The Ricochet Podcast - Marco's World

Episode Date: January 30, 2026

Peter returns to catch up with James of Snogadishu and Charles of the land of peace, prosperity, and enviable winter climate. It's good timing to have the ever-winsome Robinson back as the trio wraps their heads around another week of crazy that hits a little too close to home. They grapple with domestic disturbances revolving around another killing in the Twin Cities and the preposterous notion that journalists have special First Amendment privileges. There's also trouble abroad...all over the place, in fact. But we're feeling pretty good about a State Department left in Little Marco's hands.

Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall. It's the Riggishay podcast. I'm James Lillickson. Of course, we have Charles C.W. Cook here, and who's walking to that door? Why? It's founder Peter Robinson. Yes, let's have ourselves a podcast.

Will you make a public commitment today to rule out U.S. regime change in Cuba? regime change? Yes. Oh, no. I think we would. would love to see the regime their change. We would like to, that doesn't mean that we're going to make a change, but we would love to see a change. I'm not asking you whether we would prefer a different kind of government. I'm asking whether you are trying to precipitate the fall of the current

regime. Yeah, but that's statutory. The Helms-Burtain Act, the U.S. Embargo on Cuba is codified. Welcome, everybody. It's the Rickettsay podcast number 774. You, yes, you can join us at Rickashay.com. It would be part of the most stimulating conversations and community on the web. Join the member site where the real friendships form and you'll say, where's this been on my life? Where? Well, waiting for you. And we're waiting for Peter Robinson to say, hello. It's been a while. Hello, Peter. It has been a while. How are you, James? Couldn't be worse. And Charles C.W. Cook, who is with us from Florida, Charles, glad you've joined us.

Nice to be here. And of course, I'm in Minneapolis or Snowgood issue, as some people are calling it. That's a term I'm particularly fond of, but it has been another week. It has been another week. We'll get to some of the things that happened, but the most breaking story, I love saying that. Breaking is that they not only arrested Don LaBahn, but they arrested an independent journalist in Minneapolis, St. Paul area, for participating in the church break-in or the sit-in or the curfluff, whatever you want to call it, where they barged in and started telling everybody how bad they were. This is interesting to me

And I would like to pretend to grapple with it Before coming to my pre-examined By predetermined conclusion But this whole arresting journalists thing There's a lot in that There's a lot in the word journalist There's a lot in independent journalist Where are we exactly now with this

And is this a dark new age That is besetting the country? Peter, I'll let you start Because it's been such a long time Sure. I want to hear more from you in due course, of course, Jane. I mean, in particular, I still think of Minneapolis. My couple of exposures to Minneapolis, it's left of center and all, but it's a very neighborly place. The just sort of pervasive air of friendship and goodwill and neighborliness. And I gather that even their attentions are such that even in a grocery store, you can actually feel it. So I want to hear about that. On the journalism, I just don't know. A journalist used to be a reasonably well-defined person, and she could prove that he was a journalist by showing that he worked for the Washington Post or the New York Times or CBS News.

And now anybody with a substack can say, I'm an independent journalist. So, I mean, I don't. And then, of course, we know that even under the most carefully, the most careful construction of the First Amendment and a freedom of the press, even at that, even if you're dealing with a thoroughly credentialed journalist in the old sense, where we all understood what journalists meant, there are lots of things journalists can't do. They can't break into, they can't trespass, they can't engage in violence, they can't engage in incitement. So I don't know.

The whole thing makes me very uneasy is does everything that's taking place in Minneapolis, in Minnesota. Well, credential doesn't. is an interesting word. What exactly does that mean? Today, what does it mean? Right. If you go to journalism school, does that mean you are credentialed?

Not necessarily. If you are working for a newspaper, does that mean? Well, it depends on the newspaper. Is it one guy with a, you know, putting together four sheets folded in his basement from the Heward-Packard printer? Or is it a big sheet that rolls off of massive?

Does that mean it's credentialed and legitimate? I mean, even somebody such as Charlie Cook, for example, could claim to be a journalist. Well, I wouldn't have to because there is no distinction in the law between journalists, credentialed, or otherwise, and anybody else. The First Amendment applies or it doesn't. Well, wait a minute.

What about New York Times v. Sullivan? But that applies to everybody. There's no such thing as a journalist in the law. The First Amendment either applies to the activity or it does not whether somebody is. I see, I see, I see. Yes. Or they run a substack.

Or they just one day decided they were going to go out and observe something. The same laws apply. Second point I would make about this. And I also don't know how this will come out. But for various reasons, some of them good historically. The sentence the president has initiated the arrest of or prostitial. of a journalist makes people nervous in the same way as the sentence the president has initiated the arrest or prosecution of a judge makes people nervous. But one has to get to the second part of any sentence to know whether it's good or bad.

We had this case in Wisconsin in which this judge facilitated the escape of an illegal immigrant. The Trump administration went after her. The press immediately said, oh my God, this is Nazi Germany where they go after judge. but she was convicted and the reason she was convicted was because she did it and I think the one thing about this that makes me a little bit nervous to combine those two points is that we have seen this reflexive argument instantly emerge in the wake of this arrest the presumption underneath of which is that there's no way that a journalist with credentials could have done something wrong and this is a self-conception of the press that is bizarre. It seems to me entirely possible. I'm not

saying likely, I'm not saying guarantee, but it seems to me entirely possible, given what we know about this, that Don Lemon was part of a violation of the Face Act. He knew what they were going to do. He didn't try and stop it. He didn't happen upon it. He was part of, so the case goes, the construction of an illegal act. And journalists are not allowed to get away with that just because they shout the First Amendment. Now, on the other hand, And if he was merely acting in a reportorial capacity, then perhaps he's innocent. And perhaps he'll get away with it anyway because they'll apply a different level of scrutiny to him because he is a journalist. But I just hate the woolly thinking that I'm seeing on this, that ipso facto, it's wrong to prosecute him because at one point or another he worked for CNN.

We can't have a country in which that's the case. Well, we have a conception of journalist in this country that goes back 80 years, and it precedes all the president's men. It goes back to every wisecracking newspaper movie that was ever made going back to the 30s where you have a bustling room full of hard-nosed guys and wisecracking gals who are getting the story, who are working for the public, who are trying to get the truth out there, part of a big organization, lots of smoke and lots of liquor and lots of fast-talking pattern, all the rest of it. And that was the model up, you know, the popular imagination up until, you know, 10, 15 years ago

when the idea of the newspaper as such began to recede completely until not. It's just the only time people really think about them is when the Washington Post announces it's shuddering its entire sports desk or something like that. So, I mean, saying, I've never called myself a journalist. I worked for a journalist organization, but I never pretended to be objective. And so I never felt comfortable calling myself a journalist. I was an opinion writer or a columnist. And just because I had an ax to grind, though, did that mean that I wasn't a journalist? I guarantee you that there are many axes being sharpened on big whetstones in the back of the mind of nearly everybody who's got it.

the profession. Now, should the government do something about it, though? There was a case. Tell me what you guys think about this, of somebody who said that it was a bad security at a nuclear facility, and we shouldn't be so lax in securing stuff like this. It's dangerous stuff. And so he hopped the fence just to show how easy it was to get in. And once he got in, security found him and arrested him and the FBI had a file of 1,400 pages and the U.S. attorney for the state of Illinois

impaled a grand jury to charge him with espionage. Do you think that that was correct? Hold on, let me stop. Do you know who that man was? That man was Paul Harvey.

Really? Good day. Yeah. One of the first things he did in his career working for a radio station was a, you know, got bad nuclear security, and he hopped the fence, got himself arrested. It's called participatory investigation, participatory journalism is what they call it at the time. And so, Paul, of course, would go on to be a national treasure, but it's interesting how these details come to mind sometimes. Anyway, well, there you go. The answer to the question, though, is that if there was a problem with that charging, it was

because it was overzealous, not because he was claiming to act in. a journalistic capacity. I mean, I wouldn't want you or anyone else to be charged with that. It's not because he was Paul Harvey, right? And I keep harping on this just because journalists do seem to believe it's a class that they are specially protected, that the First Amendment applies to them and not other people, that if they just show their press credential and they can get away with something that others wouldn't. And that's just not how the law works. And it's annoying as well. Right, but let me tell you that you show your press credentials and you do have special treatment. You do get to go places that other people don't.

I remember in Washington, I went for my press credentials and behind me was a flag. And it was a, I think it was white with a green stripe diagonal. And what that meant was I had certain access to certain areas. So you could look at somebody's press credential and tell exactly how far they could get in based on the flag behind them. If you are at a political convention where I've been, you have big, huge badges around your neck with holograms on them that tell them whether or not you can go in room. You get used to that. You get used to waving the press card and being able to go places that other people can't. And this, I think, affects some how you see each other. All right, another shooting. We had Alex Preti, intensive care nurse killed by federal

agents, and now we have a new video. And Charles, let's get to Woolley thinking about this, because when the new video came out showing him on the site, kicking out the tail of the light of an ice vehicle and spitting at it and saying the F. Bob and the middle finger and all the rest of the charming ways in which we protest in this country. Some people were saying, well, it doesn't change anything. It doesn't mean he deserved to get shot,

which is woolly thinking. Guide us through, if you will, as a firearms enthusiast, how you regard this episode, especially the people say, oh, I thought you liked COVID-Col carry. I thought they were supposed to have guns in order to withstand a tyrannical government. Isn't just this, that? Well, there's

so much there. I'll try not to speak for 10 minutes. Peter, jump in after nine. Yeah. The second video does not affect the shooting because it was on a different day in different circumstances. He was not shot for his cumulative actions or for his character. So insofar as people saw that second video of him kicking out the taillight and said, aha, that explains it. It doesn't. The second video does, though, obviate the claim that he was just a lovely, peaceful nurse who spent his time helping puppies and children. That's not true. And that has been smuggled in to the narrative to make it seem as if he was an innocent bystander in much the same way as the shooting of René Good was after a few days described as the murder of, of a mother who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, having dropped off her child.

And if you believe that the truth matters, and I do, then we ought not to allow that. The video of him kicking out the taillight shows somebody who is very angry and unhinged. Somebody who is shouting verbatim, effing assault me, you mother effers. Somebody who committed a felony by kicking a federal vehicle and causing more than a thousand dollars of damage. Look up the cost of the tail light. That's the law. Below a thousand is a misdemeanor, above a thousand is a felony, and who had a gun on him, which renders it a felony irrespective of the scale of the crime. So the video does matter, and it doesn't. But it matters insofar as it pushes back against this desire somehow to turn everyone who has been the victim

of a wrong into a saint. On the gun point, he committed in the second video of federal crime by committing a crime while carrying a firearm. That's a felony. But he wasn't arrested. He wasn't charged. And 11 days later, he got into a different incident, which I think is much more difficult to parse out. As a matter of prudence, I don't think you should carry a gun and fight with federal officers. But some of the rhetoric that's come out of the Trump administration about this is just wrong.

It is not true that you are not allowed to go to a protest. armed. There are some states in which that is true. California is one of them which makes it ridiculous that Gavin Newsom has adopted this stance he has because he signed the law, outlaw and carry at protest. But Minnesota is not that state. Minnesota wants to be that state because Minnesota filed a brief with the Supreme Court arguing that the Second Amendment doesn't apply to protests. That was signed by Keith Ellison, the Attorney General of Minnesota. But at the moment, that is not the law. The law is that you can carry a to protest. You can also approach cops and fair. federal agents while armed and not expect to get shot. A lot of what the Trump administration has said is wrong. On the other hand, a lot of what the left has said is wrong as well in that, A, it has been trying to outlaw the gun he was carrying, carry itself and carrying a protest, but is now acting as some sort of indignant Wayne LaPier's stand in. That's ridiculous.

And the description of the Second Amendment here from progressives has been bizarre. Dean Phillips, who ran for president against Joe Biden in 2024 on the grounds that Joe Biden was too old, shocker, said that he finally understood what the Second Amendment was for. That's an insane thing to say. Let's just clarify this. The Second Amendment is in part there to protect against tyrannical governments. But you have to actually start a war to exercise it. It's not an Allied cart system. You can't say, well, I don't like this law. I don't like this agent.

I don't like this tactic in this city. So we can just, what, shoot them? The Second Amendment is all or nothing. If you're going to take the Second Amendment remedy, you are starting a revolution that you have to take to its logical conclusion. So this doesn't somehow substantiate the Second Amendment. It doesn't render those of us who are in favor of the Second Amendment and haven't said what the Trump administration has said,

hypocrites. We don't believe you're allowed to open fire on federal agents. So I think so much of the commentary on this has been completely ridiculous. I do think this was a bad shoot, I will say. I think they got it wrong. I think it was probably the product of an accident. I think there was a misunderstanding. He did have a gun.

He was disarmed. Someone shouts gun. Some people said the gun went off. I'm not sure if it did or not. And then the agent opens fire and is joined by another agent. I don't think that it was willful. I don't think that it was an assassination. But I do think it was a mistake.

I do think they were too trigger happy. and I think that it's important to acknowledge that, as the Trump administration did not, at least initially, Trump's been much better than all of his underlings, because, as I said before, the truth has to matter. I think both were regrettable and wrong, to be frank, and I think both were entirely avoidable. And it's one of the reasons I don't park my car perpendicular to the street when I see the police apprehending some Peruvian pedophile that they've managed to track down. Peter, what say you? Is this fellow a domestic terrorist, as Christy Noam called him? No, no.

The use of the word terrorists is wrong there. By the way, Charlie, thank you very. First of all, when Charlie's angry, he's a thing to behold. He's a wonder on any podcast, and he is extremely angry right now. That's lovely. I confess to Wully Thinking. I began with the program with Wully Thinking. I'm just offering up my sort of reactions, reading the news, looking at it as it pops up in my X-File.

Thank you, Charles C.W. Cook for rigorous thinking about journalism and the law and the Constitution. Now, I confess, I go from Woolly Thinking, confessing that to confessing a second thought, which is that my thinking tends to run in political groups. And the politics of the thing that I see here are as follows. Five weeks ago, four weeks ago, the big story in Minnesota was the enormous, enormous corruption, the theft at staggering levels of public monies by largely the Somali community, which of course raises all kinds of questions about immigrants and our failure to assimilate them and what they're doing there, and the bad guys in whom I would include, even if an almost endearingly fumbling bad guy,

the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walts, were so much on the defensive five weeks ago, politically, that Waltz announced he was no longer going to run for a third term as governor. They were losing. And the administration, or put it more broadly, the conservative movement, or just the impulse toward decency and accountable government, was winning.

And now we have horrible incidents. They're both regrettable. For what it's worth, the second incident seems to me, just as Charlie said. I mean, you have to bear in mind these guys are being screamed at, spat at, their heart rate is up. There is an adrenaline release, and they can make mistakes under those circumstances. It looks to me like a mistake. But the way Christy Noam yapped and said things that were mistaken, and untrue and provided an opening for the mayor of Minneapolis and Governor Walts,

who just weeks ago were slinking around with their tails between their legs, provided an opening for them to reassert themselves politically as, and give one speech after another of righteous indignation strikes, it strikes me as just astounding. So at the political level here, Charlie deals with the truth, which I admit is a higher concern. But at the political level, the administration is just screwed up. That's what I think. I think so. Taking Bovino. Tom Holman seems a huge improvement. I'd love to hear. It just, the guy seems professional. He comes across as a very ordinary, decent guy. He comes across as more than intelligent enough, but also there's a kind of solidity and decency about him. Let's put it

this way. Sending him and strike me as the correct move politically, again, I'm talking politically, because he seems like the kind of person who just is so solid that by his presence, he'll calm things down. But his opinions on getting illegal people out of the country to the progressives puts him in the same category as Stephen Miller wearing a floor-length black leather SS outfit designed by Hugo Boss. I mean, his ideas are seen as reprehensible, which is what I want to get back to all the time when it comes to this.

Charlie is talking about the basic principles. You're talking with the politic groups. I am constantly struggling with how to argue and discuss this with neighbors, friends, relatives, et cetera, who have a set of assumptions that I don't know what they are. Sometimes I never hear them. Sometimes they don't have the assumptions at all. Sometimes they have no predicates whatsoever.

Sometimes they have no thoughts. they haven't thought about immigration at all. They start with seeing a bad thing. They start with seeing guys with masks going into a house. And they see their fellow Minnesotans standing on the street corners being unhappy about it. And from that, they draw the only possible conclusion, which is that the people who are protesting are in the right, because as we know in this country, anybody gets out there and protests and has signs is correct.

Has the moral high ground. That's how it works since 1960, whatever. and that the bad guys, however you want to work that argument back, they're the bad guy, so they are the culmination of badness. You can't get these people, they don't want to talk about where this starts. It starts with the idea of a nation, of citizenship, of borders, of control, of what it means to be a citizen, what it means to be able to say you are a citizen and you are not. And that may sound unfair to some people. What is it, an accident of birth? No, but this is how we've operated the state.

This is how it is set up. You cannot open the borders to absolutely everybody because then you lose your nation. Oh, so you're saying then that once the nation isn't composed exactly like the demographics of North Dakota, it won't be America anymore. That's what I'm saying, yes. That's why we have to control it. So if we're going to control it, we have to have a mechanism for enforcement. If we have to have a mechanism for enforcement, it's going to have to involve force. How do you get rid of the Laotian drug dealer or the guy from Uganda who came here and drove his car drunk into somebody and killed three people?

How do you go find them and get rid of them except by force? And is it the fact that they have scary uniforms and they're masked? Is that it? If they arrived in, you know, in pastoral robes, would that be better? the argument never happens because it's all focused on big scary guys doing big scary things to people in our neighborhood our neighbors in our neighborhood

now and also you know I will agree arbitrary detention of somebody who just doesn't look right I don't agree with that then I hear stories about this I hear stories about this all the time I don't know how true they are but I hear stories about this all the time but the idea that the enforcement mechanism that we've done for decades that Obama did

over and over and over again is somehow now illegitimate because they're masked because they're pulling people out of the houses. And if you try to tell them, well, they're pulling people's out of the houses because they had to go get them because the jails let them go, that's an argument that they don't want to have either. It's just ice out. That's it.

It's just ice out. Ice out. Ice out. And this is why, James, I will not have the conversations you're describing with people until we establish as a common starting point. that the federal government gets to execute federal law, even if people don't like it.

Because all of the subsidiary objections that you've mentioned, some of which are true, some of which I agree with, are in this instance being used as smoke screens for the actual objection, which is to immigration law per se. The people who are pushing back against this are doing so in actual. absolute terms. They will say, well, I'm upset about the masks or I'm upset about this particular incident. And again, maybe I'll agree with them on the tactics from time to time. But what they

really mean and what they always eventually get to, whether implicitly or explicitly, is that ICE should not be there in the first place. And nobody else executing immigration law should be there. You see this with Jacob Frye, the mayor of Minneapolis, who will say things that are true, for example, that Minneapolis is not obliged to enforce federal immigration law itself. That's true. Prince of the United States, 1997 Supreme Court case justifies that as to the old Prig case from 1842. But then he'll say, get ice out. Then he'll say, these are our neighbors. We benefit from, he calls him immigrants, but we're dealing here with illegal immigrants. Okay, that's a separate issue and we resolved this pretty

famously in 1865. The federal government gets to execute federal law. We do not have a country in which with the state government egging them on, networks of activists are allowed to systematically prevent the enforcement of duly enacted laws. And those laws for what it's worth. Those laws are not controversial. We're not talking here about the federal government claiming powers that Congress hasn't given it. We're not talking here about the federal government usurping the power of the states in violation of the Constitution. We're not talking about a law that is vague or that is disputed. We're not talking about a law that is currently in litigation in the Supreme Court. These laws have been on the books for 30, 50, 70, 80, 80, 100 years. Most of the

systems that are being used at the moment by ICE were put into place in 1996 in the Clinton administration. And so I have been quite open to criticisms of ICE, as we've just discussed, I think this was a bad shooting, and I think the Renee Good one was probably legally defensible, but morally problematic. But I just, I'm not going to be distracted by all of the smaller picture questions to the point to which I lose sight of what's happening. I'm not that stupid. I'm not going to be conned. They don't want immigration law and force. And that's unacceptable. That's nullification

and it just cannot stand and the Trump administration can't allow it to. And there we have the problem. You called them smaller issues and to them they are the only issues, the biggest issue. The main primary issue is irrelevant. Peter, do you think that this is because, and I don't want to psychoanalyze

too much, although it's fun, part of it is like of something to do, part of it is a god-shaped hole, part of it is looking for a cause. Part of it is people have described all sorts of things to this. But part of it surely stems from the idea that this is an illegitimate nation to begin with. A nation built

on colonialism and plunder and slavery and smallpox blankets. And therefore, the very idea that it has any right to determine who and who shall not be here is preposterous, as some of the Mexican advocates would say, I didn't move, the border

moved. The border moved and put me in a different country. It's all arbitrary. None of these things should really exist in the first place. So we don't have the moral standing to say somebody's illegal. No human being is illegal. Yeah. I'm sure there's an element. You're on the ground there, James.

So you hear what people are saying at Starbucks. You see what they're saying on the news when they're protesting and so forth. I'm sure there's an element of the hard left, real hostility toward the nation. It strikes me if I were trying to be charitable, to put the most charitable possible construction I could on this, I would say something like Minnesota is a state heavily settled by Scandinavians and Germans, and for decade in and decade out, they were centered in small communities where people went to church and knew their neighbors. And honestly, this is one reason why Minnesota used to have a welfare system, used to be

able to pride itself on a welfare system that worked. there really was a sense of neighborliness about it. And what is taking place is when Jacob Frye, who surely knows what he's doing, refers to these immigrants as our neighbors, he is touching a button, and it's a kind of decency button that a lot of people in Minnesota grew up with. And they immediately say, wait a minute, neighbors, we pride ourselves on taking care of our neighbors, on helping each other out. It's a corruption of a really decent impulse that has deep historical roots in Minnesota, which in some ways makes it even more outrageous.

Every word that Charlie uttered is true and well chosen, and there's not a single member of the administration who's making those arguments at anything like... I am just troubled again and again and again. I'll say it once and stop saying it because it's an observation we've been making for years now when it comes to Donald Trump and the members of his administration. The inability of the administration to articulate itself, even when it is clearly in the right, obviously in the right, even when it is pursuing laws, as Charlie pointed out, set in place, system set in place by Bill Clinton, the inarticulateness of the administration, I find. striking again and again and again. With the one reservation, I believe that Tom Holman, now he doesn't put it at the level that Charlie does, but Tom Holman does make this point. We're here to enforce the law. He stands on that point again and again and again. But, oh my lord, they have arguments as Charlie just proved that they're just not making.

Well, Rubio made some arguments the other day. Did anybody watch that? went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Peter, you had a gust of something. Well, I mean, yeah. So here I am talking about how inarticulate the Trump administration is, and Marco Rubio is spectacularly articulate. Tough, knows his position, is perfectly willing to go up with people who are former colleagues of his. And Rubio had a reputee.

I know a couple of members of the Senate. and Marco Rubio was very well liked. These people, off-camera at least, these people are friends, even Rand Paul and Marco Rubio. And Rand Paul, I'd like to hear what Charlie makes of this on the law. But Rand Paul was pushing and pushing and pushing. My inclination is that Rand Paul actually has a very good point that they're building, that they built much too large an operation on the slender rationale of a police action, and that Rand Paul had a better point, had the better argument, I think, than Marco Rubio.

But I want to hear what Charles has to say about that. Even at that, Rubio handled himself brilliantly, refusing to concede an inch to Rand Paul, making the point again and again and again that Maduro was illegitimate, that he was a criminal, that he was a thug, that what we had done was in the interest of simple decency and hygiene in our own hemisphere. I just thought that it was a real tour. By the way, I've also over the years, I've heard people wonder, honest, I'll just put it, the people who observed the Senate have wondered from time to time over the years, just how frankly intelligent Marco Rubio is.

He didn't go to Harvard Law School or the University of Chicago Law School and went to Miami. There's questions. Marco Rubio is highly articulate, very shrewd. We are dealing with a very intelligent man here. I was very impressed. Yeah, but he drank some water on television. Charles. Or a boat.

well I was impressed by him too I think there's often a difference between who wins debates and who is right it will not shock you to learn I suppose that I saw a lot of debates at the Oxford Union in which the side with the better debate is won even when that side was wrong I think Marco Rubio is often right so this isn't a criticism of Marco Rubio per se I think in this case it's difficult

in that I am of the view as I've argued over and over again that Congress needs to authorize military action. I know there are very smart people who disagree with me. There is a memo I believe it was written by Bill Barr back in the first Bush

administration to justify the removal of Noriega that is being leaned on by the Trump administration in this case. Now that doesn't mean that the memo is correct, but the memo is precedent for now, and it's unlikely that this is justiciable, that is to say the Supreme Court's not going to get involved and determine what the federal government can and can't do. So ultimately, this becomes a political question.

I'm more on Rand Paul's side than Marco Rubio's, but while I 100% agree with what you said, Peter, about the Trump administration being poor, representing its own case, even when its case is strong, that doesn't seem to have applied to Marker Rubio in this. instance. He's about as good an advocate as I've seen in American politics recently. Ever. Yeah. Well, I go back a little farther than you do, Charlie, although please don't remind me of that.

I would say he's as good as I've seen ever. Well, one of the things that came up, one of the issues is, and I love this, because if I can remember the sequence right, it was Greenland, Venezuela, Cuba, or was it Cuba, Venezuela, because it's been a busy year. We dispensed with the Greenland situation. I guess. We dispensed with a Venezuelan situation.

That's off the table. And now a nation turns its lonely eyes to Cuba. And we're being told that we should have regime change there by the end of the year, which, again, is one of those things that makes you sit up, take notice, and think, well, how would that happen?

What would it look like? If indeed there is some sort of bedevilment that keeps Iran from shipping as much as they'd like, Venezuelan oil no longer comes Russian oil doesn't get there why the Cuban economy might collapse

as if it's this sort of robust thing striding the island in the first place do you think this is likely it's have we gone from the government policy of yeah we'd like to see him gone but you know what are you going to do

to actually trying to do something as somebody said to me the other day you know if China invades Taiwan we're going to take you about the next day. That was interesting. What do you think of the Cuba situation? Charlie?

Well, I also like Mark Aruvier's answer on this, which was that while it might not be the role of the United States to take out the Cuban regime, it would be good for the United States if the Cuban regime were gone, because it is a force for evil within Cuba and within the rest of the world. Of course, he said it with all of the righteous indignation you'd expect from some of the somebody who is Cuba, whose parents came from Cuba. I suspect that we will not take overt actions in the way we did in Venezuela, but I would be shocked if we were not behind the scenes doing everything that we can.

Also, the action we took in Venezuela and the pressure we're putting on Venezuela is, as far as I understand it, related to Cuba because Cuba relies heavily on Venezuela, especially for energy. And as we're seeing in Iran, in a completely different circumstance, when you do have internal economic pressure, that makes the likelihood of overthrowing the government higher, although it doesn't necessarily guarantee it. So I think Marco Rubio is a fascinating person.

Obviously, he was my senator for a while here in Florida. He's been in politics for a long time. We resent career politicians, but he's a career politician who has learned his trade and bided his time. He has in some respect It's been a chameleon In others he's had a core set of beliefs he's stuck to He has managed to weather the Trump administration

Better than pretty much anyone else Maybe the Trump years better than anyone else He was Little Marco And he was beaten roundly in 2016 Then he didn't run for president again But he somehow got himself into a position Within the presidency Where he holds a whole lot of power

wears a whole lot of hats And is advancing his agendas Did he really lose? It's one of the better memes that's out there is Rubio sitting there looking a bit downcast, hands folded, and people have been photoshopping and draping anything around him, you know, the Venezuelan army clothes,

you know, mullah clothes. I just, just assume how many things that he has on his plate and how many things that he has to do. Here's the way it works. Here's the way it works, I'm told. He goes to the State Department for an hour or two hours at the most each morning and then goes to the West Wing of the White House,

which is where he spends the rest of the day, nearly every day. He is right there. Nobody has behaved. Nobody has had that large brief since Henry Kissinger. On Cuba, could I just add one note? My wife is Cuban. I know these people. I know many Cubans. Let's put it that way. Here's my one note. Just for all our listeners.

James probably is already well aware of this movie. He may be as well, Charlie. somewhere online it's available, maybe YouTube or maybe on Netflix. Watch Our Man in Havana. Our Man in Havana. It was filmed in 1959. It's a wonderful dark comedy. It's slightly anti-American.

It's based on Graham Green. But the lead is played by Alec Guinness, Noel Coward. It's a British production. Noel Coward plays a role. Ernie Kovacs. It's brilliant, fast-moving, hilarious, witty dialogue. But here's the point. It was shot very largely on location in Havana, just a few months before the revolution,

just a few months before Fidel came down from the Sierra Mestre Mountains and took over. And so what you will see in the background is Havana as it actually looked in 1959. And people are well-dressed. There is traffic in the streets. It is a bustling, beautiful city. So watch that. And then go click around, look at Havana today on Google, and click under images, and just look. Those buildings are still there.

They're in a state of total decay. Many of the same vehicles, the same vehicles, not the same vehicles, are still on the streets, but of course they've been patched together. I mean, the failure is total. It's a, what you do with the, I mean, what you do with the, I mean, I mean, what you do to the difficulty in thinking about the future of Cuba, not that any of this is insuperable, is that some people have been there suffering for seven decades now, and there are going to be tensions between those people and the ones who got to this country and have done extremely well. So that's going to be kind of a problem. But if the government changes, I'm told that all over Havana, there are banks, there are contracts and safe deposit boxes that Cubans have written.

Day X is the day the government decisively falls. And X plus 10, there's going to be ferry service introduced from Miami to Havana. The Cuban community in Miami has the investment money ready to go. It could happen very, very, very, very fast. is exactly how. What's the mechanism? But that it is rotten and disgusting. Anybody can watch that by anybody can see that for himself by looking at a wonderful old movie and then comparing the background shots in that movie with Havana today. Yes. And if the people, if they come back from Miami on the ferry 10 days afterwards to reclaim their old property, they will be regarded as

Yankee colonialists who are bringing capitalism back to do. Right, as opposed to the people in the Palestinian camps who have an eternal right to this house and this olive grove that those people would just be going home after the knackba. Peter, it's great. It's wonderful to look at that old architecture and those great old cars. But of course, Batista, you know, Batista, secret police, inequity, all of these things. Every single shred of beauty that you see of civilization there had to be sacrificed in order to tear down the horrible thing and institute equity. And they did. Everybody's equally miserable. It's the same with Iran. You, United States has absolutely no standing whatsoever to criticize what happened because of most today,

53. You know, we had our hands in that. And so, you know, we're eternally tainted for that. But the fact is, is that if you look at Iran during the Shah's reign, and yes, he was fantastically corrupt and indifferent and a bad leader and all the rest of those things and screwed the poach and did a nickel as the second. And, I mean, yeah, right, I get it. But women have the rights that they don't have now.

Women were able to walk around in Western attire. the cities, even though Tehran was sort of haphazedly built and, you know, may have had the street grow up of a Roman, you know, of Rome in 2000 BC, or 200 BC, it still was a fairly enlightened place, a proud

center of Persian culture. And apparently, they had to sacrifice all of that because of the sins of the Shah, because of Western alignment. I mean, that's sometimes I think how they think about it. Is that when they look at what was lost, they say, yeah, but it wasn't perfect. Right. Well, I think,

nothing ever is. And best that you incrementally work on what you've got, then to do the wonderful, magical, romantic, heart-pounding work of revolution and raised the red banners and storm the barricades and the rest of it and build a new world from ground zero because it never works. There's one that's worked. That's here. We weren't starting from ground zero.

We weren't rewriting human nature. We were gathering up everything we'd learned from Britain and the Enlightenment and the rest of it. and we did a pretty damn good job of it, and everybody else seems to have forgotten the lessons of that. But I'd like to see it. I would love to go to Havana someday, but it's can take an awful long time to go back there and fix everything up because it's all falling apart.

Fed Chair. Kevin Warsh. Warsh sounds like one of those things you, like his name is Wash, but you've got a peculiar mid-Atlantic accident. Hire. Worse, Kevin Warsh. Nominated to chair the Fed.

I know nothing about it. this except that they meet in secret and make arcane pronouncements that make numbers go up and down. I don't know where we are on the rate right now, whether it needs to go up or go down. I read what I read. My eyes cross. I sigh. But Peter, you interviewed him last year. Tell us what this guy's all about. More than that, Kevin and I are old friends. So I don't want to, Kevin is extremely intelligent. And everybody who's an economist tells me that he really does know his economics. He is, Charlie, this to go back to what we were talking about, this, the inarticulacy of the administration, as chairman of the Fed, he will not strictly be a member of the administration,

but Kevin is wonderfully articulate. As I just reposted the interview that I did with him in, I guess it was just about last spring, six months or so ago, now that he's been nominated to the Fed chairmanship. Kevin's view, I'm not putting words in his mouth here, this is in that interview. Kevin's view is that the quantitative easing went too far and lasted too long and that the, and that it was used to underwrite vast expansions of federal spending under the Biden administration and that it is time to reduce slowly, carefully, but to become very, very serious about reducing the Fed's balance sheet, much of which has happened under Jerome Powell, but more. Kevin is also extremely upbeat, optimistic about the economy. His view is that the Big Beautifulville and contained not

widely, not not headline, but if you read the Big Beautiful Bill, there are provisions there that cut taxes on corporations in way that make investment much easier. And, And so he was, generally speaking, so I guess I think I can say this without being accused of putting words in Kevin's mouth, but at the sort of the high level, his view is that we need to get out of the way, constrain government spending, return the Fed to a much more limited role in the banking system, and that the American economy is not sick. it's recovering nicely from the disruptions of COVID and that we really are on the cusp of serious growth. That's as I understand Kevin's views. Will we be able to see this interview through a link? It's up, it's up, it's up.

I link to it again this morning on X. Oh, fantastic. Well, gentlemen, before we head out here, some interesting things we might want to discuss. Two related stories. We're learning today out of Geneva that the UN chief is told member states, and I'm quoting here from Reuters, that the UN is at risk of, quote, imminent financial collapse. And he's citing unpaid fees and a strange budget rule. He's reportedly spoken about the organization's worsening liquidity crisis, but this is a starkest warning yet that the UN financially may collapse.

In related news, scientists at MIT have managed to construct a violin out of two atoms. And I think that's going to be very, very handy to use when we serenate our sadness about this story about the UN. Is the UN relevant? Is the UN necessary? If the UN goes away, what do we do? Do we have a World Council of Peace with an emblem that just shows the northern, you know, the Western Hemisphere? What do we do? Do we empty out the UN and turn it into condos? And I'd like to think, given the way it sits, you know, the morning light on that is going to be beautiful, but probably at a half. it really hotter around 11 o'clock or so. You'd have to bring the windows down. Wither the UN, gentlemen. I loathe the UN.

I think it is pointless and should be disbanded. It is a relic in that it is full of privileged members whose privileged status was the product if they're having been on the right side at the end of World War II, not always at the beginning of World War II, Russia, and not of much else besides, and it's also full of countries that are worse than the

United States, as almost all of them are, and if you have a representative body that is full of terrible countries or people, that representative body is going to be malicious, and it's full of institutions like the institution for the advancement. of women that are run by Iran or Saudi Arabia. I would get rid of it, but I want to emphatically draw a distinction between the UN and NATO. I think NATO is a terrific organization. I don't think it has outlived its usefulness. And I think that it ought to be sustained.

I agree with President Trump that its members ought to pay more for their own defense and probably criticize America less while benefiting from American military lus. But UN bad, NATO good is my take. Well done, Charlie. I would also abolish the UN if I could. It strikes me as a lot of trouble. And so second choice would be ignore it,

which the Trump administration is doing a pretty good job of, I think. Just ignore the damn thing. If they're hard up, let them be hard up. NATO has not outlived its usefulness. What is its usefulness now, Charlie? I think that if you're going to have an alliance of nations that are better than all the others, and if you're going to use that alliance as a block against Russia to a lesser extent and increasingly China and its sphere of influence,

then you're going to have to have some sort of organization that manages it and while I agree with some of the smaller criticisms of NATO I think whatever you end up with is going to look a little bit like NATO with an agreement to guarantee one another's security with an ability to speak as one voice and with an arrangement that is backstop by the American military which has its tendrils out into various other countries that I are close, relatively speaking, to the United States. So, you know, while I'm open to reform, I think that the basic logic underneath NATO is still sound. And how do you, so Irving Crystal, Irving Crystal published an essay in the New York Times in 1983, predicting that European dependence

on the United States would infantilize Europe. He didn't use that word, but that was the argument. And then who's this man who's the former head of MI6? I can't remember his name. I thought you might as a proper Englishman. He's an establishment figure. But he said during an interview just last year, yes, 2025, that NATO had infantilized Western Europe, that they had lost the ability to think clearly and engage in uses of hard power. Hard power was his phrase.

So how do you – so is that – is that – is that – is that – is that – fundamental to NATO? Do we simply pay that price that we're in charge and everybody else suffers some dependency? Or if they kick up their spending and actually produce real militaries and the Germans are now sending troops to Lithuania, can... We want allies, not vassals. Do we? I ask that because... No, I ask that quite seriously in that I would prefer if Europe were not infantilized. I'd prefer if Europe were able to defend itself. I'd prefer if Europe didn't have a thousand-year history of interneissine warfare.

But I will borrow this from Rich Lauer, who said this recently, and I largely agree, if you told any great nation in the history of the world, all right, here's the deal. You get to be the richest and most powerful nation in the world. And you also get to effectively control an infanticity. Europe, they would have said, wow, that's fantastic. I mean, hundreds and hundreds of years of European history are marked by one country or another, hoping to dominate the continent. It tended to end in a horrible conflict.

Well, after 1945, the Americans went, yeah, we kind of are in charge now. We should be thrilled by that. So if the alternative of them not being infantilized is not on the table, which unfortunately it's not. I think this is the next best option. It's fantastic for the United States that we can put our troops wherever we want, that we can count on these other relatively rich nations,

albeit not to do exactly what we want, but to do mostly what we want. I don't think we can improve on that other than to have proper allies in the way you describe, which I agree would be preferable. Except that eventually you end up with a 35-year-old. old single guy living in the sofa in his parents' basement, which is what seems to be at the end of all this. And I would prefer, for the sake of Western civilization and its continuance, that they actually have

more national grit fiber character muscle than they seem to be having now. Now there's just a lot of fumes of self-regard and empty statements because they can't back up what they do with force. Well, we live in a post-force world, don't we? We should not be settling things by force. It's an absolutely archaic concept. We're beyond that. It's 21st century. No, human nature. hasn't changed and the iron laws that govern international relations haven't either. So if they equip themselves more for their defense, that's great. There's only one direction that's pointed in, though. I'm not sure that's true.

Well, is the new German tank production going to be used to, you know, to roll into China when they're occupied with Taiwan? No, but I do think the trend is in the other direction. I agree with you there infantilized, but I don't think the trend is toward endless infanticization. I mean, as you've noticed, Germany is producing Eastern Europe is arming itself and spending more on its defense. Trump has made headway in this area.

No, I agree. What I'm saying, though, is that all of these self-defense mechanisms are pointed in one direction. They're all in response to the existence of the Russian threat, right? The United States has this vast military apparatus that can project power at any corner of the globe, which is different, which means we'll still be on top.

But again, yeah, we would like them to be strong. I read stories of the Royal Navy in its condition and you want to weep. The nation that held Trafalgar as a great emblem of national spirit can't get a ship out of the dry dock and the silent service is sitting there with its wires rotting. It's dreadful.

On the other hand, as we always say, you know, if there's one thing that we really need more of, it's German re-militarization. You just realize how things have changed. If things have changed. I mean, the French have Japan to do it as well. I mean, if you told my grandfather that he was to face. And say Italy, can you get some guys marching?

in proper lock step down there for heaven's sakes. I know. I know. The more things change, nothing new under the sun, except, well, no, this isn't new either. I have to remind you that Rickshay members do get together in person, in human, in places where you can actually see each other and laugh and talk and hoist glasses. Got a couple coming up in February. One group are in talks about a meeting in the Detroit area after a Hillsdale college visit. And there will be another meeting at Florida Space Coast. That's February 6th, like 6th to the 8th this year.

So go to ricochet.com slash events, and you'll find out where people are meeting in your neighborhood. And if there isn't anything in your neighborhood, why don't you host them? That's a great thing. They'll show up. They'll bring tater tons. And if you think, I really don't want to sit around and talk about politics. Experience of every ricochet meetup I've been, we talk about everything. But there's a certain like-minded nature to it, but we talk about everything in the world.

And then I would ask you also to Peter, am I going to? How many stars do I want people to give this podcast? Four. Five. Wait, how many stars are there? How many? Now we know whether or the not Peter was listening or had just checked out by the time I got to every podcast and told people to leave us. Five.

I have heard this once or twice. I have discovered, by the way, my children explain this to me that in any five-star system, the only star that counts is the fifth star. Everybody assumes that the four stars are going to be filled in. So it's important not only to fill in five stars, but to fill in every arm of that fifth star, all five, all five with an exclamation point. All I know is that I've been looking for household appliances. I go to Amazon and I look for the one-star reviews because they're the most informative. The toaster do. How does this toaster perform?

And there's 743 paid, you know, a real person who bought this, but is actually probably just a digital robotic figure tapping of, you know, a screen somewhere in Shanghai. and when you get down to the 1% is where you find the word fire in every single view of the toaster. My favorite being doesn't toast. And, you know, when you're a toaster

and toasting is the entirety of your raison d'et or a dozen toast is a pretty good one-star review. But we hope we fulfilled your expectations, folks, and we deserve those five stars we'd like you to give us. We would also like you to go to Rickachey.com itself and take a look because there you will see, if you haven't already,

the member site. Yeah, you've got to pick a couple of, you know, Lira, denari, whatever, to get to it. But it's worth it because when you remember, that means you can comment, which keeps ricochet from being like the obsess pools of iniquity and screaming and miserable old cremudgeons in their basement, pounding out stuff on a Cheetos stained check, you know. No, no, that's not us. So go there, give it a try. And Peter, we hope we'll have you back soon. I just figured out what Charlie reminds me of. Charlie reminds me of the Dalmatian emperors in the late Roman Empire.

It goes about saying. These these Caesars, these emperors would come from the outskirts of empire and show up in Rome and say, boys, boys, you've all become effeminate. We've got an empire to run here. I'll take it. What emperor would you like to be, Peter? What emperor would I like to be? Oh, I thought Augustus had it pretty well.

pretty good. That's what I would figure to. Yeah. Exactly. That's right. Half a century I mean, let Caesar set up the empire. He gets knifed and then Augustus comes along and runs it. That seems like a good job. Dyes in bed. Did I perform my part in the play? Well, yes, I think that he did. And now, like the Roman Empire itself, well, I was going to say we end, but then again,

they did split off and have another thousand years in Constantinople. Yes. I'm still calling it that because I'm still mad about that. But that's another podcast. Thank you for listening, everybody. We'll see you in the comments at Rurcashay 4. You know, whatever. Bye bye. Bye-bye.

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