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Today, Jay turns “Q&A” into an old-fashioned “Need to Know,” with his “friend, colleague, heroine, and podcast partner,” as he puts it: Mona Charen. They talk Trump-Ukraine-impeachment, of course. And then Greta (the teen climate-change activist), China, Turkey, Egypt, etc. A lot of laughs, a little yelling, and some keen analysis.
At the beginning, Jay asks Mona a potentially sensitive question: What is your middle name? He has never known …
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OK fair enough, but it would be terrible if they went off the Founder’s intent.
I had trouble with that link, but here’s one that worked for me:
http:///thehill.com/opinion/campaign/463307-solomon-these-once-secret-memos-cast-doubt-on-joe-bidens-ukraine-story#.XY02ewYDEV8.twitter
Here’s one interesting passage, out of many:
In a newly sworn affidavit prepared for a European court, Shokin testified that when he was fired in March 2016, he was told the reason was that Biden was unhappy about the Burisma investigation. “The truth is that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas firm active in Ukraine and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was a member of the Board of Directors,” Shokin testified. …
Shokin certainly would have reason to hold a grudge over his firing. But his account is supported by documents from Burisma’s legal team in America, which appeared to be moving into Ukraine with intensity as Biden’s effort to fire Shokin picked up steam.
By the way, because the link didn’t work, I found the article through two search engines, DuckDuckGo and Microsoft’s Bing, using the argument, “thehill solomon ukraine”. Interestingly, on Bing only, the top result was a grossly biased Daily Beast smear of John Solomon, the author of The Hill article I was looking for, which was itself toward the bottom of the page.
Somehow, I have the feeling that, at least while Trump is in the White House, Mona Charen and Jay Nordlinger and David French don’t have to worry about smears like this in the liberal media.
David French continues to willfully misread. It was not a “threat of a second civil war.” It was a comparison to a “Civil War-like fracture.” That is the actual phrase being used. David French is a liar. Bad enough that he originally lied about it. That he’s doubling down on the lie is unconscionable. Time for conservatives to separate themselves from David French.
I’ve noticed that it’s getting harder and harder to find articles and news videos critical of Democrats via Google. Often the only way I’m able to track down something I’ve read is through DuckDuckGo.
I remembered reading the “86 Things Trump Could be Impeached For” piece within the last two weeks, but Google would not cough it up when I searched. On DuckDuckGo it was the first link.
Google is seriously screwing with search results.
Oh, I stopped using Google years ago.
I rarely watch the Mark Levin show, but he had a social scientist on recently, an avowed liberal Democrat, to discuss his research on Google bias.
He found that Google — but not its major rivals — biased its search suggestions in favor of Hillary Clinton.
Ominously, he pointed out that Google’s effort in 2016 was not even half-hearted, because they “knew” Hillary would win anyway.
But next time – be afraid! Be afraid!
I’ll take David French over Robert Jeffrees and Diamond and Silk and any other “trump intellectuals” anyday. Trumpism truly is a movement to remove all intelligence from conservatism. FOX evidently can’t find intelligent people to defend Trump, if they are down to the likes of this know nothing pastor. Still waiting for an intelligent conservative that actually defends Trump.
We are way past that point.
In other words, it’s okay for David French to tell blatant lies because you consider the people he’s lying about to be “unintelligent.”
No. You’re the one calling for French to be separated from conservatives because he “willfully misread” some FOX pundits inflammatory rhetoric (that turns out not to be as crazy as French says, but its still crazy). Undoubtedly, you also want many (most?) other intellectuals to be tossed out of conservatism….and be replaced by??? Ahmari? Kurt Schlicter? Charlie Kirk? Robert Jeffrees?
We’re trying to appeal to the blue collar types, and that’s okay with me. Our so-called intellectuals have been slowly but surely driving them away for years with lofty rhetoric that doesn’t appeal to the average guy on the street.
They don’t know how to govern to head off populism and socialism, either. It’s a joke. Watch that video I posted. None of those guys think like that.
Ask questions on why we got the less-than-perfect-Trump instead of working against him.
Really? How about Mark Steyn and Victor Davis Hanson?
Both make French look like the worthless hack he is.
It’s war baby. And you clearly are on the enemies side.
Let’s not forget the brilliant Conrad Black. How I wish he were an American.
I love that man. Absolutely brilliant!
If you’re seriously still waiting to find an intelligent conservative who actually defends Trump, perhaps your standards are unreasonably high. I think of Victor Davis Hanson, an intelligent, articulate, and, I think, principled man who routinely makes the case for Trump (to coin a phrase). For that matter, I think there are quite a few intelligent conservatives here who will defend Trump, though few of us will do it without reservation or qualification.
There are intelligent, thoughtful conservatives on both sides of the Trump divide. Mona and Jay count among them, as does our friend Gary Robbins. I happen to be a Trump supporter, but I’d like to think I’m sensible about it.
When those of us who are allies on almost every conservative issue tear into each other over a serious but understandable disagreement about one admittedly problematic man, we weaken a partnership that remains essential for moving conservatism forward in the inevitable post-Trump future. We should all try to be bigger than that.
Not unreasonably high. Just a refusal to accept that, yes, there are highly intelligent people who support the President. It’s easier to paint all those who disagree with you as cartoonish anti-intellectuals. Then you can just unthinkingly dismiss what they say.
Are they defending Trump on impeachment? I could at least listen to what VDH has to say. Steyn is pretty much a hack blowhard, but at least would be better than this war stoker Jefrees guy.
I’m definitely an enemy of Trumpism. And I’m not too interested in social media warriors tough talk.
I have my doubts.
But here: https://amgreatness.com/2019/09/29/impeachment-coup-analytics/
I suppose so. And it cuts both ways: as a Trump supporter who doesn’t actually love Trump, I get it from both sides.
(But I still wear the stupid hat, because I’ll be hanged if I’ll be intimidated into silence by leftist scolds.)
And are you an enemy of anti-Trumpism?
How about we not ism-ize people who disagree with us, and just talk politely with each other?
We have plenty of intelligent, well-educated conservatives right here on Ricochet who are more than happy to defend Trump.
Agreed. My choice of words may have been ambiguous. My point was that it’s easy to find intelligent conservatives who defend Trump, and anyone professing difficulty might be using words in an extreme and non-traditional sense.
Thanks. VDH starts off with one of his annoying tendencies…….find the worst argument of the opposition to argue against. So, he found some statement by Democrat “heavy hitter” Al Green about wanting to impeach Trump so he’s not re-elected. This is of course, the argument a Trumper would want a Democrat to have, and certainly nowhere close to the best impeachment argument.
Then he goes off to tell us how crazy the Democrat 2020 field is. Then his deflections just go on, including strawman policies that Biden and others don’t support. The word “Ukraine” doesn’t even appear until the 12th paragraph, when he admits that the polls favor impeachment. Then he finally gets to an actual Trump defense….which is largely “no quid pro quo’ and “Biden actually made open threats”. The second argument doesn’t seem to agree with anything I’ve heard outside Trumper media….and the “quid pro quo” is still up to interpetation. So, VDH did better than Jeffrees……but mostly he offered a lot of deflections. Not too good, if this is the best Trumpers got.
Verified in my doubts.
Who knows. The one poster called me an enemy, so I embraced it. You should be asking him about conservative enemies. Its not NTs that look at things in terms of “enemies” and “war” and “fights”.
Hanson has spoken and written at great length — entire books, in fact — about President Trump and the forces that Hanson believe have propelled him into office. Your complaint was that you couldn’t find intelligent conservatives who support Trump. If you don’t happen to agree with their arguments, at least you can agree that they exist, right?
Goodness, rg, that’s nonsense: there are irate and intemperate people on all three sides of the Trump divide. I don’t think you can pin incivility and intolerance on any one group.
My objection to Jay and Mona, the objection I tried to communicate in my comment #3, is that they appear to begin from a position of moral superiority that precludes a consideration of opposing views: of course Trump is unworthy of the office; of course his supporters are fools and knaves who have abandoned the conservative cause for short-term gain; etc.
One can be a Trump critic without that, just as one can be a Trump supporter without believing that his critics are American-hating pseudo-conservative poseurs.
Conservatives, pro- and anti-Trump alike, need to continue to work together. There is more than unites us than divides us.
Of which aspects of Trumpism are you most staunchly an enemy?
Surely some of these aspects of Trumpism are worse than others and deserve a more staunch enemy opposition than other aspects of Trumpism. So tell us more about your enmity.
My points were specific to impeachment and professional pundits/politicians, although I noted some bad VDH argument styles that he uses in other areas too. Anyway, looks like Richard Epstein recently posted the best pro-Trump analysis I’ve seen so far, free of “but Democrats” deflections. And he’s not even a Trumper evidently. so, I’ll put that in the “intelligent and fair, but wrong” category.
There you go. Keep looking; I think you’ll find that more thoughtful, intelligent, reasonably well-informed conservatives lean pro-Trump than anti-Trump.