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.
We discuss the events of the week, we talk to AEI’s Yuval Levin about leadership in a populist age and Andy McCarthy about the 25th Amendment and pardons. One of our hosts is dealing with a medical issue which he discusses here and in some members only content with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (available here). Keep calm, carry on, and be nice to each other. This too shall pass.
Subscribe to The Ricochet Podcast 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.
ExpressVPN
Every day you use the internet without ExpressVPN, you’re putting sensitive information at risk. Don’t put this off. Protect your online data with ExpressVPN today!
This is the most outrageous request yet! Be nice to each other! How dare they!
How often is Thomas Sowell mistaken?
Just leave it alone. Trump shot his [redacted] off and he doesn’t matter anymore. Put him by the window, as the Japanese used to do with executives who were over the hill. Thank him for his inputs when he shoots his mouth off, as he will. Then ignore his comments. The only way to deal with Demo-rats when they bring up Trump is to ask them why they want to live in the past.
Over/under on when Rob, Jon, et al, begin to welcome our insect overlords?
Rob thinks the Republicans in Congress supported Trump? What rock has HE been living under?
Rob: “What you mean ‘we,’ Hollywood-man?”
Does anyone seriously believe that if Trump pardoned himself, it would actually stop anything? They don’t care about the law NOW, why would they suddenly start?
Thanks, Peter, for being a voice of reason. Gosh, there’s some spectacular nonsense in the first half of this podcast (the part I didn’t hear live).
Ted Cruz said in his address to Congress that they needed to address the extraordinary distrust of elections expressed in polls. He did not suggest overturning the results, nor did he ever pretend to have sufficient votes to effect such change. Rob and Yuval speak as if he was defending Trump, rather the integrity of elections.
It is a fact, not “lies”, that the US Constitution affords to state legislatures the exclusive authority to determine election procedures. It is a fact, not “lies” or “fantasy”, that Pennsylvania and other swing states altered those procedures under claims to emergency powers (despite the time element of the COVID emergency, preventing long deliberation, having ended months ago). And the US Supreme Court punted, leaving only the 2nd branch of government to defend the US Constitution. Not state constitutions — the US Constitution. Congress punted too.
How those abdications of responsibility and unrule of law should be addressed is debateable. That there is pressing need to at the very least acknowledge those failures is painfully obvious… even without a fleeting glance toward Donald Trump.
Like leftists, Rob has developed an ugly habit of contesting opponents’ worst arguments, rather than their best.
Rob took hydroxychloroquine? Sounds like he owes Trump an apology.
Actually, ANOTHER apology.
Sorry James, Move On and MoveOn.org are already taken. Remember?
But I was right about my prediction of why nobody else thought of your great idea: Because it wasn’t great. :-)
It’s been a while since I have listened to a podcast. The foolishness I heard in the first half reminded my why I haven’t listened in a while. You summarized it quite well.
@peterrobinson Tom Cotton may have angered his constituents, but that isn’t nearly as dangerous as if he had angered the media etc. So was that really courageous?
Levin says Reagan turned populism “into a defense of the institutions more than an attack on the institutions.”
Ronald Reagan is the president who famously said the most terrifying words in the English language are “I am from the government and I am here to help.” He advocated recession of federal govermment for progression of individual and local liberties.
Yes, Reagan praised American history and values. So did Trump. Our current President lacks the grace and discipline of Reagan, of course. But the enemies he has decried, from China to leftist media to the same “swamp” in DC that tried to gut Peter’s/Reagan’s “tear down this wall” speech are certainly real.
As I wrote in Lois Lane’s conversation here:
Every politician is a populist. Every politician says in campaigns:
Trump was uniquely “populist” only in that he merely rubbed shoulders with the political class all his life, rather than originated from their schools and their organizations to think as that social class of lawyers and lobbyists do. He was different in other ways, but being a boor doesn’t make him populist.
Populism is a bugaboo. It’s a red herring. Polished and controlled as he was, Obama was more dangerous as a leader.
Democrats have been training generations to despise half the nation. They have normalized expressions of disdain and calls to punish (not just defeat) Republicans and traditionalists. They harangued a President daily for 3 years with a proven lie (the Russian hoax) and now talk as if he is a madman with the nuclear football despite 4 years of extraordinary peace (in the Middle East, especially). Why would any reasonable person think that Trump is uniquely a rabble-rousing threat?
Democrats and their allies made several moves today to shut down conservative expression, including threats to the Parler platform. But you are still pretending Trump is the greatest threat to conservatism.
Maybe not all of them, but Rob certainly seems to.
“They are putting on a populist show.”
Do you mean a show like McConnell and company telling voters they will make all these great reforms, including repeal of Obamacare, and then sending diddly squat to the Republican President’s desk during two years of a Repulican-majority Congress?
Do you mean a show like decades of “continuing resolutions” and multi-trillion-dollar pork-heavy, regulation-granting expenditures that make a mockery of the legislature’s budgetary duties?
Or do you mean a show like Republican governors and state legislatures speaking of freedom while perpetuating endless “emergency” powers as if there has been no time to deliberate and debate?
If there is a “populist show”, it is Republican government writ large because Republican voters have come to expect almost nothing in significant pushback from their representatives. They are speedbumps on the road to serfdom.
At least the proposals those politicians you revile are significant, as opposed to Paul Ryan’s inane reliance on 10 years of unbroken Republican domination just to get half a tax credit which Democrats could erase in a year.
What a great podcast!
Listen to Rob at 1:06:00.
If Republicans want to survive, they need to cut him [Trump] loose.
Start a bonfire, throw him on it.
But not just not talk about him, trash him.
Kill the demon. And then move on.
…
Trash him, Cut him loose. Bury him 20 feet deep.
Not quite the stupidest comment I’ve ever read, but in the competition. The hatred and vindictiveness toward Trump disgusts me. Let the poor fool be.
On a practical level, there is no need to risk making him a martyr in the eyes of many. You can’t win without them. Ignore him and they might let it slide. Follow your and Rob’s nonsense and you may lose them forever. But maybe that’s what you both want.
Oddly enough, Sowell’s careful way of speaking is what makes him unique among intellectuals. He’s contemplated the point of no return for a long time and I suppose we may have passed it years ago, and, if that were so, he still wouldn’t be mistaken.
This is Team Red against Team Orange.
After Nixon was forced out, he was cut loose, trashed, and incinerated in a bonfire, while the party moved on.
Six years later we elected the Greatest President of the Twentieth Century, Ronald Reagan.
You have to test if he floats like a duck first. It’s science.
That was then. This is now. Your hatred for Trump is still disgusting.
That will have to wait, Gary is busy reading chicken entrails.
Ah, one of my special friends!
You realize that 8 of the first 24 comments is by you, don’t you?
The polls are beginning to come out:
“Jan 8 (Reuters) – Fifty-seven percent of Americans want Republican President Donald Trump to be immediately removed from office after he encouraged a protest this week that escalated into a deadly riot inside the U.S. Capitol, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
“Most of them were Democrats, however, with Republicans apparently much more supportive of Trump serving out the final days of his term, which ends on Jan. 20.
“The national public opinion survey, conducted Thursday and Friday, also showed that seven out of 10 of those who voted for Trump in November opposed the action of the hardcore supporters who broke into the Capitol while lawmakers were meeting to certify the election victory of Democrat Joe Biden.
“Nearly 70% of Americans surveyed also said they disapprove of Trump’s actions in the run-up to Wednesday’s assault. At a rally earlier in the day, Trump had exhorted thousands of his followers to march to the Capitol.
https://news.trust.org/item/20210108210622-t35pv
So? I was commenting while listening. When these podcasts come out so late, many people don’t notice them until the next day. They’ll catch up.
Nearly 90% of Americans probably don’t know what really happened, yet. And may never know if they only pay attention to CNN etc. Especially when the poll is couched as “hardcore supporters who broke into the Capitol”…
I said your hatred for Trump is disgusting. I did not say that you personally are disgusting. There is a difference whether you realize it or not.
What is the song at the end of the Podcast? I found it to be hauntingly beautiful.