The Ricochet Podcast - Mailing It In

Episode Date: November 6, 2020

Is it the dawning of a new era or are we continuing the one we’re already in? The answer was not clear when we assembled today at 9AM Pacific Time (the best time zone, as everyone knows), but we do our best to pundit all of the facts we knew when we rolled tape clicked record. But before we start that, Rob Long has a statement he’d like to make. And Peter Robinson has some thoughts on why the race... Source

Wait, why is your background a cafeteria? My God. It's a diner. I'm not going to have this anymore. That's exactly why, John. That's the point. Do we bring Gabriel in when I come back here? 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 equal If you count the legal votes, I easily win If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us I'm the president and you're fake news. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast post-election special with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James

Lilex. Today we talk to three Johns, John Yoo, John Gabriel, and John O'Sullivan. Let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you. Welcome, my friends, to the Ricochet Podcast, number 520. The last one. We're all calm. We're all just fine. We've taken our bromides and we have a happy smile on our face because going forward, who knows? But here's the thing. Right now, the situation is all over the map, depending on who you talk to. An era of inevitability is starting to form around these things that shapes the narrative and drives it forward. And that's what we're going to be discussing, as well as whether or not we should do this, why we shouldn't do that, what we should do, what happened, and all that stuff that's floating up there in the cosmos right now. Peter Robinson, California. Rob Long, New York. I'm James Lilex in Minneapolis. And I know

that the minute that I stop talking, Peter and Rob are going to be like my dog and the raccoon in the backyard a couple of days ago. It'll be difficult. Wait, who gets to be the raccoon? I don't know. It's kind of up to you guys. They were both pretty growly and pretty vicious, and they both gave as good as they got. And they both walked away, probably. I'll just say this. He required stitches, didn't he?

No, he didn't require stitches. Oh, he didn't. He just needed some balm and some unquents and some shots, which we may all have to have by the end of this. But in any case, Donald Trump has taken Hillary Clinton's advice to Joe Biden. He's not conceding. He's demanding that every vote being counted, and somehow we're expected to believe that the party that regarded the president essentially as an existential threat to life, as Hitler himself, the people who, if you gave them the opportunity, would probably go back not to kill Hitler, but to make sure that he didn't get

elected, that these people somehow are to be trusted running everything completely above board and are dedicated to process and honesty and transparency, even if it puts Hitler back in office. That's one way to look at it. The other way to look at it is Trump lost plain and simple, period. A lot of this stuff is just knocking around the margins. It's not going to make a bit of difference, but we should count anyway for the sake of faith in our democratic process. That's what I have to say, having set it up. And I'm just going to sit back and have a cigar and watch you guys do it.

James, I'll take either of those. Do we have a guest we could go to right now? Let's do it. No, no, no. I'm just, I'm semi-joking. What I'm trying to suggest is, James, I'll take either of the ways James set it up over whatever Rob is likely to say. I just thought we'd have some pointless brouhaha before we brought on somebody else who we can beat about the head forever.

Rob and I are very good at that. Do you want me to say something? Here's what I would say. No, Rob, it's a podcast. We prefer that you do a cat's cradle with your hands. I don't know what we're allowed to say. Here's what it looks like to me that's a good way it looks like we're having 2016 again just without hillary clinton and what we're getting probably it looks like is going to be the same electoral vote split we're going to bet a hundred i mean assuming and

i'll give joe biden i'll round up for him we're still talking about about a hundred thousand maybe 150 000 votes across four states which is a what is it like two tenths of a percentage point difference um essentially we're running it seems to me like it's 2016 just without you know the the one of the loathed partners there. Enormous turnout, which is, I don't know, weird. Bigger than 2016, I think. Bigger than 2016. Oh, my God. It's going to be 155 million votes.

Yes. I mean, the denominator here is huge. I've always loved your comparison to the movie business, where you've said a couple of times over the years, you've noted that getting people to go to the movies on the opening weekend is hard. Oh, they made it easy. Imagine getting people to cast 160, 80 million people to cast votes. Yeah, it's crazy. Donald Trump got an insane number of votes. Joe Biden got an insane number.

This is crazy. Like if you'd said four years ago, eight years ago, 10 years ago, this is what 2020 is going to be. By the way, if you'd said that this was the turnout for most of my adult life, progressives would be saying, thank God, we clearly turned it to Denmark. That's what they'd be saying. They'd be cheering. I mean, and I, look, whatever happens, I will talk about what I was absolutely wrong about. If that would make you feel good, because I was, I was wrong in particular and I was wrong at the very, very big picture. And here's the particular I was wrong in. I really thought that I was looking at a change election and a blue wave.

That's what it seemed like to me. And it totally, totally wasn't. It doesn't even matter at this point if Trump wins, he's not going to win. But it totally isn't a wave. It's not even a rejection of conservatism. This is the greatest possible, most realistic outcome for a re-elect of a president who was unpopular and never expanded his base. This is fantastic. That's why a lot of people are sanguine about the results, I think. They hold the Senate. But, I mean, if you drill down, drill down in this. I am so old, I remember when the Democrats were saying the book of the year, political book of the year, I think it was 2008, 2007 maybe, the coming Democratic majority. Correct.

And Roy Texera and a guy whose name I forget, they wrote this book, and it was, oh my God, it was earth-shattering. I read it, and I was told, oh my, this is the end of the, I'm reading the obituary, the pre-obituary of the Republican Party. That's right. Turns out, total nonsense. Turns out, total nonsense. Turns out, total nonsense. It's also possibly nonsense that my dear friend Ann Colder, whose book Adios America, that was equally nonsense. Because they basically made the same point, right? Which is that you let a lot of people in, they're eventually going to become Democrats.

That doesn't seem to have happened. Two points, right? Here's where I'm wrong in particular. Here's where I'm wrong in particular. Here's where I'm wrong in the general. I not only thought it was a change of election, I really have been saying that we've been entering, we've been in a deep period of 20 years of American voter volatility because I was looking at it from the partisan party position.

That if you look at it, if you're a Democrat, you say, what is it? People are saying they voted for Obama, they voted for Trump, and the Republicans saying the same thing. What if the American people aren't volatile? They seem to be constantly voting to keep the balance in power. It's like the microcosm of Maine. Everybody hates Susan Collins. Republicans hate Susan Collins. Democrats hate Susan Collins. But the Mainers will go in and they'll vote for Barack Obama and they'll vote to reelect Susan Collins. They'll go in and they'll

vote for Donald Trump and they'll go in and vote for Susan Collins. In Nebraska, they split it in Nebraska. In California, blue state, crackpot California, people went in in record numbers to the ballot box. They read, it's two sentences, three sentences of a ballot initiative about affirmative action, and they voted against affirmative action in California. Right. This is good news. Peter, let me rephrase a little bit what Rob said. True, it wasn't a change election, but was it skin of the teeth iteration of that because if they had indeed taken the senate it was possible that even with their slim majorities they would have been able to do things which would have fundamentally changed

the demographic makeup that was my concern by the way to my astonishment rob rob is actually rob is engaging in in a rob long like act of generosity and goodwill because he knows perfectly well he didn't say a thing with which i disagree uh my except that i was totally wrong i have to say i was i don't disagree that you were wrong okay all right all right although i did sort of think that you i was starting to come to anyways set all that aside um my fear all along was i didn't sense a blue wave coming as you know because rob and i've been arguing about the polls i thought the outlying polls the trafalgar group and so forth were more likely to be correct it turns out they were more likely to be correct why is a separate

question and a fascinating question but set that aside my concern was that they would win the democrats would win the white house and the senate and the House. And at that point, whether their majorities in the two chambers were large or small, it wouldn't matter for the next couple of years because Joe Biden would find it almost impossible to resist the demands of the left of the Democratic Party. And my fear was not that they'd raise taxes which Republicans could cut eventually, not that they'd increase regulations that Republicans could eventually roll back, but that they'd add a couple of states to the union and permanently affect the partisan balance in the Senate, that they would eliminate the Senate filibuster, that they would pack the Supreme Court,

and that even in the attempt to do so, we would lose two years. There are serious problems. China is not messing around. China's not going to wait two years in its designs on us. Okay, that didn't happen. The Senate is still in doubt because it turns out both of the Senate seats in Georgia, regular election, it looked as though purdue was above 50 and would avoid a runoff and then last night at some point he dipped below 50 there's a runoff election that's going to take place three weeks there there was also a special election in which uh leffler i think the first name is kelly the current senator we knew she was going to be in a runoff there's a run so there are those two runoffs that will take place in georgia in

three weeks will decide the balance of the United States Senate. But even if the Democrats take it, it'll be extremely close. And in the House, so it's not over. My worst nightmare may yet come to pass. In the House, it should be noted that there are non-crazy people. I was about to name Frank Luntz, but I'm not sure. Frank has days in which he may fit into the crazy category. But there are extremely knowledgeable people who are tweeting this morning that if a few more seats fall just right, it's not out of the question that Republicans might end up with a majority in the House. At a minimum, Republicans have picked up eight of the 17 seats they needed to take a majority. All of just as rob said is extremely good news there was no blue wave honestly with

it's hard go ahead even in the state houses that's the most important thing it's a census year it's going to be a redistricting year the state houses stayed republican right i mean this is a surgical removal of an unpopular person that's i don't know any other way you look at the ticket splitters in wisconsin the ticket splitters in in arizona i know we're going to bring jay john gabriel in here to explain uh uh arizona the ticket splitters the on the republican side in wisconsin it's like 60 000 70 000 people republicans who voted for biden and then voted the straight republican ticket this is a surgical removal of what was did what i would consider to be a cancer on the republican party i mean that is pretty remarkable and i don't know why everybody's

so shocked i mean i'm shocked but i don't know why i'm shocked because i'm dumb hey well it's not over until it's over there's fat ladies left to sing, and we need to hear exactly what the legal strategy is. By the way, Rob mentioned Susan Collins, and of course, the theme is ticket splitting. I just want to point out that Joe Biden took Maine by three points, and Susan Collins won by six points. That's a nine-point spread. They like her. They like her. We hate her. They like her. I like her, too.

John Yoo! I'll shut up. Introduce our guest. Right, and here to tell us exactly what the fat lady might say on conclusion of her aria is John Yoo, formerly Ricochet Podcast senior impeachment correspondent. John Yoo, remember impeachment? That was like 14 years ago.

John Yoo is now the Ricochet Podcast election law senior analyst and the current occupant now the Ricochet podcast election law senior analyst and the current occupant of the Ricochet School of Law. McRib is senior fellow on fast food policy because I think he said something about McRib once, and he's been tarred with it ever since. One of the many boat anchors we like to hang around his neck, but he's a strong guy with a bull-like constitution, and he can take it.

Listen to him, by the way, in the Law Talk podcast with epstein and you right here on this very network john so what is the strategy are the judges gonna buy it is there any point you got three minutes guys you look great yeah we should say that we're actually what are you doing wearing a tie he's wearing a little a light blue tie he's you know he's ready for his appearance in court yeah you know and i've got my briefcase pack ready to argue this in the supreme court actually this is i'm actually just preparing myself for the arrival of the mcrib on december 2nd nationwide where i will eat it like mr pitt from seinfeld in a coat and tie and a fork and knife as a mcrib ought to be greeted on its

return. It's my personal flotation device. It's no albatross. I revel in the McRib. If I can only get them to make more spam-like products and more shapes, I'm going to... I'm glad that you like the mechanically separated, formed, and pressed simulacrum of actual ribs, and we admire you for it. Are you more of a Georgia barbecue guy or are you kind of a smoky Texan guy? Because that's going to have more staying power in a week than whatever you happen to say now, but we'll ask anyway. So strategies- Let me ask you a question. Yeah. So there's two kinds of litigation going forward. I think one of them is not going to have that big of an effect, but then there's one that's sitting there waiting, which could have a huge effect.

The ones that I don't think are going to change much are the ones you're reading about in the paper all over right now, which are the Trump campaign saying we can't get in to see the votes counted, claims that, oh, we think ballots are being mixed. Maybe the only one of those that that and those are being brought in all the battleground states the only one that might make a difference although i i'm a little skeptical skeptical is the nevada case where the trump campaign says uh we think a few thousand people who moved out of the state and aren't residents in nevada still tried to vote and then they produced uh one or two people who they claim voted and are actually dead

but i think they were just voting they were they had just moved to chicago and never gotten to change their address because that's where all the dead people go to vote those cases i don't think are going to make a big difference if you're talking about elections where the right you know because they're legally untenable or because the margins are so small in those. And I think they're just hard to prove. I see. One is hard to prove. In fact, the Trump campaign has lost two of those already because they couldn't show any evidence. You know, they were making allegations and claims, but they had no proof.

That's why the Nevada one might succeed. That goes to your side because that's all just a matter of checking the voter rolls. But I think you're right peter i see the this still doesn't matter if the difference between biden and trump is so large you're not changing the outcome the only one i think that really matters is the one at the pennsylvania that comes out of pennsylvania and is sitting right now at the u.s supreme court it's been sitting there since before the election. And this only matters, of course, if Pennsylvania itself becomes decisive. That would require, I think, Trump to keep Georgia, and then Trump would have to win one of either Nevada or Arizona. But if he does that,

then Pennsylvania becomes a decisive state. If I were gambling on the National Review cruise, I would think he has less than a one in five chance of getting to that point but if he does then that litigation that case of the u.s supreme court just to summarize that that is about 2000 that is about when ballots explain that yes could you explain the reminders of the case yeah because i think there's been a lot of confusion out there people think the supreme court has already decided which they haven't they haven't so what happened is, and this is my home state of Pennsylvania, as you know, so I'm not surprised everything got screwed up. I mean, we're still recovering from the Eagles winning the Super Bowl two years ago. We have no idea

what's up, what's down. Although I'm really taken with Rob's fisherman sweater. Jesus, that is a beautiful piece. Thank you, John. Can you answer the question question i know you're vamping counselor right so what happened is the pennsylvania legislature because of the pandemic said we're going to allow massive mail-in balloting for the first time in pennsylvania history and we're going to require that all of those ballots arrive on election day in order to be counted right the pennsylvania supreme court then came in and said no we are shifting the date in fact the democrats asked for another week they said could you extend the deadline to seven days later the pennsylvania supreme court said no but we're going to change it

to three days later to today friday november 6th pennsylvania has no authority, I think, to do that because the U.S. Constitution says state legislatures are the ones who set the time, place, and manner of elections. And state legislatures, even more importantly, decide on the selection of presidential electors. question that's sitting there right now is was that change in the deadline a violation of the constitution or is it vindicating the right to vote for pennsylvanians now uh the supreme court hadn't done anything so what was going on was that that case has been appealed it's sitting at the supreme court uh justice alito and four justices were demanding that it be decided before the election uh justice ginsburg had passed away chief justice roberts you know rob's buddy rob's role model i mean for rob long in the political universe right now yeah you're right he's doppelganger wearing a fisherman's sweater right now in washington dc it would be john roberts right i think john and robber unreliable no dancing around the middle

sometimes a little bit heavy on the right foot but sometimes on the left foot and so roberts actually always on the back to hear the case roberts voted not to hear the case he i'm sure was hoping somebody wins uh you know decisively right no one's going to care about this issue. No one will care about the Supreme Court. That's what he hopes. Just make it go away. In fact, it's the opposite.

It's a close election. You never get what you want. It's a really close election. Things didn't change that much. Just a few 10,000 votes here and there. When the elections are close, that's when the courts and lawyers come in. So the argument from the side that the sort of, I guess, the Trump side, we'll just call it that right now, is you're not allowed to. It's really clear that the legislators get to let state legislatures get to choose. They choose.

They set a date. That date is firm. And you don't get to change that date unless you change the law. The side will say i think i could be not summarizing this right they could they they will say i think they'll say that's not true judges change the time all the time if there's a blizzard if there's a rainstorm if an emergency power outage an emergency and covid 19 counts as an emergency i would actually even make their argument stronger, which is you have a constitutional right to vote. People voted. It's the post office's fault or someone else's fault that it didn't get there in time.

We still have to honor the right to vote. And so if there's some mix-up, right, this is exactly the argument that Gore made in Florida 20 years ago. Count every ballot, even if you didn't live up to all the technical rules. Whereas the Trump side there, you're exactly right, Rob, the Trump side saying states have a right to have an orderly election. In fact, Kavanaugh wrote an interesting opinion. He said, if you didn't believe that, why do we have election days? Right. You have an election day. Exactly. That's exactly true. Once it's coming after the election day, don have election days right you make an election day exactly that's exactly true once it coming after the election date don't count so why don't you they count so you have to make a distinction so if you had an election if you had a guess wouldn't you i mean would you guess that the supreme court if they hear it and i i actually

feel like they should hear it would you guess that the um the the justices will fall down, you know, come down on the side of the right to vote? It trumps all the other rights or is more important than the timetable? Because if you're obviously waiting, something's going to have to give here, right? And it's better to say, OK, well, the judge, I understood why the judges did that. They may they maybe they shouldn't in the future. But right now, we can't disenfranchise the voters of Pennsylvania. Is that kind of what they'll do? As I have repeatedly said on the show, I'm so glad Rob didn't go to law school because he infers things just as a civilian that we try to keep hidden and obscure from you people. So that's about, I think that's about right, Rob. So I think if the court takes a case, I think there will be at least three votes who will make the argument you made. You have a right to vote. The people in Pennsylvania whose ballots came in late, they followed the procedures, right? They got their

ballot, they filled them out, they mailed it in, right? If it didn't arrive on, so what if there's no postmark? So what if the signature is a little funny? So what if they messed up the envelope? You can still look at the ballot and say, we can tell what that person did. saying we should take the case. In fact, Sam Alito, Justice Alito, has been watching Pennsylvania like a hawk for three, four weeks because he's from New Jersey. So of course, he's already suspicious of what we're doing in Philadelphia. I mean, he's used to it. He's still pissed he can't drive over the bridge and get parking at the Phillies games like a real Philadelphian. He gets stuck out way, all the New Jersey plates, they get stuck out way in the satellite parking. He's pissed. So he actually has, he wrote a dissent saying we should take the case a week before the election so we could settle the rules so everybody knows whether November 3rd is the real date or not. He's saying, if you tell everyone it's November 6th, then people aren't going to mail their ballots in on time. So he wrote a dissent and he has the votes of three justices. I think it's really up to Amy Coney Barrett, right? Because she wasn't on the court. It was a four to four court because of Justice Roberts, aka Rob Long, voting with the three liberals. And so when the court's four, four, it can't do anything. It's powerless. Now that Amy Coney Barrett's there, I think you're

right, Rob. One way or the other, she will decide. They'll either decide what the Pennsylvania Supreme Court did is fine and not take the case. Or I think they're going to intervene if Pennsylvania makes it. If Pennsylvania's votes don't matter, if Trump loses Georgia today and then he loses Arizona, then it's not going to matter. And then I could see the court. Actually, I would hope the court would take the case. Don't you think the court should take the case? Don't you think the court should take the case i think they should i mean it seems to me in fact i think the lawyer i mean it would be dereliction of duty not to take

this case yeah the lawyer me would say actually we can't keep doing this every 20 years we should have clear rules it would be even better if the court clarified the rules when it doesn't matter then they can say we weren't dictating the outcome of the case. We just made clear now, finally, it's the state legislature's power. But I don't think they're going to do that. I think actually they won't take it unless it matters. And that means the 20 electoral votes will decide whether it's Biden or Trump, just like the Supreme Court felt it had to do it 20 years ago in Florida. A lot of a hoary, hidebound old conservative who believes there should be an election day.

That's when you go. That's the end of it. One day. Period. We all show up and we vote. Them's the rules. Just like the rules say at 1129, there shall be a spot for one of our beloved sponsors. And that's what I'm happy to tell you about Donors Trust, the principled and tax-friendly way to simplify your charitable giving. Are you a bit like, let's say, this guy named Paul? Paul's an investor who likes to get things done, both in business and in philanthropy. Paul wants to put his charitable giving to work by solving society's problems and fighting important fights now, now when he's dead. So he sought out the most tax-efficient and simple way to make sure his giving would be as effective as possible. He turned to Donor's Trust. At Donor's Trust,

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slash Ricochet. And we thank Donors Trust for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. I know Peter wants to jump in here with something, but John, I have to ask you, isn't the problem that we haven't made voting hard enough? Everything that Democrats want to do is to expand it. So we have this sort of election day is whenever, if you want to do absentee, it's not because you're out of the country, because you just don't want to leave the house because COVID. Isn't this setting the stage for just an endless series of this miasma of rules that somehow make it very easy to conjure the number of ballots on order later, if you want, if the situation requires? I'm not saying that there are corrupt officials in Detroit and major American that, you know, a national ID for voting that you show up, you slap it down, they scan the barcode, they match it, they print off your ballot with a QR

code that's yours. And that makes it a lot simpler. But we're never going to get that, are we? Well, James, you, I think usually on the show, you're the defender of states and federalism and localities. I am. And I am. You're the real conservative here on the show because you're conservative from the earth and the dirt. It pains me. It pains me to say this. But the fact of the matter is, is when you do I mean, this is the downside. You have a federalism when you have people in Wisconsin saying, well, we're going to come up with these rules. And if it was if everybody was coming up with rules for the sake of making sure of ballot integrity. That would be one thing. But there's a progressive idea that ballot integrity disenfranchises people. There's a disparate impact on that.

And we can't have that. We have to count every vote. And it's odd because it seems to presume a level of indolence and stupidity on people. They can't get themselves with the poll. They can't. I mean, so, yes. You are in the wrong century my friend i can see you living in a midwestern farm in the late 18th century when they still used to require that you own property to vote because otherwise i didn't

think you had enough at stake and that otherwise you would just now i'm not saying you're wrong but and there's you would just freeload off the government right just no you didn't have i'm a few i'm a futuristic kind of guy john let me explain how it would work starship troopers and heinlein and the whole thing let me let me just explain so um the one i should clarify because i said this to rob also yes states are the ones under the constitution who set the time place and manner for congressional elections subject to congressional override. So if Congress wanted to require a driver's license for all congressional elections, they could do that. They've generally not used that power very often, very, very reluctantly. The interesting thing is, here's the curveball I want to throw at you guys, is the Constitution, though, says for presidential elections that the state legislatures have the sole power to choose how to pick the presidential electors. They don't even have to have elections.

They could, and they used to in the beginning, the state legislatures could pick the electors themselves. All the way through to the Civil War, there were still states that wouldn't let the people vote for president. They just picked the electors. When you vote right now for a candidate, you're actually picking a list of electors behind that ballot in a way. And so it's interesting. I think there you see the frameworks were so worried about the idea of Congress unduly influencing the president. They didn't want Congress involved at all in picking the president. When it comes to the president, they wanted the states to control. And so you couldn't actually require a driver ID from Congress when it came to a presidential election, interestingly.

I actually think, you know, I'm of mixed mind. As a conservative, I actually like federalism. I like that there are all these weird rules and regulations from state to state i like that you know that i mean it's work it's actually shows that democracy works when you have all these crazy counties causing all these but i like seeing senior citizens sort of counting the ballots as volunteers on election day it's artisanal yeah i i agree i like it too i like it more scope for lawyers fees that's what oh yeah this and this is great for my profession of course i mean but it ends up being in chaos it ends up being an anti-fragile system a honeycomb system where one mistake can't take the fancy that's right the

fancy social science word is resilience federalism creates a resilient system that's why for despite all the things people say the the Russians and Chinese can't really hack into our election system because there's 3,000 of them, right? Every county has a different system. Half of them they will not be able to pronounce. John, I just want to go back a little bit here. I'd like to back up the conversation because you were very quickly dismissive of everything except one suit that has already been filed in Pennsylvania. And I'd like to make the case of a shocked and disgruntled Trump supporter who was led to believe by the Trump campaign itself that there were rafts of lawyers in

position and ready to go wherever irregularities appeared to take place and i will say this uh i gave up work for two days election day and the day after and then i just said yesterday i've got what you call your work what i call my work but others are what others mistakenly suppose i'm doing but so let me just tell let me just list things that have been floating around in my twitter feed item one sometime in the excuse me item one is that a number of places on election night just stopped counting and they were all places all in states where trump was in the lead so it sure looks as though if trump is in the lead and we're democratic election officials we stop counting until stop counting until we get some look at the situation and know how many votes we need to find.

That's a plausible explanation of what took place. Is anybody investigating that? I mean, this is journalism and law. What's going on? Item one. Item two. By the way, I could be mistaken about all of this. I repeat, I'm just telling you things that I read on the Twitter feed.

So if I read them, lots of people are reading them. Item two, at some point, somewhere or other, I think it was Wisconsin, in Milwaukee perhaps, if I remember correctly, there was a dump of a large number of votes, over 100,000, dropped as a unit, and there was not a single vote for Trump in that more than 100,000 vote drop. Item two. Also, the minority vote is down. Forget the Sharpie case. The Sharpie case.

Add the Sharpie case. All right. So you read the Twitter feed. You add to that what I think is perfectly reasonable to add. An ordinary American who's been paying attention over the last four years says, wait a minute, all the mainstream media and the Democrats and the so-called deep state, the FBI, all of them took three years out of our lives in pursuit of a Russian collusion case that was a total fabrication. It was a cheat. It was a fraud. It all began with a document funded, if you trace the money back, by the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton's campaign. You don't have to be a seeing in state after state after state, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, where the president was up and they stopped voting, and now they're whittling away at his lead. Or Arizona got called against him, where other close states got called in favor of Biden.

You look at the whole thing and say, this isn't just a mess. All the screw-ups, all the things that if we were in a moment where we trusted the press and we trusted the fundamental process of the fundamental fairness of the electoral process. By the way, this goes back, this is the distinction I draw, Rob, you open by saying this reminds you of 2016. In 2016, I think we all had much more confidence in the fundamental fairness of the process. Well, we did, but hillary clinton didn't hillary clinton was saying essentially not quite as as an unhinged way to trump is saying it

but she's saying essentially the same thing i mean all right so john republicans have become the democrats john what what do you what you dismiss all this and say you know there were no irregularities the system does seem to function pretty well and the only case and that's why the only case that matters is pennsylvania or you say well yeah the system is rigged but the only place we have a chance of addressing it is pennsylvania so first i don't think the system's rigged okay you know and i think the president went overboard that's important for you to say yesterday yeah so this is in fact what we were just talking about with james i think uh proves the point and with rob the federal system is resilient and here's i mean this is not the this is actually goes back

to the real me in the word it's diverse you know our system has such a diversity and independence of state and local government that it's very hard to make the claim the system is rigged for against anybody so think about uh president. If he claims that Arizona and Georgia were rigged, these are states wholly controlled by Republicans, right? The governors are public, the state legislatures are public. These are states where if it's rigged, then you're claiming your own party rigged the election against you, right? It's very hard to have a system nationwide where you're going to say both the Democrats and Republicans at the state and local level conspired to defeat President Trump. I'm sure the Secretary of State in Georgia wishes the ballots were coming out differently right now and that Biden wasn't 1,000 votes ahead.

So that kind of, I think, even though the founders did it because they were so suspicious of central government, right? This is where they are channeling lilacs, right? They are so suspicious. They did not even want the federal government to run the elections for its own officers. Think about how strange our system is. We get different governments to pick federal office, but that creates, it makes it very difficult for anybody to take over that system. When it comes to the irregularities, actually, I'm much more cynical having grown up in Philadelphia. There's always irregularities. The question is, do they matter? Do they add up to enough?

I am sure there's some Philadelphia county official who might have monkeyed around and is quite proud of this. It's not going gonna change the outcome maybe maybe in arizona maybe there's a republican official who's messing around with one or two ballots across their desk it's not gonna matter the third point last point is we do have a system to take care of this but basically we rely on politics so here's what could happen state legislature in pennsylvania is republican they could hold an investigation. If they actually thought Philadelphia stole the election, they could say, well, actually, guess who has the constitutional power to vote the electors? Actually, we do. You know, we gave it to the people. We could take it

back. There's always that check in the end. If there really is widespread rampant fraud, state legislatures could reclaim their power and vote the electors there have been elections the last one was 1876 where multiple sets of electors went forward to washington because there was so much chaos and that was the southern reconstruction states between you know the reconstruction governments which were still republican and then the democrats slash i mean the white supremacists in a way who wanted to kick them out and take over government and stop letting blacks vote. So it has happened before. There's even a backup system. So even if these irregularities got so large that the electoral college system breaks down, then there's something called the 12th Amendment, which establishes a

whole backup system for picking the president, which doesn't depend on elections at all. Well, John, a calm voice like yours with historical perspective is very, very welcome, because you imagine that perhaps some people in the White House right now are like Lloyd Bridges in the airplane movie saying, I picked the wrong week to stop smoking. And by the way, folks, if you are smoking and you're thinking, I don't think it's a good idea right now with all the COVID around, there's a new way to ease yourself off, to quit. And it's called Lucy. What is Lucy? Lucy Nicotine is a company founded by Caltech scientists and former smokers. They were looking for a better and cleaner nicotine alternative. Finally, tobacco alternatives that don't suck as in,

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to your door each month. So it's simple. You don't have to leave your house because Lucy has delivery down. The Ricochet podcast listeners, that would be you. Go to Lucy.co. It's very important. Lucy.co. And use the promo code Ricochet to get 20% off all products, all products, including the gum and the lozenges. That's Lucy.co. Promo code Ricochet at checkout. Also, you've got to say this. Warning, this product contains nicotine derived from tobacco nicotine is an addictive chemical we thank lucy for sponsoring this the ricochet podcast yeah rob you uh you're upset by the by the oil that john is pouring in the waters here you actually want us to be at each other's throats is that what you like is that the kind of democracy that you want well i don't think that we are actually i think i don't

think we are either spoke and they kind of got what they wanted and it seems to me that that there are no outliers here except the the big surprises uh on tuesday night for me anyway where the was the good news for republicans i mean it's kind of remarkable and it's good and shows that the people like like the the law of American politics has been there. Two laws were busted last on Tuesday, which are great law, great things to bust. Right. One was turnout always favors the liberal progressives. We know that's not true. And the second thing is that is that you lost my point. But the second one, i forgot what the second

one was but it was a really good one um but that's a pretty good law to break and the second one is that that um that uh can i make your second i know your second yes here it is you don't go ahead here it is because it's because you left california but you're still california at heart is that you're right the american people are still uh conservative right because look at so look at what happened in california in the ballot initiatives the effort to right reintroduce affirmative action was resoundingly defeated by 12 points in fact it passed by a higher majority than prop 209 originally passed by so right now i guess even that was more against affirmative the that was my second point is that change the tax property increase the property tax here failed overwhelmingly the the only initiative that passed was the one to free uh gig workers

and independent drivers from state labor law so if you we're you know california is allegedly the most progressive state the most diverse state there's you know trump lost 70 30 here was unbelievable but when the voters were faced with conservative versus liberal choices on free markets on individual liberty on getting the government out of the way get it stop using right they voted down the line by large majorities for conservative positions and they actually even increased they even increased the toughness of the criminal system they rejected uh this new bail system and restored cash bail again which is it was a male i mean that's really anti-progressive that is really my second point where they like which i was brain locked on which is that that

for the other second law that we believed in for a long time as long as i've been watching politics has been well you know what the there's a mythic there's a myth of the ticket splitter there's a myth of it and we came up with a whole phrase for the reagan democrats he had to invent a phrase for people who just i like ronald reagan but i also kind of like tip o'neill i like ronald reagan but i also looking like big a big government and and we kept thinking that that's impossible or that's got to be some kind of rare number, but that turns out to be a huge part of the American population, including a legitimately left-wing, deep blue state like California. That's a remarkable law that I think the Democrats are going to ignore, and the Republicans should use as the first rule in their playbook to trust that.

Turnout's good. Yeah, there's no down-ballot names can win in California. You can rebuild a coalition without somebody at the top. This is all good news for a party that's on the way there. We've already heard rumblings that in the Democrat Party, a lot of them are saying, cut woke bleep right that uh this defund the police stuff this 19 genders this everything else it ain't helping out here uh and i wonder if they're going to get that message or if they're going to double down on it whether or not the squad becomes ascendant or some grown-ups come in and say no look we have to get back to some of the things that made us exceptional, not the things that made us weird. I mean, I wish there had been a city

council election here in Minneapolis, because I'm really keen to see how the people who enthusiastically put Omar back in would look at our city council, which is just, if not more progressive, but has led this city to wreck and ruin. Right. Don't you think if Biden wants to run for re-election, I assume he's already thinking about it, even though he suggested he wouldn't. I'm sure he's thinking about re-election. Don't you think the Senate going Republican is the best thing to happen to him? Because now he can say to the woke people and the squad, I can't get in. I've got to be a moderate.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, look, Trump supporters, I believe that Donald Trump has lost the presidency. And I think Joe Biden is going to be president like Rush Limbaugh. I think Biden has won. If that's the case, then Trump supporters have a choice. Right. They can either be like the fat late that you know, that fat girl at the Trump inaugural who had the purple hair, who I think you're talking about my wife, aren't you? I'm just joking.

Holy moly. I'm just totally joking. Holy moly. I am so dead meat at home. You are so dead, yeah, and you deserve it. Holy moly. I told you we eat McRibs all day. Korean bluntness strikes again. Okay, you remember that woman? She starts screaming

as loud as she possibly could the minute that Trump finished the oath of office. I'm like, you got a choice. You can be that woman? She starts screaming. Oh, as loud as she possibly could. The minute that Trump finished the oath of office. I'm like, you got a choice. You can be that woman. And you're going to have a meltdown and scream and yell. Or you can learn the lessons and win. And to me, it feels like if the Trump supporters accept the loss, don't have a conniption pick themselves back up they can and learn the lessons the good lessons here read the good news and build on it they can they can succeed again

and if the democrats don't do the same thing and don't do the same thing they're the ones who are going to have a civil war not the republicans is that a fair what do you think oh i don't expect republicans to have a civil war at all. Trump supporters just want some notion that this thing happened, I believe, that it happened fairly. And John's answer, I thought John's answer was beautiful. And to the extent that that answer begins to percolate out over the next few days, I don i don't expect i don't expect any kind of rearguard action among trump supporters and just look okay so i want to return to one to me the most important lesson is one that you didn't return to rob but that you mentioned it at the top of the show and that is that we have been told over and over and over again i put it in my book

that i came on the republican party in the year 2000, that whatever happened in all of these decades, the Republican Party, since the founding of the Republican Party in 1856, the Republican Party remained the party of the people who came over on the Mayflower. And the Democratic Party remained the party of Ellis Island and all the immigrant groups since. And the Republican Party, as recently as 2000, just could not break out of a fundamentally white vote. And that is now just over. As of this election, the majorities of the minority vote went to the Democrats, but it was the Latino vote that enabled Trump to carry Florida. The black vote doubled. It's still at very low levels, but it doubled for Trump. Here in California, I just checked, Mike Garcia, who did an amazing thing some months ago in a special election, Mike Garcia, who is the son of Mexican immigrants, ran as a Republican and won.

And in a district in which the registration is overwhelmingly Democratic. And it looks as though Mike Garcia is in the lead. It's a very narrow lead. They're still counting. It looks as though Mike Garcia will be reelected. elected sometime in the next decade or decade and a half at the outside the republican nominee for governor of california is going to be the child of immigrants from vietnam or from mexico right or from india and that will change everything and it has begun as of this election that is a hundred percent true that is a hundred percent true But a lot of it depends on whether

or not Donald Trump is going to use his post-presidency to build and grow or whether he's going to stoke, I hate to say stoke resentment because that's a cliche, but harp on the loss and that it was taken from him. That's not going to be helpful. If he still keeps waving around a Sharpie and saying, this is what cost me Arizona, that's not going to be helpful. And it's not going to lead to coming together in comedy and unity and all the rest of it. But as far as Arizona goes, let's go to somebody on the ground. John Gabriel, Ricochet editor, was there, and he perhaps can tell us about SharpieGate and how the use of one pen may have turned the entire election from the direction of goodness and truth to the perfidious slough of Bidenism or whatever. Anyway, John, welcome aboard.

We understand that in several Trump-heavy counties, they were given Sharpies instead of ballpoint pens. The machines do not recognize the Sharpie. They only recognize the ballpoint pen ink. Was this a mistake? Because when I heard that, I thought, who goes out and buys a bunch of Sharpies when you can get some cheap big pens because ballpoints are inexpensive? Sharpies, they're a little pricey. What's the story on that? Are those ballots spoiled? Are they coming back? Will they be counted? You're there. Mr. Gabriel, tell us. My desk is currently strewn with 57 disassembled Sharpies. I have some microphone here, and I'm getting to the bottom of it, frankly. No,

this is not a problem. I can see the Oliver Stone movie moment right now. Black and to the left. Black and to the left. Go on. Sorry. Exactly. Yeah, I have threads connecting all of them. It's quite a scene. But no, it's not a problem. Arizona has used Sharpies in the past. They recently changed their ballot. But Sharpies have worked in the past, and what they're doing, and excuse any car noise, I'm driving my lovely daughter to a dental appointment.

But it is not a problem. There's slight bleed-through, but it is not a problem. There's slight bleed through, but it doesn't cause an issue. I filled out my ballot since I dropped it off early with a ballpoint pen. The Sharpie is not a problem, and all the relevant officials were checking into it

to make sure Sharpie wasn't a problem, and no, it was not. Did we lose Gabriel? Wait, he's there. My brother lives in Scottsdale. So did we lose Gabriel? OK, wait, he's there. There lives a Scott still want me to call him. I am here. OK, well, let's can we just finish Arizona and then we'll go to a Sullivan. OK. Yeah. So I hate John. It's Rob. I was actually pretty confident that Trump would eventually catch him the vote until this morning.

A bunch of new votes dropped. Basically, the two candidates are separated by about 1.4 percent when Fox called it way prematurely. There was about a 5 percent difference. So what Trump needed to do with all the remaining votes is have them break about 57 to 43 percent in his favor, which has been going fine until this morning when he got about 51 to 49 in about 60,000 votes coming in. So he still has a chance, but the remaining votes are not expected to be pro-Trump. They're about considered 50-50, and he needs to get like 59 to 60 percent of those to actually take Arizona. Are we talking about Pima County, or are we talking about Maricopa? This is Maricopa County, and just so the listeners know, Maricopa includes Phoenix,

and it contains about over 60 percent of the state's population. So winning Maricopa is huge. Pima County is where Tucson is. It's been the Democratic bulwark forever, as long as I've lived here. And there's other rural counties, but population-wise, they're just so much smaller than Maricopa. So, John, I got two questions. The first question is, Fox called Arizona, you know, I mean, I was watching in New York, and it was on Tuesday night. It was staggeringly early. I mean, I was watching in New York and it was on Tuesday night. It was staggeringly early. I mean, they may end up being correct ultimately.

But was there any justification for that call in your mind as an Arizona political watcher? There was zero reason to call it. Basically, they guessed and the guess had a 50 50 chance of being right. So it'll probably end up being right. But why they called it so early is just bizarre to me because there are so many votes outstanding. And everybody knew that the late counted votes were going to favor Trump just as they have. So they might prove to be correct. It was guess not science.

So my next question is, you're in the Trump seat a month ago or two months ago, right, how smart was it in the end for Trump to say to his supporters, don't vote by mail, don't vote early, vote in person, and put it all down to this high wire act on Tuesday when, you know, if I was just saying, like, if I'm looking at if I'm a Trump voter in Arizona on Tuesday, and I've been looking and it looks to me like, you know, Arizona

is a red state. Everybody I know is going to vote for Trump. You know, I got to take my daughter to the dentist. I got to do this. I got to do that. Maybe I don't they don't need me. Did that affect, did that, do you think that will factor at all in the Arizona results? I think it'll be a minor factor because people on both sides of the fence were so motivated this time, but Arizona is a different animal than say Pennsylvania, which was changing its rules up to the 11th hour. Arizona has done, has perfected really mail-in voting for years. I've been voting by mail

for about 10 years now. And if I have trouble deciding, I just drop it off at the polling place and it's not a problem. They have a very efficient system. It's slower than Florida's. We should all be taking notes from Governor DeSantis and Jeb Bush who set up Florida's system. But yeah, it definitely didn't help. And in Arizona, nobody's afraid of or mystified by the mail-in process because we're very familiar with it. We're old. We're old people.

So, okay. So I don't, we're going to let you go, but I just want to question it's where we're recording this. It's about 1 PM on the East coast. East coast is about 10 AM on the West coast. I never know what time it is in Coast. It's about 10 a.m. on the West Coast. I never know what time it is in Arizona because you guys are weird. People will listen to this later this afternoon.

What is the news? What will they be listening to later this afternoon about Arizona? Arizona probably will not be called because, I don't know, Fox really blew it. They almost poisoned the well by calling it so early. But I think it's fairly likely, you know, I don't know, Trump might have a, you know, one in four, one in five chance of pulling it out somehow. But I'm thinking that the votes in Pennsylvania, if he doesn't take Pennsylvania and either Georgia or North Carolina, you know, throw in Nevada for what it's worth, he's not going to win. And unless he can find some provable voter fraud thing, I think it's definitely trending in Biden's direction.

All right, John, thanks. Take your daughter to the dentist. Remember, this is an important moment in her ethical development. She has to tell the truth about the last time she flossed. Start her out in the right direction, and good luck with that. Hope there's no cavities. Talk to you later. Well, our parade of Johns, from John Yoo to John Gabriel, continues with John O'Sullivan. He's the author of The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister. He's a former advisor to Lady Thatcher, National Review's editor-at-large, and like Rob Long, he is a commander of the Order of the British Empire. Did you know that about Rob?

I didn't. I think it's a lie. But he's right now in Budapest, I believe. We're happy to have him here to tell us what it looks like over there. John, we don't think they're still counting ballots for Trump in Budapest. But what is the view from Europe? How are they looking at this? With relief?

With trepidation? With a mixture of amusement at the Yanks? What? Well, most places are looking at it as Trump blowing himself up, to be honest. Nobody quite knows what's happened. Obviously, people who like Trump, generally speaking, are sympathetic to the right. It has the marks of a kind of a thriller, doesn't it? I mean, all of these things going wrong simultaneously for him in every state that really counts. All the other states which don't really count in a sense. Everything goes swimmingly, you know, and everything was going swimmingly in these states until suddenly, I forget what time of the morning it was over there,

but suddenly you get a series of reverses, and those reverses get deeper and deeper. And as I would have predicted, he gets angry, upset, hurt, annoyed, the rest of it. And he presents exactly the wrong face to the occasion. His actual, the content of his remarks were not that difficult, different rather from Joe Biden's remarks. I mean, he was saying the same thing. I think I'm going to win the end. But Biden's were cool, calm, measured, slightly just above catatonic in a way. So

what you've got there is something you're not worried about the guy. John, you mean you're talking about Trump's statements on Tuesday, right? Yes, that's right. Not his speech last night. Okay. Just to clarify. No, no, I'm sorry. I'm having actually spent two nights this week writing away, I've lost track of time. Yes, so I think among his opponents, among the left, the great bulk of European intellectuals, most of the West European governments, they're quite happy to see him blow himself up. I mean, he's been a nuisance to them, which has been, in my view, greatly to his credit, actually.

And now they think that he's gone for good. So that's what most people think. Now, this is one of several countries in the world not many india another but hungary is the country and most central europeans would have more sympathy for trump the hungarian government is actually pro trump uh outspokenly so really and they were obviously were hoping very seriously that he would win the election i mean it would have made life so much more easy for them. In a sense, there's been a rapprochement between America and Hungary in the last year or two. They've signed various nuclear, not nuclear, I'm sorry,

various defense agreements. The Americans have basically been taking the line when they've been here, look, Hungary is a good ally of the United States, and that's what really counts. So now most people here think that Joe Biden's government, his State Department, would be, and probably now will be, hostile to the Hungarians, will align themselves with the European Parliament and with those countries, the major countries in the EU who are attacking Hungary, and might be wrongly, for undemocratic procedures and the rest of it. So rule of law

violations and so on. So I think there would be, in most places, a sense of relief if he's not going to be around. But of course he is going to be around for some time, including after he leaves office. Whatever else you think of Trump, if he were to, I mean, I think there's now going to be a kind of Dreyfusard or Bonaparte, a mixture of Dreyfusard and Bonapartist traditions fusing to have him raging around the country saying, in my view, by the way, plausibly, too, that he's been cheated in every possible way. Now, whether or not, and I've been listening to the sober kind of remarks that you've all been making

about what happened this week on the violation of the electoral laws and so on. Whatever you think about that, he has been cheated in relation to Russiagate. I mean, there is no doubt in my mind that he never was really allowed to be president. And now this kind of sudden dramatic reversal of fortune in the last two days. That means he has never had a presidency at all in the sense of being allowed to govern as any other president would have been. I mean, it's been an extraordinary four years. And I think that that will be the basis for Trump remaining in politics. And as we see now, I think, on the right, there'll be a division between,

well, three-way division. Some people don't like him. Glad this has happened. Other people become reconciled to him, and they don't like what's just happened, but they don't sort of think they can prove there was any dirty work at the crossroads. And there are those who think they finally got the old boy did he well did they well we're not going to put up with that and i think there's going to be for some time and maybe for the next four years um uh an attempt on the right to keep the fight going and you know frankly although i'm i'm completely sober in the matter of what john and others were saying i think that you can understand that humanly, not just about Trump, but about his supporters.

But, John, what Peter here, thank you for joining us from who knows what hour it is in Budapest. It's all right. Is it not bad? Seven o'clock, yeah. All right, all right, all right. In that case, that case i hope you have a drink at hand um but what form will that what form will that rear guard action take i don't i don't know rush limbaugh just conceded on his television program

no i don't think it will take the form of an attempt to um the ongoing movement towards Trump leaving office. No, I don't believe there'll be any, unless there is some dramatic event and someone steps forward and says, you know, I have in my hand the evidence that, you know, the president has been the victim of a vast international plot and so on and manages to produce such evidence. None of us think that's going to happen. No, I don't think that. us think that's going to happen no i don't think that i think that once he's left office uh i think he'll remain around uh he'll be continue to be um the the the that there will be a myth not in the sense of necessarily of something that's dishonest or wrong but a myth of a great president brought low by pygmies, and then he will try to turn this into,

trying to turn the Republican Party into his vehicle for returning to office, or if not that, his vehicle for remaining a major figure on the political scene. And I think it's going to be very difficult for everybody to work out how to handle that because frankly i think it would be the democrats will may make the great mistake of actually trying to imprison him or something but certainly to reduce him to a figure who is a semi-criminal figure they there will be people who desperately want to do that, just as there are people who desperately want to turn the Republicans into kind of people who've wrongly supported a kind of criminal enterprise. That's what people on the left will definitely do. I mean, you could say too much of what they're saying. Everything you say sounds plausible and shrewd and insightful, as always with you.

I'm just trying to think of examples. Mrs. Thatcher, whom you knew extremely well, my heroine, Mrs. Thatcher. I have the feeling she'd have liked to have proven more influential out of office. She quite happily took a seat in the House of Lords. She bought a house in central London. While she remained well, she continued to turn up at dinners and give speeches and so forth. It's not clear to me that that worked, really. Richard Nixon wrote books. I don't know that he had much actual political

impact. Ronald Reagan is different. George Bush is different. George H.W. Bush is different. Don't forget Andrew Jackson. The corrupt bargain of 1824 spent four years campaigning against John Quincy Adams and won in 1828. Although I suppose perhaps the example now that John is reaching into history. Oh, my God. John, geez. Come on. Maybe the example is Theodore Roosevelt. But even then, all that Roosevelt did was spoil Taft's chances at re-election and elect Wilson instead.

So what do you reckon he could do? John Quincy Adams. He could run. I would vote for Donald Trump to be mayor of New York City. And he would be probably a pretty good mayor. There's an idea. Better job. He has better perks.

Or the John Quincy Adams model. He could run for the House of Representatives from Florida and he'd be the most colorful member of the House in history. I don't think he'd be that. I don't think he'd be the most colorful member of the House from Florida. Speaking of the House. Anyway, I'm sorry, John, in Hungary. So what do you think? Sketch out the Trump future. Well, he will leave office. He will remain active in politics. He will have the ability, maybe he'll have his, I learned he may have his own television network, and he'll continue to, therefore, be a force, intellectually, so to speak, politically on the scene.

Why do you think he wouldn't run for office again? He's entitled to. Four years from now, he'd be 78, which is older than Ronald Reagan was when he left office. Same age as Joe Biden. Yes, I guess that's right. I guess the miracles of modern medicine, yes, yes, I suppose it's possible. Wouldn't he rather try to pull maybe what

the Clintons were thinking of and trying to just set the stage for his, one of his kids to run for, you know, use the time to build, and that's what I would do if I were him, build out the network, solidify support in the party, and then set it up for, you know, his hand-chosen successors and maybe even his family. It'd bushes that they would be the new bushes of the 21st century would be the

trumps well you'll know if he if he travels around the country for four years in nixon style right and and does favors for republicans that's how you get you know you go ahead get ahead in the republican primary in 2024 as you start doing favors for people. Doing favors for people is not really something that he's terribly good at, but he could learn. But I think it's hard to win the Republican primary without doing that. Although he could run as an independent and just be a spoiler and give us four more years of President Harris. Or enjoy the rest of his life and just go back to mar uh elba and uh nicely i love it i love what you did nicely so john one more question for you if uh so set aside what he'll do in the future how do you summarize his legacy right now well it's incomplete is what uh i think he say. You'd have to say it is incomplete.

He has reversed the direction of American politics. There's no doubt about that. Joe Biden will attempt to re-reverse it, but I don't see him being able to do it, for example, on China. Do you? No, no, no, not at all. He won't be able to do it really on um of an on economic policies that are more attentive to the the position of the the workers in the russfeld states and indeed

other workers so there'll be a a slightly more paternalistic gop um it won't abandon classical liberal economics uh there's that's just a fantasy of of some people and the never trumpers but it will be a bit more like well as i've always said the old-fashioned tory party pre-thatcher which is to say essentially right on economics but continually making concessions to political reality and too many them, so that the country eventually becomes sort of frozen in all kinds of ridiculous restrictive practices and cartelized deals. And that's, in a way, his kind of politics. So he'll probably urge that on the Republicans, and he'll find a lot of supporters.

So I think that he'll continue to be a major figure in Republican politics. You see, the problem for everybody else is that he is a kind of political idiot savant. I mean, he has been quite amazing in the way in which he alone has kept his campaign going in the last month. I mean, you can't say in a curious sense that he's not a great man. He was carrying the whole of the Republican Party on his shoulders as he crisscrossed America. He had created enormous numbers of new Republicans who wouldn't have thought of themselves as such. It's now a multi-ethnic, blue-ar, both cross-class, but certainly blue-collar party. And its leadership is going to have to come to terms with that.

So I don't think he's going to go anywhere. I mean, I think the questions you put to me in the last couple of minutes, gentlemen, have suggested we're talking about his obituary, but he's not dead. And so he will certainly be powered by a tremendous sense of injustice. And the other thing is what's going to happen about Russiagate? What's going to happen to all these investigations? Are they just going to be deep-sixed?

I don't think so. I don't think so either. And although at the moment the mood is, and I think everywhere, particularly on the right, particularly among people who write and talk and think about politics on the right, well, he's gone now. I think he will feel bitter about the way in which so many people have been glad to usher him towards the door which is what you see happening i think he'll want to stay around and get his revenge

so he could be a disruptive figure on the right he will be on the other hand there'll be a lot of people who'll be supporting him and um and so i don't think we're going to see the end of Trump. My wife just tells me we will be there getting our revenge. I'm with him. The long knives from Budapest. Hello, Melissa. Hey, John, last question here. Is there any incipient trepidation in Eastern Europe about what Biden presidency might mean? Because we know there's been this animus on the left towards Eastern Europe

because they're doing all the things they think that nations shouldn't do. Do they think that there's actually going to be some sort of push to disengage or to censure or to just rhetorically condemn or just sort of limping along business as usual with what Trump has built so far? Well, whether trepidation is the right word, there's certainly a very conscious sense that the Biden government is going to be almost certainly going to be hostile, that it will ally itself strongly with the left in the European Union, and that it will encourage the European Union to, so to speak, discipline Hungary and Poland.

I think that would be a huge error on the part of the American government. Hungarians are a good ally. Most of the charges against the government are ridiculous. The idea that, for example, it's cosying up to Putin. Of course, it's next door to Putin. It's got to be polite. But the fact is, it's kept all the sanctions that NATO and the EU wanted. So you're going to have a sense here that we may have to sort of put up the battlements in order to arm ourselves against an attack of left-wing progressives in the State Department.

And I think that's probably true. But there are limits, common-sense limits, to what you can do to an ally, particularly one you don't want to leave the alliance. So I don't think that will go very far. But I think there won't be a very friendly relationship for a while. We'll see. John, thanks so much for joining us today it's been a while we miss you and we hope to have you on as soon as possible and before we go john you of course has been uh just patiently standing by john you not interrupting john o'sullivan it's just it's you know it's i only hear you i'll interrupt robin peter i mean come on you know we were all

on a deck of a ship back in the days oh that would have been like so like... So, John, in many ways, you are the quintessential American. You have the Korean heritage, but you embrace the McRib. You don't even demand that kimchi be put upon it. But I would like to know, does your partisanship towards these seasonal delicacies extend to the shamrock shake? I was just about to mention the shamrock shake. Are you enjoying the Irish benefit of that confection come March. And don't you, it's one of the things you love about America is that it's not shamrock shake all the time. I mean, we have to wait for the really good and special things, don't we? Oh, yeah. And also, it's my faith in capitalism.

McDonald's spends billions of dollars figuring out what the human tongue likes to eat. Who am I to resist all that marketing and research? I defer to the gods of the marketplace, and I've never been disappointed. Never. McDonald's and all these franchises are constantly coming up with great things to eat at low prices. I mean, you can't beat it. That's what America's all about. You can't. I think Peter has one more question. It is probably whether or not Taco Bell has been recycling the same items over and over in different names with fake Latinx terms. Peter, you had one more thing to make this thuddingly serious before we go?

Yeah, thuddingly serious. One more thuddingly serious. John O'Sullivan said, what about these investigations? I, John O'Sullivan, don't think they'll go away. So, question. What does happen to the investigations that Attorney General Barr, who is a Trump appointee and whom Obama will not reappoint, has got underway? We're waiting for Durham, the DA of whatever his title is. U.S. Attorney.

Thank you. the d8 of whatever his title is attorney thank you u.s attorney durham apparently has all kinds of findings of his long investigation that he's going to announce but the biden a biden department of justice could just shut it all down right or not nope you're right under the constitution the president has the final say over the enforcement of the laws but i think there's two uh points to make in addition to that because obviously presidents don't do that. I mean, Donald Trump never fired Bob Mueller, even though constitutionally he could have. One is the control of the Senate. The Senate can do everything China corruption investigation if they want to. They can't prosecute him, but they can bring all that information out to light. They can give immunity to witnesses. They can refer people to prosecution. That, I think, could be quite crippling, actually, to the Biden administration in the early days. And then the second thing is, I think this puts

President Biden in a quandary, because when he was a senator, he was a huge fan of the independent council statute. And actually, the Democrats in the last two, three years have been demanding that we create a permanent independent council who could not be fired by the president. Like the ones that beset reagan and bush and uh what happens when people say okay president biden live up to your campaign promises and appoint a special counsel in fact it would be hard for him to turn he'd be like clinton and whitewater right almost had to politically appoint these guys because otherwise it would look like he was killing it just to save his own hide right so i think durham will rush out his findings in the next few months but i think the prosecutions will continue and could you could

even see them handed over to an independent council wow so a permanent department of madame defarge together with the truth and reconciliation committee it'll be fun uh but of course but of course if i'm ever brought up before that committee i I will have John as my lawyer. I think we all would demand as such. I don't take losing cases. That's why I have a perfect record. As we watch you go by in the tumble to the scaffold, John, we'll wave. That'll be us waving cheerfully. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. John, thank you. Good luck.

Thanks, John. Yeah, Truth and Reconciliation Committee. Wouldn't that be fun? I think everyone else here on the show would really take it in the shorts. I get my knickers in the twist. I get my knickers in the twist. I'm sorry. If you're going to take it in the shorts, they better be comfortable, right? Even if they're twisted

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Everything. Get $20 off, but only until Monday, November 9th at TommyJohn.com slash Ricochet. That's TommyJohn.com slash Ricochet. See the site for details. And we thank Tommy John for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Now, are we done? Are we saying we're not talking about the election anymore? We're not talking about any of the lessons?

I have one more lesson if you want to hear it. I'd like to hear it. You really? Because I don't think you really do no no no i do unless unless it's a lesson about how i was mistaken no i think it's a lesson about more how i was mistaken or how we all are oh no well how you're mistaken okay listen to that all day um because there's a lot of talk about polls and the polling and polling inaccuracies and all that stuff right and um it turns out it probably looks like the national averages are going to be kind of right you know within the number that they're supposed to be you know um probably uh

and the state by states are fairly inaccurate kind of lots of mistakes they're bad um and my theory is this uh you get what you pay for and when you're talking about a big country and a lot of people uh it's sort of easier to get closer to the zone but state by state it's really hard and you got to pay the money and no one wants to pay the money except two groups did pay the money and those two groups were insanely accurate the trump campaign and the biden campaign and they spent a lot of money on statewide polls and those statewide polls they pinpointed one of the reasons why the trump people jumped out of their skin on tuesday night after arizona is because they have very very very good numbers for arizona and they were in the hunt in arizona they still are technically and even if i mean even you know even if he biden wins all the states by the i'm looking backwards at cnn i have to look at CNN because Fox News refuses to take Arizona back, and it confuses me.

Even if he wins, these are well within the margin of error, and both of those campaigns knew it. The Trump campaign pulled their commercials out of Florida, and half the Biden team said, see, they know we're going to win. And, of course, they didn't. They just were going to spend the money somewhere else where they needed it. Their campaign in Florida was flawless. They won Florida and they pulled the money out. They spent it somewhere else in the party. The Republican party came in and spent money in Florida, but the Trump people knew exactly what they were going to do. Watch where they went. Biden went to Pennsylvania because his internals said, we think we're going to win Pennsylvania. Trump went to Michigan, Wisconsin,

Minnesota, because he knows he had to win those. And he was a little bit behind in their internals. Polling, if you spend the money, works. Right. Both knew that Texas was never in play. Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean, that was, come on. There was a poll that showed Biden up by three points, and everybody talked about that for three days nonstop. And Paul Begala said the day before the election, tomorrow, Texas goes blue. And Trump took Texas by six points.

They knew better. That's exactly right. The big polling companies do work for corporate clients. And Ford Motor Company and General Motors and General Mills all want to know about the national market. They're skilled at the national market. They know how to do the national market. They have no idea how to do Utah or Delaware or Minnesota. Or a state that's insane like Florida.

I mean, imagine your job is to do an accurate survey of Florida. Like, you know, you have to be. So here's my theory about the Trafalgar poll. And this is conspiracy theory that doesn't really have a conspiracy point to it. If you're the point of these polls, the reason that the national polls bug people when they come out is because your funders, your funders say, wait a minute. And the Trump funders were saying near the end, why are we going to give you money? We don't think it's, you're going to win. And so they had these good numbers in Florida, but they couldn't release that poll because that's proprietary information, right? So they had to find somebody to publicize their results. And they found the Trafalgar poll and they basically gave Trafalgar the answer. And they,

and well, the only thing that I, Trafalgar couldn't do was show his work and when he showed his work for 10 seconds people like went to the cross tabs and said this is insanity and so he took the cross tabs down he had the right answer but he hadn't he couldn't show his work and I feel like they were leaking the next cycle we should just pay attention to both parties do that and pay attention to that because and because it'll show like where they travel and where they spend money can often be psychological warfare. George W. Bush went idiotically for a three-day or a one-day swing through California because they wanted to make Al Gore feel like he was going to win California. You could get information. The good information, I think you just have to pay for it. You know, the statewide, you can get information, the good information, I think you just have to

pay for it. Or you've got to steal it. Alright, I'm done. I'm sorry, I just wanted to share that. That was a little conspiracy theory I thought I would share. But you don't understand. James closed the show before that. Wise information, Rob, and you're quite right, and we should pay attention,

and we won't, and next time we'll be just as angry. No, no, this time we'll do it. This time I think it's going to be different, James. I'm not sure about that. I do know that this podcast was brought to you by Lucy, by Tommy Johns and Donors Trust. Support them, you support us, everybody's happy.

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We can't do that. Violate all the ballot rules. And we know those are sacrosanct and observed into the letter of the law in their entirety coast to coast. Well, we'll see what happens next week. I'm pretty sure we're going to be talking about the first projections of the Biden presidency, but who knows? Anything's possible. For example, you could go to ricochet.com and sign up and make everybody happy.

And we would see you there in the comments because you've got to be a member to comment. That's the place to be, right? We'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Next week, guys. Next week, fellas. That's life. That's life. That's what all the people say.

You're riding high in April, shot down in May. But I know I'm going to change that tune. When I'm back on top, back on top in June. I said that's life. And as funny as it may seem some people get their kicks stomping on a dream

but I don't let it, let it get me down cause this fine old world, it keeps spinning around I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet A pawn and a king I've been up and down and over and out And I know one thing

Each time I find myself Flat on my face, I pick myself up and get back in the race. That's life. That's life. I tell you, I can't deny it. I thought of quitting, baby, but my heart just ain't gonna buy it and if I didn't think it was worth one single try I'd jump right on a big bird and then I'd fly

I've been a puppet a pauper a pirate a poet a pawn and a king I've been up puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king. I've been up and down and over and out. And I know one thing. Each time I find myself laying flat on my face. I just pick myself up and get back in the race. That's life. Ricochet. Join the conversation.