The Dispatch Podcast - A Race of Unpopulars

Episode Date: June 23, 2023

Steve and Jonah join Sarah to talk about Hunter Biden's plea deal, how it reflects on Joe Biden and: -Sarah's first tattoo? -Voters react to Hunter Biden's prosecution -The illusory Biden tapes -Trump's legally dubious Bret Baier interview -Will Hurd jumps into the race -Is RFK Jr. a sign that nature is healing? -Biden Administration foreign policy -Titanic submersible Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. Stop laughing at me, Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes. I don't even know why you're both laughing at me. But here we are. And we have plenty to cover today. We're going to talk about the Hunter Biden indictment, as well as maybe some, you know, 2024 reaction.

Will Hurd gets in the race. And then we'll end with some Joe Biden foreign policy thoughts from our very own Steve Hayes, along with a not worth your time question mark related to the submersible Let's dive right in First of all, Jonah, why are you laughing at me? I wasn't laughing at you.

I made a very inappropriate juvenile joke right as you started and you missed it. Steve caught it. and he was laughing at me. Not at the joke, at me. There you go. And we will not repeat it on this pocket. Oh, okay, perfect.

All right. Hunter Biden was faced three charges, two misdemeanor tax evasion charges, one felony gun possession charge for lying on a form in which he attested that he was not addicted to a controlled substance when, in fact, he was. For the two tax evasion charges,

he is expected to plead, guilty, and receive probation. And for the gun charge, pre-trial deferment, which is something like probation, and if you complete all of that, then the charges are dropped. So he will not be a felon. And that's really important to a lot of people, because, for instance, felons cannot possess weapons. Felons can't do all sorts of things. They can't vote in certain states. So avoiding the felony conviction was, I assume, a very important part of the plea negotiations for the Biden team. I think of this in two ways. One, there's comparing Hunter Biden to other similarly situated defendants who face tax evasion and gun possession charges. And two, there's

comparing Hunter Biden to Donald Trump, like other politically situated defendants, or however we want to label that bucket. Frankly, I find the first bucket to be a very worthwhile conversation and the second bucket to be pretty dumb. But curious of either of y'all disagree or what you might think about either of the two buckets. I'll go first. I, uh, first of all, I think, because I am not a democracy, Uber, I'll list, voluptuary.

I think American society would not suffer greatly if Hunter Biden was never allowed to vote again nor do I think it is a great sacrifice of any kind if he were never allowed to have a gun again so if I were him unless I'm missing something other high stakes about being charged with a felony

I would have considered that very negotiable if I were Hunter Biden if it got me some other better parts of the deal anyway we've said this a million times hundred Biden's kind of a broken guy. He's morally dubious. I mean, all the hooker and drug stuff is just not great. Not great Bob at all. I think the selling of his art was obviously corrupt. I have zero doubt that my friends who are much more concerned about this than I are much more invested in this than I am and follow up

more closely. I have zero doubt. I mean, we know from the first impeachment that he did corrupt things, whether legally corrupt or just morally corrupt. Corrupt things. by trading on his name in Ukraine and other places. He's a corrupt guy and by basically any definition of the thing. That said, it's a bad market signal for both sides. I think a lot of Democrats say, okay, the issues with Hunter Biden are over. We ripped off the Band-Aid. He got this plea deal.

Move on. We never have to talk about Hunter Biden anymore. You're going to have to talk about Hunter Biden more, right? And Republicans are like, especially the ones deeply invested, invested in the Biden crime family, their position is, well, you know, you cut a deal here to cauterize the wound so that we would have the reaction Democrats think we should have. We're not going to. We're going to keep our eye on the ball, which is this much grander criminal conspiracy thing.

And so I think there's going to be a short time out and talk about Hunter Biden, and then it's going to come back in a big way. More broadly, I am really coming down. I've talked about this a few times on the run, and, you know, the, the answer. Ancient Romans used to constantly try public officials for corruption. It was like nonstop. And I'm coming to think that it's a important part of a republic is that you really need to make it clear that you can't get away with double standards for elites.

Or you lose the deference that a republic requires where leaders are given some leeway to do what they think is best. and then you judge them by their results. If you don't hold them accountable for corrupt practices, then you get a real problem. And the Biden's, Trump's, all of them, I just seem to, I am increasingly think that more scrutiny is better than less. And I agree with you entirely. It's a completely, as your tattoo says,

it's a completely false analogy between Trump and Hunter Biden. For those who are like, wait, what? Jonah got me a wonderful temporary tattoo. There's like many people on Twitter who think this is a real tattoo and I'm seven months pregnant. I'm not getting a real tattoo all up my arm for the first time in my life.

That would be insane. But I will read it to you. It's by Justice Jackson and handily enough, it's on my arm right now. Other cases presenting different allegations and different records may lead to different conclusions. Indeed, Hunter versus Donald Trump. I totally agree with you, Steve.

I would also point out, for instance, that during my two years at the Department of Justice, two congressmen were indicted for various forms of corruption. And Senator Menendez now is once again under investigation for corrupt practices for like the fifth time or something. I mean, this guy just can't stop corrupting. Allegedly. So I think you are onto something there, allegedly.

Allegedly. Steve, another part of this that I think is interesting, according to a Reuters poll that just came back from the field, half of Americans believe that Joe Biden's son received preferential treatment from prosecutors. And also the majority said it will not affect their likelihood of voting for Joe Biden in the next election. That sounds right.

to me. I think that's probably an accurate measure of public sentiment on this. Look, as Jonathan said, I think Hunter Biden is thoroughly corrupt. What we've seen from him in public makes that very clear, whether it's these charges lying on the, on the form, the gun form, whether it's the, you know, case that he made repeatedly as he saw in business that we've now seen through the disclosure of his public, of his private texts, private emails, clearly trading on the Biden name to make money. And then all of the procedure criminal activity he was engaged in. He's, he's a corrupt

guy. I can understand why Joe Biden says every time he's asked about this that he loves his son, he should love his son. I don't understand why he says every time he's asked about this, my son did nothing wrong. He doesn't need to say it. He shouldn't say it. And I think it reflects poorly on Joe Biden. He knows his son has done things that are wrong.

And I can understand if you're the president not wanting to know all the wrong things that your son did. But I can see why people, reading about this, think, wow, Joe Biden really probably knew a lot more about this than he's letting on. I think the problem for Republicans who want this to be the thing that brings down Joe Biden is that we just don't have evidence yet that Biden was involved in all Joe Biden was involved in the corruption. As I say, I think it would be reasonable to infer that he knew more than he's telling us. I think in some cases we have limited glimpses of

evidence that he might have known more than he's telling us, but we don't have evidence that Joe Biden was in there doing the fixing, was working alongside Hunter Biden. And, you know, I think the problem, one of the problems that Republicans face at this point is that they make these claims, congressional Republicans running these investigations, that either end up being not credible at all, really thinly sourced, or which they later then have to retract. And I think what happens is in the right-wing media ecosphere, people hear the claim, and they think, ah, there it is. there's the evidence. There's the evidence. And then there's no more discussion about it. Then

discussion just goes away. Then they don't, the same people who are amplifying those claims when they're made, don't go back and do equally long, you know, segments at the top of their lungs about how the claim didn't bear out. And the one example I'll give you is these claims that were much in the news, certainly in the news, in conservative media just a couple weeks ago from Chuck Grassley, Senator from Iowa. He gives this floor speech and he says in his floor speech that this FBI, FD, 1023 form, which is a non-verified, unvetted form that sort of collects, as I understand it, claims and helps basically helps the FBI codify these claims. On that form, there was a claim that a Ukrainian businessman had 15 recordings of calls with Hunter Biden

and two with Vice President, Joe Biden, Vice President at the time, and that this guy had held on to these recordings sort of, you know, in case that they didn't come through and deliver on their corrupt deals. And Biden, Grassley gives this speech. It's carried everywhere. It's a big deal. I was sort of email after email of conservative news sites that I subscribed to, came in discussing this, bombshell, it was called. And then Grassy gave an interview to CNN earlier this week, I believe, in which he said, I don't even know where they are instead of the tapes.

I just know they exist because of what the report says. Now, maybe they don't exist, but how will I know until the FBI tells us? are they showing their work? He literally doesn't even know if they exist. And we had a week worth of outrage discussion and commentary about how these tapes exist and the FBI is withholding from the American people when they clearly demonstrate the guilt of the Biden crime family. As I say, I'm willing to believe that there's more to learn here.

The Hunter Biden stuff is really shady. and every time we learn something, he looks worse and it seems to me to be reasonable to wonder or to ask questions about who else he was involving in these deals. But you can't claim that they're guilty of something if they're not guilty, if you don't have the evidence that they're guilty of something.

And that's where I think this stands of late. I want to, I think my value add here is to talk a little bit about that first bucket and comparing Hunter Byte. to similarly situated defendants, because I think it's actually kind of interesting. The IRS and the Department of Justice don't bring these cases very often.

Simple tax evasion of just not paying your taxes. Once Hunter Biden, I guess, was informed of this through counsel, he had already paid the back taxes. That's very different than some of the tax charges that you're going to see coming out of the Department of Justice where the person basically continued to try to not pay their taxes versus just not paying their taxes. It doesn't get charged very often.

Same with this lying on the form, on the gun form. It doesn't get charged very often. So on the one hand, Hunter Biden was treated worse than similarly situated people who have also broken those laws. On the other hand, once you are charged with those crimes, this would be a very light penalty. and I want to put some asteris on this

because frankly we don't know a lot about what the Department of Justice uncovered in either, well, we sort of have a gist on the gun charge but on the tax evasion charges we don't quite know much about it. It didn't say a whole lot about what they actually had evidence of for them to only charge him with a misdemeanor.

That's the unusual part. Normally you'd charge with a felony. So either he got treated worse because he didn't do much wrong and they don't normally charge that misdemeanor or he got treated better because they had enough for a felony and they pled it down.

I mean, that part's a little hard to know. But here's the part that bothers me, and it's the gun charge. Joe Biden just this week was giving a speech about gun violence. We have these laws on the books to try to prevent people who shouldn't have guns from getting guns. If you think that those laws are important when they're passed, if you tout them as part of your political accomplishments, then you probably should enforce them.

them and doing pretrial deferment on basically illegally buying a gun because that's what this was. We have rules and laws about who can buy a gun and who can't. He was not eligible to buy a gun. He lied on the form and he got the gun anyway. And they're not actually going to make him a felon for it. What about A, all those other people out there who are considering lying on the form? But more to the point. Why are we having this conversation about gun violence? violence. Why are we having a conversation about passing more gun laws if you're not willing to throw the book at someone who, like Jonah said, by the way, who even cares of Hunter Biden is going to be able to possess a gun? This isn't someone who's walking home from work late at night

in dangerous neighborhood and we might feel like we're taking away some of their, you know, self-defense and protection. And I assume he has Secret Service protection, right? He does. Yeah. So like, like, he's literally in the lowest category of people who need a gun. Yeah. And so I think it's pretty outrageous. I think it's hypocritical. And I think and hope it will affect the Biden administration's feelings on their ability

to talk about this moving forward because, frankly, I'm not going to take them very seriously every time they talk about how important it is to end gun violence. Clearly, it wasn't that important. And when you look at the overall statistics of, you know, this is where. one part of progressive policy runs into another part of progressive policy, which is, on the one hand, they want all these gun laws, and they want, I truly believe, of course, everyone wants to end gun violence. But on the other hand, they also believe that those laws are being unfairly used

to target certain communities and that there's an over-incarceration problem, also very valid, but it's really hard to believe both. because the way to get illegal guns off the street is to put people in prison. So, well, woof. So I don't like that very much. But I want to move on to the political side of this. Jonah, I think this is a,

maybe not literally, but a political get-out-of-jail-free card for Donald Trump. All the attention for the 2024 candidates was going to be on Trump, talking about this with Trump, Trump having to do the Brett Baer interview, which I also feel free to react to. And now every single time they're asked about it,

I assure you they're going to pivot straight to Hunter Biden. Yeah. I mean, I'm not always, I don't think it's a, I think get out of jail free card is the wrong idiom in this case. It is. It is definitely. But it got, politically it was a gift, right? It allowed, it gave everybody something to say.

that let them not concentrate on Trump. They let Trump followers get all worked up again about bad analogies and whatnot. At the same time, I just think it's really important and this can tie into the Brett interview as well. To be clear that I just don't think he has a legal strategy at this point. Other than finding one juror who will probably, and you know this stuff orders a magnitude better than I do,

who has to defy what will likely be the judge's instructions to the jury and just simply refuse to convict no matter how the instructions are given. And like the jury nullification is his only quote unquote legal strategy as far as I can tell right now. And so he's betting it all in a political strategy.

And I'm not sure, when I say strategy, that might be very, very, very generous because I think, so often Trump's, what people call Trump's strategies in these kinds of circumstances is to keep whining and throwing hisy fits and raising false charges and red herrings and whining about being a victim and the witch hunt and all that kind of stuff long enough for circumstances to change so that then he can make a quick getaway in some kind of way. I don't know that that's going to work here,

the fact that there's going to be a trial. The only way it could work for reels is if he actually got elected president and then the DOJ I'm not sure that they would would step down, would

suspend the prosecution or he pardoned, preemptively pardons himself or some weird wacky theory like that. They have to suspend the prosecution just like sort of constitutionally because the president can't prosecute himself. Like the person of justice is in the executive

branch. I will push back on this. I've never thought that this legal counsel ruling that saying the president can't be indicted while a sitting president had the force of law or, or never mind biblical authority. And I think it's much iffier when you're talking about state prosecutions because they're separate sovereigns. But when you're talking about the executive charging itself with a crime, the president, and I, you know, set aside some of the technicalities on like congressional appropriations or something. But the president could at any point just disband the Department of Justice? Sure. So how can the Department of Justice prosecute itself, basically? Politically, that would go great. That would be really a great image for the country. Can we get out of the business of giving advice on stuff like that or floating these hypotheticals

that the dispatch podcast is the new Tom Fitton. So, look, anyway, we can have we can have, we can have that debate another time about whether or not he could do all that or would do all that and all that. But regardless, I think in his head, he thinks his only way out is through political means. And so, yes, the Hunter Biden thing helps him in the short term. It helps change the conversation. It fuels the what aboutism. I'm just not confident three weeks from now we're going to say, wow, that Hunter Biden thing

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visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. Steve, I'm curious if you think there's been any big winners in the 2024 GOP field in the last week or so. Will Hurd jumped in the race. today, Will heard former congressman from Texas,

a very good friend of mine for the last 10 years. I should, like, I think almost disclose that. But, you know, he's only got, I'm bad at counting weeks, but roughly six weeks to get 40,000 individual donors to get into the debate. A lot of the other candidates are chasing that deadline as well. Chris Christie, I think, announced he was at 15,000 at this point.

So that would be on track, but then you have to assume you got the low-hanging fruit first, stuff like that. So who's swimming along with the current and whose head is bobbing beneath the water a little too much? Yeah, I mean, it's a good question. That's a lot of signatures to get for Will Hurd in a short amount of time.

He was also a former CIA operative, you know, has, I think, deep knowledge and understanding on cybersecurity issues, national security issues. Most importantly, former student body president of Texas A&M. huge. That'll get him some votes in Texas. Has presidential experience? That's the point. There you go. There you go. Um, yeah, I mean, look, I think on the, on the, on the who benefits question from the Trump legal mess, I do think it's too really to, to say at this point, we've seen some polling indicating some slippage, um, in Trump's standing in specific. favorability ratings among Republicans, which I think I'm not surprised by. I think the conventional wisdom was this indictment redounds to Trump's benefit. It just makes them stronger, rally around

Trump. The other candidates aren't taking advantage of this. And while I think some of that is true, and we had seen the polling effects of that in the aftermath of Trump's charging in the Alvin Bragg case, which I think was different and, as we discussed here many times, legally flimsy and feels political. At least initially, there are some signs that there might be a different collective Republican reaction to this, even if Republican candidates aren't hitting him on it. I would not be surprised to see this continue to weaken him. For the people in the Republican party, and there are a lot of them, who are just tired of the drama, are tired of of it all, want to move on.

You know, at a certain point, you look at the facts of this case, and particularly with the understanding that your average army captain would have already been in jail if he or she had done what Donald Trump did. There's sort of people get that. So I could see this having a longer term weakening effect on Trump's candidacy. I don't know that there's an obvious beneficiary in the field from that. You certainly haven't seen any of his Republican opponents positioned themselves to benefit from it, I would say.

So just on that point about the captain would get the same thing. The, in Kansas City, this is from the press release. that former analyst with the Kansas City Division of FBI, I'm sorry, it's from a Kansas City newspaper thing. A former analyst with the Kansas City Division of the FBI was sentenced in federal court today for illegally retaining documents related to the national defense

at her residence. She got 46 months. She kept some of the documents in her bathroom. I think stories like that are going to have some legs. Yeah, there are lots of stories like that. Some of them, I mean, that one just was, we just found out about that after the Trump news. But, you know, for years this has been the case. Mark Zaid, who is an attorney who specializes in national security,

intelligence-related matters, said the other day that any of his clients, who had done anything close to what Donald Trump has been accused of here, would already be in jail. The process would have been expedited. They would already be in jail. I think people get that. You know, and this is, you know, there was a discussion about whether Republicans

care about national security in the way that they used to. I think fundamentally they still do, most of them. And the fact that in some ways this does, there are parallels here to what Republicans claimed was disqualifying in the Hillary Clinton case. There are reasons that the Trump and Hillary Clinton cases are not the same. But the basic charge, you know, the things that Marco Rubio said on the campaign trail in 2016, I think apply equally to Donald Trump if you're talking about, you know,

either defying authorities and returning this stuff or not taking care of properly, not taking care of national defense information. Jonah, with Will Hurd jumping in the race, is this turning into 2016 all over again? Would this be different if it was only Trump versus DeSantis in our conversations about Trump's indictment or Hunter Biden? Or is actually at this point having Chris Christie in the race, Will Hurd in the race, let's call them Normie Republicans. Is that potentially going to help? Look, I mean, what do we have now? 11, 12?

That's too many. but I don't think it would be a good race just to have one-on-one with DeSantis. In part, because you can see how DeSantis is struggling to figure out how to attack Trump. That struggle would be all the more acute in a one-on-one race. And it's not clear he's got the chops, right?

I mean, I still think DeSantis is going to have better days ahead. I don't think everybody who's all, who's contributed to his campaign, thinks, man, he's just been firing all cylinders. This is going great. And so I don't want to sound like Chris Starr, all the time, but, like, the really important thing is not how many get in, but when they get out, you know, and, you know, that's a point that Chris Sunno has been making. So, you know,

if Will Hurd can't get the 40,000 small donors, you know, if he can't meet the thresholds and can't get into the early debates, he should just get out. I mean, I like Wilher. He's an honorable and decent guy and, you know, among the field, you know, barring some new information. He's near the top of my list of people I'd be perfectly happy to be president of United. States. But if he can't show real momentum early, it's going to be too late to show it later. My hope is, you know, so Trump says he's not going to be on the debate stage. I suspect he won't skip too many debates because he cannot stand being not part of the story. But that's going to be a real test to see if Christie can get on there. And if I were one

of these various Republicans against Trump groups or Lincoln Project groups, rather than just behaving like a giant Democratic super PAC, I would be working really, really hard to get people to be small donors for Chris Christie to get them on that debate stage. And it's going to be, I think a real test, one of the real inflection points in this campaign will be that debate because Christy will go very critical. If herds on there, he'll be pretty critical, not as critical is Christy. Mike Pence will say the Trump presidency was awesome except for January 6th.

And DeSantis will say the Trump president, he started out awesome, but he didn't deliver the goods and I can do better. And what will be interesting is to see whether or not the critical mass of everyone up there

goes anti-Trump. You know, Vivit Ramosami will make news because he'll be the guy up there doing his throne-sniffing act of Donald Trump on stage. But the question is, will that help normalize, will move the Overtin window towards it being a normal thing for all of Trump's opponents to actually, on the record in real time, in front of cameras, criticize Donald Trump.

And I think once they start doing that, it's going to be much more difficult to walk it back. And that's where I think you can see a sort of hastening of the process of critical mass of the other candidate it's turning on Trump or not. And you can see a hastening of the, gosh, I'd have no chance of winning this. So let's all, so Nikki Haley's like,

I can still hold out for VP or Tim Scott, I can still hold out for VP, why burn my bridges? And they just, um, the cave. And I just don't know which way it's going to go, but I think that's going to be the real, one of the real testing points.

Last word to you on this, Steve. Yeah, I mean, I like the fact that somebody like Willard is getting in because I'm still delusional enough to believe that policy matters on some level and it's helpful. I think it's good for the country, good for the Republican Party to have, you know, thoughtful people articulate serious policy views and Will Hurd will do that. And it's also, I think, important at a time when, you know, there's this assumption that Donald Trump casts such a shadow over the party. that you can't really make an argument that's anything beyond what sort of Trumpy America

first policy has been to the extent that that's even knowable. I mean, part of the problem with ascribing policy views to Trump is he's willing to just change them sort of on the spot in the moment like he has, like he did in that awkward interview with Brett Baer on his first step act. where Brett pointed out that Alice Johnson, a woman whom Trump pardoned, would be executed by his new position of executing drug dealers.

And Trump was shocked by this. I obviously hadn't really thought it through. But you have enough candidates in the race who are, I think, disingenuously trying to sound like Trump. The Ron DeSantis super PAC, There's all of this incredibly silly in the weeds online fighting between Team Trump and Team DeSantis on Twitter.

And Team Trump posted a video of an appearance from DeSantis in 2018 on Fox business where he was talking about tariffs and China. And DeSantis sort of half got President Trump's back. on his America First Protectionism, but also said, look, it's better when U.S. businesses don't have barriers to new markets and made something that at least had hints of a more traditional free trade Republican position. And in the back and forth, the DeSantis team, the DeSantis Super PAC team, tried to make it sound like DeSantis was just like Trump on tariffs.

talked about how he strongly defended Trump tariff policy. He didn't, and that's not what Ron DeSantis believes, or at least believed at the time he wasn't running for president. And you watch these candidates warp themselves to sort of cast aside positions they've held for years to sound more like Donald Trump. It's not a great thing. And so I think if somebody like Wilhelm comes in

and shocking as it might seem, times says what he believes, that's a good thing in the short term. I agree with Jonah and Steyerwald, you know, there's a time to know when it's not working and if it's not working to move on. But in the short term, I like the idea of a Republican articulating something close to Republican views. Jonah, do you see any vulnerability from this primary challenge by RFK Jr. Within the Democratic primary to Joe Biden, or, as you've written about,

third party candidates potentially hopping in in a way that could hurt Joe Biden? I definitely think it's possible for a third party candidate to jump in and hurt Joe Biden or Donald Trump. And I think you can't have... And I'm not even talking about the Cornell West juggernaut. But... You can't two times, well, I should say, in the last three elections in 2024.

So in 2016 and in 2024, we will have, each party will have nominated the least popular candidate possible, who's so unpopular they have a chance of losing to the other one. You can't continually test the patience of the system and of voters and of institutions and not invite an ambitious person to run a third party campaign in that kind of environment. So I think it's entirely possible. On the RFK thing, look, I want to be clear about this. I think he's a objectively evil person in terms of the things that his actual, I'm not talking about his motives, I'm talking about his effect.

He's a force for evil in the world. People die when they listen to him. And his view, and I think he's a fundamentally anti-American person. conspiracy theories. But one of the things I really appreciate about his campaign is that it's a sign that nature is healing because his crackpot jackass views belong on the left. So it's good that he's running in the Democratic Party. I hope he pulls all of the people that are sympathetic to him to the Democratic Party.

I hope everyone, you know, two-notches crazier than Joe Rogan, all the Q&Non people. I mean, they should, the Q&O people should love RFK because he was the uncle of their Messiah figure in John O'Kennedy Jr. who's supposed to be coming back.

He's kind of like the John the Baptist in their bizarre fever swamp eschatology. So like all of them, let's just drain the asylums of the right and send them back to the left where they belong. Let the anti-VAC stuff be on the left. Let the anti-CIA stuff be on the left.

Let the people who think that Wi-Fi causes cancer be on the left. Just get them out of here, right? Just drain the swamp of the right and put them back where they all belong. And I appreciate that about it. I think... Was that what you were looking for? Yeah, no. It was exactly what I wanted.

I think my take is just that it will have no effect. RFK will have no effect on Joe Biden's general. election campaign, but it just so deeply highlights the weakness of him as a candidate that you're even talking about RFK Jr. I don't think the New Hampshire primary stuff matters. This is the idea that New Hampshire is still going to go first, even though the Democrats have moved to other first states, and that therefore Joe Biden will participate in New Hampshire, then RFK wins the first Democratic primary, for instance. Yeah, nobody cares though, because there's no delegates going with it.

So, I don't know, tree falls in the forest. But just in general, the polling that he's getting, it'll actually be more important if he polls 15, 20% in other primaries that Biden isn't, far more important because I think it's going to demoralize folks. And that could, there's already talk about Joe Biden's fundraising efforts. There's talk about the Latino vote,

sort of just slowly dripping away from the Democrats. the RFK is just another one of those drips, not one that matters a lot, just like Joe Biden's fundraising. He's going to have plenty of money to run for president. Don't worry. But it goes to this enthusiasm gap.

But like you said, Jonah, like at the end of the day, if this is between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, I can talk about all the reasons Joe Biden is a just historically, unprecedentedly weak candidate. And then I can do the exact same thing for Donald Trump. And one of them, if they're the two nominees,

are going to win. So, you know, I've been calling it the cryptkeeper versus the A-hole. And like, yeah, that's about where it's going to turn out for most American voters. Isn't it more likely? I mean, I saw, I saw my old friend Jonathan last. I didn't see the entire argument. I think I just saw somebody mention it on Twitter, say that the most likely outcome here is that RFK ends up speaking at the Republican convention on Donald Trump's behalf. That seems to me not a crazy prediction, actually. I actually think that's actually probably likely, yeah. Will it be like a Clint Eastwood chair thing, though?

We can hope. The problem is they're going to have to turn off all the Wi-Fi in the arena. 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. It's quick, intuitive, and requires zero coding experience. You can also tap into built-in analytics and see who's engaging with your site

and email campaigns to stay connected with subscribers or clients. And Squarespace goes beyond design. You can offer services, book appointments, and receive payments directly through your site. It's a single hub for managing your work and reaching your audience without having to piece together a bunch of different tools. All seamlessly integrated. Go to Squarespace.com slash dispatch for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. I want to move on to Joe Biden's foreign policy. Steve, you have sort of an overarching thesis on this. Tell us your thesis. Yeah, my thesis, I mean, this is more of a sort of series of observations that has now, I think, made this conclusion unavoidable.

You know, if coming into the Biden presence and there was a question about whether he was going to be more like Joe Biden, the sender, who was kind of a realist in the old school verse, variety on foreign policy and national security, or if he would be more like what we saw from Vice President Joe Biden, who was often on the very dovish side of Obama administration decisions, including famously the decision to take out Osama bin Laden. I think we have something close to an answer if you look particularly at Biden administration policy on China and Iran, Afghanistan, and that is that Joe Biden is either returning to his doveish ways as vice president or just becoming a full-fledged dove. And in many ways, I think this contrast with the way that Biden pride in himself on being a no-nonsense guy. We have to look at the world

as it is, not as we wish it to be. We have to make tough decisions. This was Joe Biden, the sender. Joe Biden, the president, seems to be doing precisely the opposite. I think if you look at what we're seeing from the Biden administration, both rhetorically in terms of action with respect to China. There is this much discussed attempt at a thaw from the U.S. towards China. It comes amid heightened, angry, belligerent rhetoric from China with respect to Taiwan, Hong Kong, the United States. The wolf warriors, the Chinese diplomats who have accused the United States of any number of conspiracies, accusing the United States of being behind COVID.

Very aggressive rhetoric from China. And I would say very aggressive policy posturing from China. And the Biden administration is seeking this thaw. When Anthony Blinken's secretary of state was planning to go to Beijing, for a summit or series of meetings. When we discovered that the Chinese were floating this sky balloon across the United States, he suspended this trip. When we, on the other hand, saw that reporting that China had been working on this base in Cuba,

much to the consternation of Congress, the American public, the trip, Anthony Blanken went ahead with his trip anyway, and then said some things that I think were signaled. a dovishness and eagerness for this thought. The same thing is happening on Iran right now. You know, you had seen Joe Biden even publicly suggest that the, that attempts to revive the Iran deal were over, that they weren't going anywhere, that nothing could happen. And particularly in light of the, the strong dissent being expressed on the streets in Iran to the regime, that seems to give a boost to the Iranians protesting the brutality of their own government.

Now there are reports that the Biden administration is working on a new deal, reviving the old deal, or an addendum to the deal. They won't call it a deal because there's a law that requires them to take such a deal to Congress. The Biden administration seems unwilling to do this. But behind the scenes, senior Biden national security, officials are saying that they would like to see not only the Iranians de-escalate their rhetoric with respect to the United States, but they want the U.S. to de-escalate its rhetoric and the Biden administration. So there are talk of lifting sanctions. There is more cash going to the Iranian regime

that had previously blocked. You're seeing things that suggest something much more along the lines of Joe Biden, the vice president, the dove, than Joe Biden, the senator. And I think it's cause for concern if you're in the United States. I think all that makes sense insofar as if your operating theory is that Biden's increasingly not engaged and is relying on longtime staff and advisors. Well, the Joe Biden, who was vice president, relied on picked advisors and staff that fit his worldview. and he brought them with them from the Senate, and he brought them with them from the vice presidency.

I saw somewhere some stat that there's this the lowest turnover of senior staff and cabinet officials of any first-term presidency around Biden. And so sometimes you kind of suspect that there is this, we all have to stick this out for the old man because he's not, you know, he needs our help. You can't bring in new people in here because they don't get,

they don't know what the old they don't know what Joe would want to do and we do and so you can see how a certain amount of institutional cultural inertia is much more powerful in the Biden administration I also just think that like

you know at the end of the day the you know Joe Biden was always weird on foreign policy and even if he is very hands on all of this his his views

were always very much of the sort of institutionalist, it's better to be wrong in a big group than right alone kind of approach to foreign policy. And I think that one of the things you learned from the Obama administration was that if you can kick the can of a politically fraught foreign policy issue to be on an election, you kick it. That's what Obama did with Afghanistan. Just put stuff on the back burner long enough to deal with the stuff that you want to deal with. And so none of this is, I mean, Steve Stee's is not

shocking to me in the slightest, because this is sort of this is the foreign policy I kind of expected from Biden. The real surprises was the how, let me put this way, there were two big surprises. One was really bad. I didn't think the incompetence on display in the

Polo-Afghanistan was literally possible with a Pentagon back-stopping it. And it turned out it was possible. And I didn't think he had it in him to help Ukraine as much as he has. But we're not going to talk about it today. But it's now becoming very clear that his slow walking on F-16s is one of the major reasons why the counteroffensive is a disappointment so far.

Because you can't have, you can't do that kind of thing without air power. So, you know, it's a vanilla left-wing Democrat foreign policy, not a radical left-wing foreign policy. And that's sort of what I expected. Steve, can I ask you a question? Assume that your overarching political goal is to not have foreign policy dominate.

Have Sarah host it. Have foreign policy dominate your administration. Is there anything Biden would be doing differently than the list you gave? That could be part of the explanation. Peter, you've got to sort of of keep the plates spinning, you know, the plates have to keep spinning. So you've got to do some things to keep the plate spinning, but you're not looking to do acrobatics either. Right. No, I think

that's, in my view, probably the most charitable interpretation of what he's doing. You know, if you look back at his campaign rhetoric, he wanted to sort of reset relationships with allies. He wanted to, you know, there wasn't much. discussion of taking on our enemies. I mean, this Joe Biden was not sort of tutting across the campaign trail. I mean, he didn't actually have to campaign much. But in his rhetoric, he wasn't suggesting that we would see anything more aggressive, with a possible exception, I would say, of China, where he at times stounded almost

Trumpy and is willing to confront China. I think the record has been mixed on that. I think in some ways we're seeing what we might have guessed at the beginning of this. What strikes me is that we're, there seems to be a more concerted push. All of the reporting on the desire for the thaw with China coinciding with what appears to be a pretty aggressive behind the scenes. push to restore the Iran deal or parts of the Iran deal to keep it hidden from members of Congress

without the Iranians having done anything to deserve that. I think I guess the Biden administration would say, look, this will help us once again have eyes on their nuclear program and maybe restrict it, dubious, I think, assertion. In a sense, no, maybe that is the explanation. But I think it's cause for concern, you know, a United States that doesn't seek to influence outcomes is a pretty weak United States

and I think we should be trying to shape the world and Biden seems content to let things slide. Joan, I don't need to open up like an hour-long conversation of this, but on the domestic side, what I think I'm seeing more and more of from a larger philosophical standpoint is everyone on either partisan side putting all their eggs in the executive basket and then getting really pumped when they are just checking off boxes every day, right?

Getting stuff done. You're having this executive order and you're reigning in this regulation and whatever else it is. And then as soon as your party is no longer in the White House, that can flip in a heartbeat, not to mention the nationwide injunctions that prevented you from actually getting the policy affected during the administration anyway. Certainly, I felt like there were people, you know, slapping themselves on the back during the Trump administration for how much they got done.

And then in the first six months of the Biden administration, it was all wiped out. The foreign policy side is different, or it should be different, or it feels different. But sometimes I'm struck by how it's not particularly different than that analysis. And I think about the Iran's, situation and the Iran nuclear deal, it feels like that doesn't look that much different than the

clean power plan. You know, Obama had one clean power plan. Trump had a different one. Biden had a third one. I mean, it's no way to run a railroad if you actually care about climate change or just having consistent policies that energy producers can follow. But when it comes to the Iran nuclear deal, there's something like that. It feels like it should have a lot longer lasting negative impact to keep bouncing around like this. But at the same time, here we are, and it's kind of fine in a bad way, if that makes sense. Yeah, I mean, I think I get what you mean. I think part of the problem, and this is perfectly consistent with your point about the

executive branch doing stuff without the say-so of Congress, is that because Obama refused to do this as an actual treaty that would get, that requires Senate confirmation, it's always been in this sort of loosey-goosey netherworld, the great in-between, between, you know, an actual, it's become, you're right, the foreign policy equivalent of an executive order, which means it can be jerked around any which way. If it had been a treaty, probably would have failed. But if it had passed, then you'd have congressional buy-in. Treaties are really hard to break

once they're established, for good reason. And so, but I also think there's sort of a policy element to the Iran deal that makes it more ephemeral insofar as it was never a deal to stop Iran

from getting nuclear weapons. It was only a deal to delay Iran from being able to make nuclear weapons for a predetermined period of time. And so, like, that just screws with the incentive structure about how you think about it, right? You know, because, like, the people who oppose it think, okay, so this is a deal to guarantee Iran will have a nuclear weapon.

And the people who like it and say, oh, this is a deal to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon long enough for us to somehow get the pixie dust and fix Iran. And that just makes it even more of the sort of written on sand kind of feel to it. All right. Let's do a little not worth your time question mark. And before we do this one, yes, this is going to be on the subversible that is missing around

the Titanic. But I don't want to be flip about the actual lives at stake here, especially as today that we're recording this is Thursday, the day that the Coast Guard at least believed that they would run out of oxygen. There are loved ones who are just an agony, you know, waiting against all odds. that maybe a miracle happens today. And I'm not trying to make light of that or have it be a fun segment on, you know,

roulette with these five people's lives. Jonah, though, you have followed this very closely. I have. I'm somewhat obsessed with it. And so I do want to talk about whether it, why it's been worth your time and whether you think there's any truth or validity to some of the like, well, what about the missing Greek reference? refugee boat or what about the idea that these are billionaires and we shouldn't care or what about

the idea that what they were doing was dumb. I personally, I said this to Steve, for me, there's like a certain gender aspect to this. A, just from a number standpoint in terms of the people who could afford to get on that boat, you're going to have a lot more men who could afford it than women. So the likelihood of having five men with no women seemed higher right off the bat. But also, again, generalizing genders here, women just don't go in for this sort of thing. If I'm going to do something, there's plenty of reckless things that I'm interested in doing. But I assure you in my, you know, quasi-retirement, the number one thing on my list is strapping a machine gun on and following around, you know, a white rhino 24 hours, you know, for my shift,

which would probably only be 12 hours a day. Just whatever the white rhino wants to do, I'll just accompany it with my Uzi and anyone who tries to take out my white rhino will face my wrath. Like that's something pretty reckless that I would go do. But sitting on a submersible

to see a shipwreck 12,000 feet down, I would really enjoy seeing the critters that are down there, fascinating animals that defy all sort of surface level evolution. but the shipwreck itself doesn't hold much for me. Yeah, so I understand your point about not being flip or glib about all of this, and I will try to avoid that. No, you're allowed to be. No, that's fine.

No, I'm serious. It's weird. Like, you know how, you know, back in the day, whenever there was a national tragedy, the most crass, cruelest jokes would immediately come out of Wall Street. and I've had various theories about why that was the case, but this story, it's weird. It makes me so uncomfortable. I have considerable, I swim, I go in the ocean,

but as I get older, the aquaphobia of my youth has been coming back, and I have considerable, I can have panic attacks about ocean stuff. And I also have much more mild claustrophobia. and also I find the idea of sitting cross-legged for 10 seconds to be horrifying so like doing it for 10 hours

is just beyond the pale and so there's something about this story brings out this weird sort of I have to make jokes about it because it's so terrifying to me and it's so horrible

and so um like You can have just a giant stack of nopes. And I look at this thing and it has all the nopes for me. I'm not getting in that thing. I am furious at them for, you know, like some of the components come from camping world. I got a buddy who's like a Navy weapon systems engineer guy at my cigar shop.

And I talked to him for a long time about all this kind of stuff. He thinks they died first day. He thinks it's done. But, like, his one, the only thing that he really covered that I hadn't thought of is how the, once it was clear, like, oxygen was of limited, you know, supply and you may not get out. They should have killed the CEO, just straight choked him out to get his oxygen, because he got them into this mess, right? And since the thing has no instrumentation of any value for navigation or anything, right, it's just an up button, you don't need them. Like, how does that work? Well, you press the up button.

Okay, goodbye. The thing I, the absolute abject horror for me is the idea of bringing your child in it. And that's where the real gender difference comes. That's the kind of thing that almost makes me want to cry. Because I just think about, among other things, how furious my wife would be with me. And how if I could get my kid out of there, I might just stay with the sub rather than face my wife's wrath. And I, well, I agree with you. more male billionaires and female

billionaires and all that kind of stuff. I don't think that's the dispositive part. I think it is the general idiocy of men that explains 95% of the gender imbalance on this thing. So anyway, do I think this thing is worth your time? It's clearly worth my time. I obsess about it. It freaks me out.

I think it is so profoundly stupid. I think there's some fascinating issues about, you know, like we should recheck Peter Thiel's plan for C. colonies out in the ocean because when you have when you were when you were exempt from all international and national bodies of regulation you can create something that has no redundancies to speak of that is utterly unsafe um and get away with it and the only last point i'll make is i think the some of the people you quoted who were saying

well what about the greek immigrants and all that kind of are the syrian immigrants and all that kind of stuff. Some of that stuff, morally rationally, there's a perfectly, you know, like, valid minor complaint about media coverage and all these kinds of things that's fun. But these guys are full of crap because their way of obsessing about this story

is to criticize the people they don't like anyway for obsessing about this story. I mean, there are these stories about how the CEO gave to Republicans as if, like, that makes it okay now to sort of obsess about it, that Eli Mistal guy who's a nasty piece of work, left-wing guy, you know, he's like, we should just send all these Supreme Court justes

or billionaires who give them stuff. Give them rides on submersibles now. It's like this weird, passive-aggressive way to say, I want to kill my political opponents. These guys are all hypocrites. They're all feeding parasitically off of other people's obsessions as a way to say they're not obsessing over it,

but they're obsessing over it too. Steve, are you even aware of this story? it's not a movie I heard about it but that's about it Jonah just told me way more than I had known previously it doesn't have chairs

the idea of getting in a metal tube at the bottom of the ocean where you're sitting in cross-legged without chairs if the thing worked at perfect time I would find that a miserable experience you know the highlight of your long discussion there, Jonah, was just the visual I had of you trying

to step cross-legged. That was enough. I didn't need to be the rest. If you were watching it in real space with me, why is I tried to do that? You'd lose an eye because one of my vertebrates would pop out and go across the room. I just have to say, like, as a pregnant woman, and just there's just certain things that like you shouldn't be talking

to pregnant women about and this week was just the worst for my like trying to go to sleep nightmare stuff and one is this the idea of you know being with your son in these you know as oxygen runs out that's just you can't help but put yourself on that submersible

and how the combination of just just awful all the feelings that you'd have that. And then, you know, U.S. sprinter Tori Bowie died from childbirth complication. She was alone. Eight months pregnant went into labor and for reasons that I don't think we know she didn't call anyone and the baby was very, you know, the head was crowning.

And they find her and the baby later both dead after a welfare check. Like, nope, everyone could stop telling me about these stories. I know it's my job to follow the news, but like, that skip me. And also as a lawyer, Donald Trump going on and talking about how he needed to keep his boxes because they had his pants in them, that has to cause you stress too. That whole Red Bear interview was like, this is why I don't practice. I don't know.

all right with that we conclude another dispatch podcast with steve having very little to contribute to the very end of our conversation and so much to contribute to the rest of it it's why we keep them around thank you steve as always for um for staying despite jona and i existing and uh if you want to hop into the common section with your own thoughts about panic attacks in the water or floating water islands, become a member of the dispatch. Think about Jonah sitting cross-legged, but do it in writing.

It can be very cathartic in that sense. Otherwise, leave us a rating, a review, wherever you're listening to this dispatch, or go about the rest of your day and enjoy your life and your family and your time. Bye. Thank you.