Episode 895: Dr. Fauci’s Diaries Exposed

Thank you Dr. Anthony Fauci's diary is exposed, and is Ukraine winning the war. We'll discuss all this more on this edition of the editors. I'm Rich Lowry, and I'm joined as always by the right. Honorable Charles C.W. Cook, our old friend, Dan Foster, and the Sage of Authenticity Woods. Jim Garrity, you are, of course, listening to a national view podcast. Our sponsors, this episode are made in Vera and How the World Works, the CEI podcast. More about all 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. If you like what you hear here, please consider giving us a glowing five-star review. Or if you listen to your podcasts, if you don't like what you hear here, please forget. I said anything. So Jim Garrity, Senator Paul, has managed to get his hand on, hands on Anthony Fauci's diaries, and they are extraordinary. They could only be worse. Jim, if there had been an entry at some point, read the jolt today, have to admit clarity is absolutely right. That would make me feel good. That would have been, you know, like, as it was when this broke, I guess it was, you know, late Saturdays Sunday morning, I read through first the most exciting excerpts than the rest of it, which just went on and on, basically any thought he'd ever had for years and years. I found it infuriating, most notably, and probably most consequentially, January 26, 2020, even before I was writing about the lead leak. He says, you know, discussing the genomic data and recognizing, quote, the first infection was an early December and was not connected to the market. The connection spread amongst people weeks before the Chinese reported they were dealing with a new infection and gave the virus time to establish itself in multi-generational spread. Further along, he says, now we know the market was not the source. It was the amplifier. Having said that, somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans. Yeah, yeah, it started out in bats. probably in, you know, a horseshoe bat that was taken, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where they were doing gain of function research that made viruses more contagious and made viruses more virulent. One day, somebody doesn't wear his personal protective equipment or he gets bit by a bat or he gets jammed by a needle or something happens, or something happens, or something

I went back and I checked. I could not find any case where Anthony Fauci explicitly said publicly, the virus started at the wet market, at the Huanon seafood market, which was, you know, widely cited as the likely source of all this. But he did poo-poo the lab leak. And he also said he did not believe in the authoritative theory that someone found the coronavirus in the wild, brought it to a lab and then accidentally escaped. First of all, he said they were not doing gain of function. The National Institute of Health had never financed gain of function research in China. Then when he got called out on this by Rand Paul a few years ago, he said, well, just as Bill Clinton had said, it depends on what the definition of is is. Anthony Fauci basically said it depends on how you define gain of function. I don't think what was going on there was gain of function, even though they were taking viruses that existed in the wild, making them more virulent, making them more contagious. And thank you for remembering, Rich, because I spent, you know, it's 2020. There wasn't much else I could do with my life. I just spent an enormous amount of time researching wet markets and pangolins and bats and every... But first of all, like, I learned that wet markets are really... friggin' scary in terms of like what people eat, cooking, they reused cooking oil that they fished out of sewer. It's unbelievably unsanitary. But nobody has found this virus, this particular precise virus, in any animal in China. And also the, which is, you know, like we found related ones similar to horseshoe ones found in horseshoe bats. By the way, horseshoe bat habitat is like hundreds of miles from Wuhan. So how did it get here? Now we know the Wuhan Instro virology was going around collecting lots of samples. Back where the horseshoe bat viruses are. No, no, that's all the stuff. So the one hand... So do you expect Jim, not to put you on the spot, but if there's a virus like this, would it be prevalent in bats before it makes the jump, or would it just show up in one bat and then magically go human? In other words, should it be relatively easy to find a bat with this somewhere? So when you look back to SARS-1, they found the source animal within like a couple of weeks. It was not that hard. It was not that far away from where the outbreak was. The Wuhan Institute of Virology actually, ironically, had looked at the villages closest to where these bats are down in the southern part of China. And they found that there weren't that many infections amongst human beings. The good news is most viruses and other species do not easily jump into human beings or they're not all that terribly damaging. SARS-CO-2. Remember, we're calling it SARS-C-O-V-2 because it's most similar to SARS, which occurred back in 2003. The United States was kind of occupied with this invasion of Iraq thing, which kind of took up why we didn't pay much attention to it at the time. But this version of SARS was way, you know, different. It was spreading amongst human beings like wildfire. Now, is it possible it naturally evolved this way? I mean, I guess so, but like, boy.

It's really bad luck for us that it turned out this way. Or perhaps it may have gained a function somewhere along the way by someone who was deliberately trying to make it more contagious and more virulent. So, Dan, I think anyone would be tickled by the amount of positive attention that Anthony Fauci got. You know, everyone's a human being. But one, this diary keeping, I sort of forgive Henry Kissinger for this, you know, or Ronald Reagan, you know, but keeping this diary and being so obsessed with your own press coverage amidst of the, you know, amidst this global calamity is a little hard to take, but is not. particularly surprising. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think a lot of, well, I mean, a lot of Walter Middy types just in general imagine themselves to be the hero in their own story. And I think that's probably as true or more true for bureaucrats, especially medical doctors, especially medical doctors who work on, you know, pandemics and infectious diseases and get their moment, as it were, in the sun. And so I agree it's a basically human thing. But Anthony Fauci is this is actually the guy who I coined the term the Anthony Fauci rule after. And sometime in 2022 or 2023, I think, where the Anthony Fauci rule is basically. all public figures, if given sufficient time, all sort of newly famous public figures, if given sufficient time, will reveal themselves to be or transform into the worst caricatures drawn by their biggest enemies. And Anthony Fauci's the guy, it's named after because we sort of watched, I mean, this latest, you know, these, these latest revelations from his diary, the most extreme case, but obviously over the last five years. there's been a steady trickle of things that just greatly diminish or, frankly, destroy his image as some sort of hero of public health. I mean, the one thing I will say is, speaking of all too human, you know, I think it was very natural for a certain kind of... personality that overlaps but isn't co-extensive with left-leaning personalities to in a moment of chaos and panic and potentially great danger that like the ones we experienced in the first months of the pandemic to look for authority figures you know trustworthy figures smart wise people and to invest their faith in them almost sort of talismonically as opposed to um as opposed to on any real rational level. It's a kind of, it's a kind of superstitious impulse among a certain kind of personality. And I think that's very human. There's thankfully in America, thankfully most of the time in America, there's also a competing...

drive that's particular to sort of American psyche, which is, you know, immediate suspicion of figures that are exactly like that. And what we saw play out in the first couple years of the pandemic was the pushpole of those two American, well, that very American and that very human personality drive. I mean, I was closer to the, to the, you know, Anthony Fauci-Pouchy drinking, all praise Dr. Anthony Fauci. mindset the first few months of the pandemic, not with Dr. Anthony Fauci himself, because I tend to, you know, I tend to at least have a kind of, um, aversion to hero worship that's like that. But I was certainly, you know, looking for things that we could do collectively or, or sort of civic, you know, hygiene that I could participate in to make this thing go more smoothly. But, and I think that's a normal thing for, for, for folks, you know, at the beginning of something like that. But as, as, as we sort of learned more about the disease itself and the, fatality rates and the efficacy or lack of efficacy of these things that we were being told to do. I mean, that view kind of changed fairly rapidly. And by, you know, I don't know, call it three months, six months in, you know, the idea that we could just slavishly listen to public health advice from, you know, the bureaucrats in charge of those organizations and everything would be okay was completely debunked. So I realize I've gotten kind of far afield from your original question. But, you know, Anthony Fauci's like, the self-regard of doctors is kind of widely known. And so it makes sense that, I don't know, he got high on his own supply. That doesn't offend me so much. What offends me is the animating drive of the public health officials during the pandemic was a kind of version of the big lie or the noble lie to... that we had to tell the public X if we wanted them to do Y. Or we had to tell public X, even though we knew Y was true because we were hoping that they would get to Z. You know, it's one of these bank shot, Straussian ways of communicating that afflicts a lot of our politics lately, where you say something you don't believe because you're hoping to have some effect. by saying it and that's the way the pandemic was run by the public health authorities and that to me is the most damning stuff that's in the diary so charlie another way the diary cuts against fouchy's public posture is he's maintained since the pandemic that he had nothing to do with the lockdowns not his idea never advocated for lockdowns knew nothing about lockdowns never told anyone to do a lockdown and sure enough the the diaries he's speaking to various public authorities off the record and encouraging them to institute lockdowns, including school closures. Over the last few years, I have spoken to people always off the record who had encounters with Anthony Fauci while he was in his elevated position. And they have told me blood-curdling stories about him.

And reading these diaries, I can only conclude that they're all true. The effect that the pandemic had on Anthony Fauci, that is the substance of those stories, is evident in his own words. I think this should give those those who believe in such a thing as neutral, detached expertise or a professional class of agnostic mandarins, real pause. We have politically and jurisprudentially in recent years had an argument over whether we should pare back what was since its inception the core of the progressive project, which is to establish institutions that sit outside of our normal political structure. Most recently, the Supreme Court ruled in the slaughter case. that there's no such thing as the fourth branch of government, with the exception of the Federal Reserve, it seems, that was Cook. The assumption that is made by those who favor a fourth branch or a detached apolitical setup is that politics corrupt people. in a way that technocracy does not. But clearly, Anthony Fauci, who is the patron saint of the detached fourth branch, was corrupted by the attention and the flattery and the power just as much as anyone. who sits in the democratic and accountable branches could ever have been. Do you see any difference between the contents of those diaries and the excesses of a senator or a representative or a president? I don't. And I think that ought to remind us. This doesn't in any way forgive Anthony Fauci for his flaws, but I think that ought to remind us that human nature is constant and ubiquitous, and that there is no such thing as an institution that can shield a person from it. He loved the position that he'd been put in. He loved. the adoration. There's a hilarious moment where he starts listing movie stars and celebrities that he's been on a call with, expressing surprise.

He starts fantasizing about being played in a movie. Yeah, there's this global pandemic. I finally made it. Right. Now, look, as the founders understood, this is the great genius of our constitution, not to go too far, I feel rich, but this is the great genius of our constitution and our founding presuppositions that unlike the French Revolution, the... Soviet Union, the Chinese communist, we understood that men are fallible and that ambition will always be with us. And so we tried to harness it rather than stamp it out. But you can't stamp it out. And if you go back to James Madison's famous words, they apply to Anthony Fauci as much as anyone else, except he's much more dangerous. Because he can't be voted out. Trump got voted out in 2020. Anthony Fauci did not. So my takeaway from this other than that he is exactly who I thought he was, is that we ought to remember that human beings are human beings and we can't change him. With that, X question to you, Jim Garrity, future pandemic in the United States are responsibly better, worse, equally bad. Mixed bag. You'd like to think that some people in office and some people in public health positions will have learned from the mistakes of the last one, but would be starting with a much lower point of public trust in officials and public health officials because of the experiences of COVID. Yeah, so this time around, the public authorities will all be right, and then no one will believe them, right? That, like, they could shake out that way, yeah. Dan. I think basically something like that is right. It's a fascinating and very depressing question because everyone, it's highly likely and seems clear from some of the anecdotal evidence that everyone, you know, learn the wrong lessons. Like, you know. People were very wrong to be skeptical about getting the vaccines. But the fifth booster shot probably didn't do much. And certainly the vaccines were rushed, you know, rushed to the front lines because, you know, the situation was an emergency and maybe it wasn't as much long-term data as there should have been. But on the other hand, we've got amazing amounts of real world data where, you know. People in the billions have received these shots with no ill effects. So people learn the wrong lesson about the vaccines, but many of the same people who are anti-vaxxers were right about all these other public health things, all these other things around Anthony Fauci and what public health authorities were saying. So they're going to think they were right about everything. And that's what leads to a situation like the one you're describing, Rich. I think at the end of the day, though, the next pandemic will be different. And really, it's all going to come down to the rate of spread and the fatality rate, how it spreads, how quickly it spreads, how many people die from it. Because the thing that the, and God love them, you know, because like I said, it's a very American personality trait. But the thing that the...

you know, live free or die pandemic set don't realize or maybe don't want to admit to themselves is that if the death rate for COVID were 10x what it was and it spread much more easily, then they would not have many compatriots. But at a certain point, when the threat is existential enough, a society, you know, cocoons itself. and is much more comfortable with, you know, things that they would view as fascist or totalitarian. So there is a future pandemic that's deadly enough that whether they like it or not, there's going to be broad, widespread social support for draconian measures. It really just depends on, you know, what the next pandemic looks like, because the response will be totally different. Yeah, but there will definitely be an ex-pandemic. I mean, this has just been persistent. element of human history going back at least to athens and and further back i'm sure you know the peloponnesian wars the athenians are crowded into their city but i mean the black plague Yeah, the Black Plague killed something like one in five Europeans, right? And some insane number of people. And if they under, if they had the germ theory of disease, you know, in the Middle Ages, you can only imagine the state powers that would be unleashed, you know, to prevent its spread. So if something like the Black Plague comes along and we don't have any, you know, medical interventions, you know, the response is going to be a lot different and understandably so. Charlie, better, worse, equally bad. Well, I'm going to slightly reject the implied premise of your question because, and I'm not trying to rub this in, I was in Florida for the pandemic, and I think Florida got it largely right in that the... Legal settlement at which it arrived fairly quickly seemed tolerable to most. And the government was led by someone who adapted quickly, who didn't right at the beginning stand on some purist libertarian. stool, but who recognized that there were a whole bunch of mistakes being made and a lot of silliness being enforced. So I don't think that Florida got it wrong in the way that a lot of other places did. But given that the interval between pandemic seems to be about a century, I hope that stays true. I don't think we'll get the next one right because it will have been far too long since the last one. This is one of the problems that we faced when COVID came along. The last time something similar had happened was what, Spanish flu, which was worse.

in 1918, 19, a hundred years, almost to the year earlier. So unless we start having frequent pandemics, which I suppose given the provenance of this one is possible, I suspect all of the experiences and lessons will have been forgotten. Yeah, I'm going to go with equally bad. We'll find another way to mess it up, but I have to say if it's... A virus that's similarly infectious or has the same essential qualities, we're not shutting down the schools again. I think that's a mistake that everyone acknowledges was grievous and damaging and we're still digging out from. So we're not going to do that. We'll probably find some other way to mess it up with that. Can I just say one thing just before we finish this topic? And that is that this was a strange pandemic in, and this is a great thing, in that it didn't really affect children. Yes. And if this next pandemic kills children, then Dan Sullivan point about having a totalitarian response will be more on the money than he knows. The reason I think that people were so angry about it and angry about school closures and so on was because mercifully children were exempt. But could you imagine? I mean, the cities would have depopulated. Well, but just imagine if your children were at risk, people would have started shooting each other in the supermarket. I mean, they were just, the level of anger that people would have felt toward one another at the prospect of strangers endangering their kids. I think society would have collapsed in some places. So we were very, very lucky that that didn't happen. And if the next one does, I think all bets are off. So on that happy note, let's go to our first sponsor of this episode, Maiden. If you're considering the pros and cons of different cookware brands, you should know that Maiden has more of the pros. Pros like Tom Colicchio, Brooke Williamson, and many other professional chefs who all trust their cooking to Maiden. Cook where a fact is Maiden has a long-standing relationship with professional chefs. The company evolved from a hundred-year-old kitchen supply business and works with multi-generational craftsmen to make each piece. They make exactly what demanding chefs are looking for, including a wide selection of curated products from carbon steel, stainless clad, plus plateware, glassware, and more. But perhaps the biggest pro is that Maiden is sold online and delivered to your door. Sarah Shuddy has been traveling. quite a lot this summer and every time she's working in a new kitchen, which has happened quite a lot, she realizes just how much she misses her made-in pans and knife. If you want to take your cooking to the next level, invest in made-in cookware. Once you try it, you'll be pro made-in-to. For full details, visit made-in cookware.com. That's M-A-D-E-I-N-Cookware.com. Please check it.

So Dan, we have Volodymyr Zelensky visiting Washington, a lot of attention on this new phase of the war where Ukraine is hitting deeper into Russian territory. And if I'm grading my own punitary on wars, I think I was appropriately downbeat about the Iran war as soon as it was clear what was happening in the strait. But I was unduly downbeat about the Ukrainian war. I never thought that Russia had all the cards, as Trump said in that infamous. meeting in the Oval Office, but I just thought Russia would just grind them down. And maybe they'll still do that. But Ukraine has been incredibly plucky, incredibly innovative, and is using drones to at least somewhat neutralize the Russian manpower advantage. One way of looking at it was... There's no way a small Soviet-style army was going to defeat a bigger Soviet-style army. So Ukraine needed to figure a way out of that box, and they've done it through technologies and drones and basically area denial, making it too dangerous to move. They did this on the sea pretty early on, and they've been pretty successful doing it on land and are also launching these extraordinary strikes on energy infrastructure in Russia, the Russian equivalent of... Amazon, et cetera, what do you make of it? Well, I think the important thing, I'm obviously, I'm a pro-Ukraine guy in the sense that I think what happens in Ukraine. is going to say a lot about the fate of Europe, the fate of the West, U.S. status for the next 30, 50 years, the danger of the world. I think it's tremendously geopolitically important, and people who think it's not a core interest are just wrong. That doesn't mean that our support should be limitless or not strategic in its thinking, but just cards on the table. That's always... been my position. I think it's important to note similar to the kind of, you know, the World War II view that each of the allies was essential in its own way, kind of the, the Stalin's Russia, just in terms of blood, the United States in terms of its tremendous industrial capacity, and the British in terms of their courage and buying time for the free world. The same thing is happening. in ukraine the war wouldn't be where it is without the united states europe and ukraine all doing important and strategically crucial things. And so, you know, as as brilliant as the Ukrainians have been in terms of, as you say, rich, their innovation and their and their absolute dogged determination and their ability to adapt very quickly and break out of the Soviet mindset by and large, there's still some remnants of it in their institutional culture, military institutional culture, but they're disappearing quickly.

As valuable as all of that has been and as crucial as all of that has been. And of course, Volodymyr Zelensky's personal courage and that whole story around Kiev, you know, they couldn't have done it without U.S. support during the Biden administration and continuing through the Trump administration, despite a lot of bluster to the contrary. And despite some honest to goodness scaling back of that support that I think was. mistaken, but they also couldn't have done it without Europe stepping up into the void that America left, which is another example kind of of Trump's foreign policy doing the right thing for the wrong reasons or the wrong thing for the right reasons and sort of things happily working out via second order effects. So all of those three things are crucially important to what the Ukrainians are doing. As far as like the actual status on the battlefield, it's interesting to me. And I don't really know what's going to happen because. They've achieved kind of tactical stalemate. The front is largely stabilized. If anything, you have to admit that the Russians are still advancing on net very, very slowly. But strategically, they're creaming the Russians. And it's a weird set of circumstances. And they deserve a lot of credit because... Also like World War II, and I think like all modern wars, what has happened is that thanks to European largesse technology and money aid and U.S. as well, the Ukrainians are outproducing the Russians. That's the key. When the war was going really badly, the Russians were producing, you know, far more artillery shells than the Ukrainians were with Western aid. By the time we caught up, artillery was far less relevant. And now the Ukrainians are just, they've got a, they've got a strategic surplus. This is the way I think you should think about it. They've got a strategic surplus of drones and tech. And they're using it in really creative ways. They're, as you said, they're not just, they've not just used them to freeze the battle lines, but they've used them to attack Russia's. you know, strategic petroleum production, obviously, most obviously. But also, as you said, on the Sea of Azov and in the Black Sea, they've used them very strategically there. And their latest and perhaps most brilliant gambit is going after wild berries, which is the Russian Amazon and is also the logistical backbone of the Russian economy. They've started to bomb Wildberry's facilities. And there, you know, there was an interesting, I forget where it was, might have been the economist that there was an interesting piece. This is like, this is kind of new. The last few weeks it's been breaking into the coverage of the war. But there's, there are ways in which this is more damaging to the Russian economy and its ability to sustain the war than the oil strikes are. So they've just been brilliant at using the fact that they've got a productive edge.

to absolutely kill the Russians. And my favorite anecdote about last World War II analogy, but my favorite anecdote from World War II about the productive differences. Is it going to be the last one? Yes, well, probably not. The last one for this particular response. You're making a lot prior to my Roman Empire. That's true. Well, it's my Roman Empire. I'm more of a World War II guy than a Roman Empire guy. But the last one is just, you know, the idea that this anecdote is frequently told where, you know, at the end of the Pacific War, the Japanese were being ordered to forage off the land to survive and were starving to death. And the United States had concrete barges designed and deployed explicitly for the provision of ice cream to the soldiers on the beaches. And that is just the most, if you can't, if one thing distills that why the U.S. and the Allies won the war, it's that. And Ukraine isn't there. Obviously, the Russian economy is a lot bigger. Ukraine's getting a lot of help for much bigger economies than the Russian economies. But that strategic surplus is what has allowed them to put, you know, ending this war back on the table on their own terms. Yeah. So my understanding also that this wildberry is also kind of key element to the credit system in Russia. So also may put pressure on Russian banks. And in terms of the Russians continue to advance, but doing it a slow pace, there's a British official who says if you put a snail. At the line of Russia control, at the outset of this second phase of hostilities, the beginning of this element of the war, the snail would have gotten further the last several years than the Russians had, which is just amazing, given the cost that Russian society has had to bear. to do that. So also, Ukraine is doing better in the internal debate on the right, Charlie. Trump seems to be warmer to Volodymyr Zelensky now. I think not losing helps Volodymyr Zelensky's cause, the fact that they are manufacturing, a lot of stuff that's clearly very valuable and that we need or at least could learn from, helps that the form of aid we're giving the Ukrainians is more tolerable to Trump. helps, but had this very fascinating trip by Laura Lumer, right-wing conspiracy theorist, big maga voice. She's gotten people fired from the Trump administration, and she went over there to Ukraine and said, you know what, I've gotten this all wrong. I thought the Russians were the Christian ones, and now I see they're sending ballistic missiles into ancient monasteries in Ukraine, and she did an interview where she apologized to the Ukrainian. people. And the way I read this is Laura Lumer, whatever her other flaws. She's not anti-Semitic and she's pro-Israel. And that's such a dividing line on the right. So she's decided she's not with those people who tend also to be very anti-Ukraine and sympathetic to Russia and think there are all sorts of conspiracy theories that account for our involvement in the war beyond just what is obvious to everyone else, which was that there was a brutal Russian invasion.

Yeah, the snail line reminds me of that scene in Blackadder goes fourth, which is set in World War I, where they sit around a table and the general says, here's a map of all of the ground that we've taken over the last week. And one of them says, this is incredibly detailed. He says, what's the scale? And the general says, well, it's one to one. It's just a small piece of soil with some divvets in it. That seems to be the horrible pace of this war as well, although in this case it's good that the Russians haven't got very far. I am somewhat skeptical of the shift that we have seen on the right. We talked about this on Friday. Perhaps... Laura Luma is in a different category, as you imply. But someone like Tim Poole just turning around and saying, oh, I was wrong. Why? What changed your mind? They never say. It's welcome if it's real. It's welcome if it will. influence others, although I would suggest that if you're the sort of person whose view of a major international event is determined by what Tim Poole thinks, then your opinion is probably not worthwhile. So Charlie, are you implying they've turned around because of Trump or why they, do you have a theory? I have no idea. I think it could be Trump, it could be Israel. I think some of them could be sensing a financial benefit, whether that's direct or indirect. Perhaps they think their audience is moving. I don't know. I just find it utterly alien as somebody who probably to my own disadvantage in some areas just says exactly what I think. I don't understand it. I don't understand how you can spend years, as Tim Poole did, quite literally describing Ukraine and its leadership is evil. and saying that we should be on the other side in the war. And then just one day fire off a tweet without any substance at all saying, yeah, actually, I've changed my mind. Why? Why? I think, by the way, Lumer, she's tried to explain it and take accountability for it. I think what she did in Ukraine is pretty admirable. She's certainly on the right side, and I'm not one to wave away converts, but I would... demand a little more time before anyone starts praising her. She's also not abdicated her role as one of the leading and most crazy conspiracy theorists in the United States. So I'll remain at arm's length, even if I think that that is welcome. The interesting thing about this beyond those silly people is that the

Argument over Ukraine that has raged domestically over the last four years has often misrepresented the people that its participants have set up as avatars. That is to say, President Trump has neither been... the anti-Ukraine pro-Vladimir Putin figure that websites such as American greatness imply, nor the anti-Ukraine pure Vladimir Putin figure that websites such as the bulwark imply. He's been more nuanced than that. When he was running for president and Joe Biden was still in office, He was in favor of Congress sending money to the Ukrainians. And yet, if you watch the debates, Trump is claimed for both sides. He's cast as something that he's not, partly because figures within our politics want him to be one or the other. It's important to them. that he take positions that he hasn't. So it's certainly true that Trump has not taken the view toward Ukraine that I would have liked. He hasn't been as strongly pro-Ukraine as I have. But the emphatic anti-Ukraine rhetoric that we have seen in some quarters of the right, was not led by Trump so much as it was, I don't know, a misinterpretation of his position or a desire to influence him. So if this is the universe revolving around Trump, then those who are changing their minds will not have that far to travel because it's not as if they're going to get on the wrong side of Trump by... backing Ukraine. It's never quite been as clear because as that. So Jim, I'll just throw a couple observations at you. One, a lot of these people are anti-Ukraine. Part of their argument is that Ukraine is inevitably going to lose. So therefore, they said, let's cut them off and make sure that they lose. But before we get too far over our skis, being optimistic about this war, you still have the phenomenon that Ukraine is sending, you know, doctors to its front line and Russia is sending convicts. So there is that manpower disparity that is not in Ukraine's favor. They don't have these people to chuck into the meat grinder the way the cynical Vladimir Putin does. And then there's a matter of being able to intercept Russian attacks. They can intercept cruise missiles. You've been there many times. They can intercept cruise missiles. They can intercept drones, but the ballistic missiles are a real. problem. They intercept some of them, but obviously are being sparing because they have a shortage here. They just got licensed. Trump gave permission to make Patriot anti-missile interceptors themselves, but that will take years. So this is an element of the air war that's not in their favor, and they're absorbing a lot of punishment, and there's more to come. Oh, indisputably. And you kind of wonder whether this is a deliberate strategy on the part of Russia.

Because honestly, as terrible as it is, launching missiles into Kiev or Odessa apartment buildings, it's terrible. There's a terrible loss of civilian life. It kills women. It kills children. But it doesn't really affect the combat effectiveness of the Ukrainian side. In fact, it just makes them angrier. It just makes it more determined in, you know, the best majority of cases. So you're kind of like, well, is this something they're doing because there's a strategy or just something kind of just doing out of frustration? And this, you know, very Russian way of thinking of, ah, well, if we kill enough of their children at some point, they'll give up. No, I don't really, you know, like that, I don't think it's a particularly effective strategy. Probably the least noticed bit of news, at least in, you know, this side of the Atlantic. Last week, the Russian finance ministry suspended federal government bond auctions indefinitely as borrowing costs climb and investor demand weakens, complicating efforts to finance a widening wartime budget deficit. I won't repeat everything Dan just laid out, but yes, the drone attacks on the Russian... oil and natural gas infrastructure and now their equivalent of Amazon has been devastating, what the Ukrainians like to call long-range sanctions. When the war started and the West implemented these sanctions, you know, pretty darn far-reaching sanctions against the Russians. And, you know, Russia was still able to fight the war after several months, after a year, after two years. There was this sense that these sanctions had failed or that they were not nearly as effective as folks of the West wanted them to be. You know, first of all, some of them were leaky, no getting around it. Russia did find alternative sources for some of the stuff that they needed. But by and large, you weren't going to see a sudden collapse of the Russian economy. What you were going to see was after a while, stuff like spare parts for airplanes would get harder and repairs would take longer. And there'd just be this, you know, increasing stress upon the system. I think the fact that they're not doing government bond auctions is just one more sign of this. They're importing oil right now, right? Half of their refineries are on fire. The Ukrainians have drones that have managed to hit refineries in Siberia, right? Never mind, you know, they had a big kind of the Davos of St. Petersburg earlier this summer. Opening day, boom, oil refinery or oil facility across the river blows up. Everybody who's attending can see it, right? So there's been this like constant relentless pounding. And the question is, you know, like the Russian economy, it's not going to, you know, go kaput tomorrow. But month by month, year by year, it's just going to get harder to get stuff to done. And in terms of the, I was talking to a smart friend of mine who looks at this. Yeah, Russia still has a lot of men.

The question is, can you take guys in tracksuits and then turn them into an effective fighting force? And the answer, like the Russians don't have enough time. They're losing, like, you look at these daily casualty reports. And again, these are Ukrainian estimates, but UK intelligence is saying basically the same thing. U.S. intelligence. Nobody's disputing that the Russians are having day by day a lot of casualties in the thousands. That's killed, that's missing in action, that's injured. And you add all of this stuff up. You can't turn these guys to Spetsnatsnats overnight. You can't turn them into human meat waves to run them into the fire. But like the, like, and yes, you know, there's no doubt. Ukrainians are suffering their share of casualties too. But the Ukrainians doing most of their killing by drones. It's basically just a matter of like, send as many drones as possible. They've outsourced it to robotics. They've outsourced it to drones. And that is what's keeping Ukraine in this war. Now, does this add up to a way in which Ukraine can easily retake the lot of territory? I don't know. I mean, they keep saying they're going to hit the Kerch Bridge and they're, you know, bit by bit, they're making it harder and harder for Russian supply lines. Every time they capture guys, these guys are short on food. They're skinny as a rail. They're poorly equipped. They're poorly trained. I mean, you can see a situation where, like, the tide has shifted and things are going better for Ukraine. And you could say like, you know, the other thing which is worth noting is that for all, everything that's happening, there's no indication Vladimir Putin wants to negotiate. Seriously. There's no indication that Vladimir Putin wants to make concessions. Vladimir Putin, God knows what Vladimir Putin's getting told about this. I've kind of asked the question. Like, if we're going on, you know, we're now into the fifth year at this war, if your generals keep telling you we're on the verge of victory and it never arrives, at some point do you start to realize, oh, wait, I've been lied to the whole time. But I don't know. We'll see what's happening. I'm feeling better about the fate of Ukraine than I was, you know, a year ago. But, yeah, still a lot of fighting to go and still a very high price to be paid on the part of the Ukrainians. So next question to you, Dan Foster, surveying the Ukraine war, the Iran war, the Cold War with China. The state of the West is strong and getting stronger in your view or no? The state of the West is getting stronger is the good news. The bad news is that we are going to need it. Because getting stronger, we're trying to solve the munitions problem by both throwing a ton of money at it and changing the way we do R&D and testing and development and deployment. The military has some of our best logistical minds. And strategic minds, obviously, and they're thinking about this stuff hard. They're behind schedule in terms of the threats and dangers of the world. But they are trying their best to catch up. Again, throwing a lot of money at it, thrown a lot of good thinking at it. What I will say is that, you know, again, and this is a theme I wrote about my last piece for the magazine. There is a... A general tendency to have massive military buildups followed by massive wars. I will say the exception was the last one. Reagan's military buildup was the exception to that rule. But if you look at the three, four, or five, six before that, Germany over, over 30 years before World War I and World War II, Napoleon, several times during his rule. And even the army and he inherited was built by mass conscription and a mass arms build up by.

the French revolutionary government. Massive military buildups tend to be followed by massive conflict. And so that's kind of the bad news. But I will say, and the other thing I'll say is that a lot of the stuff is very fact-dependent. I'll give you an example, like, you know, we learned a lot. We learned a lot about the state of America's capabilities. Now, there's some confounding variables here, like political will and the whole boots on the ground question and all those things. But we learned a lot about America's capabilities by the course of the Iran War, both the things that we are in really, really good shape on and the things that are huge challenges. China, we know a little bit. There's a lot of books and studies and Rand Corporation papers written about what a war for the first island chain would look like. But... You know, anyone who does pay attention to this stuff knows, and I'm not pretending I know anything secret because I don't, but anyone who pays attention to this stuff knows that part of how the U.S. would defend itself, especially in the early going, in the Pacific, is classified. There are a number of highly classified capabilities that would feature into that. And we can kind of sit back and say, oh, they're probably awesome and we'll do a great job. It'll be like Venezuela all over again. But then again, Iran showed that that's not always the case. I mean, for every... Let's find a downpilot by listening to his heartbeat with a quantum computer story from Iran. There's a, we can't open the Strait of Hormuz story from Iran. So it's a lot of it is fact dependent. And unfortunately, we're just not going to know until we're in it. The problem with China, too, is the whole political will question is if we get our asses kicked for 30 days in China, there will be zero political will, I think. to have a longer conflict. So in a lot of ways, it's dependent on how good things look early. Now, maybe there'll be a Pearl Harbor effect or something like that that I can't predict. I mean, Lord knows there's lots in the fog of war that you can't predict, but so much of the stuff is going to be contingent rather than sort of structural. So, Dan, you said you weren't going to talk about World War II again. I think I did. There's a German buildup, military buildup prior to World War I. I said in that answer. I said in that first answer. Charlie? I honestly don't know. I think economically the West is getting stronger. The relative. wealth and power and innovation of the United States over the last 25 years has been impressive and I'm skeptical of China and we still have massive military but it's funny I'm sitting listening to Dan argue with himself in a sense and he was persuading me on both sides of the coin so I don't know Jim Gertie Positive on one front, negative on the other two. I would point out that like, yeah, Ukraine's doing a great job. We're not giving as much help as we used to.

Yeah, we're selling stuff to the Europeans. The Europeans are providing it. But we have, you know, certainly not diplomatically. Certainly we've, you know, every time Trump talks about it, he keeps saying, oh, you know, I really think Vladimir Putin wants peace, you know, nonsense there. And, you know, Iran still has effectively has control over the straight to Formuz and is, you know, dramatically reduced the amount of oil and natural gas coming out of there. And I have no idea how things are going in China, but I'm not feeling great about, hey, how many things has the administration done to punish China for all that meddling in the elections the president told us about in prime time? Two weeks? Anything? Anything? I think I'm getting married crickets. Now, do Russia have problems? Does Russia have problems? Yeah. Does Iran have problems? Oh, heck yeah. Does China have problems? Sure. But I, so maybe relatively, you know, they're losing ground worse than we are. But I don't think we're actually nearly as strong as people want to believe. I think we're getting stronger. I think Europe's done a pretty good job stepping up in Ukraine. And not all of Europe, but a lot of European countries are much more serious on the defense spending front. And economically, I don't think you'd want to be in the position of no one else would, everyone else would be. should be envious of our position economically. But there are problems. The munitions thing is just embarrassing. Now, there's some debate over whether this is true that we have empty bins. And that's why Trump had to call off the hits we're doing in the straight-up four moves. But it's just embarrassing to have that headline out there. Oh, we can't do it because we don't have the munitions. So I do think we're getting stronger. But to take it where Dan was going, I would. don't think we're strong enough to feel confident about a major conflict with China. So with that, let's go to our second sponsor this episode. We spent a lot of time this year talking about tariffs, whether it's still actually possible to make things in America, or our sponsor today is putting that question to the test. Vera was founded in Los Angeles back in 2016 with a simple but very ambitious mission to revive the American watch industry. Cut to today, Vera is proud to be the largest independent watch assembler in the United States. Building watches in California, Arizona, Rhode Island, and Alabama, as well as manufacturing leather straps in Illinois and Florida. All of us here at theaters have been wearing our very watches for a while now, and I can tell you firsthand that they are truly amazing. I am wearing mine as we speak. I get positive comments about it all the time. Listeners wondering if it's a very watch. Yes, of course it's a very watch, but then random people also say, hey, that's a really handsome watch. which it is. When I'm not wearing it, I feel as though something's missing now. Vair makes some of the most durable, well-built watches on the market. They use top-grade luxury materials. They all come with a waterproof warranty, and they've earned over 10,000 five-star reviews. What's more, Vair's classic analog approach to timekeeping is not only sophisticated and refined. It's also a welcome departure for people who are tired getting pinged on their smart watches all day. If you want to support American craftsmanship and own a watch that's both rugged and refined, check out Vair. You can find them at VeraWashes.com. That's V-A-E-R-Watches.com. So Charlie, we have Trump banging on John Thune, Senate Majority Leader, about not letting senators go on their August recess. This is like a five-arm fire. If there's one thing that the Senate treasures above anything else, it's their August recess. Trump is obsessed with passing the SAVE Act. John Thune, he's kind of like in the position that House Speaker John Boehner was.

constantly getting undermined and get his life made miserable in Boehner's case by the Freedom Caucus, but with John Thune, it's not the Freedom Caucus. Instead, the President of the United States, who doesn't understand why this thing doesn't have the votes to pass and wants to eliminate the filibuster to try to pass it. I find myself completely unmoved by all of this. The Senate is a separate branch of government. The Senate has a filibuster in place. There are not the votes to abolish the filibuster, thankfully. There probably aren't the votes on the Democratic side either. And even if the filibuster disappeared tomorrow, the Save Act wouldn't pass. So I see this as theatre. And I'm deaf to the cries of those who... Call me names for this opinion. I don't care. This is math. John Thune does not work for Donald Trump. And even if he did, the other senators who have made their positions clear do not work for John Thune. The SAVE Act has provisions within it that are extremely popular. Many of them I like myself. But it doesn't have the votes to pass. So what are we doing here? Now, the benign way of looking at this is to say that the president, of course, has free speech. The president is allowed to... put pressure on the legislature. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with someone within the executive branch demanding legislation. Ronald Reagan did it in the early 1980s when he asked people to call their congressman and agitate in favor of his tax cuts. The less benign take is that The president is diminishing the role of the legislature, which sets its own rules, and whipping people up into a hysteria that is going to make it more difficult for the president's own party to win seats in the legislature. And even if... the president's party does win enough seats to retain majorities in both houses, more difficult for those majorities to function and for the trifecta to govern. And I'm afraid I are toward the latter interpretation. I don't think that this is smart politics. I don't think that it is quotidian hardball. This reminds me of the 2013 shutdown, where figures such as Ted Cruz just kept pretending that what was necessary to get through the aims of the base loosely construed was a willingness to fight.

But it wasn't. It was math. There was no way in 2013 that President Obama was going to consent to repeal his signature law. And there is no way right now that the Republicans are going to abolish the filibuster when there is no way that Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and others are going to vote against the SAVE Act. So what this amounts to once again is a lament that Republicans don't have as many seats in the Senate as they would like to have. And that's fine. But lamenting is not a strategy. So I find myself completely divorced from this argument. It seems to be in the news all the time. People seem extremely het up about it. it's not going to happen. And as a result, there's just not a great deal of point in getting involved in the fight. So, Jim, it's not going to happen, but if it did, it would be crazy because you'd be setting up this situation where you could lose in 2028. You could easily lose the whole thing in 2028 and have an inflamed Democratic Party taking power with one of the main obstacle to the most radical ideas having already conveniently been removed for them, the filibuster. Yeah, and it's very, you know, it's interesting. Every time the filibuster is an obstacle to democratic wishes, they say they're going to get rid of it. They don't have the votes to do it. Then they get it a majority. And then they actually don't get rid of it themselves. But then they complain about the Republicans. Ah, this is a relic of Jim Crow. It's Jim Eagle, I tell you, as Biden said. Look, why does Trump want the say of act? Well, he thinks that, one, he's always believed that elections are rigged and there's grand conspiracies and, you know. There's bamboo in the paper of the Arizona ballots and 2020s stolen and, you know, every conspiracy theory that comes down the pike. But he's kind of convinced somehow that if we pass the SAVE Act, well, then Republicans won't have a bad midterm election. Republican, like, you know, there's still some time between now and election day, but the cement is heartening. The economy is not great. The mood of the country is not that, you know, will redistricting help Republicans in the House some? Yeah. Senate looks like a jump ball. Democrats might screw themselves up. They looks like they botched their chance at Maine. They might nominate Abdul El-Sayed and make Michigan look much more better for Republicans. But by and large, you know, it's probably going to be a bad midterm year. Trump has convinced himself that, well, in order like, instead of like, you know, having a better economy and not putting tariffs on everything, every, you know, opportunity I get, if I just passed the Save Act, then Democrats won't be able to cheat.

And then we'll have a good midterm. Oh, and Republicans don't want to pass the Save Act because there aren't 50 votes for it. Well, by golly, it's all John Thune's fault. Trump doesn't look for solutions. His instinct is to look for scapegoats. And he's now, again, you know, he spent a whole prime time address telling us that China had hacked the election and everything's bad, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Didn't do anything to punt. Didn't mention Xi Jinping in that speech. Didn't mention any of, you know, we haven't done anything. No, no, no. The SAVE Act is the cure-all for everything Republicans are worried about. I am very unconvinced. So, Dan, you know what this reminds me of the period between 1941 and 1943 when Stalin was desperate for a second front? All right. Sorry, I can't do it. We know you really want it, but it's just not possible. Yeah. I can do a pre-World War II reference, I guess. I mean, the filibuster is, I can make this work. The filibuster is, a procedural self-defense mechanism for the U.S. Senate that developed into its modern form in long-term institutional response to the structural protections that the Senate had from from majoritarianism that were removed with the passage of the constitutional amendment that directly elected senators. So, you know, the procedural fix I've been a big defender of the filibuster. Traditionally, I still am. I think this would be the stupidest reason possible to lose it, which kind of makes it perfect for all the reasons Charlie said about the merits of the bill. But I do think it's another empirical question whether the filibuster serves the institutional... balance, you know, the checks and balance power that it always did. And it's kind of a special case of a larger question about, you know, if the progressive world, if the New Deal world or the sort of broadly sort of progressive world are the status quo and are the establishment now, does a countermajoritarian check automatically serve conservative interests? I'm much more open. to the argument that it doesn't that I used to be. I'm not convinced of it, but I'm much more open to that argument. I mean, Charlie talks a lot also about the Supreme Court, and if court packing happens, it's the end of the Republic. I'm pretty sympathetic to that argument, too, but it's a similar structural argument, right? That it's a contingent fact, a... a fact of the current composition of the court and norms that aren't protected by the Constitution that the Supreme Court acts as a consistent bulwark protecting the Constitution. And that could change. And again, it could change without any constitutional obstacles via court packing or some other scheme. So, you know, these things are much shakier foundations than they ought to be. But I am open to the idea that a world post-filibuster would have all kinds of unintended consequences, but that it might be good for some conservative ends, the same way that it might be bad for others. I'm enough of a Burkean and a Chestertonian overall to...

not want to not want to find out I'd rather keep the filibuster around but it is at least worth mentioning that you know there are these nuances to the conversation so Charlie asked a question to you when we look back at unified Republican control of Washington we will think it was basically wasted or Republicans made the best use of it that was plausible neither they haven't completely wasted it they certainly haven't made the best use of it The system that I favor blocks sweeping change at the federal level. But it doesn't block the House of Representatives passing bill after bill after bill, knowing that it is going to die in the Senate, making it clear. what Republicans believe. Now, that might be the problem, Rich. It might be that there is no coherent greed upon agenda from Republicans. But they've certainly in the House wasted a lot of time. If you go back to the Biden administration, the Senate got in the way of a bunch of the Democrats bills in the House too. But they did pass them. and made it clear what they would do. And I think given the number of 80, 20 issues on which Republicans sit on the right side, that has been a wasted opportunity. Jim Garrity, wasted are best plausible. Like everybody else, it's somewhere in the middle, but it's still pretty disappointing. You know, Big beautiful bill, tax cuts, increased defense spending. It's not Republicans did nothing in the last two years. But, you know, never had a very big majority in the House. Every little faction could split off and put the kibosh on things. Trump was never all that focused. And Trump was always like, look, I'm the imperial presidency on steroids. I don't need the Congress. I can do whatever I want. And when you don't act like you value having Republican majorities in the House and Senate, you're more likely to lose them. Dan Foster. I'll say they basically completely wasted it. I agree the NDA, the big defense budget would be the best. thing that they did. I think they wasted it though, and I think for the reason Jim mentioned all the useful things that I think Trump has done, the ways that he's beaten back, the administrative state, the so-called deep state, which is a real thing, although not in the shape and contours that a lot of people claim it is. And the culture war stuff, he's done via executive action. And I think those things are meritorious without getting into all the specifics. But What would have been really amazing from a, if you'll forgive, a profane acronym from the DGAF Trump presidency, what would have been really amazing is a kind of James Polk, he wasn't even alive during World War II, I'll point out, a kind of James Polk presidency where Trump reset the balance between Congress and the executive. And it would take a figure with Trump's.

lack of concern for the status quo to do that. Obviously, Trump never had anything like the instinct to do that because it would involve him turning over power to another branch of government. But any kind of real lasting reform to the republic would have required a reset that the president willingly participated in. And he was never going to be the guy to do that. And so he was never going to be the guy to let. Congress reassert itself, and that is still desperately needed. Yeah, so I tilt towards wasted. For the reason that Jim mentioned, I just don't think there was ever much of a legislative agenda. I think there was a lot of preparation by the Trump team. We saw it with a strong start out of the gate. But it was a unilateral action and things that Trump was going to do on his own with an emphasis over time, more and more on foreign policies. So this has been an imperial presidency that's not really that interested in Congress one way or the other. With that, let's hear from our final sponsor. This episode, the Competitive Enterprise Institute podcast, How the World Works, featuring our old friend political commentator Kevin Williamson. Each episode, Kevin sits down with a notable guest to discuss the jobs they've had why work matters and the role of work in our social lives. After all, work involves a lot more than paychecks cashed. So listen to how the world works wherever you listen to podcasts or visit CI.org slash. podcast. With that, let's hit a few other things before we go. Jim Garrity, you guys headed to one of your favorite restaurants, The Jetty. So the Jetty is this dockside restaurant out in Kent Narrows, Maryland. You have to drive over the exceptionally high. And as Mary Catherine Hamm observed, kind of unnervingly frightening bridge. But once you get past the traffic, all that, great place right in the water. They had a band playing. It's just one of our best places that's, you know, the traffic is bad. It's about two hours to get there. But it just feels like you're completely different from the Washington, D.C. area. Just the vibe is totally different. Coming back, the traffic was like an hour and 15 minutes. So, you know, the Bay Bridge traffic is only bad in one direction one way and bad the other direction the other day. So it was nice to get away. And as I said, it's been a quiet summer around here. But this was an enjoyable place to get away to. Dan Foster here took your kid to see your grandmother. That's right. We are blessed to still have the 95-year-old matriarch of our family with us and with it. And she's never been with all five of her great-grandchildren at once. And circumstance came together this last weekend where at the last minute kind of where that was going to happen. So I wanted to make sure my daughter wasn't the fifth, the missing fifth. And it was great to see. everybody and to see her and take a bunch of pictures charlie you've been listening to ellie langley ella langley that's right ella langley is a country star and has a song at the moment choose in texas that has been on the hot 100 for a very long time and is about to break all sorts of records my wife really likes country music and i'm fine with country music

But I've never been as into it as she is. But I've been listening to Ella Langley's album, Dandelion, and it is absolutely fantastic. And unlike a lot of country music, which is really pop music with a bit of a twang, you can hear that she knows her country. It's modern in some places. But she clearly... knows her Loretta Lynn and her Waylon Jennings and her Willie Nelson. This is real country music from the 70s and 80s in tone. So if you like that sort of thing, which I do, then have a listen. So I was away for a couple days, went to a rustic inn on a nice piece of property, on a pond, had a great... Summer vibe, reminded me a little bit of Moonrise Kingdom, which, by the way, is a wonderful movie if you've never seen it before. With that, it's time for our editor's picks. Jim Garrity, what's your pick? So I could pick Andy McCarthy just about any single week, but I like how Andy keeps an eye on stories to kind of fade out of the news. And, you know, most people, I think once they've had that 24-hour news period, they kind of want to disappear. The case against former FBI director James Comey, the idea that hosting 8647 in seashells represented some true threat to assassinate the president was always kind of ridiculous. And there were a couple of MAGA types. Like, yeah, but now lawfare is on our side. So it's good. Look, you know, McCarthy was always skeptic and laid out why this was kind of ridiculous that he's keeping on top of that corner post. James Comey moves to dismiss the Trump DOJ's 8647 indictment. You know, the federal government is a big and powerful institution and it should be used for things more important than trolling. Dan Foster, what's your pick? I'm going to go with Abigail Anthony's piece. They have no idea what we think. When I opened it, I thought it was going to be on the sort of, repeatedly reproduced result one of the one of the more consistent results as far as social science goes social psychology goes that that the right understands what the left believes and has a better theory of mind for what the left believes than the left has of the right it's it is about that but it's actually this great almost literal laundry list of things that liberals in academia leftists in academia think about conservatives which are uniformly wrong and some hilarious and many, many, many are self-serving and self-soothing. And you read this piece and you come away with it thinking that the Academy deserves exactly what is happening to it and is going to happen to it. I'm going to pick the same thing, unperturbed by Dan having beaten me to the punch. I have been watching this debate play out online and have been equally irritated by those who wish to keep conservatives out of academia, taking every single possible position at the same time.

while in most cases having no clue what they were talking about. And I just want to congratulate Abigail for having compiled a list of these arguments. There's 29 of them. And then she runs through and explains how they can't possibly all coexist. So I'll second Dan Sullivan endorsement. I feel compelled to pick Jim Garrity dunking, doing some well-deserved dunking on the aforementioned. Anthony Fauci. So that's it for us. You've been listening to a national view podcast, re-broadcast, retransmission, or account of this game without the express written permission of National Union magazine is strictly prohibited. This podcast has been produced by the incomparable Sarah Shuddy, who makes it sound better than we deserve. Thank you, Charlie, thank you, Jim, thank you, Dan. Thanks to Made InVair and how the world works, and thanks especially to all of you for listening. We're the editors. We'll see you next time.