The Ricochet Podcast - Team Discipline

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

It's been said that there's no use in proposing that Donald Trump moderate his rhetoric, but with presidential approval ratings being what they are, a friendly reminder about duties and decorum might be just what the doctor ordered. Daniel Mahoney, author and professor emeritus at Assumption College, joins James and Steve to discuss his latest piece, "Discipline at a Moment of Power."Plus, the fellas consider this morning's breaking news about the SCOTUS ruling on "emergency" tariffs, applaud Marco Rubio's performance in Munich, and reflect on the passing of Jesse Jackson and Robert Duvall. 

Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall. It's the Rikish Day podcast. I'm James Lillis. Stephen Hayward is here, and we're going to talk to Daniel Mahoney about the totalitarian impulse and whether or not Donald Trump ought to tone it down or not. So let's have ourselves a podcast. We are part of one civilization, Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture,

heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices are forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir. Welcome, everybody. It's the Rikershay podcast number, get this, 777. I'm sure that's lucky somewhere. Why don't you play it in the lottery today? Or even a better investment in your money, go to Rickettsay.com, join up, sign up, part of the most stimulating conversations and community on the web.

I'm James Lillix in Minnesota where it was wonderful and warm and the sun came out and all the snow melted and then six inches fell which taxed the ability of my little Toro to get it in my back my back

but that's neither here nor there somebody who was not here but is there is Stephen Hayward Stephen how you doing? I am good James how are you aside from snow blowing challenges that's a fraught question these days but you know here we're our Minnesota seems to have calmed down a little bit.

I have no idea if ICE is working at the same level it did before, but the whistleblowing and the protests and all the rest of it seems to have subsided. So that perhaps then, you know, national nightmare has moved elsewhere. But that doesn't mean that the world isn't full of things to discuss. And no, I don't mean to imply that if Minneapolis is having troubles, it's something that everybody has to constantly think about. I'm tired of it myself. Bye. Yeah.

Well, not completely. Sorry, go ahead. No, bring us up to speed on this. This is a new development. I'm sure everybody is keen to know what you think. And what is next then exactly? What was said? What was struck down? Right. So what the court ruling released this morning, and it's 170 pages long, and I've barely gotten through about two pages,

and I'm trying to grab the main threads, because there's all these partial concurrences, and then the, dissent. So it's six three vote, I should say that. And the three dissenters were not the three liberals. It's Thomas Alito and Kavanaugh. Something of a surprise. I would have thought Kavanaugh would have been in the majority on this. Second, I'm sorry Charlie's not here because he's already tweeted out that the decision was absolutely correct and it should have been nine zero. And I understand his argument and I think I sympathize with it. But what it said was is that Trump does not have unlimited scope to impose tariffs under a particular statute.

Aipa, the international emergencies, economic emergencies act, something like that. I don't have it in front of me. But that does not strike down all tariff power. He still has Section 301 of retaliatory tariffs, and that goes back decades. And I looked this up once. You know, Ronald Reagan, free trader, threatened Spain in 1986 with 200 percent tariffs on everything because Spain had a bunch of really bogus trade barriers against America. agricultural imports, and Spain folded and lifted all those within 48 hours.

So that power, but that's always retaliatory power, or against clearly determined unfair trade practices by our trading partners. Trump wanted to do this. Sure. I mean, doesn't it go without saying that that was the motivation that Trump was choosing, that it was that they had unfair barriers to us and therefore we're going to do it to them? I don't buy the emergency thing. The emergency thing is like one of those little weasel words they use in government to justify

absolutely everything like interstate commerce. But retaliatory, I mean, if somebody's got a big tariff wall against our products and we do the same, why is that not within the scope of the powers? Yeah, well, it's because Trump didn't invoke Section 301 or too. I forget the numbers because I'm not a trade expert. But instead he invoked the statute from the 70s and it had, you know, it's the words in it about the power to regulate foreign commerce under emergency circumstances, which is up to the president to determine. but regulate is not the same as tax as what the court is saying in the majority opinion. So, okay, he can probably still impose some of these tariffs under other legal authorities the president retains that were not challenged or not before the court. Whether he can do things like, for example, the threatening the big tariffs on India and other countries to stop them from trading in Russian oil,

they may have just wiped out that power. And gosh, that's something that an awful lot of pro-Ukrainian people are critical of Trump kind of like right now. So this is an odd circumstance. There is an interesting, curious subtext to the case that I picked up on so far, which is that the case relies in part on statutory construction, that the statute simply doesn't grant that brought a power to impose tariffs as a remedy for controlling foreign trade. But the major questions doctrine, that's what Chief Justice Roberts brought up, which is, look, Whatever the ambiguities may be, and I'm paraphrasing very widely here, Congress needs to be clear about it and specific.

Under the new doctrine, the court embraced two, three years ago, the major questions doctrine. Well, guess what? The three liberals on the court who cited the Roberts, they filed separate concurrences saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, we don't want it. Essentially what they're saying is we don't want to use that major questions doctrine. Because that is a major impediment to, you know, the administrative state, rule by bureaucrats that the left depends upon these days. So I think it also means not to go on too long about this.

I think it also means that the big move we talked about last week, repealing the endangerment finding for the EPA to regulate climate. I think it means that the Trump's moves are likely to be held up under the same doctrine of a major questions doctrine. And so in a collateral way, this decision is bad news for the environmentalists and the climate cult. Is there a minor questions doctrine? I imagine when it comes to government and emergencies, I imagine everything is a major queen.

So the S&P 500, of course, leaped up after this, and everybody says, well, great, okay, this is back to the old order. But the old order, we're told, the globalist order of free trade and the rest of it has fallen under, let's see, a cloud, a dark cloud in the last year, two years or so, as everybody looks around and says,

wait a minute, what we were supposed to get to was a frictionless world, the end of history, everything being, flat, everything being interesting. We get cheap stuff there. Our standard of living goes up. A lot of people looked at that bargain and said, wait a minute, no, this didn't redound to our benefit. What we got was the hollowing out of American industry. We got barriers to immigration drops so that society becomes diluted, et cetera, et cetera. All of the things about globalism that people don't like. Does this mean globalism is back on the menu, boys, as they would say, as the orcs might say, or have we moved beyond that to a case-by-case basis where we're still going to be protecting American industries and attempting to resure as much as possible. Because that's what interests me about this whole thing.

I didn't like, I don't like tariffs. And part of the reason I don't like tariffs is because I was awake in junior high and learned that Smoot Hawley killed everything. I mean, we all have our narratives, right? Smoot Hawley came along, tariffs went up, things were bad, stock market was too frothy, everyone was buying things on the margin, and then it crashed and the bankers jumped out of the window or sold apples on the corner or both, you know, if they had a softening. That's what I was, so I've always had in the back of my head an aversion to tariffs, even though, you know, they paved the way for the budgets for decades.

I mean, it's interesting to watch that movie about the assassination of Garfield and realize, you know, how much power the guys who ran the ports and did the tariffs had. I mean, it was an extraordinary moneymaker for them in the Times. But anyway, so I don't like them. But the part that didn't bother me necessarily was the part that said, we are going to look at critical supply chains. We're going to provide incentives for companies to come back to the U.S. and build. I like that.

Everyone says, you're dreaming if you think they're going to make whirlpool washing machines in Columbus, Ohio anymore. Part of me says, but then let me dream because while I pine sort of four aspects of the past that we may romanticize them, but there is something to be said for having a solid, productive industrial base. And then people quote the numbers that you actually, this is the industry we have now, everything's five. We all know in our heart of hearts that we'd be happy if iPhones were made here, if washing machines and microwaves were made here, if all the drugs were made here, if we didn't have to rely on China for everything. So that's my incoherent, romantic, and unsubstantiated beef against tariffs pro-a-con, which is why I'm not on the Supreme Court.

Yes, well, I mean, the big problem with trade going back decades is not so much to other countries have tariffs against this straightforward tariffs of 10% or something. It's that they employ a lot of non-tariff trade barriers they're called. In other words, yes, you can send American cars to Japan, but then they let out a bunch of conditions which make it expensive or impossible to do so. But because they're not formally a tariff, you couldn't sue at the international trade quarter, whatever it's called, the WTO it's called now. Okay. So insofar as Trump wanted to use this whole exercise as a way to blast apart remaining trade barriers and also secure supply chains, like you'd say, I was all for it and willing to go along with it. And by the way, if we ever do make washing machines here in the country again, and I think we might, it won't be made by human beings, will be made by robots. And that process is already very far along, right? I know. I know. That's the part that you realize that it would not be guys toiling away with a lunch bucket who would go home when the whistle blew. that it would be made, then we think, well, it's going to be made by robots. So we're going to need lots of programmers to design and build those things.

And now at the point where, well, actually, we don't because AI can design and program those things. And, you know, essentially what used to be one big, huge factory in the end of town with a smoke belching out of the stack and grimy men leaving at the end of the day to get into their desotos and go home to their small little house, the American dream, actually turns out to be one guy in Miami who was sitting there filling away his laptop. Right. And what everybody else does for what everybody else does for a living, I'm not exactly sure. Right. Well, there's one last loose end about the case today that I'm sure some listeners will wonder about is what about the $150 billion, whatever the number is in tariff revenues that Trump has collected, from which he was promising $2,000 checks to all of us.

Do those have to be refunded? That question was not before the court today. And so they said nothing about that. And I think there may be some lawsuits filed saying from companies or somebody saying, hey, we, we absorb the cost of these tariffs. Now you owe the money back, which will further make our whole fiscal situation so much brighter, won't it? Oh, so much so. All right.

Let's turn our eyes elsewhere across the pond to Europe. Europe is in a powerless situation. It is caught in a world in which its influence is shrinking. It is overestimated its soft power. It has made suicidal bargains when it comes to its energy policy and in its demographic makeup, Western Europe. And it is becoming essentially sort of a theme park with a nice old buildings and a little tiny town, compacted town squares with winding, twisting little streets where you can get a good paella. Marco Rubio went there and laid down some markers and some truths. People are seeing it as a bookend to the last year's fans' speech.

Correct. The conference, the Munich Security Conference, you know, whenever you hear about Munich conferences, I tend to shift in my seat a little bit. Right. But, you know, he opened it talking with the origins about how the continent had been ridden by the Cold War. And I remember those days, as you do too, how the barbed wire laid down in Berlin and the guard posts went up. Nuclear proliferation, Soviet Union, on the march. And I mean, you probably like me, Steve, grew up, seeing the Eastern Bloc as just a fact of history that wasn't going to be dissolved anytime soon. Yeah.

It just, it seemed set in concrete. But of course, Soviet concrete was pretty cheap. And after a while, it falls away and crumbles. Rubio said, united not just by what we were fighting against. We were united by what we were fighting for. And that's true. Yeah. Underneath that, however, of course, was an anti-American strain.

that was built both perhaps a little bit of resentment, but mostly by resurgent leftism, which regarded the United States as colonial and awful and unfit to lead the world into its brave new collective future. People are praising this speech as a reestablishment of a commitment to a certain kind of way of looking at the world.

Is it passe? Is it just simply return with a V and avatars on X with a classical statuary and bygone nostalgia for a world that is simply no longer able to be put back together. Yeah, I liked how you put it, that it was a bookend from J.D. Vance's very tough speech last year. I think you could call it good cop, bad cop,

because the substance of Rubio's speech tracked very closely with what Vance said, but the difference was in the rhetorical style of it. It was more Reagan-esque. In fact, it reminded me a lot of Reagan's famous to me, you may remember too, his speech that he gave in London in 1982 about the meaning of the cold.

World War and why not only our idea is better, but Marxism is a failure and we're going to transcend them, and they're going to end up on the ash heap of history. Ash heap of history. Right. Oh, it was a wonderful larceny of old Marxist rhetoric. And I do remember the New York Times saying, oh, this is Cold War rhetoric from the 50s. Isn't this terrible? And that was, you know, a year later, it comes back with the Evil Empire speech, right?

That was sort of the J.D. Vance and Reagan. But look, the content was, I say, tracked pretty well, but well-received, partly because Rubio's stock is rising. second, I do think, a standing ovation, they say. I did notice, like Reagan's speech in 82, that the sainted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez complained that he was talking about Western civilization,

how terrible that is. I mean, he promoted those. Let me read the quote, which our producer has kindly provided for me. It says here, we are part of one civilization, Western civilization. We are bound to one another

by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir. I mean, yeah. But a lot of people get angry about that. And oh, on the, on the, on the, never mind Cortez. I love the fact. The last name is literally a Spaniard who came over and wiped out an indigenous empire. But I mean, people have been nitpicking this apart and saying this is absolutely preposterous. Somebody living in Lithuania has nothing to do whatsoever, really, with somebody living in Portugal,

somebody in the Hebrides. What do they got to do with somebody living in Greece? And to me, it's a petty, even meretricious way of looking at it, because obviously there is something called Western Siv. And it's, you know, the only time the left seems to acknowledge it is when it's sandwiched between the phrases, hey, ho, and has to go. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I think that's a not even the subtext of the speech, but I think what's really going on here is Europe has lost confidence in itself and its heritage when they're not in fact hostile to it, right? And I think that's what's different from, say, 40, 50 years ago when we were often frustrated with our European allies for being weak, for being to appeasement minded to the Soviet Union.

But now it's worse. And I'll just give you one instance right now that's not getting a lot of attention in the American press is. So, you know, when Reagan decided to bomb Libya in 1986 after they had bombed the disco in Berlin, our bombers took off, you may remember this, James, from an airfield that we run in Britain, which we still have the base rights there. They had to fly around the Strait of Gibraltar because France said no. Okay, leave that aside for the moment. But right now, the British are denying us permission to use that base

and also the Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean for any operations against Iran. At least that's what's being reported right now. And, you know, this is an outrage, right? This is an example. And because, look, the attitude of Europe toward Iran, especially England, has been in full appeasement mode really since 1980, right? So this is very frustrating. And I'm sure while Rubio was, you know, a kinder and gentler version of Vance in his

speech, I hope and expect that behind the scenes he was given them the business about this. I hope so, too. There's nothing I read out of England in their politics. politics. Well, actually, there's quite a bit because you have a group now, a new party, which is full-throated expressing what a lot of people have said needs to be done for Britain. And it makes reform look like, but frankly, wet. But we can get to that in a minute. Right now, we're going to talk to Daniel Mahoney. Daniel J. Mahoney, Professor Emeritus at Assumption University, where he dropped from 86 until 2021, senior fellow with the Claremont Institute, senior writer at Law and Liberty,

and executive editor of perspectives on political science. His 2020 book, The Statesman as Thinker, Portraits of Greatness, Courage, and Moderation, received the award for Conservative Book of the Year by ISI in 2023. And his latest book is The Persistence of the Ideological Lie, the totalitarian impulse then and now. Fascinating topics. Let's get right to it.

Daniel, welcome. My pleasure. Well, so earlier this week, He wrote a piece called Discipline at a moment of power. And it's a critique, a measured critique of the administration from a, and let's say, use your description, I believe, a friend, but not a flatterer of Donald Trump. All right. So let's just get right to it.

Why does Trump have a duty to outgrow the worst of his excesses? Everyone always says, oh, it's the mean tweets, but it's more than that. Look, whenever you proper this kind of advice toward Trump or the administration, a thousand voices rise in unison and say, but he won't change, it'll do no good. Look, we're obliged to point out these things, partly because some of this behavior affects self-presentation are very self-defeating. And partly for intellectual and moral hygiene. You can support this administration. It's brought goals, many of the specifics of what it's done. You could acknowledge

that Donald Trump has been the only person in the political class in recent years who's willing to face up to the crisis the country is facing, the sort of active subversion of our constitutional order and the moral foundations

of democracy, but you can also acknowledge that his modus operandi is a sometimes a self-defeating mixed bag. And And, you know, I think the president really never learned that there's a very substantial difference between campaigning and governing. When you govern, I mean, even magapartisans want you to sometimes be presidential. And as I said in my piece, we owe in the language of the Declaration of Independence a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.

Before we go further, some examples do you think of the self-defeating behavior, just we got some stuff on the table? Well, look, I said probably the most extreme and dramatic example I gave, and I gave it because dozens of people I knew who are generally supportive of this administration were very much taken back by it. the remarks about Rob Reiner and his wife when the son was killed, but the son killed them. And Trump's reaction was just unacceptable. It was narcissistic. It was brazen. It was petty.

And the high-minded thing to do would have also been the self-interest thing to do. Just be magnanimous. We didn't agree on anything, but this is a human tragedy, absolutely lamentable, et cetera. And that small-mindedness hurts. And there's no use in pretending it doesn't. And I happen to be in Europe during the whole Greenland thing. And I saw something very ominous.

I saw conservative and conservative populist thinkers very, very well-disposed to Trump. And it defended him really react extremely negatively to what they perceived as bullying. And, you know, when Stephen Miller says, look, how did the Danes get Greenland? Well, you know, three boats went there and all that. Well, how does anyone get anywhere? You got there by boats, you know. Evan Burke says never looked too close below the initial veil, you know. And the fact is, you know, they said it like settler colonialists.

The Danes, so there are many Europeans who one takes some pleasure in ticking off. but the Danes were reasonably friendly government, you know, and you could have handled this in a far less monastic way. I can give other examples. But by the way, this is a pro-Trump piece. I am trying to say to the president, the people around him, if you want to succeed and we want you to succeed, you can't double down on the things that undermine

the larger cause. Well, Dan, by the way, great to see you. Listeners should know that you and I have known each other for a long time. I hate to say how long it's been. I think way back to 1981, yeah. Yes, I think that's right. We were both interns in Washington. It was those glorious days, right?

I'm not sure as with you, but I did get thrown out of the hawk and dove once on Pennsylvania Avenue there. You and I used to go there some for happy. Absolutely. I got thrown out there once along with Martin Morris Wooster, if you remember him, because we were eating too many of the free. chicken wings. I remember Mark Morris was he was a Washington, a conservative staple. Oh, that's right. Yeah. It's eccentric intellectual. Oh, my goodness, yes. Well, anyway,

back to the main point is, you know, you and I have talked a great length about, you know, Churchill and DeGall and, you know, DeGall could be a nasty piece of work. Also, I mean, maybe arguably lacks some magnanimity, but here's the question I'm coming to. Maybe this is too broad, but I think that in the fullness of time, I'm glad I mean, you know, 10, 20, 30 years from now or longer, we're going to look back on Trump. For some reasons, you already articulated in others as one of the most consequential and necessary presidents in our history. That's sort of my precasting what I think is going to be in the future. But he does lack that magnanimity, except he does surprise us sometimes. And so, yeah, I was right with you. I thought the mistake

about the Rob Reiter tweet was, most America is not on social media. We think everybody is, but they're not. And so most people didn't know about Reiner's derangement about Trump. And so this just called attention to the fact that Trump is a thin skin. And most Americans knew Rob Reiner's this beloved filmmaker, right? So what a blunder because it could only hurt Trump. On the other hand here, two days ago, I wonder if he did this on purpose. He sends out a very effusive true social post on Jesse Jackson, right?

Now, if there's anybody who has a dossier of, I know we don't speak of all the dead, except Trump usually does, that very effusive post about someone about whose dossier of bad deeds and effects in American politics is quite long and quite serious, right? And did he do that just to mess with liberals' heads? I don't know, but he can do it once in a while. So Trump is quite capable of being humorous and self-deprecating and generous. and he has an act for making up with people. He called terrible things. Think of Secretary of State Rubio. No, and I think a problem that the officer class,

you know, the guardians of democracy as it's been redefined, the mistake they make is they take everything Trump says literally. Half the time Trump is kidding around or exaggerating or, pushing buttons. And I recognize all that. But I do think, at one point I emphasize of my piece, and I think this is no mean political consideration, is that President Trump is exhausted. And I have talked to untold number of people who voted for him two or three times who say this presidency is exhausting. He's exhausted. People need a bit of a break. But I do think acting presidential doesn't mean that Trump shouldn't be Trump. It doesn't mean

he shouldn't take on the woke, censorious, neo-totelitarian left. It doesn't mean there's a ways of doing all of that, and yet just avoiding those self-inflicted wounds that give powerful ammunition to the people who despise him. Right. I've been saying the same thing about Trump is that, actually, George Will was saying this in the first term. Of course, George has really got a full-blown case of TDS, unfortunately, I think. But, you know, you're Trump.

But George also went from being a burkey into a hyperliferation. libertarian. Yeah, I know. That's right. Talking about a life crisis. Yeah, I know. That was an interesting change, right. Yeah, we'll leave that for some other day. Where's that going? Oh, yeah, so you may remember this. Trump took a weekend off here sometime last year and

again, social media went nuts. Where's Trump? It's been 36 hours since we've heard from him. Has he had a stroke? Has he died? And Trump had a lot of fun with that the next day. but that's just his nature is to do, you know, 50 things before lunch. Look, I think a lot of people on our side have forgotten a fundamental truth about politics. And Modiskew talked about this in 1748 in the spirit of the laws. When you win, immediately those people who are with your party who voted for you,

a certain number of them are immediately going over to the other side. because everything you say and do creates a certain amount of discontent. And that means public opinion shifts, and there's the waivers. Most people used to be partisans, but a small number go over to the other side, and the other side wins elections. So it means even as you're taking on, as Trump has done impressively, you take on this censorious left, you take on the deep state. but you also have to keep in mind those 10 or 15% of the voters who they may be annoying,

they may be uninformed, they may underestimate the nasty character of the other side, but you have to persuade them in some way. And persuasion isn't just through a series of rational arguments, it's just not giving them reasons to go over the other side. So, you know, in politics, it's always that you, judicious balance between doing what you were elected to do and not offending, needlessly offending people so that you give, in this case, we're in a very dark place in our politics because we really can't afford for the other side to win if we keep the republic.

And that means there's a special responsibility not to be in permanent campaign mode. but to persuade that fickle part of the country. No one annoys me more than independent voters who... Oh, I'll go off on rants about how usually have the last presidential debate every four years is with undecided voters in a town hall format, and it's always a room full of morons, right? Who could be undecided three weeks out from a national election? And they asked the dumbest...

Okay, we know that story. Years ago, George Will wrote a column and he said, do we really want the fate of the Western world to be those who are listening to music in their car and driving on November 5th and still deciding who they're going to vote for? But this is a fact of life. And also with the foreign policy stuff, a decent respect for opinions of mankind, I was very worried when I started seeing. serious publicists,

editorialists, others in Europe who are pro, national-minded, very much opposed to the despotism of the extreme center, as some of my European friends call it, who were really appalled saying Trump, you know, does Trump really care about us? We got to recognize,

while it's perfectly legitimate and necessary, and welcome to be American patriots, we need to encourage other national minded and patriotic people. And a big coalition, a kind of conservative international, where we say we're in this together against globalism, the erosion of national sovereignty, the replacement of, you know, sound morals and common sense consensus with woke nonsense. And when these people start saying, you know, Trump's,

Trump just doesn't like us, you know, He doesn't distinguish between, you know, good and bad Europeans. It's worrisome. And that's where I think the Rubio's talk in Munich was perfect because deep down, he didn't say anything wholly different from Vance, but he didn't exude contempt. Right. Well, when you say the opinion of mankind, though, that's one of those phrases. I'm not sure what you mean by that. I mean, to me, it would seem to be Europe and Canada, perhaps, and some friendly nations, Japan, perhaps, in Australia, if they want to come.

But the opinion of mankind is self-interested, and their self-interest, of course, is going to look at us and say, what do we get out of this place? Well, you left out a word. Decent respect for the opinions of mankind, which means all the men of the Fathers didn't just, the men of 1776 didn't just,

or 1775, didn't just revolt against the Brits. They gave reasons to the world, candid facts, you know, they laid out the reasons for it. in a very, in very civil, pugnacious, but civil terms, you know. I think that means, make a case, make a case. It doesn't mean we should defer to what the editorialists and Ligardi and or L'Amone said. God forbid.

I know. I'm an agreement with so much of what you're saying. I just want to come back to the change and whether or not, if it happens, what effect it would have. Is anybody persuadable at this point? Now, doesn't that be Europe, does it ever matter, but it was. talking about the undecided, the people who hate, I mean, I don't think anybody would have hated who hates Trump would have hated him any less if he'd kept his yapshot during the, during the Reiner tragedy. Is it, can the needle be moved at this point? It has to be moved,

or we'll lose big in 26 and 28. Chris Caldwell had a column in the spectator world, the last issue is saying Trump's losing supports from his supporters. You know, some people in his coalition are turned off. And, you know, I think Minneapolis, of course, the press covered over the Antifa militants and the nonsense and turned these two rabble-rousers into martyrs. But, you know, the Tom Holman approach of making distinctions. And, you know, I think Trump listened.

And I think we have an approach here that doesn't make him the enemy doesn't highlight, you know, there is a consensus in this country about sealing the border and deporting the worst of the worst. It probably isn't a consensus to kick out 20 to 25 million people. But the point is in Minneapolis, when Homer came in there, a troubled situation was righted pretty darned quickly. And I do think it makes a difference, especially of Coldwell's right, that a certain number of Trump, natural supporters are disillusioned and tired. They have no illusions about the left, but they're losing enthusiasm for Trump.

Not a majority, not maybe even a significant problem. If it's five or eight or ten percent, it's a game change. Dan, one more question about your article, and then I actually want to introduce something beyond the scope of your article and shift gears a bit. One of the things I really liked about the article is you saying very forcefully and clearly, look, all this talk of Trump being a dictator and authoritarian, a threat to democracy is all nonsense. And, you know, sometimes when people hear a criticism of Trump like you've made, they'll default to saying, oh, you're really a closet, never Trump or something.

So anyway, that was a very valuable part of the piece. They voted for Trump three times. Right. And I wasn't exactly holding my nose like something to why know. Yeah, right. That's right. But then the other thing is, I'm not quite sure I completely agree with you when you brought up the old distinction, time honored in American political analysis between campaigning and governing. In other words, I think that I think you'll understand my analysis and probably agree with it.

So restate your arguments so that I get it better. The sort of the structure of our government with the administrative state, the deep state, whatever you want to call it, the way the media operates, the way the opposition operates, is no longer possible to govern, being deeply political and being on the offense all the time. And that's why I think you can't really separate those two realms anymore. Like, you know, the first President Bush said, I'm in campaign mode and I'm in governing mode. I think that distinction doesn't work anymore. Yeah, I largely agree with that.

But, you know, there's multiple ways of campaigning. I think it's good of Trump to do these rallies. It energizes the base. He talks the media and the lies of the political class. But he can do other things, you know. and, you know, when he went to Iowa recently, he was supposed to talk about the economy. As I say in the piece, there's such good news.

They're sharing the border. Everyone said it was undoable, and it's being done, and it's been done. But I do think, you know, when he went to Iowa, he was supposed to talk about the economy. He immediately started praising his accomplishments and saying there's no real problem with the economy. Look, the economic news is much more good that it's bad.

But nonetheless, if people see the prices of groceries going up and have formed a certain impression, probably fueled partly by propaganda and the media, you've got to meet them a little bit of the way and all that. And so these are not questions of really a radical or fundamental reorientation. It's just, you know, he says, well, you know, when Trump said, I'll be presidential when I have to be. Well, we're waiting, but yeah. You have to be. And, you know, and you mentioned, look, I've spent my whole life. As you have, Steve, you know, talking up the nobility and dignity of high-minded statesmanship. And I'm obliged to admit, you know, if Trump nodded every once in a while in that direction, it's in his self-interest.

Occasionally he does. I know. Well, cheer up, maybe. Long story, and it won't go into it now, but I've talked to some people, some of the speechwriters and people in the domestic policy council at the White House, and, you know, they have serious ideas about July 4 coming up. And if Trump stays on message, I think it'll be really good.

So let's just put a pin in that and hope, right? I only talked about Trump briefly at the end of the statesmanist thinker, but I said, look, you can criticize you, we can criticize them, but it's in the summer of 2020, when the political class revealed themselves to be cowardly credence, if not insurrectionist, Trump spoke in defense of the country. The speech he gave at Mount Rushmore was a tour to force of intelligent, spirited patriotism. And I hope this is a 2026 will be a wonderful opportunity for Trump to right in the higher ground but in a way that makes clear what he's defending what we're defending

he's quite capable of doing it and yeah and um it's just that um i don't think we do this presidency any good by saying well he he won't change or right uh you know the other side's terrible Right. Because in retrospect, eventually people will admit all this when he's gone. You know, you have to, sometimes it's better to admit it while it's going on. Right.

Well, what's the one line of Churchill's was you have to take the rough with the smooth, right? He used to say that wrong about that. Exactly. Exactly. Right. Let's say that we live in an alternate dimension in which Ronda Sanzas had won. Do you think we would have gotten what we've gotten from the last, oh, you know, your Trump administration?

You know, I mean, look. I don't know the answer to that. I think you would need Solomon's judgment, you know, because Radda Sanders has done wonderful things in Florida, tough-minded, determined, pugnacious things. He was a terrible candidate, and I think he decided to, he stiffened up somehow, but whether he would have,

he certainly hasn't had that bearing as governor, and look, but I, but I, I'm tempted to say Trump, Trump is one of a kind. And he is willing to take on what everyone says is untouchable. You know, he, as I say in the piece, he has, he is the only person of the political class who from the get-go had utter contempt for the secular religions of climate change, gender ideology, the racialism and all that. feels it in his bones. By the way, I think the governor of Florida is against all those things too, but maybe

Trump, would there have been the same determined assault on the elite universities which have become bastions of illiberalism and intellectual I don't know. But I think to say it just could have been a very good president even

even if he was a mediocre candidate. Right. So Dan, let me sort of last question here, last topic, and we could go on a long time and don't have a long time. But it's over to Europe a bit because listeners should know that you have not just detailed expertise about European politics, but you're acquainted with, as I like to put it, all the most sensible people in France, both of them. I'm tempted to joke, right? But also, you are, I think I'd be so bold as to say, and you'll disclaim it, but you're maybe the leading,

or at least one of the three or four leading American scholars of Solzhenitsyn. I think that's fair to say. Yeah, okay. Good. I was afraid you were going to accuse me of hyperbole. because I do think it's true. Look, so I don't know. I want to confine the question and we'll be here all day. You know, you mentioned we've all talked about Rubio's speech, how good it was, and I'm thinking he was trying to, you know, grab Europe on lapels and say,

have some confidence and respect for yourselves, please. That's one way. But then there's France. You know, Trump may be at 40% or less. Macron is down to what? 16% approval rating? I mean, that's a... Oh, I think it's even lower now.

Yeah. And I don't know. Matt Crowe was, you know, this conservative, conservative fellow got kidnapped and murdered in Lyon by some Antifa people who are linked to the left-wing party, Frances. France Unbound and MacCrow yelled at the Prime Minister Maloney of Italy, so you have no right to speak about this. A Pyraman I recently said, look, if you talk about conservatives,

they're all inhuman and totalitarian people. Are you going to be surprised that they're killed? Yeah, no, Macron is very unpopular. He represents this technocratic ethos. You heard me say the extremism of the center. Menon calls it the fanaticism of the center. These are the people from the old mainstream parties,

even the Christian Democrats in Germany, who are determined to bury democracies to save it. And also, Macron has that gallous autos, Oter without the greatness of soul that DeGaul had. You know, if you're an honor of mediocrity, ideolog and technocrat, you can't pretend you're Winston Churchill or Charles de Gaulle. The Olympic haughtiness looks ridiculous. By the way, Merz is down in about 20% in the polls in Germany because...

Wow. A, you know, the Germans keep on voting him and the social Democrats out, and they form these coalitions to keep the populace out. And now they're following, the Greens are part of their alliance, they're following the suicidal ecological policies and electricity bills like the Northeast where I live. My electricity bill was twice what it was last January and literally becoming a place that's unlivable. And the Germans are mad as hell that, you know, green ideology is literally undermining their way of life, their economic press. Yes, Trump is infinitely more popular. You may have seen insider advantage in another recent poll that came out. The ones who were most accurate about the 2024 election have Trump closer to 50%, not 42%. So I'm not sure Trump is in so much trouble. I think reports of his death are much exaggerated to resurrect that old saying. But he's got so much against him. He has so many, you know, the media class, the intellectual class, no doubt some Republicans who will come out of the woodwork when it's

advantageous, that he doesn't have as much room for maneuver. So I'm sure there are people call me a rhino. I'm not a rhino. I'm not a, you know, there's nobody who considers Bill Crystal to be more of a lunatic than me. He's now referring to Trump as executing people at Minnesota. Yeah. No, he's lost his mind. And he's supported Mbondani. I know. Well, Dan, your latest book is The Persistence of the Ideological Lie, The Totalitarian Impulse Then and Now. Last question. What's the difference?

Oh, between then and now? Yes. Well, what's not a difference is the structure of the position. I argue that the root of the evil goes back a century and a half or two, century displacement of the age-old distinction between truthful, so good, evil, with this pernicious distinction between progress and reaction. The guys who were on the side of history and the people are holding it back, and that's what wokeness is. Now, in the case of the French Revolution, in the case of 20th century totalitarianism, that orientation justified full-scale totalitarianism, know, assaulting the bodies and souls of whole groups of human beings.

The woke haven't gotten there yet because we still, notice I called my, the book, that subtile I say the totalitarian impulse. We don't live in a totalitarian state, although we came closer to it in the summer of 2020, but the totalitarian impulse is alive and well. It's been institutionalized in many institutions like the universities, et cetera. And look, as Steve mentioned, I've spent a lot of my adult life, my scholarship, writing about totalitarianism, about communism. And I said right from the get-go in 89, unless we pass on real lessons about the totalitarian episode, it will reassert itself and reassert itself very quickly.

You can't just say we won, or it was a victory of the market over a planned economy. All that's, some of it's true, but it's superficial. You really have to know the lie. You have to know what it was. This was not just a poor economic model. This was a war against human nature and a war against the human spirit and a war against the roots of free government. And it's alive and well. I say in my piece, I don't think there is many 80, 20 issues as people say there are.

There's a lot of people out there who have bought into lunacy. And so we shouldn't. I mean, I was asked to contribute to a symposium a week after Trump won, is wokeness finished? I said, how could it be finished because of an election? You know, wokeness is deeply instantiated in, well, in the, you know, the B.M. Ponson, the chattering classes, their default position is woke. They've stepped back a bit under pressure, but this is a battle royal.

And it's not just going to be won by winning elections. We have to recover or do our best to recover the institutions of civil society. The churches, the universities, you know, the corporations, which, you know, became agents of awokey in certainly in the last generation. What this country needs is another good long march with comfortable Chinese shoes. Daniel, thank you. Thank you so much, guys. I really enjoyed it. The persistence of the ideological lie,

the Tertell, it's journey impulse. Then and now is his latest book. We thank him so much for coming on board, and we'll talk to you again down the road. Bye, Daniel. So, before we go, a couple of things. I've got to mention to you that ricochet meetups happen. People actually get together in real life,

IRL, as they say. And as I've found out, there's many of these things, talk about anything except politics. I mean, we can talk about politics at Rickettsay, right? That's what you do. That's why you go there. That's why you pay for it. What's that?

You haven't paid for it? He says with a stern and knitted brow. Well, you know, yeah, I know what it's like to get people to pay for things on the internet. Believe me, but it's worth it because it's cheap. And what it gives you is access to a community on the member side that you won't find anywhere else on the web. And that's where you find conversations all over the map from old radio to new movies to sports to politics. Yes, to culture to art. It's just a fantastic place.

And if you pay that a little bit, you get to comment. That's what keeps the comment sections interesting instead of being just absolute cesspool, you know, free for alls like you find elsewhere. So that is something you want to do, and you'll find mentions of meetups, perhaps in your area. And hey, if there isn't one in your area, start one. That's a great thing about ricochet people. Tell them to come and they'll show up and they'll probably bring hot dish or something like that, Well, at least in Minnesota.

Had a couple of high-profile deaths this week. We're having, you know, a whole generation is expiring, it seems, when you're of the age of Stephen and myself. It's not unexpected, but it always hits you right there because wasn't this guy just 35, 40 years old just a little while ago? No, that was in the 80s. Jesse Jackson perished, died, and it, a unique American figure. And I read an awful lot of eulogies and people who were not necessarily on his side in his corner viewed him as something of an opportunist,

but nevertheless would attest to the man's charisma and his ability to charm and the rest of it. And he did bring an interesting briehl to American politics and then seemingly vanished. Stephen, your take on this. Yeah, right. You put your finger on it. Two observations. Yeah, the charisma that you really don't see his success. like Al Sharpton or and so forth.

I was a reporter at the Democratic Convention in 1984. As a cup reporter had a press pass. And only convention I've ever been to. I don't like big crowds like that. And his speech, a keynote speech, closed out the second night, I guess, was absolutely electric. And I remember thinking, wow.

And then I read the speech the next morning in the paper. And it was not the same. In other words, the orator was greater than the oratory, right? And that was always his problem. his substance was pretty bad, but boy, he could light up a room. I do think that some of the conservatives, maybe National Review said nice things about him this week. And I guess, you know, don't speak all over the dead.

I think he looks better. Well, put it this way, the cleanest shirt and a lot of dirty laundry. His successors like Al Sharpton are so much worse human beings than he was. And that, you know, Jackson had lots of flaws, personal and professional, political, and so forth. But it's only gotten worse. And he kind of propelled us. I think he did mainstream, help mainstream. anti-Semitism on the left, the famous

Heineetown remark in 84, right? Right, which came to my mind within 10 seconds of hearing his death, frankly. Yeah, exactly, right. And then, yeah, so I'm going to go on about him, but I think that's enough. Robert Duvall. Passing of Robert Duval is hard because we're losing

a certain kind of guy, it seems. A certain sort of, I mean, it's ridiculous for me to judge his acting skills. They were fantastic and it's obvious, and I shouldn't get patted on the back or a goal. star for saying, what a range of that man had. It's a great actor. But there's a certain sort of archetype that we seem to be shedding. And DeVal was one of them, a squareness, quietness,

a centeredness, a sort of American presence that, you know, I was watching Anatomy of a murder the other night, which he is not in. And for the time, it was a startlingly modern movie in the words that it used and the things that it discussed, quite so frankly. But it's still in the period, in the character of Jimmy Stewart, there's an American quality tool there that you recognize instantly when you see it and you gravitate towards it if you're of my generation because it's familiar. And I wonder sometimes if it's hard to get young people

involved and interested in old movies, not just because they're black and white, but because the culture and the archetypes and the values that they seem to effortlessly inhabit seem alien and foreign and probably wrong. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's something to that. Although I'll just say that

you're now actually inspired me to think that maybe I ought to show a Robert Duval movie or something to my students. I'd like to use movies in class to illustrate the serious content of what I'm teaching, but also to sneak in some old culture. And one that I use with great effect is the man who shot Liberty Valance, which in its political teaching really is about what are the conditions necessary for the rule of law? And is Tom Donovan, Aristotle's beast or a god. I mean, I go through a bunch of classic political questions and they like it.

I mean, at first it's like, this thing's slow, it's black and white, but, you know, I make him sit through it in a whole class period, and then we discuss it, and it works pretty well. And I think that Lonesome Dove is maybe the greatest miniseries ever made, and he's what Augustus McCray in that. I think he said that's his favorite role he ever did his entire life. And that's kind of an epic of the Old West without apology for stolen land or any of the nonsense that preoccupies Hollywood and other woke folks today. So, yeah, they don't make them like him anymore. One, I'll be sad to lose is somebody about whom I'm watching a document. recently the last few days. It's on HBO. It's about Mel Brooks, the 99-year-old man.

Oh, yeah. Delightful, as is he. So show your class blazing saddles, Steve. Oh, yeah. Point them to that and say, well, the movie had a slight controversial aspects to it. Take a look and the spirit from which it is made and try and tell yourself that these aren't the freest people you've ever seen in your life. I mean, tell my daughter that. The 70s were awful. Trust me, the 70s were awful. But you know, you can imagine somebody in a convertible smoke and a cigarette without a seatbelt driving down on their way to see Blazing Saddles. And those are the freest people that have existed on the face of the earth. Now, they may have been killed in a crash and they got lung cancer and the rest of it and the sentiments of blatantle of saddles.

Curdled as Mel Brooks tried to get lightning in a bottle. Doesn't matter. I mean, there's a brio, there's an openness and there's a cheerfulness to these things that just, you know, when you live in this in this tendentiously careful age is refreshing to see. so that'll be hard. Yeah, I mean, if nothing else, I always like to mention the scene where Mel Brooks's Governor Lepetamine says, quick, we've got to do something to save our phony bologna jobs. No sure thing was ever said about our political class. And at the time, at the time, none of us could go on the internet and look up Petamine and figure out what it meant, what it was a reference to.

That was the thing. You would have to go to go to the book. You'd have to know what meant something. You'd have to go to the library. You'd have to go to the section of the card catalog that talked about French entertainers. you'd have to pull it out, page through the dewey decimal notations, find it, go get the book, hope it wasn't in French, pull it out, then say, oh, Mel Brooks is referencing a man who went on stage and farted in a theatrical fashion. Brilliant. Now, of course, we have access to everything

and nothing means anything, except, of course, this. And except, of course, the fact that if you give us five stars at the Apple podcast reviews, we will be in your debt in the most meaningless fashion for the rest of our lives. We hope that Charlie is with us again next week. He's the funeral of our friend that we discussed last week, John Eckdahl, and we thank you for listening, everybody. I'm James Lytics, Stephen. We'll see you all in the comments at Rurkishay 4.0. Bye-bye.

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