The Ricochet Podcast - No Joking with Sen. Tom Cotton

Episode Date: September 17, 2021

The trio is back in action this week, and after a few weeks off, Rob is in full force! We’ve got Senator Tom Cotton to keep our attention (R- AR) where it should be: on Afghanistan. He then takes us through what was yesterday’s Wuhan lab conspiracy theory but which has since become today’s news. Cotton also breaks some news about Nancy Pelosi’s future ambitions – you don’t want to miss this! Source

How many details of Rob's recent life are we allowed to probe on air? You can ask. I'll just, I'll be elliptical when I need to be. 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. My God, tax the rich. What a model.

AOC, what do you know you model as well? With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. He's back. I'm James Lileks, and today our guest is the only one we need, Senator Tom Cotton. So let's have ourselves a podcast.

I can hear you! Welcome, everybody. This is the Ricochetchet podcast episode number 561 would you like to be here when we have episode number 1000 you can help by going to ricochet.com joining up and being part of the most stimulating conversation and community on the web i'm james lalix in minneapolis rob long is somewhere as is his won't peter robinson firmly ensconced in Bucolic, California, which has fended off the disaster that would have been if they'd elected a black man as governor, apparently. And here in Minnesota, it's a beautiful day. They just mowed the lawn. So when I went outside, there was that wonderful perfume of two-stroke motor oil and fresh-cut

grass, and everything seemed right in the world. I was happy to be here. And I thought, you know, when Cicero went out in his garden the day that he was executed, he probably thought, boy, this place looks nice and I can smell the flowers and the rest of it. So you never know what's coming. That being said, it's good to be here. Good to have you back, Rob. You have been bouncing around the globe. I have been. Yeah. Get to that bit, I suppose. But I suppose we should ask Peter, since he's in the thick of it right in the middle of the post-recall california was that as some say the the conservatives just the gop getting high on their own supply believing that such a thing was possible in the first place well about a month ago it looked possible the polls showed that the recall was either too close excuse me the recall election had two questions on the ballot, the first of which, and it turned out to be the only one of which that mattered, should the governor be recalled or not?

Then there was a list of 45 candidates to replace him if he were recalled. One of those was Larry Elder, our guest on this program a few weeks ago. A month ago, it looked as though question one, should the governor be recalled, was too close to call or tilting slightly in the yes, he darned well should direction. And then the Democrats opened up their barrage. The governor seems to have raised $70 million and spent a lot of it, if not all of it. I don't know that the figures are public yet. On top of that, he had the support of all the media. There were all kinds of independent expenditures from teachers unions and public employees

unions. So they outspent the pro-recall side by at least 10 to 1 and more like 20 or 30 to 1. With what result? And they tarred Larry Elder, who was the leading Republican candidate. All the polls showed him with more support than anybody else. Not a huge amount, but enough to get elected. And they reproduced the results of the presidential election. Almost exactly.

California voted two for one for Biden over Trump and two for one to keep Governor Newsom instead of recalling him. How did they do this? They painted they ran against Donald Trump all over again. So it's a disappointment for us, expected, I suppose, in some ways, because Democrats so utterly dominate this state. The politics at the grassroots level, they have organization and they have money. But this does not bode ill for Republicans. It's just California being California. That's my brief conclusion. Well, Rob, when they called Larry Elder the black face of white supremacy, which is really an astonishing redefinition, it kind of tells you where we're going in the future, doesn't it?

That there is an inescapable bond between one's race, skin color, and the set of policies that you're expected to have. Yeah, I mean, look, nobody on this podcast wants to hear this. The California Republican Party is a disaster. They ran against the California Republican Party. California is not a conservative state. The Democrats didn't steal their supermajority. They won it because the California Republican Party is filled with morons and they believe the way people of partisans believe that actually everyone agrees with us we just need to shout louder and so it is very easy i mean i i think that the democrats overspent if they spent two to one they didn't need to far more than two to one far more than two they just need to run against

republicans and republicans in california need to decide whether they want to continually play lucy in the football or they want to look more carefully at um okay which by the way they may do they may do in the general i mean this is a is a very these recall elections are very weird it's like you got to think two things would go to go in. It's not a normal election day. So but when there's an actual general which is coming up, you could see it's conceivable a Republican a Republican governor could win. But he will be a liberal Republican governor. He will be a rhino.

That is what's going to win in California. If you want to win, you can lose. Okay, so here's the deal. In other words, you have to say people are tired of homeless encampments and their streets and their parks being overtaken by tents and needles and feces and prostitution and the rest of it. A Republican who is not in touch with California will say, I'm going to get rid of those. The only way to win is to be a rhino and say, I'm going to get rid of half of them and make the streets 50 percent. No, no, that's wrong. But that's not true. I mean, the L.A. County sheriff who last night, I don't really know what his politics are, but, you know, probably a nominal Democrat, even if in his heart of hearts, like all law enforcement officers,

he's a Republican. He took charge in L.A. County and actually did powerful things. By the way, people I know in California have said it's in a way anyway, that things have gotten a lot better, not just because of him, but because everyone, all the Democrats in power are scared. Look, Republicans have to decide in California. I mean, Republicans in Texas don't have to decide this. Republicans in Wyoming do not have to decide this california i mean republicans in texas don't have to decide this republicans in wyoming do not have to decide this republicans of florida do not have to decide this republicans in california have to decide if they want to win or if they want to cry and they have spent almost two decades crying and that's what you get you just that's the kid that's the state that was delivered to you how do they win in how do they win in an education issue uh well they have to

weasel word it and be rhinos that's how you win in california republic you be a rhino you be exactly the kind of politician that uh conservatives uh other states and other areas despise that's how you win and if you don't that's okay if you don't want to win or you persuade but you don't go through the delusion of saying we secretly are really popular because you secretly are not but i don't think anybody believed that for a moment anyway i will agree in one regard and demure in two in the notion that to the extent that the california republican party is a catastrophe, it certainly is. There's almost no structure, Republican Party structure left out here at all, which is why

it's a mistake in my judgment to talk about what the Republicans need to do. There's no functioning governing body that really summons or represents Republicans across the state of California. I also have to, I do know people who are struggling with the party apparatus to try to make it meaningful and useful. And I have to tell you, Rob, just as a matter of objective observation, they're not morons. There are some extremely intelligent, very dedicated people trying to do. If this had been a general election, maybe Falconer, the former mayor of San Diego, would have won the nomination. Everything you say makes sense.

Pete, by the way, he may win. If you're talking about, exactly, everything you say, the California formula that you continue to press and that who knows might succeed is uh conservative or moderate on finance and law and order but liberal on social issues that would have been falconer that would have been john cox but there was no nominating process this was a recall election so larry elder had the best name recognition and frankly the most the message that cut through the general fog of 45 candidates the best. By the way, I say that Larry Elder was on the podcast. He was dynamite.

I sent him money. I want more Larry Elder, I say, in California. But the problem is, if you're a talk show host, there's a trillion hours of talk that they can pull out and use as a talk show host. That's right. The second point I wanted to – Rob said that the Democrats ran against the Republican Party of California. That's not what I saw. I saw the Democrats running against Donald Trump. Donald Trump. And wrapping Donald Trump around Larry Elder's neck. Just as Rob said, Larry Elder's a talk show host. There were plenty of things he said, and he was certainly pro-Trump. Okay, so they did that.

What is there to say? Probably the formula... Go ahead. The middle class evaporates in California. They move out to places where they can thrive. It's happening fast. You're left with a stratified society in which the top part votes Democrat because it's the noble, virtuous thing to do that any decent feeling person would do. And because they are personally insulated from the ground level manifestations of the policies for which they vote. The people who are underneath them vote because they want the state to give them more things and to give them more funding and more of this. So, I mean, it works

perfectly for the Democrats because the top part will go right along and go up and attend the galas with their fancy outfits and flutes of champagne. And the other people will say, look, we want better schools. So the only mechanism to deliver that is the school system that we have in the teachers union. So please give them more money without any strings. That seems to be how it works. Yeah, once you pass a certain tipping point, one party becomes the only game. I was talking just, what was it, yesterday or the day before with a business guy here who does work with people over in the Central Valley, and he said there are a lot of people. Oh, he does agricultural investing. Anyway, there are a lot of good farmers over there in the Central Valley. Central Valley is, to the extent that there's a Republican Party

left in California, it inhabits the Central Valley. And there are a lot of people over there who are at least nominally Democrats, because that's the only way to get into the game of politics in California. A one-party system is very hard to reverse, and it has happened here. Yeah, and I think Peter's right, and I hope he has happened here yeah we'll see we'll and i think peter's right and we'll and i hope he's right and we'll see what happens in the general where it seems to me that a moderate rhino republican has a real shot as they always do when the california governor seems to be um incredibly incompetent as he is but but look, Republicans are going to have to, I don't want to get into this,

but Republicans are going to have to deal with the fact that Trump is unpopular in many places. In California, for sure. And he is a useful villain, the way Jimmy Carter was for the Republicans and Nancy Pelosi is. He is a galvanizing force for the opposition, and Republicans are just going to have to accept that and figure out a way around it or figure out a way to combat it. But that's the given. Those

are the facts on the ground, which I know Trump supporters don't want to hear, which is why I never talk about it cut this out I would look you are correct I would love to go back to the Ronald Reagan of to the California of Ronald Reagan and peace but Pete Wilson It's gone If Rob is saying that California the Republicans California need to do the same thing that Republicans in Massachusetts and Maryland have done Which is to embrace candidates such as Charlie Baker, now the Republican governor of Massachusetts, and Larry Hogan, the Republican governor of Maryland, I'm all for it. It would be a dramatic improvement.

Well, if you want to disagree with Rob about that, you can send an email. It's a smart mail. I don't know what his name is because Rhino Squish was probably taken. So Rob may be Rhino Squish, nine, four, threes. He is speaking of this wonderful new fancy mail system. Listen to this. Don't be like Rob. Hop on StartMail right now and get your username before somebody else grabs it. Why would I want to do that? You say, I've got Google, I've got Yahoo.

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year. Start securing your email privacy with StartMail now. Sign up today and you'll get 50% off your first year. 50% off. Wow. Go to StartMail.com slash ricochet. That's StartMail. Now, sign up today and you'll get 50% off your first year. 50% off. Wow. Go to StartMail.com slash Ricochet. That's StartMail with the T. S-T-A-R-T mail.com slash Ricochet for 50% off your first year. StartMail.com slash Ricochet. And we thank StartMail for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast, Tom Cotton. Following his graduation from Harvard Law School in 2002 and some time clerking in Washington, Senator Tom Cotton joined the U.S. Army, serving tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was awarded the Bronze Star. Since 2015, he served as the junior senator from Arkansas, sits on the Senate Committee for the Unarmed Services, and is among the favorites to represent the GOP in the 2024 presidential race. We'll get

to that in a bit. But let's start with Afghanistan. So what is the situation there? Last I checked, there were people still stranded, and somehow we don't have Nightline on ABC every night telling us about the hostage crisis and how many Americans are still behind enemy lines. James, thanks for having me on. And you're right that we still have an unknown number of Americans and Afghan partners stranded in Afghanistan. It's because the Biden administration was both recklessly inept in executing the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and now they are disingenuously covering up their failure. You know, they're desperate to move on to any topic besides Afghanistan. So they don't want to give us the actual numbers of persons they left behind. They keep giving it in ranges of hundreds or thousands. But when you talk

about American citizens, those people who are countrymen who have passports, plus green card holders, those who have a legal right under our laws to live and work here and travel back and forth to any other country, their families. And then finally, those Afghans who had been approved and vetted to receive a special immigrant visa for having served alongside our troops for two decades, I think we're well over 10,000, maybe in the tens of thousands of persons who were left behind in Afghanistan. The Biden administration won't give us a solid number because they don't want to be judged against an actual number. They want to declare that the withdrawal was an extraordinary success, as Joe Biden said, despite the deaths of

13 Americans, as well as Afghans falling off of our aircraft as they took off from Kabul International Airport. And they don't want to have any way that the American people can measure the full scale of this catastrophe. Senator, thanks for joining us. It's Rob Long in Florida. Can I ask just a personal question? I mean, personal to me, not personal to you. The difference between the fall of Saigon and Afghanistan is that the boat people in Vietnam didn't have smartphones and they couldn't tweet, right? They couldn't send me emails. Two weeks ago, we had Congressman Mike Gallagher on, who's been sort of on top of this topic, as you have. And coincidentally, an hour later after the podcast, I got an email from a friend of mine

who runs a TV show called the United States of al on cbs and one of their writers is they have a lot of afghans as writers one of their writers is a family had family members stuck on the other side of the fence and they had passes and he said is there anything you can do so in five frantic hours we sort of assembled all of the people we could find. And luckily, Ricochet's got some, you know, we got some moxie and we actually got that family out. And I saw it happen on my phone. That's the upside. The downside is that now, according to a lot of people in Afghanistan, all you need to do is to send me an email and I can get you out. And so I have a family now who sent me an email yesterday and they said, is there anything you can do?

And before I send them an email, let me ask you, is there anything we can do or should I tell them just to make the best of it? It's it's much, much, much harder now that we don't have that American presence left on the ground. I can tell you that when I learned personally through a friend in Arkansas that he had someone he knew behind Taliban lines in Afghanistan, I was shocked that we still had, again, American citizens stuck behind Taliban lines. My office works around the clock the next few days and then constantly through the end of the month to try to get Americans inside the wire at the airport. It's much harder to give them sound advice that is not going to put them at greater danger now because there's no American presence on the ground. For anyone who's trying to move on the ground, they're likely to face Taliban checkpoints. The Taliban control most of the known and safe border crossings in the country. It's simply much, much harder to give them the right advice. What do we owe them? What do we owe those people? Do we owe them just a safety? Do we owe them a good try? Do we owe them, you know, a witness protection program set up somewhere in Arkansas? What do we owe those people who helped us? normal immigrant visa procedures who Joe Biden left behind, even as he was bringing out thousands

of Afghans who had not been approved under those channels, who really we may know nothing about, who didn't support our troops or had no particular connection to America. No, we owe them every effort to continue to try to help them get out of the country. And then ultimately, if they have a valid visa and they've been thoroughly vetted so as not to be a security or a public health risk to allow them to come to this country, we owe them a hell of a lot more than we owe the random 200,000 migrants who show up at our southern border every month that Joe Biden is just waving in just if they utter a few magic words about fearing persecution in their home countries uh we owe them a lot more than that uh yet joe biden is willing

to um treat those migrants on the southern border better than he treats afghans who served alongside our troops or for that matter better than he served better than he treats american citizens who are still stuck in afghan Senator, Peter Robinson's here. Listeners won't be able to see this, but we can see you. Those don't look like letters from constituents on the wall behind you. How are your kids? Those are from your own kids, I'm assuming. Kids are good.

Those are some artwork from my little Picassos, aged six and four. But they are doing well, and we're trying to raise them right. Okay, so here's a question about the future. For them, it begins with the past. Rob mentioned Saigon a moment ago. Saigon falls in 1975 and it is a moment of searing national humiliation. But we held on to West Berlin. Our overall position in the world remained firm. And in the 1980s, there is such a turnaround, such a resurgence of American morale that by 1989, the Berlin Wall falls and by 1991, the Soviet Union goes out of existence. We have just suffered another national humiliation. Here's what I made a note, Walter Russell Mead in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, as I recall, Arab countries

are worried, India and Israel depressed, China and Russia are scornful. Can you see there's no Ronald Reagan in the wings here? There's there there we're in a new situation. Reagan takes office. People have been studying the Soviet. There are people who think they know exactly what to do. Do you see any kind of turnaround in prospect or do we represent a spent civilizational force? No, Peter, certainly there can be a turnaround, but it's not foreordained, just like the turnaround in the 1980s was not foreordained. And for that matter, if Jimmy Carter hadn't been elected in 1976, the consequences of the fall of Saigon might have been shorter lasting as well. I will say, I think the fall of Kabul and the way Joe Biden tucked America's tail between our legs

and ran away is worse than Saigon. I mean, the humiliation is worse. There was almost no time between our departure from Afghanistan and the fall of Kabul to a band of 7th century savages, unlike in Saigon when there was a couple years. And furthermore, the Vietnamese were not trying to follow us back home and attack us in the United States. They were content to rule their country and then allow for a springboard in the Laos and Cambodia. Whereas in Afghanistan, you already had the presence of al-Qaeda and ISIS. And the deputy CIA director just said this week that even more are pouring into Afghanistan to celebrate the great victory that their cause has had against the United States. But then if you look at what happened, if I could just finish, Peter,

the turnaround in the 1980s after the election of Ronald Reagan, and that's correct. um but then if you look at what happened just if i could just finish peter to of course the turnaround in the 1980s after the election of ronald reagan and that's correct but remember the consequences were with us for a very long time you did have the near immediate fall of laos and cambodia and the rise of paul pott and the kamir rouge you had um the cubans sending troops all over the world from across latin amer America and into Angola and elsewhere in Africa. You had communist insurgencies rising up in Central America. You had the Russians going into Afghanistan in 1979, the fall of Iran to the Ayatollahs in 1979. So the weakness projected in the fall of Saigon in 1975 led to a cascading series of foreign policy disasters. I'm afraid that's

going to be the case after the fall of Kabul as well, and it may even be worse with Joe Biden as president. All right. So here's my, if I may, one of the aspects about you and your career to date that I most admire is that you are a genuinely creative officeholder in the sense that you can take a difficult political situation, and I am referring now to the presidency of Donald Trump, which was difficult in all kinds of ways. We don't need to go through all of that, but you proposed certain pieces of legislation that couldn't have been taken seriously pre-Donald Trump, I think. In other words, you had a talent for seeing opportunities even in difficult situations. What's the feeling in the Senate now? Are there some Democrats who are, are there opportunities to get things done? Is the Pentagon shaken at the level below

Lloyd Austin and General Milley? Is there an opening to get good things done in the wake of this catastrophe? I think one of the most urgent things we should do in the wake of this catastrophe and send a strong signal to adversaries like China and Iran and prepare the ground for a resurgent America after Joe Biden leaves office is to ensure we don't adopt Joe Biden's weak defense budget. And right now that is moving in the right direction. Both chambers of Congress have passed a defense bill that would increase defense spending by $25 billion over what Joe Biden requested, which wouldn't have even matched inflation when every other department in the Congress, to include Democrats, since it takes Democratic votes to pass that, that take our security seriously. And it will hopefully not leave the cupboard as bare for the next president, as we saw coming in to the Trump administration after Obama left office. Hey, I hate to interrupt a senator here, but on the other hand, I love to interrupt a senator.

Gives me great power. And of course, it throws him off because he never knows what life will throw at you. Might be somebody just interrupting to say a commercial. Well, you do never know what life will throw at you, which is always why it's best to be prepared, whether there's an emergency and a prompt to gathering or even just a long day that makes you dread a trip to the supermarket. Whenever you need a great tasting meal, you can trust there's ButcherBox. ButcherBox, they're in your corner. They're delivering what you need right to your door. Each box they send has nine to 11 pounds of meat to your choosing. Options like 100% grass-fed and finished beef, free-ranged organic chicken, humanely raised pork, wild-caught lobster tails, and wild-caught

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not come from somebody slurping raw bat soup in a Wuhan wet market, but it actually came from the building down the street where they were working on things like novel coronaviruses. Since then, we've learned a lot about backdoor funding of the Institute on gain-of-function research, but it's all muddled, and nobody in the media seems particularly to care. The intercept document comes out with all of these little back channel things that were going on and they're still indifference. But you called for the investigation of Fauci and prosecution if necessary. And it seems with that and with all the other questions that we still have about where it came from, that there ought to be something in Congress. There ought to be curiosity in Congress about this. Is there? Among Republicans, there's certainly a lot of curiosity.

And, you know, what I said about the Wuhan labs in the very beginning is that you should just use your common sense. I mean, Wuhan is a city that's larger than New York City. Bats don't live within hundreds of miles of it. Bats weren't even sold at that food market based on social media reports before they were all scrubbed by the Chinese Communist Party. And yet, James, as you point out, there's this lab right down the street that researches novel coronaviruses that is run by a woman whose nickname is literally the Bat Lady. And Tony Fauci dismissed that from the very beginning because he knew it would lead to a series of highly uncomfortable questions about his role and his agency's role in providing funding indirectly through American nonprofits to that lab to the tune of hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars. That has since been confirmed. It hasn't been revealed, but it's been confirmed by those documents that The Intercept published. Tony Fauci has also been misleading Congress continuously about this. And that's why I say it's time not

just for Joe Biden to fire him. It is time for him to face a criminal investigation for lying to Congress. Just imagine if you had as much evidence for someone lying to Congress, not just in the Trump administration, but in the Reagan and the Bush administrations back in the day as well. So I can assure you that I'm not going to let go of this matter. And I don't think many Republicans in the Congress will either. And if we win either chamber back next fall, it's going to be a very bad day for Tony Fauci. Hey, Senator, can I talk about politics for one more minute? I'm not going to do anything. I can ask anything rude.

Like, are you running for president or why aren't you running for president or why won't you tell us you're running for president? I'll let you know. But I recommend that you have some answers ready because they're coming at some point. We had a recall election in California, and Gavin Newsom was pretty much solidly returned to office. And we were talking about it before you joined us. And one of the things, one of my constant sub-refrains is the problem with the Republican Party is we don't have enough rhinos. And as a rhino, basically, basically what I've been called, I kind of feel that's true. A big party's got to have a big tent. That's how it works. And the smaller we get, we end up, the Republican, the National Republican Party could end up looking like the California Republican Party. Small, ineffective, rudderless, leaderless, chasing each new weird fad.

What do you think about rhinos? Well, in a country as large and diverse as ours, you have to have a large coalition to win national elections. And it helps to have a broad bench across all 50 states and also helps the residents of those states as well. So you take someone like, you know, a Charlie Baker in Massachusetts or Larry Hogan in Maryland. I doubt that Charlie or Larry would get elected in Wyoming, but you know, I doubt that Arkansas for that Arkansas, but you know what? There's a lot of politicians in Arkansas and Wyoming who might not be able to get elected in Maryland and Massachusetts. And I don't agree with some of those more centrist Republicans on a lot of issues. But I'd much sooner see those states governed by a moderate Republican than a far left Democrat.

And that's why it's always important in politics, whether you're talking about governor's races or Senate races or House races, to have candidates who are not just sound on the issues and strong and courageous, but are also good fits for their states. And states have their own peculiar histories and cultures. And what works in one place is not going to work in the other place um and you know the democrats right now are are blaming uh joe mansion for all their troubles i can tell you that they've got a lot more than just joe mansion who's bucking their reckless taxing and spending bill but one way to put what you're saying rob in concrete terms the democrats are probably better

off if they had 10 or 15 joe mansions because because then it wouldn't be a 50-50 Senate. So I'd much rather see us elect Republicans in, say, New England or the West Coast who are a little bit to the left of me on some issues than see Democrats in monolithic control of those states, because you see tragically what it's led to in a place like California. Right. So if we could project ourselves a few years ahead and there's a debate dais in New Hampshire, there's a bunch of candidates. I'm not suggesting you'll be there, but full disclosure, I hope you are. There will be some people on there who think that the previous Republican who was in the White House was is a big problem for the party. And there are some that are going to embrace some of the good stuff he did and probably, you know, bad mouth some of the bad stuff he is. And it's entirely possible that he'll be up there too. But what advice would you give if you weren't a senator, but you were a political consultant

to those people up on that dais? If you weren't you, what would you advise you? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Do you like it? I thought I was very elegant. That was a very sophisticated question. Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to like come to your level. I went to Yale, you went to Harvard. So I'm trying to talk down a little bit. So I won't speculate about what's going to happen three elections out since we have an election in places like Virginia, New Jersey in a couple of months and then the midterms and then the presidential election. I will say that on a lot of issues, President Trump moved the party in the direction it needed to go, a direction I had been trying to move it from the Congress for a couple of years on questions like immigration, for instance, or trade. I didn't agree with him on every single issue, obviously. You know,

maybe most notably, I strongly oppose the First Step Act. I thought it was a terrible idea to release serious and repeat felons in the middle of a rising wave of crime and drug abuse. But the former president moved the party at the elite level in a direction where I think our voters had wanted to go for some time. Some issues may be overtaken by events as you go along, and especially as you get further away from when they were very highly motivating, like top marginal tax rates now are not nearly the issue they were in 1980 for Ronald Reagan when they're in the mid-30s as opposed to the mid-70s. What every candidate in any race, to include a race for president, has to do is be his own man or woman and have his own agenda and his own plan that addresses the genuine needs of our people and lay it out

in an articulate, compelling fashion. No one gets elected by being a simulacrum of Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama or Donald Trump or anyone else. And anyone who tries to inherit another politician's coalition learns the hard way that those coalitions are not just transferable. I mean, that's what Hillary Clinton tried to do in 2016, and it didn't work for her. A lot of the Obama coalition either didn't come out to vote for her, or they voted for Donald Trump instead. And in many cases, coalitions are particular to a single politician. If you look at the success that Barack Obama and Donald Trump had when they were on the ballot, versus some of the struggles that their parties had when they were on the ballot versus some of the struggles that

their parties had when they weren't on the ballots. You know, Obama famously just couldn't transfer his coalition to Democrats running in 2009 or 2010 or 2014, or for that matter, 2016. We had similar troubles in 2018. Maybe this is the last question here. Let's say we do win. A lot of people who want the conservatives or the GOP, there is a difference, to take back control. Fear that once they get there, it's going to be the same thing, that the Leviathan will stagger on as bloated as ever in this $3.5 trillion bill. Who knows how many things are there that will be funded into eternity and perpetuity, and nobody will get them out of root and branch. In other words, we send them in and they don't do much. It's a common complaint that people have.

So what would you say to people who say there's really no point because once they get in there, they swap their blood for swamp water and they're lost? Well, the broadest level, I just say, look at what we've seen in the first eight months of the Biden administration, whether it's the humiliation in Afghanistan or the fiasco at the border, rising crime or rapidly rising inflation, speaking of the 1970s as we were earlier. But more concretely, I'd say, should we take back the Congress next year and the White House in 2024? One of the things that we need to do as a party that didn't happen in the first year of the Trump administration is, as we say in the army, move fast and strike hard. Four years can seem like a very long time. with our systems and checks and balances from a legislative matter, or you're dealing with armies of liberal lawyers using executive power through the cabinet departments and the agencies,

four years can go by very fast. And we saw some of the consequences of not moving fast enough. If President Trump had declared a border emergency and started building the wall in February of 2017, it would have been done by January of this year. Or if he had abrogated the terrible Iran nuclear deal in January of 2017 and not waited until the summer of 2018, Iran might not have been able to stagger along with its devastated economy until January of this year. So I think you need to go in and have a very concrete and fixed plan about what needs to be done and start doing it quickly and not take a single day for granted, not only to achieve those goals, James, but also to give the assurances to people who feel like they've seen this move before and they haven't been satisfied with the plotline.

Senator, Peter here with a final question, and I'm hoping to dig out a little bit of good news here. The midterm election's coming up. I keep thinking that it ought to be pretty good news for Republicans because the Democrats have lurched so far to the left. Nancy Pelosi is embracing the AOC agenda. So, for that matter, is Chuck Schumer, who's afraid of her primary challenge from her up in New York. And so, to my astonishment, is the President of the United States, who could have run as amiable Uncle Joe, the guy from Scranton, the backsliper from Scranton, but he is not.. So I think, okay. But on the other hand, these are professional politicians. They can read the polls too. So if 2022 is looking pretty good for our side, what are they doing trying to jam through 3.5 trillion in more spending? What are they doing

pounding on Joe Manchin? If the Democrats are as smart as I think they are, then maybe it doesn't look good for us. On the other hand, you're pretty smart too, in spite of having attended Harvard. How's it look? How do the midterms look? That's the question. How do the midterms look? I think they look increasingly good, Peter. I mean, there's still a lot of work left to be done to stop the worst parts of the Obama agenda. And that's the way we'll ultimately succeed next year. There are a lot of, you know, kind of historical or structural factors on our side. We have an extremely large minority in the House. I think it's the largest in 100. So we don't have to win 40 or 50 seats. We have to win

five seats. We're 50-50 in the Senate, as strong as we can be, without being in control. The seats are pretty evenly divided in the Senate. In the House, we actually have quite a few more Democrats in Trump districts than we have Republicans in Biden districts. So structurally and historically, things are lining up well for us. But more important are the abject failures of the Biden administration, the failure to get the coronavirus under control and now to start unconstitutionally using the power of the federal government to mandate vaccines to people and make businesses the enforcers. The inflation that everyone sees any time they go to the gas station or the grocery store. Humiliation we've seen in Afghanistan, I'm afraid, will continue to see. Those are the issues that are going to matter most to the voters next year. And you can see from Joe Biden's plummeting poll ratings that they're already starting to render their judgment.

And Joe Biden doesn't have a deep reservoir of goodwill and support either. I mean, he doesn't have the level of enthusiasm among Democratic voters that Barack Obama did, or for that matter, that Donald Trump did among Republican voters. That's going to hurt him as well as he tries to recover. I think the Democrats just have on ideological blinders, and they feel like they've been given a once-in-a-generation opportunity to blow through $6 trillion on their work priorities, and by God, they're going to do it. And I think some of them, nancy pelosi are willing to use

uh the vulnerable democrats as cannon fodder um just like she did to pass obamacare she knew that they were going to lose some of those seats probably not as many as they did i think nancy pelosi is done anyway she may not even make it to the election she may resign and go be joe biden's ambassador to italy or the vatican uh so she's looking for a last glorious moment. She wants to go over the cliff wrapped in a flag. Is that it? A little bit of inside baseball here is every time the Biden administration releases a new roster of nominees to ambassador positions around the world, I always check for Italy and Vatican, which has not yet been filled. And it's very convenient. Oh, really? The Speaker of the house uh who has already said this

is her last term as speaker self-consciously styles herself as the quintessential italian american politician uh in the united states and wouldn't it be nice for her she passed she rides off in the sunset as you say passing their massive reckless spending bill uh and then gets nominated to go to italy or the vatican yeah when i think of nancy pelosi i think of the quintessential italian grandma you know big from pasta with an apron with dust on and a little bit of a mustache there come to me little bambinos yeah senator cotton thank you so much for joining us today when we see you on the stage at new hampshire we will know that you'll have a small little earpiece with rob long and the wings giving you you know tactical information that you need to happy to do

happy to serve good luck thanks so much have fun with those kids too when you guys brought up 2022 it's like we just had an election didn't we i'm thinking about the midterms i suppose it's good but it gives me a pain it gives me it gives me a pain i have friend that i was talking to the other day who had a similar pain and it was back pain age but also well it also came from the fact that he didn't take our advice 300 podcasts ago and get one of the mattresses we were talking about i don't have that problem but he does because he got a lousy mattress so i told him which one to get so he doesn't have a back pain when he wakes up in the morning but here's the deal uh you know after you've spent all that money on a comfortable mattress it would be ridiculous not to put as much thought and care

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Experience the best sheets you've ever felt. Choose Bowling Branch. You can try them worry-free for 30 nights, by the way, with free shipping and free returns. Our listeners, which would be you, get an exclusive 15% off your first set of sheets with promo code RICOCHET at bolinbranch.com. That's Bolin Branch, B-O-L-L-AND-BRANCH.COM, promo code RICOCHET. And we thank Bolin Ranch for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Well, gentlemen, before we we go a few other things of note uh rob i have to ask you since you're in the comedy business opinions on from a pro on norm mcdonald all right seven died at the age of 61 after 10 years apparently of dealing with cancer

and not telling anybody about it good for him although you can sort of tell by the end of his autobiography how he was looking towards the future. But I love the fact that my Twitter feed this week was just the best of Norm. Every time I turned it on, somebody would have another clip from this guy. And I flailed at myself for not paying more attention to him recently, not seeking him out. He was just sort of out there. and when norm swam into your orbit that's great we're going to enjoy some norm but now i feel like i've cheated myself and we're all cheated of another 10 years what was a fairly brilliant interesting idiosyncratic comic persona yeah i mean um first of all it's hard to separate the man right because he did he had this he struggled

with this disease and it took him and you know he didn't write about it he wasn't on oprah about it he was just kind of like shrugging the second thing i noticed and i i guess i knew this intuitively i mean i always found him extremely funny but it's definitely an acquired taste um but one of the things i noticed just looking at all those clips as you said is the two things one is the things I noticed just looking at all those clips, as you said, is two things. One is the absolute power he had to make other professionals laugh. I mean, the occupational rule, the professional courtesy rule in show business or comedy circles is if you say something funny and I'm also funny the most you'll get out of me is um yeah that's that's funny that's good no no you're not gonna get a laugh yeah uh and he got huge laughs and then when you look at him the one things i saw like you look at the clips all

of a sudden struck me that he is kind of always smiling. He is always kind of repressing like something like he's about to laugh too. And he's always kind of twinkling in a way. So like, you're always part of the joke. It rarely seems like he's angry or he's making a joke at you. He always feels like he's also telling you that this is a little nuts what we're doing here and um you know it's interesting it's like um people would say near the end i saw when i was growing up i thought david letterman was so funny and so ironic and so funny and then you watch david letterman later in his later years it just seemed like he's this dyspeptic old man perpetually furious furious that he had to do this furious at you for watching um and i think norm mcdonald never had that he

always seemed like he thought it was funny and he thought i mean there's one moment you know if you seen these comedy central rows where people go up and they say just a cascade of incredibly filthy things incredibly nasty horrible things about each other and uh and he went to one and he said it was the for the comedian bob saget the actor comedian bob saget and he went to one and he said it was for the comedian, Bob Saget, the actor comedian, Bob Saget. And he went and stood there and just told a bunch of like really bland dad jokes, like from the 101 book of insults. And at first you think, what's he doing? And then it's really funny.

And then I'll tell you what he's doing. He's just saying, this is stupid, but not without a mean bone in his body. The guy was like he just that's kind of how he was and i suspect that um one of the things that we're missing now is that there's nobody else doing that there's nobody he was able to do an anti-coffin routine without the strange i mean enduring that bob saget roast was was almost almost Kaufman-esque, but it was a great bit. But, you know, but, but as an example, because you mentioned Andy Kaufman, like,

I remember like talking to somebody, a friend of mine, well, Harry Shearer, who's been a guest here many times. I'm talking about Andy Kaufman. I was like, I never got it. I mean, I got it on taxi. It was very funny on taxi, but I never got it. And here's what Harry said. Harry said his whole thing was making the audience uncomfortable that's the easiest thing in the world to do make people uncomfortable that's like anybody can do that trying to make them laugh that's the hard part that's hard and that's what norm mcdonald did and you never felt uncomfortable you just felt like this is funny this is funny his one of his famous jokes he did

like five times in a row during the oj simpson trial when he was doing weekend update on snl it was just that the punchline was just something like and that's why oj killed her and everybody laughed because we were edited this weird world where we weren't supposed to say what we all knew which was that oj simpson was a murderer and killed his ex-wife with a knife and a waiter and he said it and he said it in a way that was sort of flat and affectless and it was just hilarious got him fired and um it's uh it yeah got a fire and a lot of other things too but but uh and also like you know it's like this like notice the people here's yeah and i'm i don't go too long i know i'm already going the other thing

is that i don't mean to do this i hate hate it when people do this. But notice the broad base of people in this polarized I talk to at, you know, Ricochet events, a lot of conservatives, a lot of liberals too. That's, I think, a sign of genius, you know. A lot of people mourning his death who won't mourn each other's. That's the perfect way to put it. Unfortunate. No, you're right. And your remarks about Letterman are true.

When I was watching Letterman as a kid, I just thought, as a youth, I should say, in my 20s, I thought this was a brilliant reinvention of the whole genre. And then later you go back and all of a sudden what you see missing in him is what you saw in Norm MacDonald, an enjoyment and a generosity and a human spirit that eternally had that smile that Rob noted, as opposed to Letterman, who eternally just has his face sort of frozen in this ironic rictus of superiority. Yeah. It was easy to mock. It's hard. I mean, there are other people like this.

So there's a problematic character, Bill Cosby. And Bill Cosby used to say, people used to say, Bill say bill cosby like you ever worry about somebody stealing your material and cause they can steal if they wanted they're not gonna get any laughs it has to come from me not because of his timing or anything i was it was like inextricably linked to him and i feel like like i remember here's a dumb story but i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna tell it anyway because we have like i think we have two minutes um a friend of mine told the story that letterman the letterman voice was so indelible that there was a period of, I know you remember this, where everyone was kind of doing it. Like people were just, oh gosh, oh golly, my gosh, my God.

We told the audience, and you all know how painful that can be. Yeah, I know. Right. Everybody was doing this. And my friend was reminding, he was in an apartment once, and had a bunch of young people and it was like West Hollywood somewhere. And there's one guy who was really infected with that virus, the talking like Letterman. And I guess they had a big potluck dinner party at one guy's house. And my friend brought a tray of brownies.

And like two days later, he was knocked on the door. And it was his neighbor bringing back the um the clean pan and he delivered it like this oh gosh oh golly here's your brownie pan it's like you know too much too much imitating too much of the voice it just didn't work and that's kind of the difference between somebody like you know letterman who was great when he was when he was great he was great and somebody like norm mcdonald who took us all the way through you know pretty much his whole life and also we don't know not we don't know nothing about norm mcdonald i don't know what his kids he's left his son or his son's name is i don't know where he lived that wasn't the thing you know was norm mcdonald a writer you look at letterman and he feels though

he's people have people have produced that material he's got he's got writers working for certainly carson did we all we know some of carson's writers to this day but you get mcdonald's i'm asking this question as a layman in total ignorance norm mcdonald just seems to arise from the character when that happens i'm suspicious i think probably actually he worked pretty hard on that material what do you think well he definitely worked hard on it but i don't i don't i don't i can't think of whether he ever wrote for anybody else i i don't know how he could do that we're sort of like letterman i don't think let him go to written for anybody else either um but i you know he had uh and also he you couldn't really i you can't really imitate a joke or point of view for him you never really you kind of had to see it on his face like his face was laughing right like it was a it was um you know he reminds me a little bit of like the old relationship that um johnny carson had with george gobel and so george gobel was like kind of a 30s

40s 50s comedian uh and he was also on hollywood square so like if you're if you're if you're if you're super ancient you remember him lower from the lower level on the left in the cliff cliff our cat chair yeah if you're merely ancient you remember him from hollywood squares uh and but he would go on i think he he did this it was an old joke but he he was doing johnny carson once and he walked on george gobel and he's like you know basically somebody had canceled so they got george gobel right and gobel comes and sits down waves people and sits and just turns to john Carson and says, did you ever feel like life was a tuxedo and you're a pair of brown shoes? It's a really funny line, but you realize that there were some people that just had a face that Johnny Carson thought was funny.

He started cracking it up immediately. And there are some people like that who did that. I think it was Groucho Marx had somebody, and I forget who who it was just looked at you and you were ready to laugh and you could see norm mcdonald with on conan or on date letterman or on all the other shows other comedians just ready to laugh that's you know pretty good people want to laugh and if people will like the people people will like the people who make them laugh which you you mentioned before, Rob, you said the 101 Insults book. I had the 101 Insults books, and I memorized an awful lot of them. And so I sort of got my start as a Rickles-like insult comic in junior high school. And I would dole those things out, and I would slay them. I would absolutely slay them and then one day my nemesis showed a

copy of the book to me he'd found my he'd found my material and he too rose at a stone he too had copied some of them and burned them into his brain so that he could dole them out as well but he couldn't deliver he had no delivery it flat, so he couldn't work with the material. So here I am, all of a sudden, I'm revealed as an imposter, but at the same time, I'm given more respect because now they see, ah, you brought the material to life, as opposed to Jeff here, who just couldn't do it. So yes, that book did exist, and I wonder if you had a copy of it, and if so, if you know who wrote it, because I owe this guy probably my entire career. I don't know. I do remember, though, I probably have to say.

Louis Safian. Oh, aren't you? So you do know. Well, I always remember Louis Safian wrote the 101, just as I remember that when I was in high school, speech and debate doing humorous and turp, I slayed them in North Dakota statewide with a New Yorker piece by a guy named F.P. Tullius, who wrote one more thing and then vanished. It's a strange world, the world of comedy.

A suit and a comedy writing out there. Do you remember this? I know we have to run, but can I ask you? I'll ask you this important question after you do your important work. The important thing that I have to say is this podcast was brought to you by Stark Mill, by ButcherBox, and by Bolden Branch. Please support them for supporting us, and of course,

if you can join Ricochet today, that would just be icing on the cake, not icing on the steak, because butcher box stuff is great, but you don't want to put sugar on top. Listen to the best of Ricochet Radio Show hosted by moi this weekend on the Radio America Network. Check your local listings, as we like to say.

And of course, you know what's coming later. We're asking you to give us six stars on Apple. That's right. Turn it up to 11. Do it Spinal Tap style. If they only let you do five, give us five. That's great, right? The reviews help the show to surface.

New listeners discover us, keeps the whole thing going, and Ricochet will be here for episode 1,000 and more. Rob, you had a question or statement. Here's my question. Do you remember this? Do you remember that you could buy a book in the early 70s that was double-sided? So you would turn it one way and then turn it over.

So two books in one, but printed this way. And on one side was 100 or 1,001 Polish jokes. And on the other side was 1,001 Italian jokes. And this was seen as perfectly hilarious and legitimate and people just did it all the time like on tv they were making rg bunker was making polak jokes and italian joke and that was part of the american culture absolutely was the robust making fun of your ethnic origins and even saying it and even conjuring it up today. The fact that I'd actually made people think of this, it should this,

this entire podcast should come with a trigger one. I have created a thought. It will be canceled. Yeah. We did not have Italian jokes in many in North Dakota because we didn't have Italians. So the idea of using them, we had Polak jokes and,

and the rest of it. And I'm sure that within the Polish community, there are regionalities that they would make fun of, right? I mean, Peter Robinson, I know that when you were a kid, was it Polish jokes for you or was it? There were a lot of Polish jokes. There were some Italian jokes. I'm just thinking I loved he became totally political. I mean, he really did become politically unacceptable.

We're talking about Norm MacDonald. I love Jackie Mason. And now immediately coming to mind is Jackie Mason had a cousin. He was half Jewish and half Polish. He was a superintendent. He couldn't figure out how to repair the plumbing, but he owned the building. Nobody would do that these days. Right. But it wasn't, it was within our living memory that that sort of thing still worked, even though, and it worked in part because by then it had already become a little bit outrageous right but no one had heard that when when jackie mason appeared in broadway

no one had heard those jokes in 100 years and they were yeah that's true they killed he did this one joke like you know people you'll uh you'll always you can tell who's jewish who's gentile when they leave the theater after watching his show and his show was like you know he's a very thick yiddish accent and it goes uh the gentiles as they walk out we'll go yeah he's funny he's funny and the jews will always say too jewish he took poconos right and transplanted it to broadway he took this stuff that had been out there dormant freeze-dried since the poconos had died when they're killed by air travel and air conditioning and brought it there and we love that stuff, but you can't do it anymore because it's injurious.

You can't do that. That's true. You have to identify people now by political characteristics, by whether or not they're a red MAGA hat-wearing person. Now, you can say that this is probably better in one respect, because if we're not making broad ethnic characterizations about people, that's probably better in the long run. But on the other hand, those broad ethnic characterizations seem to have moved to corporate HR training sessions where they're taken deadly seriously. Hold on a second. Green side up. Lord, I tell you, never hire. Well, I can't say thank you for listening.

I do remember that line. That was an infinitely applicable joke, which you could give to any ethnic group whatsoever. And people got, well, there were canceled. That'll do. I guess we won't make five 62 because we made such a mess of five 61, but we broke some news, had a great time. Great to see you guys. Can I just interrupt you, Norman? I know we're out of time, but I just want to say one thing. Here's why we are not canceled. We are not canceled because we took the initiative about six months ago to move our server and all of the pressure points they can put on a media company they don't like. And we moved it to a private, separate, ideologically aligned and intellectually and entrepreneurially aligned enterprise with us. We did that and we did that because we want to be here now all of that costs money and so if you're listening and you want to vote for freedom of media and you want to vote for not being

canceled please join today i really want to know what that is because now i have a vision of a guy with six hard drives a laptop in the cayman islands sitting in a small room with a pistol on the table well not the cayman Islands, but you're not far off. Gentlemen, it's been great. Thank you everybody for listening and we'll see you in the comments at Ricochet 4.0 next week. Next week, boys. Am I allowed to say that? Am I allowed to say that? Don't you know everyone wants to laugh?

My dad said be an actor, my son. But be a comical one. They'll be standing in lines for those old honky-tonk monkey shines. Or you could study Shakespeare and be quite elite. And you could charm the critics and have nothing to eat. Just slip on a banana peel the world's at your feet

Make them laugh, make them laugh, make them laugh Make, make them laugh Don't you know everyone wants to laugh My grandpa said go out and tell them a joke But give it plenty of hope Make them roar, make them scream Take a fall, but a wall split a seam You start off by pretending you're a dancer with grace

You wiggle till they're giggling all over the place And then you get a great big custard pie in the face Make them laugh, make them laugh, make them laugh Make them laugh Don't you all... My dad. Ricochet. Join the conversation.

They'll be standing in lines for the show. Make them laugh Make them laugh Make them laugh. Make them laugh. Make them laugh. Make them laugh. Make them laugh.