The Ricochet Podcast - The Greatest

Episode Date: June 10, 2016

Another momentous week calls for a momentous podcast with Ricochet Editor-In-Chief Jon Gabriel sitting in for Rob Long. We’ve got Washington Post political correspondent Bob Costa on Trump and Bezos, and almost independent Presidential candidate David French, who clues us in on what might have been. Finally, some thoughts about The Greatest, Muhammad Ali. RIP. Music from this week’s episode: The... Source

Good evening Mr. and Mrs. North and South American, all the ships at sea, let's go to press. Hello. I think the media is among the most dishonest groups of people I've ever met. That's terrible. I'm gonna float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. George can't hit what his hands can't see. What Boehner is angry with is the American people holding him accountable. If I become president, oh do they have problems. They're gonna have such problems. What Boehner is angry with is the American people holding him accountable. If I become president, oh, do they have problems.

They're going to have such problems. That's funny. I don't know why that's funny. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and John Gabriel sitting in for Rob Long. Our guests today, Bob Costa from The Washington Post, and not running for president, David French of National Review. Let's have ourselves a podcast. It's the Ricochet Podcast number 307. And how did we get to that point? By your help and the help of our great sponsors, of course.

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directly on to who? To you. Now, also, this is the point usually where Rob tells you to join Ricochet, but because he's sauntering sockless down the Champs-Élysées, he's not here. So I'm going to do that part for him rather than make anybody else do the commercial pitch stuff. Rob loves it. He's a pitchman at heart. That's his job, is to go into boardrooms and say, here's why you should give me lots of

money for my idea. But actually, it's not a lot of money. It's a little bit of money every month that helps you participate in civil conversation. Sparky. Oh, yes. Elbows thrown. Sure. Tempers can flare.

But it is a safe space if you need one of these difficult election days. And if you go to Ricochet and sign up, you can make sure that it endures into not just this presidential election, but the one beyond that. And I believe that Peter Robinson, the other founding member, is with us. I hear what appears to have been somebody walking into a room, unzipping a duffel bag, pulling out a typewriter and working away. Is that indeed you, Peter? I hope not. But I am with you. I just love the ambient sound. And John Gabriel, of course, editor-in-chief, is here as well, sitting in for Rob. Hello, John. Hello. Great to be here, as Rob

swans about Europe. Indeed he does. We have, coming up in just a few seconds, our first guest, Bob Costa with a little DC talk, but let's go meta for a second here. I know we'll probably be talking about that Donald fellow eventually. There was a contretemps, a dust-up, a brouhaha, a large, multi-commented kerfuffle on Ricochet this week when one of Ricochet's technical writers, or technical people, stepped out from behind the curtain and revealed himself to be a proud Bernie socialist, a young fellow, emphasis on young, who was touting the virtues of collectivism and statism. Interesting discussion. Let me put it to you this way.

There's a story in France which has arrested, of course, some executives and fined Uber over there lots of money for doing the unthinkable for giving people rides uber which this guy cited as a as a sort of badge for his generation is something the millennials love because it's computerized and it's fast and it's functionalist and it's disruptive and it's the exact sort of thing that is made impossible in parts because of the very sort of regulatory confiscatory state that they say they want what gives what's the disconnect beats me james i just happen to be up and as you know i live down here on the peninsula in palo alto in california but i just happen to be up on in san francisco yesterday evening

and i had something like it i mean it it isn't even though it doesn't even rise to the level of trying to think it through. It's just this weird cognitive dissonance that there you have this glittering city built very substantially in the last decade. Certainly in the last five years, the real economic activity is startup activity. No, no, no, no. They built that city on rock and roll. Okay. And yet every bumper sticker was a Bernie bumper sticker. Of course. And the headline in yesterday's San Francisco

Chronicle, liberal town, you'd think the headline above the fold headline would be Clinton clitches nomination is first woman in history. No, the headline was. Turn low turnout disappoints Sanders. That was the headline. That was the big event in the California primary from the point of view of the people who draw up the San Francisco Chronicle. So this is this is just it's a whole city. And I have to say, because the startup business is so vigorous and there's so much money pouring into it from around the world, where else can you get a return on your investment? Where else can you trick yourself into thinking you're likely to get a return on your investment? Those who succeed here do very, very well. If there's one time and one place in all of human history in which capital, having the money you need, capital formation is not the problem.

It's San Francisco right now. And yet every bumper sticker, literally, I think certainly I didn't count any bumper stickers for Trump. I think I may have seen two Hillary bumper stickers. It was Bernie after Bernie after Bernie. Essentially, it's a bunch of people who think that the seed corn that they are munching on just produced food by growing out of the ground magically with nobody ever attending to it, and that they're entitled to an unlimited supply of seed corn for that matter. Artisanal seed corn. John, you live in a part of the country that isn't known for its vaporous economy. I mean, in your part, you've got – well, what is the main industry down there in needles?

Do people actually make things or are they too sitting around coming up with disruptive little apps that sit on your little shiny portable device that you can stare at and change your life? Well, actually, I'm happy to say that Arizona has been increasing in a lot of the tech field quite a bit lately. Been growing there. And our new governor, Doug Ducey, is getting rid of a lot of regulatory boards. He has made a priority of the sharing economy and getting rid of obstacles. Actually, the next time I go to the airport is the first day that Uber is allowed to service our local airport. So that'll be nice. I'll have to try out that app for that airport trip, which is never very fun when you're on a smelly bus with a bunch of other people. I'd much rather take an Uber. So they're really following the Texas model. When you say tech, though, does that mean that they're sitting around in rooms making boxes on whiteboards that eventually result in an app, or are they making things, or are there server farms?

I don't think anybody would ever open a server farm in Arizona because you have to keep those things cool. Right. It's smarter to locate that in northern Minnesota. They're very popular here. We have a few really big server farms here, and a lot of the reason for that is we are not prone to natural disasters other than the daily grind of the evil sun beating down on us all summer. So they put them there, and they spend huge amounts of money in air conditioning because it's relatively geologically stable. Interesting, given that California isn't, and we can easily see it. What would happen exactly if California did topple into the ocean? How would that change

our lives exactly? It would end mine. Well, I'm not talking about your part, Peter. I'm just talking about the entire computer startup app culture in San Francisco just sinks into the bay. How is life measurably affected by that? Very, very good question. So of course, you'd lose a lot of capital, the stock market would sink because there's a certain amount of tech now represented in the stock. I can't remember that the Dow Jones Industrial Average got rejiggered just a couple of years ago to include a couple of tech companies. So you'd lose that. But what would you lose going forward? I have the feeling that Austin, Phoenix, it would all get recreated in – but this time around in low-tax states, I think.

That's a hard – a big part – at least this is what you hear over and over again and i frankly i've never heard a really satisfactory explanation how did it all get started out here why is it here in spite of the high tax rates part of the explanation that you will always hear and it's at least partially plausible to me is you've got this substructure of really good universities, Stanford and Cal Berkeley being the best known, but there are other universities. It's not quite as dense in education as Boston, but there are a lot of universities here in Northern California and you haven't quite got that any. Well, we've got it in Boston. I don't, I I'm fumbling along. It seems it has to be the case that it would get

reconstituted pretty quickly someplace else, right? Right. For example, when you mentioned those educational places, education right now does not necessarily have to be in a place. People think they have the prestige of going to a Yale, a Harvard, a Stanford, but in the future, actually, decentralization and, dare I say, disrupting of that paradigm could mean, well, I mean, look, for example, you can sit down on your television now or your smartphone or your computer and you can stream the great courses and learn things and you don't have to go to a place to do it. That's why we're happy to tell you about the great courses plus because you can learn about anything, anything that interests you. History, business, how to cook, how to play chess, how to speak Spanish. You can watch these lectures, like I mentioned before, on your TV, on your laptop, on your smartphone, anything you want.

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offered ones. So the next time that Rob interrupts me, you can say, ah, he's violating rule number four. And it's time for our first guest, Bob Costa, back to the podcast. National political reporter at The Washington Post, and he also appears regularly on MSNBC and other cable news outlets. In the good old days, he wrote for NR, and he hosted a podcast on this very, very network here. Welcome back, Bob. Great to be back with you. Hey, Bob, Peter Robinson here, if I may indulge myself

and take the first question. You have interviewed Donald Trump. You were watching him and the entire campaign very closely. You've seen the week he just had in which he got, seems to me, in any event, kind of locked into criticizing the judge, Mexican descent, born in Indiana, on and on. Question, is it possible, we've been hearing from Trump's campaign, we've been hearing Newt Gingrich call for this,

is it possible for Trump to tone it down, to put behind him the primaries, and to begin to act presidential? Over to you. It's a difficult question to answer because the Trump I know, the Trump I've covered, is someone who's very resistant to change, who surrounds himself with people who enable his personality rather than try to contain it. And he is someone who dominates his organization from the center of the organization. This is not someone who's kind of at the top and dictates and delegates. He's at the center of everything, big and small.

And people are very sensitive to how he manages and how he's involved with everything. And so this idea that Trump can be presidential or change, I think his message can become more disciplined. But the idea that he's going to become kind of corporate in his presentation, it's just it goes against everything he believes about politics and privately and publicly. I've heard him say so many times he thinks the consultant class and the way campaigns are run today totally misses how people communicate. It misses what people want from politicians. And to an extent, he's been proven right. But whether that extends to a general election, I'm not sure. One other question, if I may, and then actually this is to set up for John Gabriel. Arizona. Arizona has a pretty big Hispanic population, big and growing.

It was thought once upon a time that Donald Trump might have some trouble in Arizona. And it was also thought that the personal unease, to use a mild word, between Donald Trump and John McCain. Trump, of course, having attacked McCain early in his own campaign, saying he wanted a real hero, not somebody who got shot down and put in prison. Unbelievable comment, in my judgment. And McCain, of course, has let the world know what he thinks of Donald Trump. In any event, the polls indicate that Trump is doing just fine in Arizona. And oddly enough, so is John McCain. Can you explain that? Are senators finding a way – is the Republican establishment finding a way not only to live but to prosper with this guy?

I think the threshold for something to be a really damning political statement or controversy is so high that there's such an aversion of political correctness among many voters, Hispanic included, that Trump, I think, is giving much more leeway than sometimes is characterized in the national press. And so when I'm out on the campaign trail, especially with Hispanic voters, I've been to Arizona. I've been to Trump rallies there. I'm struck by two things. There are Hispanic people at the rallies, and they say almost the same refrain. They came here legally. They want people to come here legally. And the other thing is Trump is rousing white working class voters in a way I've really never seen in my lifetime. And in places like Arizona, those voters have lifted McCain and others in the past, and they haven't always been contingent to win those states on having a large amount of minority or Hispanic voters. most of my life. And one thing that would define the state's political culture is not liberal or conservative. It's contrarian. And Trump has definitely given voice to that. So I think

this state in particular, regardless of the race or even gender, that's going to hold true. Now, have you heard any scuttlebutt in the backstage from these rallies? What is he thinking about for Veep? He seems like the kind of guy who's going to find someone he clicks with. It's not about, oh, maybe I can pull in Wyoming if I get this name. He's probably just going to get a guy who, eh, I like him. He does what I say. Let's go for it. We're a good team together.

Anybody rising? Anybody falling? I think there's a split in Trump's inner circle, and it's really between, generally speaking, Corey Lewandowski, the campaign manager, and Paul Manafort, the strategist. And I think they both acknowledge privately, according to my reporting, that Trump's going to end up doing what Trump wants and no one really knows who's going to pick for VP. But Manafort is recommending, based on what I hear, someone who's an insider. He likes the senators like Corker and others and John Thune. He wants someone who could maybe come out of leadership or a committee chairmanship in the Senate and add some credibility to the Trump campaign, especially as you see this week with the Judge Curiel controversy. So many Washington Republicans are starting to kind of get their nerves frayed and walking away from Trump a little bit. Manafort sees the importance of having political capital

in Washington because he thinks that kind of those relationships extend to how Trump's interpreted in the press and how he's covered and how he's seen nationally. Lewandowski is much more on that personal rapport side of things. Knowing Trump and being at Trump's side for so long, Lewandowski recognizes to survive at Trump's side, you really need to have a rapport with him. I think at the end of the day, what we're going to see from Trump, and I've spoken to Trump about this in interviews, is he is going to probably pick someone who's an elected official. But the question I have about Trump is, I hear a name like Rob Portman from Ohio. He brings in a state like Ohio, and he's been praising of Trump's populism,

but he doesn't have Trump's personality at all. I'm not sure they're going to click. And so is it going to be someone like that, a Portman, or is it going to end up being a Bob Corker? Though Corker's walked away this week. The other names I hear are people like Mary Fallon of Oklahoma because she's been in the House. Now she's governor of Oklahoma. But the problem for someone like Fallon, which is just an example briefly, is she doesn't really know Trump.

She's met Trump on the campaign trailer a few times. And for Trump, who's not in politics, doesn't think politically, that's just a problem. And so I think the person who may have the most influence over the pick for sure at this moment is Chris Christie. Though I don't think Christie's the frontrunner. I don't think he's trying to pull a Dick Cheney and make himself the VP pick, though I wouldn't rule that out. I think Christie is someone who's really earned Trump's trust in the last couple of months. And as someone who could be a Christie ally who's selected. Now, it seems like these advisors, you talk about Lewandowski and Manafort, when you have someone new coming in like Manafort, who's saying, OK, you got to rein it in, Donald. You got to back off. You need to be professional you need a rob portman

or john thune at your side he beat all these people he beat all these people in the primary so it's one of those things the conventional wisdom is oh you have to be quote-unquote presidential but breaking all the rules is working for him. Does he have any motivation personally to start following the rules and start talking like a living, breathing white paper? I think Trump – he actually – he recognizes he has a shot at winning this, and he needs to govern if he wins, and he doesn't know much about that. He thinks the presidency is – I think the way Trump would be as president if he won, based on just talking to him a hundred times, is he thinks the country needs spirit. He'd be a promoter of the country abroad and domestically, and he'd be someone who tried to cut broader fiscal deals and domestic policy deals with Congress, not really driven by ideology. But when it comes

to agencies and running that kind of thing, I think that's why you're seeing names like Christine Fallon. The most provocative name, I think, is Gingrich, because the former speaker is just someone who's also close to Trump. And most important here is Gingrich is seen favorably by all sides of the Trump campaign. And in spite of his spotty record on some things and his own controversies from the past, he is seen as someone who understands Trump on a personal level, though the question is maybe they're both too big in terms of their ego and their presence to be on the same ticket. Hold on. Gingrich was slamming Trump quite – he was just knocking him around the yard the other day about the Judge Curiel thing.

He was, and I thought that was interesting because I think based on what I hear from Trump people is Gingrich feels he has enough of a bond with Trump to be someone who can chastise him a bit publicly. So it shows Gingrich is not going to kiss his up way to be in the VP pick. This is not a suck up campaign by Gingrich, but he's trying to show Trump he can be an adult as well. The other name is Rick Scott. There's, I think, an appeal that he could self-fund a little bit and bring in Florida. And I think Thune's another name that I keep hearing because he's low key. He's not going to clash with Trump. And the thing about Trump is Trump has to be the star. He doesn't want to be with another star. He wants someone to be capable and competent, but he doesn't want another star. So I don't expect

some kind of blockbuster Sarah Palin style pick. Bob, Peter here again. Boy, is it good to talk to you. You're just such a good reporter. You actually know stuff. So is it possible? How close can you get? You personally, to the extent that you've been covering it, your colleagues in Washington, how close can Washington reporters get to answering this question? How bad is it going to be for Hillary from the FBI and the Department of Justice? It's all anyone talks about. I mean, you have the president of the United States endorsing a candidate who is under active investigation. But there's just this black box where you see different people taking the fifth. The Clinton people say she's in the clear, and they're not really thinking it's a controversy. Bernie Sanders didn't bring it up in any real way in the primary.

And there's just really, it's hard to read what Comey's going to do with the FBI and how Loretta Lynch is going to handle things. We're in the waning days of the Obama presidency. There's a lot of hesitancy among Democrats and by officials in Washington to politicize any kind of investigation. So we haven't seen much. But it's interesting. You hear I was on the Sanders beat for the last week, and I heard from some Sanders supporters and a couple allies.

There is a sense that maybe something could happen, and that's why Sanders shouldn't drop out or suspend totally because they never know what could happen. Did any of those reporters in D.C. in the pool say, huh, how about that? President endorses Hillary, and then shortly after that has a meeting with Loretta Lynch that's closed to the press. Or did anybody just think, well, that's pretty much standard business as usual? Well, I mean, it's definitely worth reporting out. I mean, it is a strange situation. The Democrats right now are in a period of unity and coming together and all this, and Bernie Sanders doesn't seem to be willing – he doesn't seem going to put up a big fight.

He's going to do his own thing through the Washington primary and then bow out, got his respect in the meetings he wanted over the last couple days. But I think it's a big issue of the election that is kind of everywhere, but it's not always talked about as this investigation. I mean, just no one really knows. If the FBI drops something, it changes the entire election and the future of the country, but it may just continue to sit on a shelf. What is your opinion of how the press corps views Hillary exactly? Because you know probably they have a little romantic attachment for Bernie for their own stirrings of youth. Hillary is necessary, perhaps inevitable, but boring.

They're all going to vote for her pretty much. How do you hear them talk about her? I don't know. I mean, everyone at The Washington Post, we do straight reporting. And other people in the press, I'm not going to speak to that. But I think there is a sense that she's a historic candidate, and I think we've seen that reflected in the coverage. I think that has been a big part of the coverage, that this is a historic candidacy. I think the most interesting thing to me about Clinton and the coverage of her is as much as there's talk about gender and history, there's not so much about ideology i mean uh cornell west last night in washington dc

sanders supporter called her a neoliberal and there was a set he said the progressors shouldn't get behind this neoliberal and it just struck me as i was at the sanders rally wasn't thinking about the sanders rallies this clinton is so much promoted and it's seen by her her allies and then covered as someone who's just a Democrat and a history maker. But where is she really ideologically? It's foreign policy. Sometimes she's called hawkish, but is she really a hawk? I'm not sure. On domestic policy, liberal is the word that comes to mind or center left, but it's just hard to define on many fronts.

Whereas Sanders is not. or left, but it's just hard to define on many fronts. In my newsroom, they're all going to vote for her, but there's no enthusiasm. There's no particular joy. I think Peter or John had a quote. Yeah, I was actually curious about the Senate, the Congress as well. One of our members, Ricochet members here, Johnny Ellum or Allum 13. He asks, will a Mark Kirk victory keep the Senate and GOP hands? And we saw him, Mark Kirk, distance himself from Donald.

But he's in a very tough race in Illinois, not a rock ribbed conservative state. What do you think of Mark Kirk's challenges and and what other races are you watching? Great question. I think the Senate races probably are undercovered. I think Kirk's going to have a very tough time. Guys like Bruce Rauner, the governor there, and Kirk, they're able to win in off years, but in a presidential election year with the kind of turnout in the Chicago area for Democrats, I mean, Kirk's facing an extremely uphill challenge. He's trying to distance himself from Trump, and he has some sympathy and warm regards by the voters for the way he's handled his health problems. But I don't – it's going to be very tough for Kirk to win.

I think Toomey in Pennsylvania is in a similar position. Toomey barely won in 2010. Now in Pennsylvania, he's going to have to hope Trump's populism and views on immigration in places like Hazleton, Pennsylvania and working-class Pennsylvania will overwhelm what's happening in the Philly suburbs and Philadelphia. Though Toomey is interesting because he did try to do the background checks on gun control, won a lot of brownie points with the establishment in Pennsylvania, some of the liberals in Pennsylvania. So maybe he has a shot. He's not the old Pat Toomey of Club for Growth fame. Nevada, with Harry Reid retiring, you got Joe Heck running. You got Catherine Cortez Masto running. It's a primary, contested primary. It's going to be hard to see what happens there. Maybe that could go R.

Florida without Rubio in the race, very complicated with different Democrats running there. It's just hard to see if Florida stays in Republican hands. I guess what other race am I looking at? Let's see here. New Hampshire, Kelly Ayotte, for sure. I mean, this is someone who hopes Trump's views on immigration and populism and economics can help her. But she's facing the sitting governor for a Senate seat. That's going to be real tough. So so the Senate looks bad. And the irony in what you say, Bob, if I hear you correctly, is that even as he's distancing himself from Trump, Mark Kirk has to hope that Trump gets so much working class white support downstate that it offsets the Democratic turnout in Cook County. Kelly Ayotte has seemed a little uncomfortable with Trump. They're all relying on Trump to drive the blue collar.

What's a better? I hate I just hate talking about the white working class vote. I hate talking about color votes. But that's sort of where we are, really, isn't it? So they're hoping where we are. The Senate is now relying on this guy. Is that right? He is. I mean, I think the most interesting thing in politics right now is

the Mitch McConnell book tour. I mean, every interview he gives, the most painful thing, trying to talk about Trump and giving Trump advice and hoping Trump doesn't kill the Senate majority, but also not trying to alienate Trump. I mean, Mitch McConnell, who never does interviews at this pace, is out everywhere, and it's really been revealing. And I think McConnell looks at the map. I mean look at a state like Wisconsin. Ron Johnson wins in 2010. I mean that state – every poll, that's a leaning Democrat.

I mean guys like Johnson, even with Trump maybe doing okay in Wisconsin, you've got conservatives in Wisconsin like Cruz much more than they like Trump. They're not going to be enthusiastic about Trump, and the Democrats are all about Feingold coming back to Wisconsin. That's not going to go Republican. Very unlikely to see that going Republican. And Toomey, I mean, Toomey's tried everything to be Mr. Moderate in the public perception still. I don't see it. Toomey, remember, he barely won in a very, very tea party year in 2010. Bob, last question here. We've got to

let you go because you have a campaign to cover. Peter here one more time. In the old days, I knew, every reporter knew, everybody knew what the Washington Post's audience was. It was downtown Washington, everybody in the government. It was over in the Virginia

suburbs, all those folks who in those days what was going on in the Virginia suburbs was that you had military people and retired military people. It was simpler in those days. You knew what your audience was because delivery trucks took the paper out to them every morning. Who are you writing for now? Do you have a clear, crisp idea? I think we're ready for a national audience. At least I'm trying to. Got it. This is, I mean, we were owned by Jeff Bezos,

our editor, Marty Baron. That's the guy from Spotlight, used to be at the Boston Globe. I mean, this paper has big ambitions. It's a strange and weird time in the media industry, so I don't like to overpredict about how everything's going to play out. But I think for now, where I am,

the Post is really trying to be big and to be sharp on politics especially and other investigations. And I think it's doing a great job at that. But yeah, it's still the Post, so it still has the audience in the region. But everything is digital now. I mean I love the newspaper, but I look at my apartment building. I'm one of the only doors in like a row of about 50 apartments that gets the paper delivered every morning. So I don't know. Right, right. Here on the Stanford campus, I'll let you go. But this confirms what you're saying. I mean, you know, in the ancient days when I was in college, we also there was somebody on the dorm hallway had a subscription to The New York Times and we passed it up and down the hallway. Here at Stanford, there are a couple of stands where the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal stack up papers and try to give them away.

And at the end of the day, actually, one good sign about it for America is that the Wall Street Journal usually is gone. But the New York – you can't – literally, you cannot give a newspaper on paper away these days. Amazing. Anyway, well, we managed to sell a half a million on the weekends from time to time. But I do remember the Washington Post in its thick glory days. It was an absolute wonderful necessity if you're going to live in D.C. And also it had comics. So anyway, find Bob at the Post at their website or on Twitter and keep up with what he's writing about the campaign.

Thank you for coming back to the podcast, sir. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. Thanks, Bob. Bye. Let me be clear. Have I polled everybody in the newsroom and asked who they're going to vote for? No.

But I know the business. I've been in many a newsroom in my time. And with a few exceptions, there's some people who keep their crankiness to themselves, it is an overwhelmingly liberal kind of place. And as such, they will vote for Hillary. That shouldn't be any particular surprise to anybody, is it? But somehow we're supposed to believe, and even though I know these people and I know that when they write, they don't write because they're trying to slant things for their side. They take pride in their objectivity. I understand that. But it is a bit of a disconnect to say that we have a profession dedicated to telling it straight down the middle.

But at the same time, you know that 90 percent of them belong to one side. What do we do with an idea like that in our head? Peter, John, or do you just assume that they're lying to you, period? Oh, I think – I believe that they're trying to. It's when people complain about media bias. There's certainly no grand conspiracy to push one point of view, but this is the ecosystem they're swimming in. It's kind of hard to avoid the assumptions made, especially you look at newspapers, traditional and the newer media. They're in urban hubs.

These are not these are not right. Right. They are you know, they're definitely blue cities. And this is the perspective these people bring. I think there are many fantastic reporters who work very hard to remain objective, but it's hard not to see newsrooms overwhelmingly supporting Hillary, or even if it happened to be Bernie, supporting him, certainly over Trump, but any Republican. You did not hear these, history is being made when Ted Cruz, a Hispanic man, some say a Canadian, won the Iowa primary for the Republicans.

There wasn't a lot of talk of history. History is being made. He did it. It's just not even considered. Yeah. James, you're a professional journalist. I'm a fiction writer who works in the daily grind. I leave journalists for those people who actually have to do a lot of reporting and go around and get a notebook out and take things down.

So you've lived through this. You and I are roughly the same generation. Nobody is as old as I am exactly, but we've lived through this. To me, two big surprises. One of them is bad news. One of them is good news. The bad news is that way back in the 80s during the Reagan years, I actually thought we were getting some place. We were establishing that lower taxes and a strong America was good and that the country had learned that it would stick with that. Wrong. But I also thought that the press had finally come to

understand that the country was that there was just to put it in commercial terms, not even terms of right or wrong or even ideology exactly, but commercial terms. There was an audience for conservative or at least straight journalism. And I was wrong about that as well. The mainstream media didn't learn at all. The wonderful development, in my judgment, is that the Internet lets people like us put our own news together every morning. I can tell you right now for straight political reporting, it's Bob Costa. He works at the Washington Post.

But what I read is Bob Costa and it's Byron York for me. Those are the two absolute utter go. In other words, all of us are able. And of course, for my conversation and to hear reflections on what's in the news, that's National Review. And of course, above all, it's Ricochet. There are ways for us to put together our own. Of course, you have to be careful about falling into the trap of just talking to people who've already believed what you believe. So I do much to Paul Reyes and

others chagrin. Every time I post an excerpt from The New York Times, Paul Reyes says, Peter, how can you possibly still be reading that? But I read it because it's a kind of corrective. It's like going to San Francisco and walking around and having my jaw hit the sidewalk because I see Bernie Sanders' poster. But we can – you're able – from the point of view of the journalistic consumer, you're able to assemble your own newspaper in the morning, right? Yeah, the New York Times ought to offer itself with a headline to conservatives as a corrective for epistemic closure. It keeps that wound from completely healing. I mean, we have a period now. I thought just now, James, that you might be having a slightly off day, but no, there it is.

The peacock tail fans. James and his folklore. Beautiful. No, it's like this. Now, yes, we can assemble modulely from all of the different sources of what we get for our news. It used to be, however, that you could walk down the street and get from six or seven newspapers, which

themselves had different viewpoints. There was a monoculture in which there was one blaring voice existed from the 70s to the 90s. And now, yes, it's great. It's wonderful. What I fear, of course, is that because it is all now digital, that there'll be some EMP and that all of these competing voices will be lost. And Hillary Clinton in her third term will be able to write forever some narrative that will

be accepted by histories going forward. I mean, what do we know about the Romans, for example, except what was written about biographers who didn't necessarily like this person or that person. But we do have history and we are obligated to know what it is. So if you go to audible.com now and search Tom Holland, you will find two prescient books that detail the rise of Rome and the fall of the Republic. One of them is called Dynasty. The other is called Rubicon. I've been reading these and they're wonderful to listen to as well because there's no story

really like the Roman story. And I'm telling you, it's free too. Free 30-day trial membership and a free audiobook. Just go to audible.com slash ricochet and either browse the Tom Holland books or the 180,000 other audio programs. Download a title for free and start listening. It's just that easy.

Audible.com slash ricochet. Audible.com. A little garble there, of there of course sorry my internet cut out for a second get started today on this and uh it's not just books it's broadcasters entertainers magazines newspaper publishers and business information providers somewhere back in the audible.com archives you might find some issues of the national review and if you're lucky you might find the work of david french but the work of david french is all over this great grand globe he's an attorney

concentrating his practice on con law and law of the armed conflict, veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, co-author of several books, including most recently the number one New York Times bestselling, Rise of ISIS, A Threat We Can't Ignore. Graduate of Harvard Law, past president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, fired those are the people who can make sure you can say something on campus without getting your mouth sewn shut, and a former lecturer at Cornell Law School. He served as senior counsel for the American Center on Law and Justice

and the Alliance Defending Freedom. David also is a major, by the way, in the United States Army Reserve, and in 2007 he deployed to Iraq, served as a squadron judge advocate for the 2nd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cav Regiment, and was awarded the Bronze Star and set up a server for World of Warcraft, which I believe was the only one of its kind in that theater. Lives and works in Columbia, Tennessee, and of course came to everybody's attention when briefly was floated about as a name to run for president. Welcome to the podcast, David. How come you're not running? Well, first, thanks so much for having me, especially after I just was a part of the shortest French revolution in history.

But it's a pretty simple reason why I'm not running. I took a good, hard eight-day crash course in an independent run for the presidency and the viability in the cycle. And I learned two things. One, that it's far more viable than people realize. And two, that I'm not the right person to do it. Simply put, when I looked at all the data and I looked at the reality of the situation, I thought there was a great chance I would end up doing more harm than good, which was exactly the worst, the last thing I wanted to see happen. David, Peter Robinson here. And let me tell you, first, there's a lot about this current campaign season that has me queasy. But one unambiguous victory for the country is that today, a lot more people have heard of David French than they had than they had a month ago. That is good

for the country because you're just getting started. This isn't the end of any anything. Listen, so when you say you might have done more harm than good, does that mean you're afraid you would have been a Ross Perot defeating George H.W. Bush and electing Bill Clinton? That is to say, in this cycle, did you conclude that your candidacy was more likely to elect Hillary Clinton than to elect you? No, I actually, you know, I didn't, I was never going to run as a spoiler in the sense of like the Ralph Nader, Ross Perot role. If there wasn't a realistic chance of winning after several weeks of running as hard as possible, I was going to get out the sense that,

you know, I was the, quote, never Trump candidate, I launch and then it fizzles out of the gate, like one to two weeks out and there's just no traction, that two things would occur. One, it would be incredibly demoralizing to those conservatives who want an alternative. And two, I would end up blocking somebody else. So I would actually end up running out the clock with a failed candidacy, which would be the worst possible outcome. So I took a good long look at it and what it would take to really hit the ground running and realized it would just take somebody with more instant access to funds than I had in a little bit bigger constituency than, oh, none.

So, you know, and it's, believe it or not, I mean, as I say it, it sounds like, oh, well, why would you even think about this? But, you know, this was coming from a place and all of us involved in this process, this deep conviction that this is not an ordinary cycle, not just in that the normal rules don't apply, but also in that there there's a moral imperative or there's a imperative so long as a person doesn't do more harm than good to provide the American people with a different choice. And, you know, the big names were not stepping up. And so that's why I gave it this really hard, agonizing look. David. Okay. So let another next question. You've given this a lot of thoughts. So it's not as if I'm going to throw you a trick question

here. The big names were not stepping up. They sure weren't. And now even Paul Ryan, who is clearly a man in agony, but I mean he's like a Rodin sculpture of a man in the inferno, the poor guy. But they haven't stepped up. So either they are reaching a different conclusion – well, I suppose they must be because we know Paul Ryan is a very serious principled man. Let's take him as an example. Others you could say are more political figures. they must be because we know Paul Ryan is a very serious principled man. Let's take him as an example. Others, you could say, are more political figures. They're more willing to trim and maneuver, but not Paul Ryan. I don't think anybody would say that of him. You have to maneuver some to get anything done, but still. So the position seems to be it's Trump. It all took place according to the rules of the Republican Party. Next time around, let's hope we can change the rules. But the rules were what they were. The man has received more votes in the primary process than any other Republican candidate in history within days, literally days, single digit number of days, as I recall, of his becoming clearly the prospective nominee. He had closed with Hillary Clinton in

the polls. So if you apply the old test, this comes from Bill Buckley, but it's sort of the standard test. It's the job of our side to support the rightward most viable candidate and do the best you can with that candidate. Then that test says it's Trump. Why is that test wrong this time around? What do you, Bill Kristol, others who are attempting to put together a countercandidacy see or believe that Paul Ryan doesn't? Well, first, let me just say I agree with you. I think Paul Ryan's a good man who's making a mistake. And there's a lot of good people right now that I believe are making mistakes in this. And here's the element where I disagree with the application of Buckley test.

Well, there's a couple. Number one, I don't think he's rightward most. I think he's more right than Hillary Clinton on some in some areas. And Hillary is more right than him and others. I mean, if you start to break it down issue by issues, especially if you look at foreign policy, I'm not so sure that it's so clear who is more left here. And you compound that with the fact that it's almost impossible to figure out what Trump actually believes, considering he's contradicting himself many, many times. And then I think there's also sort of overlaying that would be an implied requirement of basic fitness for office. The rightward most candidate who's actually fit for office. If you look at his pronouncements on foreign policy, if you look at his conduct, if you look at his thought process,

I just don't believe the man is fit for office. I can talk much more at length about his foreign policy. But, you know, when you're talking about programs, when you're talking about threatening to blow up the NATO alliance, when you're talking about threatening to leave South Korea exposed, when you talk about ordering American troops to commit war crimes, when you throw out that Exxon, Exxon, an oil company, could help be the solution to ISIS. You know, you're dealing with an individual who's holding millions of lives in his hands and not only has no clue what he's talking about, he's aggressively arrogant about that. And that that is the kind of thing that I think could lead to human suffering on a on a horrific scale. And history has proven, in fact, that clumsy, blundering arrogance can and often does lead to that kind of suffering.

And so I just look at him as he's just not in the normal category of consideration when it comes to a political candidate. Hey, have you ever had your own brand of vodka? Have you ever had your own brand of steaks? What do you got? You got mustard. That's all you got. You got mustard. And I've had it.

And frankly, it's not so good. Look, I have the fries and I will stand on those. Oh, very few people can go toe to toe withtoe with lilacs, but David just did it. We've had practice from nights in the crow's nest at the National Rural. That's right. We all get together and plot what Aaliyah's things will do next. Well, here's the thing. Everyone is saying, however, David, that this won't happen because there's an institutional buffer around the man that will keep him from doing strange things, strange and crazy things.

That's how the system is built. There are guardrails there. Is that the case or do we believe that actually we have somebody who would use the force of his personality to kick down what existing guardrails are tottering in front of our eyes right now? Yeah, you raise a great point. And there's a reason why I brought up the foreign policy point just a minute ago. It's because that's where the guardrails are least strong.

I mean, the commander-in-chief has enormous power and authority over our armed forces, over the conduct of American foreign policy. Obama has proven that in spades. And also the Obama administration has demonstrated the power of the executive order. Well, I should be more precise and say the power of the executive memo. There's an awful lot of damage that a president can do now that they couldn't do even a few decades before because we've lost those guardrails. So the idea that there could be restraint on him. And then the other thing is everything we've learned about him in the last year is he just doesn't care about restraint. So here you have the Speaker of the House, the most powerful

Republican in the country, a man of integrity endorsing him. And rather than sort of responding to that with a new move towards some sort of presidential conduct, what does he do? He launches a multi-day tirade against a judge born in Indiana. As Paul Ryan himself said, it's a textbook definition of racism. And it's almost as if he takes every act, every person's, every respectable person's decision to support him and just throws it right back in their face by doing something unhinged. And so, you know, that's one of the things that's been so disturbing is that over the course of, you know, a year or so, he has again and again discarded all of these guardrails, all of these assurances that he's going to mature and

that he's going to, you know, he's going to in some way become, quote, presidential. And he just keeps throwing it back in all of our faces. And to some people, that's appealing. I think to the vast majority of Americans, it's appalling. Hi, David, this is John Gabriel. And one thing I've been following it, I waste far too much time on Twitter and I know how crazy it gets there. But I want to thank you considering a run for president. I know you caught a lot of flack and even Reitz Priebus was complaining about, oh, these efforts are, these people are embarrassing themselves trying to oppose the mighty Trump. And I had read, though, the backlash that you experienced. I read your wife, who's an excellent writer in her own right, Nancy French, read her commentary about the Cilia tax launch by Politico and others.

What positive experience did you bring for that? We always complain about the outrage culture and people trolling other people via the Internet. But did you get support from surprising quarters? You don't need to name names but uh what positive did you learn from the experience of just considering a run well you know i have several positives actually number one i learned that i have some pretty spectacular spectacular colleagues at national review and i already knew that but the extent to which those guys on those first 48 hours where twitter hate was overwhelming uh to the extent that they weighed into a battle that they didn't ask

to be a part of on my behalf was incredibly heartening. And then the other thing is, you know, I began to hear from people all around the country who said, I will quit my job today to help. I mean, that and that was one of the things that actually brought me ever closer to thinking that I would do it, the amount of that outpouring. And then, you know, and then just friends and neighbors. I had this really touching moment when we got home late last night, back home to Tennessee after this whirlwind experience, pulled into our driveway and our friends and neighbors had covered our yard with American flags and little signs that said, welcome home, French Revolution. And it says little things like that that remind you, as much hate and mockery and scorn is out there, that there's a lot of good in this country.

And so that was extremely heartening. David, Peter here one more time. Two what next questions. Sure. David, Peter here one more time. Two what next questions. What next for the search for an independent candidate? You are insisting and insisting in detail to the extent of writing quite a detailed column in NR on it that an independent run remains more viable than the press or most of the public thinks. What next for that now that you're out? And then, of course, what next for you? Well, right. I mean, I completely believe that it's more viable than people think. I mean, the ballot access issue alone, it was eye opening for me to see how possible and feasible that was. And not only that, how how much it could actually play a role in creating a movement, because the as states would fall like dominoes in the ballot access effort, you would create this national movement. But so yes,

it's far more feasible. And I do know that there are individuals who are going to, who are being specifically targeted for asks. And I'm not going to, I'm not going to leak their names. Like mine was leaked because I know what happens next. Right, right. So it's just a matter – there are a number of outstanding GOP officeholders, conservatives with real integrity who have their own built-in networks who would do wonderfully in this. It's just a matter of do they feel that they can do it. As far as what's next for me, look, in the short term,

I'm going to keep writing and trying to tell the truth as I see it about what's happening in this election cycle. I'm actually right in the middle now of a piece about Hillary's, the latest revelations about Hillary's emails

and drone strikes in Pakistan. And I haven't thought that much further ahead. You know, as far as I was concerned, as far as I'm concerned, I'm glad to be doing what I'm doing. Glad to have glad to have a great place at National Review to do it. And so it was not out of discontent that I chose to explore this. It was out of a feeling that, you know, it might be necessary. So I'm happy. I'm happy doing what I'm doing. Oh, get off the emails. Coldwater had an account on the DARPA system for heaven's sakes. LBJ probably posted something on Usenet. I mean,

come on. The American people need something different. Well, we look forward to that, and it's going to be a national review and elsewhere, of course, but you save your best stuff for NR, don't you? Oh, of course. Absolutely. Don't you find it odd, though, that you, a national review writer, were chosen by somebody connected with the Weekly Standard, who is our competitor? After all, they are our adversary. There was a pact struck years ago. I know that we are in a state of mutual amity, but were there any hard looks around when you said, I've been talking to the standard?

Well, you know, I did feel like it was kind of like being a member of the Bloods being chosen by one of the Crips. But, you know, that is how Trump brings us all together. Yes, indeed. Rechoicing in the hallways. Crystal had to go crawling to National Review. That's the way they I'm sure they look at it around the water cooler. And I love Bill. I do.

But there was something about this quixotic effort that did bring to mind the famous downfall scene where Crystal is looking at the electoral map and says, French, French will come in from the north and take all of the election. There's looks around and we have to explain the French candidacy to Sir Yodel. Anyway, David, keep writing, keep working, and we hope to see you at some point at some Ricochet meetup or maybe, you know, if you can do something for the Standard, you can come over and do something for Ricochet as well. We're always happy to have you. I would love to. Thanks, y'all.

Thank you, David. Thanks, David. The yeah, I know. You know what? You know what? That guy, that guy just took the bark off Donald Trump as much as anybody I've ever heard. And by implication, Trump supporters. And he was very rough on Paul Ryan.

And every bit of it was done graciously and generously and conceding that reasonable people may disagree. He said, I think highly of Paul Ryan, but I believe he's making a mistake. That's the way it's done. Well, if that's the way it's done then why isn't somebody with a with an intellect and any sense of propriety and a sense of comportment and decency uh what happened to those guys if they if somebody if he presented himself like scott walker did it would have been soundly rejected for being insufficiently incandescent and what we want is straight talk right that's the way it should be done i i'm sorry i have to i don't mind that yes i know i know you's the way it should be done. I'm sorry. I have to amend that. Yes, I know. I know. You know, the moment it was seconds after they floated his name, then some political

reporter tweeted out something that they'd found from a book that he wrote and mischaracterized it and made him sound like a controlled freak. Very second. It didn't take a lot. And as J-Pod tweeted right away, this is why decent people don't go into politics because the minute you go there, the minute you put a – you dip a toe in the water, the entirety of your life is out there for people to castigate and tear to shreds. I don't know how anybody would sleep because no matter how clean your conscience is, there's got to be something back there from grade school that they'll dig up and say you were a bully or he put your car sure and these people will make it up i'm sorry is this a segment i'm sorry it was oh no oh sitting in for sitting in for rob long who couldn't see that one coming as opposed to rob who would have smelled it in the breeze i was biting my lip let the record show well essentially when i said sleeping you know where that was oh of course of go go sorry i'm gonna put my button on mute go yourself mute

stifle uh essentially what i would tell you about casper would be everything that would be in front of me in a little sheet of things to read because i hate to say it but sometimes they give you talking points to read and i'm looking right now at a sheet that has none of those things. As a matter of fact, it just duplicates the Audible copy. So what I'm going to do here is I am going to tell you off the top of my head what I know about Casper, and it's three things. One, I love it. And I love it because every night when I sleep on it, I sink into it,

and it's like it remembers me, and it gives me a little push and a little bounce as well. It's not like one of those old boring beds where you drop into it and it's like a plank of wood. It's not like one of those cheap ones you find in an old motel where you sink into it and it's like going into it just a vat of feathers. It's got just the right sink and just the right bounce. It holds you up. It is a thing of beauty. Two, it comes to your door at a price that's better than anything else. Why do you want to go to a mattress place and sit there and bounce up and down on something for a couple of seconds and say, yeah, that's better than anything else. Why do you want to go to a mattress place and sit there and bounce up and down on something for a couple of seconds and say,

yeah, that's where I want to spend a third of my life? No. You want to go to Casper.com and find out for yourself. It's going to come free of charge, free shipping. And what you're going to find is that something that not only is the most amazing bed you've ever slept on, but it's got a price that will, shall we say, will help you sleep as well.

Compare the prices on the site to what you would pay, and you'll find that it's an astonishing point. So they're made in America. It's a no-risk situation. Casper will send it to you. You take it out of the box. It unfolds like a great promise that is soon fulfilled. And once you start sleeping on a Casper, you'll say,

okay, how many beds do we have in this house? How many are we going to get? So go to Casper.com and use the coupon code RICOCHET, which I believe gets you $50 off already a low price. No middlemen. They've been eliminated strenuously with no mercy whatsoever. And the savings have been passed along to you. So Casper.com slash RICOCHET for $50 off and start sleeping smarter and better

as soon as that big box arrives. All right, that was off the top of my head. And that was an honest testimonial given from somebody who sleeps on one of those things. I shave with Harry's. I listen to audio. And I sleep on a Casper. Me too, by the way. Since you didn't have the – although if that was off the top of your head, the top of your head is an impressive place.

A little personal testimonial from Robinson since we don't seem to have the copy in front of us. I too sleep on a Casper mattress and love it right now when i start giving ads for a summer's eve here that's when that's when we'll wonder all right the big story this week perhaps um was the passing of bahamut ali which uh like everything else in the internet because everything is horrible i became virtue signaling became a way to castigate other people became a way to uh emphasize this and to do that and to downplay this and to denigrate that i I'm content just to say it was an amazing, illustrative, indicative American life with all of its highs and its lows, its flaws and its accomplishments, and just let it go with that. Because otherwise you start getting into things and you start

debating larger issues that make it sound like you can like you like you can't let anything go without grinding your axe john well one thing that i thought about uh when ali passed my dad was a huge boxing fan still is oh really gets the chance to watch it and so i grew up especially saturday mornings abc wide world of sports whatever boxing match was on i would be at his side and watching it and trying to learn at his knee as it were. Ali, it's hard to express to the whippersnappers out there in our audience how big a deal he was. Maybe I think of being a kid and you see a small hill and you think it's the greatest hill you've ever seen. Maybe my perspective is skewed because as a 10-year- in uh just sitting in front of the tv but i you look to ali he had his own uh prime time show for a while he would have howard cosell on

and when we talk about athletes today tom brady or lebron james or whoever is big in the news these days he was like all of them wrapped together. He was just, he was a force, of course, in the ring, but in politics, in popular culture, in comedy and entertainment, he was everywhere. And he'll be sorely missed. It's also a great American story that only boxing provides. I remember when he was fighting Ernie Shavers, right? And Shavers just was undefeatable in some strange way he had his head down and ali is raining blows off this big bald pate and shavers is just grinning back at him as though this isn't going to work for you when you saw the man at his prime you saw an extraordinary

athlete when you saw the later years you saw that inevitable arc that you find in boxing the hungry kid who comes up the champ who luxuriates in the fame of the world and then those those those difficult creaky ending years before finally they either hang it up or are beaten into submission uh that's why we love boxing because it if you love boxing there's it's simply all of sports distilled down to two people in one square right may i add a little asterisk to this everything that both of you said about ali although both of you know much more about the sport and about him than I do. But when Ali died, I skipped around to the news accounts and so forth. And several times, George Foreman sat for an interview and commented on Ali.

And I have to say, I was enormously impressed by George Foreman. I believe he fought fewer fights and maybe that's why he's in better shape physically, but he was a gracious, humble, funny, knowledgeable commentator on Muhammad Ali. I just, I felt I had discovered a piece of American life in George Foreman. And you do, who had the greatest third act of any boxer imaginable. Indeed. He invented a grill. He invented a grill. He invented a grill that everybody absolutely had to buy because unlike the other grills you had in your countertop, this one was angled.

Oh, oh, it was angled. And the grease all flowed down into this little pan that supposedly you were supposed to clean right away. You never did. It got all gucky. Threw it away. I remember the moment at which I realized that Apple and Steve Jobs had had an

extraordinary effect on American popular culture when George Foreman grills were coming out in Bondi blue, when they had this little plastic part to them that emulated the look and the color, the translucent plastic of the very first iMac. You forget, people, how much that iMac changed design all over the place. And now you're looking at that color and that plastic on a grill hawked by a boxer who was known to us all for his ability to punch and to take the same. It's an extraordinary country. It just is. Only in America, as Don King would say. Only in America, as Don King would say when they were doing the rumble in the thrill in Manila. True, which makes you wonder why some people of a youthful persuasion say we want to turn it all upside down.

We want to flip America on its head. What we want to do is to vote Bernie and to flip it all upside down. That was in that little remark that we had as we began the show, talking from the socialist perspective. And perhaps next week when Rob comes back after having been in a place that, shall we say, is a bit more to the left of America, we'll ask him for his perspective on that. John, thank you very much for sitting in today. Peter as well.

You, the listener, thanks for making it this far. And you owe it to yourself to go to thegreatcourses.com, caspert.com, and audible.com, where the magic coupon code RICOSHAY will help you sleep better, read better, think better, talk better, and in short, live a better life. We'll see you all in the comments at Ricochet 2.0 before it morphs into what they're calling, I don't know, 2.6. But I'm telling you, it's 3.0 and you're going to love it. Thanks for listening. I'm James Lileks and this has been Ricochet Podcast number 307.

Thanks, gentlemen. You know what? That was better than I expected. I am just a poor boy, though my story is seldom told. I squandered my resistance for a pocket full of mumble. Such are promises. Transcription by CastingWords When I left my home and my family I was no more than a boy in the company of strangers In the quiet of the railway station running scared They know, seeking out the poorer quarters

Where the ragged people go Looking for the places only they would know Asking only workman's wages I do declare there were times when I was so lonesome I took some comfort there. Thank you. La la la la la la la la La la la la la la la la Then I made out my winter clothes And wishing I was gone Going home Where the New York City winters Are bleeding me

Bleeding me Go home In the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter By his trade And he carries the reminders of every glove that made him down Or cut him till he cried out in his anger and his shame I am leaving, I am leaving, but I don't still remain still remains true Bye. Bye. Ricochet. Join the conversation. Thank you.