Speaker 1: You know, just commenting on some of the news. I
Speaker 1: don't know what y'all pay attention to or not. But
Speaker 1: Washington d c UM, the people that work there in
Speaker 1: the media are obsessed with the comings and goings of
Speaker 1: people in government, and nobody in real life pays attention
Speaker 1: to it. Nobody, right, So you might not know this.
Speaker 1: Maybe you do if you're really a news junkie. But
Speaker 1: they got a new d n I. You don't know
Speaker 1: what that is. I'll bet you couldn't get one and
Speaker 1: twenty people that could tell you what the d n
Speaker 1: I is, and you couldn't come up with one and
Speaker 1: a hundred that could have told you who the last
Speaker 1: guy wasn't old the current guy, but the guy that's leaving, right,
Speaker 1: But Washington d c ix all big deal breaking news.
Speaker 1: A guy you've never heard of is leaving an apartment
Speaker 1: you don't pay attention to. Yeah, let's talk about that
Speaker 1: a little bit with Debra J. Saunders, the White House
Speaker 1: correspondent for the Las Vegas Review Journal and the real
Speaker 1: The reason we love talking to Deborah so much is
Speaker 1: that she's a real human being who has lived a
Speaker 1: real life and is not merely a lifelong denizen of
Speaker 1: the Beltway, Deborrah, how are you? I wrote about John
Speaker 1: ratt close today the New d N. I oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's important. Are you gonna speak or something? We can
Speaker 1: barely hear you. Oh, I'm sorry? Is this better? It
Speaker 1: was so bad? I was so bad. So in the
Speaker 1: you know, post nine eleven are having intelligence and the
Speaker 1: rest of it. We're all hip to that, and it's
Speaker 1: important in the rest of it. But how how much
Speaker 1: of an adjustment period was it when you got to
Speaker 1: d C to deal with everybody's self obsession? Oh? Because
Speaker 1: that never happens in the Bay Area. That's right, Deborah.
Speaker 1: For years the token conservative the San Francisco Chronicle. But
Speaker 1: you gotta admit d C is its own weird beast.
Speaker 1: I would say that there are people here who feel
Speaker 1: that if they are not here, the world will fall
Speaker 1: apart in a way that you don't see in other places.
Speaker 1: That that there, that there are people who put a
Speaker 1: lot of stock in the fact that they are they
Speaker 1: have a place in the establishment, and that is a problem.
Speaker 1: But the John Radcliff Cliff story is important for a
Speaker 1: few reasons. Dan. We want to have somebody who sees
Speaker 1: real problems toward national security and will tell Donald Trump
Speaker 1: that he sees them, even if Donald Trump doesn't want
Speaker 1: to hear it. Right, So Dan Coates was known to
Speaker 1: do that. He disagreed with Trump on Russian interference in
Speaker 1: the sixteen election. He's made it clear he doesn't believe
Speaker 1: that North Korea will not denuclearized despite their nice sessions
Speaker 1: and Singapore and Vietnam and now at the d m
Speaker 1: z UM but uh. And so he's been someone who's
Speaker 1: been willing to say that. And so now you have
Speaker 1: this guy, John Radcliffe. Most people in the intelligence community
Speaker 1: don't really know him, and Trump picks him a couple
Speaker 1: of days after this guy basically gives us thumping to
Speaker 1: Special Counsel Robert Muller as he's testifying before the House
Speaker 1: Judiciary and Intelligence committees. And there's a belief in Washington. Gee,
Speaker 1: I don't know why that Maybe picked him because he
Speaker 1: liked the way that John Radcliffe treated Robert Mueller, sort
Speaker 1: of like the way he picked Ronnie Jackson to be
Speaker 1: v A secretary because he liked the way Ronnie Jackson
Speaker 1: dealt with the media when he talked about Trump's physical
Speaker 1: But this the Ratcliffe guy's reasonably intelligent, he was a
Speaker 1: prosecutor the rest of it. So you know, I guess
Speaker 1: we see, does he have to get approved by the Senate. Yes,
Speaker 1: he does, and that could be an issue. So Mitch
Speaker 1: McConnell puts out a statement, doesn't really say anything about Ratcliffe.
Speaker 1: Burr's pretty a senator. Burr who's on the Intelligence Committee,
Speaker 1: ranking the top Republican. He's lukewarm, it seems, And so
Speaker 1: a lot of people are afraid. The one the one
Speaker 1: position you don't necessarily want to have a big Trump
Speaker 1: loyalist is d n I. You you want the guy
Speaker 1: who was sitting, who was who was a head of
Speaker 1: all those intelligence agencies to be able to look at
Speaker 1: Trump and tell him stuff he doesn't want to know.
Speaker 1: And that's that's the Washington take, and it's it's perhaps
Speaker 1: more universal than it should be, but it's not without reason.
Speaker 1: So trying to figure out again what we should talk
Speaker 1: about what we shouldn't, it would seem that the idea
Speaker 1: of fiscal conservativism is it just is just gone. It's
Speaker 1: just dead. It's just it's not a thing anymore. It's
Speaker 1: not part of the Republican Party. What's your read given
Speaker 1: the last week or so, in which well, they threw
Speaker 1: open the gate. There's actually more domestic spending in this,
Speaker 1: and a bigger increase in domestic spending than there was
Speaker 1: under Obama. It's just incredible the way Republicans, who were
Speaker 1: such fiscal hawks when Barack Obama was president, have completely
Speaker 1: abandoned the idea. And I mean the reverse of that
Speaker 1: is I'm getting such a kick out of particularly media
Speaker 1: on MSNBC, NN, CNN all of a sudden really singing
Speaker 1: to care about the debt, which may never happen, but anyway,
Speaker 1: they don't care about the debt. They do not care
Speaker 1: about the debt. But but you know, and the thing is,
Speaker 1: there's a reason this is happening. It's not just that
Speaker 1: the right is completely craving about spending. Some are, but
Speaker 1: not everyone. But what you have is you need to
Speaker 1: raise the debt sailing in order to for the U. S.
Speaker 1: Government to pay its bills, and you need the House
Speaker 1: to do that, you need Democrats to do it, and
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi, I think bargain, got a pretty good bargain
Speaker 1: out of Donald Trump. And so you've got this big
Speaker 1: increase in domestic spending, which Republicans had managed to fight
Speaker 1: off for a number of years, and now that's sort
Speaker 1: of done. I think Trump just reading the room, and
Speaker 1: I think he's right. I'm I'm sad that he's right,
Speaker 1: but I think he just reads room things. People don't
Speaker 1: actually care about this. So I'm going to I'm gonna
Speaker 1: only get this behind us so it doesn't become a
Speaker 1: thing and move on with other things that I care about.
Speaker 1: And I think he's right. People just don't care. I
Speaker 1: think you're right, and and I think he read He
Speaker 1: also read the room that this was not the this
Speaker 1: was not the fight to go down with that, this
Speaker 1: is not the issue that he should stake his presidency on.
Speaker 1: A lot of people understand this. Um of course. Trump
Speaker 1: said the last time he passed a build and increased
Speaker 1: spending he would never do it again. Well, not quite,
Speaker 1: and talk that he will get tough if the one
Speaker 1: who's reelected, but he's not. Let's face it, he did
Speaker 1: not campaign for the president as a person who is
Speaker 1: really gonna pare down federal spending. That was not his
Speaker 1: His biggest thing. Immigration was a big thing. Well, to
Speaker 1: enforce immigration law costs money, right, and so uh trade,
Speaker 1: trade is a big issue for him, and he's fighting
Speaker 1: on that, but but those when you think about the
Speaker 1: things that have really mattered to him. Uh. I mean,
Speaker 1: let's face it, he built his empire on debt. That's
Speaker 1: how he became rich. He borrowed money and he Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the difference is in the private enterprise you have
Speaker 1: to pay it back eventually because you can't print your
Speaker 1: own at least not yet. Um. The Secret Service will
Speaker 1: come and talk to you if you try. Uh. Debra J. Saunders,
Speaker 1: White House correspondent for the Las Vegas Review Journal. Deborah,
Speaker 1: great to talk to you. Thank you and go go
Speaker 1: or ask some elected official, would you Okay, more likely
Speaker 1: in appointed official, thanks Debora. So yeah, yeah, he did
Speaker 1: not run on it. There's very little constituency for it.
Speaker 1: Fiscal responsibility. I mean, I would appreciate somebody, really, you know,
Speaker 1: fighting on that hill as they say, Um, I would
Speaker 1: respect it a great deal. But if I liked in
Speaker 1: respect of that person, I would be very concerned that
Speaker 1: they were committing career suicide by doing that, which is
Speaker 1: it's a measure of the electorate. You know, it's a
Speaker 1: cliche and it's terrible and it's not always true. But
Speaker 1: to a large extent, we do get the government we deserve.
Speaker 1: My big caveat on that is that some of the
Speaker 1: smartest people in the world spend all their time trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to game government and how to
Speaker 1: get rich off of it. Will nobody's looking, and they
Speaker 1: have up their game. I mean the astounding achievements in
Speaker 1: gaming the government. I mean on the level of penicillin
Speaker 1: and the Apollo mission. Uh, that's how good the scammers are,
Speaker 1: which is why we need Who's with me monarchy now
Speaker 1: far strong and Jetty