The Ricochet Podcast - The Final Frontier

Episode Date: November 1, 2018

We’re a day early, but certainly not a dollar short as we tackle another busy news week. First up, Washington Examiner magazine editor (and the co-host of That Sethany Show) Seth Mandel on the shootings in Pittsburgh and the Mandel’s new life in D.C. Then, our good friend (and Ricochet’s Law Talk with Epstein & Yoo podcast co-host) John Yoo stops by to school on the the 14th Amendment and... Source

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Deeds and fees apply. See OnPost.com. We have special news for you. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Are you going to send me or anybody that I know to a camp? We have people that are stupid. I mean, I'm pretty good at estimating crowd size, and I will tell you, they look a lot bigger than people would think. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter

Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lalix, and today we talk to Seth Mandel of the Washington Examiner and John Yoo on Birthright Citizenship. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Bye-bye. Welcome to the Ricochet Podcast, number 423. The Ricochet Podcast is brought to you by the fine people at Burrow. Burrow makes clever, uncompromising furniture for modern life at home. And as the days get shorter and the weather gets colder,

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And by Calm. Calm gives you the tools you need to live a happier, healthier, and more mindful life. Ricochet podcast listeners can get 25% off a Calm premium subscription at Calm.com slash Ricochet. Well, usually this is where we stick in the member pitch, but people just speed past it, so we're going to drop it in the middle where you can't avoid it, where you all of a sudden will stumble across the reminder of your own guilt for not giving Ricochet your precious shekels.

We'll get to that, and Rob, make a note to yourself to interrupt something at some point and make that pitch. I don't know how I'll remember to do that. Okay, well, just the very fact that you tell people to do it or suggest that they should do it will make it happen because, as we all know now, rhetoric makes things happen. So what a fun week. Big question, of course, that all the cable people had, at least on CNN, is whether or not – not whether or not, but how much Trump was responsible for the rash of political violence that we've been seeing. Gentlemen, what do you think? Neither one of us wants to know.

I don't even – next question. This is just – this is – it's beneath us. No, the answer is none, zero. There's a disturbed man. The fellow who – Trump is no more responsible for the murders in the synagogue in Pittsburgh than Bernie Sanders was responsible for the disturbed man who shot Republican congressman and almost killed Steve Scalise. You just can't say that because a political figure is vigorous in attacking the other party that our politics are about as rough as they were in, oh, I don't know, 1980, 81. This is nothing new. You can't hold political figures responsible for that on the left or the right.

They're disturbed individuals. Done. Well, I'm going to engage in this terrible business that you hate, Peter, but I just feel like I should engage in some of it. All right. This was – first of all, I had a lunch with a friend of mine yesterday, and we were talking about this. And he said, well, it's like – how do you interpret the thing that happened a few weeks ago in Florida? And I sort of looked at him like, what? He said, remember there was a mass shooting in Florida at a stadium when they were playing some sort of video game event? I was like, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Like that's where we are now that we forget these things about six weeks later. But I thought that was interesting. But I would just say this, that this is a specific kind of an event because it's anti-semitic and i think to shriek and point at the president united states um even this particular president even this president who was sort of wishy-washy mealy-mouthed uh weasel wordy uh about uh charlottesville is to miss the point which is that if anti--Semitism is on the rise on the right, it is maybe five, ten years behind its rise on the left. I'm not trying to say the left did it, but the idea that there's some kind of –

we're waking up to the fact that there's sort of anti-Semitic literature, anti-Semitic movement and anti-Semitic violence, and it starts now because we're talking about the – somebody on the right. I think it's a mistake. I mean I've noticed it on the left. I think we've all noticed it on the left. And we – and I think in terms of the media and the way we – our sort of politics, we've sort of allowed that to sort of go and allowed that to grow and we kind of maybe looked at looked at it you know look it wasn't right wingers who said that the jews got uh all the jews got an email on september 11th

don't go to work it that wasn't right that wasn't on the right right but it was sort of like ignored and um patronized and sort of you know the typical white progressives had you know patting the head of what were in many cases predominantly black radicals. Some of them were members of Congress. These are the seeds that we planted or we allowed to grow, it's a mistake to point to – a mistake to say that this all started on an election the day after the election in 2016. That is just not only not helpful but it's a willful distortion. You're right. You're right.

You're right. You're right. Anti-Semitism is a particular kind of wickedness or evil or even sickness. It has historical roots that go back centuries and it has to be facedown in a particular way. What frustrates me, my frustrations don't matter here, but just for the record, let me simply state, Donald Trump is the president of the United States who actually moved the capital of the embassy of the United States from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as Congress had, according to

statute that was enacted more than a decade ago. He's the one who did it. He's as pro-Israel as can be. He's a New Yorker. New York has a large population, a large Jewish population. You can't be a builder in New York. He has friends in New York. You can't do business in New York for three or four decades as he did. If you're an anti-Semite, people would have known it by now. Moreover, final point, just to put this away, his daughter married an Orthodox Jew. Jared Kushner is an Orthodox Jew. She converted to Judaism and they are raising their children in strict religious Jewish observance. And Donald Trump is proud of that. So I just, the notion that this outburst of antisemitism should be laid at the feet of Donald Trump is just, it's, it's, it, it's,

it really, in this political season, I keep thinking I can't get shocked again. This is shocking that anyone would try that when it's so obviously untrue. Well, it's also so disingenuous. Yes. I mean, you can't know better. All of that. And if you're interested in investigating the rise of anti-Semitism in America of the past 20 years, you do have to start 20 years ago, or at least on September 11th. You have to start in an inconvenient place if you're a progressive media personality. And nobody really wants to do that.

What they really want to do is any weapon to hand, grab anything that happens, and smash Donald Trump over the head with it, which is so bizarre to me because there's so much legitimate stuff you can complain about Donald Trump. But yes. Well, the left will tell you that the reason that Donald Trump moved the embassy was not because he had any particular fellow feeling for the Jews or for Israel, but because he was buying off his evangelical base, which believes that Jesus Christ will be back any day now. And this is what they're all about. So that's all that was. There was no principle there whatsoever.

I'll also tell you that there was a huge rise in anti-Semitism after the election, specifically relating to the followers of Donald Trump. Well, okay, look, there were some random alt-right lulz-seeking pee-pee memers who, yes, would send out horrible, absolutely dreadful things because they love to shock and they believe in nothing. And they want to show people that they're unshockable and that they can't be shamed. And so, yeah, they'll trade in anti-Semitic, anti-black, all sorts of ridiculous imagery just to show that they're anarchical, man, and back to 4chan and 8chan with you.

There was also a spike because you had two incidences. One, a guy in Israel who was phoning in a lot of bomb threats to synagogues, and two, a writer, I believe, for The Intercept who was trying to do some stuff maybe to get his girlfriend in trouble. But if you look at all of this rise, this 60% rise in anti-Semitism, you can ascribe a lot of it to those two guys. That doesn't mean it isn't there. It is there. There are people on both stripes, right and left, who hate the Jews for the usual stupid ancestral meaningless reasons. And they can be anybody from somebody who grew up in northern Minnesota and never met a Jew in their life and can't help but point out when they meet one, that's a Jew you know. I mean, I know people who are on the right who are – who have longstanding ties to the old country and have brought with them Polish hatreds about the Jews. I mean it's there. It's deep and you can't deny it.

But whether or not it's now bds people who have all the countries all the countries in the earth they've decided to find this one right here remind us what bds stands for uh it's it's uh it's the b is for it's divest oh what it's just for the best sanctions right and sanctions um i did the you're right the b just absolutely slipped my mind um Just for the best sanctions. Right. Investment sanctions. You're right. The bee just absolutely slipped my mind. But I'm sorry. You're on a beautiful role.

I just want. Sorry. And I appreciate I appreciate both of you throwing me off track with a pedantic little question. Well, because I actually really did want to know. So do I. But I mean, I buy out. Boycott. Boycott.

Boycott. There you go, boycott. So here you have this small little country which they've focused on, and they'll tell you that it has nothing to do whatsoever with the constituent elements. No, it has to do with colonialism. Like, there's no other examples of that to be found anywhere on the Earth. But that they can get that much energy

and make that many signs and organize themselves to punish this one country, which in its region is the only one that holds up and organize themselves to punish this one country, which in its region is the only one that holds up the liberal values to which they supposedly adhere, suggests that there might be something in there about the Jews. I'm just saying it's possible. So, you know, the idea that Donald Trump is getting out there with these dog whistles, the whole dog whistle thing is a way of saying you can't use this word anymore. We have decided what you mean when you use this word.

If you criticize George Soros for any reason whatsoever, that's anti-Semitic. If you criticize globalism for whatever reason, what you really mean is rootless cosmopolitan. You can't use that phrase anymore. If you say nationalism, we know what you mean in other words they have done a brilliant job of looking into the hearts and minds and psyches of the right wing and deciding for all of us what these terms mean and i'm sorry i'm not going to take it i'm i'm not going to get my newspeak dictionary and find that these words are no longer able to be spoken because supposedly it's a dog whistle. BS. BDS. Anyway. Beautifully done. Yeah, I mean, look, especially horrible and I don't know what – savage and unacceptable as an attack at a place of worship. I mean it's – what happened in Charleston a couple of years ago and what happened in Pittsburgh last weekend, I mean these are almost sort of – I mean look, any loss of life is terrible, but these seem even more shocking and unacceptable.

And any investigation of the reasons why these things took place, aside from a madman, but I think it's fair to have some investigation onto this. Of course it is taken has to take in a lot of has taken a lot of information and a lot of people and there's a lot of culpability and it it sort of uh it upsets me what sets me on one level because i here i am defending donald trump um but it also upsets me because it seems like nobody is really interested in what's happened in the past 20, 25 years. Nobody is really interested in talking about even Jeremy Corbyn in London or Louis Farrakhan being sort of mainstreamed in this country or crackpot views on conspiracy theories from certain politicians who are unassailable in the media being sort of like poo-pooed. All that stuff is part of this big trend to scapegoat a tiny group of people, a statistically

trivial, let's be honest, number of people in America. It just seems to me sad. It's sad that there's no – I mean I guess I have to relearn this lesson all the time. But it's just sad to me that there's just zero interest in the media who claim to be about truth and claim to be about finding the facts and claim to be standing up to a president who twists the truth. There's just no interest and there's no enthusiasm. No, of course not. That's because history began the day Donald Trump came down the golden elevator. Prior to that.

Never mind. It's ridiculous. There's nothing better than the phrase golden elevator. I got to say. But you're right. Am I right? I mean, we don't talk about these things because they're inconvenient and people wave them away. And history begins essentially when when the left says it wants to.

Prior to that, all that stuff is irrelevant unless, of course, they find it useful, in which case they'll bring it up. But no, you're right. I mean we don't look back on that. I mean the fact that Louis Farrakhan still has himself a Twitter account. But it's not just going after a synagogue. There have been church shootings as well. There have been whacked out stupid racist white men going into black churches and shooting them up as well. And it may be either because those are soft targets and they know that the people that they hate for their stupid reasons are going to be assembled there and generally defenseless.

But it may be also that they've absorbed something in the general society that a church is not a place of sanctity. A church is a place where a bunch of snake handling godbothers get together and talk to their mythical man in the sky. And as we've all been told, rational, sensible people don't believe in that. So the secularization of the country may have something to do with the targets that they choose either. But that's maybe just some sort of weird idea that I threw out there that occurred to me. Peter, do you think so?

Hold on. Go on. Yes. No, I'm in awe. We we got we got far more useful material out of a question that I was sick of. I was ready to just move on after 30 seconds. That was wonderful, boys. You know, we have to tell everybody.

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you know your fabrics, you know what that means. Soft, hand-woven fabric covers, plush inserts. Oh, I love mine. It is sitting in a room where, frankly, after I realized this is a good reading chair, I went out and bought more books, just so I would always have something there to go to my burrow to have fun, to read in comfort. Get your living room ready for fall. Save $75 off a new sofa by visiting burrow.com slash ricochet for $75 off your order. That's B-U-R-R-O-W dot com slash ricochet to get $75 off your order. And thanks again to Burrow for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast Seth Mandel, newly minted executive editor of the Washington Examiner Magazine and also the co-host of the Sooner Return, we hope, That's Sethany Show podcast right here in Ricochet.

Follow him at Twitter, of course, at Seth A. Mandel, where you can actually see him argue with his wife. It's fun. Hey, Seth, welcome. Thank you. We've been talking about the shooting. We've been talking about anti-Semitism before you got here. And whether or not Trump pours gas on the flames. Here's a recent tweet I want you to respond to. And don't you love it when

people say, hey, you there in journalism, here's something the president said. It's always... It's 23 hours of our 24-hour day. I know. It's like getting a pie in the face with a couple of rocks in the bottom. Here's the tweet. There's a great anger in our country, capital C, caused in part by inaccurate and even fraudulent reporting on the news.

The fake news media, the true enemy of the people, each capitalized, must stop the open and obvious hostility and report the news accurately and fairly. That will do much to put out the flame. A lot in that. So, go ahead. exactly but it's it's a it's absurd and i i don't know uh i don't know what the argument is in favor of continuing to tweet stuff like this so it's just you know there's no there's no real i don't really see any defenders of this kind of style of of provocation it's just he does this and i think that we've gotten ourselves accustomed to it and it it's Trump being Trump, and it's just the way things are now. But of course it's ridiculous, and of course he should stop, and it makes no sense. Seth Peter here.

If we remove one phrase from Trump's tweet – excuse me. I've got a cold. Sorry about that. If we remove the phrase enemy of the people, so it simply says is great and angry in the country caused by the fake news media, they must stop the open and obvious hostility, report the news, so on and so forth. So if we delete the phrase enemy of the people, okay, then? I think that there's a real problem of timing here and that we're watching. This is in the midst of the recurrence of political violence in America. We're not at, it's not a tidal wave yet. This is not 1968. This is not the weather on the ground.

I don't want to overplay it or exaggerate it, but we're grappling with a kind of radicalized, lonely, lone wolf-ish type of actor here in a couple of instances. And so when, when you, when you tweet, the anger in the country is caused by X. What people think you're talking about is the anger that they see everywhere. It's not, most of the country doesn't live on Twitter. You know, he went, when, when the president, when there's, when, when the president tweet like that is bookended by political violence, when he says the anger, we don't assume he means people calling each other names on Twitter. We assume he means the anger that is spilling over into private – public anger that is spilling over into private places. Well, okay. Hey, Seth, it's Rob here. Thanks for joining. I mean, the president hasn't – I mean, aside from, as we said earlier, the weasel wording he engaged in after Charlottesville, the president really hasn't engaged in that. I mean, the press being the enemy of the people, he didn't invent that theory and he didn't really, I don't think he really could be said to amplify it. I don't think that trust or faith in the press has gone down so precipitously with his

presidency as it was, you know, heading down there anyway. I mean, what are you really going to, what can you really blame this guy for? Yeah, he's, he, he, he mixes it up and he's a trash talker. But can you really actually point to that rhetoric as leading to Charlottesville or leading to Pittsburgh or, for that matter, Charleston a couple years before. I mean it seems like a stretch. It seems like that anything bad that happens, we're sort of pointing to this guy. Listen, full disclosure, I think he's a clown in the White House, but we're sort I tend to think that he should stop doing certain things that he does, even though I don't think they're responsible for every act of political terror. Yeah, me too. I mean, I agree. respond to the tweet you know my my i think the tweet is silly and i think the the and i think that um if pipe bombs were delivered to cnn i mean i guess they were addressed to brennan accidentally whatever it is but but the point is when you know when when there's when there's all

this anger at cnn and somebody sends pipe bombs and it's scary um it's um it's not really appropriate to then say uh you know boy that's too, but if they weren't the enemy of the people, whatever. It doesn't mean he causes pipe bombs being sent to CNN, but it's very clearly salt in the wound at a moment when people are scared. So it's, you know, he's not, he's not, it doesn't make him a terrorist, but it's also not appropriate for the president to engage in baiting, you know, the scared victims of threats or violence just because it doesn't cause more violence. Okay. Can we, can we get to, can we get to, can we put aside all the high mindedness for a minute and just get to the crass, tacky political stuff? Yeah, I love putting aside high-mindedness. Yeah, exactly.

It's Thursday. It's too late in the week for high-mindedness. Yeah, but it is Thursday. We are how many, four days, five days, six days from election, from midterm election, which is going to be closely, closely contested in a lot of places. Does this stuff help or hurt? Does it help or hurt Republican candidates, you mean? Yeah, Republican candidates, the president standing in general. I mean I think we can dispense with the sort of the – as Marco Rubio would say with the fallacy that these midterm elections are not nationalized they are now they've been nationalized for I think at least the past eight cycles that I can remember um does the president's tweeting does the president's

response to Pittsburgh does the media reporting at Pittsburgh does the media reporting of the pipe bombs does that have any effect on the midterms and if so what i think that the president's standing has a a different effect on republican candidates in the house and in the senate so i think you saw you almost have to take it race by race i i've noticed for example a a mistake that sometimes people fall into is after the Kavanaugh hearings, which were brutal, there was a poll that said that it did seem like a very small minority approved of the Republicans handling, this is how the polls are worded, handling of the Kavanaugh

nomination. So a lot of people on the left were then jumping on that and saying, oh, see, the people who said the Kavanaugh fight was actually going to energize Republicans and thus help them in the midterms were wrong because the people don't like the way the Republicans handed it, but handled it. But the truth is that that is too nationalized, the way to look at it. And in fact, in certain cases in the Senate, you have blue dog Democrats or moderate Democrats running and trying to dance around the issue of Kavanaugh, where as in the House, the House is much more given to national waves. The House members tend to be much more anonymous to their – even to their constituents. Unfortunately, it's such a state of specific knowledge and education. So it's different in both houses. that he's hurting the Senate because I see Democrats in the Senate who are up for re-election who are avoiding taking him on head-on on some of these things. Quite the reverse. Claire McCaskill

is arguing that he's being too soft on the caravan coming. That's exactly right. That's a perfect example. Hey Seth, Peter here. What's it like to be in Washington? It's swampy no it's it's uh i i yeah i lived in washington once before and uh but it was just for a year uh so i'm not completely unfamiliar with it but it's an it's a nice looking city it's uh it's i haven't i have nothing – the thing is that I came at the perfect time for you to ask that question because I hate the heat and humidity. So you asking me this question in late October is perfect because yesterday was the warmest day, I think, since I've been here, and it hit 65 degrees. Ah, good.

Okay. So that was, you know, this weather, I could do 65 degrees with a nice breeze year round. So we'll see when it gets into the hot weather. That's the climate. Here's what I have in mind is more the political journalistic climate. You make no secret on Twitter of disliking the president. At the same time, you make no secret that you are a

thoroughgoing conservative. So trying to be conservative and keeping some distance from the president, that's sort of possible up in New York. But in Washington, do you find that position harder to maintain? It's too soon to tell, I think, is the way to go. I've only been down here for a couple weeks, and so it's too soon to tell. But in terms of environment, the thing about it is that Washington is, because of the existence of conservative media and conservative-leaning think tanks and policy groups, and of course all the staffers for Republican representatives and senators, and of course when Republicans have the White House, there actually is in Washington, if you work in politics, there is a fair amount of Republicanism around you. It is not quite like being a secret society or some sort of

underground movement in Washington. But that's if you work in this industry. So in this industry, you actually don't feel so much like a fish out of water in Washington. The challenge in New York is that New York is media-centric, not politics-centric. And of course is in general a very liberal place. So you are much less likely to bump into prominent conservative figures on the subway or at the fruit stand or whatever it is. And there really aren't the same sort of circles to move in. So in that way, Washington is easier in that sense than New York. But the out that you have in New York, the escape hatch, is that because it's not centered on politics, it is very possible to have all sorts of conversations with people that have nothing to do with politics. And in Washington, that's a bit tougher.

Okay. So last question for me, we've got what, four or five days until the elections. You've only been there for two weeks, but what's the mood in the Washington Examiner newsroom? Resignation, Republicans going to lose the House, pick up two seats in the Senate, split decision, and we just struggle along for the next two years? Or is there a sort of anticipation that nobody really knows? I guess what I'm coming to is the polls show, the polls have suggested for two weeks, Democrats narrowly win the House,

Republicans pick up one, two, maybe three seats in the Senate. And that's what the polls have been saying consistently for two, maybe even three weeks. Is there a feeling that the pollsters may just not get it this time, that there are enough hidden Trump voters, that they can't predict the turnout, that the polls just may be less reliable? And is Washington bracing for a possible surprise, maybe a big surprise on Tuesday? I would say no, not really. Just if you're asking my impression of the atmosphere that I'm around, I think that the general feeling is that that is still the safest bet by far. Of course, it's possible that there will be a surprise, but it seems like the safest bet, yes, is the Republicans holding the Senate, Democrats taking the House. And I think the mood here is less about whether that's

a victory or a defeat for Republicans and conservatism and more about, you know, this is a newsroom and you have people here who are, I think, really interested in seeing what happened. And, you know, in covering the new Congress, you're going to have this very interesting thing where if the polls are right and Republicans keep the Senate but Democrats take the House, you're going to have the Democrats now, instead of having ranking members on all these important committees, they're going to be chairing them. And Nancy Pelosi is going to be the speaker instead of a minority leader. And so they are going to have decisions to make.

And I think everybody here is really interested to see they can go one of two ways, basically. They can use their position on those committees to turn every issue into a Russia-style investigation, or they can use their power on those committees to help the president shape policy or to shape policy in a different direction and force the president to have to either compromise or run against them. And I think that the answer is, you know, it's sort of like when the dog catches the car. If the Democrats talking about impeachment and talking about investigating, investigating, investigating, if they take the house what actually happened at that point versus a lot of Democratic leaders who believe that you can get Trump to come through with say an infrastructure bill that Northeastern Democrats have been waiting and for Godot for so I think that that's the

really interesting question what they'll actually do when they catch the car and the assumption is that they are probably going to catch the car. Waiting for Godot. Well, that's conservatives in D.C. I can't go on. I must go on. Seth, when I worked in Washington, D.C., I was in a newsroom. And after a while, I became known as sort of the conservative. But I was OK. I was not one of those. I was a good conservative. And I almost expected there'd be a little fence around my desk with a machine that dispensed, you know, corn so they could come up and feed me in my little intellectual petting zoo every time. I loved them. They loved me. Everything was fine. But what you mentioned before about D.C. having these conservative institutions, the think tanks, the well-appointed offices, I don't know what the examiner is like, but

I've been to some of these places. They're nice. That doesn't exist anywhere else in the country. There, you're, you had to have that sort of conservative presence institutionally doesn't exist anywhere else in the country. And it leads a lot of people to say that the people in DC have no, to use Rob's term, skin in the game, that they're going to be there no matter what, and that really they are part of the problem in the sense that, you know, we can tweet cruise ship emojis at them and diss them for having high-mindedness and looking at process and the rest of it. But there is a point because regardless of what happens in the election, no one's going to walk through the offices of the Examiner or National Review

or American Enterprise Institute and say, we're reducing by 30% now. We've lost, you know, there, you see what I'm getting at here? Because I don't. Yeah, I think it's actually... But how does it, how does this keep you from perhaps apprehending what's going on in the rest of the country? Right. Well, so it's a good question, and I think that the incentives are such that it's good for business in a lot of cases if you work your party gets drowned out in a wave.

But the truth is that you tend to see each side, when they are out of power, revert to a feeling of being under siege. And you would think that having the think tanks here means that you have a president and if you have a party that controls all branches of government, the think tanks, you know, would be thriving or whatever. how to go forward with and how to shape policy and stuff like that, it actually a lot of times helps to have a sort of bogeyman in the White House and somebody to direct that energy against. And so I think that's really the incentive problem, which is that you don't really have the same feel when you talk about skin in the game. You don't really have the same feel when you talk about skin in the game. You don't really have the same feeling of everything is at stake. At the same time, there's something good about that because then you don't have conservative reporters saying, oh, my God, if Republicans have to win because otherwise we won't have jobs. That's how it starts now. Five years from now, you'll be at the Palm looking at a bare space in the wall and saying, I think that my caricature would look very nice there.

Thank you very much. I've grown. I've grown since I've come to D.C. Seth, thanks a lot. We'll talk to you after the election. Enjoy the Washington Examiner cruises and if the Breitbart ship comes up alongside and hoists the Jolly Roger,

well, spit in your palms. Prepare to get some close-in knife work there. See you later. I have not yet begun to fight. Thanks, guys. Bethany, his wife, his delightful wife, has been talking about moving to D.C. and one of the things, wherever they are, that they find better grocery options. She's finding stuff that you couldn't find in the place before. And I will say that if you live in the burbs in D.C., you've got much better options for dining or for cooking at home, shall we say, than if you live in the burbs in dc you've got much better options for dining or for cooking at home shall we say than if you live in the district when i lived in the district we had this just

gosh awful safeway which stank of rotten milk and rats and had to drive way out to get anything close to fresh produce it's different now but even if i lived in dc right now and had access to trader joe's and all the rest of the places i still would like something that was a little bit more convenient than having to go and get the stuff and bring it back and watch it rot because I bought too much. Right, Rob? Yes. Oh, you checked out.

I'm sorry. I was on mute. I was listening, and then I was on mute. Since when do you go on mute when you suspect I'm going into an ad? This is how you're starting to throw me off. You're starting to bug me here. Honestly, because while you were speaking, I realized that at some point in this spot, you're going to say to me, hey, Rob, you just tried Home Chef, which I just did. And I was trying to rack my brain for the actual name of the recipes that I used last week, and I couldn't remember it.

And so I was momentarily distracted. I had it too. It was rackarily distracted. I had it too. It was a rack of brain. Listen, Coach, with all of the meal preparation options out there, how do you decide which meal delivery service is best for you? Well, home service is an amazing thing. You get a package. You get recipes. You get food.

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You can customize your date, and your box will arrive at your doorstop when you want it each week with recipe cards and fresh pre-portioned ingredients then voila you have a home-cooked meal in about 30 minutes they even offer five minute lunch options which is great if you're pressed for time see why their customers are raving about home chef people like like rob who in addition to the rack of brain head what did you have i had black bean chili which was delicious and uh And then I had – for now, I could not remember the name of it. But it was kind of a fall chicken stew with kale, which was very good too. The best thing about it – I mean this is going to sound strange – is that it was better the second day.

Like the black bean chili gets better. I mean like all those kinds of dishes, they're always better the second day. But this one was like, got a lot of flavor into it, but also that it, you know, I made a lot of it and I kind of ate it all through the weekend. It was great. There are a lot of these services out there, folks. What you want is flexibility and what you want is options. And Home Chef gives you those 16 different choices. So you can try it right now. If you don't like it, you don't like it. But at homechef.com slash ricochet, you will get $30 off your first order. That's HomeChef.com slash Ricochet for $30 off your first order. HomeChef.com slash Ricochet. And our thanks to HomeChef for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And we welcome back now to

the podcast, John Yu, Emanuel S. Keller Professor of Law at Bolt Hall, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, and most importantly, the co-host of the wildly popular Law Talk with Epstein and Yoo podcast right here at Ricochet. His new book, of course, yes, he's got one, is Striking Power, How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War. That sounds futuristic. Are we talking Skynet-style stuff here or those crazy Boston robotics things that we see throwing boxes at people? Oh, it's my desire to someday combine scholarship and Star Trek. So, yeah. Well, I'm right there as long as it's not the new Star Trek, which is dreadfully horrible in all possible ways.

We can argue about that later. Yeah, later, not on the podcast. I like Star Trek. Oh, we will really. No, no, not on the podcast. I like when you start trashy. Oh, we will really. No, no, don't encourage him, John. Don't encourage him. I mean, I like the tech. I just don't like the look.

Hey, we've got pen and a phone stuff going on here. A lot of people on the right are saying, good, let's have an EO to get rid of birthright citizenship because then it will go to the Supreme Court and we can have this decided once and for all. And a lot of other conservatives are saying that's not what we're about. We're about passing laws, not statements from on high that get adjudicated by the court later. Where do we fall on this? Give us 15 words on birthright citizenship, yay or nay. I think birthright citizenship is clearly entrenched in the Constitution. And even if somebody could change it, it wouldn't be the president. It would be Congress because the Constitution specifically says Congress has the constitutional text. It's in the 14th Amendment.

The 14th Amendment says all people born in the United States or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. Notice this is the first time I've ever heard Peter recognize and obey a comma. I should co-host Richard Epstein.

No, because all the left, recognize and obey a comma co-host richard epstein because what everybody's been not every but the all the left the cnn the usuals have been saying donald trump is disregarding the plain language that's the phrase they keep using for the first time in their history the plain language of the constitution suddenly everybody's a strict constructionist but in this is one case when the language is genuinely not plain at all. All persons born in or naturalized in the United States, comma,

and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, comma. So we've got John Eastman who, as far as I know, is an extremely good lawyer and a fine law professor down at where is he? You can't even remember where he's a professor.

No, it's at Irvine. What's that place called? And he's saying, subject to the jurisdiction thereof, illegal aliens, undocumented aliens, whatever you call them, are not subject to the jurisdiction. They owe their allegiance to another

country. And then you've got Judge Ho, Jim Ho, James Ho, who I think is a friend of yours. He used to work for me. So what you've got is a layman like Robinson here who actually spent a piece of time yesterday trying to figure out what that phrase means. And I'm just stuck. So, John, you take the Judge Ho point of view. How is it that that ambiguous language has become in your mind firmly embedded in the Constitution? I wouldn't call it the Jim Ho view. I would call it the 200 years of American history view.

You look like you're falling right now. This has been the rule in America since the founding of the republic. There has never been a time except the other side, which I would call the Dred Scott slash pro-slavery slash Peter Robinson. See, we know how to argue about it. We've already lost. We've learned. We've learned. So for our entire history, the rule in America, which is exceptional, it is different from old Europe. Here, I'm really sticking it to you now, Peter. You're defending the old Europe rule.

So the rule has always been if you're born on the territory of the United States, you are a citizen. That's different from the rule in Germany or Italy where it's your parents' blood that determines whether you're a citizen or not. And so there was just a tiny period in our history where that was not true, which was the period between Dred Scott and the passage of 14th Amendment because the Supreme Court said, well, yes, that's true except for blacks. Blacks are born in the United States, but they're not citizens. That was one of the key holdings of Dred Scott, one of the factors that led to the Civil War. So that's why I call the 14th Amendment one of the key holdings of Dred Scott, one of the factors that led to the Civil War. So that's why I call the 14th Amendment one of the Republican Party's greatest achievements because the Republicans take over. They win the Civil War, and to prevent Dred Scott from ever happening again, to prevent any stripping of citizenship from anyone born in the United States ever again, they say all persons born in the United States.

Hold on, hold on. John, John. Okay, fine. But on your argument, they should simply have eliminated that dependent clause. It should simply read all persons born in or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States. You're diagramming sentences and that's going to make it.

Why? Why look? I learned this. I learned this from Justice Scalia. He spent 40 pages in the Second Amendment – in the Heller. He spent 40 pages on a dependent clause. I get to spend 30 seconds on it. So why did they include that phrase, comma, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof?

If in fact on the John Yoo point of view, it's totally extraneous. Trump and White are going to be making an appearance soon. This is great. I love it. So ad hominem. Ad hominem. Totally extraneous. Drunken white are going to be making an appearance soon. This is great. I love it. Add homonym. Add homonym. He's attacking me.

He's not dealing with the argument. Go ahead, John. You're an jurisdiction of laws. Those would be most importantly Indians. Indians at that time were not considered subject to the jurisdiction of US law. They were subject to Indian law and then diplomats and then foreign soldiers if they were at war on US territory. The reason why that language means what it does and not – look, if you were right, they should have said all persons born and naturalized in the United States who have no foreign allegiance because there was an earlier draft that said that, and they deleted it, and they changed it to this. The phrase subject to the otherwise, if that were true, people would – the only other way this text could work would be to say, well, you could be born in the US, but somehow not be subject to the jurisdiction of our laws. That means like a foreigner could come onto our land and just like kill someone,

and they would say, I'm not subject to the jurisdiction of your laws. It doesn't make sense of the way the language naturally reads. That's why the Supreme Court has read it that way. That's why everyone has read it that way ever since the passage of the amendment. amendment really trying to do if you take a deeper look at it is they wanted to remove from the normal political process who gets to decide who's a citizen or not because that's what would happen otherwise right if you suppose sure peter then what would happen is that the normal political process you'd have people fighting all the time out over who gets to decide who's an american citizen or not instead the i think the framers of this amendment, the Republicans and the Reconstruction Congress, they wisely decided the lesson of the Civil War was we shouldn't allow these things to be up to normal politics. We've got to put in the constitutional text a definition of who's a citizen.

Otherwise, then Congress could come in or a president and they could say, I get to decide and I'm going to decide what subject to jurisdiction thereof means, and I'm going to decide whose parents are citizens in order to justify your birth country. Okay, John. It's Rob here. I'm not going to take up the frankly doomed quixotic mission of Peter Robinson to out-constitutional scholar you. But I'm going to say this. You just made a slippery slope argument which I – one of my favorite kinds, by the way. Anything's slippery.

But couldn't you make an alternative alternate, an alt-slippery slope argument, which is that we are already at the bottom of that slope with a definition that is so broad as to include the children of people who sneak over the border and have children here precisely for those protections. I mean, can't you – couldn't you go back – I mean, were I there in that great debate adding the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, couldn't I say, you know what's going to happen when the population density increases to our south and the economic differences become enormous and Manifest Destiny reaches its apogee all the way to the coast of California? The idea of whether it's constitutionally acceptable or not or what the constitutional definitions are, it does seem like it's a little out of control, doesn't it?

There's a fair policy argument to say maybe the framers of this didn't foresee the conditions of the country. Go back to 1868. We still had an open frontier. The frontier didn't close until 1890-something. The West was still hugely unsettled. Los Angeles is a cow town. They couldn't foresee – people could come across the border settle the country. So you could make a good claim. Look, they didn't foresee that there would be a time when we would actually try to close our borders and only let in a million people a year out of a definition of which is complicated and fraught, right? Or that citizenship would be a thing that you could maintain while not living in that country. So you could be here for many years as a citizen of France. That I think they did foresee. So they just didn't realize the magnitude.

So there was a debate. So Peter's next question I think was going to be, okay, put aside the text. What did they say? This is what Scalia would want to know. What did they say when they were writing the amendment and fighting about it? So there was a debate in the Senate about this text, and so there's a senator from Pennsylvania, my home state, who was a restrictionist. And he said, are you telling me that some Chinese people could come into California, have a kid, and that kid would be an American citizen? And they said, could two gypsies show up in Pennsylvania and have a kid, and that kid would be a citizen? And the senator from California who's defending the amendment said, yes, that's the way it would work. And that guy got voted out of office in the next round because of a rise in anti-immigration sentiment at that – this is just 10 years. So my question to you is – I mean all right. So take away from the policy. Is it time in 2018 to rethink it or redefine it? I mean take aside the craziness of Donald Trump suggesting he can do it with a stroking pen, which he cannot.

Clearly I think – I accept your position that it would have to be really a constitutional amendment at this point because of the interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which is fine. We've had those before. Isn't it time now to have one of those, to rethink it? No. So think about the numbers at stake. So I actually looked this up because I didn't actually know what they were. So I think the estimate is roughly 250,000 children a year born in the US to illegal aliens. So they're the ones who are benefiting from this problem. According to estimates, there might be anywhere from 12 to 20 million illegal aliens in the country. If you're worried about illegal aliens in the United States, this is not the problem. So if I were, say, the allocator of resources for the united states if i was who's not you know and i

was efficient so i'm not president trump i was like some really good spirited public servant that i would not devote any resources of enforcement to this problem right the number one resource would be spent on stopping illegal aliens from crossing the border into the country correct like there's you know like the car like if you want to focus on the caravan or that's actually the number one, number two would be making sure employers don't hire illegal aliens. Number three at the very bottom would be checking nurseries at hospitals to make sure someone born here as parents are legally in the country. And that would be the,

I think that would be in terms of enforcement, the least threatening problem would be these two. It does pain me to agree with John, but of course he's right about this. Of course you're right about it. I love it. Could I get that? Wrong about the Eagles, right about public policy. Just walk me through the TikTok here. The caravan makes its way to the border. Yeah, so the caravan is on its way to the border. This is actually a really interesting question is what the army can do there because Trump sent 15,000 troops there now. Now, actually, this is also a product of the Civil War. It's very interesting. From Reconstruction. The military had occupied the south, and part of the deal from pulling the troops out was something called the Posse Comitatus Act.

Chalice Williams thought it would be a great sitcom title. Keep your day job, John. Keep your day job. It's better than Kevin can wait, my friend. Well, that wasn't my work, but I take your point. I take your point. So because of that – Well, you came to play today, I got to say.

That's delicious today. Bully, bully. I'm so cranky because the other guy went over long. And tell whoever. So if – so under the Paz Comptonis Act, the military is not allowed to enforce the law inside the United States. So actually if an illegal alien made it over the border and started running right in front of a soldier, a soldier is not allowed to arrest them because that's enforcing the law. So you could send 15,000 troops. You could send 500,000 troops to the border, but all they're allowed to do is support law enforcement. They're not allowed to detain or arrest anyone law professor and asking questions. But for sure, if the military is not permitted to enforce the law inside the United States, for sure they're still permitted to defend the border. So presumably Donald Trump could have 15,000 troops line up on the border and link arms and just keep the caravan out, right?

That is the interesting part. Yeah, I think that – Okay. I'm sorry. You were coming to that. Go ahead. I think the settled law is that they can't chase people down in the country and try to arrest them.

The interesting thing is could the president order them to stop anyone from crossing into the country? I would think yes, but no president I think has actually ever done that before. Could you consider the caravan or large numbers of people crossing the country like an invasion almost? I think – and does the president have this kind of inherent authority? It's not set out by any statute to defend the border. I actually think he can, but that would be – it's never happened, at least not not since i don't know not since the civil war so this would be a new i will say as a practical matter you for sure don't want 15,000 19 and 20 year old young troops one of whom might shoot somebody i mean it could be a horrible i don't know how you do it and ensure that it all takes place peacefully what happened once before uh it would

liberals will get their panties in a twist over it but you remember uh at the time in that case it must be wonderful go ahead in 92 or 93 uh they're genderless panties are 92 to 93 you remember there was a a like a kind of like a makeshift fleet of Haitians who fled Haiti because of violence and tried to land in Florida. And President Bush and then President Clinton actually had the Navy intercept them, and guess where they put them? Guantanamo Bay. Sent them to Guantanamo Bay and claimed that the military had stopped them from entering the US and they had no rights under immigration law and could be sent back. And this was in the Supreme Court, and 8-1, the Supreme Court upheld that and said the military could do that. And actually that's where Guantanamo Bay – that's why they had the facilities around when 9-11 happened to send people.

It was move-in ready. Hey, John, we've got to let you go before we do. Did you say move-in ready? Move-in ready, yeah. First month free. All mod cons. So, John, you brought up the Supreme Court. Let's talk about it just briefly. Have you heard from your friend and colleague, Brett Kavanaugh?

How's he doing? I haven't. I thought I let him wait there a little while before I gave him a call. Yeah? But I guess I should have just showed up at his high school reunion because I heard he was hanging out at Georgetown High School reunion the other day. Is that true? Yes. Oh, yeah.

They were all taking selfies with him at the homecoming football game. Holy moly. So my question – so the first – but as the new guy on the Supreme Court, you got to take the notes. Is that the truth? You got to take notes and stuff? There's some hazing there? And you speak less in the conference. So when they hear a case and then they retire to the conference room and they decide how they're going to vote, they go and order seniority. So his views almost will make no difference because everyone speaks before him. Right, right. Which is why Justice Scalia crazy, and that's why he started asking so many questions and became the big talker and interrupted Justice Brennan and Justice Thurgood Marshall from their naps. Got a great system. Last question, John, before we let you go, and I want to circle back to the caravan because a lot of people say despite the issues about what they're going to be facing on the border, Posse Comitans, all of those things, there's the question of how exactly this got started, who was behind it, who's enabling it, why they didn't accept refuge status in Mexico, whether or not there's another behind it, what we'll do when it's 70,000 instead of 7,000. All these questions are out there floating.

So I want to ask you, don't you think it's a bit odd for Star Trek Discovery to choose the J.J. Abrams Abrams new Trek visual style when actually it's set in the original Star Trek world, which predates any of those fancy things? I mean, really ship to ship beaming and holographic communication in the in the TOS era. I don't buy it. Look, I agree. This is Rob's area of expertise, but I thought the way to figure this out was to look at the movie grosses for the J.J. Abrams movies versus the Shatner era movies. And I didn't realize this, but the new ones make way more money.

I don't get it. You didn't realize this? No, so I looked it up on Wikipedia, which is always true. And so they've made tons more money than the old movies. So of course they were going to borrow it for their cheap show. Definitely watch when I'm out of the country because I won't pay for CBS All Access, Pat. Because you still have to watch ads. When you're out of the country, all those shows are free on Netflix.

Well, not all of us are out of the country as much as you are, Mr. Yu. Enjoy your continental swanning about, and we'll talk to you. Some parts of California are outside the country. That's quite true. How true. Thanks for joining us today, John. We'll talk to you later. Thanks, guys.

Bye-bye, John. And I do mean bye-bye. Hang up right now. We've had enough. true thanks for joining us today john we'll talk to you later oh thanks guys bye bye john and i do mean bye bye hang up right now we've had enough yeah boy you're a pain in the neck i'm a nice guy come on cut him off by the way i'm maligned john eastman whom i mentioned earlier on when we were talking with john you john eastman does not teach at Irvine. He teaches at Chapman University. Thank you. He used to be on the Hugh Hewitt show an awful lot. Yes, John, unflappable, genial, and anybody who wants to go up

on him intellectually one-on-one, I just want to refer them to an image I have of John at 2 o'clock in the morning at a casino on a cruise ship in a tuxedo looking more Bond-like than Sean Connery could ever muster. So good luck with that. And if you can keep

your wits about you and be calm at 2 a.m. when you're playing high-stakes poker, well, it is actually, Rob, it is. You have to have some kind of application on your phone at that point, but those don't exist. Well, I was getting the whole application part thing, but since you've stripped all the gears

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Get started today. Find out what it's like. Find out what Calm is all about by going to calm.com slash ricochet. That's calm.com slash ricochet. And our thanks to Calm for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And when it comes to anxiety, a lot of you may be shifting about in your seats saying it wouldn't be a podcast without Rob dunning us for money. Come on, come on, come on. Shave and a haircut. Do the two bits.

All right, Rob. Well, I don't think of it as dunning. I like to think of this as speaking truth. And here's, you know, they say, I'm going to speak my truth. My truth happens to be your truth if you're a member of ricochet we thank you for being a member along with us and if you're not a member of ricochet look there's there's really two kinds of not members there are people who like i don't want to pay i'm never going to pay i wish you just shut up i'm going to fast forward through this and i get it okay fine i'm not talking to you i'm talking to people who want to participate and want to be supportive of what we're doing here and want us to grow and expand, which is why we need you to join Ricochet as a member.

Those people are there and there are plenty of them and I know you know who you are. Keep putting it off and I need to ask you to not put it off today. Do it. For a limited time – sorry, I'm looking. It's not limited at all. We have the podcast listener tier at $2.50 a month. That's a great gateway drug to start your Ricochet career off. Go to ricochet.com slash join. We would love to have you at any level you want, but I really do – I'm not kidding around. We really do need you. We really do need to grow, and we need to make sure that we can make our payroll this month.

And those are the things that consume us here at Ricochet and we hope that you, if you've been putting it off, will not put it off today. Just go and do it and that will be great. And then I dream of the day I can turn and address the people who have decided they don't want to ever support Ricochet. They just want to keep listening and tailor a pitch to them. But really the people who could save this business right now are the people who mean – have been meaning to do it and have been putting it off. So – Good. Well, once people pay, then their conscience will be clear and then they can go back and listen to all 422 previous podcasts with a clear conscience.

Of course, you'll want to do that because you'll hear us predict things, all of which came true. There's nothing so timeless as political commentary before an election that happened four years ago. Just like there's nothing as timeless as talking about a holiday that's already gone that nobody cares about and it really should be left to children. But that said, Rob has some cares about and it really should be left children but that said rob has some observations about halloween in the village don't you do you mean the village in the new york sense or the uh prisoner show with yeah the prisoner show no no uh you know halloween in greenwich village is a huge parade which is actually kind of fun um and i i have two i mean i i tweeted this yesterday, but I still could conjure up the word picture. Handing out candy on the stoop, two things happened. One, more kids than I expected came up and said, not the Reese's.

I'm allergic to peanuts. Do you have a Kit Kat? So that happened a lot, which I thought was surprising, although I guess I shouldn't be surprised, uh, ran out of candy and had to run to the CVS to buy more candy because there were that don't know, nine or ten, maybe in a blue blazer and a white shirt and a red tie wearing a bright red MAGA hat and walking down West 11th Street. I mean, this guy was in the heart of the West Village and followed by his father, who was sort of lighthousing his head around behind him and mouthing the words, it's just a costume. It's just a costume. It's just a costume. Like the beacon behind this kid. I hope the kid didn't know that his dad was doing that because I feel like the kid felt like he was doing something really courageous but it was a it was probably the only um costume i thought really um

sort of won the night um and especially with the added safety behind it of the dad reminding all of me uh my neighbors and uh the people who live in the area that this is just a costume it's a halloween it's not you know you don't have to do that if you're running down the street with an axe dripping with fake blood and blood smeared all over you. That's not as frightening to people in the Greenwich Village as a young kid in a blue blazer and a mag hat. That needs a disclaimer, which I thought was great. And the second thing I would say, the third thing I would say is that despite Mayor de Blasio's manifest incompetence at running the city, the NYPD, they just nail this every year they just know how to do it they just it's super efficient the streets are closed right at the one that's supposed to be

closed the crowds are kind of sluiced into the right you know canal areas and little holding pens for the parade um there are regular um a street you know you have to cross sixth avenue their regular moments where like okay everybody crosses they have it incredibly well organized it's it's like a it's like a ballet and i so i have to take my hats off to the nypd oh good for them we had the usual parade lots of fun starting with very early with the tiny children being held by their proud parents and then moving on to the older children being watched from a distance by the sidewalk with their slightly harried parents. And then the end of the night, the sullen teenagers who smell vaguely of cigarette smoke with pillowcases because they just want what's left. There was one that heartened me.

I opened the door and I find five kids all dressed up as Marvel Disney characters. And they were African-American. One of them was Black Panther. We had Iron Man. We had Captain America. And we had two Disney princesses. And I started talking to them about their costumes. And it's a great thing.

It's an American thing. And it reminds you that all of this stuff that we have about how everyone's fracturing and tribalizing and not getting along together, I can talk to these kids for hours about their costumes and the mythology and all the rest of it. We have that in common. We're Americans. We're part of a great, wonderful pop culture that binds us more than these other things separate us, that we're told ought to separate us. Am I supposed to point to these kids and start saying this is cultural appropriation? Because Iron Man was my guy back when I was an onsen. I just can't stand it. We shared this. It was great. One of the little kids was astonished that I knew what Captain America's real name was. And when another one said, you know who Iron Man is, I was almost insulted. It's like I was reading Iron Man when I was your age.

When I was your age, Iron Man was gray. He wore a gray leaden suit practically and none of the pizzazz that you got going for you. So, yeah, Tony Stark's been my man for since ever, whenever. So everybody got candy and off they went. And I loved it. I mean, I just sometimes some Halloweens I grit my teeth and grind my molars because the kids come up and shuffle and don't say thank you. And I have to say, what do you say? Thank you.

But we had a pretty good, bright bunch yesterday, and it was a beautiful night. It wasn't cold, and it didn't snow. And I mean, everybody ready for the absolute vacant scrape of horror that is November, although today it's actually quite nice. Well, I will say I only did one mean thing to some of the kids who came late or the older kids. Two girls came, and they – I mean they were late teens. They were early 20s. They were probably NYU students.

They were kind of walking – they were basically walking down 11th Street to the parade, and they saw me handing out candy. They thought, oh, I want some candy. It was about 7.30. We were near the end, and they said, yeah, trick-or-treat. I thought, oh, I want some candy. And it was about 7.30. We're nearly near the end. And they said, yeah, trick or treat. And I said, wait, what are these costumes? And they kind of looked like, well, we're actresses. We're actresses.

So I said, all right, well, here's some candy. But if you're really actresses, if you're really in character, you're going to have to throw this up right after you eat it, which was a mean thing to say. But I thought, set the tone. Older kids coming to trick orreat deserve a little pushback. If they had really been actresses, they would have been wearing waitress costumes. That's right.

That would have been better. And they would have been walking clumped together because they're staying eight in a room in Williamsburg. They can't afford Williamsburg anymore, my friend. Yeah, I see. Pricey, pricey pricey how far out do they have to go then do they have to go they would have to go to Queens

they'd have to go to Queens at this point you know that'd be a great place to set a sitcom if only there was somebody I knew who could do

something wouldn't work they would not let it happen my friend they would not let it happen it's been done

listen folks this podcast was brought to you by don't you want to hear about my Halloween yes I do and I want people to stay around and listen to it. That's why I'm going to tell them about the sponsors first.

Nobody trusts – Let James – You know what? Excuse me. I don't mean to interrupt you, James, but I just want to say one thing. We should let – James should drive this bus. We should stop interrupting him. Of course.

It's rude. Leave him alone. erupting of course it's rude leave me alone well what i was going to say and i'm going to say is that the podcast was brought to you by calm burrow and home chef support them for supporting us and you will have not incidentally a wonderful sofa great food to eat and you'll be more relaxed as well what a great package that is if you enjoyed the show and can't imagine why you didn't head off to itunes leave a review as always say, the reviews allow new listeners to discover us because they look at this and say, oh, these people were interested and these interesting people

seem interested in these interesting people. And then what do you know? We get more listeners, we get more contributors, and Ricochet continues to grow and prosper. Well, it's been a great show, guys. I'll see you next kidding, Peter. Tell us about your Halloween in California. We have one kid at home who's in his 20s. He off to a party then my wife took our teenager to a party and i suddenly realized

that i had been left at home without any candy and i was so humiliated that i turned off the lights and closed the curtains right and went to my desk and put on bow's noise cancelers and sat out halloween working pathetic but it happened oh it sounds pretty good actually actually i'll give you a little bit more pathetic for whatever reason my fancy schmancy video doorbell decided not to work it just didn't i had it set up so that it would chime in the kitchen, this wonderful sound of ghosts and chains and the rest of it. Nothing. Okay. And so I would have to look at my phone to wait for a notification that says that somebody's walked in front of your doorbell. That stops working. So I start waiting now for my tap on my wrist because my phone is connected to the doorbell and the phone will tell me, my wristwatch will tell me that there's

somebody here, but that doesn't happen. The only thing I can get to work is the video feed. So I'm actually sitting about six feet from the door, looking at my phone at the video feed so I can see when people are coming up because nothing else works. My wife said, didn't we actually have a doorbell at some point? I said, yes, yes, we did. And the one year that one day out of the year that I actually need a doorbell, I'm reduced to staring at my screen to wait for black and white pictures of these larva-like creatures coming up the stairs to crowd around the camera in a fisheye view and demand that I give them confection. That said, I've fixed it. It was a routing error problem with the network and all that. We have no such problems here.

You've been delivered a podcast straight and clean as ever, and we thank you for listening. We'll see you next week. And gentlemen, Rob, Peter, we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 3.0. Next week, fellas, post-bit terms. Tonight my bag is packed. Tomorrow I'll walk these tracks that will lead me across the border. Tomorrow my love and I will sleep near the burnt skies somewhere across the border. We'll leave behind, my dear Pain and sadness we've found here

And we'll drink from the Brazos muddy waters Where the sky grows gray and white We'll meet on the other side There across the border For me you'll build a house High up on a grassy hill Somewhere across the border Where pain and memory

pain and memory have been still there across the border sweet blossoms fill the air pastures of gold and green Roll down into cold, clear waters And in your arms meet the open sky I'll kiss the salt from your eyes

There across the border Ricochet! Join the conversation. Tonight we'll sing the songs And I'll dream of you my corazón And tomorrow my heart will be strong And may the saints' blessing and grace Carry me safely into your arms There across the board Thank you.