The Dispatch Podcast - A Game of Witnesses

Episode Date: January 30, 2020

Sarah and the guys dig into the impeachment trial amid the witness dispute, the administration's Middle East peace plan, Britain and Huawei, Trump's impact on the pro-life movement, and predictions for Iowa and the Super Bowl. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isger, your host, joining me, Jonah Goldberg, Steve Hayes, and David French. And again, if you like what we're doing here, please subscribe to the dispatch. Go to the dispatch.com to subscribe to the newsletters. And, of course, subscribe to this podcast. Today, we are looking at the witness vote in the Senate impeachment trial, the Mid-East Peace proposal that the Trump administration put forward yesterday. yesterday, Huawei, doesn't need to be a crime to impeach the March for Life. There's a lot going on today. Let's jump right in. David, I'm going to jump right in. We are on week two of this impeachment trial.

And, you know, here at the dispatch and here at the dispatch podcast in particular, we're not really going to run through the day to day hour by hour who said what. But on the other hand, Mitch McConnell said yesterday in a private meeting with senators that he does not have the 51 votes to block witnesses. You and I have talked about this on our advisory opinions, our legal and cultural podcasts, and we both thought that there was a high likelihood of having witnesses and John Bolton in particular testify after portions of his book leaked a few days ago. I think all but assured was the phrase that you used. Yes, and you. And me. Two days later, how do we feel

about that prediction? The butt is still doing an awful lot of work in that sentence. I would say this. Just as a symbol, I think, of some of the confusion that's raining, from the moment that McConnell announced that he didn't have 51 to block or he didn't have the votes to block. I don't know why it would take 51, but why he didn't have the votes to block. From different people, I got immediately all in a position to know, three different completely competing assessments of what's happening. Say more. One was total confusion. Nobody really knows what's going to happen. The other one was, it looks like we're sailing towards John Bolton testimony. And the other one was, I think that this means that Bolton's not going to testify. And so I would say at this point, there's just no way of gauging the immediate political, what are the immediate next political steps. But there is still a central fact that is looming in the background. And the central fact that is looming in the background is a book publishing date.

of mid-March when we're going to find out what he has to say. And so there's this sort of sense that this is all kind of artificial. I heard someone talking on a New York Times podcast yesterday saying, well, you know if Bolton sort of dumps what he knows into the public square now, let's say he issues a sworn statement, or he writes a long medium post, or he puts an essay in a magazine that... Or gives an interview to the dispatch. Or gives an interview to the dispatch. that the senators cannot consider it because it's outside of the record of the trial. False, false. Okay. In a hyper-technical sense, I suppose if you actually had a, John Roberts as a presiding over the trial as a real judge, he could admonish the jury not to consider anything

outside of the record. But this is a political process. What's happening to impact senators' decision-making is not only what's happening in the four walls of the Senate. And so we're still at the same position where we were yesterday, even though some people are confident that he's not going to testify, and that is we're going to know what he has to say. We're going to know it. It's going to be discovered sooner rather than later. And at some point, it just doesn't make any sense not to discover it during the trial,

although doesn't make any sense seems to sort of rule the day in modern American politics. more often than it should, but still, it just doesn't make any sense. So, Jonah, do you think that McConnell has another card up his sleeve when it comes to preventing votes? We know he doesn't want to have these witnesses. And do you buy into the argument by some Republican senators that the House was responsible for presenting their case and therefore they shouldn't, as senators, have to hear witnesses, that it was the House's job to present a full and complete case? I'm going to take the second part first. and say, criticism of the House process is absolutely valid.

Not everything people say about the House, it wasn't a Soviet show trial, and Republicans weren't locked out of the hearings, and the president wasn't quite denied rights the way the man, you know, his defense team makes it sound, but it was not a great process. And so criticism of how the Democrats handled all that, I think, is fair. that doesn't mean, it seems to me, that the Senate's, the Senate Republicans position that they, that if the House didn't do everything perfectly, it is incumbent upon Senate Republicans to put their hands over their ears and say, Neanor, Neer, Neer, I can't hear you, which is basically the substance of their position, right? Right. It's, do they have a separate duty in some sense to get to the truth? Or are they simply jurors, passively, accepting information. Yeah, I think the latter is kind of silly, given that in other, as I understand it,

you and David can correct me if I'm wrong, but pretty much every other kind of impeachment that we've had, there have been witnesses who were deposed and brought, at least potentially, new information to bear. And if they brought new information to bear, that means they were bringing something other than what was in the case brought to the house. You know, we get kind of like legalistic metaphor fatigue in all of this, but if the House is the grand jury that prepares the indictment, the idea that you could have a trial in which only the evidence brought to the grand jury were introduced is bat guano crazy, right? It's just dumb. And so we have this position now where the Republicans are trying to make it a matter of high principle to say that they must.

must be protected from getting new information. And I think that's a bad argument on the merits. I'm also inclined to think it's a bad political argument. On the first question about Mitch McConnell, of course Mitch McConnell has more cards up his sleeves. He's all cards. It's cards all the way down. I mean, people know that I've had my criticisms of a lot of people in the last three years, you know, including some of the people in this room.

But I've always had a softer spot in my heart for Mitch McConnell because, first of all, basically his heart is so small to begin with. And I don't mean that as nasty as it sounds. My point is that he's an institutionalist. He is not gone for the, you know, all hail and praise comrade Trump approach that so many others have gone for. No, he's protected the Senate. And he's protected the Senate. And I think, though, there's a profound irony that the first year of true Magapalooza Trumpiness that we got, people like, Steve Bannon and all those guys that were going around, they were putting together

slates of anti-Mitch McConnell candidates because the whole idea was that Mitch McConnell was the symbol of all that is evil and wrong with the Republican Party. And if there's any single person who has given Donald Trump an agenda to run on in 2020, it is Mitch McConnell. And so with regard to the actual impeachment stuff, I would just say that the thing that everybody always needs to keep in mind is that McConnell's first priorities get reelected. His second and very close priority is to maintain the Senate Republican majority. A distant third is to protect Donald Trump. And to the extent he's interested in protecting Donald Trump, it is only because that is a means the end of the first two. Yeah. So Steve, jump in here on that last point about 2020 and McConnell's

role in protecting these senators. How does the witness question play out then? Yeah, well, first, I think Jonah's exactly right about Mitch McConnell's priorities. I've talked to senators who've laid him out exactly the way that Jonah did. In terms of how it plays in 2020, I mean, it's hazardous any time to draw a straight line from this moment to electoral consequences in this volatile political environment. So I'm going to hedge a little bit. I don't know. I have to think on a very basic level that if you have Republican sent, you have a potential witness in John Bolton, who, as we pointed out in our newsletters and our pieces on the website this week, is sort of the avatar of a modern conservative policymaker, national security policymaker. He has been

a staunch Republican for decades. He has served, you know, successive Republican administrations going back 30 years. He was somebody who defended President Trump. He was somebody who Donald Trump handpicked and brought into the White House. The idea that now John Bolton is not a credible fact witness on these matters is totally preposterous. And you're hearing this from sort of the people you would expect to hear it from on the right. I mean, you know, Lou Dobbs is calling John Bolton the tool of the left. Do you have other talk radio types saying they don't know him?

They misjudged him. He's the John Bolton they knew wouldn't ever be this disloyal. He's, come on. He's consistent. If this is what he is saying happened, there's a pretty good bet that he's got documented accounts and notebooks full of details that this is in fact what happened. So you're seeing the president's external sort of de facto, surrogates attack John Bolton and question the relevance of his testimony. You're starting to see

senators do the same, and I think it would be a huge mistake. Not only because I still have this, I mean, at some point I'm going to become cynical enough. My cynicism will catch up with the moment, but I still believe that at some point, the truth in this matter does actually matter. it shouldn't be just a matter of process. It shouldn't be protecting the institution. You want to find out what happened. And I think we have a fairly sizable mountain of evidence telling us what happened. I don't think there's a ton of doubt. But one of the objections that you've heard from the president's defenders is we haven't heard it from firsthand witnesses. That's actually technically not true. But we haven't heard it from firsthand witnesses who had these discussions with the president himself. Well, John Bolton has. He knows. this stuff. We've heard what he thinks through other witnesses. It's important that we hear from John Bolton. I thought it was fascinating because it went so little remarked upon that John Kelly, the president's former chief of staff, came out and said, I believe John Bolton and I think that the Senate should hear from him. And nobody cared. I mean, and Kelly, MSSBC cared a lot. I did

notice that. But beyond that, I don't know that anybody cared. Kelly and Bolton were not always close allies. But no. They fought furiously over immigration policy, among other things. And certainly previous to this administration, they were not on the same side of a lot of issues policy-wise. Yeah. The big question, I mean, among many other questions, is we've heard from John Kelly, will we hear anything from Jim Mattis? And I think there is a sense that he's obviously holding back.

I think there's a sense from people who know him that he feels some obligation to speak. This is somebody with a profound sense of right and wrong and of justice, and he will want to have the record reflect what he knows. David, I'm not sure that I share Steve's what I will call polyanish belief in, you know, truth of all things. That sounds lovely, but this is a political process. It's not an actual trial. Impeachment is an arm of the legislature to check another co-equal branch. If we are simply prolonging our pain by making this go on longer, any witnesses won't change any minds, and it is now just political theater. And perhaps the best argument you can make is that

it would affect the November election? Is that really what this process was meant to do? Well, let's just be clear. Our pain will be prolonged, no matter which course of action we pursue. And you'll like it. If you don't hear from witnesses, and there is a much more summary proceeding based on the House's summary proceeding, and he's acquitted as we expect that he will be acquitted, we're going to continue to have these drips and drips and drips of additional information that they're going to keep coming out and inflaming the public argument. We already know one is coming and it's not a drip. It's more like a waterfall and it's coming in early March. And so it's sort of like choose the form of your destroyer from Ghostbusters. The destroyer is

coming. You know, the pain is coming. Whether it's a stay puff man, or something else. Something else. It's coming. And so it's either going to... Yosemite Sam. Exactly. So it's either going to be in the form of the context of the impeachment trial itself or the

impeachment trial is going to be held. There will be a summary, a quick acquittal. And then we'll learn additional information, which in all likelihood, though not certain, all likelihood, will reinforce the original impeachment case. And will then, of course, be used. as a hammer throughout the presidential campaign. So I don't think we have a what's the more pain-free course of action. I think we have a what's a better or worse course of action for historical precedent, for the constitutional soundness of our government. And I would argue

that the better course of action from a presidential standpoint is get Bolton in there and hear from him, hear from him in the course of the trial. And all of these arguments about, well, we're just confined to what the house brought to us. You and I both know, and if you're a trial lawyer, let's just stick for a moment with the fiction that this is exactly analogous to a federal civil or criminal trial. If I get new information between the end of discovery and the opening of a trial, you know what I do? I file a motion in limine with the judge to get that evidence admitted. The other side opposes it, of course. And if it's material and if it's new and it's relevant, guess what? That motion is granted. I've done it a million times in my own civil practice. So even if you

stick with the fiction that this is just like some sort of district court trial, the fact of the matter is you would get this evidence in 99 times out of 100 anyway. But, okay, I agree. Of course I want more information. I like information. I like knowing things. That's why I'm here. That's why people should subscribe to the dispatcher. But it's not a trial. The impeachment the process of impeachment has a specific goal to determine whether the president should be removed from office. If that has already been determined by these senators that he will not be removed from office, then the purpose of an impeachment trial has been met and it has, to a large extent, already ended. The purpose of an election is to get out information about whether that person

should be reelected in this case. And that, again, has a whole separate purpose and should be followed and we should have John Bolton's book and Jim Mattis and everything else. But if it won't change people's minds, the impeachment trial itself has a purpose that is separate and different than the simple fitness of a president. It is whether there are two-thirds of the senators are ready to remove him from office. And Jonah, I'm coming to you because there were some videos put out by some Republican senators in the last couple days that you were pretty milk-toast about. Yeah, you were, you were middle of the road. We got very angry text messages last night listeners, very angry Jonah messages. Yes.

Okay, well, Serenity now. Serenity now. Except the things you cannot change. Let me work up into a little rantiness here, but first of all, I want to put a pin in your statement. This is more of a remnant topic than a dispatch podcast comic, but I reject with all the fiber of my being, the claim. that the three branches are co-equal. Oh, oh, let's go, Jonah. And that is Nixonian propaganda and it must be defeated at every turn.

Second, I just want to pundify a little bit on the Bolton thing. I think it's obvious that Bolton or Team Bolton leaked to this. And I think it's because Bolton understood. Bolton's whatever flaws you think John Bolton may or may not have, he understands pretty well how Washington works. And if they went to a rapid acquittal this week, Bolton knowing what he has in his own book would look awful. Agree.

So he had to at least get on record saying these are the things I saw and said, because otherwise everyone would say, oh my gosh, would have Johnny come lately? You're not a patriot. You suck. You suck. You held this for book sales. Right. You held this for book sales, blah, blah, blah, blah.

They'll still say. You made money off our republics. That's right. There will still be people who say that, but there will be much fewer of them now because of this timing. So I think your question is really quite good about this thing about the impeachment having this purpose. And since a less than a super majority of senators have already said under no basically signaled under no terms, will they remove this guy? Why have the impeachment at all. I think that's a legitimate statesman-like question. Why prolong it? Right. In the context of a coming election. But if you can take it out of the Trump, not Trump thing,

and just look at it as a generic proposition, if a bunch of senators are so determined to say from either party that they don't care about what facts could come out, that they are so committed to their lockstep partisanship, that they literally do not want to uphold the oath that they took before the Almighty, then at least going through the, at least letting the public know that these are not the statesmen that the founders intended them to be has some value. I see some value in that. Okay. But as a productive question, I'm still agnostic about whether it was the right thing or not to impeach the guy, never mind remove him with an election coming up. The founding fathers never intended that, yada, yada, yada. Now to get to your direct question,

Rick Scott, who I always thought was surprisingly lifelike. Yeah, I mean, AI has come so far. Yeah, no, really. I mean, it's like they've patched so much of the sophomore from 2008 Romney in 2012 Romney, and I thought that he was almost human. He also believes the trees are just the right height. and he's running ads in Iowa right he's the governor of Florida and he's running ads in Iowa and he's running ads in Iowa in effect saying Joe Biden's the real criminal spouting stuff that has been fact checked and debunked over and over again and it is it is almost like some court

vizier going before Hamarabi and agreeing to sacrifice one of his babies to ball and it's just absolute

craven cynicism here and I think Rick Scott's a very smart guy. I've seen him compute pie to the 12 millionth

place in three nanoseconds but the idea that that he feels the need to take out this ad in Iowa to attack Biden to fulfill precisely the strategy that Donald Trump has been accused of is

wheels within wheels of cynicism and it's disgusting he also opens the video and I think this is relevant he doesn't say I'm Rick Scott the senator from Florida he says I'm Rick Scott and I'm a juror in this impeachment trial right

and what he should say is I'm Rick Scott and I'm about to violate my oath. Steve. So I disagree with you strongly about the idea that we should just all get on with this because everybody knows what's going to happen. It's not because they know what's going to happen. It's because the purpose of an impeachment trial, it's not for fun or for you and I.

It has a purpose. Correct. Once that purpose has been met. And you're saying the purpose has been met because we know what's going to happen. I'm saying more that the witnesses do not change. change it. Therefore, if the votes have all been decided, we don't need to continue that. So let me start by saying. And again, I'm actually four witnesses personal. I agree with that assumption. I think you're right as you look at the case. Is it likely that

if we hear from John Bolton for eight hours next Thursday, that all of a sudden a bunch of Republicans will say, wow, that's what I needed to hear. I'm changing my position. Almost certainly not, right? But I'm putting a lot of stock in almost certainly, and it's worth actually playing it out. If we had talked about John Bolton as a potential witness last Wednesday, and somebody suggested that we would be seeing, we'd be hearing from John Bolton, we all would have laughed knowingly. Of course not. We're not going to hear from John Bolton. This thing is on its path, and it's one of the reasons we didn't cover every single step of it. I think there have been so I mean, if you want to go to ways in which the conventional wisdom is wrong, we could, of course, start at 2016, where if you'd have asked the consensus of everybody in Washington, could Donald Trump ever be elected, there's no reason to even have him run because we know he couldn't possibly be elected.

So just playing this through and allowing the emergence of as much, of as many facts as we can have that get us closer in. closer to this ever-elusive truth for reasons, I think, that Jonah and his Rick Scott rant describe aptly. I think it's a good thing to do. The sports metaphor would be, this is why you play the game, right? I mean, the team that's an underdog could never stage a comeback. The Kansas City Chiefs at the beginning of the playoffs were down 24 points, I think, in the first quarter. Sure, sure. And stormed back, something that, I think, think had never been done or only been done once in the history of the NFL. On the flip side, I was watching the Purdue Ruckers game last night, and Purdue was down

17 at the half. They came within three, with, you know, give or take 28 seconds to go, and they lost. Could happen. Could happen. Okay. Let's leave. Wait, before we move on, can I do one quick point of clarification? When I was talking about Jim Mattis earlier. I did not mean that he was relevant to the discussion of this impeachment. Ukraine kerfuffle. He was not. He wasn't there. He would have no bearing on that. I'm talking about him talking in a broader sense. In the context of John Kelly. We might need to clarify in this podcast thus far. I'm not sure that rated. You know that we would have gotten emails. There would have been emails. No question about that.

Okay. Other things have happened in our country and in the world. Not just impeachment is going on. I want to briefly touch on several of them. We have a new Middle East peace proposal. Jared Kushner, 36-year-old son-in-law of the president is the architect. It is fairly detailed. And just to give further color to to this. Netanyahu also was indicted on bribery, fraud, and breach of trust at the same time that this is really being unveiled. Steve, I go to you as sort of our resident things happening not in the contiguous United States person. How did we get here? What does this mean? What does this mean for the Trump administration's foreign policy? Is this something they had to do because every administration feels the need to do it? Or is this real? Well, I mean, to to start with, actually, in some sense, the timing of the release of this might have a lot to do with what's happening in the United States and what's happening in Israel.

As is often the case in five weeks. This is no doubt a help to Benjamin Netanyahu as he goes and he makes his case to these really voters. On the substance, I think this is a pretty solid plan. I think it's unlikely to lead anytime soon to peace. But I think virtually any plan that is put out is unlike to lead any time soon to peace. I think what the Trump administration has done is, in effect, tell the Palestinians that their time is running out, saying you have rejected plan after plan after plan, which has given you more, and we're done playing that game. And therefore, this is a very Israel-friendly proposal in its broad strokes as well as most of its particulars.

But I think it reflects the fact of sort of broader changes that we're seeing in the Middle East. You have for the first time, not for the first time, but in a more obvious way, some rapprochement between some Arab states and Israel, some public rapprochement that we haven't really seen to this degree before. And what's happening in public is reflects a deeper discussions that are taking place sort of behind the scenes between the Saudis and the Israelis, between the UAE and the Israelis, things that would not, would have been sort of unheard of before those discussions are currently taking place. And I think that in effect, what the Trump administration is saying is to the Palestinians, all of these people who have been your patrons and sponsors and supporters who have gotten your back over the years, we're now having. in these conversations with them. The ground is shifting. You can no longer rely on their public backing the way that you have in the past and you can no longer rely on them to echo your complaints that everything everywhere is always the fault of the Israelis. And this, I think, reflects that broader diplomatic shift in the region. Dave, and we talk about who the audience was for this

announcement. And no doubt, Steve is right that our domestic policy issues and certainly Israel's affect the timing of this, but I do find it interesting when, for instance, this administration moved the embassy. The audience for that was not particularly the very small percentage of Jewish people that we have in this country. The audience for that, I would argue, was by and large the evangelical community, which is much larger and cares deeply about some of these issues affecting Israel. And is much more pro-Israel than much of the Jewish community. As it turns out. You have this on the heels of the President, President Trump being the first president to go in person to the March for Life.

And then on the heels of the prayer in school announcement that he made, there's a lot going on in an election year for the evangelical movement. Do you see this as part of that? Do you, you know, ratify my thoughts here? And then second, is it helping? Okay, so one, it might be, but I don't think it moves the needle at all. I don't think there's an evangelical community that's clamoring for a two-state solution here. They want a one-state solution. You know, a lot of folks who really pay attention to this issue do not call them the disputed. They certainly don't call them the occupied territories. They don't even call them the disputed territories. They often just call them Judea and Samaria. So we're talking about a community that is not necessarily super-futable. fired up for a two-state solution. In fact, I've never in my entire life, and I don't think I've been all that sheltered, been around an evangelical community who said, man, I can't wait to

vote over a two-state solution. They think support for Israel, support for Israel, support for Israel, and they think that actually a lot of these peace efforts are futile. I think there's something else going on here. There is a siren song for, it's a siren song that both Republicans and Democrats can hear. And it is the siren song of I'm going to be the one who finally solves X. This is going to be the thing that one of my legacy, I'm going to solve the North Korea crisis. I'm going to solve the Middle East problems. I'm going to solve the challenges of China. I'm going to solve that that siren song if I can do this is I think. Or to put another way, the hubris of wanting to run for president in the first place. Right. You you think you have a

unique talent and a unique ability. And part of, and coming on that is all the rest of the people who tried were garbage. I've got the right way to handle this. And so I think part of this is just the, this magnetic pull that's exerted to be the one who unties the, you know, who can untie the, the impossible knot. And I think it's going to remain a knot. And I think one of the reasons why it's going to remain a knot is that I don't think the Palestinians have fully absorbed. their weakness. And I think the Israelis have begun to understand their strength, especially as a lot of the Sunni Arab states have a lot more to worry about than Palestinians with, you know, Iranian attempts at Iranian hegemony, the rise of ISIS, which is, you know, receded a bit.

But still, they have a lot more to worry about than the Palestinians. And they have kind of left the Palestinians in the lurch. And so the Palestinians have not fully, I don't think, absorbed their strategic situation. Hamas certainly has not. And until that occurs, I don't think we'll ever have truly realistic talks. Jonah, Netanyahu, at least the Netanyahu administration initially said that they were going to annex the Jordan Valley and the West Bank this weekend that no longer looks like it's necessarily going to happen, though they're making moves. Again, does this matter?

Does it matter to us here domestically, politically? If it goes horribly wrong, it matters, and if it goes completely right, it matters. Okay. The way to bet is that neither of those things will happen. And so probably it doesn't matter. Just two quick points on this. One, I largely agree with David's analysis. The one point I would add, which is not really a disagreement, but just sort of a qualification,

is that all of these Arab states have always had better things to worry about than the Palestinians. That's true. That's why they made the Palestinians such an issue. They sort of used the Palestinians the way, not to strain the analogy too much, but the way Hitler used the Sudeten Germans. It was a thing to say, you know, all of your problems don't really matter. focus on this indignity being done to us by the, you know, the Hebraic invaders. And, you know, Palestinians are your cousins. They deserve justice. But at the end of World War II, there were literally tens of millions of refugees all over the world. The only ones were still

left, basically, are the Palestinians. And it is entirely because that's the way the Arab governments and the UN wanted it. And they keep these people. people for three, four generations now in these giant refugee camps because they wanted the issue more than they wanted the solution. Well, we know a lot about that here domestically. Yes, there's a lot. It's a common thing. And so the reason why we should have skepticism that this is going to go fantastic. Well, there are many reasons why we should have skepticism. This is going to go fantastic as well. First of all, betting on the geopolitical genius of Jared Kushner seems like a stretch to me.

But second, it's telling if you look at what these Arab governments are saying to their own populations for domestic consumption compared to what they're saying at press conferences for American consumption, there are significant differences. And this is the old game that Yasser Arafat used to play. He would say one thing in English to the cookie pushers at the State Department, and then he would say another thing about annihilating Israel in Arabic back home. And my hunch is that most of these Arab governments, they are lending their support for this because they just know, much like Republican senators,

that it's better just to say yes to Trump about everything. And then you don't necessarily have to deliver down the road because Trump cares more about the headline than he does about the substance. That actually seemed like a great summary of a lot of things. We could apply that. We'll just use that soundbite repeatedly. Huawei.

separate from Huawei, I guess, to start, the Department of Justice indicted three people all in the academic community related to Chinese spying, although several of them were actually indicted for lying under 1001 lying to federal authorities, but all in the context of assisting aiding, abetting the Chinese government and stealing American IP and technology. then you have Britain and Boris Johnson's government announce that they are going to include Huawei and their 5G buildup with some limitations. Steve, you know, the UK is part of the Five Eyes. That's a big deal for us. This could signal other Five Eyes countries. What'd you explain what Five Eyes is? Yeah, I'll let Steve go from here.

The Five Eyes is an important intelligence. sharing network, largely, but not entirely on, based on signals intelligence sharing. And it's an absolutely crucial part of our broader intelligence picture. There have been concerns in the Five Eyes, some of them having to do with the United States and our inability to keep our secrets that have rattled that alliance, but this is certainly a big step. Basically, what's happened here is Boris Johnson, as thumbed his nose at Donald Trump and the Trump administration's efforts to keep the UK from going not all in with Huawei, but allowing them in enough. But doesn't that seem unlikely? I mean, when Boris Johnson was elected, he was seen as part of

Trump's cabinet, basically. Yeah, I mean, I think he felt a lot of internal pressure to allow Huawei access to the British 5G infrastructure. structure because for economic reasons. There are basically two big issues here. One of them economic, the other one's security. And they're not very easily separable. But on the economic case, the fact is that China is just way ahead of everybody else in the world on 5G technology.

And companies in the UK and throughout Europe, as we're seeing elsewhere, want to take advantage of that because they can implement they can take advantage of 5G by the technology implemented at a much lower cost than they could if they had to wait for crappier stuff that the United States would supply and they'll have to wait I mean we're not caught up there so there's the economic case and I think that is the argument that Boris Johnson heard I would say sort of alongside that is a diplomatic case and this is Boris Johnson's sort of hedging a little bit. He didn't want to take the risk that there could have been repercussions from China and that the UK could have lost some access to those markets.

The Chinese were quite clear that there would be. Quite clear. And the United States was, I think we were clearer behind closed doors than we were in public, but we were pretty clear in public. A lot of it coming from Capitol Hill saying, in effect, you have just chosen Brexit. it. This is, you know, less than a couple weeks old. And there's been much talk of a bilateral US-U-K trade agreement. This could affect that. And I would say there are two things to watch if you're looking to see the impact of this decision. One will be what effect, if any, is there on the five eyes? And do we see that? Does the public learn about there? There could be many effects that we don't even ever see. And just as a side note to that, for instance,

during the Mueller investigation, where there was all this talk about where some intelligence came from, et cetera, absolutely there was that relationship. No question. Behind the scenes was becoming a big part of that. Right. So I think issue one to look for is do we see in public additional strains on that five-eyes relationship? And sort of as a corollary to that, are there additional, is there a additional, is there

separation between the U.S. and the U.K. and this long-time traditional special relationship. I mean, we should be clear about the fact that this is a major diplomatic failure for the Trump administration. This is something that I think would have been a slam dunk under previous administrations. The Brits did what we asked them to do as often as not. They certainly did it when we spoke in the kind of language that I think was used with the British government behind the scenes as we've made clear that this was very important to us and they've sort of shrugged their shoulders on it. I mean, this isn't the Cold War, but, you know, if this had been Russia saying, do this versus America saying don't do this, in the past they would have always sided with us, we are approaching a situation similar to that with China, where China said, say yes or we'll retaliate, and America said, say no, or we'll find other ways to make your life more difficult.

And the British just sort of said, look, we're going to kind of go with them for now. Right. And then the EU followed closely behind the British. which is ironic in its own sense. But that comparison that you're making is exactly the comparison that Matt Pottinger made, who's the Deputy National Security Advisor and expert in Asian affairs, said exactly the same thing. I said, I imagine this was Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. The second thing I would look for to see where this goes is,

is there a material impact on a potential U.S. UK trade agreement? You know, the Brits did that. It was one of the arguments that Boris Johnson and others, used to justify or to explain how they were going to compensate for any losses that came as a result of Brexit. It was something that the Trump administration in its surrogates argued for here in the United States. I don't expect that we will back away from that ultimately, even though there's been a lot of squawking and sort of not so subtle threats that we might. But even if we don't, that too has an impact because then it's a question of our credibility. We've said,

don't do this, don't do this, don't do this with, you know, thinly implied or else's, and then we don't carry through on the or else's. Does it diminish our long-term credibility? I think it could. Jonah, David, any thoughts on Huawei or should we move forward? I will, I have many penetrating and brilliant insights about Huawei, but I know we're running along, so I'll put those aside. I'll just one caveat, because I like being the kibbetsing caveat guy. You're absolutely right, back in the old days that if the Soviet Union wanted to do one thing and we wanted to do another, Britain would have been with us. But I think the fact where that analogy breaks down is illuminates the real scope of the challenge

we have going forward. The Soviet Union had nothing to offer, right? I mean, what did you want to buy from the Soviet Union? A bunch of trubants, you know. Right, this is the leader in 5G technology right now. Right. And so, like, you know, telling England, you have to turn down the Soviet telephonic system, which is a bunch of tin cans tied together that you put up to your ear, was not a big ask,

particularly since they were so clearly the enemy, or at least a foe of some kind. The challenge going forward is that the international order looks much, more like, China looks much less like the Soviet Union and much more like Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany, which is, you know, a economic powerhouse that feels like it was left out in the race, you know, Germany, what do they want, a place in the sun? They felt that they came too late to the party of international colonialism. They wanted to be treated like a great power. They felt disrespected. They had a real nationalism problem. They had a lot of economic and scientific clout. most scientific journals in the 19th century were all written in German, not English.

And the Chinese feel like it is their time to shine and they want to assert themselves. And they just have so many more tools in their quiver, or that's wrong, tools in their toolbox than the Soviet Union had. And we don't have the right vocabulary. It has been so long since we had an opponent that wasn't being. not just an ideological opponent, but by virtue of their crappy ideology, was an economically backward opponent. And that is a challenge. We just don't know how to talk about this stuff. And one of the things that concerns me is that some of the people who are trying to figure it out, whether it's Marco Rubio or Josh Hawley, is they think the problem with challenging China is

capitalism and not China. And figuring out how to calibrate that correctly is going to be really difficult. But it's, I think the 5G thing is just the beginning of this problem, not the end of it. It's a security problem, David, too. I mean, DOJ has been indicting Chinese-related spying now at an ever-increasing pace. Well, yeah, I mean, I don't know. I'm going to try to not move too far a field on the 5G issue, because honestly, about what I know about 5G is that my phone says 5G on it right now. And I don't think that it's lying to you. And it's lying to me. and that upsets me. Yeah.

So that's my 5G knowledge. But I'll say two things. One, the idea that corporate China and the Communist Party of China, the government of China, that there's some sort of bright line divide between those two is just ludicrous. It's just absolutely ludicrous. And any assurances that you would get to that effect would be ludicrous. And the second thing is, just to build on, I really like Jonah's analogy of Kaiser Germany, in a way it's even worse in this sense in that we have spent as an intentional part of

our economic and foreign policy going back to the effort to extricate China from alliance with Soviet Union been intentionally and then it began to get its own momentum incorporating them very deeply not just into the world economy but into our own economy. And so you have, if you're wanting to start up a manufacturing business today, it's almost a presumption that you're going at least look at China to manufacture your product if you're an American company and you can't find a way to economically do it here. I mean, the links between, let's just, we can talk social media. What is the social media app that is taking America's young people by storm right now? It's TikTok. And so, yeah, just to amplify what Jonah said, the ways, the all

of the layers in which we are connected to China economically now, as part of intentional policy that did bear some fruit, particularly in the closing days of the Cold War, we're kind of in uncharted territory here. And it's going to be really hard. It's going to be really hard to figure out a coherent policy to address China without, in a way, I don't even know if we can truly unring that bell. As a side note, I told my college students, I was making a TikTok joke and, you know, was trying to sound cool as an old person

and told them I watched TikTok videos and they universally told me that they were too old for that nonsense. So that was not good for me. Okay, let's do some quick hits here. Jonah, does it need to be a crime to impeach the president? I know that you're trying to provoke me here. I am. I am.

Polk the bear. No, it does not. I did a big piece on this for the dispatch on the homepage for this morning. And the short answer is it is absolutely insane to think it has to be a crime. Crimes make everything easier in an impeachment. Jonathan Turley is right about that. Everybody, all sane people who talk about this stuff are right about that. that if Donald Trump went around robbing banks, the impeachment debate would be much easier on all of us.

He hasn't done that. But if you go back and you look what Madison, who wrote the impeachment clause said about impeachment, if you go back and look at what past impeachments, impeachments for judges have been about, or if you just do this thing called thinking, it becomes quite clear that, That it can't just be about crime. If the President of the United States decided that he was just going to go nude for the rest of his presidency. But other than that, he passed all the psychological tests, so tell you the Fifth Amendment doesn't apply. Or if he decided that not only was Nickelback a great band, but that he was going to go and follow them on tour and abstain from doing his job.

Or if just every single time he appeared before the mic microphones, he dropped the N-word and went after the Jews and all this kind of stuff, it's plausible to think that people might want to have him impeached, even though none of those things are crimes. It's about upholding your oath. It's about seeing that the laws are faithfully executed. It's about doing your job. The criteria for impeachment are left vague and they're given to politicians for a reason because politicians are specifically. supposed to have this sort of intuitive sense of where these lines are, and just because those politicians right now have kind of lost their senses, doesn't mean that all of a sudden that unless you commit a felony, you can't be impeached for anything.

So you might say it's a check of one co-equal branch on another. Superior over an inferior. Superior over an inferior. The check of a superior branch of government. That's right. David's right. Fair enough. It does pain me to say this, but I do highly recommend Jonas Peacht on the dispatch.

today on that topic. David, last fast thing to you, then we'll do a wrap up, but March for Life, how will Trump's appearance fit into the pro-life movement's legacy? There's the Supreme Court case on Louisiana abortion. There are things going on within the pro-life movement right now. So real quick before that, I would just say, if Trump was the guy who went nude and followed nickelback, the over under on Republican members of the House and Senate who would also go nude and follow Nickelback is, I would say, 100 in the House and 31 in the Senate. So just putting that out there. Well, that way, Jim Jordan would continue not to wear his jacket.

Oh, God. Nope, nope. Cutting off. We're heading to visuals that nobody here really was. As I had to say last week, gross, Jonah. So let me, on the March for Life, I think there's a positive and a negative. The positive is I think Donald Trump has set a precedent that future Republican presidents will follow, and that is addressing the March for Life. I think it's going to be hard for a Republican

president to say I'm less committed to the cause of the pro-life clause than Donald Trump. So I think you're going to begin to see Republican presidents in the future address the March for Life, which will raise the profile of the March for Life, and I think that's a very good thing. On the negative, I think that the, and this is a bigger issue and one worth talking about at some length, perhaps. Maybe on a podcast called The Advisory Opinions. But the pro-life movement is part political. It is largely cultural. It is about winning over people. It is about changing hearts and minds. It's about reaching people who are in times of crisis in their life and persuading them to choose one course over another. It's about moving the heart of a country in one

direction over another. It is not about consolidating a base. It is about expanding a base. And in that circumstance, Donald Trump is one of your worst pro-life standard bearers. This is not the guy who is embodying the holistic pro-life ethic that is characterized the vast majority of the movement for the last 40 years. I mean, this is not the person that any pro-life thoughtful pro-life person would want to put forward as your standard bearer. And I worry that in this short-term political, in gaining something short-term politically, and may last with future Republican presidents addressing a March for Life, you might lose something perhaps even more important. And then I'll also say this. If you're pro-life and you are focused exclusively on the

presidency and judges for the pro-life cause, you're misguided. Because the vast majority of pro-life legislation or pro-choice legislation occurs at the state level. And if you have a large-scale loss of state legislative seats and state governors' mansions, the pro-life movement will lose a lot. And there's already been, I think it's somewhere around 200 net losses in the legislatures around the country. Correct. Since Donald Trump was elected. And that's a net loss. And so as a concrete reason or a concrete way to look at this is the state of Virginia is now pondering pro-choice legislation that it never would have considered if there was a Republican majority left in that state. And that's a very, very important state. And so you cannot be myopic. You cannot

focus only on the Supreme Court, which has been like Lucy with the football for decades. You cannot focus mainly on the presidency, which can't pass a pro-life statute through Congress and can only pass pro-life regulations that are largely vaporware in the long term. You've got to think long term. You have to think about changing hearts of minds and expanding the base. And that's where I really worry about the influence of Donald Trump. I'm going to broaden your point quickly on that, which is this presidency has not been a persuasion presidency in any area. It has been a base presidency, and it's what makes, I think, 2020 interesting is that the Democrats appear to run, are appearing to want to run a base campaign against him. And so we will have a presidential election.

with no persuasion messaging and where that audience in the middle is not talked to at all and probably, therefore, does not particularly feel motivated to vote. But it might feel motivated to read the dispatch. Yes. It might feel motivated to read the dispatch. And you look back at Barack Obama's presidency where they lost over a thousand state seats and that then trickled over into redistricting and that then trickled over into redistricting and that then trickled over into congressional seats.

There's a waterfall effect here that can happen very quickly. And I think it is probably, if you ask some of the more politically detailed people within the Obama administration or within the DNC, their largest regret of those eight years in office was what happened at the statewide level. And you could argue is why so many of the Democratic candidates running for president right now are older than you'd think they should be just by how demographics have worked. they wiped out a generation of their bench. Well, and just to stick with the pro-life point for a minute, that loss of a thousand seats,

in the last five years of the Obama presidency, more pro-life laws were passed at the state level than any five-year period since Roe. And there we go. So last thing for each of you, we're doing predictions. I know we don't do hot takes at the dispatch, but it feels like a special occasion because we have the Super Bowl 24 hours before the Iowa. caucus so i would like both of your predictions and if it you know you don't have to tell us which ones which you can if you want uh and give us a spread if you want to and iowa caucuses or the

super bowl i think you have to do both but you know if you want to say that biden's going to win the super bowl like you can you can switch them up if you want uh steve i'm going to start with you so in the super bowl i think chiefs 31 27 i think they've been playing better san francisco has allowed themselves to get into some high-scoring games in the last six games of the year. Their defense hasn't been as good, except, of course, against Mike Creighton Bay Packers. There was that unfortunate situation. I think Bernie's going to win Iowa. Yeah. And I wouldn't be surprised if he wins it rather handily. Delegate-wise. Yeah. And that will set off total panic in the establishment circles of the Democratic Party.

Jonah. So, on the sports ball question. No, my gut, which is all I have to go with, because I really haven't been following NFL in a while, is that the Chiefs will win because I don't like the 49ers. I remember not liking the 49ers, and that's good enough for me. You have a vague sense. The spread, I have no idea. In terms of Iowa, I am totally open to the possibility that Bernie wins the way Steve describes it.

But if I were actually going to bet, I would bet a small amount of money that Biden actually wins it. Whoa. In part because Klobuchar will not get the 15% threshold at all of these precincts that she needs. And those votes will go to Biden not to Bernie. Good take. Good take, David. So I'm almost persuaded by that Biden take, almost but not. So I'm going to say Bernie by three, and I'm going to say Chiefs by 14, thereby proving that my Tennessee Titans were the second best team in the NFL this year. All right. Interesting that everyone's picking the Chiefs.

Well, you're a participant here. I'm picking the Chiefs as well. Okay. But mostly for Jonah's reason, although I have watched all season. But, you know, in the end, the Super Bowl kind of is its own thing. And, you know, season momentum can be what it is. But you sort of have these two weeks. You have the two weeks before.

Momentum kind of dies over two weeks. I'm also disappointed that you haven't asked any questions about the 16th annual puppy bowl. Well, because, you know, Jonah, you and I can, we will have text messages about this during the game, I am sure. Yes. You know, I actually think that they really missed an opportunity marketing the kitten bull more because, frankly, the kittens are more playful. Oftentimes, in the puppy bowl, the puppies fall asleep. There is some of that, really some of the bulldogs and bats it else.

But I think Team Rough is going to pull it out this year. Okay, huge, huge. I think on Iowa, as the moderator and my moderator's prerogative, I'm going to skip predicting who will win and simply say that if Bernie wins, if Steve is right, it narrows the field down to two, realistically, especially if he wins New Hampshire. So leaving New Hampshire, it would then be a Biden-Bernie race. And then to your point about the fear within the Democratic Party, Biden ends up running away with it after that. And so this idea that Bernie winning the first two would somehow help him actually could have the opposite effect. And I would have to

go back and look at the history of being able to win the first two and then being crushed. Obviously, there's plenty of people who haven't won the first two, but has someone, but not rarely, if ever, can I think of a time where the same person won the first two and then didn't go on. I think the last 40 years, if you win the first two, your nominee, but I could be wrong about that. Thank you so much for listening. And please do go on Apple or your podcast listening device app of choice and rate us. So appreciate you joining David, Steve, Jonah. and I for this dispatch podcast. See you again next week.