The Dispatch Podcast - 20 Hours on Twitter

Episode Date: May 27, 2020

Sarah and the guys discuss the president's threats to crack down on Twitter, Joe Biden's ‘Breakfast Club’ controversy, the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and the president pushing a conspiracy theory that falsely accuses Joe Scarborough of murder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to The Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgir, joined as always by Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, and David French. This podcast is brought to you by The Dispatch. Visit The Dispatch.com to see our full slate of newsletters and podcasts, and make sure to subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. Today we're going to talk about Twitter's fact check of the president and the president's response, Joe Biden's comments on the breakfast club, and the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. and the political calculus behind the president's attacks on Joe Scarborough. Plus, with a maximum of 16 days left until the little dude makes his appearance, I ask the guys for their best parenting advice. Let's dive right in. So on May 11th, Twitter introduced a new policy over memo.

Here's what a portion of the May 11th memo said. Starting today, we're introducing new labels and warning messages that will provide additional context and information on some tweets containing disputed or misleading information related to COVID-19. Yesterday, the president tweeted, there is zero way, zero, that mail-in ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mailboxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged, and even illegally printed out and fraudulently signed. The governor of California is sending ballots to millions of people.

Anyone living in the state, no matter who they are, how they got there, will get one. That will be followed up with professionals telling all of these people, many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how and for whom to vote. This will be a rigged election. No way. Twitter later in the day put a little addendum. the bottom in blue. It's at exclamation point, get the facts about mail-in ballots. When you clicked through to that, it said, it had a story. It also said what you need to know. And it had three bullet points. Trump falsely claimed that mail-in ballots would lead to a rigged election. However, fact-checkers say there is no evidence that mail-in ballots are linked to voter

fraud. Trump falsely claimed that California will send mail-in ballots to anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there. In fact, only registered voters will receive ballots. Five states already vote entirely by mail, and all states offer some form of mail and absentee voting, according to NBC News. This will not surprise any of you, but the president responded late last night and said Twitter is now interfering in the 2020 presidential election. They are saying my statement on mail and ballots, which will lead to massive corruption and fraud, is incorrect based on fact-checking by fake news CNN and the Amazon Washington Post. Twitter is completely stifling free speech, and I as president will not allow it to happen.

And then this morning, Republicans feel that social media platforms totally silence conservative voices. We will strongly regulate or close them down before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do and failed in 2016. We can't let a more sophisticated version of that happen again, just like we can't let large-scale mail-in ballots take root in our country. It would be a free-for-all on cheating, forgery, and the theft. of ballots. Whoever cheated the most would win. Likewise, social media, clean up your act now. David, I want to turn to you first. First, let's start with what do you make of Twitter's addition of a fact check to the president's tweet on his, on the platform that he uses to reach

so many people? Yeah. So I think this is Twitter's, it's a mistake. It's Twitter's mistake to make. it is not censorship, and the president doesn't have any authority over Twitter and will not have authority over Twitter consistent with so long as conventional First Amendment principles apply. I mean, this is kind of like peeling an onion of weirdness in many ways, but the law is relatively straightforward and simple here. The law is, this is a private platform, Twitter is a private company. It has broad latitude, both by statute and constitutionally, to shape the rules and to write the rules that govern the platform. Those rules can include good faith moderation, which can include fact checking. And so this is within Twitter's rights here. Now, that doesn't mean

just because it's within Twitter's rights to do this, that this is a wise move. As several people pointed out, wait a minute, does this mean that if Twitter doesn't add the little exclamation point and the fact check, that it is then endorsing everything else on the platform by a public that's written by a public figure? No, it doesn't. It just shows that there are highly selective times when Twitter is going to intervene like that by adding the little exclamation point and the link to more. But it creates this impression that Twitter is reviewing and passing on as sort of a seal of approval to other content, which is not what it's doing.

Third, it's not censorship. Trump's tweet is still up there. It is still visible to everyone who wants to look at it. So this is not censorship. This is a fact check, which is a far, far cry from. censorship. And if you're wanting to talk about censorship on social media, you have no trouble finding conservative viewpoints and pro-Trump viewpoints on Twitter. They are all over the place. But, you know, one of the things that this does, however, is it does tap into, and Twitter's

action does tap into this really, especially amongst very online conservatives, this widespread belief that, number one, Silicon Valley is out to get them, that big tech is out to get them, and there are anecdotal evidence, and there are anecdotes of individuals who have been removed from platforms. There's a high overlap between those individuals who's been removed from Silicon Valley platforms and some of the worst people in the world. But there is this sense that, well, the sort of Damocles hangs over everybody, which it does not. It does not. In fact, if you look at some of the statistics regarding the leading voices online,

actually, it kind of maps often with the demographics of who uses the platform. So if you look at the top publishers of Facebook, for example, the people who are most who have the, who are able to reach the most eyeballs on Facebook, what's remarkable is you'll see that Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire often dominate outlets like the New York Times. BBC, they'll be more than the Washington Post. It's really remarkable, the success that some conservatives have had on Facebook. But also, Facebook is a platform with a lot of older users. Older users, at least until very recently, tended to be more Republican. Twitter is a platform with younger users. It has a platform of the users tend to skew more to the left. So left-wing voices tend to do better on

Twitter. There is not a systematic censorship issue on social media. But one last thing. This is a symbol, though, of how Trump's behavior puts pressure on institutions. Because if Trump was not the president of the United States, and he likely have been banned from Twitter, or at least he would have likely had to have deleted a pile of tweets. Twitter, for example, prohibits targeted harassment. And targeted harassment is one of Trump's specialties, singling out a person like Joe Scarborough, and relentlessly insulting him, accusing him, or coming right up to the line of accusing him of committing crimes that he didn't commit, Twitter's rules prohibiting targeted harassment

are pretty broadly written. But if you're going to single out another human being for a lintless attack, there's a very good chance. If you're anyone else other than the president, you would have to delete those tweets and at the very least and perhaps be suspended from the platform. But Twitter has carved out an exception from its rules for the president. And so he's living a life that the rest of us sort of don't get to live online. And it puts immense pressure on the system, on the integrity of the system.

And this is how Twitter responded to that pressure the president puts on it. And I think they responded in a way that's a mistake. but it's within Twitter's rights to respond. Steve, I want to turn to you next because we do fact checks at the dispatch. And I'll note, just to go off what David said there, and we'll talk about the substance of the Scarborough feud later,

but it has not done anything with the president's tweets on Joe Scarborough. What it put on the tweet is, exclamation point, get the facts about mail and ballots. you as a user then have to click on that in order to get a fact check. It does not anywhere say false or this is a misleading statement. So in that sense, I wonder whether some of the media coverage about, quote, Twitter, fact-checking the president's tweets, on its face, you know, they could have done more, I guess.

So as someone who is interested in fact checks and oversees our fact-checks, what do you make of that? Yeah, it is very interesting. I mean, I think what Twitter is doing is similar to what Facebook and others have done, which is turning to third parties who have fact-checked and sending its readers or Twitter consumers there to get more information. And in that sense, it's misleading to say that Twitter itself is doing the face check. But I think, you know, David raises some very good points, and this is why this is such a naughty issue. and it's why these platforms have taken, you know, sort of two steps forward, two steps back, and tried to figure out exactly what their role is in, you know, helping to police the speech

or monitor the speech on their platforms. And, you know, I think, I agree, David, Twitter has every right to do this. I think Twitter probably should be doing this. at least in some limited way, you know, what the president tweeted was false. It was indisputably false. And, you know, he's been known to do this quite a lot. And I think it, you know, raises real questions about his ability to spread that kind of disinformation.

And, you know, in some ways, threatens to undermine the legitimacy of our elections. So I do think this is a real issue, and I think Twitter probably is right to step in. But that doesn't mean that this is going to be clean and easy. I mean, you look back at the, we've had Chinese government officials tweet Chinese propaganda about the United States and suggesting that we are responsible, that the U.S. Army might have been responsible for the coronavirus and bringing the coronavirus to China. Now, they, as often as not, did it a little more artfully so that it was hard to say that's a fact.

They're claiming a fact that is demonstrably untrue, therefore we can fact check this. It was much more suggestive and troublemaking. But, you know, there were calls at the time for Twitter to step in and declare that those things weren't true. And, you know, you get into this massive, massive gray area where, you know, it may not be as clear as it is, I think, in the case that you referred to on the president's tweet, that these things are false.

And that, I think, is where Twitter runs into some real trouble. Jonah, politically, the president has complained about Fox News, the Wall Street Journal. He's turned a lot more to OAN, you know, in promoting them. Is there an equivalent, a political equivalent of that for Twitter? politically, is he actually in a great place fighting with Twitter for the next, you know, five months of the election, till the election? You know, I mean, there is some calculation that I still do not completely understand, which says that the president somehow benefits by constantly picking fights that are not

about any of the issues normal Americans care about. And I've just come to accept that we believe that for some reason this is good for him. So sure, this gives him another, you know, enemy of the people to fight with for five and a half months. And the very online right-wing crowd will think it's brilliance because they've just internalized as a syllogism that when Trump picks fights with people and they fight back and then he counterpunches, this is a sign of his brilliance. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's just accepted as true. And so sure, I do want to push back. I want to, uh, that was the, the least agreeing with me agreement, I think, ever. Yeah.

Well, I mean, like, I, like, I mean, we're in the middle of a freaking pandemic. We're in the middle of an economic catastrophe. And I have very, I have a very hard time using traditional earth logic, reaching the conclusion that it is great news. for the President of the United States that he gets to pick a fight with this horrible website. You know, I mean, it's a weird thing. But it's the, we, you know, they touch the orb. This is the universe that we're in.

So be it. I do want to make one more, I basically agree with Steve, but I think that Steve, I think the best argument for doing this, I take David's point entirely. And I pretty much thought it was a mistake, too, for Twitter to do this, for among the other, among other reasons, the one that David mentioned, which is if you condemn or fact check one person, you, by implication or endorsing the people that you don't, you know, it's sort of like a, I can't remember what the phrase is, but William McBuckley always used to use this Latin phrase, which translates as to to include means to exclude, right? If you mention a bunch of people in a thank you's and you leave one out, then you aren't thanking them. And that's a problem. So I agree that is definitely a problem. I think, you know, you can just make a very clear case for why it is appropriate to do it for the president of the United States of America and maybe leaders of other governments, too.

Insofar as, at least in the United States, the president is immune from all sorts of laws about slander and defamation, at least, while he's in office. And so when he insinuates that a leading journalist murdered somebody, which I know we're going to talk about a little bit, or when he insinuates that the election will be invalid if he loses because this is full of fraud and all that kind of stuff, as a matter of good civics and sort of journalism 101, fact-checking the head of the executive branch is much more important and legitimate than fact-checking, you know, some poltroon, you know, who just, you know, tweets whatever the hell he wants, you know, from his radio show or something.

The President of the United States is the leader of the executive branch of the government. He speaks for the administration. And if a, if the federal government is in effect lying to the American people on weighty issues, having a different standard for those kinds of lies than your normal run-of-the-mill free speech lies seems to me utterly defensible. By the way, we have a legal canon. I don't know if this is what he was mentioning,

but there's a legal canon, the negative implication canon, expressio-unius, exclucio, ulterius, which is the expression of one thing implies the exclusion of others. Yeah, that's Buckley. Buckley could say it

as if he was saying pass the coffee i mean i can't yeah i absolutely cannot but it comes up in statutory construction quite a bit i bet plug advisory opinions may discuss this someday yes can i jump in on that on that point real quick of course i this is i'm gonna i'm gonna beat a hobby horse i I am so tired of carving out exclusions of lawful and good behavior for the president of the United States. And if I, you know, Twitter will never have the guts, Twitter will never have the guts to do this. But rather than saying, okay, well, we're going to fact check the president or maybe fact check a small cohort of particularly prominent voices than nobody else, just apply the same

freaking rules to the President of the United States that apply to every other human being that uses the platform. Make him delete tweets as you would any other person, and suspend him if he doesn't. Now, that would cause it. But David, let me push back on that. Do you, I understand there's some fact checking around some of the specifics in the mail-in ballot tweet that we're talking about. Right.

And I think they point those out when you click through. but I think a lot of conservatives take issue with there's no voter fraud in the country arguments also. Well, sure, of course. And the first thing that they fact check is that there is no evidence that mail and ballots are linked to voter fraud. At the same time, the Department of Justice had a press release yesterday, so take that for what you will, charging a mail carrier for attempted voter fraud dealing with. with mail-in absentee ballot applications. So I hear you, but is this really the battle to

have picked? And does no one on this podcast think that there's voter fraud? No, the vote fraud issue, I mean, Twitter to pick those tweets, again, to me goes to the error of this whole thing. For Twitter to pick those tweets, when, you know, there is a lot of overstatement about ballot access, voter suppression, voter fraud. I mean, if you want an area of American life where you've got more hyperbole, it's hard to choose the battle between voter suppression that the left talks about and voter fraud that the right talks about. When, you know, if you drill down in the numbers and both of those, you know, it is very, very, very, very, very rare to find vote fraud to an extent that impacts an election. And one of the most recent example,

actually happen to be Republican voter fraud, by the way, in North Carolina. And the battle over voter suppression is, my goodness, it's hard to fact check. When you say, for example, that voter suppression caused Stacey Abrams, the gubernatorial race in Georgia, and yet turnout was way up in Georgia, but it was voter suppression that caused, and I know there's arguments about this flying back and forth. This is, again, I think this goes to Twitter's tactical mistake of saying, Okay, of all of the things that have occurred and all of the things that the Trump has tweeted, this is what we're intervening on right here. That, to me, goes to Twitter's mistake. What I want Twitter to do is apply the same rules I live under on Twitter should be the rules that every user lives under and Twitter.

And by carving out this exception in a host of ways for this guy, this president, to me, it creates just caps. cascading series of problems. Jonah? Yeah, I see what you're saying. But you began your pushback on this by saying you're sick and tired of having carve-outs for good and lawful behavior. And the thing is, as you said in your first go-round, I agree with you, it's lawful. It ain't good behavior, right? What Trump is doing is not good behavior, full-stop.

No, no, no. What I say it is, I'm tired of. carve-outs for Trump from good and lawful behavior, where Trump— Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So Trump has a separate set of rules that—now, some of them are formalized, you know,

the DOJ policy against indicting a president while in office. Sarah and I argue back and forth as to whether or not that applies even to state prosecutions. I don't think it should. And fairness, so does the Supreme Court. We'll find that out soon enough. But— But my only point is. is that it is, I believe, you guys know this stuff far better than I do, but I believe the decision

went forth, very early in the administration, that the president's tweets are considered official statements by the office of the president of the United States. So in effect, what you have is, and I'm using this word on its, and it's literal meaning, not the sort of overly negative connotation that it's come to accrue, you have this being essentially a propaganda channel, an official propaganda channel. Yes. And it seems to me no one else, I mean, maybe Secretary Pompeo's Twitter feed should have a different standard to it too.

I don't know. But when you have the head of the government, the head of state, having essentially an official propaganda channel, the reason why we have a free press in this country, is primarily to hold public officials account and to have, to treat his Twitter account like it is any other person's Twitter account, that is actually bulldozing a really important distinction to me. And it's one where, look, again, I think for corporate purposes, I think that Twitter got itself into this mess.

they let the 800-pound gorilla in because it was getting them views and now they don't know what to do with it. And frankly, it would not break my heart as long as nobody was hurt if the entire place burnt down in a fire. But the simple fact is, is that we are not talking about it. When a human being is indemnified and immunized from the laws that apply to everybody else, when he is allegedly speaking for the government, particularly during a pandemic, and he is dedicated to these sort of self-aggrandizing lies and distortions, seems to me there's more of a compelling reason to single him out versus other people than you're allowing for.

Yeah, I mean, I'm going to give you the last word here, but I do want to add. You can't give me the last word because I want to ask a question. Oh, okay. Sorry, sorry to prolong this. No, but I think this is really interesting because I think what we're all saying in one way or another is that Twitter is now engaged in an elaborate line drawing exercise, right? I mean, for a long time, Twitter said basically, we're not drawing lines. We refuse to draw lines. Now they're saying, okay, we think we ought to draw some.

lines. And there's this huge debate about where the line should be. I think part of the problem with Twitter is they've been all over the place about what they should be doing and what this involves. And I think that's true of Facebook as well. It's like we, the public has been kind of whipsawed back and forth as they've tried to figure out what their proper role is here. And it's led to real confusion about this, about exactly what Twitter's doing. Do they have one standard for Donald Trump and another standard for non-governmental officials. If they have those different standards, should they have the same standards for Donald Trump and Joe Biden?

I would think the argument would be yes. But Twitter earlier labeled as misleading a tweet that Trump retweeted that was manipulated video of Biden. But a Biden ad had manipulated video of Trump. or a speech that Trump gave by inserting laughter to make it look like the UN was laughing at Trump when the UN wasn't laughing the way that the video did. And Twitter didn't do anything with that.

I mean, I think that's, these are the kinds of things that Twitter has opened itself up to because there are going to be those constant comparisons. And I think you'll hear from conservatives. You're already hearing from conservatives who have pointed out, you know, the political leanings of some of the people involved, at Twitter involved in policing these things.

And, you know, it's sort of in some ways kind of a self-parody. The head of Twitter's site integrity has now been revealed to have sent a bunch of very, very hostile tweets about conservatives and, you know, retweeting things that were favorable from Hillary Clinton. And, you know, you sort of weighed into this.

And unless you have very clear and obvious rules, unless you declare loudly in advance what your standards are and how you're going to enforce them, I think that's where you get in trouble. So I think it's right that they've decided that they need to weigh in on some of these things because it's pretty important. but I don't think they've done a good job on letting people know exactly when that's going to be so that it doesn't feel so arbitrary. I'm not trying to be a jerk, but what was the question? What was the question? Do you agree? Do you agree?

And who? Don't you think they're right? And that question was directed to. Yeah. Sorry. I mean, it was sort of, you know, amplifying your point, pushing back a little bit. I thought somebody must want to... Fact check.

That was not a question. Fair. True. It seems to me, though, that what each... To take on Jonah's point a little, Jonah, what you're describing is that Twitter is taking on a news function. Yes, news organizations take statements from government leaders, and sometimes they, you know, fact-checked them or push back on them or add context to them.

And, Steve, to your point, Sometimes those leaders aren't as important as others, and they're going to have to let it fly just from a resources standpoint because it's not as important. You're going to be more likely to write up something the President of the United States says, no matter who it is, to provide context, nuance, fact check, whatever you want to call it, then you are to a senator, no matter what that senator says. And so is Twitter now just in the news business, same as CNN, NBC, you know, et cetera? I don't know. I mean, look, we're in a strange new world. I mean, it's a good question. I just don't have a great answer for it. It does seem to me that, you know, here at the dispatch, or previously at the weekly standard or at National Review or CNN or wherever, we would never dream of simply running a White House press release as an office. article. We might run it in the sense of post the whole thing and say, okay, now here's some interesting things about this. Here's the context that's missing, blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah. I'm only just, I'm just simply making more a point about sort of civics and ethics that it is, to me, there is a distinction there. I'm with David that Twitter has just created an enormous mess for itself and a real political problem for them and for their business model. But, you know, look, they cast their wish with the monkey paw a long time ago, so they're due all the curses that come with it. And, but I'm just saying that this idea that, you know, and also, one last thing, this idea that there's censor, I mean, I mentioned this before, Sarah, but the very word censorship here is so weird. I mean, the great sensory, you know, this great Orwellian regimes of the past

never included the equivalent of a click here for more information link, right? I mean, all it's doing is saying, here's some other articles. It's not saying this is a lie or any of that kind of stuff. Well, perhaps this will all just become part of the great sort. Facebook to David's point will become the conservative social media platform. Twitter will become the Democratic social media platform and near the twain shall meet once again. It is ironic, though, that the president is frustrated claiming that Twitter is censoring his speech and then goes on Twitter this morning to announce that he might look into effectively shutting down these social media policies to preserve, or companies to preserve

free speech. I mean, there's sort of layer of irony after layer of irony. I will just continue to be on the hill that says the president, state should be held to at least the same standards on Twitter as accounts with names like Antifa Stephen or Proud Boy, Jim, and that by continuing to carve out for this person, exceptions to rules that we apply to every other human being on the planet puts enormous strains on our system. It degrades the presidency. It is, yeah. After hearing all of the arguments. I think Davids is the one I disagree with the most. I do not want social media platforms

treating heads of state or political candidates, things like that, putting their thumb on the scale more than is necessary. I think that is a scary place to go. But the question is what is necessary, right? I mean, isn't that the question? It is. But in this case, I think including something that says click here for more information about mail and ballots is quite different than suspending a user. To your point, Steve, so some videos get suspended and some don't. You're never going to have a perfect enforcement system. And if you're not going to have a perfect enforcement system, I think a lighter touch is a better

touch in that case. You know, I have tweeted thousands and thousands and thousands of tweets amongst some of the most hot button topics in America. And never once have I had to worry about censorship by Twitter. It's not hard. It's not hard. You know, I hear you. But like, if you remember two years ago, they were de-platforming.

They de-platformed the chairwoman of the RNC at one point. So, you know, I hear you, David. But like, it's not as clear cut, I think, as you make it out to be either. Sarah, is there anything that, let's say the president started tweeting stuff like the Groyper's tweet, you know, clear and obvious race trash. And, yes. Would you be in favor of Twitter deplatforming the president in such a circumstance? You know, no is the answer. I'm not happy about that answer. I'm sad about it because I don't like that hypothetical, obviously, but I think it's the obvious hypothetical. Um,

No, I think it's important for people to see ahead of state and what they have to say. And then I'm fine with Twitter, including something that says, you know, click here for more information. And yes, I know that's where the logical conclusion of my argument goes. I don't like it, but that is where it goes. Actually, in this hypothetical scenario, and I'm not ascribing these views to the president quite, it wouldn't be click here for more information. It would be click here to get the facts on quote unquote mud people. Right, because that's what the grapers and those guys tweet about.

But anyway. Let's move to our next topic. We have multiple topics today. On Friday morning, Vice President Joe Biden joined a pretty famous radio program called the Breakfast Club, nationally syndicated. He was interviewing with Leonard Larry McKelvey, who is known to his listeners as Charlemagne the God, which is an awesome name. It was a 17-minute interview. It was getting pretty contentious. And an aide off-camera, and by the way, like, side note,

if you are ever an aide to a presidential campaign and the interview is running long, here's maybe what not to do. The aide interrupted the interview and said, thank you so much. That's really our time. I apologize. I want to be clear, there are many times I've wanted to do that. And you hold yourself back.

but, you know, he did it. He went on in. Here's the, let me just read you the transcript from that point. Charlemagne, you can't do that to black media. Biden, I do that to white media and black media because my wife has to go on at six o'clock. Uh-oh, I'm in trouble. Charlemagne, listen, you've got to come see us when you come back to New York, Vice President Biden. It's a long way until November. We've got more questions. Biden, you've got more questions? Well, I tell you what? If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or for Trump, then you ain't black. There's a couple more lines after that, but that is the line, of course, that got him in trouble, so to speak. Senator Tim Scott, who's the lone black Republican in Congress, was

clearly pre-scheduled for an interview on Fox and went on about an hour later. Here's what he had to say when asked about it. That is the most arrogant condescending comment I've heard in a long time and that's saying something. The man who sponsored and led the charge of a 1990s crime bill that locked up more African-American males than any other piece of legislation. And President Trump comes along and through his criminal justice reform corrects the absolute mistake made by Joe Biden for him to make such an arrogant, ridiculous comment. If you think about the numbers, 1.3 million African Americans voted for Trump. He's saying the 1.3 million African Americans that you're not black. Who the heck to see think he is? That is the most arrogant,

outrageous comment. I've heard in a very long time, and I take offense to that. I think that summarizes what sort of the Republican conservative side had to say. Charlemagne the God himself actually issued a statement saying that, as Biden said in our brief interview, when I asked him if Dems, oh, the black community, absolutely was his answer. So let's see what you got. Votes are quid pro quo. You can't possibly want me to fear Trump more than I want something for my people. Biden then came and apologize. I should not have been so cavalier. I never, never, ever have taken the African-American community for granted. No one should have to vote for any party based on their race, their religion, or their background. By Friday night, the president's campaign had

started selling hashtag you ain't black t-shirts and announced a $1 million digital campaign ad amplifying the remarks. Steve, starting with you, is this something we're going to remember in three months? Yeah, that's a really good question. And we use it as we're putting together the morning dispatch to determine as often as not what we should be writing about what we shouldn't. I think this could last. I think that the risk for Joe Biden is that this becomes part of a pattern. And I would say that his use of racially incendiary comments like this, which clearly I think did suggest that he was taking the black vote for granted.

or his comment early in the 2012 presidential cycle where he said Republicans were going to put black people back in chains. He has a history of this. And I think if we see more of this, if we get to the point where Joe Biden emerges from his house and begins something, you know, a more active virtual presidential campaign, you know, he's at risk for doing this.

And part of it, I think, is, Joe Biden always tries to be cute. He always tries to make the funny comment. And, you know, nobody's quite as amused by Joe Biden as much as Joe Biden is amused by Joe Biden. But it carries real risks because beyond just his trouble that we saw throughout the Democratic primary of his, you know, putting together sentences sometimes when he, you know, runs into trouble making an argument, he's a tendency to do this. It comes off his flip. You know, I think Biden supporters would say, well, judged against what we hear from President Trump, you know, this isn't that big a deal. And voters will look at the kinds of gaps that Biden makes with some level of forgiveness.

I'm not sure that's true. I think the biggest risk here is that if he does look like he's taking the black vote for granted, it could lead some black voters to stay home. And that's, I think that's the biggest concern, particularly when you look at it in the underperformance that Hillary Clinton had in 2016 among black voters. No question. Jonah, Charlemagne, the God, has also said that this comment means more than ever that Biden needs to pick a black female running mate. I know that's a question that a lot of people have. My students have texted me. do you think that this comment makes that more likely?

Will this affect Veep Stakes 2020, if you will? Funny you asked, since I just wrote a column about this, I think, yes, it makes it more likely and that it's a mistake. It definitely gives the sort of left-wing-based identity politics crowd more leverage over Biden, and Biden is remarkably easy to roll by those people. And but I would argue that if you, I mean, it depends, a lot of this depends on the individual, but the ranks of female African American Democrats who are like ready for the vice presidential role, I mean, it's Stacey Abrams who wants it, it's Kamala Harris.

Who else am I missing? Val Demings. Okay, Val Demings. Okay. So that's not a huge list, I think it's fair to say. And I kind of come to the view that, you know, I don't think this is, unless Steve is right that it creates a pattern and he does more of these stupid statements, always possible. I don't think this is really remembered in any powerful way in three or six months.

but patterns are different than one-off, you know, gaffs. And the thing that we know about Biden going by the primaries is that he has vastly more support from African-American voters than Kamala Harris does. We don't, you know, you can't really compare it to Stacey Abrams, but he crushed Cory Booker and Harris and what's his face who ran from Massachusetts, which is really not fair? Yeah. I mean, that was a juggernaut. I didn't imagine it was going to be a stoppable. But my only point is that he actually does really well with African-American voters, particularly the African-American voters who vote, which is older voters. And there's this weird sort of disconnect

between what people like Bernie Sanders and AOC and all these people say when they say he has to pick someone from the left-wing base of the party, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or he has to pick a black person because that's the only thing is going to energize the base. And sometimes they'll say in the same interview that Donald Trump is the most horrible evil creature to ever emerge from the Stygian depths of the netherworld. And the most important thing in the world is to vote him out of office. Well, okay. So you're saying the base won't vote to vote him out of office unless you have Stacey Abrams on the ticket? I thought this was an existential crisis. And so I think that this idea that that the base won't be energized to vote out Trump is not true.

Donald Trump is going to play for the Democrats the same role that Hillary Clinton played for the Republicans in 2016. He is the one who energizes the base. And so what Biden needs to do is, since he's already committed to picking a woman, he needs to pick a boring woman who can reinforce the message that he wants to send rather than create this sort of space between them and give Trump reason to play all sorts of nasty racial political games too. David, of course, this isn't happening.

in a vacuum. Over the weekend, video emerged of a 46-year-old man named George Floyd in Minnesota. A policeman was kneeling on his neck in the video. He is struggling at the beginning of the video. He stopped struggling by the end of the video. We're told that when paramedics responded, he died on the way to the hospital. Four police officers have been fired. The FBI is now involved. The mayor is saying that being black should not be a death sentence, the police were called in the first place to respond to, quote, a forgery and process, which I believe is check fraud, that he was maybe trying to sign a fraudulent check. There were protests as well yesterday. Squad cars were sprayed with graffiti, protesters

through stones at police, police fired tear gas, flash grenades, and foam projectiles. And this comes just weeks after police in Georgia were accused of trying to cover up the killing of black jogger Ahmaud Arbery, allegedly by the son of a retired police officer. So we can talk about Joe Biden's political comments on the one hand, but if this is what is happening in the rest of the country, how do you weigh that with Joe Biden's comments and the race, the political campaign race as a whole, and race relations in particular heading into 2020. Oh, man. That's a big question. So, you know, look, I think that if you're talking about the job of a president who is not, is not, except to ask his Department of Justice to

intervene in investigating potential hate crimes. And I believe that there has already been a request from from Minneapolis for the FBI, inviting the FBI to come in and take a look at what has occurred there. So aside from the president directing the resources of the Department of Justice, which can be absolutely indispensable in these matters and is already occurring, a lot of what the president does in circumstances like this is he offers a voice to the culture about an issue that is causing an immense amount of pain. And should, you know, if you watch that video, it should cause an immense amount of pain to all of us because it's one of the most difficult things to watch I have ever seen in my entire life. It is, it's just, it's too much to bear to even

look at it because what you see is you see this, this man dying right in front of you with citizens all around these police officers, frantic. He's dying. You're killing him. You know, check his pulse. Check his pulse. And the police are actively using threats of force to prevent citizens from coming in and trying to save this man's life. It's one of the worst things I've ever seen. I found myself, David, when I watched it, by the way, trying to imagine what I could have done differently. And it's really hard.

I mean, at one point, the woman who's screaming check his pulse is trying to get to him. And she's being restrained by the officer. And I'm just like, what could I have done differently if I were there? Like, what would I have tried? They tried everything that I would have tried. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing that is, There's so many things that are heartbreaking about it, but the thing that was so infuriating

was the active use of threats of force to repel any aid for this person who was no threat. I mean, he was literally dying. He was not a threat. And handcuffed. Yeah, he's handcuffed. He's dying. And, you know, one of the things that I would like to see is I would like to see a president who musters more outrage for that than for football.

players quietly and peacefully kneeling for the national anthem. That's what I would like to see, because not that I necessarily would engage in that form of protest myself, but the idea, the fury that Donald Trump mustered over that quiet and peaceful protest in contrast with Trump's response to events like Arbery, as of this taping of this pod, we haven't seen any response to what happened in Minnesota. there is an important presidential function, I believe, in when you're talking about what are the things that you're going to use your bully pulpit to highlight as cultural and legal and historical problems in this country?

And when it all boils down to it, if you're an African-American voter, the vast, vast majority are going to trust Joe Biden to have the right instinct on that over Donald Trump. I think justifiably so. That doesn't mean that what Biden did and said to Charlemagne the God is right or defensible. It was wrong. And he pretty much immediately realized it was wrong and apologized for it. I wish he would have apologized for the put you all back in chains, Carmen, from 2012. But with Biden again and again, you see a pattern.

When he's challenged, he gets his dander up. And he sometimes reacts with weird, strange, angry. comments. I mean, what was it? Dog-faced pony soldier? Yes. Yes. In the primary. But I think in the bottom line is you've got a president who at the end of the day will have mustered about a hundred times the outrage at protesters kneeling quietly, peacefully on a football field, then he will muster. And I hope I'm wrong about this. I hope 24 hours from now, 48 hours from now, listeners can say, you are wrong. But I suspect I won't be. I suspect that the President of the United States is going to the record will be that he will have been far, far, far angrier about those protesters kneeling on a football field than about that cop putting his knee on a man's neck until the man dies.

Let me expand on that. I think to my original question to Steve, or rather I hope that the political media cable news will think that the legacy of George Floyd, has a lot more implication for the election in November than anything Biden said on a radio show that he apologized for within hours. This seems to have a lot more importance to policy in our country and the equal treatment of citizens than a statement from a candidate. But we shall see. To our last topic, which I have not left a lot of time for, apologies, but the Twitter conversation. I mean, we had to keep going. It's Joe Scarborough, right? It's the Scarborough Trump back and forth that is happening. Again, over the weekend, the widower of the staffer who died sent a letter, an open letter to Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, asking Twitter to delete

the president's tweets about his wife. As a husband, I feel that one of my marital obligations is to protect her memory as I would have protected her in life. I'm asking you to intervene in this instance because the president of the United States has taken something that does not belong to him, the memory of my dead wife, and perverted it for perceived political gains. Twitter has not taken down the tweets,

and the president has continued to tweet about it. This morning, he tweeted, Psycho Joe Scarborough is rattled, not only by his bad ratings, but all of the things and facts that are coming out on the internet, about opening a cold case. He knows what is happening.

Senator Romney also tweeted this morning. I know Joe Scarborough. Joe is a friend of mine. I don't know T.J., the widower. Joe can weather vile baseless accusations, but T.J., his heart is breaking. Enough already. Joan, I'll start with you on this one

because you weighed in a bit over the weekend, as I think some of our listeners noted, about the press secretary's response to some of this. As this has continued since Sunday, any updates to your thoughts? No, we can keep my entirely accurate opinion of the White House Press Secretary out of this for the moment. It seems to me what Trump is doing there is grotesque and indefensible.

and it is, and I don't, I wish I could say this more often, but I think the Wall Street Journal editorial board gets it exactly right. We are supposed to be, and we hear from people all of the time on Fox News and elsewhere, how scandalized we should be about how terrible the Steele dossier was because it spread rumor and innuendo and smeared the president, he wasn't the president at the time, smeared Donald Trump. that is what the President of the United States has been doing repeatedly on this, and to be fair, on other things for a very long time. And this is particularly a grotesque one.

And I will, I'm happy to condemn it. I think it is a reflection of the man's lack of character and basic decency. It is of a piece with... But who does it matter to? Well, that's the thing. So that's the thing I wanted to get to is actually gets to the politics. of this. You know, the, he has this thing where he can't let go of these things. I know people who were on the Trump campaign would tell me stories about how they would beg him not to keep

attacking the Gold Star parents. And he would just simply say in response, but they attack me first, as if that justifies the asymmetry of attacking the parents of a dead, you know, American hero. It's the same psychology here. He just, thinks he just keeps going at it, thinking that this will shake something loose and that because he hears, he only cares about the people who love him, he just hears, and he filters out all the other negative feedback. He thinks this is some sort of brilliant thing. And the amazing thing is you asked that in the beginning in the last segment, whether we'll remember the you ain't black thing three months from now or six months from now, we would be far more likely to remember that

if Trump hadn't been doing this nonsense on Memorial Day weekend during an economic catastrophe and a pandemic, right? This is not how a guy spends the weekend that we're supposed to be commemorating the dead. He spends it peddling these scurrilous rumors and whatnot. And the news cycle prior to the weekend was almost entirely, was still about the Joe Biden stuff. He steps on his own message and his own people either don't have the, the courage or the ability to explain to him that he's his worst enemy in these kinds of things. And that is why I still think it is very unlikely that the guy gets reelected because he's like

the guy who, again, makes, who repels more voters than he attracts and he thinks he'll make it up in volume. And this is a perfect example of it. So, Steve, this is, you know, it's a little weird. think back to 2015, and the person who, you know, arguably did the most early on promoting Trump through his ability to call in and get a lot of that earned media attention was Joe Scarborough. Yeah, that's true. And did it repeatedly and chastised in public and private, those of us who remain still.

skeptical of Donald Trump. So we've seen, obviously, Joe Scarborough undergo a pretty dramatic transformation, becoming a constant critic of the president and using his show and really tee off on to Donald Trump with a focus on his character. You know, Scarborough has written, I think you wrote a Washington Post column, explaining why he's consistent throughout this process. I wasn't persuaded by the column, to say the least. I mean, I think Jonah's right.

I don't know that it has. I agree with Jonah that I don't, if I had to guess right now, if I had to bet right now, I don't think Donald Trump gets reelected. And I think these kinds of things, you know, would be part of the explanation. On the other hand, 2016. Really quick to clarify, do you mean these types of things because people specifically don't like this? Or these types of things, meaning stepping on his campaign's message with something irrelevant? Yeah, I'm not sure his campaign has a message.

I'm not sure his campaign has a message right now. No, I mean, I think he's just a really unlikable guy. He's a man of extraordinarily low character. You know, I think, you know, part of the reason that Republicans lost seats in the 28 midterms was that Democrats effectively nationalized the election and lots of, you know, formerly suburban, formerly Republican-supporting suburbanites didn't vote for Republicans. And I think some of that was an effect of Donald Trump. You know, on the other hand, you could make the counter argument that he did this stuff throughout the 2016 election, and he was elected anyway, and people have sort of priced in that this is who the guy is.

I think the great, for people who made that argument, their most compelling case came with a follow-up point, which was, and the economy is doing well, and the country is generally headed in the right direction. virtually nobody who says that right now. Now, he and Joe Biden are polling sort of roughly even on the economy. Trump had, I think, a slight advantage in a Fox poll on the economy. But if the economy continues to struggle, and I think it will, and we see, you know, tens of thousands of deaths from COVID-19 extending into the fall, given the president's very late response, there, people are just going to be. a lot less forgiving. I think people who might have otherwise been inclined to say,

you know what, my business is doing pretty well and my 401k is doing pretty well and the country seems to be headed in the right direction, you know, I guess I'll vote for them again. Given those circumstances, this might be yet another factor that would get them to pull ever for Joe Biden or not vote at all. But this is a pattern. I mean, this is not anything new that we've seen from the president. And he's not going to back off. I mean, the letter that that you read from, I mean, it was heartbreaking to read that from the widower here. I mean, a really sort of ripping, gut-wrenching letter to read. And this president doesn't care. He doesn't care. So he'll keep doing it. David, let's end where we started on this. Twitter isn't taking down the tweets.

no despite the letter from the widower no no it is not I mean I don't want to be a broken record on this and you know that makes me realize that there might actually be listeners who don't even know what that reference means I don't want to repeat myself endlessly on this point I still think that we have now discovered what it means when you create a series of permission structures that presume a degree of virtue in your leaders, that presume that a person will have the decency and integrity not to break through every line of civility that in every social norm regarding leadership that we cannot presume that will occur. And that when going forward, we need to think about very hard, and not just as, you know, not just companies like Twitter, but also we, the people

of the United States of America need to think really hard about the way in which we have imbued the presidency with this sort of awesome immunity from the operation of law. And I think we need to reflect on that and we need to change that. But, you know, the bottom line here, I think, is that there are those who say Trump's tweets don't matter. Trump's tweets don't matter. I think they have mattered a great deal in limiting his upside as his political upside as president. I think he has, and I've said this a few times, he has a lower ceiling until before coronavirus, He had a far lower political ceiling than he should have had, based on the economy, you know, peace and prosperity. He should have had a lot higher approval rating, but he didn't.

He is rarely, rarely even scratch close to 50%. You know, I think it's distressing that no matter what he does, he still has such a high floor. He has such incredible loyalty in spite of his, the way he behaves and his manifest and grotesque and complex. he does have that high floor, but he's got an incredibly low ceiling. He's going to have to thread a needle once again if he wants to win re-election. And he may well do it. I'm, you know, if I had to bet today, I would bet that he doesn't win. But I think this is all reason why he doesn't have that high ceiling. It's all reason why that all that vital suburban vote is often, you know, even even in a very red suburb like where I live now, there is just a sense of exhaustion.

around this. There is just this sense of... Yes, it explains some of the suburban vote, but I think it wildly explains the now more than double digit, but heading close to 30-point gender gap. Yes, exactly. That is huge. That is huge, and you see it even in red suburbs like here. If you're talking to a particularly to college-educated woman, even in Red

America, it's not... Frequent, you're going to have someone with a MAGA hat on. Not frequent at all. Well, let's get to our last topic then. Moderator's privilege here. I now look like a Sherman tank heading down the Shamps-Ele-Ze. There's a maximum of 16 days left of this. So, David, coming to you first, advice for a new parent.

I will tell you the thing that gave me more peace of mind, oddly enough, than anything that I read or was told to me before we had our first kid. And that is, I read, strangely enough, it was an op-ed in the New York Times. And the essential thrust of it was, whatever your parental philosophy, you're going to find a PhD somewhere who will back it. And his essential bottom line was know your kid and trust your instincts. And I have thought about that because we have three kids and they're all really different. Know your kid and trust your instincts. That gave me such sort of peace of mind when I read it in those fraught a few days before Nancy gave birth. Terrifying. Steve?

yeah i mean in a in a strange way you're ahead just because you chose this as the question to ask i've found in my informal survey of parents over the years that parents who think a lot about how to parent are the most successful parents and that sounds simple but it's also true i i think the one um the one piece of advice and this is probably a little cliche would be to to read to your child as often as you can, starting immediately, starting as an infant, a newborn. I think it's soothing. I think it, I mean, this, it's worked for our kids. It's made our kids. I think it's contributed to our kids being as enthusiastic about reading as they are. And I think it certainly drew my wife and I closer to our kids because we spent as much time as we did

with them hearing our voice, listening to what was important to us. Now, Jonah, you can answer this on behalf of the dogs or your daughter, whichever you think was the bigger parenting lessons that you learned. Well, the great thing and horrible thing about the dogs is their nature remains the same

while kids change over time. Okay, so first, I agree entirely with what Steve and David said. I'll give you much more Practical piece of advice, get a diaper genie right away. Okay, beyond that, someone told me before we had our first kid, get ready for long days and short years. And that comes to mind whenever, I mean, like we're talking about the cicadas coming back in D.C., the last time the cicadas were here, she was in a stroll. My daughter was in a stroller, and she was terrified of the cicadas.

and now she's 17 years old and like 5'10. And it feels like it happened last week. And it can get you really sort of emotional. The other thing, other practical piece of advice is for your husband that when you need time to re-energize or relax, the trick is not just to sort of be the babysitter. or, you know, have beyond baby duty in the house. Get the baby out of the house. Yeah. It's better for you because, like, if you just don't want to do the little

tea party stuff or whatever, you go on adventures, that's really important. And it also actually gives you time to just be alone, which you're going to want. And the last one, I would say, it's very related to Steve's thing about the reading is there is such a thing as quality time with your kids. It's important. But the more important thing is quantity time. You just never know when that great conversation or that great epiphany or that great moment's going to be. And your kids, particularly when they're really young, they want to be around their parents. And reserving some special three hours to cram in your wonder years moments doesn't work. Take your kids when you travel. Take your kids when you have

speech or any of that kind of stuff, they'll be better people for it, and you'll be happier. Can I add one thing about the diaper genie? Change it out, change its contents out regularly, or it becomes Chernobyl? Yes. I'll write that down for Scott. That sounds like Scott Job. Thank you, guys. That was good advice.

All right, well, from this Sherman Tank and the three dudes. and the little dude to come. Thank you so much for listening, and we will talk to you guys next week. You know,