Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
KJT (left); RFK JR (right)
With Steve Hayward back in the host chair this week, the 3WHH actually breaks some real news with special guest Kelly Janes Torrance, the op-ed editor of the indispensible New York Post. This week Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is attracting surprising interest from many conservatives, visited the Post for a grilling from the Post‘s editorial board, and Kelly Jane opened up her reporter’s notebook to share previously unreported statements RFK Jr offered at their 90-minute meeting. You won’t want to miss her scoops shared exclusively with the 3WHH podcast.
John Yoo was late joining us—apparently he got stuck in an extra long McDonald’s drive-through line right before show time—but did manage to break down the Durham report, and also gets in on the sequels with Kelly Jane, who has a lot of thoughts on the Ukraine situation from her experiences as an election watcher in recent years.
Since KJT is Canadian, we decided to honor her guest turn with exit music from the Barenaked Ladies, “New Kid on the Block,” since we’re definitely going to have her back on 3WHH. As mentioned early in this episode, she may not be a neat whisky drinker, but she has an epic cocktail game.
We’re got a short pre-roll excerpt from John on the Ricochet podcast that we think is appropriate to share with our listeners, though I think Rob Long was not amused!
Subscribe to Power Line in Apple Podcasts (and leave a 5-star review, please!), or by RSS feed. For all our podcasts in one place, subscribe to the Ricochet Audio Network Superfeed in Apple Podcasts or by RSS feed.
My interest isn’t really serious. One) I’m hoping for a replay of Uncle Teddy and Carter and b) it would be fun to have a President who thinks the Deep State killed his dad and uncle.
He got stuck in the line behind the stalled Tesla?
Its been a meme… They can’t push it, because its got no power and can’t be put in neutral. Even if they could get the car into neutral, could a couple of guys really push the car any distance?
Re RFK: It would be nice to see someone on the presidential debate stage who is capable of speaking in complete sentences. Great discussion on his ed board visit.
Re Munich: My ever so lofty opinion of John took a hit today — how could he not know about the ’72 Olympic basketball disaster, a great symbol of the Cold War? John, I was born in 1957 but I know about Babe Ruth calling his shot, Jesse Owens winning four gold medals in Berlin in ’32, the notorious “long count” in the Dempsey-Tunney fight, etc. You weren’t born when the founders drafted the Constitution, but you know all about that. That you weren’t born in the best decade ever is no excuse! :) He’s right about the video being grainy, though. Good thing he built up so much goodwill with his great line about Lucretia on the other podcast!
I say this as a supporter of the Ukrainian effort. I don’t read newspapers (except for linked articles and such), but I was once a reporter/feature writer for two daily newspapers (1979-84), and I know for sure that we would have thought it improper to place the Ukrainian flag on the masthead. . . . And I continue to find the idea that the conflict is a cheap way for the U.S. to weaken the Russians vicariously to be cynically heartless given the ongoing devastation with no plan or end in sight and with the Russians apparently now setting their sights on Ukraine’s agricultural infrastructure—breadbasket of much of the developing world. (We’re not in this war, people say, much as they claim the tech companies are private.) . . . Zelensky needs F-16s. We’re-in-it-for-the duration Biden hesitates. And hesitates. So Zelensky goes to the G7 summit, where the Allies offer to send him the planes, whereupon Biden (who for some reason has to give the go-ahead) says okay then. . . . This is no way to fight, much less end a war.
Because its US military technology. The sales contract, when you buy F-16s or whatever stipulates that the US must approve any transfer of the aircraft to any 3rd party user…
Thanks for the info. Is there no fast-track exception for times of war?
No, other than having a President in full control of their faculties.
Always remember Obama’s aphorism: “Never underestimate Joe’s ability to (expletive deleted) things up.”
For those old enough, the foto on this page seems to show that Jimmy Breslin has come back!
I found Torrance to be condescending. She said smart people like her who pay attention to the news and read books can see that Robert Kennedy is crazy but his crazy lines will “play well” with the less enlightened. Yeah, I’m paraphrasing and reading between the lines. I’m just telling you what my impression was. My “summary judgement” as Steve said. Torrance thought Kennedy was “crazy” and had “not serious” ideas and I think she was condescending.
The comment on last week’s episode about the 1972 Olympics was as relevant as it would be effective: Not at all.
To really make CNN heads explode, Trump would say, “I didn’t lose the 2020 election any more than Russia is losing to Ukraine.”
Too tall to be Jimmy! :)
Regarding RFK jr:
Starting in 1972, there were two far left Democrat nominees that told the truth about what they wanted to do. They lost spectacularly. I’m speaking of George McGovern and Walter Mondale. Bill Clinton generally governed on his platform, and he ran as a moderate Democrat.
Barak Obama and Jimmy Carter ran as moderates but governed like crazy leftists.
I don’t believe RFK as he tries to all of a sudden sound like a member of the left who’s not crazy. If he actually gets elected, he’ll go back to his priors.
I’m glad he’s running for their nomination and garnering 20% support against an incumbent president. Recent history has shown that it has meant the political death knell of the incumbent, even as they went to the general election.
I looked up the headline, “Ike Beats Tina to Death”, and that is amusing. Ike Turner had just died. The background was that he and Tina Turner were in an abusive relationship which ended badly.
Strictly speaking since Ike died before Tina he did beat her unto death. Tina is still alive and living in Switzerland.
Steve, has the connection between vaccines and autism been disproved? https://twitter.com/stkirsch/status/1659730026999480321
Agreed. I would have liked her to explain in detail where she thinks Kennedy is crazy. Is he wrong about Fauci? Are his fears about the Covid vaccine incorrect? I’ve evaluated a major insurance company’s exposure to Thalidomide more than 50 years after its use was stopped.
I said very much this very thought today in the NY Post: https://nypost.com/2023/05/22/bidens-indecisive-ukraine-policy-risks-defeat-and-humiliation/
Well, the original and most sensational finding on the vaccine-autism link by Wakefield published in the Lancet that RFK cited for a long time was retracted when it was revealed years later that Wakefield had faked his data.
Great article, Steve. I wish more supporters of the war would be more critical of U.S. actions, which I have described elsewhere as Biden playing rock-paper-scissors with Zelensky. Instead, they mostly just wave the Ukrainian flag.
I have to push back on the “rigged a little bit” and especially the, “Republicans should have done a better job – they saw what was happening…”
Rigged a little bit – uh, no. C’mon man. Read the Molly Ball Time piece, Rigged by Hemmingway, and take into account the suppression of stories (HB Laptop? Biden in Ukraine?) – it all points to rigging the election to the point of stealing. 40k votes across three states. It was rigged A LOT.
But the “Republicans should have known!” argument is rather daft for someone who says they read a lot and follow politics.
You know the name Ben Ginsberg? You can read about him here, about halfway down. Look for the section titled, “The Man Who Lost the Decades-Long Battle for Election Integrity” Read it, and then read it again. They did nothing about it? Oh ye of little depth of knowledge! The litany of names and groups in this piece that are supposedly on the “Right” is astounding. You mean McConnel and Ryan were working against us? Say it is not so!
Yes, the men who were in charge of fighting for “our side”, and especially Ginsberg, was busy helping Elias, the Democrats, was a Never Trumper, and purposefully sabotaged the efforts to combat the “stealing the election fair and square” – and did such a great job that he continued after the election to form groups to combat those on the right who DO want to fix the damages done to our electoral system!
This is why terms like GOPe, Deep State, The UniParty, The Cathedral, etc. are used so much – because there IS a consortium of actors on “both sides” (derp), in journalism, universities, and the corporate sector that are actively working to crush the valid realignment that has been desperately trying to happen since 1994’s “Gingrich Revolution” – it tried by taking the house, the senate, the hope-and-change candidate, the tea party, took back the house, the senate, then the presidency with Trump – and every step of the way it is ignored, nose thumbed at, policies done in spite of the wants of the citizenry… it gets old. Then we hear about how great it is that our defense industry is getting paid to sell bombs to what has been known as the most corrupt country in the world for dozens of years. My goodness.
Ok rant off. But do read about those responsible for the rigging, the ignoring, the cheating – and stay armed with actual facts of the real actors in this so as to stop the revisionists, or in the case of the guest and honestly maybe Jon and Steve – and even Lucretia?? (you agreed with the Trump Admin didn’t do anything argument?), to educate them on the real issues at hand. I get it, it’s hard to believe that the rock-ribbed Republican bulwarks against Democrat election interference would just … flip on us and work for the Blob? But they did…
“Republicans should have known!” I recall reading that the Heritage Foundation’s specialist on voter fraud spoke to the Trump campaign in 2020, and warned them of the skulduggery to come, but was blown off. The conventional wisdom was that voter fraud isn’t a major factor — and maybe, in a normal election year it isn’t. But 2020 wasn’t a normal election year.
“Our defense industry is getting paid to sell bombs to what has been known as the most corrupt country in the world for dozens of years.” One powerful sign of a corrupt country is that its military underperforms. For example, training will have been paid for which never occurred; shoddy or nonexistent weapons will have been purchased; unit readiness would be falsified; etc.
Now, that does sound a lot like the Russian military; but the Ukrainian military has been overperforming, not underperforming.
However, the accusation of corruption is a useful scam. It was part of the reason Harry Truman was tricked into what was probably the greatest foreign policy misstep in American history, refusing to help our brave allies against Japan, the Nationalist Chinese. Helping them would, of course, have been the honorable thing to do, but the Democratic Party doesn’t do “honor”.
Steve Hayward foretold of this reaction in last week’s comments. Granted, I’m old and encyclopedic about the pop culture of my youth, but the guests’ responses were . . . not exactly what I expected:
Thus encapsulating my several attempted dialogues with John Yoo?
This is funny. This is a politician’s response, not a journalist’s response. I’m reminded of the time I needed to move several cars across town, and I asked a neighbor if he knew how to drive a car with a manual transmission. He paused, and said “probably.”
Thanks for playing. We have some lovely parting gifts for you, including a copy of the home version of our game.
Here’s just one paragraph from the Mollie Hemingway Federalist article linked in #20:
Rather than mocking or dismissing concerns about election integrity as unimportant, the [Pres. Jimmy] Carter Commission stressed the problems caused by bloated and inaccurate voter rolls, nonexistent or faulty voter-identification procedures, and unsupervised voting. It said these practices threaten elections and democracy, as do misconduct by partisan election officials, the use of inconsistent procedures in different precincts, and an overall lack of transparency. The report noted that mail-in balloting is associated with higher risk of fraud and could also undermine faith in elections.
I wonder who they spoke to – maybe Ben Ginsberg? Lol.
Another powerful sign is the hundreds of articles, reports, analysis by all media from almost all nations over decades on how Ukraine is the most corrupt country in the world, that could be considered…
And I’m not saying Ukraine stinks, or that they should lose, just pointing out there are plenty of reasons normal folks furrow their brows at our funding of this. If we paid as much as Europe and they paid as much as we are – that would be awesome! Considering they are right next to it and flush with cash… but “reasons” I’m sure…
According to the 2022 corruption index, Ukraine’s score of 33 puts it 18 countries ahead of Russia (28).
The average score for “Eastern Europe and Central Asia” is 35, so Ukraine is slightly below average for its region. (If we looked at the military sector alone, where corruption during wartime puts you in front of a firing squad, I suspect Ukraine would do much better!)
https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2022
P.S.: The welfare state, constantly gobbling up a larger and larger share of each nation’s budget, is crippling the national defense of all countries in the Western world.
Western Europe, of course, may be in the worst shape of all.
Interesting. Looks like those countries need to make some tough decisions. Instead they are actually paying *less* then before Russia invaded. Especially Germany, there are tons of articles about how they are “ramping up” spending, but in reality they actually cut spending. The Wright Report broke that down in today’s podcast. The US is being played, we pay and pay and pay.
Algeria, Angola, El Salvador, Mongolia, Zambia – great company to keep
Ukraine is literally the lowest scoring nation in Europe, and the aid they have received is insane:
That’s almost 8 Billion in aid from 2014-2019 alone. Time to let someone else pay.
Cheap at the price, especially when you look at the size of the Federal budget, which is reckoned in trillions (thousand billions).
Ukraine is the boulder, keeping the Russian bear trapped in its cave. Trump was very sound on foreign policy, and his decision to arm Ukraine (after Obama‘s refusal) was a very good one.
I thought Lucretia b*tch slapped Torrance fairly well over Torrance’s convoluted idea of Ukrainian support, and that somehow allowing the U.S. government to print money, to pay defense manufacture workers to make munitions to “give” to Ukraine somehow “stimulates” our economy. Where did she go to school? Her parents ought to ask for their money back. Steve tried to step in, but he is no match for Lucretia’s Kung Fu – particularly when she been drinking.
As for RFK Jr. – I could care less. We are long past the days when the Kenney name and/or physical likeness meant anything in today’s political world. Unless he sides with the current power elites in D.C. then he might have a chance.
I like John Yoo, even though he eats at McDonald’s.