The Ricochet Podcast - You're Fired

Episode Date: January 26, 2018

This week, football, firings (real and alleged), and free trade. First up, the great Victor Davis Hanson, who’s National Review cover story is a balanced look at the pluses and minuses of Trump’s first year. After that, Philadelphia Eagles fan John Yoo (OK, he’s a law professor too) takes us through all the machinations, schemes, and strategies in the seemingly never-ending Mueller investigation. Source

We have special news for you. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Are you going to send me or anybody that I know to a camp? We have people that are stupid. You're fired. You're fired. You're fired. You're fired.

You're fired. You're fired. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson. I'm James Lilacs, and today we talk to Victor Davis Hanson and John Yoo. Expertise galore. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Bye-bye.

Welcome, everybody, to the Ricochet Podcast, number 387. Wow. Ricochet Podcast is brought to you by the fine people at Tripping.com. If you want to save time and money while booking the perfect vacation rental for your next trip, head to Tripping.com slash Ricochet today. And we're brought to you by Bowling Branch. You know, the right sheets can take your sleep and style to a whole new level. With Bowlin Branch, that upgrade has never been more affordable. But you've got to go to bowlinbranch.com, spelled B-O-L-L and branch.com,

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And we're brought to you by Ricochet. Oh, Peter, don't we need it now, right? We do. James, how are you? Listen, Ricochet, we say it every week, and I'm going to say it again this week. Please join Ricochet. It is the most interesting, the most stimulating, the most fun site for conversation on the conservative side, the center right side.

We ask you to pay $5 a month for the privilege of membership at Ricochet. Well, you might gasp. Only $5 a month. Not quite gaspable. And we do that for two reasons. The first is that it costs something, the infrastructure, having the servers. It costs something to run the site, and we need to cover our costs. But the second reason is everybody at Ricochet has skin in the game.

And you become a member. You pay something for membership. And what that means is that the comments are civil. And if anybody behaves like a troll, we have the legal right. It's a membership site. We have the legal right to bounce them off. We don't do that very often, although I have to admit, it does happen a couple of times a year. But the membership fee pays for most of the expenses, would that it cover all the expenses, but pays for most of the expenses and keeps the site civil.

There is a special fee, $2.50. Not at all gaspable, James. If you don't care about the site, but you do listen to the podcast and you'd like to help Ricochet, just chip in $2.50 a month. One way or the other, we'd be grateful, and one way or the other, you would be contributing to – well, you'd be contributing to something that's just a good thing. Ricochet. I pay $5.99 a month so I can watch a star trek show that i don't like i think i think somebody can pony up five bucks for a site that they can visit 15 20 times a day and i always find something new which i do and the star trek only comes on once a week and then it goes on hiatus and i don't like it and i'm paying money for it hey so uh but we're not

going to have that problem so and by the way way, as of in recent weeks, you get a special bonus for your Ricochet membership. And it is this. James Lilacs has been hot and bothered for two, three, four weeks now because he still cannot adjust himself to the idea that Donald Trump is president and that there are people who think he does more good than harm, including me. You'll hear this in a moment, I'm sure. And so James has been reading the comments on each of our podcasts. Podcast goes up, you get a chance to comment. And James has been waiting in. And I can tell he replies. He comes back and reads. He replies again. James is present. You get extra lilacs right about now. It's not as though I'm descending from Mount Olympus or something to assume human form and mingle with the hoi polloi.

That's what we're here for. That is what we're here for. Although you have to admit you have been mixing it up a little bit more than usual in the last two, three weeks, I think. All right. So listen, before politics, let's talk about something really important. Right. The Vikings won in a thrilling victory. And then last weekend, the Vikings got crushed.

How are you doing, James? How are you? Oh, we'd factor that into our emotional state on going forward by the fourth quarter. Somewhere in the third quarter, when the extent of the rout became apparent to everyone in the room, we started rooting for the Eagles to just really run up the score and prove to us how useless we were, how absolutely horrible, to just rub it in our face, which they happily obliged doing. So at that point, what are you going to do? The weird part, however, is the fact that the Super Bowl is going to be here. Yes, exactly. I was going to ask about that.

Well, it's like breaking up with somebody, and she's got a new boyfriend, and she's having a party at your house, and she's bringing him. And you have to pump the pillows in the bedroom before they go. It's just weird. But we'll behave, and we'll be nice, and we'll be sensible. Do the good people of Minneapolis and St. Paul have a team? Is there a leaning in Minneapolis toward one or the other for this game? Yeah, I think we want to see the Philadelphia Eagles fans humiliated. We want them to know what we felt

and we want to show them that we're better people than they are when they lose and we actually extend our sympathies. There's been all these Eagle fans who are really behaved poorly, thrown cans of beer at Vikings fans and the rest.

Actually, somebody put up a video of that. I saw it in my Twitter feed. It is literally true that people have been behaving really bad, or people behaved really badly in Philadelphia last week. It's a coastal thing. It's an East Coast thing. I mean, it's, that part of the country is generally cruder and

less disciplined and doesn't behave as well as us. I'm not kidding. Very clear, everybody, that was the voice of James Lilacs. This is Peter Robbins. That was James. I'm sorry, but in general, is it not so that East Coast cities pride themselves on a certain sort of swagger? I mean, they're not Casper Milk Toast walking down the street, you know, trying to avoid a puddle so their shoes

get wet. They're Ratso Rizzo pounding on the hood of a taxi cab saying, I'm walking here. I'm walking here. I mean, that's what they would like to think that they are when the chips are down, right? They're the tough East Coast guys. Yeah, I will. We're in favor of Ratso Rizzo. We're not in favor of guys throwing beer bottles at Vikings fans. Why are we in favor of Ratso Rizzo? Why are we in favor of a hepatitis riddled, nasty, jerky, twitchy little guy hanging around the ruins of Times Square is a perfect example of everything that went wrong with New York City and the East Coast.

Anyway, we have Minnesota Nice here where we think we're better than you are, but we don't say it right out front. So we're very passive-aggressive. So, yeah, so we're going to have the Super Bowl, and it'll be nice and fun and wonderful. Well, it'll be fun here. There are some people who I'm sure are going to try to make a lot of money renting out their house. That's the new thing is when you go someplace, you don't want to stay at a hotel. You want an experience. That means staying in different places.

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I don't want to mischaracterize him exactly. Okay, stop that. I'm going to start now three two one and now we welcome back to the podcast our old friend victor davis hansen american military historian columnist former classics professor scholar of ancient warfare he was a professor of classics at california state university fresno and is currently the martin and ely anderson Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Welcome back, sir. How are you doing today? Victor.

Victor Davis Hanson, welcome. How are you and where are you? I had to speak for Hoover in San Diego, and then I drove this morning. They drove me. I had a car taken. I'm pulling up to the Pasadena Hotel where I've got to speak again for Uber. Okay, but San Diego and Pasadena...

San Diego and Pasadena could be worse. If you need to stop to get out of the car and go into the hotel, say so. But here's the first question. I read your terrific, compelling, tightly reasoned, tightly argued cover story in the current National Review entitled A Year of Achievement, the Case for the Trump Presidency. Here's a quotation, Victor, from you. The

supposedly inept President Trump's first year was not liberal or directionless, but marked the most successful and conservative governance since Ronald Reagan's. Close quote. Defend that. I'm with you, but James Lilacs is much more skeptical. Defend that. Well, I was just being empirical, and by that I meant I looked at consumer confidence, business confidence, GDP,aley, Pompeo, and Tillerson had done, and I think we're aware of the problem with North Korea in a way that apparently we didn't even discuss the fact they had a ballistic missile in 2016. I think the Iran deal is coming under scrutiny.

The Paris Climate Accord is sort of a joke. We're not playing that joke anymore. We restored relations with the Gulf states and Israel. The embassy is, I think, long overdue given Senate resolutions. And NATO members were not out of NATO, obviously. NATO members are upping their contributions. So I think there's a restoration of deterrence. I just note, this isn't sidelined.

The Iranians have stopped, after six years of this, stopped hazing American ships for some reason in the Persian Gulf. You can ask why. The only disagreement about all this is, was this fumes from the Obama administration? That's right. Was this because of the Republican Congress? Was this because, for some strange reason, the moron, supposed moron Trump,

picked brilliant people at CIA or National Security or he had a good Treasury Secretary? That's the argument. But I don't think there's any argument about the agenda and the accomplishments. Victor, let me ask you about one specific piece of that But I don't think there's any argument about the agenda and the accomplishments. By its last year, the Obama administration had begun prompting, training, encouraging the Iraqis. We had forces in combat. The Obama administration admitted that reluctantly that American forces were actually exposed to combat.

Obama was taking on ISIS and Secretary of Defense Mattis in the Trump administration simply mopped up what the Obama administration began. That's one argument. The other argument is like, heck, he did. He actually changed tactics, put new soldiers on the ground. What's the truth of that case? I think it's more the latter. I mean, remember that Obama had dismissed some of the JV organization, and there was sort of a lawfare restriction on the rules of engagement. And remember, James Mattden had been relieved from command de facto by Obama in the Afghan theater.

So there were people that were not happy with the legalistic restrictions on the rules of engagement. So I think Obama had started to move in that direction, especially as he was a lame duck. And then what Trump did is he, wisely or not, he simply outsourced that problem to James Mattis and NHR McMaster. And that was a wise thing to do. But I think if you talk to people that I have, they felt it was like night and day. And they felt the enemy thought that at any time,

for any reason, the United States was capable of doing anything, whereas before they felt we were much more predictable. Right. Okay, now I want to make a point. James is going to come in here at any moment. And so I want to lay down the predicate here. Did you just reach your hotel? We'll give you a break while you go into that. I can stay for five minutes. Okay, terrific.

So here's another quotation. Your cover story in National Review is not a hagiography. You're critical of them in some ways. Here's another quotation. Time is running out before the midterm elections. Time is running out, and in the next 10 months, the economy must boom as never before, or Trump must learn to sound more like Ronald Reagan than a Howard Stern. So what are you saying there?

Trump is getting in his own way? No, I think that given the forces arrayed against him, and I detailed the various wars where it's the Mueller investigation or the 90% negative coverage from the press or their so-called democratic resistance or the Republican never Trump or his own demons within him that make him say things. The usual canard that it's economy stupid doesn't apply entirely to Trump. It does, but I think 3% GDP is not going to do it. It's going to have to be something like Reagan. Between November of 83 and November of 84, the amenable dunce Reagan and everybody dismissed Paul Volcker's inflation fight, all that anger, and the economy had gone into recession. He grew the economy at 7%.

Yes. And he destroyed what everybody had said was a better Canada than Walter Mondale. And I think something like that's going to have to happen. He's going to have to get 4% GDP, and this tax reform reduction package is going to really have to give the economy even a bigger hit. And then people are going to be willing to say, you know, what seems eccentric or confrontational or crude, I actually like it because it's connected with the deregulation and the tax reform, and that's giving me more money in my pocket. Right. Victor, one more, if I may. This is from the Weekly Standard, which also had your cover story, the case for the Trump presidency, appeared in the current National Review. Weekly Standard also did its assessment of the Trump presidency, and here's their conclusion.

Looking back on the first year, no conservative can argue in good – I beg your pardon. No conservative can in good faith maintain that Trump hasn't done damage to the presidency, our politics, and conservatism. And Victor says they're just completely wrong or they have a point, but Trump has done more good than harm. Well, he's done more good than harm to most people. I'm not worried about what the weekly standard says. I'm worried about what a worker in Bakersfield or somebody in Detroit or somebody in El Paso looks at. That is, do they have more business? Do they have a job? They have better pay.

I just went into home Depot and my mostly Hispanic town. And I just talked to a person who got a thousand dollar bonus. They just announced it. He was ecstatic. And the point I'm making is that's not crumbs to that person. Right. So that's, that weighs heavily.

That weighs heavily. You can be all, you can be moral and sober and judicious all you want, but if you're in charge of an economy that's neglecting millions of people, then you're morally culpable. The second thing is that Trump is a scab and he's torn off, but there was a wound underneath. And we were doing things historically in this country that we didn't want to talk about, whether it was the abject vulgarity of the Kennedy administration or the Clinton administration or the self-exposure of Lyndon Johnson. We never talked about that. We just found out just recently that the press suppressed a picture of Farrakhan and Obama. I'm not saying that he doesn't ask for it, but I'm saying that when you have 90% negative coverage rather than 60-40, then it's very hard to take seriously that it's all his crudity.

And that's my point. And take the worst two things he said as an example. The worst one we were told was he said that his wires were being tapped in Trump Tower by Obama. And everybody said that was almost treasonous to say that it's going to turn out pretty much, I think pretty likely that the FBI had people in there who used a fraudulent document to obtain a FISA warrant so that people in his team could be surveilled. And then most names were surveilled on mask and leaked to pet reporters. That's a long contortion of saying he was pretty much right about it. He was pretty much right.

When he said that Haiti and countries are S-H-I-T-H, it was a vulgar thing to do, but there were two things to remember. He said that in confidence, and I don't know. We learn with Richard Nixon and any president, I've been listening sometimes to the OBJ transcripts. When a president doesn't know what he's saying, he speaks like you and I and everybody else does in private. The second thing is that his worst critics, people like Lindsey Graham or Barack Obama, they had used that type of language before. I mean, they might have said S-H-I-T storm for Libya, but that was a pretty cruel thing to bomb Libya and then let those people fight it out and end up in miasma. And then just say, crudely, like Obama did, it's a S storm.

Or you can say you can be sober and judicious like Hillary did and laugh and chuckle and say, we came, we saw mimicking Caesar and Mithridates. We came, winnie-winnie, and Gaddafi died. Ha, ha, ha. Gaddafi just didn't die. He was butchered on screen and sodomized. And that wasn't something to joke about. But because she's got a particular persona, we don't call that crudity. And that's a lot of, this is not to excuse Trump because he has no margin of error, but he should understand that whatever he does

is going to be labeled crudity. And then the usual progressive image of a sober and judicious Ivy League law graduate as president or JFK type person is not going to be with him this year, this time. So everything he says

is going to be contextualized as vulgar. Peter, thank you. Hi, Victor. James Lilac's here. I was just taking the dog outside to do what he did. So I'm sorry. So how's Trump doing? Kidding. I'm kidding. Well, I just I know. I'm kidding. Here's the question. You know, when we talk about the crudity, right, there are these statements that he's made that you can be compared to things that other presidents said in confidence. But you have to admit that the persona of the man is is is reality TV. The persona of the man is the the loose tweet about the yanking licenses and the rest of it. And people like this because the other side doesn't fight fair. And now we've got to use their terms to fight them as well so we were talking

about this in the comments at ricochet yesterday and somebody said that uh when eventually there will be a time for civility and we'll get back to a more to a to a line of decor but i don't think that's the case i think that we've permanently entered a period in which this is the new tone and that it's simply smash mouth. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't agree with you because I don't think there was a civility. It just depends on how you define it. When the president of the United States illegally orders surveillance on associated press reporters and then denies it, monitors James Rosen's emails to his grandmother. Or when you weaponize the IRS and you try to alter an election by shutting down conservative groups based on their ideology.

Or you have somebody get on TV five times and say that a video maker is responsible, then you go out and you trump up a probation charge and you jail him for a year. Or then you have the national security advisor, the deputy national security advisor, and others using a document that an opposition candidate paid for and use that, which you've already had the FBI say in 2007, 8 was probably fraudulent and use that for a FISA warrant to spy on people. That's not very civil. And my point, I'm just going to say this, though, that I'm not going to worry about when he says outrageous things.

What I'm going to worry about, if Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions start to monitor the associate press, or they start to tell the IRS to go after people based on their liberal, then I'm done with him. But what I'm shocked about is that everybody's outraged about that, both on the right and left. Didn't say much about what Obama did at all. He was the greatest threat to civil liberties that we've seen. Nobody said a word. Nobody said a word about it. A lot of people on the right did.

A lot of people on the right did. But I can't feel this phenomenon that people are more outraged on the right right now about what Trump said than they are what the previous administration did. And that's just a fact. If you look at this memo that the Nunes committee is trying to release, you have people outrageous and so crude, and he is, that he hits an emotional button with a particular type of conservative elite, and they lose perspective about what he says versus what people actually do. And I know that he's a big mouth and a mouth off, but I don't pay any attention to that. I just say to myself, what is he doing?

Is he endangering civil liberties? Is he going after his political enemies? Would Jeff Sessions do that? Would Jim Mattis do that? Would Cohen do that with Mnuchin? And I haven't seen it as I did in the last administration. So I'm not as worried. I thought that was very uncivil.

That was a period of, for me, very uncivil. I agree. And we can make a distinction between uncivil actions and uncivil behavior. But let me ask you this last question for me. Do you think that a large percentage of Trump's base would support him doing the things that they didn't like Obama doing because it's our turn. We should do what they did because those are the new rules. Why not weaponize the IRS? No, I hope they wouldn't. I wouldn't. And I think so far the people who are disappointed, that's the irony. I think a lot of this discussion, nobody gives any room or avenue

for paradox or irony or anything because it may be that a person who shouldn't have been able to appoint a person like James Mattis or Gorsuch actually will appoint a more conservative and more sober and judicious people than a McCain or Romney. That's just the way the world works. But, um, I think that the, given the level of appointees and the iron, another irony is when you have 90% press conference coverage, it's negative. You have no margin for criminality and you have a special prosecutor shouldn't even be there. Whereas I think we should have had a special prosecutor on Benghazi. I think we should have had one on the email investigations. And I think 90% of the coverage of Obama was pretty good. And that gave a license to do it, not because I think Trump is an upright Christian moral person, but because he's got so much scrutiny and he's got a staff and a cabinet that are not only good, but skeptical of him.

And they have more latitude in their purview than any other cabinets ever had. They do. He's outsourcing responsibility, but he's not anal retentive or he's not crossing every T and dotting every I. It's scary if they're not good, but again, I think a lot of this is atmospherics. It's better just to look at exactly what he's done and regret that he says things that are unnecessary. Regret them also because they're counterproductive. But of course, I'll just finish by saying that's a pundit talking. I don't know the exact effect because everybody who's made that statement that I just had has been proven wrong, that his tweeting or his rallies that we think are unnecessary

and kind of embarrassing, they tend to energize a base and they have a psychological effect on independents who poll that they don't like that, but apparently like the fact that somebody's doing it as long as it's not them. It's a way of getting back at the, I don't know, the deep state, so to speak. Victor, you've got to get settled in Pasadena now. But may I ask one last question? And I'll set it up as follows.

I had a conversation not too long ago with old college buddy John Hoven, who's now senator from North Dakota. And my question to John was, Senator, you've got North Dakota is a conservative state. You've got some oil activity over in the western edge of the state, but fundamentally North Dakota is agricultural, and it's small towns and medium-sized towns,

and your people go to church on Sunday. Neighborhood matters to them. Neighborliness matters, comportment. And yet they voted for Donald Trump overwhelmingly. How do you explain that? And Senator Hoeven said, my constituents do not approve of Donald Trump, but they want him to succeed. That feels to me like the formulation that explains a lot of the country. They don't want their children to grow up to behave like Donald Trump, but on the substance, they want him to succeed. And now, as you demonstrated in your cover story for National Review,

on one item after another, after only one year in office, he is succeeding. What do you think is likely to happen to the poll numbers? Will we see approval go up? Will it settle out? Well, we already have. The RealClearPolitics was 36, 37 three weeks ago, and it's about 40. And polls other than Rasmussen, which usually has him around 43 to 45. I think Fox News had him at 42, and there was one other poll that had him at 43. And that's entirely because of the tax, the sense that when you have a drudge headline or even the New York Times says GDP or economy or stock market,

that resonates, and that's before the actual windfall of tax reductions that people are going to see in their payroll checks. So yeah, I think it is. But what you just said, it's not really, we all want him to succeed and we all regret that he says the things he does, but those are not static things. One of two is going to change at some point. No president succeeds for eight years every single year. Reagan didn't. He had a grand contrary. He had all kinds of problems. So he has no margin of error. And yet being bombastic and crude doesn't mean that character's destiny, like my colleagues at National Review always say, he can be disciplined. Kelly's already much more disciplined than Steve Bannon was.

That's right. So he's actually getting better if you think about it. Yes. His authors are fewer and rarer. They're usually reported by somebody who says something. He says that Trump was going to fire Mueller. A book says that Trump was having an affair. A book, an unidentified source says he said, or Durbin says he said this, but his actual direct conversation to the American people is much better. And so I guess what I'm saying, we have two forces.

One is his achievements that are really good, and one is his character and expression, which has been kind of bad. And they balance each other off, but either one can get worse or better, and that'll determine whether he gets reelected. Well, we'll see at the midterms. I don't remember in 1982 the sort of loathing towards Ronald Reagan that there was toward Donald Trump. And I remember that there was a great deal of loathing of Ronald Reagan. But I don't remember the sort of self-justified,

preening, moralistic, you know, autofillation that the left seemed to have. I don't know about that. I remember in 2007, all at once, we had a novel from Alfred Knopp, Checkpoint, about how to kill George Bush. The same month, the Toronto Film Festival gave an award to a docudrama about killing Bush. And people liked, remember Al Gore said he was a broncher and Garrison Keillor said he was a Nazi. Even John Glenn came out of retirement and said it was the old Nazi stuff. And then there was Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan. So it got close to that.

And Bush went out of office with the second lowest poll ratings. I mean, we worried about Trump at 40, but I think Bush's was 31 when he went out. That's right. Trump is basically, if you look at Obama, the same 11 to 13-month period, he's about where Obama was right after the... It's about 40... I where Obama was right after the, it's about 40, I think

Obama was 46, 45, and Obama got down to 39 at one point during the Obama, the Obamacare. So I think a lot of this is, and that was with a favorable press. I don't think he's ever going to get over 50%, but I think if he gets to be 45%, there's still this effect that we all encounter when somebody says he approves of Trump. He says it in a quiet voice and he looks sideways and nobody hears him. And that's true of people who even talk to him on his poll. So I think he always polls 3% to 4% low. Well, the left needs to go back and do, like they say, that we're going to revise last quarter's GDP.

The left needs to come up periodically and say, we'd like to revise our previous Hitler estimation of George Bush. He's now actually at a 0.62 Hitler as opposed to the 0.9. Victor, we've got to let you go because there you are in sunny Pasadena. Go enjoy it. Thank you so much for enjoying it. Everyone, buy his book, by the way, and learn something about World War II. Well, thank you. I appreciate that.

We'll see you guys. Victor, thanks so much. Yep. Okay. Bye. Peter, do you know if they're dropping him off at a hotel? Yes, that's exactly what's happening. He was in the car and he just arrived at the hotel.

So after that, I heard the door slam, actually. So he's probably wandering around the lobby waiting to go up to his room, as we all do. You go up to your room. You open up the windows. You take a look at the view. You check the amenities. You bounce in the bed a few times. But what nobody ever does when they go to a hotel is to rip back that coverlet, right, and test out the sheets.

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Branch for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Our next guest is my dog. If you hear that, apparently there's somebody outside. He's become something of a guard beast lately, and I like that. Too bad it's not John Yu. It would be fun to open the door and find John Yu in full cruise

casino mode in his tuxedo, looking like an elegant secret agent from some great movie you never saw. But we assume that he is natty as ever, cheerful as ever, and ready to talk to us about, well, John, what are we going to talk about today? Ah, I hope it's about

muller and john john you're on john you're on hi john how are you man jennifer jennifer rubin tweeted out today that if if trump asked uh for muller's muller's resignation that's that's impeachable right there i i don't think so the president has a constitutional authority to remove any prosecutor and he has any grounds he he doesn't have to give any grounds. In fact, the best thing he would do if he had been looking backwards in time and all the people he's already fired is he'd just fire them and give no reason like he used to do on television. So, John, this is a non-story. By the way, you worked in Washington. You know the ways of Washington.

Why did this story emerge now? Who leaked it? What's going on here? The story, of course, is Trump threatened to fire Mueller. In fact, gave orders to fire Mueller back in June. But Donald McGahn, the White House counsel, said he'd quit if Trump did that and Trump backed down. And Trump and the White House are now – I don't know that Trump has spoken about it, but the White House is now denying the entire story. Why would you – this is pure speculation, of course, but why not?

Why would this story appear now? Well, I think what's going on, Peter, is that there's a big fight going on behind the scenes about whether Trump should testify in front of Mueller under oath. There are people who, including I think the president's lawyers, who ultimately think that he will have to testify. I agree with that. I think he's in the end got to testify. He can delay it, but all the delay is going to make them look worse you know peter peter saying i know the the insides of uh insides and backgrounds of washington is like you know yogi barra saying someone else is a good baseball player peter you know washington which as well as i do right you know in the white house are these competing factions yes but you also know you know when there's a scandal the the most important thing to do is get everything out early.

Get all the information out. The delay – not only does the delay make Trump look bad, but as we saw with what happened with the investigation into the Bush White House and then with Clinton obviously, the delay and the fighting is obstructionist. It creates possibilities for you to violate the law. So – go ahead. John, you've been – where was it? I caught you on Fox News night before last saying that the president should testify in person to Mueller and he should do it as fast as possible because it feels to you – if I've got this right, correct me if I haven't. It feels to you as though that's the kind of thing that an investigation would come to last, an interview with the president of the United States. When he gives the interview, pressure would then begin to build on Mueller just to wrap it up and announce his findings.

That's your argument? Yeah. Was it Fox I was on? I could have sworn I was on MSNBC. I can tell you that since I never turn on MSMSNBC, for sure we're on Fox. So that's exactly right. First of all, almost every – years. Look how long – would Bill Clinton have white water to wrap up in less than a year?

He would love that. It took almost the whole second term and destroyed his presidency. So for Mueller to be wrapping up in less than a year, that is light speed for a federal prosecution. People just don't understand how fast Mueller is going. Second, that's a great advantage to Trump. The faster he can get it wrapped up, the more he can get it out of the way and turn to the real problems facing the questions of the country. Now, the issue is how do we know it's wrapping up? Well, so if you're a federal prosecutor, you build everything from the ground up. You start interviewing the low-level guys like the Papadopolises of the world, and then you slowly build a case, and you would only interview the president.

You would only interview the attorney general or the chief of staff at the very end. When you already think you have all the facts ready you want to see whether what you believe to be true from all the other interviews and emails and documents make sense or whether the president attorney general are lying to you so the fact that he's already in a position muller's already in a position to seek an interview trump shows that the part that involves President Trump is almost over. This is – even though I think conservatives are making a mistake attacking Mueller and claiming all these conflicts, even though it's clear these conflicts exist in the people he's hired, in these texts, in these terrible texts and embarrassing emails. But actually,

Mueller is doing Trump a favor by pushing it forward so fast. Mueller is doing – Mueller is moving as fast as he can. And if the results are that he finds nothing, then everybody will say, jeepers, Mueller, even with a biased team, Mueller found nothing. So I get all that. Here's the question, though. Next question. Ronald Reagan, the way they handled it when Reagan testified during Iran-Contra was written interrogatories.

They submit their questions. The president and his counsel, Ronald Reagan and his counsel, get to consider their answer very carefully. They reply in writing. You get to take time over it. You get to think it through. And now, Bill, if you're counsel, if you're anybody who knows anything about Donald Trump, all of us know enough about Donald Trump, who knows what might come out of his mouth, especially if somebody asks him a question that angers him. So wouldn't it be reasonable? I get your point. You want this to happen as fast as possible. Get it over with. Mueller's doing us a favor. That's what you say if you were in the White House. But wouldn't you at such people who have a no impulse control, no filter between brain and mouth. And then like Philadelphia Eagles fans, but we'll come to that. Oh, come to that. Hey, all I want to point out about that is that the Philadelphia police tried to put grease on the light poles in downtown philly

so the fans couldn't shimmy up and it shows you if politics is a greasy pole the philadelphia eagles fans will win every time because they still made it to the top it wasn't just grease it was crisco with the result that the cops in philadelphia are suffering from a donut shortage right now john the city will never be the same. Somebody said here in Minneapolis, we're Philadelphia fans, we're not going to grease our poles. No. What we will do is we will put delicious, flavored butter on all of our poles, so please

feel free in the coldest of weather to lick those poles if you will. Were the Vikings playing a few weeks ago? I don't even remember. All right. Wait a minute. Back to politics. Would you please answer the question? Should the president – If you're the attorney and you have someone like Trump as your client, yes, you're exactly right. You want to make sure that the chances for Trump to contradict, essentially commit perjury, for him to contradict other people is as low as possible.

So, of course, getting as much of it done through writing and written interrogatories is their objective. But Mueller, who might be the most experienced federal prosecutor in the country, very reasonable guy. But this is a guy who's a former Marine platoon leader in Vietnam. He has the right to seek questions in person if he wants. And what Trump and his lawyers don't want is the prospect of them offering to do written. And Mueller being a prosecutor is not going to want that. He wants to see how Trump reacts. He wants to see if Trump from his facial expressions is going to be lying. He wants to be able to follow up on Trump's answers. And he could always go to court and get a subpoena

and demand that the president do it in person orally. Puts him in the position then of Nixon. The president doesn't want a subpoena from a court and then trigger a constitutional conflict with the judiciary too and suggest that he might defy the subpoena so the best thing is you're right peter the best thing is for his lawyers to negotiate to to keep uh to put boundaries on the questions but then ultimately they are going to have to put him forward for for an oral interview john the story the story i've heard john about scientology is that after

you've reached enough levels and you're clear and you have no more thetans and you've gone to all Got it. moment and very few people get up to that point. I sort of feel like that's how the memo is now. This memo has become this holy document that only a few can see and others are clamoring for it to be released to all. You see this hashtag all the time in your Twitter feed, release the memo. Take us through this exactly. What's supposedly in that mysterious memo memo you know james for a second i thought we were all finally going to be rich because you were segwaying to the church of scientology being our advertisers i was thinking where you were going i was like oh we finally made it but actually this is this is the question is whether or not when you say did trump did he know well let's talk about xeno xeno is your new over cosmic overlord if you're full of thetans

if you've got so many thetans flying around your body that you just can't be clear that well that's where the e-meter comes down to help you just one simple application one test can tell you if you're psychologically blocked and something i am'm sorry, go on. That's amazing. That's far better than their Dianetics advertising, that's for sure. Do our Dianetics, that's what I say. Go on. So I've used classified material. I've read memos like this. I've actually been very much involved when I was in the government with the FISA application process. So what this is, I believe, is that the House Intelligence Committee has put together a memo summarizing the faults that they think occurred in the way the FBI sought approval from the federal courts to surveil Trump's campaign. And usually all of that is classified.

And then I take it underlying that are the tracing how this dossier created by the Hillary Clinton campaign and then through Fusion GPS actually got into the Justice Department and was used as a basis for a FISA application, which I have to say, when I was in the government, that just would never have happened. I find that so bizarre. If it's true, I think that really does reflect serious partisan bias in the hands of, in the part of people who are supposed to be our most neutral public servants. And then I think the rest of it has to do with people like Rod Rosenstein or Comey or so on, maybe collaborating on this or trying to cover it up. Now, the reason it's classified

is that if you take the look at all the classified information and you pull a memo summarizing it, that memo is classified too. It's called like derivative classification. But on the other hand, every member of the House and the Senate, like the president, like the justices of the Supreme Court, are the heads of their branch of government. And they have an automatic constitutional right to see classified information. They don't need to get clearance from anybody to read this memo or even read the documents underneath it. So, I mean, I think it's appropriate for, you know, Nunes and staff to write this, but also for every member of the House and Senate to see it.

And, John, take it one step further. Once every – forget about every member of the House and Senate. I think the latest figure – Byron York has actually been keeping tabs of how many have seen it. Over 200 Republicans. The Democrats seem to be boycotting it more or less. Only 10 or a dozen Democrats have read it. But over 200 Republicans have read it. You get over 200 members of Congress with direct personal knowledge of a document, and you can be sure that every reporter in Washington already knows what it contains.

That thing is not classified anymore in any genuine way. So why is the Justice Department – I'm trying to – why is justice threatening Nunes with national calamity if it's released? They're playing games, aren't they? Yeah, I agree. Actually, I think this is a classic cover you're behind, which is Washington 101. So I think what they want to do is – what they say they want to do, and there's a fair argument to do this, is to at least scrub what we used to call scrub the document to make sure that there's nothing in there that will identify an actual legitimate or a legitimate operation or some way we actually collect intelligence.

This is what's called sources and methods of intelligence gathering but i agree with you peter i bet it would take less than an hour to be able to do that because this memo appears to be just a four-page summary right of all the other classroom information it's very doubtful to me that has anything and then they can always just the fbi or the just might just block it uh black it out if they want to. And they also probably don't – they probably want to protect the individual identities of Justice Department officials who might have made these mistakes because they want to shield them from a witch hunt. That's always actually been something the Justice Department always tries to do is protect the career officers. But I agree with you. I think with this thing, everyone knows what's in it pretty much, I think, and why not release it? And I think actually this is the interesting thing. You know who's interested is to have that released? President Trump.

He'll be the one who benefits the most. You know who gets to decide what's declassified ultimately? President Trump. So all President Trump has to do is send a one-sentence email to his White House counsel or chief's office saying, I declassify the Nunes memo. And then it can be in the public the next minute. It's interesting how we're using these exquisitely legal terms to make sure that everything is done carefully with regards to the memo when what people are talking about beyond that is a group of people inside the FBI that were actively working to undermine the campaign. I mean, on one hand, you have we have to dot all the I's. We have to cross all the T's. And on the other hand, you have lawless, deep state rogue government. Well, we'll see how it plays out.

Speaking of lawless, there's always the Philly fans. John, are you – I mean, I think that, frankly, I'm with Charles C.W. Cook, who is following the Jaguars, and I think a Vikings-Jags Super Bowl would have attracted at least 500,000, 600,000 viewers on television. But you'll be happy, I guess. I've always thought there should be a consolation game, which in Philadelphia we would call the Losers Bowl for you guys well it would be i actually think that the vikings versus the janks would have been a game that would have kept people there until the last possible moment unlike the one we're about to see where the patriots will dominate early on and people will start streaming for the exits after the second quarter but oh i'll bet you a copy of dianetics on that one by the way do we know is whence going to be cleared to play are they playing he's out for

this season oh so we have whatever else happens Wentz going to be cleared to play? Are they playing? No, he's out for this season. Oh, so we have whatever else happens. These are two great stories. On the Patriot side, you've got Belichick and Brady, two old pros pulling it off one more time. I've reached the stage in life in which I find that narrative pretty compelling. And on the other side, you've got this kind of stand-in walking onto the stage and dominating the role. This is – that's like – Yeah, he's the Cinderella story, the Eagles quarterback. And what's his –

Nick Foles. Nick Foles. He was – he had maybe one of the greatest seasons of any quarterback five years ago. And he got traded away and he's bounced – and for the Eagles. They got traded around, bounced around, became a mediocre mediocre mediocre quarterback and this he was thinking of retiring last year and instead came back to be the backup at the very end of his career it's like the natural tell me this is not the football version of the natural and then he kind of comes out of retirement almost and he's going to win the whole thing oh yeah okay so five bucks for me at least

five bucks on the patriots john you're gonna go for that oh yeah of course james what about you um i uh am not uh betting man i just i hate to root for the patriots and i just hate i i don't have a dog in this fight i actually have i actually have a dog though we know that this is the first time when people will be on the side of a philadelphia sports team yes that's true that's true that's true i have two dogs in this fight actually and i hope that they chew each other anyway uh it's going to be a wonderful super bowl we have done our best in minneapolis to prepare everybody for it it's going to be our stadium is fantastic the town is kind you guys help the eagles get there so quickly. We're so happy that you – Oh, yes.

Well, you can take your gratitude, John, you, and you can put it in a little tiny bottle. Oh! We just found the limits of Minnesota dice. You just pushed him outside the nice envelope. I have that effect on many people actually. That's different. That's different. That's awesome. All right different. That's awesome.

All right, John, thanks. John, thanks so much. And I'll send you, I'll email you with my address. I'd actually like a crisp five,

a new uncirculated bill, please. 500 pennies. All right, John, we'll, we'll reckon up on Monday. Okay.

Bye guys. Take care. Oh, that's, that's great. Monday, John. We'll reckon up on Monday. Okay. Bye, guys. Take care. Oh, that's grand. It's a Monday, actually. Yes, it is the joy of carrying more than a wit about professional sports as you actually start to get agitated and have conversations like this. I've been away from this for so long that I finally get back to watching the Vikings. I'm watching with my friends. I'm enjoying the whole masculine solidarity of it all, the the hooting the punching the rest of it and then it

all ends in tears and it's just uh yeah what are you gonna do what are you gonna do well i mean we got i they didn't get to the super bowl but what a season the vikings had that your town got a good return out of its franchise this year that was quite a a season. Yes. It's just, yes. It's just amusing that after the saints game, I'm driving home and the talk radio is talking about, you know, we're looking at it. We,

we, we may be looking at a dynasty here and the next, the next week, the same hosts, the same people calling in saying, why did I even care? Why it's, you know,

it's, uh, you know, as, as the old saying goes, when I want it, when I die, I want to be buried by Vikings players so they can let me down one more time.

I hadn't heard that. That's beautiful. Yeah, it is. Well, you know, we're not alone. I mean, just about every franchise has that sort of, except the Patriots maybe, have that feeling, that cursedness. I don't know if it's worse with the Vikings or not. All I can tell you is out here, the 49ers barely ever set foot out of the grave. That's true.

The fun of it is, though, is that for a week, everybody's wearing Viking clothes. Everywhere you go, somebody's got a purple shirt on and the rest of it. Did you just bring it out now? Did you run to the store to get some? Did you mail away for it thinking it might happen? I'm not inclined to mail away for clothes. I like to look at them in the store. I like to try them on. But when I discovered BombFill, thanks to this wonderful organization called Ricochet, my whole way of getting dressed was transformed. BombFill, let me explain. It's an easier way to

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dot com slash ricochet for $25 off your first purchase. One more time, that's bombfill.com slash ricochet. And our thanks to BombFell for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Well, Peter, before we go, we already talked as much sports as I'm possibly capable of doing. Anything else kicking around here? Because once the Super Bowl is over, and I can't wait because the next day we'll be talking about what the commercials and how disappointed we were in the commercials. And then we'll forget that.

And then there's this sort of raw three weeks without anything. So we staggered about Valentine's day. Valentine's day just doesn't quite have the same oomph and push that the whole holiday season was. We're entering that interregnum between the joys of the holiday season and the onset of spring. And I'm not looking forward to spring this year at all. I'm not. So why not? Why not why not why not i don't understand i thought the whole point of living

in minnesota was spring you'd think so wouldn't you but spring brings summer and in the middle of summer my daughter is going away to brazil for a year oh oh oh oh this is the the moment is upon you oh james i actually i feel you. I really do feel for you for that. It's not like going to college where they come back at Thanksgiving or Christmas. Right. It's gone. But so is this the year before college? She's taking a gap year in Brazil?

Is that what's happening? I see. Okay. And we can't go down there either because daughter has a new family now. So, yeah. Oh, no. Truly, I do feel for you. I was pretty choked up when our first – when my oldest daughter went off to college and I had four more still at home.

This is going to be – okay. I'm sorry. I should be bucking you up. I should be bucking you up. In fact, I'm saying, oh, James, the abyss yawns before you. It does. You have spares. I don't. I should be bucking you up. In fact, I'm saying, oh, James, the abyss yawns before you. It does. You have spares.

I don't. So, yeah, when we do this podcast a year from now, it'll be, hi, I'm James Lileks. I'm alone and bereft. And let's go to – Oh, you'll pull through. You'll be fine. You will be fine. And truth. Okay, let's just take you through the thinking here.

You have to say this and say it into the mirror once or twice if you absolutely have to. Truly, you want the best for her. Do you not, James? Of course, of course, of course. And truly, you know this is going to be a wonderful experience for her. Do you not? Absolutely. I tell myself this all the time.

All right. Okay, good, good. I'm just helping you. I'm just taking you through what you're going to have to keep saying to yourself. Oh, no, no, no. The parental altruism goes without saying and has been factored into this from the beginning. I'm now concentrating on me. Me.

It's still going to hurt. All right. Because that's what I'm going to be left with at the end of it. Well, we leave you now with this podcast with a couple of words. First of all, you've got to go to Ricochet because that is the fun place where not just politics is discussed, but it's sports and art and literature and music and all sorts of things bubbling over and bubbling under in the member feed. That's the fun stuff. I mean, the main feed is great.

The member feed has a personality like no other site you're going to find on the Internet. And you can join it for $2.50. That's cheap. So join today. And once you do, you'll experience what Ricochet has to offer. And you will upgrade fast because you just want more and more and more and more. And we want you also to sleep well and be well-dressed and to stay in places that are fun and not corporate, bland, meaningless hotels. So that's why Bowling Branch, Tripping.com, and Bombfell are sponsors we're proud to bring to you.

If you enjoyed this show, by the way, you could go to iTunes. Would it kill you? Would it kill you to give us a five-star rating so some new listeners can discover us and keep the show going? Money keeps it going. Traffic keeps it going. Your goodwill and your continued patronage keep it going, and we thank you for

sticking with us for the hour or so we've been here. And Peter, we'll see you next week, and we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 3.0. Next week, James. By the way way as we as we say farewell i want to say hello to a new italian listener i know it sounds strange but it's true ciao tommy you gotta be a football hero To get along with the beautiful girls

You've got to be a touchdown getter, you bet If you want to get a baby to pet The fact that you are rich or handsome Won't get you anything in curls You've got to be a football hero to get along with the beautiful girls. Ricochet! Join the conversation.