The Ricochet Podcast - The Business We've Chosen

Episode Date: April 13, 2018

This week, two terrific reporters join us from their beats: first up, Salena Zito., National Political Reporter for The Washington Examiner (and author of the forthcoming book The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics) as well as an expert on the denizens of Trump country. Then, Debra Saunders, the White House Correspondent of the Las Vegas Review-Journal gives us... Source

We have special news for you. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Are you going to send me or anybody that I know to a camp? We have people that are stupid. This is the business we've chosen. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lalex. Today we talk to Selena Zito of the Washington Examiner and Deborah Saunders, White House correspondent. Let's the ricochet podcast number 397 i'm james lilacs i'm in

minnesota it's almost the middle of april and we're going to get 22 inches of snow i want to go back to bed my heart bleeds i just want to go back to bed and one of the reasons i do is that i've got the right sheets. The right sheets can take your sleep and your style to the next level. And that's Bowlin Branch sheets that upgrades. Well, it's never even more affordable for heaven's sakes. If you go to BowlinBranch.com spell that B-O-L-L

and Branch.com and use that promo code Ricochet, you'll get $50 off your first set of sheets. Plus, free shipping in the U.S. Yes, indeed. But we're also brought to you by quip when it comes to your health brushing your teeth it's really one of the most important parts of your day and quip knows that so they've combined dentistry and design to make a better electric toothbrush we've got a great deal for you in that and we'll tell you a little bit more about it

later and we're brought to you by the great courses hey if it's the middle of april and the snow is up to the eaves why why not stay inside and learn something? Great Courses has got, well, thousands of 30-minute lectures in almost every category. Start your free trial today by signing up at thegreatcoursesplus.com. And we're brought to you by Ricochet itself and, of course, by the founders, Peter and Rob, who are going to be all together in one of those rare appearances where you, the listener, can actually attend a Washington cocktail party and be an insider. Yeah, be an insider. Wait, Scott, we can hear you. Yeah, sorry.

All right. I will do it again. Yes, exactly. Thank you, sorry. All right. I will do it again. Yes, exactly. Thank you, James.th and May 11th. Along with our friends at the American Enterprise Institute, we're hosting the first ever podcast summit. Now, there's some controversy about what we're going to call it. I wanted to call it the ConPodCon, conservative podcast convention, but nobody went with that. But I like ConPodCon, so I'm going to keep calling it ConPodCon. You're going to see live versions of many of the shows on the network, including Conservatarians, Q&A, Jay Nordlinger, and, of course, Mona and Jay. The Substandard, Glop, The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg, American Wonk, a live tape to give uncommon knowledge of Peter Robinson, and a bunch of other stuff we're not announcing yet.

Here's the deal. Tickets are extremely limited, so you have to be a member of Ricochet to purchase them. So if you remember, go to the member feed on ricochet.com on Monday starting at 9 a.m. Eastern, and tickets will be available for purchase for $80 for the two-day event, which includes a meet and greet with the podcasters, some seminars, and creating and selling podcasts if you're interested in that, lunches, dinner included. And we will do a Ricochet meetup open to the public as well. That's May 10, May 11 at AEI in Washington, D.C. We want to see you there, but we're only going to see members there. So if you want to come and you're a member, please come. If you want to come and you're not a member, you've got to become a member. Please go to ricochet.com and sign up. You'll be doing a good thing for yourself and a good thing for us. I'll be personally hosting a tour of Adams Morgan, where I used to live.

I lived there during the pioneer days, during the riots. So I'll be telling tales, oral history, if you will, of the riots of Adams Morgan when I remember looking at the television because I was under martial law, couldn't leave my house, and they were looting the Safeway up the street. Looting the salad bar at the Safeway. Just jumping over broken glass with styrofoam clamshells of chickpeas. No chickpeas, no peas, I guess. Peter, you're there, right? I am here indeed, yes. And you're going to be with us.

You're almost as peripatetic as Rob going around the country to do interviews here, there, thither and yon. So you're not, either of you, bubble coastal types who don't TPP, and maybe cares the most of all about Trump getting behind 15% ethanol. Peter? Oh, yeah, sure. I mean, no. In general, people get, I think, most people just get a general sense of how things are going.

The economy seems to be growing, and either you like Trump at this point and feel he's fighting a fight that needs to be fought no matter how crudely or you don't. However, I did a little bit of time reading up on the TPP relook, the second look. What James is referring to is that yesterday, President Trump, after yanking the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement, instructed in public – I think this was during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room with some representatives of farm states – instructed the White House staff to look at signing back up for the Trans-Pacific Accord. stand is that although the president is very happy, keenly aware that his tariff talk seems to be helping the steel industry, so he's helping people with their jobs in places such as western Pennsylvania, it turns out that farmers who export a great deal of their product overseas and including to China are beginning to feel that they have lost leverage in trade deals with China because the United States pulled out of the TPP. So there is an interested middle of the country audience that's paying close attention to TPP

and it was their senators and representatives who said, Mr. President, excuse me, these are ordinary working people too. Maybe getting out of TPP was a mistake. And Donald Trump, to his credit, this strange – he has so little investment in certain positions. They say, you know what? You're right. Maybe we did make a mistake. But on that one in particular, that translates straight to the middle of the country and to ordinary Americans. Yes. Isn't it possible also, Peter, that this is the first sign that Larry Kudlow is in the room?

Yes, he was. Including Ben Sasse, who represents the farm state. Yes. Isn't it also possible that this is the – we're reaping now a little bit of what Larry Kudlow has sown, that Larry's got a lot of credibility with the president, and it isn't really TPP that's the issue here. It's whether you have any leverage over China if you're going to have a trade war, which, I mean, look, tariffs on Chinese goods isn't such a terrible idea on the face of it. To bring them into the trade framework that we all have to obey isn't a bad idea, but you need a stick to hit them with because if you don't have a stick to hit them with, you end up having them hit you back, and they're going to hit you back really shrewdly, I've got to say, with agricultural taxes, which hurts his base.

So the Chinese have played this really well. I wonder whether they expected him to do a 180 and change his mind and try to rejoin TPP. But it's a smart move. I don't know whether Larry is having an effect in that administration yet or ever will. I sure hope so. And I don't know, Rob and James, if you caught Larry on the Sunday shows. He was on with Chris Wallace this past weekend. And it was our friend Larry at his very best. Chris Wallace pressed him and said, look, you're a free trader. And here you're working for a president who's imposing tariffs. And Larry said

two things. One, nobody's imposed tariffs. Those things go out for a public comment period. First, the president has proposed tariffs. We're talking about them. Two, here's what's really going on. China has been out of line in its trading relations for at least a dozen years. Somebody needs to call China on it and President Trump is doing that. And it was just, it was Larry. It was like, here's the issue, not this stuff. That stuff is the issue. And of course, Larry, at the same time, very deftly getting away from tariffs and onto the larger issue where, you know, you can make common cause with President Trump. It was just Larry. Larry is so good and so shrewd. And on top of that in what doesn't seem like a terribly decent place. But also I think that Larry understands that the real problem here with China isn't so much that they are violating trade agreements or that they are unfairly – their trade practices are bad. It's mostly two things. It's their total disregard for intellectual property – international copyright intellectual property laws, which hurts countries like America because most of what our – our biggest export, our biggest industry or knowledge industries. And then the second thing they do is that they have a kind of a flim-flam requirement that you partner with a Chinese company, which is essentially a giveaway of all your intellectual property and your business practices.

So those are things – it's not strictly trade. Like you can't tax that, but you – in a framework that everybody belongs to, you can certainly make their lives more difficult. I have no particular – I mean look, China for 2,000 years has been a place to buy things not to sell things. They don't buy. Chinese are not buyers of non-Chinese goods. That's why we

have to have, that's what the opium wars are all about. They don't buy stuff. So I'm not sure they're going to change. They may as they get richer, but they certainly should not be allowed to flagrantly violate the law the way they are. Well, if they're buying agricultural products, what are they buying? Are they buying a lot of soybeans so they can make lots of tofu, or are they buying stuff that they actually need to feed a large population?

Because, I mean, it's interesting to see China now as this modern state without forgetting that just X number of years ago, it was predominantly rural and starving. And I tend to think that food insecurity might be something right around the corner for any of these guys at any time. And it's one of those things that makes Xi look around and firm up his base so he can do what needs to be done should that happen. Rob, earlier you mentioned that it's nice to have a decent guy, and Larry is a decent guy, as opposed to the people who are slimeballs. And I think this is the first time we actually have slimeball now in a presidential tweet, right? We're going to be hearing about this in a little bit. But the Scooter Libby pardon, does that mean anything? I want to go back to that because it's interesting how both you guys have hit TPP and not ethanol. Ethanol is such a big story in the middle of the the country but let's go to scooter living oh tell us you you

actually rob and i are now absolutely in love with the idea of shooting a show at your dad's place up in fargo and so you actually know the fuel stuff ethanol so tell us about that i don't know a darn thing about it yeah 10 ethanol right now and they wanted to get it up to 15 uh they want that to be the blend for everybody mandatory mandatory uh as in the sense of the farmers are happy because they get to sell a lot more corn it makes no sense whatsoever to grow food stuff and turn it into something to power your car when we've got gas coming out of our ears so to speak i said that because my dog just entered the room, and he's a little on the gassy side today. So you have all of this petroleum that we're getting from fracking, from new discoveries, and the rest of it. And what are we doing?

We're spending money to create the supposedly green fuel, which isn't because it uses huge amounts of water from the underground aquifers. The process of producing it pollutes. It takes away money and corn that you could use to feed people, for God's sakes. We don't need this, but the farmers like it. So the president has said that he's behind the 15%. And guys who drive cars hate it because it's just lousy gas and it's hard on your gaskets. And gas station owners aren't particularly happy either because sometimes you've got to put a special pump for 15 if you've got a different pump for 10. You've got to have a different tank if you're going 10 and 15 percent, two different blends.

It's needless. So it's like good Trump, bad Trump, indifferent Trump, whatever Trump. You have the people who said we want all the trade deals renegotiated. You're going to be happy with this TPP thing. You wanted to drain the swamp people who are going to be unhappy with ethanol because it's government picking winners and losers. And then you have the Scooter Libby thing, which makes people say, here's the personal political churn that's going on that in the end is what we're going to be talking about

after the elections. So there's my rant. I just think that it's amusing that all the headlines I'm getting today are Trump may pardon Scooter Libby, and the vast majority of people have no idea what that is. Who is Scooter Libby? What was that all about exactly? And they should. I mean they should, but they don't, which is instructive.

So on Scooter Libby, I have to say I am not a student of this case. There are some people who are students of the case, but as best i can tell donald trump is doing the right thing here i agree scooter libby got into so there was a case uh we now know that the person who revealed that valerie plane was in fact a cia agent was richard armitage then number two at the state. He's the one who leaked it. Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor in this case, and he was a prosecutor, not just an investigator, interviewed a number of people and he prosecuted Scooter Libby for perjury. And it went to a jury. And Scooter Libby said, wait a minute. That was not intentional perjury. And it was in any event, it was just Scooter Libby's, wait a minute, that was not intentional perjury. And it was in any

event, it was just Scooter Libby's memory against the memory of Tim Russert. Now, George W. Bush refused to pardon Scooter Libby because it went to a jury and the jury found against Scooter Libby. And of course, George W. Bush's lawyers, being good lawyers, said it's up to juries to find fact. But that was a factual question that should never have gone to a jury in the first place. The prosecutor knew perfectly well Scooter Libby was not guilty of any crime. He tripped him up in a procedural matter, and he never, Scooter Libby to this day, says no. Tim Russert is the one who misremembered it, not me. Pardoning Scooter Libby is the correct thing to do. That entire case was a travesty

in my personal judgment. I totally agree. There's something, I mean, and I always have to say this because I'm famously, certainly on this podcast, not a fan of this president. But I get what he's doing. He's trying to remind everybody that there are two sets of standards that Hillary Clinton can go in and meet with the FBI, and it's a song and a dance, and they love each other very, very much, and nobody's prosecuted. Nobody pays any penalties. Everybody's fine. And they may be just as corrupt, but they are being raked over the coals for a whole bunch of obscure things that will probably come down to violations of FEC laws, which, again, that's why we have FEC laws, so that politicians can prosecute their enemies. But that's fine. That's the business.

As Lee Strasberg says in Godfather II, this is the business we chose. I'm not going to – no whining. But it is interesting how vastly and quickly the standards changed. If you work for Bush or you have an R by your name, you're in trouble. And if you were Hillary Clinton and you clearly did something considerably worse than anything Scooter Libby is accused of doing, you skate. You're Sandy... I always want to say Sandy Frank, but it's not Sandy Frank. The guy who stuffed the papers down his pants. Yes, Sandy Berger.

Sandy Berger, exactly. Exactly! You skate. And there's a certain... This doesn't exonerate Trump. It doesn't make him not a sleazebag, in my opinion. It does not make him anything less than a repellent figure.

But there is something to that. There is something to his sort of general argument that, hey, fellas, let's play fair. And the fact that it comes from a former Democrat, Trump, who kind of knows the difference between being a Democrat and being a Republican in what we could call the most highly political business there is, which is real estate, is kind of telling. I mean he's right here. He's absolutely right. He's not only that, but there's so many of these instances, and I wish that he could point them out forcefully and gather them together in a way that we could all talk about. But as it is, we're helping him out the talk show guys are helping him out by saying all right the press is now getting all full of agita because they found a ukrainian guy that that that's connected to manafort and there's ukrainian oligarch money connected to trump same guy clinton say you know a lot of money big deal but they're obama obama we know perfectly well that obama

illegally accepted tens of thousands of dollars in contributions. I can't remember the name now, but there was some attached guy who was bundling the money and the fact that loral oh yeah remember that loral communications it's like yes yes in the past james satellite satellite target the targeting information missile technology that china probably rolled into some sort of agreement to give to north korea so if there's an icbm that's ever going to be pointed at us do you think it's because the brilliant scientists in the NORC got it and sat up one night and scrawled equations on a whiteboard and said, Eureka?

No. It's probably from Clinton to China, Laurel, to North Korea, to the bombs looking at us. It's entirely possible. Or ICBMs for that matter. But none of that stuff matters. None of it matters. When you point, if you want to go back even farther and talk about, for example, Eddie Kennedy.

Teddy Kennedy going over and talking to Russia about influencing the election. That's okay because he believed in the use of the state to forcibly redistribute property, and he believed in abortion, which will buy him every single possible sin that he did. So when I ask my friends about this, they kind of shrug, and they don't care, because the people who were doing these things, in general, were nudging the country along the moral arc of history where it's going. They were pushing it in the right utopia. Whereas the guys on our side who are doing this have got to be opposed because their general underlying idea is the horrible diminution of the state and

the rise somehow of the concept that a six-month-old fetus might be entitled to get out on its own. If we're the bad guys, everything we do is wrong. Peter? By the way, very good rant, James. That was the golden age of talk radio rant. I really mean that. That was fantastic.

You papal puking puppy. One thing I miss the time march is on, as you know. The reaper comes for all of us. But I miss, I'm kind of glad Ted Kennedy's, but yeah, well, just for me, I guess. I kind of miss

Ted Kennedy. How's your health, by the way? Front and center. My health is great, thank you. Yes, I know you. Yes. Peter and I had dinner the other night, and I was- We had both just come from doctors. I think crowing would be the word yes yes yes i was crowing about my uh my the robustness of my the absolutely crystal clear unencumbered unobstructed

uh causeway that are my veins and arteries without any plaque at all and apparently peter's just riddled with plaque peter could could go at minute. He's like a powder keg. He's got to be careful. There is no reward for virtue. There really is no reward. That's right. Exactly. Well, anyway.

Since you guys raised it, go ahead, James. I was just going to say my heart is probably like a hamster trying to blow bubbles through a straw filled with milkshake and spackle, but we'll get to that. As long as there's no radiating pains today. All I want is just get my daughter off to Brazil. After that, I'm fine. I'm done. Peter, you were going to say. No, I was going to because you both mentioned it. So I just want to dredge this up in memory. The Teddy Kennedy incident. Here's what happened. It was 83 or 84, as I recall. Teddy Kennedy was not in Moscow, but one of his best friends, former United States senator from California, John Tunney, was. And years later, in the Soviet archives, surfaced a memorandum from someone who had met Tunney in Moscow.

And the memorandum went all the way up the chain to, as I recall, Andropov. And Tunney had said to this KGB man he met in or the Russian, I don't know for sure it was KGB. Tunney said, look, if you make nice with us, Teddy Kennedy, he's going to be running for president. Things are going to be a lot easier for you. And the administration is going to be much easier. Help us take down Ronald Reagan. That was collusion. And there is John Tunney has never denied it. The Kennedy family has never denied it. And it is just that is genuine collusion. It's on the record. And that's what the two of you are referring to, as I recall. And it's worth just mentioning every so often that actually happened. It's on the record. there's a document that says it happened by contrast

they've been searching for a year and a half we all know donald trump was too disorganized to collude with anybody oh anyway all right fine rob is going to tell you in a second why he misses ted kennedy but i'm going to tell you first about some sheets because here we've been blabbing on for 25 minutes and i haven't done a single commercial promo. And you're all thinking, when is he going to transition? When are we going to have some labored segue? Well, don't worry. It's over. It's done.

Here we go. You know what? Three words. Three most important words for getting a good night's sleep. One, comfortable. Two, comfortable. And three, comfortable. If you want the best sleep of your life, you've got to be comfortable.

That's what all the sleeping pills are trying to do for you, right? But you don't need those. You just need bowl and branch sheets. Now, what makes bowl and branch sheets unique is that each sheet is crafted from a 100% organic cotton. And that means bowl and branch sheets not only feel incredible, but they also look amazing. And they sell exclusively online, so you don't pay that expensive retail markup. That's half the price for twice the quality. You're going to love these sheets, really. Try them for 30 nights and see for yourself. If you're not impressed,

just return them for a full refund. Now, Boland Branch has thousands of five-star reviews. There's the New York Times, there's Forbes, there's Wall Street Journal. They all rave about them. Three U.S. presidents have Boland Branch sheets. How about that? And somebody else I know named Rob Long, I believe, television producer extraordinaire. Rob, you like your sheets, right? That's probably one of the reasons your blood runs so pure. Rob's not with us. He fell asleep because the bowl and bread sheets are simply that tempting.

Listen, Peter, you have them too, don't you? I do have them, and it is absolutely true. They are my wife's favorite sheets because unlike all the other sheets, I'm so cheap, I won't even name the outlet, but it's a big box operation. Every time those sheets come out of the washer or come out of the dryer, they are

a little more threadbare. The bullet branch, there's such a thickness. I don't know. What is it? Thread counter? I'm not an expert on this stuff, but they are actually softer. They get better as you use them. Some strange fabric miracle going on there. Some places they do. Some places will tell you, however, the thread count isn't actually what you're looking for.

You're looking for the quality of the cotton itself. I mean, if the thread count is 800, but each of the individual threads was made out of some sort of sandpaper, micro-barbed wire, no, you wouldn't like it. You're going to love these sheets. Trust BolanBranch.com. $50 off your first set of sheets. Free shipping in the U.S. When you use the promo code, what? Altogether now, Ricochet.

Right. $50 off. Free U.S. shipping. BolanBranch.com. That's B-O-L-L-N-Branch.com. Promo code Ricochet. BolanBranch.com. That's B-O-L-L-N-Branch.com. Promo code Ricochet. BolanBranch.com. Promo code Ricochet.

And our thanks to Bolan Branch, of course, for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. So, Rob, you – oh, we've got our first guest. You're going to have to wait and tell your dream of Ted Kennedy a little later. I will. We welcome her to the podcast, Selina Zito. She's the national political reporter for the Washington Examiner and her new book, The Great Revolt, Inside the Populist Coalition, Reshaping American Politics. It's co-written with Brad Todd and it comes out next month. Right now, she's at an airport where we presume CNN International is reprogramming her

to think correctly. Selina, welcome to the podcast. I right you start with the laugh i am in minneapolis minnesota right now which is the middle of somewhere i mean bill crystal was talking about the uh super bowl being in the middle of nowhere that really got under my that really got my irish up as they used to say so you're one you're one of the reporters and writers out there who seems to understand the rest of this country, not from the perspective of a sociologist dropping in to look at the interesting people in the petting zoos, but you get it. So tell us what the coastal elites, shall we say, what don't they understand about this middle of somewhere that America mostly inhabits? Well, I think part of what they don't understand is that they believe that the people, for the most part, are angry and resentful. And there's a sense of bitterness.

And it's the opposite. You know, I teach this class at Harvard. It's called the Main Street Project, and I take my students outside of the larger cities, and we embed in different parts of the country. And after our first visit to Chicopee, Massachusetts, in the home of Tom Nichols, who is a staunch Never Trumper. And the first thing that they said on our way home after, you know, meeting and talking with people,

a variety of different kinds of people and different jobs, different businesses, different vocations, the first thing that they said that struck them was how aspirational people are. Despite all kinds of different sort of setbacks that they've had in their lives, whether it was financial or professional or the impact that the opioid crisis has had or the flight of people out of their town, they have this sense of being part of something bigger than themselves in their attachment to their community. Hey, Selina, it's Rob Long. The book sounds great. So my question about the aspiration, why do people then interpret all the time as anger?

Why is there this obsession with rage? Because this is what they think. They take their impressions from a number of different sort of false prophets. That is, first of all, Twitter. Oh my God, the worst place in the world. I mean, if you wanted to invent something that became a sewer, this was it. The second thing is in their viewpoints of attending maybe a Trump rally or seeing people

attending the Trump rally, I have found that my profession tends to focus on the most outrageous or the most ridiculous person there. That person usually tends to be an angry person or someone that is not normal. They're everywhere, but they're the ones that make news and they're the ones that you point to and say, see, that's a non-sportier. And that's why I, you know, when I would go to Trump rallies, and I still do, what I found were, you know, these things are like big tailgate parties and people are happy and they're folding chairs, and they tailgate before they go in.

I mean, this is like a big deal. And so they misread people's sentiments, and that's the danger. Look, one of the most important takeaways of this book, and God, I hope everyone on every side reads it, and people on their side always read it. This coalition is a wrecking ball, and Trump was not the cause of it. He was the result of it, and this wrecking ball was that done wrecking. Okay, Selena, Peter Robinson here. Thanks for joining us. Listen, so we have this wrecking ball, as you called it, reshaping American politics. And yet the conventional wisdom, I have to say, as far as I can tell, it's correct for once, is the Republicans are going to get buried in November, that the midterms are going to be very, very bad news. The Republicans are overwhelmingly likely to lose the House. And is that because why?

The wrecking ball has lost interest? It is itself breaking up? How come? Well, you know, I believe that the Republicans will likely lose in the term. But I'm not convinced of it. There's a couple of reasons why. I want to see who comes out of the primary. You know, who wins these primary elections for the Democrats? of it, there's a couple reasons why. I want to see who comes out of the primaries.

Who wins these primary elections for the Democrats? Are they the people that are more like Conor Lamb, who won in Lexington, or moderate, less attached to the Democratic progressive brand, or are they part of the resistance? If they are, there's going to be an

opportunity to remind independent voters and Democrat voters that went with Trump and as well as Republicans that the things that were important to them will now not be on the table any longer. And so I'm still cautious. I mean, there's obviously evidence of a wave. You saw that in Virginia where the Trump coalition, even though they did not win the state, the Trump coalition of suburban voters standing with the more populous conservatives did not hold true. So, you know, I'm not convinced yet that the House is going to go. I mean, likely, yes.

But I guess you would put it out of a primary because if it's progressive, Nancy Pelosi type stuff, then it's not going to tie it with independent Republican voters in swing districts. It's just not. Selena, one last question consolidation in larger rural cities. People want and hope for a sort of America that existed in the 20s, the 30s, the 40s, the 50s. They want some of this small-town America to come back, but it's not going to. It just can't. And what is going to become of that frustration and that longing among those people who want to empower the wrecking balls when actually it seems as if there is really nothing

that can be done out here to rebuild? I would argue a little differently in that all of these people in small towns, all they want is a little dignity and respect for their work ethic. And what they need is investment from high tech and some, you know, businesses like Amazon. They need them to invest back in their area, not in every small town, but regionally, you know, that they can make a difference. Because, you know, coal or, you know, let's just say coal. Like coal didn't power this country for 100 years, but the people there did.

And, you know, this generational work ethic and pride in community and belief that, you know, you can still live in a small town and have a, I would say, comfortable, but, you know, a moderate life that you can be proud of. It can still be available, but if we don't get, like, high-tech Silicon Valley coming to these small towns and seeing the ability for investment there, not just for their product, but understanding that the wages are lower, the cost of living is lower, and that this country doesn't allow you to be invested

in these sort of highly densely populated areas like Silicon Valley and New York and Washington, D.C. But until we get these people to come together, this isn't going to happen. And when it doesn't happen, or if it does, you'll still see more of the great revolt inside the populist coalition reshaping American politics. That's Selina Zito's new book,

co-written with Brad Todd. Follow her on Twitter. Good luck on your flight, and thanks for joining us today on the podcast. Thank you so much for giving us all the technical challenges. Oh, not at all. I heard a – bye-bye. And I was going to say to her, I heard an interview with people on the International Space Station yesterday that was better than that.

You know, of course, sound quality-wise. And that's – you know, we need to beef up our technical infrastructure, perhaps, and maybe there are jobs there. I just, I don't see the little small rural communities where downtown has completely evaporated being replaced by high tech as such. But, you know, that's another argument that we can have. And if you want to have it, maybe you should acquaint yourself with the history of small towns or the history of high tech or the history, for that matter, of the Industrial Revolution or just all the changes that have swept through America.

This is where Rob would say, but there's really no way you can do that, is there, James? And then I would say, pretending that I didn't know what he was doing, why, yes, Rob, that there is. Because we live in a world that is rich with fascinating knowledge. I muted myself. So I wouldn't. Stifle, Edith. Stifle.

Stifle myself. So I wouldn't. Stifle, Edith. Stifle. Stifle myself. Okay. I was telling people that as they well know because they listen to this podcast and they love Ricochet that there's so much in the world to learn and discover. But finding the time to do that can be a challenge, right, because we're all busy. Well, that's why we love having the Great Courses Plus app. Unlimited access to award-winning professors and experts right from your phones or your pad or your computer. Listen and learn about anything as you go about your day. You can explore

your history while you're commuting. You can discover scientific breakthroughs while you're making dinner. You can brush up philosophy while you're waiting in line. Look, it's the Great Courses Plus app, and it gives you access to thousands of 30-minute lectures in almost any category. You pause, rewind, fast-forward. If you're on your phone any category. You pause, rewind, fast forward.

If you're on your phone, you're making dinner, heck, push it at your Alexa and have a talk while the family listens. Select your playback speed just like a podcast. Well, of course, we can recommend any number of the thousands, but effective communication skills is one you might want to listen to. Check it out. There's a lecture called Differences, Disagreement, and Control Talk. What's that? Well, it'll help you better understand what happens when Control Talk, that's the mode that we use to influence or persuade. When control talk powers the conversation, you'll learn the difference between the light control that may be useful in situations and the heavy control, which is driven by intense negative emotions, which rarely contributes to the positive outcome.

Does that sound like a lot of bad arguments you had that were fruitless? Well, don't make them fruitless. Make them fruitful. Learn the skills. Learn all about control talk. Well, that's just one of a thousand. Learn something new today with The Great Courses Plus. We have arranged for our listeners, that would be you, to receive a free trial of unlimited access to enjoy all of their lectures. And you can start your free trial today. Nothing to lose. Sign up, thegreatcoursesplus.com slash ricochet. That's thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet. And remember, download that free Great Courses Plus app, thegreatcoursesplus.com slash ricochet. And we thank you to The Great Courses for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. We now welcome to the podcast Deborah Saunders,

White House correspondent for the Las Vegas Review-Journal and a nationally syndicated columnist. You can follow her on Twitter, at Deborah J. Saunders. Welcome. So, what's it like to cover this president, this day and age? It's exhausting. I'm in bed last night, and I read about his order on the post office, taking a look at basically his little slap at Amazon, and it just goes on and on and on. It's nonstop.

There are more stories that come out of this White House in 24 hours than you could even imagine. You can't write about all of it. So, Deb, Peter here. In the old days, in the Reagan White House, there was a senior staff meeting at 7 in the morning. The press secretary attended. There would be a meeting with the president a little later in the morning. This press secretary would attend. The press secretary would go back to his office,

tell the deputies what was going on, and then they would take questions from the press throughout the day. They'd tell them what was happening, go over the schedule. If the press had a good question, they'd go back and ask the official involved and come back and give. In other words, they used the press office. There were norms give – in other words, they used the press office. There were norms. There were routines, and they used the press office as a way of communicating with the country. Okay. How does it work today?

What are the norms? Well, I wouldn't use the word norm, Peter, because there isn't one. But it's true. You can send questions to the White House and they answer some of them. They're incredibly understaffed. Let me just mention that. But they're also really not... Let's face it, there's an hostility to the press. And you see it all the time. You don't have to be in the room to know that if they say that there's going to be a briefing at 2.30, that means maybe 3, maybe 3.15, maybe 3.30.

They frequently put out a time. For example, today's press briefing is supposed to be at 2.30. Not everybody is in the building. So you decide to go over there, you get there, you find out it's later. And they just, I mean, I know that a lot of people have absolutely no sympathy for the press dealing with this, but they just make sure that everything is off the game, so you're never sure what's going to happen next. Peter, the scenario layout, it really works, I think, better for a White House, because when you're up in the morning and you're explaining what your message you're trying to put forward, people can start to work on it right away.

How many times did we find out something at 5 o'clock when a lot of the sources outside the White House you have are gone? It doesn't mean you can't find people, but you could have done a better job if you'd started the story at 11 in the morning than you could at 5 p.m., and I think it would be better for the White House frequently. Deborah, when I was in Washington, D.C. in the early 90s working out of the Newhouse News Service, there was a tradition of early drinking that began at lunch and then early knocking off after you've done your work because the whole pace of things was so much more glacial compared to today. And now what you have is a situation that demands a highly caffeinated, youthful staff who's capable of running at the same pace as the 70-year-old man who's running the ship. But at the same time, you have people who perhaps don't have the grounding in history as did our old Washington, D.C. hands. When you look around the people who are handling the White House now, do you see people who are still with an old world mentality when it comes to this, or have they adapted quickly to the, there has to be something new every 17 minutes on Twitter?

Well, I don't think that they necessarily think there has to be something new every 17 minutes on Twitter. That's just the way Donald Trump is. And you have to adapt or you don't. So he's obviously running the show. He considers himself his best communications director, and he's been through four or five, depending on whether or not you count Sean Spicer twice. And he's really the person behind this whole approach. Hey, Deborah, it's Rob Long. Thank you for joining us. So here's my question.

Chaos, as you pointed out, starts at the top. So even if you had a 730 briefing, I mean, by 815, it wouldn't be it would be no longer operative, as they say in the intelligence circles. Is it working? Do you think it's working as a matter of getting your message out? Do you think it's working as a matter of getting your message out? Do you think it's working as a matter of policy? I mean, it does seem to be – Trump supporters seem to point to it as one of his strengths. Is it somehow a strength?

Well, let's talk about how much – especially the Trump base, but just a lot of Americans, they hate the media, right? They hate the White House press corps. And if the goal is to have people hate the press corps, it's working great. You have the president come out yesterday, and he's in the Rose Garden. He's talking about how much the tax cuts have helped people. And people start yelling out questions about Mueller. And was there a Stormy Daniels question yesterday? I forget. There usually is, right? Because the president didn't take questions that day. And that sort of behavior really makes people hate people in the press corps.

Even if there are plenty of people in the press corps who would rather ask a substantive question, that's not what you're seeing, right? Those aren't the people. You're not going to shout out a question on TPPP as the president walks out of the Rose Garden, right? But in terms of getting out the policy messages, I don't think it really works that well. There are a number of amazing initiatives that have come out of this White House that have barely gotten a lot of ink because we're busy covering the Trump show. Right, right. So my other question is sort of maybe a little out of school, talking out of school.

How many times has this happened to you where you have heard something or you have, there's been a policy announcement or policy shift and you call someone in that White House and that administration to clarify or to corroborate, and you are the person delivering to that person the news that there's a new policy. That hasn't happened to me. I'm sorry. I wish I could tell you it has. It hasn't.

That's right. But part of the reason is you take certain things with a grain of salt when they come out of, for example, the Twitter feed, right? You'll see – so you don't – I mean, we've been watching this for a long time, and you understand that there are times the president will say something that just doesn't work with everything else he's done, and it doesn't mean a change in policy. He just felt like saying it that day. It makes it a very difficult administration to cover because you want to convey what's likely to happen and what is happening. But if you try to fact-check everything that you hear,

then there's no room for anything else. Right. And yet, Deb, I happen to know, and I've known you long enough to call you deb i happen to know that you love it explain yourself explain yourself well it's pretty amazing to go to the white house every day and to be in the middle of it and um it is an amazing story and i think the thing i love about it the most is i don't know what's going to happen next. I mean, you know what it's like watching politics. How many times did you feel that you knew exactly what would happen when somebody gets into the race?

He's going to lose. She's going to lose. Lose the primary. Lose the general. You know by how much. You know everything that's going to happen. And I don't know what's going to happen. I don't. I can see two or three different scenarios. And just for that, I like. I still – go ahead, Bob. Go, go, go.

I just have one – I mean this is a possible question to answer maybe. I don't really know. How left-wing are your colleagues? Or maybe I should say how pro-Democrat are your colleagues? Or maybe I should say, how pro-Democrat are your colleagues? Most of them are pretty pro-Democrat. I mean, there are a number of conservative journalists in the room. Of course, they're the minority. We know what that is, right? But they're pretty liberal. I mean, I've had people talk to me and say things to me, but their positions on a certain issue, often immigration, and they just assume

that everybody thinks exactly the way they do. And yeah, they are. There's no question about it. And I think it shows at the briefings. Pardon me? Yeah. Is Donald Trump going to have any effect on that? Is he causing any reflection on the part of the media? Is there a possibility that out of all this chaos, this incredible chaos, I'm just clinging, I'm just desperate,

something good can happen? You know, I said I don't know what's going to happen. I can tell you. In this one, no. He's not going to change a lot of people's minds. Things are so entrenched. It's just... And by the way, notice that when you watch the

briefings that Sarah Sanders always calls on people who you know are going to ask questions that are really pushing all the buttons. Right. Well, Debra, you worked before in the San Francisco paper, right? Okay, so San Francisco, Washington, Right. Right. what exactly you think there are lessons to be learned. I mean, Washington, D.C., with your good liberal compatriots, regards sort of the imperial city as what you get when you spend a lot of money on government.

And in San Francisco, they seem to regard it as the same thing, and that all of the urban perils that you face are just the price of living in a progressive society. Compare the two, and whether or what America has to learn from them. Okay, well, I should explain that I was a conservative columnist for the very liberal San Francisco Chronicle. Did it for 24 years. She was for 24 years the only reason for me to read the San Francisco Chronicle. Yeah, it was that and the jumble, as I recall. And the truth is that San Francisco has become more dysfunctional every year.

The stories that I read now that I'm gone are things that I had written about before. They don't just exchange needles for drug users. They give you your own starter kit. I have my starter kit from San Francisco in my office here.

People urinating on the streets, this was a big campaign for me. I mean, it's become increasingly dysfunctional and it's a city that just doesn't know how to deal with it. I have to say, Washington DC is so much cleaner than San Francisco. It's not even funny. It smells better. People are more polite. The public transit works better. Compared to San Francisco, Washington is government working well. a dysfunctional hellhole, and now to be able to go there and walk home at night downtown at 2 o'clock in the morning is astonishing. But again, it's like, don't the people who live there and live in Virginia get the wrong idea, perhaps, about what the rest of the country might be like? Is the problem with the rest of the country is that you rubes can't figure out to do it as nicely as we can here in D.C.? I don't know. Let me say another difference between San Francisco and Washington.

In San Francisco, it's such a bubble that people don't know conservatives. And if they have a conservative idea, they don't dare speak it. Now, we know that Washington, Virginia, Maryland, these are homes of a lot of federal workers, a lot of people who work for the government, and hence they have an interest in the government, in the deep state, if you will, right? But there also are people who come from all over the country to represent their constituents, and they come from different places. And there are lots of different Republicans and Democrats. And so even though this is a very liberal area with people with liberal sensibilities, they're used to being around people with different points of view. And I think that that has made it a lot more livable for people on the right who live here. Deb, Peter here.

I just would like to ask you to note that your starter kit, your needle starter kit in San Francisco that you have in the White House press room is for display purposes only. You know, it's just a scrunchie bag. Nobody's opened it up to take a look at. All right. Thank you. Just remember, if you're a conservative in D.C. about twice a year, you should say something really outrageous and hardcore and almost Ayn Randian, because otherwise you fall into the trap of being the good conservative.

Well, you're not crazy like the rest of those people. I like to say something crazy once a year just so they say, oh, dear. That's great advice. I don't think I'll have a problem following it. Good, good. All right. Deborah Saunders, White House correspondent, Las Vegas Review-Journal, nationally syndicated columnist, follower on Twitter, Deborah J. Saunders. Thanks for joining us on the podcast today, and we hope to talk to you down the road as well.

Thank you. This was so much fun. Bye-bye, guys. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. It is tough not to be the sort of pet conservative, though. That's the thing is that everybody knows, well, this person's okay. They're not like those maniacs out there who believe those things.

That's why, I mean, D.C. just absolutely corrupts and absorbs until – because it's such a comfortable life in the imperial capital. And so I wish her well. It's fun to fit in. My dog is barking. My dog is yowling. My dog has to go out and do perhaps what you find on the streets of San Francisco all the time, unfortunately. The more stories I read. I'm serious.

I left my shoe in San Francisco because I stepped in some hepatitis-infected waste by some person. He's being encouraged to stay there because it somehow is cruel to tell these people that they cannot live and excrete on the streets themselves. It's absolutely – And it's always misinterpreted as a housing issue. Whenever you talk – whenever people talk about it, they almost always segue effortlessly into housing and housing codes and housing regulations. That is certainly part of the rent problem in San Francisco, but it's really not a part of the homeless problem.

That's a common segue that liberals make because they really want to talk about housing issues and they don't want to talk about civil liberties, which is one of the real reasons why we still have this incredible homeless problem. Right. The people who are living on the street and shooting up needles are not people who were probably pushed out because the tech sector came along and increased prices. I mean, $800,000, $900,000 for a burned out shack. It is insane and unsustainable. And I find it just fascinating and hilarious that these people who preach this egalitarianism at us are living in and contributing to the concentration of wealth and power the likes of which we've never seen but that's okay because they're disrupting the uh the uh i don't know the shingle delivery industry or something like that but listen do not take my amusement at silicon

valley for not saying that there's not value added to the industry in the country for the things they develop, because there is. And for example, Rob, how many times have you found yourself going to brush your teeth and you grab it and there's just the bristles are splayed and they're useless? Constantly, but there's literally zero solution to that, James. There's no solution to that. That is a problem that will be with us forever, and there will be never, ever, ever, ever, ever a solution to it. How wrong you are, Bacon Chris.

No, there is a solution, and that solution, which I use and I'm happy to tell you about, is called Quip. It's the new electric toothbrush that packs just the right amount of vibrations into a slimmer design and a fraction of the cost those bulky traditional electric brushes you see at the stores now it's got these guiding pulses that alert you when to switch sides you'll be going along and then it'll go and it says go to the other side upper right quadrant move so it makes brushing the right amount of you know stuff just to be absolutely effortless equip also comes with a mount that suctions right to your mirror and unsticks easily to use as a cover for hygienic travel anywhere, whether it's going in your gym bag or you carry on on a trip.

And because the thing that cleans your mouth should also be clean, this is the cool part. Quip's subscription plan refreshes your brush on a dentist-recommended schedule, delivering you new brush heads every three months for just $5, including free shipping worldwide. That's cheaper than you go to the store and get one of the disposable zipper things. Quip, it's backed by a network of over 10,000 dental professionals, and that includes dentists, hygienists, dental students. It's a toothbrush that, well, let's just say that most toothbrushes don't get named one of Time Magazine's best inventions of the year, do they? But Quip did, and you can find out for yourself why. So, Quip starts at just $25,

and if you go to getquip.com slash ricochet right now, you'll get your first refill pack free with a Quip electric toothbrush. $25, getquip.com slash ricochet, first refill pack, free. Huh. Good. You can spell this out. G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash ricochet. And believe me, you're going to love the way your mouth feels. It's like going to the dentist, hygienist, and you get all the plaque taken off. That's what it feels like after you've been using

Quip. And our thanks to Quip for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. Well, before we go, we ought to talk about, what, the Comey book? Paul Ryan? What's bubbling around in your brain that will probably be swamped by other news come Monday? Paul Ryan. I was going to say the – oh, okay.

Just sort of a sweet thing about Paul Ryan. I interviewed him for Uncommon Knowledge maybe five years ago, and he mentioned before the camera started to roll. I said somehow or other there had just been a story on him and a group of congressmen who work out at 6.30 every morning. And I said, you know, you have a hard job in the first place. And he pointed out that his father and grandfather both died in their early 50s of massive heart attacks. And so Paul Ryan at the age of, saying, I've had enough, I'm going to spend more time with my wife and family, may be the only politician in history who really meant it when he said

he wanted to spend more time with his wife and family. Paul Ryan is a guy who's done amazing things at the age of 48, but also feels he may not have much time. Interesting. I was just going to say, if you think about Paul Ryan, how he represents the different sides of this prison. I mean, if you were, the Trump side tends to despise him as an establishment. The liberals, for a while, respected him, and now they despise him as an arch-conservative who's trying to, you know know throw kids out on the street um and the establishment frankly likes him because he's you know at one point he

represented this kind of young exciting wing of the republican party and it's a sad commentary on the both the party and i think paul ryan in a way it is in a stewardship of speaker that he that all all those constituencies i think are a little bit wrong about him. But they're all – that's who's going to write the history. He didn't do what he wanted to do. He didn't accomplish it, and his own party kind of turned against him. Well, he didn't get entitlement reform. He did get a big tax reform, and that's part of it.

Remember, he came up under Jack Kemp, and that's part of the Kemp. That's true. I mean, he got one big thing done that he will be pleased with for the rest of his life. But it is amazing. This is like a guy for whom politics was a career in the military. Twenty years, and I'm out. I've done enough. It's just fascinating.

The Comey book. The Comey book. I want to hear what you guys think. I haven't heard anything yet um there's a brilliant parody of it being tweeted around by ricochet's own john gabriel because everybody's everybody's seizing on the tears in my eyes line that has been leaked out that so we want to know that there was uh tremendous that there's great emotion that this is going to be the gone with the wind of the 2018 cycle, something like that. I don't know.

I expect it will show up at your Barnes & Noble, if there is one. There will be great stacks of it, and most of them will be pulped in the end, that it will be another DC book that blows through and comes through. But here's the thing. They fell for Michael Wolff, but Comey, they're going to vet every single word, comma, period in that thing. They're not going to make that mistake again. Well, I mean I actually feel like the problem with the Comey book is that he's such a jerk clearly that your natural inclination is to try to find the good guy, the bad guy. And Comey, he seems like such a jerk that – such sort of a pompous character that he is telling a story which may in fact be true, factually true, every jot and tittle of it, and you still don't like the guy. It's the funny thing about Donald Trump is the enemies he seems to attract are all the Hillary Clinton variety.

They're like, ugh, so horrible. It's hard to – there's no crusader, clean crusader who seems to be able to lay a glove on this guy. Except somebody as venal or maybe as transactional as he is, and that may be Stormy Daniels or some Stormy Daniels-like character. I mean that may be his undoing, may just be run-of-the-mill FEC violations. Rob, as usual, has just given us the formulation we all needed. James Comey is such a sleazy figure, so self-involved, such a pompous ass, it already seems clear that he is the Stormy Daniels of law enforcement. Well,

it's too bad that he hasn't been sort of different persons to different people, because then Blue Yeti could go out with Comey Chameleon by the Culture Club. Good Lord, I'm losing. This is terrifying.

An 80s band, I should have known at the tip of my tongue. You know what? I'm going to have to go back to the Ricochet's What Makes a Good Song post and admit that I temporarily forgot about that early brave example of transgenderism in 80s pop music, Culture Club. And by the way, when I say that great song thread, that's what makes Ricochet different. It's just not about politics. It's about culture, music, art, family, history.

It's everything. But you really have to join it to find out all that stuff. Rob, how much does it cost? $2.50 a month. It's almost free. Yeah. And for that, you get the chance to join and you get access to all kinds of wonderful stuff, including, of course, the opportunity to buy a ticket for our meetup. We're going to see you in D.C. on May 10th and May 11th.

I can't wait to go back to the Imperial Capitol and strut around and say, yes, it's good to be here. And like I said, actual DC Insider cocktail party. You will be able to say that you were at one and saw Rob swan about. And Peter, knotting carefully his cashmere sweater. We're all going to be in our misbehavior, living up to our cliches. I'm going to be there short and making connections between things. Hey, Casper.com, thegreatcourses.com. And Quip, please support all these guys, and you'll support us and keep us going.

And also, if you go off to iTunes and leave a couple of reviews, well, one under your name, that helps keep the show going because people read them, figure out, this is cool. What is this? And then they give us money. And the next thing you know, we're talking about the Ricochet's 50th reunion episode where I'm hooked up to all kinds of tubes and everybody else is tottering and gumless. That doesn't sound right. It sounds like now. Let's just say we'll be looking forward to the 10th anniversary. When did

Ricochet start, by the way? What was the year? That's a shadowy date. We'll have to figure that out. We're rapidly approaching an important anniversary. I try not to talk about it too much because it's still touch and go around here. So if you're listening and you want to have an anniversary party, better pony

up if you're not a member. Excellent idea. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll see you in the comments at Ricochet 3.0 and Rob and Peter next week. Next week, fellas. If I listen to your lies, would you say I'm a man without conviction I'm a man who doesn't know how to sell

A contradiction, you come and go Doesn't know how to sell a contradiction. You come and go. You come and go. Come, come, come, come, come, come, chameleon. You come and go. You come and go. Love will be easy Because you're like my dream

Red, gold and green Red, gold and green Didn't hear your wicked words every day And you used to be so sweet I heard you say That my love was an addiction When we paint, our love is strong When you go, you come forever

You string along, you string along Come a, come a, come a, come a, come a chameleon String along, you string along. Come a, come a, come a, come a, come a chameleon. You come and go, you come and go. Loving would be easy if your colors were like my dreams. Ricochet. Join the conversation.