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One of these days, we’re going to do a politics free GLoP, but today is not that day. Our sympathies to those listeners who disagree with the GLoP-sters on the President. That said, they do acknowledge in this episode that they are aware of your comments and of your feelings and that they struggle with it (really!). The good news is that the political talk is relatively brief and you can fast-forward through it. They also cover the new Tom Hanks movie, Greyhound (it’s good!), bears, some thoughts about the great Dolly Parton, and why a certain movie about D-Day never got made.
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[Copy/pasted rant from last Femsplainers, where people were lamenting how Tucker Carlson went to the “dark side.”]
I’ve been verbally assaulted and kicked off of Twitter so many times, it’s laughable (my first account followed BasedMom, for reference). Not for anything exciting, for flat-out middle-of-the-road boring-yawn wrongthink (can’t make fun of Chelsea Handler or infer that oh I don’t know perhaps critical race theory isn’t optimal).
The “dark side” isn’t Tucker Freaking Carlson. It’s Molly Jong-Fast. It’s the New York Times, which deserves every drop of vitriol for threatening Carlson.
The liberal/left/progressives of today are the bible-thumping conservative bumpkins I grew up with in 1985 who wanted to dictate what lyrics I was smart enough to hear. Only it’s not a small group of weird zealots. It’s academics, media, politicos. The ones who excuse the rioters, sorry “peaceful protesters.” The ones still begging Russiagate, heck Anythinggate, to be real. The ones threatening that wrongthink–by their definition–invites cancellation, hate-speech laws and no due process.
It’s killed all possibility of rational criticism and discourse about this administration, and that’s unforgivable. I’ll never buy a MAGA hat (my red hat says “Made You Look”), but for me, make no mistake: second term, take the House back, vote all Ds (especially in my native SF bay area and California in general) out of office, stack the courts with originalists, and never let this nonsense (from so-called liberals and “never-Trump conservatives,” whatever that is) happen again.
Have often referred to my proverbial “red pilling” as, “I’m not pro this. I’m anti that.”
Or as John Entwistle said, “I ain’t quiet. Everybody else is too loud.”
Is one of the hard questions, “who is the President?”
We can’t really be surprised or shocked or even disappointed, really, can we, by the attitudes of three “coastal elites?”
Just for starters, I wouldn’t be surprised if each of their monthly incomes is as much or more than I get for a whole year. And that’s not really about “greed” or “envy” or whatever, but it suggests – if not proves – that they would have a much harder time “doing without” than I would, if for example there was a serious economic downturn and all of our incomes were cut in half. They could easily lose their homes – I wouldn’t, mine is paid for – and for where they live, good luck finding anything for half of what they pay now.
Biden may not be completely bonkers – although I would argue that he is at least mostly bonkers – but that doesn’t address the issue of who would actually be calling the shots? It doesn’t seem likely to be Biden himself.
Does JPod know a lot of idiots who have built hotels, casinos, etc?
If hotel/casino/etc-building Trump is an idiot, then JPod must be intellectually a rock. Or somehow even dumber than a rock.
Jonah believes that was really Bill Devane’s house in that ad?
I wouldn’t believe that.
Here’s another possibility for the “numbers” in the polls. A lot of us have seen that we need to shut up, and we no longer answer polls, so all they are getting is Democrats and Never Trump Republicans.
Skips to Carter? Not Obama? John thinks Obama was better? Or has he forgotten it already? John, where and when are you taking this test?
There really is a kind of idiocy going on here, an absolute refusal by the three men to use common sense.
At about 15 minutes, for example, Jonah describes the last question on the (presumed) cognitive test that, interpreting the President’s words without applying common sense, would be one of the questions he had described as “hard”. The last question, he says, is simply to specify the date and time and location of the test.
It doesn’t occur to Jonah that that can’t possibly be what the President was referring to. He enjoys his “gotcha“ too much, actually emitting a girlish giggle. Indeed, his last “question” sounds like housekeeping, like writing your name on the test paper, and not actually part of the test per se.
This is reminiscent of when certain people on the Left preferred to believe that Ronald Reagan was completely delusional and thought he had visited the death camps in Europe at the end of the war, rather than that he was referring to the raw footage he received as XO of the U.S. Army’s motion picture unit.
Once again, Ricochet fails by producing a podcast where everyone agrees and there is no one to pop their balloons.
The panel shows I watch on Fox News always make sure to have a dissenter there to keep the rest of the panel honest. It’s unfortunate that Ricochet seems unable to do this.
Less Trump. More Dolly and Rob’s safe-cracking stories. Don’t even mind getting into the political theory, as long as you stick to the theory and history and stay away from your mania.
Great ending song, @blueyeti.
At around 22 minutes the three guys come close to an important point but swing and miss.
JPod is talking about how no one in a position of authority knows what to do about coronavirus. (So Trump is no more an idiot than anyone else?) For a while Andrew Cuomo was the hero, JPod continues, but we now know his nursing home policy got thousands of seniors killed.
Cuomo is still seen as a hero, Rob pipes up. But no one takes the next step to explain why. The answer is media bias. The liberal media simply spend very little time on those thousands of dead seniors in New York nursing homes.
In 2004, Evan Thomas of Newsweek estimated that media support for John Kerry was worth 15 points in the polls to him. (A few months later, after this admission caused a sensation, he lowered his estimate to five points.)
If we take Thomas’ original estimate as accurate — and media bias is much worse now — then if Trump faced an even-handed media, he would now be ahead by seven points, flaws and all.
At least.
I recall reading a study maybe ten-fifteen years ago where they tried to calculate the effect of media bias, and basically determined that in the absence of such bias the national vote would be roughly comparable to the state of Utah.
Who is to say he’s not?
The problem with the Social Marxism boiling down to the ordinary man – where Joe Nobodies can be fired, intimidated or physically attacked just for having a contrary opinion – then how accurate will opinion polls be? How accurate can they be? Would we take an opinion poll of Iran seriously?
As far as the safe being behind the painting – its always behind the painting. Have you seen any show featuring a safe cracking sub plot – where the safe is not behind the painting? One time I’d like it to behind the mirror in the on-suite. (Just to have the risk of some gold coin or a ring falling down the drain in the sink for some comedy gold.)
I really wish more performers where like Dolly – not that I would disagree with their politics less, but they don’t have to discuss it at every drop of every hat. “Shut up and sing!” Should be the mantra. They’d probably be happier people if they weren’t on twitter every day predictably spouting off on every conceivable topic. (I wonder if you could create an NPC AI, that could reliably predict Alyssa Milano’s tweets)
Rob has to show his work to Peter and James on the flagship podcast, and Abe Greenwald keeps JPod from becoming untethered on The Commentary Podcast. Jonah’s really the only one who doesn’t do another podcast where he has to support/defend his claims about Trump, as neither The Remnant nor The Dispatch podcasts engage him with more Trump-supportive colleagues.
I never realized how Annoying the phrase “Take him seriously but not literally” was to the Never-Trumpers, until it was used to support Biden… Its easy to take 1 man seriously, but not literally, when its one man out there saying outlandish things. When its an entire chorus, its much more difficult, because you know there is a cohort out there who are serious. They believe the worst and most extreme things their leadership says.
Woke up and saw a new GLoP episode in my podcast app. Decided to check out the episode here and it already had 18 comments. Reading them, I’ll just let it bubble up to the top instead of selecting ‘play next’. From the description, we know the listeners want us to talk about pop culture but we can’t help telling you how brilliant we are about hating Trump.
Back to that defence. JPod is right. Trump is an idiot no matter how many hotels and casinos he put his name on. In any case, it is a very different skill set.
Pretty much, each of these guys has a different podcast where they talk Trump and Politics. I don’t need stuff about Trump in sports or pop culture. These are the things we turn to to avoid the current craziness and politics.
I don’t think President Trump is stupid. I think he is ignorant. Outside of the real estate and show businesses, I don’t think he knows much. I think he figures he got this far acting on instinct rather than careful analysis of accumulated facts, so why change. Often his instinct is good; although less so in the last few months.
On the other hand, President Obama weighed his options on complicated issues with great deliberation. He then usually came to the wrong decision. Secretary Clinton also weighed her options on complicated issues with great deliberation. She then came to the decision that would benefit herself the most. A President Biden will have his advisors do the weighing of options. The decisions will be bad for the country.
I don’t go to Ricochet to avoid current politics. Instead, I listen to history podcasts and get the politics of dead people.
Same could be said for Rob, if you take away the real estate part. 😜
I was sure a Black Lives Matter joke was coming after Jonah’s “… but those were black bears.”
If Trump had trouble with half the senility test, it certainly makes you wonder. He communicates better than Biden does these days, which is depressing. We could be sure whether or not clips of Biden are representative if he wasn’t hiding.
It’s worth repeating: a senile candidate is an affront to democratic representation. If Biden really is senile, Democrats should be forced to replace him now and it is unethical for Republicans not to speak out today. The Manchurian Candidate works as fiction because it is an intolerable situation for an empty pawn to be elected President.
Trump will suffer as incumbent in the election if the news is generally this bad in November. There will be unforeseen events before then that change the conversation. But we can be sure Democrat states will continue the lockdowns / restrictions, and that hurts business everywhere. The economy will be ugly. I’d say it’s an uphill battle for Trump.
Intimidation since the riots, BLM, and censorship craze is a real factor in the polls. But the hundreds of monuments and other such radical attacks will help Republican turnout.
However this year’s elections turn out, the consequences will be ugly.
If people are stupid enough to blame Trump for what their Democrat mayors and governors have inflicted on them, and somehow believe that a Democrat PRESIDENT – especially one as dumb/crazy as Biden – will be an IMPROVEMENT, then they deserve what they get.
The thing is, I don’t deserve it too.
I like that one. Trump is an idiot. They type of idiot that only happens when a person that is extremely successful at everything they attempted. That sort of idiot. — said by a couple of guys on a podcast out of their homes.
Fact check: this show existed long before Trump descended the gold escalator and presumably will go on long after he has retired to Mar-a Lago (when ever that will be). Also, GLoP is not a news show — we have no obligation to present opposing points of view.
As discussed in a couple of places on this episode, we get it: Many of you like the President, you think he is doing a swell job, and you don’t want to listen to people who criticize him. And yet every couple of weeks, we go through this exercise. 🤷♂️
Fact check: Nobody’s saying they have an “obligation” to give both sides – we’re saying that if they’re going to do politics, it would be more entertaining if there was someone to challenge them instead of just them agreeing with each other.
The other exercise we go through every couple weeks is that this is billed as a “pop culture” podcast, yet keeps getting bogged down in politics. I get it, these guys are all political pundits, and pundits gotta pundit. But they each have other podcasts here at Ricochet where they can politic their brains out (and I listen to all of them – this isn’t a case of “can’t stand to listen to Trump get criticized”).
But I’m honestly amazed that these three guys aren’t themselves looking for an outlet where they can opine on non-political topics for an hour every couple weeks, instead of going through so much of the same stuff they go through on the podcasts that aren’t billed as “pop culture”.
Give me more stories about The Odd Couple and less about Odd Trump.
Edit: The Sub-standard/Sub-Beacon is an *excellent* example of a pop-culture podcast that consciously and vociferously avoids politics.
I listened to about 2o minutes of this and then it hit me, “Why and I listening to this? Practically everything they’re saying is wrong.” It was a revelation magnified by this exchange:
No, nobody saw the Chris Wallace interview and nobody cares. That is, nobody except beltway pundits and political junkies (which might include most of us). The vast majority of the population isn’t fixated on an election four months away when it only took four months for our world to be completely upended by a crap sandwich of manufactured assaults. Who the heck knows what September will bring much less November?
People have seen the strongest economy in a generation go down the toilet not by Trump, but by inept leadership at all levels of government, from city councils and school boards all the way up to governors. Through it all Trump has been one of the only consistent voices reminding Americans that law and order are important, that America is a great country, and that this too will pass.
Cops and veterans, small business owners who’ve watched their businesses burn and stifled out of existence, lovers of history, people who’ve been trying for weeks on end to get to a doctor who doesn’t require a mask…do you seriously think any of these people are lining up to vote for more socialism?
Somebody get these guys to a barbecue in flyover country so they can get some perspective.