The Ricochet Podcast - We Clapped

Episode Date: September 24, 2021

Our guest on this week’s podcast is the former governor of the State of Florida, Jeb Bush. The governor helped transform his state from Blue to Red and set the stage for men like Sen. Rick Scott and current Gov. Ron DeSantis, both of whom are said to be eying a run for the Oval Office in 2024. He surveys the current situation in DC and thinks it is past time for a generational change in leadership. Source

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Holiday sorted. TUI. Live happy. T's and C's apply. All right, let's roll. I have a dream this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. I think it's important for people to know this is not who we are. That's not who the Biden-Harris administration is. With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lilacs. Today, put your hands together for Jeb. Let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you. Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast. Of course it is. And as episode number 563, would you like to hear episode number 1000? Well, that'll be possible if you join us at Ricochet.com and

help us continue to go into the future with all of these podcasts and the 482 others that we have. Of course, this is the flagship. We're justly proud of it. It's the one where you can speak to and listen to the founders, Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lalix in Minneapolis. Everybody else is scattered across the country in their usual places. gentlemen how are you today i'm letting rob go first that's what we're supposed to get it take a breath i i don't uh i don't know how i think i'm fine well how are you dealing with the infrastructure problem it looks like we may not have a bill which means that bridges are going to thunder down into the rivers the pavement will buckle the the sewer systems will burst if we don't pass this 3.5 it's a disaster right yeah no i thought trillion

yeah i mean i i i just feel like i've been talking it's you know honestly this is like the middle east for me i mean i know it's important but i feel like i've been having a conversation about the infrastructure bill for like most of my adult life it's like when i look at the newspaper and the front page is infrastructure or middle east or something and i just kind of like i just fuzzes out like it's like uh you know when you read a russian novel and you just kind of fuzz out the names just to get through it um so i i don't i don't believe i don't think i think the country is and the media spurred by the media not not because it's the nature of the media.

We're having a kind of a neurotic breakdown moment where everything is a calamity. And everything is a disaster. And I just don't understand why. Well, Peter, does it seem to you that we're having a breakdown about the wrong calamities? Because not everything is a calamity. I mean, the border wasn't a calamity until they got some video of Haitians being whipped by men on horseback. People under the bridge, thousands streaming in, curious resettlement of people without regard to where they're going. That seems to be a calamity to some, if you regard the sovereignty of the nation is important. By the way, may I try on Brother Rob a metaphor? He said it's like the Middle East. I'm going to try a metaphor that I think you might appreciate.

To me, it's like the FDR drive. That has been under construction my entire life. Is this not correct? It is consistently under construction. It's just not always the same construction. But the effect is the same, which is that you're sitting there. Right. Okay. So here's my overall take on all this.

We are in the midst of a calamity. All kinds of things are going wrong. People understand that. Victor put up a – Victor Davis Hanson put up a post the other day that this is the first time in our politics. Our politics are this strange dance now that are disconnected from reality. What happened in Afghanistan is reality. The border is reality. The press, of course, isn't reporting on that. And we have this strange politics where the Democrats have, what is it, a seven seat? I can't remember. It's a single digit number of margin in the House. It's 50-50 in the Senate.

And nobody who knows anything about American history, and I mean, even if you only go back as far as the Clinton years, believes that they can affect a lasting change in American life, altering the fundamental relationship between the government and the citizen, turning us into Sweden, a socialist state. When they don't actually have the public behind them 50-50 in the Senate and they're going to lose the house in 14 months. Nobody believes this is really going to happen. It's all kabuki. Everybody knows it's not real. Okay, that's my view. Just one thought here. Sweden would be an improvement at this point. They have a better policy on COVID. They have a better policy on taxation. They've got a better policy on a lot of things. Sweden's like... I would say

Josh Barrow, who is a writer I admire admire he had a tweet this morning that i thought was perfect that there was some some in response to an article i think it was probably the new york times or washington post something like that that said uh it was one of these articles that reads like a parody but was not which is uh uh anxiety is overcoming americans as they face climate change the psychological toll of the anxiety that they feel when they face climate change is crushing and his response was um recent gallup poll only three percent of americans could name even one environmental issue that they were concerned about at all so who are these little wounded birds worried about crippled from their worry about climate change they can't get out of bed but it's like it's the only thing we can the only way the media and i think unfortunately i

think it's i don't know if it's causing this or reflecting this that we can we can have a conversation is that that it things must be absolutely dire. They must be psychologically crushing, and they must also be calamitous, and we're all going to go up in flames in about 20 minutes if you don't vote for this specific congressperson. Like, this is nuts. This is not, this is ill befits this great nation of sovereign citizens. I agree.

That's what we're seeing in Washington. The American, I feel, have I conducted polls? Have I talked to more than my usual circle of friends? No. But I feel that the country somehow understands this is a serious moment. And that our politics are totally unserious. Ruth Weiss wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal the other day in which she quoted a recent statement to incoming students by the president of Harvard.

This is a close paraphrase, if not a word for word quotation. Climate change is the greatest threat now facing humanity. Larry Bacow is the president of Harvard, he was he served as president of Tufts. He's this presidents of Harvard used to be serious, right? People. And here's what we know, if you look back across the 20th century, communism in the Soviet Union killed 30, 40 million people. Communism in China seems to have killed 60 million people. I'm sorry, Dr. Bacow, but communism is a more dangerous threat to humanity on the historical record than anything we – Yeah. Any realistic prediction of climate change, and your kids are smart enough to know it. It's just unbelievable.

Anyway, all right. I get worked up. Communism. What is this 1955 – No, exactly. This is sort of Joseph McCarthy stuff. Why we got over our inordinate fear of communism a long time ago uh as far as the climate change thing both of you gentlemen

have seen the movie monty python and the holy grail correct there's a scene where somebody looks out the castle window or slit and they see a man running out of the forest with a with a sword in his hand and he advances about 10 yards dramatic music and then he we cut back to the person looking out the window we cut back to the forest and it's the same scene guy running out of the forest gets about 10 yards they do this back and forth and it's a joke on somebody running towards you but after about four or five times the man is suddenly upon the guy and stabs him and that's how climate change seems to be every time you look out the window it's 10 years from now it was 10 years from now in 1992 it's 10 years from now in 2002 it's always being reset but yet still they believe that at any moment it's going to

be an imminent disaster that will destroy humanity which by the way most of these people hate that's the curious thing they they're not fond of humanity as it is currently constituted in general in any way so the idea that somehow there's going to be mass dislocation and disruption of economies that's precisely what they want so i don't understand i mean what they want more than anything else is for capitalism to be thrown in the ash heap of history and for everybody to start a new you would think that they would welcome this because it would be the final stroke that would disassemble this wretched system that has brought them to such a perilous state yeah Yeah, well, no,

I'm not going to have that. So yeah, we will continue, but it would seem to me that it's odd for them to be fixated on this when they've had a more pressing situation in the last year and a half, which describes to them what an overweening state can do to their lives. But again, I think a lot of them like that because they like the comfort of the rules of statism and they like being enveloped into this wonderful public health project we have known as COVID, which either of you guys, would you have thought a year ago that we would still be wearing masks? I've seen the remasketing all over the place where I go now. And I just realized this is a permanent thing for an awful lot of in a permanent fixture of american politics and nobody's really talking about what that is doing to us in the economy well i mean yeah and and it keeps getting slipperier and slipperier so that there's a

i don't an arrest a fight something happened uptown in new york city and as it unfolded in the i didn't see it on tv i read about it as it unfolded more and more information came out one of them was um there was a bunch of people were trying to get to a restaurant in new york in uptown new york city and they had a altercation with the hostess that involved something fist thrown or something and some people were arrested and then it turned out that they were black customers and an asian hostess and then it turned out that they were black customers and an asian hostess and then it turned out that it wasn't that they that the three women refused to show their vaccine cards it's of the three men who joined them later did not were not vaccinated

and didn't want to be vaccinated and so you could watch the press kind of unfolded and tumbled out that you had this it's very complicated. Lines are drawn like, well, is it racist? But it's, I want it to be racist, but she's Asian. So is it Asian hate?

No, it can't be that because they're black women. So they can't be racist. So is it that they were discriminated against because they weren't vaxxed? No, they were vaxxed. The guys weren't vaxxed.

So they finally decided that the vaccine, but one group has decided that the vaccine requirements in new york city are racist and um but only if you're you know but not for white people if you're not if you're not vaccinated and you're white you don't have you you're a you're low life right but if you're not vaccinated and you're black you're not a low so So the twists and the yoga turns that people have to go into to maintain their kind of political up-to-date chicness is kind of funny. I mean, and maybe I'm just an optimist, but I believe that eventually those people are going to have nervous breakdowns

and are just going to stay in all the time because to leave the house is to be confronted with the rigidity and the fragility of your own strange ideological idols that you must pray to but most people most people don't leave the house and see everything through the prism of the intersectionality pyramid right but i didn't i didn't see this either. I just read about it, and I read the contortions of the people writing about it, and their absolute, almost physical pain they were in describing the facts that occurred

at a restaurant called Carmine's. And it's probably the same 3% of the people who are worried about climate. So we're having the entire culture being driven by neurotic people who are anhedonic, who are incapable of finding happiness in life today. You have no energy,

but what can you do? You have low energy, I guess, cup of coffee or something, but you're kind of lost. What? It just brings you down. It really does.

Sometimes you just look at all this stuff and you get so, so to know, well, there is something. Well, no, Rob, that's where that,

that's where you're quite wrong. And that would have been a little bit, if I had the energy for a greater, longer segue, I would have talked over Rob, that's where you're quite wrong. That would have been a little bit, if I had the energy for a greater, longer segue, I would have talked over Rob, but I didn't because I'm just feeling a little down. So what do you do when you're feeling down? Well, we have a solution. As we age, the fatigue and lack of endurance you feel can't always be fixed with more and more caffeine. You can try, but no, it doesn't work. Today's sponsor is introducing a new way to start your day. Super Beats Heart Chews, a tasty treat that gives you the energy you need and the good for you. No more afternoon coffees, energy drinks, dragging you up candy for a quick pick me up. No,

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in supporting normal blood pressure as a healthy lifestyle alone. So do more for your heart and treat yourself with Superbeat Heart Chews. Join over 1 million customers, get free shipping and returns and a 90-day money-back guarantee. Right now, you can get a free 30-day supply with your first purchase at superbeats.com slash ricochet, superbeats.com slash ricochet. And we thank Human N for sponsoring the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast, John Ellis Bush, known to you all as Jeb, 43rd governor of Florida and the state's first two-term governor. He oversaw reforms that lowered taxes, shifted healthcare to the private sector, broke up the state bureaucratic protections

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brought up educational standards that's a pretty good slate of accomplishments this date has since become a haven for blue state refugees in Florida. And yay, Jeb, for joining us today. Thank you. Good to be with you all in the land of freedom down here in South Florida. Hey, Governor Peter Robinson, we can come to current questions in a moment, but I'd like to begin by going back, going to a historical question. 1980, 1984, Ronald Reagan carries California and New York. 1988, your dad carries California. Hard to carry New York that year against a Northeastern liberal, Michael Dukakis. Now, California and New York are so overwhelmingly

democratic that although a Republican presidential candidate might try to raise money in either place, he'd be foolish to devote resources. So there you've got two states going from competitive to solidly democratic. Texas, something of a counterexample. Ralph Yarborough in the old days when your dad was trying to establish a Republican party, Ralph Yarborough was a liberal Democrat. Ann Richards, governor of Texas, was as liberal a Democrat as the Texas system would permit her to be. And now Texas is Republican. Here's the other counterexample. Florida. Now, voter registration remains very, very close. But Florida was a toss-up state at best until you became governor. By the time you step down, Republicans are doing very well in Florida. Republican presidential

candidates have a slight advantage. Republicans control both houses of the legislature. So the point I'm trying to make is you were an effective governor. You cut taxes. You handled the hurricane emergencies, but you were also a historic governor. You made a lasting change in the political culture of your state. You started something that continues to this day. So I'm in California, lost cause. Rob's in New York, lost cause. But James is in Minneapolis, and Minnesota's struggling to do something like what you did in Florida. How did you do it? How do states choose

for one political culture or another? Well, first of all, populations aren't static. Culture is not static. Changes, the 80s are very different than where we are today in 2021. Being a huge fan of Ronald Reagan and loving my dad with my heart and soul, it's easy to get nostalgic about the 80s. But in fact, we've changed as a country. So I think the first thing is to recognize that the hopes and dreams of people are different, and you have to create a 21st century strategy. What we did when I was, you know, as a candidate and then as governor is very different than what's going on today, even in Florida, where we lead the nation, the number of people moving in. And we have we used to have the third highest number of people moving out. Now there seem to be staying. So I think just recognizing that we're in a dynamic place and people's attitudes change. Look at Hispanic voters that dropped off, that waned away from the Republican Party in the Romney period and certainly the first time that Donald Trump ran. But there is a big gain in the in the in the last presidential race and certainly across the country.

Doug Ducey got 45% of the Hispanic vote. In the Valley of Texas, you have huge gains. And these are working people that see the progressive agenda and are scared of it. Many of them come from other countries in South Florida. They come from other countries and they see people in Washington talking as though, you know, if you're a Nicaraguan and you hear someone sound like Daniel Ortega, it's scary. Could I ask you to elaborate on that just a moment? Because it used to be said, wait a minute, the Hispanics in Florida, you've got the Cubans running the show in Miami, and now you've got Colombians in Venice.

These are people who've lost countries to communism. Of course, they're going to be Republican. But you touched on the valley down in Texas,as that citrus growing country way down there brownsville mccallan that's that's that's a different hispanic population altogether and so the that swing over to the republicans of a few points was really what does that tell us i think it tells us that uh we need to have a coalition of traditional republicans of libertarians of people that believe in entrepreneurial capitalism but also be mindful of the fact that there's a lot of working people that could be you know that believe in traditional values but also want someone to be on their side in all of this turbulence.

And the left appears to be very, you know, people used to accuse Republicans of being elitist. You know, I think right now it's hard to call Republicans elitist when you see the dominant side of the Democratic Party being truly elite, talking about things that are not in the neat, you know, working families just don't understand the Green New Deal. They don't understand all of this, all of these suggestions that end up putting huge burdens on their lives. But the folks that are living in the academy, the folks that already have made it, the folks that have the Federal Reserve as their partner, basically, and I would put myself in that category. I'm not being critical here. What I'm saying is

there's a lot of people that have done really well that haven't earned it to the extent that a lot of people that are struggling to make ends meet are wondering why they haven't been as successful. And so I think we have to get back to being for things and part of what we need to be for. And this is why I think Florida has done well and Texas has done well, is our working people and not be pandering to the cultural elites of our country. You said something that I want to expand upon. You said, and it's true. James, I can't help you on Minnesota yet. I think you're selling yourself short.

You want to come by? I'll drive you around. We'll have a parade of the small towns, you know, and you might want to stay here. It's not like Florida when it comes to the weather, but, you know, I think you'll get used to snow just fine. You said something that it's not the 80s, and that's true. It's not, and I feel bad about that because I miss skinny ties and Miami Vice. But you said our hopes and dreams are different, unless I misunderstood you. How so?

Well, I think people, the generation that, the baby boomer generation has run its course. And I think now you have different values embedded in the next generations. And so what they aspire to is a little bit different. That's what I'm saying. I mean, I think people still want to provide for their families. They want to make sure that they leave their children with better opportunities, all those things. There's a deeper, I think there's more pessimism now than there was. We don't have leaders like Ronald Reagan that lifted our spirits and allowed us to embrace the unknown. Don't you think that younger people want to have it all planned out? They want it all well organized. They're not really willing to jump into the abyss and knowing that great things can happen if they engage.

I find that to be a little troubling. I get that. There's ways to address a message to them that's different than maybe in 1980. That's all I'm saying. The world's different. The Soviet Union is gone. We have other threats. Our political leaders seem to be, you know, the objective in many cases is to own the other side, own the libs, you know, own the conservatives rather than give people hope that there's a better way of doing things.

Hey, Governor, it's Rob Long. Thanks for joining us. I'm going to say something and I'm going to reveal that I agree with it. And I want you to tell me if you think I'm right or full of it. He's usually full of it. Just feel free. Yeah, I'm usually full of it. So feel free. Yeah. I look at the political landscape now, right this minute, and I don't mean leaders. I just mean two issues that I sort of care about. One is entrepreneurial capitalism. You look at the COVID emergency and one thing you can say, depending on, you know, I live in New York City, so it was pretty much a failure from the ground up here in terms of government.

But one thing that has worked is entrepreneurial capitalism, right? There's one institution in America, Big Pharma. But we've villainized these people for 25, 30 years. Turns out they gave us four effective vaccines in 10 months. Pretty good. The second thing is I've noticed my liberal friends here in New York City have a newfound activist attitude about the public school monopoly. causes, free market capitalism and maybe a more free market pro-choice healthcare system and a more free market choice-based education system. We are on, we have never been closer to convincing that nervous middle that we're right.

And yet all we talk about is Hunter Biden's laptop or trivial things like that. Are we messing this up? Are we flubbing this opportunity? Well, you know, I think this was a problem pre COVID to be honest with you. Um, I think our message has become conservatives have become more reactionary, actually have embraced kind of the grievance agenda that the left is so famous for, you know, that they believe it's a darker, more pessimistic message that seems to be the dominant one. And I think out of the pandemic, there are great examples of what you're describing, that the dynamism that is embedded in people taking risks and trying to be successful. Let me put it this way. In the midst of a really depressing year, we're all in our homes and we're watching what's going on.

Everybody's whining and complaining and people are scared. People are losing their jobs. It is a very traumatic time. The most exciting thing during that full year was Elon Musk, SpaceX, launching Rocket and landing like a perfect 10. Right. Except for that. They stuck the landing. Totally.

Stuck the landing. It was so awe-inspiring. It was very Reagan-esque in the sense that it lifted my spirits up. And I think that's what we need to do is to point out the examples of great success. You know, immediately, turning on a dime, there were businesses that figured out how to work from home. I'm involved in a business that had 300 people in a call center.

They managed to figure out how to do a call center with 300 different locations and sales went up. There are businesses that figured out how to do telehealth immediately to make sure that people that were sick could get quality care. There were great charter management organization, great charter schools that didn't, that stayed closed for two months

rather than a year and a half that figured out how to deliver learning education in a way that students didn't have learning uh deficiencies right right and and and people people saw all that and so i think well okay and uh before that i lived in uh in in uh la but i spent a lot of time in florida i love florida um i love the panhandle and And I was in Miami a week ago. He was talking about Florida to people here. And they kind of, oh, Florida.

They roll their eyes. From New York? Crazy Florida. Those are the ones that haven't permanently left to come to Florida. Right. Okay. So, wait. Don't get ahead of me now.

I'm getting there um but from my perspective i'm not i mean the only city i really know well at all is miami um vibrant noisy fantastic from my from the looks of it a dynamic mayor i mean even though I think it's a very complicated city structure there, he sees, he is an ambassador of South Florida as an entrepreneurial hub. I know a couple investors who are now moving there and are putting money in. The one guy I know tweets and tells me, I've invested in 12 companies. All of them are within five miles of my office here in Miami. What would you, besides, hey, get on a plane, come down here, losers. What would you, how could you, how can you replicate that?

That kind of like, and in many ways, it took a lot of guts, right? I mean, the governor of Florida and the governor of California had very different perspectives on leadership leadership during covid but the infected fatality rate for both those states is pretty close if not age age adjusted florida is a little better i think yeah we so what do you how what do you say what's the magic i think the magic is that we're not a top-down state the progressives generally like to manage our lives uh and in a covid, my gosh, what a golden opportunity. Because when I was governor, we had eight hurricanes, four tropical storms in 16 months, and I was using executive orders on a regular basis. And I realized some of this stuff, probably the power that has been granted me constitutionally makes me nervous. It doesn't make de Blasio or Cuomo too nervous. They love it. They love this idea of, you know, mandating all this stuff. And I think Governor DeSantis has a

totally different view. He was, you know, he was data-driven. He was science-based. He realized that in our case, maybe different than other places, older people were disproportionately getting ill and worse yet, having the potential to die. And so focus on nursing homes to make sure that people were tested and vaccinated. Focus on the places where the most vulnerable existed. And we had a pretty good run. And then realize that there is a larger approach. You can mandate all this stuff and tell people you have to stay at home. You have to do all this stuff. The five-year-old has to wear a mask.

But the learning losses are huge. The loss of jobs are huge. The mental health challenges are huge. The foster care system has exploded. Drug abuse has gone up. And yet focusing only on that one thing and using executive powers to mandate things have created far more strife than people realize. And so if you if you trust people to interact freely amongst themselves and do what's right, you're going to get, I think, a better result. And it also creates an environment that's a lot more welcoming, which is what, I mean, look, we got problems in Florida. Every place does, but at least we welcome people. We're not hostile to them. We don't sneer at them. We

don't say that they're a bunch of knuckle dragon idiots or we welcome people. And Mayor Suarez from the city of Miami is a great example of, he't have any power necessarily to he's not creating a, you know, an executive order that says you're going to be subsidized or none of that. He just says, come, you're going to interact with people that really love to have you here. You don't get that same sense in New York City right now. Mayor Suarez has been spending a lot of time here in Silicon Valley recruiting. If you wonder, if he's missing from Miami, Governor, and you wonder where he is, just give me a call. I probably will have run into him at a coffee shop here in Palo Alto.

Maybe New York can't understand Florida because they are inimicable cultures. You have one that is devoted to compression and density and the rest of it, and they see that as the ideal model. Then you have another which allows it but also enjoys the spread and the sprawl and the rest of it that people from New York hate. Maybe it's okay that New York isn't Florida, but what seems to be bothersome these days is that we don't have a shared culture that accommodates both. I mean, we both used to consider them as intrinsically American, just different manifestations of basic American ideas. I'd love for New York to learn things from Florida, but it just seems as though they won't and they never will. And maybe that's okay. Maybe it's okay to have New Yorkers and then a new national identity arise from the lessons of Florida.

What's interesting, though, is that if you're affluent New Yorkers, they're buying places in the Hudson Valley and Greenwich, which was dying in terms of home sales and people were migrating out, has been booming because people are leaving the city. If you can afford it, people are doing quite well. Now, they have the ability to do that, and then they can be free from all of these mind-numbing rules that have stifled life for a lot of people. I used to go to New York three times a month, really, probably. And I stayed at the Omni Berkshire Hotel. It's on 52nd, I think, in Madison. Great people. I've been there for many years. Always welcoming. Really nice. Not the

fanciest hotel, but a great hotel, moderately priced. It's closed forever. And I went there last week because I was on business and there was a homeless people person, two homeless people sleeping in front of what used to be the entrance where I always would say hello to the people that were, you know, welcome me in. Those people can't go to the Hudson Valley. They can't move to Miami necessarily. They're stuck in a place where the rules have really created hardship for a whole lot of working people. But the lawyers and the bankers and the folks, the hedge fund guys, they haven't left the Hamptons or whatever. I don't blame them for it. I'm not being critical of people that made that choice. But that's the difference, I think, is that we have, it's not just New York elites. We have people that can, you know, live a pretty healthy life

in this quarantine kind of environment, have done really well. Their assets have gone up. Their jobs can be done, you know, through Zoom. Their productivity is up. Their businesses are doing fine. But a whole lot of other people have been left behind. And that's a trend that started prior to the pandemic that's been exacerbated by it. So it's something that we should be concerned about. And you brought up the schools. It is so clear. If you look at the number of people that have opted out of the traditional public schools after spending a year being the teacher of their kids and seeing the lack of interest of their children's education. Charter schools, student populations are way up. Home schools have exploded. People are getting this now. Yeah. Governor, tricky one. Immigration.

When you were governor, you championed immigration to Florida. I remember interviewing you and pushing you a little bit on immigration. I read you a quotation and you said, well, whoever said that needs to get out more, needs to come to Miami and look at what's happening here, what immigrants have done in remaking that city. Okay. And we all know that when you were a candidate for the Republican nomination, a certain other candidate wrapped that around your neck. So now we have pictures of immigrants queuing up under this now famous Del Rio Bridge in Texas. This is really, I mean, to me, so I'll just, Rob said what he was thinking. I'll give you what I'm thinking. This is a hard issue for Republicans because we want to be fundamentally

welcoming. We want to recognize, as you once put it, again, during that nomination campaign, that overwhelmingly people come here out of love for their families. They're trying to make a better life for their families. But at the same time, we have to understand why so many Americans look at that and say, this is out of control and feel real anger. So how do you put that? What's the message now? How do we talk about immigration? How does George P. Bush, running for high office, running for attorney general in the state of Texas, how does your son talk about immigration now? Sure. First of all, I wrote a book that no one knows about because I may have bought all the copies.

Clint Bullock, who's the head of the Supreme Court of Arizona, I think he's the lead justice there, and I wrote this book called Immigration Wars. And it was after the 2012 election where immigration had an impact on Mitt Romney losing, in my mind. And we wrote a conservative blueprint on how to deal with immigration. And sadly, it's only gotten worse because we've not made any changes, again, other than executive orders where typically the president doesn't have the powers that they're using, President Obama and President Trump. And so there's solutions to this. One is to control the border. You know, when you talk about people coming, the last part of that's, you know, the motivation being love of family. The other part of the story was we can't allow that to be the dictating reason for our immigration policy.

We have to start with the premise that we should pick who comes in. And the rule of law and legal immigration to be protected needs to make sure that it's easier to be coming legally than coming illegally. I don't believe that every that these these poor, tragic, lacking hope people that are on the border from Haiti. Imagine to get from Haiti. Unbelievable. You go across. They cross over to Panama and they're transported by coyotes. They don't have Max, don't have lots of resources. They risk their lives to come thinking that they're going to be allowed in because the Biden administration has sent the signal that that's the case. If they have a well-founded fear of persecution, which is how you get asylum in our country, let them make that claim in a third country or in Haiti. That would

be solution number one. The reason why the law was changed was because of human trafficking to allow people to make this claim. It wasn't for the traditional asylum claims. And so change the law to make sure that people aren't risking their lives to come. And then, of course, they're given a court hearing a year later because our immigration courts are overwhelmed and 10 percent show up. And those that do show up, 90 percent are deported back. And so our system is completely broken. And the idea that you allow people to come in from these countries, more than a million people in the last year, I think, a year and a half, has to change. And so I think the Biden administration should do what previous administrations have done effectively, including Bill Clinton's, my dad's, Ronald Reagan's. We handled this in a way that

said you can't come in like in this kind of manner. Then the final thing I'd say about immigration is we're the reason why people come here is this is the greatest country on the face of the earth. And we're moping around like we're not. We need to put on our big boy pants again and start acting like the greatest country in the face of the earth. It is so depressing to see us say the end is near, the China century is coming. Fix the things that are broken, and immigration would be at the top of my list. And let's start acting like we are the country that everybody wants to come to. No one's taking boats across some dangerous way to go to China.

No one's walking a thousand miles to get to China or any other country in the world. They come here because we have this special kind of place. And I'd like for elected officials and others to start acting and talking like that because it's true. Now, we have to fix the things that aren't working. That would maybe be the solution rather than moaning and bitching about how bad things are. The progressive narrative has this is the worst, most racist country in the history of the planet, which is why everybody wants to come here. Perhaps it's because they want to change its character with a new population. But how is it not injurious to our concept of citizenship that people find

themselves facing COVID restrictions all the time, and yet at the southern border, people are just let in absolutely without having to show that little magic impossible to duplicate a vaccination card? Doesn't it set them up somehow as being more worthy of being here than the actual citizens by virtue of their non-citizen wonderful status look the the hypocrisy um is that's so apparent when elected officials have one standard for one group and another standard for others including themselves by the way you know the right the ornery wear your mask and then the mayor of san San Francisco defiantly says, you know, I'm not going to wear a mask when I'm eating and drinking and dancing. OK, or the governor of California goes to a fancy place or, you know, it's on and on it goes. And this this issue of non-vaccination of people coming up through the border, but mandating vaccinations and masks for the rest of us is hypocritical. Simple as that. There's public health issues that, you know,

I don't know what the situation is right now as it relates to these impoverished stations that are coming, but the level of disease amongst many people in previous waves of immigration was really high. And we have, I think, a responsibility to adhere to public health standards as well. But I don't think, look, frankly, I think our asylum laws need to be dramatically changed to go back to where they once were, which was selectively when people truly have a well-founded fear of persecution, this is a country of freedom and we stand for it in liberty and we should allow people that come in in that regard. But we can't allow a million people to come in because they've been able to mouth off certain words that gets them a pass to come in. And then they don't go through the

process because a great majority of them are adjudicated without getting the claim of asylum in their favor. If I can just interrupt the former governor here, Bush, and just do some commerce, I'm sure he'll understand. I'm sure he understands how government waste is a horrible thing. Business waste is a horrible thing, too. Every year, U.S. businesses waste over $400 billion. That's $400 billion. Why? Because bad writing causes confusion. It misses the mark or it just takes too long to get to the point. On the flip side, better writing also helps businesses win and impress customers, enhance brand perception, improve internal communication,

and strengthen relationships with critical partners. Better, faster writing means better business, which is why your team needs WordTune for teams. WordTune. It's amazing how WordTune gives you that feeling you got with a real-life writing editor sitting right by your side to give you the confidence that your words are clear and memorable. Owners, managers, team leaders can be confident that the communication coming from staff represents the organization favorably. WordTune improves writing efficiency up to four times. Better, faster writing means better business. WordTune improves performance on any project, everything from internal emails to press releases, sales outreach to customer service support, and so much more. You can use WordTune anywhere you're writing online, and that includes Google Docs, Slack, Outlook, Web, WhatsApp. And right now, you, our listeners, can get 50% off WordTune for Teams at wordtune.com slash ricochet. If you want to see

the benefits of WordTune, you can try it for free at wordtune.com slash ricochet. But however, this 50% discount is only available for a limited time and only available for Teams. You might never see a discount like this again. Act now. Give it a try. Your team can start writing better right away for 50% off. That's half price at wordtune.com slash ricochet. We thank WordTune for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Okay. So if I can squeeze one last question in, and I guarantee you this is going to be an unfair question. So it's not right that i'm going to ask it but i'm going to ask it and i still predicated by yeah i got to predicate this by saying um i vote for you in a second uh i was a huge supporter always has been always have been

always will be set that aside for a minute who are the conservative leaders out there that you admire who are the young who who should we be looking at and saying okay that guy or that girl that that person that who's the young who give me some hope is what i'm trying to say. Yeah. Well, I put my son in there. Okay. Fair enough. Traditional conservative. I think he's, you know, he's embracing rather than trying to, you know, scowl at people. So people like that, they're governors. For the record, George P. Bush is now running for attorney general of Texas. We have listeners who might not know that.

Sorry. Go ahead. I like governors that have really had a proven record that have had to weather the storm. Governor Ducey would be a good example of that in Arizona. I don't know if he wants to run for anything else, but I'm just pointing to people that, you know, they have a, you know, they see a challenge, they create a plan, they draw people towards the plan, they work on executing the plan, and they have success. And they measure it along the way, and they have the humility to recognize not everything works, you know, just the plan going forward, all based on conservative principles. That kind of process, you know, doesn't exist in Washington. It exists outside of Washington. So I would look

to people that have practical experience, either in the private sector or not-for-profit or military or being governor that actually think that way, because that's what we need more than anything else. And they give people hope. So the problem right now in our country is, look, I'm 68 years old. I'm a young'un in DC. It's like, it's crazy. Everybody's clinging on to power. It's hard to know what the next, I can't give you too much hope because we need to, I think it's time for people that have served for a long time. They, you know, they gave it their best. They, they, they did what they thought was right or, you know, may not have worked out perfectly. They should leave the stage and let new people come in.

I mean, it's a little weird to have the presumptive Republican nominee, you know, likely to be 75 or six or seven in in 2024. The incumbent will be 80, I think. The speaker of the House, I think, is 77 or 78. The majority leader in the House is equal, maybe 79. Mitch McConnell, a minority leader, is 76 or 7, I think. I don't know. I may be off a year or two. It's not a spry group. Our leadership of our country is in a generation that should have the humility to say it's time to move on. I mean, it is the most toxic assisted living facility in the world that you can imagine is D.C. All right. So I know I got it wrong, but I do want to ask you this. I ask everybody, but especially you, because, you know, you you're eloquent about the Trump, the problems.

So are you optimistic for real? I don't mean like just because you have to be because you've been in politics for a long time, that may have been part of my downfall. But I do think there's there's grounds for optimism, but not yet in our political system. There's ground for optimism when you see the, you know, the vaccine development, when you see the Elon Musk reinventing things like at warp speed and hundreds of others doing the exact same thing. We do work with two kids that came out of Drexel University that now have a business called GoPuff that has a market valuation of $15 billion. These are in their early 30s. Their parents were immigrants, legal, and they came here. And they are full of just enthusiasm and idealism and work really hard and are innovating at warp speed. And they've hired thousands of people.

And when you hang out with people like that, there's no way that you can't be optimistic about the changes that are taking place. They're going to create disruption, but they're also going to create enormous benefits for our country. And I think, you know, the world, we still are the place where these big ideas can be implemented in a way that doesn't, there's no other place in the world that comes close to it. So I'm optimistic in a bottom that doesn't, there's no other place in the world that comes close to it. So I'm optimistic in a bottom-up way. I'm not optimistic if we continue to allow the top-down approach to everything driven by Washington. That has to stop. We've never been good at that. And we suck at that. I mean, we're horrible at that. That's true. That's true. Let's go back to what we're good at.

I disagree. I can give you a top-down model that i think works excellently the last time i was in florida i was in a top-down tightly controlled place very technocratic lots of robotics incredibly multinational with public transport everywhere and that was epcot so if you want to export if you want to export that model i'll be absolutely fine that's the place where dreams come true, James. Yes, indeed. And mine did. And our other was to have you on the podcast and here we are. So I can die a happy

man. Thanks so much for spending time with us today, James. Thanks, Scott. Thank you, John and Andre. Bye-bye. Well, yes, indeed, Epcot. I did, you know, the original Disney version for Epcot was a fascinating place. It stood for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, where they built

from scratch this place that was going to be the new model for human living. Often a lot like, oh, I don't know, like the Soviets did with cities where Chernobyl was located, which brings us to... Oh, poor James. Wow. Which brings us to... You'd think. You'd think.

I'll do it. Da-da-da-da. James Lilac's Post of the Week. How much money did we spend on that thing? Too much. Too much. All right. In post.

Insert sounder here. The James Lilac's member post of the week there okay so yes the return of the post of the week even that won't they should keep the insert sounder here anyway i always hear in the comments why what happened to the lilacs post of the week oh i don't know i maybe came to dread it because of what uh the work required to get the sounder going anyway i saw something last a couple of days ago when I was reading Ricochet at night, as I do all the time.

And it was just a knockout post by Kozak. It's called my Chernobyl adventure quote. In order to visit Chernobyl, you have to book a tour and they submit your passport and information to the government, which arranges your past and the exclusion zone, a 30 kilometer radius area around Chernobyl that was evacuated after the 1986 disaster.

A second inner 10-kilometer zone includes the most contaminated area. My two-day visit started out in Kiev, where I met my tour guide, and the other four members of the tour, two Dutch, an Aussie, and an Australian. And off they went with their dosimeters and their special suits into the heart of Chernobyl and the surrounding city. And it's fascinating. And he's got pictures, too. If you're a fan of the Chernobyl HBO series, and I'm not sure fan is the right word, perhaps admirer of the way it constituted the horrors so well, you've got to read the post.

I've never read a post and seen pictures that made me actually think, I want to go there now. I've always thought that that would be the sort of place that is not on the bucket list. But it's fascinating, the pictures of the Soviet era architecture, the rooms, the famous Ferris wheel, the control room with its great Soviet-style electronics, and then this faux stone linoleum that they put in it. Just the aesthetic of the place. Anyway, it's a great post, and it's one of the reasons that everyone should join Ricochet, because you find things like that. Who wants to go to a site where everybody's just banging on each other about politics constantly, when you can take a tour with your tour guide, Kozak? So that was the James Lyley's post

of the week. It's a great post. The pictures especially are just fantastic. Well, you know, and the weird thing about it is, is people say that, you know, the area around the floor of the fauna, it's coming back to normal. Even though it was heavily irradiated, there are things growing. The earth repairs itself, as they say. A lot of stuff comes back to, a lot of things come back to normal. You know, this summer has shown a lot of welcoming signs of becoming more normal, that we have more normal life ahead.

Finally, you can get back to enjoying life's little pleasures, like smiling at your neighbor without your mask, seeing a movie in a theater, and going to the post office. Right? Huh? No? Well, some parts of normal life aren't so great. Who wants to stand in line at the post office? You don't. That's because you know about Stamps.com, right?

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offer that includes a four-week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. And there are no long-term commitments or contracts to worry about. Just go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage, and type in Ricochet. That's stamps.com, promo code Ricochet. Never go to the post office again. And we thank stamps.com for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Well, on the way out, we had Boris Johnson johnson in the oval office in a shouting screaming match

ensured when the handlers ushered the press out lest they ask questions do you gentlemen see that saw a couple of clips yeah on twitter it's just the wall the wall around uh the president yeah at epcot i'm waiting for joe biden's statue just to mumble a few words and then walk away you know his robot in the presidential hall we will see his back that will be more than anything uh did it give you confidence that we have a snap crack when bop intellect in the oval office it's so i should i mean my normal part is an impulse would be to say this is outrageous all that honestly. Honestly, it's so bad now that I'm starting to feel it's just too embarrassing to discuss. This is wrong,

of course, because he's the President of the United States. It's a public matter. We should be discussing it. But I see that. And the reason I didn't, I just touched the button and watched a couple of brief clips. It's hard to, it's hard to it's painful it's painful to watch at this stage all bad yeah it's you know it's funny because there was a period at which i guess i i mean i don't know if i really consciously thought this but i i allowed my mind to accept the fact that because he was at old and old and kind of out of it, that he wasn't the Joe Biden that I find awful and irritating and have found awful and irritating for the past 30 years.

I guess I really just kind of thought of him as this old dude who doesn't even have the energy to be his objectionable self and yet it seems like that's the one thing he's kept he may not remember what happened on tuesday and he may may not understand all how to dodge questions but his jerky arrogant ill-informed um prickly uh self-righteousness it has it is it is in full force he has all of the bad attributes he had as a young man in spades and i find that i just find that really curious like uh you know i think it's i mean i'm maybe it's my own feeling is that as you get older you should just you know some of the bad you should me, you should just, you know, some of the bad. You should mellow.

You should become sweeter. Right. As your bones get more brittle and you're more hunched and like you're eating applesauce, things should just get slightly easier. He, it's the opposite. He saved up. It's like he saved up jerk jerkiness and it's coming out um and i find that um i'm not irritating anymore because that's just uh i actually i think it's kind of it's kind of dangerous um to have a president united states that's this um un i guess i don't know the word would be unguarded untutored unmoderated what was hillary clinton

said who are you going to call it four in the morning joe biden you've called him at four in the afternoon and he's probably taking a nap i mean it was yes exactly eating the applesauce we don't want to miss that those didn't any specials right you know let me push back on something that brother rob said a little bit earlier because i think it actually is germane you said instead of talking about hunter biden's laptop as long as we're talking about biden um and what hunter biden did with uh ladies of the night in the privacy of his own hotel room i don't care but when it comes to emails setting up deals with china and carving out 10 for the big man big dog and the rest of it it is it is it does matter and it matters i think a lot because we had a media blackout not a blackout we had a a coordinated or individually

you know ginned up response to this which told everybody this was not a story that it was russian disinformation npr had to come out and explain why they weren't going to cover it twitter banned a newspaper from discussing the matter and now politico months after the fact is saying uh yeah that stuff's true uh never mind which is important for two reasons one if it's true that we have this connection between hunter biden various foreign organizations in order to curry favor because his boss his his dad is who he is. That matters. That matters. Ukraine or with China, that matters. And if money to the Biden family is going to the big dog, 10% carve out like some crime family, I think that matters. And the fact that you had this tech, you know, big tech

conspiracy, nothing makes us sound crazier than saying there's a big tech conspiracy and George Soros is in on it. But when you have coordinated or non-coordinated, it doesn't matter. The effect is the same shutting down of a story weeks before a presidential election. And then that's bad. So I think it's safe to talk about Hunter Biden's laptop as something that's going to tell us how they're going to deal with these stories in the future and you know yeah i mean i don't disagree with you we have the same conversation over and over again i don't disagree with you i just i at at the it just seemed like it's wall-to-wall coverage of scandal which i i'm not

saying is not a scandal it was it is a scandal and but wall-to-wall coverage of that when we could i'm not talking about politics i'm not in politics but where their conservative principles seem closer than ever to be to being at 52 55 or 60 percent popularity the way they for real the way they haven't been for many many years years. And we as conservatives, as a movement, seem to be amusing ourselves or entertaining ourselves. I don't mean in a positive way. I just mean in a passing the time way with the scandals and outrage.

And there's a place for that. And I understand why people are doing it on TV. It's really great ratings. You can get very, very rich doing it. And I don't criticize anybody getting rich but if your interest is in um advancing and making advances in the culture and the way that we spend money to educate our children the way we spend money to keep ourselves healthy um this seems like an incredible opportunity and that maybe we could just rebalance it. Yes. Maybe 50% scandal and 50% policy rather than a 9,000% scandal.

Yeah. And I'm not talking about... Which we are not doing, by the way. I'm not talking about banging on about television because those are self-selecting audiences. I'm talking about getting it out there to people who don't pay an awful lot of attention to the news so that perhaps they will view the news a little differently

and not trust what they say about our side. I mean, I understand what Rob says. And it was so refreshing to hear Governor Bush say, oh, let's just stop whinging and whining and get on with what's great about the country and solve the problems. I grant that, too. Still and all, if we can just note it without going crazy. And I do feel that I'm on the verge of having it drive me crazy over and over again. There were two things became clear about the media in the last week or 10 days. One was just what James noted. Now, so to speak, established acceptable media are saying, oh, yeah, well, now that we've had the time to think this over, it looks as though that Biden laptop story that the New York Post tried to break three weeks before the election and got closed, shut out of Twitter, got censored. Oh, yeah, it looks as though that story was real after all.

That is outrageous, one. Two, Durham, I can't remember his first name, Durham of the Justice Department has now indicted a lawyer. And here's what the indictment was for. He went to the FBI and said he had evidence that Russian computers were communicating with computers on the Trump campaign. And he failed to disclose that his client was the Hillary Clinton campaign. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop there.

Wait a moment. You mean that now a prosecutor or an investigator, I don't know what his title is, with the Department of Justice pursuing an investigation that Merrick Garland, the new and Joe Biden-appointed Attorney General, has permitted to go forward, has just indicted someone for starting three years that consumed the country because he was doing it on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign, meaning that it was all a dirty trick that made Richard Nixon and Watergate look like a trifle. And the press just puts this in page three or page four. I guess it made the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Well, it would at the Wall Street Journal. And then says, oh, okay, noted.

What's next? Those two things are just outrageous. And they show not just the laziness of the media which i thought was the explanation for a long time but the corruption and malignancy and willful partisanship of the media they're not to be trusted and we just ought to note it done i completely agree. My outrage was less that and more about the photograph of horseback, of Border Patrol on horseback, which a year ago, a year and a half ago, would have been a six-act play. Culture would have stopped. All you could have seen on TV was this. It would have been an embodiment of an attitude in the Oval Office. And now it's more like, well, you know, it's really complicated that to me is more but on the other hand i feel like that the america the great 11 12 percent of the american people in the middle basically pick the next president and pick the policies and and they can be persuaded and they are persuadable and you usually persuade them on one thing first you don't get them to fly the republican flag of the democratic flag you get them to align themselves with an issue russia bad um taxes too

high and then before you know it they're republicans in 1984 they weren't republicans in 1980 and they voted for ronald reagan but in 1984 they were republicans because they were agree they were aligned on certain issues and i feel like that is what we kind of might my my set my my analysis is and i could be wrong is that that is how you win people over, which is something that, as I know, I'm a broken record on this. I feel like the right, the center right, is not even trying to do. And I would just want to spend a little more time trying to do that because I feel like that's, especially now, because it feels like we got a couple winnable, big, big, fat, winnable issues. More than fair enough wow so in other words we were talking about media outrages and rob instead of just instantly shutting us down and telling us it doesn't matter and he's tired about

it brought up his own that's i'm i'm no i i it's it's called i'm blending i know it's a negotiation tactic it's to say i hear you and i here's my contribution and then and then to continue that's a it's an old i think it's called blending i don't know so go talented negotiators who are not me in the audience will tell you what that is well to blend it all together and bring it to a close i brought up hunter biden to note also that the friend of the show lawrence fox is going to to be playing Hunter Biden in a movie, according to The Guardian. Really? The Hunter story fascinates me so much, Fox said, especially the vigor with which the mainstream media continue to try and suppress it. So I'm guessing we'll all be invited to the premiere. Whether or not we are able to go to Britain at the time, it'll be fun to do um so let's look for that on your netflix and by the way um look for

ricochet on your apple podcast app and when you do and you find it it'll be easy to do just give us five stars we like that podcast was brought to you by human and by word tune and stamps.com support them for supporting us and of course join ricochet today otherwise rob's gonna bring back the member pitch and you know how much he loves to do that. Champing at the rain, shall we say. Champing at the whip. Listen to the best of Ricochet show hosted by moi this weekend on Radio America Network and check your local listings. And thank you for listening.

It's been a great podcast, great time. Good to see you both on Zoom and talk to you here, and we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Next week. Next week, boys. Next week, boys. Next week, girls. So much left to do You and I will still be learning Always something new

I don't mind Weeping willow On my pillow I don't mind I don't mind Broken arrow Straight and narrow I don't mind. Yesterday, today, tomorrow.

And before they start When there's joy there must be sorrow Never far apart I don't mind. Weeping willow on my pillow. I don't mind Broken arrow Straight and narrow

I don't mind I don't mind. On and on and on we go now. Ricochet. Join the conversation. I don't mind weeping willow on my pillow. I don't mind Broken arrow Straight and narrow I don't mind.

I don't mind. Okay. Anybody else like Thursday more than Friday?