I want to scope out sites for the Trump Hotel for after we buy Greenland from Denmark. Right, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
Mister grbachaw tear down this wall.
It's the Ricorshy Podcast with Stephen Hayward, myself, James Lylyx and who's back from Peru.
Why that'd be Rob b Loog. So let's have ourselves a podcast.
It doesn't help matters when Primetime TV as Murphy Brown, a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid compression and mocking the importance of Bob's are baron child and calling just another lifestyle choice.
Welcome everybody. This is the Ricorsy Podcast number seven hundred and five. I'm James Lylyx in an overcast Minnesota, Minneapolis. Although we still of course have great bursting pride having made our point down the matt national stage with our governor being the VEEP and the speech, and here to discuss the rest of the convention perhaps and more interestingly what the rest of the campaign might bring is Stephen Hayward in California and Rob Long back from pilgrimage to Machu Pico or Picho or.
The Amazon.
Actually the Amazon he went to the mountains. Well, hold on a second, I thought you went to Peru. You're telling me there's Amazon in Peru.
There's an Amazon everywhere, James. Amazon is a very long river. That's all I can tell you.
Well, at the end of the podcast will tell what Rob learned and in addition to the various tropical diseases, that he picked up Teddy Roosevelt's style. But for now, let's get to the meat, at the gist of the pith, the marrow of the matter. You guys watched or didn't or read the commentary or saw the snippets takeaways.
Stephen, I actually watched an awful lot of the convention. I usually whew, you would, Yeah, I find kind of tedious and wrote and all the rest of that.
I thought, again, just sort of analytically, they had a pretty good convention.
I thought Knights two and three.
Were better than the last night. They had more energy to them and laid out more ideas. I thought, Harrison, her speech was not bad. I mean, how do we judge her. We judge her on whether she's going to start cackling or go off script and say something crazy, but she delivered it well, and I thought there were three interesting takeaways from it.
One is she after doing a lot of biography, which.
Kind of bored me, but I understand that's now the mode for these people. She did say three things that were interesting. One is she built up to a crescendo where on abortion. Now she mischaracterized Trump and Republicans, but that's par for the course. But she said they have lost their minds. And she said that loudly and forcefully, and the audience went nuts, And I thought that sort of landed a blow, even though it's a low blow. She said Trump is an unseerious person, but it'd be
serious to put him back in the White House. I thought that was a good line, again from you know what works in partisan red, because actually think Trump comes across as unserrious. I mean, for all the reasons that Rob and other critics have talked about forever, but I think he is actually a pretty serious person in ways that deeply threatened the you know, the establishment.
But if I can, if I can start right there, how can he be simultaneously unseerious and a an authoritarian threat that will demolish democracy?
Exactly exactly, Yeah, that's right.
The third point.
The third point is she took on the Israel question, which I thought she'd simply avoid.
She said, Israel is a right to exist.
Uh. And she said that in the active voice and will support them in other words.
Uh.
Nobody mentioned Israel in the whole convention up to that point, with the partial exception of the hostage family that appeared on the third night to saying we want our hostage family members out. And I think the fear was that there was going to be a demonstration or booing from the floor of the convention.
Uh. And instead they weren't going to boo Kamala Harris.
But and then, but then she said we want to have a cease fire and get the hostage out of Gaza. And so she tried to give a bone to the pro Homaqus democrats.
But I was surprised she went there at all.
And I supposed to say we should say good for her.
Rob Yeah. I mean, I think a couple of things are happening.
One, I think that there's the I'm here's just a secular view of this convention, right, This this convention shows a new way of doing these conventions, right, So we had a twenty two and we had no conventions basically, and they're all weird and they're kind of crazy. Like those conventions were bananas, like I remember Biden in the cars or I don't know who's a Don Junior's new wife screaming whatever her name.
Was, like just crazy stuff.
This one.
These two conventions were traditional, but I think that the Democrats have reinvented it in a way that's really interesting. For one thing, everyone was in the news was talking about how all these things went on long, too long, They went on too long, they wanted too long, but they didn't really because twenty million people watched it last night. But those are twenty million people except for Steve, who
you know, were this is fan service. You know, they want to see there, they want to see their guys speak. The rest of it's going to be split up and chopped up and sent out in sound bites and video bytes across social media for the next month.
You know.
Basically, this is a content farm for them in a way that no convention before now has really been. So that's sort of interesting, and I think that's going to be probably the way these things are going to go from now on, even if she's unsuccessful, if she shouln't win. It felt like, okay, this is a new way with these these events. Even things like the role call, right, the DNC role call, which people loved or hated or
whatever they thought. The point of the role call is that that little role call snippet which used to be I mean, it's one of my favorite parts of all these conventions.
You know, the guy in the funny hats, Idaho of the Potato State, all that stuff.
Now it's going to be split up and it can be targeted Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, however you want to target it two people.
Who live in that area.
It's a boost, it's a local booster pride thing. And I guarantee you in twenty twenty eight we're going to see both these parties do this, if both these parties exist in twenty twenty eight, which I hope they don't, but if they, if they do, whoever's having a convention, this will be the convention. So I think that's like the secular thing is like, okay, we say, seeing some
new stuff. The second thing that I think is new here is that for better, for worse, there was no primary Democratic primary effectively, And.
If you were.
A donor to these things, or you're a strategist to these things, you're wondering why we spend hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars running primaries that start. You know, the twenty twenty eight primary presidential primary is going to start in January of twenty twenty five, basically, right, anyse things start so soon, why do we may not need to do that. This was a pretty good convention. It didn't look like they threw it together. It didn't look
like they put it all together the last minute. It looked like this thing had been playing. There was a plan behind it, which I mean, I don't know that would be surprising for the Democratic Party right if to have an actual organized adventure. But so, I mean, so those are my secular takeaways that I think that we're
looking at a new way of doing these things. And then my more political pundit takeaway is that is essentially the message that in a crazy way, Kamala Harris is getting away with change versus more of the same, and change versus more of the same is a winning American political argument.
Mostly except she's on two sides of that argument, she's like to be right by the way of it, right.
I mean, you mentioned Rob that Gusha just looks like it was planned. One little detail that I found amusing is that the Democratic platform in several places referred to Joe Biden's second term. They didn't go back and edit that right to reflect on the updated news. One other detail that I'm sure James noticed. They made a big deal about having mobile clinics outside the convention hall to provide abortions and maas sectomies, and they're apparently fully booked.
I'm wondering how soon maybe the next convention four years from now, Democrats will also offer and I'm not entirely joking here, assistant suicide vans. I seem to me that's the next logical step, and the sort of Democrats ethos about these things.
Only if you are able to cast your vote before you write, you know, yeah, so they can extend the voting.
Period where you can get that in.
I mean, I think that they'll have those outside the Republican convention, right.
Well, I was looking at what Barack Obama was saying, looking at it, not listening to it.
You know, he's a good speaker.
And everybody loves him and has a great swelling of the.
Breast when he speaks.
But it was very it's it's the rhetoric is not surprising, it's normal. But one of our commentators contributors at Ricochet, doctor Bastiat, was noting that a quoting actually is Johnson, so this.
Is going back like three different levels.
He said that Barack Obama said, we have a broader idea of freedom than the right. So we're casting the Democrats now as the party of freedom liberation. We believe in the freedom to provide for your family if you're willing to work hard, okay, and the right does not, apparently, So since he's making the distinction the freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water, well well well, well, well, I mean, if you want to be one of those guys,
you can say, actually, these are not rights. They're not rights, you know, because it's not in the Constitution. It's not a right. It's a good thing. But the left often conflates good things with rights. If something is good, then it ought to be a right. But the way these things are phrased is typical, and they get away with it all the time. And I suppose the right does
in its own way too. But to say that, well, we believe in the freedom to drink clean water and breathe clean air, when actually, sometimes how this manifests itself in the last twenty thirty years is saying we're going to make an incremental dim unition and the amount of particulates in the air here, and you will have virtually no impact whatsoever on public health, but it will cost billions of dollars in compliance. But we're going to do it because we're the EPA, and we've solved all the
big things. Now we're just cleaning up the little ones. And since we're pre Chevron, we can do what we want, Nana, n And if you object it to any of those things, you are objecting to the very notion of clean air and clean water. And you want to pitch this country back to a place when arsenic is pumped into the rivers, we're set on fire and great smokestacks belch out as best as to blanket the country.
And that's just, I mean, it's just it's banal, is what it is. It's absolutely banal.
We believe in the true freedom in how we worship, what our family looks like how many kids we have? Yeah, the other side is really going hammer and tongs about your inability to worship.
It all comes down to what we're also saying.
Walt's pounding the table and saying in Minnesota we say mind your own damn business. This is when it comes to shape correct thought in the twenty first century. Which party actually is more interested in invasive techniques to get you to believe a certain set of ideas or be cast out of polite society.
Yeah, well, I don't know what to rep hold of their jeams.
There was a whole lot. It was a cornucopy of.
Uhh up for two all right, and well two quick comments and then a question for Rob.
I think we've got him back. He's been having some technical the.
Yeah, I was talking and he just figured I can skip this.
But it heart so I always say that the ep and there's data for this, but the one sentence summary is the EPA specializes in billion dollar solutions to million dollar problems. That's been that way at the beginning. But then the question of rights. I mean, this is something that I spend hours and even weeks with students trying to make them understand and I mean, there's a lot to go through. But one razor, like I say, Haybridge razor, if you want to use it, is something is a
right if it requires nothing from the government. You know, don't infringe on your free speech, don't infringe on your right to own a gun.
They process.
If a right requires the government to transfer resources from you and me to a third party, that's not a right. We're confusing ends and means protecting our rights or the ends of government things like healthcare, education. Those are good things, but those are means to an end. But that confusion is delivered as you point out, what question for you?
Rob.
One last thing on the convention, we kept hearing all night that Beyonce was going to show up. Yeah, and she didn't. I'm wondering if this was a bait and switch by the Democrats to keep people watching. But I thought when I heard that she might come, I thought, that's a terrible idea because she's such a megastar. Then, no matter how good Kamela was, Beyonce's appearance would be the headline and would overshadow Kamla. So I never thought she was going to show up, isn't it. I mean
I'm asking you as a show business person. Wasn't the Beyonce idea really a bad idea for.
A terrible idea? If she showed up, my god, they'd be the worst. But also, I mean, I think it'd be bad for Beyonce. I always say of the same thing. Look, I mean, at best, Kamala Harris just everything. You know, she seems pretty lucky. She's on her roll, So let's just give her the give her the luck of the dice here, and she's got eight years of you know, the White House eight So we're talking about twenty thirty two, twenty thirty three when she leaves.
I know that seems like a long long way away, but it's really.
Not right Beyonce. Beyonce is here for a long time. Beyonce's got a much longer span that she can be part of for a while. So why would she get that close to a candidate like that? That's always the mistake. I mean, I think that's partly the conundrum that Fox News finds itself in, as they got very close to a specific candidate, and you know, even at the best, this candidate had eight years at most of relevancy that this guy managed to make twelve years maybe at best,
but you know you don't want to do that. You're even for the long term. So you know, I understand why they may want a appearance with Beyonce, and they may want the Taylor Swift Beyonce endorsement, and they may get it, but I don't think.
I don't think it's it's a.
Good idea, and especially when everyone is whoever's watching it, you know, they're twenty million people watching it last night, and their real question was can I it is a casting issue, right, I'm going to cast this person as the president? Do I want to hear this noise for four years? And you don't want any other noise there? You want to you want to be a really clear, clear argument. And also like if you'r Beyonce's like, I
don't know, like it's you. It's the Dolly parton questions like I got millions and millions and millions of fans. Some of them are going to vote for Trump, some of them vote for Kamla, Like why would I want to make them make a choice.
Well, that was Michael Jordan's famous line.
I was he said, I want to sell shoes to Republicans too, when Democrats would try and get him.
Off the sidelines, right, yeah, right.
I know.
That's what I thought was interesting, was that.
And maybe you guys talked about this when I was trying to reconnect, But there was there a period there where I had to remind myself that Donald Trump is not the current president of the United States. Like there was a lot of time where I thought, wait a minute, Like I think they even slipped up and said, you know, the past four years something like that, they're running against Trump in a way that I mean, maybe it'll work.
But I did have to remind I mean, even I was watching things, Oh oh yeah, wait, wait, Biden's president. Biden is the great ghost. He's disappeared. It's almost as if the past four years you're not voting on the past four years, that is, if they get away with it.
Really smart, they're asking for the past four years I've been great, right, Yeah, they're asking.
For a mull again. Is what's really happening right now?
Yeah, we are promising continuity, the best kind of continuity, the kind that comes with an absolute clean break. I mean right, so so yes, so nothing so, I mean, yeah, she's in a difficult position. I mean, she can talk about the parallel stage that the country is in and how she's going to fix it, but you can't really do that because you look at who's been there, so you point to the boogeyman who's going to come and
destroy the precious freedom. And the experiment that we have is I can't remember the particular words of the poet laureate who came out and had a word sellid about that, but as usual, everything is on the line, and it's the most consequential election of our lifetime, et cetera.
Et cetera, et cetera.
When you start to get into some of the policy details that she has signed on to, though, A, they're irrelevant because this is a vibe election, hot brat summer and all that joy I know.
That sens basically it.
People want to go into the booth dancing and come out thinking they've performed a historical event. You find things like what I loved was the and Stephen, perhaps you know the particulars on this better than I do.
The tax on unrealized capital gains.
Now, if you want to make somebody's eyes glaze over, talk about that. And if you want to make somebody angry on the left, you mention, you defend the person with an awful lot of money from having to pay unrealized capital gains. Somebody once said that the problem with Americans is that the vote as though one day they're going to be rich. And I don't think that's a good way to character characterize it. I think it's twofold.
It's one, there's an essential sense, there's or three there's fairness.
Is this a fair Is this a fair thing to do to somebody simply because they make more money than me.
Everybody believes in progressive income tax, you know, would say yes, because they believe in laws that affect people differently based on how much property you have, which is another issue. Two, you have the idea that just because it starts out with a billionaires up there, experience has told us that, you know, some of these things, some of these powers the government grant itself, they do tend to trickle down, shall we say, until eventually everybody is under the same yoke.
And then the third point about these things would be that I forget what it was having said the first two points. So maybe if you could grapple with those, oh, just the economic consequences of what this means. I mean, it's absolutely ludicrous to say to somebody, we're going to tax you on money that does not exist, that hasn't been made, that's just floating out there theoretically.
Yeah, and it just goes to show.
That, you know, we had here in the city of Minneapolis, they're proposing an eight percent property tax increase and a lot of people are looking around and saying, Okay.
Well, I guess I'll do my share. But what do you guys cut from the budget? Then you didn't.
Yeah, nothing, There wasn't a single thing you could touch. The idea that we are all just self healing pinatas that every year we heal and fill ourselves with candy again, so they can take a bigger bat and a bigger chunk. Anyway, So do you think that, I mean, I don't think this is a campaign is issue at all. It's illustrative to me, it's revelatory, but it's not going to mean anything.
Well, you know, I've remain convinced that there isn't a mass appetite for a majority of voters for class warfare the way the progressive left has plated for generations now in other words, I think people are for fairness, but I think most people are for fairness the way you and I understand it. Consistent treatment, you know, not special favoritism, and not equity, which is the enforced equal outcomes.
So if you go back to you know, if you go all the way back.
To nineteen seventy two, and you remember George McGovern was running on not only his demogrant thousand dollars person handout, but he also ran explicitly on ninety nine percent inheritance tax rate he wanted. He called it confiscatory taxation. He actually used that phrase. He got to the California primary, and rob will know what's coming here. McGovern did best in the Democratic primary in Beverly Hills and bel Air, and he got crushed by Hubert Humphrey. You news kind
of reactionary. He got crushed in Long Beach and Lejabra and the working class parts of the place. Real play because all those people. You said, the phrase jasus of James, is that a lot of voters they may not be rich, but they like to think that someday they will be well.
At the very least, they want to be able to pass along their house to their kids.
That's a bit and no one I mean, so the left says, last point, the left says, or Harris says, well, this will only be on the most the richest people, people who are billionaires or all the rest. No one trusts them about this. I mean, I think we understand that this is always a foot in the door, and the voracious greed of the left for your money will always make them extend the reach of those taxes down to everybody, because that's how it works.
Yeah, I mean, look, that's that's that's where the money is. I mean, the the what's strange to me, of course, is that there's like there there there is so much bizarre economic theory running around in the campaigns in general that no one's focusing on. As Steve said, this would have been a big this should be a big issue. But I also feel like ten percent tariffs across the board should be a big issue. A lot of these
things should be big issues. That it makes me uncomfortable as an economic conservative that there's no economic conservative or the closest one is arguing for a trade war.
I mean, these are.
These are things that have to be worked out, and it'd be nice if well, you know, look, I'm might be nice if if Milton Friedman was around him to maybe maybe do some teaching, yes, because look, I mean, I you know, I shouldn't say this because this is such a weird year and everything, all predicts are weird, But it does feel to me like, whoever wins in November, this isn't pretty close to an issue free yeah campaign, And I think that was that, you know, that was
a I think that's a mistake of the the Trump campaign. And so I was talking to some friends last night there's that moment I think, and I say this again, I've said I probably said it too much, so you can just tell me to shut up. But I think we're miss his team. And I think his supporters misread the the disastrous debate with Biden as a debate about how bad Biden was, which is true, but I don't think they really fully grasped how good Trump was in
that debate. He was so good in that debate that if you were watching and I said that time, I said, I watched it with a bunch of like left wing public radio people and they were kept turning to me saying that was a good answer, right, That was a good answer, and a couple of said, you know, that was a really good answer on abortion he gave and it was a good answer on abortion.
It was a good answer.
And then he was passionate about crime that whoever that
person is has gone probably will not come back. It was you know maybe, I mean, I mean that what I'm saying is that what they really thought was, this is not going to be this is going to be an easy issue campaign, because it's going to be one is two issues, maybe three if you need to, But one is Biden's old can't handle it, crime and immigration, and I think crime and integration for them were like, yeah, well if we have to get to it, we can
get to it. But really it's going to be all about how this old man can't make it, and unfortunately for them, there's no more old man. So they're scrambling for a bunch of things, which and I don't understand why a week before Labor Day that's still doing it. I mean, these are actually, you know, this is not amateur hour for the Trump campaign. These are not They're
not this is a not the twenty sixteen team. These are people who've got some road on them and know what they're doing and it doesn't feel like a winning campaign to me.
Well, well, you know, we'll see.
We have another debate coming up, and it's going to be interesting because Harris has postulated he has posed herself now as being somebody who's going to be tough on immigration and tough on crime, and that brings up this question. I'm going to let each of you think of this for a second. Okay, let's say that the Democratic Party has realized that this is where the national mood is shifting.
We're not about floating the cities with endless number of fakes, itlum seekers, and that even though you know the crime rates committed by a you know recent oh he'll just say, you know, people who are here illegally. That the crime rates may be the same as everybody else. But yeah, there's these low, high profile cases and they're really bad and makes everything look best. So we gotta do this thing about that, and we do have to get a
handle on crime in the cities. We've got to drop the whole ACA B stuff that's twenty twenty never happened. We're going to retool because that's a path to electoral success and keeping power placating people by these issues. If indeed they are serious about this, is it is it worth to vote for them in favor of the guy who probably will have no power and influence when he gets in, or not as much as somebody who sweeps in with the wind inner sales like Hairlet's think about
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Because it might not be that bad. Maybe they might do these things.
Yeah. I mean the case for that, James, is this is an election.
Where you win by losing. And again a quick historical analogy. You know, Bill Clinton winning in ninety two turned out to be good for Republicans, Way Bush and sort of the staleness and led to the Republican takes cover of Congress that then was kind of enduring, right, and you've got to balance budget, and of course Clint to the center.
Oh and by the way, I think that even if.
Trump loses, it's likely in my mind where Republicans will take the Senate, perhaps narrowly, but I think they're going to take the Senate, and then we have gridlock. And as I always like to say, goodlock gridlock. Yes, yeah, gridlock is the next best thing to have in constitutional government. And you know they can block easy judge and all the rest of that.
That's a totally coj in view.
I have a lot of Trump's skeptic friends who think that I disagree. I think winning is always better than losing. And even though you can take off all the defects of Trump personally and the fact he'd be laying duck right away, I still think it's important that he's there to steady our foreign policy, where I think he's much stronger than Harrison. The Democrats appoint good judges. Boy, the Biden judges are really awful, and Harris's will be just
as bad. And Republicans could block some of course, but still that's important business.
Uh And and I mean this isn't entirely a joke.
But we've got that wonderful Project twenty twenty five sitting there on the set.
Ready to rock and roll with.
Right, I've never heard of that. I have no idea what you're talking about. Seven pages of how to build camps with the people are going to put away?
Right? All right? Rob, I know that you think that winning by losing is preposterous. But Stephen makes a good point.
Well, I mean, look, it's always hard people construct these incredibly complicated houses of cards. Yeah, from well, then you'll get this, and then that will happen, and this will happen.
Who knows?
I mean, I think if there's a lesson in the last eight years, it's really who knows this. The electorate has entered, I think eight years ago a period of extreme volatility, and so a lot of the old things that we think are just natural aren't.
I don't really know. I don't, I don't. I think you have to.
This is one of the things you have to sort of balance what you what you think she's can really legitimately accomplish, what he can really legitimately accomplish, and decide whether you know the ven diagram or those things, and I know she loves ven diagram where that points you,
I don't, I don't really know. It does seem to me that I just I've said this for a while that the parties themselves, even after this pretty good solid DNC, which they did a good job, but they seem out of gas to me, and they seem like they're looking for a direction. And the irony is is that, you know, the direction for the Democrats is so obvious to win because in American politics, a conservative Democrat, especially a conservative
Southern Democrat, is unstoppable. That is, Americans just general idea who the president should be, and they seem absolutely unable to do that because of course it's conservatives of the Democrat has a lot of like really really really really awful and objectable ideas like low taxes and probably pro life and a lot of other things you can't have.
Gonna say.
So someone's gonna have to sort it out, right, and someone's gonna have to, like, you know, break this log jam.
I mean, here here's a horrible.
Analogy that I I I I'm sorry if you're eating, stop eating, because here's my analogy that there was a peer period before you know, when when it was Trouphy Biden, there was this horrible kind of sense of like, I don't know, like that something isn't working, you know, And everybody said the same thing, really, every polster said the same thing, was like, really, if one of these parties replaced the top, that the name on the top with anybody else, almost anybody else, there would be an enormous
unleashing of energy behind the New Canada. And you know, Democrats somehow kind of kind of did and kind of didn't do. They did a half assed job, as they usually do with these things. But it really does feel I think in terms of the political energy this.
Kind of.
Like the country political the politics of the country took a laxative and got rid of some stuff and kind of unblocked itself.
I mean, I know, I'm sorry.
I apologize for that, but I actually think it's the right context for these two candidates in this year, by the way, but it does feel like there's some it does feel like a different thing. So I suspect that if look, if she is capable of convincing two hundred and seventy whatever electoral votes, that she's a moderate Democrat, a moderate law and order Democrat.
Who's going to secure the border.
It is one of the great political feats in American politics.
I think the name, the name for the episode of this podcast is going to be gentle Overnight Action.
I'm in that general.
I was going to say, James that the prospect of camel as president is more like an anima election than lacks.
Of the election.
I'm sorry, Rob, No, it's fine, that's fine. Remember it's a different time. I just want to say for the viewers, for the listeners at home. When I me I started describing that analogy, the look on Steve's face, well, I.
Was very afraid, Rob. I know, you're great.
Look just to pick one part there. Yes, they're playing up that she was a prosecutor. But of course this isn't a backdrop of where there's this backlash going on against the sort of Sorow's progressive prosecutors San Francisco throughout chesa boudin the LA voters are going to throw out George Gascone. And you know, it'll be a neat trick if she can disassociate herself from that kind of prosecutor that I think a lot of people have figured out.
I mean, we'll see, maybe she'll pull it off, but it's going to be a neat trick if she does. And I think you're counting on the shortness of the calendar. I don't think you could sustain this if this was say February and she was the front runner and had to go all the way through the primaries and the summer into the fall. So it may, but it shouldn't on metaphysical grounds at least.
Yeah.
And also I think in the past, the the that profile of a Democrat, their task was when they were scooping up the primary votes was to act like they weren't that person. You know, you're think about Bill Clinton, even Barack Obama. You know, he had to be very liberal, and then when he ran, he ran, people voted for him. He got fifty three percent of popular vote because he seemed reasonable, right, Nobody expected Chae Wivara in the White House like we got by the way, and that was
a pretty good trick. But I think for her it's going to be I can't imagine there's no bigger trick. That's going to be the biggest trick.
I can't.
I can't think of a can if she succeeds, I think I can't think of a candidate that lucky.
It's extraordinary, it really is, especially when you consider that for the last four years she's been regarded as a sort of intellectual melody. And the spontaneous speeches of this, this, these strange statements of the obvious, compounded by a rephrasing of the statement of the obvious, indicates somebody who is just not exactly I mean, not imbued with that, with that that firing brain that is that is eager to get out there and and talk spontaneous.
About these issues. There's that doesn't seem to be a lot of wonkery there.
But I am curious, since we're casting about fictional things, I think she would have done if DeSantis was the p I mean, everybody was saying, question, no, we need to revitalize our campa, the GOP side by getting DeSantis in there. How do you think it would look if it was Harris versus Desantus I'm sorry, yeah, my wife's name instead of the heaven or of Florida.
Yeah, well, I think it would be completely different because he is really good at boring in on the issues and going on the attack, and in ways that Trump is a little weak and inconsistent, right, and I think he would make it impossible for her to repair behind her generalities and joy and all.
The rest of that.
That would also be seen as very unfair because this isn't supposed to be these things.
This is supposed to be about changing joy is in a historic change.
But looking, yeah, God, but I'm saying, if you, if you had any other can I mean, the problem isn't I mean, I'm not speaking.
It's not Trump specific.
So the Trump is an old name, he's an old man, He's an old name, old news, new hope, and change works. That's what Reagan ran on, and it actually works. You just the change can be from the right as well as the left and desantists Nikki Haley I think would be way ahead, just because she's new and different and people seem to want they didn't they don't like the choices they were given. And the Democrats kind of reheated some leftovers and are now calling a Turkey tech razini.
Well you know what it is. And they're kind of like, oh, okay, this is new and new and changy, new and changy, and people seem to be you know, right now, the
momentum is they seem to be responding to that. And what I think the Trump campaign has to hope is that that that they take a big, deep look at all of this and then at the end of September recalibration which usually happens, although I don't know what usually happens, is not really a phrase you want to use in twenty twenty four that they're going to get there, They're going to get the momentum back. That could happen, but in American politics, it change versus more of the same
is a very winning argument. The idea that the sitting vice president is making that is kind of crazy. But listen, Terry Branstead, the governor of Iowa, right in Iowa, that's right. Yeah, when he ran his sweeping statewide and won it handily on change, change, and when he ran his reelect this is true. His motto was re elect change, so it can't happen.
I remember in ninety two when Bill cli was at the convention then and there were one of the buttons that was being handed out showed a frazzled looking abstract woman for the cat, probably in a box of wine, and the phrase the button said worried about everything.
Vote Democrat, which and there were interviews you always had. The word change.
Mantra would appear in every single man in the Street interview that you had, and of course the man in the street interview, since you know, the convention was being held at Madison Square Garden.
It's the people who were pouring out of the subways.
Below in the streets, and they'd always say the same thing, Well, you don't change. I now think back, gentlemen, to nineteen ninety two. I know you were both there, which apparently was a dystopian hellscape the likes of which America had never experienced before. We were the worst economy since the Great Depression. Nothing worked anymore. I remember our newspaper where I worked at the time, the Bureau and the New House Bureau in Washington, d C.
Commissioned a series on finding out what.
Exactly in America does still work? Things that sound very common today, But in nineteen ninety two, when we cast our eyes back in two, we do not think it was that bad.
It really was, but they came a pause in the greatest increase in wealth and prosperity.
In human history. I know it.
It breath catching it was of like, well, okay, now we got we gotta we gotta put all that stuff in. And people acted like, oh my god. The recession of ninety ninety one. That was just devastating. People are living selling apples on the street.
It's like, give me a break.
Yeah, well, you mean there was a you'll remember this, James. I think maybe Bob. There was a huge best seller around that time. It was the bar Let and Steel book America What Went Wrong? And it was Bill Clinton would hold that book up. That book was terrible. I mean, it was superficial, wrong, inaccurate, but it was a huge best seller. And you know, part of the failure there was the Bush campaign never had its own narrative to
fight back on it. They kept crossing their fingers and hoping for better news and time and it didn't come.
But look, I will give you this prediction about where we're going from here. We can do counterfaction for the past.
But I think, regardless of who wins, Joe Biden's reputation is going to circle the drain and go down the drain over the next three four years.
First of all, I mean, if Trump wins, they're good.
Democrats are going to be mad that Biden didn't step aside a year and a half ago and let him have a campaign to nominate a stronger person who.
Would have won.
And if Harris wins, I think she'll be poorly. But I think even if Harris wins and runs in lots of trouble, as I expect will happen, everyone's going to be mad at Biden for not dropping out, Democrats for sticking them with somebody who's really not a very good president, Republicans who might have nominated a younger candidate if it was an open Democratic field, so you might have had the Santas versus I don't know Jos Shapiro, but you can name a number of people and we would have
had that race that Rob has talked about with younger, different people, and you still have all the basic polarized politics we have, but it would be different than what we have now, which is partly personality driven.
Yeah, I think it's probably true. I also feel like.
If she wins, you know, it seems like, you know, maybe it's fifty one, fifty two to forty eight percent that she's going to and just say she wins, Like, what do you do when you're the president. You every problem you have you blame on your predecessor. It's going to be NonStop from that administration. Boy, you guys have no idea. How crow horrible? Well I'm here, I have all this mess to clean up. The biggest trash mouth you're going to get about the Biden administration is going
to be from the Harris administration. And you know, I mean all those people running around before saying listen, I love Joe Biden, I love Joe Biden. They Hey, nobody loved Joe Biden. Right, they love Joe Biden. He would have been If they love Joe Biden, he would have run for president in twenty sixteen and one they love Joe Biden, he would have been the nominee.
Before nobody loved him. He was a true no.
His transmutation into the gentle wise hero for those of us who've been seeing him back in the days when he had fewer follicles, is amusing. Well, you're right, tell all books are going to be great, and they're going to be written by the same people who are writing stories about how Republicans are being mean, saying that Joe Biden is not at his mental peak.
It'll be an instant flip and the advances will be good, and they'll all be interviewed by the same Can.
I tell quick campaign story about how sometimes you can you get in the weeds in a campaign and you kind of forget that it's these these are title.
Issues sometimes that really the small things.
And I tell the story in the most recent issue, the new issue of Commentary. But I don't think i've told it on the story y nineteen ninety two. If you're ancient, if you're you don't even have to be as ancient and as old as Steve. But if you're just simply you know, still spry like me, but you have a memory. One of the biggest shows on TV then was Murphy Brown and Murphy Brown, the character played by Cannisberg and had in the show, had a baby out of wedlock. She was sort of her first kid.
She was older. It was all a lot of things whatever. And Dan Quayle was giving a speech. Dan Quayle was the Vice President United States, just so remember who that was. And he was given a speech which now if you read it now, seems the most anna dyne, kind of milk toasty speech.
Ever, it's like it's like if you took.
All of the you painted everything, jad Vance says in past deels.
But he was right.
He said, the problem in America, our cultural problem, is kids growing up without thought, and it's the breakup of the family.
He was right then. Daniel moynihan was right twenty years before when he said it.
It's still right. It's still exactly. It's the one thing we need to fix and the one thing we can't fix because the liberal progressive control over all of our dialogue.
He was right, he said, and he referenced. He referends Murphy Brown.
He's like, well Y's TV show, Murphy Brown, this character is having a child out of wedlock. It's mocking the importance of bathers, right, pandemonium. The Murphy Brown people were all pro Democrat, all liberal, and they said, okay, this had this happened in you know, he gave the speech in May so that Murphy Brown was on hiatus. They were preparing for the fall season, which was going to be the election ball ninety two, and they were preparing
Murphy Brown's response. So it's this weird thing where the a sitcom character was going to respond to the sitting Vice president in real time basically, and they they did the episode and the script was under wraps.
It was like no one read it.
They had they you had to sign an nda Is to watch the show, and they burned all the scripts like nobody was under nobody knew what she was going to say until they aired it.
Except somehow.
One day someone gave me a copy of this embargod script because like, you can't keep a secret in Hollywood, right, And I'm like, what am I I do with this? Well, it turns out I had a lot of friends in the Bush campaign, so I just fed Exit to them. I said, here, just a little preview. And then I said to my assistant, who was on the right at the time, a very staunch Republican, I said, you know what, let's send one of these to Rush.
So we fed ex it to.
Rush and the next day Rush gets it and he starts the show and he says, I got this thing. I know it's a trap. I know it's not real. I don't know who this I sent it to me. I've never heard of this guy. I know this is not real. It's the Murphy Brown thing. And a friend of mine, who is in fact I'm staying I'm a house guest of theirs right now. She knows Rush.
She calls him up on the air.
When he's on the air, she says, look, I don't know who's sending to you, but if it's this guy, it's real. And he starts reading the script, and I thought, I have just re elected the president of the United States. I have just done this incredible, sneaky political and I'm like, I couldn't believe how great I am. And it had zero effect on the outcome of that election.
A I you know, I don't know what the original script was, but I think they missed an opportunity for Candice Bergen to give birth to Charlie McCarthy, which I think splinters.
I have two footnotes that story, which you may have heard. Rob.
One is apparently I heard it from Bill Crystal, who remember it was Quayle's chief of staff.
They said they're on the plane.
Flying out to LA to give the speech, and Quayle points to that line and says, you know, maybe I should take out this line about Murphy Brown, and Crystal says he told him, no, no, I'm sure no one will pay any attention to it.
So see, but then.
More significantly than I mean, she your broader point. I think it was two or three years later The Atlantic Monthly did a cover story called dan Quayle was right, and I said, what would you just said? Is actually I don't remember it was Nick Layman or you know, some sort of center liberal establishment figure said, actually Quail was right. Of course he was out of office by then, so it was costless. But still that was you know, he was vindicated about it totally.
We're always right down the road.
It turns out the communists in the government, and it turns out that dan Quayle was right. It turns out it was morning in America. But they'll admit that that was the case.
Then now is.
Completely different, and that's why we have to upend the yetch you sketch, give it a good shake, and start with year zero. All right, guys, a couple more things before we go here. One of them is, I know, Stephen, you wanted to say something about RFK. One of the more could have been, if he'd gotten a little bit more oxygen, one of the more unique and peculiar political candidates of this very much a twenty twenty four guy.
You know, you don't have things like leaving a bear in the park on the list of things that you expect Kennedy progeny to say, or.
Maybe you do.
I don't know is he going to vote for is he gonna elect or he's going to throw his hat in the Trump campaign or what?
Well, it sounds like it.
I had someone in the Kennedy campaign who I don't know but is legit reach out to me here yesterday. So that's a reader, it turns out, and he's one of these conservatives who doesn't like Trump, and so he's spreading with Kennedy. Anyway, between the time we're now recording and when listeners hear this today or tonight, Kennedy is going to drop out. It's supposed to be two o'clock Eastern.
And the person I talked to doesn't have intimate knowledge on whether there's a firm deal to have a cabinet post or something like that.
But that's the speculation. I'll just say this much.
You know, Trump has been really trying to court Kennedy, going back to when Trump called him up after the shooting in Pennsylvania, and on the polling data seems to suggest that Kennedy dropping out will help Trump. Right now, the polls are dead even, but in a lot of the battleground states, Kennedy's still put He's on the ballot, he is polling at two three percent, and Trump gets the lion's share.
That at least according to the polling detail.
But it's all pretty volatile. But in a fifty to fifty election, which rob is where the polls are right now, it's a coin flip. It could make the difference. So this is an interesting moment in a year which has seen so many crazy things. Right, So we'll just have to see what happens with this.
Yeah, I mean there's like we're now at the at the uh at the small ethnic populations of the important states. Right, So the fact that there's three hundred thousand Jews in Pennsylvania matters. The fact that and that that's one of the Israel things. That's what that is real thing was about.
So like you you start to start to see how you're basically you're gonna you're seeing the wires happen in a way that you know, I think Trump tweeted yesterday, so you know, I've always loved that Governor Brian Kemp.
He's thanks him for his partnership.
I think it's like, you know, you're starting to see it all kind of unravel with these two guys scramble for little boats here and there they go because belunking.
Record, scratch, different topic. Culture.
Filled on you, dead Rob, You're the television guy influential beyond uh, beyond imagining, thinking man's Jerry Springer mainstay.
We never expected to go away. What what's what's the legacy of philled on to you? You know, I think you know there was a there used to be an ad in.
Chicago when he know, I mean it was a Cleveland even when he started in Cleveland. He's starting Cleveland, then moved to Chicago. Daytime Guy in Cleveland, and the ad was for the show. The line was have your second cup of coffee with Phil Donahue, entirely directed.
At women who were at home, and.
The idea was your first cup of coffees in the morning with your husband and your kids and they go off, and then you're gonna have a time for your second cup of coffee after the house is empty, and you have it with Phil Donahue. And I think he was one of the first people in television to sort of treat that audience for real, and maybe it was postfeminism, who who knows, but he treated that audience as a as a as a gold mine.
I mean, in a.
The housewife at stay at home mom audience was suit of like the happy homemaker kind of thing. It was all kind of nothing in game shows and dramas, and he said, I don't know, maybe not game shows in daytime dramas for an hour, maybe salacious content or even political content or like current events content or whatever it was. I think he was the first guy to do that,
and pretty amazing, actually quite an accomplishment. I mean I found him incredibly irritating and also especially near the end when he was simply pro Soviet, he was just he was one of those guys while we were winning the Cold War, while Reagan was winning the Cold War, was saying, let's not win this Cold War, you know, let's let's give up.
And you know why because he had a close personal, warm relationship.
With who post Vladimir Poser.
That's the guy ever met, ever met Vladimir Postner.
Oh I met him and.
Was on TV with him once Turnout and a Half in LA in nineteen eighty eight, Arm wrestling with him.
Yeah, you now, eighty eight I think was when I interviewed him to what he was making one of his sweeps, his leather jacket and his merl Burgs and as Jack Daniels and the rest of them that ready, Yeah, so yeah, I mean, but he's an interesting character.
I mean, the story of Vladimir Posers is interesting, this westernized face that they that they put out to us.
But yeah, I mean, I think Phil was just enamored with the fact that that we would actually, you know, that the Soviet Union would somehow be a liberal place
that abounded with Vladimir Posers. After all, they'd already had you in Tropo, who, as we know, liked to listen to Benny Goodman, and so, I mean, all we had to do is get past is reaganesque fear mongering and and show them that actually that, like Sting, we believe that the Russians love their children too, and handholding would result in the rest of it, absolute utter delusion and
a sign of an unseerious, easily swayed mind. But enough of that, we're going to record Scratch again because we before we go, I would like to find out what Rob actually did in the Amazon, aside from probably get a bunch of parasites which will manifest themselves.
Yeah, slowly you could see.
You can't really see anymore, but I did have a bunch of splinters in this hand from everything ever. Anything in the in the Amazon that's really horrible and scary is tiny. You can barely see it. You know, in Africa, you like, you know, that's a lion that die's gonna eat me. That elephant will step on my foot, that's your raff is just gonna knock me over. The Amazon, everything's small and like a little bug and a little caterpillar and a tiny little leaf cutting ant and little
stickers on a tree that you can barely see. So I was there with a bunch of people and pretty much everybody had one encounter with a biting, stinging insect or some GI tract issue that said, it was really, really fun, and I would go back in a second, and I was every every minute of it. I was sort of saying prayers of gratitude to Dow Chemical for inventing all sorts of like shut toxic cancer causing insecticides.
But boy do they work. I got to try you deep, my friend yeah, I handed to do.
Well, we're deep free here now, which is why we're all slapping and scratching. I heard that there was an Amazon something that lives in the water that.
Is known for swimming up to you.
And then deploying barbs so that it cannot be pulled out. And I'm wondering exactly how something like that evolves or is just proof of a malicious spirit inventing it on the spot, because I mean, if that's really what you need to need to do to reproduce, swim up the urethra and deploy your barbs, it seems there's limited opportunity for that, but apparently they just abound in the Amn.
You don't really want to swim, Yeah, in the Amazon. There's ponas there. Some one of our party got bit by a piranha. You don't and you definitely don't want to, like, uh, relax in the Amazon in any meaningful way, because you know, you're you're feeding the fish and some of those fish they call they call that the toothpick fish, by the way, that's the nickname for the candiru. And it does exactly
what you say. It opens up like an umbrella after swimming inside you, and there is no way to get it out.
You need to remove the appendage. But you would you everything, everything there is trying to kill you.
But yet you would go back because there's everything there could kill you.
Everything there's just trying to live. That's the thing. It just it doesn't really has no it doesn't. They didn't know me.
I mean they know me, maybe they maybe those bugs will be trying to kill me, but they don't really know me. There's like I'm just like, oh, I can can I eat that? I'm gonna eat that. I'm you know, the natural world, especially down there, is just all about hunger. But can I just change the subject briefly? Yes, I mean I know we're coming to the end because I do want to. I want to make one plug because
I had this sort of great experience last night. I met this guy who was the former Secretary of Commerce under Trump, Will Barross.
Fascinating guy.
So sometimes I know we've been spending our time trashing old people like the candidates, former candidates. Candidates and former candidates are too old, too old, too old, And then you meet a guy who's old, and you think that guy could be president of United States. I would vote for that guy to be president the United States. He told these great stories, wonderful stories because he worked for Trump.
But he also he had he goes back with Trump, goes back all the way because he's a bankruptcy guy, and he would He was one of the people leading the bankruptcy negotiations for Trump's casino in Atlantic City. That was his first encounter with Trump. And the story's riveting. And he's written a book. The book is called Risks
and Returns. And I'm telling you if you're interested in good stories, well told by a non polemical, non partisan, smart guy, and they're good stories, and he writes really well. Wilbur Ross Risks and Returns.
Tell me what.
Tell me you said there's this podcast thing you know about that would be happy to have him for a guest.
Tell me that, yeah, you know what I didn't because he you know, because this is why this is this guy. This is the reason why this guy is so rich and successful is because he was He said to everybody, Hey, I'm giving you a copy of this book, but make sure your friend's by four because I need he's got that. He's got a chart in his head of what he needs to be to be on the New York Times bestseller list. I mean, I think the book was released every after Labor Day so you could pre order it.
That's what you need to do, pre order it. But you know, you're talking about and a guy who's been in business for a long long time and is very very smart but also really gentle and fun. And the book is like, it's really great. It's a really great memoir of He.
Needs to do some publicity because otherwise people don't know about it, so let's have him on the show.
You're totally right, he would be great to be like me.
Not saying it's saying I got a sub stack up now with my column.
Not running there, But I'm not going to tell you about it. You can find out for yourself. I mean probably probably is James Lylyx that substant substack dot com, James Lilax dot substack dot com. But I you know, maybe yes, maybe no. I do know, however, that Apple would love to hear your reviews about this podcast. Five stars, five stars, five stars.
Don't be like one of those people goes four point seven because he didn't like this or didn't like that.
Five stars.
Just give us the whole raft there, baby, And I would also tell you that if you want to improve your metabol account, find out what you need to eat in the course of the day, and and actually have the pleasure of a really well designed scientific instruments, you would go to Lumen and you would support us. If you support them and support yourself and your metabolic health, of course, and you get ten fifteen percent off.
That's great.
You would also be wise to you know, just be glad that Rob is back among us, that he survived, and happy that Stephen could join us as well. And beyond that, gentlemen, Uh, it's been a great hour, it's been a pleasure to talk to all of you. The great weekend, and we'll see everybody in the comments at a Ricochet four point zero next week Labor Day.