Sorry, there's a crisis at the Lucretia household. The kitten has gotten herself too high to get down and I can't reach her.
Ask not what your country can do for you, Ask what you can do for your country.
Mister Gerba Shaw, tear down this wall.
It's the Ricochet Podcast. I'm James Lilyx and I'll be talking with Stephen Hayward and Lucretia. Our guest today John Hindrick, who at the center of the American Experiment, to talk about Well, of course, Governor wats So let's as a podcast and.
I'll tell you what I have been doing.
I've been voting for common sense legislation that protext as second Amendment. But we can do background checks, we can do CDC research, we can make sure we don't have reciprocal carry amongst state and we can make sure that those weapons of war that I.
Carried in war is the only place where those weapons.
Were Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number seven hundred and three. I'm James Lylyx in Minneapolis, and I'm joined by Stephen Hayward and Lucretia. And it's like the ship of Perseus, you know, keeps. We keep shedding different pieces, Rob and Peter and adding others, but yet the ship itself is still the same. When I'm gone, of course, it will still be the Ricochet Flagship Podcast, and you guys can carry on and eventually forget that I ever existed.
But that's the ways of way, I hope. For Now.
We're here today to discuss well, we're going to be getting to the vice presidential pick with John Hindereker from power Line in just a little while, but I want you guys to to give me your impression on the overwhelming sense of joy that we are now, the giddy, the giddy, infectious enthusiasm, as somebody once said, the fact that we seem as a nation to have awoken from a slumber, of of of of a torporous slumber, and now we're suffused with this magical sparkle that runs like
electricity through the entire country. I've been led to believe that the future was pretty grim, given that the ism and the climate change and the rest of the existential crises at face, But apparently we have turned a corner in America's back.
Baby.
So what do you think, James?
Can I offend all of your listeners with what I call it. It's the Kamelama ding dong media gasm.
It does drip off the tongue, doesn't it. Now the media, yes, the media is enthusiastic and emboldened by this. I mean, we're getting really hard stories on Tim Walls, like his favorite hot dish recipe. But anyway, Stephen, you were going to say.
Well, how quickly this is galloping along? Ten days ago we were told that this selection was about vibes. Harris Harris had all the vibes, and this week suddenly became joy. And once again I thought of a historical parallel. I drive Lucretia nuts with these. She thinks, I'm I'm wacko. But the last time we had a candidate who is about the politics of joy was also a vice president succeeding a president who dropped out mid campaign from Minnesota.
Right the minute you said it, Yeah, right, the great Hubert Humphrey was all about the politics of joy, and boy did he have an unjoyful campaign and an unjoyful result. I think we're going to repeat that, not exactly the same, but I think we're going to see the same pattern.
Agrecia, why is it. Why does it drive you nuts when he brings up Hubert Hmphrey, I mean Humphy.
No, No, it doesn't drive me. I call him analogy man. He doesn't drive me nuts that he brings up Hubert Humphrey. What drives me a little bit nuts is that Steve can manage to find and not always apt historical analogy to just about anything, as if history just repeats itself over and over and over in exactly the same way.
No, no, no, no, it's it's not.
I'll use the apocryphal Mark Twain line. History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. I think that's what we're saying, and that would.
I thought that was George Lucas well. I mean, yes, we do look back and and it's it's inevitable, and it's natural to find parallels like this, the Minnesota, the Joy, the rest of it. But let us focus, perhaps just on the joy itself. I'm not opposed to joy in an election. I kind of like it as a matter
of fact. I While I like the idea of somebody laying out a clear path to get ourselves out of the numerous morasses in which we find ourselves, there is something quitch essentially American about having that bright spirit, that that inner Norman Rockwell glow to your face that attracts people. You can't, I mean, you can't glower and frown and be dismissive and sarcastic and bitter in the rest of it and expect people to come to the polls to vote for anything. But you know, grim sullen duty, and
sometimes grim sullen duty will get you the election. But what's what's the matter with joy is what I'm is what I'm saying.
What's there to be joyful about? She's an idiot, he's a draft No, she can't say. You can't call him a draft doctor. That's silly, a stolen valor, a petty tyrant who, in the same breath that he says mind your own business, reminds us that he was. You know, he locked people in their homes and then encouraged their neighbors to snitch on them if they actually walked outside to walk their dog during COVID. He was the absolute worst. There is nothing to be joyful about either of those
far leftist, basic communist idiots. Sorry, I like nothing about either one of them, Absolutely nothing. You know, I can find a few things about RFK that I like. I like nothing about those two.
What about RFK do you like? I like the fact that he's become a meme into which people drop every single historical event of consequence. Just him sitting there with his arms crossed, calmly discussing how he was in Sarajevo in nineteen fourteen in wonder by a coffee. I mean, it's just absolutely delightful. But anyway, to Lucreaseia's point, I mean,
what's there to be joyful about? I mean, if you want to look at the positions of the candidates and where you think that they would send us on the left, no, it's not something that fills your heart with a great deal of joy. But again, we are talking about a
vibe election. We are talking about something where people are apparently, at least I mean on the left side, are absolutely enthusiastically energized by the fact that they don't have to pretend that they believe that this doddering man with mashed potatoes in his brain is somebody for whom they should
feel enthusiasm. I mean, they've got real power and energy behind them, and I think it's it's to people who aren't particularly engaged on the issues, or don't engage the extent that you do, or do engage and don't agree with you. This is a powerful motivating thing. Is this is a real I mean it may be a blast of nitrous gas, it may wear off, but it's energized them. So what are the consequences of that? Do we find out? You know, does the does the right find a way
to manifest joy in its own way? Because otherwise we're the lemon suckers?
Right well, I think at least two ways of thinking about this.
One is they're trying to get the jump on Trump by stealing some of Trump's thunder Trump's rallies are these great joyous affairs. I mean, he's kind of been the candidate to joy because he's funny in his sort of sarcastic and attacking way, is sort of don Rickles stick that he does.
And you know, maybe they've got a little off balance.
I mean, I think you've made a couple of minor mistakes here in the aftermath of Hamila's ascendants, So they're trying to steal that. But it's also a tactic second to avoid any serious media scrutiny which the media is happy to go along with. And it's because it's going to be a short campaign. They're gambling they can make it to election day on vibes. To go back to the original theme of the campaign. I'm skeptical it's going to work only because there's some underlying facts that I
think will reassert themselves. One is a Republican registration has been surging, especially in the battleground states. Republicans have actually drawn even or ahead of Democrats and registrations in a lot of places in the country. I think nationally, Republicans are now nearly even with Democrats for the first time in decades. Now you have this third of the country who are independents and they always decide things. Second, the issue map will come back into play. All the top
issues favored Trump. People are concerned about the border, the economy, national security, abortion, which is supposed to favor Democrats. I guess it does. It's number six or seven on the list of important issues for voters. And if the campaign and if the Trump campaign can get us back around to reminding people what they're unhappy about, I think Harris will have a harder time dodging and weaving and changing
her positions, and that's going to reassert itself. So I'm still betting on Trump for a narrow but solid win.
Rate. Suggestion on X that Trump should hold a press conference since Kamalama ding Dong won't, and have a TV next to him and ask questions and have the answers be play being kam Lama ding Dong's answers that thinks that she said in the past come across on the TV. And I think that would be brilliant because I agree with Steve if If and this I unfortunately I don't agree with his optimism on this. If the Trump campaign can get the conversation back to issues, of course, trump wins.
Of course Trump wins, you know, and away from personalities and so on. I get mad at Republicans who want to complain that they're, you know, that Trump is not focusing on issues. But it's a little bit difficult right now for him to push forward on this when he
gets absolutely zero help from the press. So he's gonna have to do some some kinds of tricky things I think to force the press, maybe not hold a press conference like I just described, but to force the media into demanding from Kamala Harris that she addressed you know, other than on day one she's going to lower prices, thank god. I don't know quite why she's waiting until the first day of her new administration and not maybe get started on that now. But you know, anyway, so
that that's what worries me. I don't know that I've ever seen it so bad where the media just was so all in. You know, it's get Maybe it's just been getting worse and worse and worse. But you really have to go to social media to find anything that is in any way critical of Kamala Harrison. Not even Fox is very critical if you ask me. So that was my thoughts on the matter. Maybe I think Trump can do.
It, get the same sense. I mean, one of the things that you can do. And again, the minute we spend all of our time saying here's what they should do if they really want to win, they do this when you start. When you do that, the game's up. I mean you're not actually seeing it come from the minds of the people who are running the campaign. But what I would like to see, because I don't want a ViBe's election, what I would like to see is a series of honest questions and an honest examination of
the answers. I mean, there's a couple of things that Walls have said that I think are indicative of his positions, and it's maybe not enough to run on Joya's big dad mid Western energy when you have two statements that really indicate the divide in the country. One of them has to do with a comment about the border wall that you know, if they put it up twenty feet, he'd invest money in a company that made thirty foot ladders.
It words to that effect, which to me is revelatory of a whole host of positions, and I think that we deserve an honest conversation about those. And if the press really wanted to hold his feet to the fire or at least facilitate that on his conversation, they would ask, and they would press, and we would get very detailed specifics about what exactly their position on the border is, because I'd like to know. I'd really like to know.
The second has to do with the comment again it was floating around on social media last week, had to do with the statement about hate speech not in disinformation, not having First Amendment protection. Well, that's wrong. That's very, very wrong. And as if we've seen in Western democracy recently, particularly in England, horrifyingly in England, the idea that there is this special I mean, they don't have the First Amendment, so you know, they have fun with your or well
fulfillment factory there, buddy. But the idea that they're putting people away for spreading, for sharing a link that they believe to be inflammatory and is terrifying. So yes, does the left, the majority of the progressive body in the country today, believe that there should be options for hate speaking disinformation apparently so? Apparently so because it's injurious and threatening to our democracy. Well, there isn't. There isn't There
isn't any carve out. And the biggest threat to our democracy is somebody setting up themselves as the adjudicator of what is is not allowed to be said. And that goes for social media, that goes for the newspapers, that goes for standing on this street corner, that goes for everything. I don't want to hear a word out of these guys about freedom of speech and our democracy. If they're saying, well that's disinformation, ergo, we're going to use the force
of the state to make sure that it isn't spoken. No, sorry, no, James, I've.
Never been so proud to own a tesla in my life.
Yeah.
Well, you're one of those, you know, bleeding hearts that wants to save the planet. So I understand that correctly. Every day, just until Elon Musk pulls off his rubber face, reveals the lizard head beneath and then bricks everyone on the countryside, that'll happen. Well, you know what, we can sit here and h right now, I'm outnumbered. I'm just one Minnesota against you guys, at least you know, physically Minnesotans.
Perhaps you guys are Minnesotas in your heart. But I want to bring on my old friend John, John Hindereker, president of the Center American Experiment of Minneapolis, space think tank that is not at the present time. On Fire proposes creative solutions that emphasize free enterprise, limited government, personal responsibility, and government accountability. In other words, fascism straight up. He was found with the power Line blog in two thousand and two, and we welcome back John.
How you doing doing great, James, Good to see you.
Yeah, good to talk to you too. All right, we got the gov here. You know, I wrote a piece about this for Discourse where they're just saying, Hey, you're a Minnesota what do you think? How do you do people think?
You know, what do you think?
And it's like, you know, we have all these stories about the people who Oh, he was a teacher. He was a great teacher. I love him as a teacher, and you know that's entirely possible. I'm sure that his students did love him. I loved my teachers too. And then I'd go back to the talent and I'd open up the newspaper and one of them was writing a fist shaking letter about Ronnie Reagan being mean to the Santainistas. Okay, all right, I'll just think back of the happy days
when you're feeling me at chemistry. The fact that he's a genial guy and that he's friendly and people like him is utterly irrelevant. What matters are the policies, And you guys have been going over the policies, not the personality, and laying out exactly what didn't work for Minnesota and what won't work for the country. So let's just set aside all the football coach, the supposed stuff about, you know,
the service in the National Guard. Let's just what counts is the ideology behind the policies and how those play out. What's he done for Minnesota?
Well, first of all, James, I would take issue with the characterization of Tim Walls as genial. I think he is vicious and mean spirited, and I think he's displayed that throughout his political career. And I think one thing he's got going for him as a vice presidential nominee is that he's well qualified to play the attack dog role that vice presidents typically at a sign.
So I just want to make it clear.
I understand that, I understand all.
But yeah, but James, You're right, the real issue is is what has he done and how has it worked? And the answer is that the Walls administration has been a classic illustration of the failure of left wing policies. Tim Walls came into office as governor of Minnesota, and for the last two years especially, he's had a very compliant state legislature and he's implemented a whole series of far left policies and they've had disastrous consequences for Minnesota.
Do you want to start with crime, James.
Well, yes, And let's also talk about how much the governor has and because gotta be fair, I'm going to talk about a lot of things, but how much the governor has influence over that particular aspect. So, yeah, let's talk about crime. I live in Minneapolis. I've got my thoughts on that, but go ahead.
Well, let's let's start with the basic data. I think that's what's important. Minnesota, through its history has always been a low crime state. That was always true until Tim Walls got into office at the beginning of twenty nineteen and now beginning in twenty twenty and continuing to the present, for the first time in its history, Minnesota is officially
a high crime state. The per capita rate of serious crimes that's part one crimes is defined by the FBI, is now higher in Minnesota than it is for the country as a whole. We are a high crime state that has never happened before, and there's a couple of reasons for it, James. One of them, of course, is the twenty twenty George Floyd riots and Tim Walls dithered
for four days. Everybody was pleading with him, including the mayor of Minneapolis, to call out the national Guard, and he wouldn't do it, and he said, but he said that he wasn't doing it because he was sympathetic to the objectives the of the rioters. Finally, after four days he called out the National Guard and they called the riots. But the damage was done. I mean, is you know, James.
Big swaths of the city of Minneapolis were burned down, and the rioters stormed the Minneapolis Police Department's third precinct station. They burned into the ground. I mean, it was a nightmare. And the crime rate in Minnesota has never recovered. The
crime spree continues to this day. And the other thing that and David Zimmer of our office did a post either yesterday afternoon or just this morning, which is also really revealing, and it shows how the crime rate, the violent crime rate started rising right after Tim Walls and Keith Ellison came into office at the beginning of twenty nineteen.
And it plots the crime rate, violent crime rate against the incarceration rate in Minnesota, which is absurdly low, and as the incarceration rate falls over the course of the Walls administration, the violent crime rate rises. And David goes on to explain the specific things that have been done in Minnesota by the Walls administration and by the Minnesota legislature, which Walls dominates, that have radically reduced the incarceration rate.
So the data are all there. Minnesota has become a high crime state for the first time ever, and Tim Walls can't dodge the responsibility.
A couple of points. One to go back to what you were saying before about him having being kind of nasty in the clutch, Yeah, I mean that when I say genial, I mean that the images of him always look like, you know, when you're looking through your dad's old photographs of the hunting trips. He looks like, you know, the the chubby guy in the end with a big grin and the plaid jack and the rest of it.
I'm just talking about the most superficial issue of it. Secondly, when it comes to Walt and the riots and the rest of it. I mean, you remember, he gave a press conference just like the May at the end of May, where he went off on the protesters. He may have had a you know, initial sympathy like his wife at the start, who said that she'd like to keep the window open so she could smell the you know, the the the burning of justice, which says a lot, but I mean, he did really hammer them in a press
conference toward the end of May. I was reading some remarks about that, and you know, it's kind of just what I want the guy to say. Well, I agree with the points that you make. I think I can't. It's going to be hard to blame him specifically for what happened in Minneapolis. Minneapolis I believe is driving most of the crime right here, and that has to do with less police. It has to do with less policing. It has to do with the end of all of the little nuisance laws by which they used to nip
crime at thet etcetera, etcetera. There's a lot of stuff packaged into that. And while I don't think you can hanging around him, which you can hang around him is his party and the attitudes of his party, which are don't police, don't pull the guys over, don't send him the prison. You know that.
I think, Well, James, if you're saying that he's not the only radical leftist in Minnesota or absolutely the Tiffin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, you know, we could do a separate podcast about her but I think you're being way, way too generous. I mean after the rioters was after the fact, Well, the riots were going on, that's what we needed him to do something to stop them, and
he didn't and and that's the key fact. And then again beyond that, uh, the incarceration rate has has declined significantly and you can just see it in the chart. And the violent crime rate has risen, and that too. Again he's not the only one, but it's a combination of administrative actions and legislative actions that have that have driven that.
So let's go to education, because I think you've govern or submit budgets. Budgets are statewide, and so I think maybe we can look there and say that we can have a more clear direct between line between his tenure, his occupation of the office, and the results. Where is Minnesota always prized as a literate state that's full of smart people looking to get ahead. How are we doing on that score?
Yeah?
Well so Catren Wigfall, who's our education policy fellow here in America Experiment, put together a brilliant chart that tells you everything you need to know. And what it shows is that in recent years, and particularly during the walls administration, spending on K through twelve education has skyrocketed. The chart shows per student inflation adjusted spending, and it is just skyrocketed.
At the same.
Time, student performance has been declining catastrophically. And the chart, again, it just tells everything you need to know. And the facts, James, as you know, are shocking. Currently, more than half of all of the K through twelve students in Minnesota's public schools can neither read nor do math at grade level.
I mean, just think about that more.
Because we're not spending enough. We're obviously not spending enough money.
It's unbelievable. Let me give you another one, James, let me give you another one.
The longer they're in Minnesota's public schools, the worse off they are. Sixty four percent. Sixty four percent of eleventh graders in all the Minnesota public schools K through twelve cannot do I'm sorry, this is eleventh graders sixty four percent across the state of Minnesota cannot do math at grade level. Sixty four percent. Well, I mean, this is catastrophically bad.
How do you expect them to make more Democrats without schools that perform like that? Hi, Johnny, we usually you and I usually only see each other in pixels. And I've got three or four questions, but they all culminate in this one. When are you ever going to run for governor of Minnesota? Clearly we need someone like you to do this.
I actually have been asked that question more seriously, Steve. But it's been a while, and I think I don't want to run and have people talking about whether.
I've seen a hell yet.
You know, I.
Think I've passed the point where that would have been a good idea.
Yeah, well all right, well look, I know, but people should keep asking you that. Look, Lucretian, and I won't say we don't have any sympathy for you in Minnesota, but we have been governed well me, I'm still but Lucretia grew up in California. We're governed by Gavin Newsom, and it seems to me the only difference between Newsom and Waltz is that Waltz doesn't use as much brial cream in his hair, and Newsom gets more pressed because
California and so forth. On the other hand, I do notice that Newsom's approval ratings in California are deeply underwater. The problem is there isn't. And by the way, the serious point behind my question of you running for governor is that the Republican Party is just so feeble in californ that they can't seem to get a decent statewide candidate with even a shot at disrupting the progressive juggernaut.
Here.
Minnesota's closer, right, I mean, the Republicans are like with a couple of seats in the legislature, Is that right?
And yeah, yeah, I often.
Point out to people everybody thinks Minnesota's this deep blue state. It's true that Republicans haven't won a statewide election since two thousand and six, but if you look at the legislature, it's very narrowly balanced. I mean, the Democrats, all the terrible things they've done in the last two years, they passed by one vote in the state Senate thirty four
to thirty three. They swung one seat in twenty twenty two in a district where there was a Republican incumbent he was challenging the primary by a more more conservative Republican. The conservative Republican won the primary became the nominee. The incumbent Republican then endorsed the Democrat who won by three hundred and twenty one votes, and all the terrible things the Democrats have done since past thirty four to thirty three in the Minnesota Senate. So yeah, we are more
finally balanced than people realize. But the other side of the coin, steve to be honest, is that Minnesota's Republican party has been weak for about the last fifteen to twenty years, and there's a structural imbalance. The Democrats in the twenty two cycle outspent Republicans three to one, and that's typical in some ways. They'll outspend the Republicans four to one, five to one, six to one.
Right, Okay, well, sorry, that's a problem.
One more question and then I'll turn over Lucretia, who I think I know what she wants to ask about.
I think conservative media have been pretty good.
At least laying out the whole list of issues about Waltz and his opinions and his views. There's one story, though, that I know you and Scott Johnson have covered closely that I haven't heard people jump on yet, and it's the scandal over the what's it called the Feeding Minnesota program where you've had feeding our future, Right, would you tell listeners what that's about and his wall it's implicated in least being negligent about that.
Yeah, oh god, we could talk for a lot.
Future is the biggest that's shorthand okay for a huge scandal here in Minnesota, the single biggest fraud that's been identified as coming out of all the COVID programs. And very briefly, this was a program that was supposed to feed poor children. Now, if you did the math, we don't have that many poor children in Minnesota. I mean, these people were claiming to feed millions and millions.
Of meals the poor children.
Feeding Our Future was one of two or three umbrella nonprofits. And the woman Amy Bach, who ran Feeding Our Future, she's now a criminal defendant. She went out and rustled up a bunch of Somalis to put together other nonprofits and they work frequently through restaurants, and they started invoicing for the alleged feeding of millions of to poor children, and the State of Minnesota shoveled out the door. The Department of Education shoveled out the door hundreds of millions
of dollars and finally got investigated. The US Attorney thinks that five hundred million dollars were stolen from the taxpayers. There are seventy criminal indictments. One case so far has gone to trial. Eighteen defendants have pled guilty. Five have
been found guilty. In that trial, the defendants delivered a bag with one hundred thousand dollars in cash in it to the home of one of the jurors like the day before they were going to start deliberating, with a note saying that there was more where that came from if she voted to acquit the defendants. It's an unbelievable scandal, but it's one of many, well over a billion dollars in identified specific scandals with names, not just the way
the indulgent every day scandals. Names have gone out the door during the Walls administration. I mean, it is the most scandal plagued administration in America.
Yeah good.
Can't some of that attach to Waltz or is he able to put distance between him and that?
You tell me it hasn't attached to Walls in.
The local press in Minnesota. I mean, look at the deparent of Education. The commissioner was appointed by Walls. The buck stops if it doesn't stop with Walls. It stops with the Commissioner of Education. Yeah, not a single person in the Department of Education has been fired or suspended or furloughed, or had a pay cut or had a reprimand put in their file or anything else as the result of a five hundred million dollar scandal. That's the administration that Tim Walls runs.
Johnny, this is of a piece with the usual Republicans. You obviously are telling me because you don't like the Feeding Our Future program, that you don't want to feed children, that you just the very idea of feeding children angers you. And this is one of the attacks that we've seen when people point out that they're trying to make it sound as if the GOP is upset that the state feeds children in schools, that that's the thing that that animated James.
I'm upset when people steal money by pretending to feed non existing children. Well, that can't need to be a slightly different point.
That's you know, your your your nuance. There is just not He's going to fall on deaf years because we know that the Republicans want children to be starving all day and they don't want them to learn. But the attack is that they say that the Republicans are opposed to feeding children in school before we go to du Cretia, could you just tell us exactly why that isn't an accurate description of the objections to Walt's policy.
Well, I mean none of that has even come up. I mean, the criminal prosecutions and the criticism the Department of Education has taken have had nothing to do with feeding children. They've had to do with stealing money.
Right.
But it's the idea that I mean, we're going to feed children in school regardless of income.
That's the whole Well, that's that's another So that's a whole nother.
That's completely different women.
Completely different issue. Now we're talking about children who are actually attending school. That was not the case of feeding our future.
I know.
There's a whole nother.
Issue, which is that the Minnesota legislature has has passed now a law that provides both breakfast and lunch to all students in the Minnesota public schools, not just poor kids.
You don't have to qualify for free lunch.
You don't get free breakfast and free lunch if you are a student attending Minnesota schools. And and that has not been all that controversial, frankly, but I mean some of us have criticized it on the ground that it's really the parents' job to feed their children. Okay, if there are poor kids as parents can't afford to pay the thirty five cents or whatever school lunch costs.
Now happy, I'm happy to help them out.
The programs federal programs that do that.
Yeah, but since when is it the states duty to feed children in the first instance. It's up to the parents to feed their children.
So I want to ask a question of you, John that I think you can attach directly to Tim Waltz. So for a variety of different reasons, I have probably spent a dozen hours over the last couple of weeks with command sergeant majors that are friends of mine that I work with, and I will tell you that while the people who wouldn't vote for let me say that right, the people who would vote for the Kamalama Ding Dong Tim Waltz ticket aren't going to care about Tim Walt's,
shall we say, exaggerating his record. There are a lot of veterans out there who might not have voted one way or the other, who will come out on this because the issue to me is very, very very serious. It is because I spend most of my time professionally in my volunteer time with soldiers. The idea a of a command sergeant major. I know he had the right
to retire. We're not clear how he got out of his enlistment, his six year enlistment, but that he would leave his battalion before they were about to deploy to Iraq. I know there's all these little things about dates and so on. So are you know at least a year and a half before a unit's likely to deploy, especially in those circumstances, So he put in his retirement paperwork after he found out they were deploying. There's no doubt
about that. Number two. And to leave his battalion like that, I have never met a senior enlisted officer who would even consider doing that. They're always doing the opposite. So he is cowardly or he's so driven by power and so forth that he wouldn't see it any other way. But then to claim that he was in war, that you knew I held this gun in war, all of
the things that he claimed to claim. Having been a retired command sergeant major he knew that most people were unlikely to challenge that because most people don't understand how the whole process works and the difference between an eight and a E nine and why it matters. But over the years, he's claimed so many lies, basically twisting the truth.
I think that's a lie that veterans I know and talk to who couldn't give a damn about politics are scandalized by this, and I think that attaches to him. And I think what you're seeing is a lot of Republicans continue to press this point. You see some evidence that the Democrats are a little panicked about this and are trying to push back. I think this sticks with Waltz, and whether it sticks with him enough to force them to get rid of him, it's not c to me
yet depends. But what do you think Knowing that you're there in Minneapolis, you've probably met some of the people that were in his battalion that were upset about the fact that he'd abandoned them.
In their opinion, Well, there are multiple things going on with respect to Tim Wall's exaggeration at best of his military service, and I agree with you, Lucretia, that the most significant one is his abandoning his battalion. Okay, he was in the Minnesota National Guard for twenty four years. He took money, you know, he served. That's all great,
that's fine, it was all in peace time. Well, now the Iraq War comes along, and in two thousand and five, or maybe even in two thousand and four, his battalion gets the word they are going to be deployed to Iraq.
And there's a lot of talk about this.
This is in the works, as you say, for quite a while, and several of his former National Guardsmen fellows have that he repeatedly told them, I'm going to Iraq, I'm going to be with you, I'm going to be there, and then at the last minute he pulled out and he quit, and he left the National Guard, and many of those National guardsmen are bitterly angry at him for it.
There was a piece in the Daily Mail where the mother of a twenty year old minister or National guardsman who was in that battalion, who went to a rock when Tim Walls didn't. She's bitterly angry at Tim Walls to this day. I don't know how big an issue this is with the general public, but I think it's going to be an issue with a lot of veterans.
And I think the side.
Issues as I would view them, the fact that he always said, oh, I retired as a command sergeant major.
Well, actually that's not quite right.
You know, he held that title kind of provisionally, but he never completed the requirements for it, and so when he summarily quit the National Guard, he was demoted and he didn't retire command sergeant major. Now I think most people maybe won't understand that distinction. I think some military people will. And then of course he goes around, he's on video, you know, talking about himself like he was a war hero. You know, he's talking about gun control,
all these weapons of war. I carried these weapons of war in war. No, he didn't. You know, he was never in a war. He never went near a war zone. And so you know, stolen valor is a charge that we'll see it. It may stick to him.
No. I mean, just as you know the phrase big debt energy means the patriarchy is back, doesn't it mean that all of this talk about his service means that, you know, it's good that we got these guys with guns in uniform going to our coons to do things. And of course that's going to stick and not be flipped the minute that it turns on, you know, the other candidate. So yeah, I'm not sure how much this is going to stick with people. Some of the particulars may be.
That on James. Yeah, I mean, Pennsylvania has eight hundred thousand veterans. Again, what John says is true. Well, does it matter to the general population that the guy said he was a command sergeant major but he really was demoted back to master sergeant. It doesn't matter to the general population. They don't know the difference between eight and e nine and why that's important. But you know what, every single one of those veterans understands it completely.
And I agree with you.
It's going to make a difference, and in close elections it's going to make a difference.
Perhaps you're perhaps you're absolutely right. It goes it goes back to you convincing the vast middle that your person, your guys are the ones who are happy and joyful and will do great things and the other side is full of youple And I mean what John was saying there before, making the distinction between the state giving breakfast and lunch to needy kids who otherwise could not afford it, and then just giving it to everybody seems like to
a lot of people a ridiculous distinction to make. What are you upset about?
Why not?
What's the problem? You want to stigmatize the kids who are getting it for free?
But it actually is.
I mean, it's indicative of a lot the idea that the isn't the parents' responsibility to put the lunch the lunch of bulls in the bag. Is the state in all of its manifestations it's supposed to take care of you. That's what we get hung up on. But does that affect the general election?
I don't think so.
So anyway, go on, Can I make just two quick observations about this?
One is there?
I think we're at the phase that happens in a lot of campaigns where the record of the running mate the a possible personal scandals come to the fore for a few weeks. The same controversy almost happened with Dan Quayle in nineteen eighty eight and his Indiana National Guard service. So who knows whether this is going to stick the way the swift boat problems stuck with John Carey. But
there's a second thing here, the exaggerations of Waltz. There's a pattern here that I've commented on before with Lucretian, I've written about there's a kind of neediness about liberals, so and they lie about stuff about their own record. You know, Joe Biden, as we know, was arrested with Nelson Mandela and March and the civil rights movement and
climb Mount everest al Gore invented the Internet. Hillary Clinton was under fire in Bosnia, right, Brian Williams at NBC News, it's not just officeholders, but you know, he was under fire in Iraq. And what drives these people to do this? I think it's part of their Actually think it's deep
roots in leftist ideology. And that takes a while to explain, but at some point, as social psychologist has to say, there's a pattern recognition problem here with liberals who feel compelled to puff up their personal heroism and bravery and reputation when the facts can't back it up.
And that's always a bad sign sometimes things.
Truth is more important than just the facts, Steve, don't you.
Know it's well my truth number, it's my truth. We live in the age of proprietary truth, as I've been calling it.
That's the simple explanation for what you said would take too long to explain.
Okay, Yeah, So I don't know, John, that's need a truth teller like you run for governor, a real truth teller.
So I'll just my stick there.
I think point Steve, I can't really explain it, but there's no question there's a long history. There's no doubt that Tim Walls is very much in that tradition.
You know.
He can't just you know, be honest and tell the truth. They have to pump themselves up.
Yeah.
Is this a modern effect? I mean when I think back to we were talking before he got on here about the previous happy warrior, Hubert Humphrey. Remember, I don't remember Humphrey actually exaggerating and inflating what he did. I remember any of those guys really doing so. I mean, JFK, you know, pt book, the rest of it. There's always a little of that in politics. But as far as being sort of a pathological thing by people who really.
I got hey, James, I got to stick up.
I got to stick up for Kennedy, you know, I think passing out the tie pins, you know, the one O nine that it's okay politics. You know, he had that on his record, But later on he was asked, you know how he became over.
Yeah, well, and his answer was, well, I had no choice. They sank my boat, right.
Yeah.
I think at some level, Kennedy, you know, Kennedy did have a little.
Of our self awareness.
Yes, well, speaking of presidents who did not finish out their term, it's the fiftieth anniversary of Watergate, the resignation and the rest of it. I always remember that this time of the year. I think it's the birthday of Prince, the anniversary of Hiroshima and Nixon's resignation. Ah, so celebrate those in which way you choose? What do we know fifty years on that we didn't know at the time. What have we learned in retrospect? Should he have stuck it out?
Yes?
Does any of this matter to a modern American politics or the residences to this day that still echo in the very and whenever we talk about these things, Well.
Let me start with three quick points that Lucretia can backfill in a number of ways.
That was a question of our guests.
Actually, okay, well, let's John, He's sticking around.
I want to give you.
I have more to say about Tim Walls.
By the way, you should hear what you did in Minnesota's economy, for example. But that's okay, we can Did you know that for the first time in our history, we are now a below average state economically by the most basic measure gd per capita GDP. We have always been above the national average and per capita GDP. In twenty twenty three, because of Tim Walls is crazy and the DFL is crazy left wing policies, we are now below average.
I mean, we have more more people leaving than coming in.
And of course, yeah, way more people leaving and moving in. That's the acid test. And people want to live in your state, and people don't want to live in Tim Walls's Minnesota.
Now let's go back to.
You.
Sound like a candidate staying on message just there.
Yes, I try to stand a message, but so yeah, look, I mean, I'll tell you what and you guys may know more about this than I do. I was in law school during Watergate. I had friends who were a couple of years ahead of me in law school who went to work in the prosecutor's office. The Independent Prosecutor's office. And it was Archibald Cox who took that over. No, no, what was the sequence?
Cox was the.
First one, and who mix and fired and then and then yeah, oh that's right. Then and Jeorski took it over. And I had friends who went to work in that office. And the whole ethos was get Nixon. We are trying to get Nixon. I mean, I saw it firsthand, and I guess what I've always felt is that in the end, Nixon didn't have any choice.
And part of the reason he didn't.
Have any choice is that his party didn't stand behind him.
He got sold out really in the us SE And at the time, people thought, oh this is a good thing, you know, James Baking, all these people, they're not being partisan, right, And with hindsight the way the political game has been played ever since, I'd like to see kind of an alternative universe where the Republican Party gets behind Nixon, stays behind Nixon, where he doesn't get you know, he doesn't get forced out and sticks to his guns, and see what would have happened.
Yeah.
So, I mean, I think we've learned some new facts over the fifty years because a lot of confidential documents from the Justice Department have been pride loose through Foyer and other means, And what we learned is there was massive prosecutorial misconduct and completely unethical ex party communications with
Judge John Sirica, who's subsiding over the whole thing. It also turns out that people who've were slowly gone through some of the things in the tapes, especially the famous smoking gun tape, the March meeting with John Dean saying we can find the money to pay hush money to the burglars, turns out that the timelines don't work out right, and those conversations were actually misunderstood, including by Nixon's own team.
But then, finally, I think when you look at what's happened to Trump, starting with the the phony Russia hoax and the law fair against him, all of a sudden our perspective has changed. One of the things to understand about Nixon is remembered he humiliated the left by winning forty nine states in nineteen seventy two, and second he proposed seriously to take control of the federal bureaucracy. And I think the real subtext here, and of course Watergate
was an excuse and Nixon himself admitted it. He says, I gave them a sword, and if I'd have been them, I'd have done the same thing with it.
Right.
That was the famous David Frost interview. But look, the I think the real subtext here and the sort of lingering and significant storyline for us today is that bureaucracy decided, the permanent government, the deep state, whatever you want to call it, They decided Nixon has to go because he
is an existential threat to our existence and our program. Right, Nixon understood, and he was starting to say something that Republicans still have trouble saying directly, and then I'll shut up our permanent bureaucracy, the administrative state, whatever you want to call it. It is the partisan instrument of the Democratic Party. And that's why any threat to it.
So you know your.
Bushes are not going to threaten it very seriously. And look, they tried to take Reagan down using the same law fair playbook with a ran contra. But Trump once the ind comes along and as a direct threat to them with specific proposals. That explains why the left is ginning up about Project twenty twenty five, even though it's an
exercise that heritage has done for forty years. And so you know, if Trump wins as I as I say I expect he will, you're going to see them try and run the exact same playbook one more time.
I but I would disagree with one thing you say to disagree with small point, because you actually contradicted yourself in that whole one. Because what you said was the administrative state, how did you put it? Is the is the Democratic Party, it's the part as an instrument of the uniparty, Steve, and you said that because the very next thing you said was the Bushes aren't going to uh,
you know, do anything about that. The the the the the Republican party establishment is almost as guilty and complicit in refusing to allow kind of back to what John even said, refusing to allow any Republican president or presidential candidate to criticize too deeply the swamp. Call it that, and that sounds a little bit childish to put it that way, but I mean it sincerely. And that is
that that because the Republicans wouldn't stand behind Nixon. And I don't think it's just because they were, you know, watching the polls and so forth, Because they weren't responsible for some of the negative press that that Nixon was getting. In all that, Republicans have shown themselves over and over, with few exceptions, that they're not willing to stand behind a candidate who wants to clean house of the federal government.
And so that's where I would disagree, and I think if you put it in that context, it explains why Nixon was not supported in nineteen seventy four, and it explains why Trump wasn't supported in twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, all through his presidency, and why Trump is not supported by many members of the Republican establishment today because they don't want Trump to do what Trump wants to do.
They didn't want Nixon to do what Nixon wanted to do, because there's just too much at stake for the way things operate on a daily basis in Washington, d C. For Republicans even to want that whole nice little situation that've got to end, whether it's defense contractors, on and on and on. I could go on this forever, and I won't. I'll quit now.
Well that's a big subject.
But I'm going to go back to a point you made, Steve, because I just don't remember this. I'm sure you're probably right. You say Nixon was making noises about really taking on the federal bureaucracy.
I mean Nixon found the EPA.
Oh yeah, no, right, yeah, maybe.
I'm just forgetting I was younger then, but I mean, I don't remember Nixon making war on the federal bureaucracy.
Well, well it's a long Oh no. No, he understood what.
Had gone wrong, I think, and wanted to reverse course dramatically in a second term.
But he just want to abolish the EPA.
He wanted to actually centralize control of the bureaucracy in the White House and have a super cabinet. There's a great book about this from Gus the late seventies called The Plot That Failed, And the opening scene is it's my liberal professor named Richard Nathan. It's a great makes for great reading. But he said, was he overheard his conversation on a plane in early seventy three. We were one liberal operative says to another on the shuttle New York.
You realize Nixon's only weeks away from taking over the federal government. That becomes the whole storyline of the book. And yeah, no, Nixon's a complicated person. We didn't perceive this very well. The administrative state and spending arguably grew more under him than under the.
Great Society, and that is a big problem. That's one of the great Wait.
So well, that was why you know my mentor stand Evans used to say, you know, I didn't support Nixon until after Watergate, you know, after.
Wage and price controls, and water was a breath of fresh air.
Yes, well, this is one of the great historical moments with Nixon or Ford. I think it was in Nixon and then carried on by Ford and Dick Cheney, and you know the Donald Rumson charge of waging price control. I know, I mean conservatism in the nineteen seventies was.
Not when it later became.
William Simon was the first energi zar, which is, you know, on principle he couldn't shouldn't, okay.
Right, But to his credit, Nixon had a plan for building something like one hundred nuclear reactors. Correct, They had this big strategy where that we're going to become completely energy independance. We would have had so much, so much electricity at this point that it would be too cheap, demeter, it would be pennyche I mean that, you know, like, as you said, he was a complicated man and no one understands him but his woman.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, John, we got a few minutes left. Anything you want to leave us with any parting thoughts, any warnings, anything for the great national audience to remember that only US Minnesotans know.
Well, not really, I mean I would just add this thought. I'm appalled at Tim Wall's being the vice presidential choice because because Kambala may very well win and I don't want Tim Walls anywhere near the levers of power. On the other hand, one interesting phenomenon is how now that he's the vice presidential nominee, light is being shown on him and his administration, his policies, his con in a
way that's never happened here in Minnesota. Despite our best efforts, James, the Star Tribune and the other media here in Minnesota have done nothing but run interference for Tim Walls. I've got a good friend who was active in the twenty eighteen Republican campaign when Walls first got elected governor and kept trying to talk to local reporters about Tim Walls's military service and how he abandoned his battalion and lied
about his rank. All this stuff was known then, and the reporters uniformly told him that's an old story, it's been covered, we won't write about it. And you know, it's really interesting how this is. It's a kind of a case study in how in how it's not just the national media, you know, that's in the tank for the Democrats. In some respects, local media tends to be worse. And it's kind of fun for me to see people finally paying attention to Tim Walls's record.
We'll see, and we'll also see how people outstate regard this whole weird charge. I think one of the most rustive illus trading things about the administration happened a couple of years ago. I think a couple of years ago during the trans day of Visibility at the state Capitol. Now, I'm of the opinion that if somebody wants to declare themselves to be another gender and where the clothing of that other sex, fine, I don't care. There's a club
for you, I'm sure, I don't care. Don't ask me to agree to conform to the general ideology to anything, don't ask me to be anything but indifferent. However, I do draw the line at having an event in the state Capitol where this guy on heels is dancing on the state's seal, which is embedded in the floor of the rotunda. It's actually this sort of thing you cannot do. There are ropes around it out of respect, you're not
supposed to walk across it. But we have this event where everybody's whooping and whooping and hollering and cheering at this guy staggering around doing a horrible dance in high heels on the state seal itself. And to oppose that, to find that deplorable, is weird. Apparently that act that show is not itself weird, but to have an objection to it, to have an opinion about it even is
being seen as weird. And that is how the culture of the Metro at least has shifted in the many years that I've been here.
Now before they removed that seal since.
James No, this is my point of lucretia. That seal no longer exists. You know why, because Tim Walls's committee didn't like it. There was an Indian on it on horseback, a pioneer pine trees waterfall, the state mottol and the date eighteen fifty eight, that was the date when Minnesota became a state. Tim Walls's committee said we shouldn't celebrate that date. That was a tragedy that Minnesota joined the Union. That was a terrible, terrible thing. We have to take
that date off the state seal. And so the Indian's gone, the Pioneer is gone, the date is gone, it's all gone, and now it's just a loon. So the state seal that guy danced on, symbolically that was a preview of things to come.
Because that state seal has now been retired.
Well in the state seal is no longer on your flag. Instead you have the wanna be Somali flag.
Not as badly.
Yeah, the real question is whether or not you will be sand blasted or dynamited off one of the buildings in the State Fair because one of the old nineteen thirties nineteen forties barns I remember has the States has the old seal on it. So I'm curious whether we're going to go full or well and statue here and and jackhammer that thing off because its sentiments are no longer to be shared. History is such a bothersome impediment to getting us all into the year zero. Gosh darn it. Anyway, John,
thanks so much. Everybody should go daily as you go to Ricochet too, power line blog dot com and have a good read. John, enjoy your lunch. Thank you for joining us today.
And James, can I just get in a very quick closing note of course, listeners should know that I have filed an injunction in federal court under the old common law doctrine of adverse possession to take permanent ownership of Peter Spot since he's gone a Wallace, and Lucretia is recruiting a team of the best medical doctors to give the long overdue rhinoplasty to Rob Long.
So, Fustine, I gotta warn your adverse possession takes twenty one years, so you might have to wait a while, you.
Know, you know what the next year is going to feel like at least twenty So yeah, Johnny Derecord, thank you for joining us today in the podcast. To see you John, And we've come to an hour, so we're going to get out of here because what more needs to be said, really, except that you want to go to Ricochet, where a couple of things will happen. One you will be amazed she hadn't gone there before. B you will be curious beyond measure to find out what goes on in the member feed. Well, you have to
join up for a mere pittance. You can find out and join the community there. That's just insane, center right, civil conversation you've been looking for all your years in the web. Mostly civil, sometimes yes, sometimes you know, not so civil. We're only human, what can we say. You can also find whether the Ricoshet people are meeting up,
because it's not just a website. It's a place where people arrange meetings, where we meet in human form contact and have ribs and drink beer and generally talk about everything except politics. Lucritia, thanks for joining us today, Steven again, you know, good luck in the adverse possessional lawsuit. I take twenty one years, but I hope I'm going to be here for that long, and if not, I'm sure somebody else will be slaughtered in this place with absolute
frictionless ease. We were brought to you by the people that you heard breaking in periodic play the podcast. Support them, and you support ricochet dot com, And I tell you to give us that five star review and Apple podcasts. But you know that already you haven't done it. You feel guilty. I forgive you, go do it. Send no more. I'm James, Alex here Minneapoli, Stephen Lachritian. It's been a pleasure and we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet four point zero.
Next time, James,