Well, sorry, James, I'll go ahead. I just asked if you want.
But.
I will, and you can take it wherever you wish. That's what we do here. Imagine your roblong and I'm asking a question that he's just going to go where he wants to go.
Ask not what your country can do for you, Ask what you can do for your country.
Mister Gorbut you'll tear down this wall. It's the Ricordshe Podcast with Stephen Hayward and Charles C. W.
Cook.
I'm James Lellax. Today we're going to be talking to Anne McCarthy about Trump's leap of woes and more so, let severs was a podcast.
How should voters look at some of the changes that you've made that you've explained some of here in your policy. Is it because you have more experience now and you've learned more about the information? Is it because you were running for president and a Democratic primary? And should they feel comfortable and confident that what you're saying now is going to be your policy?
Moving from Welcome everybody, this is the Ricochet Podcast, number seven hundred and six. I'm James Lilax drinking a cup of tepid office coffee in a skyscraper in downtown Minneapolis, which did not burn to the ground parts. Yes, but the fires did not lap on the shores of our corporate office here and I'm joined by Stephen Hayward and Charles C. W. Cook. Gentlemen, Hello, between Florida and California. Once again we span the nation.
Actually, James, I am coming to today from Raykovic, Iceland. We're combining a business and pleasure trip. But I have found something for your Lilax Museum of Curious Cultural Collections, whatever you call it. Did you know, Yeah, because r right next to my hotel turns out to be the most visited museum in Iceland. It's called the Icelandic Fall. A lot of hamilgrit and Theseum.
No, it's not okay, No, I know what you're thinking.
You're thinking of the hot dog place that's the other side of my hotel.
No.
I believe it was a hamburger that was putt It was a hamburger, that hamberger that was put under glass in Iceland about twenty years ago McDonald's Hamburger and is not decomposed in the least bit anyway. So phallologically, yeah, what's the only it's the only penis museum in the world that is exactly what you think it is.
Ah, Okay, the brochure says it's family friendly. I'm skeptical of this, but there you go. I'll send you the brochure.
Well, since my side is the Gallery of Regrettable Food, I am not sure whether or not that would constitute a goustatory experience, but of course it depends on one's orientation of preference.
They have a phallic cafe b stro James, so maybe it will make your gast Okay.
I you know, I I missed that when I was there, and I advise that everybody in their lifetime should go to Iceland, because it really is an incredible, spectacular, amazing place, this little island of civil It's little, this this this civilization that they built on this rock, which has in the you know, a certain part of the day, a certain part of the year, it's just always bright and then a certain part of the year is always dark. So everyone has two jobs in an alcoholic habit and
and they're in a band. I just I love the place, Charles. How are you? How's Florida Muggy?
I assume no, it's really nice. It's really nice. I've bed to Iceland. I went in two thousand and seven. I agree, everyone's drunk, but that's why they have no money, because it's so expensive to drink in ice. And that's in Scandinavia. And I annoyed my sister on that trip by eating a puffin in a restaurant.
Braids braised, puffin. Why not?
It was on the menu.
Do they bring the beak?
No?
But it was on the menu, and I thought, well, I'll try that because I like trying random and unusual things. And then she said, well, you can't eat a puffin. They're so cute, and I thought, well, now I have to eat a puffin.
Well they don't they taste like spotted owls?
I think, I exactly with a little snail darter relish if you will. One of the things that I love about Iceland, Reykovic, and also what it sort of says about Europe and Northern Europe, is that they have this incredible modern cathedral, this church. But you don't really get the sense that anybody believes in any of that stuff. I mean, if you were to believe it, if you were to build a church for a culture that was nominally habitually, ritualistically Christian, but really didn't believe it it
would be that church. That was just the feeling that I got. It's so spare, it is absolutely so white and so pure, but so somehow lacking that wonderful effervescent divinity that you get in baroque churches, for example. But enough of our travelog gear. We're here to discuss the ways and means by which the country is going to come to rack and or ruin or success or as usual, middle and muddel in betwixt the two points. So we had an interview with Kamala Harris this week on CNN
in which she laid everything out. I get the impression that the problem that we have been suffering in this country is an insufficient amount of government. Is that basically what you get. We're about four percent away. For if we had four percent or maybe seven percent more government, we would solve housing, we would solve the middle class problems. We would solve climate change, which we have to do on a schedule that is of time and to hours and the weeks that she said, so, what did you
take away from this? Did you do you think this is a fresh breath emanating from the Biden administration. A clean break revitalized attempt to drag Joe Biden's great policies over the goal line. Well don't everybody talk at once.
Now.
I don't know what I made of it, because she didn't say anything. She did an interview, she well, she answered questions, but she didn't really advance anything. And there was a tweet that went out off It's by DNM where they said, we got closer to understanding. They always talk about her, so she's an ancient Mayan civilization. We got closer to understanding what Kamala Harris wants to do. And I thought, well, actually that's not true at all.
She didn't account for her shifts in policy. She said, my values haven't changed. And what she should have done if she was going to make that argument is say, here are two or three examples of where the policy has changed, but the values that informed them were different for this or that reason. In fact, Dana Bash tried to set her up to do that by giving her
the answer before she gave it, but she didn't. She then said that, oh, I know that in twenty nineteen I said I would ban fracking, but in twenty twenty, I said I wouldn't, which isn't even true. In twenty twenty she said Joe Biden wouldn't ban fracking. She didn't explain why she shifted view, or even if she has so. Throughout Yes, I got the vague, effveescent sense that she wants more government and that she thinks that we have
been beholden to some ancient ideology for too long. But she never actually really outline what she wanted to do, so I don't think it was particularly useful as a voter.
Stephen. There have been attempts recently, devious attempts, I think rhetorical slights of hands that have attempted to tether That's the word Kamila Harris with a Biden adminstration. Was there was there tethering going on? Was there breaking going on? Was there was there? Was there anything going on that made you sit up and say that's new?
I don't think so. One of the blessings of being on overseas travel as you got to miss it, and I've only caught up with a few things I've seen online. I think Charlie puts his finger on something. The most important part of it is her saying over and over again her one message was my values haven't changed, which ought to be the four most terrifying words in the English language today, you know, after one's the old Ronald Ringing line, I'm from the government. I'm here to help,
because what are those values. They're all pretty deeply radical, as any check of the record will show. And if you had an alert Trump campaign, and it's still not clear whether we have one or not, they would be running ads and they just have a clip of her saying my values haven't changed, and then just throwing up on the screen some of her previous statements on what her values are. I think that it was a wink
and a nod to progressives and the media. Who are you know, carrying water for saying, you know, don't worry, I'm still the progressive if you want, and you know, backing down on fracking and sting relatively quiet about climate change. For the most part, it's going to be you know, Biden times ten when I get past the electorates in November.
I think that this is not new, by the way, this has been a democratic playbook for quite a while, and people like Obama going all the way back to Doucaucus can try and get away with it, and have in some instances, like Bill Clinton, But in her case, she's got such a long record of very radical views that it still astounds me to think that she can away with it. On the other hand, as has been pointed out, the election is not sixty five days off
or whatever it is. Early voting starts in three weeks, and so the votes will start getting locked into the can very very soon.
Well.
The CNN story about the interview says, Harris laid out an economic plan earlier this month, did you know, focused on bringing down costs on food, housing, and childcare, in part by going harder after corporations. There's stunning new development. She's going harder after those corporations. Her proposals include efforts to combat price gouging. My my mind, Okay, so we are going to do that again, where we're going to go and investigate and of course it doesn't matter whether
or not anybody actually is price gouging. What matters is that they're going to be dragged through a process that we'll just add to their costs and you know, cripple them and keep them from doing things and hesitate to do this and they'll have rippling effects about the entire economy. But oh, well, you know she's doing something. She's least she's doing something. Recently, here we had an institution which raised its prices by eight percent. Eight percent, just announce
eight percent. And the strain thing about it is here is that you don't have the option not to pay. You have to because there are property taxes. Our property taxes going up eight percent, and what's more, because of the new evaluations. It's a tax on unrealized gains. It's just perfect. Do we have any saying this, No, no, no, we just absolutely have to pay. That's not gouging at all, though. No, that's an absolutely reasonable response to the needs of the
particulars of the people. But she also said that she was going to ramp up construction of affordable housing. Now, low information people may not look at that and nod and say, well, that's good. Folks need housing. That's something, But this is not the job of the federal government. The reason that you don't have affordable housing and so
many of the cities that need it. Leaving aside whether or not the homeless crisis is a result of the lack of affordable housing usually isn't is because you have any number of heavy boat anchors that are draped around the neck of the people who are trying to build these things, from the code requirements to the cost of material, from this to that that. I mean, San Francisco does not have an a lack of affordable housing because there are people just for some reason who can't build there.
I mean, it's it's the process, it's the rules, it's the nimbi's, it's the rest of it, things over which Kamala Harris has absolutely no control whatsoever, unless we want the federal government to march into our communities and say, well, you know what, you don't have enough affordable housing in this neighborhood. Therefore we're gonna build them, which they've been trying to do for years and years and years and
years and years. And if that's what she's talking about, redoubling that effort to just sort of sweep aside what people in particular communities want and say, we're doing it from Washington. We're telling you what in Idaho you got to have in your neighborhood. That's again, dare I say I get the idea that she's in favor of expansion of the state that maybe just me.
Maybe, just could you have gotten that idea, James, Look, the land thing, I mean, the talk of bringing back price controls. Let's be clear, that's what she's really talking about. That's a bad idea we thought we'd gotten rid of for the last time in the seventies. You may remember, James, I know you follow these things. I know the history of it. There was a push back in the mid seventies at the time of price controls to have the
federal government get directly involved with local zoning. In other words, weren't just going to leave it to states and cities. And you know, there were bills in Congress that was back on the palmy days of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act and all the other national legislation we passed after the First Earth Day, and you know it got shot down in Congress because of massive resistance by the states and local governments and the home building industry and others.
But I wouldn't be.
All surprised if we're there have been sort of backed or ways to try and coerce states and cities for a while now. But I wouldn't be surprised if we did not see from the Harris administration a brand new initiative to get the federal government directly involved in local zoning decisions.
I just think it's worth saying that this line that I've started to see that Kamala Harris is some sort of yimbi yes in my backyard is ridiculous because the primary reason that the demo crowds are struggling on this issue is that there are a whole host of interest groups on whom they rely that stand in the way of the production of new homes and development more generally, and those are environmental groups, unions of various sorts, and
other left wing interest groups that don't like development for various reasons.
And this is a.
Problem that will only be solved when a Democrat stands up and says to those people, no, it is more important for us to fix this on the supply side than it is for you to get what you want. And I just don't see any evidence that this is happening.
If you read left leaning self professed wonks in the United States, you will see that they are aware, especially in California, New York, that they have an issue here, but they don't really know how to fix it, because the internal politics within the party makes fixing it really tough.
And I just see nothing in the history of Kamala Harris's life of public role that suggests that she has an interest in doing that whatsoever, Which is why, in addition to saying all of these things that some reformers have said are encouraging, she said, I'm going to give twenty five thousand dollars to anyone who's by, because that's actually something that won't be upsetting to the people she needs to win the election and keep on side.
Right.
Yes, well, I think that's all very unfair, Charlie. We know that she curls up at night with a glass of wine in a copy of Shane Jacob's Life in Different of the Cities. Just deeply interesting, a great book and developed the progress it is, indeed, But that's another podcast. In this podcast, we bring you Andy McCarthy. Andy McCarthy, We're proud to do so again, senior fellow the National Review Institute and a contributing editor there as well as
at Fox News. Andy, welcome back. Breaking news, right, Hi.
Jans, how are you good? Yes, breaking news. Trump is trying to get his sentencing in the Manhattan case postponed by moving again in federal court to have the state proceeding removed there, that is, to have the federal court take jurisdiction over it.
And the point of.
This is there's now a profound immunity question in connection with Braggs prosecution, and immunity is supposed to be litigated whether Trump wins it or not as a different matter, but immunity is supposed to be litigated through appeal before other proceedings in the case happen. And that's obvious enough that even Alvin Bragg, the District Attorney of Manhattan who brought the case, has conceded that there should be a postponement.
At this point, sentencing is supposed to happen on September eighteenth. For whatever reason, Judge Merchon, who has been I think credibly accused of being biased against the defense in this case, has not acted on the motion to postpone the sentencing, even though the prosecutor agrees that it should be postponed.
And the way this is teed up at the moment, merch On has said that he'll rule on Trump's immunity claim on September sixteenth, and then proceed to sentence him on September eighteenth, which certainly suggests that he's trying to frustrate Trump's appellate rights by not giving him enough time to get to another court to stop the sentencing from going forward until the immunities decided. So they're going to federal court at this point now to try to make them act.
Before I hand it over to Stephen and Charles. I just want to bring everybody up to speed, because memories are short. Remind everybody what Trump fell for in this case. I use fell in the old dragnet sense of having been found guilty.
Yeah, this is a very strange case. You know.
I think there's some really strong allegations against Trump that come out of the law fair stuff.
This case is just a joke.
He was accused in thirty four counts of falsifying his business records in order to conceal a second crime. Ordinarily, in New York, nobody gets prosecuted for these kinds of offenses, particularly under Bragg, who is like a textbook progressive prosecutor. Ordinarily, business records offenses are misdemeanors. These misdemeanors happened, I think now twenty seventeen, so seven years ago. The statute of
limitations on misdemeanors is two years. By alleging that Trump was trying to conceal a second defense, he got it inflated from a misdemeanor to a felony and thereby did
an end around the misdemeanor statute of limitations. And then he carved this one transaction into thirty four by basically taking each piece of paper that was involved in the payments that occurred here and charging it as a separate felony, which totals up to I think one hundred and thirty four or one hundred and thirty six years of criminal exposure. It's capped at twenty in New York, but that's still
a lot of a lot of penalty. So that's the crime, and I think the outrage, well, there's a lot of outrage about the case, but the worst part of it is that the judge did not require the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt what the second crime was because the judge misinterpreted the law of conspiracy. What Bragg relied on as the so called second crime was a New York election law conspiracy to influence an election.
By unlawful conduct.
And therefore Bragg said, as long as the jury finds beyond a reasonable doubt that he conspired to influence the election, then that's sufficient.
So we don't have to figure out what.
Unlawful conduct he agreed to participate in.
And the problem with that.
Is in conspiracy law, first of all, it's not a crime to influence an election.
That's what campaigns try to do.
What makes it a crime, What makes it a conspiracy is the agreement, the meeting of the minds by two or more people on the criminal objective. So you can't have a conspiracy in the criminal law unless the jury agrees beyond a reasonable doubt on what the statute, the criminal statute the crime that makes it a conspiracy. Otherwise, if it's just an agreement to influence the election, that's not criminal.
So there's a lot of problems with the case.
Well, any it's Steve Hayward who said a couple of days ago, why don't we have Andy here since so much legal news is breaking this week, and it turns
out to be timely. Look my summary for lay persons, which I think as a lawyer you may find a little too cute, which was they try to elevate a misdemeanor jaywalking into a felony by first counting every step taken across the road as a separate felony, and two saying once the person reached the other side the road, he was either gonna mug somebody or rob a liquor store. And you can decide which crime you think the person
was going to. I mean, that's silly to me, But then the other I don't want to I still have a question about the appellate process. But the other big story that first brought you our attention again was Jack Smith introducing a new set of indictments against Trump for election interference. And I'm it just took my breath away. I mean, I thought even this Justice Department would at this point say it's too late based on their rules.
I know there's some ambiguity about whether it's a sixty day deadline or a ninety day deadline ahead of the election, that you do not bring a case against somebody who's up in an election or a political figure. But they've gone ahead and done this here, and I'm simply it takes my breath away that they would do this. It
seems politically reckless, but then also the legal grounds. I haven't quite figured out the legal grounds yet, So why don't you comment or say your own thoughts on what's going on there and whether I'm right that it's politically reckless or legally dubious.
Yeah, Steve, I'm a pretty strong critic of Smith, but in this particular, I think he's getting a bad rap.
So let me explain why.
Okay, Yeah, so we all know the Supreme Court didn't throw out the election interference case in the immunity decision, right. What they said is that Judge Chuckkin, who was the presiding judge Obama appointee in Washington, was supposed to get input from the parties and do an exacting examination of the indictment in order to determine which acts are official presidential acts that would be amenable of an immunity claim and which conduct that's alleged in the indictment is private
and could be grisk for a criminal prosecution. So she wanted to have Smith weigh in on that issue and originally directed him to do so on August ninth, he asked for a three week delay, and the interesting reason why he asks for a three week delay is this is a dilemma for the Justice Department. Ordinarily, the Justice
Department's job is to defend the executive branch. So the immunity ruling by the Supreme Court is a godsend to doj because in the future they will be able to use it to very expansively argue that presidents have immunity. Smith's case cuts against that. So anything that Smith does to try to argue that the presumption of immunity can be overcome in his case creates potentially a precedent that's
going to hurt the Justice Department in the future. And therefore it's not just a matter of the Trump prosecution. Everybody in the Justice Department needs to get on board about what they think this decision means, which is why he has for the delay. Obviously, August thirtieth is today. This would have been the day that Smith had to file. So if Smith had simply done what Chuckkins said, he would have been providing this week his vision of what
the case is going to look like. That is what things can still be prosecuted and what things Trump has immunity for. Instead, what he did was what I would have done, which is I don't want to consult with the court and the defense about what the case looks like. And the one advantage I have as a prosecutor is I can rewrite the indictment.
And that's what he did.
But all he did in rewriting the indictment is strip out the allegations that the Supreme Court said he can't run with, which is mainly Trump's control over the Justice Department, and to the extent that that piece of the indictment further the schemes that are alleged. So the four crimes that are in the new indictment are exactly the same as the original indictment.
And the only thing he's done.
Is strip out the stuff the Supreme Court told him I had to be stripped out. But whether he had done this by making a submission on Friday or done it by filing a superseding indictment on Tuesday, it's the same thing one way or the other.
So Andy in the bragcase, it was assumed before the Supreme Court weighed in on the immunity question, once Trump had been found guilty, that there would be a sentencing, and it was possible that Trump could go to jail while he was running for president, and the question got a bit scrambled, partly because of the immunity case and then a few other legal developments. So my question is, given the changes that you described in your first answer, what is most likely to happen next in the brag case?
And if there's no way of telling what's most likely, what are the options in the next, say, six months to a year.
Yeah, So, Charlie, I think Bragg wanted to press ahead with the sentencing because he knows that Trump is not actually going to prison, and I think kind of almost perversely, that incentivizes him to give Trump an even more stiff sentence than he would otherwise have given him, because what's going to happen here. This is a non violent crime. Trump is not going It's not like he's going to get carted off to rikers the second that march On
imposted sentence. But what they've always wanted out of this case was for the Democrats to be able to say he's a convicted felon facing a stiff prison sentence in the run up to the election, and they would have that the problem legally that they now have, and this is a I think reckless and certainly gratuitous presentation of the case by Bragg. They didn't need the Trump presidential
acts as evidence in the trial. They could easily have proved up what was charged to the indictment by just sticking with employees of the Trump organization and the testimony
of Colin and called it a day. Instead, what they did was they called two of Trump's White House staffers to testify about his customary with the way he ran the White House, you know, the way he conducted himself as president, etc. Bragg is now in the position of trying to argue that that was just harmless error, but when his prosecutors summed up to the jury, they described it as devastating proof of kilt. So he's got a tough time saying it was harmless error at this point.
The other thing he did that I think was pretty outrageous was he had Cohen testify that Trump had told him that Jeff Sessions would make the Federal Election Commission
investigation of the non disclosure agreements go away. There's no corrobore evidence that that happened, but it's important evidence, even though it was fleeting, because Bragg didn't make it prove anything that would indicate to anyone that Trump was even thinking about federal election law, much less that he was willful beyond a reasonable doubt in conspiring to violate it.
Right, So this was all stuff that Bragg threw.
Into the case that he didn't need and didn't have any business in the case. And at the same time, they proved that they knew that the Supreme Court was considering immunity and that the oral argument had happened, and during the oral argument a number of the justices had seemed to be sympathetic to Trump's position. Yet they kept insisting to Brag that there was no presidential immunity and certainly no derivative evidentiary privilege not to have proof of
presidential acts come into a criminal trial. So Bragg understands now that he's stuck with having made this decision. There was proof of presidential acts that came into the trial, which if they had just waited until the Supreme Court ruled as Trump's lawyers asked them to, the judge would have known, you can't let that evidence into the case. But he let it into the case. So that gives Trump a strong immunity claim. Now Trump is not going to win his ultimate claim, Trump is saying that the
indictment should get dismissed. I think ultimately what the courts will probably decide here is that the guilty verdicts need to be vacated, and if Bragg wants to try him again at some point, he can try him again.
I don't think they're going to throw out the.
Case on a ruling that couldn't be that would end the case completely.
It'll be up to brag whether he wants to bring it again. That's what I think will happen.
But this is going to take a long time to play out because it seems to me that merch On being merch On, and we've seen the way he's performed the whole time he's had this case. He's going to rule against Trump on the immunity, and then I think Trump is entitled if that, If that's the state of play, Trump is entitled to go to the appellate division first,
and before brad can before merchand consentence him. He should be able to go to the appellate division and litigate the immunity because immunity is supposed to be decided first. What Trump is trying to do now is circumvent the process of going through the New York appellate courts and just get the case brought back to federal court again, and have at the very least have a federal judge tell merch On he can't impose sentence until immunity is litigated.
To the ground.
I think Trump would rather if he could litigate the immunity in federal court rather than in the New York courts. But at a minimum, and his immediate objective here is to get the sentencing postpone.
Well, well, now, Andy, it quick jurisdictional question here, sort of law one on one. It's usually not simple to jump from state to federal court. The federal courts don't like to admit you until you've exhausted all the state courts and so forth. So But on the other hand, I can I mean on political grounds. I can see some federal judge saying, hey, wait a minute, this is
out of hand. Maybe one way of asking is this is judge merch On's I think pretty obvious bias is that sufficient grounds legal grounds for a federal judge to leap frog of state courts and search jurisdiction.
Not in and of itself, but and there's always a butt when you have me on, right, and there's a butt to the butt. So if it was just if the only claim here was biased by merch on, that would be one of the bundle of things that happens in a criminal case that all goes up on appeal together.
Right, There are a handful.
Of issues in criminal law that have to be decided before anything else happens in the case because they go to the legitimacy of the preceding itself. In other words, if you have immunity, the constitutional offense is not convicting you, it's trying you in the first place.
You have a right not to be tried. Right, So there's a handful of these issues.
Immunity and double jeopardy are the ones that come immediately to mind. Where those actually are issues that you are allowed to have what's called an interlocatory appeal on. That is, you don't have to wait till the end of the proceedings in the trial court.
You get to appeal those immediately.
So because for two reasons, Steve, One because this is an immunity issue, and two because it's a question of a state prosecuting a federal official. Arguably in connection with activities in furtherance of his federal responsibilities.
I think got it.
Brad should have been able to obviate the second one by saying, look, I'm not proving any of his federal activities.
This is strictly private. But he went there. He shouldn't have gone there.
And on that Congress has had, i think since sometime in the nineteenth century, a removal statute on the books that is pretty forgiving that allows federal if a federal official is charged with a state crime and the federal official can argue that he's being prosecuted for the furtherance of his federal duties or and this is usually end actually that he has a federal defense to the charge, that case is supposed to be removed out of state court and brought into federal court.
You know, this reminds me. I was gonna I'm going to ask you a political question a minute, but this is starting to remind me a little bit of an obscure nineteenth century case called Kirby versus New York. Do you want any chance to know that Andy case? It was where some local Kentucky officials, local Kentucky sheriff arrested a person from a male carrying barge for murder, right, and as I'm look, I don't remember the exact details, but the claim was made that this was the state
interfering with the delivery of the lawyer. The person's lawyer argued, there's a state interfering with the delivery of the mails. That's illegal and the constitution you have to dismiss the murder claim and put the sheriff on trialph Anyway, an absurd case, and the Supreme Court saw right through it right away. It's a fun one to bring up with students, But I want to ask you a political question.
Can I just can I just say?
Can I just say, Steve, there's analogous modern cases where you know, you have a lot of these states think that they're safe havens from the immigration laws. Right, So the thear always is that if the if the federal officials go in and try to arrest somebody or do a search and further into the immigration laws, that the state will arrest the federal officials. That kind of stuff is a concern all the time.
Hi, this is and colder. You can hear me every Monday on Ricochet with the five things you need to know this week, and on Fridays, I'll give you the big stories of the week that you may have missed. Look for it every Monday and Friday on Ricochet or wherever you get your podcast.
Ricochet Join the conversation.
If I may just jump in here for a second. I was attempting to find out exactly what case this was, and so I typed Kirby Versus into my search bar and it auto populated completed with Kirby versus Goku, Kirby versus Jigglypuff versus Dice, Kirby versus Sonic, Kirby versus Mennonite, Kirby versus Mario, and Kirby versus Superman. So I take it that there is a game character named Kirby out there, Sitch, Yeah, right, that's what I'm getting very nation.
It might be Usb Kirby. I might have had it backwards, and so I screwed everything up.
It's a lot of it. There's a lot of United States cases.
So you know, good luck, right.
Political question, I mean, you know, what was being thought for the last year and seemed to be borne out by events, was every one of these indictments of Trump strengthened him, at least with Republican voters in the Republican base. And everyone's been saying for months, well, gosh, if Merchon puts him in an orange jumpsuit and marches him off to Rikers, Trump's gonna win in a landslide. And I still kind of think that. On the other hand, everything
has suddenly changed here. In the last sixty days, you had, you know, Biden was replaced by Harris. Harris is running on joy. The latest poll show her pulling ahead by you know, credible polsters. And suddenly I'm questioning everything I thought I knew about American politics. Not everything, but I'm questioning whether it's still true that the legal harassment of Trump helps him or not. I can actually see that
maybe this is good. In other words, voters are going to say, well, Harris's untested, we know what she thinks, but yeah, Trump is this convicted felon, And I'm worried. Now that's just it just might work. What do you think?
Well, I think I've all along thought that this was a conspiracy, a brilliant one by Democrats. Are pal Jonah Goldberg has argued that I've been a little bit too conspiracy minded about this, but I don't think it's a
complicated conspiracy. And I think it's when they ran in twenty twenty and twenty twenty two as well, and that is that the indictments at the beginning, when the target audience was the Republican base, rallied the base to Trump, and it made it impossible for what I thought would have been a more electable candidate like a DeSantis like
Haley to get traction with Republican voters. The Democrats wanted to run against Trump, but they always thought Steve that phase two of Law Fair was going to be in the run up to the election. They were finally going to get their trials, and they thought they were going to get two or three of them and dump out all the bad evidence in the form of riveting testimony that the press was going to cover in every gory detail.
And then at that point, the target audience is the voter the electorate at large rather than the Republican base. In the electorate at large, Trump is much less popular, I think, you know, I think it's fair to argue that he's unpopular with about fifty five percent of the country. So I think that was the target audience. It was probably a good strategy, and to me, I don't. I think Charlie probably agrees with me on this, but I'll
let him obviously speak for himself. I think that what's left on the table now are kind of low information voters if you haven't made up your mind about what you think about this, and while we look at this stuff very closely, I think all those voters are going to hear is that Trump got convicted of felonies. They're not going to look into it the same way that we have. And I just don't think this can help
Trump at this point with those voters. I think there's a way that you can, like people who were informed, could look at Bragg's case and go just like a lot of you know, progressive commentators did. And I don't think Democrats are happy that the Bragg case went first, because I think the brag case tainted law there as an enterprise, whereas if they had gone, say with the Florida case, where there was a pretty strong obstruction element to it against Trump, they would have had a much
better time with this than Bragg's case. Which is even people on the on the left, at least the credible ones diminute a small pool small pool, but they think it's you know, they think it's a joke.
I think that low information point goes both ways, although I do think it probably hurts him more than helps. But if you're told it's a low information voter by Trump or sarrogates that the system has gone after him and you don't know any of the details, then you perhaps believe that. And then if you're told on the other side, why he's a convicted fell and you don't know any of the details, then you believe that. So the question is who gets to them first?
I guess, well, that's a proble.
I always say that low information voters is one of those you know, threewere euphemism for morons? How much I mean, I always hate these debates A little rant here. I always hate these debates with undecided voters are in town hall format with three weeks to go before an election. Who can be undecided with three weeks to go in the presidential race? Well morons, that's and that's why those debates so often are moronic, and why it always this favors Republicans. It seems to me, yeah.
Yeah, well you don't want morons.
And I thought about this a lot when we I tried the blind shake back in the nineties, and one of the things that the defense wanted was, like, anybody who had heard about the World Trade Center bombing or some other notorious things that we had shouldn't be on the case because they've already formed. And I said, like, anybody who hasn't heard about this has been living under a rock. That's not somebody that you want as ature in a case.
You know, right right.
Before we go, and we've plenty of time here. I'm not trying to hasten you off the broom or a hook, but to change the subject. Mark Zuckerberg re had a letter where he said, you know what, yeah, yeah, they did ask us to take some stuff down. And it's interesting that some of the things that the Biden Harris, I'm sorry, there I go tethering again. Administration I wanted to get rid of was a satire and humor when it came to things like COVID and the virus in
the vaccine and the rest of it. What are we to make of this? And isn't a little late for this information to be coming out? Or have we all just decided, as we did, that the laptop was faked, that the Twitter files and the Facebook files that they were coming out with, that's all settled and factored in and baked in. Isn't it something that somebody would want that a canny campaign would want to make a point of.
I mean, when you talk about authoritarianism, which we're supposed to be very worried about because it's going to destroy our democracy, this seems kind of authority. This seems kind of fashy to me, to use their terms.
Yeah, I'd say two things about it. First, it would have been nice to have Zuckerberg's testimony in the case that the Supreme Court decided at the end of the term. You know, remember they threw out that they threw out this challenge because they said that the States and the social media users whose communications or postings had been suppressed, that they didn't have standing. And the big problem with
the case was there was a tenuous connection. This is always a problem when you're you're going after the third party actors. Right, their communications were suppressed directly by the
social media platforms. But what they were saying was that the government officials were the ones who were responsible when you have a case like that, you have to show a tight connection between the actions of the third party, and you know, hear the suppression And what Justice Barrett said in her majority opinion was that the case was poorly pled by the plainers, that the lower courts had just gotten some stuff flatly wrong in their analysis of
the record, and that the claims were too attenuated. Now, you know, Justice Alito had a pretty good pushback on that, but a lot of what Barrett said about the standing was very persuasive.
It would have been nice to have Zuckerberg's testimony.
Zuckerberg's testimony could have helped them on the causation part of this. So, you know, I think to the extent people think that the Supreme Court has now said you can't bring a case like that, that's not what they said that. What they said was that this one was poorly played and that you have to show a better chain of evidence. The more important thing, I think, and this really goes to the Hunter Biden story, and this
should be a major major scandal. The Hunter Biden laptop stuff that got suppressed happened in October of twenty twenty, in the run up to the election. The FBI got Hunter's laptop in December of twenty nineteen. They had it for nearly eleven months when they were going to the social media companies and telling them watch out for that, you know, Russian disinformation.
There could be Russian disinformation.
About the Biden family and about Hunter. And I think if you I tried to do this in a piece at NR this week, if you trace the chrinology of what happened. The the FBI had Hunter's laptop, knew it was, they had subjected it to forensic testing, They knew that it was authentic. There was no reason to think it
wasn't authentic. But what happened was in twenty twenty, the two Republican senators, Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson are investigating the Biden influence pedling scheme and they're getting all kinds of evidence about it, mainly financial records. That was really what the House built its investigation on the scut work
that Johnson and Grassley had done. And they're collecting all these bank records and suspicious transaction reports from the banks and all this other stuff that show that there's a lot of smoke here at the very least, and the
Democrats in Congress were very concerned about that. So top Democrats in the House and then also in the Senate, acting together, ask their pals at the FBI, in particular a guy named Tim Thiebo, who was running the Washington Field office and was later forced into early retirement over his anti Republican, anti conservative social media postings. They call up THEBO, the Democrats do, and they say, we would like a briefing from you on Russian disinformation and interference
in our elections. And THEBO assigns to it a guy named Auton, who we know as the handler for the guy who provided the information for the Steele dossier.
So that's where he's coming from.
He's under investigation by the Bureau for his participation in the misrepresentations that were made to the Pisa Court in connection with the Russia Gate stuff, and yet he gets brought in to do an analysis of Russian disinformation as it affects as it may affect the election. So what Grassley says in a letter is we never asked for a briefing, and this stuff wasn't Russian disinformation.
These were bank records.
There was no reason to think any of this stuff was coming from the Kremlin. And as I've pointed out a number of times, the fact that something even if it is disinformation or information that's provided by the Russians, that doesn't make it inaccurate.
Sometimes the Russians.
Actually leaked through information if they think it could put somebody in a bad light. So the whole thing was complete bs. But the Democrats use the fact that the FBI collaborated with them in doing a writing an analysis up that talked about Russian interference in the election and did it particularly in the context of Biden and Ukraine.
And then what the Democrats did was they began to that to the Washington Post and all the usual suspects, and wella, we have a you know, a gaslight situation where they've created this story that this is all Russian disinformation.
And at roughly the same time when all this is going on, we now know that Anthony Blincoln, who was then a Biden campaign official, is working with Mike Morell and these other Clapper and Brennan and these former Obama intelligence officials, you know, national security officials, and they crank out the letter that's fifty one of them sign off on saying that we're not saying that we have any of the inside facts here, but this sure looks like
Russian disinformation, which Biden then a couple of days later when they have the debate with Trump, like I think it was the last of the debates between Trump and Biden, when Trump raised the Biden evidence, Biden used the letter from the fifty one officials saying that it was Russian disinformation, like conclusively saying four former CIA directors have said this
is Russian disinformation. So to me, the big issue here is not just what Zuckerberg said, which is remarkable on its face, but if you trace what happened here, this is an elaborate fraud conspiracy, and if it had been pulled, if Republicans had even tried to pull it off, it would be the scandal of the century.
Now, I think.
It's basically being dismissed as the old news. Maybe it's because the Trump campaign's not competent enough to make a big to do with this. Maybe it's because the media just won't let it be a story. But I think that's one of the most scandless things I've ever seen.
I agree, if you have a laptop that has videos of an own drug addict chopping up some cocaon a mirror. Ockham's razor says, that's Hunter's a razor. Andy. It's kind a pleasure. You're talking to you as usual. We learn so much, and we'll talk to you again down the road again when something legal that we don't like or is annoying or frightening happens. So I have a good liberty, will.
Have a great, weaken great weekend.
Before we go. And we got a couple of other things. And yes, that's the second time I've said before we go. It's almost like I got to be somewhere. I don't you know. I got a lunch, I got the gym. We got a nice weekend ahead of me, three days in which the wife will put me to doing various things around the house. She's decided that there should be
more stones in the front yard. We got three big stones last week, and then she cogitated a while and sort of study them the way an artist does when he steps back from his canvas to see how it's working. She's decided that we need more geological formations in there, which is my lot in life to haul stones. If I was the sort of person who enjoyed gaming on
the Internet, and I do. And if I was the sort of person who also did things like fantasy football, and I don't, i'd be right up there with Ricochet's new fantasy football league. Luckily, Charlie Cook is a great fan of football and as a guy, can tell us what it's all about and encourage people to sign up and play. Right.
Yeah, I think the exact details of this and how it's going to be executed still need working out, and we'll be very soon. But what is more important is who wants to do it. If you want to do it and you're a member at Ricochet, and there do seem to be a whole bunch of people, I just
don't want anyonet to be left out. This is why we've mentioned it a couple of times and we pinned it on Ricochet and we will soon be sending out messages subliminally to all Ricochet members just to say football, football, football, football, If you want in say so. There's a little logo icon graphic on the right hand side of the site at the moment, which has a football picture and says Ricochet Fantasy Football and if you are interested, click it
and register your interest. And the details will be forthcoming this week.
And if you're thinking, what exactly is a center right political side doing talking about football and fantasy football, it's because Ricochet is so much more than just chattering upon politics. If you go to the member feed, which does cost a little bit, yeah, not a lot, but it's worth it, you will find mean the sites that are free, they're
worth every penny Ricochet. We're talking old time radio, new time music, meme dumbs, literature, fiction also, got means just there's so much going on in the member feed, you ought to check it out. One of the things we've been talking about though, in the member is this question that's vexing me. And I'll end with this. That's the third time I mentioned we're ending. It's anagging question. I know it probably is ridiculous to bring it up, but I'm gonna ask you guys and give you both a
shot at this. Who's running the country right now?
You can tell by our silence we have no idea who's running the country right serious question. I worry that it's some intern, or somewhat more seriously, that it's the chief of staff whose name I don't even remember right now, or that Susan Rice has been the shadow president from perhaps the very beginning. I have no idea, but I should hope we find out someday. It would be nice to.
Know, you know.
I was asked this a lot before Joe Biden disappeared from public view, when he seemed seen island.
Indolent.
I was asked who was running the country, And usually the question came in connection with a theory that the person asking me had you had a particular figure in mind. Is it Barack Obama? Is it Susan Rice? And my answer then is the same as it is now, which is, if you understand how the left works, the answer to the question is the progressive blob. The progressive blob is
running the country. They are not reliant upon a president in the way that the Constitution envisions a president, which is a person who has control over the executive branch, not over legislation, not over the Supreme Court, but over the executive branch. This is another reason, incidentally, why they're so horrified by the idea of the executive being able to control all aspects of the executive branch, including these
supposedly free floating institutions. The Department of Justice, and the FBI, the fourth branch of government that we are supposed to have. We don't have that, but in their estimation, it works much better if we have that set up. Because the Progressive Blob is this sort of permanent, lumbering, self executing thing that knows that its basic task in the world is to advance progressive policy in the prospects of progressive politicians. And they don't need Joe Biden to be active for
that to work. They don't need Kamala Harris to be able to speak English or have any ideas for that to work. On the Republican side, because this exists, you actually do need someone and I'm afraid Trump is not this person, as the last administration showed. You actually do need somebody like a desantist in Florida who is full of vigor and ideas and resolve, who is going to through his own sheer force of character, make the executive branch to do what the elected head of that executive
branch wants. So the answer is the Progressive Blob is how democratic administrations work, and they're not suffering from the lack of Joe Biden right now because everything's running on autopilot.
Can offer you one last observation from a traveler, Believe it or not. Here in Kubik there is the Monument to the Unknown Bureaucrat. I am not making that up and our listeners won't be able to see this, but I'm going to show it to you guys here if I can. Yeah, there it is, and if listen, just look it up. It's the solid stone block that goes down about the waste of a bureaucrat, and I think
it couldn't be any more perfect than it is. I encourage listeners to google the Monument to the Unknown Bureaucrat. It's a perfect, if unintended I think, an ironic a description of what Charlie describes, which is the blob that actually runs the country, that is impervious to outside pressure or erosion or lightening strikes, whatever metaphor you want.
That art is a work of staggering genius. I heartily endorse it, and I think that it should be put up outside of every state capital in this great country of ours. Stephen, as long as you're in Reika vicdumuitzevor go down to the bar when you do and have a Reika r e Yka it is the best Icelandic vodica. I think they filter it through lava rock or something like that. You can really taste the lava, but it's
really good. Charles, I can offer you no advice for Florida cocktails except to say that I hope you have one on this great week. And of course, as an American, you're going to be grilling. I'm going to be grilling. I don't know what you're going to be doing, Steven out there when it comes to laborty, but I hope somebody can supply with hot dogs, ribs, beef, hamburgers and the rest of the staples. Happy long weekend and puffing
and puffing that's right, that's right. If you have some puffin thyroid on a toothpick or something like that, I'm sure that that's gormand enough. Be lieve you with whatever song our producer says, And we thank you for listening to us. We enjoin you to give us good reviews at Apple iTunes, and we will see everybody in the comments where why of course Ricochet dot com Next week, guys, have a good weekend.
All right, Thanks James.
Next week