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When something happens across the pond, we immediately call on the great John O’Sullivan to explain what it all means. He stops by for a complete data drop on the appointment of Boris Johnson to 10 Downing Street. Also, is Mueller time finally over? And does it kill impeachment? All answers lie within the confines of today’s Ricochet Podcast.
Music from this week’s show: A Foggy Day by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald
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Borismania!
I agree a thorough investigation of how this investigation started is called for, and I hope Mr. Barr conducts it. But I don’t think the intelligentsia were completely hysterical watching Trump and Bannon come into office and thinking there was an unbalanced demagogue that had slipped past the safeguards the Founders intended. In his first week and month of office I sincerely thought there was a good chance this man could not tell reality from delusion, whether it was the crowd size of his inaugural or short-circuiting due process with the Moslem Ban. Bannon openly said his goal was to be the tribune of the Alt-Right, and NeverTrump Americans were supposed to shrug these off as peccadilloes.
Peter gets outraged that Mueller treated his report as something different than searching for time-clock abuse by poultry inspectors; that Mueller laid out in detail Trump’s multiple illegal actions like trying to fabricate false documentation, yet he’s totally sanguine about the fact that our President has at least as bad character, as low ethics and morals, and is at least as untrustworthy as Jussie Smollett. I will never understand it.
Seems to me some people in Britain and the US see democracy and the Constitution as just a useful façade to keep the masses in line while they do what they think is really right and best for everyone. They ask the people who they want for President but if the answer is Trump, they think they know better and work to get rid of him without those risky elections. And in Britain they asked the people if they wanted to leave and didn’t get the answer the “experts” wanted so they try to get around that. The people don’t always get it right, but they don’t always get it wrong.
I agree that the best way to get rid of Trump is to vote him out and I’d dearly like to do that. But not if it means voting in the left wing lunatics that comprise the Democrat Party. They voted against Trump in Virginia when he wasn’t even on the ballot and ended up with a racist, infanticide loving governor and a Lt. Gov. who makes Trump look like a choir boy in his dealings with women.
I like the recommendation to relax and not worry but I worry. Comes from being a grandma I suppose.
Here’s what I will never understand: People who believe that this report is a 100% true statement of facts. Like any prosecutorial document it is a one-sided list of accusations. To say that the document “proved” anything is not how it works. It’s not how any of it works. That’s why the concepts of American juris prudence are so important. There are too many that have proceeded from accusation to hanging. Most of those who scream the loudest about Trump’s lawlessness have all the demeanor of the Queen in Wonderland. Get to the other side of the looking glass.
The charges were based on 30 hours of testimony by Don McGahn, Trump’s own attorney.
There was no crime committed so it should have been handled as a counter intelligence problem, because that’s what it was.
Prosecutors never, ever produce reports like this.
Now someone is going to tell me that is all wrong.
And there’s not 30 hours of transcription in there, either. As a prosecutor you cherrypick whatever supports your premise.
This isn’t a difficult concept. If indictments were all this world needed we could get rid of the courts and change the concept to “guilty until proven innocent.”
The single worse look on the most fervent anti-Trumpers is the way they scream about allegations as though they were gospel, deride any defense of the President as being “cultish” and then sanctimoniously proclaim how the most precious thing in the world is “the rule of law.” Well, the rule of law comes with a presumption of innocence, the right to an unqualified defense and the burden of proof being on the accuser, not the accused.
It doesn’t look good on the media and it doesn’t look good on you, either.
And it is a really bad look when Trumpers immediately excuse all of Trump’s disgusting and often foolish behavior and deride anyone who thinks it is a serious problem.
There was insufficient evidence to prosecute Trump. That is a fact. It is also a fact that Trump behaved badly. But it is not Mueller’s job to write a report about bad behavior. Only criminal behavior. The Democrats shouldn’t have a special prosecutor looking for opposition research on their behalf. That’s their job and if they believe Trump should be impeached, then impeach him for crying out loud. Don’t expect Mueller to do it for them!
I for one would be happy for him to be impeached. I’d rather have Pence/Haley.
Trump went on nationwide TV and denounced “rats” and those that cooperate with investigations. He openly proclaimed he might misuse the pardon power if needed. I’m sure he was amazed that McGahn didn’t follow the ETTD playbook and lie during his 30 hours of testimony, the way Kelleyanne Conway and others have cashiered their integrity. There has been no pushback by any administration official refuting the charges and premises of Mueller’s account in volume two of the report. I think Trump has been a disaster for our former party of personal responsibility and I will be heartbroken when he is re-elected by good people that are given no reasonable alternative.
I like that.
@jameslileks, thank you for sticking up for the truth on WMD in Iraq. The New York Times was reporting on various findings on page C25 while yelling about Bush’s lies on A1. It was an incredible time and an incredible thing to see, and it continues to this day.
No man should be prosecuted in the media or be forced to present his defense there. Your principles are not as high and/or as mighty as you believe them to be.
That isn’t at all what I got outraged about. Not even close. As I made very clear in the podcast, I got outraged about one point: That the Mueller Report undermined the most sacred tenet of all American jurisprudence, the presumption of innocence.
I really do respect your opinion [that’s why you and VDH trouble me so much for being in the pro-Trump camp] but I disagree with you on this. It sounds like a slippery slope fallacy – if a $40 million investigation into the President of the USA is allowed to delineate it’s content and procedures, no one is safe. To me that’s like saying we can’t allow government employees pick up your garbage at the curb because next week they’ll be on your lawn taking your picnic table and the week after that they’ll be in your house in bed with your wife. Trump could have avoided Mueller’s negative punditry by acting ethically and honestly throughout – I suspect Mueller was really hoping to say there was no evidence and that Trump could be completely exonerated.
That’s so cute.
The elites were wrong about WMD in Iraq??????
The elitists at the New York Times say otherwise:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html
But maybe the elites were wrong about new WMD or something like that.
You guys look great with Boris hair.
And while I’m dropping compliments, this is and always shall be
Captain Kirk’s frienda wonderful podcast.I just started listening but I have a question. The DNC “hack” was mentioned. Podesta actually fell for a phishing scheme. Mueller went on and on about Trump’s excitement and satisfaction about the WikiLeaks exposure of this. He made it sound like we need some gigantic criminal investigation.
The way I see it, Podesta was an idiot and the Democrat Ruling Class exposed themselves for the elitist, conniving hacks that they are. Personally I love it, and I see no problem with what Trump did or said about it.
Am I a bad person for having this view?
According to the Democrats, yes. Exposing THEIR perfidy is NEVER acceptable.
The best part of the podcast was Mr. Lileks describing his father’s funeral procession, with honor paid through the circling of tractor/trailers and blowing of horns, and the experience of held up by the train delivering exactly that on which they all depended. One of the ways I suspect some of the stories of Mr. Lileks Sr. will propagate is that they will be told in the echoes of the stories the people of town will tell of the outrageous funeral procession. The story of the funeral procession will trigger the other stories.
I think it is nigh unto impossible to keep the stories going beyond the generation that knew the person. I know the stories of my grandparents, 3 of whom I met and spent time with, and even a little bit of the one who died before I was born. Mostly I know the stories because my parents kept telling them. But the stories my parents told of the generation before my grandparents I have not absorbed (at least not consciously).
My children will know some of the stories about their grandparents (all of whom they met and were able to spend significant time with, and who lived into my children’s adulthood. But my children are largely uninterested in my recitations of stories of my grandparents, whom my children did not meet. My daughter did have the benefit of interviewing my mother (her grandmother) and writing a report on her life for a history class in high school.
I really enjoyed this six-minute video of Boris Johnson talking about Winston Churchill’s speeches (scroll down past the short article–although the article itself is good too).
Can you imagine Donald Trump giving a little informational chat of this quality? You can tell Boris is a lot more intelligent.
Allow me to clear this up.
If I have it right, The way James has explained it before, the Lileks Fuel trucks go out not to receive fuel from the trains, but to PUT fuel INTO the trains, before they continue on.
Certainly a champion BSer: you can almost see him ransacking his brain for every snippet of Churchill he can remember!
Trump is knowledgeable about different subjects. The first time he impressed me was shortly after his inauguration, in an appearance before the National Association of Building Trades Unions. He was clearly on a first-name basis with the union leaders present, and knew enough about each unions’ current situation to be able to josh them about it, keeping them in stitches.
And Casey Stengel was knowledgeable about baseball. Yessiree, the whole game, top to bottom — pitching, fielding, hitting, you name it — the guy was a walking-talking compendium of information about America’s pasttime.
And my uncle Max — a carpenter — knows pretty much everything there is to know about drywall and sheet rock.
Exactly. Intelligence is defined as ability to learn, not what you have learned. It’s how a rookie like Trump was able learn more about Presidential politics in a few months than Hillary had learned in 40 years.
Who helped in congress him, too? Seriously. The reason I ask that is, how do you have three Senators and 100 Reps go back on their eight year voting record of repeal of the ACA?
Did they tell Trump to slow down because the GOP Congress is full of liars? I am asking this seriously.
Hang on — isn’t the rap on Trump, according to White House insiders (who should certainly know), that he is woefully ignorant and gravely ill-prepared?
Those would be anonymous sources, the kind that said the same things about Ronald Reagan back in the day?
Or putatively real sources who said many things, but the liberal media cherry picked only negative claims?
NR pointed out a few months ago that Trump has testified under oath about 100 times in the last half-century, plus a similar number of legal depositions. To the despair of his attorneys, he doesn’t prepare: he prefers to wing it and trust his wits. And (NR continued) it has worked for him: he’s never been accused of perjury.
So I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a few White House aides wishing Trump spent more time reading briefing books.
Well, as I’ve said on here before (many times), I have no problem believing in the destructiveness of the Left (which is truly frightening and seems to get more egregious by the day) while simultaneously believing in the comical buffoonery of the current President.
To paraphrase Tertullian, you believe because it is absurd. Absurd for a comical buffoon to defeat 16 Republican pros, and then the Smartest Woman in the World.