Well whiskey, come and take my pain the money. Why think alone when you can drink it all In with.
Ricochet's three Whiskey Happy Hour, join your bartenders Steve Hayward, John You, and the International Woman of Mystery Lucretia.
Where they slapped it up and David ain't too busy on the show Tap.
Got a giving.
Welcome everybody to a new episode of the Traveling Road Show known as a three Whiskey Happy Hour because everybody has been on the road. Steve, you just got in from the road. Where are you coming from?
I've been in all four time zones of the country in the last week, and wow, and and the problem is I had to make up for all the drinking I didn't do on the road. So I'm I'm totally bombed tonight. I mean, this really is the three whiskey Happy Hour, and I'm trying to see if I can live up the reputation of the late great Richard John Newhouse, who was legendary for his capacity to drink liquor to like three in the morning and become more lucid the more he drank. So I'm gonna try for that.
Yeah, I was gonna say I mean, this is gonna be Steve's greatest performance podcast in history, So.
I doubt it.
I can see him. He's barely able to sit up straight in his.
Chair, crucifying John.
I can I just ask one one one quick story about this is I once had a fairly eminent person.
John, you've seen me, actually, Lucretia, you have to.
You know, I've done my master ceremonies for the pri I Annual dinners. You came to Charles Crowdhammer and and the Lucretia you came with me and Peter Thial, And I had an eminent person tell me once, do not have anything to drink before you speak at an after dinner meal. And the person who told me that, the person who told me that was PJ O'Rourke.
I mean, I got legendary for his substance.
Yeah, really well, And he said, look, as I've listened to tapes, I can tell you not well. So this is out the window tonight because I had you know, I got home long story why but I you know, I had martinis and then I grilled some lamb chops with my spouse and had some bottle of red wine. And after you haven't drunk for a week its yard. Okay, well, just.
Where are you? Where are you trying?
A lovely beach area still a nice beach area of California called Marina del Rey, and I had a lovely dinner overlooking the ocean at a place called you Will Love It Whiskey Reds, And so I had my share earlier, and now I'm drinking something that I have in the hotel room, which I believe is some kind of Italian red wine. Go figure, because I had plenty of this ski earlier. And now it's it's late. These guys, you know, our schedules are crazy, and so here it is late, late,
late at night and past my bedtime. So I'm just slowing down a little on the whiskey and drinking wine.
I should we should take an episode at Whiskey Reds someday something.
It would be awesome. It was quiet, it wasn't crowded, it was amazing.
We should also tape one and the rare occasion Lucretia is not bombed, and along with Steve, we do that in the morning.
I've never fallen in the mornings.
John, So you say, okay, be a fun show, and I'm in Kansas City, Missouri, where I'm supposed to speak at the meeting of the judges of the Eighth Circuit, which goes all the way up to the north of the country, all the way down the middle, including Iowa.
Then all the way down here to Missouri, Missouri.
Exactly I want to know, is everyone they're unhappy about.
Email Bove No, not at all. I think people here are judges are generally a happy bunch. Even though the President of the United States seems to hate them all.
I don't think he hates them all. I don't have there been any universal injunctions from the UH.
No, the Eighth Circuit would not be the circuit that the the A C, l U and the ACP would be choosing. Right, They're choosing Massachusetts, Maryland, Washington, San Francisco, California. You're not picking Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas.
Places like good smart people from those places.
And I just came back from a great dinner with a member of the national media who will go unmentioned. But I'm just reinforcing Lucretia's terrible stereotypes of me as a bourbon swilling pal of the mainstream media. Yes you will, I confess that's all true. Do they know you, John?
I mean, are there any of them?
I was just I was just one. I was just on NPR and PBS this week and too great. Yes I was.
I was not only on there for free, and.
I was on a frontline documentary on Trump and the rule of law this week. And I had a whole segment of All Things Considered this morning.
All thanks behind.
Well wait a minute, so, but I think I think NPR I have a hunch about this. I think they're working very hard now to try and present some balanced guests because I was invited on NPR a week ago and I didn't even answer their emails because I hate them so much.
I just said, no, I'm not going on. I don't care.
I've had bad experiences at NPR a long time ago, and quit quit accepting their invitations. I will just say for listeners, because it's fun and you and I John texted that I know of whom you dined with, and it's a lady and I had a massive crush on her twenty years ago.
I'll just say that. And Steve yew anchors.
For Steve to have a major crush on you, all you have to do is have long hair and a slight southern accent, then you look a little.
Bit like Sydney sweety.
Well, that actually brings us to the first topic, which is to talk about the three Whiskey Happy Hours two favorite women, Sydney Sweeney and Kamala Harris.
Thought.
I didn't know I was going to do it? Did you? You didn't know how I was going to do it?
Thought was my favorite.
About Steve's favorite cultural icon of the last week. Sidney I did not know of. I did not know of her until this controversy. I still have don't think I've ever seen her in any show. But Steve, tell us about why instead of our former anchor on TV, you now have the hots for a jeans saleswoman. Tell us what's going on?
Well, so, first of all, John, you don't even pay attention to our own podcast because several weeks ago, maybe more than that, it might be three four months ago. I tried to bring up Sydney swingeing. I couldn't remember her name, and I said Sydney Powell.
Well, except that's that's somebody that Lucretia has the hots for. So Sydney, Sydney is all you need to get.
The John, don't even start with me.
Confusion came up is that she starred in a movie with an actor named Glenn Powell.
That's how it happened. I got that confused in my head.
I saw some of that movie on an airplane and I thought, yeah, she's really pretty, and you know she has shall we say she has all the she has attributes, but she's not a very good actress.
But that doesn't matter. But here's I here is the.
Moral political significance of it. First of all, you go back just four or five years ago and you had well, first of all, just think of she's the anti Dylan mulvaney ad campaign.
More than that, and Dylan mulvaney was the trans the cross dressing right, cross dressing sales uh, salesperson for.
That killed like a week.
Yeah right, And if you go back four, five, six, seven years ago, you know all of the you had always I'll put it this way, delicately plus size ads lucrease.
You will probably put it more bluntly than me.
Right, And the point is haired Obe's purple hair. Right? Yeah?
Sorry, Well you know I remember.
Now you're getting me excited. Oh stop, John, Well you got to be excited over Sidney Powell, and he's excited about Sidney Sweeney, So go ahead, sorry, and he.
Went Tigley Puff was that her name?
That was a different thing, that was right? That was she was?
You know, yeah, that was the very point. Yes, it was getting all if you go back to sort of me too. Uh, moral panic people called it, and then uh is an adjunct of the whole George Floyd Racial Awakening. A lot of the ad agencies got populated by recent grads from colleges were very woke and they wanted woke advertising. That's how you got the Dylan mulvaney ad for bud Light.
Uh.
You know their marketing director at uh it was in bev was a company they said, oh yeah, we want the beer to be less fratty and so forth.
Uh.
And I remember at the time, actually, Lucretia, you were there. It was when we went to the dinner in Newport Beach with Ron de Santis, that Claremont hild And you know, I wandered off and I got talking to a guy, young guy I know who's a Hollywood young guy trying to break into Hollywood screenwriting. And he said, everybody's terrified of the young, woke people that they've hired for the AD Agency used to the studios. Everybody wants to go back to making movies with pretty women in short skirts
and the men rescuing them. I mean, you know, you go forward two or three years and what's the huge monster movie?
It was Top Gun two.
It was old fashioned Americans are going to crush some American to crush iron I mean David, but right, and everybody wants to do that, and all the old studio heads are terrified of this. And my collateral point is all the Ad Agency people were terrified of it too.
Suddenly this comes along.
That's not You're gonna put Sidney Sweeney out there, who I'll just say apparently has her original equipment.
He just froze, So I'm gonna take oh you know what.
Yeah, so the yes zoom Steve's comments is inappropriate content. I suppose, yeah, they Steve you brows for the last fifteen seconds as you tell us that you were getting sweaty under the brow.
But colorha can okay, now let me take over for her. He's gone on too long. So it's not just that it's the whole idea that they were trying to enforce on all of society the idea that males, but especially white males, are stupid, they're incompetent, they're this and that. So if you ever actually saw a white male in an advertisement, for instance, they were always idiots. The black
wife was always the smart one. Every single ad had a multi racial couple, had a you know, and and then the the most fringey I don't know the right word for couture, I guess designers would use these, you know, very androgynous kinds of models. You couldn't tell if they
were boys or girls or they would you know. There was a really classic meme showing back in the days that she's and let anything get between her and her Calvin's and it's Kate Moss and somebody, some guy, and they're in kind of underwear and they both have these absolutely perfect bodies. And then the new one is these you know, overweight, lumpy dumpy wearing opposite like the girl's
wearing boys underwear and the boys wearing girls underwear. And so that's that was the practical effect of what Steve was talking about. And so Kate Moss, sorry, sorry, Sydney Sweeney comes out and she goes back to just being kind of sexy and a little bit teasing and making some jokes and showing off her ample attributes and makes a comment I guess that good jeans mine or blue something like that, And of course this is a Nazi dog whistle, you know, just on and on and on.
But the most interesting thing is is that the reason there is so much outcry not just because it's become a self fulfilling thing, but because the Left is realizing they're losing this battle. It's over now with Sydney Sweeney. It's over. After American Eagle made two hundred million dollars in like three days. You know, they.
Really make a lot of money.
Their stock is way up, their stores are their stores are sold out.
I've got to think.
I've got to think their ad agency people are partying at night, just doing all the cocaine possible because they have just done the biggest advertising in fifty years, and the one.
You do it right?
Do you guys remember the carls Junior ads? Jump on that one?
Think yeah, I do right, Yeah, yeah, I.
Mean there hasn't been anything like that on TV for how long. I don't know. I'll watch ads on TV. But but when I do, I think that they're just right go. So, yeah, it's a wonderful thing. Woke is over, guys, yep, And the rest of society is just going to follow along pretty soon, because when ads advertisers stop putting overweight transgender couples on TV for their ads, it's over. You know,
we're not going to be celebrating that anymore. And they're going to figure out that most of America doesn't want that nonsense. And that was the nicest way I could put it.
Very good, Very good. Now we're going to move on to Lucretia's next favorite woman, Kamala Harris.
And they say.
Today as we were preparing for the podcast, that Kamala Harris has decided not to run for governor, but is instead going to bless us with a new memoir of her one hundred and seven day long campaigns.
Sortist presidential campaign ever.
And I say, sorta, Krisha, like President Trump, who was asked about this today, is already decided to buy the book. What are your thoughts?
I have none. She is just such a non entity. I get that. I guess in most polls she's the front runner for twenty twenty eight. Let me remind you wearing twenty twenty five. Things might change a bit in the meantime, but the Democrats don't have anybody better. That's the amazing part. They don't have anybody better. Who are you gonna give me AOC? Jasmine Crockett, Gavin Newsom, let's see, man, what the hell is the change body? Judge? Yeah, booty Judge.
The guy from Chicago, what's his name? Obama's guy who's getting made fun of because he's trying to rama Manuel Rama Manuel. I mean, they have nobody. They're all losers, and all the polls say that, Okay, we don't really like everything Trump's doing, but when it comes down to it, we trust Republican way more than we trust Democrats. In fact, sixty two Americans have a disfavorable view of Democrats, so
they have nothing. If they're going to put Kamala Harris for more power to them, I get to reenact at kam Lama ding Dong show.
Well, look, Steve, have you seen these cringe worthy TikTok videos that Kamala has caught on is posting on Twitter and on TV. I all thought they're painful to watch. Not only is she addressing the camera, but then she is a TikTok thing which looks like she's in a library, whispering to some partty off stage about that she's not really been sitting on the beach drinking margaritas the last few months.
Oh I heard I didn't see that.
I heard it on satellite radio driving in my car, and I thought, this can't be real, right, I mean, Tutree thoughts one is.
She if she ran for governor, she was going to lose. And I think the really you think she was lose? I do.
I think the historical announcer here was Nixon in sixty two. People realize that Nixon did. His heart wasn't in it. He was just using it as a stepping stone. I think somebody told her, you know what, that's if you want to be president, don't run for governor. You should keep your powder dry to run for president. And by the way, she should run for president, you know, three years from now and not six years from now like Nixon was thinking. Okay, But I also wonder two things.
One is connects to Lucretia's point, but the other one is the word around California in the last several months is to she was putting out word of the California establishment, please don't get behind anybody for governor.
All the money people wait till I make up my mind.
And I wonder if some of the money people in California and elsewhere said, you know what, We're not giving you money to run for governor.
It's a bad idea.
And part of the reason she is not running is because important people on the inside told her not to run. Someone behind that might be Gavin new by the way, although that's sort of tricky Lucretia. Last week we talked about how AOC is raising all the money and and Jasmine Crockett and Jasmine Crockett right, but AOC is running, is going to use that money to run for president? Crockett who knows what? But uh, and so this is kind of interesting. I think Cammel is thinking about running
for president again in three years. And look, her lead in the polls is just name recognition. I got to think if a campaign starts, AOC is going to have all the energy of the base and not Kamela.
I think she's Sti't tease, don't tease.
No, don't to Okay, Well, I'm done.
I mean, come on, okay, analogy man, who just really quickly, if this is Nixon in nineteen sixty two, who is going to run for California governor and win?
Well, it's going to be a whole bunch of you know, Democrats now running, and this will be good. I mean, there's you know, apparently Rick Caruso is not going to run for governor. Apparently I heard lately he was going to run for mayor of l A. Again, I'm disappointed at that. I think he'd be a good candidate for governor.
Ye a whole somebody needs to fix it.
But go ahead, Well, all right, you know the candidate for US is a Steve Hilton, you know, the Fox News hosts in America.
Yes, he's running.
Seriously, if you have a bunch of I don't know if there's but there's a Republican sheriff and riverside running, I don't know if that's gonna work.
But I don't know.
It's going to be Hilton, I think, and some you know, no name Democrat.
So okay, all right, well that's that's just great. In the meantime, it doesn't matter. Kamala Harris, AOC the Democrats are losers. Uh, you know, sorry, there's yeah, it's it's it doesn't matter. Now things could change, but the things that could change, for instance, you know, the economy could tank because of Trump's terrorists.
So they're still they're just about to That was the next story that Trump terriffs because today or this week, Trump announced deals with the European Union and South Korea, and.
They took it in the in the shorts. By the way, the European Union did go ahead.
Well, they both agreed to fifteen percent tariffs, and then he announced today higher tariffs on all the countries who could not make a deal, like India, South Africa, major Training. He's paused the tariffs on Mexico, Brazil, I think Switzerland, but basically every country that didn't reach a deal is being hit with twenty five percent tariffs are more, which is a huge increase. I think tariffs before all this started were about two to three percent.
Before you go on, John, I do want to mention that his uh tariffs on India were not exclusively because they wouldn't make a deal. They were punishments for selling.
Yes, that's true part of it.
And the reason I brought that up wasn't to point out that you glossed over it. It was it's actually, I think an important point that when in the past has has any president just made a concerted effort to use tariffs as a foreign policy tool. No, you probably know this better than me. This is not my area of expertise. It never interested me before. It doesn't really interesting me now all that much. Except I'm It's turned out I was right and you guys were wrong. It
hasn't destroyed our economy. The economy grew more than expected it to. You said, you said, you actually said the opposite. You said that the short term, the short term pain would be great, but if we could hold out, maybe it would work. But instead, the short term page is going to start.
But it hasn't started yet. Until now ever, you got haven't gone into a sect.
Change the goalposts all you like. You know, I'm right, But.
Anyway, that's it's that's not quite right, John. I mean, I was startled to see what tariff revenues, how much they've increased from I mean, it's been up and down, it's been a radic and all the rest of that.
The here's a couple of ways to put by the way I mean I I you know, I wrote the piece for our Friends of Civitas two three months ago about how Reagan imposed some pretty tough tariffs, but it was usually very narrowly targeted specific industries, even specific countries or specific companies.
Reagan threatened, I think in nineteen eighty five.
A two tariff on Spain because Spain had all kinds of bogus trade barriers against American agricultural exports, and they backed down real fast. I think that the point to be made here is two or threefold. One is, you know, Trump has been most consistent about this for forty years, which is we're being taken as chumps. We've been saying to the World Trade Organization and you know what was it called before wt O.
It was GAT.
General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, which was my version, is GAT really meant General Agreement to talk and talk. We've been saying for fifty years, pretty please with lawyer trade barriers on American goods, and maybe we'd hear there, we get a little nick down and and Trump has said, screw all that, I'm going to do this the way I do my real estate deals, and you know, to my surprise, I will confess this. It looks like it
is working. And in addition to getting by the way, what I love the most about the European Deal was how much he humiliated What's Arsen LeVander Laterjosen, the head of the as I collected, as I call it now, the EU s SR is what I like to call those guys, right, so and so, by the way, by having a fifteen percent tariff, I'm i'm you know, in the abstract, I'm for zero percent free trade reciprocal. On the other hand, this looks like it's a serious revenue
measure for the American budget deficit. I didn't see this coming. So here's the mystery to me. And I'm sorry, Lucreatia, I'm going on too long.
But Trump said it was gonna happen. You didn't believe it, and I said that was right because I didn't know better.
Well, this was the thing I was wondering about.
Okay, I got to you know, my my historical analogies are a little soggy tonight from a cocktail of or. But I think, yes, soggy are the usual. I didn't write this Saturday on our sub stack when I was sober and I said, you know, this reminds me a bit of Reagan and the Strategic Defense initiative. People thought it was a bargaining chip, and in fact, Reagan really believed in it. And what's been not clear about Trump is he has said tariff It is a beautiful word.
I love tariff's But he's also said over the years, I'm for free trade, but we've been Patsy's and so someone has to make a tougher deal.
So which is it.
Well, it turns out maybe both, and that's not a bad thing. I mean, I will concede and celebrate that. He looks like kind of a genius about all this, and I think we do hold the high cards, right. We are the big export economy. I don't quite understand world trade. I mean, in the abstract, I'm a free trader. I mean, you know, I listened to Milton Friedman talk about it, but I do think in the modern, complicated world of international trade, it's not as simple as just
free trade. By the way, the person who made that point and won the Nobel Prize for it was Paul Krugman, who forty years ago worked in the Reagan Treasury Department. And I think maybe he might have been onto something there. I hate to that Krugman could be right about anything, but he might have been the.
Same podcast you're going to praise Paul Krugman for having been somehow prescient and lucreatia. That's just sick.
I don't show you how little Steve understands trade, but I don't understand why this, why this is con that are while you guys are saying Trump one so right, the other countries agree to reduce their tariffs on American goods to zero percent directly, Yeah, but we put tariffs on them of fifteen to twenty five percent, which means somehow we win by paying more taxes on stuff that we're importing. And I mean this is that's to win.
That's a loss, that's going to drive inflation higher. That's not even more for foreign goods we are How are we not going to pay more for foreign goods?
How it doesn't make far from.
Japan not going to go up fifteen percent.
They're not going up fifteen percent as a matter or not, because somehow, somehow, some way corporations are eating these costs right now, Because the whole point of tariffs isn't just the revenue. It's the leverage that you get in the market. And they know that if they try to overprice their Japanese cars, they'll lose market share. And guess who'll pick
that up is American car manufacturers. I know that all of those things are kind of meaningless concepts in some ways because American car manufacturers make Japanese cars, who make American car parts, who make Japanese car parts, you know, on and on and on. So to talk about just simply speaking American, South Korean Japanese doesn't really make a
whole lot of sense. But what has happened, and this is well documented, is that corporations have to a very great extent, how should you say, eaten into their profit margin to keep their prices relatively the same. Now, whether that can continue again, I don't understand it. But the whole idea back, No, no.
No, this is all part of the studies.
The economic studies show that tax increases and tariffigures get passed on to the consumers.
Not happening.
That what I'm telling yet.
And there's two things to be said about it, John, And then I think because none of us are you know, you tchied us sometimes about going beyond our knowledge of the law and your right to here were all of us beyond our knowledge of economics. So one point is there's the old problem here of the difference between the incidents of taxation and the burden of taxation.
I'll leave that aside.
The second point is I was having a conversation yesterday at the Reagan Library with one of the really smartest supply side economists I know, is Brian Demtrovitch, who works with Art Laugher.
And how's that we were going.
I had a long conversation about the One Big Beautiful Bill and the tariffs, and he made a couple of points.
He pointed out to me some aspects.
Of the One Big Beautiful Bill that I sort of knew about it, but I hadn't thought about about how immensely pro growth they are. But then second he said, tariffs. Look, you call it a tax, except it's not really. Taxes is sort of discretionary. You only pay it if you're
importing something. And second, and if you go back to one of the US government one hundred and fifteen years ago and longer and further back, financed the whole government by tariffs alone, our growth rates were like five six percent a year, and he says, all the distortions the tariff might cause a fifteen percent it's going to disappear as minor noise if we get the boom I think we're going to get. And I think Brian's a very solid guy. I've been reading him from Kay.
I'll tell you who I think is even more solid, and that is Michael Barone, who knows everything there is to know about politics in at least in the United States. He is. He is truly a walking almon aft and very very perceptive. He's not just you know, a fact listard. This is what he says. Meanwhile, today, meanwhile, the economic numbers are coming in more positively than those who predicted doom,
like you two in April from Trumst's tariffs. And then Michael admits in parentheses I called them lunatic, and then goes on to say that, of course it's turned out that that everybody, all of the orthodox economists, were wrong about tariffs and Trump was right. So there you go. We'll see what happened.
You guys. It's only been a few weeks so far, and I think the effects will.
Long Since Liberation Day I don't think they actually started collecting the tariffs in the amounts you guys think until very recently, if at.
All, they've collected a lot.
I was startled with.
This day.
Let's keep this for a future. Whether prices go up, inflation goes up, interest rates are going to have to go up, that's gonna rates.
Are going to go down. The Fed is crumbling on the issue.
Not a good thing to want, but okay, that's what that's what pen for now, John, Okay, okay, So let's move on to our next issue, which is the news out of I will admit that Trump is winning on
this one, which is his campaign against higher education. Columbia University agreed to pay a fine of two hundred million dollars two hundred million dollars and agreed, I think, even more seriously than the fine, is agreed to stop its diversity equity inclusion programs, to stop using any use of race and admissions and hiring and promotion a faculty and agreed. This is the incredible part that I actually have a
hard time believing. They agree to an external monitor who is going to observe Columbia's compliance with the agreement, and if he finds or she finds that Columbia is not living up to these commitments, the United States is going to be able to resume its investigation and lawsuits against Columbia. This has now apparently become a model for other universities.
There's rumors that have been reported in The New York Times that Harvard is considering paying a five hundred million dollar fine and agreeing to many of the same conditions, although allegedly, according to the reports, Harvard is reluctant to agree to an external monitor. Brown just paid a fine which, consistent with the lesser value of a Brown education, is only about twenty million dollars, and there are other reports.
I am I'm going to lead this. I still don't understand how Brown made into the Ivy leagues and then on a separate track, UCLA. I just agreed to a multimillion dollar settlement not with the Trump administration, but with Jewish students arising out of the terrible riots we saw on campus there after the Hamas attacks. So, guys, looks like higher education is on the back, That's what But I would put this to you. Let me ask you, guys, this start with Steve this time, are we focusing too
much on the fines. If we do, are we going to miss the more important thing, which I think is making sure that universities changed the way they actually do business. If you're at Harvard or maybe you're you know, these are places with multi billion dollar endowments. They get to have their federal funding back, they pay them one off fine, and then they keep discriminating on race and pursuing their
woke agendas. Anyway, so why not do it? From their perspective, they don't have to really change how they do anything in the future.
Yeah, I mean, I kind of feel in some ways like they're getting off cheaply. On the other hand, maybe the money is not the important part. Maybe the important part is the outside monitor. This really is the equivalent of a consent decree, isn't.
It, John.
It's very much like a corporate consent decree.
Yeah, And if that becomes a template, that's a great thing, assuming that the outside monitor is going to be tough minded and look at things.
And you can't always assume that.
If this is a template, and I've been saying this for a while, the Trump administration I think is being very smart. Let's go after the most elite universities that are going to generate the most publicity. And then we go on down the food chain and hit everybody. The University of Toledo, right, you know, the University of Akron. Right, you go get everybody and put them all into receivership and you know, beat the hell out of them. The Harvard thing, I mean, here's I think about Harvard is
is and John. Do you know John Manning who's the provost.
He used to be the Harvard law dean.
Yeah, yeah, so, I mean, I mean, maybe he's not as conservative as me like might like him to be, but he's not a lefty. The fact is, poor Harvard. I have a tiny bit of sympathy for them. Well, I knew you were going to say that. I said tiny. I qualified to try and.
Avoid your scorn. You know, they kick I know, they unsuccessful. They tossed out.
Clotting Gay rightly and other people. They brought in a bunch of white guys who six or seven years ago would never have been considered to be president and provost of Harvard.
And I think those guyss.
No, No, it was before the election.
They brought in Garber last year, before Trump went They brought in Manning last year, and now it was sort of hard on the election all the rest of that. But the point is is, I think even Harvard's trustees and elsewhere, look, they're confused people, they're dumb, they lack courage, and go on down the list that you want to
check off the creche. But somebody has said, you know, let's bring back some white guys who know what they're doing, and you know, people like John Manning and so forth, And so suddenly Trump was after him, and I'm like, you know, you guys are too little and too late, right, and so anyway, I wanted to keep going on all this and I'll bet, by the way, privately, Yale, all these other schools, I bet they're furious with Columbia for making this deal because now they're going to be under
pressure to have to take the same thing.
So let me ask you guys, let me especially let me ask John. We keep we we keep getting a little hints here and there from listeners about something called a queen tam Is that how I say it? Lawsuit? Oh yeah, so you talked about you talked John about
the external evaluate, external monitor whatever it might be. But isn't the more important check on their ability to get around these things and to you know, turn the the diversity, equity and inclusion provost into the belonging and community support provosts, like they've done at my damn university. Uh, that that the the person who can because what we had to do.
I don't know if you guys are aware of this, but what we had to do as a result of the Trump policies in order to continue to get federal dollars in a variety of different ways, was we had to swear off on the fact that we had eliminated all of our dei everything, you know, our positions, our everything, but what could be legitimately covered under academic freedom. So I could probably make a fortune if I were willing to bring a qui tam lawsuit against my university for
the ways in which they have just manipulated. As you were pointing out earlier, it's kind of what your question was, John. Our university is just going to continue to try to get away with what they've been doing all along. And my question to you is, I believe ken this is so far from my legal knowledge and it's not even funny.
I'm so blonde that qui tam lawsuits could be a mechanism whereby universities, our corporations even are forced to either to actually delete their completely get rid of their DEI initiatives people and so forth, or face huge lawsuits that would benefit the person bringing the quetam lawsuit. The private individual am I wrong.
So one thing is if you look at the consent decree as it were, Columbia carefully says that it doesn't admit to any wrongdoing, because if it did admit to wrongdoing, then it would open itself up to these kinds of lawsuits which can really destroy the bottom line of a normal company. Because key TOOM refers to a kind of litigation under what's called the False Claims Act and also
refirst to some Medicare Medicaid reimbursement statutes. But basically it comes from the Civil War and since the federal garment was a big enough back then to bring cases itself for fraud, waste and abuse of federal funds. The False Alams Act says that if a private person sues and finds abuse and waste of federal funds, you get triple damages. Triple damages, So this is a huge It can be a huge hit if you can prove it to a
university against the university or against the company. So the key would be to show that Harvard or Columbia, we're violating the fourteenth Amendment or Title nine, something like that. So the one of Trump President Trump's executive orders about getting rid of DEI and ending affirmative at race based affirmataction mentions this possibility because if the United States government comes in with you on one of these false Claims Act cases, your chances of winning go way way up.
So that's what you're referring to. The consent decrees don't address it, because you're right. The consent decrees say Columbia doesn't take any you know, doesn't amid any wrongdoing, and so the Trump administration agrees to that. So they say they're not finding any doing.
What about in the future if they say they have ended all of their DEI activities and someone says, but no, they have not, And then they say that and in you know, they promise that that is the case, they certify that that's the case in order to continue to get the federal money that is contingent upon them doing that. But instead they are in a subterfuge still continuing to do it, and you can prove that that's the case. Is that not a subject for a call it? Is it? Keytam? I'm sorry?
Oh yeah, the Key Tom really has to only do with you're receiving federal funds and you're wasting it or stealing it or abusing it. I don't think that violating this kind of agreement by itself would be grounds for Key Tom action.
You're poite right.
Regardless of whether this agreement exists or not, you can still sue Columbia like you and I could suit Columbia and say we think Columbia is still using race in the way it administers federal grants and they're still vulnerable. This consent decree, as Steve called, it doesn't really help or hurt those kinds of lawsuits. And so yeah, I agree. I would be worried if I was a lawyer for Columbia or Harvard that they're going to be hit with these lawsuits and they could lose.
Yeah.
Well, I mean not just them, I mean a lot of people. So as talking, there was a good article on the Wall Street Journal today by Colin Wright, who I don't know, the guy I'm not sure if he's a sociologist or social psychologist or whatever he is, but the interesting guy is worth following on Twitter. And he is suing Cornell because documents have come out that in their screening for faculty hires.
They prioritize race over everything else.
And he said, okay, I'm going to sue you for that because I was excluded because of my race. Oh my goodness, how many lawsuits can be because of this? Could be hundreds and hundreds of hundreds. And let's go out again. Let's open the floodgates for everybody who has done this, and it's going to be lots and lots of universities, lots and lots of departments for at least ten years or longer.
And let's have fun, right. Yeah.
A lot of these losses potentially don't just involve universities. Think of defense contractors. The defense contractors had DEI programs or they were, you know, promoting minorities and not whites or Asians because of their race. They would be open to these kinds of lawsuits too, because you know, they take on a lot of federal money and these probably occurred some federal funded programs or research, then they're liable to get as triple damages. That's the worst that the
legal system can do. Wow.
Lot, so just I don't want to beat this together and almost I brought it up, but I think the listeners will find it interesting. One last question about that, isn't the amount of damages upon which the triple is based, whatever funds they have continued to receive after after making the promise that we are no longer engaging in unconstitutional dei activities, the amount of money they could receive is up to the amount of federal dollars that continued to flow in after that promise certification.
I know it would have to be I think it would have to be the federal funds that are actually supporting the program that you're claiming they're using. Okay, that's pretty cool, but it could be a lot of money.
And the only reason I mentioned that is just because, remember the Trump administration made the continuation of federal funding contingent upon getting rid of your dei because DEI had been declared at least in universities by the Supreme Court to be essentially unconstitutional. DEI in the sense of affirmative action and so on, That's why I brought it up. But I don't want to beat this horse any longer. The poor thing is really dead.
Well, Lucretia has proven once again that she should go to law school and become a plaintiff's lawyer.
Into all to go to law school now, John, I would have, but it's too late. I just have to learn from you now.
So we have one more last issue we have teed up to talk about tonight, which is the ongoing fight over nationwide injunctions. Lucretia identified that there have been a bunch of rulings this week by lower court judges who seem intent on defying the Supreme Court and maintaining nationwide injunctions against for example, President Trump's order on birthright citizenship, or another one about the change and refugee and asylum policies.
Mostly all these have to do with immigration, but not all of them, and so Lucretia wanted to know what's going on. How can these district judges continue to do this?
I have to interrupt and say John is too modest to point out that he actually got a compliment from Lucretia. An attacked saying that John actually predicted that this sort of thing would happen. Now, go on and say what it is is happening that you predicted?
John, Oh, I didn't get that text. I guess my AI must, you know, filter out these fake emails that they're pretty plausible, like Lucretia saying I said something good, not.
Just good, but predictive.
Now, so you remember in the Kosta case where the Court said no more nationwide injunctions, they did have two exceptions, and one was for class actions. The other one is for lawsuits under the Administrative Procedure Act that pretty much brought in Washington. And you know, yeah, my prediction was there are going to be these court judges which are going to try to say, now everything's a class action, or now everything is in ad ministry price drag claim.
And that's what some of these trial judges are doing. It's almost as if the Supreme Court hadn't decided the cost of case, and some have maintained their nationwide injunctions. So just one point is I find it hard to believe these judges in good faith are able to turn around and just in a few days decide there's a class action. Sometimes the decision on whether a class action exists can take months, if not years. So if a judge just turned by the way, I'm very works. I
see Lucretius swigging directly from a bottle. Now I hope it's water. I hope it's water. But she dranks so fast and deeply I can tell what it was.
Oh, I'm still drinking, but I'm not swigging from that one. It's it's tellegrino. It's okay.
All I see is that it's a colorless liquid. So the a class action is very complicated. It depends on whether what we call there's commonalities a law in fact. But when a judge just turns around just a few days after the Supreme Court strikes down his or her decision and says there's a class action, that makes me very suspicious. If that's not a good faith. And if you're the plaintiffs, you're.
So suspicious it's not in good faith.
Yeah, so good.
This is also you know, gonna if you if you and also for example, you want to challenge birthright citizenship. Remember I don't think that Trump's going to win in the end. What you want is for these cases to get to the Supreme Court as fast as possible on the merits. Now you've just introduced a whole nother procedural issue that Trump will probably win on and will probably delay the Supreme Court for reaching this issue again for another six months to a year.
So but in the meantime, in the meantime, those they're actually the stays, the injunctions, whatever you want, you want a column, appear to be working, right, I mean, right now, the situation across you United States is that there is a class.
Action of.
Unborn children who consented to a class action to stop birthright citizenship.
And so until the Appeals Court, you know, lifts those injunctions like they did the first round with the costs of case. Yeah, but you're right, and even if they lift the injunction, this is what I don't where I think it's also kind of productive, is at least in those states where these decisions are occurring. Those states have blocked, you know, the states when those states of Trump administration is blocked from following that executive order, they just not blocked nationwide.
Yeah. So you notice here John or Steve that that John is very rational and reasonable about these things. He expects everybody to be equally rational and reasonable. About them, and he can't quite understand why they're not, because that's just how he is. Am I wrong Evenven, I'm still on our podcast.
What I'm right here, Steve.
I can see in the reflection in his glasses that he's been looking up more ads about Sydney Sween.
No, it's just that I'm on my iPad being on travels and only the speaker shows up the way I've got it set up on my iPad and I'm afraid to mess with it or it might mess things up. So when you don't talk, Steve, I don't see you.
Well, okay, oh see, now you're just encouraging him to talk more. Steve.
It's hard.
It's I don't have any thoughts there. It's hard to hear. Lucretia's like the Great Lakers broadcaster Chick Herns. She has a high streshold of interruptibility because I keep talking and don't stop.
Right, something like that.
Okay, well, I think that brings us close to the end of the podcast. I think Steve had one more comment about eating contests. You've been engaging with some readers or calmness about whether we should have a three whiskey our eating contest. Well, I would totally demolish you in the seventy two ounce steak eating challenge, which you didn't even take. Tell the renos how you whipped out from this challenge.
Yeah, so I wanted to go to this place and see it. Not do this, well, maybe thirty years ago do it? The Big Texan Steakhouse in Amarillo, Texas, just
off the I forty. It's legendary for having the seventy two ounce steak challenge, which is free if you can eat it in an hour, plus the side dishes which includes bread I think, baked potato, and a shrimp cocktail for some reason, and ninety thousand people have tried it since it was started in the nineteen sixties, and ten thousand people have succeeded in doing it.
The record.
This is really shocking because I think it's it's worrisome. The record is four and a half minutes, which means someone seventy two ounces is four and a half pounds, so a pound a minute is by a one hundred and twenty five pound.
Woman who's a competitive eve And Joey.
Chester, when you did Lucretia show up in this town?
Yeah, I mean, you know I don't even want to watch the videos, but there are two people trying.
Oh, by the way, this place is.
But Steve, you didn't do it.
You didn't do I'm too old. Why because I would die.
I mean it's uh yeah, I know you said you could do it, but.
Are oh yeah, easily. I've I've had these forty eight out supporterhouses and I'm still hungry when I done.
God, Okay, Well there's a Steve. There's a restaurant uh not in Tucson called the Trident, and it's started by a bunch of Navy seals, and their premier menu item is I think it's called the Navy Seal and not quite I forget, but it's a one poundmburger, which you know doesn't seem like all that much one pound hamburger. Maybe it's a two pound hambiger. The point is is that then it has another eight ounces of pastrami. Blah
blah blah blah blah. It's this huge, huge, huge burger with a pound of fries, and it's it's only about thirty dollars thirty maybe thirty five, I forget, But if you can eat it in fifteen minutes, it's free. Okay, and my kid has gone in there quite free, quite often and eaten the entire burger but never the fries. So yeah, he's paid every so. But yeah, seventy two ounce? What is it a rabbi or is it a what is it?
I think it's a porterhouse and it's it's seventy two dollars if you can't do it in an hour, which is not.
Really all that much for a seventy ounce port quarterhouse.
Honestly, I just have to say this place was the most texas cy place that ever texased.
If those are purps, but next time we'll go there together, I'll eat three of them so that you guys can get two free ones.
Well.
One of our new humor columnists for this political question substact Anthony Lucido, better known to power Line commenters as Anthony and Lucretia as Anthony hates male and he is, by the way, he is the next date Berry.
I think, I mean, I think he's that good. In any case.
He says, come on, when are we going to go there to Texas or somewhere and have a make ribating contest with John and make him show up?
And that sounds more fun.
So that wouldn't even be close, because I already told you how i'd win. I would put four of them in stock them and been in two pieces of bread, and just see, I mean, wouldn't even be close. Let me come on, and then we'll move on to spam, just as a victory lap, just for fun spam eating contests.
You will notice insisting that this was a news free week or low slow news week, when of course it was nothing but the Russian collusion hoax all week long. And John still insists that there's nothing new in that, And yeah, I told him, I said, all of our listeners are. I think John is a bit a bit wrong on this point, but I'm going to leave that aside. We'll pick it up next week. We can actually know the whole story a little bit too.
Much, a big document which we haven't all gone, which we haven't had time.
So we're in the interest of appearing intelligence for a change, We're going to withhold our comments until next week. But I do want to make sure that listeners know that I'm on John on this. He's wrong. I wrong to him, eventually, but they will have to wait for another week. And so I suppose we are probably at the point Steve John excuse me, he's the host of our Babylon Bees, of which there are so many. But what made me think of it was there was a Babylon b I'm
not going to go through the whole thing. It was the seven things that are that are way more expensive or hard to get because of Trump's tariffs. And number six was all the mcribs are gone. Somebody has eaten them all. And so I had to ask if that somebody, of course was John, Oh yeah, but he didn't answer. He totally deflected on that one. He didn't say it would.
Be me, But it's there are no McRib promotions going on right now. I haven't seen a single one. Of course, I would get it if I saw it. I send you guys a picture every time I eat one.
So that being said, my first Babylon Bee investigation concludes Trump is the only one who didn't collude with Russia. That's not even funny, that's just true. Okay, sorry, you guys will like this one. Women's parallel parking added to twenty twenty eight Olympics. That even round. Okay, So for the nerds out there, the nerds hopefully you'll get this one, Stuart, And it's a picture of the Stewart of Gondor from the movie Stewart of Gondor moves to officially recognize more Door as a state.
Oh right, yeah, you get it, do you?
Yeah?
Oh yes, yeah.
Democrats announced twenty twenty eight campaign slogan we hate capitalism, hot chicks, and the Jews.
Of course that is also true, so.
It's not even funny. They got to stop with the not funny. Okay, I'm done.
I'll close us out with always drink your whiskey neat and order your mcribs with extra sauce. Steve made me say that I'm not sure that's going to be our permanent tage, John, I bring my own. I mean this sauce is a little sweet. Yeah, these are kind of sweet barbecue sauce. It's a little sweet, but I would like to add Korean hot sauce to it. I think this could revolutionize the product, Steve. That's something for all of us to consider to the next episode. Still weird
AI generated poetry. Do you have about the three whiskey Happyhow?
So?
Here's one stanza from AI's Lewis Carroll style. Oh, ponder, The court cried, John, you the spry as a ravenous logic leapt into the sky to federalism. Steve did chime while quoting Burke with metric rhyme. Then Lucretia, with a chuckle in bourbon breath, declared, the Ninth Amendment fakes its own death.
Really, this was made up by an AI. That's incredible.
There's so many three whiskey happy hours on the internet now that they have figured out each one of us.
John, I know it's all right.
Bye bye everybody everyone.
Next week, Ricochet.
Joined the conversation.
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