The Ricochet Podcast - The Francophiles

Episode Date: April 28, 2017

We’re a man down this week, as James Lileks is in Reno (no, he did not a shoot a man there just to watch him die), but we have lots to talk about and two great guests to discuss it all with. Our old pal David Limbaugh returns to give us insight into his new book The True Jesus: Uncovering the Divinity of Christ in The Gospels. It’s a fascinating book in which David combines the four Gospel stories... Source

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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. My dear compatriots, you have brought me to the second round of the presidential election. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lalix, and I'm not here,

but you've got John O'Sullivan and David Limbaugh. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Bye-bye. Welcome to the Ricochet Podcast. This is number 350. Wow. Peter Robinson, we've done this 350 times. 350 of these ago, I permitted you to talk me into this.

Isn't that incredible? We should do a party for like 400, right? We should do a party. Anyway, this is the Ricochet Podcast. It's brought to you by the font. We have some very fine advertisers, and we really do mean it. We really do appreciate it. And the products are great.

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James Lilacs here and we don't have James Lilacs in today's state fair. We are just... I thought it was my job to trip you up as best I could.

All right, go ahead. I'm so bad at this. And we're also brought to you by ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter.com. You can post your job to 100 plus job sites including social media networks

like Facebook and Twitter all with a single click. And right now, Ricochet listeners can post jobs on to 100 plus job sites, including social media networks like Facebook and Twitter, all with a single click. And right now, Ricochet listeners can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for free by going to ZipRecruiter.com slash free trial. Man, I'm bad at this. I actually know people who've used ZipRecruiter and love it. I mean, I have not ever, you know, I'm in no position to hire anybody, but the people I know who've used it love it. But we are also brought to you, Peter, by the thing that 350 podcasts ago we invented, Ricochet.com. What is that thing? Tell us about that.

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the bunch of people who really work hard to keep this podcast network going. And we've added some more people to the podcast network. Should we just say quickly, welcome to weekly standard and Washington exam examiner. They have a family of podcasts. They're going to be part of our super feed. You're going to get all of those with your membership and you'll also get the,

you can participate in those conversations too. We're very excited. The substandard podcast. Have you heard that one? I have. It's incredibly. Yeah. I love it. Incredibly. Yeah, I love it.

It's like, I mean, honestly, Peter, do you understand anything that they talk about there? It's all like pop culture movies and stuff. Do you get, is it? I view, I view the Glock podcast as sort of my primer. And when I'm really feeling strong after listening to you and John and Jonah then I'll try out the substandard for a few moments just to dip into that modern world okay well

let's just jump in because we don't have this is we don't have the smooth contemporary jazz tones of James Lilacs to make sure this all goes swimmingly all we have is awkward old me where is James I me. Where is James? James, I think, is on

the State Fair, I think. I can't remember. I think it was the State Fair. Oh, sorry. He's in Reno. Oh, that's right. He's at a conference in Reno, right? A rare intervention by the Blue Yeti. Yes, he's in Reno. That's right. That's right, right.

James is in Reno. We hope not just to kill a man is to watch him die. It's the old Johnny Cash song. But he will return. And I'm sure he's listening to this and thinking everything about this podcast is horrible. Right. But before we have a couple of great guests. We have David Limbaugh coming up in a minute.

Before we do. And I know we want to talk to David about this, can we just start talking a little bit about the 100 days? Yeah, it's been a pretty good 100 days. Wouldn't you agree, Rob? Well, I mean, here's why this president is just so irksome to me in a way that only people that you wish well are irksome. You're coming along if you're only calling him irksome at this point. You are making your accommodation with reality. Go ahead. He is correct.

Because he's saying now, because this has not been a great 100 days. He's saying now, hey, what is this kind of ridiculous, arbitrary 100-day number? It's so silly. It's not meaningful. He told us all everything was going to be easy. Everybody in Washington is stupid. All these things he wanted to do were going to be easy and happen fast. And now he's realizing that they're not, and he's acting as if somehow it's everyone else's fault.

And this 100 days business, I agree with's fault right and this 100 days business i agree with him that i think the 100 days business is kind of silly but i would have gone around talking about how easy everything was and how dumb everybody was and how simple it was how clear it was when you then have to turn around and say actually you know health care is pretty complicated who knew it was so complicated right everybody knew it was so complicated our china and north and north korea who knew it was so complicated everybody knew it was so complicated. China and North Korea, who knew it was so complicated? Everybody knew it was so complicated. NATO, who knew it wasn't obsolete? Everybody knew it wasn't obsolete.

And all these things that he was going to happen, oh, they could happen in a minute, in a second, in a nanosecond, really, really easy. Well, they're actually hard. It's one of the reasons why sometimes you're careful about what you say and what you promise. This reminds me of the first question out of the box that I got. There was an event at the Reagan Library last week.

And the first question was, what's the biggest difference you see between Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump? Well, of course, there are hundreds of differences. But the immediate difference was that when he took office, Ronald Reagan knew what he was doing. He'd been governor of California for eight years. And Donald Trump, and I actually don't even mean this in a disrespectful or snarky way at all he just didn't know what he was doing how could he have known what he was doing you and i i think would take a somewhat different view of these 100 days i actually find them pretty impressive on balance chaotic yes infighting in the white House, yes. Flynn is out. Bannon's downgraded. This, that, the other.

Health care falls apart. On the other hand, I look at this and say to myself, wow, he and the people around him, I repeat, just didn't know what they were doing. And in only 100 days, they've learned an enormous amount. He's got Gorsuch on the Supreme Court. It looks as though within another week at the most, they may very well get another vote on healthcare in the House. He's got the entire agenda now shifted around to talking about how deeply to cut taxes, how best to cut taxes. And he's got, I say again, we mentioned this, but with those 59 cruise missiles

hitting that airport in Syria and dropping that enormous bomb on the tunnel complex in Afghanistan, and again, surrounding himself with extremely experienced, tough, knowledgeable generals at Defense, National Security Council, Homeland Security, he has put the world on notice that the United States of America will now take action. For somebody who was, let's go ahead and admit it. You're willing to admit it. For me, I have to push myself. But I admit it. He was a total amateur 100 days ago.

And the learning curve has been extremely steep. But he's marched up it in a way that I consider pretty darned impressive. Thank goodness this is only audio because I know you are closing your eyes. I'm not. Here's my big concern. Look, I agree with you about McMaster.

Tillerson especially, I think, was the surprise. Yes. By the way, did you hear? I don't know if you heard the news this morning. Tillerson gave this live this morning press conference and said – this is very, very bracing, but he's telling the truth. The risk of a North Korean nuclear attack on Seoul, South Korea is real. This is a very close phrase. The risk of an attack on Japan is real. The risk of an attack on the continental United states may not be far off we are not going to permit this to happen wow no no i think that's actually great that's great clarity that's that's better north korea but they are speaking north korea better than any recent president that's for sure yes and the uh the trio of um mattis tillerson and master. That's a great trio.

And so, yeah, we keep saying it. My fear is that we are entering now Obama land. Oh, how do you mean that? In that every single criticism of the president is defended fervorously by his supporters

in a bananas way it isn't just that he has been kind of a C plus president and has a disarray and needs to pull himself together and needs to really sit there and do the job and shut up and do the job he's magnificent unfortunately I was watching Hannity last night

and Hannity and Lou Dobbs those two will drive you crazy those two will drive you crazy I Those two will drive you crazy. But I fear that we are entering Obama territory where Obama supporters, it didn't matter what he did, it didn't matter how incompetent he was, it didn't matter how many failures he produced, he was always, not only

was he a magnificent genius, but also that it was somehow beyond the pale that you would ever criticize him. No one gave any quarter. And so the president got better. I think this president is better when people are tough on him in his circle. They are better when people are tough on him in the media, from friendly media.

I'm not saying it doesn't make any difference to him what MSNBC says about him. But they need to be hard, tough on him because this is not a person who is naturally good at this job. He just isn't. He doesn't understand it on ours i have a kind of parallel concern or had a parallel concern as we reach this hundred days and that is now we're talking about our own side basically you're talking about trump supporters that his fellow conservative center right who support him and you're saying that they're supporting him fanatic blindly this is the blindness that bothers you and what has bothered me through much of this 100 days is on our side the never trumpers who remain never trump again blindly not taking into account reality the way he's adjusting he's growing he's getting better i have the feeling that the two within the strange dynamic on our

own side was that the pro-Trumpers and the never Trumpers were forcing each other into harder positions, so to speak. This is, I think now Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs are, you know, what is, what is there to say? I think it's in their commercial interest to be very hard pro-Trump, almost in a Pollyannish way, set them aside. And you talk about Bill Kristol, who was a never-Trumper, in his tweets and his comments now. He's giving Trump credit for certain things. He's accepting.

So it's all going to be okay, Rob. I think it's all going to be okay. I hope so. Here's my larger concern. I know we have to do a spot, and I want to bring David in this really fast. My concern is that we now argue with each other, debate with each other, debate with each other, whether it's within the intra-right or inter-side, inter-aisle. We argue with each

other not based on facts or ideas or, I don't know, principles or something or evidence. We argue with each other based on what we think someone will think if they hear you, or what we think another audience might think and so people say oh you shouldn't be so andy trump you know just gives the msnbc crowd more oh i see more support or or or the never trumpers or whatever it is and that's exactly what the left said it doesn't help at all and it's also silly i mean on handy last night i hate to go after handy he replayed and replayed and replayed some exchange between Chris Matthews on Hardball and P.J. O'Rourke, actually, which is kind of a funny little exchange. But he replayed it and bills and laws and

bureaucrats in the doj and instead it's about some weird ratings battle we're having with msnbc and that is just wrong this is not true and i fear our president thinks that too somehow like the same people who say i just i i just I just whipped a bunch of people up on Twitter. Yeah, I really decimated their – I destroyed their arguments on Twitter. It's irrelevant. Twitter is irrelevant. What's relevant is actually getting health care passed. What's relevant is actually how are you going to move this behemoth of a tax bill and get it done.

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You don't really. Jump down, turn around, pick a bale of. There you go. Okay, perfect. Can you sing it? no, forget it you don't want to hear it let's bring in, because we're talking about the 100 days we're talking about Donald Trump

let's bring in our old friend David Limbaugh he's one of our favorite guests he's a columnist, author, lawyer ricochet listeners have heard of him a million times his new book is The True Jesus Uncovering the Divinity of Christ and the Gospels. That's his most recent book. I've read it.

It's really fantastic. He writes it like a lawyer. It's really great. And he combines the four gospel stories in a unified account, which is not often done. Actually, it's really interesting. And he guides readers on a faith journey through the four evangelist testimonies of the life of Jesus. Lots of great stuff in that book. I think, David, have you joined us?

Hello, hello. There he is. They always tend to put that stuff in the PR, promotional stuff. I'm a lawyer, so whatever. But I didn't really approach this book, The True Jesus, from a legal perspective. The first book, Jesus on Trial, was an apologetic and discussed my faith journey. The Emmaus Code, the second one, was about Jesus in the Old Testament. This is all about the Gospels, purely a faith-oriented book.

Okay, David. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Rob. So you read the Gospels, as they say, vertically, right? The idea of like you sort of line them up into a unified account so that you're seeing the whole story in one part rather than four different versions of the same story? Well, for purposes of this book, I consolidated them and combined them into a unified narrative. But I'm very careful to point out in the book that it's a fool's errand to try to totally harmonize the Gospels, and I don't intend to. My purpose is to introduce the beginning readers to all the events that occurred in the Gospels,

and I've got like 250 substantive events and speeches of Jesus, and most of this is verbatim, and then I do commentary along the way. When I paraphrase, it's always trying to stay true to the text. And of course I have an introductory section, the first four chapters, introduce the four Gospels. But the goal is to encourage readers to be inspired to read the four Gospels themselves, where they will encounter Jesus.

I know we want to talk about politics, but before we do, I just want to say... Who wants to talk about politics? Actually, I'm going to shut up and just listen to Rob, who has to check the GPS system to find a church on Easter. I do not. politics i'm actually i'm going to shut up and just listen to rob who has to check the gps system to find a church on easter go i do not i excuse me peter i was i participated wait yeah okay before we keep going david i want to say like i'm very excited to read it because i love the first two books this is a great sort of uh i don't know how you want to say it, like a great sort of personal discussion and exegesis, as it were, on your relationship to Christianity.

And these books all together are quite a remarkable whole volume. So thank you for doing it. Thank you. Just to be clear to Peter Robinson, just so I get my bona fides here, I not only attended the – I not only participated in the recent Holy Week, I actually, on Palm Sunday, essayed the role of pilot. Did you really? I did. I was a very good pilot too, Peter.

And which prayer book were you using? In other words – But, I mean, was this sort of old, oldie Englishy? No, no, it was the Passion. Yes, but I mean, which, who, King James? Yeah, that's, so that's where I still, that's where I, we Catholics have had the whole thing made. All right. I've got a guess here, Peter.

David, excuse me, David, questions. When you read the Gospels, when you read the Gospels, to what extent do you feel you're reading something that might be almost mythical, where these authors are putting down things they've heard from other people? And to what extent does it really feel and read like firsthand account? Okay. The first place, all four of the Gospels were written by people who were either eyewitnesses or close associates of eyewitnesses. And so they had firsthand experience or derivatively firsthand experience of the actual historical events. And I don't think they sound mythical at all. I think they sound down to earth. I think they sound how they would be written if you or I would write. These were ordinary people that Jesus picked,

and while they describe some supernatural events, and they unveil the most unique, sublime being who ever existed, Jesus Christ, the way these read is quite easy and natural. And I don't think it comes off as mystical. I believe fully that it's historical. And why don't they quite line up? There are very few, I'm trying to remember this, I think we could argue that there are no really flat-out contradictions among the Gospels, but the accounts are a little bit different in a few places.

Why is that? Well, because you have four different witnesses who have four different perspectives, and I think God superintended it that way. Matthew was Jewish and had a heart for his fellow Jews and wrote to them, and so he invoked Old Testament scripture a lot to relate to them and show that how Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament promises, prophecies, and covenants. And say, look, Jesus didn't give us a new religion. He's just fulfilling the religion of your fathers. And so he wanted to appeal to them on that level. He also presented Christ as a king. And so you'll see the authority, Jesus always speaking with authority,

and you'll see his lineage from the line of King David. And then the other gospel writers, John focuses on his deity, Luke on his humanity, and Mark on his role as a suffering servant. But they're all different, and we need all those perspectives because they give us different views. Early church father Irenaeus, if that's how you pronounce it, said we need the four gospels like we need the four directions of the wind. They're all essential. And David, another question here. C.S. Lewis argued in – well, he argued in a number of places, I think, but for sure in mere Christianity, that it is possible to argue, you may not be able to carry the argument with everyone, but it's reasonable to argue that Christ was the Messiah, a divine being. making outlandish claims that could only have arisen from a mental imbalance what it what you

cannot argue reasonably is that he was simply a very wise man one of the greatest of the prophets one of the finest of the teachers that makes no sense because he made claims that's that to divinity and people around him very very quickly likewise make claims that he was divine. Either he was divine or he was crazy and they were mistaken. But that middle position that he was just a very great teacher is not reasonable. How do you respond to that? I love that quote and that's why I put it in this book as well as at least one of my others. I just think people are to be exposed to it.

Oh, yeah. He said he's a lord, liar, or lunatic. Here's the thing we need to be clear about. Jesus emphatically claimed to be God, the Son of God. He's also fully human. We can't forget that. Some of the early heresies in the church were that he was not human. The Gnostics and the Docetists, they thought the world was dualistic.

The material world was all evil. The spiritual world was all good. If Jesus would have been real, a real person, he would have been evil, so he couldn't have been real. It's essential we understand his deity. But Christ in the book of John alone declared his deity so emphatically. I and the Father are one. He claimed the authority to forgive sins, said he was the lord over the sabbath and most essentially he

said before abraham was born i am i am is the name of yahweh in the old testament they knew he was claiming to be god which is why they picked up stones to kill him for blasphemy so one more question david um from me and then i know rob wants to come in and we also want to get your views on donald trump's first 100 days from jesus to donald trump but here's my here's one more question for you to the unbeliever you know what not even the unbeliever i'm thinking now in terms you and i both have kids of about the same age, so I'm very conscious of kids in there, say, just graduated from college a year or two ago, and you discover to your amazement they went through four years of a pretty good institution and never encountered the Bible and maybe have yet to read the Gospels from beginning to end. What do you say to someone who isn't particularly interested? How do you persuade them just to sit down and read it? Don't worry about it.

You don't have to devote yourself to go on a mission. Just read. How do you make that argument that you ought to just read the things? Well, in fact, that's exactly what my book is. Essentially an argument

to get, not an argument, but a plea to get people to read the Gospels and the Bible themselves, because only there do you encounter the true living Son of God. Let me just say something. You mentioned the mystical thing a minute ago. One thing I will say, there is no person depicted in all of literature who is as sublime, unique as Jesus Christ.

And when you read the Gospels, his divinity jumps off the pages in a way that you can't find anywhere else. Fiction writers couldn't have created this being unless they were perfect, and they're not. And it speaks for itself. But what I've done in this book is try to introduce people to a lot of the things that the gospel talks about so that when they read it, they'll be less intimidated. They'll have a jump start.

We Christians are supposed to help fellow Christians. We're supposed to teach each other. The Bible can be difficult for some people. It's easy in some respects, and it's deep in others. I want to accelerate people's learning curve and share my passion with people about the Word of God and about Jesus Christ and hope that that is contagious. I would just implore people to give it a try. But if you read the book and other books, there are books about Jesus and about the Bible. There are no substitutes for the book itself, but they will help. It's like I consider this kind of Sunday school

writ large. I like to teach Sunday school, and I try to help people learn. People have helped me. The books I've written on Christianity are the books I wish I'd had available to me when I was trying to accelerate my own learning curve.

Well, that's great. As I said, I'm a fan of all the books, and I'm glad you're continuing in sort of the series of this. They're great. I can't wait to read it. Can we dispense with divinity for a minute and higher purpose and talk about gritty and awful grubby human politics? Into the all-truths women category?

Right. You said you were going to talk about Trump. What's the big deal? What's difference okay all right uh so i think i get it david uh give me a give me a grade 100 days give me a grade for this this president um let me just throw something out at you okay i'm pretty direct as you know and don't duck questions but what i really have have become a little bit bothered by is our obsession with polling and to evaluate everything on a daily basis for example and i don't fault you for the question obviously but when when the health care bill didn't go through the freedom Freedom Caucus, I think, largely blocked it. I don't think Trump was of a single mind on this.

I don't think he could decide whether he wanted a socialistic or a free market plan. I mean, in his mind, it was free market, but I don't think he fully understood. He's on a learning curve here. He's trying to learn. I'll give him credit on this, but I think he was kind of triangulating between Ryan and the Freedom Caucus and didn't know who to blame. But the real thing is he needs to get his own head around this whole issue and realize that to the extent that you have government intervention,

you reduce market forces and therefore reduce choice and quality and all that. So where do you include that safety net without messing up the free market? I know that's an overly simplistic analysis, but my point is I am glad that bill didn't go through, and I didn't say after it didn't go through, oh, gosh, the world's over. Trump's presidency is over. Because when it does go through, it will be a better bill. And people won't care that it didn't initially go through. So why do we play this game? We're always on a soundbite game, TV game. Everything's, you know, breaking news, breaking news. But none of this stuff that we call breaking news, so little of this stuff matters later.

I think Trump is doing a pretty good job, but we have got so many hurdles. The left is literally unhinged on steroids. They were so bad with Bush, people forget. They were going to psychiatrists. They are really nuts with Trump. And a lot of the country is trying to block what he does. So why don't you give them an F for their obstruction and give Trump a B? He's learning.

I think he's going to. He is learning. Well, you're echoing Peter Robinson, but let me just push back on that a little bit. This soundbite obsession. How dare you? I'm a guest. This soundbite obsession, this polling obsession, this rating obsession. Those are his obsessions not mine he was the one who told me it was all going to be easy to get to do it in a second that everybody was stupid

that all i alone can fix it he's the one who said we need him because he oh he's the only guy who can do it he's the one who claimed he could do it all in a hundred days and it's all going to be easy and simply clear and boy how stupid are you that you think it's complicated? Now, suddenly the world is complicated and he wants to blame somebody else. My concern here is that we're all codependents of this guy, trying desperately to apologize to him. We're turning into Obama acolytes, but just our Obama is now Trump. Everything he does is great and he's perfect.

And anybody who attacks him is somehow beyond the pale. You asked me ten questions in one, and that was very good. Yeah, yeah. I just hope I remember them. No, very good points, fair criticism, and that's one of my problems with Trump and one of my problems with people who initially supported him. You can't just automatically transfer the business model into a governmental role, especially not the President of the United States when you're restricted by the Constitution. So, yeah, he was naive if he thought he could get as much done as he thought he could get done. On the other hand, I do think I underestimated his ability to move some things because I disagreed

that the fact that he's an outsider made any difference. I think that's what I think is making him attractive and going to make him effective is not his outsider role, but his personality. The fact that he fights.

We have not had fighters. We've had people roll over and I'm sick of it. So I want him to fight. The thing is now, you say we are becoming like Obama. And I agree. Sometimes I feel like, gosh, am I going to be a cheerleader?

Am I going to be intellectually honest? Well, I always want to be intellectually honest. On the other hand, we are in a war in this country, and I'm not going to help the other team. I'm not going to help Trump do something I think is destructive. But I'm going to be slower to go after him in the way some people are because these are vicious people 24-7. Look at what they're doing to free speech. These people are rabid dogs if I made myself clear. I'm not kidding.

That's going to be my next question. My next question is are things better or worse or are we just yelling more i mean i've been following this of the free speech issues that are happening right now and college campuses and culture speech at berkeley getting canceled we're making more noise is that good or bad well um if we don't here's the thing the The left is making noise. Are we just supposed to shut up and roll over? I don't agree with this attitude. In fact, I reject the whole notion of bipartisanship. When has it ever existed?

Bipartisanship means let the Democrats have their way, and if you don't, the major media will say you're not bipartisanship. Here we go again, Peter, back to where we were about government shutdowns. All the squishes on our side said if we allow a shutdown, we'll get blamed for it. They never tested it. We ultimately didn't get blamed for it, and yet they still say we did. We still say we didn't, and we're always afraid of our own shadows. I am so tired of worrying about it.

We've got to do what we believe is right on some of this stuff. So wait a minute now, David. Are you saying that Trump has not been assertive enough no no okay all right he's not he's not a uh you know an ideological conservative so he isn't always going to incline in the direction that i want to by the way so you said something a moment ago which prompts me speechwriter that i am i feel a little impulse to make a little speech here. You said that he's constrained by the Constitution. I have to say at this 100-day mark, what I feel inclined to give an A-plus to is the Constitution of the United States.

Donald Trump comes in. People are worried today he's going to be an authoritarian. He's going to be a Mussolini. No, the courts say you can't do this. You can't do that. He obeys them. he discovers the way the town works he gets rid of flynn he brings in some people who actually are more sober and here you have obama eight years of obama and i agree with you david that the left has moved farther and farther left but the country has fought back the democratic party is at its lowest ebb in it well it depends how you

count it but if you add in the state houses as well as all the seats they've lost in congress and the white house they're at their lowest ebb in at least seven decades maybe eight decades and it's and it's and it's working it's working i it just seems to me this system is just amazing. Obama was a huge act of overreach. The left still controls the instruments of chatter and noise and opinion formation, but the great center of the country has fought back effectively. They have, and I agree, but I want to qualify something. Yes. Hooray for the Constitution, but it's sad when courts when leftist courts transcend their constitutional authority they're blocking trump totally uh ultra virus i mean they have no authority and it's outrageous so hooray for people who actually uphold the separation of

powers legitimately but shame on those that don't and that's what the left the left recognizes no constraints obama didn, except the ones he had to, where he just couldn't have gotten away with. The court, the Ninth Circuit is obviously making a mockery of it, of Trump's executive authority. It's just, it's outrageous. But I think the public, when you say the public did stand up, and they did, they're going to be frustrated if Trump doesn't stand strong and do what he said they're going to be frustrated if trump doesn't stand strong and do what he said he was going to do or at least try to do what he said he was going to do this is a real movement and this transcends trump too by the way it isn't just about trump

trump was the guy but if he doesn't perform but and by the way i think he will but if he doesn't uh to me one of the miracles of this first hundred days was that the health care bill didn't go through that that freedom caucus that there were 33 34 conservatives in the house of representatives who said no that's it we're tired of this that's it this bill is no good it's not conservative we're the conservative party we will stop it yes that is amazing and interestingly we're not as partisan excuse me for for talking over you. I didn't mean to. You're the guest.

You're the guest. No, but I mean, we're not as partisan as Democrats. These guys said, look, this is not what we elected you to do. And we're going to. Now, some people think it's a power play. And these are just obstructing this conservatives. No, this was a gigantic deal. This was one of Trump's main mandates, and I don't think he realized just how diluted his bill was in terms of the market parts being diluted.

Hey, Bob, I know you've got to run, but before we do, can I ask – I'm asking you and Peter this question. As you know, I'm slightly more cynical about politics and this president. You are Pilate after all. I am Pilate, yeah. What is truth? What is that? Listen, you people are – whatever you people want. What are the two or three things he can do, and we'll take Gorsuch out of it now because he's on the court that are actually that are real legacy things um not the i

mean i'll even take health care out for a minute because that's going to be a big greasy bill no matter how you look at it what are the things he can do you know next in the next 100 days we'll say for the next year that will actually change the direction of the government and the direction of the way, maybe even the way people expect something from their government? Or is there anything? Are you asking me or is there some Bob

here? No, I'll ask you. I'm going to ask Peter too. Peter, you want to go or you want me to go? I have a feeling, David, you and I are two minds with but a single thought or two. That's what I wanted to hear. You go, David. Go ahead.

Okay. Rebuilding the military is essential. He's obviously going to do that, which is, of course, why the Soviet Union wanted him elected. Give me a break. Secondly, deregulations, deregulating as much as he can. I think that's a good sign. Taxes, big-time tax reform, that is so essential. Healthcare is, in terms of politically, even more essential.

And in the long run, maybe even substantively, because it's a sixth of the economy now, and it's socialism. It could go to single payer if we don't roll this back. And obviously foreign policy, that's a wild card we don't know for sure where he is uh what the overall cohesive strategy is and it's going to emerge i guess again i think trump as i've said is involved in a learning curve here and i think he's a quick study and i think he's focused i don't think politics has been his thing most of his life, and I think he's learning, and I just hope the right people,

he's listening to the right people. There's all kinds of people talking to him. I hope his instincts lead him to listen to the right people, as I would define right. No surprise. I agree with every word David just uttered. And yet neither one of you mentioned the wall. Because, you know, the truth is what I really want is for us to be strong on terrorism

and vigilant about illegal immigration. And the wall, I think he's going to do, I kind of take that as a foregone conclusion, he almost has to do that because that's his that that's his signature if he doesn't do that uh even if no matter whether it's effective or not if he doesn't do it he's in trouble politically i think so the wall to me i think well we'll see if david agrees to me the wall the wall is part of a larger category which is reasserting the rule of law so far so far in immigration, Donald Trump has only done two things. One was to issue an executive order which imposes a temporary stay on visas from seven countries in the Middle East.

That's one. And the second is, and this is all he's done, he's appointed an attorney general who intends to enforce the books the rules the laws that are already on the books that's it a small adjustment and a decision to enforce the laws already on the books and that's that seems to me a critical part of any kind of reassertion of american greatness the law must extend to the border simple Simple, right? I totally agree. And there's no reason that we need to be ashamed of the fact that we're Americans either. Under Trump, we've seen a resurgence of national pride, which, with all due respect to the Wall Street Journal

and people who always call us nativists for wanting to control the border, there is nothing wrong with nationalistic pride, and it is not nativist. It is not bigoted, and it is not discriminatory in any way, in any negative way. If we don't have a cohesive nation which is made of diverse ethnicities, we don't have a nation. Here, here. Hey, David, thanks for joining us. Just to remind everybody, the book is called The True Jesus, Uncovering the Divinity of Christ and the Gospels. Buy it.

If you haven't read the other two, buy those. This is a great, great book. It is an act of intelligence and devotion. You know what I want to do, Peter, sometime is come on, and this is self-serving, I want to come on your uncommon knowledge to talk to you about my book because I want to see if I can come up with any uncommon knowledge about my book. Let's figure it out. And I also want to say to the ricochets out there,

yes, it seems mercenary always promoting books, but try writing one sometime. If you don't promote it, it doesn't work. I get sick of talking about it as much as you get sick of hearing it. Trust me. But they don't sell themselves. I'd rather write research. It's a tough world out there. Everybody I know who writes books, I say the first thing you've got to do when you write that book and it's published is you have to go and sell it hard and you should

not be ashamed of it. You've got to talk about it all the time. I have hundreds of interviews and it's miserable. No offense. I mean to do it over and over but I love writing and researching the books but promoting them, self-serving, it seems uncomfortable. It's just you've got to do it. Don't be and I'm glad you did it because they're great.

Hey David, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much you guys.'re great. Hey, David, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much, you guys. Take care. Thank you, David. Thank you. I always love having David on because, like, you can go high and low with him. Yes, you can. Yes, you can.

You can start sort of in the heavens, and you end up, you know, kind of lower than, I would say, terra firma. But, you know, Peter, you know where terra firma is. Terra firma is where uh they grow flowers that's the worst ever oh my goodness we are thankful for our uh sponsor pro flowers and when you send 100 blooms from mom bouquet when you send the 100 blooms from all bouquet that's actually one thing they call 100 blooms for mom but the bouquet from pro flowers this mother's day you will make a real impression it comes with a free glass vase for just $19.99, plus shipping and handling. And if you really want to make a statement,

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We're lucky. Our next guest, I want to get right to him because I know he's overseas, but he is going to give us sort of a word from Europe. It's my old editor from National Review, John O'Sullivan. He's been editor-at-large of National Review since, I don't know, a million years. And in recent years, he's been a senior fellow of the National Review Institute. He's also president of the Danube Institute in Budapest, where I have been wined and dined and fed at once and had a great time. And he's a director of the Washington Think Tank 21st Century Initiatives.

And he joins us, I think he's joining us from Vienna. John, how are you? I'm in Vienna at a conference discussing the, what am I discussing? Yes, it's the future of the European Union after Brexit and particularly after Margaret Thatcher. This question of Brexit is not just interesting to Brits. It's obviously having a big impact on the whole of Europe. And it's interesting to me,

as you know, an old Thatcher hand, that Mrs. Thatcher is still regarded as a figure whose views on this are still relevant. John, Peter here, obviously we have to get to France,

but while we're talking about Mrs. Thatcher, could you just explain to her very brief, explain to us very briefly her successor, Theresa May, the current prime minister who's called a snap election. Here's the way it looks to me. Please correct me if I'm wrong. She appears to be tactically brilliant, almost better than one might have hoped for. She figured out to do with what to do with Boris Johnson. She got this measure through the House of Lords. So she was got the two year clock running with activating measure, whatever it is. And now she's called the snap election, which everybody expects her to win and the Tories to win in a landslide. But strategically, the couple of times she's given big speeches about what Brexit is for,

what she wants to do with the country, it sounds almost no different from David Cameron's ridiculous mumbo-jumbo about a great society. There's no Mrs. Thatcher freedom there. There's no notion that we can do better than Europe. So explain that, would you? Mrs. May is tactically brilliant. There's no doubt about that. And the cards have fallen her way.

She's also a genuine conservative. But she's not the kind of conservative Peter that you are. And she's not entirely the kind of conservative that Mrs. Thatcher is. I mean, they're similar in being patriotic, in being proud of being British, in being, in some sense, nationalist. They are different in that Mrs. Thatcher was a believer in a strong, dynamic, changing society. She wanted to encourage people to do better, to start businesses, to go in for charitable activities,

to do all kinds of things. But nonetheless, to be, in a sense, dynamic and to have a more dynamic market society. Mrs. May is a genuine conservative of a kind I recognize and very much liked while disagreeing with in the years I was in the Tory party from, say, the 1960s and early 70s. She's a vicar's daughter. She's a Christian.

She cares about other people. She wants a less dynamic and more gentle society. She's not so market-minded. But she nonetheless, and one of her heroes is Joe Chamberlain, the father of Neville, who was famous for having left the liberals, joined the Tories, and he had two great causes. One was he wanted to make the British Empire a permanent world institution. He didn't succeed in that, but he also wanted to lift up the condition of the workers, and

he did help to do that. He made his own city famous worldwide, and I think that in both of those respects, she admires him. Hey, John, it's Rob here. I'm having a hard time not hearing in the background Vienna, the theme from The Third Man. But since you are in Vienna… I'm in Vienna, yes. Yeah, the – I would say the capital of kind of Cold War Europe in a lot of ways.

The last time Europe was unified under a yoke. What's the attitude there towards Brexit? I mean, I imagine you're surrounded by angry, bitter Europeans who think that the British have lost their minds. They're in a punitive mood, are they? Well, Vienna is the capital of Gimmutlichkeit as well, of course. It's the capital of the Wolfs. It's the capital of chocolateimmutlichkeit as well, of course. It's the capital of the Walsh. It's the capital of chocolate cake and Sackertort.

And it's the capital of a great empire, the Habsburg Empire, that brought together a great deal of great many nations and kept them in a kind of uneasy harmony for hundreds of years, for several hundred years. I think that obviously that kind of memory, the idea of Europe as a multinational Europe held together by clever people, that is don't want, I think, to have – I don't see them joining the Euro anytime soon. I don't see them going in for those kind of European ventures that cost money and don't actually produce a great deal of good. So don't think of them as being naive Europeans. Yes, they support the European Union, but they support it practically for practical, hard-headed reasons rather than hazy, romantic ones.

But it's been a year since the – almost a year since the referendum. What do you think that the – what is the mood from the Europeans as they negotiate the British exit? Is it going to be hard? Is it going to be tough? Are they going to try to, you know, enact some kind of punitive measures? Or is it the kind of thing where they really don't have any leverage? I mean, Britain was the most important trading partner they all had.

Is it going to be, put it this way, after all the fireworks and the anger and the shouting, when Brexit finally happens, as it will, will it be a big deal or will it be a remarkably small deal? Well, I think it will be for some people a big deal. For example, I've just come from Hungary, and the Hungarians, of course, were very close to the British

because they and the Czechs and the Slovaks, and I think not so much here. They were very much in favor of reducing, they didn't want all these powers taken away from their own parliament and given to Brussels. They wanted to slow that process down. to people from, well, actually come down to it, people from other parts of the world, Northern Africa and the Middle East, to come into Europe. That frightens them because these are, after all, small countries. I mean, there are 10 million Hungarians. A million new people coming in is not that great for Germany,

81 million people. But for Hungary, it's a huge amount, huge number, I should say. And I think that they are very nervous of Europe going in for big experiments that might turn out to be at their expense. John, apparently Macron is going to be the next president of France, this 39-year-old former investment banker, former finance minister under the Socialist Party, who invented his own party. And it looks as though, according to all the polls, Marine Le Pen simply cannot catch him.

And is that not an enormous victory for the Franco-German status quo in the EU? How are we to understand that? Well, I think you're probably right that he's going to win. I don't think he's going to win quite as big as it seemed on the day afterwards. And I don't think it's going to be quite such big as it seemed on the day afterwards, and I don't think it's going to be quite such a victory for the status quo as it then seemed. But it is a victory for the status quo, for the French establishment, and particularly for the center-left.

I mean, my colleague Charlie Cook said in National Review, a very brilliant point, he said that the country is moving right, and that's why it's going to elect a left-wing president, which is an extraordinary state of affairs. And that's because so many of the votes that will now be cast for Macron are conservative votes. There will be some left-wing votes, but whoever would have thought, for example, that a lot of the Republican Party, that is the goalless party votes, three months ago, would be cast for a candidate who's really the stealth candidate of the socialist party, which got 7% of the vote, traveling under false colors as a centrist. Not entirely false colors.

He's slightly more reform-minded than the socialists were. He's slightly more willing to talk in terms of markets but he's not anything like Francois Fillon the goalless candidate would have been who really was thinking about fairly major economic reforms. I think we're in for but you can look on the bright side Peter. In two years time there's going to be an enormous

crisis when everything starts to fall apart who do you want to be in charge of the country at that point do you want it to be Mrs. Le Pen or Madame Le Pen I should say or do you want it to be Monsieur Macron whoever is in charge is going to be in trouble

and we're going to see the beginnings of a new political system I personally think it's probably not a good thing. It's probably a good thing, I should say, that Madame Le Pen is not going to be in charge now because it gives some opportunity for the right to reassemble itself and for another candidate, somebody following François Fillon, who would be in a good position to benefit from the collapse of the center-left.

Hey, John, it's Rob again. Help me out. Why two years? Well, I mean, that's a shot in the dark, old boy. I mean, I can't expect... I mean, you know, things are going to hell in the handbasket, you know, but you can never exactly be sure when

they're going to hit hell. They never hit when you need them to. They never hit when you want them to. I made a bet years ago with a friend of mine who's sort of a Gaullist French guy. I bet him, I think it was 100 euros. Maybe it was 100 francs. I can't remember how long ago it was.

That A. Le Pen, at that point, I thought it was 100 francs, I can't remember how long ago it was, that A. Le Pen, A. Le Pen, at that point it was, I thought it was probably the father, Jean-Marie, but A. Le Pen would be president of France. Well, you might be right. And as I think you are going on to say, now it looks like Marine, but it might be her niece. It might be Mademoiselle, right? Yes, that's right. Who is a strong candidate and who has one advantage she doesn't

have. I think Marine Le Pen has been very shrewd in how she's repositioned the party, but she has actually steered away from social conservatism very strongly, whereas Mademoiselle Le Pen is steered towards it and as we saw

two years ago the protest very civil orderly protests against gay marriage they attracted the largest crowds ever seen in a French protest so provincial France Catholic France La France Profonde

that has still got a great element of social conservatism in it which isn't going to the front at the moment and might go to a goalless party that had moved somewhat slightly to the right on all of those issues. Peter Robinson John, Peter here with one last question if I may. Could you offer a correction for us on the following three counts if correction is needed one we hear that marine lepin and the national front are a fascist right-wing anti-semitic party that's one of three two of three we hear that victor orban is likewise

a uh is semi-fascist the victor orban the prime minister of Hungary, semi-fascist throwback to the interwar years of autocratic rule in Hungary. And three of three, we hear that the current Polish regime is likewise a throwback, in this case, to a kind of immediate post-wall collapse, ultra-Catholic, deeply conservative, and anti-liberal regime. That is, I think, a fair generalization of the way the press here portrays Marine Le Pen, the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, and the current Polish administration. Give us a correction. Is that true, or how does it need to be corrected? Well, all three, I think, are gross exaggerations, some more than others.

The one I know least about is Poland, but I will say simply this, that I keep reading, for example, that the new Polish government tried to stack the constitutional court when it got in. Well, what is never reported, and I know about this, is that just before the previous government left office, they tried to stack the constitutional court to prevent the new government being able to do anything. And what the new government then did was to dismiss two of those judges and appoint another three. So, I mean, this was a tit-for-tat thing. It's never reported like that. Marine Le Pen, there's no doubt that her party has a shady

past, but since she's become its leader, she has done everything she can to actually take it away from that, to take it in a different direction. In fact, it is not, for example, an anti-Semitic party. It has actually a number of Jews

in its leading figures, and she has positioned the party as a defense of traditional French republican identity and support for the Jewish community in France. She is now accused, therefore, of Islamophobia because that is positioned her as someone critical of Muslim life. I know for a fact, for example, that she vetoed the Hungarian populist party Jobbik as membership of the group of which the National Front is a member in the European Parliament precisely because it was anti-Semitic and she said it could never join them while that was its character. As regards Orban, look,

Orban wins. I will be as mild as I can. Orban doesn't need to be authoritarian. He wins 45, 46, 47 percent. He won over 50 percent of the vote in the European elections at a time when his nearest opponent gets 25%.

He's won the last two national elections, the European elections, and all the local elections. Does he sometimes do things I think are mistaken? Absolutely. I think he's very critical, for example, of some of his economic policies, which I think are too centralist and too statist. But at the same time, he is clearly representing democratically the opinions of his voters. And I wish he would, like Mrs. Thatcher. It's like the difference between Thatcher and May. I prefer him to be more like Thatcher and less like May in that regard. And finally, he will win the next election probably.

I think what he's doing with the Central European Union is an own goal, but I don't think it's a move towards a dark authoritarianism. And I think, frankly, the left has simply got into a hysterical mood, and that hysterical mood has influenced the international left and the international media. Thank you, John. Thank you, John, and that hysterical would do a podcast for us from Europe, sort of the voice of Europe, and it's getting about time for you to make good on that promise. We'd be happy to do it. I personally would be happy, and so would the Danube Institute. We've just recruited two top new people to join us, one of whom is going to be

working on this. The other is a woman called Melissa O'Sullivan, who is now in charge of the program, which means that she's in charge of me therefore, so things will get done. I feel much better knowing that Melissa's now taking the

reins. Thank you. You set my mind at ease. And give our best to her. I hope to see you soon. And all the best in Vienna. Talk to you soon. Thanks for joining us. Thanks. All the best.

Bye. Cheers. So once again, Peter, you and I – I love that, John. Two years from now, a catastrophe will happen. Oh, John, what's happening in two years? Oh, that was a shot in the dark, old boy. Well, once again, Peter, you and I have failed, at least in one of my central bucket list missions, of stumping John O'Sullivan.

Impossible. Trying to come up with something even more obscure that he can say, I have no idea. Unfortunately, he's just too well-informed. Speaking of well-informed, again, a terrible segue. Are you hiring? Do you know where to post your job to find the best candidates? Posting your job in one place is not enough to find quality candidates. If you want the perfect hire, you need to post your job on all the top sites. And now you can with ZipRecruiter.com.

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From the member feed, should we talk about the member feed for a minute? Robert Mc for a minute robert mcrenalds asks about federalism yes please he talks about federalism in in the context of the the sanctuary cities um and he and i think his general point is that um does the federal government have the right to enforce those laws does have a right to sanction sanctuary cities, as it were, in an idea in a federalist universe, which I think you and I would prefer? That's an iffy proposition, or is it not?

I have to say, well, Ricochet member Mr. McReynolds gave me an education on this, and he quotes a law professor at BC, Boston College, who explains that he's quoting this law professor, Kerry Hong. Quote, activists, read Peter Robinson, believe that immigration laws will no longer apply or be enforced in a sanctuary city. That's not true. It's just that the federal government has to do the enforcement and not the local police. Close quote. So that's a point. That a very very good point it's not as if sanctuary cities are in open defiance it's not as if they are attempting to secede from the union they're

just saying you want to enforce the immigration laws federal immigration laws it's the fed's job anyway you do it but fair enough as far as i'm concerned but are they well i don't know that's the point i have i have to say this as i say this was a new thought to me i didn't quite understand that distinction between the federal government enforcing immigration laws and the local police and if i were a mayor i might very well say that's the job of the feds my boy my local police are busy enough on the other hand you know that that's not quite what's going on at least that's political coloration over in berkeley or up the up this i would say here in san francisco in san francisco that really is they are attempting that is an act

of defiance in one way or another i'm sure of it right i think i think it's interesting i'm not sure i guess the example the example we would use is counterfeit dollars. If you're passing counterfeit money in San Francisco, while it is true that the local government, the local police are not – that is not their primary job. That's the job of the Secret Service, Department of Treasury. It is also true that the local police are not indifferent to that crime. They don't believe that it's not a crime. They don't stand in the way in some way, in a bureaucratic way, of the Department of Treasury from doing its job of ferreting out counterfeit currency.

So I think it's a little different. I guess on the other side of the high-handed federal government, I mean, we had until very recently, still have in many ways, a national speed limit, which was enforced by the arcane Federal Highway Fund withholding the idea that you'd be punished as a state if you didn't comply with the new federal standards for speed limit. It seems insane. It seems crazy and completely against anything that would be constitutional. But on the other hand, it was extremely effective for getting local and state governments to sort of change their speed limit, if that's what you wanted them to do. Are we going to go down that road, I guess? I suspect that the best way to get sanctuary cities to start to behave is to do two things. One is to sort of agree in general and principle with

the idea that they shouldn't be doing that in any case and empower and invest in a federal police force to do it. And the second is to sort of punish cities and states that don't comply or obstruct and punish them in some weird financial way, right?

Yeah, I guess. I guess. I have to say I really am of two minds about this. Robert McReynolds' post showed me how little I actually have given this real thought. Go way back to 1986 when Reagan signed the Simpson-Mazzoli bill. Everybody says over and over again he gave amnesty to 3 million people. That's true, but there were other provisions which included provisions requiring employers

to do much more of the work of verifying whether a prospective employee was in the country legally. And there was a lot of controversy about that at the time and afterwards because many employers said wait a minute that's just not our job we are not set up to administer the law we are not an arm of law enforcement that that responsibility should not be placed on us and that struck me as an argument at

the time an argument likewise sanctuary cities they if if you're the mayor of some town on the border and you're plenty busy with your police force just trying to keep law and order in your town and you say let the feds handle and that strikes me as an argument rob i'm committing the great thing here i am saying something you're not allowed to say on these podcasts i don't know i don't know either. But I have to thank our member, Robert McReynolds, for sort of bringing this conundrum up. Now, let a thousand comments fly, and we'll see where everybody comes out on Ricochet. This is the value of Ricochet. Exactly.

All right, here's an easy one. Look, our friend Ann Coulter, as you know, is always – I think Ann sometimes sits on her sofa and thinks to herself, you know, I've got to start something. I'm a little too bored. So she's going to give a speech at Berkeley, and the speech was canceled because they said, oh, it couldn't be safe. You couldn't be safe.

Right. Which seems to me a lot like we don't want to hear from her. We don't want to hear from her. We don't want to hear from, you know, we don't we don't want to have that. We don't want the trouble. And we also don't believe that she's the right to speak. Sorry for that phone. Is this I mean, and I said this, I said to David earlier, I asked the same question. This seems to me to be have been happening at a regular pace forever. But is it just now that are we now hearing about it more because the right is more emboldened?

Are we hearing about it more because it's my suspicion that there are more conservative kids on campus who aren't going to take it anymore? Ah, that I think, that I believe to be true. And I might just turn this around on you and ask you about your alma mater

because I've been struck by this kind of contrast here that on the one hand, Yale University has been getting terrible publicity, in my judgment as a Dartmouth man, all very richly deserved. Yes, I don't disagree. For political correctness and a kind of really authoritarian enforcement of political correctness. And that's been all the press on Yale. Somehow or other, once you get in the crosshairs of the press on that one, you stay there. At the same time, though, in the last three or four years, the William F. Buckley Jr. program at Yale is flourishing. Yale undergraduates who are conservative are just flourishing. There was a piece in the Wall Street Journal just the other day. Now they're involving themselves in a trustee battle at Yale.

So there is this kind of contradiction that, yes, it is my impression, my feeling. Yale is a case in point. You can tell us what's happening at Yale if you're in touch with your alma mater. On the one hand, university administration, the left, all becoming more rigid, more politically correct as if that were possible. And yet at the same time, here and there and other places, you see a kind of conservative renaissance, conservative kids finding each other and fighting back. Yeah, I think that it seems to me that that's that has to be the i mean it doesn't have to be the driver that is probably the driver here is that you have a bunch of students who just don't or or for whom that they went through the nat that i think what

is the natural attitude which has happened i think happened at yale two years ago which is that the idea is that well just keep your head down you don't keep your head down. What's the benefit of complaining to a kind of a, I think, sort of a fed-upness with this idea that you can hear words spoken and your whole brain's going to explode. That's going to just freak you out. You're unable to sustain any...

And I think part of it has been there's been a relentless 12-month, 18-month mockery of these students in unlikely places like The Simpsons. The Simpsons had a very funny little bit about how incredibly sensitive the world is. It's really great. And once you start doing that, once you start ridiculing people and ridiculing undergraduates, I think it kind of helps. So maybe the ridicule works. Just before we go, I know we have to talk about this, which is that Obama is going to make four hundred thousand dollars in a speech. What do you make of it?

I think he deserves it. Of course he should. I'm against all of this nonsense about how people shouldn't get the market rate for what they want. Look, he's former president. He was a two term president. He was there for a lot of stuff. People want to know what he has to say. I would pay whatever.

I wouldn't pay 400 grand, but I would love to hear him speak and take on the current president. And yet he spent the last eight years doing everything he could to suppress the free market. Is that not the case? Don't we know? He's not going to go to Cantor Fitzgerald and give us a rousing defense of the free market.

He's not going to go there and say, you know what, I think I was mistaken. Let's roll back all these regulations on you guys on Wall Street. Let her rip! No, of course not. So he benefits from the free market while attacking it. But all liberals do.

All leftists do. All liberal celebrities do. That's just the way of the world. from the market while attacking it but but all liberals do all leftists do all all all liberal celebrities do that's just the way of the world he's not he's not uniquely hypocritical illustratively hypocritical he is grandly illustratively in a peacock flumid style a hypocritical but i still think he deserves the money and i kind of think i mean the um and i as something i alluded to the beginning of the um the sort of lip-quivering outrage people have uh towards obama um it's just it's over now let me first of all and and and the lip-quivering outrage and shock they have when anyone attacks trump just just the way i mean i mean i'm just overreacting to hannity

but the way hannity behaves that this is all beyond the pale is just sort of silly first of all trump is a big big boy i mean if he doesn't like the political tone um uh in washington or the way people talk about politicians he's got him only himself to blame uh i mean i we can sit here and read tweets from the president united states that are across the line uh but also just like come on grow up big boys now let's let's all just grow up let's stop pretending let's not be like them on the other side where every time you every time you said god that obama he's such a crook or such a hypocrite they would start to cry and call you a racist or whatever it is let's not play that game because nobody wins that let's obama gets his 400 grand he's

gonna he's gonna end up still in all still in all it's worth pointing it's worth highlighting that he's accepting quite happily four hundred thousand dollars let us let us not let the left comfort itself delude itself with any notion that barack obama is going off to be america's saint francis no no no no no that's why i like it i like it because he's not so like, I mean, it's not going to be his only 400 grand gig. No. First of many. And it's going to be fun to watch him get rich. And it's going to be fun to watch him pay taxes. Yes, at Goldman Sachs.

It's going to be fun to watch him do all the things. Look, it's going to be fun to watch him turn himself into Bill Clinton. Yes. And I will applaud that. In Vanity Fair, this may go back as much as 10 years ago. In Vanity Fair, there was a full-page ad for, as I recall, Louis Vuitton luggage. Very, very, very $10,000 per suitcase. And the ad consisted of a picture of a man in the back of a limousine looking very

contented, beautifully dressed, and next to him on the seat was a piece of Louis Vuitton luggage. And that man was Mikhail Gorbachev. And Barack Obama is now in Gorbachev territory. He's becoming quite a happy capitalist. Exactly. It's nice nice it's good to be the ex-king that helps that you can kind of sleep a little later speaking of sleeping later another terrible segue we are very pleased and would

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take a minute, leave a review on iTunes. It helps bump us up to the top of the rankings and more people find us. And more people finding us is a good thing. Peter. Yes. This was fun. This is like the old days. It was. It was a lot of fun. But it's a lot of work. I mean, I've got to be nicer to James.

Go take a nap. Go take a nap now, Rob. Yeah, it's exhausting. It's exhausting just keeping it all going and introducing the... By the way, so what's the Rob Long itinerary? I just love watching this. Well... You're in Baltimore now. What's next?

Okay, brace yourself. Yes? On Tuesday... Yes? I'm going to Cuba. You are? Yeah. I didn't... What? What? Are you. You are? Yeah. I didn't know.

What? Are you becoming a communist? I just want to go there before it gets too nice. I'm imposing two stern instructions on you. One, you must do nothing to support the regime. Nothing. No, no, no. Of course not.

Second, bring back some cigars for me too. I will do that. We should have, I'd like to, you know, maybe we could have Mrs. Robinson on. We could have a little Cupid. Well, you know what she's going to want to do? She's going to want to tell me not to go. No, she's going to give you about three different addresses and say, go look at my, go look at the house my parents used to live in.

Here's the building that blah, blah, blah, blah. She'll, she'll give you a tourist itinerary. Okay. Never having been there herself, but she wants you to go look at the old places and tell her what kind of shape they're at okay all right set them away i'll do it i'll do it all right i'll instagram them well have fun isn't quite the right way to put it but write about it take pictures right you don't want to hear like i'm gonna do a full report. All right. Next week, then. Upon my return from Cuba. When you get back from Cuba and James gets back from Reno.

Next week. Next week. Every time I look down on this timeless town, whether blue or gray be her skies, whether loud be her cheers or whether soft be her tears, more and more do I realize that. that I love Paris in the springtime I love Paris in the fall I love Paris in the winter when it drizzles

I love Paris in the summer when it sizzles I love Paris Every moment Every moment of the year I love Paris Why, why do I love Paris Because my love is near Ricochet! Join the conversation. ¶¶ © transcript Emily Beynon I love Paris in the springtime I love Paris in the fall