The Ricochet Podcast - The Jersey Boys

Episode Date: October 16, 2021

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A huge bird just flew into my window. So if I am absent later, it's the whole Tippi Hendra and Alfred Hitchcock thing going on here. I have a dream. This nation will rise up. Live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. Never let anybody tell you who you are. You tell them who you are. With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lallix, and today, one guest, Chris Christie. So let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number 566. Why don't you join us at Ricochet.com?

You, too, can be part of the most stimulating conversations in community on the web. I'm James Laddix in Minneapolis with my dog barking madly in the background at the guy who's cutting the lawn for the last time this year. It's atmosphere. Rob Long is atmospherically somewhere else. Looks to be in some sort of New Orleans, follow the house of Usher type place with Gothic settings and crepuscular light coming through the window. Peter is in his usual library. It seems a gentleman.

How are you this week? I'm doing very well. I'm in Oxford, Mississippi. That's where I am. Oh, I'm in a, it's in in a the graduate hotel is one of those like there's like they're all over these chains are all over um college towns and they're sort of nice hotels with giant lobbies and the students hang out uh and there's free wi-fi and that's where i'm staying for the southern foodways alliance symposium and i'm presenting um tomorrow

and i'm missing this is how devoted i am to our project together i'm missing a bunch very interesting conversations just gave a very moving award i know this other stuff going on to a family a father and a son who he was a crabber for a long time in georgia and six years seven years ago he started farming oysters in georgia on the georgia coast and um just a beautiful movie just a little short film of them. It's just incredibly, if you can't, if you watch that and you are still in despair,

then I can't help you. I mean, I'll put a link to the movie. If you've got some time, you should watch this. It's very short. It's like about six minutes, seven minute documentary. Just talk about their lives.

It's beautifully shot. Filmmakers, Joe York, who's done a lot of movies for us. And I'm just still a glow of the beauty of that film. So still in despair, he says, what a typical Pollyanna attitude Joe York, who's done a lot of movies for us. And I'm just still aglow of the beauty of that film. So still in despair, he says, what a typical Pollyanna attitude from a rootless cosmopolitan floating around, flitting from city to city, not realizing that depression and slumped shouldered resignation is the only way to go. I don't agree. But perhaps Peter, Peter, you. James, I am reminded of what California.

You said that the fellow is mowing your lawn for the last time. And when we first moved to California, yay, these many years ago from the northeast where my wife and I both grew up, we rented. We've moved on since then, but we rented a little house and I was thrilled because the house, small as it was, the house had an almond tree, an orange tree, a couple of cherry trees, a lemon tree, a plum tree, a persimmon tree, all kinds of bushes and shrubs and so forth. And I went out there the first weekend and I small house, tiny yard, fifth of an acre tops. And it took me five hours. We had little kids too, who wanted to, took me five hours to do the cutting, cutting this back and pruning that. And then the next weekend came and it took the same amount of time. And then

what really threw me, if you begin to get the picture here that my pleasure in this is beginning to diminish and really rather rapidly. You're not a farmer, Peter. I think it's very true. I go outside and the squirrels have eaten all the almonds, every last almond. And then the time of year comes when I instinctively feel that this sort of nonsense should end. Because in the Northeast, as in Minnesota, there comes a moment when you mow the lawn for the last time. But in California, James, you never do. It just goes on and on and on. You are Sisyphus mowing the lawn and pruning the trees. And there's nobody who needs 500 plums, which is what one plum tree can produce. Anyway, it turned into my dream of California.

I got over it in about six months. And by about December and January, when all this stuff was still growing, it had turned into a total nightmare. Sorcerer's Apprentice, a plum of stone fruits. Yes, exactly. Damn this golden fecund land. Exactly. It's true.

What game are they playing now with me? I do remember that. I remember when we were kids growing up in Northern California and we had a cherry tree. We had a swimming pool and we'd stand on the cherry tree and someone said well you need to harvest all the cherries so we harvested all the cherries we just threw them into the pool and the pool was like two inches like it was like cherries like it looked like a cranberry bug and then you scoop them out and then you um you you know just too

many you washed them and froze them and um ate them oh because that that gave them a kind of chlorine rinse. I was just going to say that special chlorinated thing that the cherry wax. The 70s, we didn't care. Yes. Well, we had one apple tree when I was growing up, and I bagged them all, put them in my radio flyer red wagon, and went door to door selling them, which was my first experience with capitalism.

You could sell apples in North Dakota? This seems to me like the kind of thing everybody would have plenty of. Yes, they did. But it's a pity purchase when the little neighborhood guy comes. You don't want to sour him out for your price. I see. Which no one called me. Well, speaking of capitalism.

Or they only called you that once. They called me that once. We have an interesting set of circumstances that seem to be coming to us. Now, you know, I was thinking about this the other day. Everybody talks about the black swan is the thing that nobody expected. It seems like what we have here are a cloud of black starlings that one or two of them perches on your eaves and you think nothing of it. But when all of a sudden they get together in a concatenated mass and swirl above you in an oddly coordinated movement, you think something is amiss, something is strange, something is ominous. Between the ports and the inflation and the

empty shelves and the Christmas that won't be and the surging natural gas prices, I'm supposed to pay 50% more in natural gas this winter. I was under the impression that we had that stuff coming out of our bleeps, but apparently not. So you have all of these things coming together. And even though I don't think- Oh, we do. Excuse me. We do. We do, James. You understand what's happening here. I don't. No, I don't. No, of course. Yes, I do. All right. John Kerry thinks it's bad for the climate, so you need to pay 50% more. And I understand. Now, some people think that it's Joe Biden's fault. I

don't. I think he's senescent and out of touch with this. And they put a piece of paper in front of him and he signs it. Some others think that this is a grand plan of a socialist cabal that wants to wreck America and bring us down to the rubble so they can rebuild. I tend to go with the incompetence on many levels and unforeseen circumstances and unexpected consequences. What say you guys? And do you think that people will, in the end, blame Biden for this? Spoiler, yes. I have been enormously cheered by two events in the last two or three weeks. The first is that President Xi of China seems really

determined to reassert communism. Terrific. We need the Chinese to get in their own way right now. That looks as though it's going to happen. The second is that the starlings are coming home to roost. I'm trying to pick up on your choice of bird, James. Half-arsed bird metaphor. Starlings are coming home to roost faster than I had expected, meaning that, yes, of course, there was supply chain, but the lockdown is largely they're doing in any event. That's a separate matter, but they're doing everything wrong and reality is asserting itself. And what has me so cheered is that Biden's poll numbers have turned south already. Ordinary Americans have figured out that this guy is messing things up. And it's happening faster than I would have expected.

And we have now spontaneous, by the way, is this, i do i neither of you is catholic but do i need to go to confession over this because i have so enjoyed yes i mean cackled and gloried in let's go brandon well no it's special i'm sure there's a special exemption for that new year and your religion there always is um yeah the let's go brandon but i think the let's go brandon stuff is um uh for people to know that somebody uh uh i think it was a nascar race uh the the crowd was chanting um a very popular anglo-saxon uh curse word um followed by uh joe biden and the and behind during an interview and the interviewer uh either didn't understand the words or pretended that they were shouting let's go brandon because

she was the person you speak to is brandon and so people are now saying let's go brandon uh and i think this i think this is actually significant because what it is it's samizdat right it's underground yes it beautifully put beautifully that's what this is, it's Samizdat, right? It's underground. Yes, beautifully put. That's what this is. This is people saying, we don't buy it and we're going to make jokes. And the minute they start doing that, I think it's very, very powerful

and hugely undermining, you know, to be a figure of, and I don't think Joe Biden is the victim, is really the greatest victim here. I mean, he's the president. He's going to pay the price. I think the victim is really the is the greatest victim here. I mean, he's the president. He's going to pay the price. I think the reality is that it's the media. It's the people saying, we know you lie. We know that. And you are lying to our face right now. And we know it. And, you know, we know it. And we're going to make fun of you. And to me, it's great. Just two data points I saw.

Well, one data point from a friend of mine, old friend of mine, who's an original Ricochet OG. He has three children and they are of, you know, sort of spread out in age, not, you know, post-college, college and pre-college.

Post-college, kind of like probably politically somewhere in the conservative, democrat, liberal, republican kind of way. Current college, woke. Pre-college, pretty right wing. And he says this

because there's a generation that probably they're trying to indoctrinate, and the indoctrination is so terrible and so ham-fisted. It's so let's go. They are now a figure of fun. So I think that is a data point in hope. Second thing is we're walking around San Francisco.

We had a ricochet meeting this week. We had a lovely dinner. We had a great conversation. We did some business. And then the next day I went to have lunch with my friend and we were walking around san francisco and san francisco was traditionally filled with insane lunatics and nuts right and uh they're all they're still there a lot of other problems too we're walking along the embarcadero and this white van is coming along the embarcadero and somebody is on the van on the loudspeaker you know like broadcasting to people

like yeah you know which they always do like crazy people do i'm sure it's like there's fluoride in the water and they're trying to control your brain or you know someone you know like ronald reagan is you know from outer space all that stuff crazy as the as the van gets closer we're like wait what's he saying and he's saying this the mask mandates are not necessary the vaccine is effective they're trying to control you by keeping the masks on schools should be open children are not vulnerable to the virus he's basically he he is broadcasting the truth to a city full of crackpots it's completely inverted it's traditionally it's the crackpot broadcasting to the city of normals,

and now it's the one normal guy just with a microphone, just trying to say, remember, they told you that you could take the masks off, and then two weeks later, you had to put them back on. That's crazy.

Come on now. It's over. And he basically is saying the same things that our good friend and genius Jay Bhattacharya is saying saying and that smart people are saying. He's he's using, you know, when in Rome, when in Rome, you broadcast like a crackpot. I was just in an airport last weekend and experienced a return to the world of masks, airplanes, waiting rooms and the rest of it. I was reminded how much I hated it. And the airport itself was a desiccated experience because half the

restaurants were gone. And when I went to Steak Shack to ask if they were opening up, because I saw a guy behind the counter, he said, nope. Half my night shift called in sick. Didn't have any workers. Place right next to him. Wasn't open. Didn't have any workers.

But the great thing in the Phoenix airport was you could go outside and observe art. And inside, in a glass case, there was art. So you had your compensations. You're going to die of hunger, but here's some art. The thing of it is, though, is that life is more than food. Life is art. Now, let's back up for a second here. Let me tell you something.

The global pandemic we've been going through, right, it's completely disrupted the markets. And reckless spending from the Pelosi-Biden administration is only making things worse. So finding promising places to invest your hard-earned $100,000 nest egg is tougher than ever. If you're like me, or the rest of America for that matter, you're probably heavily allocated to equities, right? Which is exactly what every report from the Wall Street Journal to Citi is telling us not to do.

And they're projecting equity returns from 5% to actually going negative in an inflationary world. That's a nightmare. Well, through the Fed off printing trillions of dollars on Congress's monstrous infrastructure bill, it does not take a genius to see that your money needs a safe haven and it needs it now, right now. So how are professional investors preparing for this nightmare scenario? They've turned to an under the radar asset class, one that is historically only been available to the coastal elites and the hedge fund managers. It's a real physical asset that isn't gold, real estate, or anything related to crypto. It's actually fine art. See, I was talking-

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Lucky for you, they have given me 60 passes to skip that waitlist. To jump to the front of the line, head to masterworks.io slash ricochet. That's masterworks.io slash ricochet. Previous offers have sold out in hours, so do not wait around. It sounds fascinating, doesn't it? You'll find out more at masterworks.io slash ricochet and see the important disclaimers at masterworks.io slash ricochet as well slash disclaimer. And we thank Masterworks for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast, Chris Christie, political commentator, lobbyist, former federal prosecutor, served as the 55th governor of New Jersey from 2010 to 2018. You can catch him on ABC News or appears regularly or follow him on

Twitter at GovChristie. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to the podcast. Hey, let's start with the future, shall we? When you were on the aforementioned ABC This Week show, you said, quote, every election is about tomorrow, end quote. And you dismissed the idea that 2024 will be about 2020 or 2020. Will 2022 be about 2028? Are both parties too hung up in the past, fixated on Trump? Are you over Trump? And do you think everybody else should be? What do you think is going to be on the plate in 2022 and 2024? Well, look, I think if you want to win, you can't be relitigating 2020. You know, the former president has made it, you know, his business since election night in 2020 to continue to try to relitigate that. And

to me, not only is there no evidence to be able to support what he's saying, but worse than that, most of the American people are well over it. And if you want to try to win elections, you've got to talk about their hopes, their aspirations, and what they want for their future. And they're certainly not going to want to be talking about what happened in Arizona or Michigan or Pennsylvania. But the president still wants to continue to talk about that. In fact, you know, he sent out a press statement two days ago where he said that unless the election fraud from 2020 is resolved, and I don't know what he means by that, then Republicans should not vote in either 22 or 24. I mean, look, you know, that's the kind of stuff that's incredibly destructive to the party and ultimately destructive to the country. So I think that elections have always been about tomorrow.

And in this instance, for us to win, it's even more important for us to make it that way. Governor, I'd just like to pursue that for a moment. You know what? There are a lot of Republicans who are tiptoeing around the subject of Donald Trump. And you just did something pretty remarkable. You came right out and told us what's really on your mind. So let me let me say you're the man to whom to put this next question. I probably shouldn't reveal the names here.

I'm sure I shouldn't because it was in confidence. In any event, this is a report to me from a friend who was with at dinner with someone who is considering running for president in confidence. In any event, this is a report to me from a friend who was at dinner with someone who is considering running for president in 2024. And the question was, if Donald Trump runs once again for the Republican nomination, will you run against him? And the candidate replied, or the prospective candidate replied, well, I keep thinking about it and thinking about it. And here's all I can see. If I run against him for the Republican nomination and lose, I've lost. If I run against him for the Republican nomination and I win, Donald Trump being Donald Trump will hold it against me and do everything he can to make sure that I lose in the general election, so I will have lost again. If Trump decides to run, I'll stay out because it would be lose, lose. Does that make sense to you? No, not at all. Not at all. Look, if you're afraid of Donald Trump, then you have no business running for president at all, whether he's in the race or he's not. Because Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping

are going to be much more difficult to deal with. As are the Ayatollah in Iran, as is Kim Jong-un in North Korea. You know, there are going to be big problems around the world and at home to deal with. And if you're scared of Donald Trump, then you have no business running for president at all, in my view. You view. I haven't decided what I'm going to do or not do, but I will tell you this, my decision will be my decision. It won't be based on whatever anybody else does, Donald Trump or anybody else who's being talked about in terms of running for president in 24. Okay, I got one more question. Rob, I know, wants to come in and ask about vaccination, the politics of vaccination, and so forth. Are you surprised that Biden's poll numbers are trending down as quickly as they are?

And in some sense, excuse me, the background, and we were talking about this before you came on, I honestly find it kind of heartening. The administration's doing everything that the liberals and progressives want, as much as they can get through Congress. They're screwing everything up, and the American people are already on to them, is the way it looks to me. What do you think? Look, I'm surprised because I didn't think he would screw up this badly this quickly. I think it's just the pace of the screw-ups that is, you know, the Afghanistan situation was disgraceful from a military perspective, but also from a strategic perspective. You know, if you're going to leave, and he made the decision

to leave, you get all the unarmed people out before you get the armed people out. I mean, I don't think you need to be George Patton to figure that one out. And the fact that they did that in reverse was an extraordinary blunder, which led to a lot of things that I think are really, really problematic for him. The other reason I think they've dropped so quickly, Peter, is that people really get resentful when you govern differently than you campaigned. Joe Biden campaigned as a moderate uniter who was going to try to bring both parties together and craft compromise. He has governed as an unapologetic left liberal. And the American people see it. And a lot of the white educated suburban voters who voted for him and who made the difference in this race, I suspect now are appalled as to what's happening and feel like he played the bait and switch with them.

And so I think that's the other reason the numbers have gone down so quickly. Pure incompetence is number one. Number two is inconsistency with brand. The worst thing you can do as a politician is do things which are inconsistent with your brand. Once you do that, the public believes that you're phony. And once they believe you're phony, it's very hard to be seen as being effective as a leader. Hey, Governor, it's Rob Long calling from Mississippi. I wanted to thank you for joining us. But when you mentioned authenticity, I should tell you that when you were, I think it was your first term as a governor, maybe the first six months of governor.

And I was in L.A. and I was with the right television. And I had script writer friends, very few, you know, who were on the right, who would, you know, try to begin the day by watching what they call the little Chris Christie porn, which were YouTube clips of you taking down the press corps a little bit. Not, you know, fairly, but you were tough and authentic. And it really came through. Do you think that in the culture that we have today, that there's room for that? Is there room for that kind of like smart, pugilistic, not, it wasn't negative, but you were tough. You were tough on them.

You were tough on the press. You were tough on teachers unions. You were tough on a bunch of people who are not traditionally gotten tough on. Do you think that's ancient history now, culturally? Or do you think there's still a future for that? No, I think there's still a future for it if you do it authentically. It's really who you are. And that's why it came across, I think, the way it did back then. And I think it would come across the same way now. Now, are there different sensitivities now? Yes, there are. But I think most, if you go back and look at most of what I said back in those days,

most of that stuff would not even violate the enhanced snowflake standards that we're in right now. That's very true. You know, smart and tough have to go together. When you have crazy and tough, that's what I think people don't want to see anymore. But smart and tough, I think they're always happy to see. I think so, too. I want to ask you a little bit about COVID, because I heard you were on a segment of This American Life, National Public Radio, and they got together a focus group of vaccine resistant, vaccine hesitant, even maybe suspicious, non-vaccinated people. And they sort of presented them a bunch of arguments and a bunch of like, here's why you should get it. Here's why you should get it. You sort of bat clean up on that.

And you told some really compelling stories. You told a really, really moving story, after which I think a huge portion of those people were convinced. You convinced them to get the vaccine. And you did it on Zoom too, by the way. I mean, we should just say that, but you weren't in a room. You were like, yeah, it was this way. Would you, if you were governor, had you been governor, Christy, at the time, would you have had a vaccine mandate? Would you have a vaccine mandate? How would you get those people? How would you convince vaccine resistant people to get the vaccine as a public citizen and not just as a private citizen. Do you know what I'm saying?

I'm saying like, would you, would you be law or would you just have a, have a session like that? Like you did on the radio? I would do it just the way I did it. I do just the way I did it on that focus group. See,

I think the mandate piece is just going from government is just going to make people more resistant. And, and, you know, think more and more, I don't want the government telling me what to do. And I think that, you know, as a conservative, I've always thought, you know, the governing should be done closest to the people and we should push that down. So I don't think governors should be mandating that kind of thing. I've thought, and I really felt after that focus group, Rob, that people want to be educated, not indoctrinated.

And that's the difference. Even those people that day, when I told those stories, they changed their minds. These are not people who are doctrinaire about this. They have legitimate concerns. Some of the concerns are a little outlandish, but they come from things they've read, you know, on the web and other places.

And so, you know, they, but they hold those things genuinely. They hold those concerns genuinely. And I think our job, and I think this is where both the Trump administration and the Biden administration have fallen down. I don't think they've educated the public nearly enough about how much of this research has been being done for a decade before COVID even showed up. One of the big things I've heard from people is they're concerned about the vaccine because they feel like it was rushed. Right, right.

But when you know that the mRNA technology has been being researched for at least a decade, if not more, and worked on by scientists across the country and around the world, you start to become a little bit less concerned about that. So you need to have people walk through it. I also think the TV doctors have generally been a problem Whether that's Tony Fauci or Scott Gottlieb or you know the whole list Sunjay Gupta, you know I mean, they don't want to be lectured to by people that they don't think even practice medicine anymore Right, right. What we should be doing is getting regular family practitioners from around the country on TV talking to people about their experience with their patients and why they're advising their patients, if they are, to take the vaccine. Why they themselves are taking the vaccine.

Those are things that I think would be much more persuasive to vaccine hesitant people than a government mandate. Because let's remember something else. You know, the government puts a mandate on that everyone needs to be vaccinated. How are you going to enforce that? I used to, you know, when people would come to me with ideas of something they wanted me to do as governor, one of my first questions always was, well, how are we going to make sure that it happens? Because the last thing you want to look like as an executive leader is like a paper tiger. If you're going to go do something, you better make sure, you know, you can enforce the vaccine mandate across the state as large

from a population perspective and densely populated as New Jersey. I think it'd be very hard. So you're making a really interesting point that it's not the vaccine, it's trust. Yeah. There are plenty of good Americans who don't trust the vaccine because they don't trust the public health officials or the Biden. And honestly, there's good reason at this point for Americans to have doubts, right? Sure. Sure. And that's why I'm saying it's like, there's good reason for generalized doubt, but I don't think there's good reason for specific doubt on these vaccines. You know, one of the things I said to a friend earlier was that, you know, who himself was vaccine hesitant. And he said, there's not enough research. I said,

we're in the midst of the largest clinical trial in world history. Literally hundreds of millions of people are getting hundreds and millions of doses of this. We have not seen yet any reaction from these folks that would cause you to be nervous about taking the vaccine. I said to, he said, well, you don't know what's going to happen in five years or 10 years. And I said, you're right. I don't. But I also can tell you, you don't know what's going to happen if you get COVID. It's so random and still so, there's so little understanding in the medical community about it and its short-term course and its long-term effects that you don't want to try it.

So there's risk in everything. Laptop. Check. Spanner. Check. Screwdriver. Check. A career built around me?

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Administration's messaging has been odd. I mean, there's Joe Biden double jabbed, getting his booster, wearing a mask and rolling up a sleeve to reveal an arm so hairy that I think people were vaccine hesitant because they thought it caused werewolfism. They've been bad at it. I agree. Of course, if you are a werewolf, you're covered with soft, silky fur, so it's easy to sleep. If you're a human being, you don't have that. You have to find something else like nice sheets, right? Well, my nice sheets are in the bedroom. And I would like to note also that the bedroom has a variety of things appointed that are just the way I like it. The place where I charge my phone

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Hey, Governor, I'm speaking to you from California, where we just failed to recall a progressive governor who's doing a lousy job. And we failed to recall him by a lot because he raised enough money to turn his campaign around and run not against Larry Elder, but against Donald Trump. As recently as Ronald Reagan carried California in 80 and 84, and George H.W. Bush carried the state in 88, back in the 80s, New York was still in play. Now we have big, important states, above all to me, California, of course, because I live here, but out of reach for the National Republican Party. Here in California, it's out of reach even for congressional seats, except for a few limited regions. You did something pretty remarkable.

You managed to run and govern as a pretty conservative and very outspoken Republican in a blue state. How did you do that? And are there any implications for the Republican Party? I mean, I don't know how you feel, but I feel fundamentally, honestly, it's not just bad politics. It's unpatriotic for our party to say, California, 11% of the population, we're going to have to learn to live without them forever. Look, I think there are implications for it, but it's not easy. It's not going to happen overnight. So let me say this. For instance, in my reelection, which was a little bit like what Gavin Newsom just went through and the Republican Party went through.

They'll be going through it again next year. I got 51% of the Hispanic vote and 29% of the African-American vote. That is staggering. Now, that didn't happen overnight. That happened over four years of me going to Hispanic neighborhoods and social clubs and events and African-American churches and having town hall meetings. You know, I think Republicans generally are uncomfortable with going places where they don't think they're going to be welcomed with open arms. I never worried about

that. I remember going to a town hall that I did in a church, an African American church in Irvington, New Jersey. Now Irvington is a medium-sized city in New Jersey that is 95% minority. It is majority African American, but the top plurality is Hispanic, and only 5% of the population in Irvington is Caucasian. When I ran the first time in Irvington I got a total of 430 votes. John Corzine got over 4,000. Got it. I stood up and when I came out onto the stage for the town hall meeting in the church, I got very tepid applause and some booing. And I asked my people to count how many people there were in the place. And there were 520 people there. So I said, by the way, this is a win for me no matter what you do. I said, because there are more people here today

than actually voted for me in this city when I ran for president three years ago. I said, so we're making progress. And they all started to laugh. And we went from there. And we had some contentious back and forth in it. But I was there. And I really do believe that one of the things that we've forgotten about in politics is it's harder to hate up close. Right, right, right.

The further we are away from each other, the less time we spend with each other, the less time we expose even our ideas to each other that are different, that are in conflict. But they know that they're given with respect and seriousness and thought, you still can win people over. I mean, I'll give you another example, Peter. I'm the first pro-life governor in New Jersey's history since Roe versus Wade. There's not been another pro-life person elected to the governorship. And, you know, the abortion issue, pro-choice versus pro-life in New Jersey, runs about 65-35 in favor of pro-choice. Yet I got elected twice as a pro-life governor. Public doesn't need to agree with you on every issue. But they need to believe that the positions you have

come from a genuine place and that if they disagree on one, there's another one that they're going to agree with you on. And I think that's the model for us winning in a lot of different blue states. I think you see that with Larry Hogan in Maryland. I think you've seen it with Charlie Baker in Massachusetts where they've taken some pretty traditional

conservative positions on a lot of issues. And yet those two guys are both in the 70% approval rating today in Maryland and Massachusetts. So it can be done, but it takes work. And you have to do things differently than our party has done them before. I got Rob and James want to come back in. I know. Listen, I've got to give you my gut reaction to our conversation so far. You're talking about a game you love. You love politics and you're damn good at it.

And you've got all kinds of ideas about what conservatives can do. And you think you know how they should be done. I mean, you're not going to declare on the Little Ricochet podcast, for goodness sake, but I'm not talking to a man who's diving into corporate life and putting politics behind him. Am I, Governor? No. I mean, look, I'm not, you know, I'm not ready to retire from public life yet. It doesn't mean I'm going to run for president. But what it means is that I'm not, I'm still fascinated by all this. I still think that government is a place where you can make a huge difference in people's lives. And you're right about all the things you said. I do love this. And I feel like I have certain God-given skills and talents that make me pretty good at it. So, you know, if you find that, then I think it's a sin not to use it. Certainly that's what my Sicilian grandmother would have told me, was, you know, God gives you a gift. It's a sin not to use it. And she was the one who got me interested in

politics in the first place. And, you know, I will continue to be interested in it for the rest of my life. And I'm certainly not ready to concede the field to others who I think may not necessarily bring as much success to our party or to our country. So can I, let's ask, let's talk about what you're doing right now. You're on, I can't remember the official name, but you're on the Republican redistricting something or other. And this is what, to raise money and provide legal support to challenges to Republican redistricting efforts, which are sure to come? Yes, and are coming right now. It's the National Republican Redistricting Trust. It was established in 2017 by a number of prominent Republican donors who felt like we were behind the curve, and we were, from the group that's headed by Barack Obama and Eric Holder, supporting Democratic redistricting efforts.

And we didn't have a national organization doing that. So folks like Charles Schwab and others stepped up to start to help to establish this. four or five months ago, Kevin McCarthy reached out to me and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and asked if we would co-chair this together and be kind of the counter voices nationally to Obama and Holder on the issues that are going to come up over this course of this next year on redistricting. And we'll be involved in some fundraising also, but more than anything else, it's about providing advice, counsel, and a public voice to the Republican view on redistricting. And we'll be involved in some fundraising also, but more than anything else, it's about providing advice, counsel, and a public voice to the Republican view on redistricting. And so Mike and I agreed to do this together. And so far, so good. I think we're having, I know we're having a good time together doing it. And we're providing, I think, an effective

counterweight to President Obama and Eric Holder, which needs to be done. I was, in fact, in Minnesota yesterday. They have a group called Integrity Minnesota, which runs the Republican efforts for redistricting in that state. And Tom Emmer asked me, Congressman Emmer asked me to come out and speak to that group and give them advice. And so I flew out to Minnesota yesterday morning and flew back yesterday afternoon after meeting with them for a few hours. So, you know, we're going to be on the ground, Mike and I both making a difference with these groups and trying to provide the type of leadership that's necessary to make sure that the redistricting effort is fair and constitutional. Because if it's fair and constitutional republicans will win um it's

because redistricting is something that we do and gerrymandering is something the other guys do that's usually how we how we divide it up right but if i could ask about even if we redistrict we still i mean republicans i, conservatives, whatever counts as that movement, still has trouble in the cities that are growing, still has trouble in the Dallas suburbs, still has trouble in now the Atlanta suburbs, still has trouble in a lot of places that we didn't used to have trouble in. And you can cut the map up all you want, but if you're losing, you're losing. No, I agree with you, Rob. I don't think that redistricting alone makes you a majority party. What happens is redistricting doing it

the right way in a fair and constitutional way at least levels the playing field a bit, but nothing replaces good candidates with a good message. Nothing replaces that. And in the end, we have to have good candidates with a good message who are well-funded. And if you have a fair map along with that, then I think you have a majority in the House. Think about this. Obama and Holder's group sued in three states in the last cycle. And in those three states, they picked up eight seats by the redrawing of the map after they sued. The margin right now is five. So they sued their way to a majority. And those were suits in states like North Carolina

and Pennsylvania and Florida, those three states. They picked up eight seats in those three states. That's their majority. So this is razor thin, very close. And we need to be sure that we do this the right way and just provide a level playing field for our folks. If we do, we're going to do really well. Governor, so I've got to ask. You don't want to relitigate the past, but our side is getting hit every day with the Democrats saying Republicans are convinced this lie that they've lost the election. Trump says we won. OK, you know where I'm going with this. Here's my theory.

There are a lot of good Republicans who sense that something funny, funny stuff did happen in the 2020 election. But it didn't happen. The president just didn't get it. It didn't happen on election day. Democrats were changing rules through legislation. It happened legally. And it happened in all kinds of rules changes in the year leading up to election day. And if we had had Chris Christie and Mike Pompeo running a well funded organization to mount legal challenges, to publicize what was going on, some of it should have gone on. We did perhaps need to readjust voting procedures in a time of lockdown. But something funny did happen. And honestly, it was a failure of the administration and of the Republican Party at the time not to start fighting a year before election day.

Is that right? It is. It is. And let's face it, the president and his campaign blew it. I mean, you know, the idea that when you saw COVID. Laptop, check. Spanner, check. Screwdriver, check. A career built around me, check. Bring your best self to work every day with exciting heavy vehicle mechanic apprenticeship opportunities with BusAaron and Dublin Bus. We are leading the way in sustainable public transport, moving from fossil fuel to zero emissions. Join our team and help keep Ireland on the road to greener journeys. Enjoy a career that's built around you. To apply, visit careers.busseran.ie today. Coming in March of 2020, and this is part of the problem, the president never took COVID seriously in the beginning. And that not only manifested itself from the perspective of public policy, but it manifested itself politically as well.

Because if you took it seriously, you'd know from March or April forward that there were going to have to be changes in those laws. And that in some instances, Democrats were going to try to take advantage of that to change things in a way that had nothing to do with COVID, but could help advantage them in the election. The president raised over $1.2 billion for his campaign. How much did we spend on the legal effort? Not much. We did not put together a top-notch legal team. The Democrats did. They outmaneuvered us. That's not stealing the election. That's strategic failure. And let's face it, this game is not for the faint of heart. And so, you know, of course there was irregularities in the election,

but there's irregularities in every American election. You know, I had a predecessor, Brendan Byrne, who was a Democratic governor in New Jersey, who passed away about two years ago. But when he was alive, he used to say to folks that he made his wife promise that when he died, that she would bury him in Jersey City, New Jersey, so he could remain active in politics. So we know that there have been irregularities in elections, you know, for as long as elections have been held, but they were not dispositive here. The mistakes that were made

that cost us the election were strategic in nature on the legal side and strategic in terms of the way, in my view, the president conducted himself during the campaign. And those two things were what cost us the election in 2020. You can't say, you know, there was a ballot dump in Detroit when the president actually got a higher percentage of the vote in Detroit in 2020 than he did in 2016. Not just more votes, a higher percentage of the vote. He got a higher percentage of the vote in Philadelphia than he did in 2016. These are two places that the president has pointed to where the election was stolen from him. Well, that's a very ineffective steal if you let your opponent get a higher percentage of the vote than he did four years earlier.

So, you know, that's why I think this stuff is useless for us to continue to grind over. Right, right. Listen, one last question. We've already kept you longer than we promised your staff that we would. So I don't know whether you're going to get across with them, but for sure they're going to get across with us. But there's one more. This is just one more big thing question. Here's one of the many things I love about Chris Christie. You're good on the granular stuff, but you're good on the big thing stuff too. So Rob raised this point. I've already said, how do you get back, win back California? Cities. Six of the seven biggest cities in Texas are run by Democrats. The sole exception is that Fort Worth, which still feels like a cowboy town in some ways.

So I don't remember your numbers well enough, but I don't think you carried Newark. I don't think you carried Jersey City. Why are the cities so just, why do they elude what's the registration in New York these days, eight to one Democrat over Republican? I mean, it isn't even close to parity. Why should that be the case? And what the heck can we do about it? Again, to me, it's almost unpatriotic. You just can't say in a country where urban centers are the center of education and media and finance, you just can't say, oh, the hell with them. You just can't do that. Well, no.

And look, but I also think we need to be realistic. You know, the way our politics has evolved over the past 60 years, urban centers have become very dependent upon government funding. Republicans are not usually talking about increasing spending on things with the exception of the Trump years. So, you know, we are not going to be the fan favorite in a place where they're very, very dependent on ever increasing government spending as one issue. But I think that we shouldn't look at trying to win those cities. What we should look at is trying to cut down on the margins in those cities. You know, so for instance, I mean, you know,

by cutting down on the margin that I lost by between 2009 and 2013 in the city of Camden. I wound up winning Camden County. Did you really? Yes. In 2013. Wait, let me remind you, Camden County is right across from Philadelphia, right? Right across the Delaware River from Philadelphia. Camden City is a very urbanized city. Atlantic City, very urbanized city. I actually won Atlantic City in 2013 and won Atlantic County. What you can do is go in there and reduce these margins as a conservative Republican. And if you do that, when you add to it what we have traditionally won in the suburbs and the exurbs, that's the way you win elections. In the end, I'm not looking to make history in the election. I'm looking to win the election so I can make history in government.

And so what I care about the most is winning. And I think we've not been focused enough on winning recently. And we've been focused more on ego and focused more on, you know, bickering than we've been focused on winning. And so we need to refocus on winning. And believe me, there are enough people who already have regret, as those poll numbers that you talked about in the beginning indicate, with Joe Biden, who already have regret. It is open for us to win. But, you know, I had a political science professor who taught me in college, when your political adversary is in the midst of committing suicide, there's no reason to commit murder. The result is the same. And when you try to commit murder, sometimes you can make mistakes, right? So the Democrats are handing us some gifts right now.

What we need to do is not start continuing to harp on the past, because let's face it, as you said in the Gavin Newsom introduction, Gavin Newsom won because Donald Trump's still out there talking about 2020, keeping himself relevant that way. And so you can tag Larry Elder with Donald Trump's still out there talking about 2020, keeping himself relevant that way. And so you can tag Larry Elder with Donald Trump, because Donald Trump's not talking about tomorrow. He's not talking about the mistakes of the Biden administration. He put out a press release two days ago talking about the 2020 election fraud.

You know, as long as we're doing that, we're not going to get focused back again on winning. So I think on cities, it is about getting in there, getting to know people, getting some of their votes. And then, you know, when you start winning elections, now I always said, you know, my first election, I got 48 and a half percent of the vote in a three-way race. But when I would travel around the state in the two or three months during the transition, by my count, I got about 68% of the vote because everybody came up and told me they voted for me, you know? Right, right. I got two-thirds. People like to be the winner too. And so remember that

as well. You know, I think, you know, you have to be able to go in there and let them get to know you, let them see you perform. And over time, I think we can make progress. Do I think, you know, you have to be able to go in there and let them get to know you, let them see you perform. And over time, I think we can make progress. Do I think we're going to become a majority party in the cities? I don't. But I do think we can become a significant plurality in the cities. And when we do that, then we're winning elections statewide and nationwide again. Right now, we're not.

Hey, Governor, we'll let you go with this. You were talking about cities. You were just in Minneapolis. That's where I live. I'm in Minneapolis, which is cobalt blue. And I don't just mean the tips of our fingers because it got cold the last couple of days. It was beautiful right before you got here. I'm so sorry it was yesterday. But anyways, you may have noticed Minneapolis is kind of in the middle of the whole continent. We require everything to be trucked to us, to be dragged by rail and the rest of it. And our shelves are starting to look a little bare because everything is backed up in California.

All those billions of pounds of plastic the Chinese turned out can't get here. You could drag things through the Panamax, through the canal and get them to Jersey, couldn't you? How's Port Newark doing? You could. That's why we're the third largest port in the world, you know, in New Jersey.

And that's why when I was governor, the Bayonne Bridge, which was going to be an impediment to those new big, huge ships that are coming through the new Panama Canal, wouldn't be able to get to our port. But now they can. But to do that, it takes a governor who cares about the private sector and who wants to partner with them to increase the port resources enough to be able to take on that increased volume, a lot of which would want to leave California right now because of Jersey, my successor, Phil Murphy, who he campaigned, if you can believe this, fellas, he campaigned in 2017 saying, I want to make New Jersey the California of the East. That was absolutely one of his punchlines in his speeches. He is, I guess they call those folks progressive now. I still call them liberal. He's incredibly liberal and he's not spending the time on the port stuff that he should because there's an amazing business and jobs opportunity for New Jersey. And we lag behind most of the country in job recovery since COVID right now. He's not doing it because he cares

much more about teaching critical race theory in school and enhancing sex education for fifth graders. So those are, you know, his top priorities. Oh, and by the way, he also passed a law that said that if you, if you're below 18 and you get caught with marijuana by the police, the police cannot tell your parents. Whoa. I'm a parent. So those are the big issues he's working on.

So why would you ever deal with the port issue when you can work on such important issues like that that are really going to change American society? Yeah. It would have changed me in high school, that's for sure. I've got to be honest. It changed the port. Well, it would have changed me in high school, that's for sure. I got to be honest. It changed the bunch.

Well, the ports will take care of themselves, right? All these people are handed all of this seed corn from previous generations and they pop it in

the microwave and then wonder why they're hungry an hour later. Hey, it's been a great chat. We'd love to have you on again.

And the next time, I don't want to have to drag everything out of you like we do this time. It's just like pulling teeth. I'll try to have to drag everything out of you like we do this time. It's just like pulling teeth. I'll try to come out of my shell.

Yeah, please do. It's been great. Governor Chris Christie, we appreciate you coming on the podcast today. We look forward to you doing the bit with Peter Robinson, and it's been great. Thank you, Governor. I appreciate your time very much. Thank you. You take care.

Have a great weekend. We will. The phrase, we're talking about Robin who used to listen to Chris Christie, the Christie porn. Christie porn, yeah. It's more like a banquet of exquisite cuts of red meat. Is it not? I mean, we always talk about red meat. People say that like they're throwing something bloody on the table

that you don't want to eat, as opposed to something that's been hand-trimmed, extremely cured, and still has robust flavor, the likes of which are hard to find. Hard to find. Good red meat. Well, no. It's going to be, frankly. I mean, because I've been looking at the stores, and meat is up.

Prices are up. Everything's up. And so you wonder, okay, I'm going to be probably paying more for less quality. Who knows what stuff throws at you, life-wise, and you want to be ready for it, right? You want to have good meats, not enough to just have some miserable, gristly thing to serve your guests. Hey, if it's an emergency, an impromptu gathering, or even just a long day that makes you dread a visit to the supermarket to see the bare shelves, whenever you need a great tasting

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apparently we need new ways to lose that look a lot like the old ways. You just said everything that needs to be said, James, about that idea, in my opinion. Now, Rob may have a different view. Well, I know. I mean, it's funny because I like those guys very much, and I think they're very smart. Yes, same here.

We stipulate that. Yeah, but we just had a clinic. We were just taught a clinic on modern American politics. Of the super pugilistic variety, I mean, he's no shrinking violet, Chris Christie. He punches back. He punches hard. I don't want to think – I mean, if you're Marco Rubio, your political future, for a lot of reasons in the last Republican, you know, in 2020. Laptop. Check. Spanner. Check. Screwdriver. Check. A career built around me. Check.

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Was absolutely undone and he mopped the floor with him because Rubio wasn't paying attention to his own answers. And you remember that was a famous debate in New Hampshire where Chris Christie asked him a question and Rubio kept answering the same way. And Chris Christie went after him and said, you just said the same thing. And it pretty much ended Chris Rubio's campaign. And I mean, so this guy's tough and he's no shrinking violet. And he seems like he's interested in building a party that he can proudly represent and proudly lead.

So while I think theoretically, you can look at numbers and sort of think to yourself, maybe there needs to be a different party. Maybe this Republican Party is just too wrapped up with Donald Trump. But on the other hand, we just spent 30 minutes with a guy who feels like sounds like he's not buying that either. And the practical part of it is it's really, really hard to be on ballot in all 50 states. And you got a whole lot of money before you even have a camp even have a candidate um you know there's a reason why it kind of evolved to two parties because it's sort of like that's kind of the american way it's like let's see if we can simplify this a little bit

you know i agree with every word you said i put a little gloss on james's although i i still james, we need a new party that can lose. No, no, that's all, really all that comes to it. But we know Jonah and we, I don't know David French as well, but I've known Jonah for years. They're thinking reasonable thoughts, but I believe the premise is that the whole Republican party is so frightened of Donald Trump that the nomination is his and that Trump is running and that the nomination is his and that the rest of the country will reject him all over again. And that is just just their premise. And if that's true, then what they say follows. Maybe you do need a separate organization. Maybe you do need, maybe you lose for a cycle. Okay. There is no need to think that way. If Chris Christie gets into the race,

there is no need to think that way. If Ron DeSantis gets into the race or Tom Cotton gets into the race, my reading is that the nomination is not Donald Trump's for the taking. There are tough, smart, talented candidates who are willing to take him on. I'm not even saying which one I'm, I mean, I've just, as you know, we, on this show, we tend to fall in love with the candidate we're talking to. And boy, do I like Chris Christie a lot, but I want an honest process. I think that's honestly that I don't want to put words in their mouth, but I think that's really all that Jonah and David French want. They want a contest. No, they want the party to back away from a variety of positions. They want it to be less popular. If you listen to Jonah, he doesn't like

the populism in the party. He describes populism and defines it in ways that other people may not or may not see the most to see that it's as pernicious as he believes, but he believes that it's become statist and that it's government power, okay, if it's our side, that it's become beholden to a mob, et cetera, et cetera. So he thinks you need something that's a little bit more intellectual and high-toned and can be guided in more alignment with the classic ideas of the conservative movement. I don't think that's necessarily wrong. The problem is that American politics, the politics of it, the capital P politics of it, the trying to win in Camden, to use our

former guest as an example. I don't know what they do. All those words, these are big words. It's like if you're a politician in New Jersey or somewhere like stop it with the big words. I don't do big words. I just I go to places. I meet people and I try to persuade them that my, you know, conservative, what, what can you close your eyes and imagine that day is in Iowa or that day or that first debate in New Hampshire among the Republicans. And you're going to, you're going to see Mike Pence and you're going to see Mike Pompeo and you're probably going to see Chris Christie. And I'm sure you're going to see Ron DeSantis. I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't think these are not big government Republicans. No, they're also not guys. They're also guys who've seen Donald Trump up close. So there's no, you can't- And they think, they all know they can take,

or they all believe they can take him. Believe that they can take him. And more than that, if you're Mike Pence, if you're Pompeo, even if you, I mean, you're Chris Christie for a long time, you can say things about Donald Trump that come from your own personal experience with him that may cause some of his current supporters to rethink their support. I'll just leave it at

that. I'm not really supposed to talk about Donald Trump, but that's what I would say. Just strategically, I think it'd be very difficult to be up there as the former president talking about how your former vice president and yourself and your personally chosen secretary of defense are telling lies about how unfit you are. Wait a minute. Are you creating a scenario where Donald Trump turns on people that he had previously hired? I just I can't see it. I can't see it. Speaking of the last time donald trump was in a political debate he lost the election that's what happened when he debated joe biden well another we've just assured that the comments will be 90 about this and 10 about

christy right sorry i broke my own rule i'll never i won't talk about another for another year when you said up there on the dais up up there was what William Shatner did. He didn't go into space, but I'm going to give it to him. He slipped the certain bonds over. What counts as space? I thought once you leave the atmosphere behind, that counts as space. I think there's a line you got to get across.

I think you got to. Oh, is there? There's a certain altitude that you have to do. and uh but i'm not going to quibble about that anyway that part we know right which for a man of his gravity is is uh because he is a he is a man who is his density and his ego um i i find the guy. And I say that as somebody who interviewed him once, and it was the hardest thing I ever did in my professional career. But I still, because he was mulish,

because he was, he was, he was touchy. He was prickly. And I didn't ask a single question about Star Trek. I've told this story before. I came to this interview with a whole bunch of stuff about stuff, early things that he did

that I wanted to discuss. He made a movie with Roger Corman in which he is a preacher who comes to town to stir up racial hatred. And he's great. He just has this charismatic malevolence.

He's fantastic. So I wanted to ask him about... What was the name of that picture? Do you remember? The Outsider or something like that. I can't remember. Just Google Shatner and Corman. And so I wanted to talk him about that what was the name of that picture you remember the outsider or something like that i can't remember just google shatner and corman and so i wanted to talk about you know whether or not he'd he'd felt that he'd missed a career as a heavy because he's a good man a law

and order he was captain kirk he was tj hooker he's barbara what do you know what if you'd been the bad guy uh he wanted to talk and i understand this about the new show that he was doing with henry winkler where they traveled around and ate food and got gas. And I got that. I mean, we're going to get to that. This is not a long interview. But the whole thing was, I felt like I was really taxing him by asking him to discuss some of his work, which is kind of what the interview is about. Anyway, he was happy to talk about his horses and something else. And then I spoiled the latest Star Trek movie for him, which is still a highlight of my life because he hadn't seen it. And I gave away the ending and that had to do

with him. I actually spoiled a Star Trek movie for Captain Kirk. So there, that was my payback at the end of the interview. But it was great to see him go up and beaming and smiling it's fantastic that he's 90 it just reminds if 1968 69 if you told me as a 10 year old boy in 2021 shatner's going to be up in space i would have said of course why did i probably gonna be living on the moon or something we're gonna have bases there aren't we the idea that we would not have yet gotten to the moon and that it would that the idea that people would not have yet gotten to the moon and that the idea that people would still be celebrating Shatner in 2021 and Star Trek in 2021, it would have been absolutely wonderful news to me in 1968. But it also made me wonder if we had accomplished

anything else in the interim that we still had to be talking about this. Well, we didn't accomplish enough to drive Shatner or Trek out of the popular culture. So everybody applauded when he got up and everybody loved the beautiful speech when he got down and groaned when Jeff Bezos cut him off because it was time to drink champagne. Anyway, he's 90 and my dad at 90 could have gone up. Peter, I know that you're not a space guy. No, no, I'm not. I spend my money on space guy. I don't care if Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. In fact, I'm delighted by that.

Really, I am. You know, Rob, something you said before about we were talking about populism. I'm going to bring this back to that to close it up. Jay and Jonah, J.D. Vance had a tweet where J.D. Vance had a tweet where he said that we should confiscate all the money of the Ford Foundation and give it to the people who've been hurt by their policies. I think that's what Jonah was referring to because Jonah hated the tweet. I think it's stupid too. But

I think that Vance was kind of making a point here that the left is always talking about confiscation. When you mentioned Bezos, they want to take all of Bezos' money, they want him to liquidate everything, and then they want to tax him on it, and then they take away the rest. There shouldn't be billionaires. There shouldn't be any of these rich people. We should just take the money and give it away. And Vance was sort of saying the same thing, that, well, if we're talking about the legality of confiscation, here's a big pot of money. And what's more, Jeff Bezos created jobs. The Ford Foundation over the last few years has advocated for policies that have hurt the poor. So I don't think that Vance was necessarily being serious about that. But if he is being a big statist

conservative who wants to use the instruments of government to direct things, well, then I say it's spinach and to hell with it. And that's all I have for this show, ladies and gentlemen. Rob, Peter, closing thoughts. I say it's finished and I say to hell with it. James Thurber, what year? No, not Thurber. I think it was Stig. Not Thurber? I thought that was a famous Thurber cartoon. No, I think it's Stig or Hoff. It's either Stig or Hoff. Oh, really? Yeah. I'll let that out there. I'll stake my cartoon historian reputation that It's either Steig or Hoff. Oh, really? Yeah, it's a great, we'll have to, I'll let that out there.

I'll stake my cartoon historian reputation that it's either Steig or Hoff. And it's a great cartoon. Peter, did you, when you were a kid, did you read Thurber? Did you look at Thurber cartoons and think that you were seeing this wonderful, sophisticated window into a world that someday you would join? I subscribed to The New Yorker when I was in college because I was trying to learn how to write. He was dead by then. No, he was dead by then, but then also a list of books of examples of prose style, Life with Ross, which was James Thurber's memoir of the New Yorker. I read that

maybe when I was 18 or 19. Again, freshman year of college, I sort of had this New Yorker encounter, which is one reason what's happened to that magazine is so distressing to me now. But yes, yes, I became a Thurber fan long after he was dead. Typical timing on my part, by the way. And Rob, were you a Thurber lover? I know that you probably as a, as a situation comedy student, know that there was a single season made on the works of Thurber. Yeah. I was a huge Thurber fan. I mean, he was a brilliant writer and really super spare too,

which I kind of like, I i admire i don't write that way so it's always been you know it's a it's uh it's amazing to watch somebody do to read some as he writes so it's such spare use it's a lot in there and kind of like a robert benchley type too a lot of ways not a lot of words but a lot of laughs eventually wrote more thurber you're right wrote less and thurber was angry that he didn't get credit for the writing that he did he's bitter towards the end of his life that he didn't get the nobel or the pulitzer or something else he had a very successful friend named elliot nugent who did lots of great things and thurber never break you know we remember thurber but whether or not we're sort of over-exaggerating his cultural relevance at the time, I think perhaps we are.

Thurber or E.B. White? Who stands up better? E.B. White. E.B. White, right. But nobody gives awards to the funny people. Like if you write comedy, if you write funny novels, funny stories, you're not going to get a Nobel. That's not an especially painful point with you, Rob, by any chance. It is what it is. You know, we're going into the business, you know, but it is true. You don't, you don't get it.

Dave Barry got the Pulitzer prize. I'll go with this. I'll leave with this. Yes. Thurber was a great writer, but man, that guy could not draw. And I'm serious. Oh, but that's part of the charm. He could not draw. I will leave that up to you if you want to dispute that. That's what the comments are for at Ricochet 4.0. Join right now so we can cobble together enough shekels to get Ricochet 5.0 going someday. But in the meantime, it needs no improvement. It's perfect as it is.

Right, guys? Flawless. No, it's not perfect. It's cacophonous and it's noisy and it's interesting and it's sort of like life. If life was perfect, it'd be boring and it's never boring.

It's sort of perfectly imperfect though, don't you? I guess so, yeah. I'm being semantic. We're not striving for perfection. We're striving for fascination. And fascinating it is. I'll see everybody in the comments.

Usually I show up at about 11 o'clock at night and hit over the member feed and mix it up and say this, that, or the other. Leave some stuff because it's always great. That's the one place on the internet where I comment. How about that? It's been great. Chris Christie made the show, and you guys were fantastic as usual. Everybody was listening. Superlatives heaped everywhere like mounds of delicious sugar with sprinkles. it's been great. Chris Christie made the show and you guys were fantastic as usual. Everybody is listening.

Superlatives heaped everywhere, like mounds of delicious sugar with sprinkles. And we will see everybody at Ricochet. So gentlemen, next week, next week, boys, here comes a fireman. Here comes a cop.

Here comes a wrench. Here comes a car. Been going on forever. It ain't ever gonna stop Everybody wants to be the man at the top Everybody wants to be the man at the top Everybody wants to be the man at the top now Aim your gun, son, and shoot your shot

Everybody wants to be the man at the top Rich man, poor man, better man, feeble Doctor, lawyer, end in chief One thing in common they all got Everybody wants to be the man at the top now. Aim your guns, honey, shoot your shot. Everybody wants to be the man at the top, yeah. Ricochet! Join the conversation. Oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah Oh, oh, oh, oh, alright

Oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah The man at the top says it's lonely up there If it is, man man i don't care the big white house through the parking lot everybody wants to be the man at the top here comes a banker here comes a businessman here comes a kid i'm just trying to get out and I'm babbling like a fool. you you you