It's being converted on the fly, So every moment that it's in use, it's being converted. It's like nineteen eighty four. It's a relentless totalitarian conversion that never stops. You want to imagine the future, Imagine a USB two cable into a USB three cable, stamping on a human face forever.
Ask not what your country can do for you, Ask what you can do for your country.
Mister gorbucha, Tear down this wall.
It's the Ricochet Podcast with Steven Hayward and Charles C. W. Cook James Lillax. Today we talked to Jerry Baker, editor at large of the Wall Street Journal. So let's podcast.
Mister Greed, take your seat. Take your seat, sir, take your seat. Finding that members continue to engage in wilful and concert a disruption or proper decorum, the chair now directs is startant at arms to restore order. We'll move this gentleman from the table.
Well become everybody. This is the Rickchhepe Podcast, number seven hundred and thirty one in James lilloxs in Minneapolis. Beautiful crisp day. We got about ten inches of snow. Yeah, we can take it. It's March. I'm joined by Stephen Hayward and Charles C. W. Cook. Who are I believe in respective poles of the country, Florida and California. And where to start with this week? Every day it seems to be something, and then we forget that we did.
We annext Greenland last week? I don't know what a swirling constellation of stars around your head like somebody in a cartoon who's been whacked on the nug and with a frying pan. So what to begin? What do you, guys, what stands out at the end of this contentious week as the most important issue to you or the one perhaps that flew under the radar, That will that will be something we're talking about in a little bit now.
Could it be the Supreme Court decision that appeared to slam the knuckles of Doge Stephen Charlie.
Well, I'm not quite sure it did that. It's a little bit it's a little bit obscure and maybe technical and narrow. I think actually the biggest story of the week is still unfolding today Friday, as we're talking. First two days ago we had the news that Gavin Newsom is now a podcaster by the way. I predict he's going to do as well at podcasting as Mario Cuomo did a talk radio thirty years ago, and I thought he'd be the ride, he'd be the rival for Rush,
and he was just boring as good beat. But what the news was that a newsom suddenly sounded like a Republican's interest. I'm against boys and women's sports, I don't want to use l tinks, and defunding the police was idiotic. So this is clearly someone gearing up to run for president. But then it's followed up by the news that after Senate Democrats voted unanimously to block the Republican bill to ban trans women from women's sports, suddenly they're changing your tune.
And now they're out with a new proposal. Well, let's let the states decide, you know, sort of the their equivalent of the Dobbs decision on abortion, I suppose you might say, and I think you're seeing the weakening here on some of these cultural issues on the left because it realizes they're getting killed on this and so anyway, I think that's the sleeper story that's going to grow, and it's going to cause great divisions inside a democratic coalition interesting.
Well, yes, watching new some molt and shed his skin is interesting. But then there are some people who say, well, I'm looking at this bill here they're talking about boys and women's sports. I don't like it. But on the other hand, I looked at my IRA the other day too, and I really don't like that. Ah.
Yeah, and it seems to be getting worse. If you look at the stock market right now, it's worse than it was this morning, and that in turn is worse than it was yesterday. It was okay twelve days ago. It seems to me, James, and I don't know if you think this is maybe a conspiracy theory or me putting pieces together that doesn't belong. But do you think this might have to do with the tariffs? I think it might, yeah.
And you know, as somebody who is on the cusp of retirement, and you know, I generally don't check those things. They go up, they go down, you know whatever. We you know, I don't like it, and I especially don't like it because it seems to be what we call an unforced error own goal. I was not in the mood, particularly for a trade war with Canada. And while Canada may indeed have an onerous terrace on American milk. It's
just it's not it's not really up there. Now. I understand the long term reasoning is to do this to bring back, you know, manufacturing in the country, and we have to go through short term pain and then in five years it'll all be better because we'll have more industries than businesses. Here. One of the major car companies announced that they're going to start building some stuff in America. Again, I get that, I get that, But I hate tariffs.
I just do. I just I just do. And maybe it's because I associate them, you know, with a smooth end or holly and think that didn't work, and maybe this doesn't work now. So yeah, the Mexican tariffs have been abated for a month, though, have they not they not decide to step away from those for a while.
Well, they're showing as tariffs you see, they're introduced well because they both exist and don't exist, and they're both good and bad because when they're introduced, there's all these reasons that we need them. We need to be more like America in the eighteen nineties when we were apparently rich. We need to be like William McKinley. We need to protect industry and create jobs and potentially even get rid of the income tax.
And that's just terrific.
And that's why tariffs are so good and the most beautiful word in the English language.
And we all love them.
Also, they're so horrible that if you threaten people with them, then you get things that you want. So we don't really want tariffs. What we want is to threaten tarifs and then not do them, because obviously we wouldn't do tariffs. Trump actually did this yesterday, James. He actually said yesterday when he was announcing that he might give some tariff relief that he was going to rescind some of the
tariffs to protect American industries from them. But you put them on, so he's both the provider and the taker.
Yeah, I mean, I think the embarrassing irony hearers that if you go back to twenty sixteen, Trump was most prominently talking about tariffs to save American auto industry jobs and save auto factories in America, and those are the first tariffs are that sector that he relaxed within hours of imposing them because I think someone pointed out to him that the supply chain for automobile manufacturing in parts
is more complicated, and it's not so simple. I still wonder if, well, an old word comes back to me, James. You'll remember from the seventies we were going to fight inflation by jaw boning, remember jaw boning, and that meant we'll talk about it a lot. And what shame people
in the lowering the price of eggs? I don't know, but I do wonder sometimes, and Charlie put his finger on it right here, just now, how much Trump really believes in tariffs and how much this is Trump's typical supercharged, exaggerated rhetoric in service of trying to be jaw boning on steroids. And you know, look all presidents of going back. You know, Reagan put up with some tariffs under politically circumstances that were difficult.
He kind of had to.
But you know, a Bush put on tariffs to protect steel, so did Biden. Well, there are aluminum tariffs. We've had tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber on and off over the years. I don't keep up with it, but so I don't know. I'd like to think that, in my optimistic moments, that Trump has got a serious game here, and he's playing it the way he does everything else, and maybe it will get some results. But at some point paper are going to figure this out, as we have suggested before.
Well, those were individual tariffs. I mean, there are targeted, specific cares. We've been doing that stuff, this sort of broad brush stuff. If it was just talk, there'd be
one thing. But he did them, so that's another. And if he backs off from this, because I'm wondering what would make him back off of it, if anything, because everything the wins that you've had, all of the rhetorical, philosophical, symbolic wins that Doze has been racking up by saying, look, America, you there, you guy, you who paid five thousand dollars
in taxes last year. Actually what we did is that your entire tax payment for the last twenty years has been going to one L pack of farmer in Peru. I mean, and again, we no longer need to make up absurd examples of spending like this, because that's where it was. I think it was ninety thousand dollars for an L pack of farming in Peru. So somebody looks at that and says, well, exactly, how is that supposed
to work for me. Then I am driving around on roads that are pothold, there's miscreants and lolling about in my park that isn't clear, et cetera. I mean, we know these are all complex state, local issues, but people just basically get the idea, I'm paying a lot of money for taxes, and if we lived in an absolute, utopian, clean paradise like Tomorrowland in the movie, yeah, throw a couple of nickels at the guy in Peru. But we don't.
And why so that's a win because I think that then as nonpartisan, I think people actually the middle get that. But when all of a sudden you have shuddering economic contraction because of something that was put on that nobody really really really was voting for. I wonder at what point Trump looks at this and says, I'm going to cut bait and cut my losses and back off of this. I don't know if he has it in him or if he's just gonna be bullheaded about it and keep going forward.
Charles, I think he definitely has it in him, because he keeps rescinding them when the stock market goes down. Look, this is a real risk. So let's look at this both from the perspective of somebody who might hate Trump and from the perspective of somebody who really likes Trump. I think the argument against this course of action is applicable from both sides. If you hate Trump, you look at this and you say, well, he's doing tariffs. Theyre stupid.
He's a stupid person and he's being stupid, and.
I hate him.
Okay, fine, If you like him, you don't want this problem, and it's become a problem to overshadow all of the other things that you want him to do, because the maxim that it's the economy stupid is still true. It's
the primary reason that he won the election. He won the election because Joe Biden and his party made inflation a great deal worse in twenty twenty one by pumping a whole bunch of money into the economy that the economy did not need and creating the worst inflationary environment in forty years, and then saying it's not happening, and then saying it's transitory, and then saying, well, maybe it is happening, but it's not too bad, and then this is the worst part of all, passing a bill called
the Inflation Reduction Act that had literally nothing to do with inflation. Well, look at Trump's policies right now, many of which I like. But look at what he wants to do in the next six months. He wants to expand the tax cuts from twenty seventeen, including no tips on taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime, no taxes
on social security benefits. Best sent. The Treasury Secretary said two days ago that their aim is to bring interest rates down, and he's imposed tariffs supposedly twenty five percent on everything from Canada and Mexico. At least that's the aim. All of those things are inflationary, and inflation hasn't gone. People won't put up with it. Most people aren't ideological like we are. Most people don't follow politics like we do. They're gonna say, ah, wait, everything's expensive. I don't want
things to be expensive. And when that happens, you don't get to do all of the rest of the stuff that I like, all the reform of the executive branch and the destruction of DEI and some of the foreign policy, not all of it. But I think this is a real risk for him that he is taking and not just again from the perspective of people who don't like him, who are going to say that anyway, but for the people who do like him.
Agreed. Although we can have this argument about taxing social security another day perhaps, but I agree with you. And if inflation doesn't go down, then people are going to scratch their heads and wonder why. Now, you know, inflation is one of those things where you know it's hard to find a sweet spot for it. But your metabolism is different. Your metabolism. If your metabolism is working properly, you will feel that benefit in every aspect of your life.
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this thing. And thank you Luhmann for sponsoring this the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast. Gerard Baker the editor at large at the Wall Street Journal, and you'll also find his weekly Free Expressions column every Tuesday. There. He hosts podcasts but the same name, along with the interview series w SJ at Large with Jerry Baker on Fox Business.
Welcome, Thank you very much indeed for having me. It might be my first time. What's my first time for a while anyway, I think I think we've done this before, but back in the back in the ancient days of the Puts, the Biden administration.
That would be a long time. You know, we've been doing this forever. This is podcast number seven thousand, seven and forty two, so you know, we may have had you back in the two thousands or something like that. So here we are. You know, we're halfway through the hundred days and you get a little tired of the one hundred days thing. But it's hard to shake. I guess it's inevitable. Trump has packed more into the first half of the hundred days, I think than I can
imagine a lot. And it's this baffling welter. It's like standing in for behind a jet engine into which somebody has fed feathers and tacks and it's just it's really, so, what's your impression so far?
Yeah, it's the uh, the everything everywhere, all at once to approach to governing. And by the way, there's obviously there's there's method in that, right, there's I mean that
that that's done very deliberately. I remember reading an interview with Steve Bannon years go, I think in the early days the first Trump administration, where he said, you know, part of part of the purpose of this is a obviously to give a to project an image of activity and momentum and all of that, but also frankly, just
to sort of overwhelm the media and political opponents. I mean, you know, you you at one minute, you're talking about Matt Gates being nominated for something, and everybody's, oh, throwing their arms up about that and so and then the next thing, we're talking about Telsea Gabbitt, and so we've
forgotten about maca you know. So you know, there's no question it's a you know, and again everything from executive orders on everything from you know, immigration to you know, the administrative state to tariffs, and goodness knows what else.
I mean.
So you don't have time, the media don't have time to digest and interpret and critique and all of those things that you would normally do. So so part of it is so and that's you know, you can't you can only stand back and look at that and say, wow, that's kind of impressive management as well as impressive sort
of energy. Look, I think I do think maybe this was the week in which, you know, maybe maybe maybe the we saw some of the kind of downsides of the frenetic pace the I mean, first of all, the tariffs, right, I mean, are just a disaster. Let's be completely honest about it. They're not only a disaster in themselves intrinsically,
I'm a believer tariffs generally do nothing but harm. But but but the the back and forth, and you know, the desultry way in which Trump is you know, yes, they're on one day, they're not the next, and you can see the reaction of the financial markets. Nobody likes that and and so that's you know that that that's uh, maybe a sign of the you know, this this extraordinary,
this this train hitting the buffers. You've had the you know, I think more worrying signs about the economy with jobs numbers weren't too bad today, but I think that's also going to kind of punch some holes in this, uh, in this performance. And and of course, you know, losing the case at the Supreme Court, or at least sort of temporarily as I understand it, losing the case of the Supreme Court on the on again in another administrative state case. So it feels a little bit as though.
And then and then, by the way, you know, the European what this I mean Europe at the moment, in this extraordinary revolutionary kind of temper that there is in us, you know, European relations, I think that is also perhaps a sign that things are not going quite quite as smoothly as planned. So look, I think there's you know, it's it's been a it's been a highly productive, incredibly productive start from the executive side. We've got to see
obviously where any of the legislative process goes. That that's you know, there's especially the big the big beautiful bill and other stuff. But I just think we're starting to see for the first time this week. I wouldn't say go as far as to say the wheels coming off, but the you know this, when you do, when you start out with this kind of blizzard, then stuff is going to start to stuff is going to start to, you know, to fall fall by the wayside. And I think we're starting to see that.
Jerry, it's Steve Hayward out in California. And so, by the way, you know, my Tuesday morning starts reading your column in the Journal. Actually, my mornings start with reading all the daily columnists. And I wish you could get Dan Henninger to unretire and come back on Thursdays. But anyway, look, ask you about the European scene. Since you're over there.
I've been planning out the theme lately with people that just as Trump is attempting to overthrow the Wilsonian legacy Woodrow Wilson's legacy of the administrative state at home, he is also trying to undo the Wilsonian legacy in foreign policy. In other words, the Wilsonian internationalism that has been the consensus of you with both parties at least since the end of World War two, if out in certain ways before all that, And I think I'm sympathetic to that
project in some ways. That would take a long time to go through, But I don't think there's any way that that could be accomplished without some kind of big bang, without something that would be wrenching. I mean, I thought I was writing actually when Obama was president, that he had the opportunity if he wanted to reset sort of American European relations and the NATO strategy and so forth, but he really had no interest in that. And so of course Trump's going to be bumbling, But I think
there is potentially an upside here. Am I too optimistic? What am I missing? Are Europeans so thoroughly alarmed and panicky that this was an ill advised idea?
Yeah, So I'm here in Europe wading through the waiting, through the through the broken eggs of the of the the president Trump is in the process of making. I
don't disagree with you that, Jim, I think. I mean, I think I think, you know, fundamentally, one of the things that I found really interesting this week, and it got a lot of attention to got a lot of negative attention when Trump gave I think he was in the Oval Office and he was talking, you know, in doing that strange thing that he does where he kind of holds a kind of a rolling in comptue press
conference while he's signing those executive orders. He was talking and a topic he got onto the subject of Japan and the Japan Security Pact that the US has with Japan, and he said, you know, it's kind of ridiculous. We have a pact with Japan whereby we promised to protect them if they get if they get attacked, But what do they do for us? Absolutely nothing, then anything for us. Who who the hell came up with that idea? The
answer is Douglas MacArthur. And it was an essential part of the of the of the post war settlement that actually the pacification of Japan was considered back then to be a rather important national security priority for the United States. But it did strike me then just and this is your point, but you know, back to your point about Europe and the Wilsonian framework. It's from me then that
you know, he of course he has a point. I mean, yeah, because exact because the answer, as I just said to who came up with that crazy idea was you know, Douglas MacArthur and then Truman and then ultimately eyes now and they and it was a good idea at the time, right, but that was that time was seventy plus years ago.
It probably doesn't make anything.
We don't we don't view Germany and Japan today in the way that we did in you know, nineteen forty five and ninety forty six. So of course we need a new a new order. And I think more broadly, yeah, the kind of you know views that we've call it Wilsonian, but the sort of you know that the post Cold War liberal order that was you know, very much the
thing for a long time. I also agree with that that, you know, the US has different strategic interests, the world poses a different set of challenges, and I think there's
absolutely things a lot to be said that. The only thing I'll say though, is, I mean, I think Trump has incredibly good instincts, and sometimes his instincts put him, you know, a really really good political and even geopolitical instincts, and they put him in a place where, you know, perhaps almost inadvertently, he discovers this is exactly the right strategic approach should we should be taking. But then he does also all frankly, and you know, this is also
the question at the back of everybody's mind. Is he really kind of unconsciously undoing the Wilsonian order and consciously undoing the global liberal order or does he just have a bit of a.
Thing for Vladimir Putin?
You know?
And I you know, and I'm sorry, I can't I'm not being too flippant about that, and I certainly don't buy the you know, Putin's got something on him, compromat kind of thing. But it just does seem in his case he just really has a thing for the man and never says a bad word about of mind conscious that he you know, just actually has called the post sanctions something. So so you know what, that's all I'm saying, is we do all we do this with Trump all
the time, like he's this incredible. Charles wrote a terrific piece recently about the you know, I'm picking the absurd observation claim that Trump plays four D chess. You know, everything he does is like, oh, you know, I think I can't remember it was a tallyron set of metinic or the other way around when they died.
You know, I wonder what he meant by that, and that's what we said to do that with Trump.
We do that with Trump, right, and it's like, you know, he just he just you know, he just you know, sent out a text tweet saying, Kaffifi that's regulably a sophisticated observation on the state of the world. No, I just that's the problem with him. I mean, you know, you know, his instincts are good. Often sometimes it's not. They're terrible. But is it instinct or is it you know, grand strategy.
Well, yeah, right, I mean that's a good question. There is a headline, a news headline in your paper today. I haven't read a story, but the headline goes something like Germany considers acquiring nuclear weapons and I wonder, is this for real or is this the Germans learning how to play Trump's game.
I have a very dear, very dear friend, a Jewish journalist friend and colleague who you know, when we were having these arguments years back about burden sharing and whether the Germans should be doing more on that, the Germans were you know, useless militarily, and he would say, and we'd have this argument, he'd say to me j S.
Jerry said, we are having an.
Argument about how bad it is about whether or not about the fact that the Germans aren't we know, militaristic in it. That is a good thing, you know, That is that you know that, that is that that that is something anybody in the last two hundred years would be celebrating. Why on earth are we kind of you know, worrying about it. So when you see a headline saying the Germans want to get nuclear weapons, you know, on
one level you might think, uh oh. But one of the things I wrote quite recently, I read a column sort of just looking at kind of the implications of this new world order, and nuclipliferation is absolutely one of them. I mean, that's you know, if I am Germany for that matter, and you know, Freedom Nurse that soon to be chancellors said this. But if I'm poland, if I'm the Baltics, and if I don't think that, if I don't think if I think NATO is in effect a
dead letter, which I think, frankly it almost. If it isn't now, it will be soon. The first thing I want is to get my hands on a nuclear weapon. Because I want to be able to say to Vladimir Putin or whoever his successes are, you know, you you know, you come and come after our cities. We're going to you know, we're going to We're going to annihilate Moscow. So I I you know, so yeah, this is the reality.
But I think I do think the larger point here is that I do think NATO, even if it's not formally dead, and you know, I think Trump will probably come back and say some nice things about it, would be persuaded to say some nice things. I saw Pete Haig Sith yesterday say some very nice things to the British Defense Minister. But I think in practical to him, does any I mean, do you think, for example, that Donald Trump would take America to war to defend Estonia if Vladimir Putin invades tomorrow?
I don't.
I mean, maybe I'm I just don't.
Hi.
Jared's Charles Cook here on the question of four, five, six or maybe seventy chess.
What is your take.
On Trump's attitude towards Tariff's because it's certainly been a feature of his rhetoric for years since the eighties, but it is totally incoherent, and he does seem to impose them and then back off. You can't reconcile the way he talks about tariffs. It's been the greatest thing that ever existed with his condoc and his incorporation of them into this art of the deal myth. So what do you think he's doing because it is inscrutable to me.
It looks chaotic.
It does look chaoto, and I agree I think he so. I first of all, I think he has a very dare I say, simplistic, but sort of simple view of international economic relations. Not even mechantalyst, it's a it's just a very simplistic, arithmetical view, which is that if one country has a trade surplus or current account surplus with the United States, then it's cheating. You know, it's just it's it's it's just cheating. We're being ripped off. I mean,
he keeps using phrases like subsidized. He said, you know, when when he talks about the US having a trade deficit with Canada, he says Americans are subsidizing Canada, which it is economically nonsense. It's not a subsidy, it's an economic transaction. But you know, we get that. You know, we we get oil and the Canadians get us, and they're very happy on both sides. Used to be very
happy with that arrangement. So but I think he genuine I think he thinks that's how he thinks of the international economic system, that it is a kind of zero sum game, and you know, just probably get it just as he you know, when this is when he was a real estate guy. If if he was winning, if he if he got it, if he got to if he beat somebody to a deal, that was that meant he was winning and the other guy was was losing.
And so I think so, I think so, I think it stems from that, that that basic view that the world is unfair, and that that what you need to do then to redress that unfairness, to to to redress that injustice is tariff's tariffs are you know, are obviously an obvious way to do it. They you know, they hurt us, but they hurt the other side more because they will have the effects other things being equal, of of of reducing their the other side exports. So I really,
I think it really, I think it's that simple. And then I think he's built on top of that this idea that tariffs will generate huge amounts of revenue. He keeps talking about, you know, William McKinley, and how you know tariff's generated the asked bulk of federal income back then and asked that that's when the that's when the federal federal government represented about two percent of GDP.
But but you know, so I think he's so.
I think from that basic sort of economic equation, kind of kind of false economic if you like economic equation, that that trade that if that if you're trading, if your trading partner has a surplus, then they're cheating and they need to be and they need to be hauled in. He then builds on these other ideas like taris will produce great revenue and all. But he's not wrong about the you know that tariffs ultimately will produce will induce and incentivize American or need any company to come and
you know, build in the United States. So but I do think it I think it really stems from that. He looked, and I think Charles and I remember, you know, looking where. I remember I lived in New York in the nineteen eighty late eighties, and I remember him taking out those ads in the New York Times when he would say, you know, when the trade deficit with with Japan and they would have an enormous trade definite, he say, look,
this is wrong. They're cheating. This is absolutely and I think, I really do think it comes from them.
Yeah, it's rhetoric. It's the same used to say politicians in America effectless and they're allowing Japan to cheat. It's pretty much a through line from there. My second question is about the budget. Republicans historically have talked about the deficits we run every year. They've talked about the debt that those deficits create. They've talked about the issues that we have with entitlements, and Trump doesn't. Now you can make the argument that this is politically smart, because it is.
People don't want to hear it. The public is not their Republicans who talk in that way lose. But the math remains the same. Do you expect Congress to just blow open the deficit this summer when they pass their spending and tax bills or do you think any saner voices will prevail.
No, I think they'll I think they'll go for broke, and I think with one caveat which one comes to look. I think the I think, if the economy is slowing, as it really does seem to be doing, I think, you know, we're getting these sort of the usual kind of hail of not necessarily consistent data, but but but it usually points broadly in one direction. Even today's jobs numbers were you know, on the softer side, and we've
seen two months of relatively soft employment growth. The the you know, the there's certainly the markets think the economy is slowing very sharply. That's why, you know, market interest,
treasury yields have fallen. And I think there's a pretty good chance that we get to the middle of the year or as this as this legislate, as this as a as as this budget and tax cut goes through Congress, I think I think the nervousness about the economy will grow, and I suspect that will you know, that will be enough to silence the what whatever remaining deficit hawks there may be, because the argument is going to be we really need a stimulus, of course, but the caveat I
was going to say is, at the same time, inflation is not is certainly not going away.
It's getting worse.
I don't think as it happens for you know, reasons we don't need to go into I don't think tariffs are inherently inflationary. I think they lead to a one time increase in the price level, and they're not necessarily recurring, which would only be inflationary. But they will raise if they ever get into if we ever actually impose these tariffs. We keep going through this sort of you know, hide and seek with tariffs that we've been doing for the
last couple of months. But if we ever get the tariff, then they will push up prices, and you know, by the way, and then and a big fiscal blowout, even though it might be advantageous for demand in the economy of demand is really weakening. Could also you know, will will will certainly make the inflation picture worse too, so you could you know, this is this is the stagflation scenario.
Obviously.
The other caveat or conditional is if we you know, if the market really we if we have a market event where it looks like the market suddenly takes fright, bond yield spike, you know, and people think this is not sustainable. At one hundred and twenty five percent of GDP debt level, and that causes, you know, a real rethink. But I think that's low probability outcome. I would say, you know, I'd say they push it through.
Jerry. It's Steve Hayward again. I want to ask you a question about your column this week about the consequences of collapsing public trust in the media. And what I want to do for listeners is just quote two sentences from it to get the flavor of it, and then I'll give you my question about it. Here's what you write. What happened is that news organizations were transformed in character and purpose. They went from being quasi legal institutions to
quasi religious ones. They are more like prayer books for a believing congregation. Their purpose is to strengthen believer's faith by offering reassurance and imparting moral guidance. And you have men more harsh things to say after that.
I agree with all that.
I do wonder if the problem of the collapsing public trust in the media goes deeper and shares something in common with a parallel collapse in public trust with the universities and education. And I'll put this proposition to you I think it was a great turning point or mistake that decades ago journalism went from being a working class profession like being a policeman or something like that, to a skilled profession with people getting journalism degrees from Columbia and so forth, and.
So beyond the.
Beyond the problem of having people who are very progressive of going to newsrooms, and you point out out in a sequl paragraph people I think who are actually not that well educated. And here's my bold proposition. I think you go back seven or eighty years ago to a daily newspaper reporter who had only a high school education probably had a better grasp of history, history and American civics than a lot of our professionally trained journalists do today.
And I think that's as much a part of the problem as ideology is.
Is that completely outrageous to say.
No, it's one hundred percent correct. And in fact, there's a chapter in my book, Steve, which I will encourage your listeners to the American breakdown We Trust's Lives the whole chefro in my book, which I absolutely go through the kind of demography of the news business. You're absolutely right. Now, let me tell you just one one fun story which
I think I refer to in the book. Actually, but when I was editor of the journal, a a friend at a at another at a magazine, actually a news magazine, a conservative leaning magazine, recommended a bright, young reporter to me, and he said, you'll love him. You said, he's looking for a job and he wants to work for you'd love to work for the journal. And you know, he talked to me and he said, I'll give you this.
This is an example of why you'll like him. He said, he's only three or four years out of some ivy league college, very bright, but a very good reporter, very very thoughtful, very fair, very analytical and scrupulous. But they sat him down and when he said he wanted to be a reporter at the Wall Street Journal somewhere else, they said, well, you know what, you know, why why do you know you're you know, you're bright, you're smart, You've got great prospects.
You're working for a magazine.
You could be a you know, you could be a you could be a commentator, a columnist, you know, you know, opinion writer. And this kit, this young man apparently said, I'm twenty six years old.
I've been out of college for four years, who gives a shit what I think about?
And it's just not as absolutely, absolutely absolutely the kind of reporters we need. And that is exactly it. I mean,
there's you know, they you're absolutely right, Steve. You know, they come out of university and they've been you know, expensively educated, and they have imbibed all that you know, nonsense unfortunately that's taught at most of these universities, and they come out with a you know what was where they come up with that sort of Marxian apro What did Carl Marx say that philosophers sought to interpret the world the point is to change it, and that sort
of I think that's you know, that's that's that's how I view journalists. You know, journalists used to just go out and report the world exactly as you stay say, because they didn't have sort of high falutin ideas about, you know, the way the world should run. They just wanted to go out and find out what was going on. And instead they've been replaced by this cost you know of of sort of self revering intellectuals who want to tell people how to think. And I couldn't agree more.
The average newspaper of say the nineteen forties, nineteen fifties or so, would have probably twenty thirty stories on a page. Now it might be car accidents or the fact that a toddler had slipped on a roller skate in his head, but you got this great, big panoply of life in
these papers. And now, of course you'll find maybe one or two stories on the paper, if the paper even exists anymore, and it will be something of a deep social importance, or something that is happening around town that is seen through a particular prism that oftentimes is just not available. The people who are holding that prism in their heads don't know that they have that prison. They still think they're being objected. But I want to ask you this, but.
Sorry, Josh me interrupted quickly. It would be toddlers slips on ice, white supremacy, to blame right right, colonialism, to blaye right right.
Because one of the things that has been I mean, I'm sitting in a newspaper office right now. I've been a newspaper since nineteen seventy eight, and as an opinion writer, because what the hell do I know? And one of the things that's bothered me the most of the last few years is this shift away from even paying obecient lip service to objectivity, because objectivity means giving credence to evil.
Is what a new generation of journalists say when you when you pull them in, these jay skulls, which ought not to exist in the first place, I tell you, well, you know, there's no other hand when it comes to Hitler, there's no other hand when it comes to climate change. So let's go to the Washington Post and look at that paper in the competition Bezos is trying to do apparently he lockstep with gearing and garables and the rest
of it. He's demanding, perhaps requesting that the editorial page come out for free, you know, free economy and personal liberty, who which again fascist of fashion adjacent issues right there, And the reaction of the staff seems to tell me that that probably is indicative of their own blinders and their own ideology, which will continue to do in the news industry as we know it today.
Right exactly, I mean, I mean the idea that again you absolutely you know, identify the ideological issue, but just the kind of larger to me, and this is such an so typical of sort of entitled view that we have to deal with with so many you know, the idea that someone pays, you know, essentially pays someone's salary and loses hundreds of millions of dollars over a fifteen year period to keep this thing afloat and keep these
people employed. The idea how that it's absolutely outrageous to that that that person, that owner should then actually decide he you know, he thinks he would like the paper's
opinions to broadly align with his own. No, it's you know, it's it is that is that this is the problem we have that Abo bunts one of the reasons again I said, sorry to revert to my own column, but you know why people don't trust why people don't trust them anymore, it's they've they've lost all credibility and not any credibility, but also they've lost any kind of the lost any sensibility too, you know what I mean. I think,
I think they move in such rarefied circles. They all believe that, you know, Donald Trump is the second coming of Hitler, and you know, again all that stuff that they've been taught about about colonialism and all that kind of thing. I don't meet anybody who who even disagrees
with that. I mean, I always remember the story of someone telling me, you know, some time ago, they're out for you know, dinner with a bunch of journalists back in the twenty sixteen campaign, and you know, somebody said, well, how many people around the table voted for Trump? Or just after the campaign was in? And not a single hand went up? And then the more interesting question was, how many of you know anyone who voted for Trump?
And still not a single hand went up? And that's you know, I look, I don't want to be too harsh. There there's a lot of still terrific journalists out there doing honest work, good work. But it has you know, it's as a as a hesitated with profession because I don't think it is a profession, but as a as an occupation, and as a as a useful function for a you know, for for for society, it's it has just it's lost its way incredibly badly. And I you know,
I don't think it's over. I think there are ways in which it can be recovered, but it's in a very very very bad place.
I regret it too. I love it because I love this industry. When I go to England, I stay with a telegraphic family, and there's just something about opening up that big paper. So I love the telegraph. That reminds me of what the medium can be. But when Stephen was talking before about the lack of faith in journalism and the lack of faith in the institutions of education, doesn't it It's it's part and parcel of a broad
spectrum lack of faith in the institution. There's been a there's been a suicide of institutions institutional credibility in the last four or five years. That seems to be nearly every single one of them that you can think of, possibly with the exception of the American military, which again, you know, always doing things like well we got to do you know, we have we have to pay for the surgeries of transgender soldiers, or we simply won't be
the effective fighting for us we want to be. Which institutions have survived the last five years or so and actually gained credibility with the people or is it just pretty much everything that we look at seems to have revealed itself is made of fallible human clay, and and and you know, bent Timber.
I mean I apologize profusely because I did not come on this show, which I love this show, I think, I think it's terrific and I love I'm honored to do it. But I did not come on the show to promote my book. But this again is which I actually go through this in the book. And actually, if you look at the data the institutions that there are a few institutions that have in in whom trust in which trust can can you know, continue to be relatively high.
The military you mentioned, although as you say, there's been some damage to that over the last few years. But the really interesting ones are small businesses. Actually, people still really have a very very high level of trust in small business. Oddly enough, they also have a high level mustionis ealdly enough, that's unfair, but certainly counter to the kind of broader trends. They have got a high level of trust in local government too. They you know, again,
when local government works for them. I mean, you know, if the DMV is efficient, you know which in many places it is actually signed in New York City and to my intense surprise, New York City government is a disaster on every front. The only two things the New York City government does remotely efficiently is the DMV for some reason, and of course tax collection, it's brilliant, it's
incredibly efficient to both of those. But but you know, so people do so if you know, if the if their streets are cleaned and there they can get their driver's license, and they can you know, and they the police are pretty good, and the fire the you know, the people that they like the fire house. So people have high levels of trust. And I think the larger point here, and I did draw this conclusion in the book, is that the closer people are part of the problem.
I think it's only a part of it. I wouldn't way claim that it's hugely important, but I think part of the problem has been that institutions have become larger and more remote, and we become more remote. And this is a function again inevitably of the digital age that you know, we just do spend so much, you know, we can do so much, you know, without stepping outside
of our front door. That I think that that has created a kind of you know, forgive me for using sort of an alienation and a kind of isolation which breeds mistrust. But so when people actually encounter and have interactions with institutions, direct institutions, small businesses where they go into the mum and pop store, or they go into the you know, into the local restaurant, whatever, they get a good meal, they like them, they have and again this is reflected in data.
You can look it up.
They have a high level of trust in small business. They have quite a high level of trust in you know, very very local government. They even have quite a high level of trust in local newspapers, which tells you something. So so I think there's something there about the kind of bigness. That bigness and remoteness has bred mistrust as well as all these other things that we've talked about.
So we don't want to be big lely. I get it, And you're right, local is better. Let's just record scratch up in the sketch, and I want to get back to England. One of the things that people who are very online here in America are aware of is that there seems to be two things going wrong with England.
One of them is immigration, which is reshaping the nation in ways that people perhaps don't like, and the other is a crackdown on free speech in which it seems as if you can stab somebody for setting a krona fire, but if you have a thought in your head outside of an abortion clinic, or if you post something critical of a local councilman on your Facebook page, then the police will come round in place. You want to caution and talk and wave badge that you are we exaggerating
what's going on? There? Are there? Let's just do the free speech thing. Is there a worrisome trend or an old friend worrisomely exacerbated in England when it comes to the free expression of ideas in England of our places?
The answer is yes, and yes, I mean there is some exaggeration. I mean you, you know, to read some people over here, and indeed to listen to JD Vance when he went to Munich and talked about this a few weeks ago, you'd think that Britain was essentially East Germany in you know, circa nineteen sixty seven or something. And you know that people are being arrested all the time for saying, you know, politically unacceptable things. It's not It's
obviously not true. You can you can still, you can still go and go online and anybody who anybody spends any time online and England knows that there is a you know, just a deluge of free speech. There are still you know, newspapers and television and in fact, there are more television channels than there ever will. But when Charles and I, you know, grew up there so it's
of course it's exaggerated. But but I won't I won't diminish it that that there is the absence of a First Amendment protection, the the the dominant the domination of the major institutions of government, law enforcement, and by a government I mean sort of the permanent governor alone now and you can add to that the elected government, but this was going on when the Conservatives were in power too.
And the dominance of the cultural institutions like universities and the media does mean that that a you know.
That there there there have been a there's.
Been a high level of there's there's been a there's been a there's been a considerable amount of an attempt to police speech and and and and I think this fits in with another which I find which is I think is even more sinister, but it's it's related in the UK, which is a there's there is there's been for and by the way. Kirstama, the Prime Minister, is
an absolutely kind of first rate exponent of this. There's been this attempt which we've had a little bit of in the United States, a lot of in the United States.
I think it's going going first there in the UK to essentially transfer out of democratic political decision making very important issues of social and cultural matters and the political matters and and and have them reside in the legal in the courts, so essentially to establish rights in the courts which are then invulnerable to any sort of political you know, to any to any any to any attempt
by politicians democratic electing politicians to overturn them. That is something, you know, So that's why you get some of these cases because there are you know, it has been enshrined in law, the hate speech things like hate speech of interest around in law or you know, there's a big debate going on in Britain about whether or not ultimately it should have it won't under the Labor government, but under the Conservative whether Britain should essentially derogate from the
European Court of Human Rights where all of these rights have been been you know, again on issues like you know, on on religious expression or on abortion or many many of these big hot button social issues, as obviously happened here by the way, of course with Roe v. Wade, to to to make them, to make them essentially invulnerable or sort of immune to political the political process, and to and to and to have the courts be the
deciding authority. That is a very worrying thing. And it's and it's and it's allied to this, you know this not not you know, not insignificant attempts to suppress, to suppress certain types of speech.
Well, as a former BBC producer yourself, I'm sure you know that the the deep, the deep well spring of right wing thought at the BBC will eventually come out. And as he's uh, he's sitting in a in an isolated chamber somewhere in broadcasting house and they don't they don't let him out. But yes, did you know Paul Heiney when you were there?
I did?
Actually, yes, yeah, I know I know paulin Libby, Yes I do. They live in They live in the town in Suffolk where I go a couple of times a year, a place called.
There were a few kind of you know, dissenters from the BBC Progressive orthodoxy. But I'm not joking yet. I think they all left. I mean I think every single one I knew who was, you know, vaguely kind of who differed from the the sort of the progressive nostrums. Literally, you know, just couldn't stand it and left.
Their bones were ground for cafeteria gruel. I'm sure of that.
Jerry.
It's been a great pleasure as ever, and we hope to have you back as soon as possible and talk about all the great things that are happening at the fantastic renaissance of America, etcetera, etcetera. But in the meantime, advise everybody to read his books and read him in the Wall Street Journal. And thank you very much for being on the show today.
It was really my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
Yeah, thanks Jerry, Thank you Cheria.
You know there is are you get this sort of warm feeling when your guest talks about how much they
enjoy the show. And it was interesting because I was checking his checking his biography on a Wikipedia just to catch up on a few details, and the inset picture of him, his picture on the Wikipedia page is identical to the picture that we're looking at in our video feed was it was a bit unnerving as a matter of fact, as though, oh, that's right, I do live in a simulation of Matrix and it's just been updated for my own satisfaction and convenience. Here, I get it,
I get it, I get it. But he looked well rested in both, didn't he Absolutely? So, No, we don't live in the matrix. We are not you know, hairless people shivering in a capsule of blue goo and having our electricity rain, which didn't make any sense technically, but sometimes, you know, you want to wrap yourself in something that's warm, and I imagine that, you know, if you popped out of the Matrix cube and we're sort of all wet and confused, and you'd want you'd want somebody to drape
a nice blank or towel around you, wouldn't you. Now, we're not living the matrix. We're not all a bunch of people in little pods there, you know, living in liquid. No, we're not. We are in the real world.
But the real world can get cold, and the real world.
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But we are in the presence of a man who, shall we say, acquiesced to his spouse's wisdom on the matter? Is that right, Joe?
You remember the word that I used? I'm honored?
Oh did I did did you ex acquiesce?
I did?
We ascribe a multi syllabic word to our to our great breeding and education? So do go on?
I did I acquiesced. I concurred, I submitted even I'm glad that I did. It's not go that far.
We don't want to put that metal.
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you heard about Cozy Earth right here? Thanks, and we think Cozy Earth responsoring this the Ricochet podcast, Well, gentlemen, before we go on, I think we should all just for a moment, you know, have some fellow feeling and some empathy for those who are on the ruppers, and
that would be Hunter Biden apparently is broke. From what I read, I think he spent some He sold like twenty four paintings in a year for fifty thousand a throw, and now miraculously, since the beginning of this year, he doesn't the demand for his work doesn't seem to be as robust, and his book has only sold eleven copies in the last six months or so. So he's broke.
Why is that?
Why? I trying to figure out, Because the iding quality of art should be such that Stab should be just jacking up the price again and again and again and again because we haven't seen the style and a talent like his, And what what is going on in this world when nobody's buying Hunter Biden's book. That's what I'm asking you.
Well, it just goes to show the cruelty of the artistic gods, doesn't it.
That you appreciate the grief.
Yeah, For a brief period, Hunter was touched by greatness, and he produced twenty seven works of art, all of which sold in a two or three year period that, in an amazing coincidence, overlapped with his father's tenure in the White House, and people thought, they are the lynch pin of my collection. And in the last one year I hear he sold just one. And I just think that is what happens to every great artist after a while.
After a while, they just sit there with the blank canvas and the brush stripping paint in their hand, and they think, why has my inspiration gone? This what happened to the beach boys.
Of very droll Charles.
He would sit, He would sit for hours with his feet and sand next to the piano, and he couldn't come up with another. God only knows, And that seems to be Hunt's lot, so we should.
This was the most predictable news story of the year. You can see this coming, well, you can see this coming years ago. I think the next shoe to drop on the story will will be my suspicion from the beginning, and said Hunter didn't do any of those paintings. He had someone do them for him, just as his book
would have been ghost written too. Maybe someday at enterprising journalist will get onto that, But that'll be the fine little cherry on top of this embarrassing melting ice cream of a crazy family.
What I wish he'd done is actually go full Warhol and paint representational art, so you'd have Brilla, you'd have doz biz Tide draft name every one of his canvases, asked after a laundry detergent, just just to make it all the more blatant, exactly what is going on here in the purchase of these things? And still nobody would nobody in the media really would have cocked an eyebrow with the fact that people were paying ridiculous amounts of
money for this ridiculous amount of art. Well, that'll do. We've had a substantial and dense piece of work here, a noble you know, two English accents in one podcast really does bring the general intellectual tenor up I think by at least thirty forty degrees or points or whatever. The Dow is down six five hundred. I don't know. You know, I've lived through a few corrections in my time, So you buckle up, you buy in the dips, and then you keep going on it. One last thing I
forgot to mention. Have you guys been hearing a lot from the left about how Donald Trump is coming after Social Security? I'm hearing this a lot. I mean, having my friends on the left who are warning me that I better print out PDFs of what I'm owed because they're coming after it. I'm not exactly sure those pda all up in court, but I researched this this morning
as far as I could tell. Since he Donald Trump has steadfastly said that he will not cut Social Security, but he has talked about reducing the workforce by ten percent, which would mean then that social Security would be less responsive and you might have trouble getting your checks. Is that basically the bith of the gist?
Yes, So two things have happened here. One is that Democrats just cannot stop but say the Republicans are going after social Security. They wake up in the morning and they say this. It's a form of political turets. Even if Donald Trump literally says I will never touch social Security.
I love it.
I hug it at night on my Cozy Earth sheets. They say, oh, my goodness, did you hear what he said? That he's going to cut social Security. That's the first thing. But the second thing is that a lot of news outlets I have noticed have, either deliberately or because they're lazy, run headlines and lead paragraphs that conflate social Security with
the Social Security Administration. Because I was a bit confused by this too, it said Donald Trump plans big cuts to Social Security, and then you click through and in paragraph eight it says administration.
Stop.
Yeah, it's just not the same thing at all.
No, no, it's not. No, it's not so good. Well that's a relief. Then, so I can retire on my pittance, and maybe my pittance won't be taxed by the institute, by the very government that held a gun to my head and demanded that I contribute to it. London Liberty. Anyway, we thank you for listening. We thank Luman and Cozy Earth responsoring. Your life will be better if you avail yourself of the virtues of their products, and we encourage
you to do so. We encourage you to give five stars to us wherever you possibly can in your podcast review system. And we encourage, we intreat, we beg No, we offer the open arms of embracing welcome for you to come to the Ricochet and join. And you say, why would I do that? I can read it, I
can listen to it. No, the member side. The member side is with the friendships grow or the topics range all over the place, and we're posts that eventually you see in the main page surface are are initially planted, and it's just it's the same place you've been looking for in the Internet ever since they plugged this thing in. I'm James Lelax. It's been great. Stephen Hayward, Charles. We'll see you guys next week and we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet four point zero by.
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