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Yeah, yeah, there was an election earlier this week, but we’re all past that now. What will the first 100 days of the Trump administration look like? For that we (along with guest host Mona Charen) turn to the great Larry Kudlow, who has been a Trump supporter and advisor since the beginning of the campaign. Who will be, who will be out, what policies will be advocated, we cover it all. Also, some thoughts about the campaign and how we all move forward from #NeverTrump.
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Music from this week’s podcast: Mr President (Have Pity On The Working Man)
The opening sequence for the Ricochet Podcast was composed and produced by James Lileks.
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It’s last week’s file.
Oops. Fixed.
In defense of Trump infrastructure plan (i.e., how is it any better than what Obama did), my understanding is that Obama’s stimulus plan was hobbled by political correctness. “Shovel ready jobs” favor male workers, and when this was pointed out, money was redirected to other jobs that were more gender neutral, but didn’t improve infrastructure.
Oh my god! I can’t get away from Mona!
Yes, and presumably infrastructure for Trump will include pipelines.
LOL. I asked for Coulter and Kudlow and get Charen. I don’ think I can listen to this one.
I wasn’t a fan of some of her NeverTrump posts. But she is perfectly civil with good questions in this podcast, to which Kudlow responds with heartening answers.
Mona, a simple “thank you” would suffice.
This is not the new podcast!!!
Delete the copy on your phone and re-download it. We had a temporary issue with the file and some may have received the wrong episode. Apologies.
I want to find the audio from the lead in where Hillary Clinton is laughing and the woman says “I don’t know why you’re laughing.” Cracks me up every time.
Thank you, @blueyeti for your quick update.
Kudlow: “Business pass taxes on to consumers in form of lower prices!!!”
I know it was a “misspoke” but I just can’t stand the guy. Everything is “I know him, he is my friend”. He is just in favor of anything that keeps the stock prices high in the short term (and I do not care about his f..g friends.
“Entitlements are not the cause of deficit” ????
I really hope he is not part of the Trump administration. High growth policies are great but we also need to do something about our disastrous entitlements. They will hurt the economy as not all years will be Kudlow years and because they are causing lower growth per se.
Mona is working for division.
Peter is keeping it sane.
Peter and James would have been great on this podcast. Mona did not add anything positive.
I enjoyed this discussion, actually. And Mona was delightful.
#alwaysmona
she’s wonderful.
#robwho?
I agree. Mona was great.
@peterrobinson bemoans the fact that 85% of Stanford and Dartmouth students were for Hillary, we are losing the next generation. Being of a certain age, let me put that in perspective.
As an undergraduate at Stanford during Reagan’s second term, I had a particular friend (call him Miguel) a class above me in my dorm for most of that time. We weren’t terrifically close, but we were both from DC, and his room was always the evening hang out, beer drinking etc. It turns out we were both conservatives, but I didn’t know that until January of his senior year.
I went home for Christmas break and read in the Washington Post (or perhaps the Washinton Times) a short little note that President Reagan and Nancy enjoyed an intimate Christmas dinner with Michael Deaver and his wife, and two other family friends, including a young man with the same name as Miguel. I chuckled, assuming it a coincidence, but to cut to the chase, I discovered upon seeing him and making a cute joke out of it, that it was indeed him.
He was a close friend of President Reagan, I had known him for three years, and I had no idea. He made it clear that on the Stanford campus, that wasn’t something you should publicize.
He was right. I expressed my opinions, and I was routinely called a bigot. I recall student polls in ’84 being >80% Mondale.
Stanford and Dartmouth are not bellwethers.
#MoreLileks
This was actually a very nice podcast, but I think what Mona and James was missing and Peter, sort of gets, but not really is that Trump is a salesman. This campaign was his pitch meeting. Now everyone knows that if you are pitching an idea you want to sell it, in the abstract. but once you get the approval now you have to put the idea into reality and sometimes your pitch isn’t exactly what you end up with. Also Trump has been in the private sector his whole life and is quite flexible when presented with reality (or else he wouldn’t have been successful at all). So I think Salina Zito was more correct that you think in that Trump’s supporters take him seriously, but not literally.
@peterrobinson , should you really use polls taken at two elite educational institutions as taking the temperature of all millennials?
I seem to recall that the source was Hillary’s marathon testimony before the House committee that held hearings on Benghazi (the one chaired by Trey Gowdy). The questioner was a Republican congresswoman who had served in the military. I can not remember her name.
While true, and while nodding in the direction of the conventional wisdom about young people being liberals due to their youth and inexperience, I confess I am concerned about Millennials (I say this as one who just barely qualifies due to age).
Among my extended family members who are younger Millennials, those who found work in the trades largely got onboard with Trump, and quite early. While that distresses me to a certain extent, it heartens me more than those other younger Millennials who have struggled to find work or graduated with a ton of debt and are now overeducated, under-employed, cynical and smug.
Those in the trades voted for a politics that really isn’t ideological: its something concrete and tangible, if crass. The others are more attracted to these distant abstractions like social justice–a society in which not only is there nothing unfair, but the very “structures of power” (itself an abstraction) that might somehow result in unfairness have withered away. They are attracted by people like Sanders and find themselves stridently on the Left, and they reinforce this set of impressions endlessly on social media.
Will the next few years change their minds? What could at this point?
Trump is going to execute as a centrist Progressive. His chief virtue, in union with Obama, shall have been that he is not Hillary.
There will be no reform under Tribble-head.
Good discussion on infrastructure. Trump’s statement on big infrastructure spending gave me a sick sinking feeling. This discussion helped relieve the grief. I hope it isn’t just wishful thinking and that real economists are actually advising Trump. Keynesian aren’t real economists.
Liberals will not learn now that the shoe is on the other foot. Liberals do not learn principles in that way because they do not deal in principles. it’s all about power. Now they’ll use our principles to try to obstruct conservative initiatives. The next time they’re in power they will not lose a beat ignoring everything they’ve said. This hope is a naive misunderstanding of progressives.
This is my fear. However, I am trying to be hopeful, thinking perhaps Trump has been influenced by people like Mike Pence, Jeff Sessions, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani and others.
If Trump governs Left, with the Democrats embrace him? I sort of doubt it.
If he is actually a progressive at his age he won’t change and while the Democrats won’t embrace him, they’ll help him pass dumb stuff over conservative opposition. I’m hoping he’s more a blank slate than progressive so he’ll learn. He should be learning a lot about progressives.
A couple of questions on the infrastructure plan.
One of the things we could do to improve communications is to stop using words like the above.
Same for words like “Shrillary”. Grade school taunts.
Absolutely. Very important. We can argue forever if the divides on the right were caused by the election, the candidates, or Republican sins prior to the election OR we can try to create common ground now and use the election results to get some positive change. Name calling and all-or-nothing attitudes makes the second option less likely which at least I think would be a shame.