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This week on the world famous (many people are saying that) GLoP Culture podcast, it’s just two guys (John Podhoretz is on vacation) talking about the pluses and minuses of travel, some thoughts on the media and the way they’ve covered the Jussie Smollett case and the Mueller Report, a review of Les Mis, and…giggling. Lots of giggling.
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I don’t have a problem with Jonah or David French’s positions of “Trump deserved an investigation because he played footsy with bad people” while also being skeptical there was collusion.
What I want is the equal and opposite conclusion that those who had questions about how this investigation started or how Mueller staffed his team also were valid so long as they weren’t yelling about illegitimacy, because there seems to be peacocking that “boy those Mueller critics look really crazy now” in the same vein of the criticism French and Goldberg bristle at about Russia.
I believe the problem Jonah has run into is his full embrace of this ‘character as destiny’ argument regarding Trump. And we know from Jonah’s previous writings he didn’t always believe this. Character was not destiny for Mark Sanford as Jonah defended his advocacy for that adulterer. And for the moment put aside the moral consequences of this fatalist ‘character as destiny’ argument, you see this is Jonah’s coloring of how he sees Trump.
And this is why Jonah cannot be outraged that an entire political party try to undo an election using false allegations. It’s why Jonah says it is the ‘smart move’ for Trump to move on. I believe Jonah thinks Trump deserves this injustice because of the past injustices he has committed.
And that is the irony here; Jonah, this articulate and nuanced defender of Western Civilization, doesn’t really care if the rule of law is subverted to go after Trump because somehow Trump deserves it because ‘character is destiny.’ Rule of law used to mean that even people who have done immoral things are entitled a defense and fair treatment. But if ‘character is destiny’ then Trump is actually deserved mistreatment for his past misdeeds. That is something but it is not a principle of Western Civilization.
I still wish that Jonah would take a page out of Kevin Williamson’s book and get off Twitter. Jonah’s arguments that come from his books are masterpieces but his arguments derived from Twitter spats are public bathroom stall drivel. He is so much better.
Enjoyable until they descended into Mueller territory. “He probably will benefit from the investigation”, “What did the investigation prevent him from accomplishing?”. I guess Chicago benefitted from the Jussie Smollet hoax. Who cares about the wasted resources and energy to pursue a non-crime. Maybe Jonah would argue his IRS audits have had no effect on his productivity. Inane and infantile discussion.
@blueyeti the promos really should be GLoP, not Ricochet.
How could Trump basically saying to Putin (not directly, via the media) “Please keep helping us find out what Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are trying to cover up regarding their misconduct in office and in the campaign” amount to illegal collusion? That’s just trying to attain the transparency and accountability that Clinton and Obama claim to favor already.
I’m reminded of the joke about the Soviet dissident who claimed publicly that the politburo was full of incompetents and idiots, and was imprisoned for revealing state secrets.
And it doesn’t seem like the Hillary corruption and maybe the Obama corruption too, would have come out any other way. Certainly not as quickly and as timely as it did.
If either Trump or anyone in his campaign was asking for interference with voting machines etc, that would be different. But that’s not what anyone has shown happened, or even seriously alleged.
OK, I’ll bite: what promos?
In the show notes/description.
etc.
Yes, not to mention that the IRS did not go after Mr. Goldberg’s family and colleagues. Nor did they show up at 0600 with gun-toting SWAT teams, or then put one of Mr. Goldberg’s 70 year old employees in solitary confinement.
As far as harm to Trump (and incidentally, the United States) does it not occur to the GLoP crew that the president of the United States is busy, and has a lot of work to do? Time sucked up by this Mueller witch hunt could have been spent on other things. We will never know if any world leaders said, “Donald, why should we negotiate with you while this investigation is going on? You might not be here in future.”
And, for the umpteenth time, asking Russia to find Mrs. Clinton’s e-mails was a joke. Sheesh.
I hope you guys realize that if you properly created an acronym, the title of your show would be “GoLoPo”….
An enjoyable show. As much as I like the alliteration of GLoP/Pop Culture trying BLoG or GLoB with Sonny Bunch on the team would be interesting. He’s great with culture and is great on the Sub(space)Beacon podcast.
So JPod is off Twitter again? He was on it last week. Wasn’t sure what Rob and Jonah were talking about.
Maybe it was a “joke” but I don’t think they would have come out by any non-nefarious means. And also served to demonstrate/expose how secure her home server WASN’T.
Those Time/Life series leather bound books of Bigfoot Erotica you purchased for “research” in 2015 aren’t a tax write off?
Really having trouble wrapping my head around Jonah and Rob’s discussion of the “national political conversation”, when they themselves go on to say how small the audiences are for Rachel Maddow, Fox, etc. I think it’s long been established that there is no such thing as a national conversation around politics, which is sort of ludicrous and arrogant at the same time.
Half the country doesn’t vote. Poll after poll shows that most Americans, even registered and voting voters, are hugely illiterate economically, historically, and often don’t know the positions the people they’re voting for espouse.
I don’t see that as much of a flaw, actually. I’m not sure how a “national conversation” would help any one of us, in any way, whatsoever. From two guys who talked about reading the Federalist Papers discussing why not having national conversations is a bad thing, you wonder what they think they read in those documents.
The whole point was to have an absence of government in our lives, so we wouldn’t be having national conversations about policy X or Y, conversations politicians use only to buy votes.
I think too much time spent on social media, for which both Rob and Jonah might more or less rely as part of what they do every day, has created a pretty narrow keyhole view into how they think the rest of the world sees politics, or them. Rob used the word “obsessed”, to describe himself, around the fascination with politics all the time. Even as a participant on this site, and I read some of Ricochet every day, the last thing I’m doing is wringing my hands over the need for a conversations or national politics in general.
Like most chowderheads, I’m earning a living, taking care of my family, going for a 10-mile run, then having tacos. Assuming we’d all best be served by all of us devoting some significant portion of our lives to following politics like the soap opera it is seems to run counter to the broader ideas espoused in those naughty Federalist Papers.
No kidding.
Indeed. Too bad the left thinks government has to be in there making sure nobody uses the wrong words around certain people, etc etc.
The generation of “non-public goods” especially at the federal level, the Fed pushing everything around, government actuarial science. All of this stuff is anti-progress. It makes everything worse.
The EU discussion was excellent. I cannot possibly exaggerate how much I hate that thing.
EU: “For the thousandth time, We will never recognize an independent Catalonia.”
Dumb And Dumber Catalonia: “So you’re saying there’s a chance!”
He deleted his account, then undeleted it, then redeleted it, several times, in the wake of this. As of this writing it’s undeleted again, but he still hasn’t tweeted since that incident.
Everyone always conveniently leaves this out about the Trump Tower meeting.
Perkins Cuoi funneling DNC and Clinton money to Fusion GPS for this cloak and dagger crap is against the law.
I vote for the Pod-less underground podcast.
As far as harm to Trump (and incidentally, the United States) does it not occur to the GLoP crew that the president of the United States is busy, and has a lot of work to do? Time sucked up by this Mueller witch hunt could have been spent on other things. We will never know if any world leaders said, “Donald, why should we negotiate with you while this investigation is going on? You might not be here in future.”
After listening to this interview with John Dowd (the latest Byron York podcast), who was an attorney for Trump during the Mueller probe, we do know that the Russia investigation affected Trump’s meetings and negotiations with foreign leaders:
http://ricochet.com/podcast/byron-york-show/the-man-who-defended-trump/
Much more worth your time than Goldberg on the Russian investigation, i.e. Dowd (and York for that matter) actually knows what he’s talking about.
It seems like Rob had it nailed in #111: “How do you not know that’s your plan, when I know that’s your plan, and Jonah knows that’s your plan, and everyone listening knows that’s your plan?”
(Actually it’s #112, but still called #111 on the site because GLoP numbering has been off by one for quite a while now.)
Is good joke, comrade. Let us to clarify position is Jonah arguing:
Jonah – and presumably Rob – believes that it was “reasonable” to conduct a two-and-a-half year investigation of a Republican presidential candidate/President-elect/President that includes illegally spying on American citizens, because the Republican candidate joked during a televised campaign rally
Even the New York Times admitted that Trump “was referring to emails Mrs. Clinton had deleted from the private account she had used when she was secretary of state. ” (italics mine)
That one joke, the one made in public in July 2016, was the only “evidence” of “collusion” with Russia.
Reasonable? Two and a half years? With ZERO evidence? Gimme a break, Jonah. Give it up.
We also know from that interview that the collusion investigation was 100% complete well before the end of 2017, yet Mueller’s report wasn’t delivered until March 2019. I wonder if control of the House of Representatives would have switched to the Democrats if the report had been delivered early in 2018, as it could have been, as it should have been.
This cannot be overstated. This encapsulates the full incestuous corruption that is the Government/Democrat/Media Complex:
This doesn’t even get to the attempted coup d’etat that Andrew McCabe details in his book.
And Karl Rove wants Donald Trump to “move on?” Gimme a break. Trump can’t drain the swamp fast enough. If need be, let’s repeal the 22nd Amendment, especially while AOC thinks it’s bad. Trump 2024!
[Update: edited to correct Bruce Ohr’s high ranking position at DoJ, not FBI]
@libertydefender Well done.
-The colonoscopy advice segment was the funniest thing I have heard in a long time.
-Jonah, take Rob’s advice. Also, drink Jello right after you mix it, before it sets. You can drink it faster than you can eat it so you don’t feel hungry. Also, baby butt paste is a must.
-Agree that Byron York is best source….but add any podcast interview VDH has given, especially the one on Whiskey Politics.
-re GLo or GLoP… don’t care as long as Rob offers more medical advice.
Thanks. I don’t follow him, so I thought he was off Twitter per his announcement on GLoP awhile back. Then I saw Ace commenting on that incident, so he’d returned at some point, but Jonah and Rob talk about him being off Twitter. The intervention didn’t take hold.
Oh by all means you should follow him. You might learn new ways that he complains about Trump, in addition to all the ways he complains about Trump that you already know.
< /sarcasm >
I’ve mourned the loss of National Review as a serious publication, but I was never a regular reader of Commentary, so I cannot gauge how precipitous has been its descent into TDS madness. But I do know that there was a time – many years ago – when Jennifer Rubin blogged thoughtfully at Commentary‘s Contentions Blog. Pretty steep slide, there.
Well, I have a throwaway account that follows the 25 Salon-approved Conservatives as a joke, but I rarely use it. Somehow I’m blocked by two of them.
Jennifer Rubin was once thoughtful? It must be many years ago. Not sure when I first became aware of her, but I do remember the Left Coast/Right Coast podcast on here with her and Mickey Kaus. By that point it was evident that the positions of the hosts were opposite of their geographic locations.