The Dispatch Podcast - 4Chan Putin Stan?

Episode Date: April 13, 2023

The intel leak is a serious mess... Sarah, Steve, and Jonah try to figure out just how bad things can get from here. Also: -Gamer bros get the lowdown -Why are Republicans fumbling on abortion? -Tim Scott 2024... ??? Recorded Wednesday, April 12, 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isger. That's Jonah Goldberg and that other guy is Steve Hayes. We're going to talk about the intelligence leaks and the repercussions of those. And then we'll talk about the politics of abortion on the right and what we've learned both from that Wisconsin Supreme Court race, the 22 midterms, these two dueling abortion rulings and how the Republican Party is politically navigating this issue. And finally, Tim Scott jumps into the 2024 presidential GOP nomination race. How's it going so far? Let's dive right in.

Steve, will you just give us the lay of the land on these intelligence leaks? It seems catastrophic. Yeah, I think it is catastrophic. Some of the folks that I've, that I trust on this. suggest that these leaks are not quite Snowden level, but are very serious leaks. So what appears to have happened, and they're still piecing together, the details of these disclosures, is that someone leaked in a chat discussion or a series of chat discussions about gaming, several documents very highly classified, many of the

them related to the war in Ukraine, sharing detailed information about the progress of the war, about the positions of our allies, about efforts to fund arms to Ukraine. There were other disclosures related to some of our allies, South Korea and Israel, which have caused ripples in our relationships with each of those countries. long and short of it is this is a huge problem for the United States. Both in terms of the substantive leaks, there are details about what we think, what the U.S. intelligence community has assessed is going on in the war in Ukraine, and they sometimes don't align very well with what the U.S. public position is on these things.

It complicates our work with allies in trying to supply arms to Ukraine. It gives us a window into exactly who we're listening in on. In some cases, it appears we have very good signals intelligence on some of the Russian groups that we've been monitoring and that we hold responsible for much of the violence. In Ukraine, in other cases, it's very clear that we were paying careful attention and spying, if you will, on what our allies are doing, which is nothing new, but stark to see it this way. This is just a big headache for the U.S. government.

I think the final point I'll make is that you've had briefings with senior U.S. officials about this, and those briefings themselves have been alarming because the U.S. officials seem to know so little about what's happened here, how these documents were made public and where to go from here. Steve, just as a follow-up, I guess one of my initial reactions, because we've seen the Snowden leaks, and I feel like we've seen just an increasing pace in these sort of large-scale leak dumps,

part of me this time was like, maybe we're done with classified information, you know, this large scale sharing of information across the government, et cetera. On the one hand, you saw a problem in the late 90s, obviously, of a lack of sharing of information, at least being partially to blame for September 11th. But on the other hand, telling the Russians that we know everything just seems so counter to American interests. Are countries at this point going to start acting like nothing is secret anymore, and you've just got to live in that new world? Yeah, I think so. So there are three areas of concern. The information itself, the diplomacy and sort of assessments of U.S. information security, and sources and methods is the third.

And I didn't spend any time on sources and methods. It's very clear that we have very big and It seems to me effective windows into the thinking of what the Russians are doing. It's almost inconceivable that the Russians won't learn from this and close off those means of getting that information. I think you have to look at the way that our allies are likely to treat these disclosure. If you look at the Snowden leaks, look back at WikiLeaks, you look at the U.S. inability, apparent inability to guard its own secrets. I do think you're going to have U.S. allies saying, how much can we share with them? You know, if this stuff is likely or possibly going to make it out in public and prove embarrassing to our government, you're seeing this right

now, particularly with South Korea, can we continue to share this information with the U.S. government. We, in the morning dispatch, uh, Wednesday morning, we had, uh, an interview with Eric Edelman, former U.S. ambassador to Finland and Turkey, senior advisor to vice president Cheney asking him about sort of the fallout for that. And he said, look, I don't think it's likely that, you know, we're going to see major intel sharing partners pull out of agreements like the five eyes, uh, where we share with five governments, four other governments. but but there will be real consequences people won't share the way that they have shared before I'm not sure I see it the same way because like a lot of the intel here isn't shared stuff

it's like our notations on conversations between us and them or our notations of private conversations that allies and enemies are having and like it's not and maybe I missed some of it a lot of it is not the, well, the Australians gave us this, this intel. It's, oh, the South Koreans said to our people on the phone that they're not going to do this. Or we spied on Egypt. He's dropped on Egypt saying they're going to do that. The issue wasn't sharing. The issue was that we just can't keep our dirty laundry or our stuff secret. And that alone is a huge problem. But anyway. I think the issue is them sharing with us, that if If our stuff isn't locked down and Australia gives us their goods, then it's liable to get leaked.

And I think it's just coincidental or not coincidental happenstance of what's getting leaked in each of these batches and whether it was Intel, you know, harvested by us or Intel shared from one of the five eyes. I don't think anyone's making those distinctions who's leaking it. No, no, I agree. My only point is that that even if there was none, of this contained shared intel. The real problem is that we just can't run a railroad properly, you know, and I think that's going to be a problem for Biden. But anyway, you were going to ask me some scintillating and probing question? No, that actually is part of the good question. Does this factor into our domestic politics in any way? Because it sort of doesn't feel like it has yet. This doesn't feel like a Biden administration problem. I haven't seen Republicans

particularly talk about it much. This is a national security. you know, the Steve Hases of the world wringing their hands problem. I think it does. I think it's going to affect our politics in several different ways. One of the ways is that one of the things you learn from these documents is that the U.S. thinks Ukraine could really just straight up lose.

And that would be terrible for Biden. In part because Biden is like the most pro-Ukraine political figure on the scene, at least the most pro-political figure who matters, right? I mean, there's some senators who are more gung-ho. Liz Cheney, I'm sure is more gung-ho. But he's the President of the United States,

and he's the one who's leading the effort to aid the Ukrainians. And one of the upshots of all of this is that the biggest impediment to giving Ukraine everything that it wants is the Biden administration. Not Kevin McCarthy. It's not Republicans in the House.

It's the Biden administration so scared of seeming like it's supporting Ukraine too much that it's actually erring the side of supporting it too little. at least if you believe that it should, in fact, help Ukraine win. And if Ukraine falls, that will feel like a massive disaster for the Biden administration. And there will be a lot of hypocrisy from Republicans who criticize it, but it will also have great political effect. And so there's that.

I also just think that this is going to create so many headaches diplomatically. and geostrategically for Biden that when you add it to the Afghan stuff, this was supposed to be the area where he, like the adults were in charge. And this just doesn't feel very adult and charging. And the one thing I just, I'll say, I just want to put a, lay a marker down on this. The whole thing feels very strange to me. And I suspect that this leak was not some deep Russian cell in American national security state, it feels more like a secret 4chan, you know, Putin, Stan, who for some weird reason

had access to a lot of this stuff, or whose dad had access to a lot of this stuff, and dumped it out in Discord, which is just the weirdest place to dump Intel. So I'm just saying, The whole thing is weirder doesn't make it less bad than I think we're treating it. But it's bad. I think it's bad. And it's going to, it's going to distract the Biden administration quite a bit trying to put out all the fires that it has lit. Steve, what are you hearing about the likelihood of finding out who this is? I heard it was the Supreme Court leaker.

So it's, it, it, I don't think we have, uh, real clarity on the provenance of the documents of the documents, even where they first appeared and when they first appeared. Secretary of Defense yesterday said, you know, that their first, their first citing of these documents was late February, early March. There are other reports that the documents may have been accessible online as early as January. Some of the documents were dated late February early March. Some of the other documents, it's been reported, may have been a very available online elsewhere, even earlier. Discord is where it appears that these documents were first widely noticed,

but there, again, there was a report in the Guardian yesterday that some of the documents may have appeared on other places. Forchan was one. Other chat groups for people who are interested in either gaming or war gaming. The Guardian piece was really interesting because it described efforts of the U.S. intelligence community to monitor what goes on in these chats about war games because so many of the people who play these very sophisticated war games are, in fact, the people who do conduct our wars and monitoring those sites for potential leaks of classified information that this may have been one of those things. I do think it could have a broader domestic political impact in a couple of different ways. If you look at one of the pieces of intelligence that apparently came out from this concerns the eagerness of Ukrainian government to launch attacks in Russia.

And one of the reasons that skeptics of providing Ukrainians with long-range missiles have cited is the possibility that Ukrainians would want to use these missiles to launch attacks in Russian territory. The fact that this now is being alleged that this has been happening, even though they don't yet have these long-range missiles, I think probably gives some support to the people who are skeptical and say, oh, we can't do that. That seems like it would lead to an escalation. It takes what they had posited as a hypothetical and makes it real.

And I would expect that you'll hear from, you know, the sort of NatCon right who's been skeptical of U.S. involvement on this question. So, Jonah, that's exactly where I was going, which is, given the fractures in the GOP from the Reagan-Republicanism Cold War model into this more isolationist, what we've seen push back on aid to Ukraine, it's a minority still within the Republican Party, at least elected Republicans, but a growing minority and a very vocal minority, where do you see this intelligence leak fitting into that dynamic within the right? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I just push back a little bit on the premise. There was, when I agree with the premise, but there was an

interesting counterpoint this week where Kevin McCarthy basically kind of rhetorically switched gears on Ukraine stuff. And I think it was because of the, his interactions with Taiwan, where the Taiwanese were like, no, Ukraine really matters, and someone got through to Kevin McCarthy, or maybe he just sees the writing on the wall because his speakership may be doomed, and so he wants to get back on the right side of things. Regardless, he said, you know, Ukraine has to win, and it's vitally important. And that whole blank check thing was really, you know, that was just about oversight and responsible accountability and yada, yada, yada, but Ukraine is essential and it's, and their fight

is our fight and blah, blah, blah, which I thought was a very interesting. turn of events for him and what it means in terms of whether it's an actual statement of actual conviction, which means it won't last that long, but, or whether or not the political facts on the ground of change that make them feel like it's necessary to say that, it was an interesting positive trend. All that said, I think it's too soon to tell on the, because I don't think there's a lot of purchase for the net the real the sincere net con rights position on this russia stuff it's it's not really in the polls and where it is in the polls i think it is pretty weak and i think uh sort of like we had this conversation on this podcast a lot about

the fall of of cabul um a lot of americans tell pollsters told bolsters they wanted us out of afghanistan and in fact i think if you asked anybody on this podcast whether in theory or in the abstract, we wanted to be out of Afghanistan, we all would have said, yes, with the asterisk for some of us being eventually. And then all of a sudden, Kabul falls. A bunch of Americans are killed. A bunch of our allies on the ground are slaughtered or go into hiding. People fall from planes. Americans are embarrassed. And they're all like, this isn't what we wanted. Similarly, if Kiev actually falls and you see mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing, which I think you would, the people who said, well, you know, we just want to negotiate a settlement and, you know, Russia has a right

to this and Ukraine's not a real country, they would go into political hiding really quickly. And American attitudes on this stuff would change dramatically. And if you don't want America involved in a land war, one of the things you might want to do is prevent those kinds of images from appearing on the nightly news. Speaking of which, Steve, and I'm curious for your reaction to what Jonah said about how the intelligence leaks fit into the, foreign policy, national security, tumult on the right. But we've now seen videos of the headings by Russians of Ukrainian prisoners of war. Add that into your calculation as well. Does that change things? Yeah, I mean, I think it could. You had Voldemir Zelensky

cut a video, a minute and a half long video today describing the video of this beheading of a Ukrainian captive and suggesting this is what Russia does. This is the most graphic way of seeing it, but this is what Russia does. This is the nature of the regime in Russia. And I think he makes a good point, and it's a powerful point, even if it's a sad one. Yeah, look, I mean, I think it's very interesting. I hadn't given much thought, candidly, to the fact that this hadn't become political yet. And I think you're right, Sarah, to note that. Like, it's one of these odd things that we've been talking about or that's been an issue for almost a week. And we haven't really seen the politics of it at play.

And I think in part that's because you're waiting for Republicans to figure out how do we politicize us. I mean, how do we use this against Joe Biden, honestly? The other challenge, I think, for Republicans is, you know, Republicans have largely adopted Donald Trump's formulation of the intelligence community as the deep state. right? I mean, there's a lot of people who sort of amplify and echo Trump's thinking on that. And it makes it, you know, how do you make the deep state the bad guys in this if they're producing assessments that contradict what Joe Biden is trying to do in Ukraine, for instance? So it's a naughtier problem, not as easy to politicize, I think, as some of these other issues we've been talking about. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of

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rates may vary. During the Volvo Fall Experience event, discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design that leaves plenty of room for autumn adventures. And see for yourself how Volvo's legendary safety brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute. This September, Lisa, 2026 X-E-90 plug-in hybrid from $599 biweekly at 3.99% during the Volvo Fall Experience event. Condition supply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. Well, speaking of naughty issues, let's talk about abortion. There's a few data points to include in this discussion. One, you have the 2022 midterms in which pro-life candidates didn't seem to do particularly worse than pro-choice candidates on the whole, but what you did see was where abortion itself was on the ballot, a ballot measure, a constitutional amendment, et cetera.

It did seem to drive turnout, and that affected the rest of the races, of course, because of who was voting in the first place, and that those ballot measures were a victory for the, I mean, I hate using these terms. with the pro-choice side. I'm going to use those for stand-in right now because it's just easier. But, you know, at the same time, the only pro-life Democrat in the House of Representatives down in Texas had a pro-choice opponent in the primary. So this is just among Democratic voters in a largely Hispanic district near the border in Texas, San Antonio area. And he won. He beat his pro-choice primary opponent. And yes, abortion was an issue in that race, but really what you saw, and again, I think you saw this in the general election throughout 2022, was that voters prioritized other issues above abortion.

And so it's not that they necessarily agreed with the pro-life candidate or the pro-choice candidate on abortion. It's that the economy was more important, crime, education, immigration, whatever, all these other topics. Okay, fast forward, you then have the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. That was as close to having abortion on the ballot with candidates as I think you can possibly get having a Supreme Court, justice candidate say that she would rule against any abortion restrictions. She wins by 10

plus points in Wisconsin, a swing state that's going to matter for the presidential election in 2024, certainly. And you have these dueling abortion rulings, one coming out of Texas about MIFA Press Stone, an abortion-inducing drug, another out of Washington State, saying the FDA had to keep the status quo when it comes to Miffa Press Stone. That's going to go up on appeal really quickly. And obviously, we'll talk about the legal details on advisory opinions. But from a political standpoint, it was fascinating. You had Democrats putting out lots of statements about it. You had a bipartisan coalition of three members of Congress, two Democrats and one Republican in the House, saying the Biden administration should ignore the ruling from the Texas judge.

Just set aside the stupidity of that for a moment. But you know what you didn't really see was statements from Republicans cheering it on. Mike Pence put out a statement. I saw a handful of others. It wasn't nothing. But there wasn't a stampede on the right the way that it looked like on the left. So a real asymmetry on the issue. And Jonah, I'm going to start with you.

Why haven't Republicans figured out how to talk about abortion? Are they the dog that caught the car after 50 years of talking about wanting Roe v. Wade overturned? and then they had no strategy for what to do when it was? The weirdest thing, and look, this is a serious issue with passionate feelings on all sides and all that. But, like, you remember when you had that one teacher in high school or college who just wanted to help people get an okay grade on the test?

And so they would, like, write some question on the blackboard and be like, I'm not saying this is going to be on the test. But if you figured out at any, answer this, you might do really well on a test coming up sometime in the future. You know, that kind of like wink in a nod game. Dobbs was leaked way in advance, right? Everyone had like a heads up that there was a non-trivial to ironclad, right? Somewhere between pretty good to absolute certain chance that Roe was going to be overturned and that maybe Republican strategist Republican politicians should get busy, you know, get out some legal pads and brew a cup of

coffee and sit around a table and say, okay, what do we say when this happens? But they chose to go another way. They chose what I might call, if we're going to talk about high school analogies, the Jonah Goldberg way, which is to do no homework and no prep whatsoever and just wing it when it happens. And you feel really good about itself, yourself when you get it right and you go to summer school when you don't. And so anyway, my point is, is the GOP, it's sad because these issues are so important. And I really do think that there was this progress, this moral improvement on the status quo that was possible with a national compromise position that would hold for a little while,

which would be good, that Republicans could have taken. that first of all it's the state's rights issue but beyond that that you know the country's not quite ready for an absolute ban or at least our state's not ready for an absolute ban so here's a eight week 15 week 22 week whatever the number is number that you know will set in and then we'll live the fight to keep advancing the ball and instead it was utter chaos um and uh and in a weird way the the the I met the press I cannot say the thing what is it called Miffa Preston thing is one of the problems with it is it is like one of these like legacies from the pre-Roe from the pre-Dobbs era right the FDA when they first

legalized this when they first fast-track this thing to be over-the-counter and all that not over-the-counter but you know widely used they then sat on it for 14 years about reviewing the policy so that it would gain huge market share become rely have a reliance interest for lots of Americans and make it more difficult to get rid of once it finally got in front of the issue once it finally got in front of judges. And so in some ways, this is the worst of both worlds. This is an argument from the pre-Dobbs era, further legally and politically complicating the abortion issue in the post-Dobbs era. And these guys have no frigging clue how to talk about it one way or the other. Steve, do you see this changing before 2024? Do you

see any instincts among Hill Republicans, for instance, that they're trying to figure out a path through the messaging, or is it just going to be to try to not talk about abortion? What does it look like in the next 18 months? Yeah, I mean, certainly there's a lot of strategizing taking place among pro-life groups right now and trying to sort of counsel, educate Republican elected officials about how to talk about this. I mean, it is the case, if you look at, depending on how you look at polling and we've talked about issue polling here broadly. We've talked about abortion polling here specifically. I think it's fair to say that there is a consensus position that aligns with the views of many pro-lifers on the timing of abortions. And there's a way,

I think, for Republicans to talk about the issue that makes Democrats look extreme. I think some Democrats are very extreme on the issue, and Republicans can take advantage of that and potentially win some public opinion to its side. I think there's a challenge there, and I shared Jonah's sort of bewilderment at the failure of Republican elected officials to talk about abortion more effectively, knowing that this was the goal for 50 years. I mean, for 50 years, Republicans wanted to do two things. They wanted to push abortion. discussions back to the states, and they wanted to have those discussions in the context of politics, not judicial rulings. And they succeeded in both of those cases and seemed

ill-prepared to talk about them in those contexts. I do think that there's an additional challenge that we don't talk about a lot. We don't spend a ton of time on this podcast talking about the media. But this is one of those areas where there is virtual unanimity in reporters on the quote-unquote pro-choice side and virtually every report that you read about these issues, I think casts the issue as in sort of the framing that's most favorable to the pro-choice side of debate. It makes it harder, I think, for well-meaning Republicans to make good faith arguments that will be related to consumers of news in a fair way. On just that note, I find it fascinating that I can can't think of another area where the media refuses to use the name that the group itself

uses for itself. But most news organizations will not refer to pro-life organizations. They will only refer to them as anti-abortion organizations and then say that's in their style book. And so you can't change it. So even if you're writing an op-ed, I'm sure Jonah, you've experienced this. So much. And it's very strange because the groups themselves do not call themselves anti-abortion. So why would I refer to them as anti-abortion? It's very, it has been jarring to me to have that experience. Well, and you look, just to jump on that, I think it's an important point. Actually, the language really does matter. And it helps shape the way that we have these debates. You look at the discussions that, the way that other issues, some of them related issues, some of them not related issues,

I mean, you have media organizations now using pregnant people as their preferred description of, you know, what used to be known as women. You have, you have news organizations making the decision to capitalize the B in black. A lot of these decisions are informed by a particular worldview. I think the worldview is pretty liberal. just look at the look at the amount of coverage of trans issues and the coverage in the mainstream media of

trans issues I mean certainly it's the case that folks on the right are stirring this up or poking the proverbial bear or however we want to describe it and want the issue of want the fight they're looking for a cultural war fight but you know you read the New York Times

reading these mainstream publications. And there is a not very subtle hint of advocacy in a lot of the reporting that we see. I think the abortion debate arguably more than just about any other, with possible exception of climate and environment, is where reporters sort of let their guard down, don't really try to, to frame the debate, you know, in a fair way.

Yeah, the one that you guys left out, which is not the, it's not the original one, but it was, at the time, it was very tendentious and very frustrating was, you were no longer allowed to refer in AP style book change. Illegal immigration was no longer acceptable. And you had to do undocumented migrant or whatever. And it's right, it's just, it's, it's, it's a way of sort of like, you know, you get 250 points on the SAT for filling in your name. Like, you just give extra points to one side of the argument when you circumscribe the words that people on the other side of the argument are allowed

to use. Can I tell you what's frustrating about that one? Is that our statutes all still refer to aliens. And so if you're doing a legal podcast, for instance, it can be quite jarring, I think, for people who are now only used to reading one type of language when then you're talking in a very different language in a legal context because that's what the statute says and that's what the legal opinions are going to say. Is there a good legal podcast you could recommend? No, I can't think of one. Jonah, I want to stand this a little bit because I'm curious, long term, is there a chance that the pro-life movement within the political right?

loses so much altitude because they are an albatross electorally that it fades from Republican politics and that actually the pro-life side Dobbs was the beginning of the end for the pro-life politics. So I've been thinking about this a little bit. It's funny the not on a funny ha-ha way. But I'm laughing. The assumption

on the right, including the vast majority of the sort of my intellectual corners of the right for the last quarter century was that row was um a dam on it was holding back a national consensus that was closer to the pro life position than the status quo under row and if we got rid of row it would move the ball there were arguments about how far it would move the ball but everybody basically agreed it would move the ball towards more restrictions. And meanwhile, one of the reasons why the entire debate was so frustrating was that the left thought, and still to this day, believes that Roe was the compromised position, that it was

the middle ground, moderate position. And now it turns out that the left might have been more correct in that than we thought, though not for the reasons they thought at the time, but because the Republicans have been so bad about figuring out how to come up, how to cobble together majority coalition positions on abortion, that the left or the pro-choice side, however you want to put it, is racing to basically just simply legalize abortion tooth suite. And if the Republicans keep losing elections,

that could be the new status quo in five or ten years. You know, particularly if they manage to get enough members of the House and the Senate to pass a law that essentially nationalizes abortion rights. Anyway, it seems to me that the left is winning on this on the ground. And when you look at the polling done, particularly by our friend Kristen Soltus-Hey, Anderson on attitudes among young people, people may look back on the Roe regime, which I do not think was a compromised position as more moderate than what we're actually going to get. And there's also a segment, just one in the last point, there's a big segment of the

hardcore NatCon right that is not on the religious side, right? So not the post-liberal liberalist crowd, but like there is a significant bunch out there that actually, actually never liked the pro-life position, considered it dysgenic. And if that fever-swampy element of the right gets more prominence, you could see them just to simply throw away the abortion issue entirely. Steve, last thing to you on this, which is just that for me, I find it frustrating, though in the grand scheme of what I have found frustrating in the last seven years. saying this ranks particularly high, but that on the legal right, at least, for as long as I've

been in and around it, it's always been overturned row because this is a state issue and it should be left to the states and this is a federalism issue. This is where political accountability becomes important. Like Jonah was mentioning, you can reach compromises in the states. All of, you know, local control, all of that stuff. And then as soon as Rose overturned, now from some corners of the right, not, it's not universal. Now it's, oh, but now we can make it a national issue and just pass a national law. This is the Lindsay Graham 15-week bill. I think that's more for political expediency than it is principal, the Lindsay Graham side. I think there's some that are like principled, great. Now we can force our side to win for a little bit. Do Republicans risk

losing credibility on issues like that when, I mean, everyone heard this is a state's issue. And yet, I wonder in the next Republican administration whether it will stay a state's issue. I would say, actually, your little aside, sort of your throwaway aside, there are lots of other issues that have caused me greater angst over the past seven years, is the bigger reason that Republicans don't have credibility on this and on so many other issues. I thought we cared about limited government and like balancing budgets. I mean, don't get me wrong. Like, there's a lot of other things that I've been like, oh, we don't.

That's not what people think anymore. Got it. Right, right. I think this is, this is actually a little more complicated. I mean, I do think for for people who have, look, let me phrase it this way, there are people who strongly believe the federal, federalism argument that they were making all of these years. and would make similar arguments, whether we're talking about abortion or unfunded mandates or Medicaid

or what have you. They believe in federalism. They made this argument because they believe in federalism. They think the law was crummy for those reasons. I think there are also social conservatives who believe that they should do that elected Republicans who call themselves pro-life should do everything they can to minimize the number of abortions in America every day. for a while making the sort of federalism argument worked for them in a way that they could sort of ally with people who were making the legal arguments that you suggested, but have always believed ultimately what matters most is reducing the number of abortions in America. And I think those people would say, sure, if we need a national law, some federal law to

to limit the number of abortions, if that would work for us, we're for it now, because what matters most is just limiting the number of abortions. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, your writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one. Use one of their award-winning templates or try the new Blueprint AI, which tailors a site for you based on your goals and style.

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And when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. All right. Last topic today, Tim Scott announced his exploratory committee this week. He is the latest person to hop into the 2024 Republican. presidential nomination race. We now have Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchison, and Tim Scott. I'm curious if you think Tim Scott changes this race at all, if it was already sort of baked into your calculation. And also, and maybe this is just me as the operative side, an exploratory committee, really, Tim, really? Why in the world, in this current climate,

Would you follow the 2008 model for jumping in a presidential race? Exploratory committees are basically what you do when you want all of the legal benefits of running for president, but want to hold off on having your announcement later on because the exploratory committee basically allows you to raise the money, spend the money, as long as you're also then filing the FEC reports. Again, it's indistinguishable from an actual presidential campaign, but calling in an exploratory committee made my eyes roll. Not for any good reason. I'll fully admit.

Like, I can't even articulate why it annoyed me, except, like, just announce. That's just do the announcement. Very weird. But we also had this memo from Nikki Haley's campaign manager this week, you know, touting her fundraising success that she'd raise more money than Donald Trump in the first quarter. Also saying that Donald Trump had a good first quarter,

if you count being indicted as quote-unquote good, you know, taking on Donald Trump and his grievance politics, backward-looking, all of that. But again, I will note it was a memo from the campaign manager, not Nikki Haley on the stump or in an interview or anything else. And in the meantime, the, you know, the race is where it's been, basically. Even if you want to see little changes in the polls, what's moving? So, Jonah, I'll start with. you. Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, is any of this mattering to you? Not a lot. I don't, I like Tim Scott. You know, I have this past relationship with Nikki Haley because my wife worked for, I'd be perfectly happy to see both of them get the nomination and all

that. But I, it doesn't feel to me like they can be the catmasters of their own fate in a way that most presidential candidates have to deal with events outside of their control. But a lot of these people, they are basically waiting for implosions or self-destructions or some other event that they cannot force themselves to make themselves viable contenders for the nomination. you know, if Trump drops out, has a heart attack, is in jail, you know, then Nikki Hale is going to look really good. If DeSantis and Trump, you know, destroy each other in some sort of Iran-Iraq war kind of scenario, things look really good. Otherwise, it feels like most of them are

contending to run for vice president. And it's early. But I just kind of think that a lot of the rules of thumb of politics about how early it is and all that. that kind of thing matter less. I will say I just want to. It's early, but it's getting later every day. Exactly. No. I just, you know, like we've had so much unprecedented stuff in the last seven years that, you know, talking about precedence feels kind of lame at this point. But it's not a topic for today, but I just want to lay a marker down that largely thanks to the lovely and talented A.B. Stoddard, I'm, I'm kind of red-pilled on the idea that I'm leaning towards the idea that Biden does not in fact run. And, yeah. And, um, and I think that

that will shake up things a great deal. Yeah, I think it would. Just put it down there. It's a marker. Did you have spicy food before you went to bed last night or something? No, I've been thinking about it a lot. And more more people are, you know, I think it's a thing. I'm not saying it's 100% lock or anything like that, but people are saying. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's It's some of the best people. Should we invite Jonah onto our next high states? I guess, yeah, because this is... You can come make that argument for me

because I don't really believe it right now. Sarah's newsletter got into Biden's sort of unique strength as an incumbent. I commend it to you. It's very well argued. It's worth noting. I was saying that Biden was a stronger incumbent than people think. because all I see are people saying what a weak in company is because his

approval numbers are lower than what Trumps were at this point. And it's like, yeah, but okay. Trumps are at 25. I mean, you could literally grab some hobo out of a port of John and run him against the guy with 25 and they'd probably win. And yet,

those head-to-head numbers are pretty tight. Steve, Tim Scott is a an interesting candidate in Republican politics at this point. He's not a culture war guy in any traditional sense. He's, you know, sort of a preacher-style candidate who likes talking and plain folk talk and big picture stuff and my life disproves their lies is a popular line that he uses, Republicans love having Tim Scott in the party. And I think they'll love having him as a

candidate. Will they love having him as a nominee? I think if he were the nominee, they would love him as a nominee. And I think if he were the nominee, I would place bets that Tim Scott would beat Joe Biden, given all of Joe Biden's numbers and given the economic problems and foreign policy problems that we're seeing, and that in some cases, I would argue, Joe Biden has brought upon himself. I think Tim Scott, where he'd be the Republican nominee would be a very strong Republican nominee. It's a long way to get there. I think the thing that Tim Scott has, I would argue more than anybody in the field, and probably more than anybody who's likely to be in the field is his likeability.

And it's this, that's this amorphous description. People don't really know what that means. But you know when you see it. I think Tim, Tim Scott has it. You want him to do well. I think he's, he's approachable. He is a conservative and has been a conservative going back years. He released a three-minute video early Wednesday morning announcing

this exploratory committee. It was pretty tough, I would say, on Joe Biden and the Democrats. He opens it by making reference to the first shots fired in the Civil War, April 12th, 1861, in South Carolina. And went on to talk about... Where South Carolina was on the wrong side of that. Correct. He was not taking the pro-South Carolina position. You won't be surprised to learn.

He, but he said, we're facing deep divisions and continue to be tested today, drawing at least some comparison to the battle there. He's, the question for me, and this is the question I have for all of the potential challengers and real challengers to Donald Trump, is it possible to take on Donald Trump to separate yourself from Donald Trump to look like anything other than a wannabe Trump or a mini-Trump and not lose support from MAGA voters. And, you know, if you look at when there were rumors that Tim Scott was going to be announcing for president just a few weeks ago, he did an interview, I believe it was with Sean Hannity,

and Sean Hannity asked him, just as he had asked Nikki Haley a couple days earlier, you know, sort of walk me through your policy differences. with Donald Trump, and Tim Scott answered the question by first saying, I thank God every day that Donald Trump was president of the United States. And if you're looking for somebody who's willing to step away from Donald Trump a little bit, that's not a very good indication that Tim Scott will be the person to do that. Yeah, I mean, it feels very 2015 all over again. I got to say, even the Nikki Haley memo to me, it's this idea that as soon as I can get into a head-to-head with Donald Trump, I can beat him, but I have no strategy for how we're going to go from a field

into that head to head with Donald Trump. And obviously the last couple weeks hasn't helped. I think the Trump indictment, I actually reject the focus on whether the indictment itself helps or hurts Donald Trump. Because it's not the indictment. It's the focus away from every other candidate being able to get any attention whatsoever. That's what wildly helps Donald Trump. that's what we saw throughout 2015 and 2016, that no candidate could get into the head-to-head because it was the Donald Trump show all the time. So I guess it brings us back to something you mentioned very briefly, Jonah, which is, let's take an uncharitable view towards these candidacies for just a second. I know that if you asked Tim Scott and Nikki Healey,

they'd say they're running for president. Let's assume that they're not going to be the nominee. are they, you know, is there a vice presidential ambition here? Is it a 2028 ambition here? How does this help them short of winning? Or doesn't it? Well, I mean, I think this is the, this is one of these things that, uh, when I was talking about how so much unprecedented stuff has happened in the last seven years, it's hard to talk about precedent anymore. it is now just sort of and I think you wrote about some of this recently I mean it's it's running for president is like getting a spot on dances with the stars or celebrity apprentice it's just

it's good for you to be out there and losing is is not necessarily a loss if it ups your name ID and again I'm not trying to be super cynical about Nikki or about Tim Scott because I think both of them very much would like to be president. And I think that the plan is, you know, particularly for Nikki, has been to run for president for a very long time. And if they caught fire, they would pursue a strategy. I mean,

this is the catch 22 of a lot of this stuff, right? Is you want to, you want to preserve your options. So you run a certain way. And but you're like, if we catch fire, then we'll go all in. And the problem is very difficult to catch fire unless you go all in. And so you kind of determine the kind of race you're going to have by by negotiating with yourself all the time. And I personally think maybe, maybe not for Tim Scott, but at least for Nikki Haley, to more, rather than hide criticisms of Donald Trump and campaign memos, but to actually go all out hard against Donald Trump, maybe there's an argument about timing but it's impossible to see how she gets the nomination

without toughening up the fight against Trump and that's true for pretty much all of them which is going to be interesting. I'm not super eager to get your ABC colleague Chris Christie into the race, Sarah, but it will be fun and useful and educational to see Christy

do what he says he would do which is run straight at Donald Trump and that will be the big litmus test for this entire race do the other candidates join in stay on the sidelines or defend Trump

against these brutal and unfair attacks and I don't have a great answer for you I think it's interesting because I don't think Nikki Haley is really in the vice presidential conversation if Trump were the nominee at all. I think she might be if DeSantis were the nominee, you know, Tim Scott, actually, then she'd have to move states. But whatever. It's not that I don't think that she would be considered vice presidential quality or something like that. Of course, she would. But I think that on the Trump side, she's already disqualified herself slash there's too many

other people higher in the line. Tim Scott, on the other hand, I think has a bit of an odder, harder choice, just like you said, Jonah. If he goes all in, he'll disqualify himself from being a potential Trump VP pick. But I think he would be a potential Trump VP pick if he doesn't. And so what do you do in that case when Donald Trump is running so far ahead of the field? And again, this is not a new problem. Every single presidential cycle, you see people trying to balance going after the frontrunner, but not too much. Welcome to, you know, Kamala Harris. 2019. But as you pointed out, Sarah, I mean, call me when Nikki Haley attacks Trump on Fox News, right? When she sits across from Sean Hannity and criticizes Trump the way that

her campaign aides criticized him in this memo obviously meant for distribution to reporters. I mean, she's feeding that line to people who that they think are likely to be receptive to it. And I think that she's doing it on purpose. You know, the Chris Christian Point is an interesting one. I mean, you could argue that nobody in sort of establishment Republican politics did more for Donald Trump in 2015 and 2016 than Chris Christie did. He was one of the first major Republican officials to endorse Donald Trump. He gave Donald Trump this stamp of authenticity, sort of by transitive property. Chris Christie was authentic and took people on. Donald Trump will do the same. And, you know, had been on and off

advisor to Trump for years before he wrote his book and has become, since become more critical. I think you're right, Jonah, that if Chris Christie gets in the race, it will at least help liven up the debate because right now he looks like the only person who's willing to do that in a serious way, willing to take Donald Trump on in a serious way. But he is an imperfect messenger on questions of how to regard Donald Trump, just as Nikki Haley is, who once said Donald Trump should never really be in Republican politics again, should never be near elective office, and then has defended him ever since. I think one interesting thing to look at, you've not seen any Republicans break ranks with Trump

on this prosecution of Trump in New York City, there will be interesting questions about possible future indictments related to either attempts to steal the election or January 6th. I would hope that in a serious party, these wouldn't be controversial issues. Of course you condemn the guy who tried to steal the election. Of course you condemn the guy whose rhetoric led to an insurrection. but these are not

this is not that Republican Party and these are not the simple issues we might wish them to be. All right, with that, we're going to do a little not worth your time, question mark. We were talking before this podcast about how neat it is

to hear parents, and I mean, let's be clear for me, particularly moms, grapple with their sort of the difficulty of being a parent parent, right? Being a parent is trade-offs and it's hard, especially if you have a job in terms of the trade-offs. But Scott and I were talking about the other day, we have no idea how stay-at-home moms are doing this. Honestly, like, the hardest job is not having any break coming. This is a treat to be

on this podcast. And so we were talking about how fun it would be to have a podcast of just people coming on and talking about their worst parenting moments. Like, we all have ours. And so just, you know, this is more for the audience than for either of you two. But a podcast of just people you know coming on to talk about their worst parenting moments and or in the comment section talking about your worst parenting moments, I think it'd be really fun as we had into the season of Mother's Day and Father's Day. We so cherish parents and celebrate the sacrifices and the things they do, but maybe we should be more about celebrating the catastrophes. I don't know. What do you guys think? Worth our time? I'll go first because I got a hop to go record a remnant. I think

it's a great idea. Just because, first of all, people like stories of misery and woe that don't involve themselves. And I think that I will save you my numerous terrible bad parenting moments, but I also think it's important, just one, not to get all gushy here, but like parenting is just an unremitting stream of feeling that you're not doing enough, right? Either you're not doing enough for your kid or you're not doing enough for your job or for your other responsibilities and all that kind of stuff. And I think that one of the things that only when you reach the ripened old age that, that I have achieved, you know, I'm almost as old as David French, is you, is that you realize, and also having lost now both of my parents,

is that you realize that the stuff that was painful and hurt when you were parenting in real time, kids noticed that too, right? And they remember that and that there are positive lessons in the stuff that makes you feel bad that you're doing it. Right. The fact that, Daddy has to go off to work and work hard or daddy was getting up at four in the morning to write a book or all that kind of stuff or like the compromises my mom made. They feel like screw ups and all that kind of stuff, but kids are huge sponges and pay enormous attention to how their parents behave. And so even when you're screwing things up, kids also pick up how much you care. And I think that's an important thing to remember. Okay, but Jonah, this week I took Nate to the playground and there was like a fire pole that

you can slide down and he wanted to slide down the fire pole. And so I was like helping him learn how to get his feet around the fire pole. And then I was like, you know what? Let's just see if he can do this on his own. He dropped like a rock in the bathtub. And but then towards the bottom I tried to catch him. But instead of catching him making it better, I made it worse because I gonged his head against the fire pole. And Nate started going around talking about how mommy slammed his head against the pole to other people at the park. Yeah, he did absorb what I did.

I just don't know that it was my enlarged. The very first time my wife trusted me to be alone with Lucy for an extended period of time, I ended up in the emergency room. and she was with her sisters at a baseball game and I had to call and be like, yeah, I'm at the emergency room. So like, I get it. But, and when you have your podcast, I will come and tell you that story. But I just, I think, you know, people are too hard on this. I was telling you beforehand, you know, my mom's advice to new mothers was always, you know, have you read the New York Post? These things survive in garbage dumpsters for days of the time. They're tougher than

think and you need to be tougher to. Yeah. I think it's a really interesting question. I'm eager to listen to that podcast episode or maybe just a new podcast. To add to the challenges of work-life balance, we'll just give you a new podcast about work-life balance. Yeah. No, I mean, as we were talking about this beforehand,

the real difficulty I have is I'm sort of fiercely protective of my kids' privacy. And I don't want to be, I mean, Lord knows being a parent gives you so much that you could possibly write about or talk about what have you. I mean, I could write a different thing every single day about just the experience of being a parent with all of its highs and lows and and challenges and joys. But I don't want to, mostly because I don't want my kids to read that stuff about them. And I'm, I try to be very careful about. ever making reference to them in anything I say or do. There have been a couple of notable exceptions.

And I will say one of them was probably the thing I enjoyed working on more than anything else in my 20 plus years of being in journalism. I contributed a chapter to a book called The Dadly Virtues. Jonah contributed a chapter. Tucker Carlson contributed a chapter. Jonah's chapter was on the moral case for giving your kids pets. People probably won't be surprised. Yeah, wow.

I thought it would go the other way, giving your pets, kids. That's a very good point. I wrote about the best gift you can give children as siblings and just had a great time writing it, but the entire time, you know, I'd write a little bit, I'd share more than I was comfortable sharing, and then I would sort of pull it all back in and cut out stuff that probably would have made the point a little bit better, probably would have been a little funnier, but I didn't want to expose the kids to that or have them read about it later because I think kids can be very sensitive about what they hear their parents say,

particularly in a public forum about them. But I will look forward to, to your new podcast. And I will be a reluctant participant if you want me to come on and talk about this stuff. Look, dispatch members, hop in the comments section. Let me know what you think. And again, I want to be clear, this is not a parenting podcast that I'm thinking about. This is a bad parenting. Parenting failures. I don't want success story. Steve's was a little too mushy good parenting there. That's not what I want. So let's be clear about the focus. And if you're not a dispatch member, you can become one and hop in the comments section if you have very strong opinions about this not worth your time question mark.

Also, let's be clear for all the reasons that Steve just said, this would be a very limited edition podcast, probably between now and let's say the end of the summer. All right, with that, thank you so much for joining us. This has been The Dispatch Podcast. We'll talk to you next week. I'm going to be able to be. Thank you.