The Ricochet Podcast - Shake It Up

Episode Date: February 19, 2015

We haven’t done one of these in a long time: a show with just the three hosts talking about the news. To be honest, it wasn’t planned that way, but a certain producer told the guest the wrong time. But luckily, we have three guys who can easily fill up an hour with clever conversation and camaraderie. This week, we cover ISIS, our confounding foreign policy, a (very) early look at 2016... Source

Hello, everyone. I'm not going to get I don't know what's going to happen here. I don't have any information on that. They don't understand what you're talking about. And that's going to prove to be disastrous. What it means is that the people don't want socialism. They want more conservatism. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lilacs and Henry Kissinger is not our guest. Neither is Pope Benedict. You just got us three today having fun. Let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. Whenever you're ready. All right. Just looking at my own audio video here, automatically adjust and we're all good. All right. Coming down to three. Oh, 250, three, two, one. Welcome to the Ricochet podcast and not just any Ricochet podcast. Number 250, halfway there to 500.

We're brought to you by Acculturated.com, where pop culture matters. And if you don't think pop culture matters, well, what are you doing on this podcast? You've got Rob Long, who makes pop culture. You've got Peter Robinson, who makes culture. You've got me, who drinks pop. So pop culture matters. Check it out.

Also brought to you by Harry's Shave. You know, the holidays are long over, and if you haven't made a resolution yet, start now. Make a new resolution to make smarter decisions, particularly when it comes to your face and your hair and the depilatories that you choose. Overpaying for drugstore razor blades,

it's just a bad habit. You've got to leave it behind. So make the smart switch to Harry's, and we'll give you a coupon code later to tell you how to save money as well as make a wise decision. Guys, welcome to number 250. Peter, Rob, what a thing to be getting. That implies that we've been at this for five years. Is that possible, Rob? I think it's possible because we started the podcast well before we launched

Ricochet.com. We did that because, of course, we wanted people to know about Ricochet.com. Right. And we did that because, of course, we wanted people to know about ricochet.com. We wanted them to find out about it through the podcast. If you are a member of ricochet.com, we're thrilled to have you. Thank you for being members along with us. If you are not, and that number, I know I say it the same way each time, and I'm trying to come up with different words. It's really hard to come up with different words.

If you are not a member of Ricochet and you like this podcast, please go to ricochet.com. I won't ask you to supremely – my supreme ask, which is become a member, although we do need you to do that. And if you did that, if half of you who listen to this podcast joined Ricochet today, we would be in clover. We would be well – we would be a company in the black. I would just like to say this. Actually, what he means is we'd be in Clover, Yucatan, which is this great resort. Yeah, it's right there.

We'd be buried. We'd be buried in Clover. We'd be pushing up. In the news you read, about once a month, someone in the usually left-wing blogosphere comes up with this brilliant – tries to solve this brilliant problem, which is of course trolls and nasty conversation on the web and people on the web screaming at each other and hurling insults and all the conversations on the web devolving into some nasty profanity. And they struggle with this on the left. They don't know how to solve this. And you, Peter, and I, and a bunch of other people who helped put together Ricochet when we started, we solved it because we just simply applied basic free market principles, not even complicated ones,

really free market principles you could get just from reading the first third of Free to Choose by Milton Friedman. And we said, well, what if everybody has, and I know I use this phrase before skin in the game, what if people were members of a club that they felt they had ownership of? So what if we charge people at that time, the low, low price of the price of a grande latte at the flagship Starbucks, the price of a cup of coffee among friends, because if you are with people who also have skin in the game, you don't turn the place into nasty name-calling, chaotic mess. And the result was of course, hey, guess what? The free market works. So if you like the free market and if you like conservative conversation and if you like a place on the web that's civil

and if you like sticking it to the left where they're trying to solve a problem that we've already solved, please join Ricochet. You get a three 30-month trial. So if you don't like it, you can buzz off. You can give subscriptions if you are a member. We'd love to have that. You get to come to meetups. We're going to do a bunch of meetups coming up. There's one in Chicago.

There's one in a couple other places. And of course you get to subscribe to The Daily Shot. That's free anyway. Just go to Ricochet.com and subscribe. So we would love to have you become a member for all those reasons and even more because it's a good community. The larger it gets,

the more interesting and the more complex, the more surprising and the more delightful it becomes. Especially as the election approaches. One of the things we're going to be talking – one of the things we'll talk about soon, no doubt, are the chances of the various candidates. But whoever is going to be the GOP frontrunner, they have to either reestablish an American position when it comes to the Middle East or they have to just assume that nobody cares and the president's right. The president's recent remarks from the prayer breakfast to the interview with whatever lightweight to the extremism, the extremism meeting that they had seems to be telling us that the president believes the greatest enemy that America faces is domestic Islamophobia, is insufficient respect for Islam. Let me just let me just throw that out there. And Rob, you've already had your piece.

Let's bring Peter into this. Do you think when you listen to what the president is telling everybody, that his message is resonating with people who look to ISIS, who look to the rest of the world and say, yeah, he's on this? Or are people despairing of his ability to even identify the enemy? I am despairing of his inability to even to identify the enemy. I would draw a distinction here. Rob made an extremely shrewd point, I believe, on the podcast from which I was absent.

And I know about this because when I am unable to join the two of you and whoever is your third part, it was John, John, I think that week. I make sure to listen to them just to check on you. Just to monitor my conversation. That's exactly right. See what – I'm talking behind my back, baby. And Rob made the point that in a certain sense, the correct thing to do is just what the administration has done. Let the fight against ISIS become a fight of Muslim countries. Jordan is now in the fight.

Egypt is now in the fight. We have this peculiar situation where the country which has done the most to protect Christians in the Middle East is now a Muslim-majority country, Egypt. All that is right even as Franklin Roosevelt during the Second World War let the Soviets do the brunt of the fighting against the Nazis as they should have because the Germans invaded them, which would – because Stalin trusted – long story, but OK. At the same time, the president of the United States to engage in this equivocal, dithering, strangely self-referential rhetoric when 21 people have just been lined up on a beach and had their heads hacked off is

to me astounding. It's beyond despairing. It's just a complete lack of any ability to come to grip with reality in the White House. I am very happy. Rob, I have to say, as you began to unspool this point on that podcast, I resisted it as I was in the car. And then about 90 seconds into it. I heard you resisting it somehow. You heard the brakes coming off?

I heard the strains of you. I heard your – I felt your fingers tighten around the wheel. That's exactly what was happening. I can't believe I missed that. But then I had to say, you know, he's right. He has a point. He has a very good point. At the same time, the president of the United States should speak with some minimum of moral clarity. That's the first point. Here's the second point. I – it used to be – this is – I'm going to be putting this crudely and we're talking about such horrible things that putting them crudely sounds even cruder than it is in some way. But a matter of only weeks ago, a couple of months ago, what was happening with ISIS was that once every two or three weeks, they would hack off one person's head. Now, we know that they were killing a lot of people off camera, but on camera to get

in our faces, they were trotting out a prisoner every couple of weeks and hacking off his head. And then they burned a man alive. And then quite soon after that, in a completely different location, now we're out of Syria and Iraq. Now we're on the shores of Libya, which is right across the Mediterranean from Italy. They lined up 21 people and hacked off their heads. I just have the sense that the pace here, the level of outrage, it's becoming higher.

You just have the sense of footsteps getting closer. That's what concerns me at the moment, that it seems to me that they are, that they are either it's because they feel required to increase the level of drama, the outrage to get their noses closer to ours as they get in our faces, or because they may actually be planning something in Europe, in North America. But there's no, I get no sense that the government of the United States is responding to this increasing tempo, the increasing volume, the increasing magnitude of these atrocities. And that concerns me as well.

All right, boys, over to you. Rob, do you think that the president, uh, oh, who am I kidding? No, he doesn't. We're the problem, aren't we? Our inability to apprehend, for example, as the president said, that there are Muslims who serve in our firefighting brigades, in our first responders. This was apparently supposed to be news to people and supposed to tell them something. Because if I hadn't heard the president say that, I would have rounded up all of my knuckle dragging friends and headed right out to the mosque, of course, to do either one of two things, burn it or request that they put up a rainbow flag, because that seems to be really important to my neighborhood.

Well, look, I think the problem with the president right now is he never misses an opportunity no matter what he's talking about to criticize Americans, right? Like it doesn't really matter what it is, right? It could be ISIS. It could be firefighters. It doesn't really matter. It doesn't really matter what it is that – whether it's foreign policy. I mean they don't like what we eat. They don't like what – they don't – they're mad at us for things that we haven't done yet to Muslims.

That's the – that's ultimately the issue with Obama. Obama is mad at us because he knows what we do if we were unleashed. We'd probably round them all up. It would be Japanese internment camps. It would be something – because we did the crusades, James. That was bad. It was just around the corner and we would do it again. And I think what's interesting is that – and I just saw the Gallup poll.

He's at 50 percent now by the way. So his popularity has come ticking up a little bit. I suspect these things are lagging, right? They always lag a few weeks. But President Scold and President You're a Bad Boy is not a popular president and it does seem like his default setting in every possible conversation, no matter what that conversation is if it's domestic it's that you're too racist if it's uh if it's uh international it's that you're too militaristic or you're too islamophobic doesn't matter whatever your initial impulse is it's wrong and um i think that's a very odd thing for the president of for any president of the united

states to take as his controlling um philosophy which is that the first impulse of the American people needs to be corrected and attenuated and redirected. Weird. I mean he's a weird dude. He's very strange. It really is like – you know, I mean here's what I think. I know this is not the same thing. But there was a moment when in – now show us how old we are. But in 1988 when George H.W. Bush was running for president and he was telling this kind of gripping story, a story that any presidential candidate would love. He was 19 years old fighting World War II in the Pacific Theater, I think 19.

He had lied basically to join the Navy. He was not yet 18. He was a genuine war hero. The Japanese shot him out of the air and he's sitting in – he's in the Pacific. The raft, right? In the raft, waiting to be rescued. So what was going through your head? What was going through your head? What was going through your head as vice president then?

He said, well, you know, my family that I love, my country, God. It was separation of church and state. Like really? That was going through your head at the time, separation of church and state? But he kind of felt that he needed to say that because we didn't want anybody to get the impression that he was putting them all together. And that's sometimes what happens to politicians, even good ones, when they are unable to actually react and respond. This guy, instead of monitoring himself because he's perfect as far as he's concerned, he's worried about what you're going to take away from it. He's monitoring you and his opinion of you is extremely low. And if he even uttered,

I'm sure he says, look, if I told them, if I told those horrible, pro-lish Americans that we have a problem with Islamic, fundamental Islamic terrorism, or there's a wave of Islamic savagery sweeping the Middle East and it needs to be fought against, you know what they would do. They'd probably – well, Joe Biden, they'd pull out every cab driver in the Middle West and beat him because the Americans are savages. And he has an opening now. He has an opening now with President el-Sisi of Egypt who's done two amazing things. One, he went to the – I don't know that this is the term but it's the principal seminary or the principal school for instruction in Islamic theology and gave that astonishing speech. This would be in a matter of weeks ago – not months, weeks ago in which he called for a revolution.

What the word was in the original Arabic, I don't know, but that's the word that's used in all the translations. He called for a revolution in the religion because it was now being seen around the world as a source of violence rather than peace. He said this to his Islamic clerics. He's done that. And now he immediately, after this tape of the 21 Christians being beheaded, and as you know, the Coptic minority in Egypt is a small minority. He could have brushed it off.

He could have ignored it. Furthermore, it's a smaller minority after that one year when the Muslim Brotherhood ran Egypt. They began persecuting Christians. We saw instance after instance of churches vandalized, of Christians being harassed in the streets. The Christian community is mainly in Alexandria. So there's one place where you can go get them if you're a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. And Sisi, I believe it was within 12 or 14 hours of the tape surfacing of those Christians being beheaded in Libya, appeared on national television in Egypt with

the leader of the Coptic church in Egypt and spoke of those Christians as Egyptians, fellow Egyptians. And within a few hours after that had launched air attacks on ISIS. So on, on ISIS encampments in Libya. So Barack Obama can say they are distorting Islam. They are misusing Islam as and our allies include great Muslim figures such as President al-Sisi of Egypt. He has before him a live contrast that he can make between good Islam and bad Islam, so to speak. And instead,

he's just saying to us, nope, nope, it ain't Islam. It's extremism, radical extremism. It's unbelievable. And what's weird about it right now, I mean, just to spin a possible optimistic look at the situation, not the Obama response to it, but the situation. I'm resisting again. I'm resisting. My hands are tightening on the steering wheel.

Relax, Peter. I will not defend the president. But what's interesting is that you actually have you know, look, amazing things, good things and bad things happen when the situation becomes chaotic and there's great tragedy, right? So for years, the Arab world has been trying to unify – the headquarters for that, for the first attempt at unification was in Cairo under Nasser to unify against a common enemy. That common enemy was always Israel, always Israel. And then later it became kind of with a wink and a nudge Iran but only – never spoken and never spoken out loud.

But there was the fear from the Arab world that Iran was getting too powerful and the fear from the Arab world was what drove in many ways our – and informed in many ways our Iran containment policy for the past X number of years. The Arab world now has emerging another enemy, a more useful at least to us enemy, a more productive at least for us, enemy. And if the king of Jordan and the president of Egypt and a few other folks want to join in, and unfortunately some of those folks probably – numbers among some of those folks, it's probably Bashar al-Assad. It's probably the president of Syria who's a bad person, a very, very bad man. But if he's smart and I think he's not stupid, or at least he's gotten smart in the past few years since he left the optometry store and became head of Syria. He will join this bandwagon and he will say, let me – help me. Help me get rid of this deadly scourge.

And the Arab world will unify or quasi-unify or be more unified than it's ever been before against ISIS. That might be useful for us. But these are the kinds of things – it's interesting, Peter, because I remember during the Cold War when Reagan was president, there was this explosion of intellectual passion and debate and ferment about what to do about the Soviet Union, about what the philosophical position of the administration should be and what it should not be. And these are this explosively interesting intellectual times. You had the emergence of this new kind of neoconservative voice.

You had the new kind of the cold warriors on the left were trying to reform their – all the ideas about what to do. You could not reopen the paper. Their magazines were started just to debate this. And you really felt that for whatever reason, whatever side you were on, you had to give the Reagan administration credit that they were intellectually engaged in this. Right. In a big thing. And I think it's fair to say that what's going on in the Middle East is a big thing and will have big repercussions for Americans for the future. It doesn't seem like this administration is even engaged in it in an intellectual way. They're not freely thinking.

There aren't any articles written. There are no big thinkers in that administration. There's nobody in that administration that has any particular heft or weight. And they certainly aren't engaging in any useful or illuminating debate with anybody else. Well, two points if I may. First of all, the Soviet Union and Russia occupied a huge space in the Americans' imagination for so many years. Leaving aside even the people who remember what they did in World War Two, the rise of Bolshevism. There was an intellectual component to it that people could discuss. You could see how these ideas would be played out in our society.

Plus, there was sort of a Soviet red chic, if you will, where there was a grudging admiration of a certain machine that they had created, right down to the fact that when Rocky, you know, plucky American hero, would go up against one of their guys, you know, a Soviet killing machine played by Dolph Lundgren, of course, Rocky's pluck itself was sufficient to make the Gorbachev-like character watching the fight stand and applaud his grit. So there was the idea, perhaps,

that somehow, because they loved jeans and we admired their soulful vodka-ness, that we could reach an accommodation and that our cultures could live together. There's no such thing with ISIS. But even so, if you had people discussing ISIS as they did with the Soviet Union, you would find fascinating, fascinating examples of what people thought of it in places like Acculturated.com because that's where culture, politics, current affairs, everything coincides to give you a lively, intelligent read about what those kids today are coming up with.

Acculturated will have features such as the Daily Scene, which is the best on the Internet about hot pop culture topics. Original posts every day about what? Well, books, comics, culture, fashion, movies, games. Yay, Peter. Music, sports, tech, and television. A lot of your favorite writers and ricochet people. If you like this show, you ought to check out Occulturator.com and see what young conservative writers

have to say. The pluck of James Lilac's second point. I mean, Rob's absolutely right. You can't, there was a great deal of intellectual intelligence applied to the Cold War, but now we have people who even when they try to accommodate and appease sound like utter idiots.

The people who are trying to deal with the Soviet Union on the left in the old days were saying, well, you know, we will do it by the usual means that societies have coexisted by treaties, by thick pieces of paper with signatures on the bottom of them by trade, by culture. But now you have an asinine administration whose public spokespeople seem to be about the collective age of 15, you know, tried, dealt sorority debate losers who come out there and honestly tell us that the people who are enjoying as much as they've ever enjoyed anything in their life, the fact that they belong to a wonderful organization that lets them be the ultimate guy, sawing off heads for God. Oh, man, what a rush. And we're telling them that the reason

that they're drawn to this is because they don't have sufficient employment opportunities. That if they would come to America, perhaps, and work at a Purdue plant where they could saw off chicken heads at the out of 50 an hour. It is, I mean, honest to God, to have a crisis and an enemy and a foe like this

and to have this political class be the ones who are not only misleading us but demonstrating by every syllable that they utter that they completely misapprehend the nature of the foe just makes you despair. But I think what's so despairing about it is, for me anyway, is just how – I mean how unelevated they are. It's one thing to be arguing with someone who has a position and a philosophy and is smart and especially now when we're talking about grand strategy, right? We're really talking about big strategy. It could blow up in your face. It could not. The good news here is that the Arab world is starting to coalesce around itself using American weapons, which is fine.

And they are starting to use them and think about using them against the real threat they have, the existential threat they face, which is ISIS. That's good. It is also good that to do so, they're going to have to take their – at least their rhetoric and their minds and their focus away from something else, which is a focus on Israel. The third thing that could happen, which is already really happening between Saudi Arabia and Israel, is a lot more cooperation in the intelligence operations of all those countries and Israel as they fight ISIS, their common enemy. That's a good thing. Fighting a common enemy is a good way for two people who are enemies to sort of figure out how to coexist without trying to kill each other. That's a good thing. All of these are strategic pieces that are turning and turning and turning. And I'd feel much better if I thought there was anybody in the Obama administration who

was obsessed with them rather than obsessed with their fear of what I am going to say. Or worse, not spouting crazy, simplistic and nonsensical things about why ISIS has erupted. You mentioned that. We should say Marie Harf. Now, if you go at least to my browser, my Chrome browser and write in Google Marie. Just type in Marie. The number one Google suggested search is Harf. She is a spokesman for the US – for the Department of State. And she implied this week or maybe last week depending on when you're hearing this, excuse me,

that one – that the reason that ISIS is so popular with the young people is because, because of course they don't have jobs again oh it's incredibly simplistic like childhood this isn't this is the kind of this is the ninth grade model un thinking and i simply don't understand why um why an administration that is really i mean yes i disagree with them but there is no reason that they have to be this stupid, this willfully simplistic. I just don't understand why they – and why they're allowed to and why we're allowing them to take – constantly take the stupid choice and make the stupid comment. I'm not saying the one that I disagree with or to come to a conclusion that I disapprove of or I find intellectually dishonest. I mean to come up with one that is simply not rigorous thinking in any respect. When you – yes, when you say that you're baffled, I am too.

So as you know, I've mentioned it before. Sometime during the 1980s, Bill Sapphire, the late William Sapphire, who was a speechwriter for Richard Nixon and then a columnist for many years, a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, a wit, a raconteur, a man who knew politics, more about 20th century politics and author. He was in many ways a hero of mine, founded a group, a club for former presidential speech writers, for current and former presidential speech writers called the Judson-Welliver Society.

All right. And I was struck. We still get together every 18 months or a couple of years. I've been struck through the years, whenever we get together, that in the old days, there were a couple of fellows who would still attend from the Truman years. Clark Clifford would come to those events. There's a fellow called Ken Heckler who's still with us. George Elsey is still with us. They're too old to go to Washington anymore.

But you had presidential speechwriters from Truman all the way through. Last time I went, there was Clinton writers there. It's been a few years since I went. But what you – the sense that I got, we'd laugh, we'd chat, we'd give a few speeches ourselves. And over the years, you could get a sense of what motivated, what moved the writers in other administrations. And from the Truman administration, right through the George H.W. Bush administration, it was clear that although the differences on domestic policy were sometimes very deep and really quite bitter, frankly, among us speechwriters, between the Reagan writers and those who in those years was the defense of the republic, the prosecution of the Cold War. Now, there were disputes about how to do it.

Was it merely containment? Did you press the Soviets harder? Should you press them hard enough? All of that. But there was no question that the defense of the republic was the job of the president of the United States. That assumes it's worth defending. That assumes – maybe that's what – That's a good point. And now look what we have.

Just look what you'd get if you – I'm preparing next week on Monday. I'm going to be interviewing Tom Cotton, the new junior senator from Arkansas, who's a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Very impressive, very impressive. So I was just reading the newspapers the last couple of days to see, to sort of say, to answer the question, what's just in the air on foreign policy right now? We've just discussed one, of course, ISIS in the Middle East, but consider another couple. The latest agreement with Vladimir Putin. There was a ceasefire that he agreed to last September.

The Russians violated every particular of that ceasefire, violated it massively. The September ceasefire terms required them to remove their heavy equipment and remove their troops and stop supporting the separatist rebels. And instead, they did just the opposite. They kept troops in. They continued to supply the separatist rebels, and they increased their weaponry in eastern Ukraine. So what happens? The United States says to Germany and France, you handle it. We'd like to stay out of it. And Germany and France agreed with Vladimir Putin. We'd like to stay out of it. And Germany and France agree to Vladimir, with Vladimir Putin on another ceasefire, the terms of which he is certain to violate all over again.

In other words, no penalty for violating the ceasefire. On the contrary, you get to consolidate your gains and we give you a breathing space. Peter, you know, before you get in your high horse here, California used to belong to Mexico, did it not? That's a very good point. We've talked about ISIS and now consider Iran. I reread Henry Kissinger's testimony January 29th before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

And Kissinger said, I didn't notice it at the time, somehow didn't register with me at the time. But in fact, it's chilling that the negotiations with Iran said. They wanted an agreement if possible this spring. Now it's clear that they're simply attempting to manage the timetable and the terms of achieving this nuclear capability. Yes, of course. And Kissinger made the very good point that if we permit Iran to get a nuclear weapon, every other country in the Middle East is going to get a nuclear weapon. And we will, within a matter of single digit years, if not higher digit months, be living in a world, proliferated world, where every country in the Middle East has its finger on the nuclear trigger. Putin, Iran, ISIS, and the Obama administration, and he is golfing in Palm Springs and issuing statements

in which he's reading us this – from this politically correct playbook and essentially saying so. Let's – no, no, no. I want to be very clear. He said yesterday. I want to be very clear what I call these people. These are radical extremists, not radical Islam. It's unbelievable.

But you know what's interesting is that I don't mind the – but I don't mind the gulf, right? I don't really mind – if I felt like there was an intellectual machine there and there was a strategy. But as you say, his constitutional job and everybody's – every president's constitutional job is to protect the citizenry, right? That's their primary role, right? That's their primary role, right? That's their job. But in most presidents, I think, are even – and I think even a lot of candidates too. I would even say even far left candidates. When they come in, they really come in to serve.

I will say this, even this. I think President Joe Biden, weirdo, creepy old man Joe Biden, you know, when he's nuzzling these girls near the podium and he's like whispering. Remember, he kind of licked some young girl's ear. He's a creepy weirdo. If President Joe Biden was there, you would have probably an assembly of foreign policy thinkers coming up with a strategy that made sense and they would be issuing carefully worded policy statements the is to protect Americans at home and abroad and also to bring about a more peaceful world. I think Obama is not – that's not his primary directive. Obama is in office to fix us, not to serve us. That's very profound. I'm sure you're right.

That's really the fundamental insight about this guy. That's the first thing he thinks about. Everything for him is a teachable moment for Americans. Twenty-plus Christian – Coptic Christians beheaded in Egypt is a way to teach us something about the freedom bus riders or something. It's all connected to how bad we are and how we need to learn. It's really extraordinary but how bad we are and how we need to learn. It's really extraordinary, but it's also incredibly lazy. That's what I find so – it's incredibly lazy because as president of the United States, there's more than enough opportunities to scold the American people. You can scold them all the time. Foreign policy is the one area in which you can be

a smart grand strategist, but he won't even allow himself to do that i can't imagine a president this small-minded this sort of weirdly narcissistic who wouldn't jump at the chance to be considered a world strategic leader like they all want to be some version of nixon all of them but this guy does not he would rather just go play golf and stand in front of a microphone and tell me that I'm a bad guy because in 1216 or something, some Christians headed east. His grand strategy is to remove the United States from its baleful influence on the world. If you see us and the West as the problem, then leading from behind and diminishing our power is a great thing because it allows the natural equilibrium of the world to reassert itself. Boo us. I just – Rob, you're absolutely right.

The man is remarkably intellectually incurious. after contact with events in Europe where what you see is sort of the – how to put this kindly? The refutation of the implementation of the multicultural project as Europe has gone about it, right? If we see nothing else, we see the idea that there may be incompatibilities between these various spheres and we're looking to the president to see where his sympathies lie. I don't think people think his sympathies necessarily lie with western civilization as it's been practiced as an ideal perhaps as something shining utopia down the road yes maybe but i there just doesn't seem to be a great deal of fellow feeling for the american experience except as a fun buzzy social media modern hip kind of thing where he can posture and if you can tell me another

president who has postured as much as literally postured as much as this fellow has in the last couple of weeks i'd be surprised to see can you imagine let's imagine lbj with a polaroid camera on a stick taking pictures of himself you know and sending it out to the media. I couldn't believe it. Literally, I couldn't believe it. I assumed when I saw those that they were Photoshopped. I could not believe they were real. No. No, he's putting on aviator glasses and making Fonzie gestures at himself in the mirror.

But again, like I don't mind that. So I would not mind that. I mind it incredibly. I mind it so much. I think only I would only mind it because because everything else is so lightweight. It seems like that's actually the most significant thing he's done. No, no, because I if Rick Perry did it, if Mitt Romney did it, I would have the same opinion because I want a grown up. I want some gravitas.

Yes, we want them to have fun. Ronald Reagan had that jar of jelly beans on his desk for a little, you know, bringing him down to earth. I want a picture black and white like Kennedy standing in the Oval Office at the desk or looking out the window. Kennedy giving it away to Khrushchev. Right, right.

Give the Atlas missiles and Turkey away. Something – and I don't even care if it is a photo – staged photo opportunity. I want something that at least says we understand that the world is in flame. The world is convulsing and, yes, we're on this, not posing with selfie sticks for Instagram. That's what I mean. There doesn't seem – I mean that's what gives me sort of the disquieting kind of tummy flutters because it's one thing to be a cool dude. I mean I don't mind that he took selfies.

That's fine. Only in the context of – I've got this other team over here handling this. I've got the state – I've got all this – I've got the brains of the century handling this. He doesn't seem to have that. He doesn't seem to be interested in that. He doesn't seem to think that that's even necessary or even that that's his job. That's what's so bizarre. That's what I mean.

It's like pick the most absurd politician in America today, the biggest clown on the national stage. It's probably Joe Biden. Joe Biden ran for president, I think twice. So close your eyes and just imagine a Joe Biden presidency in an alternate universe. And I really honestly think we would be happier with that. Joe Biden would be weirder and probably doing weird clown things just like he's doing now. But I think his foreign policy and even his domestic policy would be more serious and more purposeful and more effective. I mean, maybe as conservatives,

we would like it because it'd be more effective, but it would seem to be probably more about the policies and less about the politics. I mean, ultimately, that's what I would say about this guy is that our current president is he doesn't seem to be interested at all in what the presidency means and what this country means. He's only interested in our little petty vices that he's going to correct. And I find that a very weird choice for a man who sits at that desk because if anything, sitting behind that desk kind of turns you into kind of a power-mad weirdo, right? I mean you're sitting behind that desk.

You're like – you just bark into the phone. They get anybody – you can talk to anybody in the You're like, you can pick it up. You just bark into the phone. They get anybody. You can talk to anybody in the world in like, what is it, 11 minutes? Peter, what is the record for the White House switchboard? I mean, the White House, you simply pick up the phone, right? And you say, I'd like to speak to Paul Anka. And then they say, well, Paul Anka's dead. So why don't you speak to him anyway?

Rob, it wasn't your memories of 1988 that suggested anything about your age. It is picking up the White House phone and saying, get me Paul Anka. Get me Paul Anka. I was thinking about what Reagan might have said. Oh, all right. All right. All right. Fine. Fair.

He would have said, where's Frank? Get me Frank. Get me Frank. Right. But and the White House switchboard or track him down. That was the most amazing thing. Like you'd hear stories of people in the airport and suddenly someone would come out of a door and say, we have the White House for you. Like they just found you. That's how powerful you were.

And then the lights turned green and you could do whatever you wanted. And I think you naturally felt to yourself, especially in your second term, OK, I'm going to leave the world stage. What – I'm going to make a world stage. I'm going to make a mark here. People are going to know. There's Reaganism. There's even Clintonism. I'm going to leave the world stage with a mark. And this guy seems to be more about I'm going to leave the world stage

and my wife is going to make sure the kids only eat a stick of celery and I'm going to make sure that no Christian conservatives forget that in 1292, you did some bad stuff. It's weird. It's a very small, small set of goals. Well, unless you conclude, as I think we almost have to, that he really does want the United States to be a smaller country in the world. He really this retreat is intentional and he wants the Europeans to engage directly with the Russians. And if he wants the Russians to let let them sort it out, even if it means the Russians will devour Ukraine and move next on the Baltic states, let Iran get a nuclear weapon. They should we have one.

Why shouldn't they? The one place I might disagree with you, it is clear that that actually is the best summation. Why am I giving Rob so much credit? I don't know. Not just for what he's saying now, but for what he said on a podcast I listened to in the car the other day. Must be. But that formulation that Barack Obama's, the principal point on his agenda is to not to defend us, but to fix us, to fix this country.

That's actually a fairly breathtaking agenda. And if that's his aim with these executive actions and Obamacare, he's actually he has been pretty – let's put it this way. If he hasn't been transformative, it's going to take the next president, even if it is a conservative Republican, a long time to unwind what Barack Obama has done here. If it can be unwound. If it can be unwound. Maybe we should – should we pivot? We have a few minutes left. We should pivot at least to talk a bit about what's happened this week. Well, hold on a second here before we pivot.

Yes, we should. I just want to remind people that you're absolutely Peter's absolutely right about about to re evaluate and reduce America's position and to unwind us and detach us and because we're bad. But as I was saying before, the evidence of the world seems to contradict what the president wants. The future for us, the examples that you find around the world don't work. I mean, you would think that he would learn something, for example, from looking at Greece. And Greece is a country with 25 percent to 50 percent unemployment among its youth.

The economy is collapsing because they borrowed too much money and spent too much money and had a big, fat public sector. As if there's not something we could learn from that. Now, Greece goes hat in hand to Germany, which is sick and tired of bailing these guys out. And we all expect somehow that Germany is just going to remain this economic powerhouse despite the drains of the euro upon it. And it's times like that that make you really glad that the Harry's guys bought that German factory because they don't have to sit. I didn't know where you were going with this. That was brilliant. Rob didn't even interrupt it.

Admit it, Rob. You did not see that one coming. I didn't. I was listening because I knew it was coming. But I kept looking for a shave or a shaver. That's the deal. Of being economical. See, the guys at Harry's bought the shave blade factory in Germany.

So if Germany itself starts – all we have to worry about is them nationalizing property. And when is that going to happen before? So anyway, the point is, is that Harry's, which sponsors this podcast, wants you to know that if you're somebody who has follicles coming out of your epidermis and you want to get them gone, the thing to do is to get a good blade. And the thing to do is to get a fine blade with a fine gel or a shave. And that's where Harry's not only brings it right to your door, but does so cheaper, cheaper and cheaper doesn't mean bet lesser. It means cheaper. Who wants to go to the store and pay 40 bucks for a bunch of blades when Harry's can deliver to your house a beautiful shave experience. The starter kit, 15 bucks. What do you get for that? You get a razor, you get three blades and you get your choice of the shave cream

or the foaming gel. Me, I like the cream. As an added bonus, you can get $5 off your first purchase. Wait a minute. In the last podcast, you said you liked the foaming gel. I've been changing between the two of them. I have the two of them, and I've been going back and forth. And now, now I'm on a cream kind of guy. As a matter

of fact, I have it right here. Right here in my hand. It's in this it's this, oh, I'm sorry. What do of guy. As a matter of fact, I have it right here. Right here in my hand. It's in this – oh, I'm sorry. What do you do, Peter? You listen and you toggle back so you're like – Why don't you just show up? Why don't you just come to the podcast? Then you won't have to listen that closely.

I'm sorry. I misspoke actually. Peter is right. I do prefer the foaming shave gel. And when I was referring to the cream, I was referring to what I have right here in my hand in the attractive dark green and tobacco-flavored cap, which is the aftershave lotion. So glad we have Hercule Poirot listening to this. So do I, taking notes. Now, you may ask yourself, hey, why do I need an aftershave lotion with Harry's? Because is it doing something to my face that needs calming?

No, it just completes the wonderful, completed, shavy, creaminess of the experience. So yeah, not only cream or gel, they got the aftershave lotion. And they got beautiful razors too. Coupon code is Ricochet. That's right. You'll get five bucks off.

You can get an entire month's worth of shaving for just $10. Try that at the store. Shipping is free. And if Harry's.com right now, you go Harry's dot com. H.A.R.R.Y.S. dot com. Coupon code Ricochet. Five bucks.

All right. So that's that. I was talking about the Grexit and then Greece and the rest of the things. That's just a slow motion disaster going on there. But we were going to talk a little bit about domestic politics because we're not going to be having this president forever. And ideally, hopefully, we will have somebody with a little bit more steel in spine. Stephen Hayes has got a great piece in the weekly standards. Two must read pieces this week, I'd say. One is the Atlantic piece about ISIS written by a very clear eyed guy who says this is what they are. This is what they

want. Something that the president would probably roll his eyes at and say TLDR. But Hayes has got a piece where he handicaps the 2016 look race and he starts at the bottom and goes to the top. You guys have read the piece. What do you think of his discussion of the Cruz-Rubio-Jeb-Walker nexus? I'll just throw it up and let you guys rush for the bone. Who goes first, Rob? Peter, you go first. OK.

I swear to you I'm telling the truth. Honestly, honestly, honestly, I am. 24 hours before I read Steve's piece, it just came to me. Now, four years ago, it came to me as well. What came to me then was that I was absolutely certain there was one man who would never get the Republican nomination, and that was mitt romney so i i can be mistaken about these these visions can be can be they can be hallucinations rather than visions but i've been mulling over the field i've been thinking through the early primaries and suddenly it came to me the nominee is going to be marco rubio it is going to be Marco Rubio. And here's why. As between the urge we all feel, James has been particularly eloquent about this on recent podcasts, the urge we all feel to get a governor who's actually done something, the urge we

feel for a Scott Walker. The truth is the governor's, Jeb Bush is – there are problems with that campaign. We can come to Jeb Bush in a moment. Scott Walker is pretty good but only pretty good and there's a little bit of a flatness in his public presentation. Good ad but you get him talking and there's a little flatness. On the one hand, and on the other hand, after six years now of Barack Obama, the ability of a leader to lift us out of the present moment, to restate the underlying values of the nation, to elevate our hopes and aspirations, to give us a vision as between competence and vision, my feeling is that primary voters are going to be so hungry for some sense of vision, youth, energy, that Marco Rubio is going to lead – is going to be a very, very formidable candidate and could very well grasp the nomination. And then I clicked through and lo and behold, Steve Hayes says exactly the same thing. So I must be right, Robert. It's way too early.

I don't understand this. Look, it's way too early. What we do know is – Those of us who see visions, just take them when they come, Robert. Yeah, exactly. do know is that running a national campaign and running a primary campaign are very, very difficult and people who have done them before tend to do them better than people who are only doing them for the first time, who have only had statewides or have only had easy statewides.

So I'm not picking one candidate over another. I'm just saying that that's one of the indications you want to look at. The second indication is how quickly can you fill up the tank and put together an organization to make the marathon that is the Republican – well, sort of a marathon sprint now because it's been compressed. But the marathon sprint of the Republican race to the nomination. We do know that Jeb Bush is raising an awful lot of money. We also know that Scott Walker is raising an awful lot of money. He's also putting together an international kind of domestic policy and international policy team.

These guys are doing all the sort of the basic stuff you do when you're building a campaign organization. That's a good thing in general. That's I think all we know. To me, I like Marco Rubio. I dissent slightly. I dissent slightly. Very briefly, and I want to hear what you have to say about Marco Rubio. I am a huge Jeb Bush fan, and I think I've indicated that by three or four times in the last six months saying nice things about Jeb Bush on Ricochet and then standing back as half of the Ricochet he pounded me for doing so. But what concerns me about Bush's campaign so far is, I'm putting this crudely, but still you'll get the point. He's putting the money first

and worrying about the rationale, the argument, the case for his candidacy. Develop that later. Scott Walker and Marco Rubio are putting the case, the argument first and trusting that the money will fall. Well, that's a mistake. And I don't think they're doing that. I think nothing Scott Walker's doing that. I think he's doing both right now. Well, he's not. He's not. Scott Walker has been making the case for his. He's he appeared at that Koch event. He's been giving speeches in which he actually says something. Now, Bush has a big speech. I think it's today. Maybe maybe maybe we today. Maybe we'll get a rationale. But Jeb Bush was impossible to find in Iowa or anywhere else.

He was in Manhattan raising money for week after week after week. Now he did – it did get Romney out. I mean he did block out Romney by sucking up all the money that Romney would have got. It's all shadowboxing now. That's what I mean. It really is all shadowboxing now. That's what I mean. It really is all shadowboxing now. I don't think it's – I mean I go to bed at night and I think, OK, if I wake up and any of the names that are now listed as potential Republican candidates win except for a few of the outliers, I can live with that. I can live in a country where there's president Marco Rubio, sure. Oh, sure.

But I don't think it's inevitable and I don't think he's going to win. But I – that's fine. I don't think that's a character flaw to run and not win the presidency. I think it's a good thing for him to do. But I would like to have him – kind of like I feel the same way with Ted Cruz. I'd like to have him have a little administrative experience too. I'd like him to sort of fight with a legislature that's against him. I'd like him to figure out how to outfox his actual legislative enemies on the Hill or on a Hill in a state, because that's what it takes. And that's what an effective president has to do. Let me put the question to you a little

differently than Rob and James. Steve has, Steve implies here – well, what we need is to get Steve on the podcast. I know he's agreed in principle and we've got to figure out a time and a date. But Steve is saying here in effect that early as it is, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and Marco Rubio have established themselves as serious first-tier candidates. Tiers have emerged. That's what I'm saying. That if you read Steve's piece, you get the feeling he believes quite strongly that tiers have emerged. There is a first tier and it includes Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and Marco Rubio and nobody

else. And then you drop to a second tier and that includes Ted Cruz and Chris Christie and John Kasich and others. So will you go that far, Rob? Would you say that early as it may be, there is a first tier? Yeah, I think that's fair. Yes, that is true. That is absolutely – I mean I think that's true and I think it's true – I think even the people – I mean look, everyone wonders what's the delay?

Why are these candidates delaying? We know they're running. Why aren't they saying they're running? Part of it is – putting together an organization. Part of it is really trying to finance this very, very difficult thing and come up with two or three ways to do so. One is you raise money for your actual campaign, for the campaign for America's future and prosperity, whatever that is, right? Then you have to raise – then you set up a PAC. As long as you have not yet declared your candidacy, you can set up a pack and raise money for the pack and install leadership of that pack. And then when your candidacy is declared, of course, you have to sever all connections to that pack.

Right. You can't coordinate, but you can but you can you can raise a lot of money doing it. And you can have a team there that is answerable to no one necessarily. But – you already know they are aligned with you because you're the one who installed them. And so a lot of the bigger candidates we have who are putting operations together and I think Marco Rubio is one of those. That's what they're doing now. And it may be unpleasant to think about, but it's – especially in early days, it really does matter how prepared and planned and how much – how prepared you are for what is in fact a very, very, very grueling and quick and fast-changing and demanding campaign schedule. And you've got a bunch of – I mean look, everyone – one thing everybody wants, everybody wants Huckabee to run in Iowa and win because that makes Huckabee – that makes Iowa's front – no frontrunner emerges from Huckabee. You have a cluster of second, third and fourth places and then you go to New Hampshire. And then New Hampshire – then if you're Jeb Bush, you want to surprise everybody in New Hampshire or if you're Scott Walker, you want to surprise everybody in New Hampshire. Or if you're Scott Walker, you want to surprise everybody in New Hampshire. Now, if Scott Walker wins in Iowa, then he's definitely the front-runner because people expect –

Oh, definitely. It's all that stuff happens now and all you can think of is I just kind of have enough money when I leave Iowa so I can own the airwaves in Boston, which is one of the big markets for New Hampshire. And then I can get down to South Carolina and I still have gas in the tank. Because if you start losing, you start coming in second and third or worse, people stop thinking that you're going to make it. And if they stop thinking you're going to make it, they want to pull the plug. There's a reason that there's a top tier of the three people that you mentioned. Scott Walker is responding to a national, or at least on the right, desire for somebody to take on the bloated, corpulent public unions and start to rein in their power.

And Marco Rubio speaks to a sort of pride in America and American exceptionalism, the immigrant experience and all these things that we think the party needs. Jeb Bush is in that tier because – because – because – Money. Money. Money. Money. Because of money. And nobody in the grassroots or the larger party at large is clamoring out for him. Will they accept him eventually? Again, must I?

Yeah. This is hard for Rob because James is agreeing with me. Keep going, James. Keep going. But right now, the feeling of Jeb Bush as being inevitable to many people – let's make a pop culture reference that they'd get at a culture radio dot com. The scene where Ash the robot is rolls up a magazine and tries to jam it down Ripley's throat. That's about how people feel right now when it comes to a Jeb Bush candidacy is that they don't want it. They didn't ask for it and they can't even speak because this thing is being rammed down their throat.

And as for what he says himself, again, we all love the way he's, you know, what he did in Florida, Common Core, immigrant. There's a great deal of admiration. He's about 75 percent of what we might like and certainly better than a Hillary Clinton presidency would be. Yes. But he gave a speech the other day. I think it was yesterday or a couple of days ago that was just flat, just ticked the boxes. There was no passion. There was – when you compare the passion of a Rubio – I agree completely. And when you compare the energy that Cruz can bring to it, although I think as a national candidate he would be a polarizing disaster. Well, let's put it this way.

The New York Times – no, it was the Washington Post that did that piece on Scott Walker about his college years. They're fascinated by his college years. Completely uninterested in what the president did. But Scott Walker, it's interesting. So it tells you that they have – that they're worried about him and that they've got him in their sights just like they had the – oh, there was a stone on Rick Perry's property which was owned by a Klansman. Yes, yes, right. In the 19th century.

So we'll know then exactly that Jeb Bush's inevitability is becoming more and more inevitable when all of a sudden in the crosshairs, the Post and the Times look at Mr. Jeb Bush with the precision of a sniper. Speaking of which, the Oscars are coming up and American Sniper, of course, is being brooded about as a great fave. You guys have any picks? You're in the Academy, Rob. I know, Peter, you're're in the Academy, Rob. I know, Peter, you're probably in the Academy as well. I'm of the Academy. I'm not in the Motion Picture Academy. I'm not.

Oh. Well, then. I'm not old enough, really. The average age of an Academy member is something like the mid-60s. They are, I mean, just to delve into progressive politics, it's like 93 percent white and it's like 68 percent male and it's – the average age is over 60. Well, then, Rob, you probably read that piece. I think it was Hollywood Reporter that reprinted anonymous comments on what somebody thought about it. It was one step above Bill Murray saying, didn't see it, but it was an instructive look

into the views of these cosseted white progressive folk who are saying, look, if you're in the academy, you're not a snaggletoothed hillbilly, so it's okay for you to hate Selma. Right, right. I have a question about the Oscars, and it's a question based on finally finding time. As you know, I have a bunch of kids and in any event, my wife and I this past the Middle East to the deep, deep question of what it means to be a man. The question – manliness and manhood in the 21st century.

It is a tremendous – the editing, it is a tremendous piece of work and yet I cannot see Googling around on anybody's rundown of the likely movies to win for Best Picture. Nobody thinks American Sniper will win. Why not? And am I not correct that if it doesn't win, it will be a travesty? Robert? Well, I don't know. You can't say travesty about the Oscars. I mean weird things win.

It doesn't rise to that level? It doesn't rise to that level. I mean look, we're talking about the lowest of the low information voters vote in the Oscars. I mean weird things win. It doesn't rise to that level? It doesn't rise to the level. I mean look, we're talking about the lowest of the low information voters vote in the Oscars, right? They don't even see the movies mostly. They just look at the marketing and the in-town buzz around movies. It is highly possible that American Sniper could win because of the controversy, a lot of people saw it and it's not a jingoistic movie. It's a really, really finely done movie. It also has a very interesting – had an interesting path to the screen.

It also appeals to really, really old dudes because it was directed by somebody who's even older than they are, Clint Eastwood, and who has been, at least in the past few pictures, has been really hitting – really looking old, right? The movies – Clint Eastwood pictures before this one, the three before this one, have been slow and ponderous and have real pace problems as if maybe he's too old to direct now. So there's a lot – americans never could easily win i think the winner will be boyhood which is a lovely picture um and an interesting one shot over i think 16 years um the the team would gather every summer and they just filmed everyone in a family as they got older and the actors got older and the boy grew from, I don't know, 10 to 18, 19. And he went off to – or earlier, maybe.

And he went off to college and you see this child grow up before you on screen and it's a complicated movie and can infuriate you because the Ethan Hawke character spends half the picture as a young man, young, callow dad who is absent father, not really helping raise his kid but every time he takes his kid out they complain about Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld but in the end the movie ultimately really becomes a redemption

story about the dad, Ethan Hawke who kind of gets his act together and meets another woman and she's from a good family in Texas and they go to the church and it's pretty amazing stuff. And it's just kind of a lovely picture and I suspect that it will – it's a hard thing to guess. But I suspect that Academy voters will look at it and say, man, I wish I had made that movie.

I wish I had taken 16 plus years to make a movie. And so that's the kind of thing that, you know, gets them where they live. And also they gave, they gave a 12, 12 years of slave. They gave that movie,

they gave that the Oscar movie last year. So like Selma, you know, right. They covered that one. They covered it. We did already that – the Oscar movie last year. So like Selma, you know. Right. They covered that one. They covered it. We did it already.

We proved that we're good. Oftentimes it takes 16 years to make a movie anyway. And I think what's most important to the people involved is that they just got paid at some point. Because as we know, once a movie is out there and making money, it will be in the red forever. I don't think – I don't think gone with a – I don't think gone with a I don't think Wings ever made money. You know, Birth of a Nation the Great Train Robbery is probably still in the red. Oh, it's still in the red.

Oh yeah, there's an advertising on that thing you can't, you know. Well, before we go, we should probably take a look at what folks have been saying at Ricochet itself. This being the Ricochet podcast. So many comments this week. I mean I was having fun with one where somebody was talking about – there was these little threads of Roman history discussion going on in the member feed where you can just chime in.

Whatever you're looking for essentially, it's there in the member feed. And if it isn't, you can start it and people will flock to it. It's odd. Once you put up a particularly polarized magnet, what sort of fillings it will attract. It's great. That's what I love about it. But there's a question from Brandon Phelps who said, I don't believe in God. I believe in science.

It's an interesting thing. It's one of those little pieces of chum you throw and watch the water roil. So that leads to the other one that was was how should Scott Walker have handled the evolution? Gotcha question. I don't think that the idea of God and science are in conflict. But it's not the sort of thing that a presidential candidate or even a politician in that matter I can expect to expound upon with great nuance. It's a gotcha question. Yeah. And Rick Wilson had a great series of questions that we should be asking the media people themselves.

Yes. We should put a link to that in the podcast. But if you're listening to the podcast and you have not seen the list of questions that Rick Wilson posted on Ricochet, Rick is a great – very smart, very funny, very caustic political consultant, political guy from Florida, and he posted this thing on Ricochet. We should – we'll post a link to that. It was great. They were great. So I'm going to go out with this then, a question for both of you. What we want to do is the Breitbartian – the idea of punching back twice as hard, not just to sit there and take the media – the way they phrase the question.

Massive retaliation. But to throw it back at them. The trouble is, is that with some guys, it's peevish and bullying with other people. It's happy warrior. Start with you, Peter. Who do you think in the field is best able to turn the media around and charm the audience so that the audience itself realizes that the media is on one side? Ted Cruz in this order. Ted Cruz scott walker marco rubio all i've seen all three do it yeah rob i think that's i think that's right i think that's right yeah but also i feel like um i feel like the one of the ways in which we what's interesting

what's interesting about the reaction with the sc to Scott Walker and I think what's interesting about Brandon's – I think that's like 100 and something plus comments in the conversation. It's really worth going to. We should post a link to that too. It's the idea that, OK, listen, if you're running for president in 2006 – for 2016, you – we expect you to have your – I guess people – some of them are calling it the Newt Gingrich moment. Remember Newt Gingrich in 2012, in 2011, 2012 in those debates? He would ferociously turn on the questioner with this great – and people – every time he did it, at least for me, I would say, man, I wish I could vote for Newt. I can't for a whole lot of reasons but I wish I could because I like that guy. I suspect that there are candidates right now knowing that – or that they should be preparing if they're not prepared. This is a little early but be prepared to smack down those questions Rick style without a doubt.

I mean if they aren't, then maybe they don't deserve to be – they don't deserve your vote. So – but it's worth – the Brandon's post is really interesting and interesting I think for – it also says a lot about Ricochet. What's interesting about it is that Ricochet is a place where there are a lot of believers and there are a lot of non-believers and they all kind of like jostle against each other like in a happy subway car. And we would like to know that that's a happy subway car from the Giuliani era. Yeah. Where everything is cleaned up. Clean and the AC is on and yeah. Where everything's cleaned up. Clean and the AC's on and yeah. It's not completely spattered with graffiti and smells of dank, electrified urine and all the other things that we associate with New York, which hasn't happened yet. But give them time. de Blasio is only just getting started.

President has two years left. de Blasio, who knows? You know, the job of remaking America, fundamentally transforming it, thankfully, is a little bit more difficult than these guys thought, which is why I believe that successive things like American Sniper and other little cultural messages tell you that there's a lot of people who are yearning for a certain strong and confident country again and do not believe that there's anything wrong with either strength or confidence, particularly when it seems to be something that our enemies have in spades. Well, you can debate that at Ricochet. You can go there to the Ricochet store and get this great new mug for the diner that I'm looking at

or the Glop podcast, which is a delight to wear. You can also sign up for the Daily Shot, which you'll want to do because it's hilarious and informative, and it comes to your email box without any effort on your part. There it is. And, of course, we'd like to thank Acculturator.com, where you can find all kinds of fascinating stuff in the Ricochet mold about pop culture. And we thank Harry's as well. Harry's.com, $5 off with that coupon code Ricochet.

You'll start shaving smarter and you'll never go back to drugstore brands. Guys, it's been a pleasure. Peter, Rob, we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 2.0. Oh, I forgot to mention. Hey, you guys been at National Review today? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right. That's right.

They've launched a new site and, you know, sympathies because we all know what it's like to launch a new site. There's always going to be bugs. So be patient. I've got an email them a new photo for my national review online pieces. It looks really good. I kind of like it. It's incredibly bold and lots of pictures. I like it.

I mean, look, everyone hates it and they're going to hate it for weeks. Oh, I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I like it. I mean, look, everyone hates it and they're going to hate it for weeks. Oh, I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I like it. And then if they change what they have on there now, people say, why are you changing it? We loved it. But I love that they're doing it. It's great. I mean,

it is a must-go-to site. Obviously, everybody on this podcast has a lot of loyalty and affection for National Review and for what they've stood for and what they do and everything. But I think they did a great job and I know it was hard, hard, hard getting there. But congratulations to them and we should also – we should celebrate that. I will celebrate that in a post but good for that. Absolutely.

A note to readers from Rich Lowry. Dear readers, it is a rule of the internet that most people initially hate redesigns. He's right about that. Actually, I do like it. There's a sharpness. Okay. Everybody go look. Nationalreview.com.

This is why I redesign my site, lilacs.com, every year. I redesign my blog, The Bleat, every week just to keep everything in the churn. So, uh, yeah, go take a look at it. And by the time you become absolutely comfortable, love it, and then take it as an ordinary way of the universe,

it'll change again. Constant change is the only constant there is. Thanks everybody for listening and we'll see you next week at a ricochet podcast. Next week. I stay out too late. Got nothing in my brain. That's what people say. That's what people say. I go on too many dates. But I can't make them stay.

At least that's what people say. That's what people say. But I keep cruising. Can't stop, won't stop moving It's like I got this music in my mind Saying it's gonna be alright Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play And my haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, baby I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake.

Shake it off, shake it off. A heartbreak is gonna break, break, break, break, break. And the fake is gonna fake, fake, fake, fake, fake, baby. I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake. Shake it off, shake it off. I never miss a beat. I'm lightning on my feet. And that's what they don't see.

That's what they don't see. I'm dancing on my own. Ricochet. Join the conversation. And that's what they don't know. That's what they don't know. But I keep cruising Can't stop, won't stop grooving

It's like I got this music in my mind Say it, it's gonna be alright Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, baby I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, hate, hate, baby. I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake. Shake it out, shake it out. My heartbreak is gonna break, break, break, break, break. And my heartbreak is gonna break, break, break, break, break.