Episode 844: Trump's Minneapolis Climb-Down

a climb down in minneapolis and trump threatens iran plus what do we make of his comments on housing we'll discuss all this and more on this edition of the editors i'm rich larry and i'm joined as always by the right honorable Charles C.W. Cook, the grill master Phil Kline, and the notorious MBD, Michael Brendan Doherty. You are, of course, listening to a National View podcast. Our sponsors this episode are the University of Austin and the Witherspoon Institute. More about both of them in due course. If for some reason you're not already following us on a streaming service, by the way, you can find us everywhere from Spotify to Apple Podcasts. And if you like what you hear here, please consider giving us a glowing five-star review wherever you listen to your podcast. If you don't like what you hear here, please forget I said anything. So before we get into it in earnest, let's hear from our friends at the University of Austin. 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So MBD, we have Tom Homan on the ground in Minneapolis, held a press conference yesterday. We're recording Friday where he outlined a lot of progress according to him. Keith Ellison told him that counties can alert ICE when they're releasing illegal aliens from their jails. He said he's talked to police officials there who say, and he's made the case that they seem receptive to, that the police should respond and help immigration agents when they're threatened by mobs. And he said, look, we're just going to focus on the worst of the worst, targeted raids against criminal aliens, and all this is going to happen, and we're going to be able to draw down federal resources. What do you make of it? I think it's an intelligent place to land, although it is, like, in a way, a kind of, you know, a kind of surrender from the administration. it is I say it's intelligent because the administration has been focusing on criminal illegal aliens illegal aliens who committed other crimes that's an approach they've taken a lot elsewhere they haven't they chose this kind of more confrontational door to door strategy in Minneapolis because of reporting about the Somali fraud and because they wanted, I think, the drama of confronting a sanctuary city and its policies. And so they're kind of backing down to normal, but doing so while getting more cooperation locally. So in a sense, they're like, I think they're hoping to take some of the sanctuary city policies out of the sanctuary city. and that's good but again this is not you know like it's not clear that they're getting that right it's not 100% clear and then it's also like you know it opens them up to criticism you know I saw Megyn Kelly ripping them you know saying like this isn't what I voted for you know I voted to get them all out and you know I wrote this week that I've wanted to see worksite enforcement and prosecution of criminal employers to turn off the magnet. But instead, we're going to go with this other strategy. And listen, there's plenty to go. And of course, it makes sense to focus where an illegal alien has committed another crime. You're talking about removing someone that is a really noxious presence in our society and has no right to be here. So that is a good thing. But again, I think it's a kind of signal that the administration thinks it can't win, you know, win the battle of Minneapolis, as it were. Yeah. So I've been at two minds of this, mostly on the second point I'm going to make here. But on the one hand, they didn't need to do this. They didn't need to send 3000 guys to Minneapolis, driven by sanctuary policies, but also by the online outrage about the Minneapolis fraud. So it was, in a sense, chasing headlines in that way. and not necessarily. Why are you doing this in Minneapolis rather than L.A. or Chicago was kind of chasing online interest. On the other hand, as we've talked about before, it's just a terrible thing to have mobs, in effect, getting their way. Now, it's not a total back down, but they are winning. And I think the mobs are winning, and there is an incentive for Waltz and Fry to basically not give them anything, right? Blood is in the water. It seems like they're determined to stand down no matter what. So how much do you actually need to give at the end of the day? And Phil, we've seen three notable climb downs from the president, right? We've seen the subpoenas of the Fed chairman, Jerome Powell. Now, one argument is the White House didn't really know about them. Maybe that's true, but they certainly immediately said, This is a really bad idea. Climb down on Greenland, climb down on this. You might want to throw in climb down on Iran, at least his initial threats. We're going to talk in the second segment about the current round of threats. But this has always been an aspect of Trump and extreme flexibility. He wants maximum power and he wants to get what he wants, but he also has his political antenna up. And if he thinks things are going the wrong way, he can adjust much more quickly than people around him. And this was an aspect of how Kristi Noem got caught out. She was making the maximalist Trumpist type defense when Trump was deciding as he was watching TV, ah, maybe that's not the right call here. Yeah, and this morning we actually might be seeing a bit of a climb down off of the climb down because he was posting the latest video that emerged of Freddie on earlier in the month, spitting on a police or immigration enforcement vehicle and then actually kicking out the taillight. and it was kind of unhinged behavior that doesn't necessarily that doesn't absolve or really factor into him being shot I mean he deserved to be shot weeks later but it at least punctures the idea that he was this sort of just you know, just sort of some nurse who happened to be passing by and trying to, you know, aid a lady who was pushed down. It was clearly, that's clearly. And so Trump today said, Freddie's stock has fallen. And he now said he's an agitator and insurrectionist. He used the term insurrectionists. So, you know, clearly I think the malleability is also dependent on how the optics of how things are playing. So I think when he saw a lot of the initial footage of him, of the border agents shooting a, uh, an, on a disarmed guy, um, he became frustrated, made some changes, But now when this other video emerges, he kind of wants to make clear that he's not on board with the idea of Preddy as some sort of martyr and heroic figure. So it could change day to day. Yeah. So Charlie, we've talked offline a lot about that second video. And just show Preddy just totally unhinged. And I think it puts what he was doing in the second incident into some very telling context. But he was not a protester. He was, if you want to call him an insurrectionist or an agitator or whatever it is, but this is direct violent action against federal agents. He committed a crime kicking out that taillight, and he's armed the entire time. I mean, he's lucky something awful didn't happen the first time around. Yes, he is. I'll reiterate what Phil says. The existence of the second video doesn't change the facts of the first case, which was actually the second case chronologically. But it does alter a couple of things. One is the claim that he was a peaceful protester. He wasn't. And that claim has been advanced. it's been advanced quite widely there have even been figures who have suggested that he was some sort of hero or the perfect man anna navarro said perfect perfect boyfriend perfect man good samaritan just joe scarborough i was watching an abc news clip when i was searching stuff on youtube one of their reports and they they refused to refer to him as anything else but ICU nurse, like over and over and over again. Right. And why does that matter? Well, it matters because that narrative has been smuggled in. You can't simultaneously keep it smuggled in and say, well, why does it matter? It has to matter or you wouldn't have smuggled it in. So it is a political, not a legal case. But the political case has been made that he was a peaceful protester, a good person who was gunned down for no reason. And that's not true. That doesn't justify what happened. I think it was a bad shooting. But it isn't true. He was clearly an unhinged activist. And I use unhinged deliberately. The video shows him saying, effing assault me mother effer. And it shows him kicking out a taillight in a manic rage. so it matters for that reason it also matters because it shows that ICE is not arresting people who are committing crimes in that second video the first incident 11 days earlier, Pretti commits a crime that's indisputable he kicks out the taillight of a federally owned SUV If the taillight is under $1,000 in value, that's a misdemeanor. If the taillight is over $1,000 in value, which it is, if you look it up, that's a felony. So he committed a felony, and he did so while armed. there are laws that alter the severity of the crime if one is armed while one commits it so he really should have been arrested detained and charged with a federal crime and he wasn't. When people say, well, why does it matter? What they mean is that it doesn't matter to the later incident. That's true. What they mean is that he was not being judged cumulatively at the moment he was shot. That's true. What they mean is that the analysis that obtains in the later case still obtains irrespective of the video. That's true. But it does matter. and I think attempts to pretend otherwise are disingenuous. So MBD, Democrats clearly feel as though they have the whip hand on this issue, also at the national level. So we have this dispute over a DHS funding bill that was part of a bigger tranche of funding and there was some chance there'd be a partial government shutdown. Still might happen, but as we speak, there are talks over a deal to cleave off this DHS funding past everything else, something that Republicans had been opposed to, and Democrats are pushing a bunch of reforms or so-called reforms. They don't want ICE operating off the basis of administrative warrants. They want judicial warrants, which would be a massive change and basically make it really difficult for ICE to do anything that it's doing. They want body cameras. They want masks off. They want other forms of identification. The only thing I'd be open here to myself is one, if they have some sort of number, it should be clearly visible, some sort of identifying number. But I don't think you can unmask them in the current circumstances. And body cameras, I'm always in favor of in theory, but someone who knows much more about this area than I do says it's actually difficult to use body cameras when you're going from jurisdiction, jurisdiction for technical reasons. But the warrant thing is, I fear they have a potent issue there because it sounds like, oh, who could oppose more rigorous standards for warrants when it would really be a kneecapping interior enforcement? Yeah. So a couple of things. I'll just quickly express myself on the other issues. I'm normally in favor of body cams because I think that tends to work in favor of the cops. Like it just historically it's, it's been, I think, uh, an own goal by progressive activists to ask for body cams because you end up seeing how vicious and violent criminals are when they're resisting arrest and you, you naturally side with the cops. Um, and again, I agree with you in the current environment. I don't, you know, unmasking, I think is a bad idea. we've seen the reporting in Minneapolis is that the resistance is extremely sophisticated. They have extensive shared databases of license plates, photographs, photographs of civilians they think are on the side of ICE that they've identified for harassment. So yeah, I totally understand why ICE is masking up. even if I don't like it. And then the judicial warrant issue. I mean, this is a thing where, you know, right now, basically the Department of Homeland Security can kind of issue an administrative warrant through the power of the Attorney General and the Department of DHS. And that's what we've always done for immigration cases, pure immigration cases, because it's a civil issue. and deportation is not like a considered like a punitive act of the justice system. But if you require a judicial warrant, you have to bother a circuit court judge for it. And there are only 700 of them in the country. They are very busy as they are imposing a duty on them to handle warrants for every single arrest of an illegal alien when you're doing mass deportations, I mean, it would, you know, I think Democrats think like, oh, this is a way, you know, we can slow things up, you know, probably about half of the judiciary are appointed by Democrats. Maybe they'll slow walk these and we can kind of just slow the whole thing down. But it would actually cripple the judiciary itself. I mean, if you had an ICE agent or Border Patrol agent who knew the whereabouts of an illegal alien in the middle of the night, they could call a judge at 2 in the morning. And they would. They would have an emergency reason to do so. This is done all the time. And judges have to answer these calls. You would be absolutely ruining the lives of like 700 circuit judges to do this. I just don't think people have thought this through at all practically. And it's a silly proposal. You know, again, this is also a function of the pure scale of lawlessness we've allowed for decades, especially under Democratic administrations and especially under Joe Biden. When you allow millions of people to break the law, resolving that is a titanic project and it requires tons of man hours. and if you're going to add even one legal requirement onto it it ends up being a massive burden to the whole legal system which everyone needs access to I'd have to say MBD just listen to you talk there it is amazing even with the difficulties and maybe a bit of a climb down here that we are debating how to get people out in a big way, in a way that we haven't for decades and decades and decades So it's a symptom of how important this issue was in the last election. Phil Kline asks a question to you. I'm going to double barrel it. So I was on with Mark Halperin on his show on the Megyn Kelly Network yesterday. And he asked me, which I'll ask all of you as well, you're hypothetically in a ride along with ICE agents. and they're going past the Home Depot and there are a couple guys standing there just wanting to do some yard work or sheetrock work or whatever it is and ICE picks them up and it emerges, you are hypothetically totally certain these guys are fine guys They haven hurt anyone They don want to hurt anyone They abiding by the rules except for working illegally and being here illegally But they just fine people They're not criminals. They haven't hurt anyone. Would you favor in that circumstance? Would you say, you know what? Let's just let these guys go. This one's not a big deal. No foul, no harm. Let's let them go. And the double barrel, second part of it is an abroad policy. context, would you favor some form of amnesty and or comprehensive immigration reform now or sometime in the foreseeable future? Yeah. So if it were me, I think given that we're a nation of laws, I don't see how, you know, I could arbitrarily say, hey, like I had a nice conversation with these guys. So the laws don't apply to them. So I think we'd have to apply the immigration laws to them. I think broadly, I think that there is, if we had a long kind of blue sky conversation about like, could we have, you know, is there some sort of comprehensive of immigration reform that at the end of the day resulted in some form of amnesty? Is that something that theoretically there are circumstances under which I could support it? I'd say yes. The problem is I don't see that our political system is in, it's in any way possible to create the type of system under which we'd get to that sort of deal. Like if you had a deal in which you knew that if people were granted amnesty and they were kind of, it took a long time for them to come citizens. So it wasn't like a huge advantage that they got by creating laws and they weren't eligible for to collect benefits for a certain period of time and the whole list of things. But I think that the main thing is, you know, ensuring that it wouldn't encourage another wave of people to come in, assuming that eventually we just give up and have amnesty. And that's fundamentally the problem and was the issue with the 1986 amnesty. And so if you could guarantee that for 50 years, we'd seal the border and people wouldn't just be able to come flood in, there's a stronger case for amnesty. But it's hard to justify that if I think that Gavin Newsom or whoever becomes president and they just let millions of other people in. And then you have to give them amnesty in 10 years. Charlie? I would advocate the deportation of your hypothetical nice guys because laws are laws. We should be able to determine who we want to come in and who we don't want to come in. And the only way to do that is to have laws distinguished between the two and then enforce those laws, even if the people they're being enforced against are nice. I am implacably opposed to amnesty for a couple of reasons. First, I see no reason for it. I don't understand why we would owe that to those who have chosen to break our laws. I feel no obligation whatsoever to accommodate them. Second, as Phil said, I don't think that it would work. We've already seen how difficult it is for a president who ran on mass deportations, who has 60% of the public in favor of mass deportations to actually do it. The idea that we would get a deal that would be enforceable seems to me far-fetched. Last time we tried that in the 1980s, it didn't work. We got the amnesty and not the enforcement. So I'm against it. I will say, though, that if we had some moment of national unity and we could get a deal, I will take some form of amnesty in return for the permanent repeal of the 16th Amendment. All right, so MBD, we so far have immigration restrictionists dreaming the answers. The Home Depot guys are going home, and we're not doing comprehensive immigration reform. Sorry. I'm not going to tell immigration enforcement how to do their job while they're literally in the job and I'm a guest in the car. you know what I mean like just as a matter of socialization I just think it's wrong but I will give the other side of the case that Charlie just gave I think my head is with Charlie but there is a part of me that says you know custom is the best interpreter of the law and you know if we've been tolerating this lawlessness for decades, that matters. You're shaping people's expectations that this law doesn't really apply. So, for instance, there's a county in New Jersey that has blue laws, but there's a giant mall that's been defying them. and it's you know will the county actually enforce the law or is the law effectively defunct um and i i just i think it is a whiplash to say like well for decades we didn't enforce this now all of a sudden we are i do i do think there's just a human element where it's it's it affects the justice of it that doesn't but I'm as a political matter I do think I still kind of stick to where Phil is which is that you know the reason we have to be implacable is because the other side has not been honest about enforcement in the future and in effect we have to like show them like, no, we, we want to mean what we say until then, you know, enforce the law. Yeah. So I agree with all of you guys that the Home Depot guys, just, they, they got to go. I'm allergic to the term comprehensive immigration reform. What it has meant the last decade or so is increased levels of legal immigration, fake interior enforcement and a massive amnesty. But all that said, if you could let me write an immigration deal, and if, and these conditions are important, and as Phil and Charlie point out, might be unrealizable, but if we know the border is secure in a durable way, such that any form of amnesty is not going to be a magnet. And if we can drastically reduce the level of illegal immigrants in the country now, and I could trade major reforms in the legal immigration system to really make it high-skilled, merit-based, and there's some standard, I don't know exactly what it is, you've been here 10 years, you've been here 15 years, you can show you've been an honorable person in that time, I'd be open to such a deal. With that, let's hear from our second sponsor of this episode, the Witherspoon Institute. 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So Phil Klein, the threats, as I mentioned in the first segment, threats against Iran that were briefly off. For now, back on again. We have an aircraft carrier headed back into the Middle East region. Now, maybe this isn't as notable as everyone is making it out to be because it was highly unusual to have an aircraft carrier in the Caribbean. It's not so unusual to have an aircraft carrier back where we have one headed. But Trump has made very stark threats that Iran has to cut a deal with us or we're going to attack them. The phrasing here, I don't have it in front of me, was quite amusing. It's like with great enthusiasm or something like that. What do you make of it? I would say at this point that some sort of U.S. military action against Iran is more likely than not. Doesn't mean it's guaranteed. Doesn't mean Trump couldn't change his mind. But my sense from listening to Trump's statements, trying to read the tea leaves, is that basically the wheels are in motion and that we may very well have crossed the point of no return to where essentially we're going to act in some way. now Trump has sort of pivoted a bit I think in part because he missed the window to sort of take advantage and take action during the midst of the protests to try to maybe see if there are any targets that he could hit that would tip the balance of the protesters or encourage them more As far as we could tell, the protests have died down substantially and that. Yeah, they killed thousands of people, right? Yeah, the slaughter of protesters seemed to have been effective. Trump last night, and it's sort of classic, you know, Trump, like, talking at the Kennedy Center before the premiere of the documentary on Melania, was sort of taking questions about war and peace and the potential actions against Iran. And he had mentioned that they killed thousands of protesters. So essentially, that was a red line that he had drawn. And he's basically acknowledging they crossed his red line that he said would trigger military action. um however at the time a few weeks ago when protesters were in the streets he had said help is on the way keep keep at it um if you know depending on what happens that could be looked at as an you know egregious heartless thing to say if given that you know people were dying you know if people thought, oh, America is about to come to save us, so we should go out to protest and then they get killed, that's an awful thing. But recently he's pivoted back to the nuclear program and saying, you know, he'd love to make a deal, but if not, he's going to attack. Now, Iran came out with some statement today, said they're open to talk about nuclear weapons, but this has always been the dance with Iran that has been going on for decades is they'll claim, well, we don't have nuclear weapons ambitions, but then they won't give up uranium enrichment. They won't give up ballistic missile manufacture and development. So the question basically where we are now is that if Trump wants to cut some sort of deal and get Iran to agree to something that he claims, he wants to claim that he got them to back down on something, it seems that avenue's open. If he actually wants to stick to the statements that he said in the past, I don't think he's going to get that type of deal for Iran. Iran's not going to give up ballistic missiles, it's not going to give up enrichment. So if he wants a real deal or military action, I don't think that I think that it's going to lead to military act. That's why. And it just does feel like he's kind of itching to kind of do something. So I kind of think something happened. It could happen by the time we record another edition of the editors. And again, could be wrong. you know, Trump could wake up and change his mind, but that's just what it feels to me like. Yeah. So Charlie, it's just amazing Trump's ability. And we've talked about this a lot before, but he still has this capacity to have this kind of black box deterrent threat that you just, you don't, you don't know what's in there. You don't know whether he's going to do it or not. I tend to think Phil's probably right. It's more likely than not, but who knows? Because he could Just turn around and find some reason tomorrow to be satisfied. No, I think you've misunderstood what's going on here, Rich. What's happening here is Trump, because he is such a letter of the law guy, is obviously winding up to ask Congress for permission to go into Iran. And he's making sure that he's got all of his asks ready so that at no point in the future as the executive does he exceed his congressional authority. Yeah, so like a huge element of Trump's governance, right, is just maximum flexibility for himself, right? He gets to decide. And one reason you don't get as much leaking about this stuff as you do in some other past administrations, there's no process. They're not a bunch of people read in, you know, it's like Whitcoff and Rubio and maybe Ratcliffe and Trump, but Trump just decides. It's entirely up to him. And he's, of course, he's not going to Congress. He's not doing interagency process. It's governance through truth social posts. yes i mean as a practical matter i'm of course being facetious but as a practical matter one of the arguments against the involvement of congress in these things is that it does ruin the element of surprise now that doesn't matter when you've just been attacked by japan clearly everyone knows you've been attacked by japan including the japanese and they know what's going to happen next and so if you go to congress and ask for a declaration of war and you get one it's changed nothing. In this case, it would make a difference, at least the first time. If you ask for an authorization for the use of military force against Iran, subsequent attacks would not need to be telegraphed. But in this case, the first one would, that doesn't make it legal, but it does, as a practical matter, change the way that it works. And if you add that to Trump's mercurial nature that is probably an asset for him, as we've observed before, on the world stage. He is somebody who runs on instinct. He also has an advantage over almost every other president in that he is such a character and his control over his party is so extensive that he knows, by and large that whatever he decides to do his side as it were will go with him right and that's not usually true and it's sometimes true but if you look at say barack obama when he was trying to build the case to go into syria he didn't have the support of his own side his party was skeptical Progressives were skeptical. There was a petition put together by Move On and other left-wing groups. So he has not only the instinct to keep the other party, in this case Iran, guessing, but he has the flexibility to do it as well because he's implicitly trusted by Republicans. Now, I don't think that's a good thing. I think having too much faith in a president coupled with a legal regime that allows the executive to freelance on foreign policy independent of Congress is a bad thing, but it is nevertheless a thing. And that's what we're seeing here. So MBD, if I were Ron, I'd take this pretty seriously and I'd be doing everything I could to open a negotiation right now, I'd be talking a little bit like, you know what, maybe you could get a cut of our oil. You know, whatever it took to make them go away and play for time. But this ask from Trump is a big one. Just totally ripping up the nuclear program is a big ask on its own. But then the missile program as well, they wouldn't be able to hit Israel and basically they'd be held harmless if Israel wanted to hit them, giving up in their proxies around the region, including Hezbollah, another tool they have against Israel. and a way to project power, it's impossible to see, as Phil said, Iran agreeing to all this. Now, it's also very hard to see anything that can be done really to bring down the regime, unless you kill the supreme leader and try to kill everyone around him. Maybe that does it. But otherwise, mowing the grass, as they say, on the nuclear program and hitting missile sites, It's hard to see how that would shake the regime and its foundations. Yeah, I think earlier in an earlier episode, I said that we had a kind of unstable policy in Venezuela. I think we have an unstable policy in Iran, right? I mean, in a way, like I felt last summer after the bombing of Fordow, there was a, um, a kind of three or four days cycle where Donald Trump seemed to be putting a total exclamation point on it Like this is it We utterly destroyed it It totally destroyed obliterated done Like don bother me about this Like I want to move on to another subject And then like, we get drawn back and then there's another ultimatum. And then there's another, then there's native protests. And suddenly there's pressure from, you know, a perpetual lobby that I think has existed since I was born for a major intervention against the Iranian regime to not blow this chance. You may never get this chance again and then it doesn't happen or the experts come back and say we're not sure that any one particular strike we're ready to do would tip the balance here and we're thrown back it again. And mowing the lawn can be expensive. I mean, as I said, this last summer, we were told by the administration itself that we had set back the nuclear program by two years. And I said, at the time, I thought that was a problem because the bunker busters we used, their replacement, the next generation penetrator, the schematics weren't due for another 18 months, let alone the production of them. So if you're mowing the grass, you want to make sure you actually have a lawnmower ready for next season. I'm not sure we're there yet with Iran. I'm very curious what they're going to do. At the same time, Donald Trump could turn around in another week and say he wants to start rebuilding the Iran deal. Like, I mean, he hasn't definitively given up on that. MBD, let me do a snap, individualized exit question just for you. Sure. As a paleo slash realist, what is your letter grade for Trump's foreign policy overall? No major Middle Eastern wars, but very interventionist in his way. it's a it's a B minus I would say I'd like to see him drive to a conclusion in Ukraine if it's possible and I'd like to see more readiness focused on the Pacific where it seems like we're not ready I think the We had an extensive discussion before we started recording about World War II, as we often do, actually. We're talking about Neville Chamberlain, and the advantage of appeasement was kind of playing for time. I think you can argue – the administration has been remarkably soft on China. You know, some trade shots fired back and forth. The argument you can make for what they're doing is that it's just playing for time. We want to build up and get ready. well i think i mean i see this is the thing is like when you say foreign policy too if you include trade which i i do think of trade as partly a foreign policy issue i mean i think we have been decoupling from china at a pretty huge rate um and china's out there searching for other partners to dump its cheap goods on and we're importing from all sorts of new countries um to replace them so i actually think that's happening quickly but as far as like moving more material into the Pacific to deter China, that hasn't happened, and I'd like to see that happen. So, Phil Klein, the exit question to you first, non-second order exit question. We have new data showing people continuing to leave blue states. If you could move, let's say you have to move. I don't know how much you like the state where you're living now, but if you could move or had to move to another state, what would it be? I think Wyoming. I think just because of the, you know, natural beauty of Wyoming would be amazing. But it would, on the other hand. Fresh cattle to put on the grill. Yeah. On the other hand, it would be hard to find a mignon there of, you know, 10 other Jews to worship with. So that would be the, that's always the sort of limiting factor. But if, you know, just putting that aspect aside, I think that Wyoming, I've visited 42 states and Wyoming's the most beautiful place I've been to. Have you been to Utah? Yes. You think Wyoming's more beautiful than Utah? Yeah. I do like Utah, but I'm more of a Wyoming guy. Charlie Cook. if i had to move out of florida yeah sorry but i don't want to move out of florida rich where would i move well if i were moving to try to keep the political status quo tax rates expectations zoning so forth i would move to texas if i didn't care about any of that and were willing to put up with garbage governance i would move to southern california yeah so what what's the the do you prefer there may have been personal reasons you ended up in florida rather than texas let's put those aside do you think florida is preferable to texas i think it is in some ways and it isn't in other ways i think it's preferable because it is prettier on balance and it has a lot of beaches and coastline. It's mostly beaches and coastline. Property taxes are lower. The government spends less. And of course, near and dear to my heart, it's full of roller coasters in a way that Texas is not. I think that Texas is superior in that texas is more vibrant it's more entrepreneurial it's less old yeah and there is probably more opportunity there if you're starting up so i think both are wonderful states i love being in both yeah i have a friend who's lived in new york city for years and years and then was considering when he was considering getting out with his family his take and this of the exaggeration and simplification, maybe not fair, but he thought Florida was more full of people who had done stuff and Texas had more people who were doing stuff. So he chose Texas. Although people like you are in Florida and doing stuff as we speak, of course. MBD, you got to move. Where is it? In the United States? Yes, a state. This is so difficult. It's difficult because most of the like states that are politically sympathetic or not um you know they're like landlocked and i'd like being near the ocean well there's florida yeah there's florida um you know a big florida guy a little humid um yeah the summers are brutal north florida is much less humid than people think especially on the beach that's interesting i mean i i've never been uh to north florida i should check it out um you know i want to say like we should we should have a live taping in jacksonville please come down charlie's uh fan base is most intense it's a bombing barmy 54 degrees today i am i am like deeply attracted to the kind of climate and landscape of Santa Fe. I've never been. I've never been. People say it's great. It's so nice. Yeah, I just think that kind of, I don't know, it's not quite a desert. It's not quite a, it's got like a desert climate, but it's not an actual desert. What do they call it? It's like the same sort of environment like Mongolia is like a steppe environment. that's your endorsement of santa fe partly yeah but absolutely there's the kind of mongolia but american country you'd move to if if we could if we could if we have mongolia itself it's not anything about like the culture of mongolia but like the the step climate you can get one of those tents in mongolia you know what you know what guys we're gonna find out in a couple of weeks that michael has been receiving payments from mongolia you know the scandals on the right where people are paid by Qatar or whatever. It's the first Mongolia scandal. Yeah, it's the biggest thing that's happened to the Mongolian tourist industry in a long time. It'd be really funny if they were so desperate that they paid me to compliment them through complimenting New Mexico. That's how you get away with it. But, you know, it gets cold there. It's not like Sedona. Mongolia or Santa Fe? Santa Fe. So there's a little snow, but it is a desert climate. And it has, you know, beautiful kind of Spanish colonial architecture. You know, there's kind of this, you know, spiritual, you know, this, this collision of cultures of Spanish colonial, native American, Western America, Western America. You know, it just seems really attractive. That's, that's actually, It's an excellent answer. I'm actually with Charlie, assuming I can put up with the increased taxes, et cetera. San Diego, I just think San Diego is so gorgeous. And there's a reason California hasn't entirely emptied out. It is such a gorgeous and amazing place that they've done so much to ruin over the decades. With that, let me do a quick plug for NR Plus, our digital subscription service. Please sign up. You won't regret it. It's a really important way to support our crucial journalism. let me urge you also to check out Carolyn Downey's YouTube show called Locked In. Search Locked In on YouTube. You'll find her videos there. Subscribe to that. You can also subscribe to the main National Review channel where I've been doing a lot of videos too with that. Speaking of living places and houses, I'm going to do a big segue here, Charlie, to you. Trump made some comments at the cabinet meeting this week that elicited a lot of comment and criticism where he said he wants to keep housing prices up. And some people say, of course, who doesn't own a home and want their house to be worth more? And there are others like, is this crazy? You know, we're supposed to be having a debate about affordability and you're talking about keeping prices high for one of the main things that people want to buy and create a stable edifice for a family, et cetera. i think it was a crazy thing to say if you'd asked me a week ago what the worst possible thing trump could say would be this would have been high up the list along with perhaps i think grocery prices should stay high people are very worried about this people are increasingly of the view that our society is set up to protect the boomer generation and that public policy favors the boomer generation at the expense of everyone else and that that is at odds with other aims that we nominally have such as increasing the birth rate and creating a happy and wealthy younger generation it is of course true that homeowners and i am one want their property to increase in value over time but it shouldn't be true that the government suppresses new construction or sets the zoning rules in such a way as to achieve that. That is to say, it should not be the case that the government artificially increases the value of the existing housing stock by preventing the development of new housing stock. That is how Britain works. In Britain, there is a big problem on the center right, and it's infecting the left too, despite its rhetoric. That problem is that the vast majority of people who vote for the Tories, and I think this is going to be true for reform as well, are homeowners whose wealth is tied up in their homes. And they oppose anything that will change that. The trouble is, younger people increasingly are angry about that and understandably wish it to change. Historically, Republicans in the United States have been pretty good on this score. They've certainly been better than the Democrats. The Democrats have had a reputation as being anti-development for environmental reasons and others. I think to rhetorically ally himself with the Democrats is stupid. It is exactly what he should not be saying right now. So I think this was a mistake. I will also say that there are trade-offs to having your home values go up. My home value has gone up over seven or eight years, but more recently, it's gone down a bit. And the reason for that is that there's been an enormous amount of construction in the town next to mine. That town didn't exist when we moved in. It was just land, and then it was gates with nothing behind them. If you remember in Back to the Future, when Marty goes back to 1955 and he goes to the area he lived in there's a big gate that says lion estates but there's nothing behind it that's what the town over looked like seven years ago now there are thousands and thousands and thousands of houses and restaurants and gas stations and lows and so forth and it's really great because there's tons of kids there there's kids in my town too but in particular there's tons of kids there that town is where a lot of people who moved in from the northeast went to when they came in during covid because it was affordable and there were new homes to buy so this is not just i think culturally about wealth and increasing one's assets but it's also about what sort of country one wants to live in and i want to live in a country where there are lots of kids and young families nearby. But that becomes quite difficult if you don't build new homes. So I'm opposed to what Trump said, for a variety of reasons. But even if you disagree with me, for whatever reason, politically, I think it was monumentally stupid. Yeah, so so MBD, again, the defense of this or the reality of this is people really like their homes being valuable. And then also very often in their jurisdictions, their towns, say let's not build more housing one because it will put downward pressure on home or home prices and also create all these inconveniences more traffic more parking lots all over the place and yeah maybe that that's okay for someplace else maybe it's okay for where charlie lives but we don't want it here i think it's even deeper than that i mean i think it's not just you know preserving the character of your neighborhood and i appreciate that you know it isn't it would be insane if you had a row of, you know, neo-Victorian or neo-Tutor suburban homes, you know, all designed in the same period of the 1910s and 20s on roughly similar size lots. And then you built, you know, a five story apartment building in between two of them. Like I understand why people don't want that kind of development, But there's a lot of room beyond that. And there are lots of, you know, places even in nice towns that are underdeveloped that are that you could create a special zoning section for that would encourage development and that would bring more amenities into the town. And not only that, but like when you, when you pursue this policy over time, there's a generational effect, right. And a really intense one, you know, my, my neighborhood has seen a gigantic upward draft in nominal prices in the, since COVID. And you can tell partly because no young people are moving in anymore. Like they just can't afford to put that kind of down payment together. And it sucks, frankly. I had moved in here hoping that some of my old friends or people we knew from church or peers would be moving in. And they can't. And the other side of rising nominal prices, especially right now, when you've had a gigantic increase in interest rates, you really are setting up a situation where you're trapping people that might want to sell their homes in nominal values that other people, that buyers just can't afford. So I don't know how that policy works either. There are people that will want to downsize, but they don't want to feel like they're getting ripped off either. And you already have this mismatch in interest rates that's just deranging the housing market. And one that also is anti-growth in some ways. So for instance if you refinanced or if you bought your home in 2020 when rates were really really low just before the pandemic really kicked off you know you can just move for a new job when they offer you a normal sized raise because it won't make up for what you lose on the cost of money financing your home. And that means people are going to be stuck in jobs that pay less than what they could be earning and it just slows slows and gunks the economy up um so no it's a bad situation um and what would a truly like pro-family housing policy and one that would be sane for the economy would stop treating homes like retirement investment vehicles um you need a retirement account to be your retirement account. You need your home to just be your domicile. And it shouldn't be, you know, obviously people, some people get lucky and their, their, you know, the opportunities around their home increase and they get this little bonus when they sell and move out. That's, that's understandable. If we try to make that the norm, it will increasingly lead to this generational warfare between the old homeowners and young renters. So, Phil, speaking of accounts, there is this messaging disconnect where Trump had this big event promoting a course, inevitably what he calls Trump accounts, that we're going to put $1,000 in for an account for newborns here at least the next three years, and people can make various contributions, et cetera, et cetera. And one purpose of this is to incentivize at the margin and people having babies and family formation, whereas the other hand, he's endorsing a status quo that is one of the expenses that people think about, presumably when they're considering to have kids or how many kids they're going to have, whether they can afford a house or not, and he's leaning the other way on that. Yeah, I mean, it's a big problem, and there's no question that for conservatives that feel like America is better if people are getting married and having a bunch of kids, and that our future depends on that happening. It's a big problem that housing has gotten so expensive. And part of the aspect of this is that sometimes people that sort of try to dispel the notion of the extraordinary growth in housing will point to the fact that houses are bigger, and that if you go by square footage, then the housing inflation isn't as much as it appears just looking at the housing price. However, the problem is that there are a lot of people who would be fine with a smaller house if it meant that they could have some sort of foothold in the market. And that, I think, is an under, you know, misappreciated aspect of this is that, you know, if you go back to the formations of the suburbs, and Levittown often gets cited as the first real sort of suburban development that was sort of engineered by a developer. The first Levittown houses after World War II were about 750 square feet. I mean, if you look at the Leave it to Beaver house, it's a pretty small house and there's one bathroom. And I feel like a lot of the shows that I grew up watching that were syndicated when I was a kid, it was like all the kids fighting over the bathroom. And it's like, oh, so-and-so's taking a shower. She's never getting out of the shower. This was like a common gag. And so I think the problem is like, yeah, it's great to have more space and more amenities and houses. But if somebody would be fine with a two bedroom or three bedroom house with one bathroom to get started so that they could get into the market earlier and then have something to sell when they need to purchase a larger house. then, you know, plenty of people would want to take those sorts of houses. But the ones that have been built, you know, since, you know, but now the average home size is over 2,000 square feet. It's basically double the size of what people would have lived in, you know, 50 years ago when, you know, or in the 1950s when they were raising families. I mean, even in the 70s, you had houses for maybe 1,200, 1,300, 1,500 square feet. There's no obvious answer to that in the sense that there are reasons in terms of efficiencies with home building to take one lot and build a larger house, then break it up into two smaller homes. But I think that's another aspect beyond just the sort of, you know, local zoning restrictions on higher density housing. I think that there are issues with, you know, the boomers built these massive homes that are super expensive. And the, you know, they're not building the new homes that they're building are expected to have more space and more rooms. And so then, you know, they're not building these small homes, which I think would be demand for. Yeah, I've experienced this personally. A high school friend of mine, a couple of years ago now, we were just talking and he said to me, Rich, you lived in a really small house when you grew up. And I was almost offended by it. I totally, no, I didn't. What are you talking about? I just thought it was a normal house. And then I look back and yeah, it was a really small house. I mean, it didn't feel that way. I was a kid, I didn't know any better. But what happened in our suburban neighborhood outside of Washington, D.C., is everyone built extensions on these old brick houses in the back. And now what's happened, I went back there a couple years ago, and it was almost totally unrecognizable. I had trouble determining which families used to live where because every time one of these houses turns over pretty much now, it's knocked down. And this kind of McMansion is built that uses like every single square inch of the yard to get the size of a house that people are expecting now. So let's go to a total non-sequitur, but a really important one, Charlie, for our final exit question of this episode. To you first, what outrages you more? The Bill Belichick first ballot Hall of Fame snub, the sissy kickoffs, as Donald Trump has called them, the new rules for kickoffs, the two pass interference calls against the Bills in their playoff game against the Broncos or that the likes of the great Jets pass rusher Mark Gastineau used to totally wipe out the likes of Joe Montana with brutal sacks during Pro Bowl games, and now there's no longer any Pro Bowl game, and they play sissy flag football coming weekend. I think I am most outraged, if I have to be, about the sissy kickoffs. I did prefer kickoffs before this change. I'm certainly not outraged about the two past interference calls in the Bills game because I think only one of them was questionable. NVD. I think the, you know, I can't believe I'm going to say this, the Bill Belichick snub. I mean, it's just obvious the guy should be a first ballot Hall of Famer. and I guess why it bothers me is because I'm a Giants fan and if he's not a first battle Hall of Famer, then how bad were the Eli Giants that beat him? Come on, if we're not going to give the Patriots dynasty their due, then a lot falls apart. Phil Klein. So I'm a Jets fan. You know what's on pass interference calls? Yeah, so I am pro the pass interference calls. I'm a Jets fan, so I'm not going to really defend Belichick, even though I'll acknowledge, objectively speaking, he's a Hall of Famer. But when I read more about the process for selecting Hall of Famers, it made me realize how this could happen, is that essentially you're only allowed to vote for three candidates that are up for nomination. and in this ballot there were people like Roger Craig who were going to lose eligibility if they didn't get in this year so a lot of people thought like there were enough a sufficient number of people who were like well I want these people these other players that this is their last chance I and I think they should be in the hall I'd rather give them their chance and I could vote for Belichick in a future year. So it's not a simple threshold like in baseball. So I think the issue is more with the voting process, even though I agree the result is kind of ridiculous. But I think I'd say the annoying kickoffs, like it looks pretty pathetic. I mean, I think that there is, and I'd be curious too if it really reduced injuries. I haven't seen a statistical analysis because it also leads to more returns because they wanted to encourage more returns. Right. But so it used to be that under the old rules, there would be a touchback almost every single time. But I feel like you could encourage returns by penalizing touchbacks more. They already moved it to 35. if you move the touchback to 40 yards, which I think would be ridiculous. And field goal range? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like nobody would kick it in the end zone. Everyone would risk trying to get the return. So I kind of think that's fine. I mean, I just think at some point they're trying to regulate so many aspects of the game when you're dealing with, you know, massive guys slamming into each other. And the pure physics is going to make the game, make players susceptible to injury. So you're sissy kickoffs. Yeah, I'd say sissy kickoffs. All right, so you and Charlie, sissy kickoffs, MBD, Belichick. I have to say I'm not outraged by any of these things. If I have to pick one, I just don't care about the Patriots, Tom Brady or Bill Belichick. They're hugely important, obviously, but I'm not vested in any AFC East stuff. And I just, I don't really care. But I would say the bell, if I have to choose one, bell check. The sissy kickoffs, I guess I like all rule changes in all sports. It emerges. It's unsightly, but I do assume it's reduced injuries. I think it's a good call because just so often you have a kickoff, nothing would happen on the kickoff. The guy gets five yards, and invariably someone's on the ground hurt. So I think avoiding that is a good call. The Pro Bowl also just was not interesting or good, and why risk getting anyone injured in that as well. The pass interference calls we litigated extensively last week, so if I have to settle one on one, I'll go with Belichick. With that, let's hit a few other things before we go. MBD, you watched the movie Nuremberg. Yeah, I watched Nuremberg last night. it's one of those movies they don't make anymore where it's very straightforward, um, historical drama that is meant to educate you, but it's stuffed with excellent actors and big performances. And it is, you know, weighty subject material. And, uh, it was really good. Uh, Russell Crowe plays Herman Goering in a brave role. I think it, I think she thinks it takes some courage for an actor. like him to play such a notorious villain of history. And I think that Rami Malek was really good, and so was Michael Shannon as Justice Jackson. And the film doesn't shy away from some of the controversies around the novelty of the trial itself and the subject matter. And I thought it was well done without being utterly spectacular. It's the kind of thing I'd like Hollywood to do more of, take more shots at. So, Phil, everyone heard a lot about your thinking with regard to your tarp though removal strategy in advance of Washington, D.C. being hit by a couple inches of snow. How did it work out? It was great, I have to say. I had, as I said, a multi-tier strategy. One was that experimentally I laid out a tarp on my front steps to try to shield the snow. And then I also employed a strategy of going out there while it was still snowing. And every few hours, redoing the driveway and everything and shaking out the tarp. and when I woke up the next morning there was as people know who are in the snow zone but if you aren't what was unique about this was that the it snowed we got like six inches of snow and then after it turned to sleet so you had this layer of sleet on top of the snow which was very heavy and icy. And then the temperatures dropped into the single digits and are still in the single digits or low double digits. And so everything froze into a block. So the next morning after I woke up and I had a cleared path, cleared walkway, cleared driveway, and everyone else in the neighborhood was trying to dig themselves out. And they were taking, you know, like axes, shovels, whatever they could to try to get through it. And I was sitting pretty. I was just back at work and it was just a normal day. So it's, I think that my strategy of attacking the snowstorm and using innovative, you know, techniques as opposed to just sitting back and watching the snow fall passively and letting the snowstorm happen. well i was i was a skeptic i was a skeptic of the tarp strategy so you proved me wrong charlie you watched the old classic movie taking of pelham one two three i did the original from 1974 not the remake which i haven't seen i'm sure it's good this is such a classic 70s movie there's such an atmosphere about 1970s american movies especially american crime movies you can't replicate it maybe it starts at the very tail end of the 60s and persists until the early 80s but there's just something about the way they look the way people talk the music this is one of the best that I've seen. So I also watched an old movie, not that old, but School of Rock, dating from, I just looked it up, 2003. And really a delightful, fun, and fluffy movie. With that, it's time for our editor's picks. MBD! What's your pick? My pick this week is Charlie's piece, Why the Second Alex Pretty Video Matters and Doesn't. He went into that a little bit in this podcast, but I just thought it was exactly the right thing to say, which is that these things matter in our judgment of reality, even if they don't have a total impact on any one particular case or one aspect of the law. It was very judicious. Dan McLaughlin had a post, read a history book, Tim Waltz on Tim Waltz's absurd comment that maybe you know, maybe we're at Walt Fort Sumter moment, which of course, which of course raises the question of like, is he Francis Dickens, the governor of South Carolina? So anyway, I think, you know, Dan obviously is a history buff and goes through some of the sort of surrounding, you know, history of Fort Sumter. I'm going to pick another piece from the 250th anniversary themed edition of the magazine. I think this may have been chosen by someone else last time, but I'm going to choose it myself this time. It's called America the Durable by Yuval Levin. And his argument, in essence, is that we ought not to discount the fact that we are celebrating 250 years and we ought not to believe as many do that our institutions are weak and that our country is on the verge of collapse and that if the wrong person wins one election or a court case goes the wrong way and we are all destined to disintegrate because we're probably not so my pick is also a dan mclaughlin piece on how new jersey and seattle are doubling down on the defiance of federal authority that we've seen in Minneapolis. And this is a very bad trend. So that's it for us. You've been listening to a National View podcast, and your rebroadcast, retransmission, or account of this game without the express written permission of National View Magazine is strictly prohibited. This podcast has been produced by the incomparable Sarah Schutte, who makes it sound better than we deserve. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you, Phil. Thank you, MBD. Thanks to the University of Austin and the Witherspoon Institute. And thanks especially to all of you for listening with the editors. We'll see you next time.