The Ricochet Podcast - Sajak and Yoo

Episode Date: July 14, 2017

On the Ricochet Podcast, we go to great lengths to provide breadth and depth in covering the news of the day. Where else can you hear incisive legal analysis from John Yoo and great social commentary and levity from Pat Sajak? Nowhere else, that’s for sure. We give some free legal advice to those in need, talk about walls (those that were torn down and those yet to be built)... Source

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Like I said, in retrospect, I probably would have done things a little differently. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lallex. Today we have John Yoo on legal stuff. And Pat Sajak. Say no more. I'm James Lallex. Today we have John Yu on legal stuff and Pat Sajak. Say no more. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Bye-bye.

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rob peter welcome guys uh before we get into the things francais um if we wish rob has a very important message and he's he's dying to tell you oh that's right spit it out come on we are also brought to you by ricochet which is the site you're listening to, or the Ricochet, the podcast network you've subscribed to on Stitcher and iTunes and all those places. And we also ask you for money, and a lot of times people say, oh, I don't really want to join that site. I don't want to post anything or comment anything. That's fine. You can still support us by joining Ricochet at the podcast tier level. You get a lot of goodies, but you don't get all the goodies.

It's not $5. It's $2.50. So podcast listeners who want to support Ricochet, the Ricochet Project, we're calling your bluff. Please go to ricochet.com and sign up today. Good idea. Peter, welcome. How are you? I'm extremely well, James.

Jack, you're in Northern California. Don't you wish you were in Paris? I do. The president in Paris, there's a whole bunch of, not a whole bunch, but there are things that are coming out where apparently the relationship with Macron is better. And they're talking maybe the Paris treaty. They're talking, you know, Trump, they say, has backtracked on his talk about how Paris is uninhabitable and it's full of terrorists and the rest of it. And so this is now being held up as the one thing that we have to hit the president with. I'm just happy that they're getting along and pleased that he's saying good things about an ally.

What's the problem? Is there any problem? There is no problem. Well, you still have a French brother-in-law, but aside from that, there is no problem. French brother-in-law, but aside from that, there is no problem. French brother-in-law is not my problem at all. No, look, this is a good example of the ability to overcome or reset or however you want to describe it, whatever they perceived inside the administration as a blunder in his last trip, overseas trip. They framed this privately and publicly as a redo, a do-over, and so far it's going really well.

Look, he's described Paris as this terrorist-ridden danger zone, which is a little silly, but he was a guy who said he's not going there anymore, which is probably not true, but that's sort of a piece with the President's general anti-terrorism

or terrorism, I will say, awareness, so that's not of a piece with the president's general anti-terrorism or terrorism, I will say, awareness. So that's not too crazy. And the French people themselves and the Parisians themselves definitely feel it. I mean, it's not like they're saying it's a safe city. They sort of understand the problems. But this could end up being a big win for him. And shouldn't we all be wishing that? We should.

And he goes abroad and good things seem to happen the critics say it's because he gets flattered and flattery is the easiest way to get into his heart and change his policies whatever they may be uh but the critics would say that would they peter is is it he seems to be a different man abroad than he is at home would you not say i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. And I'm not even sure this is so much Donald Trump backtracking. I'm going to put a slightly different spin on this. As Donald Trump, the negotiator, first, he's rough.

He says, France is a mess. You guys have terrorist attacks all the time. And furthermore, you're not contributing what you should to NATO. And what does France do? France elects a man who is, although very much in favor of the European Union and in favor of an independent France. On the other hand he's also made it very clear he intends to enact

free market economic reforms he invites Donald Trump over to demonstrate the importance of the French-American relationship. Looks to me as though the new president Macron and France itself which gave him a huge majority in the parliamentary elections a couple of weeks ago, gave Macron a huge majority in the parliamentary

elections a couple of weeks ago, has taken a step or two in Donald Trump's direction. First, you make your demands, then you warm up a little bit and start to negotiate in some detail. This looks to me like donald trump he will undoubtedly screw up something because he's still donald trump but this is this is negotiation and and and france has moved in his direction a step or two there were a couple of columnists journalists who were saying you know donald trump invented this guy named jim that he used to know who didn't go to france anymore and uh maybe jim you you know, what is Jim, this imaginary rhetorical friend, going to do now? And I could just see somebody in a newsroom saying, hey, could you write something about this?

It's like, yeah, I'll ask my cab driver friend Slats Grotnik about it. I mean, it's a rhetorical device you find all the time. That's a good point. So, all right, well, it took France off. That's good uh but supposedly according to the stories the white house at home is paralyzed uh they exist in a state of they're immobile like statues they can't move um does that strike you either of you as as accurate or do you think that it's probably an overblown assessment of an administration concerned with some of the directions of the past week?

It strikes me as an overstatement. Yeah, it's an overstatement. Look, in the Reagan White House, the first year was pretty rough, and there was a lot more infighting going on in the Reagan White House than anybody was aware of because there was no such thing as Twitter in those days, and because it was a more disciplined White House, people weren't leaking all the time. But the notion that strong people who feel strongly about policy different and have different points of views fight with each other that is not news in the white house furthermore donald trump is in france he's giving speeches the speech writing shop is working the omb is working

they've got budget proposals before congress the idea that this somehow or other the federal government isn't functioning because the White House can't function is demonstrably wrong. Well, I think that's true. Obviously, the federal government's functioning, but a White House that leaks this much in this kind of zany fashion and a White House that really has no strong whip hand at home, or know, the Reagan White House for whatever you want to say about it, had towering figures with enormous

abilities and they were fighting each other. It was the clash of the titans. This is just Lilliputian B-level or D-grade PR or we would call D-girls in Hollywood. This is not a

very, very impressive group. And so, yeah, of course it's a mess, but I think it would be a mess no matter what because these are people who are not very good. It will continue to be a mess until there's at least one or two people there who have the confidence and the experience to run a White House, period.

Well, I know we're not going to rehash the news of Donald Trump Jr. because that's actually old news probably. My take on that was not evil, cackling, Machiavellian mustache, twirling collusion, but stupidity. And you just wish sometimes that you would see examples that some of these people are smarter than that. So maybe I ought to read The Economist, right?

We had a big conversation in the members' about i canceled my economist because and people were weighing in as to the day that they finally realized that a magazine that calls it that but yet you constantly endorse the socialists may not be as center right as people thought that they were but it did get me thinking about how much i sort of enjoyed the magazine when I was in college and felt smart for toting it around. And it reminded me how much I loved magazines in general. You know, it's not just the physical, tactile nature of them. It's the way you have serendipity and come and find this and you go to this story and read that. It's the gestalt of what the journal provides you. Don't you miss magazines? Well, you know, they're not something just to flip through in the checkout

line of the grocery store and read in the doctor's office. They're informative and they're entertaining. They keep you up to date on news and social issues. And yes, I'm doing a spot. Can you believe it? Rob, didn't see this one coming. Well, when it comes to your best journalists and writers and leaders, you can get all your favorite magazines in one app, Texture. The Texture app has gone beyond delivering just the magazine itself. They've made it easy to find and enjoy the articles that you want to read with daily recommendations, exclusive interactive features, videos, and more.

It's searchable. Texture lets you mark what you like, check out back issues, view bonus video content, and they even curate articles and magazines just for you or whoever you happen to be giving Texture to this year. It's a hint for a little price you know uh so i find magazines that actually i didn't know existed on texture which is kind of fun um find yourself paging through you know fitness stuff thinking oh i really ought to work that muscle a little bit better or you find yourself looking at

a news journal you might not have read otherwise but you're learning a different point of view you can find out the world of newspapers and magazines awaits you at $9.99 a month. That's usually what it is for 200 magazines. But if you sign up right now, texture.com slash ricochet, you get a 14-day free trial. So why subscribe to just a couple at a huge price? You can have all your favorites on your smartphone and tablet all the time for way less. Why? Subscription to Texture is just $9.99 a month. That's less than half the cost of many single magazines. Plus, Texture was selected as one of Apple's top 2016 iPad apps.

It's great on the iPad, trust me. Start your free trial now and download the Texture app. They're offering you, the Ricochet listener, a 14-day free trial when you go to texture.com slash ricochet. That's 14 days to try Texture for free when you go to texture.com slash ricochet. That's 14 days to try Texture for free when you go to texture.com slash ricochet. And our thanks to texture.com slash ricochet for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. And now let's welcome John Yu. He's the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at Bolthall, so you can call him Manny. And he's also the co-host of the wildly popular Law Talk with Epstein and you podcast on Ricochet, this very, very site.

John, welcome. We all know that there was the emollience and collusion law of 1864 or something like that, but people are confused about the legal definition of collusion. Help us. There really isn't a crime of collusion. And what you've got is former Vice Presidential Candidate Tim Kaine accusing Donald Trump Jr. I guess we should just call him Jr. for short. That seems appropriate now. He's accusing Jr. of treason and that he's conspiring with the Russians to commit treason. I cannot believe that someone who's a fine graduate of the Harvard Law School

and actually claims to have taught law at the University of Richmond, as Cain does on his website, actually thinks that this meets the qualifications for treason. It just shows you how far off the reservation the left has gone, I think, to try to bring down Trump. But, John Peter here, what is the definition of treason, legally? Yeah, there's this interesting thing. The framers were so worried that the treason would be abused by the government, that that's

the only crime that's actually defined in the Constitution itself. And there's only two kinds. You either are levying war against the united states or you're giving aid and comfort to the enemy and just both terms don't fit here so levying war is been defined actually it's great it goes back to the aaron burr treason trial back in 1807 with john marshall the great chief justice was the district trial judge in this case. And he said levying war means you have to actually take up arms and threaten or try to use force against the government. Now, you know, taking a meeting with some Russian women lawyers, a lot of things, but I don't think it's using force.

The other thing, giving aid and comfort to the enemy, you have to be in a war. So you can't just, you can't give aid and comfort to the enemy unless there's actually a war with a real enemy. So a lot of people think like we tried people in the 1950s and 60s in the Cold War against the Soviets for treason, but we actually never did. We haven't tried,

all those people were tried for espionage because we weren't actually at war with the Soviets, although we should have been, but we weren't. But meaning that there had been no congressional resolution of war. Is that what you mean? Oh, no, it doesn't even have to be a declaration of war. So you could have, people were tried for treason, for example, during the Korean War. I see.

But there's no shooting war going on with the Russians. We're not at war with Russia. We haven't, you know. Okay, so war, it's not enough to say there's a renewal of the Cold War. There are new tensions between us and Russia. War means war. You've got to be shooting at each other. That's right.

There's got to be troops in the field. There's got to be an actual war. Hey, John, it's Rob Long here. Thanks for joining us. So, why it does seem as if that particular charge of treason, which is hard to say without laughing, comes from the

place, I can't believe I'm actually psychoanalyzing the other side. Maybe your mom, who's a really great shrink, could help out. It does feel like they act... She only specializes in old people. Well, that's actually probably pretty appropriate here.

It is pretty appropriate. I mean... Go for it. It's as if they think that she was president already and that he was undermining a sitting president or undermining someone actual american foreign policy it's very hard to say that at live score bet we love cheltenham just as much as we love football the excitement the roar and the chance to reward you that's why

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I think it's because it's just inflammatory. But you would think it's always been, actually, to their credit, I think it's always been the left that's been worried about abuse of treason. So I think it's only ironic. It just shows how unhinged they've become that they start running for treason. It's not just the usual talking heads on TV, the vice presidential candidate. Tim Kaine is the one who's raising treason. The other thing I'd say is the more respectable people are trying a different tactic.

They're saying, well, maybe what he's done is he's violated the federal laws on election campaigning. But that's equally frivolous and actually is much worse if you think about it for the reasons Rob mentioned. You're talking about criminalizing opposition research in a normal rough and tumble campaign. Well, here's the – it's difficult to discuss this in this environment because they'll call it treason and when you back up and say well no actually it isn't then it's well then you're just a trump bot you're just one of those fanatics who'll defend him no matter what the sensible approach andy mccarthy i think took uh national review the other day where he laid out the concerns that people have about what junior did because it was stupid it was wrong and it was disloyal but that doesn't mean that it's necessarily a crime.

But nowadays, unless you're saying it's a crime, it's collusion, you're being seen as minimizing it when that isn't what some of us are trying to do. I also think the bigger issue is not one of... It's not that at all. I think the way you... I wrote a piece in the New York Times. I don't know how it got in there, but they can't get it out now because you've got to take it.

Wow. You've got to get a sign, you rhinos. I'm sure they're trying. But I argued – and I think this is right. I argued that criminal law is not the way you solve this problem. This is not a problem that you're going to cure by having an independent counsel. That didn't work with

Clinton either. The only way you can really control this kind of conduct is impeachment. And I think that's really Andy's point. I agree with him. And I think, I don't know why, I mean, I don't know why, I mean, in some ways it's better for Trump's

opponents to go that way because the impeachment clause properly understood doesn't mean you have to go after the president for committing a crime. It can be because you just think he's incompetent or that he's just a bad president. He doesn't have to actually, you know, he could be a failure

without committing a crime. Can I ask one little, maybe it's a stupid little legal question that's been bothering me. If Donald Trump Jr. had received an email that said, we have information from what we've gotten illegally, we stole it, we hacked it, whatever, and we want to give it to you. And he said, yeah, okay. Is that a crime?

So this is the argument that some of the liberal folks have been pushing lately. Well, wait, wait, wait, wait. Don't you do that to me, John. I wasn't pushing that. I'm just raising it. I'm on the Trump side in this. Really? Since when? When did that happen? I pick and choose my battles, John.

Trump is a buffet. I decide how I feel when I show up. So this is an argument that's being raised by let's call them trump critics and this is the idea that well what really happened is not treason but a violation of i think this is loopy when you really pull it apart but this is a violation of the federal limits on how much you can contribute to a campaign because suppose the facts are as you said them which are those are the worst possible scenario for trump then what the claim is what's happened is that the russians basically gave a campaign contribution not money but a thing which is the information and that just can't be right no court has actually ever allowed prosecution on the idea that transferring information,

giving knowledge, is itself a thing of value like money that can be limited by the government. Think about how far that goes. Because this is not just about the Russians. I couldn't care less about Russians. They have no rights as far as I'm concerned. But Americans also can't give more than, I think it's $2,700 to a candidate for a campaign. Suppose I gave the Hillary Clinton campaign great dirt on Trump. Suppose I was the one who leaked the Access Hollywood tape that almost tubes Trump's campaign.

Does that mean I just made an illegal campaign contribution? That can't be right. The First Amendment protects all of that, I think. John, I heard you draw breath, so go. You did indeed. John, Peter here. You've just drawn the distinction between criminal violations of federal law on the one hand and impeachment, the criterion for which is the Constitution prescribes as high crimes and misdemeanors, which can only be defined by the House of Representatives. They're the ones who draw up the articles of impeachment. What is Robert Mueller and what is the special counsel's

office attempting to do? Gather information, evidence of of missed and misdemeanors for the house of representatives which is the only place that a the disciplining of a president can take place and if so where do they come all get off defining what high crimes and misdemeanors are or are they gathering possible evidence of criminal violations and in in that case, what's the point? Because that's not the remedy. The remedy takes place in the House of Representatives, not in a federal court. How do the pieces, the Constitution and criminal law, fit together? Well, I think that's a big problem because we came to think of what happened in the Starr

investigation as the way it should work, but that's actually not the way it should work. You know, basically what star terror did was turn his independent council investigation into a kind of fact finding mission for Congress to carry out impeachment. That's not the way whitewater started, but that's how it ended up. And that's not really appropriate. You know, the independent counsel regulations and the Justice Department's

job is to investigate crimes, investigate violations of federal law. Impeachment power, as you just noticed, is much broader than that. You can impeach people for things which aren't crimes. So I don't think Mueller has, under Justice Department regulations or even just the way the separation of powers is supposed to work and what the executive does, he should not have some kind of wide-ranging mandate just to discover whether Trump's a bad guy or he cheated a little in the election or he's doing bad things. only limit his investigation into criminal acts and only by the president and top advisors he doesn't have a wide-running mandate to just investigate anybody and everybody he feels like either well the latest top advisor to come under the uh the scrutiny of the press and this story should be i think expanding over the weekend uh is the kushner and the russian troll bot army story supposedly suppressing the votes in wisconsin mich and other places that both the House and the Senate subcommittees are saying that are insinuating or outright saying that they have evidence that somebody in the Trump cyber campaign, if you will, actually coordinated with Russian bots to tell them which counties were vulnerable and which needed to be hit with fake book news about Pizzagate and the like.

It's an interesting tale. And that's just blown up on the web today, as far as I can tell. And it's hard to find anything else about it, but I think we'll hear more. So if Kushner, for example, if Kushner was indeed involved in this, that's going to fall under the FBI investigation's scope, right? Yeah, the criminal act there would be conspiring with the Russians

to try to hack into secure web systems. That's a federal crime. That's not what this is, though. This is not that. This is using their troll army on the internet to not hack into secure systems, but just disseminate false stories. Disseminating false stories isn't a crime, but actually working with the Russians would be, wouldn't it? Disseminating false statements. And Mueller has to go after the New York Times and the Washington Post now, doesn't he? I don't think that there's a crime there.

And so if there's no crime there, then I don't think that Mueller can investigate it. But what he's going to do is he's going to try to say, I assume this is where it's all going, it seems to me from press accounts, is that this is all part of some grander conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence. And so even though this part of it may not be illegal, if it's part of the overall context and web network between the two campaigns, which could show conspiracy on a whole bunch of other things, then he will look into it. Rob, you got the last one. Wow, great.

Hey, so just to go back to how this is all going to sort of unfold, if you had to guess. Do you think that Mueller is going to come back later with this broad-based sort of umbrella campaign, umbrella investigation, where he says he looked at all of this stuff and there's this indictment or that indictment or there's nothing or do you think he's going to come back and say it do sort of an anti um uh canada star and say no no no narrow focus i only looked at this and i see you know i'm going to indict somebody or not i mean the indictment is a separate question but do you think we're going to take the bait and we're going to have a continuing investigation of the Trump administration on whatever comes under the heading of controversial like we did with Starr? Or do you think he's got a little bit more discipline? First of all, I think the reason Starr's mandate kept growing was because at that time, the actual independent counsel was overseen by a federal court, and they kept expanding the jurisdiction. Every time there was some new crisis, new scandal,

the court referred it to Starr and expanded his scope. I think that's probably what's going to happen here with Mueller, because I think what he'll do is he'll go after the weakest, lowest parts of the link first. So he's not going to go after Kushner. He's not he'll go after the weakest, lowest parts of the link first. So he's not going to go after Kushner. He's not going to go after people, you know, Bannon first. He's going to go after the people who work for him. He's going to go after these loudmouths like Manafort and all these guys who, like, they're from the Nixon years, right? They're even before Peter Robinson.

They're so old. Well, nobody's before Peter Robinson. He's so old. Well, nobody's before Peter Robinson. He's as old as when the Earth was lava. And giants conquered the Earth, John. I know. I mean, I've seen that manual typewriter you wrote things on on Air Force One. You have to press the key really hard to get the letter up here. Every time Peter goes to Washington, he looks at the Washington Monument and says,

They finished it. It's beautiful. Peter's a Washington Monument. All right. What should we be looking for? What are the cues for this? The first thing you're going to look for are people who are lower down in the food chain, people who worked in the campaign, people who worked for Trump, but not people you would necessarily have heard of right now, who worked for Manafort, who worked for Carter Page.

And if you start to see them getting interviewed, I'm sure you're going to have people stake them. I can't believe the press wouldn't do it. They're going to stake out the front of the building where Mueller's IC office is located and try to video every person who comes in and out of there with a lawyer. If you start to see them cooperating with the government, then that's the sign that's going to be a much broader investigation. And that's what he has to do.

He's not going to catch anybody until he gets to a lower level. The way you investigate these is the exact same way that the government investigates mafia and drug cartels. They're going to get the street-level operators first. People ran the IT systems, the people who are buying and selling ads, personal assistants, people like that are the ones they're going to go after first. John, we've got another guest, believe it or not. This is me wreaking revenge on you for your old guy jokes.

Listen, two last questions, and both brief. Gut feeling, is there any there there? Is Mueller going to find something that all of us would even consider a crime? Or just stuff that the press would hyperventilate about for a couple of weeks and then it'll go away look i'm not i'm not a no trump fan by any means but i don't see yet what the crime is i i don't i mean i can see congress saying we should impeach this guy because he's just a terrible president and they can do that i don't i still haven't seen the crime and you know this is like this reminds me a lot of watergate and iran contrara and even the Iraq WMD stuff. It's really the people who are going to get caught are going to be caught for lying to investigators and covering up, not because they did anything illegal in the first place.

Okay, second question, totally unrelated but important because we've got you. Scale of 1 to 10. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, how's he done in his first session? I give him an 8.5 because I don't give anybody a 10. Remind me to avoid your classes, Professor. But I think he's done, and I think he in some ways he's actually more conservative than Scalia was at this point. I've actually been very surprised.

I think people would be really pleased. Great. We'll see what happens in subsequent decisions. And I just think we're all going to wake up in a year and there will be a headline that says Mueller indicts Donald Trump for cattle futures trading. You can't indict a sitting president. It'll be something that people will say. But Hillary.

Anyway, thanks, John. Appreciate it. Talk to you later. Thank you, John. Thanks, guys. Bye. The thing I was mentioning before, the supposed suppressing of votes.

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Bet within 48 hours of race. Main market excluding specials and place bets. Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie It's by sending out people fake stories via Russian troll bots into their Twitter feed. Some people say that's ridiculous because Twitter drives absolutely no traffic whatsoever. Facebook, a different story.

And I don't think that the election in any way was swayed by people who saw these stories in their Twitter feed and said – or their Facebook feed and said, what? Pizzagate? Hillary's part of a pedophilia ring? I'm not going to – I'm going to switch my vote. I don't think that's the case. But given the small margin you had in Wisconsin, it's possible you can suppress some votes and some people just decide not to go for whatever. I mean we'll see how this plays out. But anybody who gets their news from Facebook is foolish.

Anybody who doesn't look around for as many sources as possible to get their news is really missing out. That's impossible. Absolutely so. I mean, Rob, would you get all your news from one place? It'd be impossible. Even if I wanted to, how could I do it? But then again, you've got to carry magazines around.

Magazines are so heavy, James. I know. You've got to pull it. It's so hard. It would just be ridiculous. There's no solution. Literally no solution. But actually, the idea of looking for as many things as possible.

No, no, Rob. I'm here to tell you you're wrong. What? It is because the very concept of looking for as many sources of information as you can also applies to your finances. And that's why when you get a mortgage, you don't want to go to one place only. You know that depending on where you get your mortgage, you can save $20,000 or more? That's why when you get a mortgage, you don't want to go to one place only. You know that depending on where you get your mortgage, you can save $20,000 or more? That's right. Rob thought I was reading another spot.

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LendingTree.com slash Ricochet. That's LendingTree.com slash Ricochet. LendingTree.com slash Ricochet. LendingTree LLC NMLS number 1136. Terms and conditions apply. And we thank LendingTree for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. I could see Rob walking. You are totally right. I think that it's fair to tell the people listening that I was trying to interrupt a different segue.

Yes. I was completely, completely on my back. Often I interrupt the right segue, but this one I was interrupting in the wrong way. And I feel now I need to say one thing about LendingTree, which is that what I like about them business that turns the model around from you applying and hoping that the vendor will accept you to you receiving the – being at the right side of the equation where vendors are competing for your dollar. That is a good thing. Absolutely. Absolutely. No, I was playing three-dimensional chess with Rob there, and he was just playing chess. Four-dimensional. Four-dimensional chess.

I was playing sorry, and you were playing yeah yeah letting drew will be next for me when i get a mortgage because uh my friend the the crazy uke who used to be my mortgage broker is no longer out of the business without a steady hand a friend to guide me it's like spinning the wheel and hoping good money comes up speaking of which welcome back pat sajak to the ricochet podcast rob beater it's been too long hasn't it pat how you doing? My favorite tweet yesterday or a few days ago was about you being swamped at the mall with autograph seekers. Yes, it happens all the time. You know, it's quiet.

I'm walking along. No one's bothering me. And then all of a sudden someone screams, hey, it's Pat Sajak. And it all starts. You know how it goes. Autographs and pictures. Next time I'm not going to yell. So you're going to be part of a very special,

not in the after-school special sense where a comedy starts talking about teen pregnancy, but a very special taping of Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, July 23rd, 4 p.m. And no Ricochet person knows about this because we've been cleverly hiding it with an ad that you can't dismiss on every single front page. It's going to be featuring you interviewing Peter. Now, Peter, of course, you know, is known as the master interviewer. How does it feel, actually, to be turning the tables around and figuring out what to ask for that one last question?

Well, you know, as Peter knows, it's all about research, and I thought I know him pretty well, but when you delve into it, I mean, I didn't know about those rodeo clown years, for example. I'm going to spend a little time with that. Remember you got in trouble with that Obama mask?

Well, the knotted sweater kept the horn of the beast. It wasn't the mask pad. It was where he's wearing it. That's what got him in trouble. I'm practicing. I'm actually going to try the Charlie Rose approach. I'm going to ask the question and answer it.

But you should make him wear a big old name tag like on Wheel of Fortune. That would be good. Listen, I'm looking forward to it. And I'm honored that he would turn over his desk to me, or at least his chair. It should be fun. Obviously, we're

the jumping off point for this and I guess the excuse, if you will, for doing it is the anniversary of the speech in Germany. And we hope that, you know, obviously we'll be spending a lot of time with that. But a lot of other things to get into. And, you know, we have goofed around on this show enough so that we can have some fun as

well. So it should be fun for people who are there and for people who are listening. I guess we're streaming this live. Is that true? We are. We are. We are. Scott Emmergut, who's trying to pretend he doesn't exist as usual, is right next to me, people who are listening i guess we're streaming this live is that true we are we are we are scott emmergut who's trying to pretend he doesn't exist as usual is right next to me pat and he's saying

yes yes don't say yes the answer is we are live streaming by the way touching a little thing well we here i'm sitting at the hoover institution my office at the hoover institution on the stanford campus and we just had a big event for our hoover overseers of the people who are kind enough to contribute money to keep this place going and represent our governance body and wendy borchert who is one of my favorite ladies but here's the point she knew closely she was friends with ronald reagan and nancy reagan and wendy came right up to me and said oh pat sajak not only am i going to go but i'm taking a bunch of my friends.

So there you have it. We will have in the audience, actually to keep us both on our toes, because Wendy actually knew the people in question we'll be talking about. I met President Reagan once, and that was after he was in office. I had never met him while he was in the White House. But I knew Mrs. Reagan. I mean, we didn't bowl together or anything like that. was in in office um i had never met him while he was in the white house and um but i knew i knew mrs reagan fair i mean we didn't bowl together or anything like that but we were but we but we we mer and nancy was was great friends with mer griffin who was my boss for a long time and so i

got to be with her several times once once on a on a um on merv's yacht in the Mediterranean, she popped in, and the Secret Service had to get her off another yacht and then get her to Merv's. We were docked in San Tropez or some such place. And she got out. We had a wonderful time. We went out. We had lunch and all that fancy-spancy stuff. And we got back to the – this was shortly after she'd had a fall, you may remember, in a New York hotel and was still recovering from that. So she was a little fragile and uh as as we're uh so now we get back to the dock and it's not easy to get it wasn't

easy to get the the first lady or anyone for that matter off the ship and then down the dock and then lowered into a little dinghy that was going to take her to her ship so as we're all at we're all at the front of the ship waving to her and as the secret service is bodily lowering her into the dinghy she looks it up and gives us the sign of the cross which peter how long do you think it'll take before subtly but unmistakably the the whole show turns to you interviewing pat oh i'm i'm counting on that actually i have my questions i'm working on a script as well. I am the fallback.

My script will be the fallback, but I can't imagine we won't end up having to use it. I'm just very dubious about Pat's research abilities. It's funny you say that because I'll be on guard against that for the entire show. This is a one-man show, Robinson. You've agreed to turn it over, and you shall. That's great. So we're charging people to hear each one of you say, no, no, show, Robinson. You've agreed to turn it over, and you shall. That's great. So we're charging people to hear each one of you say, no, no, no, no. What about you?

One last question. No, I have one last question. I have one last question. No, I have one last question. No, it's going to be great fun. And, again, I know your ricochet readers and listeners haven't heard about it, but it is on the 23rd at the Reagan Library. It's at 4 o'clock, right? 4 o'clock, yes.

I want there to be a mock-up of the Wheel of Fortune board there, and I want every letter to be spelled out, tear down this W blank LL. And I want Peter to say, can I buy a vowel? Yeah, right. E. Tear down as well? Aye. Aye. Chair down as well. Rob, you got a question for Pat as well.

Well, actually, Pat, are you on the East Coast or West Coast right now? I'm on the East Coast. You're on the East Coast. So you're sort of sweltering through the East Coast summer? It is. It's been a little on the, but it's a wet heat. Exactly right. It's a wet, oppressive heat that doesn't –

It's a little – the only people who are comfortable are those who hail from Guam. They seem fine. Oh, it's nice and breezy. So how – I know when you shoot the show, how many weeks out are you? So if you – the next bunch you shoot, when will they hit the TV? Do you know, I used to be able to answer that a little more clearly because it was usually about four to six weeks out, and the shows we kind of taped in order. But for reasons that are incredibly boring having to do with budgets and sets and all that thing. We tend to tape out of order a lot more. So I'm constantly confused with holidays and things.

I mean, we'll tape, you know, in August, we'll be taping Christmas shows. And then the next day, we're taping Halloween shows. And I'm sure we've had those holidays and they haven't even been here yet. So I don't know. But it's still most of the shows are four to six weeks out but some of them much longer why do you ask okay so well i was gonna ask because i one of the things that um people have always said is that or people have been saying recently it's been you audiences are different americans are different audience are different people are different everything

changed everything's changed or over the years things have changed um and if you watch these shows, you don't really notice that at all. I mean, I think if you watch reruns of Let's Make a Deal from the 70s or The Price is Right with Bob Barker and The Price is Right with Drew Carey, it doesn't feel like the people, the contestants are different. It feels like they're Americans. You know what's different? Like you want a new washer and dryer. You know what's different is one of the problems we have is we have trouble, if we have a variation in ages on the show, we have trouble finding puzzles that seem fair to everybody. What's happened is I think in the culture as a whole, we have lost – we've sort of lost a common culture.

When I was a kid listening to Beatles, my parents were listening to big band music. But I knew what big band music was, and my parents knew who the Beatles were. They didn't like them, and they didn't like that I listened to them. But we sort of knew each other's worlds. That's no longer true. I suspect that I could say I've got a million dollars for any of you guys here who can name one song in the top 20 on the Billboard charts, and I suspect I would win. Conversely, young people would have difficulty identifying things from generations past, sometimes from just a few years past. There's a wall now almost between, not just between generations, but between members of what we would think the same generation.

I mean, in two years, language changes, references change, and there's no overlap anymore. I fear we'll all kind of get walled into our and I know it's sort of social media driven, but for a show like ours that appeals to a wide audience, it's a bit of a challenge. It's absolutely brilliant and you're right, but there is a unifying glue and that is meme culture. There's a certain sort of internet culture

that goes over everybody. Things that I see that my daughters see that are widely shared. And for example, nobody could tell you five years ago who Tunak Tunak was. It was this ridiculously fetching, catchy Indian song from 1999.

And now it's been revived because there's nostalgia for memes among people who are 16 years old. So there is there are still cultural things that bridge various generations, but they're in a different medium now than they were because we don't all watch the same three channels. You know, common expressions, a stitch in time saves nine.

I mean, I never used that when I was a kid. I wouldn't go up to a kid in high school and say that. But I knew what it was, and I sort of knew what they were saying. No one knows it anymore. Not only I don't know what it means, they haven't heard it. So we're – We used to wear stitched clothes. Nobody repaired them.

They actually have jeans that are already torn. Exactly. Yeah, they buy them in a state that our parents would have been shocked by if we had worn them. So that's, to me, the big change, that there's very little generational overlap, and that appears to be accelerating. Case in point, I don't know if either Rob or James will appreciate this, but people of Pat's and my generation, my son Pedro, this is a couple of years years ago so it would have been 22 or so he came dashing into my room and played something for me that he had just discovered and he said dad this is the coolest presenting it to me as though i would i would never have heard of it before in

my life and it was louis prima remember louis prima sure of course we remember louis prima but to my son pedro it was like an archaeological dig as though he'd excavated a dinosaur bone yeah but here's the thing people when you when he was a kid when i was a kid louis prima was king louis on the jungle book movie on the jungle book exactly all right this is it turns out he was a real guy dad just it just as george saunders was the uh was the the the evil uh feline all of these voices that I grew up with that I thought belonged to the television shows and cartoons of my generation were actually the last gasp of these careers

from my parents' generation. My daughters just the other day played something to me and I said, that sounds really like those guys have been listening to ELO. Well, it was ELO. So there's hope, Pat, is all I'm saying. Whatever you do, let's not get on George Saunders' stories.

We'll be here all night. It's what we call major demographic appeal. That's what we want. James thinks that the culture's okay because they're listening to ELO and Peter's kid knows who Louis Prima is.

I'm not sure that's the victory we were looking for but i'll take it no and i and i can't i on the show on the show uh recently we had someone who and i don't remember the exact word but he uh you had to want to talk about his pet and he said he had a he had a cocker spaniel named frank sinatra or something like that i remember so you know the brain so your comic brain is thinking in that in that one I don't remember. So your comic brain is thinking in that one second it takes to say that your comic brain

is, okay, I can get a laugh out of this. I've got to come up with a breed and a singer. Right? Well, I have a so-and-so named so-and-so. That's the joke in my head. But so in a millisecond, I came up with Shih Tzu because it's a funny word to say.

So I have a, I have a, and, and in, again, in that millisecond, I could not name a singer. I was looking for a female,

a female singer to, to save my life. And here's what came out of my mouth. Talking about, I said, I have a shih tzu named Rosemary Clooney. Now, Rosemary Clooney.

Rosemary Clooney was a fine, fine singer and I knew her well. She was a wonderful woman but not exactly the demographic I should have been going for. Whenever those lines come out of my mouth, I can always turn to my producer who just rolls his eyes and goes,

there goes another group leaving us. Come on to my house. You've baffled another generation. Yeah, I know. Chuck Berry would have been better for the Shih Tzu. So, Rob, you know, it's a political podcast, so we just got to ask you, Pat, your take, shall we say, on the current scene, the current affairs.

Wow, what's going on? Oh, man. I don't know. You know, sometimes I just semi-turn it off because it's just going to be this way for as long as it's going to be this way. None of us has ever seen anything like this. There is. I still suffer from that malady where i i kind of enjoy watching heads explode on the other side um on the other hand sometimes my head wants to explode as well

which i i don't like so i'm i'm kind of torn by that um you know you're talking about the cultures being separated obviously we're separated politically in this country more than ever before and i guess it's what side of the divide you're on is how you look at this thing. I'd love to know what's going on in the White House. Do they really feel under siege? Is he having a lot of secret fun with

this? I don't know. I get up in the morning and I go to the computer and I look at some of my favorite sites to see what's happening and I hold my breath. You just don't know. And when I see something about some pop singer having done something as the lead story, I'm actually really pleased because it means nothing horrible has happened overnight. So I don't know. It's certainly good for pundits and broadcasters and political show ratings are up because it is a soap opera and it's going to stay that way. But it seems like it's a soap opera where nothing's happening. Well, yeah. You know, it's a lot of noise and a lot of drum roll

and a lot of cymbal clashing and then there's no big entrance. I mean, is there possible that, because I know you took, I remember talking to you a couple years ago, you said, I'm on a break on this stuff. I'm not watching the news, cable news during the day

and I'm judiciously keeping up with the news that I need to know on a weekly basis. And you didn't miss anything. No. It's like you've got hours back in your day. It is. Every day it seems to be something new. You know, outrage is fine.

This is sort of – everybody's talking about fake news. It's fake outrage that's making me a little crazy. Everybody's outraged by these things, and it's one a day or sometimes several a day. And it's silly stuff for the most part. And we're in a strange part of our history where you can – people angrier about you're saying something than doing something uh and i don't know what that phenomenon is exactly uh maybe because they can respond by saying something rather than having to do something uh maybe that's it i don't know what it is but but you know i i've always said that if Bill Clinton, rather than have happened what happened with Ms. Lewinsky, if he instead had been caught on tape saying, you know, what women are good for, he might be out of office now.

I think he had a worse risk for speaking his – saying something than what he did. It's a strange uh phenomenon that i haven't quite figured out but but you know any i mean uh you know trump today made some uh remark i guess that the about the you know the president of france the wife looks great or whatever he said you know she's she's in great shape i think, you know, and now that's the worst thing that's ever been said. So, yeah, every day, and it feels the same. The outrage, the level of outrage is the same no matter the level of the offense. And after a while, it just becomes kind of white noise. For Pat and Rob both, do you guys miss ethnic humor or the ability to tell an ethnic joke by the way but before robby jumps in

i i miss humor period i i i believe that that some during the night an invasion of the body snatchers thing happened and removed everybody's funny bone i mean that's close it's right you know screw screw trump is not a joke uh and now. And there's nothing funny about that. There's plenty funny about Trump if you want to, but be clever, you know, dude, say something. Yeah, I mean, the best joke I heard, I guess, yesterday, the day before was, hey, you know, hard to believe, but yesterday was a very good day to be Eric Trump. You don't hear that often. So there's lots of funny things you can say. But, yeah, it's the outrace stuff.

It's the quivering lip and the outrage and all that stuff. It just drives me crazy. I don't know how comics do it. I mean, if you're a comic in a club now and you go, hey, two guys walk into a bar, I'm sure people say, hey, there's nothing funny about alcoholism. Yeah, right. You have to stay within the lanes. It's been prescribed what you can say, what you can make jokes about. And you're right.

To say something is the worst thing now. Trump gets up and gives a speech in Europe about defensive Western civilization. You think that he jacked up his right hand like Dr. Strangelove and said, you know, kinder like some Nazi telling women they had to go back. It was the most reductive, spasmodic, revelatory reaction of the left that I'd seen in an awful long time. The defense of Western civilization has become an alt-right dog whistle. It has become the sort of thing that they cannot countenance because that means that you're, well, you're condoning everything that the West has done.

And these people believe that, of course, the West is the original sin of the globe. And now here Peter is saying, don't you miss the days when you could tell a joke about it? Well, I mean, that's symptomatic of it. Right. Sure. Sure. I mean, look, tastes change and lines change where they're drawn. And I understand that.

And where it comes to ethnic humor, the lines have shifted a bit. And I'm okay with that. I mean, things change and I get that part of it. But we are so sensitive over there. Mel Blanc and Jack Benny, the science-y routine, one of the funniest routines ever. All three of you know what I'm talking about. We'll put it up on Ricochet so anybody who doesn't remember it can see it. You could not do that today.

Is that not correct? No, I agree. And that's a loss, I think, right? Right. Well, I mean, it's a loss. Those are great jokes because they require – they're always funnier when told by someone from that group because it's always funnier to be telling a joke about yourself than about someone else. back to the outrage, because this maybe ties into what you guys are going to do next week. There was outrage after the Berlin Wall speech, wasn't there?

There was outrage before the Berlin Wall speech on the part of the staff who didn't want the president to give it. It was interesting because looking back on it from the contemporary moment, the outrage was on the part of the fancy press, so to speak. In Germany, the tabloids debute.

The tabloids in Germany and in London liked it. The MSM of the time, right? That's right. They liked it immediately. And in the highbrow press in Germany, well, we're not so sure this was – excuse me. I'm doing ethnic humor here. And badly. Yeah, that's right so sure this was excuse me, I'm doing ethnic humor here. And badly. Yeah, that's right. It's the best kind.

It's interesting to me the speeches that everyone knows and remembers. I suspect a lot, you know, people will little note, no long remember what we said here. I mean, and we're still talking about that one.

I wonder if they've all felt that way when they're going into it. I mean, I can't imagine anyone thought, here's a speech for the ages. You don't know until you've delivered it. Well, I suspect that former President Obama thought that every time he opened his mouth. Well, you know, there have been a lot of these grandiose speeches, the states of the union address, state of the union, states of these union. Anyway, these

addresses they give that I'm sure with this flowery language they think that kids will be reading this in their textbooks ten years from now and it's forgotten the next day and yet a simple line like the one we're referring to which Peter wrote and Gettysburg Address and

ask not what your country will again those are you can't put those on paper thinking that they're going to be embossed but they just become that way and also I think the audience picks and chooses I mean I say this with an awkward disclaimer it is of course a magnificent, a magnificent speech, one of the most important speeches that an American president has given in the 20th century, without a doubt, Peter's Berlin Wall speech. But, you know, in the speech, there's also some, like, standard presidential speechifying.

Boring stuff. Yeah, boring stuff. Like, there's a whole trade section of that speech. Yeah, it's not it's not it's not it's yeah, you're right. People pick out what they remember. And, you know, most speeches are not terribly memorable. But there sometimes there's a line that just takes takes on a life of his own. But people don't know, for example, during that speech, he told several Polish jokes, which now you could. Yeah, you know, you couldn't do that now. No, no, no. The things that last are the things

that are sort of crystallizing crystal clear and incredible clarity. You knew exactly what he was saying. You knew exactly what the challenge was. He was laying down two eggs. We did then but after a week from now I just realized that historians

are going to spend decades on tangling mangled wreck that passed this historic moment no it's good you know that that line uh that that is is not only i mean obviously it's been been memorable to be become part of our culture but it but it's not it's not flowery rhetoric at all i mean it's been memorable. It's become part of our culture. But it's not flowery rhetoric at all. Tear down that wall. You don't need a thesaurus to figure that one out. Are you saying it's wooden? Is it wooden? Is that what you're saying? You don't need to go on and on and say, I've torn down lots of walls. Believe me. This is a wall that needs to go. Okay.

Okay. Everybody knows. I wasn't sure that's what he was saying. I thought he was saying that Pat was making a weird, what is it they call, shade. Kind of a shade. He was subduing you. No, no, no, no, no. What I was doing. Never mind. You know what I was doing. Don't make trouble. Don't meme me.

Trouble, memery, shade-throw shade throwing all that stuff uh and of course just a great exchange of great views by two of our favorite people in the world will be yours if you're in the vicinity of simi valley on california in california on july 23rd 4 p.m special taping of uncommon knowledge with peter robinson being queried by pat sajak at the reagan library sounds great uh guys we look forward i we look forward to seeing the video for the whole thing, and we'll see Pat on television, elsewhere, and on the podcast as soon as possible. Thanks, Pat.

Take care, guys. Thank you, Pat. The pole vaulter and I look forward to seeing you. Good. What a delight. We've all had those broadcasting moments where you say something like pat said the shih tzu line right which just cracks me up rosemary clinton you know of all the things you could say and you say i have a shih tzu dude it's rosemary cluny and you know that

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for sponsoring this the ricochet podcast I want to be that guy and throw a bunch of cold water on the things we were saying about ethnic humor and radio it's true there were certain kinds of people who you could make fun of in a gentle fashion there's always the Jewish person you know there's Mrs. Nussbaum there was an irish guy often sometimes there was life with luigi which is all about the making fun of the people who had the accents all right but it was it was

gentle and it was affectionate but there weren't very many african-american characters who were not servants there was rochester for the jack benny show who had an equal role to everybody else uh there was birdie in the great gildersleeve, but other than that, there weren't too many at all. So what kind of, are we just thinking of the days, Peter, when you could say, here's a Polack joke in the same way that you could tell a dead baby joke or something like that? No, I actually had in mind what I, I mentioned what I had in mind, which was the Siddance, the sigh and see routine with Jack Benny and Mel Blanc, which was a kind of play on.

Well, the ethnic and the ethnicity involved was Mexican. Right. And that's about as far as it went, James. Well, Bill Dana, who recently died, I believe. Oh, yes, that's right. He was Jose Jimenez, who came out of this, which I remember dimly from youth as being this guy who sort of played a dim-witted Hispanic astronaut. And the character preceded the astronaut. But apparently the astronauts loved him and adopted him.

And Dana eventually felt bad about the character and dropped him. But then, as the story usually often goes sometimes, as with Speedy Gonzalez, was pressed upon by people of that actual ethnicity. He said, no, we enjoyed that. Now, I can't say if that was a general acclaim and it was true and indicative of the rest of the community, etc. But we're not asking for a return to demeaning jokes. I think what you're talking about is for everybody to sort of enjoy and enjoy the sport of obvious cultural differences. That's right. That's right.

You're putting, which in the case of the, you know, the only and Lena jokes was because they were culturally different because they were stupid, but no, I'm kidding. I mean,

if you look back at the old movies, the Scandinavian guys were dim and they were always janitorial people, which is just, it was always, only Svensson was always the guy pushing the broom. It wasn't particularly clever. Um, which is why the, uh,son was always the guy pushing the broom who wasn't particularly clever which is why the Scandinavian cultures

invented the Polish joke every culture has some other culture that they poke jay perfectionist fun at it's not about them as much as it is the general idea

of cultural stupidity well Rob you're in the business you what's the idea with ethnic humor these days is it has to be monocultural

where you have one group that talks within itself? Yeah, that's it. I mean, that's what we did. We decided to silo everybody off. Nobody argues. We don't have any interracial conversations anymore. We don't have any intergenerational conversations.

Everybody's kind of siloed off in a separate market. Pat was talking about what's on the top 20. There isn't a top 20. There are five top 20s, 10 top 20s, each different category. But I also want to take issue with what you said about not taking hope in Peter's son discovering Louis Prima and my daughter taking a shine to ELO. Are you saying that these are subpar products of American culture, Rob? Is that what you're saying? Well, ELO loves English, right?

No, no, of course not. But there's a giant soup out there, right? So you can kind of dip into anything and discover it. So that's good because everything is equally easy to connect to. I mean, that's what brought down the music business. It wasn't really unlimited bandwidth. It was unlimited store width you could everything was the same uh mouse click away rather than having new new music is is higher

up in on the shelf than the old music which is down in the in the cd rack or wherever you're keeping it um that had a huge effect on people's music behavior. That's true, and that's true. Now we can get anything, the whole Western cultures there. But at the same time, in the 1970s, Peter, you remember this. You're listening to the radio, right? There would be a saccharine ballad one moment, followed by Ohio players' funk the next, followed by Black Sabbath, followed by a light soul tune. Peter was listening to a different radio station.

Yes, I was. I was in Fargo, so that's kind of true. This has gone on far enough. I just have to reveal my ignorance here. What is ELO? Hello? Electric Light Orchestra. Generally, the one man sometimes

and sometimes other project of Jeff Lynn, a brilliant producer, a great songwriter, and a man who's underestimated for his contributions to 70s pop and 80s pop. He's really, really extraordinary. And Rob, you knew that? Well, I'm in the world, Peter. I live on Earth in the world in the contemporary times. So, yeah, I didn't know that. All right.

All right. Next, you're going to tell me that B-O with an umlaut C doesn't mean anything to you. O with an umlaut C. No, it means nothing with an umlaut C. Blue Easter cult. Oh, this is just painful. He's one of us too. He's one of us. Guys, anything to predict for the next

week before we go out on this little podcast here? Any shoes to drop? I kind of share Pat's idea about how it's becoming boring. Garrity wrote a whole morning jolt about that fact that we're sort of inured now to being jolted like rhesus monkeys with a probe up our butts every six hours or so, and we're just becoming acclimated to it, and it's dull.

Yeah, well, the growing realization, here's what I predict, the growing realization that by the Rob Long test, last time we spoke and recorded a podcast, Rob said, wait a minute, I don't care. Just forget about what Donald Trump does. Is he effective? And Rob said he's clearly not effective because he's driving Joe Scarborough's ratings up instead of down. Okay, fine, we'll just take the effectiveness test. By the Rob Long effectiveness test, it's going to begin to dawn on people that Donald Trump has been pretty effective in his first six months. Illegal immigration down, markets up. The Senate's going to vote. I think they're likely to pass a health care act. All the Russia stuff is going to go on and dominate the news and dominate twitter feeds and it will slowly begin to dawn on people possibly as early as this very week if the senate does pass that health care reform that donald trump actually judged by effectiveness has had a pretty good six and a half months there's that's my wild and woolly prediction. Rob? I don't disagree with that.

I do think he's one or two concrete steps towards an agenda, you know, his agenda, away from being – having a – not turning it all around, but reframing the question, right? I mean, everybody goes to hysteria on two levels. One is, oh, my God, they're criminals. they're criminals, collusion, collusion, collusion. And then the other one is, oh, my God, they're masterminds. He's confused and dazzled us with his Russia smoke stream. Meanwhile, he's got a billion and a half dollars to build the wall. And I feel like that's a pretty good success and there will be people

who say that well now that he's saying you don't have to build the whole wall that there's geographical barriers that need to be you know he's backtracking there's no satisfying some people and I know the feeling because sometimes I'm dissatisfied too but it is essential for everybody to keep a clear head and to not you know base what you're doing out of tribalism

and it drives me crazy when people automatically dismiss the good things because of tribalism and automatically dismiss the bad things. I agree. I agree. Well, that's why there's a ricochet, where if we're one camp or the other, we can come together and discuss things civilly without putting too many fingers in other people's eyes, but not very often. It's a great place, and you ought to join it.

There's that special tier for you, the podcast listener, and anybody else who's a great place and you ought to join it. There's that special tier for you, the podcast listener, and anybody else who wants to sign up and get some of the best reader-written commentary. This is now one of those top-down sites where you've got about four or five people pontificating at you from the top of the hill. This is us, and we'd love to have you join us. Thanks to Pat, thanks to John, and thanks to LendingTree, Texture, and Bowlin Branch, both of which provide that little coupon code there you see at the site. You can save money on a mortgage, on sheets, and the things you love to read. I might go to iTunes, if you wouldn't mind, and give us a nice little review.

One of these days, we're going to be on their new and noteworthy podcast page, maybe, and wouldn't that be great for the bottom line? Again, thanks for listening, everybody, and we'll see you in the comments at Ricochet 3.0. Next week. Next week, fellas. Outro Music You want to stay out with your fancy friends I'm telling you it's got to be the end Don't bring me down No, no, no, no, no

I'll tell you once more Before I get off the floor Don't bring me down. Ricochet. Join the conversation. Don't bring me down. Don't bring me down. Don't bring me down.

What happened to the girl I used to know You left your mind out somewhere down the road Don't bring me down No, no, no, no, no I'll tell you what's wrong Before I get off the floor Don't bring me down