The Ricochet Podcast - Question Time: Summer Edition

Episode Date: August 4, 2016

A few times a year, we banish the guests and open the floor you, our cherished members. And you didn’t let us down — dozens of great questions were submitted. Thanks for participating. We’ll do this again after the election. P.S. If you’re not a member, you’re really missing out. Do the right thing for yourself, your country, and for us and JOIN TODAY. Music from this week’s podcast: What Have I... Source

I'm ready. Three, two, one. It's the Ricochet Podcast. Sorry, not enough coffee this morning. Here we go. Three, two, one. Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. North and South American, all the ships at sea. Let's go to press. Hello. You would think that we ought to be focusing on Hillary Clinton, on all of her deficiencies. She is such a weak candidate that one would think we'd be on offense against Hillary Clinton. And it is distressing that that's not what we're talking about. I think the media is among the most dishonest groups of people I've ever met.

One of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you don't use a politician's filter. However, that is not without its downsides. What Boehner is angry with is the American people holding him accountable. If I become president, oh, do they have problems. They're going to have such problems. I don't know why that's funny. Welcome to the Ricochet podcast. This week, our special guest is, well, it's you. We take questions, so stay tuned. It's going to be a great podcast.

It's the Ricochet Podcast number 314, and this one is question time, where we stand on the dock and submit ourselves to the merciless peppering of questions from the audience. Just kidding. We're going to pick the ones that reflect the best on us. But we wouldn't be here without our proud sponsors, and we're happy to tell you who they are. First of all, you've got ZipRecruiter. That's right. You can find a candidate in any city, industry, nationwide, period. Just post once and watch all the qualified candidates roll into ZipRecruiter's easy-to-use interface. And we're brought to you by Casper Mattress.

That's the sound of a happy, relaxed man who slept on one last night, and you can try one for 100 nights risk-free in your own home. If you don't love it, they'll pick it up and refund you every single penny. Go to casper.com slash ricochet and use the coupon code ricochet. We'll learn more about that later. And we're brought to you by Harry's Shave. As I rub my hand over my smooth face, I can tell you that I got a great shave at an even greater price, and so can you.

Go to Harry's.com and enter the coupon code Ricochet. And speaking of this Ricochet thing, might there be an apparatus connected to that? And might there be a founder here who is going to come out and once again be the equivalent of the guy standing by the interchange off-ramp with a battered cardboard sign saying, we need 1,500 members. Right. That guy would not be lying to you. Yeah, there's a guy attached to the apparatus and there's a guy attached to that apparatus that is attached to you. There's a dog attached to that apparatus. If you are a member of ricochet and you're listening

to this podcast we thank you if you are not a member we have only this to say we need 1500 members and we need them kind of soon we had a great week last week but we are not even at 10 percent of our goal so you can do the math if you'd like uh and we need to be there if you are wondering oh you know i was gonna i don't think i'm going to – yeah, I'll do it soon. One member makes it. So we do need you. You are listening and you – we have many, many, many, many, many, many more listeners to the Rick Shea podcast than we have members. We need the members to sustain the whole business.

It's the fastest growing, most civil conversation on the web. And you'd be striking a blow for civility to join. And you'd be striking a blow for civility to join. And you'd be striking a blow for good audio if you join. So we need you to do that. Please do that today. Also, it's a technologically sophisticated site now compared to its previous iteration. True, true. There's all kinds of gigas that you can either – you don't have to use them.

But if you do, you'll find groups. You'll find friending people. You'll find tagging. You'll find a little list of notifications that tells you when you've been mentioned. You don't have to use it. But if you do, it's a very – what's the word that the techies like? Robust. It's robust.

It's robust. It's robust. It's like Facebook without the annoying algorithms that strain out what you really want to hear. Well, it's also Facebook without like just suddenly dripping into fundamental questions between people who fundamentally disagree, you know, Bernie versus whatever. It's like it's the center right. So you're kind of in the right territory and everything is very civil and there's no screaming and flaming and trolling.

But trust me, there's no epistemic closure either. Oh, no. There's none of that. And you get a free month. So there's absolutely no risk to you. And, you know, we actually have a great post. One of the members wrote called Why I Left Ricochet and then came back. And if you're wondering about that, we'll put a link to that in the show notes.

This is where you cue the Pacino gif from Godfather 3. Speaking of godfathers, of which there are two, Rob being one, Peter is the other. I heard his genial chuckle. Welcome in, Peter. Welcome, godfather. Gentlemen, I have never seen any of you. By the other. I heard his genial chuckle. Welcome in, Peter. Welcome, Godfather. Gentlemen, I have never seen any of you. By the way, can I tell – not the Godfather, but closely related. I find myself more and more as this campaign season progresses reaching for the Tony Soprano philosophy of life, which goes in total like this.

What are you going to do? That's it. Well, that is a, that, that is, are you with Trump? Are you with Clinton?

How's the, I get the, I just find myself, I don't say it quite this way, but I find myself thinking, what are you going to do? But is that a challenge or an expression of hopelessness in a, in a,

in a bleakly existential world? OK, but you're also talking about a guy who took somebody and tied him to a chair in a hut somewhere and kicked him to death. So that's what he's going to do. That's what he did. That's what he does. He did attempt to shape reality, didn't he? Yes, that's right. That's right.

Now and then he did attempt to be the master of his own world. But the Soprano thing when it started, of course, was the lament of the American male who said, as Tony did, that he feels that he came in at the end of something really good, which is a lot of people feel. That's why, of course, Ricochet is there because it's the beginning of something great. But I'm going to ask you, when it comes to the end and maybe something that wasn't all that hot or just got bad and curdled, I've never seen press coverage like I've seen this week pronouncing a candidate not only dead but due to drop out. This was the most interesting, bizarre frenzy that I'd seen in a long time and it didn't seem to me

to reflect anything close to reality. I mean Trump had a bad week for a couple of gaffes and lines. What about your gaffes? But the idea that somehow it's all exploding inside and he's going – and the GOP is maneuvering to push him out. What do you guys think about this? I couldn't agree with you more. I have never seen anything like it. I'm still sort of reeling and I haven't had the courage. It's like Tony Soprano in some basic way.

I'm a big chicken. It's still fairly early here in California, although Rob being Rob, I'm sure he's on his third cup of coffee. He's read all the newspapers, written two scripts. I haven't had the guts to look at the news today. Yesterday, it reached the level of surreal, including right here on our own beloved ricochet, where Larry Kudlow, who's right in the middle of the Trump campaign, recorded a podcast with former Governor Tim Pawlenty, who's close to the campaign. And they went on for a whole podcast about, frankly, how the whole thing, the wheels are coming off Donald Trump. It was amazing. I just begin.

Here's where it began. And it went on from there. If you haven't listened to this podcast yet, it's still less than 24 hours old. Give a listen to it. Go to the site. Join up. Give a listen to it. Go to the site. Join up. Give a listen to the podcast. But Larry Kudlow, who's advising the campaign, I think that's formally his relationship advisor. He's right in the thick of it. He's right in the middle of it.

He knows them all. And he began the podcast by saying, I don't think Paul Manafort is the right guy to be running this campaign. Wow. That's for somebody who's in the middle of a campaign to say that in public about the guy running the campaign and it went on from there. I've never seen anything like it. You've never seen anything like a campaign infighting or this kind of bizarre freefall?

This kind of bizarre freefall, excuse me, campaigns, if you're on the inside of a campaign, you see that all the time. But this is taking place in public and it is just astounding to me yeah what's okay what's strange about it of course is that all it does is reveal what we kind of already knew or what we should have already known or what many of us already knew or let's just say i knew which is that it's extremely uphill for this guy for a whole bunch of reasons. And his temperament does him no service. He's a terrible campaigner and everybody thinks he's a great one.

If you win a third of the Republican diehard primary electorate, you still have to win 65 million people on Tuesday. That is a hard thing to do. And a lot of the Trump voters thought that some magic fairy dust was going to descend on him and he was going to somehow win over the remaining 50 million he needs by being more of himself, which turned off the 50 million. To solidify the first 14, you would lose the next 50. The math is very, very difficult. It's very difficult all over the map. So when she got a gigantic bump after that convention and it started to solidify and if you go – everybody – all the Trump supporters were just crowing about Nate Silver, Nate Silver, Nate Silver. Every single way he looks, he does his analysis and she wins by about a good solid 10 percentage points. And so all it really did was – well, old Warren Buffett line, which is that when the tide goes out, you realize who's been swimming naked.

And the tide is out and you're looking at – you're trying to look at what this candidate's fundamentals are and they're not great. And he seems to be unable, unable to speak directly to the American people at large, the general public at large, the general electorate at large. No, you'll finish your point. Instead, he insists on re-litigating the primary. He insists on cavilling and nitpicking and trying to draw a little distinction. All the things that he did to win the primary, which was like a constant barrage of language to the press, is exactly how you lose the general and if he doesn't understand, his team doesn't understand that winning the primary general are two fundamentally different things that we are in for a very cold November. We're going to go down and he's going to take the Senate and the House with him. And now I personally think that's probably necessary at this point. But it's it's slow motion car wreck to watch because it's – I don't think this is – I have a very different theory or fundamental understanding of the campaign from Rob's but it still gets me to roughly the same conclusion. is that Trump's bump was responding to something real. And even now, all we're in, this is Wednesday after Hillary Clinton's convention last week, all we've seen is a Hillary Clinton bump, a sort of natural bump back from her convention.

My fundamental theory of the campaign is still this, that the country wants change. It is eager to vote against Hillary Clinton. And all Donald Trump has to do to place himself right back in contention and quite likely win this thing, all he needs to do to place himself back in contention is stop being a jerk. And if he accomplishes that, he'll be in contention. All he has to do to win this thing – I still do believe this is fundamentally the shape, the underlying dynamic of the campaign. The country wants change to win.

All he has to do is appear plausible. He has to demonstrate a certain stability of personality and just a fundamental goodness of heart. He loves the country and wishes his countrymen well. That ain't him. But even at that, it isn't happening. He wishes his countrymen well in the abstract perhaps. Simple as it is, easy as it is. Easy as it would be to do.

Yes, even at that, he's not doing it. Even at that, he's not. So I guess this is the end of Ricochet, ladies and gentlemen. You've heard the final ten minutes of the last podcast. Goodbye, everyone. Rob, save us. James? No, look.

I mean I'm a fatalist, right? But I think it's really simple. We're going to lose. James has to lighten this show up and it's getting harder and harder. Ladies and gentlemen, what Rob and I are saying we really believe. But at this point, we're also just devising a technical test for James to see if he can pull this show out of the nosedive. Go ahead. He can't.

I can't. No, what I was going to say was that he loves the country in the abstract, I think. When it comes to loving the individual citizens, it depends whether or not they were insufficiently devotional the previous. I mean, what we've seen, we all know that sometimes the show of party unity, the coming out and endorsing somebody is political theater, that they may personally hate each other. They may still be nursing grievances from way back in the day when somebody didn't vote for that or somebody said this in the cloakroom. It doesn't matter. You have to put together a certain show and people are saying perhaps, oh, this is great. Finally, the political kabuki has been broken and shattered and now we've got a guy who's honestly saying,

hey, why should I endorse this person? They didn't endorse me, which I can see that point. But you can also understand why when unity is supposedly something that our side has got to demonstrate that you just get the idea of a guy who's in it for himself and whose ego and the reactions of his ego to others is the paramount driving motive, which is why I think Rob's right. There's no pivot. There's no guy who's going to rise phoenix-like from the ashes and spittle of the previous couple of months. I mean people are saying that there should have been in the last couple of weeks just a never-ending series of commercials. I think it was the Wall Street Journal, one of the columnists,

laid out what they should be. You know, Trump behind the desk making deals, Trump out in the factory floor shaking hands, projecting this image of the guy involved. He's out there. He's a man of the people. He loves his family, et cetera. The usual theater that you get in a presidential campaign.

We haven't had any of that. And it's because I think they think that just TV is dead and that you can win on Twitter, that you can win by getting a lot of media by just saying the things that you're saying. Now, to be fair, he gave a speech yesterday. And I remember walking by the television and said it's a Trump to hit Hillary. Not literally, I assume. And I just thought, well, that will be interesting because if he does – Of course, if he did that, I might vote for him. Hammer and tongs for an hour and a half, then we got some stuff and maybe we're going to be talking about this.

Nothing in the media and nothing in my tweet stream talked about the context and the substance of that speech. Everything was about your gaffes. So whether or not he actually went out there and made a substantial charge and attack on her, I don't know. Because shall we say the media is not exactly inclined to pick that up and run with it when there's something much more fun and juicy. But that's how he won. That's how he won. Yeah, but that's not how he's going to win this. No, but that's how he won the primary.

So it is at this point too late and unconvincing to say hey why don't they ever cover the substance substance of stuff like no you this is how you won so you won the primary there was a substance-free primary um this is how this is this is the table you've set for yourself and if and the idea that he the the the trump supporters go around and say oh the media is this the media is that welcome to the world welcome to planet Earth. That's why it's hard to run a general as a Republican and win. If this is news to you, you should not be allowed to vote. You're too stupid.

If you've been paying attention – if this is so new to you that you should not be part of American politics today because it's just what it is. And no one is going to change that. And the idea that he went after – like my god, after that – her convention and then decided to spend a whole day talking about Ted Cruz and the cons. It's just – you do not recover your footing because what people are saying is I don't like this guy. I don't like her. I don't like him more. And that is not a winning success. That is not a success formula. There's been some turmoil from what I understand in some of the campaigns.

A lot of people have left, which means they've got to find new people to plug in late in the game. How do you do something like that if you're running a political campaign? Well, you've got to recruit somehow. You do. And if you're a big apparatus like the GOP, I assume you have just folks that you can move around and push in the slots. But if you're a smaller business, you don't. And if you're a smaller business, larger business, medium, whatever, if you're hiring,

you might not know where to post your job and find the best candidates. Posting your job in one place is not enough to get the quality guys and gals. You want to find the perfect hire, you need to post your job on all of the top job sites, and now you can with ZipRecruiter.com. You can post to over a hundred job sites and now you can with ZipRecruiter.com. You can post to over 100 job sites including social media networks like Facebook and Twitter all with a single click.

Done. Find candidates in any city or industry nationwide. Post once and watch your qualified candidates roll in to ZipRecruiter's easy to use interface. No juggling emails. No calls to your office. Just quickly screen candidates, rate them, and have the right person fast. So find out today why ZipRecruiter has been used by over 800,000 businesses. And right now, any listener to this podcast can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for free by going to ZipRecruiter.com slash free trial.

Let me give that to you again. ZipRecruiter.com slash free trial. One more time to put it in your head for free. Go to ZipRecruiter.com slash free trial. And now some questions from the audience. Let's go straight to, what should we see here? I'm looking through this long, long list. All right, Sweet3505 says,

so let's assume the election is lost because it is. And what do things look like on November 9th? Republicans still in control of Senate House. And if the Republican Party, as we know it, is dead, and it is, what is the party that replaces it look like? And how long will it take to rebuild a winning coalition? In other words, what's the strategy after we lose if we lose? Peter? I'm not going to grant that the election is lost. It seems to me very likely. I still believe it's simple and obvious how Trump turns it around and puts it back into contention. Although I grant Rob's point, Trump being Trump, he may just refuse to do it even so.

However, I will stipulate with suite 3505 that the election is lost. What does the Senate and the House look like? At the moment, it looks to me as though Trump is flaming out in a way so specific to him. And it looks to me as though leading Republican figures have kept their distance from him successfully enough so that we're very likely, we, the Republican Party, is very likely to retain the House, even if Hillary wins by four or five points is very likely to retain the House even if Hillary wins by four or five points. Very likely to retain the House. And I believe there's still a chance of keeping the Senate. But on any calculation, you'd have to suppose if Donald Trump goes down, the likeliest outcome is that we'll lose the Senate.

If we do lose the Senate, I believe it will be by a seat or two. That's still very, very bad. A majority in the Senate is a big deal because then you get to control the committees and then the Senate, the committees really truly do matter. In the House, if you have the majority, the speaker schedules business, committees, chairman are important in the House, but it's really the speakership that matters. In the Senate committee, chairmanships matter more. So pretty grim, but my hunch of it, my feel for it right now is that we keep the House. Yeah, I kind of agree with you, Peter. I mean, it's just beside my general pessimism about this. I do agree that that's the case. I also agree that fundamentally the

issue with the Senate is if you don't have a filibuster-proof majority, which seems not in the cards for either party, however, for many, many years, just the way the country looks. The most important thing, the best thing you can get is to be able to organize the Senate, and organizing the Senate is the most important thing and so that's why no matter what you think of the ladies from – the famous ladies from Maine who are not really as liberal as people think or the squishy rhino senators, they're really important because they help you organize. I think the Republican Party just – the brand is dead. So it needs to either – either it needs people who say, you know what? I don't care what it was. It was once the great party of Lincoln. Now I don't – it's nothing. We're going to call ourselves the new whatever party, which could happen I think.

It needs to – let me give you this analogy. I had a friend who used to play high school basketball in Missouri. It was the worst high school basketball team in Missouri. And because it was a small rural high school, they didn't have many people playing. Everybody basically, everybody who wanted to play on the varsity basketball team got to. And they were playing a particularly bad game against a pretty good team.

And it was just this horrible, embarrassing blowout that in future years would become to be known as the mercy rule. They would have cut it off. And the coach finally called a halftime and said, here's the plan. The minute anyone of you gets the ball, I want you to just dribble the center court. Put it down. Put the ball down and then I want you all to run away. And are you serious, coach? Like, yeah, I want you all to run away. And you serious coach?

Like, yeah, I want you to all run away. Why? He said, because I want to know that you can do at least one thing that I'm telling you to do. And that's kind of what Republicans need to do. We need to forget all of our other plans and all the great ideas we all have. They're all gone. Pick one thing and do one thing and be known for one thing. One thing that's generally popular and do it.

And then pick another thing, one other thing. And everyone else has to just shut up and let that other thing happen. And you slowly build back trust and enthusiasm and support from an electorate, a general electorate anyway, that has voted against you. The problem for our side, however, is that doing something is not what we do. Doing less is what we supposedly do. Doing something in terms of using the government to accomplish something is antithetical. I mean doing something –

Reform agenda. Doing something can be – we're going to – I wouldn't recommend this as your first thing but we're going to cut corporate taxes. We're going to turn education into block grants. Just one thing. Just one thing. Do one thing. Be known for one thing. I agree. But if we have an electorate that for two cycles now has voted for a progressive president and seems likely to vote for a progressive female president, the idea somehow that we're going to win back the nation by doing less, by – I agree with you.

It's the thing to do. It is a smart strategy to say here's something we can accomplish and here's something we can hold up. But is that going to be sufficient to assuage the criticisms of those who believe that we should be doing five, ten things constantly simultaneously? It doesn't matter. If we don't get everything that we get, then there's sellouts and failures. Those are the people who have driven a lot of the anger that led to Trump. But it doesn't matter because those people will now be disenfranchised. They're not going to be represented now for the 16th year in – for the beginning for the next nine to 12 years in the White House and with dwindling majorities in the House and Senate. I mean it's unlikely that republicans grow in 2016 in November.

They're going to shrink. What? In the House you're saying? In the House, right. Yeah. And I think as a self-identified electorate, December 1, when they say how many people are Republicans and how many people are Democrats, we're once again going to go back to the days of the 50s or worse when we were a minority party or the 60s, really more like it. This is really more like Republicans in the 60s. Absolutely irrelevant. Oh, joy. Well –

Yeah, let's lose the government and the culture. That will be fine. I'd make an argument – counterargument. I'd make it very quickly because there are lots of interesting questions here. But the counterargument is Hillary Clinton is still going to be Hillary Clinton when she becomes president. She will be older than Ronald Reagan ever was. She really does represent the past. She will have committed herself to the left-wing agenda.

Her imperative will be to get the economy growing, but her political imperative will be to pay off her left wing. If she tries to move legislation that's to the left, the economy, slow growth in the economy will continue. She will be a very unpopular president from the moment her, the so-called the honeymoon phase wears off. She'll get a kind of a Barack Obama honeymoon phase, not as long as his I don't believe because she's simply not as attractive a personality. New presidents tend to get them. She'll be the first woman president. Sixty days maybe at the most. The economy is not going to start growing under her.

She'll be stuck between the need to cut – she knows. She lived through an administration under which the economy grew so the republican party unfortunately will still also be the republican party but rebuilding under her should not be impossible she will be unpopular and in a very difficult political prediction let me can i make a rule anytime you hear someone talk about the future and rely entirely on hillary clinton's incompetence or liberalism or anything else you know we're dead that may all happen that may all happen but coming into 2016 if you told me even a year ago we would be having a conversation like this after the conventions when public opinions are coalescing sharply against us, I would have thought, well, you're crazy.

All these other candidates, someone's going to – the country will see how what a great patriot and what a great figure and how likable Rick Perry is or how likable Marco Rubio is or they're going to believe that the country needs conservative leadership like Ted Cruz. I would have – I could have spun anything. But when you're talking about a general election, if you're not – I mean and your political future, if all you got is I think the other side will make a mistake. Not so – not so cheery. Sorry. And once they do, then we'll be really popular.

Then we'll get it. Question for Peter from Quinn the Eskimo. What's the most impressive speech you ever heard delivered by a Democrat? Not just the performance, but also craftsmanship in the writing. Uh, March. I was not there in person. March 12th, 1947, Harry Truman's address to a joint session of Congress in which he laid out what very soon thereafter became known as the Truman Doctrine. That was the moment the Soviet Union after the Second World War was pushing and pushing and pushing, pushing into Eastern Europe, pushing south into the Balkans, into Greece, threatening Turkey.

And that was the moment when Harry Truman pushed back. I find that speech tremendously impressive for two reasons. One, Harry Truman had just lost both houses of Congress to the Republicans. The Democrats had lost them for the first time since 1932. Truman was forced not only to solve the geopolitical problem, what does the United States do in the face of Soviet aggression, but the political problem, how do I build political support for what we now know is a Cold War that lasted 45 years, and also because there are passages in that speech that are just beautifully written. Truman never had a beautiful delivery. And in that speech, by the way, if you look at a newsreel footage of the speech,

it really puts the lie to the revisionist view that Americans wanted the Cold War. Harry Truman doesn't want to be there. You can see it in his face. Still more, you can see when the camera pans to the chamber, you can see that the members of Congress and senators really don't want to be hearing what he's saying. And yet there's a passage there in which we have reached a moment in world history where virtually every nation on earth has to choose between two ways of life. One is based on democracy and the rule of law and free markets and individual liberty. And the other is based on the rule of the minority, violence, intimidation, and coercion. It's better put than that. And that sharp contrast was true.

It remained true for the next 45 years. It framed the basic choice that Truman had to make, that the members of Congress in the chamber had to make, and that the American people had to make, that the members of Congress in the chamber had to make, and that the American people had to make. It is not a thrilling speech to listen to, but if you understand the political background, how courageous that man is going into that chamber because he believes it's his duty. He has no political support. He doesn't want to do there. And how large hearted in some way it was of the Republicans to rally to him even just a couple of months after they had recaptured both houses of Congress largely by running against him. And then that one passage in particular that can life two modes of existence that gets it right and that frames the struggle for 45 years to come.

That is an impressive piece of work. Imagine if I told Peter this question in advance what he would have prepared to say. That was off the cuff. I know. Well, he's got this written down somewhere. I'm going to throw the next one to Rob here. I've got a question from Ed Robinson. Oh, right.

Why doesn't a rich person or group immediately go to Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney, Carly Fiorino, or any other respectable and very articulate conservative? Oh, right. And if one such electable person said yes and then the rich people, the rich group goes to Trump and offers him a billion dollars or some such huge number in cash to drop out of the race saying, you know, you can just say it's not for you. You're sick or whatever. Now you fully support X for the presidency. A billion dollars. Assuming this is legal and won't violate any camp on laws, it allowed Trump to get out of a situation that he might be understanding now. He just is kind of not cut out for or is going to lose, isn't fun, et cetera. Is this doable? Is it illegal?

Rob, do you think that any chance – It's not illegal. It's not illegal. I mean I don't know if it's – it's a great movie. I'm not sure. The problem with all of this stuff is that there are so many moving parts to these things and unfortunately one of those moving parts is Donald Trump. So it's hard to get – I mean Donald Trump thinks he's going to win I think. So it's hard to imagine that that's happening and you need to have the deck absolutely cleared before you have the candidate.

No candidate will say they're in until you have the deck cleared. And the question is, can you give Donald Trump a billion dollars to drop out? There are a lot of people who have a billion dollars and it's not entirely clear that Trump is one of them. So maybe he wants one. It is sort of how in a weird way they got rid of Idi Amin. And this was floated, I think, in the early 80s. I think it was floated. It was a part of the –

Yeah, that's it. It was part of the Reagan – I mean Reagan State Department kind of like – I remember reading this. There was the idea like, well, these are bad people, and what if you just give the bad people money and you tell them you've got to leave. You've got to go live in Switzerland. Hawaii. Hawaii. And Marcos. Exactly. And you leave Switzerland. Hawaii. Hawaii. And Marcos. Exactly.

And we just give you money. And you leave your country and give you money. You don't have to loot the country. We're going to give you – I mean Idi Amin died in Saudi Arabia. That's where he left and went to Saudi Arabia. He was kind of under house arrest for his whole life. I mean he wasn't recognized officially. He lived really well under house arrest in Saudi Arabia.

They have so many toys and trinkets. Exactly right. So there is something about that. Ed Robinson is on to this. They live really well under house arrest in Saudi Arabia. They have so many toys and trinkets. Yeah. Exactly right. I like – So there is something about that. Ed Robinson is on to this. We treat him – treat Donald Trump. This is – let's just enjoy this fantasy. OK.

Oh, boy. He's a third-party dictator. So have somebody go to him and say, hey, Donald, look. There's an island in the Caribbean, Switzerland. You choose your canton. Or the Saudis will devote an entire hotel just to you for your retirement. Oh, dear.

It's a hard one. It's not easy. But I get the idea. It is also maybe slightly more likely that once you get them out, you don't necessarily get who you want in. You have another mini convention and then you have a convention like conventions of old where you reconvene the same delegates and they're all unbound and then you have uh you know two days a day two days of speeches or a day of speeches right everybody puts your name up like last

president and then you have a day of politicking and then you have a vote because they're supposed so let's use ed rob the notion of paying paying donald trump a billion dollars that's to me that's the difficulty because then you whoever succeeds to the Republican nomination under that plan has to spend from now until November – of course the whole thing is a fantasy. But from now until November explaining that why they bought Donald Trump out of the – just – that's kind of a mess. But is it too late for the Bill Kristol plan? Is it too late even now for the Bill Kristol plan? Is it too late even now for the Bill Kristol plan? Suppose this coming weekend, Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio said together, look, for the good of the country, for the good of the Republican Party, for the good of conservatism, we don't expect to win. But for the next 100 days of this campaign, we will articulate.

We will show the reasons. You mean without Donald Trump where he's out? Oh, they'll run it. You mean without Donald Trump where he's out? Oh, they'll run it. Who cares about Donald Trump? They are flaring in the sky behind them. And Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio say there are all kinds of legal problems. It may be too late to get uncertain, but we are going to spend the next 100 days articulating the underlying good reasons why Americans will should. And just and is that – so nobody wins.

They don't win. Donald Trump doesn't win. Hillary Clinton is elected. Just as Rob said a moment ago, she would be. But for 100 days, reasonable, likable human beings make the case. But it won't happen. It won't. Describing that, Peter, and in the Bill Crystal fantasy, in my mind as you said that, I saw Adam West and Bert, his youthful lord, whatever, running into the room, flipping the bust, pushing the picture, the slide, the wall open and they hit the poles and they slide into the Batcave and come out president. Romney as president and Rubio as Robin and they jump into the presidential mobile and flame out and

save the day that i mean it's them not even as a campaign but just appearing to do that send crystal sending out the romney signal they are in the sky i mean yeah but you realize that what's the butler's name in the franchise the alfred so bill plays alfred bill crystal is alfred right so you realize however that a lot of people who are Trump supporters are going to be listening to this fantasy scenario and saying, but didn't he win the primary? Yes, he did. Did he win the nomination? He did. If his whole point is that the system is rigged and corrupt and the system is not trying to get rid of him after he won it fair and square. Aren't you kind of proving his point?

Yes, but the beauty of the – well, it will not be known as the Robinson plan. The beauty of the Robinson plan is that he has to take the deal. So nobody – nobody stabs you in the back. They just simply bought you out. And you could have said probably – I am not for sale. But instead what you said is, yeah, that's my price. It's the old Churchill thing now. We've established what you are.

Now all we're doing is haggling over the price. You're telling me that Donald Trump, after putting himself out there as the man of the people who is going to walk in and save the corrupt system, could take a billion dollars, retire to a private island and still have a good night's sleep, that he wouldn't be up nights staring at the ceiling thinking, what have I done? What ideals have I produced? It depends on whether you've got a Casper, of course. You've got a Casper. Whoa!

Oh, man. Casper. Great. I have to go in 20 minutes, so let me just – Excuse me, everybody. Excuse me. This is James Lilacs recording this after the podcast is over, interrupting Rob, interrupting me on a segue. Very meta, but something just has to be said at this point, and that's about Casper.

The mattress industry, you know those guys. They forced you, the consumer, into paying notoriously high markups. Casper is revolutionizing the mattress industry by cutting the cost of dealing with resellers and showrooms and passing that savings directly to you. Time Magazine named it one of the best inventions of 2015. It's an award-winning mattress that won't disappoint. And here's why. Casper is an obsessively engineered mattress at a shockingly fair price. Mattresses can often cost well over $1,500.

But Casper, $500 for a twin, $600 for a twin XL, $750 for a full, $850 for a queen, and $950 for a king. If you've shopped for mattresses lately, you know that price is up. Spend thousands of hours developing the Casper. It combines springy latex and supportive memory foams to create an award-winning sleep surface with just the right sink and just the right bounce. Plus, its breathable design allows you to cool and regulate your temperature throughout the night. Trust me, you'll notice this. Buying a Casper mattress is completely risk-free. Absolutely. Casper offers free delivery and free returns with a 100-night home trial. If you don't love it, they'll pick it up and refund you everything.

But you will. Casper understands the importance of truly sleeping on a mattress before you commit, especially considering you're going to spend a third of your life on it. So, best of all, Casper mattresses are made in America. You can get $50 off any mattress purchase by going to www.casper.com, Ricochet, and using the coupon code Ricochet. There you go. Start sleeping better immediately with a Casper.

Casper.com slash Ricochet. And now, back to the show, which as far as I'm concerned is already over. One question's here. One for me, actually. It's like Christmas. I'm just going to take one from under the tree and open it up here. Let's see. It was, and I lost it here.

Oh, it's from Used to See Scrub. Ask me if I'd waited on yet on the new Star Trek film because he knows how much Peter and Rob want to jump all over the place with that too. Have you seen it? I did, and I enjoyed it a lot. It's like a good full straight ahead episode and the people were saying, but it's not deep and philosophical like Star Trek is meant to be. Star Trek is occasionally deep and philosophical. And in the original show, when it did so, it was often trite and superficial when it

did so. Oh, look, racism. It's bad. Oh, look, Nazis. Nazis are bad. I mean, yes, the old show tackled social issues. And yes, that's the reason that the show has endured for half of a century as opposed to Lost in Space, which was just kidding nonsense with an arch campy villain.

But let's not pretend that Star Trek is at its core a deeply serious philosophical enterprise. It's a space opera for adults that takes ideas seriously but also knows that the fun is in the swoosh and the ship and the tech and the characters. And this show gets the characters very, very right. I interviewed Shatner a couple of days ago. You did? Yeah, he's coming to town for a convention and for the 50th anniversary. And so they pitched, do you want to talk to Bill Shatner? Of course.

Sure, I do. I mean, as somebody who watched the very first Star Trek episode in color on Grandpa's TV at the farm when it aired as a small boy and was duly scared. Yes, of course I want to talk to Captain Kirk. The trick, of course, is to talk to Captain Kirk without making it sound like you're talking to Captain Kirk. You can't say, you know, what was the combination of your safe? When you beamed down to the planet, you told them to open your safe. You just can't do that. But you know that that's what you want to do and you know that that's what everybody who's interviewed him has wanted to do because nobody cares about T.J. Hooker.

They want to talk about Star Trek. But he's got so much – Hey, I care about T.J. Hooker. He's got so much other stuff to talk about Star Trek. But he's got so much – Hey, I care about Heechy and Hooker. So he's got so much other stuff to talk about. But he hadn't seen the new movie yet and doesn't realize that there's actually – that a photograph of him appears in the movie. And so I asked him if he'd seen it and he said no. And I said, but you're in it. And he didn't know.

Nobody had told him there's a picture of it in it. So he blamed you? Well, I spoiled it. I mean I should have – but you just don't think that when you're talking to Captain Kirk about Star Trek, it's necessary to say spoiler alert, right? He'd know everything, right? Anyway, so that's that and I'm excited for the new series. Nice guy, witty, as fun as he seems. He's got a famously delightful persona which you see on stage and in the Xpedia ads.

And that seems genuine. That's that twinkly little salty, giving you the needle sort of approach you get. Yeah. That's I mean, no. All right, Peter,

how out of it are you that you say, nice guy is nice as he seems. Bill Shatner is famously not a nice famously a jerk well if you're if you're what's the name the guy who did this long-running 40-year feud with the guy who played uh uh leonard nimoy no no no the oh george decay yes george decay that feud continues but on boston legal okay that the twinkle the – and then I've seen him do a couple of interviews on, I don't know, YouTube or something like that, the Expedia stuff. He seems funny. Yes.

You know what? Have him on Uncommon Knowledge, Peter, and come back and let us know how that goes. I look forward to that. All right. All right. A question from Nick Stewart for you, the founders. Jermaine, how have we been going so far? I remember seeing this question and thinking, hmm.

He asked, do you really think landing Ricochet so firmly in the Never Trump camp was a good idea? I don't think it was pushed there or put there. I think that's what arose, which is different from landing. But let's just – let's take Nick's question at face value. Do you think landing Ricochet so firmly in the Never Trump camp was a good idea? Rob, you go first. Well, wait. I mean, Peter, are you Never Trump?

No, I'm not Never Trump. So on the other hand, we just spent the first 15 or 20 minutes of this saying Trump is sinking. He's blowing up. It would be so easy for him to turn it around. He still won't do this. So that sounds very Never Trump-ish. No, I know. I think – wait.

Can I just say – Go, go. I should push back on that because I get that every now and then. It kind of bugs me. Saying that he's not winning and looking at the polls and saying he's blowing it is not the

same thing as saying never Trump. That's reality. The problem is you end up with this. I had this problem four years ago where you're saying there are problems with the campaign and it's not connecting to the voters and you can see it and people say, why are you so negative against Romney? Like no, no, no. Reality is reality. I could love the guy and it's still – he's still Trump.

If I was pro-Trump, I'd still be really worried about this campaign. I mean there are people who are pro-Trump, who are paying attention to the world, who are terrified – who believe we are going to go down in November. They wish they weren't. Our own Larry Kudlow. They wish they weren't. But it doesn't mean that – in a forum such as ours, in this podcast, I can't do happy talk. I can't just say stuff to – I'm not a cheerleader here.

I got to look at the numbers the way I look at them. So – but I don't think that we're in the never Trump camp. I mean I don't even – I mean I am. I don't know what I'm going to do in November. But as far as Ricochet as an editorial position, we don't take an editorial position and we have tons of member posts that are pro-Trump. But we have tons of posts that are like, well, listen, I hate the guy. The guy is a jerk. I'm still going to vote for him. Right.

So – but I mean to give me – Nick Stewart is on to something real here, which we've talked about and struggled with. Yeah. Which is that once you enter a political campaign season, even on our own side, and this year it has been more pronounced than it was four years ago. Once you've got a candidate who's in the lead, there's a certain natural tendency among his supporters to want to say, look, folks, let's fall in line here. He's the candidate. And in particular this year, because the press, because it did seem to, because Trump himself was running as the anti-elite candidate, there was a certain kind of overlay among Trump supporters. There was a certain kind of overlay among Trump supporters. There was a certain sense of, why aren't you listening to us? This guy is winning primary

after primary. Just listen to what he's saying. Listen to us. He's winning. You have to listen to us. That struck me. So that struck me as correct. We have tried very hard to have, this is one reason we, what was it? Two, three weeks ago, we had Larry. James was unavailable and we had Larry Kudlow join us on this very podcast. We've made a point of making sure both sides were represented. Now, what we can't do, Rob Long and I can't do it, is traduce our own consciences by pretending to be more – now, Rob really is never Trump. I have never – I am never –

You are almost on the – I am never, never Trump. And in fact, for what was it, eight days or so, I actually participated in the campaign in a very modest way. When Larry called and said, will you help with speech writing, Larry, he wasn't my first choice. Larry said, I understand. He's the nominee.

Will you help? And the answer was yes. I viewed it as a patriotic duty. He wasn't my first choice. Larry said, I understand. He's the nominee. Will you help? And the answer was yes. I viewed it as a patriotic duty. So with regard to the site, we've worked very hard to make sure that everybody gets listened to, that the pro-Trump voice as well as the never Trump gets air. What we can't do is pretend to enthusiasm for a candidate that we don't feel. We have to be umps on the podcast. We have to call them as we see them yeah also i mentioned on the site itself the site itself has member voting so there are a lot of members who want you know if you see there's a member feed

post pro trump post you see you can vote it my my concern about that is that what i mean it's sort of my concern about the trump campaign in general is that there's so much anger in the campaign. There's so much anger driving that candidacy that it sounds – always sounds like you're furious at people, that you're trying to rub their noses in it. And if you're a pro-Trumper and the tone of pro-Trump and the pro-Trump campaign is I think what's turning off the people who are undecided. Now, I mean I'm decided, so – et cetera, et cetera. But my advice to the Trump campaign and pro-Trump people in general is figure out a way to persuade with charm and generosity and kindness and all the other things you need because you're selling a product that a lot of people don't want to buy. And that's kind of how you have to do it. And if you don't want to do it that way, that's fine too.

But you can't then complain that people don't seem to like this guy. It's the media. It's this or that. There's agency here. But in terms of the actual editorial stance of the site Ricochet, we don't have one. We have editors and editors have perspectives, but we don't have one. I mean I don't – we don't have an editorial line. Our members contribute to a continuing conversation.

This podcast, it just so happens it is what it is. But you can't really be a – the very things that make Trump successful in the primary are the very things that polarize people into big camps like this and that's a – that's just – them's the brakes, right? Everything comes at a cost. Here's a question from Eggman, which is generally related. Rupert Murdoch has named you, either one of you, the head of Fox News. What's your strategy for keeping the station dominant and conservative, assuming that it is, for another 20 years?

I would say, I would do away with the entire graphic package that they have right now. I would just scrub it, start fresh, and go to something that's more like, it's a little bit more, right, with that gong when there's breaking news. Gong! I mean, that used to be the second tower fell.

Yeah, right. And now it's the Trump train has – the Trump plane has landed. Date for the ticker. Oh, the ticker. The ticker used to give – everybody eventually adopted the ticker. I had a nightmare after 9-11 where Peter Jennings leaned down from his desk and scrambled up all the words in the ticker until it was just nothing but nonsense letters trailing across. That's how I felt after watching news nonstop for a week. But I would go to something more – a little bit more restrained like the BBC's visual graphics. And that seems like a small thing.

I know. But it isn't because there's something about the whole Fox package now that just looks cheesy. And if it looks, if it is cheesy and that seems to say that the ideas are cheesy, that this is kind of a weird out there, low rent. Let me sell you some dog vitamins and, and,

and a Patriot food that you can pack in cosmoline and bury in the base. I mean, there's just something about it that says, can question for the two of you. Yeah. Is – by the way, what you would do at Fox News strikes me as a really very good question. Frankly, a better question for the two of you since you know so much more about broadcasting than I do. But I look at Fox and it seems to me there are two Fox News.

One is in Washington. Brett Baer and his panel, which includes Charles Krauthammer and George Will, One is in Washington. was established by Brit Hume, who's now in semi-retirement. But Brit Hume ran that thing from the beginning to, what, five years ago. And in feel, that seems to me almost – not quite. There's a little – there's more fun. It doesn't take itself quite as seriously. But it feels almost like NPR for conservatives. It takes place at a pretty high intellectual level. Yeah, that's right.

The whole feel of it. And then you get New York and you've got, well, Gretchen Carlson and – who's now – Well, not anymore. She's the one who caused the trouble. But the whole notion of these blonde girls seated in front of desks where the legs show and you've got the bombast. So it's blondes and bombastics if that's a noun. Just – they're almost two different stations. In the Fox of the future, do you choose one? What do you do?

Well, I don't think you have to choose one. I mean I – even people who hate Fox News and anybody I know who's a liberal hates Fox News. You say, well, what about the special report with Brett Baier? Oh, well, I like that. I like that. So that is the kind of NPR version of it. I would love to see what the ratings are for the thing that everybody loves. I mean, this is a business

that spins off $700 and $800 million in free cash a year. Whoa, a billion five. A billion five in free cash. That's like, whoa. A billion five last year. A billion five, like in free cash. That's like after everybody's got raises and they've paid rent and they've slid a lot of expenses

that should be the Wall Street Journal over to Fox News, right? So like, that's like, it's a hard thing to do. And then they sit in a meeting and say, oh, we got to change this.

Well, you don't have to change it too fast, right? I mean, I actually feel like the problem with it isn't the entertainment problem. It's that there's so much of it and that from all of prime time except for the special report, it's the same five stories over and over again depending on – irrespective of the host with all of that nonsense, that hyperactive kind of over – alarming graphics and sound effects that everything sounds like ISIS is right behind you. I think their problem is that there's – they don't cover anything else except the horse race and politics and terrorism. And there's a certain kind of, I don't know, monotony to that even if it's at the high-pitched alarming thing.

So I would try to break up that day. I would break up the day a little bit. I would make it – I mean I think that they're out – I'd love to see the actual numbers for their show outnumbered because I feel like that had a really good idea to it that was kind of then – it's a little too uniform. I would just change little things about it and then I changed the primetime schedule so it wasn't very opinionated hosts four in a row talking about the same topic running essentially the same show

over again with a different host and I would maybe break it up because there's lots of other things that people care about and so what I would probably do is wide angle it a little bit so it's not just for center right people or conservatives who are obsessed with politics, but it's also for people into the culture and celebrities and all the things that you do

on a prime time schedule to attract sort of a bigger base of that pyramid. So it's not just because they're, you know, eventually, you know, they have the oldest audience. It's not a foregone conclusion that this is going to be a successful enterprise

for always the last ratings book showed uh cnn coming in very close you know beating them in a desirable demo so it's very profitable but it's also a cash cow meaning it's spinning off cash and it's not going to last forever i don't know how much of that cnn exposure though and success comes to their mandatory installation in airport lounges, which is one of those things that makes you – I mean I don't have the complaints about travel that people do about planes because I'm wee and munchkin-esque. But the inability to avoid international CNN is a thing. And of course, international news right now is big because everybody loves the Summer Olympics. A question from Austin Murray saying, since this is the Summer Olympics season, what's your least favorite Summer Olympic sport? And mine is the Summer Olympics.

I don't care. I just don't. I absolutely don't. No. It leaves me – Roan. I have no – A, I have really no dogs in the fight. I don't regard the success of an individual as reflecting somehow a national character.

It's nice when we win. It doesn't mean anything to me if we lose. Secondly, the whole internet – the whole pageantry of this whole thing. Oh, yeah. That's a problem. It goes right back to 1936. In fact, we're always seeing Velveeta sanitize more highly tech versions of the 36 Olympics when they really started to get the showmanship together. Thanks, Adolph.

But no. And then finally, finally, the things that I do such as walking around the lake and talking to people are not represented in this. So if I don't find my own life directly mirrored in this, I don't see why anybody else should watch it. And as a matter of fact, I want to close it down because I'm insulted by its existence.

That's not true. But I do walk around lakes and talk to people and I have to lead a tour right now. Well, at a lowering park. So and talk to people and i have to lead a tour right now well in a while at uh at loring park so i have to go and loring park i'm gonna leave the show to to you guys um and that means that rob has to do a spot and that means that rob perhaps can answer the question about interrupting my spots and use that as a segue to get into his guys i'll talk to you later even better because i have to run rob has got to do the introduction part of the show that runs in the opening music.

That's not so hard. It's really not that hard. Here's what I'm... This has me concerned now, Rob, because you and I certainly can talk. We can keep this thing in the air. What I'm not sure we know how to do is land. You mean we don't know how to land the plane?

We don't know how to land a plane. So when James comes back two or three hours from now, this podcast must take place. Well, we have so much to talk about. It was interesting because he mentioned Austin Murray's question which was weird because there were two Austin Murray questions. One of them which I liked

a lot was which item of clothing has fallen out of common use that you'd like to see back in fashion and why? And I thought that – I can't believe that James is not here to answer that question. Oh, but you'll do fine. Which item of clothing, Rob? Well, I mean there's a vestige of it obviously that's still there, which I would say it's the cravat. Oh, Rob. It's the cravat.

Never have you been more completely yourself. Don't you think? Well, two thoughts came to my mind. One was the monocle. I sort of – I sort of always when I was a kid watching movies from the 1930s I thought oh someday when I'm grown up I guess I get to wear a monocle too but of course nobody uses monocles and the other bit

I was just thinking about this the other day I don't know why exactly the double breasted jacket for suits wait a minute Cary Grant looks so great and those are I cannot believe I cannot believe we were really having this question, this conversation. I totally get that Peter Robinson would like to bring the monocle back.

But I. The monocle and double-breasted suit. We're really women. I didn't realize that Peter Robinson didn't have a double-breasted suit and didn't think that it was and thought that it was out. I mean, I expect you to walk in where wear – I expect that was like your Saturday casual wear. Oh, no. I actually – I had a – anyway, I do have one double-breasted jacket but I bought it

when I was studying in England in 30 – for sure it doesn't fit me. I'm just holding it on to see if one of the boys wants it. I mean it is – I mean it is one of the boys wants it. That's, I mean, it is, I mean, it is one of the great suits. Let's be honest. I mean, you know, you,

you cannot, you cannot wear a double breast, I think even a double breasted blazer and not feel, I mean, as long as you don't leave it unbuttoned, which I think is, is just uncivilized. Oh no,

you can't. That's, that is a problem with those. It's a huge mistake. Yes. Yes. It's just unacceptable. But I mean, as long as you can do that you're all right i mean

i guess my question would be like i mean what other what other items of clothing i mean is that the cutaway would be great or that i always like it when you see restoration comedies and they're always wearing this sort of weird swallowtail jackets and things and i mean obviously this is all historical like you know we're here talking is all historical. Like, you know, we're here to talk about history and ancient history or, you know, the history of, of clothing and what that,

what it meant. And I suppose there's, I mean, that's an area of study and inquiry for people, which is, you know, one of the things that's kind of fun is learning about that stuff. And,

you know, I love to learn Peter and you love to learn. And that's why we're both big fans. The great courses plus, and we keep telling you about it. Yes, I could do them. Not quite up to the James level,

but you did slip it past me. You did slip it past me. As a reminder, The Great Courses Plus video learning service has a wide variety of engaging lectures taught by award-winning professors

on topics like history, what we were just talking about, politics, business, photography, cooking. It's the perfect way for people like us who love to learn to get unlimited access to over 7,000 high-quality lectures. What are you waiting for?

Get started now with Great Courses Plus so you can dive deeper into areas you love to learn about. Great Courses Plus, there's one they're featuring right now, which I saw, is the Philosopher's Toolkit, How to Be the Most Rational Person in Any Room, which I'm in many rooms in which that is not so hard, but I live and work in Hollywood. It's taught by Professor Patrick Grimm, and you can learn how to sharpen your problem-solving skills and make better decisions and arguments in this dynamic course that helps you put philosophy's most practical tools into action. Thinking is fundamental to our daily lives, and this course surveys the strategies to improve our thinking, visualization, simplification, the principles of debate and techniques for social reasoning, which by the way is the

most important part of that whole lecture, the social reasoning part, because the best philosophy is done in conjunction with other disciplines. You apply these tools to economics and psychology and whatever. Brief personal testimony here. I am now about a third of the way through the great courses, the writings of the apostolic fathers, where the teacher is Professor Bart Ehrman. Yes, yes, yes. I know it's – Bart Ehrman.

It is absolutely fascinating. It's something I should have read ages ago but didn't, and so now I'm listening to this. The apostolic fathers, it's the first century roughly, first 50 to 75 years after the apostles, after the New Testament. And what's so fascinating – not to be grim but what's so fascinating about it is that as our culture becomes more frankly hostile to Judeo-Christian traditions of morality and piety and belief, these Apostolic fathers just become more and more – it's relevant. There is Ignatius who is condemned to death in Antioch in what is now Syria and travels to his death. He's thrown to the animals in Rome. And as he travels, he writes seven letters to the various churches as he approaches his death. And, you know, with that priest getting his throat cut in France and with Christians being beheaded in Syria, there is something and it is just brilliantly – let's put it this way.

It feels more alive and relevant than you wish it would. But one way or the other, it is brilliantly done. When I'm in the gym, I'm listening to this stuff. It's brilliant. And there's more Bart Ehrman lectures, great courses. I've heard a bunch of them. I haven't heard that one. Can we just put a pin in that for a minute so I can finish the spot and come back to this?

Sure. Sorry. I'm sorry. You can never do. Go ahead. You can never do. But just so you know, every lecture in the Philosopher's Toolkit series is about 30 minutes. You can listen to it

on your commute to and from work while you're preparing dinner or just in the evening to wind down instead of watching alarming and incredibly tense making news. You'll love The Great Forces Plus like we do and right now as one of our Ricochet Podcast listeners, you'll immediately get a free month of unlimited access to all of the lectures when you sign up. Don't wait.

Start your free month today. Sign up now. TheGreatCoursesPlus.com slash Ricochet, all one word. And we thank them for not only sponsoring us but also for doing a great product. But we go back to the Apostolic Fathers. I did read a long time ago. I can't remember what it was. Something about the great little monks and devotional devotees in the Middle Ages who copied manuscripts from classical times to say – to sort of rebuild the world's library. And the argument that was made to them or they made in a time when they felt their faith was receding and being besieged was study it more.

Learn more about it yourself. something sort of interesting where you think, well, how do you go – how do you solidify the – I guess the theory is and I'm going to mess it up because as you know, Peter, my relationship to religion and faith is fraught. But how do you spread the faith is as much about how much you learn it and learn about it and study it yourself as it is how much you proclaim it. And I thought that was sort of an interesting theory in the Middle Ages, that even though the monks and the little devotees were sitting in caves in Ireland and France and Italy copying ancient manuscripts, and they were not out spreading the word.

They were deepening the word in themselves and that is also that is also mission critical and faith strengthening and mission critical at Ricochet not regarding the faith but regarding the Republic read the Constitution read American history join Ricochet that's what I mean I adore our

podcasts I like recording this and I love listening to our other podcasts but there is something not to get back to the member pitch. Well, yes, to get back to the membership, please join Ricochet, the website, because there is still something about the written word and about the website where we ask each other questions. Has anybody thought about this? What about that? That is fascinating and instructive and instructive. There's some sense not to go too heavy on this, but there is some sense in which participating in Ricochet is an act of devotion to to this republic in the 21st century. Yeah, brighten it, brighten it immediately, Rob. Put on your cravat and my monocle. Here's a good I mean, we got a couple more questions and then we can wrap it up.

We can have a good conscience wrap. Go ahead. I am going to – here's the question I'm going to ignore because I think it's unfair to talk about. Kurt North asks, James, who's not here, seriously, you can tell us, does it ever bug you that Rob likes to interrupt your truly inspiring segues into the promo spots? At first, I thought it was funny. But in truth, it's gotten boring and predictable and serves only to prolong the promo spot. I think that James paid Kurt to say that. I'm not going to respond to it. I just have to – I don't know.

I'm just compelled to interrupt. I haven't done it in a while, so I think it's fair. Kim K asked, why do you think comment threads on Ricochet are heavily skewed male? Good question, actually. I don't have an answer to that, by the way. Well, what is the answer? The answer is we know, Rob, from when you and I founded this and then a couple of times since we've done, we've surveyed websites in general. And there is some reason why they do tend on the left as well as on the right, political websites, but websites generally where commenters do tend to skew male. I don't know why that is.

I am very proud to say that some of our best read, most commented upon contributors are female. One need only mention Claire Berlinski. But and exactly, exactly. So I feel that Ricochet is in some way more open and inviting to women than many other websites. I just don't know the answer to that question. I mean, I think when we started, we wanted to be sort of civil and no screaming, no flaming. And that I think does drive some women from um, uh, from, you know,

web discussion forums and threads and things. Um, you know, we have obviously tried not to do that. Um, we're not always successful. We, I think we're the most successful there is. Um, I don't know. That's a good question. Uh, I, I, I, I like looking at the comment that the conversation threads and seeing lots of different faces in the icons and not seeing – I mean I like it. I feel like it's more like a party, more like an actual conversation where you would have – where the natural audience would be balanced. So I'm not sure I know the answer. By the way, I should mention Susan Quinn, who's a member.

Her post, Must We Learn to Live with Racial Tension? I just thought it was absolutely fascinating. That was really great. That was really great. Yeah. All right. Last one. Last one.

Which I think is actually good because it maybe will make – Hold on. Wait a minute. I thought Austin Murray's question about the Olympics was pretty good. I actually have an answer that I think would be great. So this is – which is your least favorite sport in the Summer Olympics? And one of my boys came up with this rule over the Olympics in the professional arena should not be represented in the Olympics.

So, for example, the highest level of basketball, that's a winter sport, but the highest level of basketball always takes place outside the Olympics. The Olympics really has nothing to add, nothing to teach us or show us the world about the sport of basketball. So I would go through the list. I'm trying to think now. What are the – what are the summer Olympic sports where the highest level of play? Tennis, I suppose, right?

Is tennis in the summer Olympics? Anyhow, so my – that rule, which strikes me as pretty good, I'd be happy to apply to the summer Olympics, although not off the spur of – not off the top of my head because I'm floundering right now. And I will, however, pledge my fealty to a couple of events that really in some way only come to the world's attention during the Summer Olympics. When I studied in England, I rode and I just last night completed the boys in the boat about the University of Washington crew in the 1936 summer olympics it is the sacrifice that those athletes go through for a six-minute race once every four years of course there's collegiate racing but the world only pays attention in these 2 000 meter races at the olympics and the beauty of getting eight men or eight women plus a Cox so completely in

sync, the way they have to give to each other, lose themselves in the larger consciousness of the book. It's just a fantastic human achievement. And I love that sport. And then the other one, which to me is just, is the decathlon where these athletes master 10 different disciplines, which have been with us, frankly, since ancient Greece, the discus, the javelin, the pole vault. Now, I have a son who's a college decathlete. So I suppose I've learned more about the sport than I would otherwise have known. But even when I was a little kid, my dad used to teach me, pay attention to those guys. What they do, nobody else can do when we were watching the Olympics. So I'm not with James. The pageantry is, I agree with James on that stuff. There's always some kind of slightly

fascist overtone. It's horrible. But the athletes, the sports, I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to the summer olympics i'm done there is something weirdly kind of cool and classical about the decathlon because it it feels like ancient warrior stuff yes yes like well you know i mean i don't really think that shot puts all that important now but it's kind of cool that they were doing it in ancient greece because i guess they were throwing heavy rod i don't know what they're doing right it just feels like it feels like you're watching ancient warriors competing physically, which I think is very cool. Last one.

Let's get back to politics, Peter. Sure. Because I feel like we want to be a little uplifting and I could be uplifting. Let's try. Go ahead. Scott R. asks, would you prefer President Clinton with Republican majorities in the House, Senate, and state capitals or President Trump with Democratic majorities, which could easily happen? What do you think? Oh, that is not even close. Clinton with Republican majorities. I agree. I agree. And I actually don't think that's so bad. I mean, I'm painting a terrible

picture about November because I kind of feel it's going to happen. I mean, I want it to happen, but I feel it's going to happen. And I think that clarity and focus might be just what you need. I mean in the old days, it was sort of a bad thing because you got to – how to get big and big and big. But I suspect in the new media sort of world, surgical strategic focus may be exactly what the doctor ordered for a political party trying to regain popularity. But could you indulge me to the extent of one question, which I'll answer very, very briefly, because I think it's Casey Mulville asked a question about speech writing for Donald Trump, given Peter's close encounter, which is to say that for about eight days, I was advising the campaign on speeches. What would it be like to be a speechwriter for Trump? And I just want to say, this goes back to something we said earlier, and I'll give you a chance to respond, Rob. But it's so simple what Trump needs to do. And when I was advising for

my eight days advising the campaign before they sent me a nondisclosure agreement that was so aggressive, I couldn't begin to consider signing it. But there was one long conference call when Stephen Miller, who was the campaign – member of the campaign who drafted most of the convention speech. And I just went back and forth with Stephen and I said, Stephen, how are you going to do this? The candidate is not comfortable with a written text to the extent that in the couple of times so far, this is before the convention, when he's given a written, carefully considered, pretty darn good speech, but given it from a teleprompter, the press has all but ignored it on the grounds that that's not the real Donald Trump. And I will say, I thought the speech went on too long. I would have written bits of it differently. I would have included more uplift, more frankly, inspirational material.

But the idea that Donald Trump, they got a speech that was a written text. It took him where he wanted to go. They thought it through. They covered the points they wanted to make. And somehow or other, they were able to do it in a way that fit Donald Trump. To me, again, it's heartbreaking because this guy can do it. The campaign staff can do it. Technically, his convention address was a remarkable achievement.

They had taken – they had put in writing and worked with him. He delivered a written text that was true, very largely true to his – to himself, to himself. So I want to give him kudos and simply make – one more time, maybe for the last time. They can do what needs to be – he can do what needs to be done. He can do it. He's just not. Well, all right. Then let's wrap it up with uh the last question

from christy 121 i have been tempted to slide into despair over the state of things i know i'm not alone decided i would sleep the rest of the summer away but got insomnia instead instead um you haven't didn't try hard enough then i mean uh I can sleep. I never have something. What are you doing to keep hope? Dreaming of monocles and double-breasted suits probably. Yeah. Well, OK. I'll go first because we leave it to you. You're a professional at this.

You can lighten things up. I'm keeping hope in two ways and I actually have thought about this. The first of course is I'm keeping hope in two ways. And I actually have thought about this. The first, of course, is I'm just following. If Trump would really have to screw up, he's capable of it for us to lose the House. I am sort of assuming that our side will retain the House. I'm watching the Senate. If by some miracle we can retain control of the Senate, just as you said a moment ago, that would – in some way that would be good enough. That would – if we retain the ability to organize the Senate and therefore to give voice to this rising generation of Republican senators, Joni Ernst and Tom Cotton and Ben Sasse, that would be a huge achievement and filled with hope in my judgment. The other little piece of it is I'm thinking to myself, well, even under Barack Hussein

Obama and his effort to regulate this economy more heavily and tax us more heavily whenever he thought he could get it through Congress, Even under him, the American economy has proven so dynamic that it has produced fracking and the price of oil has been driven down. Yeah, $40 a barrel, right? Permanently. There was just a piece in the Financial Times yesterday or the day before saying in effect that the Saudi effort to destroy fracking by flooding the market with cheap oil, hoping that they would drive America to the price so low that American frackers would back out of the business, that has failed. It turns out that if you close a fracking operation, you can reopen it pretty cheaply and within about 80 days.

Whereas in the old world, if you shut down an oil drilling platform, it was really expensive and took about six months to reopen it. The market – you could shove that market around and fracking is nimbler and quicker and the price of oil is down and down permanently and that changes all kinds of things about the way economic growth manufacturing can come back to this country. Russia will be starved of cash. We no longer have to kowtow to anybody, including the Saudis. It changes everything. And it took place in the private sector, even under Obama, which means that even under Hillary, wonderful things may happen because there is still freedoms in this country. Wow. I don't know if I could top that. I will only say

this is that I think besides agreeing a wholehearted agreement with you, things are never lost. It's never – the world is never all going to hell in a handbasket. There are always places where it's not. As the great president said, there's not one problem that we face as a country or as a people or as a culture that somebody somewhere isn't solving right now. And despair for our side is a sin because we're the only ones who believe it. And we're the only ones who are looking for a little – who will take a small solution in a community or a state or a county or – I don't know, not even a country, but a smaller group and think – and consider that a success. Whereas the other side can only think collectively from the top, a big government solution. We think a lot of small government solutions is better.

So we are temperamentally suited for a thousand small victories and one big loss at the top than we are – than they are. I think we need to rededicate ourselves to that. And I think that's sort of exciting. Part of the – I mean look, I've said before, everything – all my bleakness about the Republican Party or our side is balanced by the fact that I think that these brands, all of them eventually go. They eventually can't sustain into whatever the modern contemporary world is. We've had a bunch of political parties in this country. And I think that if we get to it first and rebuild first, we'll be in stronger shape.

Nobody outruns history. And so maybe our job is to start rebuilding as soon as possible and which i think we can do uh 25 years rob and i still love you that's how much you're kind that is just beautifully put with your monocle and your cravat and all yeah and my my saber that's the one thing that that's that's that we really do miss which is the. Wouldn't it be great if you're all – not concealed. Open carry. I'm in favor of open carry. A little bit of those fantastic Sabres.

This podcast is brought to you by the great courses, Zip Recruiter, Harry's, and Casper Mattresses. And we thank them for their support. It's been very meaningful to us. And we would love to have you go visit the Ricochet store for lots of great Ricochet swag. If you enjoy the show, please take a minute to leave a review on iTunes. Your reviews allow new listeners to discover us and that gets this show growing.

But the most important thing for you is if you were thinking about becoming a member and you were thinking about putting it off and it's been on your to-do list, we don't need that many members to make this whole thing sustainable for a long time, but we do need, there is a number and we are short of that number and your membership counts. So please go to rickshay.com and become a member. Sign up for the Daily Shot, which is a daily email blast. Very, very funny stuff. Comes in your email box every day, arms you with thoughtful, smart, intelligent, witty stuff to say in an argument with any liberals that you might find in your path.

And that's it. And we'll see you next week. Next week. You always wanted a lover I only wanted a job And I was without a living How am I gonna get through? How am I gonna get through? I couldn't look in for money

Got to heaven Living the living with love Now you left me with nothing Good morning. I brought you flowers I read your books and talked for hours Every day so many drinks Such pretty flowers So tell me what have I, what have I What have I done to deserve this What have I, what have I What have I done to deserve this What have I, what have I

What have I Since you went away I've been hanging around I've been wondering why I feel I'm down Went away I've been hanging around. I've been wondering why. I'm feeling down. When the weight, it should make me feel better. But I don't know how I'm gonna get through this. How I'm gonna get through this.

You always wanted me to be something I wasn't You always wanted too much Now I can do what I want to forever How am I gonna get through? How am I gonna get through? At night the people come and go They talk too fast and walk too slow Chasing time from hour to hour

I pour the drinks and crush the flowers What have I, what have I done to deserve this? What have I, what have I, what have I done to deserve this? What have I, what have I, what have I? Since you went away I've been hanging around I've been wondering why I've been wondering why Ricochet. Join the conversation. How I'm gonna get through. How I'm gonna get through.

How I'm gonna get through. How I'm gonna get through. How I'm gonna get through. We have the piggy bank. They have ripped us to shreds. Ripped us absolutely to shreds. Actually, I was only kidding. You can get the baby out of here.

That's all right. Don't worry.