The Ricochet Podcast - The Viral President

Episode Date: October 2, 2020

The news cycle these days is crushing — warping time upon itself like a black hole. So how does America’s Most Balanced Podcast® respond? By booking a third guest, of course. On today’s lineup, we’ve got Casey Mattox;the Vice President for Legal and Judicial Strategy at Americans for Prosperity, a group dedicated to (among other things), getting Amy Coney Barrett through the nomination process. Source

For what it's worth, I actually, I have now changed my thinking about this completely. It's not even thinking, it's just response. I like seeing the faces now. I have a dream this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. I wear masks when needed. When needed, I wear masks. Okay, let me ask.

I don't wear masks like him. Every time you see him, he's got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away from me and he shows up with the biggest mask I've ever seen. I'm the president and you're fake news. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lilacs. Today we talk to Casey Maddox, Doc Savage, and Henry Olson. COVID, POTUS, SCOTUS. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome everybody to the Ricochet podcast number 515. And before I introduce

Peter and Rob, let me check the wire to see if anything's happened in the last seven minutes. I think we're good. Peter, Rob, what a week. And of course we all thought we'd be sitting here talking about the debate and hashing over that again which now seems like a leisurely halcyon time because the president has covet my daughter said to me the first thing this morning well you know bolsonaro had it like three times yeah that's uh it's it's true so this could be trump's first bite of the apple what do you think what are the effects of this going to be, if anything? I'm, I'm, yeah, I mean, I'm, for one thing, I'm really heartened to see that everybody on Twitter is holding hands and doing the simple thing and pushing for the best and

all the rest. No, of course, it's the usual cesspool and sewer. Don't go on Twitter. But here in the place where it's got a tangential connection to the real world rob peter what do you think the fallout from the covet is okay we're going to have dr george savage joining us later in the show to talk about the medical aspects of this because that of course is question number one how sick is the president as best i can tell from and of course i woke up this was news this morning you mean physically

you're talking about there he goes rob he starts and mass the massive clicking off of the podcast so here's what i am i'm a political guy i was a speech writer and you know what i'm looking at i'm thinking but the first thought was i'm sorry sorry for him. I'm sorry for Melania. I don't, everybody has in that operation, some of whom I know now have to rethink what they do over the next few weeks. But I'm a speechwriter and I think to myself, oh, actually, an opportunity to get him to sit still and deliver some speeches, maybe a few one or two minute remarks. If you're campaigning and you've got a president who's quarantining in the White House and you're a speechwriter, that's not the end of the world. But of course, I'm getting way ahead of myself here.

What does it do to the campaign? Who knows? I mean, I remember there was some joke exam question in Oxford when I was studying there, studying British constitutional development. And the exam question was, assume the Big Bang happened 10 billion years earlier than it did. Describe the effects on the development of the British Constitution. I don't know. I just don't know. It'll all get sorted out pretty quickly. But as of this morning, I don't know.

Rob is going to tell us, though. Well, I don't know it'll all get sorted out pretty quickly but as of this morning i don't know rob is going to tell us though well i don't know either i i just i just what what seems to me i was watching fox and friends this morning which is always a an adventure um but what i loved about it was that they're they're trying to figure out the what's the silver lining here and i think that and they came up with one, which is roughly kind of what what Peter did, which is that maybe this will this this will sit down. Maybe he'll be like this. Maybe he'll have some speeches. Maybe all sorts of things will happen. and how utterly failing the Trump campaign is, that the president contracting a deadly virus is seen as a potentially good thing, that this might change the thing around.

I mean, this is a... I have no idea what's going to happen. I could not even begin to war game it. We have no idea. We don't even know. I mean, the New York Times flashed today that he has some symptoms as lethargy and other stuff uh only one funny tweet i saw that i thought was kind of

worth passing along which is that the problem for the president is he's in um you know all the risk groups he's uh elderly he's obese and he's low income um which made me laugh but look the trouble for him is that he that the trouble for him is that he, the trouble for him is that, and the success for him, I'm just speaking politically, is that more Trump has been a disaster. We got maximum Trump on Tuesday night, and there was zero indication that has helped him.

And many, many indicators suggest that it hurt him badly in the suburbs, in the places that he needs to win. So less Trump may actually end up like it's true for a lot of presidents. The less of them you see, the more popular they are. So this could be good. The problem is there's this kind of horrible. It's not fair and it's ugly, but there's a terrible symmetry to this for a lot of people he just on tuesday

made fun of the guy for wearing a mask and now he's got the covid and there is it's a hard not to draw that connection if you're a voter if you're a if you're if you're on the fence or you're you're somehow looking to be persuaded one way or the other this does seem like terrible judgment on his part that uh is now um he's now paying the price for i mean let's just be let's just be blunt i'm not speaking politically i don't take a position on this because it's not i'm not we got it none of my business i hope the guy gets well no i don't want him to get sick but i'm just talking about politics. That's my political interpretation.

Not good. Potentially not good. But Peter could be right. Potentially great if he actually does stay quiet. Yeah, I guess my summary statement on this would be, we got enough of both personalities in the debate. Trump is the one who was loudest and most insistent. But Biden did the interrupting first he he was unbelievably disrespectful to the office yes I understand Trump was in his face but to

say shut up man to the sitting president of the United States whoever he is oh no no no no no no no you forfeit no don't you think Trump is for that oh he gets now claim no oh come on Donald Trump is the president of the United States. He's a constitutionally elected president of the United States. He's a citizen who Joe Biden was undignified in the extreme. Donald Trump was not the only person at fault in that debate by any means. But my point is, we've had enough. I think the core if Joe Biden, if Joe biden retreats i'm not i'm not

that's not a defense of donald trump what i am saying is that joe biden was behavior was hardly that of saint francis of assisi no matter how good a catholic he may try to remind us that he all seems to be joe biden has plenty to answer for in that debate let him go to the basement let donald trump go to the yellow room maybe if we get less personality and more actual argument, maybe there's an opportunity here for both men to make their cases. Trump is behind. It feels to me as though the country has already decided. I may be wrong about that. But maybe the silver lining is that we'll get arguments for the future of the country, arguments about policy and less personality. That's my, or silence. Silence will be a benefit. Two points. I mean, first of all, the Joe Biden that we saw at the debate was the Joe Biden that we saw in the debate with Paul Ryan, same thing, with less energy, but that's who he is. He's a jerk. And while Trump indeed has set a different tone for the presidency, joe biden is under no

obligation to follow it and indeed would do well to reject it and return to the supposed why would he do well good why would he do well he he won the debate he's he's winning in the polls by by the trump standards of winning is everything he's winning why should he change this is the the president has set a new tone for the presidency. Why should anybody go back? So you are now because I was because I Trump standard. No, I'm just I'm just wondering why we're applying it now to Joe. Look, I agree. Joe Biden is because we want to Trump.

He's a seven because we want to return to normalcy. Don't we? We want to return to the old norms. I don't know. We did. I don't do any Trump supporters want to return to normalcy. I love the second point that james has his voice on right now because you and i are shouting at each other

and james is just standing back being calm james is the normalcy to which we want to return that's true the second point that i would make is that if indeed the big bang had happened 10 billion years before it strikes me as britain would have been in a very different position when it came to establishing the sort of government that it had we would be in about 4.5 billion years from now, the Milky Way and Andromeda are set to collide. So we'd be about five and a half billion years into that collision. Whether or not that would affect, you know, Earth, it would affect the gravitational pull of the moon of other celestial bodies. I mean, we don't know. If you had a different gravitational situation here, you might have had tides that prevented

England from ever launching a ship, and it would have never been the maritime and imperial power that it was. How that affected the Constitution, we'll never know. But I think that you could make point that galactic collision would indeed have made changes in the British constitutional system. So, Peter, I'm surprised that you missed that easy layup. But as far as returning to the norm, do the Trump supporters want to return to the norm? I think they will if it's turned against them. They want Trump to be Trump, but they don't want anybody else to be Trump. That's my point. You don't get that. That's not a choice that you get. And the people who are reluctantly voting for Biden or happily voting for Harris or the rest of them want to go back to a time where it's where it's

the West Wing, where people behave, where they don't shout, they don't call names. And we don't seem to have these schoolyard brawls like we did in the debate. I found the whole thing tremendously off-putting from every possible way. And I was I was not surprised, but disheartened that the president refused to take my advice, which was it would not have been difficult to smile. It would not have been. The president the other day described it, the Al Smith dinner, right, where he's talking about Al Smith and anti-Catholic prejudice, wink, wink, Amy Coney Barrett, which actually no winking, he explicitly noticed it,

said that he called himself a happy warrior. And I would say sometimes in the rallies, when he's in the groove and he's feeding off the public, yes, you get that aspect. But that was not a happy warrior performance we saw in the debate. And it would not have been, it would have been much to his credit to have been sunny, upbeat, Reagan-esque, dare we say, and give people a sense that at the center of all of this is not this glowering mass of him-ness. And we know that's what it is. But at the same time, we want to know that there's something more there as well. So you compare that to Biden, who would look into the camera and connect with America and tell the stories. And it just was a tremendous series of missed opportunities. And I found the whole thing just

to be stunningly unattractive. Yep. Biden was dark as well. I mean, to the extent that you could hear him talk about policy, maybe that's the wrong way to put it. Neither man took an opportunity to use any part of one of his two minutes supposedly uninterrupted stretches to offer some sort of upbeat inspiring vision of america in the years to come which was of course which was second nature to ronald reagan and which of clinton would do that it's a good politician would have done that neither man i mean walter mondale did that yes i mean yes the question that's proof it can be done yeah absolutely can be done uh the question i have about it was that did they agree ahead of time no closing they must have they must have because i

was waiting i thought the whole thing ended i mean not that i was uh wanted to go any even a minute longer but it did seem to end rather abruptly without the closing statement i think that really that especially if he agreed to this format that was really a really a huge huge huge mistake for trump uh because that's when you do connect to the audience and you say hey listen but the problem is that trump can't do that he never looked at the camera because he just he's evasive in that respect uh and and biden did it extremely effectively everyone i watched with i watched noticed that everyone noticed that republican strategist noticed that the people who work for trump that i know noticed it it was very weird that trump didn't do it um you're talking

about technique of looking at the camera connecting to the people at home there's no audience looking at the camera all right yeah i i think of this from time to time now that rob mentioned it when trump looks at the camera it is and it's odd for a man who is so camera savvy and camera comfortable he doesn't seem to be comfortable when he's looking directly at it as if there's an interrogation there as if there's an unpersuadable object to which that he can't i mean some people can reach right through the lens into your house other people just seem to be pinging off it in a way that uh is difficult to describe but i think people must describe ronald reagan as sitting next to you watching you watch him at the same time and it really did feel like that was that clinton was the same way

if you ever met bill clinton you're like oh my god i totally get it how did this guy only win a plurality he's really good this guy is not he's not good at that and and then for whatever reason he didn't know to wasn't told to do that it was terrible preparation for his fault uh but i know the people who were helping him out and they, when, when the day after they're running away from it, like, like scalded dogs, they,

they, they would be socially distancing from him, from him. Anyway, you know, that it's a problem, a big, I've done a lot of teleprompter work and I like it,

but the thing that you have to get used to is as you're reading the words, you have to get beyond them. You got to go through them to the person and make direct and make a direct connection, but you don't always want to make a direct connection when you're reading the words, you have to get beyond them. You got to go through them to the person and make a direct connection. But you don't always want to make a direct connection when you're on the internet, do you? Because sometimes you're going to leave your personal information all over the place. Elegant.

I mean, they'll know your IP. They'll know it. You want to socially distance yourself from your IP. Absolutely. Sometimes you do. So that's why you probably think, you know, from time to time when I'm doing this or that, maybe I want a VPN. But who, where, when? There's so many. There's tons of VPN providers out there, and you've probably heard of a couple of them. Some of you may have even

used them before. You use them from work, sluggish, a bother. Oh, you know, here's the thing. There's one you ought to do. There's one you need. And I can say with full confidence that ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN is the best VPN on the market. And here's why. ExpressVPN does not log your data. Lots of really cheap or free VPNs. And there's no such thing as a free VPN. They make money by selling your data to ad companies.

Oh, great. More ads. ExpressVPN developed the technology called Trusted Server. Makes it impossible for their servers to log into your info. Can't be done. Second, speed. I've tried lots of VPNs. I've had experience at work.

I've had experience with free offers. Many of them just slow your connection down and make your devices sluggish. So yeah, you're doing it virtually, but boy, there's no speed. In this day and age, you want the speed. I've been using ExpressVPN months, and the only internet speed problem that I have is whether it's blazingly fast or blazingly incredibly fast. Even when I connect servers thousands of miles away or so, I can still stream HD quality videos with zero lag. And the last thing that really sets ExpressVPN apart from the other VPNs is how easy it is to use.

Unlike other VPNs, you don't have to input or program or anything. You just fire up the app, click one button, you're connected. So easy even your grandparents could use it. Not just me saying this, by the way, Wired, The Verge, CNET, many other tech experts rate ExpressVPN the number one VPN in the world. So protect yourself now, today, with a VPN that we here use and we trust. Use this link, expressvpn.com slash ricochet. Use it today and get an extra three months free on a one-year package. That's expressvpn.com slash ricochet. Visit expressvpn.com slash ricochet to learn more. Three months free on a one-year package. And our thanks to ExpressVPN for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. And now we welcome to the Ricochet Podcast,

Casey Maddox, Vice President for Legal and Judicial Strategy at Americans for Prosperity, where he advocates for a legal system that respects the rule of law and protects individual liberty. For over 15 years before joining AFP, Casey's legal career focused on defending the First Amendment rights of students, faculty, families, healthcare workers, and religious organizations. He's litigated in 35 states. Let's get him to tell us the ones he hasn't been to. North Dakota? He's also testified three times before congressional committees. Casey's is a JD from Boston College School of Law and a BA in Government and History from the University of Virginia. Welcome to the podcast, Casey. Hey, thanks for having me on.

Obviously, you've got a Supreme Court nom going on here. What's the oppo? What have you heard? What are they gearing up to say? What are they going to do? Well, you know, I think everybody has basically heard the kind of the top line stuff, which is essentially either trying to speculate about how she will rule on specific cases or attacking her personally, either for her faith or for her adoptions. So that's been, you know, sort of the attention so far. You know, I think it basically all just speaks to the way that our judiciary has gotten so out of whack. First of all, that people wouldn't feel the need to resort to those sorts of tactics. The seat is that critically important that it's okay to go there. But also just viewing the court

as a legislature, as a place where law is going to be made. So therefore, we need to know how you're going to vote on specific cases. Casey, what do we know about the timing? Has the Majority Leader's Office announced, or who would it be, Senator Graham as chair of the Judiciary Committee, have they announced the dates of the confirmation hearings? They have. So the hearings would be held between the 12th and the 14th of October, so just a little over a week away, we would be having those hearings. So that's the plan as of right now, with the potential for her being confirmed by the Senate before the election by the sort of the last week of October. And it's a doable timeline considering that Judge Barrett has been before the Senate

Judiciary Committee and before the full Senate just three years ago. So they have a pretty good understanding of who she is. And of course, anyone who's been watching the court and watching this nomination process for the last several years knows that she's been right there at the top of the list. So it's not as if she's a surprise in any way. They have a pretty good idea of who she is. And so 12, 13, 14, that means potentially three days of hearings? That's right. So normally the first day, the 12th, will be basically opening statements from her and from all the other senators. And so everyone will have their time to be able to say what they think about the entire process before you actually get into asking her any questions over the next couple of days.

Okay. And so now they're committed to hearings. And you mentioned a moment ago the lines of attack on her would be for her faith. Tricky. Joe Biden is running ads showing that he's a Catholic, and now they would attack her, some, on being a Catholic. But also you mentioned that she might be attacked for adopting two kids. What kind of line of attack? What would that even sound like? Well, so far, some of the attacks, and now granted, this is not coming from senators themselves. This has come from a number of progressive activists.

But, you know, there is a certain segment of the progressive population that views interracial adoption as somehow suspect. Do you expect any of the senators to go? Is it conceivable that Kamala Harris or Richard Blumenthal or Dianne Feinstein would attack her face to face for a, they'd be crazy. Those little kids, those beautiful little kids would be seated right behind her. Isn't that right? You would hope so. You know, but I think what we learned in the Kavanaugh process particularly is that, you know, when you see the Supreme Court as a place where policy gets made, then people resort to a lot of things in order to try to stop the wrong kind of people from being on the bench. I think that's what's

sort of unique about her, and it's why we're engaged in this process advocating for her confirmation, is that we're simply just not approaching it from the mindset that we want someone there who can reach results. We want people who will actually put the lawmaking responsibility back on the people on the other side of that hearing room on the set. And so one more question, if I may, about the politics of the thing, and then I know Rob wants to come in here. With the Kavanaugh hearings, with the Scalia hearings, a one. Scalia was confirmed 98 to zero, if I recall the numbers correctly. A couple senators were out that day, but it was unanimous in his favor, and the hearings were really quite straightforward and brief and uncontroversial. That's a one. Kavanaugh's a 10. They threw

everything at him, including totally unsubstantiated, even now there's not a shred of evidence, no witness, nothing, that he engaged in an act of harassment more than three decades ago. That's a 10. Where do you expect the Barrett hearings to fall? Good question. I would say that we're probably looking at maybe a 7. That would be my guess. I think it's hard to go below a seven in the modern era. You mentioned Scalia. If you look back at the pictures of the Scalia hearings, you'll see Justice Scalia smoking a pipe in his confirmation hearings. It's an entirely different universe. It was like a seminar. Yes. Right. It was a bunch of people having a conversation about

the court. And, you know, it's a totally different world than the one we're in now. I think that one of the things that will prevent it from potentially being a 10 is because of the fact that you're not going to have the same sort of opportunity for a circus around this nomination because you won't have all the protesters in the room. You won't have, you know, during the COVID era, that does create a little bit of a different dynamic that sort of hopefully forces the senators to be at least slightly more substantive and not play to an audience in front of them. Right. I mean, this is Rob Long in Maryland. Thank you for joining us. Yeah, I'm old enough to remember when we were all concerned about Donald Trump's federal tax returns on Monday or whatever day that was.

So things do change. A lot of other stuff going on, I think. But so I have two questions about really more about the nuts and bolts you can help me with. One is, I mean, I could be wrong, but it seems to me that as somebody who kind of who admires her, I've never really heard her speak. I've never read her writing. I admire her a great deal. I think that she'd be terrific in the hearings. Were I she, I think I would be eager to sit there. I mean, it's true the Kavanaugh hearings were a 10, but they were a 10 because they couldn't, they had to come up with a drunk frat party story. It seems to me that the most eloquent advocate for Amy Coney Barrett is Amy Coney Barrett. If I'm on the sheer politics of the thing, if you were Lindsey Graham, you'd stretch this out for a week. The Democrats couldn't resist the opportunity to attack her.

Right. And yet she's a brilliant jurist and a wonderful human being. If you had to handicap her performance, I mean, how, what do you think? Good point. Well, she, she handled herself incredibly well during the, her confirmation hearing to the seventh circuit just a few years ago. We're, you know, often those appellate court confirmation hearings don't rise to the same level, don't get the same sort of public attention. And of course, hers to a large degree did because you had the attacks on her, the dogma lives loudly within you argument coming from

Senator Feinstein, right? The Star Wars comment. And so she's already dealt with that. She knows what those lines of attack are going to be. And she handled that know, she's already dealt with that. She knows what those lines of attack are going to be. And she handled that very, very well the first time around, which is why she's a Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals judge now. So, you know, I think you're right. I think she is someone who is going to be the best possible advocate for her own nomination. And it's difficult to look at her story as someone who has climbed through the legal profession, who has been 15 years as a law professor, three years as a federal judge, Scalia clerkship, and at the same time has this incredible personal story. I mean, frankly,

it makes me feel like a couch potato when you read someone's resume like hers. I think, you know, what am I doing? What am I doing that I can't manage to, you know? I totally get it, yeah. So what is the preparation for her like? Is it like debate prep where they're preparing her for negative questions? Are she, is she getting a, uh, a, a good, um, you know, briefing on the senators that are going to be arrayed against her and what they might say, how much coordination is there with the, the pro Barrett senators? What's the actual, uh, what are the mechanisms here that will, when we're watching this, we should be looking out for?

Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm sure that they are preparing her with some difficult questions or especially over at the white house and, you know, giving her some examples of the kinds of things that she can probably expect to have to deal with and how she can answer them and, you know, giving her the opportunity to try that a few times. So I'm sure they're doing that. She's obviously just this during this past week and next week, she's going to be meeting one-on-one with senators. We'll see how much of that is occurring in person versus other means, given where we are with COVID. But she's having those meetings with individual senators and just sort of talking through her philosophy. And so I think that's an important part of the preparation in itself.

And just to, I could be wrong about that. She and her husband both have had COVID. They had it earlier this year. Is that right? I believe that's right. Yes. Over the summer, they both did. She's coursing with antibodies.

If there's not a metaphor there, then I should hang it up. That's right. Yeah. No, it does uniquely position her for this moment in time, doesn't it? The toxic atmosphere of the Senate Judiciary Committee. She'll need all the anybody she's got. Last question before we let you go. It may be moot if she gets in, because the Democrats, if they take everything, will want to preserve all the penumbras and the emanations thereof and pack the court. Do you think that's likely? What would that look like?

So I don't think that it's likely that the Democrats are actually going to be effective in packing the court. It would be disastrous for our country, for our system of government. And that's why every previous attempt to pack the court has failed, because ultimately... And that has stopped them when, though, exactly? That has stopped the modern Democrats when, when it comes to things being disastrous for the country? Well, it did stop them, at least on court packing, it has stopped them. And it stopped them in the, you know, back when this was attempted back in the New Deal era. And, you know, we didn't have court packing actually occur then. I don't think it's likely that we would see it now. I think a number of Democrats have previously been very clear that they think it's not a good idea. And

frankly, you can just look at Vice President Biden on the campaign trail. If it was such a great idea that had such broad support, you would think that he would be making that case. And he's doing everything he can to run from the idea or to hide the idea. If he's elected, that hardly gives you the ability to claim a mandate for court packing when you've spent the entire time saying, I'm not going to take a position on court packing to later come out in favor of it. And of course, ultimately, court packing only sets you up for the opportunity for Republicans to pack again. There's sort of no end to that process. So, you know, I think it's unlikely we're going to see court packing. I'm sure there will probably be other ideas that are bandied about as much less extreme options to try to do things like it, but I don't think we're

actually going to see it happen. Well, it'd be interesting if the Republicans did try to do it again and the Democrats followed suit and eventually the Supreme Court can only meet in a football stadium with 60,000 people in the seats. I'm just wondering if they do add two other justices, will they have to literally expand the bench? I mean, they'd have to build in new stuff, or would they all have to move closer? In an age of COVID, it doesn't seem wise for me to have the justices move closer, so I think they would have to expand. The best idea I've heard so far is that, you know, the way you make the Ninth Amendment great again, our guarantee of individual liberties, is we all get to be a Supreme Court justice. If

we're all a Supreme Court justice, then the Ninth Amendment finally means something again. So maybe that's it. Right, and get rid of the lifetime tenure good behavior thing and then fulfill Andy Warhol's prediction that in the future, everyone will be a Supreme Court justice for 15 minutes. Casey, thanks for joining us today. We appreciate it. We'll talk to you again as the Supreme Court continues to occupy everyone's mind, aside from COVID, war, president, etc. Sure thing. If I can, if I could just make one quick pitch. We have a website set up at uniteforbarrett.com, where we're encouraging people to speak up, let their senators know. It takes 30 seconds to let your senator know that you want Judge Barrett confirmed. And frankly, we are seeing overwhelming grassroots activism on this

from people. We have surpassed in less than a week the number of letters sent by activists through that website in support of Judge Barrett that we saw in three months with Kavanaugh. You see, I want to promise right now that I will be sending an email off to my senators, Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris. That's phenomenal. You know, they need to hear from you. Well, the dog was strong in you, Peter. Yes, exactly. Peter, if Kamala Harris ends up voting for Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation, I just want— It'll be me, baby. If Kamala Harris ends up voting for Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation, I just want...

It'll be me, baby. It is completely your responsibility, and I will tell everyone that you are responsible. See that I get an ambassadorship to some lovely Caribbean island. That's right. All right. Where Rob will become a permanent house guest. I retract that suggestion. That's true.

Thanks, Casey. Bye. Thank you. Of course, I couldn't do that because my online handle is Ivan5497362, which I chose years ago, and now everybody thinks I'm a bot. It's a damnedest thing. Hey, no time for a segue. We've got to go right to what we're talking about that you need to know, and that is Donor's Trust. And I know that Rob is disappointed that he's not going to have the opportunity to get an error from his quiver and put it in. Busy news day.

That's exactly it. And Donors Trust is one of our sponsors, but it's more than a sponsor. It's a great idea, and it's something that can help you and help your ideals. It's a principled and tax-friendly way to simplify your charitable giving. Think of it, imagine a situation here. Let's call them Jane and John. John and Jane have college-age children. It wasn't long before the couple discovered that

the world looks different when viewed through this new college lens. Since then, John and Jane have been supporting classroom and other foundational programs that teach the principles of economic liberty, rule of law, and free expression, things that kids don't always get at college, depending where you go. Now, they could have written personal checks to accomplish their goals, sure, but instead they opened a donor-advised fund at Donors Trust. At Donors Trust, they knew they'd spend less time on administration and more time having an impact. Because a donor's advised fund, it's like a charitable savings account where you can manage your giving in a smart, tax-advantaged, and private way. Donors Trust is unique. They work

with donors at all levels who share a commitment to the freedoms and principles that strengthen America. Donors Trust's philanthropic advisors can help you sharpen your giving, discover new groups, define your charitable legacy. So join the community of liberty-minded donors at Donors Trust. To see how a Donors Trust advisor fund could benefit your giving, go to DonorsTrust.org slash Ricochet for our six reasons to use a donor's advised fund. That's DonorsTrust.org slash Ricochet. And our thanks to Donors Trust for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome back to the podcast, Doc Savage. Dr. George Savage, physician, biomedical engineer, co-founder of several technology-based medical companies in Silicon Valley. Also a Ricochet board member. And we hit him up for free medical advice from time to time. Follow him on Twitter at George underscore Savage. Well, so here are the president's

physician, let's say. Are you going to take Joe Biden's advice and eject him full of bleach? That was a really sharp remark. What would you be telling the president and the first lady right now? Well, first of all, very good to be on the show with you and best wishes for President Trump and Mrs. Trump to recover. This is, of course, sobering news. Bleach is not a great idea. The good news is that even though given his age and what medical conditions we know about, he's at elevated risk compared to younger people. The chances of recovery are still very, very high. So the best approach is conservative management, just symptomatic, as you would with the flu. I wouldn't be surprised if doctors had him on azithromycin and zinc and

potentially even hydroxychloroquine again, simply because it's low risk and it might be useful, might be helpful when provided very early in the evolution of coronavirus. That's not proven, but very little evidence that it could hurt. Stop there. Azithromycin for what purpose and zinc for what purpose? Remember how dumb I am, George. Take us through this Lehman's style, step by step. Many of these suggested regimens from hydroxychloroquine to azithromycin have been shown in tissue culture to help prevent attachment and of keep the virus from giving a foothold or as big a foothold into the body as otherwise. There is some limited clinical evidence that when administered very early, this may help. My colleagues in the medical community will be keen to point out that there is as yet no good randomized controlled evidence. And certainly there's randomized controlled evidence

to show that when administered later for people already hospitalized, that it doesn't appear to be useful. So, yeah. So, I'm sorry, I just want to go on this one more time because I think I know of azithromycin is what they gave me the last time I had a nasal infection. It's an antibiotic, right? So it kills bacteria, but this is a virus. So there's some mechanism. It seems to interfere with the mechanism by which the virus does damage cell by cell. Seems to.

Okay. Yes, that is the hypothesis. Got it. And again, I need to emphasize not approved hypothesis, not FDA approved, not well-controlled clinical studies. What does the zinc do? Well, I've been taking zinc for years. Every time I feel like I'm getting a cold, I take so much zinc, I feel like a piece of furniture in the Hindenburg smoking lounge. I swear by that stuff.

It actually works. So what does that do? Zinc is a galvanized bucket. That's what I think of as zinc. Here we're dealing with certain observational approaches where different people have observed that patients who have, for example, another factor, low levels of vitamin D, tend to do worse. Now, is that due to the low level of vitamin D or is that due to other factors? And so people are just looking at the data and you might be looking at statistical noise, but you may say that, well, if you are

zinc deficient, you have a worse course than if you have adequate amounts of zinc in your body and vitamin D. Maybe causal, may not, may just be completely not helpful at all. But these are the kinds of things that some physicians may want to try in the president. I have no idea if they will or if they are doing it. Again, the raw statistics show that based on his age, by my best estimate, he has about a one in five chance of needing to go to the hospital. And the mortality rate would probably be in the 3% to 5% range. So the good news, if you're an optimist. He's 74 is his age. I just looked that up.

And, George, what about this? So this is my last layman's question. Then Rob is going to come in, and I've seen this happen too many times now. You and Rob really get grooving. And us little laymen. So I'm going to ask the last simple layman's question, then turn you over to Rob. He's 74. He's got a very stressful job.

He's at an almost unimaginably stressful moment in that job. And he's overweight by, to take a look at him, you'd say between 20 and 30 pounds overweight. And from this layman's reading, there's some correlation between obesity. So the question is, how sick is he likely to get? Right. That will be determined over time. The factors against him are, first of all, male sex. Men do worse with COVID than women on average. Being obese, you just mentioned. I'm unaware of any other significant health issues for him, which is a positive.

Also, a positive is the man's evident energy and ebullience, if you will, just sort of raw physical. Does that strike you as unusual for a 74-year-old? Is he not just in terms of sheer animal energy, would he not be an outlier among septuagenarians? He certainly looks that way, just to look at him. So those are on the good column. Against him is primarily his age, and we mentioned the obesity and his sex. Again, he has about an 80% chance of recovering without need of a hospital, which is excellent. And I would estimate, you know, well over in the 95 percent plus range of avoiding mortality, which is, of course, what we're all praying for, that he has a smooth recovery. But there is an elevated risk as regards, you know, younger people.

Hey, George, it's Rob. So a couple questions one is i mean is it fair to say that uh not just president trump having obviously access to the best medical care there is but anyone contract not test not a case not testing positive we we they're now saying that he is symptomatic in some ways lethargic and he doesn't feel great so um is it fair to say that in in october 2020 his the chances of a person fitting his description um who has who as as covid is experiencing the symptoms is much better than the experience of somebody in his same position having this being in the same

position in march i mean are we are we further along in our treatment i guess is what i'm trying to say we certainly are uh we've learned a lot about the disease uh what to expect uh i would have to in terms of coming up with some treatments particularly for severe disease and particularly for the complex uh admitted to hospital cohort where we have different approaches to mechanical ventilation where we're not as quick to put patients on ventilators because in some patients that seems to actually not help and may actually hurt as we did in the past. And we've learned a lot.

And, you know, the president is often criticized for being a cheerleader, for not worrying about coronavirus and getting beyond it. But he is correct when he points out that we have declining mortality rates in the United States and, indeed, one of the lower mortality rates in the world for people who catch the disease. So that's favorable. So if you're his doctor, what do you, or I should say anybody, just fitting his description, What are the indications that this is going to, or are there any indications that this is going to kind of, you know, bounce off him? It's going to be a really bad flu or it's going to get worse. Is it just time and the symptoms getting worse or is there, is there a profile of somebody for whom this is not a couple of days bed rest? Yeah, well, certainly you put your

finger on something I think is critical, which is I would advise rest. And that is something where the president in particular, given the election he finds himself in, may find difficult to adhere to. But yet I think that could be critically important. There are some, again, studies showing that looking at different profiles of blood chemistry can indicate whether your immune system is beginning to go awry and put you at elevated risk of this severe acute respiratory syndrome, the SARS point that puts people in the hospital. The data are mixed on those, and it's early because, again, we're looking at associations and not necessarily causality,

but I'm certain that the president will be getting blood testing and everyone will be studying his profiles to see if there are early signs and, again, then deciding based on pretty premature evidence what's the best approach. Right. Right. So just one more question. So I read this. This is what this is. Every doctor's nightmare, your nightmare, especially talking to me. But I read an article, George. And let me tell you about this article. So I read an article in The Atlantic, which is sort of interesting. It got a little complicated for me, so I skipped over parts of it, to be honest. But it talked about some new research about the people who give you this disease, the spreaders.

And we've always been, well, not always been, but since my degree in epidemiology, which I received in March 2020, I know a lot of us us i've been focusing on this are not number right the number of people that one person can infect yes and that seemed to be the crucial number but now there's this new data suggests actually that's not so interesting it's the r they call rk number and because you know it's like anything else it's like 10 of people do all the work in life and so 10 of the covid uh um people who have it test positive for the virus do all the super spreading there's just some some kind of super spreaders around there i know what they spit when they talk or whatever it is they just give off the moist droplets who knows but um is it is it first of

all is that true is that another wrinkle in this incredible mystery? And what do you think? You think there's a patient zero here for the president and the first lady that, you know, I just was watching pictures of the Amy Coney Barrett announcement. And Mike Lee's there and he's and he's hugging everybody and everybody's hugging everybody else and is is it is he typhoid senator what do you i mean long question to jump in well i don't know about mike lee but speaking uh to the pareto principle which seems to hold in much of life about how 80 of the good or ill seems to be the result of 20% of the people or the work or the things to focus on. That's not a bad assumption. I think the data are mixed on

super spreaders versus casual spread and data are being developed in real time. I think there is some suggested evidence that some people spread more frequently. And, you know, this sort of lends itself or leads inexorably into politics when we think about, you know, the president famously being masked may or may not be a good idea. And we want to get beyond COVID. And now here the president has COVID and hopefully Judge Barrett doesn't have COVIDed hopefully joe biden didn't get coveted uh at the recent debate uh etc etc but we we now have a reminder to the public at a very critical point uh that the pandemic isn't over and that uh there's still real concerns out there and you know by the way judge judge barrett just barrett she had oh really she hasn't had it

already so by, by my cursory reading, they're basically superheroes at this point. They can be untouchable by any disease known to me, even yet invented by the Chinese. I'm sorry, James, I interrupted you. No, I was going to say that history will probably show that the super spreaders were all people

who were doing Sylvester the Cat and Yosemite Sam impersonations. Fucking fucking Sam! Last question before we let you go. people who are doing Sylvester the Cat and Yosemite Sam impersonations. Last question before we let you go. Vipotus Pence has tested negative, so we assume that he has to be tested again and again and again. And we hear a lot about false positives, but how reliable are the negative tests

right now? I think negative tests are pretty reliable. Of course, they can't account for the incubation period when you may have the virus maybe taking hold of you, but you haven't had enough replication to be detected as yet. And so I'm certain that former Vice President Biden will need to be tested quite frequently. And this throws a lot of things up in the air about, you know, maybe everyone will have to have a remote debate later in October if they have a debate at all, at which point you can always mute Zoom so certain issues become mooted around what the Commission on Presidential Debates is talking about.

Or whether they can have one or not, or whether you have one from bed with, you know, a cool cloth on your forehead as you have a fever or not. Maybe having a fever would help. Who knows in terms of the lucidity of the proceedings. We all have a fever, and the prescription in terms of the lucidity of the proceedings we all have a fever and the prescription is actually not more cowbell at all doc savage thanks a lot for joining us today in the podcast we hope to talk actually we never want to talk to you again because we're tired of covet but of course we will because i can't wait for 2020 yes there's going to be a clear demarcation on december 31st when everything will change. Yeah, sure. All right.

Talk to you later. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you, George. You know, I wouldn't call him Doc Savage, of course, because that's the name of the famous old 30s pulp hero. Remember? And they came out with these books in the 70s where they revived it. There's like 478 Doc Savage books. He was one of those early characters

who was a doctor and an adventurer and an archaeologist and a two-fisted man of action and all the rest of it. He's quite diversified, you might say. And speaking of which, you've often heard that it's necessary and good and wise to have a diversified portfolio. Perhaps you want to be like Doc Savage and have your hands into everything that's interesting. Well, one of the things that's interesting, of course, there's stocks and there's bonds and there's mutual funds, but what about real estate? Because if you've looked at a breakdown of the

most successful portfolios, you'll typically see a diversified set of real estate in there. So why isn't that one of your first asset classes when you consider what you're looking to diversify? Well, there's a reason for that. You don't have it. It hasn't been available to investors like you and me until now, until now. And that's thanks to Fundrise. Fundrise makes it easy for all investors to diversify by building you a portfolio of institutional quality real estate investments. So whether you're just starting to invest in real estate, looking to add more, our friends at Fundrise have you covered. And here's how. Fundrise is an investing platform that makes investing in high quality, high potential real

estate as easy as investing in your favorite stock or mutual fund. Whether you're looking to add stable cash flow via dividends or you prefer long-term growth through appreciation, Fundrise has you covered. To date, Fundrise manages more than $1 billion in assets for 130,000-plus investors. And since 2014, the Fundrise platform has managed 8.7% to 12.4% annual returns, and investors have earned more than $79 million in dividends alone. Fundrise's teams of real estate professionals carefully vet and actively manage all of the real estate projects. And with easy-to-use website, you can track your portfolio's performance and watch as properties across the country are acquired,

improved, and operated via asset updates. So start building your better portfolio today. Get started at fundrise.com slash ricochet to have your first 90 days of advisory fees waived. That's F-U-N-D-R-I-S-E dot com slash ricochet to have your first 90 days of advisory fees waived. Fundrise.com slash ricochet. And our thanks to Fundrise for sponsoring this, the Rico ricochet podcast now we welcome to the podcast henry olson he hosts the horse race podcast here in the ricochet audio network writes column on politics for the washington post and he's a senior fellow at the ethics and public policy center henry uh i hear from some people that we had a debate and that it was a bit contentious and a bit divisive. What do the polls show? Do we know?

Well, the polls haven't come out since the debate that there's been no polls that have come out with an exclusive post-debate period. But you can just tell that people were talking about it and the ratings for the debate were extremely high, near Super Bowl level. So people saw it and we'll know by the weekend whether people's suspicions that this hurt the president or the president's assertion that he won it big time will come to pass. Okay, so obvious, first of all, threshold question. Can you spare us all a lot of angst over the next five weeks? Is it already over? It's not over, but it's close to over that the president is not close to where he needs to be to win the electoral college the republicans are not close to where they need to be in order to

win the senate the president needs to get his job approval rating up another two to three points and needs to do it fairly quickly because of early voting. And that should bring up all the other Republicans because they've been sailing along with the president. But if he doesn't do that within, say, three weeks, then yeah, I think we could say that it's over. All right. I can see Rob thinking deep thoughts, which always alarms me. Maybe I'll just keep questioning you, Henry, to protect you from him. But he has COVID now. Joe Biden has been running a campaign, a kind of McKinley campaign. McKinley ran his from his front porch.

Joe Biden seems to have run his from his basement. So let's say you're Mark Meadows. You're the president's chief of staff. And you know what Henry Olsen just said, you've got to get it up, get your approval up two to three points, and you've got to do it fast. And now you're under quarantine. What does Mark Meadows say to the president? How do we handle this? Yeah, I think what the president does is, first of all, obey the quarantine because it would be terrible if he were to disregard what everybody's recommendation is and actually to go out and be seen out and about outside of his room in the White House. Secondly, you've got to go on Zoom and you've got to do telenetworking. It's not something the president wants to do, but

given the Trump campaign's millions, hundreds of millions of dollars trying to set up mega get well President Trump rallies online could very well be something that will communicate with as many voters as going on television with

big rallies. But it's the message as well. The president ideally would be somebody who is displaying more seriousness about the pandemic than he has. And maybe he'll have a not deathbed, but acquisition of the virus conversion. And that would be something I'd be telling him as well,

which is you've got it start showing sympathy every day with other people who have got it too and last question for me before rob comes in we were talking about this robin james and i at the top of the show the debate and my little theory i i have i hatch theories henry but i so seldom do i get a chance to test them against somebody who actually knows the answers, like you. So my little theory is that the country's had about enough, actually of both personalities. That debate, Joe Biden wasn't all that well behaved or dignified himself. He was quieter.

All right. some strange way might it not be quite useful for us to see donald trump and joe biden for that matter by zoom just let's hear the arguments let's listen to what they have to say about policy let's let them suggest what they would do in the in in a second term for trump or a first term for Biden, in some strange providential way, might this actually be good for this debate, good for this fraught moment in American democracy, that we hear the arguments and less personality? That's my little theory. Yeah, well, if that's actually what were to happen, I think that would be a good thing. Thank you, Henry. Henry speaks, that's the voice of a man who's seen it all.

Well, you know, look, this is a guy. This is a president who's been insulting people in 160 characters or less for four years. And he can find a way to, is that going to change him in some way so that he can get to your ideal scenario, which is, I think, where he wants to be? I doubt it, but, you know, you just don't know what's going to happen in this crazy campaign. And maybe he'll, maybe like Jim Belushi and James Brown's church, he'll suddenly see the light and get the big picture. Peter, one of the current treatments for COVID is not a personality transplant, just so you know. Hey, Henry, thanks for joining. So I have two questions.

One, just a nuts and bolts question. Job numbers came out today today i guess 7.9 percent pretty good right considering i don't know what was it 15 percent at some point um is that too little too late is it too small too incremental is it still too high to make a difference um is there any sense out there that the v-shaped recovery which the trump white house insists is happening and um everyone else is a little bit um unconvinced by is there any sense that that's going to help an approval rating that seems to be in free fall uh sorry a disapproval rating that seems to be in free fall yeah actually it's i think it's already helping him that the president's job approval rating is below where it wants where he wants it to be.

But it's actually a 45.3 percent as we're talking right now. And that's four points higher than it was in mid-July. As the economy has recovered in a V-shaped form, he has recovered in a V-shaped form. But here's the bottom line, is that despite the recovery, the unemployment rate doesn't tell the whole story. There are 4 million, nearly 5 million people who have just dropped out of looking for work, and that keeps the unemployment rate down. The employment to population ratio shows that we've recovered about 60 percent of the jobs. So that means there's still 10, 15 million people who had a job in February who don't have a job

now, and 5 million of them are so discouraged they're not looking for one. I think, in general, it helps him. It would help if he knew how to make the argument about this better. I wrote a column last week that showed, if you look at the state levels, the national level is being held up by 10 big blue states, New York, California, Massachusetts, Illinois, New Jersey, that not shockingly have Democratic governors, except for Massachusetts has a Republican governor, that shuts down more and reopens less quickly. On the ground in the swing states, things are much closer to the actual V recovery and i think people on the ground are seeing that uh so it's helping but it would help if the president would know how to frame the argument about it as well can we just talk about two states um one state absolutely crucial uh

for the president florida uh they're going to spend 250 million dollars about the republicans and democrats uh 250 a quarter of a billion dollars for florida they're going to spend $250 million about the Republicans and Democrats, uh, 250, a quarter of a billion dollars for Florida. Um, this is that going to matter. I mean,

at the end of the day, I guess if Biden pulls out Florida, it's money well spent for him, but is it really, is there a, how, how, how tenuous or not tenuous is the connection between that kind of statewide spending and actual success in that state?

Yeah, very little. What's happened with the explosion of social media and 24-7, 365 cable news is that people at the presidential level don't have too little information. They have too little information. They write too much television commercials matter most when it's virtually the only information you get about a race which tends to be the case for everything below maybe the governor or Or the president, you know, even US Senate races are determined by partisanship and television advertising but at the presidential level It is just you do it because you don't want to not do it. The things that I think would matter more would be, do you have a good voter targeting operation?

Are you turning out new registered voters, the sort of things that won't be seen on your screens, but could produce that extra 10,000 votes that in the winner-take-all format can help? So it's not the amount that matters. It's whether you're doing the high-cost, low-visibility things that don't produce many votes but could make all the difference in a close race. And there I don't know enough what each of the campaigns are doing. What I will say is that the voter registration trends in a number of swing states are good for Trump, that Republicans are out registering or gaining on Democrats in places like Pennsylvania and Iowa and Florida, all signs that maybe they have invested in this turnout, the marginal Trump voter who doesn't usually vote, but we won't know for sure until election day. People may have a lot of information,

maybe too much information, but whether or not they synthesize that and come up with a scenario that is the logical result of that information is something different. For example, if you had complete democratic control, you had DC, you had Puerto Rico, you had the end of the electoral college, you packed the Supreme Court, you have the Senate be proportional, representational, you're talking about one party rule in perpetuity. When you talk about Joe Biden's energy policy, and you wrote about this, a lot of people think, well, yeah, we should, you know, get away from the bad stuff and global warming and all that. But as you mentioned, one of the reasons in a piece you wrote, I think for the Washington Post, one of the reasons a lot of conservatives are hesitant to vote for Joe Biden has to do with

his energy policy. And I'll quote here, Biden's statement on climate change were also not reassuring. He said that no more coal or oil-powered electricity generating plants would be built in the U.S., and that he would lead the transition away from fossil fuels. Nearly 7 million Americans work in the fossil fuel industry, whether they extract from the ground, transport them in refineries to gas stations, or own those stations themselves. Coming from a family that actually owns a gas station, we're a tad concerned about this. And people say, oh yeah, can I get rid of cars? Gavin Newsom just said that 15 years hence, California will no longer allow gas-powered cars to be sold in the state.

So the end result of this is a fundamental shift in the economy and the way people behave. Do you think that voters actually know that, that they believe that private insurance is going to go away, cars as they know them are going to go away, air travel is going to go away. Cars, as they know them, are going to go away. Air travel is going to be restricted because of global warming. I mean, do you think that the average Joe Biden voter knows that? Or do they just kind of wave it away and say, yeah, it's never going to happen, and he's not as crazy as Trump? I don't think most voters know these things, and the ones that do on Biden's side either

want them to happen or they disregard them. One of the things I think that Biden and Democrats have a real possibility of is the rude wake-up that people thought they were buying bipartisan unity, and they find that they actually get bait and switched into a slightly less extreme Bernie Sanders agenda, which is basically what Biden has signed on to, is we're not going to go 100% of the way you want, but we'll go 65% of the way you want. And for people who maybe want to go 20% in that direction, that's going to be a rude wake-up call if they move forward on it. But no, I do not think voters know very much about it. And I don't think the president has

done very much to help them understand that because he hasn't had the sort of focused, disciplined campaign message that allows things like this to break through. Concisely stated with a succinct wrap-up. Boy, what do you think this is, radio and television? This is a podcast. You're going to ramble on for seven more minutes about that and say the same thing 48 times. Well, no, of course you don't because you're Henry Olson and you're good at this and your horse-rate podcast can be found here in the Ricochet Audio Network as well. We advise everybody to download and listen to it. Thanks for joining us today, Henry. Talk to you again. Thanks, Henry. Henry, thank you.

Thanks for having me back. A pleasure, although it would be more of a pleasure if you told me Trump's approval ratings were climbing faster, but all right. A pleasure, Henry. People can't see this on the uh on the podcast version but here in zoom peter has a nice calming forest right that's his background as if this then in the gentle morning mist is going through the trees and it looks like a happy place for peter it really does rob's in a happy place in maryland and i'm here in my office uh just waiting to hear if we're going to hear the sounder for the Lilacs membership post of the week. The James Lilacs member post of the week.

Oh, I don't even bother. And this one is a little bit different because... By the way, that intro music just tested positive for the virus. Sluggish. Lethargic and the rest of it. This was sort of a back and forth between some of the pooh-bahs at Ricochet, but it was so interesting we wanted to note it. And I was getting some feedback on Twitter saying this is a post of the week, so that's what it is. It's Max Ledoux who wrote Harry Truman and the decision to drop the atomic bomb.

And you would think, haven't we been over this before? Yes, we have, but this has some new wrinkles because Peter Robinson weighed in, expressed his opinion on Twitter that President Truman did not. Well, here's what Max wrote. Peter Robinson expressed his opinion on Twitter that President Truman did not approve the use of the nuclear bomb. Quote, Truman never approved the use of the bomb or disapproved it, Peter wrote. The military considered it one more weapon, like a new submarine or aircraft. They kept Truman informed, but they did not ask for his approval. End of Peter's quote. Max, that's not my memory from reading David McCullough's Truman, so I decided to look it up as best as I could. And what followed was pure ricochet. Intelligent, smart, fact-based, source-based, cited, and no real nastiness like

you would find, for example, at the bottom of a YouTube piece on Truman's decision. Peter, if you could summarize what we got out of that and why it means that people should go to Ricochet and join immediately. What we got out of that was a really, there are a lot of Ricochet members who are history buffs. I learned a great deal from that exchange myself. By the way, when I said, the really, my point of departure and what goes through the thread back and forth on Harry Truman is that somebody, some mushy-headed Dominican, as I recall, a priest, said that Truman was wrong to bomb civilians and that he made the wrong decision. And I thought, oh my goodness, this again. It's a fascinating

point, and I think it tells us something, that there is no written approval from the President of the United States for dropping the atomic bomb. I have found over the years, talking to students, everybody assumes that it was such a momentous decision that there must have been some moment when the president was presented with the options, President Truman, and he said, okay, do it, and signed a document. Again, my own background in the Reagan White House, every military action required formal, explicit, written approval from the President of the United States. There was no such moment.

Truman offered no such written approval. And why is that? Did he approve of it? Yes. He said in later years that he made the decision. The military kept him informed. He was asked verbally at a number of points for his permission, so to speak, but there was no written, solemn moment of decision at all. And that strikes me as significant.

What I tried to argue was that it tells us something about the environment in which those people were operating. They were at war. They were trying to stop the killing as quickly as possible. And Harry Truman had been president for only a little under four months when the bomb was dropped. His entire emphasis was simply to complete the unfinished work of Franklin Roosevelt, who had died unexpectedly in April. The bombs were dropped in August, and the Manhattan Project was part of part of his unfinished work so my point is simply they were at war nobody needed written approval it didn't quite occur to them because they were bombing there had already been firebombing of tokyo the right the massacre that had already taken place was so massive that everyone assumed understood

that if we developed a new weapon that might help end the war more quickly we'd use it it wasn't a question in their minds and i make the argument that that tells us something about the moral context that people today trying to sit in judgment on harry truman i did in mind sorry james go ahead oh it does indeed i mean because the movie version in your head is that the Oval Office is deserted. There's a piece of paper on Truman's desk. He's looking at it a single beam of light goes down. He turns around. He goes to the

window, hands clasped behind him, shot of him from outside of his lined face, full of worry, goes back and signs it. Reality is the military guys in the office and Truman says, hey, how's that atom bomb coming out? They say, oh, it works. It works coming out? And they said, I works. It works.

It works. Probably. It's closed already. It works. We're driving one on Tuesday. The Enola Gay is on the way home. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. Okay. Just, well, what's interesting about it. And, and, um, I was just saying two things.

There's one wonderful book called thank God for the atom bomb by a, uh, Princeton professor, former late principal resident, Paul Fussell, who wrote three great books. One was called the great war in modern memory, Adam Baum, by a Princeton professor, former late principal president, Paul Fussell, who wrote three great books. One was called The Great War in Modern Memory,

which was about the Great War and the poets' people died. That was classic. Another was this incredibly very, very specific, very funny, insightful book called Class, about the American class system. To this day, it's probably the most honest and accurate portrayal and um investigation of the american class system but he also wrote a collection of essays called uh thank god for the atom bomb and he has a couple great sentences in there one is that he was a young infantryman

uh at that time he was training to invade fortress japan training to invade the island this was after the greatest island in the greatest amphibious landing in the history of earth they were going to do the next even bigger amphibious landing in the history of earth and his uh later i think friend or colleague john kenneth galbraith was a wartime economist in dc at the time uh and later wrote uh i we did not need to drop the atom bomb. And Paul Fussell writes, I merely note that at the time, John Kenneth Galbraith was writing, was doing wartime economics in D.C., and I was practicing with my friends to invade and get my ass shot off, which I thought was a very important point.

The second thing he mentions which i which is interesting in the book is that we forget just how ferocious the war was and the war at home that people forget we see it now kind of in a black and white movie version of it but we forget that there were school teachers who were presented with polished japanese skulls. This is true. Where they kept their pencils on their desk. This was a brutal, brutal, total war. So the idea that near the end, when we could all breathe a sigh of relief and get on with the business of rebuilding, which by the way, they had, we're starting in, in, in, in, in, in parts of Europe, uh, that they should hesitate is just ludicrous and even ghoulish. the third thing i'd say is that i

really i talked to peter about this before that from my understanding my memory of this is that one of the reasons that we are a little there's a some confusion about this is because truman himself insisted he made the decision i think someone at one point asked him so that's right you know after his presidency president truman did you wrestle did you struggle with this and he said nope made the decision like that. And he snapped his fingers, you know, blunt talking, give him hell, Harry. When in fact, the troops were on the trains. It was a done deal. It was absolutely going to happen whether he wanted it to do or not. And there was absolutely no way he was going to approve or disapprove of it. And it's just interesting that that a later

the later egotistical or i would say sort of self-interested uh memory of an event uh has become embedded in our uh in a historical dispute you know interesting right i could agree more truman never walked away from that decision excuse Excuse me. Again, there was no moment of decision. He certainly approved of it. At the time, it was clear, but there was no moment of decision. Okay. Later on, people assumed that he must have made a decision, and he didn't dissuade them. Why go into the details? He stood by it. Interestingly enough, of course, all kinds of people in later years tried to put distance between themselves in that decision. Even Eisenhower said that he argued that it might not be necessary. Turns out there's no documentary evidence that he did. A colleague of mine, colleague of mine, that's the wrong way to put it, but Edward Teller, the great physicist, was here at the Hoover Institution in his final years when I arrived at the Hoover Institution, and I knew him. Brilliant man, great man.

And he was on the Manhattan Project. He was one of the brilliant young physicists who was a part of the Manhattan Project. And Ed Teller said, well, you know, of course, I argued that we should do a demonstration explosion in the atmosphere to show the Japanese what the A-bomb was capable of. As far as I am aware, there is no documentary evidence whatsoever that Ed Teller argued that at the time. Maybe he did, but there's no document showing it. So you just get the feeling, looking at the record, that a lot of people had second thoughts, and Truman would have none of it. He understood that the responsibility, this is for sure, the responsibility was his. He was the president. He could have stopped it if he sought to do so. To me, what sums it up is that

Robert Oppenheimer, who was one of the leading scientists and the physicists in the Manhattan Project and who was at the Trinity test and saw this thing happen, after the war, Oppenheimer played a call on Truman at the White House. And I don't know exactly what took place, but Oppenheimer apparently tried to talk Truman into limiting our nuclear program. And after Oppenheimer left, Truman turned to an aide and said I never want to see that man again if anybody has blood on his hands it's on mine yeah wow so so there's some you just I you know my heart I see here you know what I see here coming across I see Harry Truman coming across the desk at him. You became Death Destroyer Worlds. I became Death Destroyer Worlds. Yes, yes, yes. But don't you find that admirable somehow?

I find it admirable, but it's also just as a partner in a business that you and I are trying to keep afloat, ricochet. But I just, I mean, ricochet. Please tell me, listeners, that you're as interested in this as we are. Because we're talking about events that are 80 years ago. And as if they were absolutely, and they are kind of crucial. They're sort of the big questions. And I just hope that we, I mean, part of me thinks we should just be talking more about porn, right? Because that's what people, but then the other just be talking more about porn right because that's

what people but then the other hand i don't know maybe that's what ricochet is supposed to be we're supposed to be the place where we can talk about everything including stuff that other people roll their eyes at i find it fascinating in all different ways not only the moment and and get and i know we have to go but truman also was like such a uh he's so emotional too which i one reason why i admire him so much there was that point one of his closest friends i'm gonna get this wrong closest friends jewish american friends from missouri i think uh there's huge there's a huge jewish population st louis missouri so i think it was oh and uh it was when the beginnings of the state of israel and and uh yes yes yes the government the.S. government was not sure they were going to recognize Israel, not going to recognize Israel. And Truman's old friend was going to come visit him.

And Truman said, we're not talking about this. We're not talking about this. And the guy comes in the Oval Office and looks at him and says something like, Mr. President. And Harry Truman instantly bursts into tears and says, you son of a bitch, I told you not to do this. And they sort of hug it out. And then, of course, we recognize Israel. But I just love the idea that this guy, I mean,

it's kind of like, well, I hope that that wasn't the reason. But I just do like the idea that there was a time when you still were so loyal to your friends they could get eddie jacobson eddie jacobson eddie jacobson i knew there was i knew you know i just love that scene may i close it's usually rob's responsibility to add the light note may i close with a harry

truman anecdote of course we've already lost all our viewers and our businesses in the toilet we may as well doom it all together all right grasp the our businesses in the toilet. We may as well. Why not doom it all together? All right. Grasp the handrail as the Titanic goes down. This was told to me by Clark Clifford, who was the eyewitness to the event. Clifford was a Missourian, a lawyer, and he was a close aide of Truman. He had business with the president. This is after the war. And to get to the president's office from his own in the West Wing, Clark Clifford walked through

the lobby, the West Wing lobby, and he noticed that there was someone there who was very prominent, who was waiting to see the president, and it was the president of the Chase Bank, then the biggest bank in the United States. He went into the Oval Office, he did his business with the president, walked out, president of Chase Bank is still there waiting. 45 minutes later, Clifford needed to see the president again, walks through the West Wing lobby, the president of the Chase Bank is still there waiting. 45 minutes later, Clifford needed to see the president again, walks through the West Wing lobby. The president of the Chase Bank is still sitting there waiting. And he, Truman, I beg your pardon, Clifford knows from the president's schedule that Truman was alone for those 45 minutes. He goes into the Oval Office, finishes his meeting with the president, and then says, by the way, Mr. President, I just want to make sure you're aware

the president of the Chase Bank is out there waiting to see you. And he's been there for over an hour now. And Truman explained that when he was a senator, he had business in New York and the president of the Chase Bank had kept him waiting for two hours. And Truman lifted his wrist and looked at his wristwatch and said, that son of a bitch has another 37 minutes to go. Our man, Harry Truman. I know. Makes you wonder what Hero Heater did. So this is the end of our show.

And we thank everybody for listening. Donors, trust, fundrise, and no, I'm sorry, not Keeps. It says Keeps in the copy, so I'm going to have to recut this at the end. Start again. Three, two, one. Well, that brings us to the end of the show. I got to tell you that Fundrise was one of our sponsors. DonorsTrust was the other, and ExpressVPN, of course, all brought you this Ricochet podcast. Support them, support us. You get great stuff. They get your patronage. Everybody's happy. Take a minute to go to Apple, iPod, iCast, iTunes, whatever it's called nowadays

in the latest software iteration. Give us five stars. Would it kill you? Would it just kill you to give us five stars? No. And go to Ricochet and sign up as well so Peter and Rob can know that this is not all in vain and this wonderful institution and edifice that they built can carry us on from presidential campaign to presidential campaign.

Gentlemen, it's been a pleasure. What a show. See everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Next week, boys. Next week. If we make it, next week. This is the car that's going to get you. Going to knock you right on the head.

You better get yourself together. Because you're going gonna be dead What in the world are you thinking of? Laughing in the face of love What on earth are you trying to do? It's up to you Yeah, you Your subconscious gonna get you do it's up to you yeah you the music is gonna get you

gonna look you right in the face better get your children to the door join the human race how in the world

are you gonna see laughing at fools like me Who on earth do you think you are? A superstar? Well right you are Well we all shine on Like the moon and the star and the sun Well we all shine on We'll be right back. Better recognize your brothers If we want your beat Why in the world are we here?

Surely not to live in pain and fear Why on earth are you there? When you're everywhere Come and get your shit When we all Shine on Like the moon And the stars

And the sun Yeah we all Shine on Join the conversation Will you shut up man