Latest / Words & Numbers / Episode 472: Trumptimism

Transcript

Episode 472: Trumptimism · Words & Numbers

0:00
Today on words and Numbers, the BBC caves.
0:03
The disconnect between education theory and education practice.
0:08
The podcast problem and the administration backtracking, all
0:12
this and more. Coming up next on Words and
0:14
Numbers, a civil original production.
0:16
Check us out at civil.com. That's C ivl.com.
0:21
Hi, I'm James. And I'm Anthony and.
0:22
This is words and numbers. Ant, as is my custom, I ask
0:32
what's new and exciting in your world this week?
0:34
I have an interesting article I've been sitting on for a
0:37
number of weeks, largely because not because it's not
0:41
interesting, but because other timely things were coming along.
0:44
But finally things have quieted down a little bit.
0:46
I can get to this. This is from I found this in The
0:50
Hill, which is a for those who don't know, that's a largely a
0:54
Washington, DC based website that looks at reports news
1:01
having to do with the federal government.
1:03
But I highly recommend it. The Hill we.
1:06
Sometimes publish there. Yeah, yeah, we write, they pick
1:09
up our stuff from time to time. But I ran across this article by
1:13
David Marshall, who's a professor at Auburn University,
1:17
and what he's done here is to to look at 25,000 presentations at
1:27
the American Educational Research Association's annual
1:31
meetings. And for a little bit of inside
1:34
baseball here, I would imagine all or most disciplines have a
1:39
whole bunch of meetings. But generally there's one that
1:42
will stand out that meets annually.
1:44
That's kind of considered the premier annual meeting.
1:48
And this is where researchers go academic researchers to present
1:54
research they've been working on, get some feedback, kind of
1:57
like a last step before you start submitting things to
2:01
academic journals. But what what Professor Marshall
2:04
did here is to look at 25,000 presentations at the American
2:08
Educational Research Association annual meetings.
2:11
This is the premier gathering of educational researchers.
2:17
And then he surveyed over 260 actual school teachers across
2:25
the country, asking them what issues they most wanted to see
2:31
researchers address. And he says the contrast was
2:35
stark. I bet at the at the annual
2:39
meetings, the dominant themes were equity, social justice and
2:43
identity. Those those topics appeared at
2:48
twice the frequency of any other research area, also predictable.
2:52
In contrast, when he asks the actual classroom teachers.
2:57
What are your top concerns? Their top concerns were far more
3:01
immediate and practical. They included student behaviour,
3:04
discipline, mental health, well-being, parental
3:07
involvement, and teacher retention.
3:10
The only area of overlap between the educational researchers and
3:16
the educational practitioners was artificial intelligence,
3:20
which ranked as a top priority for both groups.
3:23
Interesting. And David concludes, I'll quote
3:28
him here. In other words, the nation's
3:30
largest academic research conference has devoted the
3:34
majority of its attention to questions of identity and
3:37
justice, whereas teachers in classrooms are struggling with
3:41
how to get students to sit down, focus and learn.
3:44
Yeah, all of that seems exactly right to me.
3:47
And and look, I can tell you, having gone to the premier
3:52
political science conference a bunch of times in my life, it's
3:57
a pointless waste of time. The only reason rational people
4:02
go is because they can meet up with old friends.
4:06
Yeah, it is. It is that.
4:07
And I've gone to the to the premier economics annual meeting
4:11
a number of times. And if if you're presenting a
4:15
research paper in in an actual session as opposed to some
4:20
session that a friend of yours and his buddies got together and
4:24
created so that your Dean would fund you to go and you can
4:27
actually just spend your time drinking.
4:29
If you go to an actual session, you do get really good feedback.
4:32
I actually had this was, I believe, a couple of years
4:37
before he won the Nobel Prize. So a Nobel laureate sitting in
4:41
my session giving me feedback on my research as an undergraduate.
4:45
Excuse me, not as undergraduate as a graduate.
4:46
Student I mean that's that's pretty nice but political
4:50
science political scientists don't offer helpful suggestions
4:56
they. I heard you guys don't play well
4:58
together. Well, they they do not.
5:00
And it's so unpleasant that I just don't go.
5:03
Wow. The one of the last times I
5:06
went, I was standing with a friend who I will not name but
5:10
who, you know, actually, you'd probably be able to figure it
5:13
out. He is another political
5:15
scientist. We went to the same Graduate
5:17
School. And we were standing in the main
5:21
hall where literally everybody at the conference had kind of
5:25
gotten into the same space. And he looked at me and he said
5:29
a real patriot would put a bomb in the middle of this room
5:35
because even if he killed us too, it would be a benefit to
5:39
the American it. Would be a net benefit.
5:42
Even if the two of us died too. And you could make that joke
5:46
because it was September 4th, 2001 when we were there.
5:52
Oh wow. Yeah, yeah.
5:53
Yeah. We just got that joke in.
5:56
Yeah, actually it was the second or third because I was on the
6:01
flight that crashed one week later.
6:05
Really an earlier version of it. I was on the flight on September
6:09
4th that ended up crashing on September 11th.
6:13
Wow, wow. The crazy things that could
6:17
happen. Just to to wrap up this story
6:20
for for listeners, I want to drive the point home.
6:23
What we've got here is a situation where the the experts
6:28
who are at the cutting edge of figuring out how we can do
6:35
education better, that is, that is their job.
6:37
These are education researchers are spending the majority of
6:42
their time asking questions that the practitioners in the
6:46
classroom who are trying to teach our kids have no interest
6:50
in. Meanwhile, the researchers are
6:52
ignoring the things that actually do matter.
6:55
All right. And look, anybody who's been in
6:56
academia for any length of time would not be surprised by any of
6:59
this. No, no, but I'm hoping that that
7:03
people outside academia are surprised and mad it.
7:07
It would be nice if they were mad, and it would be nice if a
7:09
little pressure got applied from time to time to people who
7:12
involve themselves in utter nonsense all the day long,
7:17
leaving the people there purportedly there to serve.
7:20
High and dry. Now in in defense of the
7:24
academic researchers, my guess is that they will have
7:30
difficulty getting published in academic journals unless they
7:35
talk about equity, social justice.
7:36
And identity? No, that's right.
7:38
Journals themselves have a have a stranglehold.
7:41
On that's right, what these the entire the entire system is
7:45
corrupt. Yep.
7:47
The whole thing anyway. But Speaking of corrupt, I want
7:51
to talk about the BBC. You know, I, I tell you often
7:56
that I get the, the majority of my news on a daily basis from
8:00
the BBC and that I, I enjoy it because they're relatively
8:05
impartial and they don't shout and, you know, it's, it's a
8:09
dignified newscast and, and the like, like.
8:12
American news used to be. Like it used to be.
8:15
And I I even listen to not one, but two BBC podcasts just about
8:19
every day. But the BBC is in a world of
8:26
trouble right now. And as matter of fact, they're,
8:30
I think it was today or yesterday, the director general,
8:34
Tim Davy of the BBC and the CEO of BBC News, Deborah Turnus,
8:41
have both resigned. That's like the number one and
8:45
#2 at the BBC. Right.
8:49
Imagine that. Because, because they edited a
8:54
video of Donald Trump such that it made it seem like he was
9:01
telling people in the crowd on January 6th that we're going to
9:05
March to Congress to, to the, to the Capitol and we're going to
9:09
fight. What they did, what the BBC
9:12
didn't tell anybody, was that there were 53 minutes between
9:15
the two halves of that that utterance.
9:19
Really. The first part of the sentence?
9:22
The second part of the sentence. They had nothing to do with one
9:25
another. They were edited together.
9:27
Wow. And they knew it and they
9:31
published it anyway. And then there was an internal
9:35
memo of some kind. So they knew after the fact and
9:39
the brass didn't do anything about it.
9:41
They're, they are, they are as biased as any other news
9:48
organization as of this moment. And then I, I did a little
9:53
digging into the BBC and apparently there is a wing of
10:01
coverage. They have what they call the
10:05
LGBT desk, and the LGBT desk gets to veto stories that they
10:13
don't like. So anything that's at all
10:16
critical of trans issues doesn't get covered by the BBC.
10:22
What normally when when you have something like that's called an
10:26
LGBT desk or some whatever desk, they're responsible for writing
10:32
the articles, the material that appear, they're not.
10:35
Gatekeepers, they do that too. But they can say that no, that
10:41
story can't run here. And for a news operation that's
10:47
just terrible, you can't do that and be a serious news operation.
10:54
The the BBC, in my eyes, has taken such a hit here that I
10:58
don't know that it's going to recover anytime soon.
11:02
Well. And and.
11:03
Welcome to modern. Journalism.
11:05
I don't care how much you dislike a president, you don't
11:09
get to lie about it. That's just out of bounds.
11:14
Which I guess brings us to the foolishness of the week.
11:19
The foolishness of the week has been kind of like taking over
11:22
the rest of the podcast. Well, this one, I'm I'm pulling
11:27
this off of a website called The Wrap, but it's making the rounds
11:30
everywhere. And it's interesting that you
11:33
started us off with the utter nonsense that is DEI and social
11:37
justice, because here it comes again, aunt.
11:41
And this time it's about you. I mean, it's also, it's also
11:45
about me, but it's mostly about you.
11:48
I'll read you the headline. Podcasting's diversity problem.
11:52
Colon. 64% of hosts are male. 77% of our white USC study
11:59
finds. That's a it it.
12:03
The whole thing is a bit accusatory, right?
12:06
It's not. Oh, look, we look what we
12:08
learned. No, no, no.
12:09
It's podcasting is white guys, and that's bad.
12:13
Well, yeah, all kinds of questions here.
12:15
First off, you know, look, we didn't, we didn't go into
12:20
podcasting because we're white guys.
12:22
We went because we had something to say, right?
12:24
Well, anybody who has something to say, you go into.
12:27
Podcasting we we might have because, right, we were
12:32
privileged enough to be bored and have free time.
12:36
Wow. Yeah, I'm just playing devil's
12:38
advocate here. I think, OK, that's an asinine
12:40
argument. And we look, we were just two
12:43
guys who said, well, I don't know, how about a podcast that
12:45
might be fun? And I'm assuming almost
12:48
everybody else who podcasts did the same thing.
12:52
Right. I see and I literally mean this.
12:56
I see 0 barriers to entry into podcasting.
13:01
You know, but it's interesting. No, I agree with you.
13:04
There's zero barriers to entry, but they're looking at
13:06
podcasting and I don't listen. I don't listen to podcasts.
13:11
It's not my thing weirdly, but I love Reels on Facebook and I
13:18
find I haven't done this study but just going by memory I'd say
13:24
it's a pretty even distribution. Male, female and proportional
13:30
black white. And this is after Facebook is
13:34
doing whatever filtering it does to show me reels it thinks I
13:37
will. Yeah, my, my, my guess is that
13:40
Facebook has its own social justice algorithm.
13:44
Perhaps so. That hadn't occurred to me,
13:46
yeah. And I don't, I don't really, I
13:48
don't really give a damn about that one way or the other.
13:51
I like like most guys our age. I occasionally click on a reel
13:56
and then sometimes I go down the real rabbit hole when I'm not
14:00
doing anything else. Oh no, I'm reels all the time.
14:03
I love them. You're the cooking reels 60
14:05
years old. Spiracy reels.
14:09
You're 60 years old, aren't you? They're great.
14:13
God you're not even answering my question.
14:16
You're you're an old man watching reels.
14:20
Next thing you're going to tell me is you're on TikTok doing
14:22
dances with young people. The thing about Reels, they're
14:27
addictive. They're really, really, in fact,
14:31
Facebook, I notice they started this thing.
14:33
It must have been a month ago, maybe a couple of months ago,
14:36
where you hit the back button, which previously would close it
14:40
out and you're back to your home screen on the phone.
14:43
You hit the back button. No, it scrolls up to the top to
14:46
the next reel. You got to hit it several times
14:49
before it actually closes out the thing.
14:51
And it and you know, invariably what happens is you hit it once
14:54
to close it out and oh, look at that.
14:57
And then you're back into the rabbit hole again.
14:59
What 1 fascinating thing after another and before you know it,
15:03
it's bed, it's bedtime. Yeah.
15:05
The algorithm works on you. Well, see, but but now there's a
15:10
built where I'm concerned, there's a, there's a built in
15:13
fail safe here that kicks me off and that is the later it gets,
15:18
you know, you go to bed, you're reading the reels or whatever it
15:21
is. My glasses are gone.
15:23
I can't see. I can't read them anymore.
15:27
So I have to stop. God, you know on behalf of all
15:32
of our listeners, right? I'm.
15:33
An idiot. Put in God's name is wrong with
15:37
you. We're happy to announce that
15:39
Civil members can join me and James for a new lecture series,
15:43
Words and Numbers Live. Words and Numbers Live is a
15:46
members only series in which James and I talk about issues in
15:49
politics, philosophy and economics.
15:51
We take a deeper dive and then invite listeners for a live Q&A
15:55
session. You could also submit your
15:57
questions for us at wordsandnumberspodcast@gmail.com.
16:02
In the next session, which starts Thursday, November number
16:05
20th at 5:30 PM Eastern, we examine public choice economics.
16:10
To participate in this exclusive series, subscribe to
16:13
civil@civil.com. That's civl.com.
16:17
When you log into civil.com, you'll find an archive of our
16:21
past lecture series, as well as the collection of all our
16:24
episodes of Words and Numbers, as well as announcements about
16:28
upcoming lectures in our new Words and Numbers Live series.
16:31
Subscribe to Civil for $5 a month or $50.00 for for an
16:35
annual subscription. I'm going to talk about a bunch
16:37
of things today that at first blush might not seem to be the
16:42
same thing. But I think we can weave all
16:45
this together to make a pretty strong case that we're talking
16:49
about one thing here. And I want to start with the
16:54
Donald Trump's presidential job approval rating.
16:57
I'm, I'm just using Gallup here for convenience sake.
17:02
Most of the polls mirror one another.
17:06
They're they're all pretty close.
17:09
There's always an outlier or two, but they're pretty close.
17:13
And if you want to check that there, there's an aggregator
17:17
whose name I forget, you would probably know it.
17:20
Yeah, I don't. There's lots of ways you can
17:21
look into this. Yeah, but there are aggregators.
17:23
We can go on one site and see all of the latest, all the
17:26
information all together. What I'm seeing at at Gallup
17:29
comports with what I know to be true.
17:32
Trump's approval rating right this second at at the closing of
17:37
the time of the poll, and it's pretty, pretty constant.
17:41
It is about 41%. OK.
17:44
Right. And and for him in this
17:47
presidency, that's about average.
17:50
So it's. I I recall Obama in his second
17:54
term being around 40% well for for Trump. 40, I think Obama got
18:00
to 41 as well. As I'm scrolling the cursor
18:05
across the screen, you can find George W Bush all the way down
18:09
to 25% at one point. Yeah, profound low, low point
18:15
for him. His father was in the in the
18:19
high 30s. Nixon was down to 24%.
18:24
He's the lowest on the pole. Now the other direction is also
18:29
Truman. I have to correct myself.
18:32
Truman was down to 22. Oh.
18:34
Really. Yeah, but.
18:36
But didn't you say at one point that George W stands out for
18:41
having both the highest and the lowest?
18:42
He. He was extraordinarily high, the
18:46
high point 911. Yeah, it looks like the high
18:49
point for him was 87%. Yeah, which?
18:53
Is what I'm remembering. And oh, wait, wait, wait, no,
18:57
after 911 it looks like it was come on in into the upper 90s.
19:06
Wow. Yeah, yeah.
19:08
Well, and and you know, whatever they there's a lot of variance.
19:12
Here is the the short answer. Well, and.
19:15
And I would say that a lot of what you're seeing there is
19:19
people's attitudes. You know, we all came together
19:23
after 911 or, you know, the economy is doing well.
19:26
You're there's going to be a Halo effect and the president's
19:28
going to get get good ratings. And and in recent enough days,
19:33
Trump was as high as 47, right? Which is not great, but that's.
19:37
More than enough to isn't bad either, right?
19:40
It's more than enough to win the presidency, right?
19:43
We've, you know, especially if you're you're looking at other
19:47
candidates that aren't that appealing.
19:50
You know, Bill Clinton's approval rating was never all
19:54
that high. He was as low as 43%, right?
20:00
He got as high as 67. We're not, this is the world
20:05
we're dealing with, right? We're not.
20:07
We're not dealing with tremendous highs and tremendous
20:11
lows. But there is a certain kind of
20:14
movement with Trump that that is starting to show up in the
20:19
polling data. And between March and November,
20:25
something has has happened. And, and look, let's be honest,
20:28
nothing has happened with Democrats.
20:30
They've hated him the entire time.
20:33
You, you covered this a few weeks back, right?
20:35
It was that Democrats were like 98% unfavorable when they
20:39
thought about Donald. Trump.
20:41
All right. So we're we're not really
20:43
thinking about them. We're thinking about
20:45
independents. That's where the real money is.
20:47
And the independents have gone from 38% approval to 25.
20:52
That's not great. But get this, Republicans have
20:57
gone from 81 to 68. Yeah, that's consistent with
21:01
numbers that I saw a few weeks ago.
21:04
Yeah, Republicans are becoming annoyed.
21:06
They are. And all of a sudden you're
21:10
hearing people say out loud the phrase lame duck president.
21:15
Really. And it we are awfully early in
21:19
the second term for people to be saying that.
21:22
Yeah, you don't hear that till the last year typically.
21:26
Yeah, the last year, the last nine months, they're already
21:30
saying it. Now, it's not being said
21:33
everywhere. I'm, I'm not making the case
21:35
that the world is crumbling around Donald Trump.
21:38
Clearly it's not. I'm looking at the Gallup data
21:41
and he's got a pretty solid base at about 40%.
21:46
But we are seeing unexpected movement in Republicans and
21:50
independents from March to November.
21:52
And that's, that's got to be a little disconcerting.
21:57
And, and I think it gets a little worse than that because
22:02
you remember just a a week or so ago watching Mom Donnie win the
22:08
New York mayor's race and every other big ticket Democrat in
22:14
every other race won that night. Yeah, they they swept, which is
22:19
harbinger, harbinger for the midterms.
22:23
Could be this. Now this was an off off year
22:26
election, right? Which means that there no,
22:29
that's not a congressional year. Next year is the congressional
22:33
year. So you're dealing with a couple
22:35
of mayors here and there, a couple of reps to fill empty
22:38
seats, you know, these kinds of things.
22:41
So it's hard to draw hard and fast conclusions.
22:44
But if I'm in the administration right now, I'm looking at what
22:48
happened that day and I'm looking at the opinion polling.
22:52
And I'm starting to think we might have a problem here, you
22:57
know, And, and if there's a problem, it will manifest
23:01
exactly as as you point to in the midterm elections next year.
23:05
So either things stay the same, get better or get worse.
23:11
That's the universe of possibilities.
23:14
And we we'll take all of it from the administration side.
23:17
So we'll be thinking, like Republicans, things could easily
23:23
get worse because things are getting worse.
23:27
And that's largely economic. And regular people hear from
23:34
Donald Trump that we have the strongest economy we've ever
23:37
had. And then they go to the grocery
23:40
store and they think, is that right, 'cause I can't afford
23:44
these things, I can't afford a car.
23:48
The economy doesn't seem strong. And you've got a very sizable
23:52
percentage of our population who presented with the option of who
23:57
you going to believe me or your own lying eyes are starting to
24:02
say I believe my own lying eyes cause they've got to pay the
24:06
bills. They see them every month.
24:08
We've been seeing this for a while in the consumer sentiment
24:11
data. Consumer sentiment is is at
24:15
almost its lowest point since 1952, and consumers are not
24:19
happy. They're not, but the state of
24:22
the economy, while not great, doesn't warrant that kind of low
24:28
sentiment. Yeah, it does.
24:30
It doesn't, however. It's almost like we have the
24:36
economy has a mild headache, but it's a mild headache that has
24:41
been going on for so long. You just want the pain to stop.
24:45
You've had enough of it. And I think that's what's going
24:47
on. We've been seeing look still
24:50
today on even without. We don't know what the actual
24:53
job numbers are because of the shutdown, but even under a bad
24:57
case scenario, unemployment today is markedly less than the
25:01
pre COVID average. Which is good news.
25:04
But the bad news is month after month after month, since
25:08
2/20/22, it's been rising a little bit.
25:12
But every single month since 2022.
25:15
Just enough so everybody knows somebody who can't find a job.
25:19
Yeah, yeah, might not. People are starting to have
25:22
enough of it, but yeah, it was good.
25:25
Going to be somebody in your friend group, right?
25:26
You're going to know somebody. And it's, it's disconcerting.
25:30
And the president is convinced that everything he's doing is
25:34
exactly correct, and that only good things happen when we all
25:39
listen to him and shut up. But that's not really how the
25:42
economy's been working. It's not.
25:45
And James, I said this before and, and, and anyone who's an
25:49
ardent Trump supporter, I'm going to say it again and pass
25:53
the word on. He could, he could win right now
25:57
by doing one thing, declaring in the way he does things, declare
26:02
victory in this, in this trade strategy that he employed.
26:07
He's forced our trading partners to lower their tariffs and now
26:11
in response, we're going to lower hours now.
26:15
Mission accomplished. Yeah, cancel them all.
26:17
Economy would pick up immediately.
26:20
He would, he would get a huge bump in the polls.
26:24
We'd all be better off. But somehow I don't think he's
26:26
going to do that. He's going to double down.
26:28
I do not know why this is a failed policy.
26:31
But he's, he's wedded to it. He is.
26:35
He is. I don't.
26:36
Know why other than stubbornness at this point?
26:39
He's a, he's a, he's an 18th, 19th century mercantilist in in
26:44
his heart, he, he behaves as a mercantilist.
26:47
Mercantilism has been largely discredited for a couple 100
26:51
years. Oh yeah, at least 2 centuries.
26:54
But but his policies are mercantilist, and we might as
26:57
well just call them that. There's some interesting
27:01
movement, though, happening, and in light of the polling numbers
27:06
and the disastrous election, I think these things make a lot
27:10
more sense than they would have in a vacuum.
27:14
Because that imbecile, Scott Besant has weighed in on the
27:21
200, the $2000 tariff checks that we talked about last week.
27:25
Do you remember and remember how we couldn't figure out who was
27:29
getting them and who wasn't? Right.
27:32
Well, now we know everybody with a household income under
27:37
$100,000. Wow, that's a really different
27:41
answer. Yeah, that's a, that's a lot
27:44
different than everybody. And my guess is the median
27:47
household incomes 80,000. So he's probably hitting I'm
27:50
guessing 60% of the household. That's probably about that's
27:54
about right. So there you go.
27:57
That's interesting. They're still pushing this, but
28:01
they're moderating the push. He Besant.
28:05
Let's stick with Besant for a moment.
28:07
He tells us that quote, substantial UN quote, tariff
28:12
relief is coming on coffee and bananas soon.
28:16
What do coffee and bananas have in common?
28:19
We can't grow it here. Right, that there's no point in
28:23
putting a tariff on them. And that that's the larger
28:26
point. There's a a host of products
28:30
that agricultural mostly right that we cannot grow.
28:34
And the tariffs on them are the most destructive of all tariffs
28:39
'cause there's literally no other option.
28:42
Our option is to buy highly tariffed bananas or nothing.
28:47
It's not like paying for a highly tariffed Toyota or buying
28:51
a Ford. There's no other option with
28:54
bananas. It's yes bananas or no bananas.
28:57
And so too coffee. And people are aggravated at at
29:00
the cost, the skyrocketing cost of coffee.
29:04
I, I am among them. So maybe some relief there, but
29:07
it isn't it interesting that Scott Besant is all of a sudden
29:12
the voice of reason, albeit the very mild and distant voice of
29:17
reason. He has not been reasonable in
29:20
much any way Besant and all of a sudden here we are.
29:25
And Trump has, has said a couple of other things lately that I
29:28
find incredibly interesting today, as a matter of fact, he
29:34
said, and I'm, I'm just about quoting here, the US doesn't
29:41
have enough talent to fill the jobs that we have open.
29:45
We need foreign workers, says President Donald Trump.
29:51
The same guy that's letting the foreigners in.
29:53
Right. And the same guy who's put a
29:56
$100,000 fee on the H1B visas that high skilled potential
30:06
employees come in on. So you made it virtually
30:11
impossible to hire a foreigner into an American job?
30:14
Cause most people don't have $100,000 for an application fee
30:21
right? An application that could be
30:23
could be denied. Well, but even the really high
30:26
skilled ones don't. Yeah, no, that's right.
30:30
But I mean, when I when I first told you that Trump said we
30:33
don't have the talent to fill the jobs, I saw confusion on
30:37
your face, right. It didn't add up.
30:40
It didn't add up given all the other things he said for quite a
30:44
long time now. So he's he's rolling back and
30:52
hold my beer because there's one more and the last one is just
30:58
befuddling in an interview that he did with what was her?
31:02
I didn't even remember her name. Laura Ingraham.
31:04
I think Trump said we we have to let in 600,000 Chinese students
31:13
to American universities. What?
31:15
What? He just threw out a whole bunch
31:18
of a bunch of Chinese students, right?
31:20
But now, I mean, looking back, don't get me wrong, I'm happy.
31:22
I'm just perplexed. It, it is perplexing.
31:26
He is reversing himself on several key policies right this
31:32
second. And I think it has everything to
31:35
do with the opinion polling and and there's further opinion
31:40
polling about the nature of the economy and people don't think
31:45
the economy is doing all that well.
31:47
The number there is actually his numbers on the economy are lower
31:50
than his numbers generally. So if to me this is this is
31:55
heartening. Because I I was afraid that he
31:58
was just going to double down on his policies.
32:01
And the more people resisted him, the more he would stick to
32:05
his guns because he's Donald Trump.
32:06
This is good to see that that he can learn and change.
32:10
Maybe, maybe I, I think that the administration is terrified by
32:14
what might happen at the midterms and, and let let's be
32:18
brutally honest, if the Democrats take over the House
32:21
again, and they're very likely to, the Republicans have a very
32:25
slim majority. So if, if this last off year off
32:29
off year election is any indication of what's going to
32:32
happen nationally. And I think it it kind of is.
32:35
Donald Trump will be impeached again very soon.
32:38
Yeah. 'Cause that's what Democrats
32:40
are. I mean, they can't help
32:41
themselves. That's all they can think about.
32:44
They literally can't help themselves.
32:47
And if they get a majority, do they only need a simple majority
32:51
to convict? On get it to get it rolling, no.
32:54
To get it rolling, yes, but. In the Senate, I mean.
32:57
Yeah, no, it's never going to happen.
32:58
You need 2/3. Or you need 2/3.
33:01
In the Senate, it's never going. To happen, OK.
33:03
It would require that so many Republicans jump ship.
33:09
I mean, everybody knew Bill Clinton was not, was not going
33:11
to be convicted. He was impeached.
33:13
Everybody knew there was no chance of conviction, but
33:17
everybody knew back in Nixon's time that Nixon had no chance,
33:23
yes, that if it got to the Senate, he was going to be out.
33:27
And that's why he resigned. I there's no way Donald Trump
33:31
gets convicted, not with the Senate we have.
33:35
And, and just to be clear, impeachment in the House is
33:40
whatever the House says it is there, there are no rules,
33:44
right? You can't look at the
33:45
Constitution and say, well, impeachment has to fit these
33:49
criteria. Whatever the House says, that's
33:52
what impeachment is. And then whatever the Senate
33:55
says, that's whether you get convicted or not there, there's
33:59
no rule by which you must go this way or that.
34:05
So it's it's a political tool and the Democrats will use it
34:09
primarily because they can and because they know every minute
34:14
that they're pulling that nonsense, Donald Trump is paying
34:17
attention to something other than what he wants to pay
34:19
attention to. So that, you know, I think
34:22
that's the great fear of of the Republican Party right now.
34:26
And they're they're trying to figure out what they can do to
34:28
stave that off, to make the midterm elections go differently
34:32
next time. James and I are delighted to be
34:34
working with Civil. For years we have been pushing
34:37
people to think about how we can make the world a better place.
34:41
Sybil's mission of upgrading society fits exactly with what
34:45
James and I have been talking about for years.
34:47
Civil helps us by allowing us to do what we do best, which is
34:51
researching topics that are important in communicating these
34:55
to our listeners in ways that we hope they find enjoyable.
34:58
To see Civil's extensive list of content, including our podcast
35:02
Words and Numbers and our new lecture series, Words and
35:05
Numbers Live, visit civil.com.civl.com.
35:10
Let me ask you some slightly related questions.
35:14
We're just now coming out of the shutdown.
35:17
I haven't seen the particulars of the news, but both houses
35:22
approved whatever they have to approve.
35:24
And last thing I knew that the thing was on Donald Trump's
35:29
desk. I don't know what he's done with
35:30
it but but nonetheless the the end of the shutdown is insight
35:34
and it came about. My understanding is because 7
35:39
Democrats broke ranks and voted with the Republicans, amongst
35:45
them one of your representatives from Arizona.
35:49
Is that correct? I don't know.
35:51
I don't pay attention to that sort of thing all that much.
35:54
Well, because. I've I saw John, I saw John
35:56
Fetterman had had broken ranks. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, sorry,
36:01
no, no, no. It goes like this.
36:02
They they broke ranks and the deal, as I understand it, was
36:08
that the that the House will seat your representative from.
36:12
Arizona, yeah. She hasn't been seated yet, and
36:15
that was largely because everybody knew she would sign on
36:18
to that Epstein files business. OK, so I've got a cascade of
36:23
questions here. The first one is this business
36:26
about seating. Now the good people of Arizona
36:28
elected her, yet the House of Representatives representatives
36:35
can refuse to admit her. Well, in this case they they
36:40
just delayed swearing her in because they were out of
36:43
session. That's the technical.
36:46
Reason. OK, now the House can refuse or
36:51
expel a member from its its number.
36:54
Regardless of of I mean how, how is that not disenfranchising in
36:59
effect the people that representatives?
37:02
It is, but they can do it. It's part of the system.
37:05
They they can do it doesn't. So doesn't happen, doesn't
37:09
happen. It it doesn't get threatened
37:12
very often, and it happens even less so.
37:16
What just hypothetically, would stop A Congress that was
37:21
majority one party from expelling everybody of the other
37:25
party? Because he could.
37:26
You'd never get away with it. Never get away with it.
37:29
You mean the voters wouldn't stand for it?
37:32
No, not a chance. This is a thing that that almost
37:36
never happens. The George Santos was the last
37:39
one. You remember that Republican who
37:41
just lied about every damn thing, turned himself into a
37:45
cartoon and landed in prison? I vaguely remember that, yeah.
37:50
Yeah, he he. Was like, let me go to my next
37:53
question, which is again my understanding that with the
37:57
seating of your Arizona representative, there are now
38:01
enough votes to what publicize, make, make public the Epstein
38:07
files? Yeah, that's, that's the going
38:10
story. The Senate, I don't think they
38:13
have the votes in the Senate to make that happen.
38:15
Oh. OK, so it's got a, this is like
38:18
a, a bill. It's got to go through both
38:21
House and Senate. I believe so.
38:24
I don't know if there's, I heard early on that there was an
38:28
administrative work around that might make it possible for the
38:32
House to just do it. But nobody's talking about that
38:36
anymore. What they're talking about
38:38
instead is, is infinitely more interesting.
38:41
The speech and debate clause in the Constitution insulates
38:46
members from prosecution for anything they say on the job.
38:52
If you're in Congress, if you're a congressman and you're in
38:57
Congress and, and there's some argument about how far this
39:02
extends, and I don't, I don't care about that.
39:04
But if you're in Congress, in the in the Capitol building, you
39:07
can say anything you want and there can never be prosecution
39:14
of you. And there's a couple of couple
39:19
of representatives who have Epstein file stuff and they say
39:25
they're just going to go in and read it.
39:29
Wow, you can't get them released.
39:30
I know how to get them released. I'm just going to read it out
39:33
loud. Then it goes straight into the
39:35
Congressional Record, and there it is.
39:39
I I presume that more than one group has filed a Freedom of
39:44
Information Act request. Now there's nothing.
39:48
I would presume there's nothing in there that's of a of a secure
39:52
what? What's the term you would look
39:53
for a top secret designation? Yeah, there there is.
39:58
Oh, really? Yeah, you think so?
40:00
Yeah. How far should I go in my
40:02
prediction? It's it's it's not.
40:05
I think other people have come to the same conclusion, I think
40:10
in those files. And the reason I think this is
40:13
the reason why they're not being released in those files is all
40:17
kinds of evidence of very high-ranking members of the
40:21
Israeli government doing all kinds of awful things on Epstein
40:25
Island. Why do you say the Israelis?
40:28
Who else could it possibly be? I'm not following.
40:32
And there's there's a fair amount of evidence that a former
40:35
Prime Minister is among the the visitors.
40:39
I just presumed American politicians, and that's what's.
40:42
Jeffrey, Jeffrey Epstein was, he was a plant, right?
40:48
He was a creation. He didn't create himself.
40:51
Somebody created him. And the almost everybody is
40:56
convinced it was the Mossad. For the purpose of blackmailing.
41:01
For the purpose. Of gathering information and
41:05
black and blackmailing if you have to.
41:07
See, but look at how strange this world is that we live in 10
41:11
years ago, even five years ago, talk like this, I would just
41:15
dismiss as you know, conspiracy theories.
41:17
We all ask about it until a few of them actually turn out to be
41:23
true. And now I have to stop and and
41:25
at least give some shred of a benefit of a doubt to to
41:31
conspiracy theories. Yeah, what what I'm telling you
41:33
is not crazy. It there's a lot of agreement.
41:37
I I'm not going off the deep end.
41:39
I'm in the middle of the pool. There is a deep end.
41:43
I'm not going there. There's a shallow end.
41:46
And to me it seems Pollyannish. From where I sit and from where
41:51
a lot of very smart people sit, it's pretty clear how this all
41:56
came about. Now what?
41:59
What's in the details? All I know is it's terrible
42:04
enough for the United States government as a whole and the
42:09
president specifically to say we can't, we can't do that.
42:13
You might recall Trump ran as candidate Trump saying I'm going
42:17
to release the Epstein files. Oh yeah, yeah, this was a big
42:20
deal. I don't and, and people are out
42:22
there saying that Donald Trump is a pedophile.
42:24
That's the news today that Democrats have have released
42:28
some emails that I don't believe that for a second.
42:32
I really don't. I don't, I don't think he has
42:34
that character at all. But something is being hidden
42:38
because he said he was going to release it and the minute he got
42:40
his hands on it, he refused to release it.
42:43
There's something in there nobody wants to be made public.
42:47
And I don't think it's Trump himself.
42:49
Who? Do you think?
42:52
I do. I do.
42:54
Who among our allies would we never throw under a bus?
42:59
You know, the answer is only Israel, You know, And look, I'm,
43:04
I'm, I'm a supporter of Israel. That's fine.
43:08
I I know what I'm saying. Israel is not our ally exactly.
43:14
They're not our enemy either. But Israel acts in its own
43:17
interest all the time, and only in its own interest.
43:22
If that means that they spy on us, and they do, so be it,
43:26
right? So there are Israeli spies in
43:28
the United States right now. There have been for years.
43:33
Do you think there are British spies in the United States right
43:36
now that we don't? Know about Oh yeah, I, well, I,
43:40
I take it on kind of just as a fact that every country is going
43:44
to have spies in every other country I mean, come on, you
43:47
want to keep tabs on what other people are doing yeah.
43:51
All right. Well, we're getting a bit off
43:52
the rails here, right? You said you had more crackpot
43:55
questions. Well, yeah, the the seating of
43:59
of your representative was, was the big deal.
44:02
We haven't talked about wanting a shutdown and I'm not I'm not
44:05
suggesting we should, but. That's well, look, the shutdown
44:09
is around here. The shutdown is functionally
44:11
over right there. There are still some
44:14
administrative hurdles that have to be gone through, but the
44:17
Democrats walk away from this clear losers.
44:21
Clear losers. Yeah, but I I don't think it's
44:24
over in a in an important sense. We discovered something in COVID
44:31
that economists warned about, but even then we knew
44:35
theoretically it was going to be the case.
44:38
We never actually observed it until the COVID lockdowns.
44:41
And that is that you can't turn off something large in the
44:46
economy without a very long period of start up to get it
44:51
going again. You know, we're still feeling
44:54
reverberations of supply chain problems from the lockdown of in
44:59
2020 here five years later. And I submit that we're going to
45:04
be feeling reverberations of this shutdown for some time. 1
45:10
Case in point, a friend of mine who's involved in in aviation
45:15
said, you know, you can put all the air traffic controllers back
45:18
to work tomorrow and you're not going to clear up the problems
45:23
that were caused for a number of months.
45:26
Well, yeah, there's a ripple effect and it's going to going
45:28
to take a while. Look, we're going to have this
45:31
air tariffs, too, Reagan. Fired all the air traffic
45:34
controllers when they went on strike.
45:36
Yeah, one of the finest moments of the American presidency,
45:40
right? They had a no strike clause.
45:41
They went on strike and he said you're all fired.
45:44
Yep, a baffling move. Most people said, oh, he's a
45:47
crazy old man. He can't do it.
45:48
And the next thing he did is he took all the military air
45:51
traffic controllers and he said go man the stations, you guys do
45:54
it. No interruption.
45:56
No, not really. I mean, there was interruption,
45:59
but. Yes, but that, on the other
46:01
hand, there were a lot fewer Americans flying back then.
46:04
And there are look. I'm I'm not saying that this is
46:06
what Trump should have done or I'm just saying there are these
46:10
options, right? And you have to avail yourself
46:13
of them from time to time. But, you know, look, the
46:16
totality of the evidence right now points to Republicans being
46:20
very nervous. And they're rolling back some of
46:25
their most extreme positions. And isn't that isn't that
46:29
interesting? Because that's a tacit admission
46:33
that you know you went too. Far and it's it's also democracy
46:39
slash Republic at work. You're.
46:41
Supposed to be a government. Yeah.
46:44
The the. Compromises public, it has to,
46:49
you don't always get your way, but the massive people generally
46:52
most of the time get their way and that's the best you can hope
46:56
for. And, and you know what people
46:58
will say? Well, I, why on earth should we
47:01
have 600,000 Chinese students here?
47:03
They're all spies. There's going to be a fair
47:06
number of them who are in fact spies.
47:07
That that's how that works. But 600,000 students paying full
47:12
tuition at US universities and colleges keep universities and
47:18
colleges open. Right.
47:21
Without they actually thousand Chinese students, we would shut
47:25
down a number of colleges that are fully functional right now.
47:30
These foreign students pay full sticker price generally and in
47:35
so doing they're they are subsidizing American students.
47:38
American students chunk of the academic scholarship that you
47:42
get or sports scholarship that you get is coming from the fact
47:46
that there's a foreign student who's paying full, full ride.
47:50
That that's exactly right. So, you know, before you
47:53
complain about it, ask yourself about the secondary effects,
47:57
because that's where it gets really interesting.
47:59
And there are secondary effects all the time.
48:02
And you think about the H1B visas, right?
48:04
Where all of a sudden we are short scientific knowledge,
48:10
scientific practitioners and they exist in other places and
48:15
want to come here, but they can't.
48:20
So all of a sudden we're going to we're going to lighten that
48:23
weight on them a little bit because come to find out, we
48:28
can't service all of our needs with home grown things,
48:33
including human things. And there you go.
48:37
So I'm fascinated by this right now.
48:40
I want to see the regime is clearly drifting, purposefully
48:45
drifting, but moving in very slow, nearly imperceptible
48:49
steps. Right?
48:51
Nothing crazy. Nobody's coming out and saying
48:53
we were wrong about everything. Let's change our minds.
48:56
They're just saying, OK, we're going to roll this back so your
48:59
bananas and your coffee don't kill you anymore.
49:02
And everybody could just be happy about that for a minute.
49:05
And then we're going to let these students in.
49:07
And that's going to have the net effective keeping some colleges
49:11
open and keeping the prices down for the rest of you.
49:14
And we're going to bring in some scientists again to get things
49:19
rolling in certain industries that haven't been.
49:22
And then we're not going to look like a bunch of crazy people
49:27
when the midterms come. And we're going to bank on the
49:30
on the hope that the Democrats do what Democrats always do and
49:36
shoot themselves. Not in one foot, buddy.
49:38
And two, right before the election, they will find a way,
49:42
right? If if I'm a Republican
49:44
strategist, I'm saying look, just look reasonable for a while
49:49
and let them take care of it. Right.
49:53
Actually, I feel really good about this conversation.
49:56
I have hope for our Republic for the again, for the first time in
49:59
a long time. It seems to be because I was, I
50:03
was seriously afraid that we had gotten into a cycle of of going
50:09
back and forth between two extremes.
50:11
And in here I hear echoes in what you're saying.
50:14
I hear echoes of Clinton's second term, when he actually
50:18
became a much, much better president, when he the same
50:22
thing happened to him. The Democrats took a drubbing in
50:25
the midterms and Clinton realized, look, I'm going to
50:28
have to govern from the center. I'm going to have.
50:31
To compromise, it was great because instead of chasing all
50:35
the lunacy that his left wanted him to chase, he chased welfare
50:40
reform. Yeah, something that Republicans
50:43
have been asking for for decades.
50:46
And he became a hero to to all. At the time, he was actually
50:52
pretty well regarded, but not until he had a Republican
50:56
Congress. He and Newt Gingrich together
51:01
did some good things. His nemesis?
51:04
Yes, together they did good things.
51:06
That neither of them would have done without the.
51:11
Yep, Yep. So OK.
51:14
I. OK, let's see what happens right
51:16
now the, the, the House and the Senate are so evenly divided
51:21
that, you know, one or two peel off and you got a real problem.
51:24
And that's enough to keep real Lucy from happening.
51:26
So let's, let's see how it goes. And now we wait for the Supreme
51:29
Court on tariffs. I'm, I'm pretty convinced it's
51:34
six to two, six to three or seven to two against the
51:37
tariffs. And that'll be that.
51:39
We'll see. But for right now, hey, let's
51:43
take the win, live in the middle for a minute, take a deep
51:47
breath, not hate each other and just say hey, this wasn't a bad
51:51
day at all. And and be nice to each other
51:55
because why not, right? Today's been a pretty good day.
51:58
Be nice to each other. I'll catch you next time, man.
52:00
See you next time, James. At Words and Numbers.
52:02
We spend a lot of time talking about what's going on in the
52:05
economy and the government, but fundamentally, all of this boils
52:08
down to one thing. The greatest threat facing
52:11
modern society is a lack of respect, that people who
52:14
disagree somehow find it difficult, if not impossible, to
52:18
discuss their differences in a civil manner.
52:20
We at Civil are interested in upgrading civilization by
52:23
encouraging people to engage with new ideas and ultimately
52:27
engage civilly with each other. If you share this idea, please
52:31
joinusbysubscribing@sybil.com.civl.com.