The Ricochet Podcast - The Policy, Not the Mouth

Episode Date: October 18, 2019

On this episode of The Big Show® we take you back to last night’s 74th Annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner where Rob offers a first hand report. The guest of honor was former Defense Secretary (and Marine Corps legend) James Mattis and, of course, the main topic in the hall was the current situation in Syria with Turkey and the Kurds. (The General’s full remarks can be watched on the... Source

I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University. As government expands, liberty contracts. It's funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food. That's a good thing. First of all, I think he missed his time. Please clap. It's the Ricochet Podcast. Stay tuned.

We have a great show for you. We talk about the Al Smith dinner. We talk about Elizabeth Warren. And we buy drugs with Heather McDonald. Stay tuned. It's going to be a great podcast. Hello and welcome to the Ricochet Podcast. This is number 469. I know whenever I do this, I always get to look at that number and I think, my God, 469 times the people listening to me and James Lilacs and Peter Robinson talk. We must be good. We must be really great. James Lylex is off this week,

but I am joined, as always, by my Ricochet co-founder and friend, Peter Robinson from Palo Alto, California. Peter, how are you? I'm very well. You're in New York, correct? I'm in New York City. It's a beautiful, blustery fall day. It's exactly the kind of day that everyone says they want, and now they have it, and people are still complaining, which is human nature. Is it football weather? I remember when I moved back, the first breeze, the first time that leaves, you say, ah, this feels like football season. Yeah, and then I was walking around the corner.

I had a cup of coffee this morning with our old friend John O'Sullivan, who's in town for a minute. Oh, wonderful. And, of course, it was about two blocks away, and as I was walking to the coffee place, I heard more than one person say, it's too windy. Like, you know, two weeks ago, it was 90 degrees. Too hot. Now it's too windy. It's never right. It's never right. By the way, the mention of football was actually setting something up, Rob. I won't dwell on this, but last weekend in the Ivy League, Dartmouth defeated oh yes, it was Yale they defeated by 42

to 10. That is how you know there's an Ivy League football game, because it scores always in the double, sometimes the triple digits. It's 107 to 93. It's so much fun to watch because anything can happen. Yeah, I mean, I think when you're crowing about Dartmouth beating Yale, I think we're talking – these are what we call tiny fists. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Make light of it, if you will, you on the losing side. Make light of it.

Yeah, but who looked better in their raccoon coats? That's right. Speaking of raccoon coats, we should get to the news here just a little bit um you were a presidential speechwriter peter robinson i was um what do you think of that letter that donald trump wrote to president erdogan of turkey the one where he says don't be a tough guy okay i am always saying again and again and again and have said it for three years and i'll say it once now and then move past it pay attention to the policy not the mouth the policy not the mouth here's the problem in for me

in syria the policy is wrong this is one case where we can't say, oh, no, no, ignore that strange intemperate letter, ignore Donald Trump's tweets. His policies are fundamentally sound and solid, and you may quibble with that. No, this is one where the policy was wrong, where ISIS prisoners, ISIS had been penned up. ISIS has been, I don't want to say set free, but a number of ISIS fighters have broken free. Our allies in one struggle after another in the Mideast, the Kurds, are under attack by other allies of ours, the Turks, purely because Donald Trump effectively, he may not have thought he was doing this, but he effectively said to Erdogan, go ahead, you have our permission. I am perfectly aware that the Kurd situation is complicated. There is one group of Kurds who have formed something called the PKK, which is fighting

for a Kurdish homeland in Turkey, and they have adopted this as a long-running, low-grade, and it's sometimes quite intense battle. The Turks view them as terrorists. I believe our own State Department is not happy with the PKK. So Erdogan has a point. He's trying to defend, to some extent, the argument would be that he's trying to defend the integrity of his own territory, but he's going relatively deep into Syria and attacking our allies. There were other ways of handling the problem. Jim Mattis, before stepping down,

this is one of the reasons Jim Mattis resigned, was to object to Trump's urge to... Trump thinks he's just pulling out. He's ending the endless war. It's all bad. It's all... Yeah. It's not even real, too, because, of course, the number of U.S. troops in the Middle East has increased in the past two weeks, not decreased. So you can't really say you're bringing the boys home because you're not bringing the boys home. You're bringing some boys home and you're deploying more of them to Saudi Arabia, which is sort of how we got to 9-11 in the first place. People forget 9-11 got kind of muddled up with all this talk about caliphates and Israel and all sorts of things. But the stated reason for 9-11, which we have no reason to doubt al-Qaeda when they said it, was because there were 75,000 troops in Saudi Arabia in the Muslim Holy Land. Right.

And they wanted them out. And on that point, I have to say again, I say this over and over again, ignore the man's tweets. He tweeted something a couple of days ago. I'm still angry about it, to be perfectly honest. He's tweeted, Saudi Arabia pays us back for our troops. They underwrite the expenses of sending American troops over there. We are not a mercenary force for the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. That is such a... Trump isn't the only one. George W. Bush,

this has been going on for a long time, where politically presidents of both parties have said it's all right to help the Saudis, they pay us back. No, we do things that are in our interest because they're in our interest, and we are not the mercenary, we are not hired hands for Saudi Arabia.

And it is unclear at this point. Send Trump, will you please, to restore some balance to this opening dialogue? I can, I really can. And, you know, we don't want to get too gloomy, of course. Look, people who support the president, I'm, as you know, not a fan. You are what I would call Trump-curious. The people who support the president. Trump-tolerant.

Yeah, Trump-tolerant. The people who support the president. You know, look, I get it. I totally get it. But those are the people I want to stand up to this because they're the ones who have credit. Look, they're never Trumpers. They're never Trumpers are never Trumpers. So they're going to hate him no matter what he does.

But the people who sort of like, you know, who draw lines and say, look, when the guy does something I like, I applaud. When he does something I don't like, I don't like it. It's OK to criticize him. It doesn't mean you're going to have President Elizabeth Warren, although we might have President Elizabeth Warren. You know what, in the middle of, as we're chatting here, one thing occurs to me. There's one particular Ricochet member for whom I have enormous respect, particular respect. I respect all our members, of course. I like everybody at Ricochet. But I have particular respect for this one particular member. He is by and large pro-Trump, but he always explains his reasons. And so if E.J. Hill is listening to this and he would like to, and E.J. would like to put up a defense of this move in Syria, I want to

read it. And I want to refer everybody to, if E.J. can see the arguments for this, I'd like to see that. Well, I mean, I guess that's the issue. I mean, as you know, I spent some time yesterday with Jim Mattis, the general, former secretary of defense. Yeah, I want to hear all about Marine. I'll tell you all about it. And we obviously this this issue came up and a bunch of interesting things about the Al Smith dinner. He was speaking at the Al Smith dinner last night. Tell everybody what the Al Smith. I grew up in New York. You're in New York now. Everybody knows. Tell everybody else. Al Smith was a governor of New York State in the early 20th century.

He was a very, very devout Roman Catholic, and he ran for president, and he was the first Roman Catholic to do so. He lost to Herbert Hoover, right? 1928. 1928, right. But he had been a very successful governor of New York State, very popular governor of New York State. And he ran and he lost, but he was, you know, they called him the happy warrior. He was happy to, that was really where that term came from, came from Al Smith. And as a result, after his death, or maybe, I think it was after his death, but I think 75 years, the Al Smith

dinner has been an annual dinner in New York City, put on by the Archdiocese of New York. Now, this is now, we're now deep into Catholic territory, so I may have it all bollocked up. I was sitting at a table, Peter, with a whole lot of collars, and a lot of priests, and then there were some friars there who i we all were jealous of because all they had to do is put on a robe that's right this thing they don't have to dress up he's put on a robe and if it's a brown robe it doesn't matter you can spill anything you want nobody can tell um uh so uh so anyway so i so uh general matters are speaking at the secretary

matters are speaking at this um uh at this event and I sort of helped him a little bit with his remarks. And so we were sort of hanging out in the afternoon, and he said, you know, he's never heard this level of disquiet and nervousness from people in uniform at all ranks. And so we talked a little bit about what you do when you disagree with the presidential policy. And he said, well, you know, what you do is you salute. You do it. He's the commander in chief. He's the civilian commander of the U.S. Armed Forces is one of our bedrock principles here. And even when you disagreed with it and, you know, he's got a new book out where he disagrees with a lot of what – a lot of the Obama foreign policy.

And I think there were probably people who disagreed with the Carter foreign policy and the Reagan foreign policy and certainly the Clinton foreign policy and military policy. But they believed that there was a thinking and a strategy and a plan behind it. So I may disagree with your views, I may disagree with your way of handling the world, but I believe in the integrity of your decision-making process, that you thought it through. You came to a conclusion that I wouldn't have, but you thought it through. And he said there's no evidence that this was thought through, and I think exhibit A, B, C, 3, through Z is that there is still food in the refrigerators there.

There are still dry erase markers in the dry erase boards there. Americans, there's still soda in the vending machines there. We left in the middle of the night and we left in a hurry and we left without thinking and without planning. And that makes people in uniform more nervous than defending and executing a policy that they disagree with. Well, how Jim – Secretary Mattis – I think actually he prefers General Mattis. General Mattis is all over the news this morning because in his opening jokes, his opening monologue – that was a monologue. We're having a dialogue. He took a, well, I don't know.

He didn't actually take a pop at the president. He replied to the president. You want to describe the response in the hall when he spoke? Well, you know, it was, you know, look, these are a whole lot of Catholics there. And they were fairly conservative. You know, when the deists, I mean, as you know, I'm no woke progressive, but even I knew at the introduction, you know, the announcer introduces everybody on the deists. And usually there are people who've, you know, paid a whole lot of money to be there. And, you know, Cardinal Dolan, who's from all accounts a pretty smart operator, probably the most successful politician in New York State, he twists the right arms in the right way and with enough velocity to make sure everybody coughs up some cash for this charity, which does an enormous amount of good work.

I mean, I'm being flipped, but it actually does a huge, huge, huge amount of good work in the state. Everyone walking on the day is the first 30 people were white males. All of them looking almost identically until you get to the end of it. And it's Henry Kissinger who, you know, he's there. He gamely showed up and he he was on his phone a little bit. But he like, you know, the guy's 90, you know. Oh, he's he's 93, I believe. Yes, yes. He's in his, cause the guy's 90, you know? So, Oh, he's, he's 93. I believe. Yes.

Yes. He's in his nineties. He's in his nineties. So, so there's that, there's that. And, and,

and, and, and, and then the background of mayor de Blasio is there. This interesting, as mayor de Blasio was introduced, he was booed. Really?

To me, that's the most interesting news of the night, right? Which is that the mayor of the city, boo. And it kind of was like softer than it kind of got larger. It got larger as people saw in the big jumbotron that he was wearing a gray suit. Wow.

But he put on a white tie, so he looked like an insane person. And then he's sitting next to Governor Cuomo, and of course the two of them loathe each other with a passion. So there's this fun drama right right uh but there was one moment i thought we could just talk about briefly before i know we got to move on but i thought was really well two moments i thought were really interesting one sitting with general mattis and you know he's he's just sitting around i mean it's like it's weird it's like the guy was secretary sort of in the green room this is well i mean i don't want to meet him i mean i'm gonna say hi to him i meet him in the lot this is before this is in the this is yesterday during the day where i i mean he's

just standing around the lobby right that's second for that's a great that's another great american moment yes i agree powerful you ran centcom you were a battlefield commander and you were secretary of defense pretty much every secret every every secret that the country has is inside your head and you're just standing there and the h, and you're waiting for me to arrive. Hey, how you doing? And then we go off to a little corner, and we have a little conversation. We talk, we chit-chat, and tell each other jokes. And then there's a guy at another table at the little business center at the Hilton, and as he gets up, he says, General, I just want to say thank you for your service. And then he mentions his service.

He's out of the U.S. Army. I forget what he said. The general says, well, thank you for your service. And they kind of look at each other. And then General Sipmata says, America's worth it, isn't it? He goes, yes, it is, General. And then he walks away. It was kind of a weird goosebump moment. And I saw it happen again. And then the woman who sort of runs the Al Smith Foundation, who was doing some introductory remarks, she mentioned that she was with him that morning and that that that had happened or the receiving line i think that it happened and she said you know we've never done this announcement dinner but i think it's time to do that but everyone in this room now it's a lot of old white guys right anyone in this room

who served uh could you um just stand up so we can acknowledge you and they all stood up and there was general applause but i mean maybe i'm a cynic what i was surprised by was how few of them are uh and how few of them were on the dais right a whole lot of rich guys whole lot of rich white guys now i saw the pictures wasn't wasn't wasn't Kelly, the former police commissioner, seated up on the dais behind Jim? He was there. He must have served before becoming a police. He's made his career effectively in the armed forces as a cop. But he was one of the few up on the dais who stood?

One of the few who stood, I think. He's behind. So when I was in the front row and the dais is really high, so you can see. But it just was a surprise to me that of the front row, 30-some people. And, I mean, look, that's not an indictment. I'm just saying that it just shows you – I mean, that would have been – the entire room would have stood up between the years of 1946 and probably 1975. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

And now it's just different. And there's a lot of guys there who I'm sure are great Americans in a lot of ways. But, you know, they did their service at Harvard Business School. Right. Right. he made and the jokes that he made, some of which went over very well, I was happy to hear, happy to say. But I think there's been some, there's been some, some of the meat of the speech has been overlooked. It's a really great speech. If you can, if you can find it online, I recommend you hear it. We'll post a, if we can find a link to the speech, we'll put it on our show notes, because it's really worth hearing. He's a genuine hero. He really is. And a very, very, very smart, thoughtful guy.

I have to admit, I looked around this morning and everything is about, he told a Meryl Streep joke, which was answering the president who the day before had called him. What did he say? He said he's an overrated, that's right. He's the most overrated general ever. I think he said so. Right. Right. Right. OK. So, yes. Now I want to read E.J. Hill and I want to read Jim Mattis. And we'll if we invite E.J. to respond to this opening dialogue, E.J. is so smart. I'm sure he will have arguments. And and we also invite everybody to read.

Or can we get a clip of it? Whatever. We'll put up one way or another, in one form or another, we'll put up General Mattis' full remarks last night at dinner. Yeah, I think so. Also, if we can, if I can talk you into it, I'd love to put up a picture of you in your native costume, a tuxedo. Well, thank God for the first month or so when I was sort of planning to be at this dinner, whatever it was, three weeks, four weeks, I thought to myself, I am not going to – I mean, I do, Peter, have a tailcoat for white tie. I have to tell you, I do. Oh, you should have worn it. Does it still fit? Well, it does.

It is from an earlier era, a college era. And I there have been many, many, many bread baskets since then. You know, many, many prime ribs and foie gras and whatever. There's no way. I mean, at this point, it looks like I'm bursting out of it. So but luckily for me, I suddenly said, no, no, no, no, just the day is his white tie. I can just wear a black tie at the table, which, of course, I do have and I can squeeze into. But here's my trick. This is my – this is like – this is the 1% trick here for people.

This is going to turn everybody off. I learned it, I think, years ago. You never, ever wear a formal shirt. Formal shirts are just pains in the neck. You never do it. You just wear a nice white collar shirt, not a button-down, just a regular straight collar shirt, and you call it a day. No one notices, and your life is so much easier. I have seen, the Blue Yeti has sent me a couple of pictures of you from last night.

You also have to explain your tie, that bow tie. That was a very old fashioned bow tie you were wearing because it was floppy. Oh yeah, it's really super floppy. It was, I think it was either my, I got it from my dad. I was sure that would, that had been passed down. Yes, go ahead.

And it's, I wear it And I will only wear that one, especially now because there's a lot of stuff, my dad's stuff that I like to wear. But I will only wear that one because it's floppy and frayed. And it's just exactly the kind of thing – I mean that's sort of my philosophical understanding of black tie, which is that you're in a uniform. Right. And that's what you're doing. You're wearing a uniform. It doesn't have to be fancy. It just has to be the uniform.

And if your black tie is old and a little frayed at the top, so be it. It's still a black tie. It's unlike, you know, it's like it's different if you're out, you know, you're in a business suit or something. Right. But a black tie, the whole joy of it, for men anyway, is that you don't have to think about it. You really don't. You just wear a white shirt, a black bow tie, and a black dinner jacket, and you're done. Right.

So also, you get here in California. I don't think I have been to – maybe in the last quarter century, I have been to two events in which I had to put on a dinner. I mean, two non-weddings. California, even in New York, doesn't happen that often. If you're wearing a floppy bow tie and a slightly, a little bit frayed at the sleeves, perhaps, it says, look, my family has been amortizing the cost of this dinner jacket across generations. Exactly right. Exactly right. All right. Exactly right. All right.

Well, so that was sort of the, that was my foray into New York power politics last night. And it really, you know, if you squint, it feels like a black and white movie because you just see, first of all, it's where, I don't, is there another, maybe Chicago, another city where

the Roman Catholic Church is, as they say in Yiddish, a true mocker. Like, really kind of has a lot of, it's powerful. And I think in a good way. I mean, but powerful. Like, Dolan is a politician. He's a spiritual leader, but he's a politician. He understands exactly what he needs to do in that city. And everybody shows up on time for that dinner, and they write big fat checks. And he is a really admirable character. I would agree with that. We should probably note

that it ain't like the old days in that Governor Cu governor Cuomo, not any piece of legislation that makes abortion even more available. And governor Cuomo, a putatively Catholic signs that legislation, Bill de Blasio, same sex marriage. They lost the Cardinal Dolan works the town. He's on good terms with everybody. He raises a lot of money for very good causes.

He makes sure that the Catholic schools in difficult neighborhoods are well-funded because in many neighborhoods, it's the Catholic schools, not the public school system that offers the best chance for those kids to get out. He raised money. St. Patrick's Cathedral was about to fall down. It was in terrible disrepair. He raised money. He got that done. But on one issue after another, where he was arguing for what he certainly was teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, but also simple decency in his view, on one issue after another, the politicians have stiffed him. He's lost a lot of fights at the same time.

I think so. I think so. I think that's true about some of the secularization of everything in general. On the other hand, I think what is, I mean, look, I think so. I think that's true about the secularization of everything in general. Yes, yes, yes. On the other hand, I think what is – I mean, look, I know precisely zero about this, but except what I saw last night and from hearing the one or two conservative Catholics, arch-conservative Catholics, Shiite conservative Catholics that I know – My people, you mean? Your people complain about Dolan. But the one thing that I feel like he is probably trying to do, his strategy, if you can give him a strategy, is if we're going to lose the fights in the state houses, which we might, we're going to need to have parallel institutions that do good. Yes. And that are untouchable by the state. And that is why I think religious liberty and religious liberty movements are so incredibly important. And of course, they didn't come up last night because it's sort of not the venue. But I suspect that Dolan, I mean, I hope that Dolan spends a good 30 percent of his day maintaining that and reburnishing that shrewdly and well observed uh seems to me that you're since you're driving the bus in the absence of james ero we've got we've got we have a spot to do i just did the segue you just did the segue um uh uh speaking of maintaining sort of uh you

know secular and financial stability we need to do the same thing for ourselves here. And remind everyone that the Ricochet podcast is, first of all, it's not free. And we would love for you to join Ricochet by going to ricochet.com slash join. We absolutely need your membership. We need to grow. And we would love to have you mix it up with us in the comments. We would love to have you subscribe and connect with other members. Love to have you read the great member feed and just generally support our enterprise. And we'd also like you to support our good sponsors, especially Eero.

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You? Can't imagine it. Yeah, just having a conniption. And then when I finally plugged the Irohs in and I got them and set them all set up, I said, whoa, it never happened again. So it was me, not, you know, as is usual. We are joined now by our old friend Heather McDonald. She's the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. She's a contributing editor at City Journal, a New York Times bestselling author, recipient of the 2005 Bradley Prize.

Her newest book is The Diversity Delusion, How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture. We are thrilled to have her here. Heather, before we get to the book, I want to get to the book, before we do, could you just tell me a little bit about what happened? You went to San Francisco and you bought drugs. It was a first, I have to say. I was just so appalled by the shamelessness of the Honduran illegal alien drug dealers who count their cash in public. You see deals going down all the time. I wanted to test what their threshold of suspicion was. You know, I don't necessarily look like your usual drug user. And I was on my way to the airport walking down through the tenderloin with my luggage. So I started asking what the going

rate was for fentanyl, which is the up-and-coming drug of choice in San Francisco producing drug overdose deaths, right and left. And was first told I had to show the cash and eventually struck what I was then told was an extremely good deal of $16 for a pellet that I subsequently weighed that came in at about two grams. And my next concern was, do I get this through TSA? I called a police officer I know from San Francisco. He said, dump it.

You know, don't go through. Well, I wanted to hold on to it just if nothing else for proof. So when they pulled my luggage off the luggage belt, boy, I said, oh, shit. It turns out they were going for my lotion. That's much more dangerous. You know, you can't bring your lotion through TSA.

Wait, wait, wait. Heather, you are telling us that you did get two grams of fentanyl through airport security? Yes, I buried it in my luggage. All right, so we should back up here. Where is it now? I mean, this is just not just for... Now it's in a shoebox in my apartment in Irvine. You know, it's so highly toxic that, again, my police officer said, don't even touch the thing. So it's in its little glassine baggie.

So if ever we get completely desperate and become a drug addict, I will share it with you. Heather wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal. Excuse me. Lots of people have been declaiming the problems in San Francisco. I mention it myself almost every time we have a podcast or after I've been up to the city. Heather did something unusual. She went to San Francisco and reported. She talked to homeless people.

As we just heard, she bought, she did a drug deal. She produced a piece that appeared, what, a couple of weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal, and now she has a longer, more thorough piece in City Journal titled San Francisco Hostage to the Homeless. Heather, here's the question. How can a city which is in so many ways so glittering and so beautiful and so rich, still in all kinds of ways the center of technology and venture capital. How can such a city have such a problem? Well, of course, the wealth of the city has absolutely nothing to do with it. I mean, that's what I suppose the advocates would have you believe is that they're just not spending enough and or that income inequality is producing this. San Francisco has built more affordable housing units per capita than any other city. It spends minimal, I mean, by the most modest

estimation, including the merest of expenses, it spends about $400 million a year. That works out to nearly $50,000 per homeless person. It is caught up in the progressive delusion that it is unjust to hold every member of society to the same standard of behavior, to expect self-disciplined, respectful behavior in public of everybody. And instead, it has carved out a zone of immunity for certain favored victim classes from the bourgeois norms that everybody else more or less abides by. And when you make it well known that your streets are available for a drug-addicted, alcohol-addicted lifestyle, that you will be fed constantly by either the city workers or by charity, that the advocates will give you tents and smartphones.

Guess what? You get a lot of people coming from all across the country to take advantage of that opportunity to live this vagrant lifestyle. So, Heather, my question is, I mean, I live in New York, you live in Irvine or New York and you live anywhere you want. Why do I care? Why should I care what's happening in San Francisco? I mean, I could make the argument, well, that's fine. San Francisco can offer all that. Maybe it'll be a magnet and attract that kind of element from all around the world, all

around the country. Should people who don't care about San Francisco still be worried about San Francisco? Well, you're right, Rob. I mean, a great amount of schadenfreude is definitely called for, and it is extremely satisfying that these progressives, you know, who feel themselves so superior to the rest of the mega hat-wearing red America, have to step across feces on their way to work or to get out of their door. They're also facing risks of assault from the homeless. But I think we should care simply because it's certainly not a San Francisco phenomenon unique to San Francisco.

This is something that is happening in cities up across the West Coast. Now, granted, they do tend to be liberal cities that tolerate this. Again, my solution is very simple. You just say this behavior is not allowed, period. And that focuses the mind. And then you really have to start thinking about alternatives. But it's a simple thing to solve in a sense. You go back to the law enforcement practices of 60 years ago, where the police would simply move people along. But I think we should care because

this is one manifestation of a mindset that is pervasive in our society now, which is this belief that anything that has disparate impact on victim groups is therefore unjust, racially unjust, above all else, and that the solution is a whole set of double standards in behavior, whether it's crime, whether it's academic effort, school discipline, you name it. Now, one would think this would be self-correcting. Okay, so let those cities have those double standards. At some point, there's going to be a popular revolt.

And, you know, there's been various little seeds of that. Hilariously, you know, the tech community now is the new villain of choice. And there's been a few tech bros over the last decade or so who have written on Twitter or Facebook these clé de coeur saying, this is absurd. You know, these people are destroying my quality of life. They're destroying the city. They became the targets of just utter social mob assault. Some of them had to even move out of the city. One guy ended up in Nashville. So one would think it would spark a populist revolt, but it hasn't yet. Can I ask – on this question of populist revolt, Rob, you're in Irvine now.

You're in Southern California. You spend a lot of time in Southern California. You're at the Manhattan Institute in New York. You know those two areas very, very well. And what I have in mind, of course, is the popular revolt that years ago elected Rudy Giuliani, who, among other things, got a tough police commissioner in Bill Bratton. Rob was at a dinner last night, the Al Smith dinner, where Bratton's successor, Ray Kelly, also a tough commissioner who served through Michael Bloomberg. So you got, what was it, 20 years or so, Giuliani and Bloomberg were the mayor of the city of New York, supported pretty intelligent but firm policing. And New York is a pretty darn clean city.

Homicide rates down, but also homelessness, at least the kinds of nuisance homelessness that you encountered in San Francisco down. What's happening under Bill de Blasio and what's the situation in L.A.? Well, L.A., Skid Row is the absolute nadir of street squalor. I've written about that before. It is just beyond belief. I mean, it makes San Francisco look almost clean. And the police chief there, unfortunately, somebody who I've, you know, supported in the past, appears to be just as vulnerable to racial race mongering as anybody else. So he's been dismantling policing there in the name of racial equity. New York, you know, what we backing off, you now have the way it really should work, which is informal social controls above all families that are, you know, that you don't have the kids growing up in single parent homes, the gang involvement that you once

did. Hey, Heather, so LA is a city I know pretty well, or used to know when I used to live there. And the great thing, the salient fact about Los Angeles is that it's all spread out in these incredibly segregated neighborhoods. So it was possible to live

in Brentwood or the Pacific Palisades or Bel Air or Beverly Hills or Santa Monica and feel very safe. You really didn't have any trouble. You either had – at one point, the LAPD estimated that at any given time during the day, there was only one patrol car in the Pacific Palisades. And that's partly because it's up on a hill and it's kind of complicated to get to and And there's one Sunset Boulevard is pretty much the only boulevard that goes through it. But the residents didn't seem to mind because they all have private security and they are also all almost all progressive.

What happens when, you know, the progressives get mugged, as they say well you know we saw that with the la riots uh and uh when and that's basically what happened with crime in this country in the 80s and early 90s where for once it it was bleeding out of of inner cities i mean i'm gonna be very frank here street crime in this country today, that is shootings, aggravated assaults, carjackings, they are really exclusively a black and Hispanic phenomenon. There simply are no drive-by shootings in white areas. And we see how the country has this amazing double standard. Let one white girl, you know, be killed by an school shootings every couple of weeks in the black community. Black kids are being killed, mowed down in Chicago in 2016. There was one person shot every two hours that worked out to 4,300 people shot in Chicago that year. But they're all black, and nobody gives a damn. If 4,300 white people in Chicago had been shot in one year, it's unthinkable there would be a national revolution.

But why don't they give a damn? I mean, these are people that certainly progressive urban urbanites talk about how much how many dams they give all the time. What they would say is that, well, you know, the the white suburban voter doesn't give a damn. And that's because they're racist. You're you're telling me that the that the progressive urban theorists are don't give a damn. Why don't they? The most don't give a damn categories are the progressives and the media who purport to be such social justice warriors. And the reason they don't give a damn is because if they're going to be honest about those black homicides, and blacks die of homicide at about eight to ten times the rate of whites is because if they're going to be honest and look at the data, they'd have to also look at the flip side of that. And the reason that blacks have this very high victimization rate for homicide is because their homicide commission rates are also literally exponentially higher than they are for whites. And that is the truth that is kept out of public discourse through, you know, military control. Do you try and bring it, do you try and talk about the black crime rate and how it affects

innocent blacks in this country. And I can speak from personal experience. You come under artillery fire. Right. Heather, you mentioned a moment ago that the cities where there are homeless problems tend to be liberal cities. I've never mentioned this. I'm glad you're on when this is in my head because a hundred times I've thought to myself, I want to ask Heather about this. Most cities are liberal. I read the other day that of the six biggest cities in Texas, Texas, the reddest of the large states, only one, Fort Worth, has a Republican mayor. What is it about urban life that leans so heavily toward not just Democrats?

Mayor Daley, the first and frankly, as far as I can tell, the second Mayor Daley ran Chicago pretty well. They were centrist Democrats. But now we have not just Democrats, but Democrats quite far to the left. The current mayor of Chicago, Lightfoot, Bill de Blasio in New York. What is it about urban life that tends to shut out conservative political solutions? Well, that is about the most sort of profound and difficult question you could come up with, Peter. That's why I thought of you. Oh, thanks.

All I can say is I've observed the same thing to my utter despair. I noticed it in a far more sort of sybaritic way, which is to be very frustrated that the best foodie cultures are also in liberal cities. You know, like Irvine, the farmer's market there is quite inferior to what you get in Santa Monica. Not that Irvine is particularly conservative, but, you know, Newport Beach, which is this slight remaining holdout in Orange County, has lousy restaurants. You know, it you get a tipping point and conservatives don't feel welcome, or if they simply choose, you know, there may be sort of more of that libertarian instinct where they certainly are not, in my experience, ideologically, a lot of conservatives simply seem to be somehow opposed to public transit and are very committed to the car lifestyle.

They may not value those sort of foodie, metrosexual aspects of cities quite as much, and whether, too, there's a sense of support for big government as a matter of simply ideology or an opposition to it. And so somehow all those wealthy Hollywood progressives are willing to pay higher taxes, not that they don't try to shelter it, but they are – at some point, they are paying higher taxes in those cities. And they somehow feel that that is fine because it makes them believe that they are therefore uplifting the poor. Heather, my solution to this problem is to run Rob Long for mayor of New York. Oh, my God. Well, I will be honored to be not that he needs a speechwriter. So I don't know what he would need, actually. I drive him around. I would be a bodyguard. I think Heather, Heather for press secretary for so well. I think Heather for press secretary, you're so well-known.

I think the two of us are probably not for politics. What you said earlier, you said people, because of things they want to believe, they'll just pay a little bit more in taxes or they'll just still live in a fantasy land, which is a perfect way for me to remind everyone that your book is called The Diversity Delusion, How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University, Undermine Our Culture. It's about academia, but it's also about society. And it feels to me like it's the same problem in both places. Does it not? Well, yeah. I mean, it is this lie that we're all living.

I'm starting to call it the myth of bias. And that is the idea that if there's any disparities in any institution, race or gender disparities, that those are by definition the result of bias. That is the only allowable explanation for the media, for progressives, for the Democratic Party. You are not allowed to talk about behavior, culture, preferences, and certainly not the academic skills gap for explaining why there isn't, say, 50-50 gender equity in the STEM fields or why there are not a proportional number of black physicists in every physics department in the country. So it's the same turning away from the facts of our world and positing an explanation for those facts that I think is just completely by now bogus. You know, the idea that this is a racist country is just belied on a daily basis by the fact that there isn't a single mainstream institution, whether it's a university, media, a corporation, a bank, a law firm, publishing, you name it, that isn't twisting itself into knots to hire and promote as many blacks and Hispanics and females as possible. You know, the universities exercise massive racial preferences, and the country, you know, these lefties, they don't know Americans. We are a nice people. We go out

into the middle of the country. People are nice. They just want to get along. They are so ready to be post-racial. They're not allowed to be because of the frenzied identity politics on campus and increasingly the frenzied identity politics in the Democratic Party. Well, unfortunately, I think we're going to be living in that frenzy for a while. But in the meantime, Heather, thank you for joining us. And try to kick the drug habit. Just try it. That's one day at a time, Heather. Well, stay away from San Francisco.

It's just so tempting. It's so easy. That's what it is. It's easy. First one's free, as they always say. Heather, thanks for joining us. Heather, you are charming and intelligent. But what I love most of all is your utter fearlessness.

Thank you. Well, thank you, and you guys tell the truth, so thank you. Heather actually is kind of a – people use this word too much, but sort of a badass, don't you think? Are you kidding me? You wouldn't want to cross Heather in a dark and gorgeous house. I just love the idea that she went to go buy drugs in San Francisco and and she like airport carrying her to her luggage, the wheelie luggage. And she she haggled. She wasn't like, you know, I think in that position, I would just whatever the price is, is fine. Right. I mean, first of all, you're going to expense it.

I could. Can you imagine? Can you imagine yourself or me going through TSA, the security, with two grams of fentanyl in our bags and then having the bag pulled aside? I would say – I confess I did it. Yeah, you would crack, Peter. We know that you would confess. She is so cold-blooded. She just waited to see if they'd find it. You confessed on the way into the airport. Turned yourself in um

uh but that's you know that's a personality difference and she's sort of fearless in a lot of ways and and that's that's that and look everybody this is a segue by the way everybody uh everybody has different things going on inside their head and there's no way to know um really sometimes sometimes you kind of need to say what you're, find some place to talk about how you feel and not in a sort of what they call a safe space, which in fact is safe. So if there's something that interferes with your happiness or is preventing you from achieving your goals, BetterHelp Online Counseling is there for you. Connect and find your professional counselor in a safe and private online environment. It's so convenient.

You can now get help on your own time and at your own pace. your professional counselor in a safe and private online environment. It's so convenient. You can now get help on your own time and at your own pace. You can schedule secure video or phone sessions or chat and text with your therapist. These are licensed professional counselors. They specialize in depression, stress, anxiety, relationship, sleeping, as well as many other specialties. And of course, anything you share, your entire relationship with your therapist, your entire relationship with BetterHelp is confidential. If you're not happy with your counselor for any reason, just get a new one at any time without an additional charge. 3,000 licensed therapists in the United States across all 50 states with services available worldwide. Again, text, chat, phone, video, whatever is most convenient for you. You can start communicating with a therapist in under 24 hours.

It's available on desktop, mobile web, Android, iOS apps, weekly video phone sessions, daily, however you want. Financial aid is also available for those who qualify. It's secure, convenient, professional, and affordable. And right now, there's an offer to all Ricochet listeners. If you go to betterhelp.com slash Ricochet, you get 10% off your first month. So it's a really affordable option. Go to betterhelp.com, betterhelp, B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P, all one,.com slash Ricochet and get your 10% off the first month. So get started today. All they ask is you fill out a questionnaire. It helps them assess your needs and get you matched with a counselor you will love and connect with. That's betterhelp.com slash ricochet. And our thanks to BetterHelp for sponsoring the Ricochet podcast. And, I mean, there is more and more of this happening online.

The tech business and tech sort of space, as they say, is encouraging more and more of this kind of help. I mean, there's weight loss apps and there's counseling apps like BetterHelp. It really is sort of maximizing the value, I think, of that phone that you carry around that has so much power and can do so much for you. But in fact, people just spend tweeting little nasty things or whatever they are doing. It's kind of interesting to see this unfold, and we're really happy that a lot of it is unfolding here with our Ricochet sponsors. Yes, yes. By the way, since James isn't here, I have to let you know

that was a pretty good segue into BetterHelp, but it can't be a great segue if you say this is a segue. Yeah, it's not. You eliminate yourself from the top honors the moment you say this is a segue yeah it's not it's i i am you eliminate yourself from the top honors when the moment you say that you know it's funny because the um i wrote a piece in national review years and years ago and i talked about how you're not you're not supposed to say the stage directions yes they're always saying the stage directions and i use as my example um uh george bush saying in the george hW. Bush campaign, saying, talking about something, saying and finishing his remarks.

They're sort of impromptu by saying to the audience message. I care. And that was kind of the way he talked anyway. That kind of was that 30s kind of gangster talk. But it also was clearly what they in a meeting they'd said to him, listen, Mr. President, you just need to send the message that you care. And so he thought, OK, well, I'll just say, message I care. It doesn't really work that way. On the other hand, we are all now so media savvy, all of us, that it helps, I think, an audience to connect with you as a performer, as a politician, if you act like you know this is a show too. So you can see the dials going up when at the Democratic debates or at presidential debates, when whoever is speaking is acknowledging how weird it is that we're here. Because that actually really makes you seem real and connect with people in

a way that I think if you're just standing at the podium and acting as if this is the most natural thing in the world, you sort of lose people. They sort of, they turn away from you a little bit. And I just feel like that's a – that is part of what a successful politician does is sort of – is remind people that maybe it's not so bad to read the state's directions every now and then. People, this is – I am standing in front of you. I am not supposed to say that – I always wonder why politicians don't say, look, I'm not supposed to tell you this. Everyone in my campaign right now is pulling their hair out because I'm about to tell you the truth. Right. What happens is they usually tell – they blurt the truth out, and then they spend the next 24-hour cycle saying, well, I didn't really mean it like that. But if you – we say in show business, we say hang a lantern on it, which means if you're going to do something, call attention to it first.

Right. Bill Sapphire, you remember Bill Sapphire. Bill Sapphire was a speechwriter for Nixon, the late Bill Sapphire, and a columnist for the New York Times. And he had a bit that he would do when he was giving talks to various groups. So while you may recall that in this or that speech, President Nixon would say, I have been counseled to take the this or that speech, President Nixon would say, I have been counseled to take the easy way out. And Sapphire would say, that was my job on the speechwriting staff. I'd go into the Oval Office and say, Mr. President, take the easy way out. Exactly right. Well, speaking of the easy way out and about stage directions, this thing, this clip happened at a, I can't even keep it straight, at a recent Democratic debate. There are a million of them now. And it

sort of made the news and was passed around Twitter. It was a question at CNN, someone from the organization, I think it's called, it's not called Human Rights Watch. That's a separate one. But I'll think of it. Asked a question about gay marriage. Here's the question. Here's the answer. Let's say you're on the campaign trail and you're approached.

You have this. And a supporter approaches you and says, Senator, I'm old fashioned and my faith teaches me that marriage is between one man and one woman. What is your response? Well, I'm going to assume it's a guy who said that. And I'm going to say, then just marry one woman. I'm cool with that. Assuming you can find one. Okay, so now we know, not a bad joke, by the way, just to give her due. Now we know that it was sort of planned out. Right.

She knew the question was coming. She had the answer ready. So on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being effective, 1 being not effective, just as a piece of pure political theater, do you think this is going to help? Do you think this is effective or not effective? I mean, taking away your views on the issue, just as a piece of campaign tactic, do you think it think that would work? That's about a five or six, now that we know that the whole thing was a setup. It would have been about a seven if it hadn't been in that room. Yeah. On the other hand, there are a lot of people between the East Coast and the West Coast

who believe, by the way, I'm one of them, who believe that marriage really, your faith does teach you that and it ought to be, remain very squarely within the realm of acceptable opinion and not to be mocked. It doesn't help her in the country. It only helps her with people who are already, it gave an easy laugh to people who are already on her side. Right. So it didn't do anything. I mean, political rhetoric has to be judged according not just to whether it's clever or whether it gets a laugh, but what it accomplishes. Politics is about getting things done, persuading people, moving policy.

On that measure, that was a zero. It moved no one's opinion. Yeah. I mean, three takeaways from that, because I think it was sort of an interesting moment. One is that she's using her Oklahoma accent. It's a lot more Oklahoma. That's exactly right. You're exactly right. Yeah, it's been before. I'm cool with that. She was not campaigning in uh you know

worcester or uh you know all you know l wife or uh chelmsford massachusetts saying i'm cool with that i guarantee you the second thing is that she took a weird it was a very strange thing for a for a candidate who needs to win and could conceivably win suburban women to take a shot at dudes like that. I'm assuming he was a man. Now, if you're a suburban woman and you are a conservative, social conservative, but there are plenty of those, um, that might seem a little strange to you, um, a little alienating in a way. Um, and then the third thing, my third takeaway from it was that this is, this is her, this is a signal from, I think, a rising star in that, in the campaign right now. I mean, I actually would put money down that she's going to be the nominee. Oh, same here.

And I think that's her saying, you know what? I can give it back to that guy. Because the truth is that that's why, that's one of the reasons what made Trump so incredibly popular during the Republican primary, was that he was funny, and he told jokes. He didn't know what he was saying. He doesn't really, he's not an incredibly well-informed guy, but he had jokes, right? And he won the presidency. He is the president. But you can say one thing about Donald Trump is that he's not expanded his base. He's not persuaded anybody of anything. He has basically, he got in the way with the numbers he got in and the numbers to stay pretty consistent or gone down a little bit since then. And she seems to me to be sending a Kabuki

kind of theater message to her audience that I've got zingers. And, you know, that's, that's a good point. I'll, I'll take back what I said know, that's a good point. I'll take back what I said. If that's the case, and that seems very plausible. In other words, Biden's entire, the entire rationale for supporting Joe Biden is that he is capable of defeating Donald Trump and Elizabeth Warren is not. And Elizabeth Warren, on your argument, is saying to all those various constituencies, all liberal, to Democratic primary voters – the name of the game right now is to win the nomination – she's saying to primary voters, I'll fight. I will fight. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. That's an implicit – yes. Yes. Okay. Just a piece of stagecraft. I think it was fairly positive. And it also may have gotten something done for her politically. Yeah, I think so. And I would have said and I, you know, I'm coming to this slowly because I would have said a month ago, oh, my God, Elizabeth Warren's never going to she's not going to get the nomination, let alone.

But she could get the nomination and she could, I think, just by watching her, she could win. Oh, I think so, too. I think so, too. I've thought I've thought all along. There are all kinds of statements in the press from the White House and from the campaign that they want to run against Elizabeth Warren. They consider Joe Biden the strongest candidate. By the way, a lot of people think that that's exactly E.J. Hill may want to comment on that one, too. But I don't see it really. Joe Biden doesn't, I don't believe, hold up terribly. The idea of Joe Biden, the idea of Joe Biden is somebody who's a centrist Democrat in the tradition of FDR through Clinton. That is to say, centrist, patriotic, common sense, not hard left, not ideological. The reality of Joe Biden is that he's scrambling as best he can to

learn this new language of socialist rhetoric without calling it socialist. Only Bernie Sanders is willing to call himself a socialist. It doesn't come, it doesn't sit well with Biden. And Biden is, frankly, he's a little, to me, he's a little, he's low energy Joe. It may have something to do with his age. It may not because what he doesn't have is anything like Trump's animal vitality. I've always felt Elizabeth Warren is Hillary Clinton without the baggage, and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and almost the presidency. Decisive, decisive victory of the popular vote. I mean I know it doesn't count, but three million is a lot of people voting. It's a lot of people.

It's a lot of people. Martin Short did well in that crowd. He did very well. He was very funny, yeah. He stole one joke from the general. I don't think he meant to steal it, but he stole one joke early on because he did the introductory remarks. And I know we want to move on, so I won't go too far.

But the one response that we all sort of liked for Trump called Mattis overrated. Yes. The most overrated general. And one remark we wanted Mattis to say, which I think he enjoyed this joke, which is to say, well, that's actually understandable coming from Trump. The only military leader he truly respects is Colonel Sanders. And Martin Short used that in the first five minutes and it killed his life. Funny. And I just thought, oh, no, this is going to be bad. But but Mattis is pretty smart because he sort of weaved it back into his remarks. And now I think I saw on Twitter that people are attributing it to him, which is fun.

But I've met Martin Short a bunch of times. So I sort of Mattis and I were after after dinner. I was sort of pointing to him and said, you stole that joke. And he said, I'm sorry. You should have told me. It was a good joke. It's like professionals, two professionals going at it. But before we go, we have to do two things.

One is we have to talk about the poll and the poll from last week. And number two, we have to talk about the Online Trading Academy because let's be honest. Most people weren't taught how to invest in school. And if you're like me, you probably wondered, what does Wall Street, why does Wall Street seem to win so consistently? How can I do more than just buy and hold? Is there a path to help me take better control of my financial future? Well, that's the Online Trading Academy, and they want you to start knowing the answer

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That is a very good point. What would you do if you knew skills designed to help you generate income and build confidence towards your retirement goals? Get started right now by joining the more than 500 000 people who have attended one of their free classes uh look i mean it is true uh uh i think we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how markets work and how we can um you know how we can figure out our financial future. The problem really here is that banks and giant institutions, financial institutions, seem to be about one step ahead. They seem to know stuff and use language that I personally find baffled by. So Online Training Academy is a valuable education tool for learning skills

that could empower your financial decisions. You learn what that all means. You knoweter i consider myself pretty smart guy and i read a lot about financial news and i can't keep up but even i don't understand half the stuff that the jargon and the trading and the analysis tools that big banks and brokerages use online trading academy is that kind of education tool. You'll learn those skills. You'll learn that language. You'll learn all the things you need to empower your financial decision. Look, markets are confusing, and people will tell you a million different things. The best way to make your way through the markets is to know something about it.

Online Trading Academy will give you that background and give you that knowledge. You can sign up for a free three-hour introductory class at onlinetradingeconomy.com slash ricochet. That's otatrade.com slash ricochet. That's a free class. There's a free class in your area. There's also online. Register at otatrade.com slash ricochet.

You'll even receive their professional insider's kit just for attending. That's otatrade.com slash ricochet. You'll even receive their professional insider's kit just for attending. That's otatrade.com slash ricochet. And we thank Online Trading Academy for sponsoring the Ricochet podcast. I think they're new sponsors and we're thrilled to have them. Rob, you have a choice to make. You may continue to wear a dinner jacket with frayed sleeves or you may sign up for Online Trading Academy. That's exactly true. Well, I no longer trust the various experts that have been telling me things about my money and things about money in general, so I will give up my frayed dinner jacket and I will take Online Trading Academy because there's no replacement for knowing stuff yourself.

Speaking of that, okay, I know we have to run. Last week's poll question. You're just calling it the poll question. Everybody else is calling it the long poll question. You're the one who comes up with these questions. Go ahead. It will be a long poll question this week. I'm just trying to decide, so I haven't made up my mind yet.

But the last week was interesting. Yes. 26%. This is the number one answer. 26% of polls. What was the question the question you got to give us the question we're just which best describes you got it okay um i have liberal friends and conservative friends and we avoid the topic of politics of politics that's over a quarter the respondent said that but just under a quarter, at 24 percent. So, you know, within the margin of error, probably.

I have liberal friends, but don't tell them what I really think. Yeah. Isn't that sad? That means a full 50 percent, even at Ricochet, where we have the nicest conservative sort of members in America, even at Ricochet, half our members just are avoiding talking politics when they have friends that they know disagree. That is a little sad, really. Yeah, I wish I had – it was a liberal version of Ricochet. They would ask that poll and see what the numbers are. You know, it's a little sad, but I have to confess, I've been in plenty of settings.

There are some settings where people know that I'm Ricochet and a Reagan, blah, blah, blah, blah. But there have been plenty of settings, largely actually school events with the kids, where I keep my mouth shut when people start talking politics. I'm in category number two myself a lot of the time. That's even sadder. Yeah. We've all done our time in category two. Something to think about anyway. Before we go, I want to say this podcast was brought to you by BetterHelp, Online Trading Academy,

and Eero. Please support them for supporting us. They have had our back. Eero's had our back for a while. BetterHelp Online Training Academy are new, and we're enthusiastic and grateful for their support. If you enjoy the show, take a minute, leave a review on iTunes. It really does help us. But what really helps us is if you join, please join Ricochet. Go to ricochet.com. Join. Join the conversation. Join the community. Mix it up in the member feed or just read and browse and and feel like you're part of a very civil online community and you're

striking a blow for civil conversation and maybe you're helping the 24 out a little bit um and rob we will post when we put up this podcast Yeti and I have exchanged a couple of texts back and forth. We will post the full remarks that General Mattis delivered last night. So you get beyond the jokes. We will post. Well, if you think we were too rough on Donald Trump, look for a reply by E.J. Hill, who's so smart. I'm a little frightened about that. And we will post a picture of Rob last night in his frayed dinner jacket.

In my well, the dinner jackets look, it's the frayed bow ties. The frayed bow tie, the frayed bow tie. But I'm sure the dinner jacket is going to be frayed pretty soon. All right. That's all I've got. Next week, Rob. Next week. The loveliness of Paris seems somehow sadly gay. The glory that was Rome is of another day. I've been terribly alone And forgotten in Manhattan I'm going home To my city by the bay

I left my heart in San Francisco High on a hill It calls to me To be where little cable cars Climb halfway to the stars The morning fog May chill the air I don't care

My love waits there In San Francisco Above the blue And windy sea When I come home to you San Francisco Ricochet! Join the conversation.