The Dispatch Podcast - 2016, 2020 and This Moment

Episode Date: October 21, 2020

The story that the New York Post published last week about Hunter Biden raised all sorts of red flags for veteran journalists. How did they come into possession of the information in the first place? How did they authenticate the story before publishing it? All things considered, the available reporting process indicates that the New York Post’s story was so shaky within the Post’s own staff that the person who wrote it didn’t want his name on the byline. “That doesn’t say that the information is false,” David concedes on today’s episode, “But what it says is that the procedures to vet the information before they put the information into the public square were inadequate.” Tune in to hear our podcast hosts discuss voter enthusiasm, liberal anxiety over a 2016 repeat, and what to expect from Thursday’s presidential debate. Show Notes: -Join The Dispatch for a post-election gathering featuring Congressional leadership, top policy and political experts Nov. 9-10: sign up here! -Post-Debate Dispatch Live tomorrow, “Liberal Anxiety Over a 2016 Repeat May Be Why We Won't Have One” by Jonah Goldberg in The Dispatch, “The Hunter Biden Story: A Microcosm of Our Miserable Times,” by David French in The Dispatch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgert, joined as always by Steve Hayes, David French, and even Jonah Goldberg. 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. And quick plug, after the election, November 9th and 10th, join us for our post-election event. What's Next Event? is where you can learn more about it. We'll have afternoon sessions on both days running from

1 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. and we'll return at 8 p.m. for an evening session with a wrap-up of the day's proceedings with the team from the dispatch. Tickets for this two-day event are $100 and include a new complimentary subscription to the dispatch. Right now, we've got interviews planned with Congresswoman Liz Cheney, Senator Ben Sass, and Senator Tim Scott. We'll be announcing more interviews and panel discussions in the coming weeks around the future of conservatism, governing under a Trump or Biden administration, foreign policy issues, and we'll take a deep dive into the results of the election, of course. So join us November 9th and 10th. You can check it out at what's next event.com. Today we're going to start with the Hunter Biden story,

the New York Post, Twitter, and everyone involved. Then we'll go on to is 2016, really, the benchmark for how 2020 is going, a little bit on enthusiasm between Biden supporters and Trump supporters, and we'll wrap with a discussion of tomorrow night's debate. Let's dive in. David, coming to us live from California from California.

You wrote your newsletter this week on the Hunter Biden story and the responsibility of journalism, social media, et cetera, when it comes to these types of reports. Yeah. What a mess. So this was apologized to the readers a long, a long newsletter because there's a lot of facets to this story. So I didn't really deal with the substance of the emails that much. mainly because I've already decided I'm not voting for Hunter Biden for president. But the really interesting aspect to me about this was the other side.

So there was a journalism side of this. The New York Post getting a hard drive from Rudy Giuliani that Rudy says is Hunter's hard drive. The social media response with Facebook throttling back, the throttling back sort of the reach of the Post of the New York Post. posts pieces, Twitter blocking entirely, and then the political response with the FCC chairman vowing to undertake rulemaking to alter Section 230, which is this law on the Communications Decency Act that allows social media companies and indeed all internet providers to engage in content moderation without being liable for their user speech. And rather than rehash my, rather than monologuing all the way through my piece,

I wanted to get y'all's thoughts. And first, Steve, you're the Journalism School graduate. Let's talk part one, the New York Post and the debut of the story. Yeah, I mean, I think this presents a number of challenges for reporters who want to cover this. You know, you wrote about it, I thought, very well in your newsletter and concluded that the Post shouldn't have published a story as it was. The real question I have involves the provenance of the information. And the story that the New York Post itself told about where this computer slash hard drive

came from and how they came into possession of it, to me, raised all sorts of red flags. it was tipped off by Steve Bannon. It came via Rudy Giuliani. The stories that have been told about the provenance of the information have changed, both in contradictory statements from the shop owner himself and from Rudy Giuliani. I mean, Rudy Giuliani now has given many interviews about this and has said things like, I don't know if the information is true, but the American people should see it. I think there's less than a 50-50 chance that this person, Andre Dirkcatch, that I was working with, is an active Russian asset or is a Russian agent.

These are the kind of, and, you know, the shop owner had said Hunter Biden, he couldn't determine if Hunter Biden was the person who came in and dropped off the laptop while Giuliani had said, of course, it was Hunter Biden. and he came in and he was drunk, so providing all sorts of details about it. There are just all sorts of reasons to be really skeptical of the information. Now, what's emerged since, it's hard to know what's real and what's not, having read all of the stories

about what has supposedly been found on these hard drives, it's certainly the case that a number of them have the ring of truth. In some cases, they seem to add more information to what was already publicly known. In other cases, they're presenting new information, but not information that would be wildly inconsistent with, I think, our basic assumptions

about the contours of the story, with Hunter Biden trying to cash in on his father's name and position. The problem is you can't know that these things are true. And you've had a lot of our colleagues in the conservative media say, well, Hunter and Joe Biden haven't come up to deny this.

And as you pointed out in your newsletter, that doesn't mean that the information is therefore true and verified. They would no doubt have been instructed not to come out and verify really any parts of the story. Because then if there is information that's later made public that's not true, you get into this whack-a-mole game of true and not true. And it further confuses who to believe and who not to believe. So basically, the way that we've handled this at the dispatch is we've tried to give people a sense of what's happening with the story without going into much detail about the actual allegations themselves. If we can get to the point where we have confirmation of some of those allegations, and we've been asking as well, we will report on them. If we know that they're true, we will report on them. If they're true, they're certainly newsworthy.

And David, well, you explain salting. It's pretty common, for instance, in my world, on when you're trying to catch someone who's leaking, for instance, but there's also the reverse. And that's the question around these, this hard drive, I think, is whether it was salted. Right. So essentially the state of play, as we understand things while we're recording, I mean, this is a evolving story, is that there's been an anonymous sort. and the DOJ, who has said that the FBI has Hunter's laptop. But, of course, the New York Post did not do its story based on Hunter's laptop. It did its story based on a hard drive that is purported to be a copy of the information

on Hunter's laptop that came from Rudy Giuliani. And as Steve said, some of the information certainly looks legit. But what we have seen in the past is this thing, this concept that Sarah just had salting, and that is when you take real information and you sort of salt into it, mix into it some fake information. And so this is something that happened in, I believe, the 2017 hack prior to the French presidential election. That's right. So that there's this mix of true information and false information. And it puts the target of the hack, as Steve said, into a difficult position that if you validate some of the information and you admit that some is true and then

there's a damaging what purports to be a damaging revelation in there and you go well oh but but that that one's false well you've already started the validation process so it puts you in in a bind and this is something that I was really interested in hearing sarah's view on and that is okay if you're a senior advisor in the Biden campaign and you're huddled in a room with Joe Biden. And you're very concerned about the, you're, you know, the New York Post has come, you know, the news is all over conservative media. It looks like sort of the mainstream media and progressive media is dismissing it and focusing more information on the New York Post. You don't know exactly what's on the hard drive that Rudy is provided. Sarah, what are.

are you saying? What are you telling Joe Biden? I don't touch it with a 10-foot poll. Now, the interesting part will be the debate tomorrow night and whether Kristen Welker, the debate moderator, finds a way to ask about it and what Joe Biden is prepared to say at that point. But he cannot, to your point, address the validity of any of the emails because they don't know what else is on that hard drive. And they can assume that Rudy Giuliani or whoever else has saved some of the emails to release later and they're not going to know whether those are real or not. And so it, as you said, it puts them in a bit of a bind. But on the other hand, even if you knew the whole thing was real somehow, magically,

I still don't think you address it because from what happened in 2016 where Hillary Clinton doesn't address it and people are like, well, that's why she lost. She should have come out and made a bigger deal of the Comey, you know, the last Comey press conference where he said that there were no new emails on the Weiner laptop. By the way, FBI laptops. I don't know, man. This is feeling recycled the whole plot line. But the big difference here is that the media for better or worse, I think feels like they learned a lesson from 2016. The what about her emails, meme of sorts, that they're just not willing to do that again four years later. And that inures very much to Joe Biden's benefit. And so by not addressing it, he lets the story

be about process. And that is the best thing for Joe Biden right now is to leave this as a process story. Was the New York Post wrong? Right. Does Rudy Giuliani think his source as a Russian agent? Even does the FBI have the laptop? All of that's fine because what we're not talking about because we don't know is was the relationship between Hunter Biden and Burisma and Joe Biden corrupt in some sort of either, you know, actually criminal way, which I'm not sure what the allegations would be around that yet, but, you know, in just a gross way. That's not the conversation.

Joe Biden shouldn't touch it. So, Jonah, oh, I'm sorry. Well, I was just going to say, I was just going to say, from this standpoint of sort of the Republican political world, salacious unverified information good now? It really depends on the day of the week. If it breaks on a Tuesday, it's good. If it breaks on a Thursday, it's bad. I'd say one thing that, I mean, I agree with Sarah about the process point, keeping your process story. One of the things she left out, though, was having the argument about whether

Twitter was a censorious 1984 Orwellian force in our lives, because that conversation is actually good for Biden, because it's not about Biden anymore. It's a major process story, and it's catnip for all of the right-wingerers who've convinced themselves that, you know, Section 230 is actually a passage from the NEPR. What was it, David? NEMRA. the, and from Evil Dead, the book, the Nemerknamacon, Game River, anyway. Necromonicum, yeah, I know what you're talking about. Yeah, necromanicon, yeah.

Yes, necromanicon, yeah. The second I tried to say I lost it, but anyway, listeners who know will know what I'm trying to get at. Anyway, I do think that on the 2016 sort of replay thing, which I'm going to talk about in a little bit, as a political matter, I'm sort of with Steve. I'm sure that there are a lot of the material. I'm not sure. I wouldn't be surprised if much of the material were in fact true.

In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if all of the material were true. I think it would be a massive earthquake of a story if it turned out that the copy of the hard drive that Giuliani gave the post is different from the hard drive of the actual laptop that the FBI has. That could put Giuliani in jail and would be a huge story, but we'll see. I don't think that's likely because Giuliani's not that dumb, but, you know, it's an interesting thing. I think the basic larger problem is for the Trumpers, no one, no one who hasn't voted yet, and lots of people have voted, is saying, gosh, if this Hunter thing turns out to be true, I'm voting for Trump.

You know, one of the problems that Trump has is that he, he laid all of this. out. I was going to use a euphemism that you can't use anymore in the age of tube. He laid all of this out for voters a year ago. And by doing so, he inoculated the story. Now it's a lot like the Russia collusion stuff, like of another Russia story or another bad real estate story or a Mollyman story who comes out for Trump. People are like, yeah, yeah, we kind of know that about him already. And the same thing works with Hunter. People kind of know this about Hunter already. it's baked in so the October surprise had little surprise value and um and Trump has this problem of thinking that this is somehow the game changer when most of us

even if his advisors apparently according to reporting don't think it's the game changer so it's it's a it's a lot of you know st. Elmo's fire it's a lot of you know it's a light show that actually doesn't do anything to you um and it does give you a preview that though, of the ugliness of the fights to come on Section 230, on arguments about the mainstream media and all that kind of thing. But its political impact right now kind of feels negligible to me. Yeah, you know, the big difference between the Hillary emails and this is aside from, well, you know, questions like, did Joe Biden tell the truth when he said, you know,

he didn't know much about his son's business activities, which, you know, you know, you know, would be sort of one of these sort of standard political spin lie evasion stories. The Hillary's story was, is Hillary Clinton a criminal? That was the question at the heart of the Hillary Clinton email. It was, did Hillary Clinton mishandle highly classified information in such a way that would bring criminal liability? And there was even a highly unusual press conference from an FBI director that excoriated her handling of classified information. So anything that popped up in sort of phase two of that story raised the specter of am I voting for somebody who could be indicted, which is so substantially different from, am I voting for somebody whose son is exploiting his family name in an unscrupulous way for money, which is one of the oldest political stories in the book. and it's interesting that the New York Times ran its latest story on Trump's business dealings

and some of the dealings of the Trump Organization and his kids. And some of the details in that story, if you want to talk about financial transactions with shady characters involving the Trump organization's financial relationship with Chinese and Chinese interests are really, in an ordinary world would be, extremely surprising and shocking even, but again, as you said, all the emolument stuff and all of the Trump business relationships are now baked in. So I agree with you. It feels like the Hunter stuff is baked in. Again, barring something completely unexpected in, you know, the next day or week. So, David, let me channel some of our listeners and ask you a question. Why are you inclined to treat

that that New York Times story as true, and to talk about it and say that it's troubling, and you're not willing to do that with the New York Post story? Well, there's a couple of aspects on the New York Post story. One is, when you're talking about the provenance of the information, you're talking about the part that the Post was transparent about, which is this came through Steve Bannon, who was indicted for fraud, Rudy Giuliani, who as we know has been working with and rather openly working with somebody, the Treasury Department has designated as a Russian agent coming from, with a laptop coming from a person who I believe is legally blind and so couldn't identify Hunter Biden with a shifting

story. Again, none of this means that the hard drive that they received is false, but what it means is that there needs to be rigorous, transparent efforts to detail the ways in which you tried to validate it. The analysis you undertook on the hard drive. What steps did you do to make sure that this wasn't salted with other kinds of information? Instead, the story seems to be what we did was we got this hard drive from Rudy and here's some of the contents. And that's my concern. It's not that, yeah, I know. And I had several readers say, look, you know, whether you're a lawyer or whether you're a journalist, you will get, sometimes you'll get truthful information from shady sources.

I mean, heck, a whole lot of prosecutions in the United States of America are built around getting information from shady sources. And in fact, sometimes entire prosecutions are built around information from shady sources. But you verify, verify, verify. And the question I would have is the available reporting indicates that the post story was so shaky within the post that the person who wrote it didn't want his name on the byline. Now, again, that doesn't say that the information is false, but what it says is that the procedures to vet the information before they put the information into the public square were inadequate. And so that's the problem I have in the sense that, you know, what ends up happening is if the information is adequate and it's true and it could well be true, I agree with Jonah that if that if it departs from the hard drive the FBI has, Rudy's got a lot of explaining to do.

But if it is truthful, then you've kind of accidentally stumbled into the truth as opposed to what you should be doing, which is rigorously transparently vetting the information. providing it for readers and providing information on your vetting for readers. The New York Times stories, when you read the New York Times stories, the level of detail involved in the reporting is an order of magnitude greater than in the post story. And then one other final thing. Rudy himself sort of said why it is that we should be a little bit concerned. He said, you know, he took it to the post because he knew other outlets.

spend time trying to contradict it, which is what they should do. And it's also apparent that Fox News or been reported that Fox News passed on this. So, yeah, it could very well be a hard drive that has accurate information in it, but the process that, the reporting process does not give one confidence that the New York Post did its due diligence. And that's important. Let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsor today, ExpressVPN. When you, you use the bathroom, you always close the door behind you, right? You don't want random passers by looking in on you. So why would you let people look in on you when you go online? Using the internet without ExpressVPN is like going to the bathroom and not closing the door. Do you

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that it does feel like the screenwriters who have been really knocking out of the park for the last three years are kind of going back to some old standby tropes, lock them up, all that kind of stuff. It feels like like, like, like maybe their normal cocaine supply in the rider's room has dried up and they're they're working on second tier stuff but um more seriously i think that the you know one of and i

know steve and and and david probably i don't know but i would suspect have the same peeve for most of our lives every time since vietnam until the iraq war within hours after hostilities were launched in any way by a U.S. government, particularly if it was a Republican government, somebody in the New York Times would write, this is Vietnam again, this is a Vietnam quagmire. It was like the only military, up until Iraq War, the only military metaphor or analogy that any mainstream journalists or gray-beard pundit knew was either World War II or Vietnam quagmire. And no one could talk about like the Spanish-American War. or, you know, all sorts of other things that might actually be more apropos.

I have the same feeling about 2016, whether it's on the left or on the right. Everybody is talking about 2016 as if it is the benchmark prism through which to view this election. And I understand it to a certain extent. I mean, 50% of the candidates from 2016 are running again. 2016 is the most recent election. Donald Trump is literally trying to run the exact same campaign that he ran in 2016 with only a few variations, down to lock them up chance and all of these kinds of things. But at the end of the day, I think the differences between 2016 and today are much greater than the similarities. And so I can list a whole bunch of them, but I am supposed to.

I just remembered as I was about to do my John Belushi rant and throw myself out of my chair that I'm supposed to turn these questions to you. So, Sarah, how useful do you think 2016 is in understanding this moment? Here's my hot take, if you will. I think that if anything, it would mean that pollsters are underestimating Biden's support because if they get this wrong again, polling as an industry, pretty much shrivels on the vine. after this. And so when I look at these polling numbers, I sort of see that in the 2016 lens of how the experience in 2016 is coloring every single one of these polls coming out. And yet both sides also seem not to trust the polls, right? The Republicans that I've talked to, the Trump supporters, are convinced that Trump's about to win in a landslide to a person.

I don't think I've talked to a single Trump voter yet who is wobbly on. that because they think the polls are just so far off. And there was this interesting interview with a pollster in National Review who believes that Trump is going to probably win. He says Pennsylvania is a little close, but that otherwise, you know, he sees Trump winning all these states and that he thinks the polls are pretty far off because of his own sort of polling methodology. And there's just not a whole lot of data to back that up. If anything, I think Jonah's like you're just making a really interesting point and something I think will be a huge moment after the election

if Biden, if the polls are correct and Biden wins by the amount we're seeing, it's going to be why did anyone think this was close? 2016 was not actually the model for 2020. I think the best example of this is what I hear from Republicans and Democrats, which is this idea that maybe Trump voters just aren't answering their phone. and so pollsters are getting sort of fooled into talking to the wrong people and who answers their phone anyway and these people are, I don't know, like hermits living in a cave or something.

And Trump has mocked all these fake polls and so they're just less likely to respond. If that were the case, and this is true for a lot of these theories about the polls, if that were the case, we'd see some evidence in the data. You would see, for instance, in this case, Republicans with a lower response rate than Democrats. When these pollsters call, they get about a 5% response rate. And so it would be really easy to see that, you know, they're calling a thousand Republicans and they're expecting about a 5% response rate on that, but somehow they're only getting a 1% response rate. But from the pollsters

I've talked to, in fact, the opposite is proving true. Republicans compared to their previous performance on response rate are a little bit more likely to talk to pollsters. They want to, you know, get their feelings out there. And so again and again, I hear people saying, but 2016, and again, when you look at the data this time, there's just not a lot to back up that this is 2016 again. Yeah, and so my point, I mean, I'll go to Steve, but my point is it's not just the polling thing, right? Every pollster I talk to, everybody who I know follows polls, the pollsters of all sort of sworn a blood oath that they've fixed this underpolling in state polls about non-college educated whites, which was the main source of the discrepancies in the state

polls, which were the ones that were basically wrong in 2016, not the national polls anyway. But it's not just the polls. There's just a huge difference between an incumbent Donald Trump, who's a known quantity, and a challenger Donald Trump, who's an unknown quantity compared to Hillary Clinton, who was like the most known quantity in American life. I was going to say, I think the bigger difference is between Hillary Clinton running against Hillary Clinton and running against Joe Biden in terms of who you're able to get to take a leap of faith on Donald Trump. Yeah.

I mean, Hillary Clinton was despised by large numbers of Republicans and large numbers of Democrats and independents. And again, you can just go down a very long list of things and say, if you're looking for historical analogies that apply. to right now, 2016, yeah, obviously it's going to be on the list because it was the most recent one and it involves the incumbent president and yada, yada, yada. But, you know, I don't know, is 1992 a more relevant one-term president knocked out of office? Steve, I mean, are you a, are you an acolyte at the golden calf of 2016 punditry? I'm not, but I guess the way that I would, the way

that I would put it is it's important to learn the lessons of 2016 without necessarily looking to 2016 as the framework for the prism through which we view all events in 2020. I mean, you know, 2016, as we've talked about here, as we, I think probably all of us have written about at one point or another, was a Black Swan event. It was a series of things that were unexpected that turned out to benefit Donald Trump in the final analysis. And it was 80,000 votes in three states. In particular, and this goes to the point about Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump and Joe Biden versus Donald Trump, Trump being then a relatively unknown quantity.

And Trump now, we having four years of looking at his presidency, late-breaking voters who didn't like both candidates broke for Donald Trump in 2016. that seems highly unlikely to happen again here for a couple of reasons. One, voters who, you know, are undecided and, you know, I think Sarah's made the point a number of times that there really just aren't that many of them, but there are some. And those who remain don't have, there isn't the same level of distaste for Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Joe Biden is seen widely by the electorate as much less offensive than Hillary Clinton was.

four years ago, for good reason, I think. And the second point is, we know what Donald Trump would do now. At the time, Donald Trump was saying all these things in the last few days of the campaign. He had campaigned to blow up Washington. I think he sort of channeled a broad sentiment in the electorate, certainly among Republicans,

who thought it was time for some disruption, and couldn't vote for Hillary Clinton. Now, he was supposed to be this disrupt. And in some ways, he was that disruption, but I think for some Republican voters, they look and say, okay, what kind of disruption? So I guess that's why I think it's important to, you know, learn the lessons of 2016, and there were some interesting and important lessons. But I don't think we have to look at everything now as through a 2016 frame.

David? Yeah, you know, it's funny. when you look back at 2016 and you look at the data that was incoming in 2016, it's funny, you're talking about, and Sarah, you're talking about how if the polling is sort of born out in 2020, a lot of people say, well, why was everybody white-knuckling this? This seemed pretty obvious in hindsight. But when 2016, I think one of the obvious questions that comes up when you sort of take another look at the data was why was everyone so completely confident that Hillary was going to win?

The polling, the national polling was relatively close, and the margins in the Midwest had closed between 2008 and 2012. Romney did a lot better in the Midwest. He still lost, but he did better in the Midwest than McCain had pretty substantially. And so there were some signs there. I mean, the race was closer, there had been some Midwest narrowing, but everyone was fighting the last war in 2016 that there was this blue wall. I mean, I remember, we all remember the blue wall, the electoral college blue wall that suddenly become, after one race, a red wall. I'm starting to think it might not be a wall for anybody right now.

And so I think in 2016, there was a lot of confidence in the predictions borne out of the last wars, which were 2008 and 2012, that was really misplaced in that circumstance. A lot of folks who support the president on Twitter are having great fun right now pointing out how similar the polls are in some of these swing states right now as they were in 2016. And, you know, that does signify the polling miss in the national poll, I mean, in the state polling in some of these states, But the national polling picture is fundamentally different.

And, you know, the idea that Trump could overcome, say, a nine-point gap or an eight-point gap in the electoral college, I think that would be, that's just fiction. That just cannot happen. But, yeah, I think 2016 confidence was partly born of fighting the 2012 war, re-fighting the 2012 war. And then I think there was just this sort of psychological thing that a lot of people had that sort of said, Donald Trump can't win. He know, this is just something that can't happen. And so it really colored people's attitudes. And the last thing on this I'll say is when you have these much closer polling numbers, you know, three, two, four points, these much closer polling numbers, that's when I think these reports about, you know, these reports about. intensity and these reports about enthusiasm can start to kind of matter. I think when you have like

a nine point gap or a ten point gap, but the core base is still enthused. That enthusiasm number isn't as important, but it's funny, Steve, when you're talking about 19 or the, is this a one term like the 1992 election? I remember the closing argument for Bush. And correct me. if I'm wrong. Wasn't it, weren't you seeing pop up, annoy the media, reelect President Bush? And that, you know, A, that shows how long the war against the media has been going in Republican circles. But that was not a closing argument that worked. And a lot, that seems to be kind of the core of the Trump closing argument, which is attack the media, reelect Trump. And with that, and what a great segue, David, thank you.

We'll move on to my topic, which is enthusiasm. And I think that there's been this assumption that the enthusiasm is on Trump's side. And to David's point, maybe it's only among this 32% or so of his base, but nevertheless, they are, you know, revved up, ready to go for their boat parade type thing. But I have three nuggets, information nuggets that I want to discuss that maybe the enthusiasm isn't quite where we thought it was. The first, the town hall. We didn't get to talk about the town halls last week. You know, in lieu of a debate, Biden does his town hall on ABC.

Trump does his town hall on NBC, which then also gets to show it on MSNBC and C NBC. Well, the ratings came back and Biden's town hall, averaged about, you know, just under a million viewers more than Trump's town hall, even though Trump's town hall showed on three channels and Biden's town hall only showed on one. You know, in my newsletter, I explained that I thought that this wasn't maybe as huge a deal as some people made it out to be because NBC basically was sorry that they agreed to a town hall that abutted Biden's pre-scheduled town hall at the same time. And so they basically

didn't advertise for it. But even so, I mean, back in 2016, you didn't need to advertise if you had Donald Trump doing the Donald Trump show. People just flocked to it. And that didn't happen this time. Also an interesting note on that was that ABC was better able to make more money on their event than NBC, roughly based on someone looking at the ads and the ad space that ABC was able to sell. Okay, second bucket. First time voters. As of right now, 7.3 million infrequent and first-time voters have cast their ballots, which is two and a half times the number of ballots by those types of voters four years ago. Now, another caveat on this one, it could be the case that these are people who would have voted

later, but because there's been so much media attention, they are really ginned up about early voting, so we're just replacing later votes with early votes. If so, we're going to start to see a drop-off in the early voting numbers here next week real soon. We haven't seen that yet. Okay, third bucket is the money bucket. Joe Biden outraised Donald Trump $200 million in September. But now we also have the cash on hand bucket, which is the Biden campaign has $177 million. And the Trump campaign has $63 million.

That's a three-to-one edge. What that means is that Trump has had to spend a ton of money. to raise money. And one stat that I saw was that he, for his small dollar fundraising machine, was spending 77 cents to raise a dollar. That is a wildly high number and tells you that the enthusiasm isn't there.

They have list fatigue. They're trying to hit their people and they're just not seeing much return from it. Okay, those are my three buckets. Steve, I know you were paying attention to the money bucket. what do you make of my money bucket enthusiasm argument i mean that's an incredible number and while it's not very good for the trump campaign it's very good for the people who are uh working for the trump

campaign for the people who are making money off the trump campaign it should be noted look i think i think this in some ways is is the most interesting of your buckets um can we just talk for two seconds about how she went from nuggets to buckets without ever explaining how but okay anyway i'm sorry The nuggets are in the buckets. That was hanging unspoken. Buckets of nuggets, maybe? I don't know. Anyway, go on.

The nuggets are in the buckets. The, I think, and we talked about this pretty early on, one of the reasons that the fundraising gap is significant between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, beyond just what they have to spend, is what it tells us about. enthusiasm. And in particular, those small dollar donors. And I find this a pretty interesting barometer of where the enthusiasm is at this point distributed in the race. I don't, I'm not under the impression that there are lots of people clamoring for a Joe Biden presidency or, you know, willing to walk over hot coals or lining up boat parades for Biden, you know, the, the, the,

the miles-long car parades that we've seen over the past few weekends for Trump, there is a disparity in the kind of positive enthusiasm for the two candidates. I think obviously what Joe Biden is benefiting from is the negative enthusiasm about Trump. And you have voters who, you know, Trump's disapproval ratings depending on your polls, 48%, 52%, sometimes as high as 54%. and the strong disapprovals are not much lower than that. So you have people who are passionately opposed to Donald Trump, who are willing to do just about anything to get him out of office.

And I think we're seeing that in these numbers, both at the presidential level with the numbers of small dollar donors giving to Biden's campaign, but also in these Senate races where you're seeing, fundraising gaps of six to one and seven to one when you're looking at just the actual campaign fundraising, which is indicative more closely of low-dollar fundraising. And so they want to get rid of Donald Trump, but they also want to get rid of anybody who's seen as supporting Donald Trump. I mean, that's why Lindsey Graham's opponent, J.B. Harrison, has raised so much money.

I think it's why Democratic Senate candidates have done so well, are these low-dollar donors. And I do think that while it's not an exact proxy for voting enthusiasm, it does tell us something about voter enthusiasm. And there's no doubt, I mean, we should make clear, there's no doubt that Trump supporters, whatever percentage of the base we want to say are the hardcore Trump supporters are about as intense of political actors as I've seen since I've been covering this for 25 years. but I think they are mirrored and outnumbered on the other side when you're talking about people who oppose Donald Trump. Jonah? Yeah, I mean, not to, you know, exploit this for my own benefit, but this just proves my point about 2016.

You know, all of these things that we're talking about, right? So the top, you know, as David noted earlier, all the top line numbers show the similarities in these battleground polls and whatever between now and 2016. But all the stuff that you're talking about is just very different situation than 2016. The, you know, my first column of the week was on this, I'm convinced that, you know, John Podort has convinced me a while ago that liberal media is losing its mind about, because of its 2016 phobia and panic.

And they're so afraid because they're the, The scalded dogs from, they're like reek from Game of Thrones. They've just been so abused and so lied to so many times. They don't know what's the truth anymore. And they're so scared. They think it's 2016 again. And so they don't let anyone talk about jinxing it. They don't like, Joe Biden ran away with the first debate.

Won that thing by any metric. And the immediate response from all the liberals was, no more debates, right? When do you, when does your guy win a debate? And your first reaction is, let's not do that again. I mean, it's a weird situation. And I think, getting to your point, I think there is this, I'm sure there's a German word for it. There's this negative enthusiasm, this angst that is at work here. And so if you're looking for enthusiasm numbers, the idea that you would look to boat parades and airport rallies, rather than the fact that in every state where they're reporting basically, except for, I guess, Florida, almost every state where the reporting part,

parties in ID in terms of early voting. Democrats are voting two or sometimes three to one to Republicans. That's a measurement of enthusiasm too. But Democrats are voting based on fear of Trump. And Republicans are voting to the extent that they're voting for Trump on love of Trump. And I think these are just very different dynamics. And I think that the enthusiasm thing generally is necessary but not sufficient for what Trump needs. And I know that we're all supposed to genuflect to Sarah's, it's all about turnout now, and she's probably right about that. But it can't just be a turnout election when you have fewer voters in your column. You should be doing something to get more voters in your column. Well, that goes to a whole series of

strategy decisions that the Trump campaign never chose to make or that the candidate was unable to make. David, last question to you. on this. I think that the, so I talked about one of the things that we'll talk about if the polls are right

and that Biden wins in Jonah's column, if you will. But I think another one will be these first-time voters. I think if we continue to see first-time

voters showing up in record numbers and that that you know, really turns the tide, so to speak, if they are voting at twice as high

as they did in any previous election, that that will be a fascinating moment in American politics where a whole bunch of people who never felt like they needed to vote before suddenly felt like, nah, I got to raise my hand this time. Yeah, you know, and in a way, again, if you're sort of looking at it like this frame of when this is all over, some people might say, oh, yeah, that was obvious all along. The first time voter number in an interesting way could be as well,

because this was the first time in a long time in American history where politics was just always being talked about constant bombardment of political news. I mean, you know, you think about 2020, we've had an impeachment, we've had a pandemic, we've had an economic meltdown, we've had urban unrest. So in one way, you would look at that first-time voter number and you'd say, well, of course. I mean, of course. The other thing that I think is interesting, going back to what Jonah was saying, is, you know, the media isn't just, you know, the members of the media tend to be on the left.

And they don't just tend to be sort of kind of on the left. They tend to be pretty left, especially the younger cohort. And Joe Biden was not their guy. He was not their guy. And so in a lot of ways, it feels like what you have is the combination of the flashback to 2016 with the I sort of this idea that Joe Biden Joe you mean Joe Biden is the guy that's going to you know that's going to take out Trump and then also I do think there's some background anxiety about Biden's age so rather than having say a young candidate who excites the base and excites the media they would be saying yeah let's debate again

here's our champions stepping into the arena but a lot of these guys just weren't excited about Biden to begin with, and still can't quite wrap their minds around an idea of a Joe Biden wave election? What? Are you kidding me? But he had a wave election primary. I mean, he mopped the floor with the competition after the South Carolina primary. It wasn't even close to close. It was not the same as Hillary's 2016 primary. It was not the same as Obama's 2008. So, you know, I do wonder if part of this is an artifact of a, actual sort of the white knuckling, A, actual concerns about, say, Biden's age, and B, he just was never their guy to begin with. And so the idea that this guy, the guy that they didn't really get, they didn't get excited

about, is somehow going to swamp Donald Trump? What? That doesn't make sense. And let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsor, the Bradley Foundation. Americans are navigating through several unanticipated crises this year. We the People, a Bradley speaker series, offers insights and ideas on the current challenges we face from some of the remarkable organizations the Bradley Foundation supports. Visit BradleyFDN.org slash Liberty to watch our most recent episode, which features

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So before we move on to Steve's topic, I have two more nuggets for you, Jonah. I like nuggets better than buckets. I prefer a bucket of KFC to a nugget. What about a bucket of chick-fil-a? Wings. Blasphemy incoming. I prefer both Kentucky Fried Chicken and Popeyes and Popeyes and even Zaxbys to Chick-fil-A. Wrong.

Whoa. Wrong opinion. Wow. No wonder you're taking heat from all sides of the sort of evangelical world. That really brought the mood down, David. Wow. Well, anyway. You can wear a Margaret Sanger T-shirt and get fewer hits. You know, my gosh.

All right. On these first-time voters, they often when you talk to people who didn't vote and you ask them why they didn't vote, the number one response is it won't make any difference. Like, not only does my vote not matter, but between these two candidates, it doesn't matter. both politicians. I don't know about tax policy or whatever. Like, it's all within this like small margin. They don't care about me anyway. And so when you see these first time voter numbers, what that means is that the message of the last four years to them was, oh, there's a really big difference now between these two candidates. And so it actually matters to me, which one of them wins because it will affect my life. That's pretty fascinating. And you see that in the registration

numbers. So last week, in one week in Pennsylvania, 50,000 new people were registered to vote. I just think that's a mind-blowing number. Right now in Travis County, which is the Austin area, 97% of eligible voters are registered to vote. Whoa. Wow. So, and mind you, the registration numbers, Republicans have also been doing really well in registration numbers. Those first-time voters are on both sides. It's just that the country sees this as a really stark choice. So with that lead in, Steve,

let's talk about the debate tomorrow night. Yeah, there's a debate. My question to you, we saw after the last debate that Donald Trump didn't do well. His public

polling, the insta polls said he didn't do well. The public polling said he didn't do well. And And almost immediately you started talking privately to Republican pollsters and strategists who said that they'd seen this plunge, not just in Donald Trump's numbers, but in the generic ballot numbers when pollsters asked you for Republicans or Democrats, in the generic ballot numbers for Republicans. So my question is simple. What will Donald Trump have to do tomorrow night to be judged the winner, both in the sort of post-debate discussion on television in the media, but also among the electorate, number one. And number two, can this debate matter at all in determining the outcome, Jonah? So I don't think there's anything Trump can do that will get, say, MSNBC and CNN to say he won, right?

The only way that they will say anything like that is if Biden has a sufficiently bad night that they have to say that Biden lost. And what that would look like depends on what scenarios you want to spin out. That said, I have this theory, this wacky theory, because I've become so convinced that one of the most remarkable things, things about Donald Trump and the Republican Party generally and big chunks of the Democratic Party is how determined people are to do the opposite of what is actually their political interest. Trump has just been going ballistic for a while now about this, you know, he refused to do the remote debate.

My argument is the remote debate would have helped him because it would have kept him from interrupting. It would have kept him from being rude. It would allow, it would have forced Biden to talk into a screen, which he's bad at, for extended periods of time without being rescued by Donald Trump's interruptions, which often benefited Biden because it made Biden look like a victim, made Trump look like a jerk, and it kept Biden from actually having to complete a whole thought. But Trump didn't like the idea of the remote event, and so can't call it Zoom because conjures all such an images. So, uh, now especially. Yeah, exactly. It's, this, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, BT and AT. So anyway, uh, the, I think that the mute microphone thing, if Trump actually

obeyed it would help him. I think Biden is his own worst enemy when given an opportunity under pressure to give long answers. Not because he's that terrible about it. It's just that the odds of Biden actually having the meltdown moment the Trump campaign wants can only happen if you let Biden talk. But if Trump keeps shouting, the system is rigged every time his microphone is muted and shouts over it, it's going to be a nightmare for him. And, you know, Trump is mocking Biden for taking four days off. to prepare for the debate and hold this four-day lib thing, I get why you would mock him for it.

You know, if I were running against him, I'd mock him for it. But it's kind of a flex move when you're like 10 points up going into the last debate. And the whole strategy for all along has to have been to make Trump the center of attention. So I think going into this debate, I guess to actually answer your question, Trump would have to pivot to being presidential in the last 13 days of the president. presidential race, and I would not bet heavily on that. Sarah, one of the things Jonah said in that long response was Trump should have, Trump should have done the Zoom call because it would have kept him from being rude.

Is Jonah right? That it would have helped or that it would have kept him from being rude. I'm not sure that either is right. It would have helped restrain him. Yeah, so I think that it would have, it would have upped the ratings because people would have found it fascinating in its own way, and they would have wondered how Trump would have responded to that, but it didn't happen, so is what it is. And we saw the ratings of the town halls.

So we kind of have some indication. I think that the more interesting question is whether Trump being presidential for the last 13 days, as Jonah suggested, would actually help him at this point. And I have a theory that it won't, that it wouldn't, that that cake so baked that even if he did it, everyone would think, everyone would know that it's so short term that that's not who he is, that it would come off as if anything either silly or inauthentic and it wouldn't really move the needle much. My theory is that the best thing that Trump can do is continue to be sort of his pugnacious self, but put like actually like rifle shot that toward Biden instead of the shotgun approach of

the last debate where it was just things flying spittle everywhere and instead just keep repeating Joe are you going to pack the court and then stop talking let Joe Biden flim flam around for a little bit and then when he's done and says oh my time is up which to Jonah's point he doesn't like giving long answers. He didn't do well in those primary debates. He would just say, oh, my time is up and stop talking. And so every single time, Donald Trump should refuse to answer every question, which, yes, will annoy the media and they'll talk about how he lost, but each time he should say, Joe, are you going to pack the court? And make that the debate. I don't think that it, I don't think anything in the debate, by the way, could win him this election. But at least that

has a chance of showcasing Biden's only real flaw at this moment in the campaign, or only real weakness, I guess, is a better way to phrase it. He's uncomfortable, not answering the question. He's not prepared to answer the question. So make the whole debate about that. If Joe Biden comes to the debate tomorrow night without a better answer on packing the court, it will be campaign malpractice, which doesn't necessarily mean that it won't happen. David, before you answer that question, I want to just go back briefly to the last debate. One of the things that was surprising to me, I didn't think Trump had as horrendous performance as any of you did in the immediate discussion that we had right after the debate. I thought he was basically the kind of Donald Trump that we've seen throughout his presidency again.

It was like Donald Trump at the rallies. I mean, he was actually, I would argue, in some ways, more disciplined than Donald Trump at the rallies. There were fewer crazy conspiracy theories than we get from Donald Trump at a typical rally. He was arguably better than he was during the White House coronavirus briefings. Didn't say as many outrageous things during the debate as he used to say during those briefings. Why, David, do you think that last debate had the pretty significant impact, appears to have had and then what can he do to avoid that kind of outcome again what he was he showed the aspect of himself that i think is least attractive to a lot of people which is

oddly enough not the wild conspiracy theories or you know the the the disinfectant ultraviolet you know the craziness of some of the of the briefings it was just meanness it was just pure there was nothing sort of like, oh, you know, that's our crazy Donald, nothing that would make you feel sort of this bizarre sense of, oh, he's just, you know, stream of consciousness. He doesn't really mean it. It was just, it was just a basic blatant attempt at bullying. And there's just not that many Americans who enjoy watching a bully try to bully somebody. I think it's just as simple as that. That this was an aspect aside of him that is least attractive to everybody except his hardest core supporters who, of course, relish the bullying and like the bullying. And so I think that when you distill it down to that, it was just that this was the aspect of Donald Trump that was least attractive to people.

There was nothing about it to you could kind of wave off as, oh, he's stream of consciousness, just whatever he comes in his mind. He says that he doesn't really mean it. he felt like he meant it and he was angry and he was bullying and he was he was trying to be cruel and that brings me to this debate i think that the question are you going to pack the court are you going to pack the court are you going to pack the court is a way that you could channel trump's aggression in a way that could really flummox biden really put him on the defensive and frankly he hadn't had great answers for this question even in front of softball questioning and so I do think that that would be a opportunity for him.

Here's the trap for Trump. He's obviously quite exercised about the Hunter Biden story. I mean, this is the thing that's like, you know, it seems like he feels like his ace in the hole. And he's very angry. You know, he's one at the Twitter censorship. He's very angry that it isn't gaining more traction. So I think his opportunity is to badger Biden about,

packing, which is a very substantive thing that makes even non-Trump supporting Republicans very nervous. His trap is to badger Joe Biden about Hunter Biden, which is something that say Maga Twitter loves and parts of, you know, the conservative media entertainment complex love. But I don't think has traction really anywhere else and can really encroach into personal territory that could give Biden an opening like he had in the first debate to basically say, look, my son has problems. I love my son. And to really flip that around on it. But I think Hunter Biden is the trap for Trump and that court packing is the opportunity for Trump. And with that, let's do our last topic, Halloween costumes. David, what will you be going

as this year? I will be going as, I don't know. I think about that. I would say, you know, I would say that I think about the Halloween costume, maybe the middle of the day on Halloween, because what I do is I don't actually, I only, I have a 12-year-old and she's really going towards the end of the trick-or-treating, but one of us dresses up in a costume and sits on the porch to welcome the trick-or-treaters. So I think the last time I did that, I went as a Sith Lord, and it was pretty glorious. Perhaps that's the better question. Jonah, what did you go as last year? Full disclosure, I can send pictures. My daughter takes Halloween very, very, very seriously. And I would show pictures of the front of our house, except I don't really need the

to know exactly what my house looks like for various and sundry reasons. When my daughter started to get out of costume age, she also got into theatrical makeup phase. And she can do like broken glass jutting out of your forehead, broken bones, she uses chicken bones and all sorts of stuff to make it look like bones are jutting out of your skin and that kind of thing. And anyway, for years, the goal. Well, Briggs went as different kinds of zombies.

We were military zombies. I think our first year, we were flight attendant zombies. Or I was a captain and my wife and daughter were flight attendants. We've gone as football player and cheerleader of zombies. The last time I got dressed up, I think it was two years ago, I want to say I was either a prince or mad hatter zombie. and my daughter was Cinderella zombie with a giant thing

of glass jutting out of her throat. So it's dark around here. I got to tell you. It's dark and serious. We take Halloween deadly seriously around here. Do the quadrupeds dress up? We usually have a window of about 43 seconds

where we can get them in a costume before they tear it apart. And we try to get a picture. But generally, they're opposed to it. Steve, what's been your best Halloween costume? I can't tell you, but my, my, I don't have it. You're going as Jeffrey Toobin. I don't have anything nearly as interesting as Jonah.

I think my youngest will pick my Halloween costume this year, and there is a 100% chance that it will be some character from Frozen. I vote Olaf. Olaf would be good. Olaf is in better shape than I am, though, so that might be hard to pull off. And Sarah? So this year is our first year with something to dress up because the cats, my cats, have declined to dress up for Halloween for the last 13 years.

So we are, I have a whole plan, but as of right now, the brisket will be going as Baby Yoda, and my husband will be the Mandalorian. Nice. And I don't know, maybe I'll be like the little, you know, coffee mug that Baby Yoda's holding. I don't know. I'll be the one taking the picture, is the true. You don't want the golden bikini layout outfit? Well, you know, Sarah, the Mandalorian has a female companion.

Yes, but the outfit is in particularly. She's like a mixed martial artist. Yeah, as am I, David. As am I. The outfit isn't very specific. You know, it's like a black hoodie, basically, and tights. Like, yeah, I guess, like, addresses that, but everyone's going to be like, are you a mime? I don't know.

Mimes are terrifying. I was in a mining troop, Jonah, in eighth grade. That makes me feel unsafe. It's weird. Mimes and clowns in the last quarter century have gone from being, like, joyful kids' things to super creepy. you know, call the police kind of things. Yeah, rhymers, mimmers. We were a big deal.

We were all the rage. So, Steve, are we doing a dispatch live tomorrow night? We are doing a dispatch live tomorrow night. Just like the last post-debate dispatch live, we will jump on probably five or ten minutes after the end of the debate. You can find information on our website about the dispatch live. and for subscribers or free-listers to the Morning Dispatch, we have links in there today, and we'll have links in there tomorrow.

This one is open to everyone. It's not necessary to be a member to join us for the Dispatch Live post-debate version. So encourage you to join us, get your friends. If you're tired, if you feel like you know what you're going to get by watching the post-debate reaction from partisans on television with Republicans, regardless of what happens, saying that Donald Trump did a good job, and Democrats, regardless of what happened, saying Joe Biden did a good job, and you want to hear from a group of people who will actually tell you just what they think without measuring or thinking about how it will play, we're a pretty good place to do that.

Also, I will tell you from experience that most of the people on TV are sober after the debates, and that will not necessarily be the case here. I will be sober. Honestly, if the debate is like the last one, I will not be. That was awful. Like, my head hurts so much. So, yeah, that's my Sarah guarantee. I may have to step in.

I'll be ready. I'll be ready. I will once again stay off of Twitter, and I will not have my, and any wine until we start the dispatch life. Jonah, what promises are you making to our listeners? I promise that when it starts, people will be able to see me. Everything else is contingent upon circumstances. No, it'll be great.

It'll be fun. I promise to be mostly sober when it starts. All right, listeners, you heard it here. We'll see many of you tomorrow night. Enjoy your debate watching. We'll see you again next week. I'm going to be.