The Ricochet Podcast - Space Force Cadets

Episode Date: August 10, 2018

Did someone say Space Force? That’s just too irresistible a topic for this podcast not to tackle in depth. So we do. But that’s not all. No sir. We also call on our friends Matt Continetti (he of the must listen Right and Righter podcast) to talk about Alexandria Cortez-Ocasio and what she means for American politics, and Byron York takes us for a deep dive on the status of the Mueller... Source

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We have special news for you. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Are you going to send me or anybody that I know to a camp? We have people that are stupid. The time has come

to establish the United States Space Force. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lileks, and today we talk to Matthew Conanendy of the Washington Free Beacon and Byron York on the Mueller investigation. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome, everybody, to the Ricochet Podcast, number 411.

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It's longer and longer. I have to apologize. When I read this copy in the morning, I think, good Lord, are we adding to it? Today's member – I have been doing this member pitch for, I mean, since the very beginning, and I failed at it, well, pretty much regularly every week. And so it has been rewritten for me, which I don't think is any different from what I used to say by our director of technical operations, which is something we actually do have here at Ricochet, Max Ledoux. He writes for me thus. I don't know about you, but my liberal friends are always telling me about something they heard on npr i was listening to npr they say oh i heard that on all things considered well i'd like to hear people say i heard that on the ricochet podcast instead

um although i do appear on npr so i'm of two minds about that you always get that in don't you yeah because it's like you know i'm i'm an interloper um here at ricochet.com we've always tried to fill a need we saw on the right for something like intellectual discussion, soothing voices, civil conversation along the lines of what NPR does for the left. But of course, NPR is free to listen to, but it is taxpayer-supported, unlike us. But it takes money to run the best conservative center-right discussion site on the web and podcast network. Believe me, so true. And everybody says it. They say RickShay is the best best that's a little trump thing he wants me to say um so look if you're already a member of ricochet uh we thank you and we are pleased to be members along with you if you

are not a member please today become a podcast listener uh member at uh what's the level at ricochet.com slash join for two dollars and 50 cents per month that is a good price you cannot beat that um we were angling for 2.99 and then you know we dialed it down to 250 uh the podcast listener member is a way for you to support the podcast that you're already listening to for free um and it you know it's kind of working i gotta say is as awkward and weird as these things are for me to read, we got an email this week from a LAPS member. After many years of LAPS membership, he writes, during which I continued to listen to almost every podcast and endured too many membership pitches. Last week, Rob asking me to pay up worked.

I don't know why, but Rob's pitch got me. That's music to my ears. So support your favorite podcast, Ricochet Audio Network, by becoming a member at ricochet.com slash join at the podcast listener level. For only $2.50 a month, that's nothing. Ricochet.com slash join. I know you're planning to do it. Do it now. Just pause the show. Go to ricochet.com slash join, and we thank you. There should be some tier that if we get X number of new subscribers, we won't do the pitch next week.

I mean this ought to be the end game. It's like subscribe now, and we'll stop doing this. Here's the thing. The actual number needed here is quite low. We don't need that many members to have a robust and sustainable business. If 2%, 3% of the listeners became members, really, seriously, it's that low, we would probably do these once a month. Well, excellent. So everybody now relax because don't worry.

We don't need you. It's only 2% or 3's only two or three percent so well we're not there so i don't say we can we i could hardly make a difference you're saying to yourself uh no you would make a huge difference yeah you make a great difference peter welcome peter you're out there in california the the hub of high-tech industry development the future is is California, as we all know. How is everyone taking to the idea of the Space Force? We have the Space Force now, and it's being mocked because all things Trump and Pence can have to be mocked. What do you think? Because we know around here in Ricochet, you're Mr. Space. I have given this.

Here's what Californians think of it. They just don't. I haven't had a single conversation about this. This is one of the glories of being in California. There are little bits and pieces of the daily news that you just don't have to pay attention to. What do I think of it? I don't know. Jim Mattis seemed to resist the idea.

Now he's come around to support it. It seems to me to – I mean if you want a serious answer, here's about the best I can do. It seems to me that it would have made sense to include things that fly, even in outer space, in the Air Force. The Air Force, as best I can tell, the Air Force as a service has trouble these days. It used to have real esprit de corps, morale, and now more and more of the Air Force is becoming technical, and more and more missions are being run not by pilots, but by guys operating joysticks from control facilities on the ground. And the Air Force could use something, some visionary new project, and space would strike me as it. So what am I saying? To the extent that I have thoughts about these things,

which you just heard the extent, it's about three sentences long. I'm sort of dubious to tell you the truth. Why can't it just go in the Air Force? Do you have thoughts about the Space Force? Yes, yes, I do. But I'd like to hear Rob's first. Mine are that I think anytime you use the word space,

it's stupid. It just sounds dumb, even if it's not dumb. But space just sounds like science fiction or Tom Swift or some kind of fantasy. But I remember – and this is how old I am. I remember when Walter Mondale was running against Ronald Reagan in 1984, and he was arguing against Star Wars, Strategic Defense Initiative, and he said in that great nasal, flat, Midwestern voice, and now the president wants to take the arms race into the heavens. And he raised his hands as if to gesture that we're going to now have the arms race into the heavens.

And I remember thinking to myself, yeah, okay. I mean I wasn't – I voted for Mondale, of course, as I've said many times here. But even at 18 years old, I was thinking, yeah, okay. I mean why is that – it's already in space. To fire a missile, an intercontinental ballistic missile, it basically goes into the atmosphere, past the atmosphere. Correct. Correct. So we already have a space force. It's just in silos in Kansas somewhere.

So I'm in favor of the concept. I just am not terribly – I mean it's hard for a president, even one with elaborate and unassailable dignity, to say the word space force and not sound silly. But when you have a president who is somewhat – who's a good deal short of that, it sounds even sillier. But that doesn't mean the concept is bad. Okay. Can we linger on this for just a moment since you raised the question of 1984 and the use of space? Into the heavens. Into the heavens.

As you know, you just said it yourself, Mondale was opposing the strategic defense initiative. Into the heavens. People got it and tended to like it. The idea of Star Wars, the future, using American technological dynamism to protect the – people sort of got it. What do you make of that, Rob? I'm sorry. I was just drinking some coffee. What I make of that is that that was probably true back then. I think now it just – Space Force just sounds nutty, and then they have this weird logo thing. It's just

hard to make it sound serious, even though it is. I'm not arguing about the merits of it. It's just hard to do that, and especially hard to do that when it comes out of Trump's mouth, because Trump has a tendency to sort of demean everything, even important things with his demeanor.

And when you start with the idea of the Space Force, you're really going to – it's easy to mock, although I don't think that as a concept, it's something that people – I don't know any – I haven't seen any polling. I certainly, as a barometer one, I don't think it's a bad idea. I think it makes complete, total sense. The trick that Reagan played, which I think, Peter, you're more of an expert on this than I am by far, but the great trick that Reagan played was to continually move forward and to make very, very loud pronouncements about SDI, Star Wars, even when it was in its very nascent, not even R&D phase, but like artist rendering phase. And then when it became controversial, in Reykjavik, he sort of blithely said, oh, listen, if you're worried about it,

when we get the technology, we'll give it to you. We'll give it to you. And it was brilliant, like this incredibly brilliant move of incredibly high level jujitsu which would left his his his enemies on the uh in the west sputtering and left our enemies on the east um you know a year from surrender well the nomenclature of these things is always fun because with star wars you're right it got named that by the people. By the enemies, the opposition. That's right. The people who wanted to mock it.

But I mean technologically it had – there was brilliant pebbles. There was the technology where they have nuclear weapons in space explode and blaze and hits. I mean there's all this complex stuff. Do you remember when we had – there was the deployment of the MX missile in the desert? Oh, for sure. Yes. Right. This was something, again, that everybody freaked out about because it just showed what a bunch of warmongering, end-of-the-world, Armageddon-ridden guys these were.

They were going to put the Colt Peacemakers out on these railroad tracks, which would then drive around so it couldn't be hit, right? That was the basic idea. That's right. Right. Because you wanted to keep them guessing as to where your stuff was. Stuff in the silos, stuff in the sky, stuff in the seas. And just for grins, we've got this. I forget what that was called, but I remember,

didn't they call the missiles that were being towed around, didn't they call them the Peacemakers? I think those were the ones in Europe. Yeah, I think the Peacemakers were the shorter range that we put in Europe. No, those were Pershings. Okay, I don't know. Short answers, I just don't know. But again, the terminology drives the other side crazy.

Absolutely. Yeah, it does. So while I agree with Rob that there is a certain comic value to Space Force only because we've degraded it ourselves with our pop culture references, there's something to be said for coming up with that that just makes the other side mad because even though they see cartoon guys with red badges and little epaulettes on their shoulders and caps that have wings let them mock it because most people kind of sort of want a space force especially if it's defined as something that's going to keep us um well the skull to the above. So call it the high-altitude war corps if you want to. But Space Force, I don't

mind. I see guys in silver jumpsuits giving a salute, and I'm on board. I'm on board. Well, one thing we know is that if this thing moves forward, the Pentagon will, in its brilliance, come up with the most idiotic acronym

for it. Outer Atmosphere the OARC or something. What's interesting about the SDI is that one of the criticisms of it, aside from taking the arms race into the heavens, was that it wasn't going to work.

It would never work. It would never work. And it's a boot doggle, and it will never work. It can't work. And no good can come of it. And the truth is that the technology that was putting in – we were planning to put into SDI, a lot of it had sort of this ripple effect and sort of halo, I guess halo effect of technology. We ended up having it became the Patriot

missile, which is the missile that shoots down the other missiles and went into the Iron Dome. In Israel, that's right, the Israelis. It's really the same thing. No one was predicting that. No one was saying, okay, well, there'll be ancillary discoveries that will lead us to sort of the 50 or 60 percent level of this.

But it's amazing to me how quickly we as a political culture anyway get caught up in the zero-sum, 100 percent or nothing argument. Forget that there's little the halfway mark of SDI was enormously useful and saved untold lives. But this is where people's wrong. Go on. I'm wrong. Permit me to give myself another chance to be wrong in another area. When you say nobody quite understood, I take your point. And for sure, the Union of Concerned Scientists kept saying Star Wars won't work, it won't work, it won't work.

My reading of Reagan at that period was he didn't know whether this or that technology would work. What he was trying to do was change the terms of engagement and bring to bear on the Cold War American technical dynamism. He was fascinated by Silicon Valley. He was fascinated. His briefings were filled with new developments in Silicon Valley. And I always felt that part of what he understood, and we now know this is for sure the way the Soviets read it because we have plenty of archival material now that's

been released, was not that the Americans can build or that we would be able to build this impenetrable space shield over the United States, but that the research project was going to create one discovery after another that the Soviets would never be able to match. We'd be two steps, three steps ahead of them. And that's really what rattled the Soviets. They didn't know what we were going to discover, but they knew we'd discover something because they, of course, were always breaking the treaties. They had their own research projects. They were making discoveries. They knew they couldn't keep up with

us. For Reagan, the whole point was the open-endedness of it. Yeah, but I guess what I mean is not necessarily the actual outcome. And I think whenever scientists or anybody says this can't be done, you should always stop. I guess what I mean, the analogy I would have drawn was the analogy to the self-driving cars that we have this obsession with. Well, the car is going to be driving around with no drivers, and that will probably happen, and that will probably happen in the future. But in the meantime, all the steps getting up there, there will be sort of the human assist cars, which my Subaru has now, which is fantastic. A little tinker toy version, but soon, next year, the year after, it's going to

have lots of little assistances to it that I'm going to get used to that are not going to be quite driverless, but are going to be really, really close and probably save a lot of lives on the highway. And the idea that you can criticize it because you just, oh, I'll be just getting in a car and I can be eating a pizza.

That's sort of a caricature of how technology changes our lives and how research like SDI or driverless cars or anything that seems kind of fanciful, the Space Force, how it can – by taking maybe a slight left turn somewhere or a slight right turn somewhere, how it can really be successful and not necessarily be the carbon copy of what was predicted. Right. But as I was saying before, where Peter is what was predicted. Right. But as I was saying before, where Peter is wrong. Wrong. I knew he would get back to this. Go. A couple of weeks ago when we were talking about whether or not we should go to Mars,

Peter would say no. And what I'm telling you is that Rob's right. Stuff like this, research, yields unexpected results. For example, if you have to get a lot of stuff into a small box and get it to Mars, you are going to learn how to compress and how to pack. It's literally impossible to do. Right. So the very technology that we use, I think, probably to get the stuff into space,

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And our thanks for Casper for sponsoring this, the Ricochet for $50 off selected mattresses. Terms and conditions, of course, apply. And our thanks for Casper for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast Matt Continetti, editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon, co-host of the Write and Writer podcast, which can be heard right here on Ricochet. Follow him on Twitter, of course, at Continetti. And on Twitter, oh, this week, things. Man, there was dragging. There was shade thrown. Matt wrote a call about Ben

Shapiro because Ben challenged Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to debate for charity, mind you. I think it was like $10,000. And she responded not only with saying no, but accusing him of catcalling. Wow. It's one revelation after the other for this brilliant new face of the democrat party isn't it man yeah it sure is uh alexandria ocasio-cortez is turning out to be a total flake and i all of her statements on public policy are grossly misinformed and it really began when she was interviewed by margaret hoover on Hoover on the new firing line. And it was just clear, especially when the issue was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that Ocasio-Cortez did not know what she was talking about. So a politician who was supposed to be the great herald of our coming democratic socialist moment,

I think, embarrasses uh every time she uh makes an intervention in public discourse and this latest episode with ben shapiro is no exception i am hard if i could just follow up on that i'm hard i'm hard pressed to find a speech that she's given lately to an interviewer in which what she said hasn't been demonstrably flat factually conceptually wrong. Nearly everything she says can be teased apart and shown to be nonsense very quickly. I mean, it's not like you need a surgeon's scalpel. You can do it with a busted, you know, chopstick.

Yeah, and I think this is a larger problem with the Bernie Sanders movement. And you saw it somewhat in 2016 that Bernie would make great claims, especially when it comes to universal health care or Medicare for all, or universal college, public college for all. And whenever he was challenged with the actual bill for these programs, he evaded the question. He hemmed and hawed. It's very similar with Ocasio-Cortez. She has these great goals which she describes as socialist, but which are really just kind of unicorns and ponies, what the cost is, what the tradeoffs will be, she falls apart. So I think that's one reason to be skeptical that the Sandinistas are the great future of the Democratic Party.

Matt, Peter Robinson here. Dinesh D'Souza has a new movie out called Death of a Nation. I haven't seen it yet, but I have seen the poster. And the poster shows a composite of Abraham Lincoln and Donald Trump. Half the face is Lincoln. The other half is Trump. And of course,

the implicit suggestion is we're headed into a civil war and Donald Trump, as best I can tell, there's no comedic intent here. Donald Trump is the new Abraham Lincoln. We'll come to Trump in a moment. The first question is, how bad is it?

Are we somehow dividing into two such separate, well-defined, and completely incompatible camps that there's civil strife coming? I don't think so, Peter. I'm with your colleague, Mofi Arena, who believes that descriptions of our polarization are vastly overstated. I mean, look, there's definitely elite polarization. There's definitely media polarization. I mean, you only need to open up Twitter to see that. But when you actually get to the everyday experience of most Americans,

they live their lives completely separate from politics. They're engaged in the business of going to work, of trying to start a family, of trying to make ends meet, and they're not as polarized as the kind of elite discourses. Now, I think it's troubling that the elite discourse is as polarized as it's become,

precisely because it's not healthy for a society to keep debating the question of whether we're on the verge of civil war. I do think, though, if there's a threat of violence, it's going to come from the radical left. And, you know, America has lived through periods of radical leftist violence before in the late 1960s, early 1970s. Of course, the upshot of this is always a move to the right in the broader electorate. So I think fears of civil war are overstated. There is a reasonable worry about the heated rhetoric among media elites. And then

there's another worry, I think, about left-wing resistance activists turning violent in their opposition to Trump and what they take Trump to represent. But these are three separate problems. And the larger problem, the biggest or the most worrisome problem of civil war is an exaggeration. So I know Rob Lahn, Brother Rob wants to get in here, but I have one question, one more question if I may. We said a moment ago, you said a moment ago that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez simply does not know what she is talking about. And this brings me, although I have to be careful how I set this up, to Donald J. Trump. You have not been a never Trumper. In my judgment, Matt, reading your work, you've been quite judicious. You've been almost excruciatingly fair in giving Trump credit when you believe credit is due.

Okay, so here's the question. I think it does the man no disservice to say that when he became president, he himself did not know what he was doing. He couldn't have. He'd spent no time in politics. What kind of grades do you give him for learning on the job policy? You mentioned the Middle East. Of course, we've got North Korea. Of course, we've got Russia. We've got the tax. Give us a grade for his mind and his ability to absorb information and make to learn the job. Where do we stand?

Well, Peter, I would say that Trump has changed fairly little as president. In fact, I think he's changed fairly little over the last 30 years. I would say at the beginning, at the outset of his presidency, he may have been somewhat intimidated by more to his subordinates on questions of trade and foreign policy. Now he's much more comfortable in the job. I believe he's liberated in the job. And so he has embraced kind of his instincts. He's always been a very gut person, kind of inner direct. He knows what he wants and he does it. And that first year where he may have been slightly kind of unsure of where he stood may have inhibited him. That is no longer the case. He's made some big bets in the second year. And I don't know whether we have seen the results of those bets yet. Obviously, North Korea is one.

Another one is the trade issue and the trade conflict with the Europeans, where he seems to have gotten some concessions. You could chalk that up as a victory. But then with China, where I actually think we need to be very tough. Um, we still don't know the ultimate, um, consequences of that. So actually much like, um, Ronald Reagan, if I can introduce another president, um, his first year was kind of set up, you're trying to get the main domestic, uh, agenda through. He failed on on uh health care mainly because you know john mccain's uh vote um but he got the tax bill through which was basically everything conservatives have wanted for

the last 25 years in the tax bill right and he got the judges through in the second the second year has shaped shaped up to be largely about foreign policy, which includes trade policy. And those two bets he's made, they could pay off spectacularly. Other bets he's made in the past have, but we still haven't seen. The roulette wheel hasn't stopped when it comes to North Korea and trade. Got it. Hey, Matt, it's Rob Long. Can we just go back for a minute?

So Margaret Hoover asks on her show, asks Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a question about the Palestinian occupation, right? And she fumbles it, and we all laugh at her. who thinks that Donald Trump, certainly when he was running or even in his vaunted first year, could have answered that question? And why are we so forgiving of a president who seems to be fuzzy on the facts and not of someone running for a junior congressional seat? Right. I mean, we shouldn't be forgiving when the president fudges facts. I think, you know, obviously the example that comes to mind from the campaign was when Hugh Hewitt had to tell Trump what and somehow we feel like this 26-year-old from Brooklyn needs to be an expert in Middle East policy. I mean aren't we in fact lowering our standards across the board for the quality, right, has been very prophetic about political discourse in the early 21st century. I think, obviously, this type of – the thinking that the rules only apply to the other side, Rob, is very widespread. And it's not just the Trump-supporting right. It's also the Trump-hating left. So it is important to kind of keep our heads straight and call people out when they make a mistake. I was very critical of the president, for example, when he equated the findings of his director of national intelligence with those of Vladimir Putin. And I think it's important for people to just keep a watchful eye.

And if Trump gets his facts wrong, then to say they're wrong. And just as it is with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, when she's muddle-headed, she deserves to be criticized and also not – and that criticism doesn't make the criticizer sexist or anything else, which is usually the reaction. Well, what I'm saying is that there's a – it isn't so much they get their facts wrong. It's that they didn't have them. They didn't – she didn't know what she was talking about. It wasn't that she got the date wrong or the phrase wrong.

I would differ. I might differ slightly there. I think she was trying to be very politic because when it comes to the Middle East, obviously her wing of the Democratic Party and now increasingly the Democratic Party largely is becoming very anti-Israel. And her district, importantly, yeah. Yeah, and her district, right. But she's taking cues from anti-Israel activists, and I think she found herself kind of flummoxed about how to respond to the question because she wanted to please everybody, as most politicians do.

She then walked it back. She told Hoover at the end of her kind of rambling answer, she told Hoover, well, we need to make sure Israel has the right to exist and such. But then in a subsequent interview with Democracy Now!, she walked that back in order to please her base. Now, of course, you see that in both parties. But I think with what Ocasio-Cortez represents, it's worrisome for people who are pro-Israel. Yeah, well, let me just poke in here for a second. I think the problem with Trump is on the campaign trail, just about everything that he said in the course of a day was a farrago of

chaff and everybody knew it. They knew he wasn't particularly ideological and hoped that he'd fill in the blanks and get the right guys later. She's being held up as this avatar of the new intellectual democratic movement. She's got a degree in economics from BU, after all. She's the new face. And I find her inability to explain herself, to say that we're going to save money on funerals, to confuse the Supreme Court definition of Obamacare as a tax with what we pay in our premiums. Maybe the bar should be higher for her because she's being held up to us as the anti-Trump. She's smart and she's got it all figured out.

That's just my take. That's my defense of Trump for you, Rob, there. I like that one. So I'm not done with you, Matt. I got to ask some slightly bigger questions. One of the things that – the actual reality here is that Trump would love him, hate him. He's only got six, seven more years left at the most in the big office. If you start subtracting time that he's going to be spending running for his reelect, so the half a year coming up, and then the half a year he's basically a lame duck, you start talking about maybe only four years, maybe five years left of actually meaningful leadership.

So just assuming he's going to be gone soon in the way the world turns, what's left of the Republican Party when he's done? What are we left with when he gets on the plane and waves and goes wherever he's going to go back to Mar-a-Lago forever? What's left? Well, yeah. I mean we – you think of what his – are you asking what the state of the GOP electorally will be or what his legacy will be? The Democrats had a very, very popular president for eight years in Obama. He won 53% popular vote, smashing popular vote victory in 2008. And then when he got on the plane and left, they kind of looked around and said, well, what do we got?

We got Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez maybe. We have nothing. We have no message. We have no messenger. Could that happen you know, Trump may well be reelected, but he could end up governing a divided government, just as Obama did by the time he leaves. I would say with Trump, you know, one reason Obama's legacy was so easily dismantled was Obama made a calculation after the 2010 midterm that he really was done trying to compromise with the Republicans. And so basically pursued most of his agenda simply through executive order and bureaucratic diktat, which of course his successor could undo. He

assumed he bought into this demography is destiny thesis in which the Democrats would just have a lock on the presidency, you know, forever. And so he didn't think that what would happen, happen, would happen. What happened would happen.

So with Trump, the parts of his legacy that are administrative, obviously those changes can be undone by a Democrat. The judicial nominations are much harder to undo, in fact, really impossible to undo. And so I think that will be a much longer lasting aspect of his presidency. And then in terms of the legislative changes, the tax bill, for example, the Democrats, if they succeed Trump, they're going to just be starting from a worse off position than they would have had they held on to the White House in 2016. So you're right. We really don't know what the electoral state of the Republican Party will be when Trump departs, whenever that happens. But I do think he's affected some changes in government that will definitely put liberals, liberal Democrats on the back of their heels when they do eventually

reclaim office. Matt, Peter here with one last question before you go off to continue to run the Washington Free Beacon. Rob said that the Democrats found themselves without a message and without messengers. The message, let's set that aside that's for the next time you come back on the podcast but messengers uh let's just put it this way i'm impressed with the following and i wonder if you are as well or if i'm just plain mistaken and here's what impresses me the rising generation particularly in the senate ted Ted Cruz, Ben Sasse, who else? You could name Mike Lee, Tom Cotton, of course, Tom Cotton. I can't remember the last name, but the –

Joni Ernst. Joni Ernst, exactly, of Iowa. It just seems to me that the next level down of Republican talent is just remarkable. Yes, no? Right. Yeah. And, you know, we've been saying that, too, even in advance of the 2016 election. And, of course, here came Trump out of nowhere and swept the field and wins the nomination and then the presidency. You uh, I think what's interesting to looking at kind of the next generation Republicans, and it's worth noting that, you know, circa 2008, uh, even, and even a week before the election in 2016, people were

debating whether there would be a next generation of Republicans. So I kind of, I, I take heart, or at least I, you know, I, I think there will always be another generation of Republicans. That's just the way politics works. But when we look at this upcoming generation, the real question is, do they understand, will they internalize why Trump succeeded in 2016 and what the nature of the Republican Party is becoming. And that is the Republican Party is becoming the party of basically middle-class white people without college degrees. They're working-class people. And much of the Republican leadership doesn't quite understand that.

They're still kind of wedded to an idea of the Republican Party circa, say, 1994, 1992 even. Trump gets where the Republican Party is headed. Now, he's very bad at expanding that base. The question for the next Republican generation is, can they accept and what the Republican base has become, the core of the party? Can they accept that? And then how do they kind of incorporate other groups into this in order to build a coalition? And, you know, I look at Tom Cotton. I think he's been very smart about everything in the Trump era,

and I think he understands that challenge. I even look at Marco Rubio, who always kind of has his thumb on where the party is at a given moment. I think what he's trying to do right now is something very similar. So I'm looking at each of these younger Republicans and asking, OK, do they understand why Trump succeeded in 16? And then do they have an idea of how to expand beyond Trump's base? Got it. Well, thank heavens the Washington Free Beacon is there for us to follow these things, because after the end of the second Trump term, I'm sure everything will be in flux, and this

will be the most important election of our lifetime, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I hope you're still at the helm, Matt. Thanks for joining us today on the podcast, and we'll see you around the web and, of course, on Twitter. Matt, thank you. Thank you. Right. So, Rob, Peter, are you kind of tired of every election being the most important election of our lifetime?

I'm getting sick of it myself. I am, but I'm hesitant to talk much about it because I can't figure out whether this is a segue. Me neither, and I like trying to interrupt it. So I had to, do you mean, am I so tired that I want to lie down on a Casper mattress? No, I mean, or, you know, listen, they say that these things are the most important election so regularly. It's like, it's like brushing your teeth, you know, except your teeth. It's incredibly difficult to do

and completely impossible oh god see that's that's that's what i was sort of setting that up to see what you would come up with and then rob that's that's just lame uh generally with the product you would think maybe the regular election cycle could somehow be compared to quip's wonderful ability to send you something at regular intervals to make your life better be the most important package you got that day, but I give up on you. But you're right. I was going to talk about toothbrushes, but I'm not going to talk about any toothbrush because there's only one, Quip. Quip.

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at getquip.com slash ricochet. That's G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash ricochet. And our thanks to Quip for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. And now we bring back to the podcast, Byron York, chief political correspondent for the Washington Examiner, Fox News contributor, author of The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy, recently shorn

by an expert in Georgetown at a hair salon, we learned, and also somebody who had a brief scrape in the Twitter jail. Byron, what did you say to get Twitter to question your existence. You know, I just woke up and looked at my emails this morning and there was one from Twitter. And it said, hello. That was kind of nice. We have received a complaint regarding your account at Byron York

for the following content. It listed this tweet I had done the day before about a new story I had written about the whole Trump-Russia dossier investigation. And it had been really interesting because there were all these new emails from Bruce Orr, the Justice Department official, and to Christopher Steele and back, the author of the dossier, and they've been kind of fascinating. And so I did this story, and I wrote a tweet basically just kind of summarizing it and linking to my story.

And apparently Twitter received a complaint about this tweet, and they wrote me, we have investigated the recorded content and could not identify any violations of the Twitter rules or applicable law. Accordingly, we had not taken any action at this time. So I felt like I dodged the bullet when I woke up. But for some reason, I've been investigated. Glad you're still with us. Now, it may be in the Bruce Orr thing that did it, because do you think that most people when they hear who are watching this story, following it, hearrens and think right that's the fellow who had the wife who inexplicably got a ham radio license if somebody said that to you would you think oh this guy is nuts he's one of those deep spate tendril QAnon whack jobs who's trying to piece together things that aren't there

but honest to tell you the truth I had forgotten Nellie Orr's ham radio license. That's what I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what was interesting about these emails was that in January of 2016, Christopher Steele writes Bruce Orr an email and says, hi, happy new year, long time no see. And he talks about the case of Oleg Deripaska, who is a Russian oligarch, had actually had his visa revoked by the United States a few years earlier, and was involved also with Paul Manafort. Very ugly case in which they both accused the other one of stealing money from him. And it appeared that Christopher Deagle was kind of advocating on behalf of Deripaska,

which seemed odd, saying that the deal was Deripaska was seeking a visa to come to the United States. This was January of 2016, to come to the United States to go to an economic meeting. And Steele says, well, it would be a good thing if Deripaska got this visa. And then in the next few weeks and months, there were more emails from Steele to Orr, almost always mentioning their apostate case. And it's like, you're thinking, wait a minute, is Christopher Steele the author of the dossier? Is he working for this Russian oligarch at the same time?

And the question is, well, we don't really know, but I'm not the only one to ask this question, because Charles Grassley, the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked this question of, let's see, of Steele's London, well, of Deripaska's London lawyer, excuse me. And he said, look, is Christopher Steele working for Deripaska? And the guy said, that's privileged. Can't say. Oh, really? That was the answer.

Yes. Yes. So you have these various emails of Steele writing to Broussard saying, you know, this would be a good opportunity for the U.S. government to let Oleg Deripaska in. This would really be a good thing. And he's always also saying, hey, can we talk? Are you coming to Europe? Are you coming to London? Or maybe just somewhere in Western Europe? I'll meet you anywhere. Are you coming over? And then occasionally they set up a call. They don't really exchange substantive stuff in the emails.

And then on July 1st, and remember this is 2016, and remember the Trump-Russia FBI counterintelligence investigation officially begins on July 31st. So on July 1st, Steele sends a note to Orr and says, you coming to London? He says, I am seeing somebody, the name was redacted, in London next week to discuss ongoing business, but there is something separate I wanted to discuss with you informally

and separately. It concerns our favorite business tycoon! And I don't know, what is that? We do know that this is four or five days before Steele first presents his dossier to elon musk i mean before my head explodes let me make sure i've got this christopher steel pulls together a dossier the people who pay him are the democratic national some arm of the democratic party and then the clinton campaign and the clinton campaign and then he goes into the pay of the fbi and you are raising the question based on suggestive evidence or at least interesting or provocative evidence. I'm trying to state the question in a way that doesn't prejudge it.

But you're raising the question, was he in the pay of a Russian oligarch all this time? Correct? That is indeed the question. Oh, my Lord. So the Clinton campaign could have been at least as guilty of collusion as anyone has accused the Donald Trump campaign of having been. I think another way to say it, I think another way to say it is I have noticed some, I mean, clearly what it suggests is, what if Christopher Steele is being fed Russian disinformation as he compiles his dossier? Right. So, because as you know, if you read the dossier, it will say source A or source B or source C, and it's like a former top criminal official or a current top official.

I mean, these are official sources, according to Steele, and in the Russian government, which is headed by one Vladimir Putin. So you have to think, maybe they're not telling him the truth. And so I think the suggestion of this Steele-Daraposta tie is that perhaps Russians were feeding Steele some disinformation that made its way into the dossier. Now, we have seen in recent days commentary from some very anti-Trump bloggers who do follow this intelligence stuff closely, like Marcy Wheeler, who writes a blog called Empty Wheel, and a man named John Seifer, who I think has formerly worked

in the intelligence services, suggesting that, well, maybe some of the dossier information is actually disinformation fed to Christopher Steele by the Russians. Not saying all of it, maybe not most of it, but maybe a little bit was. So I think that we're just getting maybe a different picture right now of the origins of the dossier. And by the way, that's the report that Twitter investigated. That's what I tweeted out. Hey, Byron, have you ever seen the movie The Big Sleep? Years ago, yes.

All right, so in the movie The Big Sleep, based on the Raymond Chandler novel, at some point John Huston and the people involved who directed it, the people involved in making it, were so baffled by the plot, they called up Raymond Chandler and they said, wait a minute, who killed the – I forget who the character – who killed the judge? No, the chauffeur. Who killed the chauffeur? And Raymond Chandler –

The car that he used to have the drink. Yeah, and Raymond Chandler kind of waited for a minute. I don't know. I don't really know who did it. He wrote the novel. And I kind of feel that way right now about this russia business because it just seems to me like the actual truth of it the way the truth almost always emerges is that someone was trying to do something else entirely and and the goal was to do something

else entirely and because of the way the the facts came out the order in which things were unfolded and disclosed you know that kind of creates its own false narrative um we are now not even close to understanding what really happened in a timeline you know the last scene of this movie what i'm hoping is that somebody methodically step by step tells me the story and it's going to be a very satisfying spy story because I suspect what it is is somebody making some money to sell some oppo research, which people do in every general campaign, and it getting half true, half false, and then because it was Trump and Trump's got some dirty associates in Russia anyway, it all seemed like it was more than a coincidence.

But what if it was all just a coincidence? Well, the big sleep analogy is very funny. But I think it may fall short a little bit because I think the truth is knowable here. And I think that we'd know a lot more if, for example, Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS would cooperate, fully cooperate, with the congressional investigations. Simpson did interview with them, but there were

things he wouldn't talk about. If Christopher Steele would cooperate with the investigations. If somebody, Bob Mueller, John Huber, somebody who's in an investigatory position would find out what happened here.

There's a number of people who are not saying what happened. Bruce Ohr has not been interviewed by Congress yet, although that's apparently going to happen in the not too distant future, apparently. But there's a lot of people, we don't know what happened because they won't talk or haven't talked up until now. Byron, Peter here. I want to shift a subject just slightly for a moment. The first week of Paul Manafort's trial ends today. The prosecution, I believe this is what people are expecting.

The prosecution will rest its case and then the defense starts next week. How has the trial gone for the prosecution? And have we learned anything that bears in any way on Donald Trump and accusations of colluding with the Russians? Yeah, well, I think it's gone a lot bumpier than the prosecution thought it would, mostly because of the judge who seemed downright hostile on some occasions to the prosecution. And that traces back to before the trial even began. And I think that their star witness, of course, is Rick Gates, who is the close Manafort associate, who was also the deputy campaign manager of the Trump campaign, because Manafort was the campaign chairman.

And I think that the defense really succeeded in just scuffing him up on trial as a witness because he admitted to having stolen large amounts of money from Manafort, hundreds of thousands of dollars by his own account, $3 million by Manafort's account. And he admitted to stealing some of that money to finance an extramarital affair in a flat in London. And at the very end of the trial, the Manafort defense suggested there were even more affairs. So he came out pretty beaten up, actually. But the prosecution has presented a lot of evidence you know that Manafort got lots and lots of money from um from Ukraine for god knows what but he got lots of money and he bought many expensive things like houses and lots of landscaping and suits and didn't pay taxes on it.

I think one ultimate question out of all this is that it's not absolutely unheard of for somebody who has a lot of money to not pay taxes on some of it. And there are audits and there are civil cases and there are penalties. And you have to wonder how this case ended up with this man being threatened with 200 years in prison. So, you know, maybe the jury might take that into account. I don't know. It seems to me that Manafort would be smart to pursue what Bill Clinton pursued through the entire Whitewater scandal, which is a hung jury strategy. So you can give one of these jurors just to not go along with it.

But anyway, you know, the prosecution has a lot of strong evidence. I'm not saying on every single count that they do have evidence on a number of the counts. Now, your other question was, how does this affect Trump? Or have we learned anything affect Trump? Right. Have we learned anything about Trump? We have not. Before the trial, the prosecutors, the Mueller prosecutors said, we're not even going to mention Trump or Russia. Well, it wasn't quite like that, but the only connection all of these charges have to Trump is, I believe there are 32 counts that he's being tried on.

There are four of the counts involve a loan that Manafort got while he was the campaign chairman for Trump. And Manafort was broke. He was desperate. He was kind of skating from loan to loan. And he was trying to tell each bank that he had enough money to merit the loan that he was asking for. And he went to a bank in Chicago where it was a rather small bank where the head of the bank wanted to be named to Trump's economic advisory panel. And he was. And then there was also some talk about nominating this guy to be secretary of the army, and he was not. But the idea is, did Manafort use his position as a Trump campaign official to get a loan that he otherwise would not have gotten? That tells you more about Manafort. It does bring up the name Trump, but it doesn't tell you anything about Trump.

Byron, last question from me, Peter. We know that there are longstanding Department of Justice guidelines suggesting that prosecutors not bring actions that might affect an election. We also know that this is sometimes ignored, as in 1992, when Lawrence Walsh Lawrence Walsh indicted Casper Weinberger on the Friday before the Tuesday of a presidential election. outrageous in my opinion particularly since we know cap cap weinberger was not guilty of anything uh except possibly some technical all right but that's a separate matter and the judge threw that indictment out within weeks but and the judge the judge threw the indictment out but george hw bush lost the election he probably would have lost anyway but who knows who knows what house seats were lost? Who knows? Walsh did something he should not have done. What's Mueller going to do with the midterms coming up?

Well, first of all, any Democrat would add to your list James Comey reopening the Hillary Clinton investigation, I believe, October 28th before the November 8th election, which was just crazy. So there there's something known in the Justice Department as the 60 day rule where a prosecutor does not take some action that could affect an election within 60 days of the election. It's not written down. I mean, it's just not a law. It's not a regulation, but it's kind of an informal rule that a lot of people in the Justice Department do cite as something they go by. Obviously, it was not followed in those two cases. Ken Starr actually did follow it in 1998. If you remember, the Lewinsky scandal broke in January of 98. An enormous fight ensued. The Clinton White House resisted Starr at every turn, invented all sorts of legal privileges, litigated it all. And Starr, meanwhile, was writing this report and the midterm elections were approaching and Starr had set a goal inside the office

to get that report to Congress by Labor Day. Well, Labor Day was a Monday and I think they got it there on Wednesday. So they missed it by a couple of days, but still they were trying to get within the 60-day rule. So what is Mueller going to do? The 60-day rule doesn't mean like he shuts down the office. It means he doesn't take any public actions that could affect the election.

So if he were going to issue a report that he wouldn't do it during those 60 days or he's not going to indict anybody during those 60 days, it doesn't mean he stops investigating. But my guess is that he will observe it because the one thing he probably doesn't want to be remembered as is James Comey. And I think a lot of people on both sides were just gobsmacked when Comey came out and reopened that thing on October 28 before the November 8 election. Got it. You know a lot of stuff, Byron. You just know stuff. Yeah. Well, the great thing about you guys is that it's not an accident.

You obviously ask about things that I have recently written about, so it makes me sound like I know something. So, Byron, secret sauce, Byron. Byron, what – Yeah. Brief question. Rob made the point that this stuff gets confusing, and there have to be moments when you lose your audience. You'll keep some people who are just fascinated.

But the audience must wax and wane for your detailed reporting of this development, that development, the other development. But the Washington exhibit, what are your editors? What's the you seem to be getting total editorial support. Stick with the story. Is that correct? Oh yeah, absolutely. And first of all, I should say, um, I'm not sure I agreed with the premise. I mean, people are, the people who are interested in this are really interested and, um, it gets a lot of traffic. If I, if I have a story that moves the story forward in some way, new material on this, somebody said that, whatever, it just gets an intense amount of interest. Oh, really? Okay, that actually is – that's reassuring in a way because what you're doing is in some ways the most old-fashioned kind of journalism.

It is investigative journalism. It is beat reporting. doing and what you're doing is in some ways the most old-fashioned kind of journalism it is investigative journalism it is beat reporting you are working sources on the hill and at doj and this is the kind of reporting that we're told over and over again nobody cares about anymore all the traffic has moved to twitter all and nobody cares about anything except what's on facebook what a relief to hear that a big story meticulously reported still commands an audience. Oh, it does. It absolutely does. And what gets less interest sometimes is if I do a story about something else.

I did a column the other day just because I was interested in the fact that Barack Obama has not been very visible in the last several months, even in these hugely important midterms approach. And I was, you know, I have for one thought, especially when he decided that he would remain in Washington after he left office, I thought this former president is going to lead the opposition. I didn't know it would be called resistance at that time, but he's going to lead the opposition. And he hasn't. And he's been really, really be called resistance at that time. But he's going to lead the opposition, and he hasn't. And he's been really, really quiet so much of the time. So I write a piece about that, very little interest. Write a piece about Bruce Ohr, wham.

You explain that to me. I don't know. It's maybe the president is connected with the inner stoner of his early years and decided that, frankly, hitting golf balls off the cliff in Hawaii is far preferable to getting out there in the trenches and actually doing some work, especially if you can just show up every once in a while, make a speech, get lauded, and go home again. I don't blame him. Byron, thanks.

Big check. Big check. We look forward to following you on Twitter and seeing what you have in the other varieties. And thank you for keeping all of this in your head so we can turn at any moment's notice to know exactly what's going on with the investigation. Thank you, guys. Enjoyed it. Byron, thank you.

Okay, no problem. You know, Rob, you were talking about when you brought up the big sleep. It is funny because it made me think. So how is the Sternwood family connected then to this investigation? Right, exactly. And you realize that one of the things that was the plot – first of all, the reason that The Big Sleep may not all – the pieces may not all fit together was that Chandler cobbled together a lot of his novels from short stories.

Sort of jammed them together and welded them in place. And so sometimes you'd get just something that didn't fit. And that was the classic thing in the movie. But one of the things that drove the big sleep was Carmen Sternwood, the crazy little sister, I think, who had naughty pictures taken of her by a camera that were going to be peddled around. And I thought, well, those were the days because nowadays the crazy socialite sister would be on Instagram or someplace else flaunting exactly what was supposedly so shameful in 1945, 1946. Oh, things change. That's what Rob – help me.

I can't depend on you for anything. I was trying to interrupt you, and I was on mute by mistake. But only out of courtesy to you. All right. Let me do this again. Oh, how things change. Oh, I don't know. What do you mean how things change?

Oh, gosh. Okay. I don't know. I guess – Rob is sitting there scrolling through Twitter. Okay. I don't know. I guess. Rob is sitting there scrolling through Twitter. He's not going to help me at all. The thing would be how things change, at which point Rob would say, well, at least the perfume buying experience is the same as it's ever been. Oh, well, no.

My interruptions to James have a little bit more subtlety than that. It was in the classical days of the movies where somebody would go to the counter and they'd get daubed and they couldn't tell what was going on because there's so many scents in the air. At least that's the same, isn't it, James? The smell of gardenias in a Los Angeles evening in a film noir? Of course. The interesting thing is if you went in front of a board of perfumers and you put up stills from a Bogart movie of the classic era, those people are good enough to be able to figure out what you mean. And that actually is part of the process at Fleur. They will storyboard an idea for a fragrance with pictures and music and let the perfumers

summon from that what they want it to be. Well, listen, finding the right fragrance, it's hard. You know it is. And it's like falling in love, which is hard too. But when you fall in love, oh, first there's that initial whiff of attraction. And then as time goes on, you discover all those additional layers and you realize, oh, this, this is the one for me. But finding the perfect perfume and finding out what's inside is not always so wonderful. That's why I'm here to tell you about a company that is bringing the feeling back into fragrance, Fleur. Fleur creates expertly crafted, sustainably produced perfumes without the bad stuff. And they're sold at an honest price.

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On the earth, there's no questionable ingredients. And the packaging, it's eco-conscious. Now, instead of testing a scent on a strip of paper where they just wave it at you or being ambushed in a busy department store where they hose you down with the stuff, you get to know each of Fleur's scents with pictures, words, and music on their website. If you like what you hear and you see and you feel, odds are you're going to like the scent. And then actually try them on your own skin at your own place and your own pace. Each Fleur's scent is created by world-class perfumers and inspired by real moments for your real life.

It's not some silly idea that a celebrity or clothing designer thinks you ought to live up to. Hey, this year it's going to be gardenias and big hats and red lipstick. No. They actually find things that fit you, not some mass culture pop movement. So I have been using this Greystoke and it's

hard to describe because, like I said, I got the little tiny preview bottles and I have them all sitting on my shelf where I sort of give myself a spritz before I go. I never used to do this, by the way. I never used to give myself a spritz before I left the house. Now, I love it. Now I can't wait. And I know that if I get one of the different ones that's not my favorite, I'm going to love that one too. They sent me three. I love all three. Flora creates sustainable, crafted, award-winning perfumes delivered with transparency at an

honest price. So here's what you do. You go and you find which scents you like on the web, and you choose three. Go to fleur.com today, choose three, and use the promo code RICO to get 20% off your custom Fleur sample set. Three scents to try, and that $15 you spend, you get credit towards a full-size bottle of your favorite. That's promo code RICO, RICO, at Fleur.com to try three Fleur fragrances of your choice. And these are not little stingy things. I've been using them for weeks, and I'm still going.

20% off, P-H-L-U-R.com. Promo code RICO. Our thanks to Fleur for sponsoring the Ricochet podcast. And believe me, if they ever invent smell-o-vision on podcasts, if that's possible, I'd love to give you a sample of what floor is like. Well, guys, we'll leave with a little popular culture, because we know that Peter is

itching to talk about it. And Rob, they have a popular Oscar now, which is really kind of, it's like a participation medal, except for the person who participated and won. I mean, what's this all about? Well, I mean, what they've tried to do is the Academy has been facing two problems.

One is that the thing goes on too long, and no one knows who those people are. But that's sort of a perennial problem they've had forever. And the second is that no one's seen the movies. And so now what what used to be a summation of the movie year where the the movie that you had a stake in and you i root for this movie because i love this movie um now it's really about like sorting through a bunch of sort of mid-range mostly mid-range budget art pictures that you'll probably not see and then that whatever one's the best picture you'll probably go and see that so it's it's it's more much more of a film festival than an award show where movies are introduced to the public um rather than being you know getting an award so

the new award is designed to kind of try to thread that needle by by by offering an oscar for the movie that isn't necessarily artistically so great or that the snooty academy voters couldn't vote for uh for artistic reasons but is in fact it was a huge crowd pleaser right so guardians of the galaxy was a gigantic crowd pleaser and the oscars just completely ignored it and instead they gave it to some other you know sort of twee little um uptight uh art picture picture. That's the theory. What's really happening is that the movie industry is dead and doesn't know it. And all the movies that win Oscars or should win Oscars are really – they don't know it yet, but they're television.

So the movies ironically is – I don't want to give this away. Spoiler alert. If you haven't seen the movie The Sixth Sense. But the movie industry is Bruce Willis in Sixth Sense. And it finds out at the end, oh my god, I've been dead all along. What's going to happen is that there's going to have to be some kind of – either both the Emmys and the Oscars are going to go down their weird separate path or the Emmys are just going to get much, much more encompassing. As the Oscars get less interesting, probably shorter, the Emmy Awards are going to get huge. It's going to be a nine-hour show. I mean the number of things now nominated for an Emmy that are part of the culture

and also part of the high culture is extraordinary. I mean I've been in L.A. for a month, and you drive around, and all you see are four-year consideration ads, billboards, and bus cards for TV shows that are only vaguely TV shows. I mean The Crown I guess is a TV show, but it's like a BBC special that would never be nominated for an Emmy but now is. So what we're seeing is this desperate rearguard action by an ancient and ossified bureaucracy of elites trying to figure out a way to stay relevant.

And they're ending up looking like Bob Hope in those old Bob Hope sketches. They're wearing the hippie wig or the Indian costume. Yeah, Bob Hope in a hippie wig is what they end up looking like. And eventually they're just going to have to realize like everybody else that the entertainment business is being driven entirely by the viewers who want to carry the screen around in their pocket. Right. To their detriment. I mean my daughter still will watch – I think I caught her watching some huge widescreen extravaganza on her phone and just sighed because, look, we've got a big television downstairs. You can actually enjoy this the way it was meant to be done but her generation is just trained not only to watch it on small devices but

to not watch it to half watch it while they're doing something else which is why i enjoyed the few times that i could take my daughter to the theater staple her to the chair i know i mean i make it sound like she's got some sort of add but she doesn't she loves movies if they're done right and worth it in other words now that they've upgraded the theater experience where I can reserve a seat, which is great, and I can get there and I don't have to sit through all of the interminable commercials and I can really enjoy a quality thing on a large screen and digital projection, it's worth it. It's worth five times more than I used to pay for a ticket price, frankly, if the experience and the movie are good. But most of them aren't. I mean, there were movies that I thought that I wanted to see when it came down to it. I just thought,

you know what? I'll wait for a buck rental, and I'll tell you why. Because it's going to be a meaningless CGI fest of a huge amount of action and explosion and the rest of it. I'm going to be dazzled. I'm going to be so dazzled by this. And the truth

is, I would rather watch some television show with three characters that is compelling and has a mystery. They're dead, yes, but they're not. When they do it right, like Coco's Pixar, or Pixar's Coco, you have to see that in a theater.

In 3D and IMAX, if prefer preferable because it's such an immersive movie. But that movie's entire – well, not entire, but the majority of that movie's revenue stream will not be in theatrical release, right? It will all be on TV, which I get is probably not as immersive as – and Pixar movies in general tend to be extremely high quality. But the movie business is making its money on spectacle, like giving giving you a reason a really allowed reason to go into a theater but the long tail of the value of the enterprise is either the follow-on sequel franchise franchise you know installments of that universe of that world or um some other way to express that universe on this on television you know the tv version of it this episodic version of it so i mean the audiences are are going to movies

less and less but they're going and it's a bigger deal when they go so there's that right there's there's that benefit but those movies that they see are giant pictures that tend not to be nominated for anything other than like best fake spaceship. And that is a problem for the academy, which has always had a very high-minded view of itself. And so now it's got to figure out how do we not bore everybody and how do we support the real industry that we're supporting and how do we not be what is basically a film festival, which is where we're introducing titles to a public that is never going to see – the five best picture nominations, hasn't seen any of them, but will choose to see only the one that wins best picture because there's always a bump when you win best picture. Even if it's a small movie like Moonlight, it made money after it won the Oscar. So you have to do all that because you're refusing to face reality because nobody in Hollywood likes to face, not surprise,

surprise, surprise. They don't like to face reality. We here like to think that the business is the same as it was when Louis B. Mayer and Sam Goldwyn and all those other people came out west to escape Edison's patent police. But it's completely different. Nobody goes to the movies anymore.

The theaters are too empty. I mean we've just sort of taken the old quote and stripped it down to its truth. Rob, thank you. Peter, thank you. I got to go. Everybody else, Fleur, Casper, and Quip, three words you ought to remember because each one of them will give you a deal. Fleur on the greatest scent you ever had. Casper on the greatest night's sleep you ever had.

And Quip on the best brushing experience you ever had. Coupon code Ricochet in most cases, unless it's Rico. Support us for supporting them. And also support us by going to iTunes, if you wouldn't mind. Toss in a few good reviews at five stars. And as Rob mentioned at the top of the show, support us by paying money, cold, hard cash on the barrel,

right? $2 and 50 cents. And you get to comment and you get the ricochet experience like, well, it'll keep you there for years and years and years until the next election. That will be the most important in our lives. Thanks guys. We'll see you in a couple of weeks.

Take care. Let me tell you people that I've found a new way And I'm tired of all this talk about love And the same old story with a new set of words About the good and the bad and the poor And the times keep on changing So I'm keeping on top of every fat cat Who walks through my door I'm a space cowboy. Bet you were ready for that.

I'm a space cowboy. I'm sure you know where it's at. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Ricochet. Join the conversation. Yeah. I was born on this rock And I've been driving through space Since the moment I first realized

What all you fast-talking cats would do If you could You know I'm ready for the final surprise There ain't no way around it Ain't nothing to say That's gonna satisfy my soul deep inside All the prayers and so bears

keep the whole place uptight While it keeps on getting darker outside I'm a space cowboy Bet you were ready for that I'm sure you know where it's at.