This Week’s Show

Contents

• 02m06s Trump twice lucky
• 09m49s The Grim Beeper
• 15m08s This is not 1954
• 30m12s Trump’s inner gentleman
• 32m19s Scientific American betrays science (again)
• 37m17s Sir Keir speaks American
• 39m08s Et in Arcadia ego
• 42m03s Signoff with Johnny

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Full Show On Odysee 

Transcript

01 — Intro.     And Radio Derb is on the air! Greetings, listeners and readers, from your manifestly genial host John Derbyshire, bringing you commentary on the week’s news from a National Conservative point of view.

As I go to tape here midday on Friday, the week’s big stories have been Sunday’s assassination attempt on Donald Trump, and the very interesting advance in military technology we saw in Beirut, Lebanon on Wednesday and Thursday. I shall give full coverage to those.

Humming away in the background are topics less dramatic but at least equally consequential, topics concerning the upcoming election, immigration, and the culture wars. I shall have things to say there, too. In the matter of immigration, I shall in fact engage in argument with the Boss himself, Peter Brimelow, not without some trepidation.

As usual, though, before we start Let me just remind you that you can still make a tax-deductible donation to the Derbyshire retirement account by mailing an earmarked check to: The VDARE Foundation, P.O. Box 211, Litchfield-with-a-“t”, CT 06759.

OK, the news. First that assassination attempt.

02 — Trump twice lucky.     This was Sunday afternoon about 1:30. Trump was playing a round of golf at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida with Steve Witkoff, an old real-estate buddy. Quoting from the man himself, speaking at a livestream on X the following day, quote:

So I was playing golf with some of my friends, it was on a Sunday morning and very peaceful, very beautiful weather. Everything was beautiful, nice place to be, and all of a sudden we heard shots being fired in the air, I guess probably four or five, and it sounded like bullets, but what do I know about that? Secret Service knew immediately it was bullets …

End quote.

Just a couple of textual notes there. Trump said it was Sunday morning; the newspapers say Sunday afternoon, I went with the newspapers (and so did Wikipedia).

And then, the reason I didn’t give you Trump’s own voice for that quote is that the livestream video I took it from is really poor quality; trying to extract the audio clip strained my patience to breaking point.

Finally, concerning that last sentence of Trump’s, re-quote: “Secret Service knew immediately it was bullets,” end quote. They sure did, because it was they who fired the bullets.

One of the Secret Service agents, scouting one green ahead of the golfers, spotted a gun barrel poking out of the trees around the golf course. He called the alarm, agents opened fire, and the would-be assassin ran without having fired a shot. Seeing him racing to his vehicle, and presumably having heard the gunfire, a passer-by photographed his licence plate and he was soon pulled over and arrested.

The suspect turned out to be a 58-year-old wack job named Ryan Routh with a checkered past, originally from North Carolina but now living in Hawaii, where he runs a small business.

As with the July attempt on Trump’s life, there are strange questions to which as yet we have heard no answers. For example: phone-tracking software has determined that Routh took up his position in those trees lining the golf course around 2 a.m. that Sunday morning; so he was lying there in wait for nearly twelve hours.

How did he know Trump would be golfing that day? The ex-President doesn’t issue advance schedules. People in his circle might know his intentions and blab about them; so of course might golf buddy Steve Witkoff and people in his circle. But why would they blab to a good-for-nothing lowlife like Routh?

There are other mysteries relating to Routh’s acquaintances and his inexplicable finances. We can hope for explanations to emerge; but if the Deep State-media complex is involved here, we shouldn’t hope too much.

Routh has been charged with two federal gun possession crimes. He was already a convicted felon, so under federal law he shouldn’t have had a gun at all. The gun he did have had had its serial number erased — that’s the second federal crime. The FBI says they’re doing an investigation.

In the context of Routh having apparently tried to kill the ex-President, those federal gun charges seem picayune.

Among those who feel that way there is Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida — the state, remember, in which the whole thing happened. Quote from the New York Times, Tuesday, quote:

After the FBI announced it was investigating the incident, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican, announced that his state would do its own research on what had happened.

[Inner quote.] “In my judgment, it’s not in the best interest of our state or our nation to have the same federal agencies that are seeking to prosecute Donald Trump leading this investigation,” [end inner quote] DeSantis said on Tuesday morning at a news conference in West Palm Beach, raising the possibility that the suspect, Ryan Routh, could face a state charge of attempted murder.

End quote.

So I guess you can add Governor Ron to the list of Americans who don’t trust the FBI, along with me and several million others.

In commentary on this event, the deepest and darkest depths of suspicion were given voice by Mark Steyn on Monday. Edited quote from Mark:

In the last two months, Trump has been lucky twice. There are another two months to go: can he be lucky thrice? Four times?

This mini-spate of lone shooters is beginning to feel a bit like the 2024 version of Russian interference: they’re getting us used to the idea of Trump being an assassination target, so that the ultimate “October surprise” won’t seem such a big deal.

The Deep State is telling us they will not permit Donald Trump to take office again.

End quote.

At this point I myself am not quite down there in the darkness with Mark. What he’s suggesting is not preposterous, though — not at all, not by any means …

03 — The Grim Beeper.     And then, at the other end of the week, the story about the exploding pagers.

The context here is of course the war between Israel and Iran. That’s how I think of these stories about terrorism and war in the Levant. We keep being told that the groups fighting against Israel — Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis — are funded, equipped, and supported mainly by Iran. That means it’s a war between Israel and Iran, to a good first approximation, doesn’t it?

Whether it is or not, this latest development is a very impressive piece of undercover work on the part of — presumably — the Israelis. Hearing that Hezbollah would be switching from smartphones to pagers because smartphones are too easy to locate, the Israelis somehow infiltrated the supply chain for those pagers and inserted explosive and shrapnel — ball bearings, I think it was. Then they jiggled the electronics so that a certain incoming signal would ignite the explosive.

And there you have it: the Grim Beeper. Other purveyors of dark humor are exercising their wits, too: I just heard the service provider for those pagers named as ATNT …

The history of war has of course plenty of mass killings. It also has a good number of targeted killings, where some particular enemy person is assassinated. What we saw this week was targeted mass killing — the first ever, I think.

Sure, there was a small number of collateral casualties. Even allowing for those, though, these killings were way better targeted than the missiles that Hezbollah’s been lobbing into the towns and settlements of northern Israel for years now, forcing the Israeli government to evacuate thousands of citizens from their homes.

You might try explaining that to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. On second thoughts, it would likely be a waste of time: Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.

Not only were enemy fighters maimed and killed with minimal collateral casualties, these pager bombs must also have played havoc with Hezbollah morale. If neither smartphones nor pagers can be trusted for communications, what can? If this supply chain could be infiltrated, what other supply chains are vulnerable? What electronic gadgets can we trust?

And what people can we trust? Bear in mind that Hezbollah, although its political base is Lebanon, is a tool of Iran, a technologically sophisticated nation — sophisticated enough to be on the verge of producing nuclear weapons. Presumably Iran had some part to play in supplying the pagers to Hezbollah. Didn’t they check them?

I’m guessing that the exploding pagers — and, next day, exploding walkie-talkies purchased by Hezbollah about the same time as the pagers — are going to effect a worldwide change of attitude to electronic gadgets, especially small ones. There have been reports from Beirut of domestic solar energy systems and air-conditioners exploding.

What, people are asking, if one of those pagers, or some similar electronic accessory, had gone off in a plane already airborne? Could it be that smartphones are like fire: a good friend to mankind if properly managed, a lethal enemy if not? People everywhere are looking at their smartphones and wondering.

I don’t own a pager or a smartphone myself, so there’s an opening here for me to be smug. I do, however, own a flip phone. It’s handy for making phone calls when I’m away from the house, although I don’t use it for anything else. It’s sitting on my desk in front of me right now. I keep glancing at it, in a way I never used to …

04 — This is not 1954.     In my introduction I promised you some sparring between myself and Peter Brimelow — my boss, as I still consider him to be, at VDARE.com.

It’s very gentle sparring, I should say. Peter and I have been friends for a quarter of a century. We hold each other in the highest esteem. Dedicated readers of my monthly Diary will recall that the Derbyshires and the Brimelows are in fact blood relatives at the fourth or fifth cousin level, according to 23andMe.

Our difference of opinion here concerns the possibility of mass deportations. That’s “possibility,” not “desirability.” Both Peter and I — along with 54 percent of our fellow citizens — support mass deportation of illegal aliens. Can it be done, though?

The reference point here is a longish — twelve hundred words — article in The Economist, August 31st. I don’t think you can read it online if you’re not a subscriber, so to help you out I’ve imaged it to my own website and put a link in the transcript of this podcast. I apologize to The Economist for having thus shamelessly violated copyright law and beg them not to sic the FBI on me.

September 9th I did a one-hour interview with Michael Farris, posted at his “Coffee and a Mike” vidcast on Rumble. The subject of mass deportation came up. I’d just been reading that Economist piece on the topic, and it confirmed some things I had already figured out for myself.

Sure — and I said this on the vidcast, around the 31-minute mark — The Economist is a globalist outlet that favors mass immigration, so to some degree they are talking to themselves here. Still, stopped clocks and all that: Some things are true even though The Economist says they are true.

So what did the August 31st Economist have to say on the subject? Subtitle of the article, quote: “Donald Trump’s dream of mass deportations is a fantasy.” End quote.

They start with the legal obstacles, interviewing an immigration judge in Dallas, Texas who has 23,000 cases pending. Quote from The Economist:

The grinding pace of Judge Thielemann’s courtroom in Dallas is just one example of the ways in which carrying out mass deportations would be harder than Mr Trump allows. In practice, such an effort would be stymied by legal, logistical and political obstacles.

End quote.

The writer goes on to tell us that 3.7 million amnesty cases are pending in the immigration courts. Any one of them, if denied, can be appealed. There are work-arounds that Trump 47 might try; but this paragraph ends with, quote, “he would face legal challenges.” Oh yes, he surely would, from a legal establishment most of which hates him.

The article moves on from the legal to the political. Sample, quote from paragraph ten:

If Mr Trump wins the election in November, blue states may pass more sanctuary laws to pre-empt any attempt at mass deportations. The result would be a deportation campaign enforced unequally across the country, depending on the politics of each place.

End quote.

I enlarged on all that for Michael Farris and his viewers. The negativity of the Economist article fits well with my preconceived conviction that the activist left has occupied all our key institutions and can fend off any assaults on its program by relentless lawfare.

A Trump administration that took them on would be facing a mighty army of NGOs and Human-rights activists, all armored up, sturdy with government and corporate money, and eager for battle.

We might win a victory now and then, here and there, but the whole logic of the four-year election cycle is against us — the ratchet effect that I spoke about in last week’s podcast.

Left activism has a huge popular base. Close to half the electorate — half of us! — are telling pollsters they plan to vote for Kamala Harris on November 5th. Whatever happens this election, whatever we might get done in 2025, 2026, 2027, 2028 could turn to dust in 2029.

We’ve all seen the ratchet effect in action. I’ve seen it myself in New York City. When I lived there in the late 1980s crime was rampant, city services failing. Then New Yorkers elected Rudy Giuliani as Mayor and he cleaned things up. Michael Bloomberg followed him and held the line where Rudy had left it, more or less.

Then, in 2013, the city voted in radical leftist Bill De Blasio, and before you could say “root causes” crime was legal again and garbage piling up in the streets.

Thirty years ago Rudy Giuliani instructed his staff to bar Al Sharpton from entry to the Mayoral offices. Last week the City Council passed legislation authorizing a commission to develop a plan for reparations to black Americans. The ratchet effect.

All right, let me bring in Peter Brimelow. I did that vidcast with Michael Farris September 9th. A few days later, September 14th, Michael had Peter on his show.

Michael brought up the mass deportation issue and repeated some of the things I had said. Peter, after some courteous remarks about my work in general, said that I just haven’t thought this issue through properly.

He then countered my pessimism with some statistics on foreign workforce participation, which declined some under Trump 45 — and in fact even before Trump took office.

Peter then proceeded with every immigration patriot’s favorite snippet of history, Dwight Eisenhower’s Operation Wetback in 1954, when more than a million Mexican workers were deported, or deported themselves, in just a few months.

Peter continued to pooh-pooh The Economist’s and my negativity, pointing out for example that immigration judges, like the one The Economist opened with, are not confirmed in any kind of legislative procedure, just appointed at the whim of the U.S. Attorney General, who can of course also dismiss them.

He went on with advertisements for all the things that need doing: nationwide compulsory E-Verify, an end to birthright citizenship, exemplary deportation of immigration scofflaws like Ilhan Omar, et cetera.

All good stuff, and I’m not opposed to any of it. The problem is, this is not 1954. We live in a country very different from the one Eisenhower presided over.

Nationwide compulsory E-Verify? In a country where powerful lobbies with legions of lawyers oppose the showing of personal ID when casting a vote?

Are we quite sure compulsory E-Verify wouldn’t violate the 1964 Civil Rights Act? (That’s “1964” as in “ten years on from 1954.”) Are we ready and equipped to spend a few years — say a couple of four-year election cycles — going through litigation and appeals to find out?

End birthright citizenship? What, you want to render helpless little infants stateless? Next thing we know you’ll be putting them in cages! Human Rights! Fourteenth Amendment! Oh, you want to pass an overriding Amendment? The first new Constitutional Amendment in 32 years? Lotsa luck.

Deport Ilhan Omar? I’d rejoice to see it; but as certain as I am that the Sun will rise tomorrow, I’m certain that I never will see it.

And those immigration judges whose authority is entirely in the gift of a U.S. Attorney General? Sure, they could all be fired. So what then happens to the 3.7 million amnesty seekers whose cases are pending? Does Peter think they will fade away into the mist while the activists and lawyers and NGOs and cheap-labor lobbyists smile on with approval?

This is not 1954 and these are not Mexicans. At any rate, the faces I see in video of people storming our southern border don’t look like Mexican faces. I don’t think they’ll be heading in cars with their washing machines on a U-Haul trailer back to Somalia, Afghanistan, the Congo, Venezuela, Haiti, Syria, India, Libya, China, …

Come to think of it, I’d like to see a breakdown of those numbers that Peter cited about the foreign workforce declining under Trump or the threat of Trump. Those declines were caused by people returning home; but exactly where were their home nations? Where were they returning to?

In one respect, a simply geographical respect, this still is 1954. Mexico is still our poorer southern neighbor, with two thousand miles of border to stroll across for a change of scenery or five dollars an hour better pay. Somalia, not so much.

Here’s the opening paragraph of an opinion piece I published in the current issue of Chronicles magazine, quoting myself:

The “long march through the institutions” embarked upon by mid-20th-century leftist activists is almost fully accomplished here in the United States of America. The commanding heights are all occupied: schools and colleges, the media, federal and state agencies, the judiciary, corporations, the big old mainstream churches, even law enforcement and the military.

End quote.

That’s our condition, I do believe. The enemy is mighty and well-entrenched. The First Directive for our side is not to under-estimate them.

Victory’s not impossible and I shall vote for Donald Trump in November — assuming he survives the next six weeks — nursing hope for eventual victory.

Once again, though: The enemy is mighty and not to be under-estimated. And once again: This is not 1954.

05 — Miscellany.     And now, our closing miscellany of brief items.

Imprimis:  Last I heard there isn’t going to be another Trump-Harris debate. For this relief much thanks.

My advice to Donald Trump at this point would be to do more presentations of himself in informal gatherings, among people who (a) are sane, and (b) don’t take politics too seriously. And yes, I’ll allow there may be an oxymoron lurking there somewhere.

My sentiments there were inspired by Trump’s appearance on Greg Gutfeld’s show Wednesday. I watched the whole thing, swallowing down the prejudice I’ve held against Gutfeld since he fell in line with the regime narrative on the Brunswick Three back in 2021.

Trump was relaxed and amusing, not at all the frowning, blustering blowhard we saw in the debate with Harris. He was normal. This, I found myself thinking, is a guy I’d like to know better, on a personal level.

Sunday’s assassination attempt? Trump joked about it, quote: “I always said golf is a very dangerous game,” end quote. He then went on with fulsome praise for the Secret Service agents who’d taken care of the matter.

All right, this was Fox News, a studio full of Trumpsters. That made it easier. There’s a gentleman inside the blowhard, though — a smart and witty gentleman. Thanks for letting him out, Mr President, if only for an hour.

Item:  I’m going to cheat a little here. Friends have been emailing in to ask what I think about Scientific American magazine endorsing Kamala Harris. This is only the second time in the magazine’s nearly 180 years of publication that they’ve endorsed a candidate. The previous endorsement was … wait for it … for Biden in 2020.

As to why this happened, the explanation offered by John Carter on X is, I believe, sufficient. Dr Carter doesn’t waste a whole lot of words on it. He just gives pictures of the magazine’s senior staff members — three males and six females — with a very brief résumé for each.

Scientific American broke the hearts of us congenital science geeks long ago. I had things to say about it in my podcast for September 4th 2020.

This was quite a long segment inspired by a rash of race denialism among academics in the human sciences and their journals. I tossed and gored that for a while, and then … Well, here is where I cheat. I’m just going to cut’n’paste from that podcast and its transcript from four years ago. You’re welcome!

{Clip:]  For keening, slobbering, self-flagellating confessions of guilt, the September issue of Scientific American is hard to beat … as it were.

This touches me more than the other examples, as I was once a keen reader of Scientific American. I can still remember the first issue I ever read: January 1960, cover story “The Green Flash.” The magazine has long since gone CultMarx, though, and I haven’t looked into it for years, except when friends send me links to especially egregious specimens of wokeness. Which a friend just did.

Headline: Reckoning with Our Mistakes. Subheading: “Some of the cringiest articles in Scientific American’s history reveal bigger questions about scientific authority.”

Well, no, they don’t really. The article does, though, reveal how racked with guilt a respectable old magazine has to be, or pretend to be, nowadays if it wants to stay respectable. Sample quote.

During the 19th century, Scientific American published articles that legitimized racism … By 1871 Charles Darwin had concluded that all living humans were descended from the same ancestral stock … But none of that stopped the rise of scientific racism, including false ideas about biological determinism.

End quote.

Down with biological determinism! Just because you’re a fish, that doesn’t mean you need to be in water all the time!

And Darwin had a bit more to say about the descent of man than the authors of this Scientific American article let on. In fact he wrote an entire book about it they might care to peruse. Sample quotes:

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world …

Looking at the world at no very distant date, an endless number of lower races will be eliminated by the higher civilized races.

End quote.

[End clip.]

Item:  British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has been mocked on X for having pronounced the fine old English word “Lieutenant” in the American style, as “Lootenant.”

Quote from the Daily Mail parliamentary reporter in the House of Commons, September 11th, quote:

Amanda Martin (Labour Party, Portsmouth North) paid tribute to the Royal Navy helicopter instructor who died in a crash off the aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth. Sir Keir, trying to echo it, contrived to say “lootenant” in the American manner.

End quote.

Sir Keir’s blunder shows us — as if we needed showing — the remoteness of our ruling classes here in the West from any acquaintance with the military.

It also, I think, gives support to Ed West’s theory that a great many of Britain’s present woes come from that nation — well, it used to be a nation — having resigned itself to being a cultural colony of the U.S.A.

Having myself once held the rank of 2nd Lieutenant in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces, I don’t think Sir Keir’s offense should go unpunished. If anyone in an appropriate position of command is reading this, I would recommend morning pack drill and a week Confined to Barracks.

Item:  I do my share of bellyaching here on Radio Derb, but in moments of quiet reflection I fall back to thinking that with all its follies and absurdities, life in the 2020s U.S.A. is pretty darn good.

Now here I have some documentary support for that. The magazine U.S. News & World Report has just issued its latest annual Best Countries rankings. Quote:

The analysis took the views of more than 17,000 people across the globe to assess how well each of 89 nations ranked on categories including power, openness for business and cultural influence.

End quote.

Uncle Sam came in at Number Three, ahead of Canada, Australia, Sweden, Germany, the U.K., New Zealand, and Denmark for the Top Ten.

Number Two was Japan — clean, orderly, polite Japan. No big surprise there.

Even less of a surprise was Number One: Switzerland. That’s the third year in a row Switzerland has topped the rankings.

Before you apply for a Swiss visa, note please that not all is laughter and fun in the Alpine Federation.

It certainly wasn’t for Kristina Joksimovic, until recently a 38-year-old Swiss beauty — she was actually a finalist in the 2008 Miss Switzerland Pageant — who lived with her husband and their two infant daughters in a very upscale neighborhood near Basel.

Eight months ago Ms Joksimovic got into a quarrel with her husband Marc. The quarrel ended when her husband strangled Kristina to death, chopped her up with a knife, a saw, and an unspecified garden implement, then pureed her soft parts in a kitchen blender.

The husband’s appeal for release from custody was rejected earlier this week by a Federal Court.

The words Et in Arcadia ego come to mind. Rest in peace, sweet lady.

06 — Signoff.     That’s all I have, ladies and gents. Thank you as always for your time and attention, your emails and donations. Most special thanks to my supporter in Seattle.

For signout music I’m going to summon up the late Johnny Cash, with a flicker of surprise that I haven’t signed out with him before. Wait a minute … have I? (Checks database.) No, I haven’t.

I’m doing so this week after a listener to last week’s show emailed in with a comment on that show’s signout. I gave you Ruby Helder, a female tenor, observing as I did so that while female tenors were not totally unknown a hundred years ago — Ms Helder died in 1938 — I didn’t think any lady is currently marketing herself as a female tenor.

Possibly not, said my listener, but Johnny Cash, who was six years old when Ms Helder passed away, may have known one, to judge from the song I’m about to play you for signout.

I always appreciate instructive and informative emails like this and I’m obliged to my listener for giving me the opportunity to play Johnny. I have to say, though — and I could be wrong, my hearing acuity isn’t what it used to be — I have to say, the lady here sounds to me more like a contralto than a tenor.

Whatever. There will be more from Radio Derb next week.