The Ricochet Podcast - Peace In Our Time?

Episode Date: May 4, 2018

This week, we go deep on North Korea with AEI’s Nicholas Eberstadt and Salena Zito tells us not to break out the surf boards quite yet — that blue wave may not be so big after all. Also, Rudy can���t fail and Peter Robinson gets schooled on Kanye. Yo. Music from this week’s podcast: Rudi Can’t Fail by The Clash... Source

We have special news for you. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Are you going to send me or anybody that I know to a camp? We have people that are stupid. I know James Comey. I know the president. Sorry, Jim, you're a liar. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson. I'm James Lilacs, and today we have Nicholas Ebersad about the Norcs and Selena Zito about the NRA. Let's have ourselves a podcast.

Bye-bye. Welcome, everyone, to the Ricochet Podcast. We're brought to you by Casper. Yes, Casper. It's that sleep brand that makes expertly designed products to help you get your best rest one night at a time. That's casper.com slash ricochet. Promo code ricochet for $50 off select mattresses. Terms and conditions, of course, will apply.

And we're brought to you by Quip. You know, the truth is that most of us don't brush our teeth the right way we don't do it for long enough we forget to change our brush on time well that's because most brands focus on selling you flashy gimmicks rather than better brushing but not quip so what makes quip so different we'll tell you in just a little bit and we're brought to you by butcher box right now butcher box is offering ricochet listeners free bacon did that wake you up? Free bacon and $20 off your first box when you go to ButcherBox.com slash Ricochet and enter that promo code Ricochet at the checkout. And I'd like to say that we're brought to you by Rob Long, who isn't here to tell you that Rob Long isn't here to tell you that this is the 400th episode of the podcast. But I don't want to say it's the 400th because next week we're going to be broadcasting

from Washington, D.C. at the height of one of those fabled D.C. cocktail parties. It seems to me, Peter, like that should be the 400th or maybe we should call it 401 and let the numbers have some strange Masonic mystery to it, shall we? This one is 401. This one anticipates how good we're going to be after we've had the experience of recording 400.

But the 400th will actually take place next week in Washington. How do you think? Why can't we bend the time space continuum a little bit? I don't know why, because the iTunes numbering system will be annoyed. Why can't we call this one 399.5 or something like there you go i'd go with that as well yes yes well done all right this is podcast number 399.99999 but 400 or 401 or whatever the numbering may be we do know we're going to be next week in dc having an extraordinary time peter tell us all about this this event that we're going to do. John, excuse me, Rob, you'll see why I'm thinking of John Pod in a moment.

Rob has named this the ConPodCon. Did I get that right? The Conservative Podcast Conference, which, of course, I keep thinking of John Pod, who, if he'd been there, would have been the ConPodCon, I think. In any event, the ConPodCon, the Conservative Podcast Conference. AEI is providing the space and a number of its own fellows to record podcasts. We will be there. One Ricochet podcasting team after another will be there. I myself will be there to record an episode of Uncommon Knowledge with a special guest. You know, I like being able to use that phrase special guest doesn't that sound like 1950s special guest

please welcome special guest larry cudlow jim mattis marco rubio michael anton arthur brooks all of these will be special guests at this thing exactly exactly and uh space is limited to members of ricochet the whole event costs what does it cost bucks? And you get to go to a couple of cocktail parties and lunches included for that. But the space is genuinely limited. There is one auditorium. We'll be recording this broadcast live. I'll be sitting down and recording an episode of Uncommon Knowledge on stage with the 26th secretary of defense jim mattis and the auditorium holds not a person more thanks to the fire marshal than 200 and those tickets are going fast so so sign up if you want to want to attend that event and you're not a member become a member right away i'm looking forward to it because everybody will see at the end of the podcast how different people react to headphone hair. Some people, they can wear headphones

and it doesn't change their coiffure, not a jot. Some people have their hair permanently deformed, it seems, by the act of wearing headphones. I'm one of them, the latter cap. So after the Ricochet flagship podcast, people are going to say, man, you've got can hair, bud. What can we do for you?

There's also a dinner and there's, I mean, there's cocktail parties. It's extraordinary. So we'll see everybody there in the meantime, Peter, until then. And it'll be springtime in Washington. Washington weather is less dependable than weather out here in Northern California, but by next week, it should be just beautiful. Oh, it'll be extraordinary. You know, I used to live there and I couldn't stand it. And now D.C. is so well-improved that I actually consider, I don't know, retiring there, which sounds absurd to me. But then again, that's because we have a vast imperial capital now flowing with money and talent from the rest of the country.

And you almost sort of wish that it wasn't the grand and glorious place that it is because that would mean a less self-aggrandized government. But let's go to, before we go to our international topics, Peter, this week there have been a couple of things, Giuliani, Stormy Davis, the rest of it. I'm, I, I. Go first. Go first. Just let it rip, James.

I don't know what to make it. If you're, if this this if you have it in mind that it's my job to defend donald trump on this podcast once again i decline the honor go ahead i let her nothing i have nothing to say because i am at a point where i just am indifferent utterly yeah it's not numb numb it's a numb it's's numb. And that's probably the great trick. That's the great accomplishment of the administration. But all of the stuff that he is accused of doing was factored in from the beginning for me. None of this is any surprise.

So I can't gin up any fresh outrage. I can't be mad at the people who say, well, we were upset about Bill Clinton, but we're not upset about this because, A, I get the whole thing about judges, Gorsuch, good laws. I get the whole thing. I understand also that the accusations of rank hypocrisy and abandoning your principles are – they stick. But at the same time, it doesn't matter to the people that they – none of this has any particular meaning today. Down the road. Yes. Today it's, it's just a white noise like the,

like the leaf blower outside my window right now. And, uh, there you have it. I mean, David French makes great points over at national review about how this affects the evangelicals and why we should take them seriously in the future. And they have great points when they shoot back and say it was him or it

was her who gives millions of dollars to child murderers. I mean, that's where we are. And there's no other place to take it. But let me ask. Go ahead. No, I'm with you. You're putting all this beautifully as you always do. And for once, I think you and I are in just complete agreement. I, too, just feel numb. David French put up a tweet the other day. I can't quote it exactly. On the other hand, it was only 140 characters. I ought to be able to get it pretty close. What was it David French put up? He had an affair with a porn star and then he lied about it. He paid her off and he lied about it. Think about that. Is that your man? I found myself thinking, well, that puts him in a league with John Fitzgerald Kennedy. And we know that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was having affairs with, I don't know whether porn stars existed in quite the way they do now, but he was having affairs with all kinds of people, including young women who worked at the White House and the girlfriends of mob bosses. And his organization was keeping it quiet.

And the press was colluding, to use a certain his organization was keeping it quiet. And the press was colluding to use a certain word and keeping it quiet. It puts Donald Trump on a par with Bill Clinton, except that when Bill Clinton lied about it, he lied about it under oath. And then I thought to myself, Oh wait, is this, is this the way we defend Donald Trump?

Now he's no worse than JFfk he's still not quite as bad as bill clinton oh please just let this pass for goodness just let it's just so disgusting right and and because of that we have to turn away and let it go and the list of things to which we become acclimated accumulates. I just want a list. I want a list so I know exactly where the line gets crossed because for those, you know, tell me exactly what he has to do or any politician for that matter has to do before we begin to say, no, be gone from the public stage.

Because right now we're just saying essentially everything's okay. Everything's up for grab. Doesn't matter. Maybe that's clarifying to some people, and the hypocrisy is gone, and we can deal, frankly, with flawed individuals and realize that there are greater issues ahead. But for the moral polity and the health of the country, just I'd love a list. Okay? By the way, one point that I think is important, and here I will rise to the defense of my brethren, the evangelicals. As I read the campaign and their support for Bill Clinton since, I beg your pardon, see what I've done?

See what has happened? Their support for Donald Trump since. I don't sense that evangelicals, good, God-fearing people, many of them in the middle of the country and the which in one way or another large and small would have involved going after god-fearing decent people uh even as the obama administration went after the little sisters of the poor and forced them to violate their consciences by the little sisters of poor a tiny order that cares for old people and forced them to include contraceptives in their insurance program. The choice was between voting for a federal official, a president of the United States who was going to go after them, and one who for all his manifest failings had much more of a spirit of live and let live. He was not going to go after evangelicals.

In many ways, he admired them. The choice was not between a devil and a saint. The choice was between two thoroughly compromised people, one of whom was going to at least to leave ordinary Christian people alone. And that strikes me as a completely reasonable choice, which evangelicals could make and overwhelmingly, I believe, did make with their eyes wide open. They weren't foolish. They weren't being fooled. They were making the kind of calculation that you have to make in a democracy all too often. I understand. I understand. And that's a great point. I still want the list. So, I mean, I want the list. So personally, I can, I know what the... Lying under oath, lying under oath is at the top want the list so personally I can – I know what the –

Lying under oath. Lying under oath is at the top of the list. That's one of them. You put that on the list. That hasn't happened yet as far as I know. I know. You know what? I could go on with this and say, well, I want to know whether or not sleeping with a Playboy model while my wife has just had a kid, whether or not that's okay if I vote the same way.

But I'm so tired of that. Forget it. Drop it. Drop it. Done. But I still want the list. Hey, the thing before we get to Nick, I've got to tell you that if you by any means are looking at the upcoming warm days and say it's time to grill, well, it's time to grill meat and it's time to grill beef.

And we're not talking about any vegan sort of tofu manufactured stuff. No, we mean meat, and that's why you need to listen to me when I tell you about ButcherBox. ButcherBox delivers healthy, 100% grass-fed and grass-finished beef, free-range organic chicken, and heritage breed pork delivered directly to your door. Incredible quality of the ButcherBox means that the meal starts with a commitment to raising animals humanely, free of your antibiotics and hormones. Now, each box, think of this, 8 to 11 pounds of meat. It's enough for up to 24 individual-sized meals. You can cook for a whole month with one of these. Here's how it works.

First, you choose from curated boxes including a high mix of high-quality beef, chicken, and pork, or you can customize your own box. The meat is frozen at the peak of freshness in individual vacuum-packed biodegradable packaging and shipped to you with a carefully calculated amount of dry ice to ensure it remains frozen after it reaches you. Now, all meat is delivered right to your doorstep for free. And what's in the box? Antibiotic hormone-free. ButcherBox believes in healthier food systems where everybody has access to meat the way nature intended, free of, as I noted, antibiotics and hormones and humanely raised.

Now, cook with peace of mind, knowing you're feeding your family healthy, high-quality meat. ButcherBox carefully curates the finest selections and cuts and makes it a breeze to customize your own delivery. Build your own box. Choose exactly how much you want, when you want it, and your family will love it. In fact, think of ButcherBox as your neighborhood butcher with their high-quality chicken,

beef, and pork delivered right to your door. By the way, you can choose your delivery frequency, so don't worry. Vacation, or you just want to stop for a while, no problem.

Each box has recipe cards, by the way, and tips and tricks to create quality meals so you're not just left on your own saying, what am I going to do with this? And remember the ButcherBox difference. Butcher box meats come from humanely raised animals that are never fed antibiotics, hormones, or fatty filters and

fillers. So I have had these steaks now for a while. And even though it's been cold here, I went and started up the grill earlier than usual. And after trying the first batch of these steaks, as I told you last week, I used to have this preparation where I would let them sit out. I'd encrust them with salt and pepper, and I'd use some butter, and I'd rub them with garlic. I didn't do any of that for this, and the steaks that I got were better with nothing on them, just what they gave me, than the steaks that I so meticulously tried to prepare.

So, enjoy the experience, and you can get $20 off your first box with free bacon. Did you hear me? Free bacon. These words should be in a large neon flashing everywhere. ButcherBox gives you free bacon and $20 off your first box when you go to butcherbox.com slash ricochet and enter the promo code ricochet at checkout. That's butcherbox.com slash ricochet. Promo code ricochet for $20 off your first order and free bacon.

Our thanks to ButcherBox, by the way, for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Now we welcome to the podcast Nicholas Eberstadt. He holds the Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. And he's also a senior advisor to the National Bureau of Asian Research and a founding member of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. We're reading about President Trump asking to consider a drawdown of military forces on the South Korean peninsula. Is this just what the NORCs want? I don't know how seriously that concept is being entertained by anybody in the U.S. government. But, of course, the North Korean side would be delighted by that

because the North Korean side, since at least the surprise attack in 1950 that started the Korean War, has been trying to consummate an unconditional absorption of the entire Korean Peninsula. And getting rid of an American security guarantee for the Republic of Korea would be a giant step. It wouldn't be the whole job, but it would put the North Korean regime a whole lot closer to their vision than they are today. Nick, Peter Robinson here. I've got a slew of questions for you and I have been very much appreciating your work on all of this. In particular, your long articles in commentary and then – where was it?

The Washington Post was your most recent, I believe. So here's the question. We see the president of South Korea all smiles. There's a handshake that grabs Kim Jong-un's hand and both of his hands. It stops a little short of an embrace, but it's warmth when the two leaders meet and Kim Jong-un crosses the line of demarcation into the South. Now, explain the psychology of that. South Korea is more populous, immensely richer, understands perfectly well that North Korea is starving its own people in pursuit of massive military force, including nuclear weapons. And yet, and they also know perfectly well they can read nick aberstad and you detailed you have detailed the ways in which the north has over and over and over again during

the years promised some form of detente promised concessions and then delivered nothing why aren't the south koreans themselves at least as determined to make sure that this time things are different, as is Donald Trump. What's the psychology? Well, there's a civil war that's going on not only in the peninsula as a whole, but also within South Korean society. The civil war in the peninsula is obvious, North versus South. There's only a ceasefire, never been a peace. The Civil War in the South is an ideological one, to oversimplify, between conservatives and progressives. And many people in the progressive camp are enamored with this sunshine ideology, which sees the possibility of not just a coexistence, but a peaceful path towards unification of the two Koreas.

It's a sort of a secular religion. And when you start talking about faith, you don't need empirical proof anymore. If you're a believer, you're a believer no matter what you've seen before. And by the way, not everybody in South Korea is a believer. The country is deeply polarized, deeply divided, and there are many South Koreans who are just as skeptical about this notion as there are who are following it. And so is it fair to suppose that what we see in South Korea now is something of the same psychology that we saw during the final years of the Cold War

in the United Kingdom and in West Germany, and for that matter in this country in the anti-nuke movement, the people who were marching in Hyde Park and marching in West Berlin. And for that matter, I believe to this day, the largest public gathering in Central Park in New York was a piece, freeze the nukes movement during the 1980s. That is to say, there's some psychology that insists on dealing with the enemy, even with the enemy gives no indication that it is anything other than powerful. Well, I think you can see a certain sort of family resemblance, let's say, between certain things we see in South Korea today and what we saw in parts of the West during the Cold War era. I mean, if you want to be a little cruel, call it the psychopathology

of appeasement or something like that. If you want to be a little more neutral about it, you'd say it's a little bit like what Frank Fukuyama was talking about with the end of history when you seem to be in a quote heroic confrontation which is endless with an implacable enemy sometimes you see solutions where none actually exist or you look for some or where none actually exist you can see maybe how some people want to take a holiday from history. Right, right. All right. So, Nick, explain also, if you would, as we think through President Trump's coming summit, as far as I keep waiting for this summit to get put on hold or for the president to start indicating that it might not. He seems totally committed to it.

So the only questions now are time and place. So it looks as though this thing is going to happen. What leverage do we have over North Korea, really? Militarily, almost none. Is that accurate? Because no matter the moment we began a military action against the North, they could unleash a devastating volley of conventional rockets on Seoul that would kill hundreds of thousands of people before anything else happened? Isn't that the case? Or do we actually have military leverage of some kind? Well, sure.

We've got a lot of military leverage, but it would have to be used very, very, very carefully because if, let's say, if the president had compelling information that the North was about to launch a strike against the U.S. homeland, he'd have to take preemptive action. It would be a crime if he did not. The question of preventive measures is quite different, though, in part because we are in a defensive alliance with our South Korean allies. And if we were to unilaterally do something, start something without our allies' coordination and approval,

it would almost surely be the end of the U.S.-ROK alliance, and it might be a big problem for many other American alliances around the world. But our power capabilities are not what's in question. I think the particular exercise of them is what's in question. I think the particular exercise of them is what's in question. Let's put military in the parentheses for a moment. We have enormous economic pressure leverage that we have begun finally using against the DPRK, and coercive economic diplomacy almost always is weak or failing. But the North is a poster child for a sanctions campaign because it's so distorted as an economy and so dependent. And we have just begun to use some of the instruments we could use much further.

I made an argument in that commentary piece that you referenced earlier that we have a very good prospect for putting the North Korean defense economy into shock, into vapor lock, if we wish to persevere in this. How do we do that? What are the specific tools? We have international sanctions are in place right now, which if implemented broadly by other countries, could cripple the North Korean economy. And I think is beginning to find some effect. This isn't a matter of, oh, we have to depend on China. Independent of, we can leave China aside, and these can still have very big effects, even if we were all alone. I don't think that it is desirable for us to be all alone. A coalition is much better. But if we are all alone, as long as the world uses dollar-denominated transactions as a main means of exchange and trade and finance in the international economy.

The Treasury Department possesses extraordinary leverage through secondary financial sanctions against entities that are not North Korean but are violating our understanding of what the strictures are for trading with North Korea. We have not, for example, used any of our very powerful tools on any of China's major banks. Woe befall one of China's major banks that gets the letter from justice that an inquiry is beginning on whether they are compliant with these orders. We have much more leverage than we have even really seriously started to use yet. And so one more question on North Korea, if I may, Nick, because I know James wants to come back in and ask about Iran. Why haven't we started using this?

If we can actually disrupt their financial flows of money, and of course they need to import food, they need to of course, they need to import food. They need to import parts. They need to import scientists. And I don't know whether they're actually bringing some, but they have nothing on their land that they need either to keep their people, virtually nothing, either to keep their people alive or to pursue their nuclear program. If we can disrupt those flows of money, why haven't we already begun to do so?

We have begun to do so. We haven't done so as assiduously as we could. I suspect one of the reasons is because our tools are too powerful. We are perhaps hesitant about bringing inquiries against a major Chinese bank, perhaps because of the reverberations this would have in the Chinese economy and in the international equities and finance markets. But that would be an argument that the tool is strong, not weak. Got it. James? Let's go to Iran, which... I'm going to have to leave in one minute. I understand. Thoughts on the deal?

Is it dead? Is it alive? Will Europe keep it going? Where are we going to be a year from now when it comes to the Iranian deal? I'm not real good on Iran. I'm better on North Korea. I will – my value added in our conversation here might be I'm not at all sure that the intelligence community in the U.S. or internationally has followed the money and collaboration nexus between North Korea and Iran nearly as carefully as they ought to. One little thing just to mention, North Korea's currency was in out-of-control devaluation for 10 years, dropped by 5,000-fold in value

against the dollar between 2002 and 2012, and then all of a sudden stabilized. How did that happen? If you look at the timeline, you'll see that all of a sudden this remarkable stabilization of the North Korean currency occurred about six weeks after the Tehran-Pyongyang scientific cooperation agreement of September 2012. That gives us a little bit of food for thought, let's say. Yeah, pellets of cash. I think there are things we're missing. There are things we are missing. There are things that we can see that are right in front of us that perhaps the media has not

put together in the way that they might. Nick, thank you for joining us today. We hope to talk to you soon after the summit. We'll look forward to that. Thank you so much for inviting me. Bye-bye. See you in Washington. Take care. Shoot, I wish I'd had the opportunity. Well, then again, as he said, he wasn't an Iranian expert, and I'd like to get one on the show who can

tell me whether or not some of these theories going around the web are nuts, crazy, nuts and crazy, or intriguing, or as Art Bell might say, interesting. My favorite is this, that the only way the Mossad could get all of that information out of Iran was if they had the cooperation of the Iranian National Revolutionary Guard. That's the theory. The theory is that the Revolutionary Guard is tired of the mullahs and wants to get rid of the corrupt mullahs so they can run the show themselves. And that's why they helped to do it. That, I think, is nonsense. But you do.

Well, it's possible. I suppose anything is. You have a part of the world where alliances that we once thought were impossible now seem to be flowering before our very eyes. There's so much murkiness and so much Byzantine and Levantine intrigue that who knows? It is fascinating that they got what they got, and it's stunning to me. When this stuff was coming out, you were seeing websites, news sources on our side of the register going with it and talking about BB Speech. I was walking past CNN at the office and nothing. I was looking at all these news sources where regularly you will find the perfidy of the administration and the the horrors of the right regularly displayed and nothing nothing whatsoever about bb's speech

now i can see them putting it up just to knock it down but there was a real finger in the ear and then and i can't hear you attitude toward this because precious's uh legacy seemed to be sullied somewhat wouldn wouldn't you say? Hey, James, before, by the time this thing goes up, Bibi's speech will have taken place three or four or five days earlier. Just pause for a moment and remind our listeners what you're talking about when you refer to Bibi's speech. Well, he got up with charts and talked about what they'd gotten from the Iranian intelligence

dump, the fact that they were pursuing weapons, five weapons. I found that was interesting. Not 50 or 100, as we thought, but five nuclear weapons with the intent, of course, of, well, we know what they're going to do with them if they get them. And so it put the lie to the idea that they had a peaceful program and that everything had been sidelined with the deal and the money and the pallets of cash and the rest of it. Is that basically how you saw it as well? Yep, yep, yep.

And the timeline was such that they were lying to the administration, to the Obama administration throughout the negotiations concerning the deal and that they were keeping this stuff on the side so that the moment they could, they could reactivate this nuclear program. I, too, found it striking that they were aiming for a single-digit number of weapons. That makes it seem to me more realistic. They've been watching what happened in North Korea. You only need a few nuclear weapons to cause the rest of the world, and particularly the United States, to feel intense consternation. And five weapons they can probably afford. They're a much richer country than North Korea.

So Bibi and it was the other bit you mentioned the Mossad. He didn't go into details for obvious reasons, but Israeli intelligence acquired what he referred to as a ton, literally a ton of documents and cds that that uh included all of this information and i checked i read reports on this the trump administ trump officials i think the phrase was said that they seem to be authentic there was no poo-pooing of this from the trump administration at the same time there was no hard confirmation from the administration. They seem to be authentic. Okay, so that's Bibi's speech. The CDs are fascinating to hear.

Old technologies like that mentioned. You wonder if they smuggled them out as DVDs of the movie Argo. But they got them. Exactly. And the general impact on the conversation seems to be nil. My favorite defense was, well, of course the Iranians lied. That's why we had to deal and negotiate with them.

You know, that's somehow the act of coming into contact with the pure noble, nothing but good wishes for the world at Obama administration would put them on the straight and narrow, or at least set up some situation where they could be chastised in the future you lied to us that wasn't very nice again the whole underlying

precept that you negotiate with these guys and and and they're suddenly going to come to the table and want to be part of the community of nations and give up everything that they wanted struck me as as absurd in the beginning and the only point of doing it was to just simply say that we have exercised soft power and the world is a safer place and to be for i mean this is the same thing that worries me sometimes about the trump administration that with the dangling prize of perhaps a nobel peace prize or going down in history as having struck a deal that the president would regard that flattery as as more important than actually doing something that history will count as a success don't know

yep yep it scares me about both north korea and iran if you're donald trump and you've got robert mueller breathing down your neck and it looks as though the democrats are going to capture the house of representatives and very likely begin impeachment hearings, doesn't the idea of a deal start a deal in itself? Don't the merits begin to matter less and less as long as you can get a deal? I don't think Donald Trump is that kind of guy for his many faults, but it's worth spending. If you're feeling anxious, it's worth devoting an erg or two of that anxiety to that problem. It is.

I mean we're talking about two men, Obama and Trump, who themselves never had any particular existential dread about the effect of an Iranian bomb. We should worry because an EMP would set us back a century and the Iranian program could be capable of unleashing an electromagnetic pulse on a poorly hardened electrical system that would knock us out of the picture. That's something legitimate to worry about, but I don't think that Trump worried about that. I don't think Obama worried about that. So I would rather trust the people who themselves live under the sword, who are close to the guys who want to kill them, who have regular parades about the need to extirpate their satanic existence from the planet. The people who are living under that threat, I would tend to trust more than those on the other side of the globe who don't go to bed worrying about the sirens and the missiles, to be frank. We've got more to talk about about that.

Of course, it's going to be ongoing. But before we get to our next guest, who, by the way, you heard before, and this time you're going to hear with a clarity that makes the previous call sound, well, think of the difference between radio in the 1950s and Alexander Graham Bell saying, Watson, come here, I need you. But first, I have to tell you something. You know know on the internet, they're happy about telling you things with headlines like, boiling beets, you're doing it wrong. And it's always annoying because you look at those, you're doing it wrong headlines and think, first of all, I don't care. Second, who are you? Third, I'll do it the way I your teeth, it's entirely possible that you're doing it wrong. And I know that's annoying because everybody thinks, eh, they're teeth, put them down here, what do I need to know?

Well, you've got to brush for a certain amount of time, and you've got to change your brush on time as well. A lot of us forget to do that, and a lot of us don't brush enough. Well, that's why Quip is here. Most toothpaste, toothbrush brands, they focus on selling you these flashy gimmicks rather than the idea of better brushing, but not Quip. So what makes Quip so different? Well, for starters, Quip is an electric toothbrush that's just a fraction of the cost of those big bulky brushes, and it's packing just the right amount of vibrations to help clean your teeth. It's got a built-in timer so you can clean for the dentist-recommended two minutes with these little guiding pulses that remind you when it's time to switch sides it's cool it's just oh now i go to the top and

the bottom quips subscription plans this is another important thing they're for your health they're not just for convenience they deliver new brush heads on a dentist recommended schedule every three months for just five dollars and that includes free shipping worldwide equip also comes with this mount that suctions right under your mirror. I've got it, and it unsticks easily, as I do, to use it as a cover for hygienic travel whenever you want to take your teeth to the other side of the country, for example. And finally, everyone loves Quip. I do, but so does Oprah. It was on Oprah's own list.

It was named one of Time's Best Inventions, and it's the first subscription electric toothbrush accepted by the American Dental Association. And they tend to know their choppers, right? Quip is backed by a network of over 20,000 dentists and hygienists and hundreds of thousands of happy brushers who use Quip every day. So, Quip starts at just $25. And if you go to getquip.com slash ricochet right now, you'll get your first refill pack free with a Quip electric toothbrush. That's your first refill pack free at getquip.com slash ricochet.

That's spelled G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash ricochet. And our thanks to Quip for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Try their brushes. I have, I love them. They're great. And now we welcome back to the podcast, Selena Zito. She's the national political reporter for the Washington Examiner, and her new book, The Great Revolt, Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics, co-written with Brad Todd, comes out next month.

You can follow her on Twitter, at Selina Zito. Welcome back. The last time our phone conversation was destroyed by a solar flare, which made it hard to hear, but since then you've written a piece about the Keystone State and how they may hold the key to congressional control. Everybody assumes the blue wave. Is that what's going to happen?

Well, I mean, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, can I just say Pennsylvania is a hot mess? So currently in Pennsylvania, we have a lot of upheaval in that the state's Supreme Court has gotten into redistricting and changed all of the lines for the congressional districts. So currently, Republicans hold 13 seats and Democrats hold five. There have been a bunch of not only retirements, but resignations, mostly among Republicans. And so everything is redrawn to favor Democrats. We have two special elections that will be held using the old lines, only to have a month later general elections in the new lines. And so I think that for the moment, I don't know that Pennsylvania anymore can be a boilerplate

for understanding what's going on in this country because we're so uniquely turned into a sort of tossed salad in terms of, I mean, people don't even know where they're running. People don't even know who they're voting for. So, yeah, this just happened yesterday. So everything has just turned upside down in 24 hours. So I'm not sure what to make. This is Peter Robinson. Is there at least a kind of consensus?

First of all, correct me if I got it wrong. Republicans hold a majority over Democrats in congressional seats, in House seats in Pennsylvania today of 13 to 5. In the House seats. In the House seats. Is there anybody... Yeah, in the House seats. In the House seats. Is there anybody who doesn't think Republicans will lose at least one or two of those?

No, no. They were going to lose... Yeah, yeah, for sure. But we don't know what's going to happen now with all of this sort of instability. But I will tell you this, in that Pennsylvania is also feeling an uptick in its economic, sort of how people feel, you know, positive, negative. It's a positive right now.

And so I don't, you know, people tend to go to the voting booth based on what's going on in their pocketbook or within their community's pocketbook. So that is going to be a factor. And the economy is doing well in Pennsylvania. Manufacturing jobs are growing, and so are health care jobs, which is where a lot of our jobs come from in our state. The other thing is, in terms of a blue wave, I'm always skeptical of predicting a wave this far out. I think you know a wave, say, August or September. But right now, it's pure speculation. And Republicans and independent voters and conservative-leaning Democrats tend to not shift who they're voting for until October. Right, right.

So I'm not saying it's not going to happen. It very well could happen. Okay, so let's just establish this point that Selena is skeptical of a wave because, as you know, it is pretty close to conventional Washington at this stage that you've got just 11 House Democrats who are retiring or have already resigned compared with at least 27 Republicans. I'm reading statistics that are a couple weeks old.

And what you add all of this up and you've got only 19 open house seats being vacated by Democrats and 41 being vacated by Republicans, which means they have 22 more open seats to defend than the Democrats. There are only 23 seats that need to change hands for Democrats to take control. And by historical norms, presidents in their first out-year elections lose badly in the House. Ronald Reagan, the sainted Ronald Reagan, lost, as I recall, 27 seats in 1982. So in Washington, there is a pretty firmly crystallized consensus view that the game is up for the Republicans in the House. And Selena says, not so fast? Yeah, I'm just, I mean, I'm a skeptic. And I spend a lot of time out on the road and not in Washington.

Yes. So in 2006 and 2010, I understood the way it was happening by July and August. And I knew exactly every seat where it was going to happen. I'm not at that point yet. I want to see who wins primary races in the Democratic primary contest season. I want to see who wins Republican primaries in some of these open seats. And I want to see who wins Republican primaries in some of these open seats. And I want to see the mood of the electorate.

And I haven't seen conclusive evidence to tell me either way that, oh, this is definitely going to happen. Yes, Republicans are going to lose seats, but that doesn't mean they're going to lose all the seats.

Selena, James Lilacs wants to come in with some questions now, but I would like to thank you and state for the record that when we talk to Selena, we are not talking to a pundit. We are talking to a reporter. God bless you. James? I'm here in Dallas covering the new NRA convention. Well, before I get to my question, and maybe my question is moot, because what are you seeing at the NRA convention? We're told, of course, that this is the hotbed of all that is evil and wrong with America. Here's these people who are showing up to support the wrong constitutional amendment, frankly.

We're tired of the first, and we're tired of the second. What's the mood there? Do they feel beleaguered? Do they feel, how would you describe the convention so far? I would describe the convention as happy and aspirational. And I don't get the sense that anybody here feels as though they're in the wrong place at the right time. You know, and I think the line to get in was like a mile long.

It took me that long to, and people here are joyful. It's like a tailgate party, right? You know, people that are proponents of the First and Second Amendment or, you know, that it is something that they strongly support tend to be the happiest people that you find on the face of the earth because they know that these are very important.

All of our freedoms are important. But these are some of the most that make us uniquely American. Do they care exactly how they're portrayed by the press to the rest of the country? Or are they just secure in the knowledge of what they are and are used to being misunderstood and misrepresented? Incredibly secure. And I think 2016 proved to everyone on every side that people are tired of how they are portrayed by people who don't come from where they, they live and exist and work and pray and,

and live out their life. You know, their, their idea is, is the better person to comment on who we are and the people among us and live with us. And they're the ones that should be done most reflective. Our newspaper, the one for which I work,

a reporter recently did a story on a biracial liberal gun advocate. And the general idea that we're supposed to have is, oh my gosh, look, it's a unicorn pegasus zebra. But it's only the restricted narrative that makes the gun lovers, these bubba's from the south, spit

and chaw into a bucket. It's actually a much more diverse crowd than you would imagine. Yeah, I live in much Pennsylvania. There's tons of multicolored people that are very supportive of segmented rights.

It's not something that Republicans or conservatives are staunchly supportive of. It's people of all different colors, all different backgrounds. Whether they have lived in this country for two weeks or their family has lived on this soil for 200 years. It is an incredible support of liberty that bonds people together over politics.

Selena, Peter wants to jump in with a question about Texas, because we all know that Peter is eventually going to end up in Texas. If I'm lucky. He's going to leave California, and weas he's if i'm lucky he he's going to leave california and we'll find him with boots having good barbecue somewhere but before we get to him back to your book the great revolt one of the things that you talk about in this realignment is that you know people think that every trump voter was angry and male and rural and racist and the rest of it but as you found it's a true it it's like the NRA, is quite the diverse group.

One of the things that you note is that they have the desire to put pragmatism before ideology. And while we all kind of like that because we want stuff to work, what I fear is that if that's the model going forward, then people, in order to get something done, elect a lot of people who are really, however, very ideological. And as the Democrats move left, once people say, we want these guys, the Democrats can get something done.

They're pragmatists. But once they get in, we have a festival of Bernie Sanderism that makes FDR look like the waning days of the Coolidge administration. Isn't it really, isn't ideology something that we should be prizing because the ideology tells you how the pragmatists are eventually going to act? Yeah, sometimes. Look, in this new populist coalition, which I really urge people to read the book, not because I wrote it, but because I went in there and looked at the different archetypes that make up this coalition. And Trump was not the cause of it. He was the result of it. And you're going to see other surprising results in all aspects of life that are impacted by this populist movement. And populism isn't ideological per se, but it is against all things big.

And so that's what people misunderstood when they get to Washington, is that they have to be very ideological in governing. And that's not always the most pragmatic way to represent the districts that you live in. And so that's when we get this sort of massive confusion in who we send to Washington and the message that the person we send understands is why they were sent there. Does that make sense? It makes a lot of sense. Selina, it's Peter again, and you did such a good job putting my mind at rest when I asked about a democratic wave shaping up to overwhelm the House of Representatives, and you said, now calm down. Listen to those of us who are out here on the ground looking things

over way too early to panic. Let me ask you one related question, and that is about my beloved Lone Star State. I live in the Golden State, but I aspire to an eighth of an acre and a double wide trailer someday in the Lone Star State. Ted Cruz is leading Beto O'Rourke. Ted Cruz, deeply conservative. Beto O'Rourke, conventional liberal. Beto O'Rourke, Ted Cruz, deeply conservative. Beto O'Rourke, conventional liberal. Beto O'Rourke, the Democratic nominee for the Senate, is not running as a conservative Democrat. He's not trying to put a Texas spin on the National Democratic Party. He's running as a liberal Democrat. And Ted Cruz is only three points ahead of Beto O'Rourke.

Should we be worried? Yeah, well, Evan Bayh was, I don't know, ahead by 10 points this time in 2016. So in Indiana, and he was running as a moderate Democrat. I just, look, I'm just skeptical of polls right now. The energy is behind Democrats, but I'm, and that's natural. That's what happens after a party, one party is in power. But I, you know, this is in Tennessee where they're saying.

We forget her name now. Terrible is losing. She's in Congress right now. I'm just I'm just incredibly skeptical of those polls at the moment. They might reflect the moment, but I doubt that on November

4th of this year that they're going to reflect the results. Okay, good. Thank you. Well, we'll find out how many people go to the booth and say, I really want the country paralyzed by indecision gridlock and impeachment that's the way to prosperity

we'll see how that works hey Selena thank you so much for joining us again we'll talk to you again and good luck with the book and my regards to the America that everybody else seems to forget until it's time to go out and do one of those anthropological pieces about the peculiar people who live between the coasts.

Come up to Minneapolis sometime, and I'll show you around. Oh, I love Minneapolis. Minneapolis, I will be up there. I'm sure this year covering your Governor's race. I think it's going to be incredibly exciting. Fantastic. I'll show you all the ropes. I'll take you to the Capitol and show you the hidden closets where all the smoke-filled deals are.

Actually, no one smoked here since 77, so that's not the case. All right. Have fun at the convention. We'll talk to you later. Selena, have fun. Take care. Thank you. Okay.

Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye. You know, we did just recently redo our state Capitol, and it is gorgeous. It's absolutely gorgeous. Oh, it's a beautiful building. I have to say, it's one of the most beautiful state capitals I have ever seen.

Designed by Cass Gilbert. Oh, I didn't know that. There have been the usual traumas and arguments, though, about what to do with some of the Civil War stuff. Because it's a reminder of previous history, and

all previous history has to be extirpated. I'm just amazed, really, that when they renovate these capitals these days, that the left doesn't demand that somebody come with cans of white paint. Well, no, that would be wrong. With cans of neutral paint and just demand that every single fresco be painted over because it's old history and anything old is flawed and injurious and hurtful, don't you know? History itself, don't you get that feeling? If I may, James, I've been to the Minneapolis State Capitol and I spent time in the rotunda going from exhibit to exhibit to exhibit. And there's an exhibit that is particularly moving. There are artifacts, including, as I recall, a battle flag from the regiment, the Minnesota Regiment, that found itself in the critical point on Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg and it is not too much to say it really is not too much to say that Minnesota farm boys won the critical battle of the civil war and I hope they haven't been fool enough to try to cover

that up or or or make it politically correct I I just that would be tragic it's a very it's very moving it's very moving when the in the middle moving. In the second half of the 19th century, when those boys, and they were boys, went off to fight, they were just that. They were farm boys who were, what, a decade or a decade and a half removed from actually breaking up the sod up there in Minnesota. It's a very moving story. It is, and you wonder exactly what they had to do with it. I mean, weren't they very far removed from this? But then you read the newspapers today, minnesota it's a very moving story it is and you wonder exactly what they had to do with it i mean weren't they very far removed from this but then you read the newspapers today and you you discover that no the passions road were high here as well on the issues there was a uh a female

proto-suffragette woman who came by in the 1850s early 1860s who started in a newspaper up in saint cloud and chose as chose as the object of her ire a political boss who ran the city of St. Cloud. He had come from elsewhere and he had brought slaves. And this was an insult to the people of Minnesota who believed otherwise. And she wrote editorials castigating him. And eventually he hired a mob of what he called the League of Virtuous Gentlemen, I think they called it, broke into her office, took the presses, threw them in the river. And so the next day she assembles everybody in the town meeting place and just lays into the guy.

And you look at this and you say, wow, so something that was – the great sin of the South was being played out in a small meeting house in Minnesota. And then you think – but it's never that clear. It's never that simple. um or the indigenous americans she became a staunch screechy anti-indian voice who requested the extirpation of every one of them after some massacre i mean history is complex history is complicated people are good and people are bad and it's never there are no shining there are few shining exemplars that we can point to um what i hate about that of course to bring it back to what we were talking about before, is to say that because some tall people had a few toes of clay, that means that those individuals whose clay extends up past their kneecap are to be put in the same league. And I don't think that's the case.

But, you know, nuance, detail. It's all a continuum, as they say. Hey, before we get on to our next subject, this is the point where Rob Long, if he were here, would be dropping these leaden hints about what I was going to talk to you about next. And sorry, Rob's not here. You're going to have to come to D.C. to see him actually spoil a segue in person. It'll be a wonderful thing to see him actually spoil a Segway in person. It'll be a wonderful thing to see. But if it's Segway we're talking, it's a spot that's coming, and you know it's got to be about Casper, right?

Because we love to talk to you about Casper. It's the sleep brand that makes expertly designed products to help you get your best rest one night at a time. The experts at Casper, well, they work tirelessly to make a quality sleep surface that cradles your natural geometry in all the right places. In fact, the reason that they can work tirelessly is because they sleep so well in the mattresses they design. They know that if you spend one-third of your life sleeping, you had

better be comfortable, and that's what they've accomplished. Now, the original Casper mattress combines multiple supportive memory foams for a quality sleep surface with just the right amounts of sink and bounce. Its breathable design helps your sleeps cool, regulates your body temperature throughout the night. But now Casper offers two other mattresses, the Wave and the Essential. The Wave features a patent-pending premium support system to mirror the natural shape

of your body. And the Essential has a streamlined design at a price that will not keep you up at night. So, all Casper products, well, they're designed, and they're developed, and they're assembled in the United States of America. The prices. So all Casper products, well, they're designed and they're developed and they're assembled in the United States of America. The prices are affordable because Casper cuts out the middleman and sells directly to you. Every Casper mattress you get will be delivered right to your door in this small, amazing

box that makes you think, how do they get it in there? To tell you the truth, I don't know. Plus, there's free shipping and hassle-free returns in the U.S. and Canada. Plus, you can be certain of your purchase with Casper's 100-night risk-free sleep on a trial. So I've been sleeping on a Casper. What has it been, Peter? Two or three years since we've done this? A couple of years.

A couple of years. A couple of years. And there's just no other bed that I would even consider. Ever since Casper came along, you've seen all these other mattress companies come on the Internet and said, No, us, us. I don't care. There's absolutely no way you can give me a better night's sleep than the one that I have in my Casper. So here's a special offer for you, the listener of the Ricochet podcast.

$50 off select mattresses by visiting casper.com slash ricochet and using that coupon code ricochet when you check out. That's casper.com slash ricochet. Promo code ricochet for $50 off select mattresses. Terms and conditions, of course, apply. And our thanks to Casper for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. You know, of the other things that we could end up by talking about, they all fall into the same category of the stormy and the rooty thing, which is, yeah, yeah, yeah, important, done to death, seen the Twitter war, move it along. I mean, are we done past lamenting the tone of the washington white house correspondence dinner debacle yet done done done i saw that i didn't think it was particularly

funny and i wouldn't mind if somebody was actually out there and gave a good comedy routine and was funny and it was smart but i didn't think it was either one what astonished me and got so little attention was the horrible abortion joke that she made. I mean, it was appalling. More than anything else that she said, which you can just chalk off the DC bubble, hearty heart, back-clapping nonsense, that was an awful, awful, horrible thing to say. And it seems to be swept under the carpet a little bit. The fact that you can get up in front of that group and tell a joke like – it's like telling a lynching joke and expecting that you're going to get people applauding you. That is a very good analogy.

Actually, that's the analogy. That is the analogy. Exactly, James. That's exactly right. And it tells you everything that you need to know about those people. I mean I have been to D.C. dinners when I worked there as a journalist myself, and lordy knows the self-congratulatory nerd prom aren't we cool inner circle is just it makes my skin it gives me the hebes and or the gbs so maybe next year they won't do the same kind of thing maybe they'll figure out that having a comedian get up there and uh make them all conform to her

particular worldview ain't what is good for their business. Because they came across as... Horrible. I mean, you want to talk about people who are sort of strenuously working to earn the contempt of people who are not part of that little group that gives us the news.

That's how you do it. The other big story of course kanye west has been red pill james james listen if rob were here he would laugh me to scorn and you may feel the same impulse but i have to ask who is kanye west who is this person i've never heard of him until the last week a rapper producer person in the music business quite influential sold an awful lot um started up a music service i don't know if it's doing very well i don't think so if i'm thinking of title um basically mogul guy who makes sort of cryptic statements on twitter indicate his brilliance and the rest of it and uh it's one of those people who you're not sure

whether or not he can sing or play a musical instrument, but nevertheless, it's assembled a career in music that is larger than 99% of the rest of the folk. And he's African-American. Yep. And he's married to a Kardashian, which makes it even better. Okay. So just the sort of pop culture, let's say, is directly in the middle of my blind spot. But the strong presumption being he's african-american

he's in pop culture he's a rapper the strong presumption is he's a democrat through and through correct right right um but uh you did now apparently since he has uh said some things that are nominally not liberal uh these all over the i mean not exactly a guy that i would say you're going to find reading an ayn rand or a or a hayek book and and weighing the merits of the arguments essentially you've got a guy who feels iconoclastic who probably does not want to be told that he has to do this and do that and uh also likes the celebrity aspect of Donald Trump and probably regards Trump's celebrity status as putting him in the same class. So you attack Trump, you attack people like me.

I mean, I don't know. I think it's fool's error to try to figure out the psychology of Kanye West. But now some radio stations are saying they're not going to play his stuff anymore because he's insufficiently worshipful. Oh, he also quoted Thomas Sowell. That was the other thing.

That really did make my day. I got to tell you. I mean, if this guy can surface to an audience, Tom Sowell quotes in a way that nobody else possibly could. I mean, God love uncommon knowledge, Peter. But you could broadcast that thing in times square 24 7 5 and you're not going to get the reach that you get when tom so with when kanye west puts out the top exactly exactly by the way by the way we do have the a new episode went up just yesterday of tom soul oh it's it's on ricochet it's on ricochet well this will be back to kanye west

okay well go ahead well here's the thing kanye West, Tom Sowell, Jonah Goldberg, Peter Robinson, Dennis Prager, all of these strange alt-right people are coming together in ways that the far right, which includes, of course, you, Saul, Jonah Goldberg, Ben Shapiro, God's sakes. Oh, all of these people, they're going to things like PragerU. And the beauty of this Vanity Fair story was that the author said, my sources tell me that the PragerU videos. I know, I know. My sources tell me. Unbelievable.

Unbelievable. Oh. I mean, on deep background, I can just – I mean, it's like meeting Leonard Garman in a Washington parking ramp somewhere. Follow the clicks. Follow the clicks. It's just a hilarious source. She couldn't be arsed to actually go to YouTube and click on this and watch one of these things. But I think what they want to believe is there's just some subterranean dark web where conservatives

get together and say things like, the power of the state actually has been growing since the end of the coolers. All these obvious things that we take for truths to them are absolute madness now splinter which is this gawker offshoot that's that's covering politics and i have no idea why they're doing it seems to be staffed entirely by the usual suspects of 22 year olds in washington dc writing blog entries for clicks and five dollars but one of them was talking about how the new uh altright sources are – the reason that Facebook is going to kick them out of this trusted news algorithm is because they deserve it, because they peddle BS like Benghazi and Hillary's emails, which brand yourself as a lunatic disconnected from reality and to show that you probably forward around your grandmother's emails in which she shows an eagle scowling as Roy Moore

cries and asks for money. To them, anything that is less statist than they are is not just far right. It's it's alt right. Jordan Peterson to them is alt right. They have no bill. So here's the thing. We can look at the left and say there's a difference between Bernie Sanders and there's a difference between some of the pragmatic guys who don't want to socialize everything and don't want universal basic income.

We can see that is are they generally incapable of doing so on the right, or is it just too self-satisfying to see all of us as beyond the pale? Oh, I think for sure the latter. For sure the latter. This is one of Tom Sowell's great insights, which Kanye West tweeted, which I was reminded of when I recorded the latest episode of Uncommon Knowledge, that Tom Sowell points out again and again and again and again that what they say on the left and what they do on the left, the taxes they impose, the programs they enact, it's not about actual reality. The game here is to make the liberal conscience assuaged it's to make themselves

feel superior yeah the warm bath of superiority that's what it's really about and james if that isn't a perfect segue for you to talk one more time about what's happening in washington on may 10th and 11th i don't know what is. this show because then your reviews allow new listeners to discover us. It wasn't over then. No, it wasn't. Why? It's only over when I say the following words, but I can't say those words because first I have to tell you, DC, May 10th, May 11th, dinner, podcasts from sunup to sundown, see all your favorite podcasting people, meet an extraordinary amount of guests that we're going to have talking lots, and it'll be fun. it'll show you if you're unfamiliar with these things how much fun actually a dc cocktail party can be now you're asking yourself how do i behave at a dc cocktail party it's very easy what you do is come prepared to abandon all of your principles the moment that

you are given access and flattery so you'll stand there holding firm your ideas, and then somebody playing Catherine Graham will just swan over and say, so glad to have you. You're looking marvelous. And then at that point, you will abandon everything that you believe in order to be invited to these parties again because everyone is so witty and sparkling. That's how it works. So the opportunities for sort of self-denial and really corruption like this are few and far between. And we're charging you money for it.

That's even better. So great dinner, great cocktail party. Meet your friends. See some wonderful podcasts. May 10th and 11th. A few tickets left. You've got to be a part of Ricochet to do it. But I hope to see every one of you there.

And you can come up and you can say, James, you're wrong about this. And you're wrong about that. And what happened to this? And I will nod politely and stare at my drink and find a way to talk to somebody who's more flattering, so keep that in mind. We'll see you there, right, Peter? Definitely. Absolutely, definitely. See you there, James. And we'll see everybody in the comments at WickedShade 3.0 next week. Next week. Now is it over?

Now it's over. Now it's over. Now it's over. Sing, Michael, sing. On the Roots of the 19th. On the Roots of the 19th. How you get so rude and reckless Don't you be so crude and feckless You've been drinking boo for breakfast Rude, it's gone fell Oh no We replied I know that my life makes you nervous

But I tell you I can't live in service Like a doctor born for a purpose Rude, it's gone fell Okay I went to the market to realize That's not what I need I just don't have But they're good for me

Press me to the heart Rudy Garfield First you must cure your temper Then find a job in a paper Then you need someone for a saviour Rude, it can't fail Now he's so rude and reckless If he's been looking cool and feckless

Chicken brew for breakfast Rude, it can't fail Ricochet. Join the conversation.