The Ricochet Podcast - The Editors

Episode Date: September 3, 2015

A couple of times a year, we assemble our far flung editorial staff (that’s Troy Senik, Jon Gabriel, Claire Berlinski, and Tom Meyer) on the Ricochet Podcast and let them riff on the issues of the day and give some dap to their favorite Ricochet member posts of the recent past. And in this, the last show of the Summer of Trump®, that’s exactly what we’ve done. Spoiler alert: Lileks checks in from... Source

Hello and welcome to the Rick and Dave podcast. This is podcast number 273, which is just bananas, Peter. It's crazy. We've done 273. Well, we've done 272 of these. We're starting the 273rd. If a giant meteor hits the earth, then this won't count. So we're beginning the 273rd. This is it. If we make it through, then we can count it as 273. I'm Rob Long. I'm coming to you from sunny Southern California.

On the line with me, as always, is my co-founder of Ricochet, Peter Robinson from Palo Alto. Peter, how are you? I'm very well, Rob. I'm a little worried about you, though, now that I know you're a homeless person. High-end homeless person, but still a homeless person. I'm kind of homeless. I mean, I making my annual – I guess what is it? I pilgrimage back east with the – I have a house, a car, and a dog, and I have me. And I rent the house out. My house, they rent it out in the autumn, and I try to time it so that when I rent the house out, I go. Then I'm back east.

But I mistimed it, so the house was rented, and I still had stuff to do in LA. And so now I had a house, a car. Now I had a house. I didn't have a house, but I had a car, a dog, and me. And so I'm in a hotel, and the dog's in the fancy kennel. But there's two eccentric old ladies who are also in this hotel who have big dogs. And so now I thought to myself, I could have brought my dog here. But then I think that's probably the wrong move to make a man of my age to suddenly become one of those eccentric old ladies.

Anyway, if you are listening to this podcast, we want you to know it is brought to you by The Great Courses. It's for a limited time. The Great Courses has a special offer for Ricochet listeners. Order from four of the great master's lecture series featuring Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, or Tchaikovsky for just $9.95. Great Courses has been a great supporter of ours. I'm a huge fan of theirs. We'll talk more about them later, but it's an amazing, amazing company, and they do incredible stuff. Go to thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet.

That's all one word, thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet. We're also sponsored, long-time sponsors, Harry's Shave, overpaying for drugstore razor blades is a bad habit that you should leave behind. Make the smart switch to Harry's. Those two announcements, in fact, this whole part is usually done by the third of our trio, Peter, James Lilacs, who's not here today. Can you guess where James is? Does it have something to do with the Minnesota State Fair?

Yeah, well, because you knew. The Minnesota State Fair, he has to be there today. So, and I can only imagine the Minnesota State Fair is the most state fairiest of all the state fairs, if you know what I mean. You think so?

I would think. Yeah. And the material for James, for James, material at every booth. I can't wait to read what he writes about this. Me neither. So before we go on, we've got some other people here. I think you heard of Pete from one of them. Let me just say we are also – if you are listening to this podcast and you are a member of Ricochet, we thank you and we are pleased to have you as a member.

If you're listening to the podcast and you are not a member of Ricochet, please go to Ricochet.com and sign up and join. You get all these podcasts. You get to go to Ricochet.com. You get to start and participate in great conversations between and among our contributors and members. Look, it's a lot going on in the country right now. Cooler heads are not prevailing. And at Ricochet.com, we like to think that we set a good example for the rest of the crazies out there. We have people from all different sides.

I think we have passion advocates of pretty much every candidate. I don't think that advocate of pretty much every candidate. But we try to do so with politeness and civility, and I think that's what makes Ricochet.com different. So join us. You get a free month, free 30 days. Find out if you like it. Ricochet.com slash membership. Use the coupon code JOIN.

And we would love to have you join in time for the next GOP debate, which is September 16th. And we've got this fantastic live chat. You can watch it and watch it in real time with us. And it's really a lot of fun. And depending on what time it is, where you are, when you're watching it, there's almost always some cocktails involved. All right, let's get to it.

We are replacing the irreplaceable James Lilacs just today. We thought we'd bring some editors on from all over the globe. We have Claire Berlinski from Paris, France. That's in France, right, Claire? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. It's like the Paris of France. Yeah.

It's like the Paris of France. And in Paris, France today, three Americans in polo shirts are the heroes. Are they still there? Do we know where they are? No, no, no. They've already long since flown out. They flew them to Rammstein. They're based in Germany and we haven't heard from them since.

And it's off the news. I mean the news in Paris is now totally focused on the migrant crisis. That's too bad because I feel like – I hope those guys – I'm trying to see if I can put this in the terms that are what we would say in Ricochet because we're very strict about our language Code of Conduct Compliant but I hope those guys that night

enjoyed Paris and were hosted well by Parisians. I reckon that they were – Good, good. I reckon it's just the way I think it was.

Like the liberation. Speaking of liberated, Tom Meyer – Tom, you're here. Are you in New Hampshire right now? No, I'm in Boston at the moment. You're in Boston. And we also have John Gabriel. John, you're in – what's the temperature in Arizona right now, 230 degrees? No, it's a cold snap.

It's like 220. Oh, that's good. Calling from Arizona. We're the Paris of eastern Maricopa County. That's right. That's right. And I don't know – hey, Troy, are you on yet? I'm on. That's right. That's right. And I don't know. Hey, Troy, are you on yet?

I'm on. I'm on. I will tell you where I am. I am in my hometown of Nashville, Tennessee, sitting in the parking lot of my dentist's office right now because our producer, the Blue Yeti, has morphed into such a martinet that when I told him that I would be getting my incisors

hacksawed during this broadcast, he said, well, you can probably do the first 30 minutes. Wait, so in 30 minutes they're going to go and get them – what, are they going to sand them down if they found them too sharp? I can't give you any more information about this because I didn't ask for any more information about this. I find that this is an area of medical practice where the less I know, the better. I'm expecting to get hit with a very strong injection of something and come to at some point around

Halloween. And you gave them permission and are about to pay for a procedure and you don't even know what it is. You're going to permit, let them, you're going to permit yourself to be put under somebody to monkey around with your mouth and you're not sure what they're doing? Oh, it's fine. You say that here as if I could add some constructive criticism, as if when they told me I could tell them

that I had an issue with the methodology. Yes, I just, I gave them carte blanche. I don't know what they're doing. Wow. Wow. Well, Obamacare, fellas. I was going to say, that's the mantra of Obamacare. You do the first 30 minutes live, ready to go, and then come back on as quickly as you can because we want to take your Troy with Novocaine. Yeah, that's right. Exactly right.

Speaking of Novocaine. Yeah, that's right. Exactly right. Speaking of Novocaine, I know I promised we weren't going to start with this. I don't want to spend too much time on it. But it just happened. So we should talk a little bit about it. Donald Trump signed the Republican loyalty oath, which they only have because there's Donald Trump in the race, which says you're a loyal Republican and you'll stay a loyal Republican. The subtext there, not so much subtext, but text is that you will not run as a third party candidate.

Does that mean anything at all, Peter? No. Oh, I think so. I think it means he's – so phase one of Donald Trump – of our talking about Donald Trump was, well, of course he can't be the nominee. Of course he's saying – so he's forcing the rest of the candidates to say interesting things and he's having fun. This is sort of – and now phase three is in Donald Trump's head, he's running for president of the United States. He started to think he can do it. This sort of national delusion is becoming a reality. But isn't that weird that we – that he said he's running for president and we all said, no, you're not. And it turns out he is, and we're all like,

wow, my God, he really is. Well, he told us he was. Hey, Claire, you pumped in and you said, no, it doesn't matter. What does that mean? It doesn't matter that he signed this pledge. I mean, he'll do whatever he wants whenever he wants. We know that. Right, right, right.

So you think that if he doesn't win the nomination, somehow he'll still take his marbles and go? Depending whether he's bored or not. He's walking back on everything else at this point. Wait. So Tom, you think he'll cease to become a loyal – he'll cease being a loyal Republican at that moment and run third party? I wouldn't put anything past Donald at this point. I do think it's slightly good news, but my feelings are kind of weird on this. A lot of people often complain about people being Republicans in name only, and I think Jonah actually makes a great point about

that, that a good conservative should, to a certain extent, be a Republican in name only. And I think Jonah actually makes a great point about that, that a good conservative should, to a certain extent, be a Republican in name only. We should be willing to ditch the party when it makes the wrong choice. The thing with Donald Trump is that he's not a conservative. So anything that makes it more difficult for him to run as a third party, I think is a good thing.

But it can't be harder right now to run as a third party candidate for either one. I mean, both the Democrats and the Republicans have been burned in the past 20 years with third party candidacies. So they both spent the past eight years at least fixing the rules across the country. So it's actually extremely hard to run a third-party candidacy. It's very expensive. It's very time-consuming. It's really hard. It's Coke versus Pepsi in this country. And Coke and Pepsi, you're fine if you want to start your own Coke or your own Pepsi, but good luck finding a bottle. Good luck finding a distributor. Good luck finding the trucks to

deliver the bottles to the supermarket. Good luck finding supermarket shelves. I mean, Troy, is there any, like, I mean, isn't this a case of a guy looking at, you know, reality and saying, you know, I'm now the frontrunner of the Republican Party. I may as well stay in it. I think it's very savvy. I don't think anything that's been said is actually mutually exclusive of each other. I mean, I think Peter's right, but we don't know why he got into this in the first place. But let's assume for the sake of debate up front that it was a lark. Even if it was a lark then, you stay on top of the polls long enough. And also, if you start feeling invincible the way I'm sure he does, where he's gotten to a point where we sort of have

road tested the fact that he can't do anything to shake the support that he has thus far. And if you live in that reality for long enough, I would think, I mean, I think like Peter said, you probably start processing things a little bit differently and start thinking, well, maybe this could work. And the thing is, if you want to go rogue at the end, there's nothing, as Claire pointed out, there's nothing about this that's going to stop you. This is not legally binding. It's probably smarter for him to actually work this out with the RNC than have to deal with what was going to be coming down the pike if he didn't do this,

which is that they're going to start trying to add these programs as a report access for Republican primaries in these various states. So I think he's got the best of both worlds at this point. It takes away the story that he's going to bolt. But if he does decide he wants to bolt down the line, this does nothing to stop him. I think it's actually pretty canny. Right. Can I ask one more Trump question, and then can we be done with Trump? Yeah.

There's other stuff. Trump kind of swallows up everything. I got an email today from my friend Mary Jordan, who's a reporter at The Washington Post. And she is writing an article about Trump's language, about his tone, his use of words. And she said, hey, you know, I'm writing a piece about his tone, his use of words, how he calls people stupid and loser, and how he simultaneously infuriated and inspired people. You work with

words, meaning me. I'd love to hear your thoughts. What do I say? John, Gabriel, what do I say? Oh, gosh. Have you become a member of Ricochet yet? That's the first thing. Yeah, exactly. Right.

Should I just tell her? Should I get Blue Yeti to send her like a 24-hour free pass? That is a great post idea. Write that out for me. Yeah, I think we should make Trump a member, but we'd really have to watch the code of compliance issues. I think one of Trump's big issues, it's kind of like years ago with Pat Buchanan, is he's the type of person and he's inspiring a lot of people who want to be against things rather than for things.

Reagan wasn't as anti-communist as he was pro-freedom. But Trump is like, I hate immigrants. I hate the party apparatus. I hate the establishment. I hate those jerks in the media. And Megyn Kelly, don't get me started. And it's just like that's one reason it feeds on all this bad emotion. And a lot of times people just get angry about him.

You'll see it on social media all the time. That people just get so angry about him because it inspires that kind of anger, that just kind of unrelenting negative, negative, negative. So I would think that's one thing about his language is kind of how I'd characterize it. It brings out that anger and highlights it. I think the loyalty oath is weird. I don't think it matters a lot because the big problem with Reince Priebus and the RNC that the base is mad about is they enforce party over principles. We want you to be loyal to our party.

We want you to be obedient to the party. Even if we don't win now with owning the Senate and House, just vote for us one more time. And to the accusation of putting party over principles, the RNC said, hey, I have an idea to address that. Sign a loyalty oath to your party. It just seems really tone deaf from the RNC. And like Troy said, Trump's going to do what Trump's going to do. If three months from now it's to his advantage to ignore it, he'll ignore it. Right.

It's funny, though, because I never thought about the loyalty oath that way. I'm sorry. I cut you off. Go ahead. No, I was – oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. I will fall silent. Well, I have a theory of the case here, and I actually wanted to present this to Peter as my fellow former White House speechwriter to see if he thinks this is right regarding the rhetorical question. There was a piece either today or yesterday by Larry Sabato in which he made the point correctly, I think, that a big part of the appeal of Trump on the rhetorical side, it's not really that. I mean, the substance of the rhetoric helps, but it's the style. It's the fact that every other candidate, Republican or Democrat in this race, this is the way Larry characterized it. And this is true of this race. It's true of every race. Every single candidate has one or two paragraphs

memorized on the top 20 or 25 issues. And the second that it gets brought up, they just go into autoplay. And we've seen that over and over again for years. This is kind of, there's this weird sort of consensual fiction that we accept with politicians and especially presidential candidates. They don't communicate to you in the way that a normal human being does. And I think that is so essential to the rhetorical success that he's had, is that people see a guy that, first of all, it makes him more interesting because you don't know what he's going to say. But second of all, it actually sounds conversational in a way that most of these people can't pull off.

And most of them, frankly, aren't even trying. Entirely correct. Also, he is appealing to a large segment of people who legitimately, who have every reason to feel this way, are tired of being told what they can't say. Exactly. Exactly. That, to me, the one moment I really could, I've enjoyed Donald Trump did this beautiful little riff on how this country is more concerned with political correctness than with

winning wars. And by the way, anchor baby is the term I intend to use. So there is this, Troy is exactly right that you don't, is that a comment on me or Donald Trump? I think Claire's cats are enjoying your – My cats are not restrained by any notions of political correctness. Just as free as Donald Trump. So you don't get this sort of – Troy is correct. You don't get this strange little dead look in the eye when the politician goes to paragraph C memorized, which they all do, except Trump. You don't know what he's going to say because he doesn't know what he's going to say. It's genuinely conversational.

And then, you know, on the one hand, he's a Bulgarian. He says terrible things about women. He uses bad language. But it just does feel refreshing. How long it will last, I don't know, because there was some of this in hearing Chris Christie in his early YouTube videos when he would say to people, shut up in town hall meetings across New Jersey. And you just feel – People just call that – What? People just call that Chris Christie porn. I had friends of mine who would like – before they would start, they would say, oh, just call it some Chris Christie porn. And they would just watch it on YouTube, christie yelling at somebody for being too liberal

and i remember those early days the christie like like yeah look at him there's something fantastic about that this unbridled there's one more thing i want to just posit to the group which is that there's a that and i think it's a lot of it's the hangover from the 2012 election, which is that once you've lost like that, once you've hoped and believed anduded and we're lost and we're adrift. Once you've had that feeling, you can't really be hurt again. Once you've had your heart broken, you can't really be hurt again. And so we have a sort of Republican establishment in Washington. And I don't believe the Republican establishment is picking our candidates for it because I don't think that's happening.

But I believe that the Republican establishment in Washington, the halls of Congress, they're terrified of losing. And I don't think the Republicans out in the country are terrified of losing because we've already lost several – so many times that we know what losing is like. It's not the worst thing in the world. Yeah, it's becoming a loser culture, which is really dangerous. It's becoming a sense of, well, we're never going to win anyway, so we might as well just behave outrageously and throw a hissy fit in a rebellion because we basically think we're losers. Well, I don't think it's that. I think that's probably one – that's maybe the extreme interpretation of it. It's an element of it. Reagan had this problem. George H.W. Bush had this problem, even though he was a one-term president. Clinton had this problem. Every president has a problem with Congress. They always, at some point, make that president, make him uncomfortable,

make him unhappy, make him heal. It is true that Reagan was a successful legislative president, but Tip O'Neill and the Democrats in the House and the Senate often brought him to heel. They often made his life difficult. George Mitchell was the Senate majority leader under George H.W. Bush, and George Mitchell was a co-president for four years, make no mistake. Under Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich brought him to heel. Bill Clinton was a very popular president for most of his presidency. Newt Gingrich brought him to heel. Same thing with George W. Bush, right? There was a, you know, Nancy Pelosi twisted him around. The Republicans in Congress have not done that to Obama.

They keep getting played. They keep getting played. There's never been a moment in his eight years where he's had to eat that certain kind of sandwich that every president before him has had to eat. And I think there are Republicans across the country saying, well, wait. Come on. Like just do it already. And I feel like that is something that is happening in the Republican primary, whatever it is, chaos, which is – which makes a guy who's a big son of a fighter and a pugilist popular because they kind of feel like, well, what's the worst that happens? What, we lose the House and the Senate again? That's already happened before.

It's not the worst thing in the world. It's the worst thing in the world for you and the House and the Senate. But if you're a Republican voter, it's like, ah, we'll get it back again. That's what I'm thinking about. I could be wrong. Yes, John? Well, hey, Rob. It's Tom.

So I think there is a lot to that. I've generally been on the side of, if not, of sort of semi-defending McConnell and Boehner for a long time. And I think James of England, who's one of our members, does that really eloquently, and I think there's a lot to that. On the other hand, these last couple of years have just been infuriating. And there's a lot of people in the base, and I'd include myself in this, who are looking at the Republican Congress and saying, what have you guys done for me lately? And a lot of the attraction to Trump is that he doesn't care about them and he's happy to tell people on our side to shove off who aren't giving results and yeah and i just and and the problem with it is that there's like one issue where where trump is a conservative and everything else he's not yeah it's that one issue to the frustration with the immigration yeah even there there's a lot of that proposal that doesn't sound very conservative to me. Agreed. But anyway, John, you were saying?

I think a lot of the frustration with the base too is there's pretty easy ways we could draw lines in the sand on a strong Planned Parenthood vote to make President Obama veto the Iran deal vote. Make him veto. And I feel like – and I think McConnell is a very smart guy. He prevented campaign finance reform for so many years. But the seemingly easy things to do just to take a stand, to stand for something, instead it's like, you know what? This is going to be tough. He's going to veto anyway.

I just forfeit the game. And at some point, you just have to stand for something. And these promises of, well, in two years, if we get the White House, we heard that we need the Senate before we can do anything. And say we had 60 votes in the Senate. We own the House. We own the White House. You know a couple of Republicans are going to vote with the Democrats in the Senate. You're always going to peel off a Susan Collins type or something like that. And I think people are tired of waiting. At least stand up for something.

If you can't stand up on your plan thing, just pack it in. And also like that's part of the fun of American politics. It's like part of the rule is you got to make the – you got to like drag the president down a little bit once or twice. It's not the worst thing in the world. It happened to Reagan. It happened to part of the rule is you've got to drag the president down a little bit once or twice. It's not the worst thing in the world. It happened to Reagan. It happened to a lot of people. And that's part of the deal. And you've got to get a little stink on you. Everyone does.

And it just feels to me like the Republicans were excited and raring to go at the last midterms and they're kind of disappointed after 2014. And that's kind of what's happening now, which is not a bad thing. Before we go, we got to – I do want to change the subject because politics is so boring. We do want to talk for a minute about the great courses.

We here at Ricochet are big fans of the great courses. As you know, I drive across the country, and I'd like to listen to the great courses. We here at Ricochet are big fans of the great courses. As you know, I drive across the country and I'd like to listen to the great courses on, I actually stream them on my phone. The great, there are lectures and classes. There's a whole like, there's a bunch of different like sections of things. You can listen to lectures, you can listen to classes,

you can listen to music, you can listen to like music theory. They're engaging video and audio lectures taught by top experts in their field. It's an incredible opportunity for people who love to learn in a great way. We've really enjoyed the Great Courses Collection on Great Masters. Those are the lecture series, and they delve into the life and music of well-known musicians and composers, including Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, each taught by music historian Robert Greenberg.

Each lecture is comprised of eight 45-minute episodes. And they come on your phone or you get a DVD or however you want them to do. It's great. It's like a lot of music and then a little bit of conversation, and it kind of helps you sort of follow along. The Tchaikovsky section is really good. It's a very interesting look at his personal life, but it's interwoven with music. So it's a very – it's a fun listen. The Great Courses are celebrating their 25th anniversary.

They have over 500 courses in many subjects, including philosophy, history, religion, and more. They are available in DVDs, CDs, streaming, digital downloads, or the Great Courses apps. And for a limited time, the Great Courses has a special offer for Ricochet listeners. Order from four of the Great Masters lecture series featuring Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, or Tchaikovsky for just $9.95. That's less than $10 for six hours of fascinating content. This special price of $9.95 is only available for a limited time, so order today. Go to thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet. That's thegreatcourses.com. It's all one word, thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet, and you will not be disappointed. We just lost Troy. Troy has to go get his teeth filed down. I guess he's too incisive, right? Is that where incisor comes from? Hey, Claire, so let's – can we just wrap up a little bit about France? When the three dudes in polo shirts saved all of France with their American heroism and they were feted and praised … Alex Spencer and Stone. Yes, by French people and then given the Legion of Honor by French President François Hollande.

That's right. There were a lot of people here who felt like size, that people in Europe and people in France were so overwhelmingly thankful and I wasn't and were you? My God, no. I mean, they saved everyone on that train. That's very real. Yeah, but there's none of this American, like,

oh, you're Americans and you're fisticuffs. There's none of that. They weren't playing, though. They really saved their lives. I mean, this is a train that everyone here takes. We all take the tallest train to – it's this fast train to Brussels, right, and to Amsterdam. And anyone could have been on it.

And it's just your absolute worst nightmare to have something like that happen on one of your commuter trains. And it's so clear that if they hadn't been on the train – well, there was two pieces of unbelievable luck that they were there. The AK misfire, which never happens. I mean, what's written on an AK never jams, right? But owing to these two extraordinary pieces of luck that they were there and the gun misfired, everyone's life was saved and it would have been a

carnage. It would have been a bloodbath otherwise. So of course people were grateful. And you know, it wasn't just three American nationals. It was a Britain and two Frenchmen as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah let's talk about the americans uh it's an american show but there what what is it about this sort of the american attitude uh stateside uh peter i mean were you surprised that there was that overwhelming i wasn't because i've been in france enough and spoken to normal french people and they're they tend in general to be very pro-American about a lot of stuff.

But there was a kind of a sense like, wow, they're kind of surprised the French were so thankful. I mean were you surprised? I seem to have a really strange out-of-touch attitude about the French these days. I've got to say it because I picked that up in some of the comments on Ricochet too. It doesn't surprise me at all. I mean it's – Peter, excuse me for – It's not me, Claire. It's all Rob.

He's just – it's a little sad. We'll have to have this conversation after the podcast. He's more and more out of touch these days. But go ahead. Go ahead. Peter, were you surprised? No, you were not surprised. I was a little surprised that – actually, I was surprised by Olande because all that we read says his approval ratings are now 10 percent.

And in every article, it seems to me over the last six months, you hear something about how Hollande is paralyzed. He's unable to – and within what was it, 24 hours, he had the three Americans at the Elysee and in a very lighthearted presentation. There they were in their polo shirts and he pins the Légion d'honneur on them. I thought that was really kind of a slick, lightheart, lovely public relations move by a mobilized president. Oh, yeah, yeah, it was all very well done, but that was all organized by protocol,

I'm sure, by the diplomatic staff. But still, it was a nice gesture and I thought the way they handled it was just lovely. I mean, they'd obviously been coached a little gesture, and I thought the way they handled it was just lovely. I mean, they'd obviously been coached a little bit, but they were so natural and so genuinely humble, and they'd just been through an ordeal. You know, Stone was injured. He had to have his thumb reattached, and his eye was was like it attached retina to me from the way he was looking.

And it's obviously no matter how prepared you are, that's a shocking thing to have happen, but they were so gracious. So, next... I'm sorry, just one follow-up question on that is, paragraph six or seven in the French newspapers, is anybody wondering...

So, thank you, lovely, wonderful it happened, moment of celebration. And now off the Americans go. Are there follow on stories about how is it that this terrorist got on the train in the first place? Talking about nothing else. Talking about whether the trains can be secured. Better inter

security service cooperation. How many phones the police should be allowed to surveil. This guy was under what's called an esfiche, which means that they knew he was dangerous and he was supposed to be surveilled at all times, but somehow they lost him

in between Spain and France, and so there's tons of reproach, a lot of debate. Everyone's not sure why these guys – because all the terrorist attacks, the big ones in the last few years have always been about guys who are already under surveillance. Claire, I forget. Was this guy a French national or was he – No, no, no.

He was a Moroccan national. Okay, that's what I thought. And he had been living in Spain, and the story that he gave – I mean, the story that everyone was just laughing at, the story he gave his attorney initially was he was a homeless guy in Belgium who just happened to find this bag full of weapons and decided to rob a train and was flabbergasted that he thought it could be a terrorist act. But no, he was obviously part of a terrorist cell, very serious, hardcore jihadi, and meant to do as much damage as possible. And to me, it seems strange that he got in a train carrying an AK that's not a small weapon. You would have thought that someone would have noticed something like that, but he did.

There are armed soldiers in train stations everywhere in Europe. Yeah, I mean, there's armed soldiers in train stations everywhere in Europe. Yeah, there is for sure. Well, they're still walking around. They've still got eyes. Yeah, they've got eyes, but what you don't have, you don't have baggage screening, and you don't have pat-down or anything like that.

So if you've got a big enough suitcase, you can carry anything in it. It's just... It's impossible to secure everything. I mean, even if you've got a big enough suitcase, you can carry anything in it. It's just – it's impossible to secure everything. I mean even if you could secure – even if you secure the high-speed trains, that will add hours. They won't be high-speed trains after that because of the security process. Even if you do that, what are you going to do about the low-speed trains? What are you going to do about the metro?

What are you going to do about any place where people congregate? It's not – you can't solve these problems. Claire, here's the one part I don't understand. I mean this applies to the US too. If a person is not a citizen, why aren't they deported? Because they've got borders in the EU. Okay, but I mean at least try. It's easier than trying to put them under surveillance, isn't it?

I'm not arguing with you so much. Well, it requires unraveling the Schengen arrangement, the core principle, which is open borders. Now, obviously that is under discussion. That is under discussion. One of the results of this may be they're going to have to reinstitute some sort of passport control. Okay, but I mean he wasn't even a citizen of the EU. Right, right, right. I mean, why wasn't he

sent back to Morocco? Exactly, yeah. I don't think they had enough of a rap on him, rap sheet on him just to do that legally. Right. He was under surveillance probably because he'd shown up at a radical mosque or something like that so they didn't have any time or anything they could –

So I would like to bring this – I'd like to bring – so go ahead, Peter. I actually do. One terrorist can't figure out who he is, what he's up to. I'm not sure whether we can deport him, can't deport him. One guy. Yeah, there's thousands more where he can't report. Well, the big story in Europe right now is thousands and thousands attempting to get into Europe. Well, excuse me, as many tens of thousands attempting to get into Europe and many thousands who have.

As recently as a month or six weeks ago, the main pressure on Europe was from North Africa. Now it's from the Middle East itself. People fleeing or displaced in one way or another by the civil war in Syria and by ISIS. Unbelievable. So we have here, it has happened at last, the famous book, Ship of Saints, which was, what, 25 or 30 years ago, which raised the question, what is Europe to do when the third world, which has higher birth rates and so forth? And now it has happened.

Europe is a much richer place, but relatively thinly populated, and the population is dying off. They're below replacement level. And we've got Northern Africa and the Middle East with much higher birth rates. The pressure on Europe is going to be obvious. And so what are, I mean, it just seems to me, this is, how do you resist Marine Le Pen and the French and the National Front? How do you resist the marine lepin and the french and the national front how do you resist shutting down the borders the czech president i'm just of course you're there i'm here i'm just telling you what i've read president of the czech republic has said that he will call out troops to protect the the reporters of the republic not the borders of europe but the borders of the czech republic

the hungarians apparently are pen up refugees, pending decisions from Germany on how many they'll... So what's the state of play here? It sounds to me as though the liberal ideal of open, humanitarian Europe, come to us anytime you... That's under enormous pressure. It's under enormous pressure. Now, certainly they could be admitting more than they are. And they should for unstrictly, just humanitarian grounds. It's possible to admit more. It's possible to screen them thoroughly. They are victims of Islamist violence. Yes, you don't want Islamists themselves getting through, but that's not what they are. Most of the people who are trying to get here are the most energetic, determined, hardworking people coming from that continent. And so they're going to be very energetic, determined and hardworking here if they're allowed to work.

But there is a level beyond which you can't have a migrant influx like that without totally destabilizing your country. Yeah, but didn't people say that about the same group of Muslim immigrants from the same countries 20 years ago? Not the same group and more like 40 years ago. This is when they're – post-war labor shortages. But if you're Dutch or French, German, these immigrant groups haven't turned out that well for you, right? Well, some have, some haven't. It doesn't matter. It's different from country to country. But the issue then was that they were deliberately importing people to fill factory shortages, right? The issue now is that these are people who are fleeing and dying in the Mediterranean, and sometimes, you know,

in numbers of 1,000, 2,000 at a time. And it requires switching your humanity off completely, to say, well, too bad. No, no, I'm not going to say that, but immigration, I mean, just to jump in,

because he's to the south right now, immigration always, there's always a humanitarian component. That was the argument for unfettered immigration to this country was that, oh, come on. This country is down to the south. They have their poor. They have no money. They're starving. They come here for a new life. When the result of that experiment – of that humanitarian experiment or the result of that solution to that humanitarian problem turns south in some way or has really, really bad ramifications, we never seem to learn that lesson.

I mean John Gabriel, here we're talking about camps with people, refugees or immigrants who don't have a place to go. We're talking about when you have people coming in across the border and we're not following them. Does that sound familiar? Slightly, living here in Arizona. Oh, a family just ran through my backyard. Hold on. There they go. Yeah, we occasionally hear as much news about this. Yeah, the issue is, and one thing that's been frustrating to me, is there is a need for border control. And it's not just for, hey, keep them darn foreigners out kind of a message. are crosses littering this tiny little town of Sasa Bay, which is a little border town in an unguarded part of the Arizona desert, just this vast trackless wasteland. Migrants from Mexico usually come up through the summer just due to when the jobs are available,

when they can get out of their duties back home and so forth. And I often drive to LA or San Diego in the summer. I can barely drive through it with air conditioning. And these poor families are just flooding the border. And I've seen pictures of just crosses and crosses and crosses of all these dead families, all these dead children, all these dead elderly people who have died in the desert. One thing that a border fence does is it prevents all those deaths. And if we could have some kind of a common sense, okay, you've been in line for six months.

All right. Yes, we actually could use your services in America. fate with these brutal coyotes who take the young women, sell them right into sex trafficking, abandon them in trailers on the side of the highway where the entire group dies. It's a nightmare. And I kind of wish that Republicans would make more of a humanitarian case for common sense border control is good because it will save many, many lives. And what's amazing is it's the same business. I mean, I was reading the reports of what was going on in Europe.

I mean, you really could substitute. Oh, yeah, exactly. It really is the same. And the interesting thing, too, is now there's so much illegal immigration from Central America, and it's very similar to Europe. People go through Turkey. They go through Hungary. They go through the Czech Republic to work their way up to Germany or to either northern Europe or western Europe. They aren't getting into Europe. That isn't the issue. They want to get into northern Europe or western Europe. And it's very similar to people coming from El Salvador. They don't stop in Mexico. They don't want to get out of the brutal conditions of El Salvador. And frankly, I don't blame them. I have two daughters.

If I had two daughters who are starving and couldn't get an education, I would do what I needed to do to get that for them. And so I think there's – it's one frustrating thing. Border control is often cast as this cruel, stay out, you immigrants. But instead, it's a real humanitarian issue, and that's something that people seemingly refuse to either understand or address. No, I agree.

But I'm sort of – I'm loathe to like read the paper and then start seeing how the world is conflating into one giant topic, which is what do you do about all the people who are crossing the border all over the place? But it certainly is one of those things that's happening. But before we continue with this, I want to introduce a very special guest. We have a very special guest on the line. I won't attempt to make a segue. I won't attempt to make a segue. I won't attempt to even introduce him. I'll only say from the Minnesota State Fair, please welcome James Lilacs.

Hi, James. Happy to be on the podcast. It's a first for me. That's right. Long-time listener, first-time caller. How's the fair? The fair is wonderful. The fair is packed, hot, sweaty, humid. I'm waiting right now for the parade, which begins with a marching band

and culminates with a giant graven image, a huge steer made of fiberglass, probably 20 feet tall, that is dragged around the streets by the virgins of Minnesota. And then there's a bonfire ritual sacrifice of the innocent. It's great fun. I'm also in the vicinity of the Republican Party booth, which has been holding a corn ballot. People are given little cups of corn that they can distribute in sort of European style to however many candidates they'd like.

Any guesses as to whose corn bin is the most full? Who's the most corny, in other words? Who has the most corn? I would say Trump. You would be correct. It's sort of sad to see a guy like rick perry with with three kernels three kernels and then you then you've got this overflowing cornucopia so to speak uh for trump and ben carson it is in a uh coming up very strong behind it so uh that's the highly scientific polls that they have there there's also in, in the back of the GOP building, the People's Plaza, which has the Freedom Fountain, which is a water cooler.

And I'm headed to the Freedom Fountain now. I hope they mean that kind of as a joke. Before you do that, James, I have to ask you a question. I woke up this morning, and I've got a little stubble, and I just don't know what to do about it. Well, what I would advise doing is come here to Minnesota State Fair because they've got barns devoted to shaving animals. I'm not saying you're

one of those, but the sheep shearing exhibition that's done frequently teaches you many things. Many things about sheep. Here's an animal that pretty much after it's out of the lamb stage is safe. It's not going to be dinner around these parts. All it has to do is chew and grow wool. And it still does nothing but bleat and

bitch and complain every moment of the day. Ill-tempered beef. But when you see those sheep out there with their heads in the harness and an expert working on getting all that wool off and you see a freshly shorn, smooth sheep, that's when you realize that an experience like that is only open to human beings if they go to Harry's.

And that's harrys.com. You can't get a place that is... harrys.com, you say? That's right, harrys.com slash ricochet. If you enter that coupon code ricochet, you're going to get $5 off your first order. Now, the great thing about the Minnesota State Fair is it's over 100 years old,

which means it's slightly older than the factory that Harry gets the blades from. It's a German factory, and we all know what German precision means. These German blades, which they get direct from them, enable them to cut out the middleman. There is no middleman. He's been thrown in the scrap heap, the ash heap of history.

And so what Harry does is they give you the starter set, great blades, beautifully designed handle, and your choice of emollients to smooth your face afterwards. Not that your face is going to need much smoothing anyway. It's a Harry's shave. It's the best. So stop paying lots of money for drugstore blades. Stupid idea.

But at harrys.com slash ricochet, enter that coupon code ricochet, and you will actually get a pendant slash ricochet. You know what to do. harrys.com. You know the code. Five bucks off. Best shave you what to do. Harry.co. You know the code. Five bucks off. Best shave you'll ever have. Ask the sheep.

They prefer to be shaved by Harry. What about the ladies? Are they good for shaving my legs? Pardon? Oh, yeah. I'm sure they work absolutely fine. As a matter of fact, I'll try them and give you a shot here. Okay, I'm looking at the corn pole now.

Things have changed. Things have really changed. Carly Fiorina is about two-thirds full. Mike Huckabee is absolutely topping off the corn pole. Wow. How many kernels for Rick Perry? I'm going to check Rick. Let's see.

Chris Christie has none. Wow. Oh. Chris Christie has none. Wow. Oh. Oh. Maybe put some caramel corn on him. For me, because I feel bad. Maybe some caramel corn.

Kerry's got about one-eighth full. And Trump surprisingly has faded. It's amazing. I'm thinking that some Huckabee corn ringers came in with like sacks of Jiffy Pop and just poured them in. That's how it's working. It does feel like the fix is in on that.

James, thank you so kindly. Yeah. I guess coming up next, thank you so kindly for coming in and for doing the Harry Spot and sorry we missed you on the rest of the podcast but we'll see you next week. Can you hear my cat purring? It's the sound of Huckabee.

Pardon? What I think you said is, do I hear a cat purring that sounds like Huckabee? No, he's purring for Huckabee. I'm sorry. I still didn't catch it. He's purring for Huckabee. People are having too much fun here.

The only thing that I miss more than the State Fair is the Ricochet podcast. So carry on and we'll talk to you next week. All right. See you next week, James.

Bye, James. Goodbye. Wow. The Minnesota State Fair. I would like to know I'd like to know the backstory on that.

It's the kind of thing where some operative overheard James on the phone talking about the – you know what I mean? There are those people who follow that stuff and then race around to try to dump some kernels in this sad little underkerneled candidate's bin I suppose. Well, and Trump might not be leading, but he doesn't have yellow corn and white corn. It's gold and platinum. Yeah, exactly. It's super classy corn.

Yeah. I've been trying to work in a fried cheese curd joke for all these last five minutes, and I can't come up with anything. It's kind of hard, isn't it? Yeah, I was doing that for poor Christy. Listen, we're coming up to the top of the hour, and since we have the Ricochet editors on the line, Peter, I thought what I would do is I'd ask them for their favorite post of the week. If you are listening to this and you're a Ricochet member, you know what we're talking about. Ricochet members and contributors make posts and they have basically start a conversation and sometimes they go on and on

and on and on and sometimes they have like a few little pithy comments and you never really know what's going to happen and it's always very interesting um and the editors sort of follow everything and sometimes they have favorites and so we're gonna hear what the favorites are so tom meyer you go first what's your favorite post of the week uh i actually i have to go with three favorite posts of the week but they're all in a series uh so uh i want so my favorites are the Katrina experiences that Concrete Evil posted for us. So this is a member of ours who owns a concrete company. And 10 years ago, after Katrina hit, he decided to drive from Tennessee all the way down to the Gulf Coast, down to Mississippi. Didn't have a whole lot of planning, but he did have a fully, you know, a fully packed truck. And he's just been telling us what he did over the,

over the weeks that he was down there. And it's, it's both really inspiring, both what he was doing and what's amazing to me is how many other people were down there doing the, doing the exact same thing as him. And these are people who just saw, who countrymen in trouble and stopped what they were doing and going down for, and it's really, really inspiring. Yeah, I followed those posts too. I sent them to a friend of mine who's down in New Orleans right now, sort of part of the 10-year commemoration of the flood in New Orleans and the storm everywhere else. But it is amazing how many people had to have his reaction. You see something happening and thought, oh, I got to truck up some stuff. I'm just going to get in the car and go. Pretty amazing. Hey, John Gabriel, what's your post of the week?

Well, actually, and just to mention the same author, I love the posts where people write about stuff from their experience that I know nothing about. And he had written something a long time ago just about what it's like to lay concrete, what he does for a living, and it was one of the most fascinating stories I've read because I knew nothing about it. And one this week that fits in, I love the stories from people who are from different faiths from me. My background is Lutheran, so I shouldn't like the Catholic posts. I should be like putting 95 theses in the comments or something. But there is one by Doug Watt to those that were robbed of life where he just talks about recent papal statements on the sin of abortion and what it means and how the media reported it wrong. But it just fascinates me to read about the inner workings of the Vatican because it's completely alien to me.

We'll have other members of other faith traditions who share that. And that's actually one of my favorite things about Ricochet, is just people from totally different walks of life all around the world, places you've never even visited, just telling their stories. Yeah, and different strains of conservatism too. Exactly. Bring this to the next post because I chose one representing the anarcho-capitalist strain of modern conservatism. A great ghost of Gödel had a post about the libertarian economist Merig Roth his, his manifesto in defense of sound money.

And, uh, I don't know, do you know much about Rothbard? He's, he's way out there, really way out there. He's crazy libertarian fringe.

He also thought there should be a free market and babies. Um, but his arguments about the fed are, it's one of those, you really have to reckon with it. You really have to think about it before dismissing it as stupid. It is insane, but you really have to think about the philosophical case he's making, which is that we have this huge centralized state apparatus setting the price of money, and yet we say we have a free market. And there is just this big contradiction in our conception of ourselves as having a free market.

It's one of those things. It's like once you start thinking about that, it does change the way you look at the whole economic system. In the same way, there's one comment a friend made to me that just changed the way I looked at everything. It was talking about being a free marketer, as one does. And he said, there's no such thing as a free market unless there's a free market of labor. Back to the post, I just thought

Gödel's explication of what Rothbard was saying was very clear. And I think it's something that we have to reckon with. As conservatives, we have to be asking this question, how do we make sense of this?

Yeah. I'm sure that's right. Peter here, I just feel the urge. Milton Friedman, I'm sitting in the office. Milton Friedman used to be two doors down the hall from me. In the old days, I'd have said, Claire, just a moment. I've. It's a relatively fixed supply in the world. It's very hard to add to the supply of gold. Gold mining is slow, laborious, and so forth.

And let the market establish a price for gold and make the dollar based on gold again. And Milton always opposed that. Yeah, he and Rothbard had a rivalry there. Right. I just, I cannot reconstruct the arguments because I just sort of read it all and thought it through once, but it was so many years ago it's gone. But you're exactly right. It's a basic point, and one does have to contend with it.

It would also be good if one could remember what one felt when one was contending with it. I love this phrase, by the way. I was chatting with a friend about free markets as one does. All right. I'm in France now.

I had an old quote by Charles Merrill, I think. I think it was Charles Merrill who was the founder of Merrill Lynch and he – one of the founders of Merrill Lynch. And someone asked him something and he said, look, there's three things in the world. The three concepts, three things in the world I will never understand. How money works, the concept of the Holy Ghost, and my son Charlie. And those are the three things you get out of it. I love the idea that it was just his – his first thing is how money works. I understand how money works.

Yeah, money – but how money works. I understand how money works. Yeah, but how money works is complicated. I find that normally it ends up – you end up sort of all the way to the edge of the cliff and then about 20 yards. There's 20 yards of treacherous sort of free fall down to the rocks below. And then on the other side of the 20 yards is another meadow and if you can just sort of roadrunner style run across it and not look down, that you will understand how money works. But if you – at any point in that moment, in that space, you stop and look down, you fall like the roadrunner down to the ground in a pump of smoke. That's my theory.

I don't know if it's an economic theory or I'll ever win a Nobel Prize for it but I suspect that it's shared by more people than not. Well, it's a lot of leisure demand in the whole system. Yeah, right. I mean that's the one thing that I think – we don't have to get into this now. We're sort of the end of the podcast. The one thing that the jittery – I mean the jittery markets of the past two weeks, we seem to be sort of entering – there's that moment if you live in California, there's no particular seismological physics behind this I'm given to understand. But the idea is – first of all, they always say, oh, it's earthquake weather, which

doesn't exist. But certain – if you have a series of small tremors, you think, okay, well, it's getting ready for the big one. Well, it's releasing pressure and no one can ever tell you which one it is. And no one can tell you which one it is. But everyone kind of believes deep down or at least they go about their day deep down believing that, okay, this is the drum roll for the big one. And it's hard to go through the past two weeks, the markets the past two weeks, and

you sort of see what's happening in China and see what's happening in Europe and see what's happening here and not think, well, when the big – when stuff happens in financial markets that's bad, it usually happens around – We've been traumatized. Yeah. It usually happens around this time of year, right? Right. So so let me just go. So so so in order in order to get out of this on a high note, let me go around the around the call and make sure that we're all still optimistic about the next eight weeks at least. Tom Meyer, do you think we're think we're in trouble for the next eight weeks or do you think we're OK? Hmm. That's a really good question. Okay, that's not the noise I wanted to hear. We're good for the next eight weeks.

Come on. We're great. We'll make it eight weeks. I'll give Claire that. I'm not worried the world will disappear in the next eight weeks. All right, so Claire says yes. You say kind of yes. John Gabriel? I'm just stocking up ammo. I don't know about you guys. Okay. Peter Robinson up in Palo Alto, the West Point capitalism. You got all those billionaires driving their Teslas and their McLarens around. Are they jitter my friend Peter Thiel, I've known Peter for goodness, over 20 years now.

And even as he has amassed a personal fortune worth over $2 billion, he's been depressed almost every time I've seen him about the state of the world. Everything is always falling apart but he's doing fine. And that's pretty much the state of the world. Me? No, of course. I'm more than comfortable. But the world, that's roughly the state up here. That is a perfect way to sum up the conservative government. Hey, editors, thank you for joining us. Thank you, Claire. Always a claire thank you thank you john um

thanks everybody and thank you thank you james and i guess right around now uh troy senix is experiencing unspeakable pain that's okay he'll get over it or maybe he's not maybe he's just anesthetized into oblivion that's also happy land exactly right uh james lilacs is probably looking at a gigantic uh paper mache pig at this point or something, whatever happens in Minnesota State Fair. Peter, this was fun. Let's do it again. Yes, it was fun. And say hello to the little old ladies in the lobby, Rob.

I will do that on my way out. Please remember that this podcast is brought to you by TheGreatcourses.com and harrys.com. And visit the Ricochet store. Lots of great Ricochet swag there. And also, if you've enjoyed it, go to ricochet.com. Sign up. Become a member. We really do need you.

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30 free days, so there's absolutely no risk to you, and we will see you in the comments. Next week, fellas. Bye. Bye. Bye. Next week. When I need motivation My one solution is my queen

Cause she stay strong, yeah, yeah She is always in my corner right there When I wanna All these other girls are tempting But I'm empty when you're gone And they say, do you need me? Do you think I'm pretty? Do I make you feel like cheating? I'm like, no, not really

Cause oh, I think that I found myself a cheerleader She is always right there when I need her Oh, I think that I found myself a cheerleader She is always right there when i meet her she walks like a model she grants my wishes like a genie in a bottle yeah yeah cause i'm the wizard of love and i got the magic wand all these other girls are tempting but i'm empty when you're gone and they say, do you need me? Do you think I'm pretend? Do I make you feel like cheating? I'm like, no, not really. Cause oh, I think that I found myself a cheerleader. She is always right there when I need her.

Oh, I think that I found myself a cheerleader. She is always right there when I need her. Ricochet. Join the conversation. Ooh, she gives me love and affection Baby, did I mention You're the only girl for me No, I don't need a next one Mama loves you too Thank you.