The Ricochet Podcast - Throwback Thursday

Episode Date: June 23, 2016

There’s a sit-in in the House, and the Emperor has no money. Seems like old times, except for the fact that we invited Twitter-famous Sonny Bunch to sit in for the traveling Peter Robinson. In addition to the fore-mentioned topics, in this completely Member Feed inspired show, the guys cover Gaius’ post A Thought Experiment: Inspired by Sen. Rubio, Robert Zubrin’s Campaign Launched to Free the... Source

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Main market excluding specials and place bets. Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie. Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. North and South American. All the ships at sea, let's go to press. Hello. And what has this body done?

Mr. Speaker, nothing. Not one thing. What people love about you is you speak your mind and you don't use a politician's filter. However, that is not without its downsides. What Boehner is angry with is the American people holding him accountable. If I become president, oh, do they have problems. They're going to have such problems. I don't know why that's funny. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long. I'm James Lylex, and today, sitting in for Peter,

Sonny Bunch, the worst man and the best on the Internet. Let's have ourselves a podcast. It's the Ricochet Podcast, indeed, and it's number 309 if you're making hash marks on the wall of your cell. We're brought to you by SaneBox. Is your email box out of control? Of course it is, because it's an email box. Get it back in control with SaneBox. And we're brought to you by The Great Courses Plus. To start your free trial today, you can sign up at thegreatcoursesplus.com slash ricochet and we'll tell you a little bit more about that later. And we're brought to you by audible.com.

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You can join today and get all kinds of stuff free. And here is the man who just loves to give away free stuff, to hand out goodies without consequence. Yeah. I thought there was no such thing as a free podcast, but, Rob, you're here to tell me different. There is a free podcast. This podcast is free. Yes, it is free. And if you want to live in that kind of world

where you get free stuff and you don't have any skin in the game, as we say, then there's a bunch of Democratic congressmen sitting on the floor of the House that you might want to join. Listen, if you're a member of Ricochet, we're thrilled and honored and privileged to have you along with

us as members of this great organization. If you are not a member, we would like to ask you to join respectfully but urgently. It's important. Lots of good stuff happening this summer, important stuff, lots of stuff to talk about, lots of stuff to be civil about despite all outward indications from the culture. Join us. Go to ricochet.com slash join. You get a free month. Absolutely zero risk to you.

So do it. We really do need you. You get a whole lot of stuff. Sign up for the Daily Shot too because you get that every day. I don't know what else to say. I'm bad at this, James. I'm clearly bad at it

because we have not yet hit our target member number. We're closed. We're not there yet. So if you're sitting around thinking, they don't need me, we do need you, we need to hit our target by the end of the summer or other things will have house and slap you and say why don't you give us more money that's right as somebody said once in a comment um they're willing they signed up just because um of your pitches in order to make them stop yeah you know that's that yeah so perhaps if you could do them in a helium voice or something or find some vocal fry to make them you know almost unbearable people will just be throwing money in order to... Any other pitches. Anyway, Peter Robinson usually comes in at this point, but since we're having

this rotation of the elites around Paris this summer, I guess. First it was Rob, now it's Peter, swanning along the Champs-Élysées. We have sitting in for Peter Sonny Bunch, either the worst man on the internet, the scourge of decency, or the hero that America needs. Welcome, Sonny. Tell us why you're

here that's a that's a false choice i can be both uh i i i'm i'm thrilled to be here i'm very excited uh hope uh hope uh don't let down all your fabulous members uh don't drive away any subscribers anyway oh that's my job that's my job hey sonny so i can ask you do you are you sitting right now at a giant computer also with tweet deck open because every time i click on my uh twitter app on the phone which is how i interact with that device and that service you're always there yes uh i have tweet deck closed because i want to give this my full attention and if i have tweet deck openck open, I'll be tempted to offer my snarky, terrible thoughts. But yes, I do basically sit around editing the awful copy that my writers send me at the Free Beacon and tweeting. And it's –

Split your day for me. What is it? 50-50? 50 Twitter, 50 edit? Because you remember, Free Beacon's not printed. It's not like you have to hit a certain number of pages or words, right? So it's not that hard to edit an online mag, or am I wrong? No, it's actually not that hard at all.

And I'm blessed with a team of good editors who handle a lot of the copy. When we first started the Free Beacon, I was basically the only editor. I was doing all of the first reads. That was hard. That was a lot of work. Now we have a lot of good, talented folks on board to kind of split the load. I probably edit four or five stories a day. And because I am the most senior editor here, I have the easiest writers. I have given myself the people who require the least amount of effort. So basically, you go home at the end of the day, and you say to yourself, I tweeted really good today. I do sometimes do that. And then my wife rolls her eyes and tells me I need to be on Twitter less. So she's not wrong. I was hoping there's somebody in your life saying that, but that's good. She's not wrong.

I do tweet too much, and I have tried without any success to make a conscious effort to be more in the moment in the real world instead of the digital world. I hear you. I hear you. What's that guy going for? I just like to know. All right. Well, in the real world, we have right now something that sums up our real world, and that is highly symbolic, nonsensical political actions like having a sit-in. A sit-in, as Charles C.W. Cook put it, in a place where you are legally entitled to be, which is like having a sit-in in your own living room or to protest something a little debate on the member chat though however as to uh whether or not uh it's effective whether or not ryan should have shut off the lights and cleared the room and is is this tepid indecisive fettuccine spine leadership from ryan that he's letting this happen or is it better just to let it happen and let the country see that

essentially we've got theatrical politics that add up to nothing. Well, it does seem like every summer there is something like this, some kind of crazy theatrical dramatic – highly dramatic event. The problem here is that I think the sit-in is happening right at the time when you have a national campaign gearing up. You have the Boston verdicts today, an hour ago. You've got two really interesting Baltimore verdicts. Two very interesting Supreme Court rulings today. When you're going to sit in, especially if you're going to sit in your own office, you should probably pick a... you should be luckier, I guess, and pick a time when you really can do it and not quite make the stir you're making.

Also, I'm not really sure what they're in favor of. What exactly are they in favor of? Are they in favor of that Cornyn bill, the Cornyn-Grassley bill that was a Republican initiative in the Senate? It's not entirely clear. Are they in favor of secret lists, the idea that government should have a secret list and should be able to act on those lists, to abridge your certain constitutional rights based on those lists? This is weird. It's kind of a weird – I'm working on this theory that there's the conservation of freak-out emotion and that a big event needs another big event of freak-out emotion to sort of counterbalance it. So unless you have that, until you have that, it doesn't really work. So everyone needs to act dramatically in DC because they feel like this big thing happened in Orlando, which was of course a very big thing. But they need to act in some equally – not equally histrionic, but histrionic way that sort of matches the sound and the fury.

The same number of hours and days of news time need to be taken up. I'm not quite sure that theory works, but I'm working on it. Do you think that they are aware that they're actually sitting in to remove a civil right as opposed to their predecessors in the 60s who did these things to attain a civil right? No, I you know, it's this is very much an emotional response to, you know, a tragic situation. Sure. But it is it's a very emotional response. You know, we have to do something. We have to do we have to take some action. And nobody has, as far as I can tell, amongst the Democrats really kind of wrestled with the fact that even the ACLU was like, guys, this is a bad bill. This is a bill that is, you know, would essentially put

Americans on secret lists, from which they will have an extremely difficult time extricating themselves and would, you know, possibly just end up back on the list anyway, even if they managed to get off it, to, again, take away liberties spelled out in the Bill of Rights. Like, we're not even talking about, you know, lame later amendments about direct election of senators or whatever. We're talking about, you know, the fundamental kind of core principles of the document. I have to say, I don't really have a problem with the way that Paul Ryan has handled this situation. I mean, like, you know, sending in the sergeant at arms to, like, march people out of the house would be, I would say, bad optics to have John Lewis, you know, kind of frog marched out of out of the house. That leads to a second round of stories that, you know, talk about civil rights pioneer brutalized by Republican, you know, heartlessless monsters it's all over again right

right right i think the proper response is you know ted representative ted deutsch uh very very you know angrily tweeted out that some gop uh member had said to him you know have fun with your little protest we're gonna go drink scotch and smoke cigars. And he was outraged by this. But that's the right response. The right response is to end business, put the house in recess, and go enjoy your life while they have their little hissy fit that nobody can see unless you're on Facebook Live or Periscope. Like, it's the wrong response, I think, is cracking down and sending everybody out and sending in the cops with tear gas.

The right response is just being like, all right, guys, do your do your thing. We're going to go home and hang out with our family and friends. Yeah, exactly. So independence day, we're going to be celebrating that independent of tyrants. Yeah. So I think that would probably work. James, you don't you don't you don't buy it. I think that would probably work. James, you don't buy it? I think this is a wonderful

idea. It's the sawed-off, swampy line of argument here. There's something that Tim Blair brought to our attention years ago. There was some terrorist attack somewhere, which was beaten off when the people in the pub, I think, just used their fists and knives and whatever to disable the person who'd been

screaming the usual slogans and i think sawed off swampy was one of the things they yelled at somebody who wanted a change a fundamental british way of life which in this case was getting hammered on a couple of pints at two o'clock one o'clock in the afternoon uh so no let them go there is there is eternal nostalgia for the wonderful old bad old days of the 60s when there was actually something to protest and here um they're just resurrecting the general tenor and framework of it and and convincing themselves that actually this is an this is an image of of equal importance it is interesting though i mean it does i like the i like the fact that the as he as sonny mentioned the aclu and gawker gawker for heaven's sakes the most despicable news organization on the planet

has said this is a really bad idea. Now, the ACLU doesn't like it because it is a prohibition, a diminution of a civil right. Gawker doesn't like it because the people on the list are more likely to be of a protected class. But you need to just scream loud and long, the government wants a secret list of mostly Muslims whos who don't deserve constitutional protections just everybody i want to see a show of hands the beautiful thing about what we're going through in this nation right now is at least it is clarifying who believes in the constitution and who doesn't it just seems strange doesn't it i mean when you put it that way it feels like donald trump should be in this in the well of the u.s house of course he supports this bill doesn't he support yeah he well that was

a while ago i did that may flip two or three times between now and then you know the next time it's true it seems interesting though i mean it i mean i i here's the only thing i i will grant that sort of general uh controversy it it does seem to bring up this strange no-fly list and what it's for and why flying is something you're not allowed to do, although you go through metal detectors presumably and full scrutiny of the TSA. But other things you can do. I mean what I really want to know is who's on that no-fly list and how do you get from the no – I don't mean how do you get off the no-fly list. I mean how do you go from the no-fly list to the no in the country list or your in prison list or the Guantanamo list? Because I don't really understand this middle – it seems to be all these sort of middle areas where no-fly list and the FBI comes to interview you and all that stuff. We've seen that as a catastrophic failure, as we saw in Orlando.

They talked to that guy three times. So what exactly is a no-fly list supposed to do? Well, keep you from flying, I guess. Keep you from flying, right? I mean, that's not it, but... Yeah. No, what I want is a list of other kind of civil liberties that we can take away if we put people on this list, right? Like, you know, let's just run can take away if we put people on this list right like you know let's just run down the amendments if if you're on this list should the government be able to shut down your twitter feed uh you know if you're on this i mean shut down my twitter feed certainly but yeah no uh you know if you're on this list should the the government be able to

quarter troops in your home i mean no no no no that that that tips our hand if the government be able to quarter troops in your home. I mean, you're a threat. No, no, that tips our hand. At LiveScoreBet, we love Cheltenham just as much as we love football. The excitement, the roar, and the chance to reward you. That's why every day of the festival, we're giving new members money back as a free sports bet up to €10 if your horse loses on a selected race that's how we celebrate the biggest week in racing cheltenham with live score bet this is total betting sign up by 2 p.m 14th of march bet within 48 hours of race main market excluding specials and place bets terms apply bet responsibly 18 plus gambling care.e

all of a sudden you know a guy in a colonial military uniform shows up and says, I'm taking the spare room, that tips our hand, that lets them know we're on to them. Right. No, but I look, I think we need we need to let these people know that we're watching them. Right. We need we need to let them know that we right to bear arms is an actual right, that this is an invention by a corrupt Supreme Court that the Republicans won't let them fix. And, you know, it's it's it's all it's all very annoying and sad but kind of predictable. What I enjoyed though is I watched – I think maybe it's even on Twitter. Someone was posting Paul Ryan, Speaker Paul Ryan. He's in the pocket of the NRA. They gave him $32,000 last year. Now, that's a lot of money but you don't – you can't buy the Speaker of the House for $32,000.

I mean I think Jim Wright and even Newt Gingrich have taught us that. You get a couple of zeros and come back to me. But $32,000 is not going to buy squat in DC. But the idea was just this – of course they're doing the bidding of the NRA as if there are no underlying issues here that are useful. homeland protecting administrators and organizations on what exactly they're doing, who they've arrested, not the names, where the trouble spots are. I'd like to know more. I feel like I don't know enough, and I'm a citizen, and I want to know more. I mean I'm not as worried about airplanes as I am about public spaces. Soft targets, malls. Exactly. Well, it's not just a no-fly list. There's other lists. There's not one big master list.

You have to know there's a variety of terror lists, all of which – most of which have to do with, shall I say, people who are bracket omitted, end bracket, the things that we can't speak of. And you're absolutely right too about them believing that the Second Amendment is this thing that somehow the evil Supreme Court has perverted. That's what I love about them, is that the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, they don't mean what they say. These are things that we can diminish. But rights that are actually not in the Constitution at all are bedrock rights, being privacy, the right to your own identity, and this sort of thing. When I have these conversations with people, it's frustrating because you never get back to the first principle that you're discussing. You always get back to, well, what do you want to do about people shooting other people? And why do you hate people who want to be their identity?

The left is generally really bad at arguing. They get emotional. And it's frustrating to anybody who knows how conversation actually ought to work and if you'd like to know how conversation should work the great courses plus is here for you again i was about to respond you can't because i'm in the middle of a spot can we just put a bookmark here because i do want to say something i know i know many of you folks have already signed up for the great video winning service that we provided here because you've heard it on the ricochet and think, hmm, must be good. Well, it is. You now will have unlimited access to over 7,000 fascinating video lectures taught by award-winning professors. But if you haven't

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thegreatcoursesplus.com slash ricochet. Removing the bookmark. Rob Long, you were saying? Now I forgot what I was gonna say you know what i think the the the moral of this is just that i should just continually interrupt when i interrupt you i should just go for it because otherwise we lose what i'm sure was a brilliant insight but i got kind of kind of got taken away by the um it had to do how we never talk about the original we never get back to the principle of the Constitution, but we're talking about people who roll their eyes at such things because they want – Oh, I think I was going to say this.

Oh, now I remember. I was going to say this about that, which is that the left may be bad at debating, but they're pretty good at winning arguments because – and they've won a bunch. No, they're good at ending arguments they win that they win them because they end them because they completely delegitimize the other side you can't speak your side of the argument anymore because they've defined you as outside of the veil of normal human civilization i think it's part of the sort of conservative a little bit ocd kind of what is the freudian, anal retentive quality that a lot of conservatives have, which is like, all right, we've had a debate.

I've won. Case closed. So we have had a series of, I mean, just to switch topics for a minute, of civil rights, I mean, affirmative action decisions by Supreme Courts starting in the late 70s with the Bakke decision, which is about a bolt law school at Cal, Berkeley. And then we had eight years of Reagan and we had another series of affirmative action curbs and then another series of affirmative action curbs. And we kind of feel like we did that. And yet it's – the problem with the left is that it – or the progressive movement in general is that it tends to flank you and fill in gaps where you weren't even aware there were gaps.

And we sort of I think as sort of on the right, center right anyway, tend to sort of, OK, we did that. Put that aside. We put that – we've settled the argument about big government. The era of big government is over. We got a Democrat president to say that. I think we could put paid to that ridiculous cliche. And then all of a sudden this guy comes and says, no, no, no, no, no. I'm going to make it really big. It's going to be really big. And we kind of forget, like, oh, we don't win. We never won that argument.

We are engaged in a continual struggle and they understand it and we kind of don't because they're basically at heart Marxists and Marx believe in a continual struggle. Although there's some paradise at the end when the workers naturally become in charge. But they sort of see the world as a continual struggle in which everything's a civil rights fight and we see the world as a series of unique debates that we win and then we move on to other debates well let me ask sunny there's been this new affirmative action ruling from the supreme court which you probably uh don't agree with why don't you want black people in college tell me right well no that's that's a good way to kind of frame how these arguments get shut down like it's it's uh it's impossible to um counteract that kind of emotional appeal uh in any way that doesn't make you look like a bigot and like i you know um so you're you're kind of kind of stuck with the old uh when did you stop beating your wife routine.

It's hard. It's hard to argue. The answer, obviously, is I don't want black people to go to college. Right. And if your wife does, you give her a slap. Right. And if she's not a white wife,

you're a cuck-servative or just a cuck. I'm reading today from the Washington Post, Edward Blum was the president of the Project Unf Fair Representation, which supports the woman who brought this case, said the following. As long as universities like the University of Texas continue to treat applicants differently

by race and ethnicity, the social fabric that holds us together as a nation will be weakened. Now, today, that's the wrong thing to say. Fifty years ago, that was the statement of highest principles that's what i find fascinating and rob you're right we thought that we won that argument but no on it goes and on it goes until of course you have to look at people through the prism of their race

and ethnicity and this course this this of course is a a result of you know 20 years of talking about privilege in colleges right this is the concept of privilege that you can't look at something like college admission in a race-blind way has fundamentally shifted the grounds of the debate. Everything is privilege. Right. We have a debate going on now. There's a 40-story office or apartment tower that's going to be built in a nice part of town, but the part of town borders a part of town that is not so nice and is awaiting gentrification, which, of course, all urbanists want, even though the definition of it is to literally drive out the people who used to live there in the newspaper as an example of white privilege. The existence of an apartment building with a certain amount of market rents itself is automatically declared white privilege.

I've had that argument with people. I love that even the phrase of it, it drives people out. How does it drive you out? People that they sell their – I live in Los Angeles and Venice. It's been a slow-motion movement here where a very, very rich people have come into a – what was a working-class, diverse working-class neighborhood and have created this real estate boom. And a lot of my hippie neighbors who are basically sitting in houses that they paid $20,000 for, which are now worth upwards of $3 million, are sort of muttering about, I'm getting shoved out of my neighborhood. I'm getting squeezed out. It's like squeezed out.

You are about to make a 100x return on your investment. No, 1,000x, right? Almost. Math is hard's that's not getting squeezed out well for rent for renters i mean if you have a neighborhood that is primarily residential with rental units and somebody comes along and says oh look at this this would be charming we can put the artisanal coffee store there we can put the artisanal toast store there um we can have a little bar where the seats are old tractor seats. Oh, that sounds fantastic.

It'll be great, and we'll get a bunch of guys who wear hats with short brims and black glasses and have neckbeards. You're reading directly from my dream journal, James. Well, I've been sneaking in at night and just photocopying what I can with a small camera. Call it the lilacs. When that is your dream, and because of the proximity to other similar neighborhoods that used to be poor and residential, uh, the people who live there get pushed out.

I mean, that's the market at work. Whoever owns the building says, I'm getting, you know, out you go. I'm going to make a lot of more money here. So I always love it when liberal millennials tell me I live in a very

gentrified neighborhood in urban environment. Who did you drive out? Where do they live now? How long does it take them to get to work by bus but that of course now they're they're homesteading and they're pioneering and so they're they're they're decent wonderful people i was uh in dc just one thing i i was uh in a wave of gentrifiers that got pushed out by a second wave of gentrifiers the rent got too high i was i was like well i can't afford to live here anymore. Better move a little bit further north. Where did you live?

I was in Chinatown, which has, for people who know the D.C. area, has come up a lot in the last few years, last really decade, and got too expensive to live there, so I moved to Columbia Heights, which is the,

which is now the, like, also getting too expensive, so people are moving further north. Look, I suffer, too, during gentrification. That's what I want to say. I lived in Adams Morgan when it was going through one of its many transitions. So I understand Columbia Heights was up there. We didn't want to go up there after dark. But, Sonny, thank you for staking out bravely at the place.

It'll all be gentrified pretty soon, and D.C. will be so flooded with money that, like most imperial capitals, it'll be an absolutely – It seems insane to me that it's a part of D.C. that's not perfectly gilded. It is – what is it? The richest couple square miles of metropolitan everything in the world at this point? It depends on what side of the river you're on. All right, let's change topics to something else. Marco Rubio is going to run again. Oh, yeah. Is that a great idea? Is that a good idea? Do we want him to...

There are people, I think, over at Ace of Spades, they really hate Rubio. They hate Rubio the way that some people hate Trump, which I find interesting. And that is because... Why? Amnesty? Gang of Four? Does that completely discredit him?

Yes. By the way, this is Gaius' topic, so we want to thank member Gaius for bringing this up. Go on, guys. Well, sort of Gaius' topic. Look, he was a popular senator in Florida, and that's what – I never understood the I'm retiring from politics thing in the first place um didn't make much sense to me then it felt a little peevish and felt a little frankly it felt a little um immature to say that and I I always assumed he was gonna change his mind I mean Sonny were you surprised when he changed his mind no no I I wasn't surprised I mean what else is he gonna do is he gonna go work at AEI or a investment bank or surprised. I mean, what else is he going to do? Is he going to go work at AEI or investment bank or, you know, I mean, like teach college somewhere if his goal is to run for

president in 2020, which I think we all agree it more or less is assuming Trump gets wiped out. You know, if he if his goal was is to run in 2020, no way he could do that from the private sector so of course he was going to go back and run for the senate um i i like i i think he'll you know i think he'll have a tough race i think he'll uh he still has there's still some some some negative feelings about gang of eight i don't think he's learned the proper lessons from kind of supporting gang of eight and then seeing uh you know how how much the base does not really want to do this sort of immigration amnesty and reform. But, you know, I also think he'll probably win, and we'll see what he does with the next four years. Yeah, it seemed like that to me. I mean, it was hard for me to imagine he was going to. He's a Florida Paul.

Like, that's what Florida Pauls do. I mean, they kind of, they're out and they're back in. But just to go back to that question, because we're trying to get some member questions in. And Gaius actually had, it was inspired by Marco Rubio, but Gaius had a pretty interesting. At LiveScoreBet, we love Cheltenham just as much as we love football. The excitement, the roar, and the chance to reward you. That's why every day of the festival, we're giving new members money back as a free sports bet up to €10 if your horse loses on a selected race. That's how we celebrate the biggest week in racing.

Cheltenham with LiveScoreBet. This is total betting. Sign up by 2pm 14th of March. Bet within 48 hours of race. Main market excluding specials and place bets. Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie. Given that the current situation is nearly impossible to contemplate, let's turn to a hypothetical. Suppose the modern presidency were not the noxious combination of chief executive and deified celebrity. Suppose that it was possible to separate the necessary task of leadership from the even more necessary task of political leadership. Who would you support for president if you had a choice? And who would you support for prime minister?

So there does seem to be this – when I talk to people, especially who support Donald Trump, this kind of idea that, well, he's going to preside, not really be the chief executive. No one's really arguing that he's got a grasp of the issues or is going to suddenly get a grasp of the issues in the next six months. But the people who support him seem to say he's smart enough to be sort of the president in the small p president of essentially a parliamentary system where the wonks are the prime ministers. I mean, do you buy that? So he hands it over to the establishment? Is that the idea? Well, that seems to be what people are saying. I mean, people I know who are coming to terms with Trump,

who weren't Trumpers to begin with. Are they insane? Sonny, I'm asking you, are they insane? Adjudicate the level of sanity in these scales of one to ten right the problem with with uh treating trump as some sort of kind of figurehead who will appoint good people is that we have no real uh uh background for who he will choose except for that dumb reality television show like you want hill. So you want Hillary. I want to get you on paper in a saying.

The problem with Trump is that he presents himself as this kind of delegator and decision-maker, and there's literally nothing in his background to suggest he'll make good decisions or appoint good people. Like, you know, from the Lewandowski thing on, you know, it's just been a series of kind of questionable personnel choices. Who would I choose to be, like, kind of the figurehead as opposed to the wonkish type president? I mean, look, I was always a Rubio guy. I like Marco Rubio. I think he's good at presenting an idea of what America can be.

And doesn't necessarily... But, you know, again, the whole immigration thing has totally ruined him. I like Paul Ryan. I think Paul Ryan is good at kind of explicating an idea of what government should do and what the people should expect from their government. But, you know, obviously I'm a Rhino establishment hack squish. So I like I don't know that I'm necessarily the best person to be making these choices.

Well, you've been corrupted by D.C., of course. Yes. that I'm necessarily the best person to be making these choices. Well, you've been corrupted by DC, of course. Yes. What I love is setting aside the character and the managerial experience and the choices and the rest of it, there is an illustrative example of how people run their campaign that supposedly is supposed to reflect on how they would run their general executive ability. And one of the things that people are pointing out is the fundraising seems to be a little skint. It doesn't seem to be like there's just a lot of effort to get out the money

and get it in. Somebody pointed out that after, what was it that Richard Vigory had made just tons of contributions by sending out blasts of emails to low information voters, which if I don't know, you know, if you guys get these things, but they call you by your first name, they're concerned, they need your help. And five dollars will do that, that this even this opportunity, the Trump campaign seems to be not doing. And frankly, I would love to get email from the Trump campaign because it would be a fascinating read. And I wouldn't put it in the black hole. I would put it I wouldn't even put it in sane later. I would let you know what I'm talking about'm talking about oh well let me back up oh wow how if you have sane box the email service that makes your life just just so much easier uh if you've got email you got what

you got a hundred thousand letters in there yeah if you're like my daughter you got that little badge it's in six digits yeah okay uh not me. No. We're sane because we have SaneBox. Now, I knew all along that I wanted to do something about my stupid email, but I didn't know how. Bulk erasing everything didn't seem to work because you miss stuff you're supposed to get from your tax preparer. And so I didn't want to go through them one at a time because it's boring. It's simply boring. Everybody hates email. But SaneBox. Okay. I can't recommend it enough. It sorts through your email and moves all the stuff that you don't need to get to now into a different folder. So the only messages you see on the ones at the top are the ones you actually want to see.

And then, of course, black hole. Black hole, you drag a letter into that, and you never hear from those people ever again. Somehow I got on a mailing list for a large machinery construction equipment firm. And I don't know how. And I don't care. What is the black hole? Thank you. $55 credit on top of the two-week free trial. You don't have to enter any credit card information unless you decide to buy, so there's nothing to lose and you will gain time and sanity. Check it out and let us all know if you like the black hole. And reaching inbox zero, like Rob Long, the sockless poster child for inbox zero. Again, that's S-A-N-E-B-O-X dot com slash ricochet. Now, gentlemen, we have apparently an incident in a movie theater in Germany, and we're waiting to hear the details.

It could be, I'm guessing, it's a Brexit supporter. It's an English leave maniac who stormed in there. It's entirely possible it may be somebody connected with the changing demographics that Europe is experiencing. But it led Susan Quinn the other day to write on Ricochet, asked the question, was Omar Mateen an Islamic terrorist? She wrote, the simplistic answer is yes, Omar Mateen was a terrorist, but it appears that he doesn't fit the profile of the Islamic terrorist that we've come to accept, and that could be a serious problem. Thoughts? I'm not sure I know why it's a problem. I mean, I think

we're going to see this happening a lot, where I'm not sure I know why it's a problem. nuts uh for whatever reason uh whether you know even if you're sort of nuts and you're a ninth generation american um that that seems to be like the eye of sauron over there it has an effect on you and you'll do evil here because you you know those are literally the voices that you hear we know a lot of these like schizophrenics hear voices right but that's those are the voices they actually are hearing them and they're over there and whether those people have any control over what they do or not over what these uh killers do in this country or not, it's sort of beside the point. We do have a horrible brew right now where we have this collection of people, some of whom are genuinely nuts. And I think Omar Mateen was genuinely nuts, not a religious zealot but a crazy person who was inspired by religious zealotry.

And that's going to be something – and we have the means right now to identify those people. He was identified. We just don't have the will or the procedures to prevent what they end up doing. So I suspect there's going to be many more people who fit the Omar Mateen profile than fit the guy training, trained in Syria, received his orders in some camp in ISIS-controlled region, and then infiltrated into Europe and back to the United States or somewhere. I just don't think that's going to happen. The guys in Europe learned their trade in the prisons in Europe. That's an important distinction. They weren't trained soldiers in ISIS-controlled regions. They were turned and trained while in prison in Europe. Yeah. Yeah, I think this is – I mean, look, I think Omar Mateen is kind can be kind of counterproductive since it inspires the United States to murder all of your leaders. You know, but if you if you have a half dozen kind of mentally unbalanced individuals situated throughout the United States who are more than happy to open fire in a mall or a movie theater or on a train or at a bus depot, you know, like, I don't, I'm not entirely sure you can stop that sort of thing. And, you know, like Rob says, we kind of had an eye on Omar Mateen, we kind of know

what the profile of this guy looks like. We have the ability to kind of track who he's talking to and if not exactly what he's saying to them. you know, it's it's, but it's

you know, this goes back to the conversation we were having earlier about rights. Like, you know, I feel vaguely uncomfortable with kind of a total program of watching tons and tons of people on some sort of secret list where who knows what data the government is collecting and who knows what they're doing with it. Look, this is one of the dangers of living in a free society, and I'm not entirely sure how to square that circle. Yeah, exactly. What the left is saying is that we can't have the government penetrate mosques and social organizations and do that because that's profiling and it's a lot of it's a little phobic and it won't work. The reasonable, rational thing that we can do is to pass a law that that codifies certain restrictions on certain kinds of guns.

They actually believe that's why neither side has anything that's going to work. The only thing that works is discrediting the ideology. And the only thing that discredits it is failure. When Loretta Lynch gets up and says that we're going to beat ISIS through love, you honestly, honestly want to put her on top of a building

in Independence Day, smiling as the death ray opens up. I mean, that literally is the kind of person that she is being. And, you know, I'm for a full, robust, diverse package of responses. And yes, love is one of the tools. A Moab and a daisy cutter is another. And unless there is the complete discrediting of this ideology through failure, repeated

failure, then you're simply going to be attracting you're right rob the crazy people who just you know you're right if you're crazy and you know what joey nice this i mean and it's a great it's not even a really devout religious thing i think maybe that's what she what susan quinn is talking about is we you know when we think of islamic terrorists we think of people perhaps who are deeply pious and i don't think that's often the case i think they glom onto the part of it that's the that's the military political as well as the spirituals the whole package i think also we made two mistakes right the one mistake we made i think in the beginning or maybe it wasn't a mistake that we had a choice in nine nine nine twelve

and there was this big debate about whether fighting terrorism going forward was going to be a military, predominantly a military mission or predominantly a law enforcement mission. And the people who suggested it was predominantly law enforcement mission were kind of routinely laughed at and mocked. And that may have been the right thing to do at that point because we had – literally we had state-sponsored terrorism in Afghanistan. But now I really do feel like the way – if you look at San Bernardino, you look at Orlando, you look at what happened in Brussels, you look at what happened in Paris. These are not military problems. They are law enforcement problems, and they're problems that we just have to get smarter about fighting and use the tools that we got. One of those tools obviously are gun laws because as people have said over and over

again, one armed guy, two armed guys in that club, one guard even, trained guard could have changed that night for – um no that's that's your madness you can't have anybody in a bar shooting because that's the wrong thing what you have to wait is you have to cower in place for three years three hours until the other guys who would who have a state sanctioned uh gun uh shoot the guy i mean that's guns didn't solve won't solve that problem yeah but uh gun solved it in the end. Sonny, I'll ask you this. Do you think then that if we're going to have this as a law enforcement problem, should we not then adjust the terms to reflect the reality,

or should we do what New York is doing, which expunged essentially? I mean, Rob's right. It is law enforcement now, but we've taken away the tools that are most effective. We've taken away the elemental block level enforcement. They call it stop and frisk. That's got to go out the window because of a disparate impact. So you have murder rates and crime rates going up in the very neighborhoods that supposedly these people want to protect. But that's OK. You have the removal of the ability to go into mosques to take a look at organizations that perhaps are a little shady because that's islamophobic in the end we end up very pure very ethical and very dead so is is there any chance do you think just as the left springs up when there's a gun attack and wants

gun laws is there anything that's going to get people to say hey wait a minute what are the laws you got rid of that were working before and why aren't you doing them now? Do you see that ever changing or is the left just made the narrative we've got to stop Islamophobia? No, no. I mean, again, I think this is what we were talking about earlier with the conversation tactics. As soon as you say something like we need to look at mosques that are funded by Saudi Arabia and see what sort of things they're teaching in there, well, that's hatred.

That is oppression. Don't you remember what J. Edgar Hoover did to Martin Luther King Jr.? Put him on a list so he couldn't get a gun. Right. No, I mean, this is it's it's it's very frustrating because I I again, I actually am sympathetic to the idea that, you know, the the government probably should not be doing a ton of surveillance of religious, you know, people and services and leaders. But also, we can't pretend that even the loonies at the West Borough Baptist Church are equivalent of some of these people coming over from Saudi Arabia, some of the money that's funneling into these places. It's a very tricky and delicate situation that we don't have the tools to deal with in the public sphere because everybody is just looking to score points and end conversations. Well, you mentioned something about the Saudis. And of course, one of the points that Donald Trump has been making is that Hillary Clinton is mostly funded by the Saudis.

It's not entirely true, but it does bring up a point that people get to look at. There's also the idea, of course, that her email has been so compromised that once she gets into office, the number of things that other secret services have on her is extraordinary, and they can actually manipulate American policy with a subtle form of blackmail. You can just imagine the Saudis, for example, waving a sheaf of letters at Hillary Clinton and saying, you know what, there's a whole bunch of guys in Gitmo. We'd like them to get out. Here you are. Here's their names.

Please remove them. And that is actually the plot of Brad Thor's book, The First Commandment. And you can listen to it anytime you want for free. Okay, I really just bookmarked that. I have a joke, though. Can I just do the joke for you? You can do the audible spot.

My joke was, I was going to say, that you don't have to worry about that with Hillary Clinton because Barack Obama is going to release them all before. There'll be nobody in Gitmo. Ah. She takes off. That was a little joke I was going to put in there. I didn't want to interrupt the segue to the audible spot, so go right ahead. You're right. That was perishable.

That wouldn't have survived the transition here. It would have been like an organ. It's like an organ. You have to pack and dry ice that joke. Lunch line set up. Got to be close together. There you go. Anyway, Audible, you know what that is.

I told you before. They've got 180,000 books that you can listen to. And they're on any topic, cooking, Spanish. It's like thegreatcourses.com. You can learn all these things, and you can learn them for free. Now, they've got a free 30-day trial and a free audiobook. Just go to audible.com slash ricochet and browse over 180,000 audio programs and download a title and start listening.

It's that easy. Audible.com slash ricochet, and you can listen to the complete works of Brad Thor if you want a thriller highly enjoyed by ricochet readers. That's right. Start with one book, and you'll want to keep going because there's like 15. And he writes them, I think, at about a rate of three a month. So, Audible,

Brad Thor, great combination. And thanks to Ricochet, it's free. Audible.com slash Ricochet. Gentlemen, I have to go a little bit because I have to take my daughter to Driver's Ed. One of those reminders that as the world seems to spin out of our control and is bursting into flames,

your life goes on it really does james because like i was i always say the story that you know you and i didn't meet um until much later after i started reading you but one of the things i remember reading was your sort of daily blog in which you would talked about your daughter and how young she was and she was three maybe i don't know she was young like she was a kid toddler absolutely and i still do i mean does this matter i think this was something i'll probably have tomorrow that the other day i i shouted up those stairs that uh instead of just saying dinner you don't want to you get tired of saying dinner so you have to say things like uh occasional

ingestion of sustenance required for additional for continued mobility. And that's why I shot it last night. And she shot it back. Sources. That's good. She's your kid. That's for sure. We'll close with this.

So and it's a big topic. Summer movies. What are you looking forward to? And in case you guys just go ripping and roaring and I have to duck out here. Let me say two things. One, I'm actually sort of kind of looking forward to the Independence Day movie, even though the first one is, which I recently reviewed and we saw, is catastrophically stupid. It's just stupid from start to finish. Nothing makes sense.

But I'm kind of looking forward to it what really despairs me is that i have seen absolutely i i've seen nothing for the star trek movie that's coming up and i mean nothing and when they don't advertise at all at sites that are kind of leaning into this or in the general public i think oh is this one of those franchise-killing bombs that's just going to make me walk out and say, well, there's 50 years of my life misspent. So there you have it. And I'm sure, of course, Rob is looking forward to something very cultured and very decent about people walking along in Venice

and having conversations about Woody Allen. But I'll just throw it up. What summer movies are you looking forward to? Rob, you go first. You know, honestly, I kind of opt out of this, of the summer movie thing, because I don't like going to see the big, loud movies where every movie, every one of these movies is the same thing. They spend $17 billion trillion on the CGI and the effects, and they spend three cents on actual extras, what we call atmosphere. So when a giant spaceship or whatever it is or the huge superheroes are having a big fight in the city and the buildings have come crashing down, they're like two people on the street, always one with a stroller pointing at the sky and shouting. It's always the same.

And I'm, you know, until they start spending money, like, like Cecil B. DeMille did or, or, or,

or D.W. Griffith did on actual extras, you know, actually, actually filling up a city. I'm not, you know, I'm not,

I'm opting out. I am interested in seeing the new Whit Stillman. That's how twee I am. I want to see the new Whit Stillman picture here. It's great. And after that, I'll probably get dragged to one or two of the others. Butman. That's how twee I am. I want to see the new Whit Stillman picture. I hear it's great. And after that, I'll probably get dragged into one or two of the others. But here's how I plan to enjoy the summer

movies, James. I plan to read Sonny's tweets and feel a little bit superior to them when he decides that really, really, really rotten movies are actually pretty good. Oh, that's mean. I will second your recommendation of love and friendship which is kind of a pseudo recommendation since you haven't seen it yet

i have seen it because i'm twee and terrible um uh with stoneman's latest love and friendship it's it's been out for a month or two now actually and it's very good it it uh uh it's a adaptation of a jane austen novella uh lady susan. And it's kind of a comedy of manners. And it's very clever in that Whit Snowman talky sort of way. Full disclosure, we should just say before, Whit, as a friend of mine, we are going to have him on a podcast in a week, I think. And he is politically aligned with Ricochet listeners. He's a former Amspec, American Decatur guy, right? Yeah, yeah.

He's one of the few conservatives in Hollywood or pseudo-Hollywood. I don't know that he spends a lot of time out there. It's funny what you were saying about the extras because one of the reasons i'm actually not looking forward to the new independence day movie compared to the first is how weightless all of the destruction scenes look right if you go back and you re-watch the first independence day all of all of that destruction was done with models they built things and they they had explosions and it kind of all uh it's all done with it wasn't all done with practical effects but it was largely done with practical effects i mean this is a movie that came out 20 years ago they didn't they didn't

do the big totally computer generated stuff yet um and if you look at the the kind of the ads and trailers for this movie which they're not screening for critics, by the way, always a great sign. You know, if you look at the special effects in the ads and the trailers, everything just seems kind of weightless and floating. And there's no there's no sense of proportion or stakes. And I you know, it makes me kind of sad actually. I like, you know, it's just, it just kind of shows that, you know, progress is not really all it's cracked up to be.

Certainly in the realm of special effects. A good story helps. Good characters help. I remember one of the things, in the original Independence Day, first of all, the thing that stuns me the most

about the trailers for the new one is Judd Hirsch is still alive and in this movie. Because in the original Independence Day, first of all, the thing that stuns me the most about the trailers for the new one is Judd Hirsch is still alive in this movie. Because in the old one, and he hasn't learned how to shave since, he still has the same stubble, is that there was no, none of the emotional devastation that you would feel upon seeing this

wreaked upon your planet. People were worried, and when they finally won, there was, yay won there was yay there was great rejoicing but i mean at the end it was like we're supposed to get this great swelling in the breast the world has been virtually destroyed and civilization crashed all over the planet and it's it's like happy ending so i i agree completely. The – oops, sorry. Yeah, can you imagine the House Democrat sit-ins after that? Talk to yourselves.

Can you imagine the House Democrat sit-ins after that? I mean the telephones and the show business celebrities having, I don't know, feel it, whatever they're going to do. Can you imagine the huge emotional outpouring of that. I would say this, Sonny, that the one rumor I have heard about the New Independence Day is the reason they haven't been screening it until later is because Will Smith appears in it. I've heard that as well, but I have not heard it confirmed by anyone. I mean, I'll end up ponying up the $10 to go see it at a matinee next week sometime, probably, because this is one of the joys of being the executive editor is that you can make executive decisions like

I'm going to go see a movie in the middle of the day. I do that too and I'll tell you what it is. Will Smith not only shows up, he shows up arm in arm with Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker and William Shatner as Captain Kirk. It's all the franchises. How can we lose?

To one unwatchable wad. I hope this has not been an unlistenable wad for you. We're going to duck out here and return you to the rest of your summer day. And remind you, the podcast was brought to you by SaneBox, The Great Courses, and Audible.com. Visit the Ricochet store, of course. You don't have to enter the promo code Ricochet there. That would be, again, as we said at the start of the show, rather tautological. But you can get your swag there and visit the sponsors to thank them for this.

And we thank Sonny for stepping in. It's been a great pleasure, sir. Give my regards to K Street or J Street or whichever one you happen to tread on your way to forming popular opinion, the Washington Free Beacon. The Georgetown Cocktail Parties. Say hi to everybody at the Georgetown Cocktail Parties. That's right. And we'll see everybody in the comments.

Thanks for joining, and 309 is a wrap. When the moon in the sky falls And Jupiter aligns with Mars Then we shall find our planet And love will still exist This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius Age of Aquarius, age of Aquarius, Aquarius, Aquarius. Harmony and understanding,mpathy and trust abounding Telephonic alterations

Golden living dreams and visions Mystic crystal revelations And the mind's true liberation Aquarius Aquarius Aquarius And peace will guide us when it is And hope will steer the storm This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius Age of Aquarius

Aquarius Aquarius Aquarian Aquarian Aquarian Aquarian Ricochet. Join the conversation. Let the sunshine Let the sunshine

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