You know, just commenting on some of the news. I don't know what y'all pay attention to or not. But Washington d c UM, the people that work there in the media are obsessed with the comings and goings of people in government, and nobody in real life pays attention to it. Nobody, right, So you might not know this. Maybe you do if you're really a news junkie. But they got a new d n I. You don't know
what that is. I'll bet you couldn't get one and twenty people that could tell you what the d n I is, and you couldn't come up with one and a hundred that could have told you who the last guy wasn't old the current guy, but the guy that's leaving, right, But Washington d c ix all big deal breaking news. A guy you've never heard of is leaving an apartment
you don't pay attention to. Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit with Debra J. Saunders, the White House correspondent for the Las Vegas Review Journal and the real The reason we love talking to Deborah so much is that she's a real human being who has lived a real life and is not merely a lifelong denizen of the Beltway, Deborrah, how are you? I wrote about John ratt close today the New d N. I oh, yeah, it's important. Are you gonna speak or something? We can
barely hear you. Oh, I'm sorry? Is this better? It was so bad? I was so bad. So in the you know, post nine eleven are having intelligence and the rest of it. We're all hip to that, and it's important in the rest of it. But how how much of an adjustment period was it when you got to d C to deal with everybody's self obsession? Oh? Because that never happens in the Bay Area. That's right, Deborah.
For years the token conservative the San Francisco Chronicle. But you gotta admit d C is its own weird beast. I would say that there are people here who feel that if they are not here, the world will fall apart in a way that you don't see in other places. That that there, that there are people who put a lot of stock in the fact that they are they have a place in the establishment, and that is a problem. But the John Radcliff Cliff story is important for a
few reasons. Dan. We want to have somebody who sees real problems toward national security and will tell Donald Trump that he sees them, even if Donald Trump doesn't want to hear it. Right, So Dan Coates was known to do that. He disagreed with Trump on Russian interference in the sixteen election. He's made it clear he doesn't believe that North Korea will not denuclearized despite their nice sessions and Singapore and Vietnam and now at the d m z UM but uh. And so he's been someone who's
been willing to say that. And so now you have this guy, John Radcliffe. Most people in the intelligence community don't really know him, and Trump picks him a couple of days after this guy basically gives us thumping to Special Counsel Robert Muller as he's testifying before the House
Judiciary and Intelligence committees. And there's a belief in Washington. Gee, I don't know why that Maybe picked him because he liked the way that John Radcliffe treated Robert Mueller, sort of like the way he picked Ronnie Jackson to be v A secretary because he liked the way Ronnie Jackson dealt with the media when he talked about Trump's physical But this the Ratcliffe guy's reasonably intelligent, he was a prosecutor the rest of it. So you know, I guess
we see, does he have to get approved by the Senate. Yes, he does, and that could be an issue. So Mitch McConnell puts out a statement, doesn't really say anything about Ratcliffe. Burr's pretty a senator. Burr who's on the Intelligence Committee, ranking the top Republican. He's lukewarm, it seems, And so
a lot of people are afraid. The one the one position you don't necessarily want to have a big Trump loyalist is d n I. You you want the guy who was sitting, who was who was a head of all those intelligence agencies to be able to look at Trump and tell him stuff he doesn't want to know. And that's that's the Washington take, and it's it's perhaps more universal than it should be, but it's not without reason.
So trying to figure out again what we should talk about what we shouldn't, it would seem that the idea of fiscal conservativism is it just is just gone. It's just dead. It's just it's not a thing anymore. It's not part of the Republican Party. What's your read given the last week or so, in which well, they threw open the gate. There's actually more domestic spending in this, and a bigger increase in domestic spending than there was
under Obama. It's just incredible the way Republicans, who were such fiscal hawks when Barack Obama was president, have completely abandoned the idea. And I mean the reverse of that is I'm getting such a kick out of particularly media on MSNBC, NN, CNN all of a sudden really singing to care about the debt, which may never happen, but anyway, they don't care about the debt. They do not care about the debt. But but you know, and the thing is, there's a reason this is happening. It's not just that
the right is completely craving about spending. Some are, but not everyone. But what you have is you need to raise the debt sailing in order to for the U. S. Government to pay its bills, and you need the House to do that, you need Democrats to do it, and Nancy Pelosi, I think bargain, got a pretty good bargain out of Donald Trump. And so you've got this big increase in domestic spending, which Republicans had managed to fight off for a number of years, and now that's sort
of done. I think Trump just reading the room, and I think he's right. I'm I'm sad that he's right, but I think he just reads room things. People don't actually care about this. So I'm going to I'm gonna only get this behind us so it doesn't become a thing and move on with other things that I care about.
And I think he's right. People just don't care. I think you're right, and and I think he read He also read the room that this was not the this was not the fight to go down with that, this is not the issue that he should stake his presidency on. A lot of people understand this. Um of course. Trump said the last time he passed a build and increased spending he would never do it again. Well, not quite, and talk that he will get tough if the one
who's reelected, but he's not. Let's face it, he did not campaign for the president as a person who is really gonna pare down federal spending. That was not his His biggest thing. Immigration was a big thing. Well, to enforce immigration law costs money, right, and so uh trade, trade is a big issue for him, and he's fighting on that, but but those when you think about the things that have really mattered to him. Uh. I mean, let's face it, he built his empire on debt. That's
how he became rich. He borrowed money and he Yeah, but the difference is in the private enterprise you have to pay it back eventually because you can't print your own at least not yet. Um. The Secret Service will come and talk to you if you try. Uh. Debra J. Saunders, White House correspondent for the Las Vegas Review Journal. Deborah, great to talk to you. Thank you and go go or ask some elected official, would you Okay, more likely in appointed official, thanks Debora. So yeah, yeah, he did
not run on it. There's very little constituency for it. Fiscal responsibility. I mean, I would appreciate somebody, really, you know, fighting on that hill as they say, Um, I would respect it a great deal. But if I liked in respect of that person, I would be very concerned that they were committing career suicide by doing that, which is it's a measure of the electorate. You know, it's a cliche and it's terrible and it's not always true. But to a large extent, we do get the government we deserve.
My big caveat on that is that some of the smartest people in the world spend all their time trying to figure out how to game government and how to get rich off of it. Will nobody's looking, and they have up their game. I mean the astounding achievements in gaming the government. I mean on the level of penicillin and the Apollo mission. Uh, that's how good the scammers are, which is why we need Who's with me monarchy now far strong and Jetty