The Ricochet Podcast - The Wrestlers

Episode Date: February 17, 2018

This week, we mix it up across a wide variety of views with guests from all over the right side of the ideological map. First up, AEI’s Christina Hoff Sommers, author of The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men. She wrote a Tweet this past week that set social media on fire. So we talk about that. Then, the main event: Charlie Sykes is a longtime time talk radio host... Source

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Are you going to send me or anybody that I know to a camp? We have people that are stupid. To make sure the one, this individual is, we have justice and two, to make sure this never happens again. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson. I'm James Lollux, and today we talk to Christina Hoff Summers about culture and Charlie Sykes about Trump. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Bye-bye.

Welcome, everyone, to the Ricochet Podcast. It's number 390, and how did it get that far? Well, because it was brought to you by the fine people at The Great Courses. Bye-bye. And we're brought to you by Bombfell. Bombfell is an online personal styling service for men that helps find the right clothes for you. You only pay what you keep, and there's no charge to send returns back. For $25 off your first purchase, visit bombfell.com. And we're brought to you by Tripping.com. Hey, heading off on a vacation? Well, with Tripping.com, one search lets you filter, compare, and sort over 10 million available properties on trusted sites like Vrbo, TripAdvisor, Booking.com, and more.

Head to Tripping.com slash Ricochet today. And, of course, we're brought to you by Ricochet itself. Tautological as that may sound, right, Peter? Tell them why they should join Ricochet and keep it going. Ricochet is the most interesting, fascinating, entertaining conservative website in all of the media. You need to join, and here's why. We need the money. It's not a lot of money, but we need some money to keep the site up and running.

It costs something to rent space on servers and so on and so forth. And because when you join for $5 a month to join all of Ricochet, what you get out of it is the right not only to read what's up on Ricochet but to read more material that's behind paywalls and to participate in the conversation yourself. And when you join, we have the right – we had all of this very heavily lawyered up. We have the right to impose certain minimal rules of civility. And what that means is that as it happens, we very seldom have to impose the rules, but people behave themselves. So the conversation, the comments and that dead air that you just heard there meant that Peter Robinson has left and that Ricochet itself is gone. No, of course not. It isn't. But just imagine if you had not followed Peter's call to arms and you had not subscribed and all of a sudden there was a ricochet-sized void in your life. You went there one day and the page was gone. The member feed, all of those stories,

all those friends had vanished. Well, no, you don't want that to happen. If you do want new internet friends, though, don't go over to YouTube and sign up and start trolling around down there. No, go to ricochet.com and sign up. There's all kinds of tiers depending on what sort of price point you're looking for. And you'll never regret it. And you'll keep civil conversation alive. Now, at this point, our incredible technical experts are out there trying to get Peter back. Hello? You can imagine.

And there he is. And here I am. Yes, Peter, I finished your ad for you, and I wanted to give everyone sort of an image of Blue Yeti standing on the back of a ship, casting a rod, trying to pull you out of the ocean. He gassed me. He hooked me. There you go, in which he disappeared. And we'll get to our first guest in a few moments here,

but I wanted to ask, the stories this week are the stories that we will no doubt hear again and again. The first one, alas, because it's not the last school shooting, and shooting and the second one immigration because that's going to go on and on and on and when you talk about these things you just kind of swap bromides and uh hardened positions back and forth to me the most interesting and revelatory story of the week had to do with giving poor people boxes of food you've've heard this tale, right? No, I haven't. I haven't at all, no. Oh, it was a proposal that they would decrease the benefits of some of the food stamp snap benefits,

and they would send out boxes of food to people to cook themselves. Peanut butter, beans, rice, some grains, some preserved meat, canned vegetables, and the like. You haven't heard this. The administration was sort of describing it as blue apron for lower class people. The administration used that phrase? I heard that phrase used as describing the conversations within the administration about it, but I don't think they actually would be subordinate to come out and say that

exactly. Well, I'm surprised you rise this every day, of course, but yes. All right. Well, then since you haven't heard this,

how do you think the left responded to this proposal, to this idea? Uh, that it was demeaning. I mean, irrationally, I suppose they responded irrationally. They denounced the trump administration and they

accused them of racism and and i'm just giving you the the generic left's response to anything the trump administration proposes right i'm not sure that racism has entered into it yet but right demeaning demeaning because it took away from the poor the right to choose their own foodstuffs and um and high-handed and and because it presumed that they were able to do something with this with the bar one of my favorites was well well what what if they're not home when the box is delivered i mean if that's the case you can you can you can really come up with just about any objection you want. But isn't it a little bit condescending to say that they wouldn't know what to do with the food, that they lack the skills and the instruments? That to me was the most instructive.

My computer is having internet troubles. But even at that, James, if we continue down this one, I'm going to get going. I taped a show, an episode of Uncommon Knowledge, an interview perhaps two months ago with my friend John Kogan, my friend and colleague here at the Hoover Institution, John Kogan, who had just produced a book drawing on, as best I can tell, really a lifetime of his work studying entitlement programs. The name of the book is The High Cost of Good Intentions. And what that book demonstrated is that the federal government now spends on entitlement programs something like three times as much as it would cost to lift every American who is under the poverty line out of poverty with a simple direct cash payment. The left prefers elaborate programs that spend and spend and spend in a way that is utterly – okay, you get the picture. So yeah, you got me going.

It sounds to me as though the administration was recommending something entirely reasonable and the left reacted the way the left reacts saying no no no no what you have to do feed first is the federal government right if it if money that is not washed somehow through the magic hands of the bureaucracy becomes impure to them in a very strange way it's it's money is elevated you know charitable money that goes directly to people is somehow tainted by i don't't know, God or self-interest. But if you wash it through the magic spirit and conscience of the government, then you've accomplished something. And you've also employed some people, too.

I think they fear here that the people employing, the people delivering the food would not be sufficiently unionized. So that's problematic. That there would be allergies, concerns that the government was not addressing, that that would be a problem. The one thing that they won't say, and by they I mean the general leftist defenders of every status interventionist program you can think of, they won't say is that there's any fraud and abuse when you give somebody an EBT card and say go out and get whatever you want.

I mean, so they won't admit the possibility that somebody's going out there when you give somebody an EBT card and say, go out and get whatever you want. I mean, so they won't admit the possibility that somebody's going out there to get chips and soda. So when you talk about obesity and food deserts, you say, okay, well, how about then we assist people in making better food choices and we overcome this supposed food desert by actually bringing the food to them. You've called their bluff, and they don't want it yes they don't want it they don't want it what they want is a guaranteed income where essentially all you have to do is respirate and you are entitled to x thousand dollars a year to do with as you see fit and to ask anything more of that would be contemptuous condescending and all the rest of this stuff right yes yes yes it is i i have to say poverty arguments about poverty i find maddening i'll go really fast here one because poverty today is not poverty as human beings have under have cell

phones and televisions it's just not poverty to the federal government on the one hand subsidizes corn throughout the center of the country and on the the other hand, we know that high-fructose corn sugar makes us fat. Three, we spend three times as much on welfare programs as it would cost to cure. Anyway, all right, enough. Enough, James. Back to you. Back to the same man. It is just interesting to find out that the one paradigm that everybody,

that all the yuppies have in all the big cities is that stuff comes to them in a box. And so this idea apparently only works when you're talking about yuppies in a big city. I know you see it coming. Everybody sees it coming. But I'm here to tell you that this being a podcast, of course it's going to have something in a box that's going to come to you. But what?

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for $20 to $5 off your first purchase. What's more, that's bomfell.com slash ricochet. And our thanks to Bomfell for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. Now we go to our first guest, Christina Hoff Summers, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former philosophy professor and the author of Who Stole Feminism? You can follow her on Twitter, which is fun because she'll says things that angers up the blood and riles folks and makes them come after her with all sorts of cruel, you almost want to say sexist and

lookist invective. Christine Summers, I've seen how they've attacked you in the last few days. How are you holding up? Oh, I'm fine. It was a bit of a cranky tweet. Let's tell everybody what the tweet was. Dear kids, I'm a baby boomer. We are getting old, but at least we had sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Seems like millennials have moral panics, workshops, and grievance circles.

Time to rebel, XX mom. What did they say? Because you're absolutely right. Well, I know. I mean, I think at the time I was writing it, I was just reading about this pile on against Barry Weiss at the New York Times by her colleagues. And a friend of mine had tweeted, I bet they were all millennials. And so I think I had in mind these hyper vigilant, safe space, trigger warning people, you know, on the college campus. But what I'm what I've done is angered all millennials. And so they're they're. But Christina Peter Robinson here,

you've done an act of charity. You've drawn fire away from Barry. As it happens, Barry was our guest on this podcast last week. So would you mind just giving a recap of what she tweeted and why the world fell on her first? Yes.

In a moment of enthusiasm, she reacted to the virtuoso performance of the American ice skater whose parents, I think, immigrated from Japan. But she quoted a line from, I guess it was Hamilton, immigrants, we make the world. We get the job done, I think, right? We get the job done. That's it, yeah. But she said they get the job done. And then people told her it was insensitive, and she was just trying to be nice.

Well, it didn't matter. She was accused of otherizing and every conceivable crime against, you know, of racism and elitism. And she was told to check her privilege. And then her colleagues at The New York Times had a, I don't know, some special set of emails that were leaked, possibly by these people from the New York Times, where they were just trashing her. And it sounded like a caricature of a college workshop on microaggressions. And they were saying how traumatized they were and how microaggressive she was. Anyway, that was... And so she tweeted something that was good-humored and pro-immigrant and was excoriated for insensitivity and all the crimes you can commit against political correctness.

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but the attack, can I just say, did anybody respond as if you were mean, you intended this humorously, whether it was anything of the nature of, well, okay, you were trying to be funny,

but there's just no humor. There was some clever reaction. And, um, I, Okay, you were trying to be funny, but there's just no humor on the other side. There was some clever reaction, and a lot of people agreed with me. I mean, the ratio is pretty good. Still far more likes and retweets than notes to me. Well, one of the reasons perhaps you were excoriated was you're talking about an era that it seems a lot of millennials have a difficult time coming to grips with

because they look back at the past as a time of great freedom and rebellion and all that, but at the same time, everything that was going on was wrong. I mean, the baby boomers may have had sex, but it was the wrong kind. It was non-consensual, cis-normative, and transphobic, and the rest of it. You know, they may have had drugs, but they didn't have the problem that kids have today with this, and rock and roll, of course, well, you know. So how do you think, actually, they do regard

this past? Because, I mean, I tell my daughter, even though you should always wear a seatbelt and don't smoke, when you see a 1970s movie of people driving down the highway having a Marlboro with no seatbelts on, you're looking at the freest people who ever existed on the planet. I can't help but be glad that I came of age after the sexual revolution, before the diseases came, and I was in college before all of that. And before, you know, all of this policing, we were just free. And, you know, we weren't perfect. But still, you could sort of, you know, I remember in college debating and staying up late at night where you didn't have the self-censorship that

kids have now. Now you can say, well, it's good that they self-center for being racist and so forth. Well, I would agree with that, but what they have to self-center now is just any opinion that could, you know, like as we saw with Barry Weiss, that just might offend someone because they're prone to be offended. Right. And what happens is that you have beliefs that people have rooted in common sense that they are afraid to say because to do so would simply bring the Slack channel of the New York Times down on their head for microaggressing and macroaggressing. So like in a totalitarian society, people say one thing and believe the other. But let's go back to a free time when we could say and believe anything we wanted.

In the 1970s when I was growing up, there were two modes of masculinity. There was the old cliché John Wayne, and there was the new emergent mode of Alan Alda who was sensitive and leftist and all the rest of it. But you still could talk about which mode you wanted to belong to. Today, have we gotten to the point where any sort of traditional masculinity is automatically assumed to be toxic? And what's the effect that that has on young men who are coming up today? Well, this is very serious because as any sociologist can tell you there is something called pathological masculinity

or sociopathic masculinity that's a young man who shows his maleness by preying on weaker people by being a bully by just being destructive and wreaking mayhem but that's a small percentage of males. The vast majority embody positive masculinity, normative masculinity, which is just the opposite. You protect vulnerable people. You don't bully them. You build and construct. It's a very positive force. And it's the majority. However, what's happened is people forget that distinction, and now all males are branded with this epithet of being toxic, toxic masculinity.

So it's very bad. And, you know, older men, guys can cope with it, but little boys, imagine growing up with that. But I think something else is going on on too, is there's a growing education gap among millennials, especially. They're the most educated, the most of that, more than any other generation. They're likely to have gone to college and to have bachelor's degrees by age 25. But the girls are far more likely. It's something, I think it's something like 46% of the girls and 36% of the boys. So there's an education gap. Now, these young women, the millennials, in college, in many of the courses, there's a very anti-male agenda.

And so I think that's also having an impact on the way that millennials are and the readiness to label all men as bad. I also get the sense sometimes is that there's a lot of guys who use that anti-male atmosphere, free-floating in the culture, as an excuse, perhaps, to check out, to not step up. I mean, if you want to go to the involuntary celibacy club and hang out with the guys who play video games, that's an easier life than actually having to conform to the old standards of what a man is expected to do. So I think it gives a lot of them an excuse to check out. Yeah, and it's also just very, very hard now. If you look at the data and see in the, maybe 20 or 30 years ago,

if you had a high school diploma and you worked hard, you could make it into the middle class. Now, you really need education beyond high school. That's the new passport to the American dream, as some researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education called it. So increasingly, young women are getting it, and there's a vast cohort of young men who don't have it, and they're not going to find a place in the information economy so i see it as a challenge for education i think we do a better job educating girls and young women

and um other countries england australia they're trying very hard to um meet these young men halfway and keep them in the educational system. We're not doing anything. If you actually said that it is time for government, society, culture to step up and make sure that more young men become trained collegiately in the information economy, this goes contrary to everything we're told, which is that men stand at the doors of the STEM institutions pushing women out because they're icky girls. But you're right.

I mean, they have to learn their place. But what if their place ends up being in Google and they discover that there is an institutional culture that seems to look at them with a certain amount of contempt? Let's talk about the infamous memo, Google's ideological echo chamber, that James Damore released. Well, and by the way, did you know that Damore is scheduled to speak at Portland State University on Saturday?

And apparently the Antifa is threatening with violence. And it's so absurd. Your listeners probably know, but James Damore is the Google employee who posted a quite reasonable list of reasons why there may be fewer women than men in tech. Maybe the tone was here and there. It could have been softer. But most of what he said, you would find a majority of experts on sex differences agreeing with. We know that there are, on average, it doesn't mean everyone, we're talking about statistical

probabilities, and it's just more probable you would have a young man looking for a job at Google than a young woman. For example, the vast majority of computer science majors are men. Christina, Peter here. Educators have work to do. What about parents? I know this is – we only have a moment or two together, and I know I'm opening a topic that is book-worthy.

I know that because you've written a book about it. But in brief, parents of sons, what can they do to help their little boys grow up to be proper men? thing is that most societies, you know, someone once said that every generation, there's an invasion of barbarians. They're called children. And we have to do all we can to civilize them. And it's more of a challenge to civilize males. And if they are ethically, morally neglected, young men have very unpleasant ways of making themselves noticed. So in the past, we had the idea of a gentleman. And we had a lot of, you know, boys mostly had fathers. They had, you know, maybe male teachers. And these things could be taught through athletics.

But a lot of, you know, fathers, teachers and these things could be taught through athletics. But a lot of, you know, fatherlessness is epidemic. Male teachers are disappearing, certainly in elementary schools and even high schools. And then, you know, at that very time, our schools and even our families sort of, and some families just didn't do the job of moral education. So on the other hand, I don't want to, it's not as if they are, overall, crime is down. And, you know, a lot of pathologies are down. The millennials are the least likely, you know, to be criminals. They're the least likely to be racist and sexist and homophobic.

You know, there are many good things that have happened. So I don't want to exaggerate. But what can't be exaggerated is the way we've neglected boys' education. So parents have to know that. They have to know that their daughter is more welcome in the school, it would work better for her. And it can be a very hostile environment for little boys. And parents have to pay attention.

Millennials may be the lowest in the crime rate because they're all cowards and weaklings. But there's a certain sort of a male aggression that can play out, for example, in video games. It's a great valve. And as we saw three, four years ago with Gamergate, there doesn't seem to be any sort of traditionally male space or predominantly male space, which the left eventually won't walk into and insist upon changing to its own values. Do you see in the future that there will be a time when men's spaces, places, occupations, if you will, where it will be all right for something to be men only or predominantly male in a way described and defined by the men themselves? Or is it inevitable that everything has to meet a feminist first, second or third wave test to be acceptable in society today. administrative, the entire administrative apparatus on most colleges, is captive to this very aggressive third wave intersectional feminism. And they don't really allow critics,

and I go on a lot of campuses to offer a different point of view. I'm a feminist, but that doesn't mean that I disparage males and come with paranoia about the capitalist patriarchy. But yet a lot of kids are being taught that in these classes. And now they've graduated. People say, oh, when they get to the workplace and they get out in the world, they'll have to change. No, they're getting out and they're trying to use the same intimidation tactics. I think that's what we saw at the New York Times, that you have these young women, mostly, although some very aggressive young men too, who believe these theories and who want to

police the world so it's in line with what they learned in microaggression 101. And they are out there doing it, and there's no diversity. If you challenge them, you are by definition a backlasher, part of the problem. So I think that until we solve the problem, and it's not just colleges.

I think some of these twisted theories are taught even in high school. I think you're right. I think they've been indoctrinated. There's no other word. Because they just haven't heard a different point of view. That's why I have this series of videos called The Factual Feminist on YouTube. And every few weeks I post a video correcting a feminist myth about the wage gap or about the rape culture, about male privilege.

And I examine the facts. And it turns out the situation is just far different from what many, many young people have learned in the classroom. Facts are offensive. And I'm waiting, actually, for punctuation itself to become a nanoaggression so that we can come up with all sort of nanoaggressions. Yes, punctuation, grammar, all of these things are constructs that are used to enforce privilege and the rest of it. But, well, let's just hope that the next speech you give,

Antifa doesn't show up, and that the next time... Davidson College, Davidson College on February 26th. I think they'll be next year, but you never know. You never do. I was at the plate when you showed up at the University of Minnesota with Milo. I was there when everyone stood up and tried to shout you guys down to prove that you were wrong about free speech. I mean, when Guy Benson, Guy Benson is being, is a tool of violence, then you've defined these things completely out of absolute ridiculousness. It's absolutely ridiculous. James Damore. Could there be a more gentle soul? And he's being targeted in this way at Portland State University. Right. Well, as crazy as it gets, it's only going to get crazier. But we need voices like yours, voices of reason.

And thank you for coming on the podcast today and talking. Hope to talk to you soon. And we'll, of course, follow you on Twitter. Follow me on Twitter, at CHSummers. I'll try to be nice for the next couple of days. Then who knows? Then dial it back up. Thanks.

Talk to you later. Bye-bye. Thank you. You know, the last time I saw her before the speech with Milo Y, and Milo's star seems to have slipped over the horizon, eh? But this summer's steam rolls on in her own way. The last time I saw her before that was on a ship when we were sitting talking about the things we were just discussing. And the one thing that I miss about that trip was the fact that there was no way to really get off the ship and wander around an island for two or three days and then get back on the ship.

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longtime journalist, author, commentator, and radio host, and now the newly minted host of the Daily Standard podcast available right here at Ricochet. You can follow Charlie at Twitter, at Sykes. Charlie, no, I'm sorry, at... Let me start that again. I'm so used to erls that I stuck a dot in there.

Three, two, one. And now we bring to the podcast Charlie Sykes, a longtime journalist, author, commentator, radio host, and now the newly minted host of the Daily Standard podcast available right here on Ricochet. You can follow Charlie at Twitter, at SykesCharlie. Charlie, welcome. Let's talk about the Trump presidency. Is it finally normal? No, it's not even close to normal. No, that's not to say that there aren't a lot of things

that conservatives will like in the policy realm, but the list of things they have to ignore, his character, his behavior is pretty extensive. So I would certainly not say that we are in the normalized category yet. Charlie, can you tell us, you're going to be hosting or ring mastering, or I'm not even sure what the verb is, Peter Robinson here, by the way, thanks for joining us, a suite of podcasts from the Weekly Standard, and they're going to be available right here on Ricochet. So before we go to Trump, who's a kind of permanent subject, tell our listeners about the podcast, the Weekly Standard suite of podcasts. Well, this is a work in progress. I sat down with Stephen Hayes, who's the editor in chief of the Weekly Standard. And he said, we want something.

Of course, I asked him the question, why on earth do we need another podcast? I mean, it's like another movie about dancing or something or another movie about a comic book character. He said, well, we want something that is smart, conservative, and non-tribal. And obviously, since we have this universe of intelligent, articulate, thoughtful

people out there, it seemed like I'm hoping that we'll be able to find a niche for people who want to hear that kind of intelligent, probably deeper conversation than you might get, say, on talk radio or cable television. Got it. Wonderful. And I should know this, I suppose. You still live in Wisconsin. You're doing this from Wisconsin. Are you moving to Washington or traveling back and forth? How will that work? No, I am broadcasting from the frozen tundra, even as we speak. This will be a remote broadcast. So the folks in the Weekly Standard will be in their studios in Washington, D.C., and I'm going to be right here in Mequon, Wisconsin. Got it. Excellent. All right. Let me ask you about the general mood in Wisconsin at the state level and then at the national level.

Fill us in because it is, in my judgment, it is a matter of permanent importance how your governor is doing at any given moment. Wisconsin is a complicated politically state, pretty evenly just a huge force to be reckoned with. Is the governor just filling out the rest of this, his second term? Is he continuing to make progress? Do the people of Wisconsin wish the fights would all go away? Or do they feel the state has moved, actually made progress, permanent progress of some kind in limiting unions, limiting the agenda of the left? Is anybody winning in Wisconsin and leaving Trump out of this? I'm just talking about Wisconsin politics. Well, if we could have this conversation in late November, I'd sound a lot smarter.

Ah, but that's all you have to commit yourself right now, pal. You know, you've laid out exactly what the dilemma is. I mean, keep in mind that Scott Walker has been elected governor three times, even though he's only served two terms. And obviously, he's he's very much a polarizing figure. And he still is. I mean, the Walker derangement syndrome is alive and wealthy. The situation here in Wisconsin is awfully interesting because, of course, this is a state that Donald Trump won to everybody's surprise. So there is a trend to the right here in Wisconsin. On the other hand, obviously, Democrats are highly motivated, highly, highly motivated. Also, the economy is going well uh the governor does not appear to be marking time i i think he's developed a rationale

for his you know a third term that the uh you know the budget problems he's not limited i see no no no he's entirely plausible that he'll run again. Oh, he is running again. Oh, he's announced that. I'm sorry. OK, I'm sorry. He is running again and it's going to be a tough race. This is going to be once again a battleground because you have an incumbent Democratic senator, Tammy Baldwin, on the ballot at the same time Scott Walker's on the ballot. Both of them as incumbents you would think would be favored, except that, you know, I'm trying to imagine who votes for Tammy Baldwin and for Scott Walker. We don't really split our ballots anymore.

Charlie, could you – there's a piece of Scott Walker's background that has always puzzled me. He first came to statewide attention as county executive if I have the title or city executive. You'll have to correct me on this. In Milwaukee, which is a very blue town. Isn't that correct? Extremely, and has gotten more so since then. This is actually – But the point is he – very early in his career, he figured out how to reach out to the other side. Is that right? He did, although I wouldn't say that that's something

that would characterize his governorship, although he's very clearly, now that he's running for the third term, moving to the center. Now, that was a very interesting story, and of course, I'm from Milwaukee. I was very good friends with Scott Walker and a big advocate of him when he ran for county executive and afterwards as pro-governor. He took advantage of a meltdown scandal where the liberal establishment incumbent was basically caught looting the county's pension system for his own personal benefit and one of his cronies. And Democrats in Milwaukee decided, yeah, we're really not going to do anything about this. We're kind of not going to kind of turn their back on the reform movement. And Scott Walker saw the opportunity, jumped in as a conservative Republican from the suburbs and really did something quite remarkable about a decade and a half ago, which is to be elected in a nonpartisan race in a very, very liberal Democratic county. Now, again, in politics, as you know, everything has changed rather dramatically. That's a very, very long time ago. And Wisconsin remains very, very polarized.

He won't win in Milwaukee County in this year's governor's race. So he'll lose Milwaukee and he'll lose Madison. Those are still four square against him. Is that right? All right. Now, now to Trump, Charlie,

if I may, here's, uh, I love the upper Midwest, but, and I get, but get to spend too little time there. And a friend of mine who's from North Dakota,

uh, in politics in North Dakota, I've mentioned this before on this podcast, so I'll be very brief, but just to set it up for you. And I said to him, wait a minute, North Dakota, people in North Dakota are nice people. That state is still dominated by medium sized towns and small farming communities. They go to church. They care about education. They care about civility. They want to, they raise their

children to be polite. Civility still matters. And yet North Dakota supported Donald Trump in a big way. What's going on? And my friend replied, my people in North Dakota do not approve of Donald Trump, but they want him. They want his agenda to succeed. Is something like that going on in Wisconsin or is there a more visceral dislike of the man in Wisconsin? And if so, why? What are the distinctions here, Charlie? No, I think that that would be very similar because you remember that Donald Trump was not popular here at all during the primaries. In fact, this was one of his big defeats where Wisconsin Republicans disliked Donald Trump so much that they voted for Ted Cruz in the Wisconsin primary. And by the way, Ted Cruz is very much not a good fit for Wisconsin. But I do think that Republicans here were very savvy and very engaged, you know, made that distinction. And they're trying to make know, support the policies and now feel the need to carry water for Donald Trump personally to make excuses for his character and his and his behavior. There is a sort of cult of personality aspect to American conservative politics these days. But in Wisconsin, I would I would agree with your friend from North Dakota that I think there's a distinction between what the policies are and the man himself.

Got it. Okay, so call it. How do you see things shaping up in November? Republicans have a majority of 24 in the House of Representatives. That's actually not that big a majority. And if I have the number right, I think – no, no. Excuse me. The Democrats need to win to pick up 24 seats.

Sorry. Different statistic. Democrats need to pick up 24 seats to take control of the House of Representatives. What do you think? Well, of course, I was dead on in my predictions for 2016. No, I wasn't. And therefore, we'll be permanently modest about all of this. Only a man from Wisconsin would be so humble.

Charlie, you're in politics. Come on. It was a humbling experience. Up until about two weeks ago, I thought that the Republicans were going to get a shellacking, that you just had this huge sense of the of the blue wave coming you're watching the the elections around the country not just in alabama and virginia but in some of these local elections where what you're seeing is a much much more engaged liberal liberal brace little base but i'm actually starting at least for the moment and i'm i reserve the right to you know revise my comments a little later the democrats haven't have a really almost bottomless ability to screw things up.

I don't think that they fully understand how badly they're losing the messaging war on the tax cuts. I think they thought the tax cuts were going to be toxic. They told people it was the end of Western civilization as we knew it, that everybody was going to get a tax increase. And that is so

far out of line with the experience that people are seeing in their paychecks right now that I do think that these polls that are showing a narrowing gap probably do reflect the fact that voters are looking around going, OK, Donald Trump may be tweeting these erratic, bizarre things. Maybe he is paying off porn stars. But you know what? My 401k, at least this week, is looking okay. The economy is looking okay. And this tax cut, everything I see about it seems to be positive. So this may not be the Democrats' fantasy election. On the other hand, you also have history. You notice I did the other

hand thing there because I'm, you know, you know, you know, off your elections are notoriously awful for the party in power. And 24 seats is not a huge margin. So I think it's much more likely that Republicans will lose the House than lose the Senate. The map is just so dramatically tilted in their favor in the Senate. So I think we're probably looking at another two years of vicious partisan gridlock. Charlie, I now remand you into the custody of your fellow upper Midwesterner, James Lilacs. Hi, Charlie. I'm here in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which, as you know, Minnesota is going through its similar convulsions. Outstate, there was much more interest in Trump than people ever thought.

And it caught a lot of people in the press absolutely flat footed. They couldn't believe that these people with a tradition of progressive government, the, you know, the DFLers would actually lean towards Trump. They misjudged the culture. They misjudged the mood. And I think they will again. Question is, is that the when I go past the television sets, the big screens on display in our newspaper office, what you have is this 24-7 hair on fire attitude from people on the left who believe that this is an absolutely apocalyptic moment in American politics and everything is absolutely horrible. And that doesn't really seem to be working for them though when it comes to persuading the persuadable and even people like

myself and people like i presume you who were never trumpers and still remain deeply deeply uh troubled by the guy aren't moved i'm not moved by the left's imprecations and hand-waving. Are you, and what exactly is the future of principled criticism of Trump coming from the right that doesn't play exactly into the hands of the screaming left? You know, it's interesting you mentioned that because right before we came on, I was reading a column in USA Today by a lefty critic of Donald Trump that was so over the top that I thought this is going to boomerang. This is actually not helpful if you – in fact, if your hair is always on fire, you're always hitting the nuclear button. On the other hand, I have to tell you that I am really concerned, not so much about what Donald Trump is doing, but what he's doing to conservatives and watching the way the conservative movement has been transformed. You know, when you ask me that question

about whether the presidency is becoming normal, look, conservatives have to ignore a lot of things right now. I mean, yeah, we got Gorsuch, got the tax cuts, but you know, there's this issue of the character, bullying the name calling you know the line remember you we're all old enough to remember when conservatives and republicans said you know character counts i mean really right now the mantra of of the republican party is that character doesn't count um you know and including people who supported roy mo, you know, the the the the behavior, the values of the man are not just matters of personality and style. And I think that to the extent that that conservatives are basically willing to say, OK, you know what?

We may we may not we have you know, we may find this distasteful, but we're going to go to the mat to defend this. I think that even after he leaves the scene, that's going to leave a mark. And I am really concerned about that. But Charlie, who's going to the mat to defend bad behavior? I just don notion, which is that we don't actually defend the absolutely indefensible behavior and character of the man at the top of our ticket. But what we're going to do is we'll change the – we'll either change the subject, we'll engage in whataboutism, or we will ignore it, which means we accept it. And this behavior, which would have been unacceptable in any other era like five minutes ago – show me somebody, a parent right now, who would say to their kids, hey, you know what? You should want to be when you grow up. You should be like Donald Trump.

You should treat people like Donald Trump. Yeah, yeah. You and I will have to – we have to have you back on soon so that you and I can arm wrestle over this one. I see what you're saying, but I really disagree that he's having much of an effect on the Republican Party. But, James – I'm sorry. I butted in. I give you back to James. Well, when you look to the people who have become surprising advocates of Donald Trump, you can look to the evangelical community, can't you? There's a new book out about Trump's faith that makes a startling array of claims about

Trump's faith, which it seems to me one thing to say we're going to use this imperfect vessel to have good and godly things done in the world. It's another to contort and snap your own spine in several places bending over to pretend something isn't when it obviously isn't i mean the idea that donald trump is a a godly man imbued with new faith seems to me to be preposterous and yes at the end at the end of it when you have when you have people who have made their entire political and social career out of bringing America from its state to a more moral state, to throw in their lot so greatly reminds you that it seems as if there's no group, no person who eventually is not corrupted in some way by their association with this fellow. Well, I agree completely. And while the end result is maybe all the... I don't. Go ahead.

I know. But the end result, and I understand that I'm not doing that. I get it. The end result is that you have a better economic, regulatory, military, diplomatic situation than you would have had with Hillary. I get it. But the cost is what we keep coming back to. And so here's my question.

Is this maybe a one-off in that everything that the people on the right and the GOP have said they will put up with or agree or assent or nod along to when it comes to Donald Trump only extends to the condition and situation of having Donald Trump for president. But afterwards, the morals, the character, the issues, they come back. After Trump, they're important. Yes, but who will take them seriously? I mean, the next time the Republicans claim that they are fiscal conservatives who are really deeply concerned about adding to the national debt or the character matters, what

will their credibility be when they say to women and minorities and young people, hey, that wasn't us. We had nothing to do with that. Well, of course they did. They were there. And by the way, I'm really glad you brought up this book, because this goes to exactly the point that we were taught I was trying to make before about the people who, in fact, do feel the need to defend the indefensible.

I mean, this book, it goes to the book. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Well, Eric Erickson has an absolutely brilliant, just devastating review in Weekly Standing. This is this is the Brody book that talks about that, that really the the depth of the faith of Donald Trump. OK, look, fine. You may like his Supreme Court. But do do not, you know, pull my leg that he is really looking for God when he's looking at the latest Stormy Daniels.

I mean come on. Really? And I think that evangelical Christians will be one of the subsets that will be badly, badly damaged by all this. When Donald Trump – And damaged in what way charlie and damage to them uh their credibility their um their moral authority their um their intellectual integrity to be able to say that look you know we actually we have something to say about virtue and about role models um and when you say when you say Republicans who supported Roy Moore, no Republican of any note supported supported Roy Moore, with the exception of Steve Bannon and the president of the United States obviously supported Roy Moore reluctantly when he went down to and made it very clear that he was supporting Roy Moore because of – he wanted the seat.

And the moment Roy Moore lost, Donald Trump said, see what a lousy candidate he was. The American people are – I just don't see this deep corruption. It is – Donald Trump is the president. It happens to be the case that to get legislation moved, you need him to sign it. These people are professional politicians. They're trying to do the best they can in a difficult moment and that means putting up with Donald Trump. And I don't see very many republicans of any standing or stature at all trying to normalize him or to defend his character. That is not to say that people aren't saying that Robert Mueller is doing some things that

are questionable. That's a matter of enforcing constitutional respect for the Constitution and due limits on special counsels. That is not to say that the notion that Devin Nunes' memo is the defense of Donald Trump, for example, is ridiculous. I just don't see this. Go ahead. I want to go back to no Republican of note.

Okay, I want to go back to this. The President of the United States, the Republican National Committee itself. And the Republican National Committee cut off. Be fair about this. Get the record straight, Charlie. The Republican National Committee cut off funding. The Republican National Committee cut off funding to judge roy moore right and then they restored it no i don't think that's right but if you're right about that you may know the facts better than i i grant you that but see this is a transactional view of politics i mean this this is what what

republicans have now said okay you know guess all these things. And we're not going to defend politics. But we talk about it. But this is the the Faustian bargain is not that bad things. It's not a Faustian bargain. Well, OK, this is what my argument is. Do you think Paul Ryan wanted Donald Trump to be president? Do you think I wanted Donald Trump to be president? I think you're making nominees for the republican nomination donald trump was my 17th choice clearly paul ryan was uncomfortable with this they are politicians who've been elected by their own people to do the best they can and they're and overwhelmingly in my judgment the people office holders in the house and senate your governor republican office holders at every level are doing a pretty impressive job. Honestly, honestly, seriously, you're watching this and you're saying this is the best they can do. This is this is the budget that you wanted. This is, in fact, the kind of this is the kind of at the better budget. I think the votes exist to get a better budget. I want to go back to the Faustian bargain. Now, I know Paul Ryan extremely well.

We are very, very good friends. I understand the calculation he made. And, of course, he made the calculation that I'm going to look the other way about the racism, the insults, the bullying, the attacks on the rule, all of the things that Donald Trump – because we have to get this legislation signed. We have to do what we have to do. So it was based on these policy things. And, of course, to a certain extent, we know what the judge is. We know what the tax cut is. They have succeeded.

But again, but again. To a certain extent, it's a remarkable set of accomplishments for one here. Well, if you've lowered the bar to this level, I probably interviewed Paul Ryan a hundred times between radio shows, television shows, and various public events where he talked about the absolute necessity of controlling and dealing with a national debt, the impending debt crisis that this country is facing. And I will tell you that I believe that. I thought there was a real urgency to that. You think about the rhetoric of the Republican Party, of conservatives, of people like Paul Ryan, of people like me, about the the danger, the national security danger posed by a crushing debt and a possible debt crisis.

We just now saw the president of the United States present a budget that doesn't even pretend to lower the national deficit, that will add $7 trillion to the national debt, that will raise the national debt to $27 trillion within eight years. Within the last seven or eight weeks, the Republicans in Congress and the president have added at least two trillion dollars to the national debt. And I guess at some point you step back and you go, all right, really? And I get the issue of military spending. This is the best we can do. we surrendered all of these things we we bowed the knee to donald trump we basically decided that the orange god king is is the leader of our movement charlie in return for this now you're going on if i may oh good great bowing the knee to the what did you call him the orange god king that's that's ridiculous over i mean it's fine i find fine finding and use florid language it's fine it's entertaining but it's

ridiculous nobody's bowing the knee to donald trump brief point and then i'll fall then i will then i will literally tugging the four lock a brief point and then i will literally mute myself because you do i i do want to be polite and give you the final word and the brief point, and then I will literally mute myself because I do want to be polite and give you the final word. And the brief point runs as follows. History is instructive here. Ronald Reagan ran up deficits, and then we won the Cold War. Excuse me. The Cold War is a separate matter.

Ronald Reagan ran up deficits but achieved 25 years of economic growth, which permitted in subsequent administrations, Bill Clinton and then George W. Bush. In George W. Bush's first year and a half, there was actually a federal surplus. The imperative, even as the immediate spending imperative, is the military, and that's been dealt with. The only way to deal with a federal deficit is by getting the economy growing. And if you – and it strikes me you could argue this, that or the other that they're making a mistake or that – but it's a reasonable argument. Larry Kudlow, our guest last week, made the argument.

And Larry knows what he's talking about. You may disagree with him but he has deep knowledge of economics. Larry made the argument that the first thing the administration and Congress has to do is elicit economic growth. You can't begin – as a political matter, you can't begin to address the deficit and the federal debt unless you get healthy economic growth again. That strikes me as a completely reasonable argument. You may disagree with it, but it's reasonable and does not involve bowing the knee to the orange-haired god or whatever. Orange god.

Orange god. Can you put it better than I did? Charlie, I am literally muting myself to give you the last word. Well, I actually agree on this issue of economic growth. And, you know, this is one of the reasons why I think that the Reagan years were so successful. I actually do think that Donald Trump represents, in many, many ways, a rejection and repudiation of many of the things that Ronald Reagan stood for. But my response to all of that would be that, yes, Ronald Reagan did

add to the deficit in order to win the Cold War. Also, the economy in the 1980s was very different than the economy today. Plus, the size of the national debt was different in the 1980s was very different than the economy today, plus the size of the national debt was different in the 1980s than it is right now. And I guess at some point you have to say, are we going to grow the economy? Well, let me just step back. Most economists that I have read, both on the right and the left, question whether or not the tax cuts alone will pay for themselves because of economic growth. I actually think it's plausible that the tax cuts will pay for themselves through economic growth. However, then when you add all of the spending on top, including the trillion-dollar-a-year deficits that we're looking at, you've already spent the revenue from the economic growth. So does every single decade have the same response? I am totally in favor of growing

the economy. And I think that, by the way, this is why Democrats may be on the verge of screwing this up, because I don't see anything plausible from them. But what are their ideas to improve opportunity to grow the economy? So this would be something would be a tremendous success. On the other hand, if it does lead to a national debt crisis, if in fact we have another recession, I think we're going to have a problem. But also I think we need to acknowledge that fiscal conservatism is pretty much dead it is pretty much over and we ought to at least be intellectually honest enough to acknowledge that this party um which claimed to be the party of fiscal conservatism has taken a very very different now and we may defend it and say that it's a good thing that what we're doing but let's acknowledge that that many of the things that we said over the last 10 years

now turn out to be the opposite of what what Republicans are doing in power. It won't be long before we're told that an increase in the gas tax is actually a wonderful thing and completely in line with conservative values. That'll be fun. And I expect that Charlie right now, me sitting here in Minneapolis, I'm looking west. I'm seeing puffs of smoke. Either they elected a new pope or that actually is the steam from your collar. So we're happy you came on board, and we can't wait to hear your podcast carried here on Ricochet, the Daily Standard. And I assume this means that you're associated with the Weekly Standard magazine, right? Yes, I'm going to be a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard and looking forward to writing for them. All right, stay away from Sonny Bunch.

He knows nothing about anything and has the worst opinions of anybody on the Internet. I have been told this. I know, it's just a thing. But thanks for stopping by, and we'll look forward to the comments that will no doubt accrue when your podcast is revealed. Thanks, Charlie. All right, good talking with you. Regards to the Badger State.

That was interesting. And you learned something, right? I mean, let's just call this podcast between the first and second segments the Sex and Violence Podcast because essentially it's how it's broken down. But you can't say that you didn't learn something, and you can't say that isn't why you listen to the podcast, right? It's because one of the greatest enjoyments in life is learning. And that's why, yeah, all together now, that's why you're going to love the Great Courses Plus. Not only can you learn about any topic that interests you,

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and giving us those five-star reviews. That helps an awful lot, too. On behalf of Peter, I'm James Lilacs, and this is Ricochet, and we'll see you next week. Why can't we be friends? Why can't we be friends? Why can't we be friends? Why can't we be friends? Why can't we be friends?

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I call you but you could not look around Why can't we be friends? Why can't we be friends? Why can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I pay my money to the welfare line. I see you standing in it every time. I can't believe it.

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