The Ricochet Podcast - The Class of '87

Episode Date: September 20, 2019

It’s a bit unusual to find oneself adjacent to the biggest news story of the week, but that’s exactly what happened to our own Rob Long. He, like Brett Kavanaugh, Deborah Ramirez, Max Stier, and Robin Pogrebin are all member of the Yale University Class of 1987. We explore this story in this show in great detail with Byron York (he of The Washington Examiner and our own Byron York Show podcast). Source

I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University. As government expands, liberty contracts. It's funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food. That's a good thing. First of all, I think he missed his time. Please clap. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long. Peter Robinson is off this week.

I'm James Lylex, and we have as our guest Byron York to talk about all things D.C. So let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast number 465. That means if you started listening from the start, you could have a podcast every day for a year and you'd have a hundred left over. What would you do with all that time? Well, you'd probably think, gosh, I wonder what Hollywood entertainment Rob Long is cooking up at this very moment to occupy my empty days. Rob, it's a good question. Hi there. And what sort of mass market pablum are you coming up with these days? Oh, so much. I couldn't even begin to, I wouldn't want to bore you yet. My plan is to bore you later at a higher rate. Oh, good. Higher ad rate. So yeah,

it's when it's on a network where you're paying a subscription and you're like, why am I subscribing to this? That's the future of Hollywood right there. Well, since Peter Robinson is off this week, that means we can talk about all the things that make him uncomfortable. So let's talk about sex and science fiction. Kidding. But it is sort of kind of relevant because I've got a pony up for one of these premium streaming services again if I want to see some Star Trek. I don't like to do a Star Trek show. I can't stand it. It pains me to the core that there's Star Trek on and I don't like it. But they're going to come up with something with Picard for the previous generation

and I'm going to have to pay money for it. Apple's coming up with a service to pay money. As we keep saying in the great old days of cable, we'd say, I'm tired of paying for all these channels I don't watch. I wish I could get them one at a time a la carte. Well, here you go. And it's a nightmare because all of a sudden you have all these other recording charges. Now, don't worry, everybody. We're going to get to all the news of the day.

And we've got Byron York coming along to set the scene from Washington. But just talking about the culture at large, this is one of those things that further fragments a national discussion, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely it does. But this is also what people want. I just think people have to get used to the idea that entertainment is becoming a lot more like your favorite restaurant. Some people go to Chinese food. Some people go to Thai food.

Some people want pizza. Everybody goes to their own thing, and you never actually go into somebody else's favorite restaurant. I mean, have you ever gone into like, you know, there's always more than one supermarket around you and you end up going to the same one. You go, oh, this is the one I go to. And then maybe one day you have to go to the other one. You're like, this is weird. This is a strange supermarket, but in fact, it's just all the same. It's just different for you. And that is something that I think we've lost a while ago, and we're now realizing it's gone.

And it is sort of like careful what you wish for. I mean, everybody spent a lot of time being offended by what was on mass media, mostly the left these days. But in the previous days, it was the blue stockings to the right. And now you don't ever have to encounter, ever have to encounter anything that isn't already in line with your, you know, whatever lens you wear. You can, Netflix will happily create and does an algorithm for you so that you never bump up against something that might be awful. You may never see a piece of news that might be awful. I mean, part of, like, I mean, you know, Fox News, part of the whole Fox News business is to search for strange things that you didn't know were happening, usually some crackpot, you know, community college professor somewhere

in some totally out-of-the-way place or some strange public library system somewhere and find something and then use it. Did you know this was going on? The answer, of course, is no, you didn't know this was going on because you're too busy watching and enjoying what you want to watch and enjoy. I'm not sure it's bad, but it's definitely different. Well, it says something, I think, about you East Coast types. They're trapped in your little affluent media bubble. And you are in New York, right? Oh, well, I'm in Baltimore now. In Baltimore, okay. I accept your

condemnation. Is this, I go to four grocery stores and each one has their own particular demographic status. There's Trader Joe's, which is for your artisanal hipsters. There's Target, which is mass market, middle, upper middle aspirational. I go to Lund's and Byerly's, which is the high premium place. You can tell. Yeah, we're going to charge you more for things, and you know we're going to charge you more for things, but the quality and the experience is going to be great. And then I go to Cub, which is the sort of volume place that gets the people who want the bargains and also has a lower

demographic, economic demographic. And I learn things from each one of these places it's fascinating you can see what they market to whom and where and how so i get to do that likewise when i'm on the internet if you go to very play if you want to find out how the rest of the world is operating you just go to reddit sign out of your own account and see what's on the main page which whoa is quite different from the curated experience that I have on my own, right? And so even though Fox News will get these things and ferret out these little tales of this, that, the other, that's true if you listen to Fox. But if you're just sitting in front of Netflix, my algorithm doesn't actually tell me very much about myself. I don't know,

and it doesn't surprise me. And it seems more and more to be giving me lots of shows that Netflix wants me to watch because they believe it's socially important for me to do so so i think that somebody who wants to stay within a liberal leftist bubble is more easily can more easily wall out to the other side uh than those of us who are here on the center right right side of it and that story about that college professor who may be saying something strange in a library, well, it's not irrelevant. Because even though the people on the left may not be consuming a lot of rightist content, the very fact that rightist content exists is problematic and objectionable. And they're going to go through that guy's Twitter feed and see if there's something that can't get him canceled because that's wrong thinking Nazi adjacent for all we know. No, no, I accept that point, too. I mean,

two things about that. One is I feel like Netflix is desperate at this point, so they're going to be serving you pretty much anything they've got because they are in a fight for their life, and they probably won't win. Most people don't realize that, though, do they? I don't know. It's hard.

The problem with Netflix is they have nothing else to offer you. I mean, Netflix is the most honest entertainment business realize that though do they i don't know it's hard it's hard look netflix problem because they have nothing else to offer you i mean netflix is the most honest entertainment business in the world ever because what they're saying is we want you to pay for our product movies are like well you know you're gonna pay a little bit for the product but you're also gonna you know we we it's shown to you if you go to the theater by a company that's making a whole lot of money on the $6 Diet Coke that you buy. Broadcast television is, well, you know, we're making a little bit of money, but also it's going to be advertising. And then the studio makes it, well, we're making a little bit of money, but there'll be reruns too and a downstream value of this thing. And, I mean, everybody's got another angle except for poor Netflix, who just marched into this business.

It's a very Silicon Valley way to do it, thinking, well, here's what's rational. And they've applied what's rational to a business that really only works if you've got one or two or three other people paying the price. And I think they are slowly learning that in a very, very, very, very tough way. Look, AT&T bought Warner Brothers. AT&T can say to you, you get free HBO Plus as long as you buy your iPhone from us. Right? It's worth it. They got iPhones.

They still got stores all over the country. The other thing I'd say about the supermarkets is an interesting separate topic. I know we've got to move on. I did a little research on this years ago for something. I discovered that rich people in rich neighborhoods all over the country, but rich neighborhoods, they go to more than one supermarket because rich people exercise choice. They go to, for some stuff, they go to the fancy store. For some stuff, they go, they're not going to buy paper towels at the fancy store.

That's idiotic. But maybe you'll buy your meat or your fish there. So they go from store to store. Poor people in poor neighborhoods don't have that they don't have that choice there's usually just one supermarket there uh one discount supermarket and no no cutthroat competition the response from the sort of liberal establishment and the you know welfare state has been to condemn that and to condemn the fact that the discount stores are there at all, they call it a food desert or something, and try to figure out

a way to have farmer's markets or some silly thing. Whereas the principle of it is choice is what creates value. As long as the consumer has a choice, they have value. That works in supermarkets as well as education. It's an amazing thing. They identify the problem properly and they just simply don't identify the cause, which is lack of choice. Oftentimes what they will do is mandate that convenience stores, small vendors carry more fresh stuff, more kale, more lettuce. What happens is that places that are not equipped to handle produce put it in

and it spoils and they have to throw it out and they complain and then the city will say, all right, we're not going to make you do that anymore. That's what happened here in the Twin Cities. But when I lived in D.C., I lived in a very mixed neighborhood and it had one safeway and it stunk. It stunk of rotten meat and mouse droppings and spoiled milk. But we had to hit it every day because it was the local one. You get your stuff, you go home, you cook. So once a weekend, or maybe once a month or so, you get in the car and drive to the far distant suburb to be able to get your groceries. And then you take them in bags in bulk and take them home. Oh, what a luxury.

And the suburb grocery store was as bad as the one in D.C. Because there simply, at that time, there was no money to be made in providing a better experience. Now I assume it's absolutely different. But then, oh man, that Safeway's still there. And last time I was in D.C., I stepped in, and it smelled a little better. And I wondered, what do they do? Do they just take everything off the shelves and get a big tank of bleach and then get a hose and then put the hose in the ceiling and fill the entire store with bleach. And then that might get rid of the smell.

But that's pretty toxic. You don't want to do that. You know what? Healthy, plant-based, non-toxic cleaning ingredients. Sure. They work. They work. They work.

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Real product brand names you know, like Mrs. Myers, are included in grove.co. Limited time also. You can only choose from the best-selling fall scents like apple cider, acorn spice, mum, pumpkin spice. It's exclusively sold at Grove, by the way, that particular aroma. Can't you smell fall in the air? Well, if you can't, why don't you try out these fall scents? Go to grove.co slash ricochet to get this exclusive offer. That's grove.co slash ricochet. And our thanks to Grove for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. Now we welcome back to the podcast Byronron York, chief political correspondent for the Washington

Examiner, Fox News contributor, and the author of The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy. You can listen to his wildly popular podcast, The Byron York Show, which is available at the world-famous Ricochet Audio Network right here. Byron, thanks for joining us here in D.C., and I imagine that, I don't know if the Kavanaugh thing still has some sizzle or if we've moved on to Ukrainian collusion, but let's talk about Kavanaugh, because that was fasting. That's like a cold scene that all of a sudden flared up again. Is this the way it's going to be? Funny that you mentioned it. I just tweeted, and I'm going to read the tweet to you. A peer's attempt to revive Kavanaugh war mostly fizzled. Twitter frenzy a week ago, but New York Times did book authors no favors.

Serious problem. If you wanted anti-Kavanaugh red meat, book did not deliver. Biggest news actually supported other side. Energy quickly faded. That is my 265 characters summation of the last week. That's pretty good. That is. Thank you. Yeah, which was syndicated here in the Minneapolis paper. And she was talking about how, you know, really the problem was, was the FBI didn't investigate and we didn't get the true facts about Kavanaugh. And she described Max Spears as a respected leader of a nonpartisan think tank.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, we know what we found out about Max Steyer after this book excerpt came out in the New York Times a week ago is that, you know, Steyer's a lawyer and he was actually on the opposite side, Brett Kavanaugh, in the Clinton wars. Steyer was a Clinton White House lawyer defending Clinton against independent counsel Ken Starr. And of course, Kavanaugh was a top deputy of Ken Starr. And so they've been kind of, you know, on the opposite sides for a long, long time. So the idea that suggests that Max Steyer is some sort of nonpartisan player here doesn't really hold water. And by the way, a number of people have pointed out that, you know, 1998, it was a total war between the two sides. Right. And it's amazing that Max Steyer knew that a top Ken Steyer lawyer had sexually assaulted a woman in college.

And that never got out. Yeah. Well, I think a lot of people's memories were refreshed about, well, probably about 11 months ago, it seems like. It's been a year later. Hey, by the way, it's Rob Long in Baltimore. Thanks for joining us. So I've got a question and a confession. Here's my confession.

You talked about it a long time ago. Actually, in 1983, there were a bunch of freshmen at Yale. One of them was Max Dyer. One of them was Brett Kavanaugh. One of them was Deborah Ramirez, the one who had a recovered memory about the alleged assault. Another one was Robin Pogrebin, the co-author of the New York Times book. Correct. And another one was Rob Long, who's on the podcast right now. And I want to know, I want to know two things from you, Byron. I first, I want to know, um, is this just a case of the Ivy league eating its own? And the second is, do I have a book deal somewhere I should be looking for? Well, first of all, we should be interviewing you. So yes, I agree. Were you,

did you, did you know Kavanaugh in college? I didn't really know him. I think I interacted with him a little bit on freshman year when we all did. I mean, I can only say that my recollections of that time are as vivid as apparently everybody else's, which is to say not very vivid at all. Did you have any memory of any incident involving Deborah Ramirez? Well, not yet, but give me a couple days. I could think of one.

You could go away with a lawyer for a few days and see if you could recover a memory. So, Byron, what do you attribute that you said it fizzled? What are your data points to support the fizzling? Well, I mean, you can just tell the book has not really taken off in a way a hot book takes off. What happened was on a Saturday, the book is scheduled for publication on a Tuesday on the Saturday before the New York Times does this op-ed. And it's in the opinion section. We know all this. And the Max Steyer revelation is down in the middle of the Peace. And it doesn't include the rather critical information that the alleged victim in the alleged incident has said she has no memory of what took place. So that part is not known

for about 24 hours. So all the Adenai Kavanaugh forces get very excited. Wow, here's more stuff. This is just the tip of the iceberg. The Democratic presidential candidates join in and say, got to impeach, must impeach. But within 24 hours, we find out the part about the alleged victim not remembering. And that just weakens it enormously. And the people who have always been skeptical of this stuff, skeptical of the Christine Blasey Ford allegation, skeptical of the Ramirez, Deborah Ramirez allegation,

they kind of get their boots on. And you see in the New York Times op-ed, it says seven people, seven have memory of the Ramirez allegation. And then when you look through it, then the thing that really killed the book was when people started getting copies of it. And they could see what was in it. That'll always kill a book when people start reading it. Yeah. So the seven people, I did a piece on this.

You look at all seven of them, and there's just nothing there. The biggest one was a guy who was not at this alleged event, but he said he heard about it a couple of days later. His name was Kenneth Appold. He said he heard about it a couple of days later from one person who had been directly there and seen it and another person that that person had told. Appold was an original source for the New Yorker when they brought out the Ramirez allegation

back in the final days of the Kavanaugh fight. And he actually went on the record in a later article with the New Yorker, and he said that he, Appold, had been trying to find this person who told him, this person who witnessed it. I've been really trying to find him. I can't get him. And The New Yorker said, well, we actually found him, and he said he doesn't remember any such thing. So that's the big witness right there.

And then the next big witness is a guy who said he was told by Kenneth Appold, so that kind of, nothing there. And then there was an anonymous guy, we don't know what, and then there were two other guys who said they had heard about something happening to Debbie Ramirez. And then maybe the big one was Ramirez's mother. And the two book authors had talked to Ramirez's mother, and remember Ramirez said she didn't tell anybody about this incident.

Right. And she didn't do it at the time, but while Ramirez was still in college, the mother recalled, meaning, you know, two or three years, within the next two or three years, the mother and the daughter are at a restaurant, and Deborah Ramirez breaks into tears and says, quote, something happened at Yale. Yeah. breaks into tears and says, quote, something happened at Yale. That's her entire statement on this to her mother. That's all she says at the time. That's all she says for the next 35 years until the Kavanaugh nomination. So it's not a very strong story. I was surprised. I thought, well, I thought these book authors would probably have, you know.

I thought they'd have a bombshell, right? Well, they're sympathetic, and you would think they'd have more on Christine Blasey Ford. The only thing they got on Christine Blasey Ford was they got Ford's friend, Leland Kaiser, to come out and say outright, the story just didn't hold up for me. I didn't believe. Hey, it was her truth. It was her truth. Come on.

Her truth. If you wanted bombshells, if you wanted red meat here, book did not deliver. I just want to, I don't want to keep, I mean, it's just crazy to me that 12 months ago we had you on a podcast and talked about this very topic, too, and it's come back like one of those psycho killers in a psycho killer movie in the last scene when you think he's dead. He comes back. Two questions. Well, there's a reason for that. Yeah, there's a reason for that.

That's my second question. My first question is just about the book. We now know that it is a thinly sourced book, but included or almost included one pretty good source, and that was Brett Kavanaugh himself, who offered to speak on background as long as they said that he hadn't spoken. Is that a normal – what do you make of that request or their response to that request? And what do you make of now the fact that we know that that request was made because the reporters revealed it? I have not basically devoted any thinking to this because I just don't know if anything they say is true. In terms of Washington sourcing, you know, it is sometimes done where somebody speaks off the record and you've got information from them and you say that they declined to comment in the story and yet you've got all the information that comes from them. I'd try not to do that. I think it's a pretty cheesy practice. But things like that are done in Washington. But I have no knowledge of whether Kavanaugh did that or not.

I mean, why would he want to talk to these reporters? Once a classmate. Yeah, right. I mean, all I can say is it's going to be very awkward. So was Deborah Ramirez. Yeah, that's true. They were classmates. It's going to be a very, very awkward college reunion, which I should report directly from the field. And my last question on this, and I think— Go ahead, sorry.

I mean, the bigger point of this coming out is to delegitimize Kavanaugh's decision on the court, and to a greater degree any decision by the conservative decision on the court, and to a greater degree, any decision by the conservative majority on the court. And we started, you know, we've seen since the Kavanaugh confirmation, we've seen people say, well, you know, he can't rule on this, he can't rule on that, because he's incredibly accused of sexual assault. And I think Jeffrey Toobin, of all people, came out and said 40% of the court's conservative majority has been credibly accused of sexual assault,

meaning Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas. And so this, by the way, this just as a side, this phrase, credibly accused, is the new phrase in these such things. You don't have to prove anything. You just have to be credibly accused. And by the way, we get to decide what's credible. It's good Soviet dialogue, by the way. Yeah, so this is an effort to delegitimize anything that Kavanaugh does in the future.

Well, what was the sexual assault before? It consisted of saying, who has put pubic hair on my coke and talking about long-drawn silver? You know, I don't know. You'll have to ask Jeffrey about that one. Yeah, exactly. Right, well, it delegitimizes the court because Garland was supposed to be on the court, so we can't have Gorsuch, we can't have Kavanaugh because he was not credibly investigated of the credible accusations. And should RBG go and Trump names another before the election, that will violate the rule that you don't put a name up in an election year. So you will have three judges who are regarded as illegitimate, which gives people the intellectual credibility to say the supreme court need no longer have its rulings followed in states where

you're at an interesting point if if you saw the the new york times published a column by one of its columnist you know booy uh... calling for court packing which have been floating around among some a lot of democrats i think put it people to judge has actually supported it but he has actually supported it but he has to do was that you need to pack the supreme court if if democrats were to get control the whole government

after twenty twenty need to pack the entire supreme court uh... because uh... gorsuch is illegitimate because of america on the fair and cabana is illegitimate because of the uh... Garland affair, and Kavanaugh is illegitimate because of his past as a sexual offender. But you also need to pack the entire federal judiciary, because Donald Trump has appointed so many judges. Just pack the whole thing and erase any trace of the presidency and judicial nominations

of Trump. And this is a New York Times columnist publishing in the New York Times. It used to be thought to be kind of serious. So, I mean, they're really upset about this. I'm coming to the point where everybody who works for the New York Times ought to be considered to be a columnist because they're just putting opinion in what previously used to be a column. Well, let's talk about something else because I I was talking to my wife, who gets her news

when she listens to NPR on the way home, and she reads the newspaper and the rest of it. We were talking about this Ukrainian whistleblower thing that popped up. Before we started talking about it, I asked her, I said, what was everybody spun up about last week? Do you remember? And she got this sort of glazed look in her eye and I said, remember? Trump had blown a spy's cover and he had to be extracted from Russia. That was the big thing of the day. And everybody was, this was it. This was, this is perfidy. This shows you how bad it is. And we've completely forgotten about that because every week something else is floated. Now, that doesn't mean that someday somebody isn't going to float something that actually

has some merit to it. But this particular story here, and again, I want to hear more, phone call with the Ukrainian president to investigate Biden, supposedly a whistleblower, deep within the administration, so concerned out of nonpartisan zeal, he lodges a complaint. What do you hear, and what do you think the impact is going to be? I'm tending to think this is going to fall into the shooting a man on Fifth Avenue. Well, everything you just said comes from leaks. It doesn't come from the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, or at least it doesn't come from his briefings on Capitol Hill on Thursday. He had a long, maybe three, four-hour meeting with the House Intelligence Committee.

This is the inspector general. He wouldn't tell them anything. I mean, all the stuff about it's the president who we're talking about, he wouldn't say that. It's a phone call with somebody in Ukraine or a Ukrainian leader or relating to Ukraine, wouldn't take any of any of that wouldn't say anything wouldn't say how the person knows this today here conversation today read a transcript

were they an intelligence community workers perhaps detailed to the white house there are such things uh... don't know i don't know how they saw it on how they know this uh... don't know i don't know how they saw it don't know how they know this uh... nothing that you know they're saying nothing and and the republicans the republicans kind of suspected democrats have been getting some

information from somewhere but they don't have it so uh... i mean i have uh... quickly kind of reached the point that clearly they are getting spun up for Trump Russia too and what we need is to avoid just the sheer insanity of that for two two plus years what we need is a lot of transparency here we need to find out about what is the allegation who is the whistleblower what are the circumstances of this allegation

uh... what are that what was the handling of this allegation we need to know all of this and the idea you know the idea that the uh... whistleblowers identity should be you know protected and all that it was a great quote on Twitter from a former CIA officer who talked about the whistleblower, and he said, this is galloping your horse over the cliff with a guidance streaming.

You can only do it once. You're finished, however it turns out, so it better be worth it. This whistleblower has really gone for broke here. And my feeling is that, you know, norms are being, you know, trashed right and left. The idea of a whistleblower lodging a complaint against the President of the United States is crazy. So we need to find out what this is and take care of it very, very quickly. Hey, Byron, when Trump took office, he took office with the reputation of a man who

was kind of reckless and mercurial and a little bit much really lazy and ill-informed and all sorts of bad things. Maybe avaricious, financially motivated, all things we sort of, as they say, as the say in Wall Street, were baked into the cake. What we expected, even those people who voted for him, was that that would be more of the same, that his kids are kind of gross. It's gross, right? Whatever. What I didn't expect, what nobody expected, was that the opposition to him, both in the

government, in a government that he is the chief executive, where he's the chief executive, and the other branches of government, the opposition would be, first of all, so demented, so driven crazy, but also revealed to be so scheming and meretricious. I mean, when Trump leaves office, whether it's 2020 or 2024, he's going to take with him the reputations of a lot of institutions that up until now have been fairly— Well-regarded. Fairly fairly... Well-regarded. Fairly high, well-regarded. The national security apparatus, the intelligence apparatus, the Department of Justice, the FBI, all those things.

And it isn't because of anything he's done. It's because of the way they've reacted to him. I mean, is anybody thinking about that, or am I just overreacting? Well, I mean, it's been kind of the sad joke behind all of this talk about Trump violating norms, right and left, and government. Because basically the never-Trump world or the resistance world inside government has just violated norms all over the place. And I think, you know, for example, we're talking about maybe some sort of conversation Trump had with some foreign leader. In August of 2017, someone leaked transcripts of presidential conversations with two foreign leaders,

head of Australia and Mexico. I mean, this is completely norm-violating. I mean, this is just beyond the pale. And by the way, the whole Michael Flynn thing was based on a leak of national security intercepts, which is just off-the-scale violations. So they're doing all sorts of things from the very beginning, violating all sorts of norms in an effort to get Trump. And now we see this.

I mean, I really think somebody thought, man, this is the cleverest damn thing we have ever thought of. Let's use a whistleblower complaint against the president, and it'll be protected a whistleblower complaint against the president, and it'll be protected by whistleblower protections, and we can get the information out and keep the whistleblower anonymous and unable to be fired or questioned. I mean, it seemed really, really clever, I guess. Now, is this on a scale of one to the melting down, right? So like one, I guess one would be, well, we'll do it the other way around. On a scale of one to melting down, right? So like one, I guess one would be, well, we'll do it the other way around.

On a scale of completely missing the mark and a direct hit. So, you know, we'll put Iran-Contra at an eight, we'll put Watergate at a ten, we'll put the Brett Kavanaugh at zero. Where do you think the whistleblower is going to be? We have no idea. We don't know what, I mean, look, I'm not going to say Trump didn't say anything or there's nothing in this recording or there's absolutely nothing there. How could I say that? I don't know. That's why this thing needs to be exposed quickly.

So, look, it has, it has the, it's coming from some of the same people who told us for two years or more that collusion was occurring, the collusion had occurred, and they were wrong, you know, they were completely wrong for years. And some of the same people are getting all excited about this now and doing the same sort of stuff. That doesn't mean it's wrong. This time we need to find out. So I'm not going to go out there and say, you know,

President Trump did absolutely nothing. I don't know what he said in this conversation. That's too bad. I was kind of hoping you had a scoop here. It needs to be exposed quickly. And secrecy, I mean, just as in Trump-Russia, secrecy is fueling all of this because everywhere in the press and democrats and the anonymous sources can say i can't tell you what it is but it's really really bad and it goes on and on it when trump russia went on and

on for years because of classified information and information that a prosecutor, you know, ongoing criminal investigation that a prosecutor kept secret. The secrecy kept going for years. And then we find out that Mueller had established by Christmas of 2017 that collusion had not taken place. But the secrecy just fueled it. It just gave it fuel to continue for years. And that will happen here too, unless we find out what happened. Byron, last question. Am I crazy for, and I could probably just leave it at that, but am I crazy for thinking that the same people who believed it was ethically

necessary to get information from Russia about Donald Trump and to get information from Germany about Donald Trump's bank work information from Germany about Donald Trump's bank work. Those same people now believe that it is completely wrong to get information from Ukraine about one's political opponent. Yeah, you're probably right about that. I mean, look, the fact that people in politics are hypocrites is not a big news and it's not a disqualifier. I mean, we need people who are kind of warriors for both sides. But what we really need here is disclosure. And, you know, I was saying this all through Trump-Russia. You know, I am sick of this. Let's see it all. And I'm already sick of this whistleblower thing.

That's right. Byron, before we let you, do you wake up in the morning and just think, can I just have a weekend? You know what happens in the morning? Sometimes you'll see pieces of mine posted about 8 or 9 in the morning. What has happened is I was thinking about something at night, but just did not have the mental focus to really write it down. And then wake up at 6 in the morning and it just kind of all falls together.

And I write it. So, no, I kind of wake up thinking, well, what should I write right now? There you go, everybody. Set your alarm clocks for 6 o'clock in the morning is when Byron does his morning work and starts to hit the Twitter, you can start catching up with what's going on in D.C. Thanks for joining us today, Byron. We'll see you, well, it's your own podcast here on Ricochet.

Talk to you then. Thank you, guys. Thanks, Byron. I don't want to make any sort of segue that demeans the subject that we're about to talk to, so this means that there are two segues that Rahm has been unable to besmirch. Maybe you're right. You know what, I have to tell you, I was going to besmirch this one. I had a segue I was going to interrupt and set up, but then now your

little intro here has kind of shamed me, so I will remain silent. Well, it should have shamed you, and I'm appalled that you actually even considered it. That's true. I did. Because we're talking about happiness and mental health and the rest of it. You know, you have to ask yourself and you look around and people seem fine, but there's a lot of things going on in people's heads. And perhaps even with you listening to the podcast, there might be something that interferes with your happiness, prevents you from achieving your goals. That's why there's BetterHelp. BetterHelp online counseling. It's there for you. You can connect and find your professional counselor in a safe and private

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BetterHelp.com slash Ricochet. Simply fill out a questionnaire, help them assess your needs, get matched with a counselor you love, and that's BetterHelp.com slash Ricochet. And our thanks to BetterHelp for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Now, we have a couple more things to get to before we end here. And believe me, we had a big chunk there with Byron. So, yeah. Yeah, you got another ad coming up. And, yeah, you're going to have to sit through it.

I listen to podcasts all the time. And I sit through the ads because I want this podcast I love to prosper. And so, yeah, one's coming up. But I'm going to put Rob Long's poll at the other end of that ad. Good idea. We'll dispense right away with the Lilacs post of the week. And there are so many, of course. The main page has got all kinds of stuff. The member feed just abounds with these things. Sometimes they're quirky little things that have nothing to do with politics. That's the pleasure of the Rick's community.

When Gieser Bob posted Iceberg right ahead, I thought, oh good, this is going to be about the Titanic. I love the Titanic. It's a great story. We're all fascinated. There are more interesting shipwrecks, believe me, but the Titanic just nails that one. He talks about how when they sighted the iceberg, Murdoch and the bridge did something right away. He turned the ship and they hit it. But we all know how that went out. But it's not a post about the Titanic. That's the thing. Actually, it's a

post about something else entirely. Quote, we cannot hide behind the Second Amendment for long. See, you're thinking, what? How did we get from Titanic to the Second Amendment? Trust me. Too often the response seems to be, too bad about those victims, but don't touch my guns. I will be the last to recommend abandoning our rights, and I'm certainly not prepared to hand over my rifle to Beto or anyone else. Still, we cannot foresee the future, and we are on a collision course. It will not do to Stonewall. I believe it is incumbent on us as proponents of the Second Amendment to lead the way in seeking effective responses. I will willingly accept that no solution will be anywhere near perfect. Still, to do nothing is to bank on the hope that the ship won't sink.

End quote. Now, the reason I bring this up as member post of the week is not to say, look at us, we're talking about responsible gun control. That's not the point at all. Gieser Bob made a good point about if something needs to be done, what needs to be done. What impressed me was something that you'll just never find anywhere on the internet and you'll always find on Ricochet. There was a civil, sane, non-ad hominem conversation about gun control.

Impossible. That's possible. You say possible. So that's my that's my post of the week. There's also a lot of stuff that had to do with the Iran, Saudi Arabia thing. And before we get robbed of your poll, I want to know. I'm I'm seeing stories criticizing the president for talking about America's great military, but being chicken about using it.

And this stuff is coming from the left. Apparently, the guys who thought that he was going to get everybody into a war are now appalled that he's not getting us into a war. As if the only response you can possibly do to Saudi Arabia is to darken the skies with tomahawks. Do you think there's something in the works? Do you think that there's something that's already happened behind the scenes how do you deal with iran's there was iran their attack on saudi arabian oil fields well i mean i think i think part of the problem is that um that these the responses from iran were not anticipated uh because you know when you when you re when you reimpose sanctions, for better or for worse,

whether you think they agree or they don't agree with it, there are going to be a series of reactions. And those reactions are going to escalate, as they have. Iran has escalated its behavior and its provocative behavior ever since. And they have yet to be contained. So they have made a calculation, I think, that they have more to lose by doing nothing, by some kind of meek response to U.S. sanctions that are being supported around the world, and less to lose by being provocative and forcing the conversation again. So that's sort of what they're doing. And I think that unfortunately the administration, because it's leadership has been so zigzaggy and incoherent, both the people, the revolving door of security, national security advisors, the revolving door at state, the revolving door at defense, and then the revolving door inside trump's own mind uh i think that's

the problem when you're dealing with a threat with a genuine bad actor in the re in a region that's that's necessary to us that by the way is is is surrounded by some we have saudi arabia is an ally um i think you have to anticipate those responses and they have not done that and so that's why that's why there's this that's why we lost a national security advisor i think because of iran and um that's why i i feel that if you're trump the reports are but trump or that he doesn't feel he has any and no one's bringing him any real uh choices to make any any uh any decent choices to make but he's boxed himself in um you know i'm not arguing for the ir deal, but what was interesting about the Iran deal, people keep forgetting, is that alone among Republican nominees for the presidency in 2016, alone, they all said, the first thing I'll do when I take office, I'll rip up the Iran deal.

Alone among them, Donald Trump said, as a then-candidate Trump said, I won't rip it. I'm not going to read it. I'm going to read it. I'm good at making deals. I'm good at opening up the internals. I'm good at renegotiating stuff. I'm not going to tell you I'm going to rip it up. I'm going to go there.

I'm going to read it and think about it. And people kind of rolled their eyes. That's a completely non-statesmanlike answer. But it actually was a very statesmanlike answer. And unfortunately, like a lot of things, his instinct when he's not operating from a purely egotistical level at a purely self-centered level they're pretty good um and i think i think that iran is a much more dangerous threat to american interests than north korea and may need a little trump north korean style diplomacy if that's what he if he's looking for an outcome that he can be proud of.

Because right now it looks like a retaliation, right? How else do you respond to a provocation? You must retaliate. And that is something that Iran, I believe, thinks would be a win for itself. And I don't think they're wrong. Only Trump can go to Tehran. Well, I mean, I see him strolling hand in hand to the mosque with the Grand Ayatollah.

And that is a happy conclusion and a good way to get going forward and make sure that they don't. I don't see it. I don't see it. No, I don't see it either. But but advocates of and I was not really an advocate of the Iran deal, but advocates of the Iran deal. But the bedrock principle of that deal was that you are you are constantly in communication with the belligerent. You always they're always at the table. You're always talking. You're always negotiating. They're always there. There's always something for them to lose by simply ripping a document up. You no longer have a framework. That's that that is that that was the trade framework,. That was the trade framework for the Pacific trade deal. The idea is to create a council where they feel like they're obligated to give concessions.

Otherwise, you end up with what we have now, which is that they either are going to play nice or they're not going to play nice. But if they don't play nice, the question is always, how far are we willing to go? And for a nation that's been at war for 19 years, 18 years, I don't think that we're willing to go that far at all. Well, see, as far as playing nice, they might play nice with the ultimate goal of getting their nuclear weapon, which is what they want, and to put it on an ICBM, which is what they want. So when they come to the table, it's going to be to lie, to prevaricate, to deflect, to concede a little bit and move away from this and closer to this and

at the end of the day, sorry to use that phrase, they got their nuke. When you're dealing with Russia, with the USSR, you had two states that already had huge nuclear arsenals and so you had this long process with lots of thick, creamy paper with embossed seals on it that would state, we're going to go down to this, we're going to go down to that.

And you could deal with them because there was, they already had them. And it was just a question of numbers now. And it was this big public stork dance that they engaged in to make it seem like we were becoming friends.

That's not the case with Iran. They have a goal and they're going to get there by whatever means necessary. And to participate in this John Kerry-esque sort of charade that, well, we're both players on the international stage, and we both have our roles, and we'll both act nicely and have cocktail parties, although ours will have booze and theirs won't, etc. No, I mean, you're dealing with a government that is profoundly illiberal, and the end of it will be a great thing for humanity and the liberation of the Persian people. Does that seem like some strange neocon, porn star mustache Bolton talk to you, Ron? Well, I mean, I guess I feel scalded by the

talk of the liberation of a Persian people the way I feel scalded by the talk of the liberation of the Iraqi people, liberation of the Afghan people. The question really is, what's in America's interests, and how can we affect that? We can't really create regime change in Iran. They have elections. They're fraudulent, but they have elections. They have protests. I think they have a protest. It was a couple years ago they had a protest once a week against the prevailing government, creating an external enemy that the country can rally around. Remember, the hardline Islamists in Iran, in the Iranian government, they were against the Iran

deal too. You know, the Iran deal wasn't popular among, amongst, in Iran's leadership either. So there's a agitation for an enemy. And if we get, I mean, look. Wait, hold on. Wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm not talking about invading. I'm not talking about sending in troops and on marching down the streets and deposing the leaders and setting up our own government. But if you're telling me that our existence, that anything we do provides an enemy for them, we've been presented as an enemy to them ever since the Revolutionary Guard took power. I mean, we're the great Satan.

It's not as though, are we going to be great Satan plus? That's what I'm trying to figure out. But the thing is that there's two ways to, like, you know, there's the two-dimensional action, right? And then there's three-dimensional action. A two-dimensional action is like, well, I mean, sanctions, right? Sanctions are actually really, really painful to Iran. And it turns out that with a world that is entirely centered around the dollar, dollar-based sanctions have a huge effect on, and they're very, very painful. They do make it, they are in fact having an impact.

So there are no more sanctions. We are at the limit of sanctions. The next thing we can possibly do is three-dimensional stuff. We could blow things up. And the question is, what are we going to blow up? Who are we going to blow up? We have a president who already didn't blow things up because he didn't want to kill 50 people or whatever, how many people it was. So, you know, the best course for a country as large as ours and as powerful of ours is consistency and predictability. And if you are not predictable, then your leniency is not respected or received with gratitude, and your punishment is not respected or received with fear, because you can always say on Tuesday you might change your mind. That is the most dangerous position to be in, and that's kind of where we are right now. I mean, Iran is testing us and telling us, like, we don't think that you have any consistency in your foreign policy apparatus.

And they are, so right now, they are correct. They are winning. So the argument shouldn't be to bomb them just to prove a point, but to have been consistent all along. That's the calculation we're facing, and it's not a good one. I'm not saying you're wrong, but it also seems to me that a certain amount of inconsistency keeps them guessing. In that this thing, the Houthi-sponsored drone swarm on a Saudi Arabia thing gets you a couple more sanctions. Sending out some little boats to harass our own stuff gets you six tomahawks in your oil refinery facility. You don't know. You don't know what you're dealing with and you don't know what the response is going to be.

We have no idea how many tools are actually in the toolbox here. We can say that we've done all the sanctions that we can. It's entirely possibly so. That's different from, for some reason, an Iranian tanker on the way to China, which needs it, disappearing. We don't know. We'd never know if it happened. We'd never hear about it. There's all kinds of things. I think unpredictability is something to be said for that. But what do I know? I'm sitting here in Minneapolis on a beautiful fall day, and the thing of it is, is just when we're done with this podcast, I'm going to go in the backyard, and I got to do some work. I got to call up my home, I'm sorry, my office computer and I got to do

some work. And it's demanding stuff. I mean, I know you Rob, you're in Baltimore, so you probably aren't in a big yard. When you're in California, you're not in a, I've seen your house, the backyard, beautiful but it's not huge. And in New York, of course, what, you got three rooms there, each about three feet by three feet. I've seen those New York places. But out here in real America, right? Right, right. You get in the backyard and you lose your Wi-Fi. Well, that's why we're happy to tell you about Arrow. Arrow, sponsor again of the Ricochet podcast. If you are tired,

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which I think are, i wish we had a different name for the name of the poll but this one is really a simple one um you wake up the day after election day and by some bizarre series of events uh the democratic um challenger has won which one and we're gonna we're gonna frame, I think, probably more politely, but which one would make you throw up the least? Which one do you think, you know, all in, we can work with? Like, not that you're happy with, but just like, okay, it could have been worse. Which is the least bad alternative for people listening to the podcast? For all I know, they may be rooting for the Democrat to win. In that case, then it's an easier poll for you.

But for some people who are not rooting for the Democrat to win, which one is the least bad alternative if you have to have it, right? Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it uh should a democrat win i just can't wait for them to reach across the aisle and get in uh jennifer rubin and max boot in their administration the people seem to be angling for the david gergen position for whatever liberals yeah right by the way before we go um do you think there's what are the chances that Joe Biden has some blackface? I'm sorry, brownface back there in his history. I suspect I think it's unlikely. I mean, I don't know why I'm saying unlikely, but I'm like, because he's it's not really a Delaware thing. You know, he's a kid from Delaware. It's not really something that, you know, his age that it tends to be a lot of people from the south who did it.

And then people from the far north, apparently, the Prime Minister of Canada. I did like the idea that they had to be very scrupulous. It's not blackface, because he was pretending to be an Arab. And what I love about, I don't love about it, but what I've always found funny about old Arabic literature, including Thousand and One Nights and a lot of Arabic folktales, is they make a very elaborate distinction between skin colors, a very elaborate distinction between skin colors. When the sultan or the local king is being cuckolded, it's considerably worse if he's being cuckolded by a slave who is a darker skin. And this is sort of ancient Arabic literature where they draw these distinctions. And it turns out that Trudeau, Prime Minister Trudeau, Justin Trudeau, the son of Pierre Trudeau,

former Prime Minister, was dressing up as Aladdin. Well, what you say exists in their culture sounds like internalized self-loathing brought on by Western colonial patriarchy. It would have to be done via time machine because it predates all of that. I think you're probably right. But Biden, I mean, Biden had this clip surface last week, a couple years ago where he was talking about a rumble that he had at the swimming pool. And people were having fun with him and saying, matter of fact, one very prominent fellow on Twitter was bashing the fact that he had named his antagonist in this story Corn Pop. Corn Pop, yeah. Corn Pop, who turned out actually to be a real guy. That was his... Turns out it's true.

That was his nickname. And there was a Twitter exchange between somebody named David Simon who was talking about, you know, actually Corn Pop is not a ridiculous name for somebody who lived in cities. Trust me, I've done some research. And somebody came back to this David Simon guy and said, well, have you ever seen The Wire? Yeah, I saw that. It's a show about Baltimore and the unusual nomenclature. And David Simon, of course, who is the creator and writer of The Wire, just simply answered back, have I ever seen The Wire? Well, I mean, what was interesting is that of the two frontrunners so far, the Democratic, it seems like it's Biden-Warren

at this point. There is such a person as Corn Pop, and there is not such a person as her Native American grandmother. So, if you're keeping track of who's telling the truth and who's lying, you have one for Biden, zero for Warren at this point. I'm hearing a cricket in the background. I'm actually seeing Jiminy himself making some little sounds there. Are you hearing the cricket as well?

I'm going to tell you how it's going to be. Is there a cricket in Baltimore where you are? I can't hear it. You can't. I'll have to have you. Yeah. You know what? Now I take my headphones off. I do hear it. That lends a bucolic sound to the podcast that completely changes my conception.

Well, it is a beautiful autumn day here. It's not cold. It's not hot. It's just sunny. And it's just one of those days. There's always those days. There's days in autumn and the days in the spring that are so perfect, and they could go either way. This exact day, six months from now, you'd be out there thinking, you know what? Summer's coming. And this exact day I'm out here today, I'm thinking, you know what? Autumn's coming. It's always those middle seesaw days that are interesting.

It is, and it's beautiful here, too. 70, clear, but the sun doesn't have the same heft that it does in the spring. It doesn't have the same weight. The trees have that fatal tint, and even though I heard a cicada yesterday, I know that at some point, I'm not going to hear a cicada. You never hear the last cicada of the season. You always note hear a cicada. You never hear the last cicada of the season. You always note the first one, but you never hear the last one. The world falls silent and falls away in varying degrees until you're left standing on the back porch having a cigar at sunset and you watch that ragged V of geese go south and think, once again, and I'm not going

with them. However, we are done. And essentially, I got to tell you about this. Well, here we are. We've got Eero. We have Grove Collaborative. We have BetterHelp. These are wonderful services that can improve your life, and you can support them, and by doing so, support us. And Rob, have you ever gone to iTunes and given something five stars so people could find it later? Yes, I have. Very good for you. I was trying to find a podcast the other day that I'd listened to, couldn't remember the name, couldn't find it.

Couldn't. No search term brought it up. Now, Ricochet is a little bit simpler, but the more stars, the more listeners, the more it surfaces, and then, of course, the more people go to Ricochet and do what, Rob? They, four-letter word. Join. Join.

We really do need you. We really do need you to join. We always have. And perhaps at some point we won't, but we do. And we thank you for listening. Peter will be back next week. Rob, been a pleasure. Thanks to Byron, our guest. And Blue Yeti as ever, our indispensable producer. We'll see you in the comments, everyone, at Ricochet 4.0. Next week. Ta-da. Ta-da. I'm going to tell you how it's going to be. Are you going to give your love to me?

I want to love you night and day You know my love will not fade away You know my love will not fade away My love is bigger than a Cadillac I try to show it when you're driving me back Your love for me got to be real For you to know just how I feel A love for real not fade away guitar solo I'm gonna tell you how it's gonna be You're gonna give your love to me

A love to last more than one day A love is love not paid away A love is love not paid away I love it's love and I fade away. I love it's love and I fade away. Ricochet. Join the conversation.