Frozen in the Safe Lane

So let's roll it. Shall we shall we do it? Let's do it all right? Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Mister Garbitschaw, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lilax and today we talk to Jim Garrity about what's going on and what will happen in Iowa. Let's have ourselves a podcast. We are just days away from the

Iowa Caucasus and dangerously cold temperatures could affect turnout on Monday night. But you have to ask islanes, do they really want to head out that night when the windshill will be twenty below zero? Sounds cornty not a joke, think about it. We all these truths to be self evidence. Oh man and women created by go you know the thing. Welcome everybody. This is the Ricochet Podcast and this is episode number six seventy four. I am James Lylax.

And also so I am emphasizing words for some reason. I have no idea why. But here is Rob Long and there is Peter Robinson. Gentlemen, welcome, Thank you. James, I am here. Good nice to hear that that was the very pointed. Somebody pointed out that guys in the NFL when they're giving their college affiliation for some reason. Now now we're saying the University of Minnesota, somebody started it, and it's it's spread to all

of them. Speaking of spreading, here we are with the latest iteration of our interminable war with Iran, which will not end until they light off a nuke and then the Israel converts them to smoking glass and is castigated for doing so at the International Criminal Justice Court. We have hit the hoofies enough sufficient, too late. Well, it's early here in California, so I haven't read the accounts in detail. But as I went to bed last night,

the news was that they had attacked us. They they're Iranian practic proxies, but they had attacked bases in which American soldiers were based. They had attacked America. They had attacked bases that Americans are using, or have used, or plan to use throughout the Middle East, Iraq, Syria and shipping over one hundred and thirty times, and we had scarcely answered. So the idea that we have replied strikes me as obviously necessary. Whether we did it well,

I don't have. First of all, I'm not a military mastermind, but I haven't even read the papers this morning to form it to begin forming a judgment on that. But we had to hit back. We had to. Well, it's the whole point of the US military. I mean, the ultimate beginning of the US military was to protect trade routes. Right,

That's why them we have marines. Correct, the hallsitary winner though has to be you know, once again Mohammed bin Salmon, the leader of Saudi Arabia, right, because they've been they were fighting the hoodies for who thies, not the huties, the Hutus, right, the Hutus are in pro Miranda seas or one who does the season and then who this are somewhere else, but not that far. Actually, they were fighting them for years. We told them to stop because they were they were doing it too brutally, I

guess, and then we said, oh, well we'll do it. It could have been, you know, the Houthis could have been already occupied by a war with Saudi Arabia, which we didn't want them to have. So so far twenty twenty four is doing is going very well for Mohammed Ben Solomon. That's all I can say. He's getting what he wants. He he is earning, I think, earning some kind of credit for the fact that the potentially incendiary war, wider incendiary war in the Middle East, in Israel

and Gaza, is not actually spreading. I mean, there's always like the threat of it, but it's been ninety days now and hasn't done it yet. It could, of course, with my luck, it'll happen this afternoon. But you know, it does it. It does show you that the foreign policy is really, really hard, and that the Biden administration is really really bad at it mostly, and that the world is a really dangerous place, and it equation to have some smart people back I think, or even

just to have the people who are already there in place. I mean, the questions this raises about the chain of command. We have a president who is to put it lightly, a little on the aged side. We have a vice president who how do we put this? I leave that one to you. Rob will circle back to you to put it politely. And as we have a secretary of Defense, thank you, James. Then we have a secretary of Defense who checked him into the himself into the hospital. We

now note that it was to treat complications arising from prostate surgery. Prostate surgery is not life threatening but can be mighty unpleasant, and it does involve surgery deep inside the body. And he was out for four days, and nobody seems to have been exactly aware of where he was or what he was doing. And his deputy Assistant Secretary Secretary of Defense was in Puerto Rico on a vacation, which she did not interrupt when she became acting secretary of all of

this matters, because of course the commanders in theater have wide discretion. But as I say, the Huthis had been attacking US and international shipping for weeks now, and the commanders must have had battle plans. They must have drawn up the plans. Clearly there had to be something going down the chain of command. And the old saying that a chain is only as strong as its weakest length. There we have right at the top, Commander in Chief,

Secretary of Defense. The links aren't even in place. It just astonishing to me. Yeah, I mean that that is the first order of business for the United States military is to secure the trade routes in the world. Right, That's what else is kind of you know, it's got other things it's doing. It's also not doing, but that is one of its central missions. The idea that this was the idea that you would you would not anticipate all these different possibilities and plan for them, right, is kind of weird

to me. And it's not as if, well, you know, world's kind of quiet these days. You know, they're getting in around ten, leaving her at five point fifteen, take it on an hour lunch. No, it's the world is actually more inflamed now that it's been in twenty years. I'll tell you here's a little anecdote about the way these things go. This goes goes all the way back to the first couple of years of the Reagan administration and Wimar Kardaffi and Libya had been acting up. As you know,

he had bombed a disco, killing many American soldiers in Germany. We knew it was Kadafi, all right. Our military drew up plans to retaliate to I can't remember exactly what it was now at this stage, but I think we were going to embargo, we were going to interrupt shipping to his support and we expected trouble from the Libyan Air Force. They had it all planned out, they had it all figured out. But and Edmee was present

in the Oval office. He's the one who told me this story. The military wanted to make sure that the commander in chief understood what they were about to do and approved the rules of engagement. So a map gets rolled out across the President's desk. They show, here's the med, here's a Libyan airspace. And the question was, mister President, do we have your permission if they attack us? Do we have your permission to pursue them back into

Libyan airspace? And Ronald Reagan said, you have my permission to pursue them back into their damn hangars. All right. They needed to hear that from the commander in chief. I just can't imagine how how these conversations are taking place in this administration where the Secretary of Defense is checked himself into the hospital without telling anybody, and the president is slow. It's a strange time.

It's very strange time. I mean, I think, I think, I mean my sort of over actually you know, metaphor here or the theory I'm working on is that we we we have been uh, we have treated all of us. I mean both sides and both positions have treated kind of the the role of government and what it can do and what it can't do, and what we should be doing kind of frivolously. It's this is a product of incredible wealth and decades, which is good. These are good things.

You're a high class problem to have, but we need to get serious. One of the problems with the Biden administration is that it is the and I'm getting in trouble for you, but we didn't like dan Quayle. But it is the the epitome of a frivolous, pointless, meretricious vice president meretriciously arrived at vice presidential choice. The goal of the vice president is a stupid job.

The idea is to be a competent person who provides no political competition for his boss, but is nevertheless qualified to be president at a moment's notice. And for the past many, many cycles it has been treated by clever pundits who think they know things and by candidates who think they know things. It's like, well, this is how I'm going to appeal to my bay.

I'm going to do this and that I'm going to get. These are the people which of course never happens, never ever happens an election day, and instead what they end up with is a person that most people are nervous will become president of the United States. And that is unacceptable on any level, but especially when the president's nine hundred and seventy five years old, or alternatively is four hundred and seventy five pounds and looks terrible right that, It's just

not how it's supposed to go. I mean, Mike, I mean to Trump's defense Mike Pence, who is far more conservative than I am, and who I would love to have been president of the United States so I could oppose his policies, was ready to be president, I think I would say. I mean, does anybody want to see a picture of Kamala Harris in the situation room, like looking at that monitor, you know, like that famous photograph of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton Secretary Hill Cleek watching the the osam

Bin laden Assas killing in real time? Anybody want to see Kamala Harris there? I mean, I don't think Democrats don't want to see you there. It doesn't not a partisan thing. It's just that she's not qualified to president. The president's nine hundred years old, and that when everything's great and doing good and everybody's happy, I guess you can get by right, like we all do sometimes when times are good. But it's dangerous. Now. These

are real jobs. It's serious. It depends really what you think the job of the president is. And a lot of the people on the other side of the aisle, I believe, think that the job is destroyed. Manfully

down White House Corridor is spouting Aaron Sorkin dialogue. You know, they just have this, you know, that's basically it about doing the right thing and act like Martin Sheen and that everything somehow takes care of itself because the government is staffed with government people who are good at what they do and smart at what they do and have the right instincts and all the rest of it.

But Rob's right, I mean, you have a tremendous amount of wealth and a bacchanalia of job seekers who just sort of inhabit their space without doing much of anything. Now, the good part about this, I would like to think, I would hope to think, is that you don't have the Secretary of Defense doing the map spreading and saying, here's what I want you guys to do. You have the people who who design and execute these things put it up the chain until here's what we would like to do, and then

it's approved and so forth. So the fact that we didn't have the sec death right there in the office monitoring this doesn't really bother me that much. I tend to think that there's enough competence in place to be able to run this. You know, they get a thumbs up and they go, But who gives the thumbs up? Who gives the thumbs up? If the secretarity defense is non secretary presidents out to lunch, well that's that's my point.

Thumbs up. I think you're right, and they will get a thumbs up from the president or the person who's handling his calls, or whoever is in charge of putting something in front of him that that day for you know, to wipe the pudding off the corners of his mouth and get a you know, an okay to do this. But what I worry about more than any of the stuff that you were talking about before is the lack of that Reagan esque will to go to follow them back to the hangers because you know,

we're all about sending a message. We're all about showing them that we're serious, and don't you do this again or this is We're going to come over and we're going to spank you lightly across the botocks one more time. We spanked you harder the left one last time. We're going to spank you a little bit harder in the right the next time. Follow them back to the hangers is something that we haven't done for a very long time. And the

hangers aren't where they are. The hangers are in Tehran, correct, and nobody is. But nobody is ever going to say, well, you know, we've got to take this back to this. Nobody will so again that that concerns me. The lack of hanger following concerns me more than the lack of hanger following right now. Is is A is A is a function of the American people. I mean the American people do not want another work, They do not want to go to war where they ram, they do not

want this. Well they will they will when something else happens here. And it goes back to the late too late, I mean maybe not. I mean, I who knows we invaded a raq no reason the far and away leader for the Republican nomination is I mean, and I agree with him. He's an articulate spokesman against American military intervention abroad and an inarticulate spokesman too, both of those kinds of spokes He's both those kinds. So the I mean I am a I mean, the answer is two ways. I'm also kind

of a you know, corny traditionalist. I think I like the idea that the president of the United States is sort of a citizen's job in general, and the citizen is a commander in chief, and that the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of War whatever it was was back of the day, was confirmed by the Senate, so it was confirmed by a democratic process. And I like the idea that two people who are accountable directly to representatives and voters

make these decisions. I think that's a good thing. And when it's sort of outsourced to sort of well, the sect deaf. The guy who was confirmed by the Senate, he was he was under prop the fal he was anesthetized at the time, and the president is sort of a who knows where he is at any point, So it was like the under Secretary of something or the whatever, the guy running Sentcom who kind of agreed that this seems

like a bad move for everybody involved. That if I was at Sencom, I would say, who WHOA, We'll wake the Secretary of Defense up. I'm not doing this until I get exactly exactly I mean, if you put yourself in the position of the captain of the gerald Ford the or the admiral who's in charge of the fleet there in the Eastern Mediterranean. We have two carrier groups in the Eastern Mediterranean. The situation is dangerous. It's really dangerous.

The Biden administration lifted the sanctions against Iran. That means that Iran has for some three years now been selling billions and billions of dollars worth of oil there. Their treasury is full to overflowing. We also know that Iran has the most developed drone program on the planet. They've been selling military drones to the Russians that the Russians have been using to counter the drones in Ukraine.

We know that the Huthis and has Belah in the north of Lebanon, the Huthis down south of Saudi Arabia, and we've got the Hamas fighting back Israel. We're tied down in Ukraine. The Chinese are making our violating Taiwan's airspace every single day. Now you're a commander, you know that you're Our bases and international shipping have been attacked one hundred and thirty times in recent weeks, and you think to yourself, will if we're here, we'd better defend ourselves.

But if we defend ourselves, this may happen. That may happen, and the other may happen, and things may start. Now I want to know whether the commander in chief is aware of all this before I push the It just seems to me that those guys who are in the theater making decisions saying we could do this, and we could do this, and we can do this right, but do you know what might happen? Do you understand how dangerous this is? And there's no answer. There's no answer coming back

to that question. I would think it's also kind of a general muddle about the way the American military is supposed to work. I mean, correct, they fired on US ships, so they have to So there's really there can't be much debate that needs to be an incredibly vigorous, incredibly, incredibly effective response, right because there's a direct American interests. But I feel like we have this kind of muddle right now in the administration, maybe in the country

in general, about what the American interests are. And I suspect that if you ask, you know, you pick a random person and you don't even need to know what their party affiliation is. But most Americans think if they had a list things they would say that the America buility is supposed to do. Is the one protect the borders of the tree, and two protect American

interests abroad narrowly defined as sort of commercial interests rights, our ships. And then you know, we get a debate about the three numbers three through one hundred, but the numbers one and two are pretty much there's a consensus there. There's even a constitutional consensus there. And it doesn't seem like the Biden administration's aware of certainly not aware of the poor problem. And there's particular confusion

in the Democratic Party because there were many Democrats. Okay, whatever her name, Alexandra the Squad, I never have been able to pronounce her name, and I keep hoping that she'll disappear, so I won't have to learn it. But the squad would say, wait a minute, we're only getting fired at because we're there, and we're only there because we're there to support Israel, and we think Israel is in the wrong, not in the right.

So instead of attacking Iran, let's bring the navy home. That that is a very strong position in the Democratic Party, that the Democratic Party isn't just muddled split. That's that complicates things for these I was seeing it on the right as well. I was seeing people say, you no, you know, we've got no we have none of the goods that are good, that are that are going through that area are headed to the US. So it's

not our deal, which is blinkered and short sighted. You look at all the things that are having to go around the Horn, a lot of China that's going to be a lot more expensive by the time they get over here. Before we go any farther, I want to leap back a few minutes here and ask and point out Rob just said that we invaded Iraq for no reason. I don't agree with that. Now you can disagree with the reasons,

but we had a lot of them. I mean, the world had changed significantly in a blink of an eye, all of a sudden, we had been you know, we've been dealing with a lot of Islamic terrorism for fifteen twenty years. We'd seen them try to blow up the World Trade Center before by you know, truck bombs in the basement, and all of a sudden, there was just a rotten branch approach just that we're done with these

guys. This is I'm sorry, you're over. We're going to take them out of Afghanistan, and then we're going to take out Iraq because Iraq had chemical weapons, which everybody had known for fifteen twenty years. Could they've been using them? Because Sadam Hussein was a bad actor, because he was in an open ended conflict with the United States that involved constantly firing on our planes in the no fly zone and plotting to kill presidents. You know, he's

a bad guy. Finished that off and then have a base there with Iran encircled was the idea. That was the second I mean, Iraq was the second campaign of this new war. So I wouldn't say that we didn't have a reason. I don't think it was some spasmodic reaction that had nothing to do with reality. I think there was a strategic decision there that would encircle Iran and help facilitate a turn over there. I mean, so, am I wrong? Oh No, I think that's probably a fair assessment of their

justifications for it. I think those justifications were ultimately foolish, because the truth is that you foolish or just plain mistake, simply mistake. Well. I mean I think that they they they had an idea about the world is that it's a game of risk in which the pat you move the pieces around instead of was sort of messy and noisy and horrible. Now I say this, I mean, I am a very good friend of mine is an Iraqi,

very smart guy, runs a wonderful organization. Uh, And he argues really passionately and kind of convincingly that Iraq is much much better off now that it was before. That may be true. I'm not sure that it was worth the treasure and the American blood to do to go in there and and to do that, I think you wanted it more than I don't think we made

the world safer necessarily. I'm not. I'm not, I'm I'm I'm decoupling Iraq and Afghanistan I'm not sure we had a choice with Afghanistan, but I think Iraq we had a choice, And I think the downside of that is that you end up when something kind of ends up in a muddle and not a w but a question mark. You end up with a nation of both both Republicans and democrats on both sides who are queasy and unwilling to make them stands when they should. So what, you know, you can't fight everywhere.

It wasn't perhaps that we had to go. I mean, yes, we had to go into Afghanistan. What was a choice was attempting the nation build and in the aftermath, yes, the attempt to take this big mess of a place and tie it together with freeways and air conditioning units and conducting fried chicken and call them a nation. As with Iraq, I remember when we had rumsfeld on and asked him more than a debatification was a mistake, and if you remember, he said that it's a very good question, and

he didn't really have an answer for it. In both cases, if we'd gone in toppled, installed our kind of strong man instead of trying to remake them into Western style democracies, he might have had more success. That's a bit condescending to say that a rock can't be you know, like the rest of the countries. But hey, that's you know, you might have you might have had success. But I guess what I would say about that is that while that may be true, it has never occurred in human history,

so it would be the first time that that ever happened. Maybe it could whatever happened, I'm not following exactly. You invade a country, install a leader of your choice, and that leader runs the country for a while successfully. It just doesn't seem like that's a very good plan. Well, South Korea, Japan, West Germany, and West Germany. Yeah, there's a couple of different from from invading a country like Iraq and then installing a leader.

That wasn't really what we did. They had. We pretty much installed the South Korean guys. South Korea wasn't a democracy until a dozen fifteen nine. Korea and Germany are our geopolitical, cultural ethnic entities. Iraq is yes, I mean, now you're drawing distinctions, right, right, Iraq is a conjured country. Is one of those conjured countries with arbitrary orders and the rest of it. But Rob is right, We are still dealing with an

aftermath that makes Americans queezy about that sort of actions. And from that, you know what, if you are you know, like my age, and you go out on the town and you have a good time, you know you can be the aftermath can be less than salutory. Frankly, you don't bounce back the next day like you used to when you were twenty years old and hard charging and out there and having fun on the weekends. So you know, I got to make a choice sometimes, I really do. Can

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code ricochet at the checkout fifteen percent off. Fifteen percent off and we thank zbiotics responsoring this the Ricochet podcast. Now it's see done, James, well to thank you. I understand the I understand the difficulty there. No, it's absolutely no difficult whatsoever. Whithouse do it as a as a cheery evening, Yes, I will use that. I will use that in the future.

And now we bring back to the podcast the man that j Hewet himself calls Garretty the indispensable Still is that still the case with you, Jim? Are you still absolutely indispensable to the Hue Hue Show? It is okay good And every time he does that it invites the old legend of you know, the graveyards are full of Jim, of course is National what is that indispensable

life goes on? Jim is National Reviews senior political correspondent and a Washington Post contributing columnist, author and co host of the Three Martini Lunch podcast, and author of many Final Areas non fiction works as well. And of course I lost saw you at the National Review party where we all we all participated in the Twelve Days of Christmas set to uh Anti Biden Japery and I think we were all singing in about forty seven different keys. But it was a great

merry time, and it was it was good to see you. But here you are now and you have flown to Iowa. Well, I assume you flew fly. Did you drive? Did you do that thing where you meet with Americans and you drive on the freeways and you stop at the small town diners and see what they're saying. Or did you just like parachute in? No, I lived down to the Beltway beltway stereotype of parachuting in and one

of the reasons I'm able to join you. I know, if you can see how much snow is outside behind me, we had getting apparently what's being called the Blizzard of the decade. I arrived here Monday, apparently one hour before the previous blizzard of the decade, which put about a foot of snow onto to most of the state. So my reporting has pretty much been the Des Moines area. I have not gotten out of the immediate city and suburbs

too much. Covered the debate on CNN Wednesday night. But I was supposed to be heading back today and the airline said, Nope, not happening. So I'm hoping for tomorrow. Jim, were you heading back, because you know, stick of fork and it's done. There's nothing to happen here. Are there's still some surprises left? That's a reasonable interpretation. It's good to see you, by the way that basically I have been here all week.

I have another speaking gig down in Atlanta next week and if I don't spend some time on the home front, I'm going to be in serious trouble. But yeah, like, look, Trump has been around fifty percent in just about all these polls. Looking at the caucuses. I've heard Republicans out here say that, look, DeSantis has a good turnout operation, all that door knocking, he should beat his final poll numbers, which is good. But

his poll numbers right now mostly they've been around twenty. Some of them have in the teens, and the most recent one that came out from Suffolk has Hiven third place behind Haley. Now we'll see, there's one more card to drop. The Des Moines Register is going to have a poll out apparently this weekend. That will probably be our last look before people actually show up on Monday. So, Jim, I know Peter wants to jump in, Can

I ask you one question before he jumps out? Are you getting that thing that they do that the campaigns do you know, certainly in the early primaries where they say, hey, listen, if my guy breaks ten, that's a big win for us. Hey my guy gets five people in that that school gymnasium on Tuesday, that's a huge Are they doing that expectation thing, so that hey, we came in a we're a solid fourth. That that

you know we didn't get smoked. Are they doing that or is it rob I have yet to hear the if we have just one person show up, we've done better than Dean Phillips at his event in the Hutchinson right. Oh yeah, Like look everybody, look, if DeSantis isn't in second place, it's really bad news. I don't know if it means he's automatically got to get out, but like, this is the state where he's been endorsed by the governor. This is the state where he's visited all ninety nine counties.

He's spent a ton of money. I think he's had good debate perform He's done all the things you should be doing if you want to win Iowa, and it just hasn't been working. Now again, maybe he'll surprise us on Monday. I think it's ideally for him. You definitely want Trump below fifty, and you definitely want to be the closest guy, and you probably want to put some distance between yourself and Haley because New Hampshire is Haley State.

You know, the Zanna's campaign is open they're not really competing in New Hampshire that much. But he's got to get some momentum out of this because if he doesn't, where does he win, right, you know, it's South Carolina doesn't look good. He's trailing Trump by quite a bit in Florida, like where this is supposed to be his good state. And if it doesn't look good, I don't think Spin's going to do that much. It could be all that effective. Jim Peter, Peter here a question about always Yeah,

good to see. By the way, our listeners are listening, so they can't see you, but you're extremely well dressed, beautifully beautiful, tie cinched all the way up. It looks as though you're about to go downstairs to speaking engagement in the lobby of that very hotel. What's what I'd love to Actually, I just did Fox News this morning. Oh okay, you go, yes, Rob and I or James of course, always looks flawless

to Rob and I are unshaven and bleary eyed and so forth. All right, listen, I know a couple of people from Iowa, and here's what they told me about caucuses. There's a reason they're unpredictable, particularly on the Republican side, people change their minds. They're Iowans, they're neighborly about it. They discuss their reasoning. It is particularly again my friend's stress on the

Republican side. It is a neighborly get together. They bring cookies to share with each other, and they talk about whether a vote for Dessandis might be wasted because Haley's the only one in. They talk of this way and that being the case, and it being the case that the weather is really cold, predicted to be really cold even by Iowa standard, so you might think

certain Iowans, particularly the older folks, might choose to stay. So it seems to me that although we're of course grasping for poles to get some feel for what's going on, that this one really really is going to be unpredictable. We're very likely to learn something. But you're so, the question is

is that right? Or do we actually know what's going on? It is you know, I don't doubt past caucuses have worked out that way, got and so yeah, So yes, the thing on I pointed, you know, if if the polls are right, it's not like DeSantis has to gain a little bit, you know, it's like Trump right around fifty DeSantis maybe at twenty in some of these like you you need a big you know,

scoop scoop there the two of act. Again you mentioned weather and like you know, besides you, it's a shame this is only audio because like I could behind you at the window. Yeah, yes, yeah, it's you know, it's it's coming down. It's not quite white out conditions, it's it's yeah, but there's a lot I you know, again, I went back and I checked in twenty sixteen or I got twenty six twenty seven percent of the caucus goers on the Republican side where aged sixty five or older.

I would not want my parents driving in whether like this. The roads might be icy. And remember this is all in your your local high school, your local community center, so people have to go to participate. Uh, what are the last two other last factors? And what I pointed out, this is the first Iowa caucus that will occur during an NFL playoff game. They're having a game on Monday night. I don't think there are a lot

of Tampa Bay Buccaneer and Philadelphia Eagle fans here in Iowa. But if you are if it's cold and it feels like Trump's gonna win anyway, maybe it's like, you know, I'll stay home and watch the game. But the other factor is the Democrats do not have a caucus here. They're they're caucusing, but they're only doing party business. They're doing a non counting vote by mail system will the results will be announced on Super Tuesday. Iowa Democrats do

not get to go first here. So if you're an Iowa Democrat, I could see a scenario where you're like, well, Biden's going to be the nominee. I don't really care about what's going on with that. Maybe they support Haley. Maybe they see Trumps the easiest to beat, and they decide to show up and go for Trump. This would mean, though, like you could it's technically the caucuses are Republicans only, but you can change your party registration up until that night. Wow. Oh, so there's no control

over the say yeah, I'm a Republican and then boom. You know, I don't know how much paperwork has it been involved. I can't imagine there's that much to say, you know, change party registration. And so theoretically Democrats could come in and say let's let's all go out for Asa Hutchinson, you know, or or whoever they think is the most the one they like. They just want to stop Trump. Let's get back in. But before he does so, there's one more question. Sure you said a moment ago

that DeSantis has done everything. He's spent all ninety nine counties. He spent a ton of money. He might as well be governor of Iowa. I'm sure he's getting guff back in Florida of that very kind. Why hasn't it worked? It just hasn't worked. Why? Yeah, I'm sure there are some people whould say charisma. I don't think he's that bad, but I think you can say that he's not. People don't want to go and watch

him like it's a show, the way it is for Trump. I do wonder if the we're now entering year eight or nine Trump being the central figure in our politics and that kind of has conditioned Republicans to expect a you know, snazzy personality where you just never know what he's going to say and all

that stuff. The other thing is also I think the party has changed, and for a long time, the person who won the Iowa Coxes was the one who were their Christianity on their sleeve, Rick Santorum, Mike Hackabee, even you could argue Ted Cruz last time around. And I think it's a you know, it sounds I was talking to some other reporters, it sounds like evangelicals are not unified behind anyone. Some of them are Trump, some of them are DeSantis. I think it's a slightly smaller group for Haley.

It's very much splitting along kind of class lines, the more professional, white collar class evangelicals being more dysantis, the blue collar and even like people who self identify as evangelicals but who don't necessarily go to church every week, they're

you know, kind of leaning Trump in that direction. So look, I think, look, part of the problem is for Dessanta's I think he had an applausible sounding but erroneous argument of how you win, which was to be, hey, I'm kind of like Trump, I just don't have all the scandals in the baggage, right, And I think Trump folks are like, no, I want Trump Trump, I don't want Diet Trump. I don't

want Trump zero or or whatever, you know. And to everybody else who is not who are repellent repelled by Trump, they kind of ended up drifting towards Nikka Aeli that that that de Santis wasn't think enough from the things they didn't like about Trump. I guess that was kind of all to my question is there has has there been a political collapse of a far and away front runner seemed to capture not just you know this. You know, Desantas was

not an establishment Republican. He was a firebrand. He was a you know, he was a Reagan figure. I mean, very different from Reagan, but in the sense of like from one of those slightly baddy states where they vote for the real conservative and the guy's pugnacious, and he's in this in the in the fight, and he does this credible step during COVID and we all think, I think, well, this is going to be he should

just walk to let's just give it to him now. And not only is he happy to fight for it, but he's happy to fight for second or third. It's just has there ever been a story like this? We were talking to nor about, like, you know, presidential campaigns that have crashed and burned, and you could point to rue Giuliani in two thousand and eight, some people nominated Scott Walker, who'd left very early in the twenty cycle.

But I think that, like, you know, look, coming off that huge win in twenty twenty two, when in the midterms over that whirling dervish of raw charisma Charlie crist Like by the way, the fact that, like, you know, the fact that this antis has not taken on the world by storm Man, How bad is Charlie crist Right, you know, to get you can thanks like that, But so you just kind of think,

also, like what didn't go right? He decided to stay in Florida in the early months of twenty twenty three to get his last agenda items through the state legislature. Trump went on the attack. Trump did his part to define him. I think that didn't I think you've had to do that over you probably don't want to start your beer campaign on a Twitter thing that doesn't work and where no one could hear you. That's probably less than ideal he

did. And like we've had all the kind of different resets and all that stuff. Like you look at the amount of money he has spent on TV advertising. It doesn't appear to have moved the needle at all. And so I don't know. And some of this is like, you know, how much could you coordinate with the super Pack And the super Pac was independently spending its own money, and so they had their ideas of what messages would work

best. Look, I think from the beginning, like if you had to do it all over again, I think DeSantis had to take on Trump much more directly and had to say to Trump voters almost like staging an intervention for a friend. I know you think this guy's great, but he really did deliver for you. And Desandas has intermittently hit these notes and kind of gone with this message. I don't think you could tell I don't. I know it's not that his heart's not into it, but I think he doesn't.

He wanted He's just gonna naturally win over some of these Trump supporters and it just was never gonna happen that this was uh, you were never going to be Hey, I'm kind of like Trump that that was not what these folks wanting. I think it really needs to be much more. Look, Trump is a big talker who doesn't get stuff done right, and it turns out to be nicky Haley who makes that she's making that argument better. Yeah, I'm like, I think he wanted to be a little little column a a

little column. Yeah. He ended up in this inverse sweet spot where he was too trumpy for the non Trump, for the Trump opponents, and not trumpy enough for the Trump And it's a very bad place to be. I wrote a little, stupid little book a few years ago called like, set some of Trump's speeches to verse. It's called Big Lee, right. It was kind of whatever was somebody asked me to do it. I thought it was a funny idea. The Trump fans, I thought I was making fun

of him, and you're not allowed to make fun of Donald Trump. Trump fans do not like that. He is, without a doubt, the great Messiah. And the people who hate Trump thought, what are you? You're just making fun of him. You can't make fun of him. He's like New York democracy, is it dies in dark night? Oh? By the way, Florida Democrats canceled the primary. But so sometimes you can kill it right out there in the olden It dies in darkness, right. Washington Post,

by the way, is ultimately is awesome. Everyone should subscribe to it. I really like my columns and Jeff Bezos's money and everything was great there. So you know, well, the New Yorker said that I was guilty of jocular sanctioning. That's what I said, you basically your procretary, right, but I mean jocular exactly. But how much how much runway do these guys have? Like? Okay, so Trump is far way ahead? Uh? Is it just a bunch of like very very rich funders thinking, oh

not again, not know Trump again. We'll keep you alive. We're gonna we will pay for your oxygen and tell the you know, the the convention begins, is that what's going to happen here? It's okay, So how much runway do they have? Yeah, an aircraft carrier is worth not a lot, but enough because by by sense for this and this is kind of the case in both the Early States and nationally, roughly half the party is

yep, we want Trump again, ride or die. This is our you know, which means that if you want to if your name isn't Donald Trump and you want to be the nominee, you got to get that other half, and you got to hope that it's a bigger than fifty percent, and you got to have a fight all the way to the convention, and it's going to be really, really hard, but it could be doable. But to do it, you got to unify that other fifty percent. And some

of those people were Ted Cruz voters back in twenty sixteen. Some of those people were John Kaysik voters in twenty sixteen. It's not there's a big ideological divide, big different ideas of who. You know, there's a big gap between like Liz Cheney and Brian camp right, you know, for how they see things. So it was always gonna be tough. And a couple of weeks ago I promote I said, like, you know, looking at the way things are and how not much is changing in these polling numbers, you

know, DeSantis and Haley should think about a unity ticket. Say you know, whether you want DeSantis Haley or Haley DeSantis, put them together. That's the one way to make sure you get all these in the same pile. And uh, everyone hated it. Every there's enormous real the Zantas people see Nicky Haley as Lilith. That's not just okay, I didn't realize it,

but that's a good cheers reference for you. Rob And then you know, the uh and they just say, you know, and say, Haley fans see desantisys bill ails above that he's every bit is And so even if they wanted to do that, it sounds like both of their basis of support have come to really dislike the other. And I think, based on what we saw on that debate stage Wednesday night, I think they really don't like each

other anymore. I think they really have cotton. You know, like there was a it was like two hours of my opponent sucks and you know, not enough folks on there's this sky thirty points ahead of them that you'd think they'd you know, intermittently remember to criticize. Dana Bash and Jake Tapper had to keep reminding them, say is there anything you like to say about Donald Trump that you know? So, yeah, we haven't even mentioned way just not a factor. We haven't even mentioned. Okay, uh, yeah,

he'll probably be in single digits, not particularly high single digits. You also see people clustering towards the towards the front runners towards the end. I will say I watched Vivic at a rally at the state capitol. It's against these carbon pipelines. Basically, they want to run from the ethanol plants which generate

carbon dioxide. They want to take the carbon dioxide, liquefy it, run it through pipes lines to other states where they'll dump it into caverns, and the under the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration will just say, here's a giant pile of money for you for doing this. So the ethanol industry loves it. The whole bunch of farmers who have their would have the pipelines go over don't like it, and they sure as hell don't want eminent domain

used. So I watched Vivek in person, and he said all kinds of I am not around a swanny fan. I'm the opposite of it. And I find all kinds of nasty, stupid, false things he said in the debates. But when you agree with them, as in this case of like no, we don't want eminent domain to use to help ethanol companies, he becomes a lot more persuasive. And as somebody put it to me, you just wish you would use his powers for good instead of evil, because he's

good, he's got like he's got natural charisma and retail politics. He dealt with a Heckler, just so, and I wrote about this in the morning's old newsletter. Women starts shouting environmental activists and it's basically like, how can you oppose these pipelines and still support oil and gas pipelines? And he says, you know what, I'm going to give you the microphone for a minute, and as long as you agree not to insult people here, I will give it to you and you get a chance to make your case. Do

you agree to that? She said, sure, puts a microphone in her hand. She says who she's from, and within thirty seconds that this man is lying to you. This man thinks you're stupid. And she you know, she probably is like twenty seven years old, you know, your classic green environmental activist type. Unsurprisingly, the crowd was not persuaded. She did, after a minute give the microphone back, and Ramaswami looked magnanimous and he said, look, we're in the state capitol. We believe in freedom of

speech. We just we believe in free of expression, and so you know, I disagree with your opinion, but I'm glad you're able to and he just handled and he looked like and then he goes off and he talks about why he doesn't know why he's he thinks the climate change agenda is nonsense. And it was just like she came across as a angry, incoherent, you know, lefty, and she he came across as the guy who actually had done his homework and knew about the issue. And I looked at it.

I was like, that was just handled really well. And he just does can you look at this? You're like man in Silicon Valley, those ventures Aapolis must have been like listened to him and say, take my money. This is you know, he's not a gift. And I just again, I like this guy who's holding I wis I wish he used his powers for a better philosophy rather than the agenda's got And why is he still in You're a billionaire, you can do what every ll you want. Yeah, okay,

okay, New Hampshire. So I think Nicki Haley's path got easier with Chris Christy out of the race. I think the you know, both CNN polling and Christy had alluded to his own internal discussion numbers of internal polling on Hugh Hewitt's program, indicating that most of his supporters will probably go to Nicky Haley. As I said, DeSantis is not really playing in that state. So yeah, if there's supposed to be a debate in New Hampshire next week

on CNN. To qualify, you had to have ten percent in national polls and in New Hampshire polls. DeSantis has not hit ten percent in a New Hampshire poll since mid December. Wow, thetom has dropped out for him now. But if you finish third or above, you still get to qualify, So he stood, should still qualify for this debate. If I'm Nicki Haley, though, do I want to do another one on one debate with DeSantis one week later? You know what? What's the upside for her? So?

What is it? What is it about DeSantis that the people of New Hampshire, the Republican voters don't like his positions, his track record, what what doesn't do it? It's just that they regard him as a sack of wet tinder and they can't get behind somebody. They don't regard it as particularly charismatic, as opposed to the fiery loveliness and you know, warm embrace that we all get from Nicki Haley. What what don't they like about DeSantis?

Here's a guy with the right record, with the right COVID, the behavior with who fights as they say, okay, everybody are saying, I'll fight for you, we'll fight. Well, he's fought successfully a lot of the bugaboos that were supposedly concerned about what don't they like, what's not to like? Well, well, one thing to note is that DeSantis early on looked

at these early states. You basically you either pick Iowa or you pick New Hampshire, right, and so he put his money into his advertising, his money, all that stuff into ne Hampshire, got endorsed by Governor Kim Reynolds, and so as a result, you're kind of like, you know, you pick one. New Hampshire's already. Oh he's one of those, Ohio,

one of those Iowa guys. Also, let's point out that like New Hampshire, as I mentioned, you could change your party registration up until that, but independence can vote in the Republican presidential primary up in New Hampshire. And so let's point out this is a good venue to talk about this. So you know, every year this John Weaver candidate, right, not just like by himself, but there's a candidate named John who runs as the kind

of Republican if you're not really into the Republican party. Could be John McCain, can be John Ksick, or it could be John Huntsman. But the character is always named John. The candidate is always nam John, and they almost always hired John Weaver. And it's the MSNBC loves them, The New Report Oublick loves Usually they go on the view and they wow them. It's kind of like I thought I hated Republicans. Say that John Anderson, there's

another one, and there you go. And so Nicky Haley is as close as we have to that John candidate, unless you want to say Asa Hutchinson. But like, you know, he's looking at Dean Phillips and saying, Wow, that guy can't attract a crowd. So I think that's he's just, you know, his brand doesn't match the state. The state wants somebody who's flinty and independent. And you know, Son endorsing Haley health, you know, And I'm waiting because Rob and James both look like they have more

questions. But I'm I'm here, I'm here in Minnesota. Okay, Okay, this is like Jeopardy. I'm going to hit the button first, Jim question. Let's I ran into Carl Rove a couple of days ago and said, well, you know, if Nicky Haley does well in New Hampshire, I assumed I took it for granted. She's a former governor of South Carolina. She ought to do well in South Carolina. And he said, that's

a very very good question. There are a lot of good old boys in the Republican Party at senior positions in the Republican Party in South Carolina, and she had a tense relationship with the good old boys of the Republican establishment in South Carolina from the first moment of her governorship to the last, said Carl Rove, who, like you, is a man who understands the grassroots in state after state after state. So South Carolina is not a Kimney for Nikah

Hailey at all? Is that right? Oh? Definitely not. Polling there is as bad as it is pretty much anywhere else. It's see, it's a culturally and kind of character wized is still a very trumpy state. And the assessment is right. She apparently she had a falling out with Mark Sanford, but she was seen as like a Sanford, you know, Acco life, you know, somebody who actually wanted to complain. My parents lived down in South Carolina, so I feel reasonably comfortable talking about the dynamics of this

state for a long time. It might be changing, but like for a long time, South Carolina had Republicans who governed at the state level, not all that different from Democrats. They loved their bringing money back to their district. They love their highway projects, they love their you know, they were not fiscally conservative by by as most people would think, and you you know, Hailey clashed with them. She was not the favorite in that primary.

She really was helped by Sarah Palin And obviously, if you win the Republican primary in South Carolina, you got a really good shot at winning the general election. And she was running in twenty ten, it's heat part of a year, so the dynamics, you know, worked well. But she came in there as this reformer and she was not part of the good old boys

network, and so yeah, there was tension there. I think she is like still like liked and respected, But I keep emphasizing this for all kinds of people who you know, for every senator who looks in the mirror and sees the president's steering back. Like the goal was not to be liked. The goal is to be somebody's first choice for president because they really get one. You know, it's being just you know, maybe it caucuses if your person gets knocked out in the first round or or you know that, okay,

then we'll vote for him. But like you really have to be there for you and you're going up against an incumbent president who won, you know, who won South Carolina twice by a wide market. So I yo, now here's the thing. If she wins in north in New Hampshire, it's like three hundred the God King bleeds, you know, zeruses you are?

Are? You know you are? You are vulnerable now? And you know, maybe the the honestly questions does everybody who doesn't want Trump coalesce behind Hailey, because that's like a prequisite you need, you know, And then does you know, does Trump start to look a little more vulnerable? But somebody point out to me this morning, there's like a month between New Hampshire and South Carolina and you probably you know, you guys, remember George w versus

versus John McCain in two thousand. This is a state where it gets next. It really does. When when Haley was running for governor that Schmoe said, yeah, he confessed to having an affair Nicky Haley. She denied it. It was never proven. And let's point out, but you know, by the standards of by the standards of politicians, Nicky Haley is a very

attractive woman. So if you're a guy and it says, yes, I confess I had an extra marital affair with that smoking hot gubernatorial candidate, and I am ashamed for the many many times, you know, like there were good reasons to be skeptical of that assessment. So yeah, like she would have a shot at South Carolina. What's interesting? Do you think maybe she regrets taking those shots at Tim Scott during the primary debates. Maybe his endorsement

would be helpful right around now? Okay, so Jim, I got a larger political question. I know you got to run because anywhere take off your

tire relax, has anybody ever won playing it's safe? I mean, I guess what I'm saying is like I'm looking at the Santas campaign and I'm thinking, Okay, well that you know I there was a highly controlled, highly disciplined campaign for most of it, and they did this thing where they split the campaign up into this monsterly overfunded superpack that was run by the brain, big brains, and then the campaign which is run by you know, kind

of like your local cronies, your your kitchen cabinet, but also big brains. Nobody's doumb here. And they just thought it was, you know, here's here's how you do it, and they just that's And it just seems to me that the the political graveyard, at least recently past twenty five might say three four five cycles has just littered with people who sat in rooms said look, look here's let me tell you how it's done. Is that you

go from Iowa, then you go here, you go there. And I has anybody recently who's who's the biggest winner that you can think of right now? Who played it safe? Would you count Trump by not doing debates and stuff? Is that kind of a well, because I think he's such a renegade. He he sort of like jumped in. I mean, look, you had you had you told Trump to whether he was going to jump in or not before he jumped in twenty six you would have said, don't do

it. There's no way you can win. People say there's no know where you can win. On that Tuesday morning election day, he Trump didn't think he was gonna win Tuesday morning election day. Remember in twenty sixteen, there was this idea of lanes, right, there was this establishment lane, probably somebody with a Christian conservative lane, you know. And I think one of the hard lessons for everybody else not named Donald Trump in that primary was Donald

Trump wasn't in any lane. He was in every lane. He you know, could be very conservative at times, he could sound very moderate. At times. He would sound you know, like sometimes in the same speech and he could sound very hawkish, We're going to bomb the s out of at a ice, right and think where you end the Forever Wars, And he would do it in the same paragraph and nobody sensed any blatant contradiction there.

So I think there was this the idea of like, well, like you're not like ideally you're running to be president of the United States, you're not just running to be president of the Republicans, and you're not running to be president of the Christian concern. This is my big beef with the sa Taurum and Huckabee style campaigns. It's like, I am the president of a faction.

That's great. The point is to be president of the country and you have this like great, you appealed to the demographic that is most inclined to like you. That's the lowest bar to clear, you know. The aim is to get you to appeal to all kinds of different people, all different walks of life, all kinds of different you know, so they're there, You're right. I think that there may have been like nobody's going to look at the Santas campaign and say, yes, this is how you do it,

this is how you run, you know. Like I think the idea of like the super Pack, like there's nobody would say, oh, well that worked well, you know. Jeff Road to parting a couple of weeks

ago. I had people insisting it's no big deal, and I'm like, nobody leaves the super Pack like with a month to go because things are going so great and so well, you know, like you know, so I think that there's that I think the let's keep in mind, you know, my kids will periodically repeat Mike can get it done, because Mike Bloomberg ads were all over their video games back in twenties twenty, right, So you can spend a bazillion dollars and if you people think, yeah, you're this

little, you know, little weirdo guy from New York City, they're not going to be interested. So in the end, like you could make the look it was always going to be hard running against a qui effectively an in common president. Right, Trump space was extremely like we may look at this and say, what DIDs santists do wrong? And somebody might say nothing that this was never a race to anybody, but Donald you can make us.

Yeah, it was always a very steep climb. Right, everybody agreed, and yeah he brought in what's Oh the other thing is that like we don't worry about COVID anymore, and that was his big, you know, big success. Periodically, people still talk about Fauci and stuff like that, but it's just not front and center on people. But he wasn't. I don't think that was a given. I think he made that that was a problem.

It's choice that he I mean, I guess my point is that that they seem to make it to come up with a very complicated mouse trap, when in fact, if you're a sitting governor of a big state, you say, look at all the good stuff I did in the state. Look at all the good stuff I did in the state, and you don't talk about a lot of the extraneous stuff. You know, you just do not attempt to grow a brain. I think is always a very very good piece

of advice for people in politics. Stop thinking so hard, you know, just run on your record and keep saying that over and over again, and we might do it better in New Hampton. Yeah, I so okay. So back in twenty sixteen, I was the president of the Bobby Jingle Fan Club. We did, indeed hold our meetings in a phone booth. It was see kids, a phone booth. With these places they to have us

strength. And so like they had found on his campaign went nowhere and they said, like in the country, the Republicans were in a very bad mood in fall twenty fifteen, heading it to twenty sixteen, and they would like do focus groups and they talk about all the good things he'd done in Louisiana, and they found that people just didn't believe it. They found that like like they were to move like, oh you know, the country's going to

hell, you know, like they don't outing your record now. Again, like the fights in Florida were national news, particularly over the COVID stuff. So like on the one hand, you know, you you would have thought that would have done him more good. But you know, maybe the downside of being a governor is that maybe the average Republican isn't as impressed with what your record is done. Let's also point out, you know, best observation

of that debate. You look at the gubernatoiler record of Nikki Haley and the gubernatorial record of Ron DeSantis. Haley was a pre Trump Republican, That's true, and he keeps hitting her on you know, uh, the Chinese factories opening in uh uh opening in South Carolina. Every governor had Chinese factories.

Every governor was was welcoming Chinese investment back then. So the I and if you want to, oh, you think you know she's soft on China, well look at her at the u N Right, I think we could say that she's not a secret Chinese spy or secretly soft on Bay or anything like like like this is kind of a you don't want to nominate or find this is kind of a dumb argument. Flipside looking at Ron DeSantis. You know, when he was in the House, he voted to raise the debt ceiling.

Yes, so did one hundred and sixty six other House Republicans. Like you know, do you want to know how? Or she's like, yeah, well you know he didn't manage the finances of his campaign. Well okay, but we have this other record of how he manages finances called the state of Florida, and things look pretty good there. They had like a two point two billion surplus there. So like they spent the night doing dumb attacks

on each other the whole time. And so if that's the first thing is I don't think, you know, any of those tax attacks will get any traction against either one of either one of each other. But yeah, you look forward talk about you're gonna do. I guess I think there was for a couple of these debates it was like, Okay, we've heard about you did in Florida and things are great, but you know, you're what are

you gonna do for the other forty United States? All right, Jim, listen, if you can't get a flight out, hop your car and come up to Minneapolis. I gotta I got. So the weather's nice crash upon, yet it is actually the struggle and balm us down there. James has a beautiful house and he's a wonderful host. You should do that. Actually, I've been there. We will fight for fighting that. Yeah. Back. The second second point is after the show, after we let you go,

we'll bring you back. You can make a series of predictions about how you think I was going to go, and then we'll run the correct one next week. So you know that's like that really just like like, yeah, I'll do this here. Yeah, I'm like Trump's gonna win. Yeah, because people are telling me that DeSantis is get out the vote operation will

help, and because it's going to be miserable weather. Uh, you know, he'll be let's say, or low twenty percent, you know, twenty twenty to twenty five, somewhere in that range, which will be okay but not great. Haley will probably be impressive for a state where she wasn't, but you know, probably like seventeen or something like that, you know, and everybody else will be single digits. That'll be great. Well, you know, Donald Trump has spent the last four years broadening his base, so

this coasting the victory I can see already. Thank you for joining us. Him, It's been a pleasure as ever, and we hope to talk to you as much as possible in the year to come. Oh always always enjoyed, guys. And this is the perfect day because I got nowhere else to go. Stay insides right, We're going to try to take that as a

compliment him. Oh, it's great, yes, indeed, oh man, just traveling around, you know, it would be great though, if you've managed to get out and get out to the to the diners and whatnot, because one of the things that you wanted an Iowa diner, they've got these these great hot turkey sandwiches. You got the hot turkey, you got the mashed potatoes, you got the gravy. They're absolutely delicious. And if you got you know, if you save it and you take it home next day,

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The Hunter Biden story is it is what it is? You know, I just tired of the whole bunch of them. I think the most interesting thing this last week. And if we could spend maybe one or two minutes on it, Rob, you're there, New York. I wrote about this this week in my sight New York said, you know what storm's coming in. We're going to take the migrants. We'll put them in a school. Kids

got to go home remote learning. It was one of those examples of here are these guys who are not citizens that we apparently are more obliged to accommodate than the actual children of the citizens of the country. And when you come with the couple of other governors or governors but may are saying, you know what, we had to put these pople up in private homes as well, you began to wonder exactly what the endgame of this is here, Rob,

you've got that quartering. Yeah, look, these are these are these are the consequences of a policy. The policy two policies right. One policy is don't enforce the border, and the second policy is have passed lots of like uh, nice sounding notions in cities that aren't touched by illegal immigration. We're a sanctuary city. Where are this where that pass all sorts of rules because you you're absolutely convinced that you'll never be held accountable for them, And now

they are. And it is unfortunate that these leaders didn't have the foresight to think about what would happen if, if if the migrant problem in the southern border somehow made its way up north to New York City. But it has now so I suspect that there's going to be a whole lot of people trying to figure out a way to use a what is essentially a Trump era immigration platform, and we use the word here and there so they can say it's

their own and run as run as Democrats, run as liberals. You're gonna be seeing massive amounts of liberals trying to figure out how to be for border security without being border security. It's gonna be kind of fun in a way. You will. But what this means, I think looking at this in a couple of other things, and it means j basically perpetual Democrat rule, because you will have the smart ones realizing that there is another lane here.

As Garrity was just talking about, it's like Fetterman all of a sudden getting strange new respect for making statement. It's like the people around Pennsylvania saying, no, you're not going to take down the statue of William penn and the Democrats saying this. So when they say that and they get outside of the prog narratives and realize that there's actually a lot of middle of the road Democrats

who say, yeah, I like that. I don't like the whole progu thing where you tear down the statues, where you quarter to the people, where you do that then you have the rise of that faction, which you know, we'll get more votes than than than your Trump faction period. And

look, I think that's I think that's a general good. I think it's good when people are forced to realize that their bizarre extreme positions have ei their negative consequences or are foolish, and that I mean, it's good the party that the Democratic Republican Party that wakes up to realize that it's a fifty one fifty two percent nation and you need the people who don't like you now you need to vote for you. You can't you can't just sit there and scream.

Those are the people who understand how the system works. They're going to get the most done. They're not gonna get everything done, but they're going to get the most done, and they're going to get the most done under the system that we have. We we we now are governed by and was created by the founders for this express purpose, which was to force people to somehow make common cause and to accept the C plus version of what it is

they want. And that is the way it works. So you can either change the way it works, but you can't bang your spoon in your height here. The awakening from me wokening will be there. Salvation and how we respond to that on the other side of the political aisle is something that we will see and we will be here to talk about it with you, Rob and Peter who had to scamper off. I want to remind you the podcast was brought to you by Fume and by Zebiotics, and you can support them

for supporting us and improve your life immeasurably. Take a minute to leave that five star review at Bapple podcast if you would to like and smash and subscribe, and as they say as YouTube, yeah I'm sorry. No, what matters is that, Join Ricochet and keep it going because we want to be here for you throughout this entire election and the administration to come. Rob, it's been a pleasure and we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet. Still four point zero next week, next week,