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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.
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Yes. Yes, it was.
Unless, of course, he was so drunk and/or stupid to think his constituents are less consequential to his prospects for continued tenure in office than a media etc. you’d think was pretty much thoroughly discredited among likely Tom Cotton voters. Although judging the true power of an “etc.” is a difficult task.
Naw. All his voters can do is vote him out of office. The media etc can do – and have done, to others – much, much worse.
The Trump phenomenon isn’t going away. Someone will step up to take Trump’s place.
The Cash version of Hurt is iconic (produced by Rick Rubin), but most people don’t know it’s actually a cover of a Nine Inch Nails song (warning: some bad language):
It works, too.
This is the worst thing. It’s unbelievable
I really wish Gary and Never Trump would get this through their heads. They don’t even think about it. They don’t think about the actual dynamics.
Actually sounds like it was more courageous of Bennett than of Cotton. Also in case you haven’t noticed, the media is FAR angrier NOW.
Peter and Rob,
If you believe what you’ve said on this podcast, and take seriously Yuval Levin’s warnings, I’d ask you to consider how those lessons apply to this website. Increasingly you’re lending your own good names to a conspiricist fever swamp in which language proliferates the logical end point of which would be continued political violence.
Shut down the member feed, lock comments on the main feed and refund subscriptions. I hope you can maintain the audio network and its many wonderful podcasts, but the “conversation and community” part should be written off as a failed experiment.
I’ll always look back with affection on the days when those things could actually be found here but right now and for the foreseeable future the community is broken.
I think Mitch McConnell really does have a severe China conflict of interest. The stuff that Peter Schweizer has on him is terrible.
Rob’s and @Gary Robbins’s suggestion that we need to burn and bury Trump is a [self-redacted] idea. The problem with ditching Trump is that it allows the Democrats/Leftist the opportunity to say “Now that you’ve given up Trump, you have to give up all of his policies because they are as evil as he is.” We shouldn’t put the Right in the position of giving ground on: 1) reducing business regulations, 2) confirming originalist judges, 3) telling our NATO allies to pull their own weight, 3) distrusting China, 4) building alliances in the Middle East, etc., etc. Trump had a lot of good policies. Republicans need to campaign on moving forward on these policies while acknowledging that Trump is and was a flawed man. It was always a gamble whether the good that Trump could do would outweigh the harm he might cause. I’m hoping that Trump’s crash and burn at the end of his term doesn’t blind us to the good that he did.
Oh, and Gary, I think you’re wrong (again). This isn’t “Team Red against Team Orange.” We are all in this s***tstorm together. Try not to take offense; I think of you like my lefty brother-in-law—wrong about politics, but still part of the family.
This is why you have a populist problem right now. Automation and globalized labor is destroying jobs and reducing wages. This is better living through purchasing power, otherwise known as deflation. This is what progress looks like. Deflation is progress. This is the way the world did everything prior to 1914.
The government and the financial system require inflation. Militarism – being a global superpower – requires inflation. It’s the only way you can pay for big government militarism.
If you didn’t have the acid bubbles and CPI inflation all of this would be happening at a more humane rate.
The elites benefit from this situation so they want to throw socialist crumbs to them, basically.
Then throw in drag queen story hour.
Ronald Reagan knew that inflationism and central bank discretion was a big problem. It’s surprising how much work he did on it because you never hear about it. He was actually raising quite a bit of hell about it with Ron Paul but it never got in the news. Then the Bush crowd got rid of Volker and everything went down the drain. Alan Greenspan.
Technically speaking, I don’t think Trump went to Wharton. He only has an undergraduate degree.
I basically agree with this, except you’re being too nice to Gary after all the… stuff… he’s caused.
Better Help has been positively reviewed by Dr. Todd Grande which is saying something. The guy is serious as a heart attack. I completely forgot that I need to use it for something.
You could not resubscribe if you want.
Or as others say in other similar situations, “there’s the door.”
Yuval was talking about narcissism and needing stronger parties. I don’t think that’s the way to look at it. You’ve have ineluctable problems because there is too much centralized government.
I would love it if you got Ann Coulter for the next show.
Tom Cotton handled this perfectly. The whole thing was over when the states wouldn’t do anything about their elections. Last nights Dan Proft show read a great article by John Solomon saying what Trump and all of those guys should have said: two years of democrat law fair + the pandemic and Zuckerberg’s ballot harvesting scam made the whole thing un-auditable. It was towards the end of the Dan Proft show. After hearing that, I really do think Trump would have won if that aspect was dealt with. The big problem was, Zuckerberg’s money came in in the middle of September. Nobody saw that coming. $400 million to rent the government.
Really good ‘cast to start the year off! Rob’s vitriol is necessary and ought to be heard.
I think a lot of the hyperbole right now is part of an effort to make Trump non-viable for running again in 2024, since there’s still pretty good odds he’s going to hold out that option for quite a while simply as a way to continue to have a voice in the political conversation. But going through all this because 12 more days of Trump in office is simply a bridge too far to cross ignores the fact that Trump’s voters are not going to go to anyone seen as trying to force that issue, and then the question becomes how many candidates in the various factions show up for the 2024 primary season?
(At the moment, I’d say Josh Hawley is making the most concerted effort to win over Trump’s base, and already has been on the radar of the #NeverTrump crowd since late spring of 2018 as someone they see as pandering to Trump’s base who knows better. So they’re going to try going forward to make Hawley the alternate face of Wednesday’s Capitol riot, while Hawley having his book deal cancelled by Simon & Schuster is already being played up by the Senator as a way to show voters he’s most like Trump in being willing to challenge the establishment and face silencing over it. How well this works if there are 4-5 candidates trying to be Trump’s replacement in the 2024 cycle remains to be seen, while at the same time how much traction any candidate can get by trying to be the anti-Trump, especially after at least two years of the Democrats controlling the White House and both houses of Congress, is another question — the midterm push-back after 1994 and 2010 gave us Dole and Romney, but if I’m a #NeverTrump person, I don’t think those two outcomes are going to be very inspiring to GOP voters in 2023-24.)
Google (Android) and Apple both now have suspended downloads of the Parler app. Amazon has threatened to revoke Parler’s licensed use of their servers. All claim Parler is not doing enough to prevent “incitement”, though of course those companies all host platforms with similarly uncivil messages.
Tucker Carlson reported on it. We will see what Democrats do to undermine FOX News. YouTube is still hosting conservative commentators.
The first priority of Republicans and conservatives right now must be to ensure that we remain able to communicate. Ricochet admins would be wise to have a backup plan in case the site’s server license is threatened.
Republicans still don’t understand why people liked Trump so they hope it can all go back to losing politely. I don’t love Trump and he was intemperate often. Turning on Pence was typical of him but disappointing. He didn’t incite violence.
The Republican response illustrates clearly why conservatives are useless and we need to move beyond them. They have no loyalty to see it through if anything becomes slightly distasteful. In response to leftist violence they apologize. In response to a small amount of violence by the right in a peaceful protest they commit hari kari and command us all to do the same. I wouldn’t trust any of them if the stakes got high and there was real fighting. No stomach for anything. I say that acknowledging, like the president, that the entry of the capital was wrong. But it was minimally violent compared to what we have seen. Pathetic the sissy screeching coming from adults about some criminals getting out of hand on their side.
Hey dumb right wingers If you don’t like Twitter or Facebook make your own platform.
[Makes own platform]
Just kidding. You cannot be allowed to talk anywhere.
You can’t do this because of the network effect. Simply combining good management with capital is not going to create another pipe.
The constitution cannot function as written with four companies controlling the public square.
It was also the last song that Cash recorded as he was dying.
I have a different take on this: Rob, being Mr. Hollywood, was doing a subtle impression of a lunatic MSNBC left wing host, lost in his own insular outrage. Well done!
As such, no need to consider his rant “necessary” or take the content seriously, as it was opposition theater. Rob has a keen eye for keeping the product interesting – he is the Eleanor Clift of the Ricochet podcast. ;-)
You hit the nail on the head. The problem is not that Trump’s policies on regulations, judges, distrusting China and building alliances in the Middle East are not wrong, they are either completely right (regulations, judges, and taxes) or mostly right (China).
This is why I think that Republicans and Conservatives must remove Trump. The problem was not Nixon’s policies of fiscal restraint on Democratic spending programs. They were good. The problem was that Nixon, the person, actively supported and even directed the cover-up.
Thank you for acknowledging that this was a gamble on whether the good Trump could do would outweigh the harm he might cause. I am looking at Trump watching at the assault on the capitol at a “pre-Riot” watch party in a tent with Kimberly Gilfoyle and DJTJ while the song “Gloria” plays in the background. See the following tape at the 44 second mark to 1:18. Then DJTJ comes on and says “I think that we are at T minus a couple of seconds,” and refers to [White House Chief of Staff] Mark Meadows as “an actual fighter.” That Trump must be exiled from the party and from the nation, before the Left can attack the good Trump policies on regulations, taxes and judges.
Then there is the question of Rob’s hyperbole that I repeated. Unlike some of the Trump mob who were chanting “hang Mike Pence,” built a symbolic scaffolding at the capitol with a rope noose, and roamed the capitol searching for Mike Pence, Rob said that Trump needed to be abandoned, and thrown on a bonfire. No, I do not think that Rob wants the actual body of Donald Trump to be thrown on a literal bonfire. But, that Rob wants Trump to be wholly repudiated and for the party to disavow the assault on the capitol. And I agree that Trump needs to be wholly repudiated, as well as the people who mobbed Mitt Romney as he flew to Washington, and the other people who mobbed Lindsay Graham as he flew home from Washington.
Just so. You are on a great roll, Aaron Miller. Useful idiots was the name for those that, through their unknowing actions, supported the socialist/communist destruction of freedom, liberty and representative government, among other things. Democrats are actively trying to undermine the country and our democratic republic at every step. There are many now on the right who are willing to allow the trashing of the conservative cause and all that was accomplished over the last 4 years, in the name of their unthinking hatred of Trump. Trump was the most conservative president, in practice, since Reagan. Rob calling him the “worst president ever” (silly, childish hyperbole) surely undermines the conservative achievements during that time. How could it not? Useful idiots today are ceding the ground to those intent on the destruction of what we cherish. Don’t be one of them.
Oh, boy. I’ve avoiding this one.
As Gary actively and enthusiastically supported Joe Biden and was even against swishy Martha McSally and others as I remember, this comment says a lot.
There have only been a few of the flagship ricochet podcasts that I have skipped or missed, but I think this might be one. I think I might avoid the non-Delingpole/VDH podcasts for awhile. Dan Senor’s post-COVID postcast was kind of interesting though.