your currency is completely worthless, maybe it's still worth it to go convert into Bitcoin. But this is just simply one more very highly speculative asset and needs to be treated as such. And I think if you go back to that episode with Michael Green, he has some very good suggestions of how you prevent systemic risk here. One is make sure people know what they're investing in. Have it regulated just like any other speculative asset.

Make sure that they have to do certain bare minimum audit requirements. PayPal, as he talks about, has to tell us where the money is, where they're invested in, so that if there's ever a fiscal crisis, we know exactly what's happening. The stable coins don't produce audits, right? They all need to be required to do that. And then at that point, you have your eyes wide open, and if you want to go and you know bet the farm on something and you know but no no one is suggesting that bitcoin or ethereum or solana that these are uh have been manipulated right it's just

that that people feel like hey money's tight i gotta buy my groceries and things with actual money i gotta get out of this is that kind of what i mean when when people feel the pinch they get out of speculative thrill investments of all kinds correct that are they are they they are not um 100 they take their profits right i mean i'm just looking at my coinbase and not you know i should i should get out of bitcoin now because i made money on it over the past 10 years. What am I doing? Just get the money now.

I can use it to spend things. I can fill up my car with that money. And I can't do nothing with it now as Bitcoin. Isn't that a wise strategy? It could be. It could be a wise strategy. If you are looking for a hedge against economic uncertainty and Bitcoin is not that anymore, then just treat it as any other speculative asset that you own. When could you argue that Bitcoin was a hedge against uncertainty?

It seems like it's one of the most volatile assets there is. Well, this is, I mean, it's not my words. This is the crypto industries. I mean, you should look at some of our guests, listen to our guests that we've had on there. We had one person on who was going down to crypto Bitcoin conference in Miami a few weeks ago. And he's selling this whole product of how to go on payroll and have your gig economy workers paid in crypto and be able to invest in it. And I was like, why would you want to do this? Well, this is the future.

This is the hedge. And this is what people say, like, you need to have this because it's the hedge. And it's not a hedge. It's not. It's completely tied to the overall economic downturn. When people are avoiding risk, they're getting out of Bitcoin. Clearly, you listen to like Anthony Scaramucci and others on television saying, well, that's today, but it's not in five years.

That's not in 10 years. Right. I guess we'll see. Right. You know, you never want to sell the down. Right. You don't want to sell on the way down in any sort of asset. If Bitcoin has enough backing, which it clearly does for now to withstand based on all the

institutional investors that are still in and getting in, and we think the overall market is bottoming, it may not be a bad time to buy in for a short-term play, right? If that's what you're looking at. But to think that this is where i want to keep my money long term doesn't make a lot of sense until there is far more regulation far more transparency in there otherwise um you know you're really just sort of like in the middle of institutional investors making big big bets losing money gaining money and you the investor at home are probably going to get totally well they'll say that you don't need those audits because the nature of the blockchain

itself and all the mechanisms by which these things are verified, proof of work, et cetera, means that you don't need auditors. It's inherently fraud proof. That may be true for Bitcoin, but for the rest of these, I have to ask, what is the difference between then, between Bitcoin and all the rest of these other coins? Or is Bitcoin plagued by the same thing that eventually will drag down these insubstantial, meaningless little items in the cloud, the blockchain, down to zero? If you had money today, why would you say to somebody, well, if you're going to go for crypto,

go for the Bitcoin? Well, Bitcoin is still sort of your standard base, right? So it's operating under its own formula, and it's still being mined. And while it absolutely still will fluctuate up and down based on how many people are participating. So that Ponzi scheme feel, I think is still there overall, right? There's still going to be some sort of value so long as people still hold it. It's still being mined. There's additional people out there. There's demand. The financial the sort of ideas have been cooked up some of these coins the tokens the stable coins the alternative coins that they're now based on different metrics different calculations and they're leveraging this to pay for that peter

to pay for paul and so when the music stops and there's no chair for somebody tara collapses right so you know nobody's saying that Bitcoin is going to collapse down to zero overnight. I don't think anybody's predicted that. These smaller coins, you know, it's possible people looking at Tether was tested, I guess, over the last 48 hours, they went down below their peg, their backup, because they had enough institutional backing to stay afloat. But, you know, all of these things are very, very interesting. We still have so many institutional investors getting in. We're seeing this marketed now in sports, celebrities. It's not going away. It's part of our reality. But it's this sort of weird thing where I've now been at

the show now for several months. Now we've got all kinds of guests on we're going to continue to look at this you know every which way and it's like i i personally just don't want it you know i i that that's like my conclusion like i don't need it i don't want it i don't think it's my future i'm good you're missing out you're missing out man you're missing out on community you're missing out on all the new ways we're going to transform everything's going to be on the blockchain listen there's something the the other side of this the other part connected to it it's not a it's not a cryptocurrency but in that digital realm conceptually are nfts right and nfts strike me today like the pen stocks they are a way for people who are mystified by the whole thing out there don't have enough money to get into it big but want to participate and so they feel like this is their way of getting... So you have people who have not a lot of money, but enough that they can throw 250 bucks, 0.0027 ETH or whatever,

and get a little thing. And I've been studying the way that these things are marketed. And it's fascinating. Every one of them has this language about community and about what we're doing together, almost to the point where I think that it's coming from somebody who's not necessarily a native speaker of English, that the daily run of mints of the pointless, ridiculous NFTs, if it all came out of China at some point, I wouldn't be particularly surprised. But anyway, so you get this NFT, you get into this strange, bizarre world where you're mining honey, and your honey coins are used to slurp the monkey. And the monkey token gets you access to the metaverse space where they're in a fight against the Bored Ape Yacht Club. So you can't go if the system checks to see if you've got a token from the yacht.

I mean, it's just, to me, it's an alternative. You're way deep on this. You are. We need to have you. We need to hear what you've got a token from the yacht. I mean, it's just, to me, it's an alternative. You're way deep on this. You are. We need to have you. We need to hear what you've been doing at night. You can use two slurps on a monk, is what I'm telling you. But it's like a religion. It takes the place of actual social interactivity,

and people feel like they're doing something new and modern, and it's going to make them money, and it isn't. We interviewed an expert named Michael Greenwald at the time. He was still at a family office doing financial advising. He's now moved on right after our episode aired to run Amazon's global strategy for digital assets going forward. He's thinking a lot about the cloud and its applications, cryptocurrency, and what's going to happen if there are central bank digital currencies and the Fed has a digital dollar and all these kinds of things. So I asked him, explain to us NFT, go through it, understand. He said, well, actually, I just went through the process.

So I would see it with my own eyes and understand it and be able to explain it. And he said, listen, there is a niche world for everything, right? The art world itself is a niche world. And if you put a value on NFT art and other forms of it, and you say, this is how much I think it's worth, and this is unique, it's the only one in the world, then there's going to be people who want it and people who want to put it on their digital walls or whatever. It's going to be on their phone. It's going to be on their frame TV in their living room, whatever. And say, I have this NFT of Michael Jordan, of whatever.

Now, me personally, I want the actual rookie card. I don't want the NFT. I don't really get it. But there are people out there who do. They're willing to pay big bucks for it. And his point is like, listen, you're not an art collector. That world is not massive, right? But there's going to be a world of NFT and there's a value for it and it it's going to move and we should have concerns about money laundering just as we do in the art world itself and in other situations and we need to be very cognizant of it and put controls in place but he's very convinced that you know he's in love with the nft he bought and he you know thinks other people are going to stay in that space and it will continue to have value. And one interesting thing I thought was, he said,

because of the blockchain attached to it, every time it moves ownership, the original artist could still get a royalty. Right. Right. That's what's interesting for people in the larger art market, the idea of a blockchain ledger for, you know, physical three-dimensional art sales.

Right, which makes sense to me. Which makes sense to me. The NFT, a lot of these things are just, it's an acquired data. Look to a JPEG. Well, it is. But I mean, if it's a JPEG by Beeple. Hey, move those routers there. Oh, hey, it's me, your data center.

And as you can hear, I'm making some big changes in here because AI is making some bigger ones everywhere. So I took a little trip to Nokia. Super fast routers, optical interconnect, fully automated. The whole data center networking portfolio, and they deliver. That's them. Hey, Nokia, right on time. Get your data center AI ready.

Someday is here with Nokia. Or by David Lynch, or if it's Madonna scanning her private parts and putting them up, that is a unique item. The culture that I'm talking about are the places. I don't know, everybody's seen that. The places that mint 999 little algorithmically generated pictures of a mouse head um that's that's the stuff that is but each one is unique yes that's what you need to really appreciate one has a unicorn one is a unicorn you can't have another one no it doesn't because i don't know why you'd want one in the first place kryptonite is the podcast rich goldberg and kryptonite of course the podcast

is available here on ricochet it's fascinating podcast and ricochet that we've mentioned it coincidence yeah and it's fascinating it's a great podcast and it um if you're if you're you know we read about all this stuff all the time and like you're like me sometimes you bleep over it because it's just too complicated this is the podcast for you this stuff isn't going away and also it's kind of fun now it's more fun to read about people who are losing money on something you don't really understand now's a good time to learn about it because you can feel good about yourself because you're not missing out you're just watching people lose some money i mean i just checked bitcoin year to date it's down 37 almost 40 s&p though year to date it's down almost 18%. So now it's a good time to learn because you don't want to be in.

So yes, get your crypto info from Rich Goldberg. And thanks for joining us on the podcast today. No, I appreciate it. Thanks, guys. Go back to the beginning, episode one forward. Now is the time to learn, get caught up, listen to these fresh fresh episodes because it's going to make a difference agree well uh you know i'm sitting here in my hotel room i said we're going to come to a conclusion soon but i'm staring up at this television set this enormous tv set right above me here and when i first turned it on it told me that i could watch netflix well

you know what that is that's a thing about that that. Yeah, I can watch some Netflix. I just can't watch all that Netflix has. Some people say that's not fair by the fact that Netflix hides thousands of shows, movies from you based on your location. That has the nerve to increase their prices on you. That's right. They just increased their prices again. Well, you could cancel, sure, in protest, or you could be smart about it and make sure you're getting your full money's worth by using ExpressVPN. You see, you might not know what's on Netflix in your country because it's completely different from what Netflix has on the UK or Japan. If you use ExpressVPN, however, you can control which country you want Netflix to think you're in. ExpressVPN has over 90 countries to choose from. So every time you run out of stuff to watch in one country, switch to another and unlock new shows. For example, you want to check out Star Trek Discovery for various

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podcast. Well, Rob, before we go, people will be listening to the show after tomorrow and so i'm sure they'll really want to hear in advance something that's already happened so they can feel bad about yeah they're gonna miss first place tell them what they're gonna miss tell them what they missed they're gonna miss well they may not they may not maybe if you listen to it i mean if you run hurry hurry over uh to the first ricochet and not the last Ricochet, but the first Ricochet pub crawl. We are celebrating the beginning of our, restarting of our In Real Life IRL get-togethers, but it's still not

too late. You can sign up for a co-branded Ricochet America's Future Bar Crawl, New York City. It starts at City Vineyard. City Vineyard, not City Winery. Make sure because there's a City Winery and a City Vineyard. City Vineyard is a little farther downtown, closer to the financial district. It's 233 west street so city vineyard uh new york new york 10013 saturday this saturday tomorrow 3 p.m this is your chance to hang out with me james

andrew gutman friends old and new i know some people are coming my i think my old friend nick gillespie's coming a bunch of other people are gonna be there it'll be lots of fun like and uh by the way gillespie is very eager to he told me he's coming because A bunch of other people are going to be there. It'll be lots of fun. By the way, Gillespie's very eager to... He told me he's coming because he wants to talk to you. Gillespie's a big Lilac fan. Well, it goes both ways. That's great. So sign up now at ricochet.com slash special. Use the coupon

future at checkout to get a special discount and a free pass to the event. But also, if for some reason you're kicking yourself, you're not going to be in New York City tomorrow, which is, I guess, okay as an excuse. Save the date for our next Ricochet event, which is in a month, almost exactly one month from now. See, it's starting to happen. We're really getting back into this.

Byron York will be recording his own Byron York show podcast recorded live at Hillsdale's Washington, D.C. campus with Federalist editor inief and Fox News contributor. But, you know. We know her. Let's just be real. Ricochet's own Molly Henley. Next month. So, that'll be Wednesday, June 15 at 6 p.m.

It'll be a fun evening. These guys are great. They're going to be fun together. They're fun separately. Byron is always terrific. He's always got it together molly chris is so much fun so and a man of enviable hair you know yeah he's got enviable hair that's true yeah uh more sign up details will come very soon but look again uh you can only come to these

events if you remember it's worth it join come to these events join ricochet sign up today ricochet.com join you get 14 free, so you can't go wrong. And I said this last week and the week before, and I'm going to say it again. We have a gigantic legal bill we need to pay. It hasn't gotten any larger in the past two weeks, thank God, but we now know exactly how much we owe and it's really frankly it's more than we can afford um by a by a by a not quite a zero but way up there and so we absolutely need your help so if you've been thinking about joining and you've been wondering why and you can't come to pub crawl and you may become the dc thing and you're we need you to join please do uh you will be helping us continue this project into the future. And I know it's a bitter pill to swallow to say,

I'm just going to give you money so you can give it to some enraged leftist who wants to put you out of business. And the answer is yes. Unfortunately, that is what I offer you. But we need it and we would like you to join and be a part of this. It's not up there with blood sweat and tears as a as a as a leader yeah right right luckily if it makes you feel any better i don't think the enraged leftist is gonna get my own either it's really gonna go to the lawyers which just got its own set of problems but you know that's not again that's normal well walking around

new york city this morning i noticed a lot of people were downcast wearing black and the rest of us had very sort of in a somber mood and And when I stopped one and asked and said, why? Why the long face? What seems to be the problem? They said, well, it's Jen Psaki's last day as a White House press secretary. A lot of people are taking this hard. It's going to be replaced by Karine, there's an E on the end, Jean-Pierre. I don't know how to pronounce this yet, and I'm sure you know who that is, Karine Jean-Pierre, who was getting a lot of attention on the left

before the historic business about being the first black openly gay female to fill the role, couldn't care less. What matters is her ability to tell the truth in as much as they can in that job, I suppose. And I am looking forward to somebody who is going to not circle back and be as condescending as Ms. Psaki was. I know that she revered that she handled all those rapscallions in the press corps, that ravening pack of angry people who every day took her to task with the most forceful sense,

however did she do it. But are you sad to see her go, Rob? Or do you actually wish sometimes this whole institution of back and forth lying and posturing was just simply perhaps abandoned, and we do it once and you know i'd rather have question time in the house but i think it's dumb kabuki right because the people who care end up just saying what they say and then it appears on the news channel that you've already selected that gave you the news the way you want to hear it um and none of it can cover up the stuff that matters and the american people the big people in the middle the ones who kind of don't watch fox news

and kind of don't watch msnbc or even cnn just kind of like live their lives um they don't watch this stuff but they certain things get through to them and those are the things that really are more about management than about you know jim sack sacky sacky she can try all she wants um i think she can do all she wants she could try all she wants to spin but she's only spinning people who either totally agree with her or totally disagree with her it's really kind of a waste of time and money what the by the time it gets to that lectern um they've already lost or won it seems to me because that means the administration has kind of lost its way it is it's neither touting its successes nor uh explaining away its failures it's already kind of lost the thread of the conversation you have to kind of be winning already um and i i'm surprised that um you know

i mean it took clinton a while to figure it out uh obama didn't really have to figure it out because the press was so incredibly lick splittle and compliant and just really repeat whatever he said um of course everybody they all hated trump so much that every every single one of those press briefings was just this you know horrible vicious bitchy back and forth no matter who was at the lectern um so you know these things i think i mean if i were president i wouldn't have no i would just i think that i would turn it into like a little little coffee room and people could come and get a cup of coffee and a donut and then i would pass out little sheets waste of time and like let everybody read it yeah i'd like to go back to what they have you know in england

question time where the where the president actually goes and stands there in the well and get and gets questions put to him and there's yeas and days and groans and the rest of it i would love that except that we don't we don't really have a you know we don't have politicians who are able to spontaneously craft the amount of oratory required to make their also like we have equal branches we have equal branches of government so why should these these why should these these low-rent congressmen get to question the president united states like they don't know like nobody just grandstand you know really maxine water should be allowed to like stand up there and question the president oh forget it no way no

i'd love to see these these uh you know i would love to find i would absolutely love to see ran paul and ask some piercing economic questions about uh to joe biden to wrap everything up you said we get the beginning of the show that you thought the bite administration was being reasonably competent in their ukrainian policy even though you didn't agree with it. I wanted to give you the opportunity to tell of herd the europeans in a kind of a weasel wordy half-half kind of way uh slowly along and try to make slow uh um progress with you with europe with the french and with the germans and and in that sense i suppose you could say that they have been um that they that's a that's a policy they They have executed that policy.

It seems to me that what they've done is they've been extremely lucky. They've been playing for time, and time so far has been kind of on their side, but not really on their side. It's been on the side of the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians are the ones who have literally skin in the game, blood in the game.

You know, Mariupol is going to fall to the Russians, without a doubt, and all the people there are going to die, and the Russians are going to kill them all. That's, I mean, I was briefed on this on Tuesday night from very knowledgeable people, and it was, you know, it's grim. There's probably, the Russian army is, I'm just repeating what I heard,'m not i'm not these are people who've been studying this russian army is uh you know very very close to actually falling apart to pure disintegration um they can't because of the way they've been deploying their troops and because of the troops specific troops they've been deploying including fsb troops meaning the internal security troops that are now in the ukraine and the untrained raw recruits are

now in ukraine and the training officers the training corps that are supposed to train the new recruits are also in ukraine so they no longer they don't have new recruits and don't have anybody to train those recruits we're talking about a six month period for the russians in which the russian ability to fight will be degraded uh until maybe december january 2023 so the two things could happen one three things right one is the russians could dig in in which case they stop trying to take more territory they just try to hold what they've got which would be the smart thing for them to do two is they to keep going for broke depending on what the ukrainians do three is they try to make a mess in Moldova so that they can start bargaining away in Moldova

to keep whatever gains they have in the east. What they don't count on, and which right now the Ukrainians probably couldn't muster, is a Ukrainian counteroffensive, which if it came in the next eight to 10 weeks, could actually break the back of the russian army which is something that is either a policy or it's not a policy it's certainly not a policy of the europeans i mean macron said this week that we should be looking for ways not to humiliate

it's unclear whether it seems like it's not a policy for the united states but i think the united states policy and the uk and the Ukrainian policy are going to start to diverge. Because if you're Zelensky, if you're Ukrainian, you're like, well, wait a minute. Why are we putting up with all of this? And by the way, it is, according to these guys that I talked to, it is a bloodbath there. It is not. This is the Russian atrocities are staggering. Everyone who is even on the fence of saying, well, you know, the Russians.

Hey, move those routers there. Oh, hey, it's me, your data center. And as you can hear, I'm making some big changes in here because AI is making some bigger ones everywhere. So I took a little trip to Nokia. Super fast routers, optical interconnect, fully automated. The whole data center networking portfolio. And they deliver. That's them.

Hey, Nokia, right on time. Get your data center AI ready. Someday is here with Nokia. Hey, move those routers there. Oh, hey, it's me, your data center. And as you can hear, I'm making some big changes in here because AI is making some bigger ones everywhere. So I took a little trip to Nokia.

Super fast routers, optical interconnect, fully automated. The whole data center networking portfolio. And they deliver. That's them. Hey, Nokia, right on time. Get your data center networking portfolio and they deliver that's them hey nokia right on time get your data center ai ready someday is here with nokia uh my advice to you is to sort of clam up a little bit because you're going to be it's going to be really ugly soon and it's going to be revealed just how bad they have been just the

the sheer number of civilian deaths the sheer number of mass graves the sheer number of like what they've been doing the filtering call they call it philtria philtrusca where they go through systematically through a town and and and execute civilians um for having certain character traits um so so if you're zelinsky like well what's this all been for it we want the original borders of ukraine restored um so he may why should he make a deal maybe he should fight maybe a counter offensive rather than a defensive action which means they need artillery right which they're getting where they're getting they're getting. They're getting very expensive, very powerful, very accurate artillery, which the more they push north and east allows them to hit the supply lines

and the rail lines and do damage, the likes of which they've never done before. So, yes, it has been bloody and it's been hard. But if you want to look at if you had to throw your lot in with one or the other, purely on the question of morale, where would you go? Oh, the Ukrainrainians for sure absolutely 100 i mean it's like they're right they're defending defending their country as opposed to the russians yeah 20 000 russian dead is a a probably an underestimate at this point i mean it's staggering what the the disaster of the russian army the the problem of course is that

they're nukes right so what happens to the nukes the the the problem of course is that they're nukes right so what happens to the nukes the the the complication is that we have no evidence that he's not going to use the nukes anyway theater you know tactical theater weapons anyway so we we don't really have that much leverage over him it's as if the theory is from the west is always okay well if we do x y and z then he won't use the nukes but he might use them anyway it actually might be at this point in his rational best interest to use them if he wants to preserve himself and his power um use them how and where though it is very difficult for putin to say i have come to liberate and denazify eastern ukraine and i'm also going to completely irradiate it and make it uninhabitable for the people to live there.

I mean, what he's done, what he's done to de-Russify the attitudes in the Eastern provinces, from what I understand of people that I've talked to, people who previously were just, you know, here I am, I'm living in this, the Russians are here, whatever. Now, they hate these people intensely and they want them all dead because of what's happened. So it's unlikely that he's going to nuke that region. It seems unlikely that he's going to throw a nuke into Kiev. And I'm saying kiev because i've been saying it all my life i'm not going to say yeah someone say kiev dang it um when i say kiev i mean it's just anyway he's not going to

nuke kiev because then no no no okay so but also like so he may not be able to launch it right well there's that so i mean but the russ Russians were great at their tactical battlefield nukes, right? The Italian ones, which making, which, but those were against mass amounts of NATO armor pouring over the border or pouring towards the border to defend against the Russians. So there's, I mean, who are you going to nuke? I hate to make a Ghostbusters song out of this, but if you've got the Ukrainian forces dispersed and doing all kinds of very clever communications, there's man in control is so much better obviously than the russians um who's there to nuke it'd be better to use chemical or biological which and they biologically you know again what are you going

to do give them smallpox while they're hiding in the forest they run um so i it's very close to baylor's not sure how that works all that's all that's true all that is true i guess the question is that that in many ways the opportunity for americans is is that we don't have to want this more than the ukrainians they seem to want it appropriately as much as they possibly can and we don't have to send american military there and we don't have to provide them with almost anything well we can sell them some stuff we can do the lend lease thing but we don't we don't have to provide them with almost anything well we can sell them some stuff we can do the lend lease thing but we don't we don't have to fly over we don't have to send troops no you know we don't have to do are there a couple of advisors on the ground probably are there a couple of you know is there some back and forth coordination we've all i wish the administration wouldn't say uh yeah we've been helping them with satellite information

sure absolutely shut up about that can we just keep our mouth shut about something but you said that the policy interests diverge because um zelensky wants the whole country back and macron doesn't think that putin should be weakened by this i'm not particularly you know saddened if he is but biden has said he's evil he's a monster he has to go i mean but the biden administration has said yeah but they walked it back the regime changes part they can walk it back but what world leader having learned that the president of the united states wants them dead says boy i hope they take that back tomorrow i'm not going to sleep

well tonight until they do no you can't take that you can't right. So if we take them at face value, then the administration and the left, which got in favor of this war for a variety of reasons, is now in the same page as Zelensky look, I'm not trying to sound cold, but it is also a fascinating situation, right? Because you have a leader who, a year ago, if you were watching MSNBC or reading the New York Times, he was a brilliant supervillain who was thinking five steps ahead. Putin was so smart he was altering the way americans vote he he he personally selected a u.s president that's how what's a genius he is turns out he's not that smart if you had read certain um very conservative american um web publications that he was a proud uh defender of traditional Western values, which we know is not true either. It turns out he's just kind of a thug and a paranoid and gotten weirder and more paranoid as he gets older. And the one thing the guy should have known, one thing every leader should know, especially as he goes forth and tries to invade another country, is what is the precise strength of his armed forces and he didn't

know that he didn't know the one thing he needed to know he couldn't um who's going to tell him well who's going to tell him that they right i personally presided over he has recreated he has recreated the old soviet union in one institution the worst possible institution for it to be recreated that's the armed forces right and that is not smart and that is not good thinking and that is not good leadership and that is nothing to be admired and he's now in his sad little country his sad country is reaping the whirlwind and it's too bad for them um but for us it's sort of fascinating and it's also fascinating to discover how many complicated deals and understandings there are with this big russian gas station right so now the chinese are in trouble i am personally thinking uh i would if i were if i

were a presidentian president who wasn't sleeping most of the afternoon i might call up the call up the israeli prime minister and say excuse me what is exactly your precise position on the Russian invasion of Ukraine? I think it's insufficiently on our side. You want my support for you in this country? How about you make an obviously very clean call and say that Putin should not invade Ukraine? The Israelis have been really bad on this, very, very bad on this. Well, they got on board after the Holocaust and the Zel the zielinski jewish hitler questions but what would you want from israel in return would you want more gas and oil once leviathan money money you want money from money and also like but also the israelis could respond and say how come you're not letting us

build that pipeline which of course the the, the, the stupid Bush, stupid Biden administration didn't let him do it. Well, we could go on and on about that, but unfortunately we, we, we tech, we tax your patience as it is. And I got to save some little voice here for tomorrow. Cause I know I'll be absolutely, I'm not going to say another word today so that I can speak. You're going to rest your instruments.

I can close talk to everybody. Cause I'm going to be in New York and I'll gesture a lot because i'll be in new york and uh and all the rest of it no what am i talking about i'll stand like a sore thumb like a minnesota doesn't want me to do it forget it forget about it forget about it i'm walking here i can't oh you can leave with this you know new yorkers are disappointing me like you wouldn't believe because it used to be walking down the street right don't make eye contact with anybody because they'll stab you right or even worse ask for directions you know just just walk right that's the new york walking style now everybody is is hunched down right they're all looking at their phones it's just absolutely weird right so i'm thinking the idea that there's even a

a spark of the ratso rizzo in these people anymore. That somebody would slam on a car hood when a car encroaches on the intersection and say, I'm walking here. You know, is that gone? I swear to God. I wrote that in a column. And then I stepped outside after I finished the column that writes a cigar. And I'm walking out and there's this family that's moving down the

street, mom, dad, and two little kids. And the dad says to the kids, what do we say if a car starts to go through the intersection? And the kids, like seven, 10, both shout in unison, I'm walking here. He said, what are we? Really? I'm walking. I'm charmed to my heart. I can't believe it. I said it didn't exist. Here literally is the father bird teaching his younglings how to properly respond when the car gets into the intersection. I was sad. So to my dismay, they turned into my hotel.

They walked to the elevator. I walked with them. They're not from here. They're not from here at all. So the only I can think if the New Yorker spirit like that is brought back, it's because of the immigrants. It's because of those who come to this great city and remind them of the character and spirit that they had, that they were indeed walking here. Without a doubt. Brought to you by Bull & Branch, PolyGC Genius, and ExpressVPN.

Support them for supporting us and join Ricochet today, won't you? Please take a minute, if you won't, please, to leave a five-star review at Apple Podcasts. Helps new listeners discover us, which helps keep the show going, etc. Hope to see you on Saturday with Rob. It'll be great. Everybody else, well, we'll see you in the comments. Oh, by the way, Peter, Peter Robinson, remember him? He'll be back.

He's just away. He'll be back next week. Until then, we'll see you in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Next week? Tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow. Ricochet. Join the conversation.

Hey, move those routers there. Oh, hey, it's me, your data center. And as you can hear, I'm making some big changes in here because AI is making some bigger ones everywhere. So I took a little trip to Nokia. Super fast routers, optical interconnect, fully automated. The whole data center networking portfolio. And they deliver.

That's them. Hey, Nokia, right on time. Get your data center AI ready. Someday is here with Nokia. Hey, move those routers there. Oh, hey, it's me, your data center. And as you can hear, I'm making some big changes in here because AI is making some bigger ones everywhere.

So I took a little trip to Nokia. Super fast routers, optical interconnect, fully automated. The whole data center networking portfolio, and they deliver. That's them. Hey, Nokia, right on time. Get your data center networking portfolio. And they deliver. That's them. Hey, Nokia, right on time. Get your data center AI ready. Someday is here with Nokia.