The Ricochet Podcast - The Market Makers

Episode Date: January 29, 2021

This week, Robin Hood is back, and this time he’s running a Wall Street retail brokerage firm. But the whole “take from the rich, give (or more accurately, keep) for the (relatively) poor” thing is still in effect. To discuss, we’ve got WSJ columnist Gerard Baker who explains and opines on it. Then our favorite Congressional correspondent on the planet, the Washington Examiner’s Susan Ferrechio... Source

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income, and certain other information provided in your loan application. Go to upstart.com slash ricochet. And speaking of ricochet, on with the show. Oh, hello, everybody. Here we go. Coming down in three, two, one. 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. We will probably need a supplemental for more security for members when the enemy is within the House of Representatives, a threat that members are concerned about. I'm the president and you're fake news.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson I'm James Lylex and today we talk to Jerry Baker about GameStop and other things And Susan Ferrecchio about what's going on in Washington So let's have ourselves a podcast I can hear you! Welcome everybody, it's the Ricochet Podcast number 529 What a week it's been

You know sometimes they start out by Peter and Rob and myself just chatting about the news of the world. But, you know, why listen to us when we can have somebody who actually knows what he's talking about? So joining us in the first segment this week is Gerald Baker, editor-at-large of the Wall Street Journal. His weekly column for the editorial page Free Expression appears in the Wall Street Journal every Tuesday. It's a must-see. Mr. Baker is also the host of Wall Street Journal at Large with Jerry Baker, a weekly news and current affairs interview show on the Business Network. Welcome. What a week. It's been great over the last year to see everybody on Twitter

become an expert in epidemiology. The last week, I've seen everybody become an expert in hedge funds and short stocks and all the rest of it. But I tend to think that maybe there are people out there who don't know exactly what happened with GameStop and why we're going to end up with congressional hearings where we have pontificating senators who don't know what they're talking about asking about stonks and what stonks mean. So what happened? Is it a really big deal? And what is the fallout and repercussions going to be from this? Thank you very much for having me. It's a great pleasure to be here.

Well, yes, I think it's amusing. I did see somebody, somebody actually rather amusingly said on Twitter this week that they were tired of seeing these comments from people saying, you know, suddenly Twitter is full of all these experts on hedge funds and short interest and all this kind of stuff. And this person said, what on earth do they think Twitter is for? That is almost precisely what Twitter is about for people who know nothing about stuff to pontificate on it at length. So what's going on? Look, is it a big deal? I can't make up my mind on this. I mean, just briefly, what is going on is that a bunch of hedge funds do what hedge funds do, which is they were shorting, among other things, what they do. They were shorting some stocks that become rather unfashionable, unfavorable. GameStop is the most obvious one. AMC Movie Theater is another one.

Many of these stocks, by the way kind of uh businesses that that that operate in malls in shopping malls and part of the assumption here by the hedge funds was well the assumption of the analysis i should say by the hedge funds was that these shopping malls were doomed which seems you know which does seem to have been the pattern of the last uh few years accelerated by the pandemic and therefore their stocks were going to go down and they're possibly even you know to disappear completely to nothing so hedge funds being hedge funds they shorted these stocks that is to say you know without getting into the details they made a bet stock prices of these companies would fall um what is new and different is that you know there's always someone on the

other side of that trade because there has to be, because for a trade to work, there has to be, there have to be two people. What was new and different this time was that we had essentially a group of individual traders. I don't want to call them, I mean, there's a lot of, I think, there's a lot of surmise here or indeed kind of assertions about who these people are, that these are, this is the little guy rising up and taking on the man. There's an element of that. But I think also that what happened is that on social media, using the social media forum Reddit, a bunch of people came together who are day traders, as they call them, enthusiastic people who trade stocks, not for a company, not for a business,

not for investors, but for themselves. They came together and they saw these short positions that were being taken in these stocks over the last year or so and thought, here's an interesting thing we can do. We can sort of challenge that short position and see whether or not we can actually, which sometimes happens in financial markets when somebody on the other side of the trade tries to push the stock in the other direction so that all those hedge funds are caught holding stock or they're actually holding stock that they're holding a position that is becoming increasingly unprofitable i think these day traders these day traders were a mix of you know people in their pajamas spending their 600 stimulus checks has been said but i think a lot of them were professional traders perhaps even professional

wall street types trading on their own on their own accounts and on their own money. Anyway, they were very successful. It was a classic. It was called a short squeeze, which means they bid up the price of these stocks, a tremendous disadvantage and have had to, one of them had to be bailed out by other hedge funds because their losses were enormous. And so that itself is significant. The larger issue here, which I think, which I'm inclined not to subscribe to, the larger proposition here is that this is part of the populist revolution. This is people disgusted with people in power and authority and money. And it's an attempt to take them on, a successful want to see this as, you know, part of the sort of storming of the establishment, the Bastille, or whether you want to see it as, you know, the latest manifestation

of anger with people at what they see as the summit. I think there's an element of that. I think it's true. There's an element of that. And I think it's, frankly, I don't get upset that, you know, hedge funds are losing a huge amount of money. Hedge funds have tremendous advantages for people who work for them and are astonishingly well remunerated. But I don't think we get too upset about that. I don't think there's any regulatory issue here people who are losing money are people who are basically um well placed to lose money or at least know the risks that they're losing that they could lose money so i think you know is it a big cultural moment i think that's the bigger issue i mean yes in some ways it is the first time we've seen anything like

this with social media people on social media coming together to speak on established financial institutions and i think it's you know that's not a bad thing my the reason the reason i'm a little skeptical about whether this is a big moment and a big cultural change is at some point the stock price is going to fall uh they bid this price up to you know as we speak this morning to astonishing levels up several thousand percent from where it was a year ago a stock that was trading at at five or six dollars a few months ago is trading at several hundred dollars today that is that is a classic bubble the the earnings that game stop even on the most optimistic scenario might earn over the next few years are not going to justify its current valuation so you can be confident you just know for sure that that is going to that that stock price is going to decline

and then there's going to be all these people these day traders are going to a lot of them are going to be sitting on huge losses and many of them will be chastened i think and probably won't do it again but it is it's it's a fascinating moment there are elements of a kind of kind of populist the populist revolution against the established powers but i'm skeptical that this is going to represent some radical new power shift because i'm fairly confident i'm 99 confident that they is going to represent some radical new power shift because i'm fairly confident i'm 99% confident that they're going to be a lot of these people are going to lose a lot of money in the course of the next whether it's weeks months or whatever and i think burned and i think the idea that we can keep doing this and keep taking on the establishment this way will i think have to be um

that view will have to be modulated one of these brilliant traders who's already learned his lesson by losing a couple hundred dollars yesterday was my 26-year-old son, Nicholas. He got in too late and got out too early. No better teacher. Exactly. But Jerry, what about the question, Robinhood, I'll get this wrong, I'm sure. But at some point yesterday, as the trading was becoming increasingly frenzied, Robinhood, which is the software that many of these informal let's call them informal traders let's say the non-hedge fund traders you make the good point that a lot of the people involved were professionals but the the non-hedge funds the software they were using to trade robin hood changed the rules toward the end of the day and said you may only buy stock not buy buy stock in certain companies, including GameStop,

not sell it. And that was, there was presumably Robinhood had written the terms of service in the very, very fine print such that they could do exactly that. Presumably they didn't break the law, but that sure felt wrong to a lot of people. Oh, you who are, who have been invested in by among others, Citadel, one of the huge hedge funds, you, Robinhood, are suddenly changing the rules halfway through the game to protect the big boys. Did that smell a little bit unsavory to you? Yes, it did. And it's a fair point, you know, that again, and people have pointed out that Robinhood, as you say, is not only, you know, is holding a lot of Wall Street, if you like, or tech investors or venture capitalists, actually money, and therefore is to some extent answerable to them and, you know, is not presumably going to be smiled on by those investors when

many of those investors are taking big hits. And Robinhood actually is dependent in part for its revenue on data that it collects and sends on to those hedge funds and to others. So there is an element, absolutely an element of that, that this was – many people were outraged by that, by Robinhood stopping people selling. I think there is a continuing question, stopping them buying the stock, rather. There's a continuing question, which we haven't resolved yet we did get some interesting intriguing insights into it last night which is did they stop the selling because they were kind of felt under pressure to stop this populist revolution did they you know start bar the you know katie bar the door kind of uh approach or did they do it because they were experiencing financial difficulty themselves it was striking that overnight we learned that they did raise they were they raised a of capital. They raised, I think as we speak,

it's not completely clear, but they're raising about a billion dollars of capital. Now, of course, like any financial organization, any organization that's related to the financial markets, they denied that they had a liquidity crisis because once you acknowledge a liquidity crisis, you have a liquidity crisis, whether you had a bigger liquidity crisis. They denied they had a liquidity crisis. But there does seem to be some suggestion with the speed by the speed with which they raise this capital overnight from some of their investors that they were experiencing some stress. So, again, Peter, we don't I agree with you. It looks bad. It smells bad. It looks like the fat cats of Wall Street coming together to look after each other.

And by the way, it's also worth saying, you know, these companies in a political context, you know, these are companies that are, you know, all sort of signed on to the general kind of woke agenda, if you like, in the last few years. And it all looks a little bit like, you know, this this this wealthy, you know, progressive establishment coming together to protect themselves. And I think there's an element there's a strong element of truth about that. We just don't know the specifics yet and the extent to which Robinhood was actually experiencing genuine financial difficulty and was worried that this frenzy of activity could actually deepen those difficulties. Hey, thanks for joining us. It's Rob Long in New York. In order for something like this to happen, you need three things, right? You transparent information which we which we suddenly have we we we suddenly have we can read a report that says talks about the short interest in all these stocks so that if i'm sitting

at home in my pajamas they know the classic day trader i know which big hedge funds have to have giant short positions in gamestop although i mean anybody paying attention to gamestop would assume that any position gamestop would be a short position, but okay, there you go. The second thing you need is you need a transparent way of connecting. So you suddenly have all these individual investors who can now hook up together on Reddit or wherever, mostly Reddit, on a subreddit called WallStreetBets. And then you need a trading platform so that you can actually trade. But of course, that information goes both ways because the big hedge funds know ahead of time where those trades are going. They get to do this kind of high-frequency trading where they know where the mob is going, sort of ahead of the mob in a way.

And then you kind of need to have a level playing field. And you also have to have, if you're an individual investor, access to lots of cash, because if you're going to short sell, you get money. Someone's got to give you that money in your account, right? That's how that sale works. So if I'm a woke, feeling very, very cocky, Democratic congressperson or senator, who do I go after? Who's my target over the next three weeks? Who's going to pay? It's a good, it's a very good question, Rob. And, you know, as somebody said yesterday, you know, we are now in the situation, there are so many ironies and paradoxes in life. This is one of them where we have people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez weighing in strongly

on behalf of investors who are seeking to make a quick buck in what is clearly a stock market bubble. And she's sort of by, you know, some of the things she said, it seems to seems that, you know, she's actually kind of encouraging people, encouraging people to make speculative investments in the stock market, which I thought every good socialist thought was the almost definition. Don't look too closely at those traders' handles and find out what else they've been posting on Reddit either. Right, exactly. So it is ironic.

But look, it's a good question. I mean, again, I don't think there is really a regulatory issue here. I mean, there's a regulatory issue when the public's money is at stake, right? So if a bank gets into trouble and it puts at risk your money, or if a pension fund gets into trouble and it puts at stake your money, hedge funds are, you know, one of the reasons they do what they do

is specifically because they are fundamentally unregulated. They're investing money. Now, they are investing money for pensions, for pension funds and university endowments and all that kind of stuff. But they, you know, those institutions invest a relatively smaller part of their small part of their money with those so that they can willing to because they're willing to take the risks of losing it all for the high returns that they that those hedge funds potentially offer them but there's no you know there's no

there's no there's no public there's no public interest if i'm put it like this there's no there's no there's no um there's no reason for the government, that the government needs to step in and save somebody who has been a victim, a hapless victim here, which does happen in a lot of financial scandals. You know, the traders themselves are investing anywhere between presumably a few hundred, like Peter's son, a few hundred dollars and some hundreds of thousands of dollars, we think. They're all doing it knowing that, we hope, knowing that they're taking a risk and knowing what the risks are. The hedge funds themselves do this all the time and they take these shorts and they know that they get on the wrong side of a short. They can literally be

forced out of business, which that's their risk and they take that risk. Again, it's money, that's all understood in the market. So I'm not really sure what the kind of, what the tort here is or what the offense is, what the wrong is, who's being who needs to be protected from whom. So there are in a world where there are no victims, I guess the the only I mean, my friend and very, very fine finance writer, James Grant, always says we don't need regulators. What we need is individuals selling apples on the street. Because when you go broke and you're on the street selling apples and you once had a, you know, a Duesenberg or whatever the famous thing was after the crash, that is a lesson for you and for everyone else that it's a dangerous game to get smart when you're investing in the financial markets, right? So who's going to go broke and who's going to learn a lesson then?

If I can trust you and hope that there aren't a whole passel of idiotic regulations down there. I mean, we have to now hope as conservatives that there are people, you know, figuratively, rich people, formerly rich people selling apples on the street as a lesson, right? Yeah. I mean, and again, I mean, who knows? If those hedge funds, if this does become, you does become the big hedge fund that's been in trouble, we know from the last week is this Melvin Capital, which had to be bailed out, as Peter said, by Citadel, I think, sitting on some really significant losses. Now, by the way, a lot of hedge funds have gone bust in the last 10 years. I mean, hedge funds do rise and fall. I don't know whether those guys who used to work in them are selling apples on the streets. I don't know either, but here's the argument, an argument. The argument would be 2008, those guys on Wall Street, the government, we, public money got used in vast

quantities to bail them out. Nobody, somebody should have gone to jail, let alone ended up selling apples on the street. Now, something has happened here again. And part of it surely, goes the argument, is that Jerome Powell, chairman of the Fed, is pumping money into the economy because of COVID, because of the government lockdown. The government locks us down. The Fed starts printing money because the real economy is locked down precisely because nobody can go to the shopping malls and GameStop and AMC theaters are in trouble because people aren't allowed to get out and go shopping. The government does that to us. Then it prints huge amounts of money. Where does this get invested? Well, it gets the public money ends up in the hands of huge,

sophisticated hedge funds. Yet again again they are the disproportionate beneficiaries of a bad rotten difficult time for the rest of us and indeed because of bad rotten public policy somehow or other those guys are benefiting from from the public wheel that's the argument it's a sloppy argument but what do you make no no it's not it's not a sloppy argument at all it's it's it's a perfectly good it's it's it you know even this many economists differ about this but there is a lot there's clearly a lot to the argument that the federal reserve has been pumping extraordinary amounts of um money into the economy that's driving up uh driving down interest rates obviously interest rates are basically zero

um interest rates on all kinds of long-dated securities are tending trending towards have been trending towards zero and this creates this frenzy by the way for it's part of the reason no doubt that the the day traders or indeed anybody hedge funds are looking to date to do more and more risky things because they need to get returns. Hedge funds need to get returns for their investors. And so they are doing more extreme shorts, if you like, or more extreme investments or whatever, more risky investments. So, yeah, absolutely. And I agree with all of that. And it's also, I think it's indisputable, you just look at the numbers, that over the last, since the financial crisis, as you say, huge amounts of money have been poured into the economy. Those and the wealth of the capital holders, if you like, and get into a sort of socialist terminology here, the capitalists basically done extraordinarily well.

Anybody, you know, who's been invested, the stock market's up hugely. Other financial assets have been up hugely. They've done extremely well while let's be honest most of course most americans benefit from their pension funds uh being better off and their 401k is rising and all that kind of stuff but they haven't shared in the benefits as much as the um the capitalists if you like the the owners of capital um and i think that's indisputable but the the problem is what what does that mean the federal reserve should not have pumped in the money because because the federal reserve i mean in fairness didn't do that to bail out the capitalists. It didn't do it specifically with the specific objective of saving Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan and hedge funds and everybody else from the consequences of their own decisions.

It did it, and it continues to do it because it sees it, rightly or wrongly, as the only way in which the broader economy can be can be can be bolstered and buoyed. So it's it's a it is and I it's unfortunate, perhaps this is how the Fed would put it. Some some people of the Fed anyway would put it. It's unfortunate that the consequences of that policy, which are designed to lower, keep unemployment, push unemployment down, to keep, you know, to keep the economy generally sort of humming. It's unfortunate that those policies obviously do end up disproportionately benefiting the wealthy. And maybe, you know, maybe the argument is we need a more targeted approach. We haven't come up with one yet. The Federal Reserve is not probably the institution, monetary policy anyway, at least, is not the instrument by which to get more targeted

um a more a fairer if you like a more targeted distribution uh of the common wheel targeted distribution my friend jerry just came around to the populist argument exactly i'm not you're not sounding that far off donald trump at his peak but there was a peak i'm sympathetic i'm sympathetic i'm look i think i think the explosion of inequality in the last 30 years in the country is hard to justify. Hard to justify on the underlying, on its merits, on the underlying economic indicators, on the underlying performance. I think it is unsustainable socially. I think it just is unsustainable. And I think we've seen some of the tensions already

in the last few years. And Donald Trump is just one manifestation of that. And I think we, I absolutely agree. We are going to have to, we are going to have to figure out as a society, and we can have another conversation about this another time, I have some ideas, how we address those inequalities,

what we do to make sure that the united states is is a the united states becoming a less not only a less equal but a less fair society and um that really does i think i'm with the trumpists completely on that that needs to be addressed well mr baker we know you have to go and that's a pity because while the rest of the world is concentrating on reddit user big butt energy 47 working his way in the financial system. We all know that the real story, the real story is Jewish space lasers creating fires in California. But we'll have to discuss Marjorie Taylor Greene at some other point. That would be a good, yeah, let's really focus on where the Republican Party is headed. Well, we don't know if the Jewish space lasers are controlled by the Rothschilds or the Illuminati,

or whether the Rothschilds are actually using the Illuminati and the Masons as a cover for all of this. concerned about Liz Cheney, who, you know, exercise principle and integrity and judgment, than it is about someone who thinks that Jewish space lasers are causing forest fires in California, and indeed who also apparently believes that Lee has expressed support for the idea, at least in the past, that several members of Congress ought to be executed, as far as I know. That was one of the things I saw. But anyway, as you say, that is a conversation for the idea, at least in the past, that several members of Congress ought to be executed as far as the last one. That was one of the things I saw. But anyway, as you say, that is a

conversation for another time, the rather strange state of the Republican Party. It's a lovely Jacobin moment we're having. Thank you for joining us on the podcast. It's been a pleasure. We look forward to reading you on Twitter and in the paper and see you on the Thank you very much. Great. See you soon. Thank you. Take care. Bye bye. You know, people laugh about the Jewish space lasers, but the fact of the matter is is now that i've mentioned them i'm wondering exactly what sort of configuration this guy is going over my head right now to shut me down um and that exactly exactly well there's no there's no security there james i mean there's no way to keep big brother and big tech from you know eavesdropping on you that's just that's fact of life. Get used to it. Just a fact of life. There's no way around it.

Sometimes they carefully set up a segue that actually was going to move from that into something else, has been truncated, smothered in its crib. If that segue were Moses, the reed basket would have sunk to the bottom of the stream. Sometimes I don't interrupt you and you're like, why didn't you interrupt me?

Sometimes I do and you're like, I wasn't going to... You know what? My default setting, James, is to interrupt you all the time because I feel like at least 50% of the time it'll be, it's like a broken clock it's right twice a day. Well, when we're talking about, you know, large scale technologies in the sky or in the cloud or around us trying to shut you down you have to admit that over the past couple of weeks and months we've had a lot of stories about big tech not exactly, shall we say, letting all the horses out of the barn to roam free. There's the case of Parler.

There's the case of people having their websites deplied. The cases of their credit card being denied access because of the content that they host. It's not a time, you feel, where expression is expanding, and it seems to be contracting. So, you know, here's a question. If you are on the Internet, of course, you're giving all these big tech companies, a lot of your personal data, it's just a cost of doing business, right? Well, you know, big techs made it kind of clear what side they're on. And so now is the time perhaps for you to take a stance. And that stance has to do with your data and keeping it to yourself, protect your personal data,

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thing will probably be forgotten soon, don't you think? I mean, I'm not looking forward to the endless hearings where the senators or the congressmen will ask stupid questions, just not bright questions at all. And in the end, there'll be a regulation that doesn't solve anything, just makes it difficult for these people over here and possible for these people to profit in a way unexpected before. Or is this And I think that once the media realizes what's going on, these questions surface and intensify, they're going to lead a charge. And they're going to activate people's outrage over this. Don't you think so? Or is this just sort of a way of covering their,

covering their tuchuses and say, hey, we said something about it. Let's move back to his dogs and his ice cream. Peter? Rob? No. I don't really know. i look i suspect what's happening is everyone's sort of trying to poke the bear you know trying to figure out where the you know this it's like that old story about the the 40 diners in california they would kind of

look around at like these hill configurations and then dig a little bit and dig a little bit try to find out where the where the scene was and i think that's probably what democrats doing probably what republicans are doing too although they're bad at it so the democrats have all these different possibilities but one of them which i find so ironic is that i think it's true that there are big tech is trying to shut down a lot of the stuff that's going on that you know we would just generally consider to be on one side but the the the unearthing of all of that seems to be like you know the most recent information about marjorie taylor what's her name um is uh it's like that's entirely driven by democratic you know operatives and it's fascinating because of course it's so nutty um and it's and i think

until we probably won't know for another two months, three months. But that might be a very useful thing for the Democrats. Democrats might think themselves turn on the fire hydrant. Let all of these crazies have their social media moment because it's fantastic research for us later when they get into Congress. So I'm not quite sure. I think we're looking at like the the beginning of a of a of a boxing match where everyone's kind of dancing around and fainting and jabbing and there aren't any punches being landed because nobody knows where the soft spot is but when they find it they're gonna it's we'll know right by the way we better we better just state marjorie taylor what's her name is marjorie taylor green a republican who would right just won a seat in the House of Representatives from Georgia as a Republican. I don't know whether this is the right way to put it. She's a member of QAnon,

or she has certainly posted some crazy things, including the lasers causing forest fires in Cali and all these other things that we've been joking about. I just, sorry, just wanted to step in. It is Marjorie Taylor Greene, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia. Send your letters to her. Care of U.S. Congress, not to me. Exactly. So we're in a kind of a weird moment. We get this strange trading yesterday, which Jerry seems to me right that the fascinating thing here is that ordinary people can organize

quickly enough in real time. I say ordinary people, what I mean is non-professionals on Wall Street can organize quickly enough in real time to really put it to the big boys on Wall Street, which I have to say, I don't know if it's schadenfreude or good for the, I'm delighted by that, honestly, just delighted. On on the other hand part of this as Jerry said is because the Fed is pouring money into the economy interest rates are essentially at zero and you know who's not doing that you know who actually is providing relatively riskless returns the Chinese the Chinese are now competing with the United States as the riskless, in other words, for seven decades now, anybody who wanted to park money someplace, any big player who wanted to park

some money someplace would put it into U.S. bonds, into treasuries. And now they're starting to put it into Chinese government instruments because it looks like it's more stable. The Chinese have a better handle on their money supply. This is all very unnerving. was how long is it going to take for Joe Biden to indicate whether he's going to run, whether he's going to govern the country as a centrist, or how much is he going to find himself forced to give to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party? And the answer is, it took no time at all, and he has decided to give the progressive wing of the Democratic Party everything it wants. Those are the people in charge of the Biden administration.

Wonderful for Republicans, except that Republicans are so divided. What do you do about Marjorie Taylor Greene? What do you do about the newest inhabit, newest permanent resident of Florida, Donald Trump? I saw a column by Fred Barnes, whose political judgment I respect, saying this is a liberation. Trump's gone. Thank goodness Republicans can now operate. And then last night, I happened to walk past the television. Tucker Carlson was on, as he always seems to be in my household. If we miss the live feed, we replay it again. And there was Lindsey Graham saying, I have this to say to my fellow Republicans. If you think we can retake the Senate and the house in 2022 without Donald Trump, you'd better think again. It's a, we, we, we are in a messy moment. I guess that's the way to put

it. It's just a mess. They are. And the question is whether or not in two years it'll matter because they're just shoving one scrap of fool's cap after the other under the pen of Marshall Hindenburg. And if everything gets signed and a variety of executive orders extend the federal government's control over energy and schools, I mean, when Chuck Schumer says, I want the president to declare a climate emergency so that he can take all control away from, well, you know, us, the legislative branch, and just do what needs to be done. That is mildly terrifying. But hey, why talk about it amongst ourselves when we can have an actual Washington correspondent?

And that would be Susan Ferracchio, chief congressional correspondent for the Washington Examiner, frequent guest in PBS's long-running public affairs program, The McLaughlin Group, and she's previously reported for Congressional Quarterly and the Miami Herald as well. Welcome to the show, Susan. Hey, good afternoon. Hi. Hi there. I've got a really niche question here that nobody's going to care about. Okay.

But I saw that you were with Miami Herald. Did you get out of the Herald before they moved out of their building? Yes. So you have, in other words, you come from old-style newsroom life, right? Yes, very sad. Is the Washington Examiner like that that or is everybody just atomized? Well, we have, do you mean where are we located? I mean, is there a central newsroom anymore? There is. Yeah, there is. We have a central newsroom and it is downtown in Washington, D.C.

Right. But a lot of us, like, for example, I work out of the Capitol because that's where the news is that I cover. And it's easier to find out what's going on on Capitol Hill in the Capitol than it is where our main office is. But we definitely have a main office where pre-pandemic everybody worked from. And still many people do even now. But, of course, it's not. These aren't normal times. And a lot of people are kind of scattered about now because the pandemic. But we definitely have a central location.

It's my theory that that leftward news that newspapers who themselves were sort of institutionally left and liberal are drifting even more so because without people having the mediating influence of colleagues, they just spend all their time in their little silos on Twitter and tend to intensify in their view of reality shifts. But speaking of reality, impeachment, is it going to happen? Are we actually going to wake up to what we thought was the new Star Wars movie and the first 30 minutes of it is actually something that happened in the last Star Wars movie? Or is it going to be just, you know, shunted aside and it's not going to happen? Lots of great questions. It's supposed to start on February 9th. That's the plan. And there has been a move by some Democrats and some, you know, coupling with some Republicans to try to skip over impeachment and just do some kind of censure motion, because it seems pretty clear you're not going to get enough Republicans to convict the president on this one article, which is inciting an insurrection. So why go through

the exercise? That's sort of the viewpoint of some Democrats who say, let's just instead go full speed ahead with the Biden administration agenda. We've got Democrats running the House, Democrats running the Senate. Why do we want to impeach a former president when there's all constitutional questions? It's not going to result in a conviction. If it doesn't result in a conviction, they can't have a vote to block him from higher office again. What's the point? Well, aside from that, you have the Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, saying we're doing the impeachment. We're having the trial. We're going to lay the evidence out for everybody to see, and we're going to force Republicans to vote on this. So some Democrats see it as a necessary exercise. They say it's to help promote unity in the country

by holding the president, former president accountable. But I think it has a lot to do with wanting to put the party, the Republican party, to put them in a kind of a squeeze on President Trump. He controls this. He has the support of millions and millions of voters. What will Republicans do after Democrats lay out the evidence, making the president look like he incited this attack on Capitol and then they force Republicans to acquit him or they'll force some Republicans to convict him, which is also bad for the party. So it's it's a political maneuver by the Democrats. I'm not entirely sure it will work out in their favor.

There's many ways it could backfire. The Republicans can point to evidence that Democrats have used the same language the president used in political speeches. They can, and they've got plenty of evidence. They've already been laying it out on the floor in various speeches over the past few weeks. And it could just really kind of backfire politically on Democrats by, by trying the patience of the voters who put Democrats in office here, they put them in for things they campaigned on like healthcare, the economy, obviously getting this vaccine out and getting a new aid package pushed through with

stimulus checks that were promised on the campaign trail. Now they're going to divert how long on this impeachment trial of a president who's no longer in office and is golfing in Palm Beach. So that's the lay of the land at this point. Susan, could I ask, it's Peter here, you would think Rob and I talked to ourselves, before the election, Rob and I talked ourselves into believing firmly that whatever the outcome of the election, the next administration, whether it was Trump 2 or Biden, was going to have to return to normal politics, by which I mean reassuring the center of the country. Joe Biden gave an inaugural address that sounded as though he intended to do that, unity, unity, unity. And yet down at the White House, all the executive orders have been, they might almost all have been drafted by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez herself. And then on the Hill, where the Democrats are not in that strong a position.

Nancy Pelosi's majority, the Democratic majority in the House, got cut into quite a lot. They've only got, what, six or eight seats. I think there's still a couple seats. Somebody died, and there's one race that still hasn't been called. And then in the Senate, here they were expecting a blue wave, and it's a dead tie, 50 Democrats, 50 Republicans. They're not in that strong a position, you'd think. And yet, as you just said, the Democrats seem intent, determined. Chuck Schumer is supposed to be trying to hold together 50 Democrats. And here he is, again, his remarks on the impeachment might almost have been written by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. On the Hill, are there any Democrats saying, whoa, we should be

slowing down? We should be attempting to find ways of appealing to some of those 74 million Trump voters? Or in other words, what I'm looking for here is why is there no evidence of at least a conversation, if not an outright struggle in the Democratic Party, between something like Clinton centrists and the left? The left has its way entirely as far as I can see. Why? Well, there are some Democrats who by necessity are talking to Republicans and trying to find a way forward that's more bipartisan. And it's bill by bill. So they don't have to get together and say, hey, let's all agree going forward, depending on what comes down the pike. No, they wait for a bill and then they decide whether they want it to be bipartisan. So right now, this COVID plan,

you know, the cost and scope is under great dispute between the two parties. There had been ongoing talks. The president said he wanted to go bipartisan. There are lawmakers talking together, Republicans and Democrats. They're meeting. They're thinking of how do they want to move forward. But at this moment, Friday, it seems like that there is a lack of patience on the part of Democrats, that they're not going to wait for Republicans. They're not going to do the same bipartisan deal they did pre-Biden inauguration. They're going to go full steam ahead and try to use a budgetary tactic that will circumvent Republicans. So right out of the gate, there's a lack of patience by Democrats. They're saying, we want to be bipartisan, but we're really not going to wait around for that because they have the green light.

It's very rare to have the green light. The green light is when you have the White House and both chambers of Congress. The last time was was during Trump and then once during Obama. When they do that now, the new the new thing over the past decade is when when they or more when they get this green light is to hit the gas because they know they're not going to have that green light for long. Get done what they can and try to make it as sticky as possible, hard to undo. And then the next time the Republicans have the green light, they're going to do the same thing. So everything you're talking about, about bipartisan, that's secondary to what I'm talking about right now. It's the green light. So don't expect, they're going to go as far as they with within the limits of their own party. Now,

if they go try to pass some big green new deal in the Senate, it's not going to pass, even if they got rid of the filibuster, because Democrats aren't going to go along with it. We're talking about Joe Manchin and some others. So they have they're going to go within the constraints of their own party. They're not really seriously trying to do anything bipartisan. They'll have to on some things because they can't get all their guys together on it. But the goal one is to move a Democratic agenda. Goal one is not let's appeal to the Trump voters. Wrong. That's not happening. So it's all it's all very, you know, it's it's all very big. They're trying to go as far as they can with their agenda and they're trying to move as far as they can to keep winning elections by improving their standing with their own base.

Sitting around and trying to appeal to people in the middle of the country is probably not high on their agenda at all right now. Well, so for right right now isn't it kind of smart politics or is it smart politics to keep the boogeyman alive keep the you know like in the psycho killer movie the psycho killer is always alive he's just off screen keep trump alive if you're the democrats talk about impeachment make a big deal about it don't let it go in the, while the other hand is signing a lot of, you know, left-wing executive orders and kind of doing base and faction service with a lot of little stuff. Keep your base and factions happy. Make them feel like they're part of this big administration.

Distract everybody else. We're talking about how terrible Trump was. That seems like a legit strategy. What am I getting wrong? No, that's true. Now, he's gone for the most part. They can impeach him. And that, like I said, that has got, that's got risks and benefits for the party. But there's also a new way to continue that kind of, that what you're talking about, which

is within the Republican Party itself. There's some fringe elements that have gotten elected to Congress that Democrats love to highlight. And a perfect example is what's going on in the House right now, where you have the Speaker of the House saying that they feel very threatened, the Democrats, by the Republican Party. An extraordinary thing is happening where she, the Speaker is saying that the Republicans are the threat.

In the House of representatives the elected lawmakers we're not talking the throngs who busted in on january 6th we're talking about elected members she set up metal detectors at the door of the chamber because she thinks they're going to come in and commit violence the republicans on the democrats either with with various weapons that they try to bring in. She's well, how much of that how much of that you think is real? How much of it's disingenuous? How much of that is just like really great political theater BS? I think there are members in there are, you know, Democrats in the party who are really afraid.

They're really afraid of and they're complaining of Pelosi. Pelosi's, you know, one tough broad. I don't think she's afraid of anybody, frankly. And, but I think she's hearing an awful lot from her members that are saying, you better do something about this because I'm afraid I'm going to be shot on the floor. And, and she's just gotten drawn into that. And that's why we have, you know, we've got the mags set up so people can't walk in the chamber anymore it's pretty pretty unbelievable to see that she's asking for more money a supplemental supplemental uncommon thing it's a spending bill outside the regular process to get extra money because members are afraid and then for of what she says yesterday the enemy is

is is in the house the enemy is within here meaning. The enemy is within here, meaning we're not, it's not so much we're afraid of people storming the Capitol, although they clearly are because that fencing is up and barbed wire and National Guard everywhere. But she thinks that the Republican Party is dangerous. That's the message she's portraying. So it goes right back to what you're saying about, you know, the boogeyman in Trump. Well, now the boogeyman is the republican party and democrats are very

skillfully trying to just slide that profile onto the republican party and that that's part of what would pelosi said yesterday so the democratic strategy is make the fringiest fringe elements, the crackpot elements, the really indefensibly insane elements in the Republican Party, make them the leader of the Republican Party. Make the brand be the new congresswoman from Georgia who is clearly mentally imbalanced. Make her be the leader of the party. Now, traditionally, then, a party then would respond by respond by saying no the leader of our party is this person and if you're a republican right now who do you say the leader of your party is well that happens every time a president loses then the party struggles they don't have a leader they really don't have anybody right now trump is golfing in palm beach and he cannot you can say he's the leader. Well, I don't know. I don't know

what he is right now. I don't think any of us do, frankly, it's going to, I'm keeping an, you know, we're all watching to see how that's going to change. They don't have a leader and they may not have a leader for a while. Democrats didn't have a leader for a while. Who, who's the leader of the democratic party right now? Is it Joe Biden? I mean, I don't even know you like Obama was clearly the leader of the party. And Biden's different kind of president. He's not the same president as Obama. And we know we know that. I don't think you have to. You know, I know. I just don't. For the Republican Party, though, they are obviously having an identity crisis, as any party does after what just happened in this election.

And I don't think we really know how that's going to shake out yet, but each party tries to pin the most unflattering identity on them, on the, on the opposite party. They did it. The Republicans did it, do it all the time with AOC. They did it successfully in the last election. That's why Democrats lost so many seats because they pin that far left element on more moderate lawmakers. And that's why they ended up losing in these swing districts. And that's what each party will try to do. Republicans did it aggressively. Now Democrats are doing it with even a fringier element, which are these lawmakers who, you know, the QAnon theories and all that stuff.

So and that's going to be the Republicans are going to have to be very careful how they navigate that. Well, as we all know, the country has about, what, 75 million QAnon believers who are ready to storm every state capitol, as we saw on Inauguration Day. It didn't turn out to be the case. But nevertheless, what we have going on in D. dc now is the capitol police as you mentioned wanting a permanent fence around the capitol which you know which is horrible optics for america it's absolutely dreadful i i mean with pennsylvania avenue shut off as it is with a capitol fenced off it makes the place look terrified

and afraid and militarized and it's dreadful and it's un-american but on the other hand it works well for the democrats because they're able to say that there's this tremendous peril out there and the fence is proof of how the other side is institutionally, intellectually, spiritually illegitimate. Somehow what happened on the 6th of January wiped away and absolved every single piece of urban disorder that we saw over the summer. None of that matters. All that matters is what happened on that day. That's when history began anew for them, it seems. And you're right. There's no reason for them to abandon that strategy because it's very helpful.

It just makes the other side look not only just wrong on the issues, but dangerous and morally unfit to take the reins of power again. Last question. What is D.C.? Last question. What is D.C. like these days? Because I'm sure that the retail environment, the restaurants, all the rest of it, that the decimation or worse is being blamed on January 6th. Is the mood of D.C. struggling back to normalcy,

or is it just still sort of stunned from a year of what happened? Well, there's a lot of boarded up everything. Everything's boarded up. Of course, you know, the pandemic has shut down a lot of the nightlife and restaurant activity. It's struggling like a lot of cities are, I think, because of the pandemic and because of the combination of that and all these demonstrations that had been going on over the past year. You know, you see, it's, I think it's a city that's going to recover because the jobs are here. The jobs are here. The money is here. The ability to, to survive is here. Unlike other places where, you know, you probably economy is hurting more significantly.

But, you know, there is fencing everywhere around the Capitol. It has a different look to it, obviously, because of the military presence suddenly on Capitol Hill, which is unprecedented. unprecedented and um i think i think as soon as some of these lockdowns are lifted and and people are dying to get back out there and live normal lives and now that you know there is no longer republican in the white house there probably won't be as many street demonstrations so i think a combination of that means that it's good that things will eventually return to normal. to figure out who's actually running the place. I was in the Reagan White House during the first term. People understood what Baker did and what Ed Meese did and what Bill Clark did as NSC advisor and that all the... Reagan was going to keep a light touch, but he made all the important decisions. Trump, we know,

he was making all the decisions. Pat Cipollone, White House counsel, became more important than many White House counsel, became more important than many White House counsels were because there were so many legal problems. You get a kind of feeling for the internal structure of the White House. Now we have Joe Biden, who's two things, 78 years old and clearly a man who's lost a step or two, even by comparison with five, six years ago, recent history. He's not as vigorous as he was. He's not as quick on his feet as he was. And his positions are unclear.

Even if you contrast the beginning of the Democratic primaries when he was portraying himself as a centrist with his positions at the end of the Democratic primaries where he seemed to have cut some kind of deal, I'm your guy, I'm the progressives guy. himself as a centrist with his positions at the end of the democratic primaries where you seem to have cut some kind of deal i'm your guy i'm the progressives guy so he's an older man he's slowing down and it's hard to figure out quite where he stands in the first place who's running that organization i think there's a couple things at play here. This is the age, which issue, which is different for every member. I mean, I've one thing I feel like I'm a, I'm a semi expert on is watching these lawmakers age. Cause I've been watching it for 30 years.

It's really interesting to see how these senators and lawmakers age. And so he's an older president and he, he, he, you know, everybody knows he's not the same as he was five years ago, certainly not the same as he was 10 years ago. I've covered him in Congress as a senator, as a vice president. You know, he's he's different. But that happens when you get older. It's it's it's inevitable for all of us. Right. So who's running the White House? I think the other issue is is the party direction, which is unsettled. Biden obviously didn't come from the far left of the party, but he's got to be there. That's how he got into the White House, in part by at least winning over the dubious far left that wanted Bernie Sanders.

So they are a big influence in the party. They're a constant source of pressure. And that's, I think, playing the larger role in determining the agenda right now, especially when you look at the slew of executive orders that have happened already. It's just he wants to show very quickly, or the administration does, they want to show their base that they are taking immediate action on their deepest concerns. And that may help them pad the way further down

because there's only so much they can do by executive order, A, and B, there's only so much they can do in Congress because of the makeup right now. And I don't think they have the, I don't think think that it's there that getting rid of the filibuster. And I think even with the most tempting bill, it will be hard to get rid of that filibuster given the makeup. So they're trying to navigate this without their own party implosion. And that has a lot to do with with what you're seeing in the Biden administration

right now. That's who they're looking for. They're not saying, well, we want something bipartisan. They're trying to keep their own party happy. And that's playing a big role in dictating what Biden says and does. Susan, thanks for joining us today. And as you make your way to the Capitol, make sure to run in a zigzag pattern because that way the Rothschild space lasers can't lock on to you. Talk to you later. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Thanks for the advice. I appreciate it. Thanks so much. Thanks, Susan. You know, as I was saying before, I really don't spend an awful lot of time worrying about Rothschild Jewish space lasers. But if I did, you know, it would tend to impact, to use that horrible verb, my happiness. And there's just a lot, there's so many things out there these days that can work and get their tendrils into your

cerebellum until you're just kind of nervous, jittery, or on edge. We all are. We're kind of raked over after the last year. Well, listen, you know, when you want relief, wouldn't it be great if you could find relief in your pocket? What if there's a pocket-sized guide that help you to sleep better, to focus better, to act better, to be better? Well, there is. And if you've got 10 minutes, Headspace can change your life. Headspace is your daily dose of mindfulness in the form of guided meditations in an easy-to-use app, frankly. Headspace is the only mediation app advancing the field of mindfulness and mediation through a clinically validated research.

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little time you know not five minutes 10 minutes 12 minutes a day and just kind of sit there and breathe and don't don't think to like you know that do your do your meditation that's why headspace is actually quite good because you can do it you're always got your phone and it's on your phone so it reminds you that while you're wasting time on the phone you could be doing something very productive with your phone which is using headspace that's what i like because the whole world is telling you, think, think, think. And it's sometimes necessary to have something to tell you that that really little time spent not thinking is good for you. Yeah, I agree.

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of me wants to move forward part of me wants 2021 to actually start to bear fruit and, and, and give us all kinds of reasons for hope. Am I alone in this? Or do you think that I'm talking about it? I'm sorry. Yeah, no, no. Your question prompted another question related question.

I hope you'll, I hope you'll, well, we're going to get some answers too, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So go on. This is, this is a then and now question. And when I was in college, which predates but only slightly when you guys were in college, we fought about politics all the time, and it was presumed that it mattered. And what I hear among a couple of young entrepreneurs, I used to want to go into politics. Now I've decided it's broken. The whole system is broken. It doesn't matter. The best thing I can do is make money. And by the way, as soon as I make some money, I'm putting it into crypto because I don't trust the dollar. This kind of feeling on the part of the current of course i see this reflected in my kids and their friends and also sort of about it you know i've been at stanford for a long time now so i've watched a lot of undergraduates go through and be and reach the first half of middle age

and the first half of a billion dollars too and. And I've watched actually some of them. I've known Peter Thiel since he was poor. That's how long this has been going on. That's how long you've been doing it. And all this came to mind the other day because of a buddy of mine in college who thought the way I did, that politics mattered. And that is Rob Portman. And Rob Portman announced earlier this week that he will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate from Ohio when his term ends in two years. Rob won. He's never lost an election.

He won four years ago by 21 points. He is one of the most popular, best-loved politicians in the history of Ohio. He would surely, nothing is certain in politics, but he would surely have won again in two years. And a rock ribbed conservative. And a rock ribbed conservative and the nicest guy you could ever hope to meet. And what it essentially came down to was he felt he had to leave. Well, he's my age.

He'd like to spend a little more time with his family. That's true. But he's also young enough to have a good long career run ahead of him. And if I read between the lines, I read the interviews, he's a friend, actually, we exchanged some texts about this. He feels he has to leave the Senate of the United States to get anything done. What do you make of that do you do you have the same sort of then and now sort of sense of what there were were there bull sessions at yale in the old

days where you fought about politics because they mattered yeah but we but in college you think everything matters you think french cinema matters you think everything matters everything because you just are learning about it you're just it's like when you're a toddler and you start walking you think that walk you can walk everywhere all right i'm gonna walk over here to the edge of the cliff what's interesting to me is that i've had arguments about american government and its value and lack of value and its standing and lack of standing with uh arch concern over my over my time in sort of peripherally involved in politics about 30 years with arch conservatives during the clinton administration some of whom are are now arch conservative university presidents of arch conservative

universities or colleges that the worst thing that clinton did the awful thing about clinton is that he he uh he demeaned not the office of of the presidency this is before his impeachment but he demeaned the whole idea of congress and congressional activity and i remember thinking to myself i'm a conservative like i i would like to i don't want to think of public service as some anointed priesthood. I think that if Rob Portman's a very, very smart person and incredibly gifted, if he goes out into the private sector and writes a book or speaks or starts a business or whatever he does, isn't he going to be maybe more effective than a U.S. senator? And isn't that actually how the founders planned the country? I mean, Mitch Daniels would be my ideal president. I'd put him on the $1 bill

if I could, but he is now running a successful university and educating generations and generations and generations of people. Isn't that, shouldn't we applaud that? I mean, I understand what you're saying, but there's a certain kind of – we keep passing the football back and forth depending on who's running the country or which party seems to have the advantage. And I think that's a carousel we should get off, frankly. We did argue politics in college intensely. We all worked at the student newspaper, and we argued about them because Rob's right. We think that everything matters. French cinema doesn't.

But the politics did because the issues were big. We were in the long twilight struggle with communism. This was during the Reagan years. We were talking about arms control. We were talking about opposing Soviet expansionism into the Western Hemisphere. These were grave issues of the day. And the idea that you just sort of, you know, whatever, and go on with your college life seemed a really boring alternative to sitting up late at night, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, and arguing about

these things. And yeah, sometimes the politics of the day, the individual senatorial congressional things didn't matter. But I remember, you know, getting a copy of the New Republic and looking at it and saying, the law, the seed treaty, why do I care? You know, we could have John Yoo on for an hour talking about it, telling us exactly why it did right so i mean today the problem is that people are marinated in politics as a form of religious uh sentiment that they did because it's the one thing in their life that orders them morally and is able to show other people how they are ordered morally it is important for them to have the right positions so politics is no longer just an intellectual exercise a societal exercise it. It's sort of a religious expiation. It's a way of going to confession every week and having your father confess or not only absolve you of your sins, but applaud you

for all the wonderful virtues that you have. And so that's what's different. I mean, we would have arguments and we didn't castigate each other as being deeply immoral and flawed people because we fell on different sides of the issues. We would argue them hammer and tongs because of the ideas. And today it's tribal because it's just a way of professing your virtues and your morality. So that's the difference. And I can see why people like my daughter, for example, who was not intimately interested in politics, shies away from it because online it does become exactly that. And it's so tiresome to follow exactly where the fault lines of virtue lie today because it's a diminishing series. It's a tighter ball that grows tighter every day as more people demand purity.

And those – The San Francisco school board is renaming schools, and one of the schools they're renaming is Abraham Lincoln, and the other one is after Dianne Feinstein. So francisco school board diane feinstein and abraham lincoln are both historical villains of equal valency which seems insane to me yeah i also feel what thomas edison was kind of a jerk but i mean i also feel it's kind of it's insane to me that that i think your daughter is actually so maybe it's a sign of intelligence she's unwilling to sign on to a team sport that is seems to be coached and staffed entirely by lunatics like the idea that i mean i get it i mean my particular viewpoint is that every time i say

republicans are dumb and they behave foolishly and they're and many of their leaders are meretricious losers i get attacked not attacked, not just because people disagree with me, but because they think I'm being disloyal. Disloyalty was a big word we used. And as you were, the other side uses all the time and we use all the time. And we've all decided to get in this ridiculous, idiotic mud pit together.

And the outcome is, of course, is that pretty much a whole section of the country has either picked a side foolishly because all the sides are dumb or has opted out. And I actually feel like opting out is the smart move. Opting out is a sign of – Rob Portman has gotten the mental health seal of approval. At the same time, some of us feel like we should be in there fighting because there are things to defend. My daughter worries about me because she thinks sometimes I get too spun up about these things and I'm becoming disillusioned and bitter. No, I worry about you too. No, no, no.

It's not that I'm bitter and disillusioned. I'm just angry about what's being done to the country. And anger is not a good thing. Professing anger is not a virtue. It doesn't say anything good about me that I'm angry. But I'm concerned. I mean, one of the reasons that Thomas Edison, for example, the reason that they gave was because he electrocuted an elephant. They just mean to package germs. That's the reason. And that's not

even based on fact. It's based on sort of what people trade about on the internet. So the idea that this great American inventor, who, yes, was a jerk and had a storied life, that we have to deplatform an example of american ingenuity because he elephant because he supposedly electrocuted an elephant 100 years ago is proof that these people have loved nothing more than taking the entire thick sheaf of american history and feeding it to a shredder that produces the finest grains of paper available and then that they burn and they dance around the pyre.

But, you know, the other day, for example, sometimes you're thinking about this, you're driving to work, you got the idea in your head, and then you realize that it's a really slick road. It's very slick. There's ice everywhere. You've applied the brakes and you're not stopping. And that happened to me the other day and I did not stop. And I thought I would like to stop the car before I slide through the busy

intersection. And I'm almost like that when your life flashes before your eyes, honest to God, you think about a, I hope I don't die. B if the car's hit, hope it survives, but hope you have insurance.

Goodbye, family. Goodbye, daughter, wife. And the good thing is at least they're taken care of because I got, I have life insurance. I have life insurance. So, you know, it makes sense to have life insurance. And sometimes when you have that moment and you don't, and later you think about it and you think, what would happen if that car had gone through the intersection,

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slash ricochet and our thanks to ladder for sponsoring this the ricochet podcast well uh before we go here i suppose um we should lighten up the mood get away from politics entirely and ask you uh what are you guys watching on the uh the tubes i'd say television but you know what are you watching on that dumb terminal through which you pipe a variety of streaming services that you pay a lot for? You recommended I can't remember whether this was in a text thread offline or

anyway, you recommended Babylon Berlin. It's not for everybody, and it's certainly not for children in the house, but as a vivid and grossing, slightly weird, but absolutely engrossing, brilliantly produced, brilliantly acted recreation. Sounds like this podcast. Exactly.

Recreation of this strange moment in German history where the Weimar Republic is trying to survive and hold off the communists on one side and the Nazis on the other. It was just brilliant. And we were temporarily bereft because we got to the end. We watched all three seasons and it ended. We are now on Lupin. Oh, have you seen it? Oh, it's so great. It's fantastic.

Oh, it's so's so it's fantastic oh it's so fantastic and the amusing thing my wife is so impression is impressionable that after we would watch an episode of babylon berlin she would spend the rest of the day talking for the german accent and now we're watching people around you have that happen exactly now we're watching lupin my wife is waltzing around speaking the French accent. It's quite delightful, really. But it's brilliant. Although we've only watched the first two episodes of Rob Knows Lupin. Maybe he should tell us about it a little bit.

It is fantastic. It's an updating kind of reimagining of an old French detective series, Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Thief. He'd go to the Duchess of Saint-Simon's Ball, and he would dance and dance and dance and be this incredibly mysterious, handsome stranger. And then he would leave, and everybody would go, I wonder who he is.

Wait, where is... Why, the diamond of Trento is gone. And then it'd be fantastic as Arsène Lupin stole it. The books are... You can still read the old books. You can see see the old french movies and this is a reimagining of the story uh in in in present day um uh it's kind of a revenge tale but it's very sweet and very smart and um it's fantastic and uh uh it's only like seven or eight episodes and then it's then it's got a great cliffhanger ending. But it's, it,

it, I don't know how to say this, but it's that, you know, the French really learned the French benefited, even though they have these incredible blocks and high, and high moats or wide moats to keep other people's culture in the out. I mean,

the French have, like, they've absorbed the idea of this kind of fun, interesting television series, which they never had before. They've absorbed the comedy. There's a French comedy called Call My Agent, which is genuinely funny. And to say something, and I'm a Francophile, to say that something French is genuinely funny is a remarkable revolution in French culture. The French just typically just don't really have a funny bone.

They like it when somebody falls down. They like it when you wet yourself. And they like it when your wife is coming up the stairs and you have to hide your mistress in the closet. That's kind of all the French. And when you slip on a banana peel and pull down that's what the french think is the popularity of jerry lewis movies yeah essentially they just don't they just the if you want a blood insult in french to another frenchman is just to say that your argument it's not logical because the french have this kind of cartesian view of the world everything's

got to be logical rational so when you tell them a joke they say but do these absurd because why would you why would these rabbi and the priest go into a bar i'm like well okay that's just go with me here pierre they don't right um the germans are kind of the same way uh the germans think nothing is funny except a guy in a dress and that is funny enough to cover all the other things that nothing is funny except a guy in a dress and that is funny enough to cover all the other things that aren't funny in the world um but they make this they made a great like popcorn you know hero gentleman thief arsene lupin tv show and they made this fantastic funny call my agent it's like you know credit where credit is due they're learning they're learning

james what are you watching? Well, I just want to note to what Rob was saying is that Lupin, I'm going to watch that now. It's the next thing I'm going to do, is that the Lupin character was followed by somebody else named Fantomas, which has this huge presence in French culture in the early 20th century and probably beyond. Lupin was the gentleman thief, which is this great idea that everybody has i mean we have our carrie grants we have our to take a theory everybody there was the there was the lone wolf who was a character that was debuted in the early 20th century who was a gentleman thief like lupin who went straight and then was helping the cops and it was a franchise lone wolf that persisted for about 50 years in novels and radio shows and 10 movies. And I just watched the last, no, I watched the seventh Lone Wolf movie last weekend with William Warren.

And it's a little programmer, right? And he's pressing to service in wartime. And it's nothing particularly interesting or fascinating. It's a perfectly competent little piece of work. But it's interesting to note that like Lupin here is this huge character that everybody knew for 40, 50 years that now is completely and utterly forgotten. And it makes you realize that at some day,

James Bond will be completely perhaps and utterly forgotten that everything we take today is all these big tent poles that will never waver. No, the circus is going to pack up and move along at some point. So I'm, I'm waiting for a phantom assver. No, the circus is going to pack up and move along at some point. So I'm waiting for a Fantomas revival. Oh, me too. He's a lot more ruthless,

a lot more ruthless character than Lupin was. Fantomas would put you down. Oh, but completely, yeah, absolutely right. Fantomas was not, you didn't root for him. No. He was terrifying. And the books, I've read all the books. The books are fantastic.

Although they continue, they keep moving up. So I think the last Fantomas book was written in 62 by the, there was a team in the remaining, the last living author. They made a whole bunch of movies. Most of them are terrible. The early movies are really good. The great thing about Fantomas, though, is it's incredible. It's almost like Balzac. You get this view of the quotidian life in Paris in 1905 or 1910.

It's fantastic and also how hard it was to solve a crime because you had to go and find a card and you had to sift cards and you had to like knock on like there was no telephone there was no yeah database you just had to hoof it around the streets of the metro of paris and like you could see fantomas and he got in the metro and he's gone and you don't know where he is. Right, he's got gloves. You know where he is. Nobody knows. Yeah. And every culture has one of those.

Just like every culture, after a while, had a private detective, and every culture had a James Bond character in the 60s. I mean, I'm fascinated by what other cultures did with another culture's archetype. And Rob's right. Of course, the French do wall everything off. But it's nice that they're sort of getting the idea of quality television, a prestige television, because everything I've tried to watch previously has been dreadful and awful. What am I watching?

I'm working my, working my way through the back through the Bosch series, because there's a new one coming up and I want to see it. And I want to remember everything that had gone before. And I'll end with this Titus Welliver who plays Harry Bosch wonderfully in the show. He's just, he's this actor with great reserve,

just tremendous reserve. And he can carry a scene by cocking his head. He tweeted out the other day a picture of himself with Michael Connelly, who's the author of the Harry Bosch books, and they were sitting in a cafe on the day of the last shoot. It was the saddest moment of Western civilization I'd seen in 2021. Here you had this great actor with this wonderful presence and this great author sitting slumped with masks in an empty place that should have been bustling with commerce. They should have all these people around having coffee and enjoying and listening to the music, saying stupid things, flirting. And the rest is just this empty room with a man with a mask that masks all of the ability to convey emotion. And since an author sort of slumped over and looking at his little tablet thing,

and I thought just the life has been drained out of this culture in so many ways by this bleepity bleep pandemic for the last year. I can't wait until we got the pokes and the jabs and we're back on the upswing and people are filling the streets again. And God, I hope it's this summer. The Minnesota State Fair, I believe,

says that they're going to require vaccinations for people to go to the fair. And that's going to be interesting. But once you get inside, once you know that everybody in there has got the poke, it's going to be the most licentious, sensual thing. I think everyone's going to strip to the waist and just roll around in a big, oily mosh pit because, you know, not something Minnesotans are inclined to do. As it were. But there's enough grease at the fair already. We'll probably just enjoy ourselves in different ways because we'll be so happy to be amongst our kind again. I can't wait.

Anyway, I love to be, I can't wait to be amongst our kind in the comments at Ricochet, which you need to do. And you have to join Ricochet in order to do that. You also have to go to Apple Tunes and give us those five-star ratings. We appreciate that. Somebody did the other day. Thank you so much. I wish I could hand you like a lollipop,

but you have my virtual lollipop. And is there anything else, gentlemen, that we needed to know before we head off? I don't really think so. I think we did it all. Yes, we've done it all. We've done it all. Oh, we have to thank Headspace.

We have to thank ExpressVPN. We have to thank Upstart, and we have to thank Lauer. And you're going to thank us once you use those fine products and see how your life's been improved. That's it. We're done. Great. Gentlemen, we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Next week, boys.

Next week, fellas. On the wrong side of the bed. And how I got to thinking about all those things you said. About ordinary people and how they make you sick. And if calling names kicks back on you, then I hope this does the trick. Cause I'm sick of you complaining about how many bills. And I'm sick of all your bitching about your poodles and your pills. And I just can't be no humor about your way of life. And I think I can do more for you if it's here for tonight. Ricochet. Join the conversation. Have some fun. And don't go first above them. All the rich folks will get rude. Because you won't get in no trouble when you eat that kind of food. Now they're smoking up their junk bombs.

And then they go get stiff. And they're dancing in the art club with muffin under fifth. But there's one good thing that happens when you toss your pearls and slide. The attitudes may taste like shit, but so will the wine. Eat the rich. There's only one thing to beg it for. Hey, that was good. Good one. Yeah.