The Ricochet Podcast - Speaking Generally: Bill Barr on “One Damn Thing”

Episode Date: April 8, 2022

Even if it doesn’t normally win popularity contests, we like to keep things candid (but fun!) on the Ricochet podcast. And even if it cost US attorney general Bill Barr some popularity points, we still want to hang out with him! He’s just published his memoir One Damn Thing After Another, and the gang do what they can to get at all the damn things. Barr proves still-adept at handling himself when... Source

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Did he hear any of that? I kept talking because he seemed to disappear. I have a dream this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. He's emailing a landlord. Please have keys made available for new office mates,

Joe Biden, Jill Biden, Jim Biden. They were not office mates. With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Rickish Day Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lylex. Today we talk to General Attorney William Barr.

So let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Results of the Podcast. Welcome, everybody, to the Ricochet Podcast, episode number 588. Wow, soon to be 600, and then, well, 600 more. And you can help by joining us at ricochet.com. You can be part of the most stimulating conversation and community on the web. I'm James Lilex in alarmingly chilly Minnesota, Minneapolis. Peter Robinson is in photon-drenched California, I'm sure. And Rob is in Gotham. Yes. And gentlemen, how are you today? Well, thank you.

I can't complain, really. I mean, I can, but... Given the state of the planet, very well. It got up to 88 degrees here in palo alto yesterday yes james i'm saying that to torture you that you are we had sirens tornado sirens go off yesterday it was the test usually the test is the first wednesday of the month and it was but then on thursday they decided to give us two more tests and people were sort of nervous about this and scrabbling for their phones and punching up Twitter or Reddit or something or next door to see, are we at war?

It unnerved people. But that wasn't my reaction. Might have been a month ago or so, slightly. But now, X number of many weeks into the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, I don't think we would be sitting here at this point saying what we're saying about how it's going. News reports today of a missile hitting a train station 50 people killed but the big story seems to be the russian retreat from kiev i'm sorry not retreat a brilliant strategic repositioning of uh battle-hardened fresh forces eager for the next front right so how does it uh appear to you guys more to the point how does uh appear to you guys? More to the point, how does, obviously, we're not still at the peak of interest that we were three, four weeks ago.

But then the massacre news comes on and it spikes up again. And we have this curious dynamic playing where there's a downplaying of it by some. There's this insistence on what Russia is saying. There's this belief that Russia still is this military might that eventually will prevail what are you guys taking away from it now rob do you want to go first on no i was on mute for a reason peter oh all right well what is there to say i mean on the one hand i find myself whipsawed about this it's as i said it's 88 degrees. It's sunny. Spring and almost the first feeling of summer has come here to Northern California. Stanford University, where I work,

has reopened after the lockdown. Students are biking and skateboarding, and life seems wonderful. In all kinds of ways, life seems wonderful. And then I check in on Twitter or I look at the front page of the Wall Street Journal and I see war atrocities. And of course, I remember my reading on the Second World War. The Battle of Kursk is the moment when the Russians begin to turn the tide of war. The Nazis have advanced deep into Russia in three columns, and in the Great Tank Battle of Kursk, the Russians, the Soviets as they were then, begin pushing the Nazis back.

And they push them back very fast and out of the country and then into Poland. And everywhere the Russians go, everywhere the Red Army goes, there is pillage and rape and slaughter, and it is horrible. Germans to this day do not like even having the subject raised of what the Russians, what the Red Army, obviously the Second World War itself is a subject, an unhappy subject for them. But to this day, the humiliation that the Red Army visited on Germans, Rob was just in Budapest. You don't want to get Hungarians going on what the Russian soldiers did to civilians during the siege of Budapest. So it's happening again. It's happening again. I hope in a smaller way i hope in a more contained way i hope that the russian commanders get better control of the troops on the ground and maybe these hopes are all fantasies uh it's the whole thing is horrible do i henry kissinger Henry Kissinger-esque, see some settlement, some way out? Do I see? No, I do not. Vladimir Putin

can't withdraw. He can't do anything that appears to be a retreat because he is in power through the sheer exercise of power. And the moment he looks weak, those oligarchs will turn into jackals. That's my reading of the way the dynamics of tyrannies go there's always someone ready to topple the tyrant once he ceases to seem invincible and the ukrainians it's now very clear that ukraine does exist in people's minds and hearts as a nation unto itself and they've had this done to them they don't want to settle i don't see any way out so rob will now find a way out no i don't think it's a way out um two things one i would think i think what's interesting is that you know the old saw what history repeats itself first time is tragedy second time is farce first my little

marks i think isn't it yeah yeah my rewriting of that is that history does repeat itself. The third time is a Netflix miniseries. Yeah. So what I was... My rewrite on that is that history repeats itself, but when it repeats itself, you're the other guy. So Russia has for years kind of enjoyed, not enjoyed, but celebrated the absolute impenetrable defense of Russia and Russian weather to the Napoleonic invader and the Nazi invader. And they found themselves pretty clever. They were pretty clever.

Well, now they are that. They are doing that. Yes, they are doing that yes they are long slog bad bad with logistics bad with resupplying a terrible command structure now they're moving away from from scalded they're moving away from the north moving away from kiev and moving to the east so there's something about that it's interesting and then i guess the second thing is like i mean good news and bad news right the bad news is that war still war and um it's mostly looting and pillaging we've we've kind of i don't know whether we how long we've done this but pretty much since the beginning of war we've had sort of war theorists and war no more nobility that's been kind of a lie we've told ourselves well these generals they

sort of sitting there like a game of stratego um they're gentlemen after all you know like the the washington dc gentry packed picnic lunches with champagne on ice and oysters and went out to manassas to watch first manassas from a distance and they just thought it would be kind of like a i don't know a spectacle but interesting one and instead what they looked at was like human slaughter, a charnel house. And it kind of changed the attitude, but a little too late. And I, you know, so the bad news is the war is still war. There's still going to be incredible massacres. And we're going to end up in this argument about what a war crime is,

as if that's like there's a line across. It'll be very fuzzy. Not that there isn't one, but it'll be complicated. But the good news is, that um everyone seems to be shocked and the the world or at least the west seems to be shocked by this even russians are shocked by body bags and on a scale of you know one to you know the beginning of history, even the 20th century, and this, this is a terrible thing. But it's remarkably contained so far. This is all stipulated as of Friday morning. And there is something to be said for that, to be said for the idea that it doesn't look like world war one's happening uh where all the powers of great powers of europe

get together and then suddenly find themselves in the middle of a of a disaster it looks to me like it's not escalating i mean i shouldn't say escalating it's going to escalate inside ukraine but it's not it's not spilling over because nobody wants to get nuked. Well, there's no engagement with the right. There's no NATO is not pouring in over the border to assist because they don't want to be obliterated by Russians nuclear arsenal, which they assumed still, you know, even if 20% of it is still working, that's, that's, that's a lot of smoke. Right. But it's still a pretty hot war, right? So it's, so it's lots going on we're going to resupply them so if if the ukrainians decide to press their gain their

short gains in the in the um in the on their coast their eastern coast um that's going to be material they get from us so we are going to we are going to escalate our arms to them. But I think that the idea that there's a nuclear peril is... Do you? Yeah, I do. for last week that a friend here at the hoover institution who's a russian and who did time in the louisian in the old days thinks there's some chance that over the next couple of years russia will just break up and so that's concern number one i'm coming to the and the second concern is but wait why is that why is that a concern well for this when you add the second one i'll get to it just uh the second one is look at the structure, such as it is that we've seen on display in Ukraine. Breaks down, they don't know what they're doing, incompetence, bad equipment. All right, put those two together, and there are almost 6,000 nuclear weapons in Russia, who is in charge of them?

Do we know where every single one of those weapons is located? Are the people in charge of it, in charge of each weapon? Or do we have a couple of drunk soldiers that's stuck at each missile silo? And if Russia breaks up, what's the custody? What's the chance? If you're looking for things to keep you awake at night, I offer those. Yeah, that is for sure. I guess my response to that is that's always possible.

But then we'll be back where we were in 1993 or 94, 1992, really. And we'll be making a 30-year bet. Yes. Well, here's the thing, though, really. And we'll be making a 30-year bet. Yes. Well, here's the thing, though, guys. I mean, they have to be maintained, and it takes expertise to do so. And if you have the whole thing break up into a constituent element countries, they probably aren't going to have the resources or the ability or the manpower or the brainpower in order to keep them going. You know, you have to keep them maintained. You know, it's not like a car that you take out and you drive it around and you get the feel of it. And then you have it, you have it serviced and the rest of it. I mean, the car that I'm driving right now, for example, every time that I take it out,

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Promo code RICOCHET. And we thank Bolin Branch for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast, William Barr. He served as the 77th and 85th United States Attorney General. Led the DOJ through the LA riots pan am 103 iran counter during his first stint and he had the reins through russia gate covet outbreaks seven on the civil unrest impeachments in the 2020 election fallout hence perhaps the title of his memoir one damn thing after another gives readers a front and center perspective on his experience welcome to the

podcast and thanks for joining us today thank you so you know that list of damn things there for the from the first stint, is enough to make anybody say, I'm just going to go to some nice little corporate board or academia. Why did you come back, and how would you compare the two stints that you had as AG?

Well, that's a great question. I had no intention of going back into government, and certainly not in the job of Attorney General, which is like walking across a minefield. And having gotten through once, I wasn't anxious to do it again, especially in the divisive world we had moved into over the preceding 28 years when I was last Attorney General. But it was clear that Trump was running into serious difficulty. It looked to me like we were potentially careening to a constitutional crisis. Take your business international.

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Visit een-ireland.com and take your business global today. I was very suspicious of the Russiagate allegations, and I was asked for recommendations and as to his replacement and I threw out a lot of names and tried to push other people but I was on a number of corporate boards I was of counsel to a firm and could work to the extent I wanted I didn't want to go in but at the end of the day, no one else was gaining traction. The president seemed very interested in me, and I decided that I would talk to him. He wanted to talk to me. And I said I would only talk to him if I was willing to take the job if asked, and I finally

decided I would. And it was basically because I felt someone had to do this job. I felt I could do it. No one else seemed to be qualifying or in the running. And so I decided I would do it. It sort of came down to something Bob Gates said to me during H.W.'s funeral, which happened a couple of days after the president had already offered me the job, although it was still secret, and he said, I see you're in the running for this job. Is that something you would actually do? And I said, what do you think, Bob? Do you think I should do it if asked? And he said, yeah.

He said, right now, we have a lot of challenges facing us. And what's best for the country is people to have these jobs and know what the hell they're doing. So I'd be in favor of it. Before we go to Peter, one question about Russiagate. What made you suspicious of it? Well, I thought the whole idea that the Russians would collude. I didn't see any need. Based on my experience with intelligence, I thought the idea that the Russians would need anyone to collude or want anyone to partner with them on this kind of election activity was far-fetched. The Russians know how to do hack and dump exercises, you know, stealing things from computers and then publishing them. That's their stock and trade. They don't need any help to do that. And enlisting support from

American politicians to participate in some way would have greatly increased the risk to Russia with no apparent benefit. So I thought the whole idea of collusion just didn't make any sense to me. And the more I saw, the more I found out about it, the more I saw that it was completely empty. These were baseless allegations. And the thing they used as predicate to initiate the investigation was clearly insufficient and based largely on their own misunderstanding of the facts. General Barr, Peter Robinson here. I haven't read your book yet, and here's why. The moment it

arrived, my wife nabbed it. So I'm going to have to ask you questions based on her looking up from the book saying, oh, this is interesting. This is interesting. Well, you know, Peter, you can always buy another copy. I could do that. Every house should have two copies. I could do that. But you just heard him talk about all the corporate boards.

He doesn't need the extra retail sale. You served in a Washington that I knew for, you were served as Attorney General under George H.W. Bush. So you were there at the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s, after we'd been through the horrible stagflation, the economic downturn of the 70s, after we'd watched the Soviets expand their presence throughout the 70s, and then this tremendous turn and revival in the 80s. So here's a sort of a big think question. Are we capable of another such revival now? So that is a great question. And it's something I talk about all the time with my friends, including those who still think that Trump is the answer to all our problems. And that is, as bad as things look today, it reminds me exactly, as you said, of the 60s and 70s. The Democratic Party took a sharp turn to the left.

Vietnam was a big part of that. They divided as a party and they tried to patch over the divide by picking an empty vessel like Jimmy Carter that everyone could sort of read what they wanted to read into. And it was a completely ineffective, feckless administration. So what happened? I mean, I see that as a parallel to what we've seen today, a sharp lurch by the Democratic Party, even more so than in the 60s and 70s and more pervasive, but sharp shift to the left. They try to patch it over with Biden.

Biden is going to be a one-term president. The answer to so many problems, or at least the first step in restoring America, is a decisive, transforming election victory. Not one-term victory, but someone like Ronald Reagan, who came in and won 44 states, then he won 49 states. Then he delivered his vice president with 40 states. That's 12 years of direct rule. And that forced the Democrats to move to a centrist, which Clinton was, and then even required that centrist to move further to the right with reforming welfare and two tough crime bills at a minimum. That was an era.

That was an era. That was an era. By the time Reagan and Bush were done, liberal was a dirty word for a couple of decades. And then we started hearing more about progressives. So I tell all my friends, look, the reason I'm opposed to Trump, I'm not hostile to Trump, but he is not the man to deliver that kind of victory for us. And putting him up would fritter away what I think is a tremendous opportunity. Gigantic. Yes. And I think it's as bad as things look, the first step is to win that kind of victory. With someone who will come in with an agenda to get back to some basics and some idea about how to put in changes that will be lasting or at least more lasting than any of Trump's have been and deal with some of the basic factors that are corroding the American Republic. And that sort of sums up where I think we are.

May I? So Rob wants to come in, of course. So rather, you and I are going to be able to sit down together when you visit California. So I'm going to have you to myself for a good long time. So I'll do another compression of questions here. Four points about Donald Trump that I think make sense. I'll just tick them off, and you tell me whether I'm right or I'm wrong. One, despite his mouth, despite his temper tantrums, he was harder done by than he ever did.

That man was treated outrageously, outrageously unfairly in a way that implicated even our intelligence agencies, or at least senior members of the intelligence agencies. Item one. Item two. Again, if you disregard his mouth and his thumbs, his Twitter feed, the first three years were pretty successful. He unified the country in opposition to China. He enacted an economic package that permitted an expansion to take place that enabled working Americans to increase their real wages for the first time in a couple of decades. Three, he screwed up COVID. He didn't know what he was doing, and he let the bureaucrats, Fauci and Birx and Redfield, close down the whole country. And four, the election drove him out of

his mind. There's a different Donald Trump after the election takes place. That's what seems to me to be true about Donald Trump. Over to you. I would add a fifth, but number one, I agree, he was more sinned against than sinning. The second one was, yes, he had, I think, a very successful administration. Putting COVID aside for a minute, I think his policy, and I would say all the way to the election, it was a strong administration. Again, putting COVID aside. And he had good policy sense on most things. I called him his red meat issues, issues like crime or immigration or other national security issues. He generally had good instincts. He was a patriot. Yes. I think he does love the

country and he wanted to do right by the country. He also wanted, you know, he is extremely egotistical, but put that aside. Then what was the third one was COVID. COVID was one of the examples of where his weaknesses come through, which is that if he doesn't have a good, strong instinct about something or something's very complicated, he doesn't have the patience to figure it out and take a decisive stand. And he has a tendency to pull back and allow events to occur and then snipe at people, snpe and criticize versus actually go out and make a decision. I went in at one point, and I wasn't the only one who was concerned about the visibility he was getting. Fauci, I said, you know, you're basically empowering this guy and making him the czar.

The White House is creating Fauci. This is an 80-year-old bureaucrat who's been in the same job for 35 years. And there are, you know, the public health sector is pretty screwed up anyway, but there are at least some good ones out there in the private sector. Go out and bring in some real top people and have some other advice here and don't make this guy the face of it. He did. Now, I, and I fooled him with it, because there was a lack of leadership. Now, any president would have had to deal with federalism, and it would have been a messy process anyway. But I contrast that with the example for DeSantis. I don't know DeSantis, and I, you know, I'm not carrying DeSantis's banner here, but

look at what he did. He made, that the governor made some really tough decisions and was beaten up for him. And there were even a time saying, oh, did he get out on a limb here? He stuck with it. He didn't point the finger and blame people. And he seems to have done a really good job. So there was a leadership gap on on covid. But I don't think Trump lost because of covid. I mean, in a way, you know, well, I think I think it obviously if there was no covid, he would have won. He would have been in office. But he it didn't defeat him in the sense that he could have won fairly handily. I think what lost the election, and everyone was telling a miss for the last year, is that there was a significant segment of the suburban voters who were Republican voters or Republican-leaning independent voters who just could not stand him.

And probably 8 to 10 percent of those in of the of the of those voters. And I could see it in my own state of Virginia. I mean, the Republican Party has just been was decimated by the defection of these voters. That's why he lost the election. And you can if you study the votes, you can see that that's that's the gap. And then the fourth point was he went completely off the tracks after the election. There was a different Donald Trump somehow. It affected him somehow. Well, see, I always felt he is almost, you know, there's a lot of id there, and he will just go after what he wants. And most people will be restrained by logic, reason, or moral compass.

They have less claim on him than with many. But self-interest is usually what gets his attention. And if you explain to him, look, this isn't really, you know, this is going to come back and bite you, you know, he would listen. And so it was a blood sport frequently keeping him on track. Not because he wanted to do anything, by the way, illegal or autocratic. It was just that sometimes he was excessive. He wanted to go too far. And, you know, like calling the 82nd Airborne into Portland to restore order. I can get into that and why that would have been a bad idea. But, you know, those are the kinds of things. But after the election, he didn't give a damn. There was no way you could deflect him from what his basic desire was.

And he also surrounded himself, and this is another weakness he has, surrounded himself with a lot of yes men. And people who would tell him what he wanted to hear, but they had no responsibility. They were outsiders, and they were crackpots. And so I agree with all of what you said. The only difference I would say is he did lose the election because he thought, and this is why he's not the man to come in with the kind of victory we need in the future. He's a one trick pony, which is to whip up his base and pander to his base.

And he does it in a way that alienates an important faction of the vote. So you look at what happened in Virginia and New Jersey. Those were candidates who brought in, who brought both those groups back together again. And it was decisive in Virginia, and it could have been in New Jersey. He panders to his base to the exclusion of this other group. I said that was my last question, and I'm sorry.

I'm going to ask one more. Has there been a shift in underlying thinking among political professionals in washington i've been in california a long time now but in the 80s throughout the post-war period and certainly into the 80s certainly through the the presidency of george hw bush and bill clinton the name of the game was the traditional game of politics which is you secure your base and then you reach for the center. You secure your base and then you enlarge your vote. And it feels to me as though the quant jocks who now dominate certain aspects of political strategy have decided no. Actually, in a closely divided nation, what you want to do is drive up your own vote. You not only secure your base,

but you do all you can to increase the intensity of their feeling and make sure that your people get to the voting booth. And that is a very different thing from securing your people and then trying to bring, to persuade, to invite others in. As opposed, Ronald Reagan is always during campaign season he's and now let me say a word to my fellow democrat i used to be a democrat all was reaching out right and with trump no and also i have to say even though they're looking at a bloodbath in the midterms the democratic strategy in biden is now on this transgender, it's unbelievable. There's not a single even baby step toward the middle. They seem intent on fomenting their own base. And is there some

kind of underlying shift in the basic mechanics or strategy of presidential politics that animates all of this? Yeah, I think there is, you know, whether it's whether it's the cause of some of the tribalism and polarization or one of the consequences, it's become worse because of that. It's hard to say. But I agree with you. And Trump's people said, if you can get 65 million out of your base, you know, you're going to win, win 65 million and his complaint is i got 75 million and i lost how did that happen uh because they weren't they didn't have a dynamic model that showed how much people hated him on the other side and how much of the vote was going to come out but um yeah you're right he did nothing to conciliate the voters who had been turned off by his behavior.

And every time he took, you know, he was out of, you know, if he'd quiet down for two weeks and wouldn't hold press conference, his popularity would start going up again. Everyone pointed this out to him. And, you know, I think it's it's a there's another thing going on, which is, you know, the politicians in Washington are becoming more career politicians. And they're afraid of, they want to hold on to their jobs, because for many of them it's the best job they will ever have. And they're worried about a challenge from their extreme. So the Republicans from the right, Democrats from the left. And so the way you get ahead is pandering to your base in the Republican Party, and

you just don't pay attention to the other people. But it's a game that has its limits, as Trump has just proven. And the Democrats are going to, you know, have the same result. But going back to the Reagan model, I think there are three, just as then, there are three groups that we can approach. We can approach the working class and the middle class that Trump resonated with. We can get, retain, and win back the Republicans and college-educated Republican-leaning people in the suburbs. And just as with Reagan, we can get people who are more of the classical liberal type who are nauseated by the excesses of the left. And there are a growing number of those people. And just as those people came over to Reagan, I mean, it's a great

opportunity. But we need a leader who understands these things as articulate. The other big difference is Trump was a leader with his base. He was not a panderer. He didn't whip up their frustrations and resentments. He explained to them why they were frustrated, but then he told them what the solution was. And Trump is a much smaller man than Ronald Reagan. He's no Ronald Reagan by far. He just panders to his base. And he doesn't even pander to his real base. This is the other disagreement I had with him.

I know it sounds impertinent, but I think he had the New York businessman's view of his base. I think in his heart of hearts, he considered them Yahoo, and he didn't really know how they fought. That's why he was so reluctant to attack the Ku Klux Klan and other extremists, because in his own mind, he said, well, maybe these are my followers. I don't know conservative Republicans who wouldn't, you know, immediately disavow Ku Klux Klan. And therefore, he went overboard. He went overboard in pandering. And that's where part of the backlash in the suburbs came from. Got it. The memoir is one damn thing after another and here's another damn host rob long hey so um thank you for joining us i should say that uh that's the book one damn thing after another and just so you know one of the benefits of being a member of ricochet we have some rich listeners listening in is that uh they get to hear this and you've already sold a copy

so great you know you're you're on your way um now wait so i i have a bunch of questions i got one dumb question um do people call you general bar like is it was that weird at first well it wasn't it was weird when i was 41 right that started people calling me general but you know that that is a complete mistake is it really is? That's my next question. So it's American ignorance. But I like it. So I'm not going to change it. But in the English system, the word general was taken from the Norman French

and simply meant general. So it was the general attorney was referred to as the attorney general. Attorney is the noun. General is the as the attorney general attorney is the noun general is the right general is the adjective and it came from the french and so uh every english-speaking country with the exception of the united states refers to the attorney general as attorney okay the united states is the only english-speaking country that refers to the attorney general as general i know this is an aside but i remember when it was the surgeon general c everett coop and he showed up one day in a kind of a a uniform i think he had sort of

designed himself because i'm general coop i gotta have a general's unit well no that's the nonsense like service it's the public health okay. It's the public health service. He's the general of the... Here's what I do know how to say. You were one of Trump's attorneys general. When your predecessor was there, we had this bruising fight

for the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Then when you were there, we had not a bruising fight. We had a kind of a little, you know, if you're on the right and there's a Republican president nominates a Supreme Court, a nominee for Supreme Court, it's a nail biter when you're watching the hearings because you don't know. But it went pretty well. Amy Coney Barrett, she's also now in the Supreme Court.

That was I think that was considering it was I compared it to Brett Kavanaugh. That seemed like a fairly civil process. She didn't convince anybody who wasn't who wasn't already liberal to vote for her. It pretty much she got passed along party lines. Judge Brown, who is now. Yesterday, I guess, was that yesterday was confirmed. Justice elect. How would you compare her process to Amy Coney Barrett's process, which you oversaw to Brett Kavanaugh's process, which we all kind of together probably watched on TV. Yeah. Well, in some ways, I'm indebted to Kavanaugh because it was the treatment of Kavanaugh that persuaded my wife to tell me, okay, someone has to stop these people, the left, and if you want to go in, you can go in. Kavanaugh is the general playbook of the Democratic Party, which is personal destruction. And I think they tried that with Clarence Thomas.

This was sort of the same kind of play. Very vicious. I just think they had a harder time pulling it off with someone who's a woman and also whose deportment was such that it was hard to demonize her. And so I think had they had the ability to destroy her reputation and go after something, they would have, but they just didn't, you know, they couldn't get traction on anything. So, which is one of the reasons she was selected,

because she seemed like she was going to be the easiest to confirm. Had you been there in the first part of the administration, would she have been the top of your list? Would you have the same list, I guess I should ask? Yeah, I mean, I think I would have had generally the same list. I had views on each of the panel. I mean, in each case, there were three potential picks, and I was happy with all of them, frankly.

I didn't think there was a lemon in the group, which was not true under George H.W. Bush, where we got Souter. Yeah. So, moving, would you have voted to confirm Judge Brown? No. Why? Because I think she suffers from the same thing as the as the uh progressive left does generally which is she they are about politics not the rule of law and the the rule of law is

being broken down by politics political consideration so when you're i mean I'm just trying to figure this out because I know there's some school thought that says, look, I evaluate that if she's fit, she's not fit. And if she's fit, then I'm going to vote for her. And if she's not fit, then I won't. And if she's a little bit liberal, I'll take it. If she's a lot liberal, I won't. On a scale of like one to liberal, the best you're going to get from a split Senate and a liberal president, is this a take your lumps and move? Or is it a stand and fight? This one was not a stand and fight because it didn't.

Well, first, I would add another category. stand and fight this one was not this one was not a stand and fight because it didn't well first i would add another category i would say generally speaking i am of the i am of the view that the president's entitled to his pick of right and it comes in with a strong presumption but we're in a world where i think the left is moving further and further away and and and whose views are essentially subversive of the rule of law. You know, I think, you know, you can have a debate over whether the Constitution means A or B. And it could be a legitimate dispute. And I may have a view and the nominee may have a different view, but it has intellectual honesty to it.

And I think we're in a world where it's more strong-arming the results that they want and overriding the law. I actually think, now, I think Breyer was a very intelligent man, very well versed in antitrust, business, regulation. He was actually, I think, in many areas a very good justice. And I think he eventually went along with the liberal bloc. But he could also persuade some of the conservatives. Having him leave and having Judge Brown in, I think, will actually weaken the liberal block because they, I don't think, will have the capacity to bridge differences or persuade. I hadn't thought of that. So how much of that goes on? Well, I mean, look at the Obamacare thing.

That was of critical significance. I mean, the story there appears to be that, and certainly when you read the opinions and see how they were constructed, it looks this way. It looks like Roberts was going to go along with the Conservatives on that. And at the very last minute, Breyer gave him the tax argument as a way of the Supreme Court not being in the middle of taking down the statute, and he appears to have been persuaded by Breyer. So that's an example in a very high-profile case. It does go on. I think Justice Kagan, I think, has the capacity to do that, too.

I think she she's a very, you know, she she is a little bit more, in my view, Justice Kagan is a little bit more of the more intellectual honesty, perhaps. I don't mean honest. I don't mean that as an insult. I'm just saying that there's more coherence to her. Right. Philosophical coherence to her positions. Now, are you hopeful going forward for the Supreme Court and the way it looks like it's going to be now when Breyer is replaced by Judge Brown? Are you hopeful that that court will at least be the court of last resort for conservatives who want limited government and constitutional yeah i'm very uh cautiously no i'm optimistic no i'm optimistic about the court i

mean it may not be a hundred percent but uh uh but i think it's going to be a pretty good batting pretty good batting average for those key issues. And I know James wants to jump in. So I just have one more thought just about the Department of Justice. Because it does seem like for as long as I can remember, I'm an old person now. The DOJ was sort of this sort of sacred building. It wasn't really like Treasury or Agriculture. You know, you're going to get to rank the Department of the Cabinet Departments.

You know, a lot of them are kind of like, I get it. This is kind of a office of grift here, ag or interior, all that stuff. DOJ just seemed like it was the temple and untouchable. The FBI seemed like these are clean cut, you know, like the Mormons who knock on your door, you know, like you seem like this clean cut straight arrows. Past four, five, six years, that is the department. And I think the FBI especially have really taken a reputation beating. Is that fair? Is it not fair? How do you get it back? I mean, or is it just, is it just the price

we pay for a wide open society no i think it's i think it's it's partly fair uh and uh let me just okay i think i think it's i think it's partly fair i think a lot of it is generational actually and the kinds of people coming into the department and to the FBI are different than we were and people in our generation were. And there's a higher incidence of people who are willing to be political, who see their job. It's like sort of journalists these days, a lot of young journalists. You know, the professional purpose of journalism isn't as important to them as being agents of change. And so truth is not as important as a narrative.

And we see that in many different professions, even medicine now. You know, politics is creeping into everything. And the same is true of the Justice Department and the FBI. And part of it is this generation has that outlook. I think that when I came in last time, the first time, it was after eight years of Ronald Reagan and there were self-selection process people who wanted to be in the department to effectuate uh liberal change had left basically gotten frustrated this time in it was after eight years of Obama and it was a much different department um I tell people that uh any case cases that were embarrassing to the Democrats, I mean, the news reports say, I'm not going to say, but the news reports say that there was a Hunter Biden investigation pending. If that's true, then it was never leaked.

And I can say that no case embarrassing to the Democrats was leaked while I was there. But every case embarrassing to the Republicans was leaked while I was there. But every case embarrassing to the Republicans was leaked. So there are political operators. There are lawyers in the department who I believe apply two different standards, consciously or unconsciously. That said, I would say that there are still a lot of lawyers in the department who are solid pros. And I've worked with Democratic lawyers. I know they're Democrat. They know I'm a Republican. But I'd go into any battle with them because they were intellectually honest.

They applied one standard. And it was a pleasure to work with people like that. But there are fewer of them. Now, it goes back to what I said at the beginning. People said, well, you know, you were there, you could have, you know, changing an institution like that or taking care of some of these systemic problems is something that is going to require a long time and certainly longer than one term of a presidency who has so much going on and has impeachment and other things like that and i think part of restoring america is to depoliticize you know

some of these you know get back to basics, make sure these departments are doing their job. Same thing in the Defense Department. The idea of these defense guys sitting around worrying about some of the woke issues they are is very disturbing to me. Unbelievable. James Lylex here in Minneapolis. Your book, One Damn Thing After Another, you have two stints as attorney general and specific, both of which had riots, the LA riots, and then the 2020 riots, which Minneapolis was hit in an inordinate part.

The 2020 was different in that there was an organization that did a lot of the groundwork. And in a statement in 2020, May 30th, 2020, you castigated Antifa and said, and I'm quoting here from the statement, the violence instigated and carried out by Antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly. So what happened? What did the DOJ do to this particular element in American dysfunctional politics. Right. So, you know, after the initial tough times from like May 28th, 9th, 30th, or running up to June 1st, June 1st was a bad day around the country. I forgot exactly when I said that, but it was sometime...

The 31st? Yeah, the 31st. So in Washington, where obviously I was physically present and the Lafayette Park thing took place, there were a lot of arrests and there were prosecutions of people. The problem, I think we ended up, after the first few weeks, arresting 300 nationwide. That's because most of the crimes were local in nature. And what I said is, we're going to go after the ringleaders, the agent provocateurs, the people who have traveled interstate for purposes of provoking this violence.

And we did arrest a lot of them. And a lot of those cases were later dismissed, especially in places like Portland and in Washington state by the next administration. And we prosecute, but we did prosecute cases like arson cases and things like that. It's just that the news doesn't really catch up with that. It's not as interesting a year later when someone is convicted of arson in Minneapolis or something like that. But the other problem we had was, and in some places like Portland, it was almost impossible to prosecute people. Yeah.

The judges were not supportive of us. The juries were not supportive of us. But the other problem was actually apprehending them and getting the evidence. And people said, well, how is it that, you know, so many hundred people were arrested onuary 6th and and it doesn't look like people are being pursued so much on the other stuff and what you know i'm not saying they're there i i do think that you know the department has approached this not even handedly in other words that i'm treating people the same but uh when when the antifa violates the law they will dress in black they have masks it's at night they have drills of how to operate to make it hard to identify who the people are

who are actually throwing the bricks or the molotov cocktails they have people in front holding their hands up to obscure the umbrellas, umbrellas, umbrellas, things like that. They have this these ways of and in the middle of night, you know, a brick comes out and it's it's hard to figure out where it's coming from. And we tried to develop counter tactics to do that, to to to try to identify the ringleaders and move in on them quickly so we could prove that they were the people. And that was difficult, especially in Portland. And so, whereas, and they know how to work the seam between the First Amendment and illegal rioting. They're right there on the seam and they know how to work the First Amendment protections in a way that makes it hard for law enforcement. So, I mean, that's the problem of dealing with it. The other thing is that the FBI

doesn't have as much information about these groups. And the reason they don't is because historically they've always gotten keelhauled every time they've spied on liberal groups, whether it be anti-war groups or what have you. And so there's this institutional concern when you're spying on a left-wing group, it's, you know, it's a civil rights issue, whereas if you're spying on a right-wing group, then no question, you know, it has nothing to do with civil rights. You're dealing with extremists. So as a result, all this intelligence comes in on the right-wing groups.

Very little intelligence comes in on the left-wing groups. And it becomes almost, you know, self-reinforcing. Well, we have time for one more, and Peter is happy and eager to ask it. Last question. By the way, I'm really looking forward to the hour we'll have together in May, because you are being

just amazingly candid. This is terrific. So here's my last question. June, just two months away, and the big decisions will be coming down. If this court overturns Roe, will the country tear itself apart? I mean, what will happen? I think the Democrats will try to tear the country apart. It'll become the substitute for life. Black Lives Matter.

And they will they will try to use it as best they can because it's an election year. Right. So, you know, I think it'll be a big deal because they will make it a big deal it shouldn't be a big deal because what it does is it allows the state i think it'll allow the states to address it at least in this case you know it will still permit abortion uh it just it places some time limit on it um i also, I don't think, my guess is, my prediction is they will not overrule Roe directly. Oh, really? No, I think the controlling opinion, some may say, you know, we're ready to do that. But I think they'll say we don't have to address that issue because this one doesn't put an undue burden on the right to abortion.

And I think it'll be more of a significant step in the direction that people who are, you know, would like to see limitations will be happy about, but it won't go the whole hog and overrule role. That's my prediction. And will people on our side of the legal issues be saying to each other all over again, as they did after the Obamacare decision, oh, doggone John Roberts, the chief is being overcautious all over again. I don't think so. I actually think, you know, our groups, if you want to call them our groups, those groups are pretty sophisticated. And, look, they accepted Trump on many things because they understood the practical realities of politics. And also, you know, as a matter of law, if you don't have to overrule something directly,

you don't necessarily do it. But I think clearly that will indicate the direction things are going. One damn thing after another. Memoir by William Barr. Check it out. Read it. Enjoy it. And, of course, wait for Peter to have the interview as well, which we look forward to. Thanks for joining us today in the podcast. Thank you, guys. It's been fun. Thank you, General. General. Thank you, Attorney.

Well, you know, he's talking there about, you know, the need for just not one presidential term, but two and three and the realignment that comes with it. When you do that and you have a population that's paying attention, you can't get away with some things. Now, you know, in the flowering of the Biden glory and all of the enthusiasm and power that he had, we had that infrastructure bill passed, right? Do you look what was in that? Usual amount of pork, usual amount of stuff. One of the things that people don't like when they hear about it is that it's going to mandate a chip in your car that spies on you for how much you've had to drink. So what's next? Automated federal tickets for speeding or changing lanes too often? Required pre-approval for interstate routes? Remote kill switch? Sorry to go on, Mark,

a minute on you there, but if you're tired of people who want to control every part of your life and clamp down on your digital freedom, use ExpressVPN to protect your network from being monitored. See, your internet provider, Verizon, Spectrum, whatever, they can keep logs of your internet activity. This includes stuff like the sites you visited, how much time you've spent on that site, and what's worse, the government can get them to cough up those records whenever they want. But when you use ExpressVPN, your internet activity is shielded. Their app works by routing 100% of your network data through their secure and encrypted servers, and that keeps your activity private. Unlike the kill switch the government probably wants to put in all our cars, ExpressVPN's kill switch actually protects you. If your VPN connection ever drops, network data is immediately stopped from entering or leaving your device to keep

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And we thank ExpressVPN for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Well, that was fun. I wanted to ask a follow-up about Antifa. I think the problem there is it's still going on. Sometimes I want to say, look, you might not get the data that you want from people who are spying on them.

Just look at Project Veritas. They've got these guys blabbing all over the Internet about what they want to do and the rest of it. But there are a lot of topics covered, and I hope everybody enjoyed getting to what we did. We didn't get to Twitter because I don't know if Bill Barr is on Twitter. I don't think that he is. But if he is, I wonder if you'd be applauding Elon Musk joining, buying 9.2% of the social media dynamo. What do you think is the result? People are not happy about this. They are just freaking out.

I was looking, Ellen Powell, who's a bluejack, says, I hope the team at Twitter is figuring out how to limit Musk's influence. They've been making progress on harassment, and now they're a target. He wants to take them back to a free-for-all, and most users don't want that. Next response. This is why money should never be able to buy any kind of power in any kind of company. We are breaking a fundamental law of the universe every time we take this path. They're unhappy about it because it's going to be the return of people just saying anything they want to say. The bad old days.

COVID disinformation might be spreading. Of course, we all know COVID disinformation like pornography when we see it. I'm happy that he's doing this. I enjoy every time our own Tony Stark does something like this. I'm going to bore holes in the ground and put cars down there.

I'm going to sell flamethrowers. I'm going to Mars. I'm going to give Ukraine a whole bunch of Starlink satellites. Far more fascinating character than any of these wet blanket nullities that we find in the squad and the rest of the progressive movement these days. I agree with every word of that. I try to dislike Elon Musk because it still bothers me that Tesla exists pretty largely, even now, this does not go to the market cap, but this goes to their profit and loss statement, pretty largely on federal subsidies. And we're subsidized. I mean, I live in the middle of Silicon Valley. Every other car is a Tesla. And I know the people driving these cars.

They don't need federal subsidies to be encouraged to buy electric vehicles. So this is a transfer from middle class Americans to upper middle class Americans. Okay, so I don't like that. On the other hand, as Elon Musk himself points out, the federal government bailed out GM. Ford itself benefits from this, that, and the other kind of subsidy. Okay. I try to dislike him, but I find the guy irresistible. His instincts, he's fascinating.

He's a showman. He's enjoying himself. And every instinct is to take his thumb and put it right in the eye of the technocrats, of the self-serious, of progressive woke left god bless him and his billions that's what i think rob is going to take the more mature view no no i mean look he's he makes big bets and those big bets um have so far paid off right i mean he just has a different investment strategy uh from everybody else i mean everybody else has from a lot of people from certainly from his colleagues his friends that their investment strategy is i'm smart i know everything i'm going

to figure out what's going to happen i'm going to put my money down on what i know is going to figure out what's going to happen. I'm going to put my money down on what I know is going to happen. That's pretty much what every investor thinks, right? Elon Musk says, I want to find out if we can go to Mars. I want to find out if I can build an electric car. I want to find out if I can make Twitter a fun place again. And so I'm just rooting for the guy who wants to find out these are investments about discovery uh i suspect i suspect i think i think he's gonna find um terraforming mars to be easier than moving the culture than moving the culture certainly at twitter right but um i'm eager for him to find out.

He's a mercurial, interesting guy. He doesn't seem to be grinding any particular axe. He seems like he's kind of fun, a good sense of humor. Anybody with a good sense of humor, I'm behind. So I'm rooting for him. Go on, Peter. No, I just note that the Blue Yeti, our producer and friend, the Blue Yeti, has just sent me a text in a white fury. He just bought a Tesla.

And he's saying to me in the text chat, I found out this week that I don't qualify for any of the subsidies, state or federal. So I don't know. Maybe they scaled back the subsidies. But if you want to learn more, wait for the Blue Yeti to put up a post on it. Well, when it comes to terraforming Mars, one of the things that irritates engineer types is when you say, if we can put a man on the moon, why can't we do X? And they always would say, well, that's because putting a man on the moon is a series of technical problems and objectives and solutions. You have to go from here to there.

What do we know about the difficulties? I mean, it's a fairly narrow set of data that you have to work. Terraforming Mars, not quite so sure, but I'd like to see them try. That'd be great. On the other hand, though, if we can send a man to Mars, why can't we on the right figure out a consistent view on the word groomer? And we're going to get to that in just a second. But first, Rob has to tell you something about Ricochet and why you should join. Rob? Well, I mean, obviously, one of the reasons why you want to join is because you get to listen to that in just a second. But first, Rob has to tell you something about Ricochet and why you should join. Rob?

Well, I mean, obviously, one of the reasons why you want to join is because you get to listen to this. What's happening? We've already sold one copy. But there are a couple of things I want you to know. One is this afternoon, I'm doing an Ask No Dumb Questions 45-minute conversation with Glenn Lowry. So if you join in the next 30 seconds, you can hear that. And if you don't join in the next 30 seconds, we're going to be doing these a lot. But just so you know, we have a Greatest Hits newsletter. So make sure to subscribe to the latest edition of the Greatest Hits, which is our free weekly newsletter. So you get a sneak peek of the

members-only content and Ricochet community news. It's a good way for you to find out if this is something that you want to do. You sign up today at um ricochet.com slash greatest also one of the perks of being a ricochet member is that you can post to your heart's content and another one is if we promote your post to the member feed to the main feed it's shared on our social media channels and let's give you and your awesome writing some exposure among the great big ricochet public which is enormous we have a. We have every podcast listener and every viewer follows us on social media. So some of our favorite main feed posts from this past week

was from member St. Augustine, The Folly of Massive Debt, which was really great. And I mean, as somebody who has complained and complained about the national debt, I was pleased that that is still an issue. So make sure to check out this main feed post and all the other cool content at ricochet.com. And if you are not a Ricochet member, you should not sit on this.

What are you waiting for? Join today. You get the first 14 days free. Sign up at ricochet.com slash join. We would like to be members with you. And you too can be a writer if that is what you are looking to do. I mean, a lot of people join Ricochet and say, I'll just work for a while and then I'll contribute. Jenna, that's one of the members of Ricochet.

It has just been posting some fantastic stuff and that moved her up the chain. You know, that, that, that dark money, conservative media chain that we're all part of. No, it was talent. People looked at her and said, she's good. She knows what she's talking about. This is good to read. And now she's appearing in places like national review and the American or the center for the American experiment newsletter. And the other day she said something to Walter Kern, your buddy, Rob,

and Walter responded to her. So here's, you know, this guy, this great writer in Montana, reaching out to Jenna here in Minneapolis. It's a cosmology that you may not be familiar with until you start to get to Here's this guy, this great writer in Montana, reaching out to Jenna here in Minneapolis. It's a cosmology that you may not be familiar with until you start to get to know what the Ricochet world is all about. And if you're thinking that it's all nothing but just massive liberal squawking Twitter out there, no. Ricochet will tell you something different. Well, one of the arguments on Twitter and Ricochet and elsewhere and NNR has been the term grooming. Some people don't like it because it undercuts

the true meaning of the word. Some people don't like it because it's a broad brush, and it really isn't fair when you talk about the don't say gay bill, which isn't any more than Trump told people to drink bleachers to find people. They're using the term because it's like racist and white supremacy, like the left does, to use the term to instantly paint the other side as being a reprehensible moral member of the community. That's all you have to say. You're a groomer. End of argument. And I see that. I mean, just as they've used terms to reduce complex ideas on the right down to simple blunt force instruments, I can see the satisfaction in doing that. But unfortunately, it seems over time to have the tendency of just making people tune out of the debate. You see that word just like you see libtard or, you know, rethuglican or something like that, and you just move you just move along i don't think it adds anything to the debate i get why people are enthusiastic or interested in using the word and i get the power politics involved in that but i don't think at the end of the day i said that phrase i shouldn't that it it it helps the discussion not because i'm offended or anything like that i just don't think it's helpful it may be correct but it's not helpful to getting to

the issues, which is what do we teach kids and when do we teach them that? Or am I just veering into Rob Squish territory here? Oh, popular territory, I gotta say. A lot of Americans are in that

territory. I hadn't thought of the groomer thing in anything like that depth but i didn't hear a word you said just now james with which i disagree well then let's stop right now on that fine high note lest we spoil the perfection of this event anymore i'd like to thank william bar for coming along we'd like to thank of course boland branch and express vpn support them for supporting us and your life will be immeasurably better. Join Ricochet today as well. And if you would take a minute, do I have to say it? I do. Take a minute. Take 30 seconds. Take 15 little seconds. It's a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. That's three seconds per star. I'll bet you can do it in five

seconds, one second per star. And then the reviews help more people show up and join, and we keep going until we're past episode 600, 700, until we hit episode 1,000. All of us here in Walkers with little tennis balls at the feet to help us shuffle along

as we go to our gruel at the 11 a.m. buffet. But that's a way. It's been fun, gentlemen. We'll see you next week, and we'll see everybody in the comments. Ricochet 4.0. Next week. Next week. I've seen the Rolling Stones

Forgot about Johnny Wright Saw the Who back in 69 Saw Bobby Spears Talking to the Panthers Saying just what he had on his mind Saw Marlon Brando on a motorcycle He was actin' out rebellion I saw Rockies Cologne in a X-rated movie

Called The Italian Stallion I've seen a lot of things But I have not seen a lot of other things But I know You gotta stand For something Or you're gonna fall For anything

You gotta stand right up For something Or you're gonna fall For anything Saw Nikita Khrushchev kissing Fidel Castro Saw a man walking on the moon I saw Miss America in a girly magazine I bet you saw that too

I seen the London Bridge in the middle of the desert See 33 years go by I know the American people Paid a high price for justice And I don't know why Nobody seems to know why I know a lot of things But I don't know a lot of other things

Yeah, yeah, yeah You gotta stand up for something Or you're gonna fall for anything You gotta stand right up for something Or you're gonna fall for anything Yeah, yeah, yeah Ricochet Join the conversation

I've been to Harlem County And I've seen Paris, Texas And I've spent some time in Rome I know a lot of funny people. In a lot of funny places. But the Midwest is my home. We've got to stop the infection in this world. Or it's going to turn around.

And bite off our brains. You've got to stand. For something. Or you're gonna fall for anything You gotta stand for something Or you're gonna fall for anything Yeah, yeah, you gotta stand for something Or you're gonna fall for anything

Yeah, you gotta gonna fall right for anything. Yeah, you're gonna stand right up for something. Oh, you're gonna fall.