The Ricochet Podcast - Over Target

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

Guests are fun 'n all but sometimes bros just gotta stick to the core group. Lileks, Robinson and Long discuss everything from a rumble in James' once quiet neighborhood to Tim Scott, Ron DeSantis, Jay Bhattacharya and a certain company which is following Anheuser-Busch into the grave by making its own conspicuous call to not just go about business as usual.

Guests, we don't need no stinking guests. Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Read my lips. No new answers. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lylex. Today our guests are nobody. It's just Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lylex. Today our guests are nobody.

It's just us talking. We hope you like it. So let's have ourselves a podcast. But we also understand governing is not entertainment. It's not about building a brand or virtue signaling. It is about delivering results. And our results in Florida have been second to none. We can and we must

deliver big results for America. I agree. We never get bored. Welcome, everybody. This is the Ricochet Podcast number 643. That's a lot of podcasts. And you may ask yourself, how did you get to that number? Well, we've got a thriving, wonderful, vivacious community over at Ricochet.com. Why don't you go there? Why don't you join, for that matter? When you do, you'll discover the part of the Internet that you've been looking for for years, a sane, center-right, civil conversation, the likes of which is nowhere else, and we're proud of it.

I'm joined by, well, I am James Lilex. I am joined by Rob Lilex in New York and Peter Robinson in California. And Rob, the New York aspect comes to me, to mind today because we had a rumble at our high school last night. Really? A rumble? What does it mean? That sounds like the 1950s. It's a story. It does. And it made me think of West Side. So we had about 50 kids, 50, 60 kids or so in a melee, in a fracas.

There was a stabbing. There was gunfire. Wow. Oh, serious. So this is West Side Story. Serious. Oh, James. There was a Glock recovered with a 50-bullet magazine, the likes of which I'm never, I'm imagining some, you know, pepper pot gun that a guy had.

And it made me think of West Side Story exactly for the rumble, just that. But it made me also turn into Milton Glaserzier you know the old man who ran that pathetic little drug store who would at one point just in absolute despair asks i think riff or tony or one of them is what is the matter with you kids why do you have to do the and it you know and if you go back and look at west side story from the very start they had every single liberal piety nailed in that Officer Krupke song. They really did. They really did. Hey, I'm deprived on account of I'm depraved, or I'm depraved on account of I'm deprived.

And 50, 60 years and nothing appears to have changed because I'm looking at all the local subreddits as people discuss this today. And it's generally society's fault. It's the gun's fault. It's we've failed these children and all the rest of these things. I think you must have your facts wrong, though, James, because if they recovered, I don't think they possibly could have recovered a Glock because those would be illegal for those children to have. You would think so, wouldn't you right right inviolate yeah yeah and i i tend to think that perhaps these decide the signs that proclaim the school to be a gun-free zone may have been um yeah uh not in a proper tight face not big enough if they've been 24 points they might have worked but they were probably 12 or 14 now so um

what do you think the elapsed time is between something like that happening something's like that happening in new york a lot and then and then someone else saying sort of in the press or sort of like well actually you know crime is down yes oh we do get that it's always the evidence of your eyes and ears of no really you shouldn't pay attention to your eyes and ears. Crime is down. Which is, I mean, as an aggregate, I guess it's true, actually, in New York City in some ways, some things. But it's really just how you throw in the scoff laws and the meter cheats and all sorts of crime. It does seem like it's down.

But if you just concentrate on people shooting at each other and hitting each other with heavy objects i think it's not down at all or pushing each other in front of trains here's something to consider i knew somebody i know somebody who was uh braced by some youths last night after the event who were looking for a confederate of theirs um and who would apparently one of the miscreants involved in this who'd escaped the attention of the police and when this person declined to assist them any further they moved closer one of them moved closer as if to relieve this person of her property her phone whatever it was and apparently the dog interceded vociferously whereupon the person's hand went to their waistband. Now, if this person had indeed produced a firearm and then backed off when the dog did something and then ran away, the question is, do you report this? Do you report it? Because there's no point in reporting it because they're not going to find the person. And if they find the person, nothing is going to happen to the

person. So this isn't reported. And therefore therefore there's no statistic that says that crime is actually going up. It's how many people just refuse to participate in this because they know there is no point. And, you know, it breaks down, as you can expect, on the neighborhood group on Nextdoor, which is Twitter for old people. Everybody's appalled. But you look at all of them and say, look, nothing is going to change, you know. Look around here. Look at all the signs, the multicolored signs in everybody's lawn. Look at the way that everybody around here votes.

Look at the last election that we had. Look at the legislature that we have and what their concerns are. Nothing is going to change. You realize that, don't you? James, I want to do about a two or three question interview of you, because I don't understand. It's been a long time now, but what, 10, 12 years ago, I was fortunate enough to visit your house. You're talking about a neighborhood high school, I gather.

You live in a beautiful neighborhood of large homes. I'm going to guess your home, this neighborhood, was built in the 20s, perhaps? 1915 was one of the outliers. Built by a candy manufacturer. Built by a man who was part of the booming Minneapolis candy industry who made the Walnetto. In addition to the Scototch loaf which i don't think is all right so so we go from my memory of your of your just beautiful leafy midwestern turn myself i've never been invited so i wouldn't know turn of the last century neighborhood

to this image now of a melee that was serious enough that somebody got stabbed. That means there were knives present. The cops retrieve a Glock with 50 rounds nearby. Is this gang activity? How did it come about? Is this preplanned? We were joking about West Side Story. Did the cops have to get called to break it? What what happened how could this have happened in that beautiful neighborhood well i'll tell you the cops showed up all mass there was everybody there was park police there was highway patrol there was sheriffs there was everybody here they all came running fast they got there quickly they got there quickly and apparently it was rival factions at a community event that had been held at the high school. It was not necessarily specifically high schoolers themselves. Some of them may have been, I don't know. But yes, so this leafy, beautiful neighborhood of mine, which I absolutely adore and feel lucky to

live in, I'm looking at video online that was not related to the stabbing or the shooting, but just simply a couple of people pummeling and kicking somebody who was on the sidewalk. Now that sidewalk, that space is where I watch my daughter walk into high school for the first day and for the last. That space is where I pass every day. Oh, that house there, that's the one in the corner of my street. And in addition to the person being pummeled, there's the usual techno-savages who are milling about with their phones

to make sure that every single little incident, moment of the kick and the push and the shove and the stealing is captured and uploaded to social media. So it is one of those things that sticks with you and gives you a sense of burning, burning impotence. Because as I said, unless there is some seismic shift in what people have come to expect about the civic order, nothing will be done. Pete Okay, two more questions, if I may, while I'm

just trying to understand this. And again, obviously for you, it's personal because it happened to your high school, but for me, I've been there. All right. Are the cops neighborhood cops? Is there going to be the kind of thing where the neighbors can talk to the police and there's some neighborly, small scale, maybe doesn't arise to the level of getting debated on the floor of the Minneapolis of the State House over in St. Paul? You said, should you report a gun? gun and my answer is if you know the cops if there's a genuine sense of neighborliness you'd report it and just say officers i want you to know you've got guys out on patrol we live here there's

a kid with a gun in the neighborhood right well if if if somebody if there had been a police car to whom one would have been able to speak yes i'm i'm sure there i mean there were just there were cops everywhere and you could approach them and you could ask them what was going on in the light. But we don't have Officer Krupke or Clancy walking the beat, swinging a club, and keying a little box on a pole and checking in. So we don't have that. So last question is, what kind of reporting took place? Is there a—a Strib wouldn't cover a neighborhood event like this, I guess. Is there a local newspaper, or is it— event like this? I guess is there a local newspaper or is it?

So just tell me what was the press? Well, the press was one stabbing shooting at This high school and it was it was well, it's right there in the front page of our paper today so yeah, it was a big thing because it's anomalous and You know, they're not gonna be able to Not cover it. It's a big deal. It doesn't happen around here, but it did. And so, yes, it did get covered.

But again, you know, part of the problem on social media is that the wrong accounts on Twitter are covering it. There's one that is quite peppery when it comes to local crime. And people are accusing them of all sorts of built-in biases and the rest of it. So you can't trust them. So I hate to link to these people. I don't want to. Do we have a fair source that we can... It's fraught with so many angles that it is just difficult for people to sometimes confront it. Anyway, so not to belabor everybody with the details of

my little corner of the world, but it's indicative of sort of a larger social crackling, fracturing that we see in every single large American city. The sense is that it is getting worse and that there is no, not that there's no will to do anything about it, but there's just, well, maybe that there is no will. Nobody really, really talks about what's necessary. And if you start talking about stern penalties for juveniles of actually putting carjackers the first time into jail, you will get everybody coming out of the woodwork and saying, well, you can't do that. That just hardens them. it doesn't teach them anything um well it may dissuade them the knowledge of six months you know picking up trash on the road right might might turn a mind or two against this sort of thing if they knew it would be swift and certain but we can't have that

discussion i guess so that's uh where i am so the other thing of course when people say minneapolis is not that they say target because that's the big head right So the other thing, of course, when people say Minneapolis is not that, they say Target, because that's the big headquarters. I can almost see it from here. And we'll get to DeSantis and Trump in just a minute here. But it really is fascinating to me to see exactly how corporations are behaving and reacting to this. Now, you guys, I'm just going to ask you, what's your take on the whole Target controversy in the latest and the get woke go

broke thing uh i i can tell we're talking about personal things target matters to me i never shop at target but my daughters love it why is this because there's stylish stuff and i'm not just talking about clothing here but stylish stuff if you've got a kid i have a son who's moving from san francisco to austin tex, and Target is one of the places you think of for curtains and maybe some desk furniture, office furniture, because it's stylish and inexpensive. And it's extremely, as far as I can tell, it's extremely well run. The people there are trained. They know their inventory. It's a well-run operation.

And then we hear that Target is, well, you'll have to explain the immediate controversy. I mean, Target, there's a woke transgender element to the story. The story that has my attention because of where I live is that I think it's the Target CEO who announced in the most recent earnings call that inventory shrinkage that is to say theft right is now costing target half a billion dollars a year and similar related story the enormous nordstrom in downtown san francisco announced that it's closing and they put it in an official statement. They didn't say anything about crime.

They didn't use that word, but conditions have changed and they can no longer do business in San Francisco when their customers and employees no longer feel safe. Oh my, these are two major well-run of course, Target, headquartered in Minneapolis. And there's a second strand to the Target story that I'm not up on, but there's some sort of transgender or woke element as well. Fill me in on that one, James. Well, first, as Nordstrom is citing, changing dynamics, which you just looked. Yes, yes. And yes, and they're leaving, and organized shoplifting rings.

You know, 0.001% of the people people doing 90 of the work is probably part of it but i'll ask you rob um i know that you have target in manhattan i think there has to be a few uh yeah there's one in manhattan and there's one which is um i would describe as hell on earth in brooklyn um which i once was forced to go to and regretted every minute of it it's just bedlam it's just it's impossible to make your way through it it's not it's not the clean beautiful target that we all remember and love so what is what is your impression of the uh embroilio the brouhaha the kerfuffle that they're currently undergoing. Well, I mean, I don't know. I think it's a mistake for corporations to sort of try to go past what they need to do, which is to sell good products and clean space and that kind of thing. I think it's a disconnect between the people sort of in hq and the people

who are running the stores i mean the the analogy i would use is that they used to be in burger king i know when the burger king camp account was at j walter thompson's million years million billion years ago the burger king company the corporation the the suits, would always want to come up with some of the clever, creative, edgy kind of ad campaign. But these franchise businesses are a little like medieval fiefdoms, right? You could be the king or the lord, but you don't have that much power. The barons have a lot of power, too. And the barons, in this case, were the store owners, franchise owners who would own a string of burgings around the country and they would always come for

the big convention and see the fancy new creative very edgy campaign and they would just say no no no no show the burger show a hot burger juicy burger that's what people want to see people come into our restaurants because they're hungry they want want to eat the food. So show the food. The fries are crisp and thing and salt and the burger and the cold ice cold. Just do that. Just do not attempt to grow a brain. And that is probably the problem you see. I think you saw it in Bud Light. I think you see it at Target. Yes, the woke thing is the way it's expressed but the the the tendency of people in media and in the corporate hq to attempt to make a simple thing more complicated or to do additional things in addition to trying to get you to get into target to buy stuff um to do something else to seem hip

and cool and with it is um almost always a disaster always a disaster yeah i think you're right i mean target has been having pride material for I don't know how many years, and it really hasn't been much of an issue. Nobody cares. I think what changed this year is all of a sudden people got the impression, and correctly so, that all of a sudden there was this trans element that had been amplified in the private. So the question is, who's it for, right? I mean, the question is just sheer numbers. Who's it for right i mean the question is just just sheer numbers who's it for i mean if if we all took a pill tonight and got rid of whatever our transphobia or whatever it is that we all got rid of tomorrow right how many trans people we talking about i mean let's just

we're talking about a very small number of people the idea that you want to like to devote your part of your store with for this kind of merchandise is like well that seems kind of eccentric especially in places where i mean look most of the you know eventually the look i understand the pride i mean the the target in manhattan or brooklyn or big cities having a pride section that might make sense actually they they're smart to do that um but this obsession with like the idea that this this thing sweet that the numbers just aren't there it doesn't matter it doesn't matter i mean you can say virtue signaling and the rest of it i think what is i think this is my this is my impression that it's a result of the ideological lodestar moving that whereas before when you had pride and was lgbt you know t will attack that on

whatever it's statistically insignificant now you have as have, as Andrew Sullivan wrote in a pretty good substack, I think, last week, you have what used to be the old gay rights movement being supplanted by queer theory. People would say, well, isn't that the same? Don't the gays want to be called queers? Well, it is complicated, because queer theory is much more cultural Marxism, is much more Michael Foucault, it's much more deconstructing gender, it's much more blowing up a whole bunch of ideas and replacing them with this infinitely malleable set of thought about human beings and sexuality

that is different from the old you know, you're a gay man, you're a lesbian, you like both, whatever. It's much different. So when you say queer now, you can actually mean somebody who is probably heterosexual but has adopted some peculiar little derivation that they found on Tumblr to make themselves feel special. So they

are now part of this, because it's cool to be that, right? You don't really have to change what you do or you're interested in, but you've got your own little particular flag and your own little gender and your own little sign and your own little pronoun, so you're queer. So the intellectual lodestar of the whole gay rights movement moved seamlessly without anybody really noticing it into queer to queer theory, just the way that equality moved somehow into equity without anybody absolutely noticing. And in both of these cases, it is a structural shift of language and thought. The guys at Target aren't that smart to probably note this. They just

note that, well, we got more queer people now, so let's go all in on that. That means going all in more on the trans bit, because that's cool. And, you know, the governor, Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota, sported this t-shirt the other day, said, protect trans kids. It's got a big knife on it. Is she going to stab somebody who is opposed to mastectomies for 16-year-olds? Is that what you're talking about? And since the whole forces of hate are supposedly assembling to keep children from transitioning medically, physically, and the rest of it, then we must be opposed to those forces of hate. So there's a virtue in coming and opposing the people who are opposing this new good thing. And there's also this sort of go along, get along, born by the cultural wind things where people fall into this and say, well, obviously this is new and this is important and

trans is important and all of a sudden it's just blown up. What they don't get, I think, is that a lot of people who are perfectly content to just, I don't care if you are an adult and you think this, whatever, I just, I don't care. They're not interested in having biological males compete in women's sports. They're not interested in biological males who have not done any sort of physical transitioning whatsoever, demanding full access to women's spaces and calling themselves. They don't buy it. They just, they don't buy it. And whereas before that they would be content to just ignore it, now they are being compelled

to believe it and having compelled speech in which they are required to say these things, that that is a woman. You can't say otherwise or you're a folk. Or you are, as our political cartoonist in the newspaper said, a bigot whose knuckles are literally dragging on the ground. So that's what I think it is. It's an ideological capture. It's people not paying attention to this, and you think, well, the other part of it is that Satanism got attached to this. Isn't that fun? That one of the artists with whom Target was

partnering is a Satanist and has all this Satanist cool pastelly stuff on his website. Well, it's a different kind of Satan than we're thinking about. It's the sort of, there is no Satan really, but we're just being individualistic and you are your own God, etc. But still, it's like you don't have to actually probably antagonize your middle America base by going with guys who are putting out little Satanist pins about how we need to put up guillotines for homophobes. I've been clicking around during this conversation because- I'll shut up now. I've dominated this whole damn thing. I'll shut up. I've been clicking around during this conversation, and here's what I found. Target hasn't just put for sale a few sweatshirts with the Pride rainbow on them. They've got,

according to what I found, they've put up Take Pride sort of displays in store after store after store with hashtag Take Pride, which leads you to, we at Target, we have a simple but powerful manifesto. We're not born with pride. We take pride. We're making our message loud and clear. Target proudly stands with the LGBT community. That's politics. That's not retail. Target has waded into an ideological battle that nobody invited unless of course, so if you're, you spoke to the middle American, even though I live in California, I would

view myself as a middle American. I would find that offensive. I do find it offensive. They didn't need to wait in. They didn't need to take sides. They're perfectly fine selling this or that piece of retail, but they took sides. They waded into an ideological struggle, and they shouldn't be surprised if there's pushback. There are going to be people who disagree. I think Target has a little explaining to do to its shareholders and to its customers honestly i had thought they just found themselves in the middle

of something nope they waded into it rob do you think it's an ideological position or is it uh is it simply i mean i i you know yes i i feel like i'm torn because part of me feels that, yes, this sort of wokeism is a problem. with um peter teal who in a recent interview with barry weiss um identified about 10 or 15 things he was more worried about for america than wokeism and i think sometimes people on the right it's uh we this will be go to this kind of outrage and and i'm not sure i um i'm not sure i really i really feel that i i think target's going to pay a price in the marketplaces. They should. I mean, put it this way. Had Target convened a giant Zoom meeting of Target store managers across the country and said, hey, what do you think of this? You're the closest to your customer. What do you think of this? I think those results would be very interesting and probably very revealing um for target well i'm interested in peter teal's uh 15 things that are more important than i mean i i understand that people get spun up about particular examples and the rest of it and uh yeah and that yes there are economic political uh demographic things to be concerned about. I think we can be concerned

about all of them. We can walk and chew gum, but there is an ideological deconstruction taking place in American culture that wokeism, not even a term I like anymore, I wish we had a better one, is cumulatively injurious. And when it happens to nearly every single institution at the same time uh it's it's it's termites that know how big and grand your house may look it's being eaten away from the inside which is the intention the expressed intention you know critical race theory yeah rob i hear you really bored with me talking about this yeah i mean honestly i i understand it's a difficult issue but it just it's to me it's so boring it's what difficult issue, but to me, it's so boring. It's what everyone talks about all the time.

When you watch cable news, they're talking about it. When you read conservative press, they're talking about it. Everyone's talking about it all the time. I agree it's crucial, but I'm just being honest. I'm so bored with it. There's nothing new about it. It's just a one more outrage machine which i get i understand but i just i'm just being honest i just i just can't gin up at on friday at 12 32 p.m i

just can't gin up uh any enthusiasm for once again going through all the terrible woke things that are happening i just don't care right now about them i mean i know i've probably i probably will in the future but there's nothing for me to be doing for me to do about it right now i don't go to target anyway except say oh you know target's gonna pay a price well here's the thing i mean i gotta go there soon to get stuff for my daughter when she gets a new apartment so she's got a job which is is great. And she's, she's incredibly, we're going to have to outfit a new place for her. And Target's got some great sheets, but there's no way I'm going to buy them at Target. No, sir. No. No, I don't think you should buy your sheets at Target. You know where I think you should buy yours. Where would that be?

Well, Bowling Branch. They're the best sheets you can buy. Exactly why. And the reason is, well, not, I mean, where she is probably not going to have air conditioning because she's still at that stage in her life. Maybe I'll get her a window unit at Target. But whatever the weather, whether it's cold or cool or whether it's summer hot, Bullenbrand sheets are absolutely perfect for whatever climate you happen to be living in because you need a great night's sleep and you get a great night's sleep on Bullenbrand. They're the bedding expert. They make the highest quality sheets with incredible craftsmanship.

Each sheet's set and slow made for unmatched softness with 100% traceable organic cotton. They get softer with every wash. The Signature hemmed sheets, those are the ones I have. I get for her as well. They're best seller for a reason from Bowling Branch because they use the highest 100% organic cotton threads on the earth. And each sheet set, as I said, slow made for superior softness and a better night's sleep. They feel buttery to the touch and they're super breathable. So they're perfect for both

cooler and warmer weather. And that's why they're loved by millions of sleepers. And you can hear from more than 10,000 of them who've given Bowling Branch five star reviews. Now I mentioned every week how they're incrementally softer than they were the week before. And they are. But the other thing that I like, it's the box in which they come. I know that's probably the least important thing, but there's an unboxing ritual to a Bowling Branch sheet that I can't wait for my daughter to experience. Because most of the sheets, they come in these plastic things, and you open them up, and you pull them out. But Bowling Branch does such a beautiful job of it that they're like a gift, like a birthday gift, like a Christmas gift. And they're the gift that gives all year long, as we like to say.

And keep in mind, they give you a 30-night risk-free guarantee with free shipping and returns on all U.S. orders. So, sleep better at night with Bowling Branch sheets. Get 15% off your first order when you use the promo code RICOCHET at BowlingBranch.com. That's BowlingBranch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D, Branch.com.

Promo code RICOCHET. Exclusion supplies. See the site for details. And we thank bull and branch for sponsoring this the ricochet podcast all right gentlemen um tim scott ron desantis they're in they're in what do you think so um i just loved tim scott i just loved him now i have a kind of background question that touches everything I'm about to say. I won't go on and on, but the background question is this. Am I just nostalgic for something that at least half the population now doesn't even remember?

And that's Ronald Reagan. That's politicians who understood optimism and a lightness of touch and who could connect with their audiences as ordinary human beings in a neighborly American way. Tim Scott has all of that. He has a, I found it, just an immensely moving personal story, getting into trouble as a kid being raised by this saintly single mother who worked and worked and did her best to keep him out of trouble, turning himself around, becoming a Christian, understanding the importance of hard work, the gifts of being an American. He talks about his faith. I'm not just tossing

that in there. It's all just tremendously moving. Details to follow. There's not a lot of policy that comes out of all of this and he barely touches on foreign policy so you take one look and say this is not a fully baked campaign yet but oh my goodness in the current climate i just found it so refreshing and then DeSantis is almost exactly the reverse for me in that there's a record as governor. There's a fundraising operation. There are want to put in that half dozen thick binders that go on the bookshelf in every campaign headquarters so you can look up where your candidate stands on any issue. And gee, I really want DeSantis to succeed. That's where I started. But there's a kind of, I don't know, a kind of flatness to the affect. I just feel as though he just, even when he's doing that, the campaign video, the announcement video, now you have to expect that to be pretty good because they got as much time in the world as they want to shoot that. That's him and a camera. And they can do

take after take after take so i'm going to guess that this is the top of his form and he's it's not that it's just not that good there's no warmth there's no connection with the i'm just so this is why i'm interested especially what rob has to say because of course rob would be all over the the professionalism or like so you've got these strange candidates yin and yang versions of each other. I personally, I'll just go ahead and say it right now, not that I think listeners would be in any doubt about it. I hope either one of them can overtake Donald Trump. But each has these enormous strengths, but also glaring weaknesses. That's what I think. And again, I sort of wonder if I say, the Wall Street Journal said it in its editorial on Ron DeSantis, it said he could benefit from even a little bit of Ronald Reagan's self-deprecating humor. Tim Scott understands humor and lightness of touch, and DeSantis has none of it. But am I saying things that

nobody relates to anymore? Does everybody want anger? No, no. i think i mean i think you're that's the interesting thing about i don't think you have to remember how ronald reagan ran to know that he he ran very successfully like it's a it's a people are people don't really change they do like optimistic future you know someone their leader facing the future and talking about the future optimistically which is what ronald reagan did he talked about the future a lot for an old man he talked about the future uh and i think that is actually what not only republican primary voters want but what the general voters want is somebody talking about the future and luckily for the republicans they have

the world's oldest relic from the past to run against so really talking about the future right and unfortunately the front runner for the republicans right now just right now i don't think that's going to last but for right now is somebody who's also obsessed with the past not the future um i think it's really right about ronda sandis i have an old friend who does a lot of campaigns and he said a campaign error is when you don't take advantage of an opportunity to be a human being because the way you win the presidency really is to you have to act more normal for about 10 more seconds than your opponent you don't have to be normal i mean donald trump's not a normal person he's very abnormal in many many ways he lives in a lived in a giant uh golden tower and has had a golden toilet right but he's still even to this day seems more normal than his opponent

in 2016 hillary clinton who seems so weird right so right um so iran is that i guess the twitter thing had all these glitches and was this and that and people oh my god i mean he this is an opportunity for him to say yeah boy a lot of it was a lot of fun to do i find elon musk a fascinating guy um i wish there weren't those glitches but we've all been on that zoom call right we've all had that problem right and i'm most working americans will nod and say yeah you know i know you sometimes the thing just doesn't work right okay that's fine then you're then but it's a it's not a one-day story where you're trying to mitigate damage it's a story in which you are moving your identity and your personality forward and that is what happens to him the next week is

going to be i mean look i think he's um I think he's running a classic gubernatorial campaign. We talked to Tim Scott a minute. You know, these are not dumb people. These are smart people. They've looked at the past, right? The last Republican sitting Republican governor to get into the White House was a quarter of a century ago, George W. Bush. He ran against, you know, Oren hatch, Gary Bauer,

Steve Forbes, Alan keys. He only really one contender. And that was John McCain. That's right. That's fair. Yes. This is not,

this is not that campaign. And so I think what I'm interested in, I mean, I'm trying to, you know, not, I don't necessarily have a favorite right now, but what I'm interested in is just watching how much relish Ron DeSantis has to take apart Donald Trump. Because that's the only way for him to win the nomination.

It's the only way for him to get in the White House. And where he's planning to take apart Donald Trump, and he just said something very shrewd yesterday, which he said, he kept it on COVID. Donald Trump did great stuff in the first three years. So totally supported him, which is true. And then he turned over his presidency to Anthony Fauci. Right.

And that is a very stark difference between the two of them. And it doesn't require him to say, Oh, you know, the January 6th, this and that doesn't require him to get any of those those litigate any of those just just clear eye to the republican primary voter when it when push came to shove he blew it and when push came to see the video when i had the same well what does santa's video uh yeah which is nothing but trump saying

we shut it down we shut it down and we were right we shut it down right it's like a minute and a half trump saying we should very very shrewd um down. And we were right. We shut her down. It's like a minute and a half. Trump saying we should very, very shrewd. But on the other hand, he doesn't seem like he seems kind of like a jerk a little bit. Like, I mean, I mean,

DeSantis people I know who met him say he's not, but I was like, he's just seems kind of jerky. So he's going to have to, I think when you, when you're, you're, you're,

you're, your chief opponent is everybody knows is kind of a lovable jerk. I mean, in a way, if you like Trump, nobody says he's not a jerk. He's a jerk. So you're going to have to come up with a contrast. So what I like about Tim Scott is that Tim Scott seems to be running the way old-timey Republicans run. And I kind of like that. But I think we're going to see some more people jump in i think it's i mean

the the only the secret weapon that i think that drawn to santas has is that the press thinks he's worse than donald trump yeah how can that be that really does feel like the tenor of the coverage they hate him more than they hate trump because he might win because he might win that's it that's it exactly also like he's like he's at he's effective right so if you but yes yes if you if you if you if you're looking for these political fights you're this is the governor who's been effective he's been effective at like i mean you know i just said i was bored of wokeism but you know right ron desantis has been effective at like combating that i i you know i feel like just you know i'm the governors like desantis and brian kemp who were smart about covid i think are

would be much better in the white house than the former president who wasn't i'll try to you i, we say to the press, why do you guys hate DeSantis? He's Trump, but without the Trump. And they reply, that's why we hate him. Right. That's why. I mean, all this talk about how he's a Nazi,

all that stuff, like the Klan, all that stuff. That I think is going to play well for him in the Republican primary. He'll wear it like a badge. Republican primary voters are hip to the character assassination that happens in the mainstream press. They've discounted that already. When Donald Trump is indicted and loses a lawsuit, his popularity among Republicans goes up. And it's not because

Republicans are somehow degenerate. It's because they understand that this guy has been treated unfairly whether you like him or you don't like him i don't like him but i do think he was treated unfairly so you know de santis should be wearing this as a badge all you you know he should be uh liberal media left and right and tell tom stein that tell tom comes time to actually run a general right which is what every Republican candidate does. You run right and win the nomination, and then you run to the center to win the general. So, Rob, you as a professional in media, and you too, I mean, James, I think of you more as

a broadcaster, but that's probably because your voice is so beautiful. In any event, the question is this. I had one encounter with Ron DeSantis in person. It was when he was a congressman, and we were both at a conference and we both got bored at the same time. So, we went off to the coffee shop and each of us had a cup of coffee and a croissant. He was heavier then than he is now. He was a perfectly lovely guy. We just chatted, we talked politics. And I see the Ron DeSantis in the campaign video, the announcement video, and it looks to me, tell me if I'm wrong is the question at the end of this, but it looks to me like a guy who thinks that the moment the camera is on, he has to be somebody else.

Yeah. And that is a rookie's mistake. Yeah. What do you think? No, I totally agree. Yeah, I do kind of get that feeling. But I'm just thinking of Newsom coming in and hip-checking Biden off the stage and the country having the opportunity to literally vote between the California and the Florida. That would be great for the country.

That would be great. That would be a clean debate. Here's a clean choice. Two totally different ways of looking at America. But I think it would come down to, I mean, I think we, I mean, maybe I'm obsessed with it. Maybe I'm obsessed with this and I shouldn't be. I should be obsessed with wokeism. Who knows? But I am obsessed with the test of COVID. And if you're going to put Florida against California, Florida wins. And we know that Florida wins because you can look on the www.whitehouse.gov website to see the states in action in their excess deaths.

And there are more excess deaths in California than there are in Florida. But you cannot separate wokeism, and again, we've got to come up with a better word, from the COVID response. Because both rely on the imposition of restriction on human activity and thought by the state. Okay. I accept that. I guess what I mean is that the left and the media want to say that Ron DeSantis, and again, I have no dog in this fight, but just because they're talking about Ron DeSantis, that Ron DeSantis, his entire governorship and leadership and 99.9% smashing victory when he ran for re-elect was because he's a reactionary and he put in a six-week abortion ban which is probably a mistake but whatever anti-trans policies his like quixotic fight against disney all that stuff right when i really think it's because he was right about lockdowns and school closures gavin newsom donald trump anthony fauci were wrong and correct the

new york times was also wrong about them so they are trying to memory hole this incredibly incredibly incredibly tragic long-lasting decades-, ill-effect mistake they all made and celebrated and squashed all the dissent for, and they try to pretend that didn't happen. So now they're looking for trivial things to jump on. But I think that the more DeSantis says the most monumental event of the past, worldwide event of the past decade, maybe the past two decades, the only time the world has been talking about the same thing before the COVID was World War II, right? Wherever you went in the world in World War II, they were talking about World War II. Wherever you went in the world during COVID, they were talking about COVID. In that moment, we had a frivolous president who could not concentrate or learn, and we had a very, very strong, powerful governor in Florida, and we had a frivolous governor in California,

and we had a couple really strong Republican governors who made the right call. That, to me, is like he should be saying that over and over and over again. You touched on this notion that they're trying to memory hole it all. Yeah. Okay, so this has been puzzling me and I've come up with this kind of cockamamie analogy in my mind and you'll agree that it's cockamamie. I don't know whether you'll agree with the analogy, but let me trot it out and see what you both do with it. It's like, it's this. And I have just been this weird thing that for two years, the country was shut down. The state assumed dictatorial powers,

unlike this cockamamie public health official in the county where I live in California, who 24 hours before with the lockdown, nobody had ever heard of, suddenly told us we had to stay in our homes, shut down our businesses, wear masks if we want to. It was unbelievable. And now it's as if it never happened. We don't talk about it. Now part of that is understandable in that we don't want to talk about it. But I have this, here's, so my analogy or my cockamamie theory is that this is all like a childhood trauma we're we're pressing something but it still explains we won't talk about it therefore we won't

understand the way this is true but in some weird way what we all just went through and our pretending never happened still explains 80 of what's happening in the country including the rumble at your high school in some way those are connected i think well maybe so in that the kids uh were deprived of a year or two of actual school exactly they forgot how to socialize they've got out of right it's entirely possible but you know we don't talk about it because why well because a lot of the people who went along with the lockdowns were people in the media right who were neurotic and and who were were part of the modern uh thought that replaced that that elevated health to above all else not your spiritual well-being or your your emotional

or your your intellectual apparatus. No, it was just the church, the cult of health. If you eat the right things, you'll be eternal. And so to them, this was very important, and they were very good at playing all the rules, and they were very good at enforcing the rules, and they had the total societal endorsement behind them of being the good little people who follow the good little rules. So they participated in this, and the fact that it may have been overblown or that it lasted too long, they're not going to give that up. They would rather just move along rather than have a full accounting of it.

Because in their hearts, they really think that they were always right. And the main problem was the yahoos in the red states who weren't doing what they were supposed to do, and that's the reason that everybody died. I mean, if you go to the coronavirus subreddit, you will find the dead enders who every day gather by the thousands and talk about how the rest of us are fools for not wearing masks on on airplanes for example still there and they're all and they're all they're all they're sifting through the guts of every single little story

about long covet because they're all convinced they have it and explains everything else for them. So yeah, we're not going to get the accounting because the people who would be doing that don't want to admit that they're wrong because they don't think that they were. Go back to the last time we had something like this, Peter, and I think it would probably be in the last few years of the teens under Woodrow Wilson, when we had things happen that today we completely forget. The amount of government censorship, the mandatory rah-rah. The palmer raids. The palmer, the nationalization of the railroads, right? There's all kinds of things that happened that changed the culture in a lot of ways. And if you look through the newspapers,

it's fascinating to see everybody flip and switch on a dime and march right along with what the government was now telling them. And that was forgotten in the devil may care 20s that followed. People just moved along. We're not moving along right now because there are all kinds of injuries that were made that were deeper than we thought and the you know does randy weingarten want to apologize no she's doubled she's retconning rewriting history to make herself to the person who was to her she's you know if she he was the one who was trying to rip the chains from the schoolhouse door to let the kids pour in do any of the people who believe that it was probably not a good idea to send everybody home for work permanently that it destroyed the office basis tax no they won't because

all of a sudden the work at home uh you know don't want to mingle too much or so no we're not going to have that i'll just say two things about well three things about politics right the first thing is that i feel like that peter you're absolutely right and i don't think we're sure yet how long these ripple effects will go or how they'll work themselves out i mean i think that what happened in 2016 and sort of the trump administration trump campaign and certainly his administration kind of collected this frustration that people had from the 2008 financial collapse where it seemed to people and i don't think they were wrong that the the very powerful financiers who made huge mistakes um didn't really pay a price and bailed out instead of sent to jail bailed out but but i hear that actually i would differ for you that it's not that they did went to jail because the truth is they didn't most of them didn't do

anything illegal don't do anything wrong they just should have gone broke, because that's what happens in capitalism. You go broke. And I remember talking to a friend of mine who's a very big financier, and I was saying, we had to protect the financial system. What do you want, people selling apples on the street? I was like, well, I kind of want the chairman of AIG selling apples on the street. I kind of want those people to lose their net worth. I really do.

At least as a down payment on the bailout. I'm not saying that we shouldn't bail them out, but I think that the first payment should have been checks from the liquidated net worth of the people running banks that failed. And then within a year everybody was back to making bank again and i that just didn't feel right i don't think it feels right to people that the that now in america where it used to be that if you were going to get seriously rich i mean you're going to get a family office rich you were going to get like your grandchildren weren't going to have to work and be they're going to be screwed up rich that kind of rich you're going to build a museum rich that you had to build something you had to make something you had to invent something

uh and now you can get you can be you can have a almost a billion dollars you get 700 million dollars getting stock options for being the ceo of a publicly held company i mean you can make a whole you can you can have generational wealth from being an executive in a company and that i think uh also disquiets people and i think that is part of kind of where we see the institutional kind of things breaking down because republicans have traditionally been allied with that kind of stuff um and i suspect that there are a lot of republicans who think that's something that needs to be addressed rob just one more thing about politics just because you went by politics is that the the strength that um the strength that that that uh that people like ron is the governor's like ron desantis but i i would i know he's not running

but brian camp i'd just say because it isn't like ron desantis, governors like Ron DeSantis, but I know he's not running, but Brian Kemp, I'd just say, because it isn't like Ron DeSantis was standing on top of a pyramid all by himself. They're not just giving you bad news. That's what makes this campaign strut so important. They're telling you, I made the right decision. I brought good news to my state. It's not just I wouldn't make a mistake like those guys are jerks and they're terrible. It's I was right. I made the right decision. If you vote for me, you don't have to just vote a negative. You can vote a positive. And I think

that's a very powerful psychological thing for a voter, you're a republican um a primary voter or you're a general in the general elect i think to have a somebody who you're like oh this guy made the right decision i think um is it powerful you know whether he can capitalize on it or not it remains to be seen but it's a powerful campaign strut for sure get him through the primaries rob i i happen to know that you're working on a big project and this is one reason that you are able to speak with particular insight and passion about covid and i just want to start teasing this project because it's fascinating to hear you talk about it you and i talk i hear this um so let me ask you this question. What's the project? And why is Jay Bhattacharya, really briefly, and why is Jay Bhattacharya, to pick up on the statement you just made, why is Jay Bhattacharya in a position to give a testimony, as he did the other day for a few minutes?

He dialed in. He was part of Ron DeSantis' announcement on Twitter. Why is your friend Jay? So what's the project and why what the heck does jay have to do with confirming that de sandis go explain that well we know we know jay jay's a friend of the podcast jay's a friend of the ricochet he's a friend of ours he's you know and he's a if you've ever met him he is the most he's sort of the kindest gentlest person like you kind of meet him you you think like, man, you know, actually

I think Jay would do better if 10% of the nasty things people said about him are true. Actually, I think he'd probably be a little bit happier in his life. So the story, we're telling long-form stories now on the Ricochet Network. We're sort of preparing them. We've got a bunch more we're doing. And we've raised some money to do that.

And one of the ones we're doing is a story, really kind of 8 to 10 episode serialized thing. It's part of our large master plan for Ricochet. The story of COVID. You can't tell the whole story. It says too many things. But essentially, I'm telling a story in three parts.

The first part is everything we knew about viruses and everything we knew about viruses and everything we knew about COVID just up to like March of 2020. The second part is all the mistakes that we made. And then the third part is what we did to the person and the people, not just Jay, but people who were right and were giving us the right science and the right research and the right conclusions.

And so my general theory is that americans decided not americans this is the big distinction not americans but american public health officials and politicians um had a panic attack the media too the media had a panic attack and they behaved like people who have panic attacks they shut down all external information they decided very early on on the course they were going to take in February, March, shut down everything, shut down schools.

Nobody leave your house, spray your lettuce, wear a mask to bed. And they never, ever changed course ever, even though people like Jay, Jay ran a study in Santa Clara County in April of 2020, where he revealed some pretty good news we should have been celebrating, which is that, hey, tons of people have much, so many more people have COVID than we thought. They are, they've had COVID.

They either tested positive for this, they're seropositive for COVID, right? Because this is, I don't want to get the weeds here. April 2020, they didn't have the nasal swab. They just had to take your blood. And he said, isn't that great? Look how big the denominator is. Like everyone's got COVID, but only the same number of people are sick. This is good news, what you want, right? And instead of saying, oh, well, then now that we know this, we can do X, Y, and Z, people said, shut up. You're a liar. The test was corrupt. Every step of the way, and Jay will admit this, he was not exactly right about everything,

but he was directionally correct about everything. And then a couple governors called him for advice, right? One of them was drawn to Santas. And Jay said this to us years, I mean said this said this to us years i mean it said it to us in 2020 same day he talked to him yeah and said wow that guy did the reading that guy did extra remember that yeah and uh you know when you you know i talk to jay now all the time to do this project i'm like you know i you will not be shocked to know that I don't always do the reading. I'm kind of like,

this is really hard. I don't have that brain. And he's very, very, Jay is very gentle with me when I say something stupid. He'll say like, in a way, you're correct. He's very, right? That's what he said about

Ron DeSantis. Now, the only other person I've heard talk about a candidate who's not a candidate anymore is Mike Pompeo, who a friend of mine said was one of the smartest people she'd ever met. But, oh, that, so, so that, that, that's, that's framing my argument. But I, but even though I'm sort of knee deep, deep underwater with covid i actually do think it's you're looking for those crucible moments where you can say we all knew we all had the same set of information i just chose to read past the first page i didn't take anthony fauci's advice and i was right and

anthony fauci attacked him attack jay, personally, after Great Barrington in November. Great Barrington. And I still say that they should have held that conference and made the declaration from someplace else, because it makes it sound as if, well, there's, you of honor for some, but for others, it told them exactly what to think. I still remember going to the local boutique shop where you get the nice little gift for the wine mom because it's her birthday. And they had candles and mug. They had a votive candle with Fauci's picture on it. Are you kidding me? I mean, like St. Anthony Fauci, that sort of thing? Right.

Unbelievable. And a mug that said WWFD. What would Fauci do? So he had replaced Jesus in the popular consciousness. One of the things you're going to have to talk about, Rob, and I am not kidding here, I think this matters, is that when everybody went home and sat in front of Netflix, there were two options that they had. One was Tiger King, which told them all they need to know about the South, of course. And the other was a movie called Outbreak, which had come out a few years before and was banging around on streaming,

and people could watch it. And it presented for them a blueprint of what they believed was to come. It had Kate Winslet being very, very concerned about these things. As a matter of fact, going to Minnesota. It took place in Minnesota. Because it was written by a guy named Scott Burns, who was from Minnesota, who actually worked for the Minnesota Daily. I remember him. I remember beating him out for taking the attentions of some reporter gal. But that's another story.

And so his construction of that, and it's it's a good construction of the story was this template that people were just imposing on the current events and when we saw that strange video from china people dropping in the streets right you felt that right we didn't right we didn't know and that was was a hammer blow that resonated for weeks. But it stopped ringing in most of our, in my ears, after very shortly, but it didn't for others. I remember when I was the only guy coming to the office in April, no, in March or so, there was an addition to the washroom. In the washroom, you leave one door and then there's a short little tunnel because the construction of the office, and then you get to another door.

They had placed a waste paper basket in that tunnel because you were supposed to use a towel to open the door and then discard it on your way out. And then you would use another towel, and then there was a waste paper basket that had been added outside because this was the new idea that everything was teeming with fomites, that the whole world itself needed to be sprayed down with Lysol and Napalm and all the rest of it at all times. Well, we got away from that pretty quickly, but it didn't for most, for a lot of the people it seems, who still regarded the world as just contaminated in a way that well let me ask you this do you think it sort of affirmed what they'd always really wanted to think about the world or it just made neurotics out of people who would never thought about these things before big broad-ended question we're getting to the end here i think all those things are true i think i think that yes i would say yes to all of it i mean

it was you know these things aren't aren't uh separate and i think that you can see now this sort of collected you know the collected response to this has been that you know like you know i had germaphobe friends who are like see i was right all along you know for carrying around purell everywhere you know okay maybe you're right right i have a friend who i have friends like you come into her house you do not sit on something. She puts something down. If you come in, you're on the subway. You've got to sit on a sheet or something. She's nuts, right?

But okay, well, she's vindicated. There are people who believe that vaccines give you autism, which, of course, has been disproved. But I don't know. They've sold this vaccine, and they said it was going to do a lot of things and it's kind of like it's not better by any by it's worse by a factor than actually getting covet and having natural immunity or having acquired immunity so i don't know i mean all those this is a big basket of things i think peter's right that it's it's they're going to work themselves out and um but i think what we need to remember is that the this the research and science mistakes like i would say akin to the technical glitches

in the ron de santos launch are are not the great crimes like it's it's okay like they made a mistake that's fine like i don't think that i don't think the american people have this idea and if they do they should be disabused of it that these people are always going to be right that it's the research is always going to point to the right thing you're going to make mistakes you're going to the zoom call's not going to work the twitter spaces thing is going to break down right right it's not the word not the end of the world the end of the world is when you triple quadruple quintuple down on your mistakes you refuse to admit them you refuse to change course it's like teacher once said to me like look the point is everyone makes mistakes you're allowed to make mistakes just don't keep making the same mistake right and every day every

week every month that covet unfolded they kept making the same mistake and then as as as the panic attack got more and more paranoid right because that's what happens when people have a panic attack it's really it's a cortisol event like it's it actually has a hormonal effect on your brain um they get more and more aggressive so they get more and more angry at people like jay batacharia like maybe he shouldn't be at stanford maybe he should be fired maybe uh these people should be silenced maybe twitter should like just not post their posts maybe we should uh block people or shadow ban people on all these things maybe we shouldn't have them on cnn to say they're to to say that masks aren't effective and that um herd immunity is the best way to go and that a lot of closing

schools is going to have more do more damage cost more lives than it saves and then at that point that's when we that's that those are those are things we need to remember not that people make mistakes but that some people when they make mistakes, have the armed forces and the entire bureaucracy of the federal government behind them. And that we can't have. The only way to rebuild trust in our institutions is for our institutions to admit that they did not deserve it. Yeah. Everyone that we looked at failed under pressure. And the refusal of them to admit that is the thing that keeps us from trusting them again.

And that's the FBI. That's the SEC. Yes. All of them. The great thing now is that we do get together in person from time to time because we're not afraid. We live life. Three-facers. And, Rob, I think you could tell people that we have some upcoming meetups that people want to do.

We do. I'm sort of exhausted now from this. We didn't have any guests either. Like, this is crazy uh so if you if you if you were happy not having a guest um well then you kind of recreated a ricochet meetup which is the guests are you so we like talking on the on the on the podcast we also like being on the site we like talking to our members but we also like meeting them in person and meet ricochet meetups are the most fun and joyful way to be part of the community. So,

and also look, if you, if you want to talk about wokeism and make jokes about it, which I do actually making jokes about it. I do. This is the place to go, by the way, you'll be surrounded by people who will give you the latest.

I have, I got one from somebody who was at the new Orleans meetup. That's fantastic. And I will not post it, but it's really funny. Well, maybe I'll do it in the member feed. But just a funny little cartoon. So face-to-face IRL meetings are the way to go. We have some solicitations.

So we have some people who are trying to put one together. I'll do that first. We have the scheduled meetups are Winston-Salem in mid-July, Matt Balzer's annual German Fest meetup in milwaukee that's happening the last weekend of july stuff's happening july and randy um just posted info about a labor day weekend meetup in cookville tennessee which actually sounds like a lot of fun um but we have some members who put up solicitations for columbus ohio late uh late june so late next month portland the portland oregon area with that'll be fun um that's in mid-july i want pictures of that uh and then mammoth i want to go to that so i can say i'm from minneapolis which is 16 better than you guys

right now if you if it's still 16 by then um mammammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky in August. So there's lots going on. If one of those sounds interesting to you, join Ricochet and show up. If one of those sounds interesting but you can't make it for whatever reason, join Ricochet and post your own meetup suggestion, and Ricochet members will show up because that is what we do. That and talk. And talent and write and the thing about writing if you go to ricochet.com you will see some of the best writers you may never have heard

of some people that i absolutely love to write a lot that is the truth sometimes you can only find them on the member feed because that's where we talk amongst ourselves and so you got to join ricochet and you have to pay actual money. I mean, it's just a little bit, but it gets you access to a community that really, you know, the folks that I've met in real life, the people that I've met online, not a day goes by that I don't hit it four or five, six times and comment as much as I, you know,

feel like I should. And it's just a great home on the internet. And you guys are the ones who found it and for which I am eternally grateful, and brought me into it, for which I am also eternally grateful. So yeah, we don't need no guests. We can sit here and argue.

I can ramble on about things that Peter is tired about, and Rob's tired about. But I guarantee you, between talking about queer theory, and wokeism, and youth violence, and the COVID era, and the rest of it,

we may get a few comments that go here and yawn. Let's just say this. It's Memorial Day, and we haven't spoken a word about that, and I feel remiss in doing so. But there will be many tributes to the veterans, to the people who sacrificed, to the American wars of the past there will be a a remarkable diverse respectful fascinating deep historical dive into the holiday all over ricochet written by people who are doing it for the love of the craft and exchanging ideas and so that's why you had to go there i know i pitched it a lot but i don't pitch it enough sometimes i will say that this has been fun rob peter have a great weekend and we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Next week, boys. Next week, fellas.

Ricochet. Join the conversation.