The Ricochet Podcast - The Purple Reign

Episode Date: April 21, 2016

It’s not often that a news story breaks while we’re recording the podcast, but that’s exactly what happened today. We started off talking politics with Bill Kristol and Michael Barone (the former on #NeverTrump and the possibility of a third party and the latter on the now very important California primary and Michael’s WSJ piece “Trump Can’t Break the Republican Party”) and wound up discussing... Source

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Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life. I don't know what's going to happen here. I don't have any information on that. They don't understand what you're talking about. And that's going to prove to be disastrous. But what it means is that the people don't want socialism. They want more conservatism. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet podcast. You thought we were done at 300? No. Peter Robinson, James Lilacs, Rob Long are all here to talk to Bill Kristol and Michael Barone.

Let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome everybody, this is the Ricochet Podcast number 301. It's brought to you by a variety of folk. Audible.com, they've got more than 250,000 audiobooks and spoken word audio products. Get a free 30-day trial and a free audiobook at www.audible.com slash ricochet. And we're brought to you by SaneBox. Is your email box out of control? Of course it is. It's an email box.

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So please become a member. Ricochet.com. 30 free days anyway. Absolutely no risk to you. But it will mean a whole lot to us and to a lot of people who work very hard to bring this to you. So please do. Well, folks, on the day that we are recording this, I know you like to think that it's just sort of timeless and floating above time and space and stuff. But actually it happens on a particular day at a particular time.

And today it seems Prince is dead and long live the queen. Peter. Prince of what? Well, we'll get to that in a second. If you can cogitate. No, I know. I'm doing that to draw Rob. I'm sorry.

I know Prince was a musician. I don't know what he performed, but I know he was a musician. As for the queen, the queen of England turns 90 today unofficially. This is the British stuff. She's unofficially – actually, today is her birthday. But for ceremonial purposes, apparently the weather tends to be better later in the year and they troop horses around and so forth. So for ceremonial purpose, I believe her official birthday is June 4th. So they'll celebrate all of this twice.

But that little old lady, I don't know, whatever, what you may think of monarchy, nobody ever asked her whether she wanted the job. She just got it. She was 26 when she became queen. She is now 90 years old. She has surpassed the record set by her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, for time on the throne. And I don't think she's made – over 63 years as Queen of England, she is gaffless. I don't think she's made a mistake or done anything undignified or said anything foolish, let alone stupid, which means she will never be a guest on the Ricochet podcast.

How uninteresting. However, she was the queen of some very stupid thing. I mean, she was the queen of some very stupid members of the royal family. So she inherited all the good sense and there was none left to give out to the rest of the Saxe, Coburgurg-Gotha. What is it? What's their official house? Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and then one other thing.

Yeah, there's another Germanic name, which they had to rebrand as the Windsors. Right. So somebody make me understand to the extent of about three sentences. Give me an – tell me why I should appreciate Prince. All by himself, working away in studios, he created some extraordinary popular music, pop rock music, pop funk, and also helped to spur a renaissance in funk and R&B music here in Minneapolis that resulted in great careers and a lot of attention to the Minneapolis sound and whatnot. But above all, he was a good songwriter and he could write some good tunes. And he was a strange guy. He just was. But when he picked up that guitar and played, there was an inimitable style and a voice and he was really good.

Okay. So compare – Just to say one more thing about him. Yeah. This is a guy who became an international superstar in the 1980s. 84. Essentially early 80s but it was 84. It was the purple rain. 84. Essentially, early 80s, but it was 84. Purple Rain really put him on.

And never left Minneapolis. Stayed there. Was a Minneapolis kid and stayed in Minneapolis. And I think that's something kind of, you could tell that he was a singular character because he didn't move to LA

and be just like another LA musician. LA came to him. Yeah. Right. And he, I mean, flight time has another studio here that Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis set up in

Minneapolis and Janet Jackson would come to report, record with them. The place was important. It was. And, but he was a serious, go on. No,

I was just going to say, this is a mini, this is, this will be a huge story for, for the Minneapolis – every outlet in Minneapolis today. Oh, good. It's just – it's crushing. I mean Rob's right. He didn't go.

We didn't see him an awful lot. Now and then he would open up the doors at his Park Studio and people would come in and he'd do a little concert at 3 o'clock in the morning. I mean that kind of fellow. When Purple Rain hit, he couldn't go around anymore. I waited on him and back in college at the Valley restaurant, he came in with some beautiful fashion model about 1982, I think, and, uh, sat in the no smoking section, which itself was a joke for tables right next to smoking. So it wafted over and he said to this little wobbly table, tiny guy, smaller than me almost, and had pigs in a blanket, which I always thought was salacious

coming from somebody with a persona like Prince. And then they left in a little red Corvette. And those were the days when he could do something like that, go to a college restaurant and have breakfast at 2 in the morning. No more. The other thing was that he was my age, essentially. We were very, very close. 57.

I don't know what he went from. People I know who worked for him said he was a clean guy as far as what his lifestyle was. He didn't touch drugs. He didn't touch drink. They said that when he used a tube of Brylcreem once, then he would throw it away.

Same with the toothpaste. I guess this is one of those things you can indulge when you get an awful lot of money. There's a little view into that. But he'll be remembered for the music, for putting Minneapolis back on the map. And also, it'll look to a lot of people like 2016 as the Reaper has been uh collecting all of these musicians and uh i wonder if it's true i wonder if there actually is more bygone deceased folk it'd be in the first third of this year than than we find in most do we remember who died last year at this time the famous person no who i don't know peter? No, you've got me completely. No.

Yeah. Well, so there you have it. Wait, there wasn't one? No, I don't remember. That's just what I'm saying. I see. Because pop culture is just a shark, and everything that we were worrying about and stewing about a year ago on the internet, we've completely forgotten because a whole new set of issues have come up except of course on ricochet where you will find threads that probably go back two years because there are issues that we're still trying to work out because history does not just simply end because the calendar page turns as a matter of fact learn more about it so

somebody was doing a survey about um what was it he was uh the great events of the oh i know i was listening to a podcast it's called um lost to the – I think it's just the Byzantium story. It's the history of Byzantium. That's it. In about 120 podcast episodes. And it's fascinating. And one of the authors had said that they did a survey of people about the greatest events in Western civilization, et cetera. And most of them were 20th century, 19th century stuff. That when it came to the 10 top events that

shaped the Western world, only a couple of people ever came up with the fall of Constantinople, which itself was a tremendous historical tragedy, if you want to look at it that way, because history matters and we may forget about it, but it does. And that's why you ought to maybe go learn some things. Where? Well, that would be simple. The great courses, great courses want you to go to the great courses plus, because there's all kinds of stuff you can learn for free. The new video learning service, for example, the great courses, plus you can learn about anything and everything with unlimited access on your pad, on your phone, on your computer, any streaming device. Here's a chance to get

a popular course, The Conservative Tradition, and hundreds of others absolutely free. Very easy. It's taught by award-winning professor Patrick Allitt. It provides you with an interesting and unbiased look at conservatism in the U.S. and the U.K., and it shows you the differences between the two, and you might not be surprised to find out

who was influenced by the U.K. versions. Now, if you would like, of course, you can go somewhere else and to a college and spend tons of money. But no, the conservative tradition is a $320 value for free if you go to thegreatcoursesplus.com slash ricochet. You can get started today, of course. That's thegreatcoursesplus.com slash ricochet. And Peter, you had something to add. James, really quickly, I just wanted to say you mentioned Byzantium. Oh, take your time.

My introduction to Byzantium took place – this is before The Great Courses was sponsoring this podcast. I paid full freight for this. This was The World of Byzantium by Professor Kenneth Harl. It is a – he's a wonderful lecturer. And if you're going to take a drive or you want something to listen to when you're working out, the Byzantine Empire, absolutely fascinating history. As James just pointed out, much more important than we generally recognize. And Kenneth Harl is a fascinating and grossing lecturer. The World of Byzantium on the Great Courses. I can personally vouch for that one with terrific enthusiasm.

Excellent. Rob, register on your particular – on your meter. I listen to them when I drive across the country and I listen to them when I drive across the country. And I actually – I'm going to be doing that again in a month or two and I'm going to have to start loading up. And I'll probably – what I usually do is I load up on something that I wouldn't – like Byzantium, that I would not pick up and read. That's how I forced myself to read all the great Russian novels. I took them to the beach.

There was nothing else to do. Nothing else to do. And it's amazing stuff. The thing about the great course is they come streaming and there's an app and there's all different ways to do it. So you kind of – they're kind of with you with whatever device you usually use, which I think is useful. I just love the idea of Rob going on his annual travels with Charlie and never managing to write a Steinbeckian book like it. If you ever do, though, make sure that it's accurate because nowadays people can fact check your butt on the internet.

But he'll be leaving New York and that means that he'll be leaving New York values. And what does that mean? I got your New York values. I got your New York values right here, buddy. And that's why it's time for us to talk to somebody who knows them full well, Weekly Standard guy, Bill Kristol. And, Bill, okay, we got the New York results. It's all over.

It's dead, right? Trump ascendant or not? It's a dopey state. I grew up there, but I left there at age 17, and I've got to say I'm glad I did. Now, I still like New York. Two of our kids live there, but I'm proud that our kids and their spouses were part of the one congressional district in New York that it was Trump did not win, and they were part of that very small, very, very narrow anti-Trump majority. So there are some good people in New York, but it turns out that New York thinks

it's such a sophisticated place. They're so worldly and they're like River City in the Music Man. You know, they're a bunch of hicks who were taken in by a con man. It's really a little distressing. Well, somebody that they've seen up close for a long, long time. That's what mystifies some people. Some people say, look, these are the people who know him. So of course they're going to vote. They know the real Trump. Well, he lost his own congressional district. The only one he lost was the one he lives in. So I suppose you could say the ones who know him best didn't vote for him.

But, unfortunately, the people on the island and upstate, I mean, obviously, look, he's a skillful candidate, a good Democrat, if you can say that. And Cruz doesn't fit well in New York. He didn't quite have probably enough resources to make as strong a campaign as he might have. It's a good victory for Trump. The race is very much in play. I think it's on kind of a knife's edge as to whether Trump can get close enough to 1237 to win at the convention or not. I really think it's a 50-50 proposition now.

I'll hand it over to one of the other guys like Peter in a second. I just have to say, come on, come on, Bill. We're in the post-rules age. He doesn't have to get 1237 if he gets 1162 the people have spoken, right? And who are you, establishment goper, to deny the will

of the people? I'm a big will-of-the-people denier. I believe will-of-the-people is a phrase that's been used in a major work of art, not in a very good way. So, I'm not... Yeah, I mean, we'll see if there are... I very much agree with

what you're saying. We'll see if the Republican Party and leaders of the party have the nerve to say, wait a second, maybe we'll have gotten at that point 38, 39 percent of the popular vote. There's a reason you're not getting 50 percent. Really, New York's the first state in the United States to get 50 percent of the popular vote. There's a lot of resistance to him, and that's why we have a system of delegates.

We don't have a one-shot winner-take-all primary where the plurality wins. But I agree with you. The thrust of a modern democracy does make it a little easier than it should be to sort of stampede people towards a frontrunner. Bill, Peter here. You grew up in the city. I grew up upstate. And I have to say what shook me a little bit about the results was that he carried, he swept upstate New York.

I was prepared to say to myself, look, the New York Post, the Daily News, the cable television operators have all been making money on this guy. Everybody's known that Donald Trump sells newspapers and brings in ratings for 25 years. Fine. Downstate, Nassau County, as far north as Yonkers, perhaps, I'll grant you that. But upstate, some of those thinly populated congressional districts in one of which I grew up, Binghamton and Utica and Schenectady and way out on the island, Suffolk County, far out on the island at this time of the year. It's not a lot of rich New Yorkers living out there. It's farmers. And Donald Trump swept that state. Are you shaken by that at all? I'm generally shaken by the fact that he's getting 38, 40 percent of the vote

and nationally, as you say, 60 percent in New York is a little more shank-worthy, if that's a word. I mean, I don't want to minimize the victory as a real victory, so I don't want to be one of those guys who's pretending that everything's great and nothing really happened. On the other hand, I mean, Hillary Clinton got a huge number of votes in New York. Bernie Sanders got the second most. The Republicans, there's't that many Republicans. And the Republican turnout was not that high, actually. But Trump's people are very motivated.

They got to give him credit for winning. But I don't think it really quite shows us that, you know, mobs of New Yorkers are in trance with Trump, but enough are to give him a strong victory there, to give him a good shot in some of the primaries next Tuesday. And it's, no, I am, like everyone else I know, frankly, or most people I know, a little rattled by it. I mean, I think I underestimated what a celebrity is.

I underestimated the 14 years on the reality TV show. I underestimated how powerful celebrities become in our politics. Ronald Reagan was an actor, sure, kind of a second-tier actor, hadn't been an actor for 10 years, but he felt in those days you had to run for governor and be re-elected as governor and prove your governing credentials before you can run for president, right? Even Schwarzenegger, who was a much bigger star, ran for governor. These days,

I guess you do the TV for a decade and then you just run for president. One more question, Bill, before Rob climbs in here, and I know he'll want to. He's in Manhattan. He wants to defend celebrity. Well, Rob wants to defend celebrity. And that makes you qualified for everything. I understand that. That's in Manhattan. He wants to defend celebrity. Well, Rob wants to defend celebrity. Well, of course. And that makes you qualified for everything. I understand. That's Rob's course. That's really Rob's view. But I do play one on TV. Rob is at this very moment angling for

running mate on the Trump ticket. Here's the next question. We're hearing a lot. So, one big event in the last couple of weeks. Trump bigger than expected by me, at least. It sounds as though by you. his big win in New York. Second event is question whether it's a real event or not. This sea change that we're hearing about from the Trump campaign about the Trump campaign.

He's hired Paul Manafort. You and I remember Paul Manafort is one of the founders of Black Manafort and Stone, which was the lobbying organization back in the 80s. In other words, Paul Manafort is a very seasoned Washington hand. He knows how to find delegates. He knows how to run campaigns. Trump himself has been saying he's going to be giving a few big policy speeches. He's going to become more presidential. Do you believe that this campaign is going to become, for want of a better word, professional? And is there anything it might do, if it were to become more serious, that might at this stage change your mind or that ought to change the minds of right-thinking, reasonable people? Bill? On the second question, the answer is no.

I don't think so. I mean, I'm not – he's a good need a good business venture you are good people to write his various businesses and some of the businesses were frauds and somewhere we all in my views political campaign is more like trump university but he might have had good marketers and good you know accountants for all i know at trump university cashing all those poor people's checks right why took advantage of those left

and i had to take of, these are people, Paul Manafort, the huge K Street lobbyist who's worked for many creepy authoritarian governments over the last 30 years. He's a gun for hire. I don't criticize Trump for hiring. It was probably smart to hire someone like him. He's probably getting pretty good advice, but it doesn't change my fundamental judgment of Trump.

Vice President Long? Yeah, that was kind of my question i mean there is something um one of the things we've been able to say about the trump campaign has been well you know they're kind of like kind of amateur hour over there it's kind of filled with weirdo thugs who have very little experience in national politics we've seen it in the delicate fights that have occurred um isn't it a little scarier when it's a professional Trump organization? Yeah, though I do think that's always been a sort of foolish anti-Trump talking point. I mean, they did screw up the delegates a little,

but it's a pretty sophisticated campaign when you think about what he's done, obviously, in terms of results and the whole marketing and PR effort. And, I mean, God knows he knows an awful lot about that. That's what he's been doing for 20, 30, 40 years, marketing his brand. And so I've never really thought the most, and I don't understand, this is, I would vote for Ted Cruz if I had to vote tomorrow, certainly. I don't understand why Ted Cruz thinks it's a good talking point to say, oh, they can't run a good campaign.

What does that have to do with anything? Or they've screwed up some delegate selections. Normal voters see that and think, well, of course, Trump's a new guy. He doesn't know that stuff as well. But that's exactly what you can fix. That's not a legitimate actual argument that Donald Trump shouldn't be president. I wouldn't be worried about it. Someone I like messed up the delegate selection rules in a couple of states.

I wouldn't think, gee, that means that General Gennadis can't be president. It means he's not experienced with politics, right? You give him more credit for beating Cruz. Cruz needs to take him out on the issues. There, I think, is huge vulnerabilities with Trump. He's pro-Putin. He's against entitlement reform. He's soft on Obamacare, replacing Obamacare. All these things conservatives, Republicans allegedly care a lot about. But Trump's good at sucking people in, suckering people into sort of debates they shouldn't be having. And he's got this whole process debate going about his assistant rigged,

and it's the campaign. And yeah, in that respect, it's smart of Trump to get the media focused on whether, you know, his campaign is now a little more professional than it was. So here's my question, right? You know, speaking as the resident rhino here, Trump is too liberal for me. So, but he's doing really well with Republicans. And when you add up the, you know, the three of the three most popular politicians in America today, of the four, we could say, who are running, Hillary, Bernie, and Donald, they're all left of center. So is the country left of center? Or is the country not even a rhino? I mean,

rhinos like me used to say, hey, listen, let me tell you something, conservative Republicans, the country's rhino. But I don't think the country's rhino. I think the country's left. Yeah, and Kasich is a pretty rhino-esque governor, so he could say four out of five are not real conservatives, and I think that would be a true statement. I think it's a lesson for conservatives, but there's a lot of sentiments out there that have been compatible with conservatives and that don't make people orthodox conservatives.

That's not a criticism of them. Maybe it's even a praise of them they did you pray to them but and smart concerns have learned how to appeal to those people trouble for children to appeal to them conservative uh... opponent didn't actually learn as well uh... i think also people disillusioned for various reasons we can go through all that but but now of course it's a real way to the left of the wake-up call and uh... it i

myself was surprised i thought i was twenty, Republicans were in pretty good shape. All those new senators and governors and congressmen are genuinely impressed. I don't think we were just kidding ourselves. I mean, you've got to set it with Ben Sasse and Tom Cotton and Joni Ernst. That's real. That's not like we made that up. But they're not – right. So here's my second question.

I am mentally and emotionally preparing myself for President Hillary Clinton. I'm thinking, I don't know, Secretary of Treasury Larry Summers is not so bad. It will be okay, right? How quickly do you think the Republican Party will recover if it will? How quickly do you think that we'll get our message back at all? How quickly do you think that we will learn from whatever happened and whoever we weren't paying attention to and pay attention to them and figure out how to speak to them in the conservative language rather than the crazy pandering language? Yeah, who knows? Generally, you know, organisms, institutions recover faster than people think, except when they don't.

But I mean, in American politics recently, the Republicans were finished after 64. Oh, what a debacle.acle books literally books were published in all the party is that the party they would have to create that's recovered democrats with seventy six so yeah i think generally there's a i'd bet beyond on a pretty quick recovery actually though it depends what direction people got the one thing i would say that i trouble we just don't know how much damage he does.

I hate that term, the brand, but to the brand. I mean, I talk to my kids and some of their friends, and the notion that Trump is the Republican presidential nominee. You know, you lose with Goldwater, you lose with the government. They're a little too, you know, it's not where the country is ideologically. You lose with a Bob Dole or a Mitt Romney, decent men, men of accomplishment, honorable men. They just lose to superior opponents, or again, it's a bad year or something. That doesn't hurt a party that much, right? dole or mit romney decent man that of accomplishment honorable man they just boost superior opponents are getting to bed here something at that doesn't hurt a party that much right now i'm thinking that

it was a disgrace to the republican party nominated bob dole you know just because wasn't a great president of canada at that point uh... with trump and everything he said and done and the party had to rally around the pc and how it now. I think people we know, conservatives, who've sort of normalized and accommodated Trump, have lost respect. I don't say this happily,

but I mean have lost respect among people, especially younger people I know, who looked up to them and now are saying, really? I mean, don't you think differently? I mean, Chris Christie, I kind of like Chris Christie. He's a little bit of a bully, a little bit of a blowhard, but he's like a pretty good governor,

kind of a tough guy. I don't respect Chris Christie anymore. Rudy? What does it profit a man if he gains the world but loses his soul? We'll let Sean Hannity take that one. Hey, Bill, we know that – last question because we know you have to leave and go to some 12th floor K Street penthouse where you will – Totally. Yeah, Georgetown actually, really.

Georgetown, that's right. No, no, no. You want to go to K Street because then you can spit champagne off the railing and people think – the people below will think it's raining. Anyway, save some brioche for me. So let's talk about contested convention then. Would it be wise – one of the questions from Eggman in our chat room says, would it be wise for Cruz to announce before who his running mate is going to be so people have a better flavor idea of the ticket? That would be a smart thing to do, and who might he choose? It could be. Those things are hard to predict.

I think if it's a kinetic question, the first question is Trump, yes or no. Trump may decide to put himself over the top. Let's say Trump could say, I'm going to select Kasich, hope that Kasich does, and then go to Trump, hope Kasich himself would then endorse Trump, or signal someone else. I think the way Cruz is like the second person who gets a better trouble hope it took himself a bit of a drop or signal someone out like the way cruise it's like a second person to get the chance to go so i guess off the top my head of our body what they do for the record

first just got a stop job that would be this to the stop job or trumps if if cruise said they've got a cruise case maker cruiser b or cruise probably fury their crews you know the gailie whatever i i don't know i a little doubtful that kind of thing tends to make a difference. I do think so much of the decision, the first go decision, is if Trump is a little short, you know, are people willing to go to Trump and accept him or not?

All right. We'll talk to you later. And we hope it'll not be during the Hillary inauguration. Yeah, that'll be fun. Yeah, well, it was great talking to all you guys, and Rob can go back to signing autographs and taking photos. No, listen, I'm prepping.

I'm a prepper now. I'm prepping for the Clinton years. Yeah, excellent. Water and little chlorine pills. Thanks, Bill. God, okay, see you guys. I actually do have the chlorine pills. It's sort of amusing. Yeah, you have to. I've got the the chlorine pills.

It's sort of amusing. Yeah, you have to. I've got the water purification. I've got the candles. I've got all this stuff. My daughter was asking me last night. Part of their school project is to ask your parents about 9-11 because these kids weren't there. They were six, seven months old.

So we sat down and we had this conversation. And what I remembered and what my wife remembered were very different things. The questions that my daughter asked and where I went with it was how the world turned out. And my wife was just remembering that my opinion at the time was that we had best prepare for a very bad patch and that I was laying in food and cash and the rest of it, which does not, even to this point, strike me as an unreasonable reaction. When you had a coordinated attack like that, why wouldn't you think that the next thing that's going to happen is going to be at the

Mall of America or the Prairie Island nuclear plant or the rest of it? What's strange about the fact that you're saying this about your daughter to me is because I was really introduced to you on my reading your blog in the days after 9-11

in which you wrote about your family and your daughter. It's so strange to me that of all the people who weren't there, of course she was. She was little. She didn't understand that she should just read your blog. My wife is always telling me,

she said, you should have written a book about being a parent. I said, I did. I wrote it every day. Maybe one of these days I'll print it out and create some sort of book and then somebody will read it on audible.com. And that would be great. I'd like the opportunity myself to do that. But if you want an opportunity, you want to go to audible. Why would you want to go to audible? Well, it's, it's, it's quite simple, really free. You like that 30 day trial membership and a free audio book for all of our listeners who avail themselves of this chance.

Go to audible.com slash ricochet and browse over 180,000 audio programs. That's right. And download a title for free and start listening. It's just that easy. So go to audible.com slash ricochet. That's audible.com slash ricochet and get started today. Now, why do you want to do this? Well, 180,000 audio programs, but there's almost somewhere of a quarter of a million files there from publishers, broadcasters, entertainers, magazines, newspaper publishers, and business information providers. So if you've got a quarter million things to go through and 30 days free, you're probably not going to exhaust the whole thing.

So you'll want to stick around and see what there is to read. If you've got a long commute, you'd like to listen to stuff while you're working at home, audible.com slash ricochet. Free 30-day trial. Well, gentlemen, I believe that it's time to talk to the dean of American political reporters, the guy who can tell you down to the atomic level how politics are going in counties of North Dakota that have five people. Well, I'd say four people, two Democrats and two Republicans, and they don't speak to each other. Yeah, let's chat.

Okay, all right. Okay, I'm going to come out of it again. That's audible.com. Three, two, one. That's audible.com slash one. Right. Ricochet. Well, Peter, have you mentally prepared yourself for the inevitable ascension of Hillary, who of course will be cleared of all charges? in this one because I still think, or at least I have persuaded myself to continue thinking, that Trump's getting to 1237 delegates is very unlikely, that there is going to be an open convention, that Trump will lose on the first round, and that after that, things will get better. I can't predict quite what will happen. At this stage, my own hope is that Ted Cruz would win the nomination, but I couldn't even begin to predict that. But I do –

Oh, look. What? It's a graveyard. Nicely done. There is this attitude, right, about that something's got to happen because the thing that's going to happen can't happen, so something's going to happen. And there may be an appetite for a contested convention, which would be sort of interesting. I mean I think as a civics class, it would be fantastic. As a lesson in Robert's Rules of Order, it would be fantastic because there would be a bazillion motions to suspend and questions of order and all that stuff.

And like the little nerds from high school debate class who like nobody ever asked out are going to be very, very popular dates in Cleveland, I assure you. And the incredibly detailed lawyers who wrote Rule 41B or whatever it is, they'll also be on call. This could be great for the lawyers and for the process guys. But I suspect – look what happened in New York State. There were a lot of Republicans in New York State, but the turnout was really low. And I think the turnout was low because of this exhaustion. It's just exhausting. And I think a lot of people thought, I'm not – I got to go. I'm not really going to – I got to go vote now.

Everyone is going to vote for Trump. What was interesting was I was in mid-state New York yesterday. I was in there and I drove through it on – Mid-state? Where were you? I went to Ithaca. I gave a speech at Cornell. Really? Yeah.

OK. So I was driving on little country roads and I saw a whole lot of – That's the most atypical upstate town but still. You drive through typical to get there. A whole lot of Cruz signs and not one Trump sign. But I don't – that doesn't mean anything. It just sort of – what's interesting is I think that people feel like you're going to go in there. You're going to vote for Trump because he makes you – there's something naughty and delicious about it like junk food, and you're eating it in private. It's your personal voting McDonald's, and you know it's probably not good for you, but you're going to do it anyway.

And you kind of like the fact that it bothers people. There's a great Jim Gaffigan. He's a wonderful comedian, a great Jim Gaffigan. He's a wonderful comedian, a great Jim Gaffigan line when he says – he starts to joke. He starts to say, so was that McDonald's yesterday? And then he stops. He goes, did you hear that, everybody? Hear that weird change in the energy in this room when I said I ate at McDonald's?

That was all of you saying to yourself, huh, I didn't know I was better than you. I don't think he should admit that. Exactly. Did he just admit that? Yeah, that's – so I have a feeling that there's going to be this exhaustion. So maybe it's good for Republicans to sort of rest up and eat right, get ready for one week. But I think probably longer than a week convention. If we're going to have it, we should be ready for it. But I just – you can't beat something with nothing and right now we got nothing.

True enough. Well, yes, true. It is – Donald Trump's point that the elites are against him and the system is working against him will have a little bit of credibility if he does not receive the nomination. But instead, the – one of the politicians who ran and lost against him receives the nomination. That would be – be tough. It's true that Cruz or Kasich or who, somebody is going to have to demonstrate that he has a compelling case to make based not on just on the delegate

count but on his ability to win votes. Nevertheless, somebody could, and at that point, but it's going to come down to the way the delegates vote. Nobody's defeated donald trump hasn't defeated anybody he's won more votes in certain in most primaries than others but even at that he's trailing his two opponents in the total delegate count and it's all going

to come down to about 2 000 people a little under 2400 people in cleveland in august and it, I don't know if you've had a chance to look at the journal today, but you've got a piece in the Wall Street Journal by the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 previous chairman of the Republican National Committee. And the first paragraph contains this sentence. The Republican Party is almost certain to hold a contested open race for its presidential nomination at its national convention in Cleveland. In other words, the guys who run the party are – it's going to be open. It's going to be contested. Let's get the rules in place. Let's make sure everybody understands that the nominee is decided by the delegates on the floor of that convention hall during those three days in August.

And won't that – OK. So just for a minute, just to put the gloom and doom aside, won't that be kind of cool if that happens? Oh, it will be absolutely fantastic. As long as I can remember the state roll call when they actually cast their votes, the fun of it has been the crazy hats and then the weird epithets they add, epigraphs they add onto their state. Idaho, the great potato state, the state that did this and this and this. Castle, that – it was always kind of fun, the roll call, right? Because it was kind of quaint and stupid and utterly, totally meaningless. Now it's going to be meaningful, and I'll bet you there are going to be interest – intradelegation fights and intradelegation motions. And I mean I don't – put it this way. The only prediction I will make is that if Donald Trump does not cinch the nomination before the convention, meaning he does not have the pledged delegates in order to get the nomination in the first ballot, this – the Republican national convention will not adjourn on time.

It will be delayed. It will go on for a week. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. That seems to be, Reince previous has been asked that in interviews already. And he said, well,

suppose it goes, and he's trying to shut that down right away. No, no, no, no. We're going to do this in three days. He's no,

he won't be. This is, that convention will take on a life of its own. And if they don't have a nominee on the third day, that convention will continue. How do you handle the bookings if you're running the Marriott downtown Cleveland? I don't know. How do you handle it? You better get ready.

And it's going to be – room is not going to be able to gin up that, oh, we're so very happy this person got the nomination. I mean, by the time John McCain was done, you had a lump in your throat, right? Your sternum was swelling, American war hero. It was a pretty good job. The convention had shaped and molded the emotions and such. But we have the opportunity now of having a convention where when the guy gives his acceptance speech, there's boos. When you have all the talk about the violence that needs to be done, well, not violence, but let's pick at the delegates' houses so they can call the people in Cleveland and say there are angry people outside the house, Bob. You have to vote the way Trump wants you to.

I mean factor all that in. Rob's right. The roll call is not going to be a procession of meaningless little aphorisms about state glories, but guys actually with black eyes and an arm and a sling announcing the results that they're going to have. It will be exciting and proof that we're not – we're never more than a couple of odd scenarios away from being right back to 19th century bare knuckle politics. It's almost right back to the way Rome was when the tribunes got together and the people assembled in the field of Mars to make their vote. It's almost as if these things, human nature and its emotions are eternal. What do you think? Well, you know what? Don't, let's not do, why ask you guys when we've got an expert here, why should I offer my opinion when we have somebody who can tell you how a small county in Montana voted in 1932?

And somebody also who can tell us what we can look forward to in the future in California. That would be Michael Barone, the dean, Fox News Channel contributor, co-author of The Almanac of American Politics. We welcome him back to the podcast. Good day, sir. Hey, I'm Washington Examiner's senior political analyst. Yeah, the Forsyth County, Montana, went for Roosevelt in 1932, but that was about everybody. Hey, that wasn't too hard.

I was going to get to the Examiner. Looking ahead to California, what do you think is going to happen when all the dust has settled? Well, some of you Ricochet guys are located at the Hoover Institution in the proletarian suburb of Palo Alto, California, where it costs about a million dollars to buy a 200-square-foot

house. So you guys tell me. The fact is that one of the things the Republican Party does that, in my view, doesn't make much sense is that it tends to allocate the same number of national convention delegates, usually three, to each congressional district in states where delegates and winner-take-all by congressional district in 53 congressional districts for 159 delegates. Now, the fact is that about half those congressional districts voted two-thirds or more for Barack Obama. Registered Republicans are scarce on the ground. There's no real feasible way to interview them in public opinion polls to get a representative sample. You're looking for hen's teeth. And as a result, we really don't know how they're going to vote in this coming election. And the New York Times had a very good

interactive graphic on voting in New York City, and it showed which candidate was coming ahead in each precinct. They call them election districts in New York. New York's always got a different name for everything from the rest of the country. And you see Ted Cruz carrying districts in the South Bronx heavily, and John Kasich carrying the one next door. What's the vote in the Cruz district? One. He's the vote in the Cruz district? One. He carried one vote. Next door, Kasich wins by a two-to-one margin.

That's two votes to one vote. If you can predict those kind of results, you can tell me who's going to carry on the East Bay district that includes Berkeley and the north side of Oakland. We don't really have a good fix on who's going to win that, and it's probably not the north side of Oakland, we don't really have a good fix on who's going to win that.

And it's probably not the same as New York, and it's not the same as California in previous contests, because you had a different lineup. The California primary wasn't seriously contested in Republican side 2012, late in the game. And in 2008, you had a race there between John McCain and Mitt Romney, in which Mitt Romney was thought to be the more conservative candidate. Mike Huckabee was in there, too. You had uniform voting, roughly, by congressional districts. McCain won by seven points statewide, 42 to 35. You also carried 48 of the 53 congressional districts.

In other words, the districts are voting pretty much the same as the statewide average. We don't think that's going to be the case this year, but the fact is, we don't really know. Michael, Peter Robinson here. We've got two areas or regions of California that are broadly speaking, more fairly predictably Republican, the Central Valley aside, of course, from Sacramento, and then the coast from Orange County down to San Diego. If we raise it, if we say, fine, if you go congressional district by district, it's impossible to say.

But if we just ask those two regions that are fairly Republican, do you have a feel for how they're likely to go? Well, I think that the Central Valley and the Sierra districts, the fourth district that goes up to the northeast corner of the state, pretty heavily Republican district, a lot of Republican voters. Those look to me to be likely to be races between Cruz and Trump, with Kasich not a significant factor. Kasich may be a more significant factor in the more affluent Orange County, San Diego County districts, but you've even there got some districts that have relatively few registered Republicans. If you look at the statewide breakdown in the field poll, you see Cruz supposedly leading by 11 points in Los Angeles County

and Trump leading Cruz by a wide margin in the rest of Southern California. But one of the things that you find out when you look at the regional breakdown in other polls is that they look quite different. And if you know anything about polling, one of the things polling tells you is that the margin of error is a lot greater for subgroups that have relatively low numbers of respondents. And my experience in the polling business, it tells me that regional breakdowns are not very reliable. One more question about California, Michael,

then I'd like to ask about your marvelous piece in the Wall Street Journal last Saturday. Here's the California question. You just described a set of circumstances in which it will be very difficult to campaign well and intelligently. Republicans thin on the ground, lots of different media markets, a big, complicated state. Does that suggest to you, other things being equal, that Ted Cruz ought to do well here on the ground that in the campaign so far, we've seen Cruz master the nuts and bolts of on-the-ground campaigning in a way that Ted Cruz has not?

What do you think of that? That Donald Trump has not. I beg your pardon, that Donald Trump has not, I'm sorry. Go ahead, sorry. I think the answer is that Ted Cruz has a marginal advantage there, but that the job of appealing to small numbers of voters in heavily Democratic districts is pretty hard. And that, you know, even if you've got smart delegate counters and people that know how to get people to county conventions, getting an appeal and getting a turnout from a very small

number of voters is a difficult task and one which even the best campaign may have trouble doing. I'd rather have a campaign that's good at micro-targeting and doing it, which the Cruz campaign seems to do, seems to be. But then a campaign like Donald Trump's that just relies on public appeal. But I think the advantage is marginal. Only marginal. All right. Listen, you wrote a marvelous essay in The Wall Street Journal last Saturday in which you addressed the question, can Donald Trump, will Donald Trump destroy the Republican Party? And your answer was no, no, no, no. These parties are enduring. And the difficulty, if Teddy Roosevelt couldn't destroy the Republican Party, Donald Trump won't. Give us a moment or two on your comparison between Theodore Roosevelt and Donald Trump.

Well, you know, the Republican Party has been a party that tends to be formed around a core constituency of people that are thought to be typical Americans, but who are not by themselves a majority. It's been less prone to schisms than the Democratic Party, which is a collection of, historically and today, of people that are very different. You know, white Southerners and Catholic immigrants in the 19th century, gentry liberals and black churchgoers. This time, Republicans have been white Northern Protestants, 19th century white married people today. But there have been two disruptive candidates in Republican history.

Both have been very rich men from New York, widely known nationally with big reputations, a gift for original ways of articulating issue positions and things. And those have been Theodore Roosevelt and Donald Trump. Theodore Roosevelt, as you know, ran as a candidate against the incumbent William Howard Taft in 1912, Taft whom he more or less handpicked to be his successor. He failed to get the nomination to the Republican Convention, though he won nine out of, I think, 13 presidential primaries, which were a new thing at that time. And he ran as a candidate of the Progressive Party, ran second.

Taft and Roosevelt together got 50 percent of the popular vote, but Woodrow Wilson, the Democrat, was elected. But by 19, the Progressive Party was running candidates all over the country. About almost half the congressional districts, they got 5% of the voter more. Now, that fizzled out. That third party fizzled out. Roosevelt rejoined the Republican Party by 1916. 1920, the Republican Party wins the popular vote by a margin of 60 to 34%. You know, Theodore Roosevelt had seven years as actual president of the United States.

He probably had a very high job approval rating, although we had public opinion polls then. He won a full term in 1904 by the largest popular vote majority in the percentage and the largest electoral vote count of any Republican up to that date. He was about, you know, He was an author of multiple books. He won the Nobel Peace Prize, and in his case, unlike a more recent president, for actually making peace in the Russian-Japanese War. He was about as formidable a candidate as you can expect, and yet the system, the disruption did not end the Republican Party, but we reverted to norm, which is encouraged by our electoral college, by the single-member congressional district and Senate seat.

And I think that Trump in some ways recalls the phrase often quoted from Karl Marx that history repeats itself. The first time is tragedy. The second is farce. Hey, Michael, it's Rob Long calling from New York. Nice to see you on Saturday. For those of you who didn't know, Michael and I were on a panel with a bunch of very interesting people. Harvard professor Oscar Arias. Yeah.

At Harvard of all places. Yeah, at Harvard of all places. Yeah, fancy Harvard. But we talked a lot about that panel, and I think I want to bring it up a little bit here about the structural disadvantages Republicans have, just removing Trump from the equation for a minute, among white voters, say white voters making between 30K and 75K. I think the GOP is like a 15-point advantage. How much is all that going to be thrown out in the coming election, assuming Trump's the nominee? And then assuming Trump's the nominee, we have a general and it's a giant, giant disaster. Where do we find the votes again to win nationally?

Well, the answer is that, you know, if you judge Trump's likely performance as nominee by current polling, he's a big loser. I mean, I think you're looking at 49, 39 Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in the most recent real-care politics that come average of recent polls. That could change, although, you know, both Clinton and Trump are pretty well-known quantities at this point with voters, much more so than Ted Cruz or John Kasich, who voters don't know a whole lot about. Their numbers are more subject to change, one would think. You know, I think we have seen, we have been in a situation of high straight ticket voting. It's very different from the 1970s and 80s when Richard Nixon was reelected in 1972. He carried 389 congressional districts.

Half of them voted for a Democratic congressman. They split their ticket. In the last 2012 election, we only had 26 of the 435 districts that voted for president of one party, congressman of another. Lowest number since 1920. I think that if Trump were the candidate, I think you will see more split tickets with more people voting Republican for Congress, for Senator, than for President, but maybe not as many more as Republicans might hope for, because it might depress turnout from people who are inclined to be Republican voters but who would not vote for Trump. Presidential race is usually what brings people most often to the polls. So I think it could hurt the Republican Party. I'm not sure that it's a permanent factor. I mean, the Republican Party nominee, William Howard Taft, in 1912, got 23% of the vote, and eight years later, the Republican nominee, Warren G. Harding, got 60%.

These things are responsive to the candidate. Donald Trump turned 70 in June, even if he's the nominee this year. And unless he's elected president, which I think is highly unlikely, I don't think you'll be seeing him as a factor in the 2020 race. So, you know, I think that the key question, I mean, what we've seen this year is a fascinating situation where we've seen an immovable object being met by an irresistible force. The irresistible force is the dull sets of discontent.

We've seen it in both parties in the support for Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, whom just about no one 12 months ago thought would be serious presidential candidates. The immovable object is this very close and steady partisan division that we've seen over the last 20 years. And sooner or later, that's going to change. Response to new conditions, new polls, new issues being raised, new facts on the ground, and so forth. And we don't know when that's going to be. I'm inclined to think that below the presidential level, we'll still see roughly the same kind of division that we've seen.

But the Trump candidacy is inflicting some damage on the Republican Party, whether or not he's nominated, in which case he seems likely to lose by a wide margin. Or if he's not nominated, in which he will probably charge that the process is biased, he may run as a third-party candidate. There's a lot of ways that he could hurt the Republican Party. So it's a disruptive candidacy, and that will probably continue to be so through calendar year 2016. How far that goes in continue to be so through calendar year 2016. How far that goes in the future, I'm dubious about. Well, let me ask you one more – one last question.

If you were getting hired to give some advice in Cleveland in the summer to Republicans who are gathered there and just say Trump doesn't make it on the first ballot, which I think seems likely. Would you recommend they go with somebody fresh and new? Would you recommend that they would throw their weight behind someone who came in second? Would you recommend that they roll the dice on an unknown face on the theory that everybody knows Hillary Clinton? She can't reintroduce herself. We know the ceiling of her support, but a fresh face may be just what the doctor ordered. What would your advice be based on history? Well, if nominated, I will not run, and if elected, I will not serve. Yeah, well, I don't buy that.

That's the response of this fresh face. It's been the response of House Speaker Paul Ryan, who has been mentioned more often than I have been, as a possible alternative for the Republican convention. My advice is go with Ted Cruz. would appear likely to have not only the most second-place votes, but also the best campaign in terms of getting in contact with the delegates. We all talk about things are going to be totally unexpected when we get to Cleveland on July 18th. That assumes that nobody does any delegate courting or counting between June 7th, the last primary, and July 18th. I think we're going to see some delegate counting.

I mean, the reason we don't have, you know, the old conventions existed as they did. The last multi-ballot convention was 1952 Democratic. Because they were a unique communications meeting. They were the only place, the only time, the only occasion where you could actually gauge accurately how much support each candidate had, a potential candidate, and where you could make kind of face-to-face communications and confidential communications. We have other ways of doing that now. We have things like the last multi-ballot convention in 1952, the first direct dial long-distance call was placed in 1951. It became more common in the 50s, universal in the 60s.

Jet aircraft, first scheduled flight 1957 in the U.S. Now you can travel all over the country. That was harder to do back then. And we had media delegate counts, The first one conducted by CBS 1968. We're not ignorant about delegate counts like they were in 1952 and 1960 when nobody knew if Kennedy was going to get the majority on the Democratic National Convention first ballot, and he got it with the last made an alpha order. Why only? I was watching that convention. team was surprised to the TV people we don't have those kind of surprises anymore the kind of things that went on

at conventions are going on now all around us the air is the air as I look out here in Washington DC is pulsating and vibrating with electronic communications of the sort that used to take place only at the conventions. Or it could be the mescaline. Across the country as well. Well, we thank you so much for being with us today, and we are, as ever, looking forward to talking to you

the next time and figuring out what shape the Republic will take. Thank you, Michael. We'll see you in all the usual sources. Thank you. Thank you, Michael. We'll see you in all the usual sources. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Michael.

Yes, it's okay. Enjoyed. Oh, so we shall, you know, you, you have to pity Michael in some ways,

because in order to be the person that he is and be connected to, absolutely. What? I hear Peter laughing at something. I don't know. I'm laughing. What are you laughing at? You have to, you have to pity Michael. I'm just. What are you laughing at? You have to pity Michael.

I'm just, whatever's about to follow, that's an amusing thought. Well, it is because, I mean, no matter how much you love politics, the idea somehow that you would have to be acquainted with every single thing that is going on in order to have the sort of informed opinion that he does

requires that you would be on every possible political mailing list and themselves those are the most the the banalities that flow from those things which is absolutely choke you choke your inbox well i know rob you're absolutely right imagine your inbox and rob don't you wish sometimes that there was a way you could get control of your inbox? Well, I don't wish that because I have control of my inbox, James. Really? Tell me how. Well, I suffered for a long time with a cluttered inbox. I got all this junk mail and I hated it and I threw up my hands. What on earth could I possibly do? What could I do? Is there a solution to my inbox problem? And you know what? There is.

There was, I should say. But I'll stop now. Go right ahead. No, you're doing perfectly fine there. See, if you had a recommendation for Rob to do a better job with that spot and you sent it to him and you were helpful, Rob would put you in a little box that said, I'd like to hear from this person again. If you're abusive and rude, not that you'd be a ricochet person if you were, but if you were, he could put you in a black hole box, in which case he'd never hear from you again, and you would rant into the darkness,

never knowing that your words had fallen completely on deaf ears. Well, all these things are possible with Zanebox, because my inbox was just a mess, just nothing but junk interspersed with the stuff that I liked. It was hard for me to tell exactly what I wanted unless I came up with all these complex rules and colors for this. But then came SaneBox, and I can't recommend it enough. It sorts through your emails and moves all the stuff, the trivial stuff, that is, into a different folder. So the only messages you're looking at in your inbox are the ones you actually want to see. And, of course, the black hole is there to make people go away forever.

Now, you can remove an email in that folder and that person's gone. Now, I use this all the time, but here's a great deal so you can start to use it too. SaneBox.com slash Ricochet. They'll throw in an extra $25 credit on top of the two-week free trial. You don't have to enter any credit card information

unless you want to. There's really nothing to lose, is there? Except all the time that you spend sorting through your email. Check it out today. Let us know if you like the black hole and reaching zero inbox. I haven't got there yet, but Rob Long has. He's proof. It's possible.

It is possible. S-A-N-E-B-O-X dot com slash ricochet. Well, gentlemen, before we wrap up here, a couple of member posts, because folks love to hear that. I love the member fee. I love going there and dropping a comment on something that happened two weeks ago. And I'm comment number four or comment number 400. Billy had written about if you live in a blue state.

And he said he wrote this long piece about living in New York City. And essentially for that matter, he said he could have written it about Massachusetts or New Jersey or Connecticut. You bleepity bleeps redacted because of the code of conduct. I think you self-auto redacted. I think you did. Yes. Have handed the nomination to a huckster and a crook and you dare to look down on me, my family and friends as hicks. That's interesting.

I don't. But isn't there – there's the assumption that if you're on the coast, you're part of some sophisticated group of people. And anybody who's spent any time there knows that that just simply isn't the case. There's a thin stratum in New York of people whose sophistication can be summed up by knowing which particular vegetable is popular to eat this year. Well, Peter, you're out there. How do you regard the situation that Billy is talking about? The situation that Billy is talking about. Boys, Scott, you're going to have to save me here.

I was trying to figure out – I was reading Scott's – excuse me. I was going back to the top of the podcast to try to figure out how we do the opening. I'm sorry. I just lost the top of the podcast to try to figure out how we do the opening. I'm sorry. I just wasn't – I just lost the thread of conversation here. Never mind it at all. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm just confused about how we get out now.

I'm sorry. Okay. Well, that's what I asked. Are we going to run to the end? Okay. We're going to run to the end. So just trust me on this one. Okay?

All right. All right. Then after I ask Peter, there's going to be a pause and and then I'm going to come back three, two, one. Well, Peter is out there in Hicktown anyway himself, so we don't want to insult him to come up with things that he thinks about his fellow Hicks. But there is a related point. S-E-N Key, you know, you can craft all kinds of interesting names in the member feed, says that Fox News is now Trump central. Quote, lately it seems whenever I turn that way, I see the baked pumpkin getting full unfiltered coverage.

Hannity is full in the bag. Greta's in the bag. Riley is too full of himself. The five have some pretending to be not, the five have some pretending not to be in the bag for Trump, but they are. I still like the five and pretty much anything Greg Gutfeld does, but Foxy says in the tank. Seems so to you? I don't watch television

yelling shows, so I just, it just doesn't, the only time I watch them is when I'm in a hotel room sometime, and then I turn them on, and there's just this horror expression that spreads across my face as I'm watching Judge Jeanine. Is this something? I don't, look, Fox News does not have a central sort of editorial position.

It just kind of like lets the hosts kind of run as far as they can. And I think that Megyn Kelly has sort of taken up all of the – sucked up all of the anti-Trump oxygen there. I mean I think Trump is a problem for that network and I think Trump – the Trumpism will be a problem for the network. And the only way out I think just from my knowledge of the media and show business being a participant and observer for 28 years is that if he's a nominee and if he goes down in flames, it's going to be a real problem. People will turn off – they will associate that network with a gigantic loser. The Barry Goldwater network was not a big, great network to be running in 1965. So I think that this will be a problem for them. But Roger Ailes is very smart, so he might pivot away.

I am more concerned with the fact that there does seem to be this sort of dereliction of duty on the part of people like editorial writers of the New York Post where they are twisting themselves into weird pretzels to sort of endorse this guy. There is a very, very good piece. I didn't think I'd ever say this. We'll put the link in and it just came out today. I just read it this morning in Vox, of all places, Vox, V-O-X. I've got that queued up, Ace of Spades.

You saw that from someplace else, right? Tell me you don't go to Vox every day to look for what you're yeah somebody said it's called the smug style in american liberalism it's written from the perspective of a liberal they're written from the perspective of progressive but it takes to task in a way that i think we conservatives are kind of in co at least been talking about the problem with american liberalism and american progressivism and how smug it's gotten and how sure of itself it's gotten and how disdainful it's been of normal America and normal American workers. That's really what it is. He said that we're supposed to be the party of the side, the left, meaning that champions the cause of the American worker.

We're supposed to be part of the workers' movement in some way. And instead, every American blue-collar worker we despise. elite and all that stuff. But it also has some useful prescriptive medicine for us and what's happened on our side. And the fact that we've lost the thread of the conversation with our supporters. So, and you say normal without even realizing how that other rises of people, how that marginalizes the other rise. Peter, last question goes to you perhaps. We've got Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill now. Unfortunately, it's not going to be the exciting picture that we've seen where she's got her hand out in this come with me if you want to live expression

and a gun in one hand. But you can't have that because there would just be a massive fainting in the snowflakes. I'd like to see it. So Andrew Jackson out, Democrat slave owner gone, and Republican gun-owning slave liberator in. This is a good thing. That is all fine with me.

Harriet Tubman was a great and courageous woman who believed in freedom. And if we want to get partisan about it, you're quite right. She was a Republican. God bless her. I'm very, very happy to have her on the $20 bill. What I'm worried about, nah, actually, I'm not worried about this. This is so far down my list of worries that I don't have the energy to devote to it. What would concern me a little if anybody asked me about it is that now that we have a precedent that we're going to start changing around the bills every couple of years. There's going to be some new political impulse to – for this group, that group, the other group and the bills are going to start – blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Harriet Tubman is a wonderful person.

I'm fine with that. But the precedent, it makes me just slightly queasy. That's all. Yeah. The more I've noticed, I collect money from other countries. I've noticed that the likelihood of the word Nova, Nuevo, appearing on a currency stamped by the government if there is a children's book writer on the front of it is great. I mean I have all this Brazilian currency which was devoted to artists and indigenous people and heroes and the rest of it is great. I mean, I have all this Brazilian currency, which was devoted to artists and indigenous people and heroes and the rest of it. And it's all stamped with the word, you know,

Portuguese for new that devalued it from 10,000 to 10. So yeah. But on the other hand, you know, there are countries that the Euro is the most boring currency in the world because it describes an imaginary world, imaginary palaces, imaginary buildings, imaginary. It doesn't exist,

which I just think is so fascinating about the euro itself but i think but i just say like i think what peter's point is really right which is that that if the criterion if the sole criterion is were you a freedom fighter did you fight for liberty in any way um that seems to make pretty good pretty good single standard for appearing on our currency you had to be in favor of freedom, individual liberty private property and individual rights

those last two private property is the tool of the ruling class and individual rights are just that's what she fought for we put over bigotry you got to stop with the first two because that will let Woody Guthrie in on the $10. But that's what she thought. That's what she fought for.

She fought for private property. That's really the only way to look at it. Slavery is a feudal slash communistic agrarian state that had nothing to do with capitalism, nothing to do with private property, nothing to do with private individual rights. And she was a soldier in that war, literally a soldier in that war, and a gun-toting soldier. I would love to have that picture of her with her pistol upright because it might remind people that, you know, every now and then you've got to fight for this stuff. Every now and then there's somebody who just needs shooting and you have to hope that somebody comes along to do the shooting they so richly deserve. And you so richly deserve to save money, which is why audible.com slash ricochet, the great – the SaneBox and the great courses all with that coupon code ricochet will help you save money and make your life better, smarter, more enjoyable. Yes.

So go there and also hit the ricochet store from some ricochet swag. And, uh, you know, the more are in your life, be it ricochet or the Republican party, just the happier you'll be. And I say that with a frozen smile on my face,

we now in the podcast and we thank everybody for listening guys. We'll see you next week. Next week, fellas. I never meant to call you when you're sorrow. I never meant to call you when you're pain. I don't want to watch that house you're laughing. I only want to see you landing in the purple rain Purple rain, purple rain Purple rain, purple rain

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our friendship had to break Purple rain Purple rain, purple rain. Purple rain, purple rain. Purple rain, purple rain. I know, I know, I know times are changing It's time we all reach out Because the new That means you too You say you want to lead up

But you can't seem to make up your mind I think you better come Let me guide you But you can't seem to make up your mind I think you better close up And let me guide you To the purple rain Purple rain Purple rain Purple rain

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